The Missed Fajr on the Return

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

On the way home, after a long day's march pressed late into the night, for the Prophet ﷺ favored night travel, noting that "the land is folded up" at night and more ground is covered, the exhausted party halted to rest, and the Prophet ﷺ asked who would keep watch and wake them for Fajr. Bilāl volunteered, but sleep overcame everyone; not one of the roughly 1,400, who never slept past dawn, woke until the sun's heat reached them around mid-morning, a measure of how spent they were. Abū Bakr or ʿUmar began saying "Allāhu Akbar" aloud to rouse the Prophet ﷺ, never daring to shake him awake. He woke to find Bilāl himself asleep; Bilāl explained that the One who took his soul had taken it, no fault of his own. The Prophet ﷺ had them move off from that spot, where Shayṭān had made them oversleep, before praying the missed Fajr.

Dr. Qadhi notes the scholars dispute whether this happened once or twice, since similar reports attach it to other journeys; either way, this was the only prayer the Prophet ﷺ is recorded to have missed by oversleeping, and only ever while travelling, never at home, the other recorded missed prayer being the ʿAṣr delayed under fire at the Trench. He draws both a consolation and a ruling: that even the most devout may, rarely and unintentionally, oversleep Fajr, and that one who misses a prayer prays it as soon as he wakes or is able, the Prophet ﷺ moving away from that place being a particular circumstance, not a general requirement for us at home.