They are, however, unanimously agreed that once the imām has risen from his bowing in the second rakʿah, the follower may no longer count that rakʿah if he now joins him; for the follower is then deemed to be in his first rakʿah while the imām is in his second, and that represents the utmost degree of divergence from the imām.

The second of the three principal questions that underlie this chapter is: When a follower completes the portions of the prayer he missed with the imām, is what he performs classed as on-time performance (adāʾ) or as a make-up (qaḍāʾ)? On this point three views are reported.

1. A first group holds that everything the follower performs after the imām’s salām is a make-up, and that what he managed to catch is not the opening part of his own prayer.

2. A second group maintains the reverse: what the follower does after the imām’s salām is on-time performance, and whatever he caught with the imām constitutes the beginning of his prayer.

3. A third group distinguishes between utterances and bodily acts. They say he must “make up” in the utterances—by which they mean the recitation—yet he simply “builds upon” the bodily acts, treating them as on-time performance.

To illustrate: if someone catches one rakʿah of Maghrib—
• then, according to the first view (the make-up view), once the imām salutes he stands for two rakʿahs, reciting al-Fātiḥah and another sūrah in each, without sitting between them;
• according to the second view (the building-upon, or adāʾ, view), he stands for one rakʿah, recites al-Fātiḥah and a sūrah, sits, then rises for a second rakʿah in which he recites only al-Fātiḥah;
• according to the third view, he rises for a single rakʿah, reciting al-Fātiḥah and another sūrah.

All three opinions have been ascribed to the Mālikī school, yet the sound position from Mālik is that one makes up in the recitations but builds upon the bodily acts; for he never differed, with regard to Maghrib, that if a person catches one rakʿah he is to stand for a second rakʿah and then sit, nor did he differ that the recitation in those rakʿahs must include al-Fātiḥah and another sūrah.

The root of their divergence is the celebrated ḥadīth, transmitted in two wordings. One version reads: “Whatever you catch, pray; and whatever you miss, complete (fa-atimmū).” The word “complete” implies that what one catches counts as the beginning of his prayer. Another version reads: “Whatever you catch, pray; and whatever you miss, make up (fa-iqḍū).” The term “make up” entails that what one catches is the end of his prayer.

Thus, those who adopted the ‘completion’ reading said: what he catches is the first part of his prayer; those who followed the ‘make-up’ reading said: what he catches is the last part; and those who attempted to reconcile the wordings assigned “make-up” to the recitations and “performance” to the acts—a weak position, for it would render part of the prayer on-time and part a make-up, while they are unanimously agreed on the necessity of proper order within the prayer and that the opening takbīr belongs at its very start. This clearly indicates that whatever one catches is the beginning of his prayer, although the intentions of the follower and the imām differ with respect to ordering—ponder this carefully. It seems that this consideration is among the reasons advanced by those who held that whatever is caught is the end of the prayer.

The third of the initial questions—namely, when the follower becomes bound by the imām’s rulings in following him—contains several sub-issues, the first of which is: When is a person deemed to have caught the Friday prayer?