Qiyām al-Layl
Definition
Qiyam al-layl is the voluntary night prayer performed after sleeping and before the fajr prayer — one of the most praised acts of worship in the Quran and Sunna, associated with the highest spiritual stations and described as the custom of the righteous throughout the ages. Al-Ghazali presents it as the crown of the daily awrad: the person who rises to pray in the last third of the night while others sleep, who makes duʿa while the house is quiet and the heart is still, is accessing a spiritual resource that most people leave entirely untapped. The Quran describes the night prayer as 'more difficult and more correct in speech' — harder because the nafs resists it, more correct because the sleeping world provides no distraction from sincere orientation.
As understood in the classical tradition of Imam al-Ghazali and the scholars of his school.
Appears in
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