معراج میں نماز کی فرضیت
There has never been a real consensus on 5-prayer doctrine, in Islam and before Islam. It is well documented that many Muslims since the earliest phase of Islam till today did not and have not subscribed to this doctrine. The school of thought lead by Shafii which started to prosper one century after him outcasted all such opinions that they did not agree with, and excluded them from Ijma. Imam Shafii was the one who introduced and canonized Sunnah as part of Islam. Before him, Muslims generally followed Quran and sought evidence for their beliefs and practices from Quran. Questioning the veracity of the 5-prayer doctrine is usually a no-go area for majority of the muslims. Their brain cells don’t allow questioning the traditions and thinking beyond what their respective scholars feed them, and also because any weakness in this narrative would expose the cracks that would shake the entire edifice of the traditional version of Islam, which is based on conjecture and hearsay. Quran being a fully detailed Scripture mentions the names of only two prayers, Salat ul Fajr and Salat ul Isha (24:58), and also mentions the timings of Fajr and Isha only: 11:114 (You shall hold the contact prayer at both ends of the day, that is, section of the night), and also in 17:78 (You shall hold the contact prayer at the setting of the sun, until the darkness of the night; and the Quran at dawn). Therefore, the Deen delivered by God Almighty through Prophet Muhammad commands two times of compulsory prayers every day. رسول اکرمﷺ کی نبوت کے آغاز کے وقت جو لوگ ایمان لاتے تھے وہ کتنے وقت کی نمازیں ادا کرتے تھے ؟؟ کیا نبوت کے پہلے دن سے پانچ نمازیں فرض تھیں ؟؟ Getting any fruitful information on this would require an independent and critical study, partly because it is a convoluted topic being wrapped under several layers of corrupting influences and later additions in the early years of Islam (during Umayyads and Abbasids). Regarding the historicity of number of prayers in early Islam, here are some useful resources to explore for a start : “MORNING AND EVENING PRAYERS IN EARLY ISLAM”, By Uri Rubin, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 10, Jerusalem 1987. http://www.islam-and-muslims.com/MORNING-EVENING-PRAYERS-EARLY-ISLAM.docx https://archive.org/details/UriRubinMorningAndEveningPrayersInEarlyIslamByMuslims/page/n3/mode/2up?view=theater “Western scholars have already noticed that according to Muslim sources, before the five daily prayers became part of the “pillars” of Islam, the Muslims used to pray only twice a day . Goldziher states that “before the duty of prayer was extended to five times a day, the Muslims are said to have observed only two canonical times of prayer: morning and afternoon … “. Other scholars, like Mittwoch, for instance, who studied the evidence of Muslim sources, maintained that the first two prayers which the Muslims reportedly used to pray daily were ṣalāt al-fajr (before sunrise), and ṣalāt al-‘ishā’ (after sunset). “ “The Politics of the Two Qiblahs and the Emergence of an Alternative Islamic Monotheism”, By Eltigani Abdelgadir Hamid, The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 https://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/231 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340910993_The_Politics_of_the_Two_Qiblahs_and_the_Emergence_of_an_Alternative_Islamic_Monotheism “At the very initial stage they (prayers) were confined to the Dawn and Evening prayers , as well as to the solitary night prayers accompanied by a prolonged recitation of the Qur’an. ( Ibn al-Jazri, Usd al-Ghābah, 1:30. See also Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Fatḥ al- Bārī, 2:5-6, 9-11.” “The Azāriqa in Islamic Heresiography”, By Keith Lewinstein, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1991, Vol. 54, No. 2 (1991), pp. 251-268 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bulletin-of-the-school-of-oriental-and-african-studies/article/abs/azariqa-in-islamic-heresiography1/67410490930463A35628DA90F5D5E723 The author describes the stance of some early groups of Muslims ( Azariqa, Khazimiyya and the Bid’iyya) who used to pray two times, morning and evening, in accordance with Quran. [R equiring only two daily prayers (as specified in Q. 11:114)]. “Debates on the Authority of Hadith in Early Islamic Intellectual History: Identifying al-Shāfiʿī’s Opponents in Jimāʿ al-ʿIlm”, By Hüseyin Hansu, Istanbul University https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7817/jameroriesoci.136.3.0515 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309959620_Debates_on_the_Authority_of_Hadith_in_Early_Islamic_Intellectual_History_Identifying_al-Shafii's_Opponents_in_Jima_al-Ilm “Ibn al-Murtaḍā (d. 840/1437) explained that the view that the prayer should only be performed twice a day, in the morning and the evening, was adopted by the Bidʿiyya.” Comparison with Judaism: “Prayer in Josephus”, Chapter 2, By Tessel Marina Jonquiere, BRILL, 2007. https://brill.com/display/title/12829?language=en The jewish historian of the first century AD, Josephus argues that there are two prayers in Judaism: “Twice each day, at its beginning and when the time comes to turn to sleep, people must bear witness to God for the gifts he gave when he delivered them from the land of the Egyptians. For thanksgiving is proper by nature and it is given in return for what happened and as a spur for what will be.” (Josephus, AJ 4.176–194)”. Josephus has written in “Antiquities of Jews” that daily prayers in Judaism are two: dawn and dusk. The 9th hour prayer (mid-day) was substituted for missing daily sacrifice after the destruction of temple. He writes: “We can be reasonably sure that the practice of praying during the sacrifice (mid-day) was instituted later than the final redaction of the Torah, as it is not mentioned in it .”