to the prayer, for he said, “Walk to the prayer.”
- The statement, “When you hear the iqāmah, then walk,” indicates that once the caller has begun the iqāmah the person intending to join the prayer must not busy himself with anything other than the obligatory prayer for which the iqāmah was pronounced. Even clearer is the wording recorded by Muslim (710) from Abū Hurayrah in which the Prophet ﷺ said, “When the prayer is established, there is no prayer except the prescribed one,” and ʿUmar used to strike those who persisted in praying after the iqāmah.
Al-Nawawī comments: “The wisdom is that one devote himself to the obligation from its very start, entering it immediately after the imam begins, for safeguarding the constituent and perfecting elements of the obligation takes precedence over occupying oneself with anything inferior to it.”
Al-Rawḍ al-Murbiʿ adds, “No voluntary prayer is valid once the iqāmah has been given for the obligatory prayer a person intends to perform with that imam.”
- The ḥadith shows that whatever a latecomer (masbūq) manages to join with the imam counts as the beginning of his own prayer, and what he misses is deemed its end; he completes it after the imam concludes.
As for the wording in another narration, “Whatever you miss, make up (fa-qḍū),” it does not contradict “then complete (fa-atimmū),” for the verb qaḍā here simply means “to perform,” not the later technical sense of “making up” used by jurists. In Arabic usage qaḍā means “to carry out,” as in the verse, “Then, when you have finished the prayer” (Q 4:103), i.e., when you have performed it and concluded it.
Al-Ḥāfiẓ and others said: “If a ḥadith has a single chain of transmission and the wording differs, it is preferable—when possible—to reconcile the variants under one meaning. Accordingly ‘fa-qḍū’ should be understood as ‘perform and finish,’ leaving no proof for those who cling to the literal sense of ‘make up.’”
Al-Bayhaqī (2/298) transmits from ʿAlī: “Whatever you catch with the imam is the beginning of your prayer.” This is the view of al-Shāfiʿī, one of the reports from Aḥmad, and is also related from Mālik.
Al-Shāfiʿī stated, “It is the beginning of the prayer both in legal consideration and in actual observation.”