The Book of Mosques and Places of Prayer-09b
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The reciter: And Muhammad ibn al-Muthanna and Muhammad ibn Bashshar narrated to us. Ibn al-Muthanna said: Muhammad ibn Ja'far narrated to us, and Shu'bah narrated to us, saying: I heard Qatadah narrating from Abu Hasan from Ubaydah from Ali, who said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said on the Day of the Confederates: Musnad Ahmad 1150Sahih (Darussalam).
The Shaykh : In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
As you can see, this hadith is explicit that the middle prayer is the 'Asr prayer. It is the 'Asr prayer. And since the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) explicitly stated this, there should be no disagreement about it. However, the scholars have differed greatly on this. Here, "the middle" refers to excellence, due to the saying of Allah the Exalted:[Al-Baqarah 2:143]. So "the middle" means the most excellent, which is preferred over the other prayers. It is not "the middle" in terms of number, because the first prayer is Zuhr and 'Asr is the second. But in terms of excellence, it is the middle, meaning the most excellent. And you have already learned its superiority over the others in what came before.
They distracted us from the middle prayer until the sunset. May Allah fill their graves with fire and their houses - or their stomachs - Shu`bah was not sure whether it was houses or stomachs.
شغلونا عن صلاة الوسطى حتى آبت الشمس ملأ الله قبورهم نارا أو بيوتهم أو بطونهم -شك شعبة في البيوت والبطون-The Shaykh : In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
As you can see, this hadith is explicit that the middle prayer is the 'Asr prayer. It is the 'Asr prayer. And since the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) explicitly stated this, there should be no disagreement about it. However, the scholars have differed greatly on this. Here, "the middle" refers to excellence, due to the saying of Allah the Exalted: