“When half the night has gone, most of the night has in fact gone.” On this basis he built his earlier statement in the chapter (3/164): “The time for the ʿAtamah prayer (the night prayer, i.e., ʿIshāʾ) continues until the first half of the night ends and the second half begins. Whoever pronounces the opening takbīr for it at the very start of the second half has caught the ʿAtamah prayer without any reprehensibility or necessity; but if he delays beyond that, he has passed the entry time for the ʿAtamah prayer.”

As for the claim that the report extends the prayer’s time all the way to the Fajr prayer, as al-Ṭaḥāwī alleged, it contains not the slightest indication of that. It is simply an opinion attributed to al-Shāfiʿī, as al-Shawkānī notes (2/10).

Night itself ends with the appearance of true dawn, and this is the position of the Shāfiʿīs and virtually all other scholars; see al-Majmūʿ (3/10).

The Prophet ﷺ preferred to postpone the ʿIshāʾ prayer. (Related by all the major compilers.) Aḥmad adds (4/424, 425): “until a third of the night had passed,” with a chain authentic by the criteria of the two Shaykhs.

He also encouraged this delay, saying: “Observe this prayer later (aʿtimū bi-hādhihiṣ-ṣalāh), for by it you have been favored above all other nations; no nation before you ever performed it.” Abū Dāwūd (69) and Aḥmad (5/237) transmit it through Ḥarīz ibn ʿUthmān: Rashid ibn Saʿd narrated to us from ʿĀṣim ibn Ḥumayd al-Sukūnī—who was one of the Companions of Muʿādh ibn Jabal—that he heard Muʿādh ibn Jabal say: “We watched for the Messenger of Allah ﷺ regarding the ʿIshāʾ prayer, and he delayed until we thought he would not come out. One of us even said, ‘He has already prayed and will not come out.’ Then the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said …” and he mentioned the rest. Abū