Importance of Morning and Evening Supplications: Why you need them?

“Bismillah….”

‘Bismillah illadhi la yadurru ma’a ismihi shay’un fi’l-ard wa la fi’l-sama’ wa huwa al-samee’ ul-‘aleem’

I looked around.

“What kind of Bismillah is that?” I asked.

“It’s a super Bismillah which grants you one of the strongest shields protecting you against all sudden afflictions,” came the reply.

Super Bismillah? What is a Super Bismillah? I wondered.

Bismillah used to be just Bismillah and now we have a Super Bismillah. I went away, shaking my head.

These guys come with something new every day…

That was my first encounter with the Morning and Evening supplications. I had never heard about them before and just like everyone, I thought it was something new in the market. I was wrong. I was ignorant and I got educated. Here is how it all happened.

I distinctly remember how strange it sounded to me. The super bismillah. I searched for it online and got no results. Jogging my memory, I tried searching for some of the words that I could remember and it turned out to be a prayer from a Sahih Hadith (authentic narration of the Holy Prophet Muhammad PBUH).

I was amazed!

It meant: Using the name of Allah, by Whose name nothing on the Earth or in the Heavens can cause harm and He is the All Knowing and the All Hearing.

Wow! That really was something. But what was more interesting was the narration that followed the translation. It went like this:

Narrated Uthman ibn Affan: Aban ibn Uthman said: I heard Uthman ibn Affan (his father) say: I heard the Messenger of Allah صلی ‌اللہ ‌علیہ ‌وسلم say: If anyone says three times: “Using the name of Allah, by Whose name nothing on the Earth or in the Heavens can cause harm and He is the All Knowing and the All Hearing” he will not suffer sudden affliction till the morning, and if anyone says this in the morning, he will not suffer sudden affliction till the evening. Aban was afflicted by some paralysis and when a man who heard the tradition began to look at him, he said to him: Why are you looking at me? I swear by Allah, I did not tell a lie about Uthman, nor did Uthman tell a lie about the Prophet صلی ‌اللہ ‌علیہ ‌وسلم, but that day when I was afflicted by it, I became angry and forgot to say them.

These days we just start mentioning hadith like: “The Holy Prophet Muhammad PBUH said….” But in the books, the precise names of people are mentioned in the order they heard from the Holy Prophet Muhammad PBUH.

SubhanAllah. I never knew that.

What was more interesting for me, was the account of the entire event. How the person narrating the hadith was inflicted by paralysis and the one hearing the hadith looked at him skeptically as though saying, “Man, if these words are so protective, how come you are in this condition?” Interestingly, the narrator noticed this and explained that he was angry on the day he was inflicted by paralysis and forgot to say those words.

SubhanAllah. Look how anger affects you. Who could have thought?

I learned that this was one of the prayers from the Morning and Evening Supplications that our beloved Prophet Muhammad PBUH prescribed his companions at different events.

There is a very interesting app that lists down all these prayers and provides translation of the Arabic text and the subsequent Hadith from where it was derived from. If you are not good with Arabic recitation you can also hear the prayers in audio from the app. It’s called Wa Iyyaka Nastaeen and is available for both iOS and Android platforms.

Sometimes I wonder that if saying a few words from Hadith can help us so much, what effect will saying the words of Allah from Quran will have on us? This is why I believe that we should read Quran daily to remain under the protection of Allah at all times. If you agree with me, let me introduce you to IQRA. She is very efficient in helping you develop a habit of reading Quran every day. You can chat with her on QforQuran Facebook page and if you like her you can also help her developers make her even better by contributing on their Launch Good campaign.