How to pray when you are travelling

Travel is the situation where the prayer changes shape more than anywhere else, and it is also where most people are least sure of themselves. The concessions are not loopholes. They are given in the Qur'an and were practised by the Prophet ﷺ on every journey he made, and one of the reports has Umar being told plainly that shortening is a charity from Allah which should be accepted rather than refused.

There are two concessions and they are separate. Qasr is shortening a four rakah prayer to two. Jam' is joining two prayers into one sitting. You can take both, either, or neither.

What gets shortened, and what never does

Qasr applies only to the prayers that are four rakahs. That is Dhuhr, Asr and Isha, each of which becomes two rakahs.

• Fajr stays at two. It is already the shortened length, and there is nothing to reduce.
• Maghrib stays at three. It is never prayed as two, in any school, whether or not it has been combined with Isha.
• Witr stays as it is. Travel does not change it, and the reports show the Prophet ﷺ praying witr on journeys.

Everything inside the two rakahs is normal. Same recitation, same tashahhud, same ending. You simply sit for the final tashahhud after the second rakah and give the salam. If you want a refresher on the shape of the prayer itself, see how to pray salah and how many rakahs in each prayer.

What counts as a journey

This is the first question and the one with the most variation. All four schools use a distance, and they arrive at it by working out how far a recognised journey covered in the era when these measures were set. The classical unit is the barid, and the majority figure of four burud is what modern conversions translate into kilometres.

In practice, if your trip is well past 80 km and involves leaving your town, every school considers you a traveller. If it sits just under, the cautious route is to pray in full, and the Hanafi figure is the lowest of the four if you follow that school.

When the journey starts and when it ends

You become a traveller when you leave the built-up area of your town, not when you start packing and not when you leave your house. The airport on the far side of the city is usually outside it, so the first prayer you shorten is typically the one after you are genuinely on your way. You stop being a traveller the moment you re-enter your home town, even if you have not yet reached your front door, so the prayer you pray after landing back home is prayed in full.

Is shortening required or optional?

Everyone agrees the traveller may shorten. The schools differ over whether he should, and what happens if he prays four anyway.

Combining prayers

Jam' means praying two prayers back to back in the time of one of them. Only two pairs can be joined, and only in this order.

• Dhuhr with Asr.
• Maghrib with Isha.

Fajr is never joined to anything. It stands alone between the end of the night and sunrise, and neither the prayer before it nor the prayer after it can be pulled into its time.

Jam' taqdim, joining early

This is praying both prayers in the time of the earlier one. You pray Dhuhr, then Asr straight after it, while it is still Dhuhr time. Or you pray Maghrib, then Isha straight after it, while it is still Maghrib time.

The conditions the schools that permit it generally set are these. Keep the order, so the earlier prayer first. Form the intention to combine while you are still in the first prayer, or before it, rather than deciding afterwards. Do not leave a long gap between the two, so give the salam from the first and begin the second without occupying yourself with something else in between.

Jam' ta'kheer, joining late

This is praying both in the time of the later one. You delay Dhuhr until Asr time and pray both then, or you delay Maghrib until Isha time and pray both then. It is the easier of the two to get right, because there is no risk of praying a prayer before its time has entered.

The one thing to be careful about is the intention. You should decide to delay while the first prayer's time is still running. Letting Dhuhr time expire without having intended to combine turns it into a missed prayer rather than a joined one.

For a long flight, joining late is usually the practical option. Pray Maghrib and Isha together once you land and Isha time has entered, rather than trying to work out which country's Maghrib time applied at 38,000 feet.

How long you may keep shortening once you arrive

You are a traveller while you are travelling. Once you settle somewhere with the intention of staying, you become a resident and the prayer returns to its full length. The schools differ over where that line falls, and this is the difference most likely to affect a two-week trip.

The word doing the work in all four is intention. Two people on the same trip can be on different rulings, because one has booked ten nights and the other is leaving whenever his business is done.

