{"id":11030,"date":"2026-01-14T07:37:33","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T07:37:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imuslim.us\/?p=11030"},"modified":"2026-01-14T07:37:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T07:37:33","slug":"difference-between-shaf-and-witr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imuslim.us\/?p=11030","title":{"rendered":"What Is the Difference between Shaf` and Witr?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif;color: #ff6600\"> The Difference between Shaf` and Witr<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Almighty Allah says:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><strong>&#8220;And [by] the even [number] and the odd&#8221;. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.learning-quran.com\/quran-translations\/en-translation\/mishari-bin-rashid\/recitation-surat-al-fajr\/\">Al-Fajr<\/a> 89:3)\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><em>Witr<\/em> Prayer is a single prayer (an odd number of <em>rak`ahs<\/em>) performed during the time between <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prayerinislam.com\/guide-to-prayer\/the-isha-prayer\/\"><em>`Isha&#8217;<\/em> <\/a>(Night Prayer) prayer and Fajr prayer. It must be the last prayers to be offered before the Fajr prayer (Dawn). It is also preferred to be offered at the last third of the night.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\"><em>Shaf`<\/em> in Arabic refers to pairs or even numbers, and is the opposite of <em>witr<\/em> which means odd-numbered.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">Ibn Hibban narrated from Ibn `Umar (may Allah be pleased with them) that he used to separate between his even-numbered prayer (<em>shaf`<\/em>) and odd-numbered prayer\u00a0with a <em>tasleem<\/em>, and he said that the Prophet (peace be upon him) used to do that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">This <em>hadith<\/em> indicates that what is meant by <em>shaf`<\/em> is two <em>rak`ahs<\/em> before the one<em> rak`ah<\/em>\u00a0(unit of prayer) of <em>witr<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif\">To know more about the rulings of <em>shaf`<\/em> and <em>witr<\/em>, watch this interesting talk with Dr. Muhammad Salah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"width: 0px;overflow: hidden;line-height: 0\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/p>\n<p>___________________________________<\/p>\n<p><em>Source: Huda Youtube Channel.\u00a0<\/em><a href='https:\/\/prayerinislam.com\/difference-between-shaf-and-witr\/' target='_blank'>Soucre Link<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the prayer that is offered before the witr prayer? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1982,1563],"tags":[2260,782,4719,9,6261,1805,1841,4113,7504,76,374,1850,2014,1052,2255,2193,1576,1577,7505,7506,4117,4118,7507,2196,5277],"class_list":["post-11030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guide-to-prayer","category-prayer-in-islam","tag-isha-prayer","tag-fajr-prayer","tag-fatwas-of-salah","tag-featured","tag-fiqh-of-salah","tag-guide-to-prayer","tag-how-to-make-salah","tag-how-to-pray-witr","tag-isha-salah","tag-islam","tag-muhammad-salah","tag-namaz","tag-night-prayer","tag-prayer","tag-prayer-at-night","tag-qiyam-al-layl","tag-salah","tag-salat","tag-shaf","tag-shaf-prayer","tag-when-to-pray-witr","tag-witr","tag-witr-in-prayer","tag-witr-prayer","tag-witr-salah"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/imuslim.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/shaf-and-witr.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imuslim.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imuslim.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imuslim.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imuslim.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imuslim.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/imuslim.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imuslim.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imuslim.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imuslim.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imuslim.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}