final ten nights of Ramadan: people pray tarawih at the beginning of the night, then return at the end of the night and stand in prayer for tahajjud.

Then come the regular sunnah prayers: two rak‘ahs before Zuhr, two after it, two after Maghrib, and two after Isha, ………

His statement, “Then the sunnah prayers,” means: after tarawih come the regular sunnah prayers. There is, however, something to consider here, for earlier, at the beginning of the Book of Voluntary Prayers, the author stated (1): “The most emphatically confirmed of them is the eclipse prayer, then the prayer for rain, then tarawih, then witr.” Thus, he placed witr immediately after tarawih. This may be answered in one of two ways:

Either “then the regular sunnah prayers” indicates an order of mention;

or the conjunction relates to his statement, “then witr”; that is, the regular sunnah prayers come after witr, making them fifth in rank.

His statement, “the regular …,” means those that are constant and continuous. They accompany the obligatory prayers: two rak‘ahs before Zuhr and two after it; two rak‘ahs after Maghrib; two rak‘ahs after Isha; and two rak‘ahs before Fajr. These amount to ten rak‘ahs.

Thus, the Asr prayer has no regular sunnah prayer, and this is indeed the case. Yet it does have an unrestricted sunnah prayer, namely, the prayer included in the general meaning of the Prophet’s ﷺ statement: “Between every two calls to prayer there is a prayer.” (2)

The author counted the regular sunnah prayers as ten, relying in this upon the hadith of