as it is established in an authentic hadith that he said to Mālik ibn al-Huwayrith and his companion:
“When the time for prayer comes, give the call to prayer and the call to commence it, and let one of you lead the other. Pray as you have seen me pray.”
It is also established in an authentic hadith:
“He used to recite between sixty and one hundred verses in Fajr.”
This amounts approximately to between one-third and one-half of a juz’, one of the Quran’s thirty divisions. He would recite the longer surahs of the Mufassal section: Qāf, al-Sajdah, al-Mulk, al-Mu’minūn, al-Sāffāt, and others of similar length. In Zuhr, he would recite less than that—about thirty verses—and in ‘Asr, less still. In Maghrib, he would recite less than that, such as the shorter surahs of the Mufassal.
In ‘Ishā’, he would recite surahs such as “By the sun and its brightness” and “By the night when it covers,” and others of similar length. Sometimes he would prolong the prayer and recite more than this, even reciting al-A‘rāf, al-Tūr, or al-Mursalāt in Maghrib.
Abū Bakr al-Siddīq once recited Sūrat al-Baqarah in Fajr, and ‘Umar used to recite Sūrat Hūd, Sūrat Yūsuf, and others of similar length in Fajr. At times, the Prophet would shorten the prayer, either because he was travelling or for some other reason, as he said: