before the time allotted specifically to it expires. Yet how can a worshipper know this while praying? The precise end of Zuhr’s time and beginning of ʿAsr’s time can only be determined by the shadow, and someone engaged in prayer cannot observe the shadow. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, had neither instruments for calculating the time nor a timekeeper who determined it using such instruments.

The end of Maghrib’s time is known only by the disappearance of twilight. A person would therefore need to look west to see whether the red or white twilight had disappeared, yet someone engaged in prayer is forbidden to do such a thing. If he is praying in a house, a tent, or something similar that blocks his view westward, making it impossible to look west while praying, he cannot, in these circumstances, aim to give the concluding salutation at the very end of Maghrib’s time. Rather, he must conclude sufficiently before the time expires to be certain that his salutation precedes its expiry.

Then, according to their view, he cannot begin the second prayer until he knows that its time has begun. This requires effort and trouble of a kind that neither the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, nor his Companions are reported to have undertaken.

Thus, according to these scholars, combining prayers would, for most people on most occasions, be possible only with an interval between the two prayers. According to the others, however, combining prayers requires performing them consecutively. These understood combining to mean performing the two prayers consecutively, whether within one prayer time or across two, while the others said that there can be no