Where the night prayer actually sits

Once the morning is anchored, the night prayer has an obvious place, and it is the tradition's own placement rather than a compromise.

The sound reports put the descent in the last third of the night, and the Qur'an calls the night prayer nafila, additional, which is a word doing legal work that a scholar can explain better than we can. Both of those put qiyam at the end of a night that has already happened, not at the front of one that never will.

Aisha's description of it is the schedule in four moves, and it includes the part everybody has been told not to do. He used to sleep early at night, get up in its last part to pray, and then return to his bed, and when the mu'adhdhin called he would get up.

Ibn Qudamah, in Mukhtasar Minhaj al-Qasidin, gives two recognised ways of taking the night. The first is to stand at the beginning of it until sleep overcomes you, which he calls among the severest of strivings. The second is the one this course teaches, and it is put without any note of apology.

الطريق الثانى: أن ينام أول الليل، فإذا أخذ حظه من النوم، وانتبه،، قام الباقي.

Our rendering: the second way is that he sleeps at the beginning of the night, and when he has taken his share of sleep and wakes, he stands for the rest of it.

When he has taken his share of sleep. That is the whole argument of this lesson, in five words, from a Hanbali handbook.

In practice it means the same fixed rising time, moved earlier on the nights you intend to pray, and then not moved back on the nights you do not. What it does not mean is going to bed at midnight, getting up at three, and staying up.