The daily prayer

A practice done every day has a beginning and a history. Ask what the tradition says about its beginning, and what it asks of the person who performs it. Then compare with a daily practice from another tradition.

Read the account of how the prayer began as the record of Salah gives it. Ibn Khuzayma opens his Book of Prayer with a chapter on the first prescribing of the five prayers, relating from Anas ibn Malik (may God be pleased with him), from Malik ibn Sa'sa'a, the Prophet ﷺ's account of the night of the Isra ^2 3. In this hadith fifty prayers a day were prescribed at first; then, after Moses advised asking for a lighter duty, they were reduced to five prayers a day ³. In the hadith of Talha ibn Ubayd Allah about the Bedouin the obligation is "five prayers in the day and night", and what exceeds them is voluntary ⁴. The Encyclopaedia of Islam adds that hadiths given by Anas ibn Malik describe how the five daily prayers were prescribed on the Prophet's ascension to the heavens, after some bargaining, and that a report from Abu Mas'ud al-Ansari has Gabriel descend five times to teach the times ⁵.

The record sets two accounts of the beginning of the prayer side by side. The hadiths from Ibn Khuzayma, and what the Encyclopaedia of Islam reports from Anas ibn Malik and Abu Mas'ud al-Ansari, place the prescribing of the five prayers on the Prophet's ascension and in Gabriel's teaching of the times ^3 5. The article's own reasoning is academic and different: it reasons that Muslim prayer grew out of the personal prayer of Muhammad, since the oldest passages that give times address him alone and call for night prayer and praise at dawn and at dusk, and soon a group forms around him and the community is addressed ⁶. It records that Goldziher saw Persian influence in the number five, and judges it unwise to give the number much weight, preferring to compare how each religion brings the cosmos into prayer ⁷. The record gives no verdict between the accounts.

The hadiths in the record come from Ibn Khuzayma's Sahih. The Encyclopaedia of Islam says that by the third/ninth century the timetable and conduct of prayer were fixed and that the founders of the four Sunni schools had worked in the second/eighth, and that it will not set out the schools' differences on prayer, which it calls quite modest ⁵; it says nearly all the ritual's detail rests on the practice of Muhammad, so that salat is in effect an imitation of him ⁸. On how the prayer is lived, it says precise studies by country, sex and other factors are lacking ⁹. The record cites Qur'an 4:103 among its Qur'anic texts on the prayer; the record of the verse does not retype it but keeps al-Tabari's commentary as numbered reports with their chains, and notes that the editor found the manuscript undotted at one clause and read it as given ¹⁰.

Ibn Khuzayma's hadith and the Encyclopaedia of Islam's article answer the question "how did the five prayers begin?" with different kinds of evidence ^3 6. What evidence does each rest on, as the record states it, and which question does each answer better: what the tradition says about the beginning, or what can be shown about how the practice developed? Why?

• Salah: Ibn Khuzayma's hadith on its prescribing, and the Encyclopaedia of Islam on its times, its form, its hadiths and the schools.
• Qur'an 4:103: the verse's record, which keeps al-Tabari's commentary as numbered reports with their chains.