“Whoever performs a ritual bath on Friday, purifies himself as best he can, applies some oil or touches the fragrance in his house, then goes out without separating two people, prays whatever has been decreed for him, and keeps silent when the imam begins to speak, will have his sins forgiven between that Friday and the next.”

Al-Nasaʾi and al-Darimi also recorded it.

I say: This ḥadith clearly states what is required of anyone who enters the mosque on Friday, regardless of the time he arrives: he is to pray as many rakʿahs as he can—and in another wording, “as much as he wishes”—until the imam comes out, at which point he must listen attentively. It is, therefore, an explicit—or nearly explicit—proof that praying before the sun reaches its zenith on Friday is permissible. This ruling is specific to that day, as the meticulous scholar Ibn al-Qayyim explained in Zād al-Maʿād 1/143, adducing this very ḥadith as evidence. He said immediately afterwards:

“He encouraged him to perform whatever prayers were written for him and did not forbid him from them except when the imam comes out at midday.”

He then went on to relate the various scholarly opinions concerning prayer before the zenith.