Theclassicalmethod:matchingtheversetothecondition—sakīnahverses,thesidrrecipe,andthescholars’versesets

The second half of the essay begun in the previous piece reproduces, with thanks, an article from the Laqat al-Marjan site on the method of choosing verses. The article opens by warning against “one verse per disease”. It is enough for any reader to recite al-Fātiḥah over any illness (it is a ruqyah by the Prophet’s ﷺ own word); or al-Baqarah, for “taking it is a blessing”; or Āyat al-Kursī, the greatest verse in the Quran; or the two protections, the like of which no seeker of refuge has ever used. When particular verses are mentioned for particular conditions, it is by way of seeking blessing in a verse whose meaning suits the state of the illness.

1. 1Ibn al-Qayyim’s three conditions of cure
2. 2The six verses of sakīnah
3. 3Ibn Taymiyyah’s practice with the possessed
4. 4The “veiling” verses
5. 5Verses for ‘ayn and for sihr
6. 6Ibn Bāz’s sidr recipe for the “bound” man
7. 7More verse sets from the scholars
8. 8The written remedies of the imamsand what they are not

Ibn al-Qayyim’s three conditions of cure

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Three things: the remedy matching the disease, the physician administering it, and the patient’s nature accepting it. When one is missing, healing does not occur; when all three combine, healing follows without fail, by Allah’s permission. Whoever grasps this as he should, the secrets of the ruqā open to him: he distinguishes the beneficial from the rest, and treats each ailment with the ruqyah that suits it. The ruqyah works through its reciter and the receptivity of the one treated — as the sword cuts through its wielder and the readiness of what it strikes.

The six verses of sakīnah

Ibn al-Qayyim: among the stations of “You alone we worship and You alone we ask for help” is the station of sakīnah: tranquillity sent down, a station of gifts, not of earnings. Allah mentions it in six places: Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:248 (the Ark carrying “sakīnah from your Lord”), al-Tawbah 9:26 and 9:40 (“then Allah sent down His tranquillity upon His Messenger and the believers”, and in the cave, “Do not grieve; indeed Allah is with us”), and al-Fath 48:4, 48:18 and 48:26 (“It is He who sent down tranquillity into the hearts of the believers, that they might increase in faith”).

Ibn al-Qayyim relates that when matters weighed on Ibn Taymiyyah he would recite the verses of sakīnah — and he heard him tell of a tremendous episode during his illness, “a battle with satanic spirits that appeared to him in his weakness: when it grew severe I told my relatives and those around me: recite the verses of sakīnah. Then that state lifted from me, and I sat up with nothing wrong.” Ibn al-Qayyim adds: “I too have tried reciting these verses at the heart’s turmoil — and I found their effect on its calm and tranquillity immense.”

Ibn Taymiyyah’s practice with the possessed

From Zād al-Ma‘ād: Ibn Taymiyyah would often recite into the ear of the possessed person:

أَفَحَسِبْتُمْ أَنَّمَا خَلَقْنَٰكُمْ عَبَثًۭا وَأَنَّكُمْ إِلَيْنَا لَا تُرْجَعُونَ

A-fa-ḥasibtum annamā khalaqnākum ʿabathan wa-annakum ilaynā lā turjaʿūn

"Then did you think that We created you uselessly and that to Us you would not be returned?" — Sūrah al-Mu'minūn 23:115

He treated with Āyat al-Kursī, and ordered the possessed person and his carer to recite it abundantly. Of Āyat al-Kursī he wrote: “those who have tried it — beyond counting — have found its effect in repelling the devils and nullifying their states to be beyond measure in abundance and force.” And in Tirmidhi is the story of Abu Sa‘īd: the Companions whom a tribe refused hospitality, whose chief was then stung; a man recited al-Fātiḥah over him and he recovered.

The “veiling” verses

The article gathers the reports of verses by which Allah hid His Prophet ﷺ from those who meant him harm.

Ibn Kathīr, on Yā-Sīn: Abu Jahl swore “if I see Muhammad I will do such-and-such”, while “We have put before them a barrier and behind them a barrier and covered them, so they do not see” (36:9) was sent down — and they passed him saying “where is he?”

Al-Qurtubī recounts Umm Jamīl arriving with a stone pestle while the Prophet ﷺ sat with Abu Bakr. “She will not see me,” he said, and recited “And when you recite the Quran, We put between you and those who do not believe in the Hereafter a concealed partition” (Sūrah al-Isrā’ 17:45); she saw only Abu Bakr.

Ka‘b reports that the Prophet ﷺ would screen himself from the polytheists by three verses: al-Kahf 18:57, al-Nahl 16:108 and al-Jāthiyah 45:23. Two later men used the same verses, one escaping Byzantine territory from Shām and one escaping Daylam captivity from Rayy, while their pursuers’ clothes all but brushed theirs.

On the night of the Hijrah, the Prophet ﷺ recited the opening of Yā-Sīn to 36:9 and scattered dust over the heads of those watching his door.

And al-Qurtubī tells his own experience in al-Andalus: fleeing before the enemy near Córdoba, he sat in open ground with nothing to hide him and recited the opening of Yā-Sīn; two horsemen rode past and turned back saying “that is a devil”. “Allah blinded their eyes, and to Him is abundant praise.”

