When does Isha end? (and when does Asr start)

• Isha starts when the evening twilight (shafaq) disappears; schools differ on whether that means the red or white glow.
• Scholars place the end, or preferred end, of Isha at a third or half of the night, and several schools hold it stays valid until dawn.
• Islamic midnight is the midpoint of the night, not 00:00, and in London the two common methods differ by about an hour.
• Hanafi Asr starts at two shadow lengths instead of one; in London it is about 30 minutes later in December and 75 in June.

Short answer: Isha starts when the evening twilight (shafaq) disappears. Scholars place its end, or its preferred end, at a third or half of the night, and several schools hold it stays valid until true dawn (Fajr). "Midnight" here is the midpoint of the night, not 12:00, so the clock time depends on your calculation method. ^{1, 2, 3}

Find tonight's time where you are: check your mosque's timetable, or a prayer app set to your mosque's method. Pillars, our app, is one way: it can show the middle of the night alongside the five prayers (Premium). ⁴

When does Maghrib end and Isha start?

Maghrib ends, and Isha begins, when the twilight called shafaq disappears from the western sky. The schools differ on which twilight counts. ⁵

The hadith describes Maghrib's time as lasting "as long as the twilight has not ended" (Sahih Muslim 612d). ¹ Two twilights follow sunset: a red glow, then a fainter white one.

• Red twilight (shafaq ahmar): the Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali schools, and Abu Hanifa's students Abu Yusuf and Muhammad. ⁵
• White twilight (shafaq abyad): Abu Hanifa. The white glow lasts longer, so Isha starts later. ⁵

Ayatollah Khamenei, a Shia scholar, holds that Maghrib begins once the redness in the eastern sky has passed over, and lasts until shortly before the shar'i (religious) midnight. ⁶

Apps turn this into a sun angle below the horizon. The Muslim World League (MWL) method uses 17° for Isha, ISNA uses 15°, and Umm al-Qura sets Isha 90 minutes after Maghrib (120 in Ramadan). The Moonsighting Committee blends red and white twilight by season by default. ^{5, 7}

[IMAGE: Red and white twilight after sunset]

When does Isha end?

There are three main positions: the end of the first third of the night, the middle of the night, and true dawn. Most schools treat the earlier points as the preferred ("chosen") time rather than the absolute end. ³

When you pray 'Isha, its time is until half of the night has passed.Sahih Muslim 612a

Some editions number this hadith 964; sunnah.com numbers it 612. ¹

The other key texts:

• On the second day Jibril led the Prophet, Isha was prayed "when a third of the night had gone" (Jami' at-Tirmidhi 149). ⁸
• "There is no omission in sleeping"; omission is not praying until the next prayer's time comes (Sahih Muslim 681). ⁹

Which view applies to you is a question for your mosque or a scholar you trust.

What does "midnight" mean for Isha?

Islamic midnight is the midpoint of the night, not 00:00. There are two common ways to measure the night, and in London they give clock times about an hour apart, sometimes more. ^{12, 13}

• Sunset (Maghrib) to Fajr. PrayTimes describes midnight as "generally calculated as the midpoint between Sunset and Fajr". SeekersGuidance (Hanafi), Islamweb and Ayatollah Khamenei also measure the night this way. ^{12, 2, 3, 6}
• Sunset to sunrise. This is astronomical midnight, used by some generic calculators. ¹²

Worked example: London, night of 19 October 2026 (calculated, Moonsighting Committee method): Maghrib 18:01, Fajr 05:57, sunrise 07:32. The Maghrib-to-Fajr midpoint is 23:59. The Maghrib-to-sunrise midpoint is 00:47, 48 minutes later. ¹³

To work it out, halve the time from Maghrib to Fajr and add it to Maghrib. A different Fajr method moves your midnight too.

Calculated end-of-Isha reference points, London (adhan-js 4.4.6, MWL 18°/17°, middle-of-the-night high-latitude rule; June row uses the twilight-angle rule). Times are for the night that begins on the date; times after 00:00, and Fajr, fall the following morning. ¹³

These are calculated method outputs, cross-checked against a second library to within about 1.5 minutes, not any mosque's official timetable. ¹³

[IMAGE: Two ways to calculate Islamic midnight]

Why does my app show Isha starting after midnight in June?

