The best guidance is the guidance of Prophet Muhammad (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him). He taught his ummah everything having to do with religious matters, including prayer, its timings and how to do it, because of its great importance in Islamic teachings. In this hadith, Abu Barzah (may Allah be pleased with him) narrated that the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) used to pray Fajr and one of us would recognize the person next to him. This indicates that the dawn had grown so light that a worshipper could recognize the person next to him. That was at the end of the prayer; he would make the prayer lengthy and would not finish it until things had become visible and faces had become recognizable. In the prayer he would recite between sixty and one hundred verses. The Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) would pray Zuhr straight after the sun had passed the meridian in the middle of the day, when the sun started to decline from the middle of the sky. He (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) would pray ‘Asr at such a time that one of them would be able to go to the furthest part of Madinah and come back, and the sun would still be shining strongly, very hot and bright. This indicates that he offered the prayer at the beginning of its time. Then the narrator, Abu’l-Minhal, says that he forgot what Abu Barzah (may Allah be pleased with him) told him about the time when they used to pray Maghrib. Abu Barzah (may Allah be pleased with him) said: we would not mind if ‘Isha’ was delayed until one third of the night had passed. Then he said: until half of the night had passed. In other words, sometimes they would pray ‘Isha’ after one third, or one half, of the night had passed, because of its virtue. Concerning the virtue of delaying it there is a report narrated by Abu Dawud, according to which the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) said: “Offer this prayer when it is very dark, for you have been given precedence over other nations because of it; no nation before you ever had a prayer like it.”.