This page gathers Shaykh Muhammad ibn Salih al-‘Uthaymeen’s teaching on the prayer from his book The Prophet’s Prayer Described. It follows the order of his book: what the prayer is, what must be in place before it begins, the times of the five prayers, what the prayer is made of, what it requires inside it, what nullifies it, how a slip in it is repaired, and how it is prayed in congregation. The words in the quotations are his book’s words. The words between them are mine, kept plain, and they only carry his teaching in summary.
What the Prayer Is
The Shaykh defines the prayer at the head of his book:
“‘Ṣalāh’ legislatively is worship with specific statements and actions, opened up by the Takbīr (‘Allahu Akbar’) and closed by the Taslīm (‘Assalāmu “Alaykum Wa Raḥmatullah’).”
So the prayer is not any act of worship a person chooses for himself. It has statements and actions that are known, it opens with one known statement and it closes with one known statement, and everything between them follows the same pattern. The definition covers the five prayers, and it also covers the other prayers the book names, because each of them opens with the takbir [saying Allahu Akbar] and closes with the taslim [the closing salam].
The prayer is one of the great pillars of Islam, and the greatest of them after the two testifications. Because of its station, it is not left to each person to pray as he thinks best. Allah commanded that the prayer be established, and establishing it means performing it in an upright and sound manner, made sincere to Allah and following the Prophet ﷺ. Opening his chapter on the description of the prayer, the Shaykh writes:
“And establishment of the prayer is that a person performs it in an upright sound manner in accordance to what the legislation came with, and that is by making it sincere to Allah the Mighty and Majestic, and following the Prophet (ﷺ), and the Prophet (ﷺ) said, “Pray as you have seen me pray.” (Bukhārī 631)”
That one command carries the whole page. Every condition, pillar and obligation that follows is part of praying as the Prophet ﷺ prayed, and the book this page is built on exists to teach that manner in detail.
Conditions of the Prayer
The prayer is obligatory upon a sane adult Muslim, and it is not valid unless its conditions are fulfilled before it begins. The Shaykh first explains what a condition is, in the wording of the scholars of the principles of fiqh [Islamic law]:
“That which necessitates absence (of an affair) in its absence, and does not necessitate presence (of an affair) in its presence,”
“(meaning if the condition is absent, the affair that requires this condition can therefore not exist independently, however conversely, if the condition is present, it does not necessitate that the affair that required it will definitely be present too).”
Put plainly, if a condition is missing the prayer cannot stand, and if a condition is present the prayer still needs all the rest of its conditions and its own parts before it stands. The conditions are six:
- Entry of the time
- Purification from minor and major impurity
- Avoidance of impurity
- Covering the ‘awrah [the part of the body that must be covered]
- Facing the qiblah [the direction of prayer, towards the Ka’bah in Makkah]
- The intention
The first is the entry of the time, which the book calls the most important of the conditions. Phrasing it as the entry of the time is more accurate than saying the time alone, because a prayer can still be correct after its time has left if there was a legitimate reason, such as sleep or forgetfulness. Its evidence is the statement of Allah:
“Verily, the prayer is enjoined on the believers at fixed hours.” (Surah an-Nisa 4:103)
So the prayer is invalid before its time, even if the person was ignorant or forgetful, and it is invalid after its time unless he is excused for a legitimate reason. The book then presents the times one by one. For the first three prayers it says:
“The Time for Fajr: From (the true) dawn when it becomes clear, till sunrise.”
“The Time for Dhuhr: From post meridiem (just after the sun passes the highest point of the sky, i.e. just after midday), till the shadow of everything is equal to its size in addition to the shadow of the post meridiem sun.”
“The Time for ‘Aṣr: From the exit of Dhuhr time till the sun yellows”
For ‘Asr [the afternoon prayer], the time that follows the yellowing of the sun, until sunset, is a time of necessity only. The prayer is not to be delayed until the sun yellows by choice. For the last two prayers the book says:
“The Time for Maghrib: From sunset till the disappearance of the twilight (the rays of red light left behind after sunset), due to the statement of the Prophet (ﷺ), “The time of Maghrib prayer (continues) as long as the twilight does not disappear.””
