Prayer for the Sick: Shifa in Sufi Practice
Prayer for the sick appears in Al-Jawahir al-Khamsa — the Five Jewels of Muhammad bin Khayr al-Din al-Attar (d. 970 AH/1562 CE), known to his contemporaries as al-Ghawth — as a compact rite of two rak’ah, a short chapter of the Quran, a silence, and a plea for mercy. The same book that gathered daily litanies, monthly calendars of salawat, and treasure-duas for protection also found room, inside its first jewel of worship, for a prayer a believer can offer when someone he loves is ill. A medical note before anything else: du’a, wird and salawat complement medicine and lawful effort; they never replace them; nothing here is a guaranteed cure; the limits of the Shariah apply; and spiritual practice is best received from a knowledgeable guide.
What the Prayer for the Sick Prescribes
The chapter is brief, and its brevity is itself part of its character. The book heads it with a plain title — the prayer of healing for the sick — and then gives the form without ornament. No amulets, no written materials, no appointed stars: only worship. The order the text sets down is this:
- Pray two rak’ah; in each, after the recitation of al-Fatihah, recite the chapter of sincerity — Qul huwa Allah ahad — three times.
- On completing the two rak’ah and giving the salam, remain seated in the prayer-place; do not rise.
- Keep the tongue silent and speak to no one, and recite the dhikr the text names — the book gives it as a single completion; our printed copy renders its exact wording unclearly, and this post therefore does not reconstruct it.
- Then offer the supplication: a plea addressed to the Most Merciful of the merciful, asking that mercy be shown to the one who is sick.
Everything in the passage serves that final petition. The two rak’ah are not a display; the recited chapter is pure monotheism, three times in each unit, so that the servant enters the presence of the One before he asks. The silence that follows is unusual in remedy literature, and it is the hinge of the whole practice: the book insists that after the salam the worshipper speaks to no one, so that nothing interrupts what is between him and Allah. Then comes the asking itself — not as a right owed, but as mercy sought for a sufferer.
The Inner Shape: Silence, Presence, and Mercy
The exact wording of the silent dhikr and of the closing supplication cannot be reproduced here in Arabic: the scan of the edition we work from is damaged at precisely that point, and the discipline of this series forbids inventing the words of a prayer. What the book makes plain is enough. The heart of the dua is rendered in sense, not in reconstruction: O Most Merciful of the merciful, have mercy — a cry for shifa offered as an act of mercy rather than a transaction. The servant describes no merits. He brings only need.
That posture explains the silence the text commands. In the spiritual physiology of these sources, the tongue that keeps talking keeps the heart from arriving. The remedy-prayer therefore gathers what the wider tradition of remembrance gathers everywhere: recitation, stillness, presence of heart, and petition. Healing is asked of the Healer; the dua is a means by His leave, and its efficacy is entirely His affair. The tradition never confuses the means with the source — a discipline the wider Qadri and Shattari literature keeps at every step, and one the reader of this series has already met in its chapters on anxiety, protection and the diseases of the nafs.
Worship as Daily Medicine in the Five Jewels
To see why this small prayer sits where it does, recall the architecture of Al-Jawahir al-Khamsa. Its first jewel gathers acts of worship and the litanies that structure a believer’s day; its second treats renunciation and the discipline of desire; its third and fourth open the treasure-house of du’a and adhkar. Across all of them runs one conviction: worship and remembrance are the daily medicine of the heart and of life. The litanies are the spiritual diet; the acts of worship are doses; the seeker who keeps them is both patient and, in the school’s favourite metaphor, being treated by a physician he cannot see.
Applied to illness, this framing is careful rather than confident. The prayer for the sick does not promise that the fever will break by morning. It places the sick person inside the worship of the household: someone gets up, performs two rak’ah with attention, keeps a silence, and asks for mercy — and the sickroom becomes a place where dhikr lives instead of despair. Families who keep the full daily pattern will recognise the same rhythm described at length in the khanqah’s daily wird and dhikr; the two-rak’ah prayer is what that rhythm looks like when it bends toward a bed of sickness.
Adab, Family Practice, and the Limits of a Remedy
Three adab govern the practice. First, sincerity: the prayer is worship, not a bargain, and the one who prays it for a relative should not treat it as a lever on the decree. Second, regularity with presence: a small act done with the heart outweighs a grand act performed distractedly — the condition the book and the whole wird literature place above quantity. Third, guidance: litanies of the Qadri and Shattari silsilahs are best taken from a knowledgeable guide rather than assembled alone from books, and a guide can advise precisely on how this two-rak’ah prayer is fitted into a person’s daily practice.
And four limits belong with it, plainly stated. Treatment: continue prescribed medicine and medical advice — the Shariah itself obliges the use of lawful means, and abandoning treatment in the name of du’a is not the piety these chapters describe. Guarantee: no prayer, litany or visitation is a promised cure, and anyone who sells certainty in exchange for money has left the school of this book. Materials: this remedy asks for nothing beyond worship — no amulet, no written talisman, no incense, no celestial timing; the wider corpus of the age contains such things, but this series does not use them, and this prayer needs none of them. Guidance: spiritual practice remains subject to the limits of the Shariah, and doubtful matters are referred to the knowledgeable. The wider treatment of illness in our sources — the supplications, the ethic of tawakkul, the family’s duties at the bedside — is gathered in the sibling study of remedies for the sick: dua, shifa and tawakkul; what distinguishes the present post is its focus on the salat itself, the two rak’ah the book prescribes. Readers who wish to understand the Trust’s devotional routine are invited to contact the office at +91 97317 17703 or info@alhashmi.org, and the series opens with spiritual remedies in Qadri and Shattari Sufism.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the prayer for the sick in Al-Jawahir al-Khamsa consist of?
Two rak’ah; in each, after al-Fatihah, the chapter of sincerity (Qul huwa Allah ahad) three times. After the salam, the worshipper remains seated, keeps the tongue silent and speaks to no one, recites the dhikr the text names once, and then offers a supplication whose core is a plea to the Most Merciful of the merciful to have mercy on the sick person.
Is this prayer a substitute for medical treatment?
No. Du’a, wird and salawat complement medicine and lawful effort; they never replace them. The Shariah obliges the use of lawful medical means, nothing here is a guaranteed cure, and dua works only by Allah’s leave and if He wills.
Who can pray the two-rak’ah prayer for a sick person?
The book presents it as a remedy any believer can offer and attaches it to no fixed hour or office. It may be prayed by a family member, a visitor, or the sick person where strength allows; as with all practices in this silsilah, a knowledgeable guide can advise on detail, especially when it is added to an existing daily wird.
What is recited after the two rak’ah?
The worshipper stays seated in his place, keeps silence — speaking to no one — and recites the dhikr the text prescribes once, then makes the closing petition for mercy. This post paraphrases the petition’s sense because the Arabic wording is unclear in our printed copy, and the tradition does not permit reconstructing the words of a prayer.