Ruqyah: treating illness with the words of Allah

Ruqyah is treatment by revelation. You recite the Qur’an, or a supplication the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) taught, over someone who is ill, harmed or afraid — and you ask Allah ﷻ to cure them.

It is also one of the most distorted practices in Muslim life. Some treat it as folk superstition to be quietly avoided. Others treat it as a replacement for medicine, or as a service to be bought from a specialist at a price.

The sources are narrower and clearer than either extreme. Every hadith quoted below is linked to the printed page it appears on, so you can open the page and read it rather than take our word for it.

وَنُنَزِّلُ مِنَ ٱلْقُرْءَانِ مَا هُوَ شِفَآءٌ وَرَحْمَةٌ لِّلْمُؤْمِنِينَ ۙ وَلَا يَزِيدُ ٱلظَّـٰلِمِينَ إِلَّا خَسَارًا

And We send down of the Qur’an that which is a healing and a mercy for the believers — and it increases the wrongdoers in nothing but loss.

— Sūrat al-Isrā’, 17:82

That second clause is part of the same sentence, and it is almost always cut off. We checked: the shortened form is what circulates, and it changes the meaning. The verse does not say the Qur’an is a cure the way an aspirin is a cure — something that works on whoever swallows it. It says the same revelation is healing for one person and loss for another. What differs is not the words. It is who is receiving them.

Hold that condition in mind, because Ibn al-Qayyim returns to it at the end of this article with unusual force.

The verse just before it is the one recited against sorcery and deception:

وَقُلْ جَآءَ ٱلْحَقُّ وَزَهَقَ ٱلْبَـٰطِلُ ۚ إِنَّ ٱلْبَـٰطِلَ كَانَ زَهُوقًا

And say: the truth has come and falsehood has vanished. Falsehood was always bound to vanish.

— Sūrat al-Isrā’, 17:81

There is a persistent idea that a believer must choose between spiritual treatment and physical treatment. The sources do not set up that choice. Ibn ʿAbbās (may Allah be pleased with him) narrated from the Prophet (peace be upon him):

Healing is in three: in a cupper’s incision, or a drink of honey, or a cauterisation by fire — and I forbid my nation from cauterisation.

— Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, printed page 7/123 of

Honey is a remedy you can hold. The Qur’an is a remedy you recite. Neither cancels the other, and ruqyah was never meant to replace treatment — it sits alongside it.

The saying itself is sound as Ibn Masʿūd’s:

Take to the two cures: honey and the Qur’an.

— Sunan Ibn Mājah, printed page 4/507 of

ʿĀ’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) narrated that when the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) fell ill, Jibrīl (peace be upon him) recited over him:

In the name of Allah He cures you; from every illness He heals you; and from the evil of an envier when he envies.

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, printed page 4/1718 of

This settles the question of legitimacy on its own. Ruqyah was not a concession made to weak believers. It was performed on the Prophet (peace be upon him), by an angel.

ʿĀ’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) also said plainly that he instructed her to use it:

The Messenger of Allah used to command me to seek ruqyah from the evil eye.

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, printed page 4/1725 of

And when he saw a child in the house of Umm Salamah (may Allah be pleased with her) whose face had changed colour, he did not wait to be asked:

Seek ruqyah for her, for she has been touched by the evil eye.

— Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, printed page 7/132 of

Ruqyah existed before Islam, and much of it was incantation — formulas whose words nobody could account for. The correction was not to ban recitation over the sick. It was to fix what is recited.

ʿĀ’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) narrated that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) came in while a woman was treating her, and said:

Treat her with the Book of Allah.

— Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān, printed page 2/188 of

Open that page and you will find Ibn Ḥibbān glossing the phrase immediately after narrating it. He reads “treat her with the Book of Allah” as treat her with what the Book of Allah permits — because, he says, people in the Jāhiliyyah performed ruqyah with things that contained shirk, and this phrase restrained them from all of it except what the Book allows.

That is the boundary, and it is the whole distinction. Recitation is not a power residing in the words as sounds. It is an appeal to the One who revealed them.

