any statement to the effect that a person who postpones a prayer until its allotted time has ended—while the next prayer’s time has not yet entered—is thereby free of blame, nor does it affirm that he is blameworthy. The report is simply silent on that issue, whose clarification is supplied by the other narrations that specify when the time of every prayer ends. Common sense further dictates that whoever allows the span fixed by Allah for any action to elapse has crossed Allah’s limits, and Allah the Exalted says, “And whoever transgresses the bounds set by Allah, it is they who are the wrongdoers.”

The second ḥadīth is from ʿĀʾishah. She said: “The Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—once delayed the night prayer until a large part of the night had gone by and the people in the mosque had fallen asleep. He then came out and prayed, saying, ‘Were it not that I would burden my community, this would be its time.’” Muslim (2/116), al-Nasaʾī (93), Ibn Mājah (1/276), and al-Ṭaḥāwī (94) record it through the chain of Ibn Jurayj, who said: “Mughīrah b. Ḥakīm informed me from Umm Kulthūm bint Abī Bakr that she narrated it from her.”

On the face of it, the ḥadīth suggests that he performed the prayer after the first half of the night had passed, yet the report must be interpreted. Al-Nawawī said: “By ‘most of the night’ is meant a considerable portion of it, not necessarily more than half. This interpretation is unavoidable because of his statement, ‘This is its time,’ and it cannot refer to a moment after midnight, for no scholar has ever held that delaying the prayer past midnight is more virtuous.”

I add: supporting this construction is the fact that the ḥadīth appears in al-Bukhārī, Muslim, al-Nasaʾī, al-Dārimī, and the Musnad (6/43, 215, 272) through several chains from al-Zuhrī from