Third Section of the Book of Prayer: The Integrals of the Prayer
First Chapter: The Prayer of a Resident Individual, Praying Alone, in Safety and Good Health
First Section: The Utterances of the Prayer
The third section of the Book of Prayer concerns the words and actions that the prayer comprises—namely, its prescribed integrals. The obligatory prayers differ in these integrals by way of addition or omission, depending on several factors: whether the worshipper is alone or in congregation; the time of the prayer (as the Ẓuhr of Friday differs from the Ẓuhr of other days); residence or travel; safety or fear; and health or illness.
If one wishes to handle the subject methodically and in orderly fashion, one should first discuss what all these situations share, and then treat what is unique to each of them. Alternatively, one may deal with each category separately—an easier approach, though it does entail some repetition. This latter method is the one adopted by the jurists, and we shall follow them, dividing the present section into six chapters:
Chapter One: The prayer of a resident individual praying alone in safety and sound health.
Chapter Two: Congregational prayer—that is, the rulings pertaining to the imam and the follower.
Chapter Three: The Friday prayer.
Chapter Four: The traveller’s prayer.
Chapter Five: The prayer in times of fear.
Chapter Six: The prayer of the sick.
Chapter One
The Prayer of a Resident Individual, Praying Alone, in Safety and Good Health
This chapter contains two sections:
Section One deals with the utterances of the prayer.
Section Two deals with the bodily acts of the prayer.
Section One
The Utterances of the Prayer
Issue One: The scholars have differed over the takbīrs, adopting three positions:
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A group held that every takbīr in the prayer is obligatory.
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A group held that none of them is obligatory—an isolated opinion.
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A group, comprising the majority, obliged only the opening takbīr (takbīrat al-iḥrām).
The cause of the disagreement between those who deemed all the takbīrs obligatory and those who required only the opening takbīr lies in the tension between the Prophet’s—peace and blessings be upon him—reported words and his reported actions. As for what has been transmitted of his words, it is the famous ḥadith of Abū Hurayrah in which the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said