and the children as well.”

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ thereupon came out and said, “No one is waiting for this prayer except you.” In those days he led the prayer only in Madinah. He then added:

“Offer it any time between the disappearance of the twilight and one-third of the night.”

Al-Nasāʾī recorded this report through the chain of Ibn Ḥumayr, who said: “Ibn Abī ʿĪlah narrated to us, from al-Zuhrī, from ʿUrwah, from her.”

The isnād is good; all of its transmitters are reliable except Ibn Ḥumayr—whose name is Muḥammad—about whom some critics have spoken, even though he is one of al-Bukhārī’s narrators. Al-Bukhārī also included the ḥadīth in his Ṣaḥīḥ through the route of Ṣāliḥ b. Kaysān, who related from Ibn Shihāb something similar, except that instead of the wording “then he said: ‘Pray it…’” he reported: “They used to perform the ʿishāʾ prayer between the fading of the twilight and the first third of the night.”

Nevertheless, the two previously cited narrations explicitly extend the time for ʿishāʾ until midnight, and—as is evident—this additional detail must be accepted. Other reports corroborate it, among them the ḥadīth of Anas who said: “The Prophet ﷺ delayed the ʿishāʾ prayer until midnight, then he prayed and said, ‘The people have prayed and gone to sleep, but you are still in prayer so long as you are waiting for it.’” Al-Bukhārī, Aḥmad (3/200), and al-Ṭaḥāwī (94) all transmit it through Ḥumayd al-Ṭawīl from Anas. Al-Nasāʾī (93) records it through the same chain with the wording: “until nearly half the night had passed,” and this is likewise the version in Aḥmad (3/189).

The ḥadīth has additional routes, including one through Thābit from Anas with the wording: “until half the night had passed,” or “he almost—”