before he performs the obligatory prayer. Should he have already offered it, he is not to engage in any supererogatory prayer afterward.

If a person comes to the mosque having already performed the two-rakʿah sunnah of Fajr in his home, he may, if he wishes, repeat two rakʿahs as the “Greeting of the Mosque,” and if he wishes he may sit instead; both options are permissible. Another report from Mālik states that he should not repeat them, and both transmissions are sound, yet the first is preferable—so keep that in mind, God willing.

According to Mālik, no one should pray when he enters the mosque on Friday while the preacher is delivering the sermon.

At every time in which voluntary prayer is deemed disliked, Mālik likewise disallows the two rakʿahs that follow circumambulation of the Kaʿbah, and he does not permit the prostration of recitation (sujūd al-tilāwah) then either. Whoever performs tawāf after the ʿAṣr or the dawn prayer should, in Mālik’s view, delay those two rakʿahs until the sun has risen or set; thereafter he may offer them—before Maghrib if he wishes, or after it—but he is not to perform any other optional prayer beforehand.

As for the prostration of recitation, it is not to be done during that prohibited time, and there is no blame upon the person for leaving it. Some have said that once the disliked period is over, he should return to the verse of prostration, recite it again, and then perform the prostration.

Related issues will appear, God willing, in the chapter on the eclipse prayer and elsewhere.