The Ten Days of Dhū al-Ḥijjah: What the Evidence Actually Says

Every year, in the run-up to Dhū al-Ḥijjah, the same line circulates: these are the best ten days of the year. Repeating a claim does not establish it. This post is not a list of what to do with the days — it is an account of what actually establishes their weight: an oath in the Qur’an and a single prophetic report, read clause by clause, including the places where the commentators disagree with one another rather than presenting a single tidy answer.

Sūrat al-Fajr opens with a run of oaths — daybreak, ten nights, the even and the odd, the night as it slips away:

وَٱلْفَجْرِ وَلَيَالٍ عَشْرٍ

By the daybreak, and ten nights.

— Sūrat al-Fajr, 89:1-2

Al-Qurṭubī, working through the grammar of the second oath, points out that “ten nights” is left grammatically indefinite rather than made definite — and argues the indefiniteness is doing real work:

وَإِنَّمَا نُكِّرَتْ وَلَمْ تُعَرَّفْ لِفَضِيلَتِهَا عَلَى غَيْرِهَا، فَلَوْ عُرِّفَتْ لَمْ تُسْتَقْبَلْ بِمَعْنَى الْفَضِيلَةِ الَّذِي فِي التَّنْكِيرِ، فَنُكِّرَتْ مِنْ بَيْنِ مَا أَقْسَمَ بِهِ، لِلْفَضِيلَةِ الَّتِي لَيْسَتْ لِغَيْرِهَا

It was left indefinite, not made definite, on account of its excellence over other things — for had it been made definite it would not have carried the sense of excellence that indefiniteness carries. So of everything He swore by, this alone was left indefinite, for an excellence nothing else has.

— Tafsīr al-Qurṭubī, printed page 20/39 of .

That is a grammatical argument, not a headcount of virtues. It tells a reader that the oath is marking something out — not what, and not by how much. The “what” is a separate question, and the sources do not answer it with one voice.

Ibn Kathīr, working the same verse, states the majority reading plainly and names who holds it:

وَالليالي العشر المراد بها عشر ذي الحجة كما قاله ابن عباس وابن الزبير ومجاهد وغير واحد من السلف والخلف

The ten nights are meant as the ten of Dhū al-Ḥijjah, as said by Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibn al-Zubayr, Mujāhid, and more than one scholar among the earlier and later generations.

— Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, printed page 7/554 of .

That is the reading behind every claim this post goes on to make. It is also not the only reading on record, and Ibn Kathīr does not pretend otherwise. On the very next page he sets out two competitors before ruling between them. One names the first ten days of Muḥarram — a view al-Ṭabarī reports without naming its first holder, and which al-Baghawī elsewhere attributes to a scholar named Yamān ibn Ribāb. The other traces to Ibn ʿAbbās himself, through a different chain:

وَقد روى أبو كدينة، عن قابوس بن أبي ظبيان، عن أبيه، عن ابن عباس: ﴿وَلَيَالٍ عَشْرٍ﴾ قال: هو العشر الأول من رمضان، والصحيح القول الأول

Abū Kudayna narrated, from Qābūs ibn Abī Ẓabyān, from his father, from Ibn ʿAbbās, concerning “ten nights”: he said, it is the first ten of Ramaḍān — and the correct view is the first opinion.

— Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, printed page 7/555 of .

Ibn Kathīr’s own editors note why he sets that report aside: Qābūs ibn Abī Ẓabyān is layyin al-ḥadīth — a narrator whose transmissions are counted weak. A second, independent thread of this disagreement runs through al-Qurṭubī, who records a different pairing on the same question — this time naming the last ten nights of Ramaḍān, not the first, and attaching a second name to it:

وَعَنِ ابْنِ عَبَّاسٍ أَيْضًا: هِيَ الْعَشْرُ الْأَوَاخِرُ مِنْ رَمَضَانَ، وَقَالَهُ الضَّحَّاكُ

And also from Ibn ʿAbbās: they are the last ten nights of Ramaḍān — and al-Ḍaḥḥāk said the same.

— Tafsīr al-Qurṭubī, printed page 20/39 of .

So the honest picture is not “everyone agrees these are the ten of Dhū al-Ḥijjah.” It is: several names attach to a Ramaḍān reading, weighed against a longer list of names — including a second, stronger report from Ibn ʿAbbās himself — behind the Dhū al-Ḥijjah reading, and the commentators who record both say plainly which one they judge correct, and on what basis. Ibn Kathīr immediately follows his ruling by pointing to why: a hadith in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, about “these days,” which he reads as glossing the oath itself —

وقد ثبت في صحيح البخاري، عن ابن عباس مرفوعًا: "ما من أيام العمل الصالح أحبّ إلى الله فيهن من هذه الأيام"؛ يعني: عشر ذي الحجة

It is established in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, from Ibn ʿAbbās, attributed to the Prophet: “There are no days in which righteous deeds are more beloved to Allah than in these days” — meaning: the ten of Dhū al-Ḥijjah.

— Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, printed page 7/555 of .

That hadith is worth opening on its own terms, because it is the report doing almost all of the actual work behind “best days of the year.”

The hadith exists in more than one wording. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī’s own text, terser than the version usually quoted in English, reads:

مَا الْعَمَلُ فِي أَيَّامِ الْعَشْرِ أَفْضَلَ مِنَ الْعَمَلِ فِي هَذِهِ. قَالُوا: وَلَا الْجِهَادُ؟ قَالَ: وَلَا الْجِهَادُ، إِلَّا رَجُلٌ خَرَجَ يُخَاطِرُ بِنَفْسِهِ وَمَالِهِ فَلَمْ يَرْجِعْ بِشَيْءٍ

No deed done in any [other] days is more excellent than a deed done in these. They said: Not even jihad? He said: Not even jihad — except a man who goes out risking his life and his wealth, and returns with nothing of it.

— Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, printed page 2/20 of , hadith 969, narrated from Ibn ʿAbbās.

The fuller wording — the one behind almost every English rendering of this hadith — is at Sunan al-Tirmidhī:

مَا من أيَّامٍ العَمَلُ الصَّالحُ فِيهِنَّ أحَبُّ إلى اللهِ من هذِهِ الأيَّامِ العَشْرِ. فقالُوا: يَا رسُولَ اللهِ، وَلا الجِهَادُ في سَبيلِ اللهِ؟ فقال رَسولُ اللهِ: وَلا الجهَادُ في سَبيلِ الله، إلَّا رَجُلٌ خَرجَ بِنَفْسهِ وَمَالهِ، فلم يَرْجِعْ من ذلكَ بِشَيْءٍ

There are no days in which righteous deeds are more beloved to Allah than these ten days. They said, “O Messenger of Allah, not even jihad in the path of Allah?” The Messenger of Allah said, “Not even jihad in the path of Allah — except a man who goes out with his life and his wealth, and returns with none of it.”

— Sunan al-Tirmidhī, printed page 2/284 of , hadith 767, narrated from Ibn ʿAbbās. Al-Tirmidhī himself grades it ḥasan gharīb ṣaḥīḥ directly beneath the report, and the edition’s footnote adds that it is also related by al-Bukhārī (969), Abū Dāwūd (2438), Ibn Mājah (1727), in Aḥmad’s Musnad (1968) and in Ibn Ḥibbān’s Ṣaḥīḥ (324), grading the report ṣaḥīḥ in its own note.

Read the exception slowly, because it is easy to soften into something it does not say. The Companions assume jihad would obviously be the exception — armed struggle in Allah’s cause is described elsewhere as unmatched by ordinary deeds. The Prophet’s answer (peace and blessings be upon him) confirms that assumption is nearly right, then narrows it to one case: a man who goes out risking both his person and his property in that struggle, and comes back with neither — that is, does not return, or returns having lost everything he took. The hadith does not say “jihad is lesser than these ten days.” It says one specific outcome of jihad is the sole thing an ordinary righteous deed inside these ten days does not outrank. Every other case of jihad it leaves exactly where the Companions expected it — at least equalled, and by the hadith’s own wording, not surpassed, by whatever good is done in this window.

What the report does not say is worth naming too. It does not rank one deed above another inside the ten days, does not promise that any deed done in them is accepted, and does not compare them to any other season by name — the comparison with Ramaḍān that Ibn Kathīr and al-Qurṭubī record belongs to the identification of the oath, not to this hadith. What it establishes, on its own wording, is narrower and firmer than the folklore version: for ten days, the ordinary good deed is placed on a footing that, by report, nothing outside a very specific kind of self-sacrifice manages to exceed.

Named acts fall on specific days inside this window — a standing at ʿArafah on the ninth, a sacrifice on the tenth — and those belong to the comparatively small number of people who travel there in a given year. Nothing in either text above is addressed only to them. The oath is sworn by the nights, not by the itinerary; the hadith weighs the deed, not the traveller. Whatever a reader is doing on an ordinary Tuesday in Dhū al-Ḥijjah — the deed itself, not where it is performed — is what the report says is placed on this unusually high footing.

If anything above overstates what a source actually says — a translation stretched past its wording, a disagreement flattened into a false consensus, a page that says less than we have claimed for it — tell us. Every citation here opens to the printed page it comes from for exactly that reason.

May Allah ﷻ make us people whose ordinary deeds, in whichever ten days we are given, are the ones He described as beloved to Him.