the Eclipse Prayer, because this is a type of prayer. Prayer is the broader category, and this is one of its types.

His statement, “The Eclipse Prayer,” is an instance of attributing something to its cause; that is, the chapter concerns the prayer whose cause is an eclipse.

Kusūf (eclipse) and khusūf (eclipse) have the same meaning. One may say that the sun underwent kusūf or khusūf, and that the moon underwent kusūf or khusūf.

Some say that kusūf applies to the sun and khusūf to the moon. Perhaps this is so when the two words are mentioned together, such that one says kusūf and khusūf. When either word is used independently, however, they have the same meaning. Arabic contains other similar cases.

The jurists define an eclipse as “the disappearance of all or part of the light of one of the two luminaries.”

In reality, the light does not disappear; rather, it is obscured. Thus, we say that the precise definition of an eclipse is: “the obscuring of the light of one of the two luminaries”—that is, the sun or the moon—“due to an unusual cause.”

The cause of a solar eclipse is that the moon comes between the sun and the earth, thereby obscuring the sun from the earth, either entirely or partially. However, the moon cannot obscure the sun from the whole earth, because it is smaller than it. Even if it eclipsed the sun over an area equal to the moon’s size, it would not obscure it from another area, because the sun is far higher than the moon. Therefore, a total solar eclipse can never occur throughout all regions of the world; rather, it occurs only in a particular location, over an area equal to the moon’s size.

If we accept this verified and certain view, that the cause of a solar eclipse is