Duas for Sleep: What to Say Before Sleeping

Most pages on this topic hand you a list of duas with no order and no reason for the order. The sunnah is not a list. It is a sequence: purify, protect, settle the day's account in praise, hand the night over. What follows is that sequence, with the narration behind each step. You are not required to do all of it — the Prophet ﷺ said the deeds most beloved to Allah are the most constant, even if small (Sahih al-Bukhari 6464). One step kept every night is the practice. Eight steps kept for a week is not.

The Shape of the Prophetic Bedtime

Those four movements make the eight steps easy to remember, and easy to shorten honestly on a night you have nothing left.

Step 1: Make Wudu Before Bed

The instruction opens with the body, not the tongue. Al-Bara' ibn 'Azib narrates that the Prophet ﷺ told him: "Whenever you go to bed, perform ablution as you would for the prayer, lie on your right side, and say..." (Sahih al-Bukhari 247) — filed by al-Bukhari under a chapter titled the superiority of a person who sleeps with ablution.

This is a sunnah, not a condition — nobody's sleep is invalid without it. But making wudu at the end of the day marks a boundary. What follows it is not scrolling in bed; it is a day being deliberately ended.

Step 2: Dust Off the Bed, Lie on Your Right Side

Abu Hurairah reports: "When any one of you goes to bed, he should shake out his bed with the inside of his waist sheet, for he does not know what has come onto it after him, and then he should say..." (Sahih al-Bukhari 6320). The dua that completes that hadith is in step 7 below.

The right side is from Bukhari 247, quoted above. Both habits are small and easy to dismiss, which is the point: the sunnah of sleep is not only words said into a pillow. Where the right side is not possible — injury, late pregnancy — the duas are unaffected. Scholars treat the position as recommended, not required.

Step 3: The Three Quls, Blown Into the Hands

'Aisha describes the method precisely. This is the step most often done wrong:

"Whenever the Prophet ﷺ went to bed every night, he used to cup his hands together and blow over them after reciting Surah Al-Ikhlas, Surah Al-Falaq and Surah An-Nas, and then rub his hands over whatever parts of his body he was able to rub, starting with his head, face and the front of his body. He used to do that three times."

Note the order: cup the hands, blow, recite into them, then wipe — beginning at the head and face — and repeat the whole cycle three times. These are three of the four quls. Al-Falaq and An-Nas are the pair called the mu'awwidhatayn, the two surahs of refuge; Al-Ikhlas is the one the Prophet ﷺ said is equal to a third of the Quran (Sahih al-Bukhari 5013). If you have not memorised them, start here.

Step 4: Ayatul Kursi

The Throne Verse, Quran 2:255. The promise attached to it at night is unusually specific. In the narration of Abu Hurairah: "Whenever you go to bed, recite Ayatul Kursi... Allah will appoint a guard for you who will stay with you, and no satan will come near you till morning" (Sahih al-Bukhari 2311).

ٱللَّهُ لَآ إِلَـٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ٱلْحَىُّ ٱلْقَيُّومُ ۚ لَا تَأْخُذُهُۥ سِنَةٌ وَلَا نَوْمٌ — "Allah — there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Self-Sustaining. Neither drowsiness overtakes Him nor sleep." The verse you recite as you fall asleep opens by saying that the One you are handing yourself to does not sleep. That is the reason it belongs here. The full text and meaning of Ayatul Kursi is on its own page.

Step 5: The Last Two Verses of Al-Baqarah

Abu Mas'ud narrates that the Prophet ﷺ said: "If somebody recited the last two verses of Surah Al-Baqarah at night, that will be sufficient for him" (Sahih al-Bukhari 5009). Commentators differ on what sufficient covers — against harm, in place of the night prayer, or both — and the hadith does not narrow it.

The verses, 2:285-286, are the believers' own words: we hear and we obey, then a run of requests — do not hold us to account for what we forget, do not burden us beyond our capacity, pardon us, forgive us, have mercy on us. If you are still learning them, read from a mushaf until they settle; the last two ayats of Surah Al-Baqarah page has the Arabic, transliteration and a line-by-line meaning.

Step 6: The Dhikr of Fatimah

'Ali narrates that Fatimah, worn down by grinding grain by hand, went to ask her father for a servant from the captives brought to him. He came to their house that night instead, after they had gone to bed, and told them to stay where they were:

"Shall I tell you of a thing which is better than what you asked me for? When you go to your beds, say Allahu Akbar thirty-four times, Alhamdulillah thirty-three times, and SubhanAllah thirty-three times. This is better for you than what you have requested."

