Types of Salat (Maliki)

What is types of salat? How many types of salat are there?

He salat can be separated into two groups; fard and nafillah.

1. The Fard Salat and its Types

The fard prayer can be separated into two groups:

1. a) Prayers that are Fard ‘ayn: The fard of the five daily prayers, these prayers’ qazas if they are left to the qaza and the Salat al-Jum’ah. These prayers are all examples of the fard ‘ayn salat. Salat al-Jum’ah is only fard for men.
2. b) Prayers that are Fard Kifayah: This is the Salat al-Janazah.

2. The Nafilah Salat and its Types

Nafilah prayers can be separated into three groups;  sunnah mu’akkadah, raghiba and nafilah muakkadah.

a. Sunnah Muakkadah prayers

These prayers are five types:

1. Salat al-Witr: This is the strongest example of the Sunnah Muakkadah. The time of this starts after the Isha salat that is prayed in the sahih manner and after the red dawn has disappeared. It is considered mandub for a person, who trusts that they can wake up at the end of the night, to delay praying the witr prayer to the end of the night. The person who has prayed the witr at the start of the night and wakes up late at night to pray the nafilah prayer, does not need to repray the witr salat.
2. The Eid al-Fitr salat,
3. The Eid al-Adha salat,
4. The prayer that is prayed when there is a solar eclipse,
5. The rain dua prayer.

b. The Raghiba Salat

This is the two-rakat prayer that is prayed at dawn. This is called raghiba. Raghiba is a prayer that is below the level of the sunnah and higher than the level of the mandub. In the Maliki mazhab, there is no other raghiba prayer besided this. It is considered mandub to pray this prayer in the masjid, to only read Surat Al-Fatiha when praying it and to pray it while reciting the qiraat quietly.

c. Nafilah Muakkadah Salat

There are ten types of Nafilah muakkadahs:

1. The nafilah that is prayed before the dhuhr salat,
2. The nafilah that is prayed after the dhuhr salat,
3. The nafilah that is prayed before the Asr salat,
4. The nafilah that is prayed after the Maghrib salat,
5. The nafilah that is prayed after the Isha salat.

There is no count limit whatsoever in these five prayers. For it to be mandub, two rakats is sufficient. Along with this, it is better to pray these first few prayers as four rakats, as for the nafilah prayers that are after the Maghrib prayer, it is better to pray them as six rakats.

6. Mid-morning salat. The minimum number of rakats for this is two rakats and the maximum is eight rakats.
7. Tahajjud salat. It is considered more virtuous to pray this salat in the last one third of the night.
8. The two-rakat nafilah that is prayed before the one-rakat witr salat,
9. The taraweeh salat that is prayed in Ramadhan. This is twenty rakats and it takes place after the Isha prayer. The salam is recited after every two rakats.
10. Tahiyyatu’l-masjid salat. This is the two-rakat prayer that a person who enters a masjid prays before sitting down.

Source: Fiqh1 (According To The Maliki School Of Islamic Law), Erkam Publications

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