78أَقِمِ الصَّلاةَ لِدُلوكِ الشَّمسِ إِلىٰ غَسَقِ اللَّيلِ وَقُرآنَ الفَجرِ ۖ إِنَّ قُرآنَ الفَجرِ كانَ مَشهودًاMuhammad AsadBE CONSTANT in [thy] prayer from the time when the sun has passed its zenith till the darkness of night, and [be ever mindful of its] recitation at dawn:1 for, behold, the recitation [of prayer] at dawn is indeed witnessed [by all that is holy].2As is evidenced by the practice (sunnah) of the Prophet, this verse fully circumscribes the five daily prayers laid down in Islam as obligatory for every adult man and woman: at dawn (fajr), shortly after the sun passes its zenith (zuhr), in the middle of the afternoon ('asr), immediately after sunset (maghrib), and after the night has fully set in ('isha'). Although parts of the Qur'an should be recited in every prayer, the early morning prayer is metonymically singled out as the "recitation (qur'an) at dawn" because the Prophet, under divine inspiration, used to lengthen his recitation while praying at that time, thus stressing the special significance of this particular prayer. (See next note.)Most of the classical commentators take this to mean "witnessed by the angels of night as well as those of day", since dawn is the time between night and day. Razi, however, is of the opinion that the "witness" to which the Qur'an refers here is the spark of God-given illumination in man's own soul - the heightening of his inner perception at the time when the darkness and stillness of night begins to give way to the life-giving light of day, so that prayer becomes a means of attaining to deeper insight into the realm of spiritual truths and, thus, of achieving communion with all that is holy.