The Prophet’s saying, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,

“Whoever sleeps through a prayer or forgets it, let him pray it when he remembers it,”

explicitly establishes that he must perform it whenever he remembers it, and that nothing else is required of him.

The jurists of our school have accepted that the prescribed order of combined prayers is not waived through forgetfulness. Yet the general wording of the hadith indicates that it is waived. Thus, if the forgotten prayer was the first of the two combined prayers, he repeats that prayer alone, as the text requires. Whoever requires him to repeat the second has contradicted the text.

The same applies to others with valid excuses, such as a latecomer who joins the congregation during the second prayer: he performs it with them, then performs the first, just as when he catches only part of a prayer. Observing the prescribed order of his prayer in relation to its beginning is no more binding than observing the order of the latter part of a prayer in relation to its beginning. In such a case, the portion he has joined is discharged, and he makes up what he missed. This applies with even greater force to two separate prayers—especially since someone who catches only the tashahhud (seated testimony of faith) of the Maghrib prayer recites three tashahhuds, as in the well-known hadith of Ibn Masʿūd concerning the account of Masrūq and his narration.

This is a principle established by the revealed text and scholarly consensus, against which analogous cases are assessed: the requirement to observe the prescribed order is waived for the latecomer.