ʿĀ’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) described his practice in his final illness:

The Prophet used to blow over himself with the muʿawwidhāt during the illness in which he died. When he grew heavy, I would blow over him with them and wipe him with his own hand, for its blessing.

— Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, printed page 7/131 of

And it was not reserved for himself:

When any of his family fell ill, he would blow over him with the muʿawwidhāt.

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, printed page 4/1723 of

The muʿawwidhāt are the closing sūrahs of the Qur’an — al-Ikhlāṣ, al-Falaq and an-Nās. They are short enough to memorise this week, which is most of why they are the default.

Here are two of them in full, so you do not have to go looking. Both are in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, and both open on the page they came from.

Jibrīl’s ruqyah for the Prophet (peace be upon him). Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī (may Allah be pleased with him) narrated that Jibrīl (peace be upon him) came and asked, “Muḥammad, are you ill?” He said yes. Jibrīl said:

بِاسْمِ اللَّهِ أَرْقِيكَ، مِنْ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ يُؤْذِيكَ، مِنْ شَرِّ كُلِّ نَفْسٍ أَوْ عَيْنِ حَاسِدٍ، اللَّهُ يَشْفِيكَ، بِاسْمِ اللَّهِ أَرْقِيكَ

Bi-smi-llāhi arqīk, min kulli shay’in yu’dhīk, min sharri kulli nafsin aw ʿayni ḥāsid, Allāhu yashfīk, bi-smi-llāhi arqīk.

In the name of Allah I recite over you, against everything that harms you, against the evil of every soul or envious eye. Allah cure you. In the name of Allah I recite over you.

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, printed page 4/1718 of

For pain somewhere in the body. ʿUthmān b. Abī al-ʿĀṣ (may Allah be pleased with him) complained of a pain he had suffered since accepting Islam. He was told: put your hand on the place that hurts, say bismillāh three times, then say seven times:

أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ وَقُدْرَتِهِ مِنْ شَرِّ مَا أَجِدُ وَأُحَاذِرُ

Aʿūdhu bi-llāhi wa qudratihī min sharri mā ajidu wa uḥādhir.

I seek refuge in Allah and in His power from the evil of what I feel and what I fear.

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, printed page 4/1728 of

Note what the second one includes: a hand placed on the pain, a count, a repetition. It is a method, not an incantation — and there is nothing in it you need anyone else to perform for you.

Ibn al-Qayyim gathered this material in Zād al-Maʿād and drew the conclusion the verse had already set up:

The Qur’an is the complete cure for every ailment of the heart and the body, and for the ailments of this world and the next. But not everyone is enabled or granted success in seeking healing through it. When the sick person treats his illness with it well — with sincerity, faith, full acceptance, firm conviction and every condition met — no illness can withstand it.

— Zād al-Maʿād, printed page 4/322 of

He then presses it into a line that is hard to read comfortably:

Whoever is not cured by the Qur’an, may Allah not cure him; and whoever is not sufficed by it, may Allah not suffice him.

— Zād al-Maʿād, printed page 4/323 of

Those two passages are consecutive pages of one argument, not two separate quotations — which is worth saying, because they usually circulate apart, and the second one alone sounds like a rebuke. Read together, it is the same point as 17:82: the deficiency is never in the revelation.

Read the narrations back and notice what is absent from every one of them.

There is no fee. There is no intermediary whose presence is required. There is no secret formula, no unexplained word, no object that must be bought. When a woman was found reciting something unaccounted for, the instruction was to return to the Book of Allah — not to find a better specialist.

You can perform ruqyah on yourself. ʿĀ’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) performed it on the Prophet (peace be upon him); he performed it on his family; Jibrīl (peace be upon him) performed it on him. Where a practice is presented to you today with a price attached and a method that cannot be traced to a source, the burden of proof is on the practice.

The muʿawwidhāt are three short sūrahs, and the supplications above are two or three lines each. Recite them over yourself tonight before you sleep, and over your children.

You can read and listen to the closing sūrahs in our Qur’an reader, and find the prophetic supplications for illness, pain and protection — with their 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 cure every one of our sick, protect our families from harm we can see and harm we cannot, and make His Book a healing for us and not a proof against us.