The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, "Our Lord, blessed is His name, descends every night to the lowest heaven when the last third of the night remains and says, 'Who is calling upon Me that I may answer him? Who is asking of Me that I may give him? Who is seeking My forgiveness that I may forgive him?' This continues until dawn breaks." For this reason, they used to prefer the prayer at the end of the night over the prayer at its beginning.
حدثنا أبو كامل حدثنا إبراهيم حدثنا ابن شهاب عن الأغر وأبي سلمة بن عبد الرحمن
قال رسول الله ﷺ ينزل ربنا تبارك اسمه كل ليلة حين يبقى ثلث الليل الآخر إلى سماء الدنيا فيقول من يدعوني فأستجيب له من يسألني فأعطيه من يستغفرني فأغفر له حتى يطلع الفجر فلذلك كانوا يفضلون صلاة آخر الليل على صلاة أوله
Its chain of transmission is sahih. Abu Kamil is Muzaffar bin Mudrik Khurasani, the hafiz. His teacher Ibrahim is Ibn Saad. Here in [manuscript] H there appears between them an addition, "Layth narrated to us," which is an error. This addition is not mentioned in [manuscripts] K and M.This hadith is a repetition of 7500, from another route, from Abu Hurairah. We have already indicated its sourcing and many of its transmission paths there. As for this particular route, Malik related it in Muwatta 214 from Zuhri with this same chain, and from Malik's route it was related by Bukhari 3:25–26, Muslim 1:210, Abu Dawud 1315 and 4733, Tirmidhi 4:258, and others.As for his statement, after the wording of the hadith, "and for that reason they used to prefer..." this is an interpolation, not part of the actual wording of the hadith. The hafiz mentioned this addition in al-Fath 3:26, and noted that Daraqutni related it from the transmission of Yunus from Zuhri. He then said that it also has a version through the transmission of Ibn Saman from Zuhri, which indicates that the one who said that was Zuhri himself. The hafiz overlooked attributing it also to this transmission in the Musnad, from Ibrahim bin Saad from Zuhri.