For anxiety & grief

This supplication — Allāhumma innī aʿūdhu bika min-al-hammi wa-l-ḥazan… — is the most frequently cited Prophetic dua for anxiety and grief in the classical literature. It is narrated by Anas ibn Mālik and recorded in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6369, with parallels in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 2893 (the chapter on Jihad) and Sunan Abī Dāwūd 1540. Anas reports that he used to serve the Prophet ﷺ, and that he heard the Prophet repeating this invocation often — “he used to say it frequently”, in the wording of Bukhārī. The context in Bukhārī 2893 is instructive: Anas narrates that during the Battle of Khaybar he heard the Prophet ﷺ seek refuge in these exact terms, which situates the dua not as advice for mild unease but as a formula the Prophet himself turned to in moments of real external pressure. Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī in Fatḥ al-Bārī (the standard commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī) observes that the Prophet's own habitual recitation of this dua is itself the strongest grading signal: a formula the Messenger ﷺ chose to repeat often, in both ease and difficulty, is a formula the Umma is meant to inherit.

The supplication's architecture is four pairs of two — eight afflictions arranged so that each inner state is coupled with its outer consequence. Ibn Ḥajar in Fatḥ al-Bārī walks through the pairing with precision, and Ibn al-Qayyim in Zād al-Maʿād extends the analysis into what he calls “the comprehensive medicine of the heart.” The first pair — al-hamm and al-ḥazan — distinguishes two kinds of psychological distress that modern English flattens into the single word anxiety. Al-hamm is worry oriented to the future: dread about what has not yet happened, anticipatory distress, the mind rehearsing feared outcomes. Al-ḥazan is grief oriented to the past: sorrow over what has already occurred, regret, mourning for what cannot be undone. The paired naming is not accidental. The classical Arabic lexicographers — including those cited by al-Qurṭubī — note that hamm and ḥazan cover between them the entire temporal axis of mental suffering: everything a human mind can suffer either lies in the dreaded future or the sorrowed past. The Prophet ﷺ seeks refuge from both at once, in a single breath, with the Arabic conjunction wa binding them as the inseparable pair that constitutes what we today call anxiety-depression.

The second pair — al-ʿajz and al-kasal — is Ibn al-Qayyim's favourite stop in his commentary, because the two words name a diagnostic distinction psychologists only reached in the twentieth century. Al-ʿajz is inability: the incapacity to do what needs doing, whether through weakness, ignorance, or genuine lack of means. Al-kasal is laziness: the unwillingness to do what one is in fact capable of doing. Ibn al-Qayyim in Zād al-Maʿād writes: “The one afflicted with ʿajz lacks the power; the one afflicted with kasal lacks the will. The former is a defect of ability, the latter a defect of resolve. Both prevent the servant from standing in service of his Lord — the one by nature, the other by choice.” This is why the Prophet ﷺ pairs them: because the believer who seeks refuge only from laziness may still blame his inability on external circumstances, and the one who seeks refuge only from inability may still indulge the laziness he refuses to name. The dua forecloses both exits. Ibn Ḥajar notes in Fatḥ al-Bārī that this pair also structurally rebuts the common Companion-era objection that “I would do more if I could” — the Prophet ﷺ asks Allah to protect him from both the lack of capacity and the lack of effort, so that neither can be smuggled in as an alibi.

The third pair — al-bukhl and al-jubn — moves from inner psychology to outward character. Al-bukhl is miserliness with wealth: holding back what one has from those who have claim upon it, whether the obligatory Zakāh, the maintenance due to family, or the Sadaqah owed to the needy. Al-jubn is cowardice with one's person: holding back oneself from the duties that require courage — standing for truth, defending the oppressed, enjoining the good, forbidding the evil, bearing hardship in the path of Allah. Ibn al-Qayyim in Zād al-Maʿād explains the pairing: “Miserliness withholds the wealth, and cowardice withholds the self; both are a failure of giving, differing only in what is withheld.” He notes that the Qur'an frequently pairs these two in warnings to the Muslim community — Sūrat al-Nisāʾ 4:37-38 condemns the miserly, and the hypocrites of Sūrat al-Aḥzāb 33:19 are condemned for their cowardice in battle. Both arise from a contraction of the self — the inability or refusal to extend outward in service — and both are opposed by the generosity (jūd) and courage (shajāʿah) that are among the names of Allah's bestowed virtues. Al-Nawawī in Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim adds that the Prophet ﷺ was himself the most generous of people in both wealth and courage, so his seeking refuge from the opposites is an act of thanksgiving as well as supplication.

