The reward in these two cycles before the sunset prayer is known to God alone. Between every first call and immediate call to prayer God has a particular self-disclosure and looking upon His servants. Whoever converses intimately with Him then is singled out for something tremendous. It is as we have said concerning the transmitted report from the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, whose soundness unveiling has confirmed, “Between every two calls there is a prayer.” He meant the first call and the immediate call to prayer. He called the latter a call because it announces standing for prayer and the presence of the prayer leader. In the language of the Arabs the sun and moon are likewise called “the two moons,” and Abū Bakr and ʿUmar are called “the two ʿUmars.”
This is the prayer of the saints who ever turn back to God. The earliest community was most assiduous in keeping up these two cycles.
(The Voluntary Prayer as Preparation for the Obligation)
The reason for this divine granting of success is that voluntary prayer is servanthood of choice, while obligatory prayer is servanthood of necessity. Servanthood of necessity requires complete presence through knowing the etiquette, majesty, and incomparability due to the Master who is worshipped. Servanthood of choice thus prepares for it like training the soul, or like withdrawal before seclusion. Entering the obligatory prayer from a voluntary prayer is different from entering it from a permissible act. An impression of what preceded his entry necessarily remains in the mind of the one entering. This is why those who kept up these cycles did so.
The two cycles of the dawn Sunnah are the same. A voluntary prayer before the obligation is charity that a person gives to himself. God says, “When you converse privately with the Messenger, give charity before your private converse” [al-Mujadilah 58:12],
Notes
Translator’s note TN2054-1: The examples use a dual name for a pair of different things. In the same way, the first call and the immediate call to prayer can together be called “two calls.”
