prayer is considered on-time (adāʾ), though the worshipper bears sin for letting part of the prayer fall outside its appointed period.

5 – It is not permissible to delay the afternoon prayer until the sun turns yellow, for that is a time of necessity in which prayer has been forbidden. Muslim relates (831) on the authority of ʿUqbah ibn ʿĀmir: “There are three hours during which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ forbade us to pray or to bury our dead,” one of them being “when the sun inclines toward setting until it actually sets.” It is likewise reported: “He ﷺ would perform the afternoon prayer while the sun was still white, clear, and high in the sky.”

6 – In some narrations the wording is, “Whoever catches one rakʿah,” while in others it is, “one sajdah” instead of “one rakʿah.” The intent is not a single bowing or a single prostration; rather, it denotes a full rakʿah with all of its prescribed words and actions. The whole is simply expressed by naming a part of it.

7 – The well-known position in our school is that the prayer time is caught merely by pronouncing the opening takbīr within it. A second report maintains that it is not caught unless one performs an entire rakʿah, as this ḥadith indicates. Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn adopted this second view, saying that it is general: nothing counts as “caught” except with a rakʿah. Among contemporary scholars, Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm Āl al-Shaykh and Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Saʿdī—may Allah have mercy on them both—chose the same opinion.