(1) According to the sound opinion held by the majority of scholars—among them Abu Hanifah and his two companions—the “middle prayer” (al-salat al-wusta) is the afternoon prayer (salat al-Asr). The proof is the Prophet’s statement on the Day of the Trench: “They kept us from the middle prayer, the afternoon prayer; may Allah fill their graves (*) and their houses with fire ….” The two Shaykhs (Bukhari and Muslim) and others narrated it through Shutayr ibn Shakal; additional chains also exist. A number of other Companions likewise reported the hadith, and Ibn Kathir has gathered their narrations with their chains in his Tafsir, to which the reader may refer. As for Imam Muhammad ‘Abduh’s comment in his Tafsir: “Had there not been unanimous agreement that it is one of the five daily prayers, I would have understood from His words wa-l-salata al-wusta that salat here means the act of prayer and al-wusta the most excellent, i.e., ‘Guard the best kind of prayer, the one in which the heart is present’ …,” and the similar remark by Sayyid Rashid Rida (1/433), (*) In the author’s manuscript the wording is “their hearts,” following Ibn Kathir’s Tafsir, but the correct version, found in Muslim and others, is what we have cited. (**) This is the reading of the manuscript. The chain through Shutayr is unique to Muslim; Bukhari and Muslim also transmit it through ‘Ubaydah al-Salmani from ‘Ali.