The fourth pair — ḍalaʿu-d-dayn and ghalabatu-r-rijāl — is the most practical. Ḍalaʿ al-dayn literally means “the overpowering of debt” — the burden of being so weighed down by financial obligation that one's dignity, worship, and family stability bend under its weight. Ḍalaʿ is the arching curve of a bow drawn to its limit, and the dua uses this metaphor to depict the debtor bent beneath repayments he cannot meet. Ghalabatu-r-rijāl means “the dominance of men” — being overpowered by other people, whether through unjust authority, oppression, or the social humiliation that follows from an inability to defend one's family or honour. Ibn Ḥajar in Fatḥ al-Bārī notes a parallel narration where the Prophet ﷺ was asked about this and said that an unpayable debt “makes a man lie when he speaks and break his promise when he promises.” The Prophet ﷺ draws out the moral chain explicitly: debt corrupts speech, and corrupt speech corrupts worship. The pairing of debt-burden with men's domination exposes the social reality that the two travel together — a man crushed by debt is a man vulnerable to being overpowered by his creditors, his employers, and the structures around him. Ibn al-Qayyim in Zād al-Maʿād observes that this is the only pair where the Prophet ﷺ names external afflictions rather than inner states — the dua is comprehensive: it seeks refuge from the entire chain of causation from inner distress (pair one) through character failure (pairs two and three) to external oppression (pair four), closing the loop by asking Allah to shield the believer from the whole architecture of ruin.

Classical scholars treat this dua as a daily morning-and-evening practice, not as an emergency formula to be reached for only when anxiety peaks. Ibn al-Qayyim in al-Ṭibb al-Nabawī (Prophetic Medicine) places it among what he calls “the preventive medicines of the heart” — supplications the believer recites regularly to protect against the diseases before they take hold, rather than only to treat them once they have. The practical sunnah is to recite the dua in the morning after Fajr and in the evening after Maghrib or ʿAṣr, and additionally whenever any of the eight afflictions begin to intrude. The Ḥisn al-Muslim compilation of Prophetic supplications (compiled by Saʿīd ibn ʿAlī al-Qaḥṭānī, drawing on Bukhārī, Muslim, and the Sunan collections) places this dua in its morning-and-evening section as one of the most-repeated by the Prophet ﷺ himself. On the question of whether recitation alone suffices without external effort: Ibn al-Qayyim is explicit — the dua is a cause in Allah's hand, not a magical substitution for action. The believer afflicted with debt must still pursue the lawful means of paying it; the believer afflicted with laziness must still rise; the believer afflicted with anxiety must still take the practical steps of restoring prayer, exercise, nutrition, and community that the body and mind require. The dua is the spiritual axis around which those efforts turn — the acknowledgment that the ultimate cure comes from Allah even as the servant walks the path of asbāb (secondary causes).

The verb that governs the entire dua is aʿūdhu bika — “I take refuge in You.” Ibn Taymiyyah in Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā treats istiʿādhah (seeking refuge) as a dedicated branch of tawḥīd al-ʿibādah — the oneness of worship — because the one in whom refuge is sought must be omnipresent, all-hearing, and all-powerful to protect from every direction. For this reason, taking refuge in anything other than Allah — a shrine, a saint, a talisman, a jinn — is classified by Ibn Taymiyyah as shirk, since it attributes to the created thing a protective power that only the Creator possesses. The believer who recites this dua is therefore not merely requesting psychological relief; the believer is performing an act of worship — publicly declaring that only Allah can shield from these eight afflictions, that no amount of money protects from miserliness, no amount of courage from cowardice, no amount of therapy from grief, no amount of social standing from men's domination. The dua places all eight afflictions outside the believer's own power and inside Allah's, and this re-framing is itself therapeutic: the anxious mind that was carrying the burden of self-rescue lays the burden down. Al-Nawawī in al-Adhkār (his standard anthology of Prophetic remembrances) comments on this dua with a line that captures the whole: “The one who seeks refuge in Allah has fled from the created to the Creator, and whoever flees to the Creator finds that his afflictions become His to carry.”

A final note on what this dua is not, because the honest naming of limits is part of the classical scholarly tradition. This supplication is not a cure for clinical depression or anxiety disorders in the sense that recitation alone will reverse chemistry or trauma; the Prophet ﷺ himself grieved deeply for Khadījah and Abū Ṭālib in ʿām al-ḥuzn (the Year of Grief), and he grieved for his son Ibrāhīm with real tears. Grief itself is not a sin, and the dua does not promise its elimination — it asks Allah to prevent grief from overpowering the servant into the four character failures (helplessness, laziness, miserliness, cowardice) that follow when grief is left unaddressed. The dua is not a replacement for seeking help — Ibn al-Qayyim in al-Ṭibb al-Nabawī is explicit that the Prophet ﷺ permitted and encouraged medical treatment, and the scholars of fiqh have consistently permitted the believer to seek the help of qualified counsellors, physicians, and community resources for mental illness. The dua is not contingent on the servant feeling it emotionally when reciting — the Prophet ﷺ taught that the slave who whispers the words of refuge with a heart that cannot yet feel them is heard, and that the feeling often follows the practice rather than preceding it. What this dua is: a four-pair, eight-affliction formula taught by the Messenger ﷺ, recited by him often, carried in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī on an unbroken chain, and placed by the classical mufassirūn and fuqahāʾ at the centre of the Muslim's morning-and-evening remembrance precisely because it covers the entire axis of human distress — past and future, inner and outer — in a single breath of refuge taken in the One who alone can carry what the servant cannot.