Is it a condition for the night prayer (qiyam al-layl) that one sleeps before it?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
May Allah reward you, Honorable Shaykh. This questioner says: If a person is accustomed to staying up late and he stands up to pray in the last third of the night, does that count as qiyam al-layl for him, or is it necessary that he sleeps first and then gets up from his sleep to pray?
Answer:
Sleep is what is desired. The important thing is that he prays during the night, but the best is that he sleeps at the beginning of the night and then gets up after sleeping; this is the best,[Al-Muzzammil 73:6]. Yes.
May Allah reward you, Honorable Shaykh. This questioner says: If a person is accustomed to staying up late and he stands up to pray in the last third of the night, does that count as qiyam al-layl for him, or is it necessary that he sleeps first and then gets up from his sleep to pray?
Answer:
Sleep is what is desired. The important thing is that he prays during the night, but the best is that he sleeps at the beginning of the night and then gets up after sleeping; this is the best,
Indeed, the hours of the night are more effective for concurrence [of heart and tongue] and more suitable for words.
إِنَّ نَاشِئَةَ اللَّيْلِ هِيَ أَشَدُّ وَطْئًا وَأَقْوَمُ قِيلًا
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، 290- هل يشترط في صلاة قيام الليل أن ينام قبلها|الشيخ صالح الفوزان — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.