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.
How the scholars use Qiyām al-Layl.
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"and the descent of the Almighty to the lowest heaven: the hadith of descent has already been mentioned. As for the rest, they are traditions reported by Muhammad ibn Nasr in "Qiyam al-Layl" from the narration of Sa'id al-Jurayri. Dawud asked, "O Gabriel, which part of the night is best? Gabriel replied, "I don't know, except that the Throne shakes at the time of Sahur."
— Imam al-Ghazali, Book 10: The Mysteries of Regular Divisions
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"Had it not been difficult for my nation, I would have made them obligatory," was narrated by Adam ibn Abi Iyas in Al-Thawab and Muhammad ibn Nasr Al-Marwazi in Kitab Qiyam al-Layl from the narration of Hassan ibn Atiyah as mursal, and Abu Mansur Al-Daylami connected it in Musnad Al-Firdaws from the hadith of Ibn Umar, but it is not authentic."
— Imam al-Ghazali, Book 10: The Mysteries of Regular Divisions
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