Prayertimes at persistent twilight: Hanafi taqdir

[birka Profil]

I am so happy to see the work carried out by you for providing the proper prayer times according to the established fiqhs of Islam.

How do you decide about 1/7 of night for Isha for the Hanafi fiqh (during summer)? Any legal sources?




There is an ikhtilaf in the madhhab on this point. Some fuqaha have said that, the time of prayer being a cause (sabab) of the prayer, it is not fard to pray Isha when the time for it does not ocur. This position is held by many great scholars of the madhhab, among them the author of Fatawa Hindiyya, and it is extensively discussed by Imam al-Shurunbalali in his scholarly work Imdad al-Fattah.

The other position, referred to by the author of al-Durr al-Muhtar, is that the Isha prayer remains fard and one should estimate the times when these do not exist. This is the more cautious position, also held by Ibn Abidin, who discusses the various opinions in great detail in his Hashya ()

As for the practical implementation, those fuqaha who hold that Isha is fard despite the absence of its time, have said that one may estimate the times in analogy to the day of al-Dajjal, or use the Shafi'i method of Aqrab al-Bilad. As pointed out in the Hashya, the Shafi'i method rests within a different framework of fiqh, and "Aqrab al-Bilad" is applied on a general basis, including the onset of Fajr and Imsak for fasting. This differs from the Hanafi outlook, where qiyas on the hadith of Dajjal is discussed only with respect to Isha.

Following the above, there is no binding rule on the exact method of taqdir in the Hanafi madhhab, hence the choice is arbitrary.

Based merely on practical considerations, we suggest to estimate Isha as the time when a fix portion of the night has elapsed.

To be on the safer side, we strongly recommend to follow the 18° rule, then the 15° rule (for Stockholm until the end of April) to make sure that no real Isha time is available, before resorting to taqdir.

When the onset of Fajr ceases to exist, we set it to midnight, in agreement with the practice of Turkish and Indian fuqaha in establishing prayer time tables.

If one prefers Aqrab al-Bilad, one should select the Shafi'i method, where it is implemented according to their madhhab.

Wa biAllah al-tawifq.

[birka Profil]

BismiAllah

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