the very limit that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ set for the passing of most of the time. It therefore follows with certainty that the period for the ʿishāʾ prayer begins well before the first third of the night, for the revealed texts state that it comes in prior to the disappearance of the twilight that appears as a white glow; hence it is absolutely clear that the time starts with the twilight that is the red glow. Shawkānī cites this (2/9).

Ibn Ḥazm had already expressed this view in al-Muḥallā (2/193) before Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, and it seems the latter borrowed it from him.

This is, in fact, the position held by the majority.

The final time-limit for the prayer is midnight, as indicated by the previously mentioned reports of Abū Hurayrah and Ibn ʿAmr. This is also the view of Ibn Ḥazm (2/164), who transmitted from ʿUmar—may Allah be pleased with him—the wording: “Pray the ʿishāʾ prayer from nightfall until midnight, that is, when you go to bed.” (In the original manuscript the word appears without dots; it is the same in al-Muḥallā. I maintain that the correct reading is shiʾta, “if you wish,” for Ibn Ḥazm narrated it through al-Ḥajjāj b. Minhal: Yazīd b. Hārūn related to us; Muḥammad b. Sīrīn related to us; from al-Muhājir that ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb wrote this to Abū Mūsā.)

Al-Ṭaḥāwī (1/94) likewise recorded it through Abū ʿAmr al-Ḥawḍī—whose name is Ḥafṣ b. ʿUmar—who said: Yazīd b. Hārūn narrated to us, with the wording, “whenever you wish.”

This chain is sound; its transmitters are those relied upon by the two Shaykhs, and this al-Muhājir is Abū al-Ḥasan, as Ibn Ḥazm explicitly stated (190).

The report has another route which Mālik (1/25) produced from Hishām b. ʿUrwah, from his father, stating that ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb wrote to Abū Mūsā in the words: