The Hawqalah: A Treasure of Paradise in Seven Words

Seven words, repeated by Muslims dozens of times a day without much thought given to what they actually claim:

لَا حَوْلَ وَلَا قُوَّةَ إِلَّا بِاللَّهِ

There is no power and no strength except by Allah.

This phrase has a name of its own — al-ḥawqalah, coined the way Arabic coins a verbal noun from a repeated saying, the same way al-basmalah is named for “bismillāh” and al-ḥamdalah for “al-ḥamdu lillāh.” Unlike most dhikr, it makes no request and offers no praise. It states something about reality and leaves it there. Understanding why that matters — and why the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) called it a treasure rather than merely a good deed — starts with the two words that carry its meaning.

What ḥawl and quwwah Actually Deny

Ḥawl is the capacity to move or change from one state to another — to go from sick to well, from poor to secure, from sin to obedience. Quwwah is the strength to act once that movement is under way — to carry a decision through, to hold a position, to finish what was begun. Put the two together with the negation “lā” and the exception “illā billāh,” and the sentence says something quite specific: a person has neither the ability to change his own condition nor the strength to sustain any action once he has, except insofar as Allah supplies both.

Imām al-Nawawī, commenting on the ḥadīth that gives the phrase its title, records how the earlier scholars read it:

قَوْلُهُ: لَا حَوْلَ وَلَا قُوَّةَ إِلَّا بِاللَّهِ كَنْزٌ مِنْ كُنُوزِ الْجَنَّةِ. قَالَ الْعُلَمَاءُ: سَبَبُ ذَلِكَ أَنَّهَا كَلِمَةُ اسْتِسْلَامٍ وَتَفْوِيضٍ إِلَى اللَّهِ تَعَالَى، وَاعْتِرَافٍ بِالْإِذْعَانِ لَهُ، وَأَنَّهُ لَا صَانِعَ غَيْرُهُ وَلَا رَادَّ لِأَمْرِهِ، وَأَنَّ الْعَبْدَ لَا يَمْلِكُ شَيْئًا مِنَ الْأَمْرِ. وَمَعْنَى الْكَنْزِ هُنَا أَنَّهُ ثَوَابٌ مُدَّخَرٌ فِي الْجَنَّةِ، وَهُوَ ثَوَابٌ نَفِيسٌ كَمَا أَنَّ الْكَنْزَ أَنْفَسُ أَمْوَالِكُمْ. قَالَ أَهْلُ اللُّغَةِ: الْحَوْلُ الْحَرَكَةُ وَالْحِيلَةُ، أَيْ لَا حَرَكَةَ وَلَا اسْتِطَاعَةَ وَلَا حِيلَةَ إِلَّا بِمَشِيئَةِ اللَّهِ تَعَالَى. وَقِيلَ: مَعْنَاهُ لَا حَوْلَ فِي دَفْعِ شَرٍّ وَلَا قُوَّةَ فِي تَحْصِيلِ خَيْرٍ إِلَّا بِاللَّهِ. وَقِيلَ: لَا حَوْلَ عَنْ مَعْصِيَةِ اللَّهِ إِلَّا بِعِصْمَتِهِ وَلَا قُوَّةَ عَلَى طَاعَتِهِ.

His saying, “There is no power and no strength except by Allah,” is a treasure among the treasures of Paradise. The scholars said: the reason for this is that it is a word of submission and of entrusting one’s affairs to Allah, and an acknowledgment of surrender to Him — that there is no maker besides Him, no one who can turn back His command, and that the servant owns nothing of the matter. The meaning of “treasure” here is that it is a reward stored up in Paradise, a reward as precious as treasure is the most precious of one’s wealth. The linguists said: ḥawl is movement and the capacity to devise a way — meaning there is no movement, no ability, and no device except by the will of Allah, exalted is He. And it is also said its meaning is that there is no power to repel harm and no strength to attain good except through Allah. And it is also said: there is no power to avoid disobeying Allah except by His protection, and no strength to obey Him except by His enabling.

— Sharḥ al-Nawawī ʿalā Muslim, printed page 17/26 of Read this page: شرح النووي على مسلم.

Three glosses, one underneath the other, but they converge on the same point: whichever direction you turn the phrase — toward avoiding harm, toward attaining good, toward staying obedient, toward stopping sin — the answer is that a servant cannot supply the power himself. He is asked to acknowledge it, not to change it.

Why the Prophet Called It a Treasure

The phrase earned its title from a specific encounter, one recorded by both al-Bukhārī and Muslim on the authority of Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī:

كُنَّا مَعَ النَّبِيِّ فِي سَفَرٍ، فَكُنَّا إِذَا عَلَوْنَا كَبَّرْنَا، فَقَالَ النَّبِيُّ: أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ ارْبَعُوا عَلَى أَنْفُسِكُمْ؛ فَإِنَّكُمْ لَا تَدْعُونَ أَصَمَّ وَلَا غَائِبًا، وَلَكِنْ تَدْعُونَ سَمِيعًا بَصِيرًا. ثُمَّ أَتَى عَلَيَّ وَأَنَا أَقُولُ فِي نَفْسِي: لَا حَوْلَ وَلَا قُوَّةَ إِلَّا بِاللهِ، فَقَالَ: يَا عَبْدَ اللهِ بْنَ قَيْسٍ، قُلْ: لَا حَوْلَ وَلَا قُوَّةَ إِلَّا بِاللهِ؛ فَإِنَّهَا كَنْزٌ مِنْ كُنُوزِ الْجَنَّةِ.

