The Forbidden Prayer Times — Awqāt an-Nahy

Prayer Has Stated Times — and Guarded Ones

The daily prayers are fixed to appointed times, and part of guarding those times is knowing the moments in which voluntary prayer is withheld. Allah says of the obligatory prayer:

The Sunnah then marks out certain moments of the day in which the Prophet ﷺ forbade prayer. These are known to the scholars as awqāt an-nahy — the times of prohibition. The prohibition concerns voluntary prayer that has no particular reason; it was never a suspension of the obligatory prayers themselves, nor — as the texts below show — of every prayer without exception. Getting this chapter right protects a Muslim from two opposite mistakes: praying nafl in a moment the Prophet ﷺ forbade, and abandoning a due prayer (such as a missed farḍ) out of a mistaken idea that nothing may be prayed then.

The Three Times — the Hadith of ʿUqbah ibn ʿĀmir

The tightest and strictest statement of this chapter is the hadith of ʿUqbah ibn ʿĀmir (may Allah be pleased with him), which names three short windows tied to the movement of the sun — and extends the prohibition in them even to burying the dead:

Three windows, each defined by what the eye can see of the sun:

1. Sunrise — from the moment the disc begins to break the horizon until it is fully up and has risen clear of it.
2. Zenith — the short standstill when the sun is at its height at midday, until it passes over the meridian (the zawāl, which is the very moment the time of Ẓuhr begins).
3. Sunset — from when the sun draws near to setting until it has disappeared completely.

Ibn ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with him) reported the same border-moments with a practical instruction for anyone about to pray as they arrive:

And in another wording: "None of you should try to pray at sunrise or sunset." (Sahih al-Bukhari 585). The word "try" (yataḥarrā — to deliberately aim for) is significant: what is forbidden is deliberately placing one's prayer on those moments.

The Two Broader Spans — After Fajr and After ʿAṣr

Alongside the three narrow windows, the Sunnah forbids voluntary prayer across two longer spans, anchored not to the sun but to two of the obligatory prayers:

Two points of precision. First, these spans begin from your own prayer, not from the adhan: the prohibition after Fajr starts once you have prayed Fajr, and the prohibition after ʿAṣr starts once you have prayed ʿAṣr. Before you pray ʿAṣr you may still pray voluntary rakʿahs even though the time of ʿAṣr has entered. Second, the spans end where the narrow windows end: the post-Fajr span runs until the sun has fully risen, and the post-ʿAṣr span runs until the sun has set — at which point Maghrib is due anyway.

One rakʿah changes the ruling for the obligatory prayer of the time itself: whoever manages a rakʿah of ʿAṣr before the sun sets, or a rakʿah of Fajr before it rises, completes his prayer and it counts — "Whoever could get one rak`a (of the Fajr prayer) before sunrise, he has got the (morning) prayer and whoever could get one rak`a of the `Asr prayer before sunset, he has got the (`Asr) prayer" (Sahih al-Bukhari 579). The forbidden times never cancel a farḍ.

Why These Times? The Prophet's ﷺ Own Explanation

This is one of the places where the Sunnah does not leave us guessing at the wisdom. In the long hadith of ʿAmr ibn ʿAbasah (may Allah be pleased with him), the Prophet ﷺ laid out the whole day of prayer and gave the reason for each pause:

So the sunrise and sunset windows guard tawḥīd itself: those are the two moments the sun-worshippers of every age prostrate to the rising and setting sun, and the Muslim's worship is kept visibly and completely distinct from theirs — even in its timing. The zenith pause has its own stated reason. And the same hadith answers a common confusion: the prohibited times are not "unspiritual" hours; outside them the prayer is described as witnessed and attended by angels. The pauses are obedience, not absence.

The Five Windows at a Glance

What Is Excluded from the Prohibition

The prohibition texts are general, but the Sunnah itself carves out clear exclusions, and the scholars differ soberly over one further category. Taking them in order of certainty:

1. A missed obligatory prayer (qaḍāʾ) — pray it when you remember

The command to make up a missed farḍ is itself general and time-independent:

And the Prophet ﷺ put it into practice. On a journey the company slept through Fajr and "none could awaken them except the heat of the sun" — that is, the sun had already risen. They moved a little, made wudu, "Bilal called for prayer and they offered two rak'ahs of (Sunnah) of Fajr and then offered the Fajr prayer". Then he ﷺ said: "There is no negligence in sleep. The negligence is in wakefulness. If any of you forget saying prayer, he should offer it when he remembers it" (Sunan Abī Dāwūd 437 — graded ṣaḥīḥ in the site's hadith repository). Notice that he even prayed the two sunnah rakʿahs of Fajr first, after sunrise.

On this basis the majority of scholars — including the Shāfiʿīs and Ḥanbalīs — hold that a missed obligatory prayer is made up whenever it is remembered, in any of the five windows. The Ḥanafīs except the three narrow windows of ʿUqbah's hadith (sunrise, zenith, sunset) and say the make-up prayer waits the few minutes until they pass. The practical counsel that satisfies everyone: pray the missed farḍ as soon as you remember it, and if you happen to remember it in one of the three short sun-windows, waiting those minutes out costs little and exits the difference of opinion. See Missed Prayers for the fuller fiqh.

