Aurad Dawn Practices: The Sufi Morning Wird

Aurad are the prescribed daily prayer-exercises of the Sufi path — the wird that shapes a disciple’s worship — and the aurad dawn practices that open the relevant chapter of Hazrat ‘Umar Suhrawardi’s Awarif-ul-Maarif are this post’s subject. In E. H. Palmer’s public-domain English rendering, the routine begins with purity before first light, answering the adhan, renewing the shahada, two rak’ahs of sunnah, istighfar, and the words for going out to the masjid.

What Aurad Are — and Why the Day Begins Before Dawn

The glossary of Awarif-ul-Maarif treats aurad alongside the two Kalimas of shahada — the twin testimonies of faith every Muslim carries. That juxtaposition is the book’s own, and it shows how weighty the daily litany is in this tradition: the fixed portion of remembrance and prayer is set beside the testimony itself as a structural part of the servant’s day, not an optional extra. What the great orders later called the wird — the assigned portion kept morning and evening — grows out of this understanding, as the earlier post in this series on the daily wird as a complete remedy system has described.

Dawn is where the routine starts. Honesty of framing matters: what is presented here is only the dawn routine that opens the book’s aurad chapter, taken as the Palmer translation gives it — not a reproduction of the whole wird system. And the sequence does not open with recitation. It opens with water, direction and waiting: ablution completed, the body turned toward the qibla, the servant seated before the morning prayer has been called. In this literature worship begins as posture long before it becomes speech.

The Aurad Dawn Practices Before First Light

The first instruction is timed with care: before first light — the crepuscule preceding the sun — the practitioner completes his ablution and sits facing the qibla, awaiting the prayer of the morning. Three movements, in order: purification, orientation, waiting. The waiting is not dead time. In the shape the book gives the routine, the servant takes his place before the day does; the hours most people hand over to sleep or haste are handed over instead to readiness for the morning prayer. A morning begun in ablution and quiet facing the qibla is a morning whose first transaction is with Allah rather than with the self’s momentum.

Answering the Adhan, and the Supplication of the Morning

When the mu’adhdhin lifts his voice, the practitioner answers him. The rule the book records is precise: repeat everything the caller says, except the two phrases of rise and goodness — hayyi ‘ala-s-salat and hayyi ‘ala-l-falah — and then say, “There is no power nor virtue but in God.” The text states that this rule is observed in every adhan; the call is the ummah’s daily summons to the prayer established among us since the time of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.

The morning call, the book adds, carries a special supplication, which it records in these words: “O God! this is the face of Thy day, the back of Thy night, and the sound of Thy prayer. O Merciful of the merciful! through Thy mercy forgive me, and my parents, and all the faithful, male and female.” Readers will notice its shape: the servant names the hour as belonging to Allah, then widens the ask from himself to his parents and, after them, to the whole company of the faithful. Forgiveness asked at dawn is asked for a crowd.

Renewing the Shahada at Dawn

Next the routine turns to testimony. At dawn the practitioner renews his shahada — the book frames this as welcoming the recording angels and declaring belief in the creed’s own inventory: paradise and fire, the sirat, the questioning of the grave, the balance, the account, the punishment, the book, intercession, and the Resurrection. Nothing here is invented doctrine; it is the public belief of Ahl us-Sunnah, spoken again at the day’s beginning, so that the servant’s first words reaffirm what he professes at every prayer.

The renewed declaration is then entrusted to God — in the book’s phrase, “for the day of my need” — and the text lists what is asked for its sake: that the servant stop sin, that his sins be forgiven, that the balance be made heavy for him, and that safety be granted. The logic is devotional rather than transactional: the testimony is offered as the ground on which the morning’s petitions stand. A day entered under one’s own shahada is a day whose obligations are accepted before its temptations arrive.

