dd." (Allahu witrun yuhibbu'l-witra).
Musalmans pay the greatest respect to an odd number. It is considered
unlucky to begin any work, or to commence a journey on a day, the date of
which is an even number. The number of lines in a page of a book is nearly
always an odd number.

Nafl are voluntary prayers the performance of which is considered mustahab,
or meritorious, but they are not of divine obligation. It must be
understood that all these prayers are precisely the same in form. They
simply consist in the repetition of a number of rak'ats, of which I have
already given a single illustration in full. A Muslim who says the five
daily prayers with the full number of rak'ats will repeat the Service I
have described fifty times in one day. If in addition to these he observes
the three voluntary periods of prayers, he must add twenty-five more
rak'ats, making a grand total of seventy-five. It is, however, usual to
omit some of the Sunnat rak'ats; still there is a vast amount of
repetition, and as the whole must be said in Arabic it becomes very
mechanical.

A Muslim who ventured to say that a Namaz might be recited in Hindustani
was publicly excommunicated in the principal Mosque at Madras on Friday,
February 13th, 1880.[201]

The table on the next page will make the matter clear.[202] The optional
Sunnat rak'ats are called {200} 'Sunnat-i-ghair-i-maukadda'; the Sunnat
rak'ats before the farz are 'Sun-nat-i-maukadda' and should be said.

---+------------------+-----------------------------------+----------------
No.| Time. | THE NAMES OF THE TIME OF PRAYER. | THE NUMBER OF
| | | RAK'ATS SAID.
| +-----------+-----------------------+----------------
| | | Witr
| | |--------------------------------------+
| | | Nafl|
| | |-----------------------------------+ |
| | | Sunnat after Farz| |
| | |--------------------------------+ | |
| | | Farz| | |
| | |-----------------------------+ | | |
| | | Sunnat-i-mau-kadda'| | | |
| |