Fast facts
- What it is
- A supplication said standing, in the last rakʿah of Witr (وتر)
- The word
- Qunut (قنوت), standing in devotion and obedience
- Second kind
- Qunut al-nazilah (قنوت النازلة), said in calamity
- Ruling
- Emphasised practice, not a pillar; the prayer is valid if it is forgotten
- If forgotten
- Sujud al-sahw (سجود السهو), the prostration of forgetfulness
On this page
The text
اَللَّهُمَّ إِنَّا نَسْتَعِينُكَ وَنَسْتَغْفِرُكَ وَنُؤْمِنُ بِكَ وَنَتَوَكَّلُ عَلَيْكَ وَنُثْنِي عَلَيْكَ الْخَيْرَ وَنَشْكُرُكَ وَلَا نَكْفُرُكَ وَنَخْلَعُ وَنَتْرُكُ مَنْ يَفْجُرُكَاَللَّهُمَّ إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ وَلَكَ نُصَلِّي وَنَسْجُدُ وَإِلَيْكَ نَسْعَى وَنَحْفِدُ نَرْجُو رَحْمَتَكَ وَنَخْشَى عَذَابَكَ إِنَّ عَذَابَكَ بِالْكُفَّارِ مُلْحِقٌ
"O Allah, we seek Your help and Your forgiveness, we believe in You and rely upon You, we praise You with all good and we thank You and are not ungrateful to You, and we cast off and forsake whoever disobeys You. O Allah, You alone we worship, and to You we pray and prostrate, and towards You we strive and hasten. We hope for Your mercy and fear Your punishment; Your punishment surely overtakes those who reject."
Reading it line by line
The supplication is built almost entirely in the first person plural. Every verb is "we", not "I", which is unusual for a prayer said alone in the middle of the night and is the first thing worth noticing about it.
- It opens with need: help and forgiveness, in that order, before anything is claimed.
- It moves to relationship: belief, reliance, praise, gratitude, and an explicit refusal of ingratitude.
- It states an allegiance, and by implication a disavowal of the opposite.
- It restates worship in the same construction as Sūrah al-Fātiḥah 1:5, إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ, putting the object before the verb so that exclusivity is carried by the word order itself.
- It closes held between hope and fear, mercy hoped for and punishment feared in a single breath.
Where it falls in the prayer
Witr (وتر) is the odd-numbered prayer that closes the night, prayed after Isha (العشاء) and before dawn. The qunut is said in its final rakʿah, standing, with the hands raised.
The schools differ on the detail, and the difference is real rather than cosmetic. The Hanafi position is that qunut is said before the bowing, throughout the year. The Shafiʿi position is that it is said after rising from the bowing, and in Witr only during the second half of Ramadan (رمضان). Both are established positions with evidence, and a worshipper follows the school they pray by.
It is an emphasised practice rather than a pillar of the prayer. Forgetting it does not invalidate the Witr; the classical rulings direct the worshipper to the prostration of forgetfulness, sujud al-sahw (سجود السهو).
The qunut said in calamity
A second kind, qunut al-nazilah (قنوت النازلة), is said in the obligatory prayers when the community faces a specific affliction: an enemy, an epidemic, a persecution. The Prophet ﷺ (محمد) is recorded as doing this for a period and then leaving it when the occasion passed.
The distinction matters. The Witr qunut is a standing devotional practice; the nazilah qunut is an emergency instrument, tied to a named calamity and set down when the calamity ends. Treating the second as permanent misreads what it is for.
The shorter supplication
A shorter qunut is reported as having been taught by the Prophet ﷺ to his grandson al-Hasan ibn ʿAli (الحسن بن علي) (رضي الله عنه), and is widely used, particularly by those learning:
اللَّهُمَّ اهْدِنِي فِيمَنْ هَدَيْتَ، وَعَافِنِي فِيمَنْ عَافَيْتَ، وَتَوَلَّنِي فِيمَنْ تَوَلَّيْتَ، وَبَارِكْ لِي فِيمَا أَعْطَيْتَ"O Allah, guide me among those You have guided, grant me wellbeing among those You have granted it, take me into Your care among those You have taken, and bless for me what You have given." (Sunan Abu Dawud 1425; Jami at-Tirmidhi 464)
Either may be used. The longer text is the one most commonly memorised in the subcontinent, which is why it is given first here.
Frequently asked questions
Is Witr obligatory?
The schools differ. The Hanafi position treats it as wajib (واجب), a binding obligation just below the rank of fard; the majority treat it as a strongly emphasised sunnah (سنة مؤكدة). All agree it should not be neglected, and the practical advice in every school is the same: do not leave it.
Can it be said in a language other than Arabic?
Inside the prayer, the supplications are said in Arabic. Someone who has not yet memorised the text may use the shorter dua above, or say what they can, while learning it. Outside the prayer a person may of course supplicate in any language.
Why does the wording say "we" when praying alone?
The plural is a feature of the text rather than an accident of congregation. A worshipper standing alone at night is still asking on behalf of a community, which is the same construction the opening chapter of the Qur’an uses in Sūrah al-Fātiḥah 1:5.