The Two Kinds of Dhikr: General Remembrance and the Prescribed Adhkar

Say the word “dhikr” and most people picture one thing: a string of beads, a phrase repeated under the breath. That picture is not wrong, but it is only a slice of a much wider practice. Classical scholarship sorts dhikr along two separate lines, and the two do not measure the same thing. One asks how open is its form — is this remembrance something you can say any way, anywhere, any number of times, or is it a fixed set of words tied to a fixed moment? The other asks which part of you is doing it — is the tongue moving while the heart is elsewhere, or has the heart caught up with the tongue? Knowing both is the difference between a vocabulary list of religious phrases and an actual map of what “remembering Allah” can look like across a day.

The first line splits dhikr by how much its form and timing are fixed.

Unrestricted dhikr has no assigned wording, place, or count. It covers tasbīḥ (سُبْحَانَ اللّٰهِ — glorifying Allah), taḥmīd (اَلْحَمْدُ لِلّٰهِ — praising Him), takbīr (اَللّٰهُ أَكْبَرُ — declaring His greatness), tahlīl (لَا إِلٰهَ إِلَّا اللّٰهُ — the declaration that none is worthy of worship but Him), ḥawqalah (لَا حَوْلَ وَلَا قُوَّةَ إِلَّا بِالله — there is no power or strength except through Him), istighfār (seeking forgiveness), ṣalawāt on the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and reciting the Qur’an itself. None of these come with a schedule. You can say them walking, sitting, waiting for a kettle to boil, or lying awake — as many times as you like, for as long as you like. The Qur’an addresses this category directly, without naming a form or a count:

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱذْكُرُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ ذِكْرًا كَثِيرًا

“O you who believe, remember Allah with much remembrance.” — Sūrat al-Aḥzāb, 33:41

The instruction is kathīran — much, abundantly — not a count, a wording, or a time of day. That openness is the whole point of the category: it puts dhikr within reach at every moment a formal act of worship is not already occupying you.

Restricted dhikr, by contrast, is fixed on all three axes at once — wording, place, and time. This is the territory of the adhkār proper: the morning and evening remembrances, the supplications said after each of the five prayers, the du’a before sleep and on waking, and the short remembrances attached to ordinary actions — eating, dressing, entering and leaving the house. These are not phrases you compose in the moment; they are specific sentences, transmitted with specific wording, meant for a specific window of the day. Where unrestricted dhikr is a door left open all day, restricted dhikr is a set of appointments — and a person’s remembrance of Allah is usually a mix of both, not a choice between them.

The second line has nothing to do with form or timing. It asks which part of a person is actually engaged — and it cuts across the first category entirely, since both unrestricted and restricted dhikr can be done with the tongue alone or with the tongue and heart together.

Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s classification of this, preserved in Imam al-Nawawī’s commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, is the clearest statement of it in the classical literature: remembrance of Allah is of two kinds, remembrance of the heart and remembrance of the tongue. Remembrance of the heart is itself of two kinds — reflecting on the greatness of Allah, His majesty and His dominion over the heavens and the earth (which he calls the highest and noblest form of dhikr), and being mindful of His commands and prohibitions at the moment of acting, so that a person obeys what is commanded and avoids what is forbidden. Remembrance of the tongue alone, he notes, is the weakest of the three — but it still carries real virtue, as the hadith on its merit make clear — printed page 17/15 of

The ranking is not a dismissal of the tongue. Speech is how unrestricted dhikr gets said and how the prescribed adhkar get transmitted word for word; without it, the wordings that reached us from the Prophet (peace be upon him) would have nowhere to live. But the classification is a warning against mistaking motion for meaning — words repeated while the mind is elsewhere are still dhikr, just the thinnest form of it. The Qur’an states plainly which half of the pairing is where the actual rest is found:

ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَتَطْمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُم بِذِكْرِ ٱللَّهِ ۗ أَلَا بِذِكْرِ ٱللَّهِ تَطْمَئِنُّ ٱلْقُلُوبُ

“Those who believe, and whose hearts find rest in the remembrance of Allah. Verily, in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest.” — Sūrat al-Raʿd, 13:28

Rest is not promised to the syllables; it is promised to the heart that is present while they are said.

Laid side by side, the two categories give four combinations rather than two: unrestricted dhikr said with the tongue alone (any phrase, any time, said without attention — still counted, still the lightest form); unrestricted dhikr said with a present heart (the same phrases, but meant, at any moment the day allows); restricted dhikr recited by rote (the morning adhkar spoken correctly but on autopilot); and restricted dhikr recited with presence (the same fixed words, understood as they are said). The fixed wording of the second pair does not lower it beneath the first — it simply answers a different question. Scope tells you when and how a remembrance may be said; presence tells you whether it reached the heart once it was.

The Qur’an gives a single description that folds both lines together in one verse — an unrestricted scope (“standing, sitting, and lying on their sides” — no posture excluded, no time specified) paired immediately with the heart’s engagement (reflection on the heavens and the earth):

ٱلَّذِينَ يَذْكُرُونَ ٱللَّهَ قِيَـٰمًا وَقُعُودًا وَعَلَىٰ جُنُوبِهِمْ وَيَتَفَكَّرُونَ فِى خَلْقِ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ رَبَّنَا مَا خَلَقْتَ هَـٰذَا بَـٰطِلًا سُبْحَـٰنَكَ فَقِنَا عَذَابَ ٱلنَّارِ

“Those who remember Allah standing, sitting, and lying on their sides, and reflect on the creation of the heavens and the earth, [saying], ‘Our Lord, You did not create this without purpose; glory be to You, so protect us from the punishment of the Fire.‘” — Sūrat Āl ʿImrān, 3:191

That is the fullest reading of the two categories together: a scope with no gaps in it, filled with a heart that is actually there.

Neither classification is a hierarchy you climb once and leave behind. A person needs the open-ended category to fill the ordinary hours that have no fixed form of worship attached to them, and needs the restricted category to anchor the day at its hinge points — waking, the close of each prayer, sleep. And within both, the aim is the same: let the tongue’s motion catch up with the heart’s attention, rather than settling for the lightest version of either category simply because it asks less.

If you want the restricted half in its full, transmitted wording — the adhkar of the morning, the evening, after each prayer, and the ordinary moments of a day — Quran Gallery’s Adhkar collection carries them with translation, so you can read exactly what was said rather than a paraphrase of it.

We have tried to keep every classification above tied to a page you can open rather than a claim taken on trust. If you find a citation that does not hold up, tell us — we would rather correct it than leave it standing. And we ask Allah to make our dhikr, in whichever of these forms it takes, one that reaches the heart and not only the tongue.