Hadith 2

ʿĀʾishah said: “The Prophet ﷺ used to pray the dawn prayer, and believing women would attend with him wrapped in their mantles. When the prayer was over they would return to their homes, and no one could recognize them because of the pre-sunrise darkness.”

He explained: Murūṭ are patterned cloaks, sometimes woven of khazz (a silk-wool blend) and sometimes of plain wool. The word mutalaffiʿāt means “wrapped up,” and al-ghalas is the mingling of the first light of dawn with the lingering night-darkness.

Unfamiliar vocabulary
1- muʿallamah: with the lām opened and doubled.
2- al-ghalas: with the ghayn and the lām opened.
3- bi-murūṭihinna: the mirṭ—with a kasrah on the mīm—is a striped, many-colored cloak; some add that it is square in shape.
4- mutalaffiʿāt: mutalaffifāt, i.e., they covered their bodies and heads.

Overall meaning
ʿĀʾishah, may Allah be pleased with her, relates that the women of the Companions would wrap themselves tightly in their cloaks and join the Prophet ﷺ for the dawn prayer. Afterward they would head back to their houses at a time when daybreak light had only begun to mix with the darkness, so an onlooker could not make out who they were, the remaining gloom still concealing them.

Scholarly disagreement
The jurists have differed over the preferable time for the dawn prayer. The Ḥanafis hold that praying it in isfār—when the horizon has grown bright—is superior, citing the ḥadith, “Pray Fajr in brightness, for it brings a greater reward,” which al-Tirmidhī graded sound-good. The majority, including the other three Imams, consider taghlīs—praying while it is still dark—more meritorious, relying on many reports, among them the present ḥadith. They have offered numerous reconciliations between the two ḥadiths; the best of them are two explanations: