137 – Ibn ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with them both) reported that the Prophet ﷺ said, “The shafaq is the redness.” Al-Dāraquṭnī recorded it, while Ibn Khuzaymah and others ruled that the wording is in fact Ibn ʿUmar’s own statement (1).
— Degree of authenticity:
The chain of transmission is sound, but the report is mawqūf (stopping with the Companion). Ibn Khuzaymah related it from Ibn ʿUmar as marfūʿ (attributed to the Prophet), and al-Bayhaqī (1/373) did the same, yet both scholars considered the correct version to be mawqūf. He said: This wording has also been transmitted from ʿAlī, Ibn ʿUmar, Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿUbādah ibn al-Ṣāmit, Shaddād ibn Aws, and Abū Hurayrah, but none of those chains is authentic.
— Vocabulary:
• shafaq (the reddish twilight): Ibn Baṭṭāl, in his commentary on al-Muhadhdhab, wrote, “The shafaq is what remains of the sun’s light—its redness—at the beginning of the night, visible from sunset until the ʿIshāʾ prayer.”
Al-Khalīl said, “The shafaq is the redness that lasts from sunset until the time of the final ʿIshāʾ; when it disappears people say, ‘The shafaq has gone.’”
• ḥumrah (redness): with ḍammah on the ḥāʾ and a silent mīm; it is the feminine form of ‘red.’
— Points of benefit:
- It becomes obligatory to interpret shafaq as the redness that appears after the sun’s rays have vanished. This explanation is traced back to the Prophet ﷺ, whose complete wording was: “When the shafaq disappears, the prayer becomes due.”