Salah times

 ( Salah ) 

Salat times are prayer times when Muslims perform salat. The term is primarily used for the five daily prayers including the Friday prayer, which takes the place of the Dhuhr prayer and must be performed in a group. Muslims believe the salah times were revealed by Allah to Muhammad.

Prayer times are standard for Muslims in the world, especially the fard prayer times. They depend on the condition of the Sun and geography. There are varying opinions regarding the exact salah times, the schools of Islamic thought differing in minor details. All schools of thought agree that any given prayer cannot be performed before its stipulated time.

Muslims pray a minimum of five times a day, with their fard (obligatory) prayers being known as Fajr prayer (before dawn), Zuhr prayer (noon), Asr prayer (late afternoon), Maghrib prayer (at sunset), and Isha prayer (nighttime), always facing towards the Kaaba.

The direction of prayer is called the qibla; the early Muslims initially prayed in the direction of Jerusalem before this was changed to Mecca in 624 CE, about a year after Muhammad's Hegira.

The timing of the five prayers are fixed intervals defined by daily astronomical phenomena. For example, the Maghrib prayer can be performed at any time after sunset and before the disappearance of the red twilight from the west. In a mosque, the muezzin broadcasts the adhan at the beginning of each interval. Because the start and end times for prayers are related to the solar diurnal motion, they vary throughout the year and depend on the local latitude and longitude when expressed in time zone. In modern times, various religious or scientific agencies in Muslim countries produce annual prayer timetables for each locality, and Digital clock capable of calculating local prayer times have been created. In the past, some mosques employed astronomers called the muwaqqits who were responsible for regulating the prayer time using mathematical astronomy.

The five intervals were defined by Muslim authorities in the decades after the death of Muhammad in 632, based on the hadith (the reported sayings and actions) of the Islamic prophet.

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Daily prayers The daily prayers are considered obligatory () by many and they are performed at times determined essentially by the position of the Sun in the sky. Hence, salat times vary at different locations on the Earth. Wudu is needed for all of the prayers.

Some Muslims pray three times a day.

(2009). 9780199745678, Oxford University Press. . ISBN 9780199745678

Jafarli, Durdana. "The historical conditions for the emergence of the Quranist movement in Egypt in the 19th-20th centuries." МОВА І КУЛЬТУРА (2017): 91.

+Overview of prayer times considered obligatory by most
Fajr	Begins at dawn, may be performed up to sunrise after Fajr nafl prayer
Zuhr prayer	From when the sun has passed the zenith, may be performed up to the time of Asr.
Asr	From when the shadow cast by an object is once or twice its length, may be performed up to the time of Maghrib.
Maghrib	Begins at sunset, may be performed up to the end of dusk.
Isha prayer	Begins with the night, may be delayed up to dawn although disliked

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Fajr (dawn) Fajr begins at —true dawn or the beginning of twilight, when the morning light appears across the full width of the sky—and ends at sunrise.

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Dhuhr (midday) The time interval for offering the Zuhr or Dhuhr salah timing starts after the sun passes its zenith and lasts until call for the Asr prayer is given. This prayer needs to be given in the middle of the work-day, and people normally make their prayers during their lunch break.

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Asr (afternoon) Asr salat is the third of the obligatory prayers that Muslims offer daily. It is also known as “middle prayer." The Asr prayer starts when the shadow of an object is the same length as the object itself (or, according to Hanafi school, twice its length) plus the shadow length at Dhuhr, and lasts till the start of sunset. Asr can be split into two sections; the preferred time is before the sun starts to turn orange, while the time of necessity is from when the sun turns orange until 15 minutes before Maghrib.

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Maghrib (sunset) The Maghrib prayer begins, when the sun sets, and lasts until the red light has left the sky in the west.

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Isha (nights) The Isha'a or Isha prayer starts when the red twilight disappears from the west, and lasts until the middle of the night, which is the middle point between Maghrib Salat and Fajr salaat (others say it’s third of the night, or until fajr time)

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Time calculation To calculate prayer times two astronomical measures are necessary, the declination of the sun and the difference between clock time and sundial clock. This difference being the result of the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit and the inclination of its axis, it is called the equation of time. The declination of the sun is the angle between sun's rays and the equator plan. Approximate Solar Coordinates

In addition to the above measures, to calculate prayer times for a specific location we need its spherical coordinates. Calculating Prayer Times

In the following;

• $Z$ is the time zone.
• $\backslash lambda$ and $\backslash phi$ are the longitude and the latitude of the considered point, respectively.
• $\backslash Delta\; t$ and $\backslash delta$ denotes the equation of time term and the declination of the Sun for a given date, respectively.

