Chapter: One who forgets a prayer and later remembers it, or who sleeps through it and then awakens to perform it.

Whoever forgets an obligatory prayer or sleeps through it must offer it the moment he remembers, for that very moment becomes its appointed time—whether he recalls it by night or by day, after dawn, after the afternoon prayer, or even at sunrise or sunset. A night prayer is to be performed in the daytime with the same sunnah practices that apply to it at night, and a day prayer is to be performed at night with its own sunnah practices, exactly as it would have been prayed in its proper time; the actual time of remembrance carries no legal weight. If he had been ill when he missed it and is healthy when he remembers, he performs it standing; if he was healthy when he missed it and ill when he remembers, he may perform it sitting if that is all he can manage.

Should he remember the missed prayer at the end of the time of another prayer and fear that praying it first will cause the current prayer to expire, he nevertheless begins with the missed prayer—even if the current one is thereby lost. This is the view of Mālik, most of his companions, and a number of the scholars of Madinah.

A larger group of scholars in Madinah, however, maintain that if he fears the lapse of the prayer whose time has already begun, he should start with that prayer. Among Mālik’s companions, this is the position of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Wahb and was likewise adopted by Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam.

If he remembers the missed prayer while he is already engaged in another prayer, the prayer he is praying collapses for him. If he recalls it while in a prayer of which he has already completed two units, he should conclude with the salām at the end of the unit he is in. If he is leading the prayer, it collapses for him and is invalid for those behind him as well. This is the apparent sense of Mālik’s school, though the analytical jurists among his students do not understand it in that way, for Mālik also said that one who remembers a missed prayer during another prayer after completing a single unit should add a second unit and then give the salām.

Had he remembered it while in a prayer of which he had already completed