Jabir reported God’s Messenger as saying, “When one of you performs the prayer in his mosque he should leave a portion of his prayer for his house, for God blesses his house because of his prayer.”
Abu Huraira said that God’s Messenger used to commend prayer at night in Ramadan, but did not command it as a duty. He would say, “If anyone prays during the night in Ramadan because of faith and seeking his reward from God, his former sins will be forgiven him.” When God’s Messenger died this was the practice, and it continued thus during Abu Bakr’s Caliphate and the early part of ‘Umar’s.
We fasted along with God’s Messenger, but he did not make us get up at night for prayer at any time during the month till seven nights remained; then he made us get up for prayer till a third of the night had passed. Next night he did not make us get up, but when the fifth remaining night came he made us get up for prayer till a half of the night had gone, so I said, “Messenger of God, I wish you had led us in supererogatory prayers during the whole of this night." He replied, “When a man prays with an imam till he goes away he is reckoned as having spent a night in prayer." On the fourth remaining night he did not make us get up till two-thirds of the night had passed. On the third remaining night he gathered his family, his wives and the people and prayed with us till we were afraid we would miss the falah (explaining, when asked, that the falah was the meal before daybreak). Then he did not make us get up for prayer during the remainder of the month.
Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi and Nasa’i transmitted it, and Ibn Majah transmitted something similar, but Tirmidhi did not mention, “then he did not make us get up for prayer during the remainder of the month."
Zaid b. Thabit said that God’s Messenger made an apartment of reed mats in the mosque and prayed in it for some nights until people gathered round him. One night when they missed his voice and thought he had gone to sleep, some of them began to clear their throats in order that he might come out to them, so he said, “What I have seen you doing has continued to be your practice, so that I have been afraid that it might be prescribed for you, and if it were prescribed for you you would not fulfil it. You people should therefore pray in your houses, for, with the exception of the prescribed prayer, the most excellent prayer a man observes is that which he observes in his house.”
