Chapter: The Times of Prayer and Their Virtue. And His saying, Mighty and Majestic: “Indeed, prayer has been prescribed for the believers at fixed times.” Fixed times are their obligation.

The Reciter: “Chapter: The Times of Prayer and Their Virtue”.

The Shaykh : And their virtue.
The Reciter: I have it with a damma, O Shaykh.

The Shaykh : Their virtue with a rafa, yes.
The Reciter: And His saying: Fixed times are their obligation.

The Shaykh : In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. “Chapter: The Times of Prayer”. Prayer has been prescribed for the believers as an obligation at fixed times, as our Lord, Mighty and Majestic, said. The meaning of “obligation” (kitaban) is that it is written and obligatory; the active participle here means the passive, i.e., Allah, Mighty and Majestic, has written it in known times.
If someone were to ask: Have these times been specified in the Book and the Sunnah?
We say: Yes, but they came in the Book in a general form and in the Sunnah in a detailed form. In the Qur'an, Allah the Exalted said: He said “at the declining of the sun” (li-duluki). The lam means “at,” and it is said that the lam means “for the sake of,” because the time is the cause of the obligation, so the lam in His saying: means “for the sake of the declining of the sun,” and the declining of the sun is its setting.
And “the darkness of the night” is its middle, because the strongest intensity of darkness is the middle of the night due to the sun’s distance from the surface of the earth. So the time here is from midday to midnight. These are the times of four of the prayers, and they are connected to one another. When the time of Zuhr enters, at its exit the time of 'Asr enters. When the time of 'Asr exits, at its exit the time of Maghrib enters. When the time of Maghrib exits, at its exit the time of 'Isha' enters until midnight, and then there is no time. For this reason, He distinguished it and said:
So He distinguished this from what preceded it, because the Fajr prayer is independent by itself. What is before it is not a time for the obligatory prayers, and what is after it is also not a time for the obligatory prayers. So the latter half of the night and the first half of the day have no obligatory prayer in them. This is the apparent meaning of the Qur'an, and it is also explicit in the hadith of 'Abdullah ibn 'Amr ibn al-'As and others, that the time of 'Isha' is until midnight.
Whoever claims that it extends to the appearance of the dawn must provide evidence, because when something is defined by the Shari'ah, whoever adds to it, even for a single moment, must provide evidence.
As for what some people cited as evidence from the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): “Negligence is only when a person leaves the prayer until the time of the next one enters,” this is not evidence, because it means until the next prayer enters among the consecutive prayers. Otherwise, we would say that the time of Fajr extends to Zuhr, and no one holds that view.
Based on this, if a menstruating woman becomes pure after midnight, is it obligatory for her to pray 'Isha'?
According to this stronger opinion, no, it is not obligatory for her, because she became pure after the time had exited.
Likewise, if a child reaches puberty between midnight and the appearance of the dawn, it is not obligatory for him to pray the 'Isha' prayer.
As for the Sunnah, it detailed this with a clear and distinct detail, as the author will mention. And what he did not mention, others have mentioned, yes.