“The Time for ‘Ishā: From the disappearance of the red twilight till the middle of the night.”
The book gives the Maghrib hadith from Muslim (612). The twilight in its words is the red twilight, not the white twilight, and when that redness leaves, the time of Maghrib [the sunset prayer] has left and the time of ‘Isha [the night prayer] has entered. The middle of the night is worked out from the time between sunset and the rise of the true dawn: half of that span is half of the night.
The second condition is purification from minor and major impurity. Minor impurity is what makes wudu [the washing before prayer] necessary, and major impurity is what makes ghusl [the full washing of the body] necessary. Its evidence is the statement of the Prophet ﷺ:
“A prayer is not accepted without purification.”
The book gives this narration from Muslim (224). The ruling makes no difference between an obligatory prayer and a voluntary one, nor between a prayer that has bowing and prostration and one that does not, like the funeral prayer. Purification itself, its manner and its rulings, is taught on Purification (Taharah).
The third condition is avoidance of impurity. The Shaykh states it in these words:
“There must not be any impurity on your garment, nor on your body, nor on the ground which you will pray upon.”
So avoiding impurity is required in three affairs: the body, the clothing, and the area of ground the person prays on.
The fourth condition is covering the ‘awrah. Its proof is Allah’s command to the children of Adam to take their adornment while praying (Surah al-A’raf 7:31), and the Shaykh closes the chapter with what Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr reported: a consensus of the scholars that a person must be covered while praying, and that the one who prays naked, while able to cover himself, has no correct prayer.
The fifth condition is facing the qiblah. Allah says:
“And from wheresoever you start forth (for prayers), turn your face in the direction of Al-Masjid-al-Haram (at Makkah), and wheresoever you are, turn your faces towards, it (when you pray)” (Surah al-Baqarah 2:150)
The sixth condition is the intention. The Shaykh writes:
“The intention is a condition for the correctness of the prayer, and any person who makes Wuḍū and comes to the masjid and prays, cannot be doing so except that he has made the intention, since the intention does not require anything physical, and doesn’t require thought, or scrutiny to remember.”
The intention is in the heart. A person who washes, goes to the masjid [mosque] and prays has already intended the prayer by his actions, and he is not asked to bring the intention to mind with effort or to say it out loud.
Pillars of the Prayer
The pillars are the parts the prayer itself is made of. If one of them is missing, there is no prayer. The book counts fourteen:
- Standing with ability
- Takbirat al-Ihram [the opening takbir]
- Recitation of al-Fatihah
- The bowing
- Rising up from the bowing
- The prostration
- Sitting between the two prostrations
- The second prostration
- The final tashahhud [the testimony recited while sitting in the prayer]
- Prayers upon the Prophet ﷺ in the final tashahhud
- Correct order of the pillars
- Tranquility in the pillars
- Sitting for the final tashahhud
- The taslim [the closing salam]
The third pillar, the recitation of al-Fatihah [the opening chapter of the Qur’an], rests on the statement of the Prophet ﷺ:
“There is no prayer for the one who does not recite the Fātiḥah of the Book.”
The book’s footnote gives it as al-Bukhari (756) and Muslim (394). The other pillars rest on their evidences in the same chapter: standing, on Allah’s command to stand before Him with obedience (Surah al-Baqarah 2:238) and on the Prophet’s ﷺ instruction to ‘Imran ibn Husain to pray standing, then sitting, then lying on his side if he could not; the bowing and the prostration, on Allah’s command to the believers to bow down and prostrate themselves (Surah al-Hajj 22:77); and the positions one by one, on the words the Prophet ﷺ taught the man who prayed badly, that he should bow, rise and prostrate until he was at ease in each position. The final tashahhud rests on the statement of Ibn Mas’ud about what they used to say before the tashahhud was made obligatory, and prayers upon the Prophet ﷺ in it are, in the Shaykh’s words, the popular stance in the school of Imam Ahmad.
