Excellence and Secrets Of The Night Vigil Volume I Picture Oil lamp ...

As this act of worship began to be embedded into your spiritual life,
Allah, the Exalted, will shine His light upon you, and set an angel to be
your guide, and then you can throw away the alarm clock and recite the
first and last ten verses of Surah 18 Kafh.
How long do we take to complete these prayers and recitation?
There is no specific timing. It all depends on individual ability and
desire. The beginner should aim to accomplish three raka`ats of witr
prayers consists of two raka`ats of Tahajjud and/or Night Prayer and/or
witr, that is, three intentions in one prayer followed by the single witr.
Then recite the Names of Allah [asmaul husnah] with its accompanying
invocations [doa]. That should be take about half an hour and upon
completion the dawn [fajr] call for prayer [azan] should be heard.
Once established on this routine the seeker [murid] should work
upwards and increased the prayers to a maximum of four sets of two
cycles [raka`ats] ending with the three witr. After the call of the dawn
[fajr] prayer [azan] he then perform another two raka`ats of
supererogatory before the Fajr prayer. These make a total of thirteen
raka`ats. As mentioned in the hadith in Part I, the worshipper should
limit himself to a total maximum of thirteen raka`ats.
As he progresses, he then lengthened the Night Vigil by increasing his
recitation of the Quran [tilawah] during the standing [qiam] and recite
other invocations [doa] from the Quran and hadith after the prayers.
We reproduced the Quran invocations here but the seeker [murid] must
regulate, set limits and targets for himself so that the exercise is
achieveable and practical in accordance to the individual capabilities.
Do not overburden yourself at the start. This will have a negative impact
on the self [nasf] which is easily bore and dishearten.
RL 5 - Part II - Introduction