Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
If there’s one main jamah at the masjid, usually followed by a second one for later comers, is there more reward in attending the first one or are both jama’t equal in reward?
Walaikum assalam,
The first congregation has far greater reward. In fact, many of the early Muslims did not permit a second congregation in the mosque. This is actually the transmitted opinion of Imam Abu Hanifa (Allah have mercy on him). Many of the later scholars said that the fatwa in later times was on a transmitted opinion of Abu Yusuf, the greatest student of Abu Hanifa, that as long as the second congregation was unlike the first (by not praying at the front in the mihrab and by not giving the adhan out loud), then it is not disliked. This was adopted by Ibn Abidin in his Radd al-Muhtar, a definitive text for the relied upon positions of the Hanafi school, where the author systematically and exactingly applied the principles of assessing the strength conflicting legal positions within the school laid out by the great Hanafi imams.
However, great Hanafi fuqaha of the Indian Subcontinent, including Imam Ashraf Ali al-Tahanawi and others, argued that the position of Imam Abu Hanifa is stronger and closer to the primary evidence and practice of the Prophetic times. In Damascus, however, the other position is followed.
And Allah knows best.
Wassalam,
Faraz Rabbani.