What Is Taraweeh? How Many Rak'ahs, When to Pray, and What the Schools Say

Taraweeh is the voluntary night prayer offered during Ramadan, prayed after the Isha prayer and before Fajr, usually in congregation at the mosque with long portions of the Qur'an recited aloud. It is not obligatory — there’s no issue with missing it — and it is prayed in pairs of two rak'ahs, most commonly twenty, though eight and thirty-six are also established practices with scholarly backing. Whether the number is fixed, whether congregation is required, and what to do about witr afterwards are questions the four schools answer differently. This article sets out each position rather than choosing between them.

What Is Taraweeh?

The word taraweeh is the plural of a term meaning a pause or a rest, and it refers to the short breaks taken after every four rak'ahs during this long prayer — a name that tells you something about how it was originally prayed, at length and unhurried.

In substance it is qiyam al-layl, the night prayer, given a particular form during Ramadan: prayed in congregation, led by an imam, with the Qur'an recited from memory across the month so that in many mosques the entire text is completed by the twenty-seventh or twenty-ninth night.

It carries no obligation. It belongs to the category of strongly encouraged voluntary acts, and the reward attached to it in the narrations is unusually large relative to what it asks. The Prophet ﷺ is reported in Bukhari and Muslim to have said that whoever stands in prayer during Ramadan out of faith and seeking reward has his previous sins forgiven.

When Is Taraweeh Prayed?

The window opens after the Isha prayer has been offered and closes at the entry of Fajr. Taraweeh cannot be prayed before Isha, and it cannot be made up once dawn has broken — like all night prayer, it is tied to the night it belongs to.

Most mosques begin immediately after the Isha congregation, which in practice means it follows straight on from the prayer people are already at the mosque for.

Praying it later in the night is valid and, for those who are able, some scholars consider the last third of the night the more virtuous time, since that is when the Prophet ﷺ prayed most of his own night prayer.

The practical question for most people is not which slot is more virtuous but which one they will actually keep for thirty consecutive nights, and the answer to that is usually whichever one is already in the routine.

How Many Rak'ahs Is Taraweeh?

This is the question people most want answered and it does not have one answer. Twenty rak'ahs, prayed in ten pairs, is the position of the Hanafi, Shafi'i and Hanbali schools, and it is the practice established during the caliphate of Umar ibn al-Khattab, who gathered the people behind Ubayy ibn Ka'b — a gathering recorded in Bukhari and widely treated as a consensus of the Companions.

The Maliki school transmits thirty-six rak'ahs as the settled practice of the people of Madinah, on the basis that they added extra cycles between the sets.

A third view holds to eight rak'ahs plus witr, grounded in the narration of Aisha in Bukhari and Muslim that the Prophet ﷺ did not exceed eleven rak'ahs in Ramadan or outside it. Scholars who accept the larger numbers understand that report as describing his personal practice rather than fixing a limit, and point out that the night prayer is voluntary and therefore open in quantity. What is agreed across all of these is that the prayer is valid whichever number is offered, and that praying fewer rak'ahs with presence is not inferior to praying more without it.

Is Taraweeh Obligatory?

No. Taraweeh is sunnah mu'akkadah — a confirmed, strongly encouraged practice — in the view of the majority, and no school treats it as a duty in the way the five daily prayers are duties. Missing it carries no sin and requires no make-up. The duties of the month itself are a separate subject — what the fast requires, what invalidates it and who is exempt are set out in our guide to the fiqh of fasting. This matters more than it might sound, because the pressure people feel around Taraweeh often comes from the assumption that it is all-or-nothing: either the full twenty behind the imam every night or nothing at all. That framing has no basis in the rulings.

Someone who prays four rak'ahs at home on a night they cannot get to the mosque has prayed voluntary night prayer in Ramadan, which is precisely what the narration describes.

The Prophet ﷺ himself prayed it in congregation on only a few nights and then stopped, and Aisha's narration in Bukhari and Muslim explains that he did so out of concern that it would be made obligatory on the community.

At the Mosque or at Home?

Both are valid, and the schools weigh them slightly differently. The majority hold that praying Taraweeh in congregation at the mosque is more virtuous, on the strength of Umar's gathering of the people and the unbroken practice of the community since. Some scholars, including a transmitted Maliki preference and a position within the Shafi'i school for those who can maintain it, hold that praying at home is better for someone who will recite well and stay consistent, citing the report in Bukhari and Muslim that the best prayer a person offers is in his home apart from the obligatory prayers.

