Answer: He must make the prayer up immediately once the excuse is removed, for the Prophet ﷺ said: “Whoever forgets a prayer or sleeps through it must perform it when he remembers it; there is no expiation for it other than that.” Accordingly, he is obliged to hasten to perform the missed prayer as soon as the impediment is gone and may not delay it until the next day; such postponement is impermissible because it would place the prayer outside its time, whose period begins the moment the excuse ceases.
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Question: I have read a ḥadith attributed to the Messenger ﷺ which says: “Whoever has missed prayers during his lifetime and cannot count them should, on the last Friday of Ramadan, stand and pray four rakʿahs with a single tashahhud, reciting in each rakʿah Sūrat al-Fātiḥah, Sūrat al-Qadr fifteen times, and likewise Sūrat al-Kawthar, while saying in the intention: ‘I intend to pray four rakʿahs as expiation for the prayers I have missed.’” How sound is this ḥadith?

Answer: It has no foundation in the Sunnah of the Messenger ﷺ. What is authentically reported from him is his statement: “Whoever forgets a prayer or sleeps through it must perform it when he remembers it; there is no expiation for it other than that.” As for the prayers you missed in the past—if you left them because you overslept, were unconscious, or for another excuse you thought allowed you to delay them—then you are required to make them up and to pray them in their proper order. If, however, you abandoned them deliberately, then the correct