or five, or seven, or nine. If he performs witr with three, he may—if he wishes—end the prayer with salām after the first two rakʿahs and then pray the third by itself, or he may combine all three and conclude with a single salām.

If he offers witr as five, he should pray the five continuously with one salām and one tashahhud; the same rule applies to seven—he prays all seven with a single salām. If he chooses nine, he proceeds likewise, except that after the eighth rakʿah he sits and recites the tashahhud but does not give the salām; he then rises for the ninth rakʿah and ends with the salām. Should he pray witr as eleven, he gives the salām after every two rakʿahs, just as the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did.

The first and second reports from Ibn ʿUmar prove that witr is not to be prayed after dawn has broken; once daybreak occurs, the time for witr has ended. If a person is overcome by sleep and fails to pray witr before dawn, he should pray during the day, but in even numbers: if his usual witr is three rakʿahs, he makes up four; if his habit is five, he makes up six—

…and so on.

These ḥadiths therefore highlight both the virtue of the night prayer and its procedure: it is offered two by two.

As for the ḥadith of Anas ibn Mālik (may Allah be pleased with him), it indicates that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) would at times persist in a given righteous deed so unfailingly that you would always find him upon it: whenever you saw him standing in prayer, you would find him standing; whenever you saw him sleeping, you would find him sleeping. The same applied to fasting: whenever you saw him fasting, he was fasting; whenever you found him breaking the fast, he was breaking it.

In other words, he (peace and blessings be upon him) pursued whatever was most beneficial and suitable: at times he would continue fasting, at times he would continue refraining, and at times he would continue sleeping, because he (peace and blessings be upon him) followed whatever