In the UK in June, some app settings put Isha's start after the night's midpoint. This comes from the high-latitude rule, not from the sky or from any school's view. ¹³

In June and July, the sun does not sink 18° below the horizon in many parts of the British Isles, and in the north of Scotland it does not reach 12°. ¹⁴ Astronomical twilight never fully ends. Apps then apply a high-latitude rule, which caps Fajr and Isha at a fraction of the night.

Two calculated examples for London:

• 21 June 2026, ISNA 15° with the middle-of-the-night rule: Isha starts at 00:49, but the Maghrib-to-Fajr midpoint is 23:18, an hour and a half earlier. Fajr follows at 01:15. ¹³
• 21 June 2027, MWL with the middle-of-the-night rule: Isha and Fajr both land at 01:02, and the Maghrib-to-Fajr midpoint is 23:12. The Isha window effectively vanishes. ¹³

Change the rule and the window reopens. With MWL on 21 June 2027, one-seventh of the night gives Isha at 22:25 and twilight angle gives 23:27. ¹³ If your app's June times look impossible, compare its high-latitude rule with your mosque's timetable. UK mosques handle summer differently, and the East London Mosque advises following your local mosque. ¹⁵

When does Asr start?

Asr starts when an object's shadow reaches a set length. The majority view uses one shadow length; the Hanafi view uses two, so Hanafi Asr is later. ^{12, 16}

Both views go back to the same report. On the first day Jibril led the Prophet, Asr was prayed when shadows equalled their objects; on the second day, when they were about twice as long (Jami' at-Tirmidhi 149). ⁸

• Standard (shadow = 1× height + the noon shadow): the Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali schools, and Ja'fari according to PrayTimes. Within the Hanafi school, Abu Yusuf, Muhammad and Zufar also held this. ^{12, 16}
• Hanafi (shadow = 2× height + the noon shadow): Abu Hanifa. SeekersGuidance says his view is held superior in the school, and both are valid. ¹⁶

Which Asr time to follow is a question for your mosque or a scholar you trust.

Because Dhuhr lasts until Asr begins, the Hanafi view also extends Dhuhr to two shadow lengths. ^{1, 16} The East London Mosque prints both, labelled Mithl 1 and Mithl 2. ¹⁵

[IMAGE: Shadow lengths for standard and Hanafi Asr]

Calculated Asr start, standard / Hanafi (gap in minutes) (adhan-js 4.4.6; local time). Treat clock times as ±2 minutes: two open-source libraries differ by up to 1.7 minutes on Asr, though they agree on the gap to within about a minute. ¹³

In the UK the gap runs from about 25–30 minutes in December to 75 in June. Across all ten UK and North American cities we calculated, it ranges from 25 (Glasgow) to 42 minutes (Houston) in December and 74–78 in June. ¹³

When does Asr end?

The hadith gives a preferred end and an outer limit. Asr's time lasts "as long as the sun has not become pale" (Sahih Muslim 612d). ¹ Another hadith says whoever prays "one rak`a of the `Asr prayer before sunset" has caught it (Sahih al-Bukhari 579). ¹⁷ Ayatollah Khamenei also holds that Asr ends at sunset. ⁶

How to set this in a prayer app

Four settings decide the times you see for Isha and Asr. Most prayer apps offer similar options; here is how they appear in Pillars. ⁴

• Calculation method: 23 methods, or autopilot, which picks one from your country. This sets the Isha angle and the Fajr time that "midnight" depends on.
• Asr: standard or Hanafi, or show both.
• High-latitude rule: twilight angle, middle of the night, or one-seventh of the night. This matters most in UK summers.
• Manual adjustment: move any single prayer by up to 60 minutes to match your mosque.

On iPhone, Pillars can also show the published timetables of mosques it covers; check whether yours is listed. Premium adds the middle of the night and the last third of the night, both measured from Maghrib to Fajr. ⁴ See Pillars' prayer-time settings

Keep reading

• When does Fajr start and end?
• What time is Tahajjud? The last third of the night
• How prayer times are calculated (and why UK timetables differ)
• Pillars prayer times app