ʿUrwah, from ʿĀʾishah, and in none of them does the wording “until most of the night had passed” occur; rather, they state, “until ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb called out, ‘The women and children have gone to sleep.’” That would ordinarily be before midnight.

This is reinforced by the more complete version narrated by Ibn ʿAbbās: “The Prophet ﷺ once postponed the ʿIshāʾ prayer until part of the night had elapsed. Then ʿUmar stood and called, ‘Prayer, O Messenger of Allah! The women and children have fallen asleep.’ The Messenger of Allah ﷺ came out with water dripping from his head and said, ‘It is its time were it not that I would burden my community.’” Al-Nasāʾī (92) and al-Dārimī (276) transmit it through the chain of Sufyān, from ʿAmr, from ʿAṭāʾ, from him, and also through Ibn Jarīr, from ʿAṭāʾ, from him. Both chains are sound according to the criteria of the two Shaykhs (al-Bukhārī and Muslim). Muslim (117) and Aḥmad (1/366) likewise relate it through Ibn Jurayj with the same isnād, explicitly stating that Ibn Jurayj heard it from ʿAṭāʾ.

These variants show that ʿĀʾishah’s narration as reported by Umm Kulthūm and the one reported by ʿUrwah are actually a single ḥadīth, which some transmitters abbreviated. They make it clear that his statement, “It is its time,” refers to the moment when the women and children had gone to sleep—a time that, as we said, normally comes before midnight. Hence “most of the night” means a large portion of it, not the majority, just as al-Nawawī explained—testifying to the precision of his understanding, may Allah have mercy on him.

If, however, one insists on taking the outward sense of Umm Kulthūm’s wording, it would only indicate that he performed the prayer at the very beginning of the second half of the night, and for that reason Ibn Ḥazm said (3/184):