The twelfth pillar is tranquility, being at ease and settled in each position. The Shaykh explains it, and closes the passage with the Prophet’s ﷺ words to the man who prayed without it:
“Tranquility is that a person is at ease in the position of that particular pillar until every bone returns into its natural position. The scholars have said that is what tranquility is, even a little of it, so whosoever does not have tranquility in his prayer then there is no prayer for him even if he prayed a thousand times.”
“Go back and pray again, for you have not prayed…”
The last pillar is the taslim. What is correct, the Shaykh states, is that both of the taslims are a pillar, and neither of them may be missed, not in an obligatory prayer and not in a voluntary one. And whoever misses any of the pillars or the obligations, generally speaking, has no valid prayer, even if he was ignorant of the issue of the pillars.
Obligations of the Prayer
Within the prayer there are also obligations, which stand below the pillars. The Shaykh defines them in his own words:
“The obligations are the statements or actions that if a person left [one of them] on purpose his prayer would become invalid, but if he left them forgetfully then he can compensate for them with the prostration of forgetfulness.”
The obligations are six:
- The takbirs other than the opening takbir
- The tasbih in the bowing, ‘Subḥāna Rabbī al-‘Adhīm’, and in the prostration, ‘Subḥāna Rabbī al-‘Ala’
- ‘Sami’ Allahu Liman Ḥamidahu’ when rising up from the bowing
- ‘Rabbana Lak al-Ḥamd’ after having risen up from the bowing (the one who is led by an imam says only this one)
- The first tashahhud and its sitting
- ‘Rabbi Ighfirlī’ between the two prostrations, asking Allah for forgiveness
The evidence the book gives for these wordings is the Prophet’s ﷺ command about following the imam: when he says the takbir, those behind him say the takbir, and when he says Sami’ Allahu liman Hamidahu, those behind him answer Rabbana Lak al-Hamd. The book’s footnote gives the narration as al-Bukhari (732) and Muslim (411), and the Shaykh notes that a command is for an obligation.
The Difference Between Conditions, Pillars and Obligations
The conditions are required before the prayer begins. If a condition is missing, the prayer is not valid from the start. The pillars are the prayer’s own parts. If a pillar is left out, on purpose or by forgetfulness, the prayer is not valid. The obligations are also within the prayer. Left out on purpose, they invalidate it. Left out by forgetfulness, they are compensated for by the prostration of forgetfulness.
Things That Nullify the Prayer
Shaykh Ibn Uthaymeen’s book does not gather the things that nullify the prayer into one list, and this page does not present a list as his. What nullifies the prayer is known from the places where the book treats it. In his opening chapter he quotes Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah setting out what the scholars agreed on while distinguishing the prayer from the circling of the Ka’bah, and among the words he quotes are these:
“the affairs that nullify the prayer such as eating, drinking and speaking and other than that”
Breaking wudu also ends the prayer. In his chapter on purification the Shaykh rules on the issue: a person who nullified his wudu and then prayed forgetfully in that state must make wudu and repeat the prayer. But a person who had an impurity on him, forgot it, and prayed before washing it off is not required to repeat the prayer.
Exposing the ‘awrah in the prayer, and turning away from the qiblah in it, likewise nullify it: they are the converse of two of its conditions, and a prayer does not stand when what it depends on is gone.
Prostration of Forgetfulness (Sujood as-Sahw)
A slip in the prayer is repaired by two prostrations, the prostration of forgetfulness [sujood as-sahw]. The book’s chapter gathers the cases under three causes: something is added to the prayer, something is left out of it, or doubt occurs in it. Its ruling on where the prostrations are made is given in the Shaykh’s own summary:
“Therefore, the prostration for forgetfulness is sometimes before the final Salām, and sometimes after it. It is before the Salām if deficiency occurred, and after the Salām if addition was made, and in situations of doubt. If he can conclude nothing overwhelmingly then it is before the Salām, and if he does conclude something overwhelmingly it is after the Salām.”
