Salah
The five daily Islamic prayers, fixed in wording, posture and time.
The scheduled ritual prayer, five times daily from dawn to evening. Each performance takes a few minutes: ablution first, then cycles of standing, bowing, and prostration, recited in Arabic while facing Mecca. It can be prayed in any clean space, though congregation at a mosque, in rows behind an imam, carries special merit. Salah is one of the Five Pillars and the spine of Muslim devotional life.
Salah is prayed five times a day at times set by the sun, and it is fixed in a way that little else in this list is: the words, the postures and the order are all prescribed. It is built from units called rak'ahs, each combining recitation while standing, then bowing, then prostration.
Ritual washing comes first, and the prayer is performed facing Mecca. It may be prayed alone or in congregation, and congregation is considered more meritorious, but the obligation rests on the individual either way.
Al-Fatiha, the opening sura, is recited in every single unit of every prayer, which makes it the most frequently said text in Islam by a very wide margin.
Does it have a text?
Fixed text, in Arabic, and part of it is held here: Al-Fatiha is published in the Arabic, from a named edition checked against a second one character by character. The supplications said in the bowing and prostration are hadith-derived and vary between schools of law, and those are not published here.
When it comes up
Other forms of prayer in Muslim
- Dua — Personal supplication in Islam, said in any words and any language.
- Jumu'ah — The Friday congregational prayer, with a sermon in place of part of the usual prayer.
- Dhikr — The remembrance of God through short repeated formulas.
- Tarawih — The long night prayers of Ramadan, in which the Qur'an is recited at length.
- Salat al-Janazah — The Islamic funeral prayer, prayed standing over the body with no bowing or prostration.
This page describes a practice. It does not tell you how to perform it, or whether you should. Practice varies by region, community and household far more than a page like this can carry, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed anything here. The full dossier names its sources.