Two Rak’ahs, Istighfar, and the Words for Going Out

After the renewal comes worship in the form the ummah already recognises. The book prescribes two rak’ahs of the crepuscule sunnah prayer, reciting in them Surat al-Kafirun — the hundred-and-ninth chapter — and Surat al-Ikhlas, the hundred-and-twelfth. The prescription is given exactly in that form; both are short surahs the believer has recited since childhood, and the text attaches them to the dawn rak’ahs without extended ceremony in this fragment.

Then comes istighfar, repeated several times with the kalima-tasbih, in the wording the book gives: “I ask pardon of God for my sin; to God, be glory by the praise of my God.” Seeking forgiveness at the day’s start is one of the oldest threads of this tradition’s remedy literature — the same thread followed in the earlier post on the forgetfulness remedy through dua and dhikr — and its placement here is characteristic: the servant cleans the slate before he writes on it.

Finally the routine covers the threshold. Going out to the masjid, the practitioner says: “O God! by the true ingress, make me enter; by the true egress, make me pass out.” Even the act of leaving the house is given words, so that the movement from private devotion to congregational prayer continues as supplication. For readers who wrestle with the simpler difficulty of getting up, the tradition has spoken plainly elsewhere: see the post on laziness in worship.

A footnote in Palmer’s text rounds the picture: prayer is of three kinds — wajib, the five; sunnat, the prescribed; and nafl, the voluntary. The crepuscule rak’ahs belong to the sunnah strand by the book’s own classification, and the aurad sit alongside these categories as the path’s daily portion.

Sources and Further Reading

• Hazrat ‘Umar Suhrawardi, Awarif-ul-Maarif — the classical Sufi practice glossary, in E. H. Palmer’s English rendering, Sufiism: The Mysteries of Sufism (Clarke-era, 1891 printing); chapter on aurad.
• The same work in Arabic, standard printed editions, for checking the wording of the dawn supplications in the original.
• Public-domain PDF scans of Palmer’s translation, available through the Internet Archive and similar libraries.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are aurad?

Aurad are the prescribed daily prayer-exercises of the Sufi path — the fixed wird of remembrance, recitation and prayer that a disciple keeps as assigned. The glossary of Awarif-ul-Maarif treats aurad alongside the two Kalimas of shahada, and this post follows only the dawn routine that opens the book’s aurad chapter, not the full wird system of the path.

What should the listener say after the adhan?

The book’s rule is to repeat what the mu’adhdhin says, except the two phrases of rise and goodness — hayyi ‘ala-s-salat and hayyi ‘ala-l-falah — and then to say, “There is no power nor virtue but in God.” The morning call carries a further supplication the book records, asking forgiveness through Allah’s mercy for the servant, his parents, and all the faithful, male and female.

Why are Surat al-Kafirun and Surat al-Ikhlas recited in the two rak’ahs?

The book prescribes the crepuscule sunnah as two rak’ahs reciting exactly these two short surahs — the hundred-and-ninth and hundred-and-twelfth chapters. The text gives the prescription in that form; the surahs themselves are the familiar ones of tawhid the believer has recited since childhood, and the fragment reproduced here offers no extended commentary on the pairing.

What is the difference between wajib, sunnat and nafl?

Palmer’s footnote to the text distinguishes three kinds of prayer: wajib — the five daily prayers; sunnat — the prescribed prayers; and nafl — the voluntary. The crepuscule rak’ahs of this routine belong to the sunnah strand by the book’s classification, while the aurad are the path’s daily portion kept alongside these categories of obligation and voluntariness.

Medical and Shariah note: nothing here is a medical claim, and no spiritual practice replaces lawful effort or professional treatment. Dua, wird and tawakkul complement medicine and lawful effort; they never replace them, and nothing described here is a guaranteed cure or guaranteed outcome. The routine is presented as the book records it, within the limits of the Shariah; prayer timings, rak’ah counts and sunnah wording belong to the fiqh of the schools. Readers taking on a full dawn wird should do so under a knowledgeable murshid, and seek qualified scholars on rulings and physicians on health.