The Messenger of Allah ﷺ delayed the night prayer one evening, the prayer called al-atamah, and he did not come out until Umar bin Khattab said, "The women and children have fallen asleep."So the Messenger of Allah ﷺ came out, and when he appeared before the people in the mosque he said, "No one on earth is waiting for this prayer except you." This was before Islam had spread widely among the people.In another narration she said, The Messenger of Allah ﷺ delayed the prayer one night until much of the night had passed and the people in the mosque had fallen asleep. Then he came out and prayed, and said, "This is indeed its proper time, were it not that I would place a hardship on my community."
أعتم رسول الله ﷺ ليلة من الليالي بصلاة العشاء، وهي التي تدعى العتمة فلم يخرج رسول الله ﷺ حتى قال عمر بن الخطاب: نام النساء والصبيان، فخرج رسول الله ﷺ فقال لأهل المسجد حين خرج عليهم: ما ينتظرها أحد من أهل الأرض غيركم وذلك قبل أن يفشو الإسلام في الناس. وفي رواية قالت: أعتم رسول الله ﷺ ذات ليلة حتى ذهب عامة الليل، وحتى نام أهل المسجد، ثم خرج فصلى فقال: إنه لوقتها، لولا أن أشق على أمتي.
Bukhari related it in the Book of Prayer Times (569), and Muslim in the Book of Mosques (638), both from the hadith of Ibn Shihab, from Urwa, from Ayesha. The wording given is Muslim's, and he said that Harmala added in his version, Ibn Shihab said, and it was mentioned to me that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, "It was not right for you to press the Messenger of Allah ﷺ about the prayer." That was when Umar bin Khattab called out.His words "tunzuru" spelled with a ta, then a silent nun, then a dammah-marked za, then a ra, mean "you insist upon him." It is also transmitted with a dammah on the first letter, followed by a ba, then a ra with a kasrah, then a za, meaning "you drive him out."In Bukhari's wording, "and on that day prayer was performed only in Madinah, and they used to pray between the disappearance of twilight and the first third of the night."The second version, also in Muslim, comes through another route from Ibn Jurayj, who said, Mughira bin Hakeem informed me, from Umm Kulthum bint Abu Bakr, that she informed him from Ayesha, who said, and then he related the hadith. In the version of Abdul-Razzaq, from Ibn Jurayj, it reads, "Were it not that it would be difficult for my nation."I say, what appears in al-Musannaf (2114) is, "Were it not that I would burden my nation," which agrees with the version of the others. Allah knows best whether the error came from the printer or from someone else.His words "much of the night had passed" mean a great part of it, not the greater part of it. This interpretation is necessary because of his ﷺ statement, "It is indeed its time," and it cannot be that what is meant by this saying is what comes after midnight, since none of the scholars said that delaying it until after midnight is preferable. This is what Nawawi conveyed.