Narrated Muhammad b. ‘Amr b. al-Hasan b. ‘Ali said:
We asked Jabir b. ‘Abdallah about the Prophet’s observance of prayer and he said, “He used to pray the noon prayer in the midday heat; the afternoon prayer when the sun was bright; the sunset prayer when the sun had completely set; the night prayer early if many were present, but late if there were few; and the dawn prayer just before daybreak.”
My father and I visited Abu Barza al-Aslami and my father asked him how God’s Messenger used to observe the prescribed prayer. He replied, “He used to pray the noon prayer (al-hajir), which you call the first, when the sun was past the meridian; he would pray the afternoon prayer, after which one of us would return to his dwelling in the outskirts of Medina while the sun was still bright; (I forget what he said about the sunset prayer); he liked to postpone the night prayer, which you call al-atama, objecting to sleeping before it or talking after it and he would turn away from the morning prayer when a man could recognise his neighbour, and he would recite from sixty to a hundred verses during it.” A version has, “He did not mind postponing the night prayer till a third of the night had passed; and he did not like sleeping before it, or talking after it.”
Ibn Mas'ud said that the extent of the shadow when God’s Messenger prayed the noon prayer was three to five feet in summer and five to seven feet in winter.
