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Case file

Fajr

Wikipedia's first sentence called it “dawn prayer recited by practising muslims”. Today it says “one of the five daily mandatory islamic prayers”. The one-line description Wikipedia serves to search engines and AI systems read “First prayer of the day in Islam, occurring before sunrise”. It now reads “First mandatory prayer of the day in Islam”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2005 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since. Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now. 1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2005

Fajr prayer is the dawn prayer recited by practising Muslims .1 It is the first of the five daily prayers ( salah ).2 The five daily prayers collectively are one of the Five Pillars of Islam of Sunni Islam and one of the ten Furoo-ul-deen of Shia Islam. It is a 2 rak'ah prayer and is prayed aloud.3 The Fajr prayer is mentioned by name in the Qur'an at 24:58.4 The time period within which the Fajr prayer must be recited is the following: Time begins: at the beginning of dawn. Time ends: at the beginning of sun-rise. However, it is highly recommended by Muslim scholars to recite the prayer as soon as the time begins.5

This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 16943969.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “dawn prayer recited by practising muslims”. Today it says “one of the five daily mandatory islamic prayers”. The one-line description Wikipedia serves to search engines and AI systems read “First prayer of the day in Islam, occurring before sunrise”. It now reads “First mandatory prayer of the day in Islam”. Read the current article and compare.
2005201020152020Oct '232025
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.

What Wikipedia says this is

Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2005, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.

Then

dawn prayer recited by practising muslims

Now

one of the five daily mandatory islamic prayers

Sections that no longer exist

Present on October 6, 2023, absent today, with no near-matching heading in the current article and the article shorter overall, so this is not a renamed heading or a topic absorbed into a fuller treatment. 1 section of 400 characters or more gone since October 6 2023, with the article 2,301 characters shorter.

  • List of hadith mentioning fajr
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.

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