Answered by Ustadh Salman Younas
Question: When travelling and combining prayers, do the Zuhr prayer and the Asr prayer need to be prayed during Zuhr time or can they both be prayed during Asr time?
Answer: assalamu alaykum
In the Hanafi school, there is no ‘real’ combining of prayers for a traveler, i.e., prayers are not actually prayed outside their time.
The Hanafis understood the combining of the Prophet (blessings upon him) as one that involved delaying Dhuhr to the very end of its time, performing it while its time was still in, and then performing Asr immediately after in the time for Asr. The same applied to Maghrib and Isha.
The other schools differ and allowed for real combining outside the time of a respected prayer. For the Shafi`i and Maliki schools, you can refer to these two detailed answers:
What Are the Methods for Combining (Jam’) and Shortening (Qasr) Prayer for Travel? [Shafi’i School]
Joining Prayers in the Maliki School
Wasalam,
[Ustadh] Salman Younas
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
Ustadh Salman Younas was born and raised in New York, Ustadh Salman Younas graduated from Stony Brook University with a degree in Political Science and Religious Studies. After studying the Islamic sciences online and with local scholars in New York, Ustadh Salman moved to Amman. There he studies Islamic law, legal methodology, belief, hadith methodology, logic, Arabic, and tafsir. His personal interests include research into the fields of law/legal methodology, hadith, theology, as well as political theory, government, media, and ethics. He is also an avid traveler and book collector. He currently resides in Amman with his wife.