Praying in congregation while travelling

Mixing travellers and residents in the same congregation is where most of the confusion happens. There are two cases and they resolve differently.

A traveller praying behind a resident imam

The traveller follows the imam and prays four. He does not give the salam after two. This is the position of all four schools, and when Ibn Abbas was asked why a traveller prays two alone but four behind a resident, he answered simply that this is the sunnah.

The practical upshot is that joining a local congregation cancels your shortening for that prayer. If you want to shorten, pray on your own or with other travellers.

A resident praying behind a traveller imam

The imam prays his two rakahs and gives the salam. The residents behind him do not give the salam with him. They stand back up and complete the remaining two rakahs on their own, then give the salam.

The courtesy here is old and well established. The Prophet ﷺ, when leading prayer in Makkah on a journey, told the people there to complete their prayer because he and his companions were travelling. If you are leading and there are residents behind you, say the same thing before or after you pray, and nobody is left standing confused.

What happens to the sunnah rakahs

Ibn Umar reported that the Prophet ﷺ did not pray the regular sunnah rakahs that go before and after the obligatory prayers while he was travelling. On that basis the majority hold that these confirmed sunnahs are dropped on a journey, and that leaving them is not a shortfall.

Two things are kept.

• The two rakahs before Fajr. These were maintained on journeys and are still prayed.
• Witr. Likewise maintained, and prayed as normal.

Voluntary prayer in general is not affected. Night prayer, Duha, the two rakahs on entering a masjid and anything else you offer freely all remain recommended while travelling. The Hanafi school adds that if the journey is comfortable and you have the time and settledness for the regular sunnahs, praying them is better than leaving them.

Praying on a plane, a train or in a car

An obligatory prayer should be prayed standing, facing the qibla, with proper bowing and prostration, whenever that is genuinely possible. On many aircraft there is a galley space where it is, and cabin crew are often more accommodating than people expect.

Where it is not possible, you do what you can. Pray seated, face the qibla at the start if you are able to work out the direction, and indicate the bowing and prostration with your head, making the prostration lower than the bowing. A prayer offered that way on time is sound. Voluntary prayer on a moving vehicle is easier still, and the reports show the Prophet ﷺ praying nafl on his mount in whatever direction it was facing.

Do not let the ambiguity of a flight push the prayer out of its time. Between praying imperfectly on time and praying perfectly after the time has gone, the first is what the concessions exist to make possible. The one case where delaying is the right answer is joining late, which is a recognised way of praying on time, not a way of missing it.

A worked example

You fly out at midday on a five day trip, about 2,000 km away, and you will be staying in a hotel.

1. You leave your town, so from that point you are a traveller and Dhuhr, Asr and Isha are two rakahs each.
2. You expect to be at the hotel five days. On the Hanafi reckoning that is under fifteen days, so you shorten the whole stay. On the Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali reckoning five days passes their limit, so you would pray in full from the day you arrive, and shorten only on the travel days at each end.
3. Your flight crosses Dhuhr and Asr. If you follow a school that permits combining, intend to delay Dhuhr, then pray Dhuhr and Asr together, as two rakahs each, once you land and Asr time has entered.
4. Maghrib that evening is three rakahs, as it always is. If you combine, Isha follows it immediately at two.
5. When you go to the local masjid and the imam is a resident, you pray the full four behind him.
6. On the flight home, the moment you are back inside your own town, the concession ends and you pray in full again.

The spirit of it

The theme running through all of this is that the prayer bends so that it does not break. Aisha reported that the prayer was originally two rakahs, and that it was the resident's prayer that was later lengthened while the traveller's was left where it started. Read that way, the traveller is not getting a discount. He is praying the original.

If you are unsure which of the positions above applies to you, pick one and be consistent for the trip rather than recalculating at every prayer. The thing that actually goes wrong on journeys is not praying two where you should have prayed four. It is not praying at all.