—for those with legitimate excuses who are permitted to combine. Thus, when combining is allowed, Dhuhr and ʿAsr share a single time-span, and Maghrib and ʿIshāʾ share another. That makes two periods, while Fajr stands alone as its own period. Hence Allah, exalted is He, set them apart in His statement: “Establish the prayer from the decline of the sun until the darkness of night, and (establish) the recitation of dawn” (al-Isrāʾ 17:78). He did not say: “from the decline of the sun until daybreak,” but rather, “until the darkness of night.” The darkness of night occurs at its midpoint, for midnight is the time of the deepest darkness—when the sun is farthest from the point beneath which that midnight lies. Therefore, the sounder opinion is that the prayer times are five, as follows:

1. Fajr begins with the appearance of the second dawn—the horizontal whitening along the horizon—and ends at sunrise.

Here I must issue a warning: the Umm al-Qurā calendar advances the Fajr adhān by about five minutes throughout the entire year. Anyone who prays the moment the adhān is given is actually praying before the time has started. We have confirmed this through astronomical calculation and through repeated visual observation. Therefore, that calendar should not be relied upon for the time of Fajr, for it is early—and this is extremely serious. Should you merely pronounce the opening takbīr before the time enters, your prayer is invalid and does not count as the obligatory prayer. Many people who live out in the open desert, far from artificial lights, have told me that they do not see the dawn until roughly a third of an hour after that timetable—about twenty minutes, or sometimes fifteen. But the other astronomical timetables that