A hundred words of dhikr in place of the household help she had asked for, and he told her it was the better of the two. Other narrations give the order as SubhanAllah, Alhamdulillah, then Allahu Akbar thirty-four times; both sequences are practised. What is not optional is the total: one hundred. This is the step most often skipped, because it is the only one that costs patience rather than memory.

Step 7: The Sleep Duas Themselves

Two duas, both short. The first, from Hudhaifah:

بِاسْمِكَ اللَّهُمَّ أَمُوتُ وَأَحْيَا

Bismika allahumma amutu wa ahya

The second completes the hadith about dusting off the bed. It names both possible endings of the night without flinching:

بِاسْمِكَ رَبِّ وَضَعْتُ جَنْبِي، وَبِكَ أَرْفَعُهُ، إِنْ أَمْسَكْتَ نَفْسِي فَارْحَمْهَا، وَإِنْ أَرْسَلْتَهَا فَاحْفَظْهَا بِمَا تَحْفَظُ بِهِ عِبَادَكَ الصَّالِحِينَ

Bismika rabbi wada'tu janbi wa bika arfa'uh. In amsakta nafsi farhamha, wa in arsaltaha fahfazha bima tahfazu bihi 'ibadakas-salihin.

Both duas assume you might not wake. That is the honest content of the night, and the sunnah puts it in your mouth.

Step 8: Surah Al-Mulk, If You Keep It

Jabir narrated that the Prophet ﷺ would not sleep until he had recited Alif Lam Mim Tanzil — Surah As-Sajdah — and Tabarakalladhi biyadihil-mulk, Surah Al-Mulk (Jami' at-Tirmidhi 2892, graded da'if by Darussalam). Many Muslims keep Surah Al-Mulk nightly for this reason. At thirty verses it is the longest thing here and the first to fall away on a hard night, so treat it as optional. If the earlier steps are not yet consistent, this is not the one to add first.

The Complete List, in Order

The whole routine on one screen. The hour before it has its own set of evening adhkar.

If Worry Is Keeping You Awake

The dua taught to Al-Bara' in Bukhari 247 — the same hadith that gives us wudu and the right side — is the one for a mind that will not stop:

اللَّهُمَّ أَسْلَمْتُ وَجْهِي إِلَيْكَ، وَفَوَّضْتُ أَمْرِي إِلَيْكَ، وَأَلْجَأْتُ ظَهْرِي إِلَيْكَ، رَغْبَةً وَرَهْبَةً إِلَيْكَ، لاَ مَلْجَأَ وَلاَ مَنْجَا مِنْكَ إِلاَّ إِلَيْكَ، اللَّهُمَّ آمَنْتُ بِكِتَابِكَ الَّذِي أَنْزَلْتَ، وَبِنَبِيِّكَ الَّذِي أَرْسَلْتَ

Allahumma aslamtu wajhi ilayk, wa fawwadtu amri ilayk, wa alja'tu zahri ilayk, raghbatan wa rahbatan ilayk. La malja'a wa la manja minka illa ilayk. Allahumma amantu bikitabikal-ladhi anzalt, wa binabiyyikal-ladhi arsalt.

Two details are worth keeping. The Prophet ﷺ told him that if he died that night he would die upon the fitrah, and instructed that these be the last words he said. And when Al-Bara' repeated it back saying "and Your Messenger" instead of "and Your Prophet", he was corrected. The wording is the wording.

For worry that is not only a night-time problem, see the duas for anxiety and tawakkul, the wider disposition this dua is a night-time instance of.

Common Mistakes With Sleep Duas

What the Sleep Duas Are Closing

Look at what the last two steps say. The dhikr of Fatimah is a hundred statements about the day: SubhanAllah — Allah is free of any fault in how it went; Alhamdulillah — the good in it was His; Allahu Akbar — whatever went wrong is smaller than Him. Then the final dua hands over a soul that may not be returned. That is a verdict on a day, delivered in ninety seconds.

Which is why the scholars placed muhasaba — the honest self-accounting — in exactly this window. The dhikr is the sentence at the end of the trial; the accounting is the trial. Without it the hundred words are accurate but unattached: praise for a day you never looked at. After even two minutes of looking — what did today hold, where did I fall short, what am I asking forgiveness for — the same words land on something. That is also the case for writing it down: the duas repeat identically every night, the day underneath them does not, and only a record shows whether the same thing keeps arriving at bedtime unresolved. The evening muhasaba guide sets out the nightly accounting in full; it is meant to sit immediately before these duas, not instead of them.

Frequently Asked Questions