295 – Ibn ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with them both) said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ declared, “The night prayer is performed two rakʿahs at a time. When one of you fears that dawn is about to break, let him offer a single rakʿah which will render what he has already prayed odd.” Agreed upon.

The Five (Aḥmad and the compilers of the four Sunan) also transmit it, and Ibn Ḥibbān authenticated it with the wording: “The prayer of the night and the day is performed two by two.” Al-Nasāʾī commented, “This is a mistake.” (1)

Hadith grading:
This ḥadīth is sound, excluding the phrase “and the day.” It was narrated by Aḥmad, the authors of the Sunan, Ibn Khuzaymah, and Ibn Ḥibbān, and its principal wording appears in the two Ṣaḥīḥs without the addition “and the day.”
Al-Tirmidhī said, “The authentic version is that which the trustworthy narrators reported from Ibn ʿUmar; they did not include ‘the prayer of the day.’”
Al-Dāraqutnī remarked, “Mentioning ‘the day’ in it is an error,” and al-Nasāʾī and al-Ḥākim likewise said, “It is a mistake.”
Among those who weakened the addition “the day” are Ibn Saʿīd, al-Tirmidhī, al-Nasāʾī, and Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah.

Glosses on the ḥadīth:
– “Prayer of the night” refers to its number of units; it is the subject, while “two by two” is the predicate.
– “Two by two” is in the nominative case because it functions as the predicate. It is diptote owing to its descriptive form and its shift from the regular expression “two two”; the repetition serves for emphasis,