Salah: The Comprehensive Guide to Hanafi Prayer

The prayer chapter of Al-Hidayah is among its most extensive sections, reflecting the central importance of salah in Islamic life and the many practical questions that arise in its performance. Al-Marghinani addresses the conditions, obligatory acts, Sunnahs, and nullifiers of prayer with the systematization characteristic of the Hanafi tradition.

The Hanafi school distinguishes carefully between the fard (obligatory), wajib (necessary), and Sunnah acts of prayer. This three-level distinction is a feature of Hanafi legal classification that differs from the simpler two-level (fard/Sunnah) framework more common in other schools. The fard acts are those whose deliberate or forgetful omission invalidates the prayer entirely. The wajib acts are those whose deliberate omission invalidates the prayer but whose forgetful omission is compensated by the prostration of forgetfulness (sujud al-sahw) at the end of the prayer.

The obligatory (fard) acts of prayer in the Hanafi school include: the opening takbir, standing (qiyam), recitation of the Quran (any amount — the Hanafi school does not require al-Fatiha specifically as a fard, though it is wajib), bowing (ruku') with tranquility, prostrating (sujud) with the forehead touching the ground, the final sitting (the Hanafi school requires only the final tashahhud, not the salawat on the Prophet, as a fard), and the act of exiting the prayer (tahlil — saying the salam).

The wajib acts include: reciting al-Fatiha in every rakat (wajib rather than fard, unlike the Shafi'i position where it is a pillar), adding a surah after al-Fatiha in the first two rakats of obligatory prayers, maintaining the sequence of pillars, performing each act with tranquility (tuma'ninah), and the recitation of the first tashahhud.

One of the most well-known Hanafi positions on prayer is that the follower does not recite al-Fatiha behind the imam — neither in audible nor in silent prayers. The imam's recitation substitutes for the follower's in the Hanafi school, based on the hadith: 'Whoever has an imam, the imam's recitation is his recitation' (Ibn Majah), and the Quranic verse: 'When the Quran is recited, listen to it and be silent' (7:204), which the Hanafi school applies to prayer behind an imam.

The Hanafi school holds that raising the hands (raf' al-yadayn) is Sunnah only at the opening takbir — not at the transitions during the prayer. This is based on the narration of Ibn Masud, who is reported to have said he saw the Prophet raise his hands only at the beginning of the prayer, and who reportedly criticized those who raised their hands at other points. The Hanafi school treats this as abrogating the earlier practice of raising hands at multiple points.

Al-Hidayah covers in detail the rules for leading prayer (imamate), the conditions for a valid congregation, the order of precedence in leading prayer (the most learned in fiqh first, then the best reciter, then the oldest), and the rules for prayers conducted in unusual circumstances (travel, illness, fear). The chapter on Friday prayer addresses the conditions for its obligation, the requirement of a sultan or his representative to lead it in early Hanafi texts, and the detailed rules of the two khutbahs.

Al-Marghinani's treatment of prayer is notable for clearly distinguishing between the positions of Abu Hanifah himself and those of his two senior students, Abu Yusuf and Muhammad ash-Shaybani, who sometimes differed from their teacher on specific points.