Therefore, Muslims living in those regions must establish their prayer times by referring to the nearest land in which night is distinguishable from day and in which the five daily prayers are recognized by their legal indicators, doing so for every twenty-four-hour cycle.
Council of Senior Scholars
Scholarly Differences
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Disagreement over the end of the preferred time for the ʿAsr prayer:
• The three Imams—Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Aḥmad—and the majority of scholars hold that its preferred time ends when an object’s shadow reaches twice its length in addition to the midday shadow.
• Their proof is the report recorded by Aḥmad (3071), Abū Dāwūd (393), and al-Tirmidhī (149): “Gabriel led the Prophet ﷺ in prayer, and on the second occasion he prayed ʿAsr when the shadow of everything was twice its length, after which he said, ‘Prayer is between these two times.’” Al-Bukhārī commented, “This is the soundest narration concerning the prayer times.”
• A second narration from Imam Aḥmad states that the time for ʿAsr extends until the sun turns yellow. This view was judged sound in al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr and was favored by al-Majd and Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn because of the hadith in Muslim (612) from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr: “The time for the ʿAsr prayer lasts so long as the sun has not turned yellow.” Because this hadith is later, acting on the later evidence becomes obligatory.
• Shaykh al-Islām said, “This is the correct view, and the authentic hadiths support it.”
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Disagreement over the end of the preferred time for the ʿIshāʾ prayer:
• According to the well-known view in Imam Aḥmad’s school, it ends at the first third of the night; this is also the new position of Imam al-Shāfiʿī, based on the authentic report from ʿĀʾishah: “They used to perform al-ʿAtamah (ʿIshāʾ) between the disappearance of the twilight and the first third of the night.”