Islamic Prayer Times | IbadahApp

The athan, also written azan or adhan, is the call announcing that a prayer time has opened. The iqamah is the shorter second call, given right before the congregation stands up to pray.

Mosques usually leave a gap between the two, often ten to twenty minutes, so people have time to arrive. That gap is one reason the time on IbadahApp and the time your mosque starts are not identical.

IbadahApp sets a default for your country rather than asking you to pick one.

In these countries IbadahApp defaults to the method the country uses officially:

• Saudi Arabia: Umm al-Qura
• Egypt: Egyptian General Authority of Survey
• Pakistan, India and Bangladesh: University of Islamic Sciences in Karachi

In these countries IbadahApp defaults to the closest available method to what the national authority publishes:

• Türkiye (authority: Diyanet)
• Malaysia (authority: JAKIM)
• Indonesia (authority: Kemenag)

The method IbadahApp uses is printed under the times, and Change lets you switch it.

Every prayer has a namaz start and end time: the window runs from when it opens until the next prayer opens. Where you pray inside that window changes what it counts as.

• Best: early in the window, not left until it is nearly over.
• Still valid: any time later in the window, up to the moment the next prayer opens.
• Not on time: after the window has closed. What you pray then is a missed prayer being made up, not the prayer at its time.

Praying early is the general principle, with exceptions. In strong heat most schools hold Dhuhr is better delayed until it cools, as many mosques do in summer. Some hold Isha is better delayed into the first third of the night. Ask your imam which applies.

Three moments are set aside from voluntary prayers, and all three fall in the gaps between windows:

• While the sun is rising: the Fajr window has closed, and you wait until the sun is clear of the horizon.
• While the sun stands overhead at midday: just before Dhuhr opens.
• While the sun is setting: just before Maghrib opens.

Obligatory prayers are not held back by this, and Maghrib begins at the moment the sun has fully set.

Missing a prayer does not mean it is gone. It is still owed: that is qada, the make-up prayer. If you slept through it or forgot, praying it when you remember is what makes it up, with nothing extra owed. Letting the time pass on purpose is different.

What making it up looks like:

• Pray it when you remember, without waiting for the next prayer time.
• A make-up prayer does not stand in for the next prayer due. Pray the make-up, then pray the current one when its time comes.
• If more than one is owed, work back through them in the order they were due. (Schools differ on whether that order is required.)

If what you owe is more than a day or two, or you have lost count, the size is no reason to keep putting it off. A workable start: pray the five on time from today, and work through what you owe alongside them.