We first give the midday (Dhuhr) time. The midday time is simply when the local true solar time reaches noon:

$$T\_\{\backslash mathsf\{Dhuhr\}\}\; =\; 12\; +\; \backslash Delta\; t\; +\; (Z\; -\; \backslash lambda/15)$$

The first term is the 12 o'clock noon, the second term accounts for the difference between true and mean solar times, and the third term accounts for the difference between the local mean solar time and the time zone.

The other times require converting the Sun's altitude to time. We use a variant of the generalized sunrise equation:

$$T(\backslash alpha)\; =\; \backslash frac\{1\}\{15\}\; \backslash arccos\; \backslash left(\; \backslash frac\{-\backslash sin(\backslash alpha)-\backslash sin(\backslash phi)\backslash sin(\backslash delta)\}\{\backslash cos(\backslash phi)\backslash cos(\backslash delta)\}\; \backslash right)$$

This gives, in hours, the difference between Dhuhr time and when the sun is at altitude $\backslash alpha$. Now we calculate three of the other prayer times:

• Sunrise (Shuruq) time and Sunset (Maghrib) times are given by $T(-0.833^\{\backslash circ\})$. (The astronomical sunset/sunrise that occurs at $\backslash alpha\; =\; 0$, but atmospheric refraction makes the sun appear 50 arcminutes higher.) So $T\_\{\backslash mathsf\{Shuruq\}\}\; =\; T\_\{\backslash mathsf\{Dhuhr\}\}\; -\; T(0.833^\{\backslash circ\})$ and $T\_\{\backslash mathsf\{Maghrib\}\}\; =\; T\_\{\backslash mathsf\{Dhuhr\}\}\; +\; T(0.833^\{\backslash circ\})$.
• If we consider the elevation of the point we should add $0.0347^\{\backslash circ\}\; \backslash times\; \backslash sqrt\{h\}$ to 0.833°, where h is the elevation in meters (see ).
• Maghrib prayer is called for when the sun is completely folded behind the horizon, plus 3 minutes by precaution.
• For Fajr and Isha many conventions about the angle $\backslash alpha$ exist. It is of 17 and 18 degrees respectively for Fajr and Isha prayers according to the Muslim World League. As a result, we have $T\_\{\backslash mathsf\{Fajr\}\}\; =\; T\_\{\backslash mathsf\{Dhuhr\}\}\; -\; T(18^\{\backslash circ\})$ and $T\_\{\backslash mathsf\{Isha\}\}\; =\; T\_\{\backslash mathsf\{Dhuhr\}\}\; +\; T(17^\{\backslash circ\})$.
• The Asr time is defined in term of the length of its shadow, with differing opinions about how much longer the shadow is. Let $n$ be the required length of the object shadow relative to its own length. We first find the Sun's altitude as $A(n)\; =\; \backslash arccot(n+\backslash left|\backslash tan(\backslash phi-\backslash delta)\backslash right|).$ The Asr time is then given as $T\_\{\backslash mathsf\{Shuruq\}\}\; =\; T\_\{\backslash mathsf\{Dhuhr\}\}\; +\; T(A(n)),$ where the ratio n is 1 or 2 depending on jurisprudence.
• It is possible to also correct for atmospheric refraction, but most sources do not do so. After all, the refraction error is much smaller for α > 10°.

Muslims use readily available apps on their phone to find daily prayer times in their locality. Technological advances have allowed for products such as software-enhanced azan clocks that use a combination of GPS and microchips to calculate these formulas. This allows Muslims to live further away from mosques than previously possible, as they no longer need to rely solely on a muezzin in order to keep an accurate prayer schedule.

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See also

• Canonical hours
• Direction of prayer
• Watchkeeping
• Zmanim

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Notes

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External links

• PrayTimes.org
• Islamic Prayer Times

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