Issue Six: Joining the Funeral Prayer After Missing One or More Takbīrs
The jurists disagreed about several points concerning a person who arrives late and misses some of the takbīrs of the funeral prayer:
- Must he begin by pronouncing an opening takbīr, or not?
- Is he required to make up the takbīrs he missed, or not?
- If he does make them up, should he offer a supplication between the compensatory takbīrs, or omit it?
Ashhab reports from Mālik that he should pronounce a takbīr the moment he joins the prayer. This is also one of the two opinions narrated from al-Shāfiʿī.
Abū Ḥanīfah, however, says that he should wait until the imam utters the takbīr and then pronounce it with him; this view is likewise transmitted from Mālik by Ibn al-Qāsim. The analogy here is to the latecomer who joins a prescribed congregational prayer.
Mālik, Abū Ḥanīfah, and al-Shāfiʿī all agree that he must make up whatever takbīrs he has missed. Abū Ḥanīfah holds that he should also recite a supplication between those make-up takbīrs, whereas Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī say he should recite the remaining takbīrs consecutively, without inserting any supplication.
Their agreement on making up the takbīrs rests on the general purport of the Prophet’s—peace and blessings be upon him—saying: “Whatever you catch up with, pray; and whatever you miss, complete.”
Those who deem this general wording to encompass both the takbīrs and the supplication maintain that one must make up both. Those who exclude the supplication—on the grounds that it is not tied to a fixed interval—hold that only the takbīrs, which are time-bound, must be made up. This exclusion of the supplication from the general text is a case of specifying the general by analogy: Abū Ḥanīfah kept to the general sense, while the others adopted the specific.
Issue Seven: Performing the Funeral Prayer at the Grave for One Who Missed It
The jurists also differed about praying at the graveside when someone has missed the funeral prayer over the bier.
• Mālik: The prayer is not performed at the grave.
• Abū Ḥanīfah: Only the deceased’s legal guardian (walī) may pray at the grave—and then only if he missed the original funeral prayer and it had been led by someone other than the guardian.
• Al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, Dāwūd, and others: Anyone who missed the funeral prayer may perform it at the grave.
All who permit the graveside prayer stipulate that the burial must already have taken place. They then differ over how long afterward the prayer remains valid, the longest period mentioned being one month.
Reason for the Disagreement: A conflict between prevailing practice and transmitted reports.
With regard to the contrary practice, Ibn al-Qāsim said: “I asked Mālik about the ḥadīth that the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—prayed over a woman’s grave.” Mālik replied, “That ḥadīth is indeed authentic, but it is not the practice.”
Yet the legality of praying at the grave is firmly upheld by the ḥadīth scholars. Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said: “I have transmitted the Prophet’s prayer at the grave through six separate chains, all of them sound (ḥasan). Some scholars add three more, making nine.” Al-Bukhārī and Muslim record it through the chain of Abū Hurayrah, while Mālik relates it in mursal form from Abū Umāmah ibn Sahl. Ibn Wahb transmits from Mālik a view identical to that of al-Shāfiʿī.
As for Abū Ḥanīfah, he followed his customary approach—so far as I can tell—of rejecting solitary reports (akhbār al-āḥād) concerning matters of common occurrence when they have not been widely disseminated or acted upon. For when a report that by its very nature ought to have gained wide circulation is not in fact widespread, that lack of diffusion serves as an indicator that weakens the report, removing it from the level of probable authenticity to one of doubt, or even to the likelihood of falsehood or abrogation.