Salaah

Asr is not the shadow-length time. Nearly every prayer app — even with a “Jafari” setting — shows Asr at the moment an object’s shadow equals its height. That is the Shafi‘i start of obligation. In the school of the Ahl al-Bayt, the obligatory time of Asr begins once Dhuhr has been prayed after zawal (al-Kafi, Kitab al-Salat: “when the sun declines, the time of the two prayers has entered”; Sistani, Islamic Laws, ruling 717). What the shadow measures mark is the fadheelah — the window of merit.

The fadheelah ratios come from the hadith of Zurara. One dhira‘ (cubit) is two sevenths of the qamah — a person’s standing height. Sayyid al-Sistani (Minhaj al-Salihin, mas’ala 504) fixes Dhuhr’s fadheelah from zawal until the added shadow reaches 4/7 of the object (better before 2/7), and Asr’s from 2/7 until 6/7 (better before 4/7). Alif computes those shadow instants astronomically for your exact location.

Midnight is sunset to dawn. The end of Isha and the start of salat al-layl is the midpoint between sunset and true dawn (rulings 726 and 760) — most apps show the midpoint to sunrise, which can be off by three quarters of an hour.

Maghrib is not sunset. Maghrib enters when the eastern redness has passed overhead — computed here as a solar depression angle (4.5° Tehran / 4° Qom), never before sunset (ruling 722, obligatory precaution).

Times marked ≈ (the end of Fajr’s fadheelah and the disappearance of shafaq) are labelled approximations: the fiqh texts describe them by sight, not by angle. They are flagged labelled approximations rather than silently guessed. At extreme latitudes where the sun never reaches the dawn angle, the standard night-fraction convention is applied and marked ≈.

Audited against api.aladhan.com across six cities, three seasons and both hemispheres: every comparable time agrees to the minute. The one deliberate divergence is Midnight near the equinoxes (±2–3 min): common calculators midpoint sunset with the same day’s dawn, while Alif uses the dawn that actually follows the night — the plain sense of the ruling.