Ṣalāt al-Khawf

Ṣalāt al-khawf, the “prayer of fear,” is the form of the ritual prayer prescribed for the believers when they are in the presence of an enemy and cannot perform the prayer in the ordinary manner without exposing themselves to attack. Established in the Qurʼān and by the practice of the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ during his campaigns, it allows the army to fulfil the obligation of prayer while remaining on guard, the worshippers praying in turns or with abridged movements so that a portion of them always faces the enemy. Its institution belongs to the sīrah of the Madīnan period, when the community was engaged in warfare, and it furnished the law with a model for the maintenance of worship in the conditions of danger.

The foundation of the prayer of fear is the verse of Sūrat al-Nisāʼ in which God instructs the Prophet ﷺ, when he is among the believers and leads them in prayer in the field, that a party of them should stand with him in prayer while another keeps guard, and that they should then exchange, the guard taking their turn in prayer, all the while holding to their weapons and their caution. The verse sets out the principle that the prayer is not to be abandoned even in the face of the enemy, but performed in a manner suited to the peril, and the practice of the Prophet ﷺ furnished the detailed forms by which this was carried out.

The Prophet ﷺ performed the prayer of fear on a number of his expeditions, and the companions transmitted several descriptions of the manner of it, which differ according to the occasion and the disposition of the enemy. In one well-known form, transmitted concerning the expedition toward Najd, the Prophet ﷺ divided the army into two ranks: one rank prayed a unit with him while the other faced the enemy, then they exchanged places, so that each rank prayed a part of the prayer behind him and completed the remainder by themselves. In another form the Prophet ﷺ led each party in a separate portion, completing his own prayer with both, so that he prayed the whole and each party prayed a half behind him.

Because the reports describe several modes, the jurists differed as to the preferred form, and the books of law record several valid manners of the prayer of fear, drawn from the various traditions. Some held that the worshippers pray in turns, a part with the imam and a part on guard, exchanging in the course of the prayer; others, where the danger was extreme and the enemy near, allowed the prayer to be performed in whatever way was possible—walking or riding, facing the qiblah or not, with gestures in place of the full bowing and prostration—so that the obligation might be discharged without exposing the believers to destruction. The diversity of the transmitted forms was understood as a latitude granted according to the circumstances of the fighting.

The prayer of fear belongs, in the system of the law, with the other concessions (rukhaṣ) granted to the traveller and the warrior, such as the shortening (qaṣr) and the combining (jamʻ) of the prayers, by which the rigor of the ordinary observance is eased in conditions of hardship and danger. Its very existence was taken by the scholars as a proof of the weight that the law places upon the prayer, since even in the press of battle the obligation is not lifted but only adapted; the believer prays though the enemy be before him, in the manner that the danger allows. The Prophet ﷺ is reported to have maintained prayer in this way throughout his campaigns, omitting it only on the rarest occasions of overwhelming peril, for which a separate ruling was given.

In the sīrah tradition, ṣalāt al-khawf is remembered as the form of worship that the Prophet ﷺ established for the days of warfare: the prayer performed in ranks and turns before the enemy, with weapons in hand and a guard kept, by which the army of the believers maintained their devotion in the very presence of danger. Grounded in the Qurʼān and the practice of the Prophet ﷺ upon his expeditions, it passed into the law as an enduring institution and a sign of the place that prayer holds in the life of the believer, not to be set aside even amid the perils of the field.

## References

1 Abū ʻAbd Allāh al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, “Kitāb ṣalāt al-khawf,” nos. 942–47. 2 Abū al-Ḥusayn Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, “Kitāb ṣalāt al-musāfirīn,” bāb ṣalāt al-khawf, nos. 839–43. 3 Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, Sunan Abī Dāwūd, “Kitāb ṣalāt al-safar,” bāb ṣalāt al-khawf, nos. 1236–46. 4 Mālik ibn Anas, al-Muwaṭṭaʼ, “Kitāb ṣalāt al-khawf,” nos. 441–42. 5 al-Shāfiʻī, al-Umm (Beirut: Dār al-Maʻrifa, 1990), 1:185–92. 6 Ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qāhira, 1968), 2:397–410. 7 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʻAsqalānī, Fatḥ al-bārī sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (Beirut: Dār al-Maʻrifa, 1959), 2:430–42.