The scholars differed regarding the night prayer of Ramadan. Some of them held the view that one should pray forty-one rakʿahs including the witr,(1) and this is the opinion of the people of Madinah, and according to them the practice in Madinah was upon this.

Most of the scholars, however, are upon what was narrated from ʿUmar,(2) ʿAlī, and others—

--------------------------------------------
(1) In the Mudawwanah of Imam Mālik 1/193, in the narration of Saḥnūn ibn Saʿīd al-Tanūkhī from Imam ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Qāsim: Mālik said: The amīr sent for me, wanting to reduce the night prayer of Ramadan that the people used to perform in Madinah. Ibn al-Qāsim said: And it is thirty-nine rakʿahs including the witr—thirty-six rakʿahs, and the witr three. Mālik said: So I forbade him from reducing any of that, and I said to him: This is what I found the people upon, and this is the ancient practice that the people have never ceased to follow.

(2) Al-Baghawī narrated in "al-Jaʿdiyyāt" (2926): ʿAlī ibn al-Jaʿd narrated to us, Ibn Abī Dhiʾb informed us, from Yazīd ibn Khuṣayfah, from al-Sāʾib ibn Yazīd, who said: They used to pray during the time of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, may Allah be pleased with him, in the month of Ramadan twenty rakʿahs, and they would recite with hundreds of verses of the Qurʾan. This chain is authentic upon the condition of al-Bukhārī, and Yazīd ibn Khuṣayfah is trustworthy and authoritative; the two Shaykhs agreed upon narrating his ḥadīth. As for the statement of Aḥmad regarding him in one of his two narrations, as narrated from him by Abū Dāwūd: "Munkar al-ḥadīth," this is not intended as weakening or disparagement, but rather it means that he is unique among his peers in some narrations, as more than one of the imams of this field have pointed out. He was followed in the narration of the twenty rakʿahs by Yazīd ibn Rūmān, as recorded by ʿAbd al-Razzāq in "al-Muṣannaf" (7330), from Dāwūd ibn Qays and others, from Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf, from al-Sāʾib ibn Yazīd: that ʿUmar gathered the people in Ramadan behind Ubayy ibn Kaʿb and behind Tamīm al-Dārī, upon twenty-one rakʿahs, reciting with hundreds of verses, and they would depart at the appearance of dawn. This chain is also strong.

And this report from ʿUmar was declared authentic by more than one of the ḥuffāẓ, among them Imam al-Nawawī in "al-Khulāṣah" and "al-Majmūʿ," Ibn al-ʿIrāqī in "Ṭarḥ al-Tathrīb," and al-Suyūṭī in "al-Maṣābīḥ." And we do not know that any of the imams of knowledge has spoken against this report. As for the statement =