Guarded Before Struck: The Prophet's Daily Shield Against the Evil Eye and the Unseen

Ruqyah — reciting the Qur’an and the Prophet’s own supplications over someone already suffering — answers a real need, and it belongs in every household. But the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not only teach what to say once envy, the evil eye or the whisper of a jinn had already landed. He attached short, ordinary words to the ordinary moments of a day — undressing, eating, leaving the house, falling asleep — meant to be said before any of that is needed at all. This is that earlier layer.

Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 751 AH) writes that every person who casts the evil eye is envious, though not every envious person casts the evil eye — which is why the Qur’an’s protection against “the evil of an envier when he envies” (113:5) covers the narrower harm along with the wider one. What leaves the envious or admiring soul, he writes, are arrows travelling toward the person envied: they strike someone left exposed and unguarded, and they miss someone who is shielded — sometimes turning back on the one who shot them. It is not only later scholarship that names this. The Qur’an itself tells the Prophet that the disbelievers who heard him recite would almost unsettle him with their own eyes (68:51). The teaching is in .

None of what follows is a spell or a talisman. It is a set of ordinary sentences the Prophet attached to ordinary moments, so that a person would already be covered before the moment needing cover arrived.

Jābir ibn ʿAbdillāh reports the Prophet (peace be upon him) saying that when a man enters his house and remembers Allah at the door and again over his food, Shaytān tells his companions there is no lodging and no supper here tonight; when the man does neither, Shaytān announces he has found both. Two sentences, said at two of the most repeated moments in any day, close a door that would otherwise sit open — reported in .

Anas ibn Mālik reports the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) teaching: whoever says on leaving the house — “In the Name of Allah, I have placed my trust in Allah; there is no power or strength except through Allah” — is told, “You have been guided, you have been sufficed, and you have been protected.” The devils that would have gone with him turn away, and one says to another, “What business do you have with a man who has been guided, sufficed and protected?” This edition’s editors grade the chain ḥasan on its corroborating routes, in

Jundab ibn ʿAbdillāh reports the Prophet (peace be upon him) saying: “Whoever prays the dawn prayer is under Allah’s guarantee (dhimmah) — so let Allah not come after any of you for anything owed under His guarantee.” A guarantee that specific is worth structuring a morning around, whatever else the day holds — recorded in .

Abū Hurayrah reports that whoever says, upon waking, “There is no god but Allah, alone, without partner; His is the dominion and His is the praise, and He is over all things capable” a hundred times, is credited the reward of freeing ten slaves, a hundred good deeds are recorded for him, a hundred bad deeds are erased, and — in the Prophet’s own words — “it is a shield for him from Shaytān for that day, until evening.” Recorded in

ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān reports the Prophet (peace be upon him) teaching: whoever says, morning and evening, three times each — “In the Name of Allah, with whose Name nothing on earth or in heaven can cause harm, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing” — nothing will harm him. Al-Tirmidhī himself grades this ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ gharīb, in . The same page records what happened to the narrator, Abān ibn ʿUthmān: he was later struck by partial paralysis, and when a companion stared at him, Abān told him plainly that the ḥadīth was true — he simply had not said the words himself that particular day, so that Allah’s decree could still reach him. He did not treat the words as automatic. He treated their absence as the reason harm found him.

ʿAbdullāh ibn Khubayb reports that on a dark and rainy night, searching for the Prophet (peace be upon him) to lead the prayer, he finally found him and asked what to say. The Prophet told him, “Say” — three times — then taught him Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ (112) and the two sūrahs of refuge, al-Falaq and al-Nās (113–114), three times each, morning and evening: “they will suffice you against everything.” This edition’s editors grade the chain ḥasan, and al-Tirmidhī separately records it as ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ gharīb, in .

Abū Hurayrah — set by the Prophet (peace be upon him) to guard the Ramaḍān charity store — caught the same intruder stealing from it three nights running before finally letting him teach what he had come to steal by: recite Āyat al-Kursī (2:255) on lying down, and a guardian from Allah stays with you until morning, with no devil coming near. The Prophet confirmed the next morning that the intruder, for once, had told the truth — recorded at length in .

Abū Masʿūd reports the Prophet (peace be upon him) saying: “Whoever recites the last two verses of Sūrat al-Baqarah in a night, they will suffice him” (2:285–286) — recorded in

. Two verses that end in a du'a for forgiveness and help against wrongdoing are the last words most nights of a believing life will hold.

None of this makes ruqyah unnecessary — envy, the evil eye and the unseen are real, and treatment for what has already landed still matters. What changes is how often treatment is needed at all. Ibn al-Qayyim’s arrow still travels either way; the difference these words make is whether it lands on someone exposed or turns aside from someone already covered. Pick two or three of the words above and attach them to moments you already pass through every day — the door, the table, the pillow — rather than waiting for a reason to reach for a cure.

You can read the sūrahs named here, with their translations, in our Qur’an reader, and find the fuller collection of prophetic supplications for protection and healing — with their own references — in Adhkar.

If we have got something here wrong — a translation, an attribution, a page — tell us, and we will correct it in the open. That is the whole reason every citation on this page opens the printed page it came from.

May Allah ﷻ guard what we cannot see, and make these words a real shield and not an empty habit.