On women attending the mosque for Taraweeh, the Hanafi school historically discouraged it while the majority permitted it, and contemporary scholars across the schools generally consider attendance permitted where the mosque is safe and accessible. In practice families often split the difference across the month, and no school treats that as a compromise of the prayer.

Witr After Taraweeh

Witr is the odd-numbered prayer that closes the night, and in Ramadan it is normally prayed in congregation immediately after Taraweeh. The point of confusion is what to do if you intend to pray more at home later, since there is a narration in Abu Dawud and Tirmidhi that there are not two witrs in one night.

Scholars have resolved this in two ways. Some hold that you should pray witr with the imam and, if you pray again later, pray in pairs without repeating witr. Others hold that you may delay witr until the end of your own night prayer, and that someone who prays with the imam may add a single rak'ah after him to make his own count even and then pray witr later. There is also a narration in Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud encouraging a person to stay with the imam until he finishes, so that it is recorded for him as though he prayed the whole night — which is why most people simply follow the imam through to the end.

Taraweeh in the Last Ten Nights

The final third of Ramadan changes the shape of the prayer in most mosques. Many extend Taraweeh, add a later qiyam sitting closer to dawn, and lengthen the recitation as the Qur'an approaches completion. This is where Laylat al-Qadr falls — the night the Qur'an describes as better than a thousand months — and the narrations report that the Prophet ﷺ would tighten his practice in these nights and wake his household. Our guide to when Ramadan begins and its key nights gives the calendar dates for each of the odd nights in the last ten. If you are going to make one adjustment across the month, the scholars' consistent advice is to protect the last ten rather than spread effort evenly across thirty.

That does not mean abandoning the first twenty; it means planning for the last ten before Ramadan starts, rather than arriving at them already exhausted.

Making Taraweeh Sustainable

The difficulty with Taraweeh is almost never the prayer. It is the arithmetic of a working month: an Isha that falls late, an hour or more at the mosque, and a suhoor a few hours after that. People who keep it consistently tend to protect sleep deliberately rather than hope for it, split the month between mosque and home instead of treating a home night as a failure, and decide the number of rak'ahs they will pray in advance so the decision is not made at 11pm while tired. It is also worth being honest that the standing prayer is one of three things Ramadan tends to build — recitation, night prayer and giving — and that the third is the one that survives the month most easily, because unlike the other two it can be arranged once and left to run. A small regular amount set up during Ramadan tends to outlast a larger one given in a single night. We look at how people handle that in the final stretch in our guide to giving in the last 10 nights of Ramadan.

The questions on which scholars have given different answers are long-standing disagreements, each held in good faith by qualified scholars across the recognised schools. We do not take a side on any of them. If you want a ruling for your own situation, ask your local imam or a scholar you trust.

Sources

This article draws on the following. Hadith reference numbers are given as they are commonly cited and are worth confirming against the collections directly.

• Sahih al-Bukhari 37 and Sahih Muslim 759 — whoever stands in prayer during Ramadan out of faith and seeking reward is forgiven his previous sins.
• Sahih al-Bukhari 2010 — Umar ibn al-Khattab gathering the people behind Ubayy ibn Ka'b, the basis of the twenty-rak'ah congregational practice.
• Sahih al-Bukhari 1129 and Sahih Muslim 761 — the Prophet ﷺ praying in congregation on a few nights and then withholding, out of concern it would become obligatory.
• Sahih al-Bukhari 1147 and Sahih Muslim 738 — the narration of Aisha that he did not exceed eleven rak'ahs in Ramadan or outside it.
• Sahih al-Bukhari 731 and Sahih Muslim 781 — the best prayer a person offers is in his home, apart from the obligatory prayers.
• Sunan Abi Dawud 1439 and Jami' at-Tirmidhi 470 — there are not two witrs in one night.
• Jami' at-Tirmidhi 806 and Sunan Abi Dawud 1375 — whoever stands with the imam until he finishes has it recorded as though he prayed the whole night.
• Qur'an, Surah al-Qadr 97:3 — the Night of Decree is better than a thousand months.
• Hanafi, Shafi'i and Hanbali positions on twenty rak'ahs, and the Maliki transmission of thirty-six — in the books of those schools.

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