2. The funeral prayer — allowed in the broad spans, withheld in the three narrow ones

The hadith of ʿUqbah pairs prayer with burying our dead in the three narrow windows only. So the scholars broadly agree that the funeral prayer (ṣalāt al-janāzah) may be prayed in the two broad spans — after Fajr and after ʿAṣr — since it is a prayer with a present cause and the stricter texts do not touch those spans; but when one of the three sun-windows arrives, both the janāzah prayer and the burial itself wait the short while until it passes, out of direct deference to ʿUqbah's wording. A burial that would otherwise be delayed unreasonably is a matter for the scholars of one's locality; the normal case is simply to let the few minutes pass.

3. Prayers with a cause (dhawāt al-asbāb) — the honest range of opinion

What about a prayer tied to a specific occasion that happens to fall inside a forbidden span — the two rakʿahs of greeting the mosque, the two rakʿahs after ṭawāf, the eclipse prayer, a missed routine sunnah? Here sound scholarship genuinely differs, and both sides stand on authentic texts.

The case for allowing them. The command of greeting the mosque is itself general: "If anyone of you enters a mosque, he should pray two rak`at before sitting" (Sahih al-Bukhari 444). For the two rakʿahs of ṭawāf the text is explicit about time: "O Banu 'Abd Manaf, do not prevent anyone from circumambulating this House and praying at any time he wants of night or day" (Sunan an-Nasāʾī 585 — graded ṣaḥīḥ in the site's hadith repository). And the Prophet ﷺ himself prayed two rakʿahs after ʿAṣr as qaḍāʾ of a missed routine sunnah. When Umm Salamah (may Allah be pleased with her) asked him about it, he explained: "You have asked me about the two rak`at after the `Asr prayer. The people of the tribe of `Abdul-Qais came to me and made me busy and I could not offer the two rak`at after the Zuhr prayer. These (two rak`at that I have just prayed) are for those (missed) ones" (Sahih al-Bukhari 1233). A prayer with a real cause, they argue, is not the aimless nafl the prohibition targets — this is the position of the Shāfiʿīs, and the one Ibn Taymiyyah and others of the later Ḥanbalī verifiers preferred.

The case for withholding them. The Ḥanafīs and Mālikīs, and the standard Ḥanbalī position, hold the prohibition texts general: one who enters the mosque after ʿAṣr simply sits, and the greeting-prayer lapses without sin, for it is a sunnah whose occasion passed. They note that Muʿāwiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) rebuked people over the two rakʿahs after ʿAṣr: "You offer a prayer which I did not see being offered by Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) when we were in his company and he certainly had forbidden it" (Sahih al-Bukhari 587) — and that ʿĀʾishah's report that the Prophet ﷺ "never missed two rak`at before the Fajr prayer and after the `Asr prayer openly and secretly" (Sahih al-Bukhari 592) describes, in the light of Umm Salamah's account, a practice that began as qaḍāʾ and then continued as something particular to him ﷺ — for his voluntary deeds, once begun, were not left off.

Weighing it. The difference is real and old; among the Companions themselves ʿUmar disciplined people for the after-ʿAṣr rakʿahs (Sahih al-Bukhari 1233) while, from within the Prophet's ﷺ household, Umm Salamah recounted seeing him offer them (Sahih al-Bukhari 1233) and ʿĀʾishah affirmed that he never left them (Sahih al-Bukhari 592). What no side disputes: the three narrow sun-windows are graver than the broad spans, deliberate aiming at sunrise or sunset is forbidden outright (Sahih al-Bukhari 585), and none of this touches the obligatory prayers. A person who prays tahiyyat al-masjid on entering after ʿAṣr, following the evidence of its general command, has scholars and texts behind him; a person who sits, deferring to the generality of the prohibition, likewise. Neither should condemn the other — this is precisely the kind of evidenced difference the salaf tolerated among themselves.

Practical Scenarios

Keeping the Balance

The forbidden times occupy perhaps half an hour of narrow windows in a day, plus two spans in which the door of dhikr, duʿāʾ, istighfār and Quran recitation stays wide open — none of those are restricted by these texts. Allah commands His Prophet ﷺ: "Bear, then, with patience, all that they say, and celebrate the praises of thy Lord, before the rising of the sun and before (its) setting." (Sūrat Qāf 50:39) — the very moments voluntary prayer pauses are moments remembrance is commanded. The prohibition was never a curfew on worship; it is a fence around tawḥīd and a mark of a community whose worship follows revelation down to its timing.

For the wider picture of the day's prayers, see Prayer Times for when each prayer enters and exits, Sunnah & Night Prayers for the voluntary prayers and where they sit around the obligatory ones, and Missed Prayers for the fiqh of qaḍāʾ in full.

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