Whoever forgets a prayer or sleeps through it, its expiation is to pray it when he remembers.
What qada is and is not
Qada is the obligatory prayer itself, offered outside its window. Only the fard rak'ahs are made up; the sunnah and nafl units attached to a prayer are not. Nothing substitutes for a missed obligatory prayer — not charity, not extra voluntary prayers.
| Prayer | Fard rak'ahs to make up |
|---|---|
| Fajr | 2 |
| Dhuhr | 4 |
| Asr | 4 |
| Maghrib | 3 |
| Isha | 4 |
| Witr (Hanafi: wajib) | 3 |
A method that survives contact with a long backlog
- Estimate the backlog honestly, in units of months or years. Precision is not required and chasing it stalls people.
- Pray one make-up prayer directly after each of the five daily prayers. That is five a day, which clears roughly a year of missed prayers in a year.
- Work in order — oldest first — if you can, since the Hanafi and Maliki schools hold that order matters where the number is small.
- Keep a count somewhere you will actually see it. A number that goes down is the difference between finishing and giving up.
- Do not abandon today's prayers to catch up on yesterday's. The current prayer always comes first.
Where the schools differ
All four schools agree that prayers missed by sleep or forgetfulness are made up. On prayers deliberately abandoned over years, the majority position is that they are still made up, while a minority view holds that deliberate abandonment cannot be repaired by qada and the person should instead turn to sincere repentance and consistent prayer from now on. Scholars who give the second answer generally do so to stop someone being paralysed by an uncountable backlog, not to excuse it.
There are also three short windows in which prayer is not offered: while the sun is rising, at its exact zenith, and while it is setting. Make-up prayers are scheduled outside them.