There is a list of virtues attached to Tahajjud in the Quran and hadith that, if you read them all at once, would be overwhelming. A praised station on the Day of Judgment. Closeness to Allah that no other voluntary act produces. The best prayer after fard.
These are not poetic exaggerations. They are precise theological descriptions of what this prayer does for the person who prays it.
The Promise in the Quran: Maqam Mahmood
The clearest Quranic statement about the virtue of Tahajjud is in Surah Al-Isra:
“And rise at ˹the last˺ part of the night, offering additional prayers, so your Lord may raise you to a station of praise.”
(Quran 17:79, Dr. Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran)
Maqam mahmood. A praised station. The scholars of tafsir discuss what this means, and the majority view is that the primary reference is to the Prophet ﷺ himself, who will be given the maqam mahmood on the Day of Judgment, the intercession (shafa’a) for all of humanity. But within this verse is also the broader principle: Tahajjud is the vehicle Allah chose to elevate rank. The connection between night prayer and nearness to Allah is not incidental. It is stated explicitly.
The verse does not say you might be elevated or that elevation is possible. It uses the language of promise: so that your Lord may raise you. The raising is the consequence of the rising.
The Best Prayer After Fard
The Prophet ﷺ left no ambiguity about where Tahajjud ranks among voluntary acts of worship:
“The best prayer after the obligatory (fard) prayers is prayer at night and the best fasting after the month of Ramadan is Al-Muharram.”
But why is it the best? Because of what it costs. Because: it is the sacrifice of sleep. A Muslim’s bed in the last third of the night is warm and comfortable and their body resists leaving it. Choosing Allah over that comfort, night after night, in a space where no one can see you and no one will know whether you prayed or not, is the definition of sincerity. It is the act that proves to yourself and to Allah that what you do, you do for Him alone.
What the Scholars Said
Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal said that abandoning the night prayer was a sign of the heart’s hardness and warned his students that no serious student of knowledge should leave it. Imam al-Ghazali devoted a full chapter to the night prayer in Ihya Ulum al-Din, describing it as the foundation of the spiritual journey and the act that separates those who know Allah by name from those who know Him by encounter.
Ibn al-Qayyim wrote that the night prayer illuminates the face, that those who pray it regularly develop a recognizable nur, a light, in their features and their character. He was not speaking metaphorically. He meant that a person who stands before Allah in the dark for years becomes someone visibly different from who they were.
These observations stretch across centuries and legal schools. There is no serious scholar in the tradition who treated Tahajjud as optional in the sense of unimportant. They all understood it as the practice that, more than any other, shapes who a person becomes.
The Virtue Is Tied to the Sacrifice
The reason Tahajjud carries the virtue it does is inseparable from what it requires. If night prayer were easy, it would not have the rank it has.
When the body does not want to leave the bed and you leave it anyway, you are choosing Allah over comfort. When your mind wants more sleep and you override that with the memory of who is waiting for you in prayer, you are building the muscle of submission that is the foundation of everything in the deen.
Allah does not need your night prayer. You need it. It is not for Him. It is the process by which a person who knows the words of Islam becomes a person whose heart has surrendered to it.
The virtue of Tahajjud is real. The praised station is real. The best voluntary prayer is real. But they accrue to the person who shows up, in the dark, when no one is watching, because Allah is enough reason to get out of bed.
For a complete beginner’s introduction to how to pray Tahajjud, when to pray it, and what to say, visit our Beginners Guide.
Read the testimonies of real people who experienced the transformation that comes from this prayer. Pick up The Power of Tahajjud.