Concerning the night prayer of Ramadan
His statement regarding its number of rakʿahs is: “It has been authentically reported that, in the days of ʿUmar, ʿUthmān and ʿAlī, the people used to pray twenty rakʿahs.”

I say: As for ʿUthmān, I do not know of anyone who has transmitted that from him, even with a weak chain. Concerning ʿUmar and ʿAlī, what has been narrated from them comes only through isnāds that are all defective, as I have explained in detail—an exposition, to my knowledge, not previously undertaken—in my book Salāt al-Tarāwīḥ. There I showed that the reports in question belong to the category that cannot mutually corroborate one another, and that even if one of them had been sound, it would have applied to an exceptional circumstance that no longer exists. None of today’s imams prolong the recitation to the extent practised by the early generations, such that they would prefer shorter recitation and a larger number of rakʿahs in place of lengthy standing.

There is, therefore, no consensus on the figure of twenty. What is authentically established from ʿUmar—through the soundest chain—agrees with the practice of the Prophet ﷺ that ʿĀʾishah related in the ḥadīth cited earlier in this work. Mālik recorded in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, on the authority of al-Sāʾib ibn Yazīd (may Allah be pleased with him), that he said:

“ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb instructed Ubayy ibn Kaʿb and Tamīm al-Dārī to lead the people in eleven rakʿahs. The reciter would recite passages of a hundred verses, so that we would lean on our staffs from the length of the standing, and we would not disperse until dawn had broken.”

In that book I also established that the Prophet’s ﷺ lifelong adherence to eleven rakʿahs constitutes conclusive evidence that the night prayer is not an unrestricted voluntary act, as many claim. Rather, in proving that it is a prayer fixed to a particular number, it stands on the same footing as the regular sunnah prayers and the eclipse prayer.