just as the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—disliked people’s singling out Friday itself or the last days of Shaʿbān for fasting, and disliked their singling out the eve of Friday for night-long prayer. The same ruling would apply were someone to introduce a fixed prayer restricted to the first ten nights (of Dhu’l-Ḥijjah), or to the interval between Maghrib and ʿIshāʾ, and the like.
Acts of worship fall into three classes:
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Devotions that are recommended in their own right, such as the specific voluntary prayers: the two rakʿahs before Fajr, the night standing in Ramadan, and so on. Included in this class are the time-bound practices, like the general night vigil.
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Devotions that are recommended because of an external cause, such as the prayer for rain (ṣalāt al-istisqāʾ) or the eclipse prayer. Within this class some are:
• prescribed with a set number, like Witr;
• left unnumbered but linked to a virtuous time, such as the prayers offered on Friday before the congregational prayer. These make four sub-categories of “restricted” prayers. -
Devotions that are recommended on account of their general meaning, such as unrestricted supererogatory prayer. Once the sun has risen, such prayer is witnessed and attended until one performs the ʿAṣr prayer.
There are also acts whose singling out is disliked while the act itself is not, as with keeping vigil only on the eve of Friday. Some practices are generally disliked except under special circumstances, such as praying during the prohibited times. For this reason the scholars have differed over whether the disapproval of prayer after Fajr and after ʿAṣr is merely to prevent people from deliberately seeking out