Congregational Prayer
Praying in congregation is agreed to be the most emphasized and most noble of worship, and the scholars differed over its ruling: is it a condition for the correctness of the prayer, or is the prayer correct without it, with the one who leaves it sinning? The Shaykh states what is correct:
“What is correct is that it is obligatory for the prayer, and not a condition for the correctness (validity and acceptance) of the prayer, but whoever leaves it is a sinner, except if he has a legislative reason.”
The congregation is ordered around its rows. The rows are straightened, the people stand close together, and the gaps are closed: the Prophet ﷺ commanded, “do not leave gaps for the Shayṭān”, and the book explains that the Shaytan enters into the gap between two men in the row. Anas ibn Malik narrated that once the iqamah [the second call to prayer] was called, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ faced us and said, “Straighten your rows and stand closer together…”
Above all, the imam is followed and not preceded in any movement. The Prophet ﷺ said:
“The Imam is appointed to be followed, so do not differ from him, bow when he bows, and say ‘Rabbana lakal-Ḥamd’ when he says ‘Sami’ Allahu liman Ḥamidahu, and if he prostrates, prostrate (after him), and if he offers prayer sitting, then offer the prayer sitting all together, and straighten the rows for the prayer, since the straightening of the rows is from the perfection of the prayer.”
The book’s footnote gives this narration as al-Bukhari (722) and Muslim (414).
Description of the Prayer
The book’s eighth chapter describes the prayer in full, act by act, and this page does not reproduce it: the book itself is the destination for the detail. In brief, the worshipper stands and makes the opening takbir. He recites al-Fatihah and what he can of the Qur’an. He bows until he is at ease in his bowing, rises until he stands upright at ease, prostrates until he is at ease in his prostration, sits between the two prostrations, and prostrates a second time. That completes one rak’ah [unit of prayer]. He continues with the rest of the prayer’s units in the same manner, then sits for the final tashahhud, sends prayers upon the Prophet ﷺ, and closes the prayer with the taslim.
The lesson of the chapter is the man who entered the mosque and prayed while the Prophet ﷺ sat to one side of it. He prayed without tranquility, and three times the Prophet ﷺ sent him back. The Shaykh explains why that prayer was counted as no prayer:
“The Prophet’s (ﷺ) negation of the man’s prayer is a legislative negation, and not a negation of facts, since the man did pray; however, he did not pray legislatively (in accordance to prescribed manner in the Sunnah) due to lack of tranquility in his prayer, so he repeated that three times.”
Whoever preserves the prayer upon this manner has preserved his religion. Whoever abandons the prayer altogether has placed himself in the greatest danger, and the ruling on the one who leaves it is set out on Why Do Muslims Pray Five Times a Day, and What Happens If They Abandon Prayer?
And Allah knows best.
References
The Prophet’s Prayer Described: Shaykh Muhammad ibn Salih al-‘Uthaymeen; Hikmah Publications, First Edition, March 2015, ISBN 978-1-4951-9677-5, translated by Abu Mu’adh Taqweem Aslam (printed pp. 13, 18, 54, 55, 56, 57, 79, 80, 82, 86, 89, 94, 102, 103, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 298, 313, 317, 321). (This is Ibn al-‘Uthaymeen’s book of this title, not the well known work of the same name by Shaykh al-Albani.)
The Qur’an verses and the hadith are quoted in the printings of the book named beside them. Where the book prints the name of Allah with a longer spelling, this site prints “Allah”, in the quotations as in its own words.
Further Reading
- Why Do Muslims Pray Five Times a Day, and What Happens If They Abandon Prayer?: why the five prayers are obligatory, and the ruling on leaving them
- Purification (Taharah): the ablution and bathing that come before the prayer
- Fasting (Siyam): the next pillar, the fast of Ramadan
- What Are the Five Pillars of Islam?: the five pillars gathered on one page
- Zakah (Obligatory Charity): the pillar of obligatory charity
Verified on 2026-10-25 against the books listed above.