We were with the Prophet on a journey, and whenever we climbed a rise we would raise our voices calling “Allāhu akbar.” So the Prophet said, “O people, ease up on yourselves — you are not calling upon One who is deaf or absent, but One who is All-Hearing, All-Seeing.” Then he came upon me while I was saying to myself, “There is no power and no strength except by Allah,” and he said, “O ʿAbdullāh ibn Qays, say: ‘There is no power and no strength except by Allah,’ for it is a treasure among the treasures of Paradise.”

— Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-Daʿawāt, printed page 8/82 of Read this page: ط السلطانية, and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, printed page 8/73 of Read this page: ط التركية.

Two details in this narration matter beyond the title itself. First, Abū Mūsā was not saying the phrase out loud, and not in response to any hardship he names — he says it “in himself,” privately, mid-journey, and the Prophet still singles it out for its rank. Second, al-Bukhārī places the ḥadīth under a chapter heading on the supplication for climbing a rise — the phrase’s natural home, in his arrangement of the book, is the moment a task in front of you costs more than the one behind you.

“Treasure” (kanz) is a word chosen for a reason, and Nawawī’s gloss above spells it out: a treasure is wealth put away and kept from loss, not spent and gone. The reward for the ḥawqalah works the same way — stored for the one who says it, the way buried wealth is stored for its owner, safe from anything that could otherwise erode it. It is not that the words are difficult to say. It is that what they acknowledge — total dependence, with nothing held back — is difficult to mean, and Allah rewards the meaning as generously as He would reward wealth kept intact.

Where the Sunnah Places It: At the Call to Prayer

The ḥawqalah is not left to occasion alone; the Sunnah assigns it a fixed post inside the adhān itself. When the muʾadhdhin reaches the two calls to action — “come to prayer” and “come to success” — the listener does not repeat his words as he does for every other phrase of the call:

ثُمَّ قَالَ: حَيَّ عَلَى الصَّلَاةِ، قَالَ: لَا حَوْلَ وَلَا قُوَّةَ إِلَّا بِاللهِ. ثُمَّ قَالَ: حَيَّ عَلَى الْفَلَاحِ، قَالَ: لَا حَوْلَ وَلَا قُوَّةَ إِلَّا بِاللهِ.

Then he [the muʾadhdhin] says, “Come to prayer” — you say, “There is no power and no strength except by Allah.” Then he says, “Come to success” — you say, “There is no power and no strength except by Allah.”

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, from the ḥadīth of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, printed page 2/4 of Read this page: ط التركية.

Every other line of the adhān is an announcement — that Allah is greatest, that there is no god but Him, that Muḥammad is His messenger — and the listener simply affirms it back. “Ḥayya ʿalā al-ṣalāh” and “ḥayya ʿalā al-falāḥ” are different: they are calls to act, and repeating “come to prayer” back at an empty room would be an empty echo. The response the Sunnah supplies instead is an honest one — before answering that summons, the listener admits the plain fact that walking to the prayer, standing in it, and finishing it is itself something he cannot do except by Allah’s power reaching him first. It is the ḥawqalah’s job, at that exact instant, to make sure the response to a summons to act is not a boast about one’s own readiness.

A Confession, Not a Request

It is worth being precise about what kind of sentence the ḥawqalah is, because the distinction sits at the center of the whole phrase and separates it from most other dhikr recited beside it. It asks Allah for nothing. There is no verb of request, no imperative, no “grant me” or “give me.” Grammatically it is a plain negation followed by an exception — a statement of fact that would remain true whether or not anyone said it aloud. Saying it does not summon a power that was previously withheld; it recognizes a power that was never anywhere else to begin with.

Compare that with the line every praying Muslim recites at least seventeen times a day, in the second half of Sūrat al-Fātiḥah:

إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ وَإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِينُ

You alone we worship, and You alone we ask for help.

— Sūrat al-Fātiḥah, 1:5

“Wa iyyāka nastaʿīn” — “You alone we ask for help” — is addressed to Allah directly, in the second person, inside a sūrah built as a conversation between a servant and his Lord. It is a plea: the servant is asking, in the moment, for aid he does not yet have. The ḥawqalah does neither of those things. It is spoken about Allah, in the third person, to no one in particular, and it asks for nothing new — it simply states what was always the case. Istiʿānah, help sought, is an act of worship performed toward Allah; the ḥawqalah is a piece of creed confessed about Allah. One is a request made in a moment of need. The other is a fact that holds regardless of whether a need has arisen at all — which is exactly why it fits a rise in the road as naturally as it fits the gravest crisis, and why the scholars read “submission” and “entrusting one’s affairs” into it rather than “asking.”

That is also why its natural home is the threshold of anything a person cannot carry by his own strength — travel that outlasts his stamina, an illness that outlasts his patience, a task waiting on the other side of a door he would rather not walk through. Nothing about the phrase changes the difficulty in front of him. What it changes is his account of where the strength to face it will come from, and that account, said honestly and meant fully, is what a Companion was told carries the weight of treasure.

Saying it once will not feel like much. Saying it as a settled description of how the world actually works — every time a task arrives that is larger than what you bring to it — is the seven words the Prophet pointed to and called a treasure. For the wider collection of daily remembrances the Sunnah hands a believer, along with their sources and their proper place in the day, see the adhkār library.