Verses for ‘ayn and for sihr

• Al-Hasan al-Basrī's cure for the ‘ayn (al-Baghawī, Ma‘ālim al-Tanzīl): reciting Sūrah al-Qalam 68:51 — “And indeed, those who disbelieve would almost make you slip with their eyes when they hear the message, and they say: Indeed, he is mad.”
• Ibn ‘Abbās on Sūrah Yūnus 10:81 (al-Qurtubī): whoever takes to his bed at night and recites “What you have brought is sorcery; Allah will surely bring it to nothing — Allah does not amend the work of corrupters”, no sorcerer’s plot harms him; and written for a bewitched person, Allah repels the sihr from him.
• Layth ibn Abī Sulaym (in Ibn Kathīr): “it has reached me that these verses are a cure from sihr by Allah’s permission” — recited into a vessel of water poured over the bewitched person’s head: Yūnus 10:81–82, al-A‘rāf 7:118 (“so the truth was established and what they were doing was abolished”) and Ṭā Hā 20:69 (“what they crafted is but the trick of a sorcerer — and the sorcerer will not succeed wherever he goes”).

Sheikh Muhammad Hāmid al-Fiqī objected that such things rest on the opinion of Layth or Ibn al-Qayyim, not on the established Sunnah, and belong to the way of the Isrā'īliyyāt. Ibn Bāz replied that the objection is misplaced and an error: treating with the Quran, with sidr and similar permitted remedies is not innovation at all; it is treatment, under the Prophet’s ﷺ words: “Servants of Allah, seek treatment — but do not treat yourselves with what is harām.”

Ibn Bāz’s sidr recipe for the “bound” man

Ibn Bāz’s prescription for the man prevented from intimacy with his wife: take seven green sidr (lote-tree) leaves, crush them with a stone or the like, put them in a vessel and pour over them enough water for a wash. Recite into the water: Āyat al-Kursī; Sūrah al-Kāfirūn; al-Ikhlāṣ; al-Falaq; al-Nās; then the three sihr passages of al-A‘rāf 7:117–122 (“And We inspired Mūsā: throw your staff — and at once it devoured what they were falsifying…”), Yūnus 10:79–82 (“And Pharaoh said: bring me every learned sorcerer…”) and Ṭā Hā 20:65–69 (“…Do not fear: you are the superior. Throw what is in your right hand — it will swallow what they have crafted…”). After the recitation, drink some of the water and bathe with the rest. The ailment will cease, if Allah wills; and no harm in repeating it twice or more until it is gone.

More verse sets from the scholars

• Ibn Mas‘ūd’s protection set (al-Dārimī): whoever recites four verses from the beginning of al-Baqarah, Āyat al-Kursī and the two verses after it, and the three closing verses of al-Baqarah — no shayṭān and nothing hateful comes near him or his family that day; and they are not recited over one afflicted in his mind but that he recovers.
• Al-Hasan al-Basrī's five verses for the distressed (al-Tanūkhī, al-Faraj ba‘d al-Shiddah): “How strange that one in distress neglects five verses, knowing what Allah gave those who said them” — al-Baqarah 2:155–157 (the verses of istirjā‘); Ghāfir 40:44–45 (“and I entrust my affair to Allah… so Allah protected him from the evils they plotted”); al-Anbiyā’ 21:87–88 (Dhū al-Nūn’s call in the darknesses: “There is no deity except You; exalted are You; indeed, I have been of the wrongdoers” — “and thus do We save the believers”); Āl ‘Imrān 3:173–174 (“Sufficient for us is Allah, and He is the best Disposer of affairs”); and al-Anbiyā’ 21:83–84 (Ayyūb: “Indeed, adversity has touched me, and You are the most merciful of the merciful”). “Whoever keeps to reciting these verses in hardships, Allah lifts them from him.”
• Ibn al-Qayyim on the du‘ā of Ayyūb (al-Fawā'id): this du‘ā joins the reality of tawhīd, the display of one’s poverty before his Lord, the taste of love in imploring Him, the acknowledgement of His attribute of mercy (that He is the most merciful of the merciful), and drawing near to Him by His attributes and by one’s own desperate need. When the afflicted person finds this, his trial is lifted. “It has been tried: whoever says it seven times — especially with this understanding — his need is met.”

The written remedies of the imams — and what they are not

From al-Tibb al-Nabawī, Ibn al-Qayyim records classical practice of writing verses for the sick — writing that is washed off and drunk, never worn:

• Imam Ahmad, hearing al-Marwazī had a fever, wrote for him a paper: Bismillāh… “O fire, be coolness and safety upon Ibrāhīm; and they intended for him a plot, but We made them the greatest losers” (Sūrah al-Anbiyā’ 21:69–70), with a du‘ā: “O Allah, Lord of Jibrā’īl, Mīkā’īl and Isrāfīl, heal the bearer of this writing by Your might and power.”
• His son ‘Abdullāh saw him write, for a woman in obstructed labour, in a clean white vessel: the du‘ā of distress from the hadith of Ibn ‘Abbās (“There is no deity but Allah, the Forbearing, the Generous…”) with Sūrah al-Ahqāf 46:35 and al-Nāzi'āt 79:46 — verses of how brief the waiting will seem.
• Ibn Taymiyyah would write on the forehead of one with a nosebleed: “And it was said: O earth, swallow your water, and O sky, withhold” (Sūrah Hūd 11:44). “I wrote it for more than one person and they recovered” — “but it is not permitted to write it in the blood of the one bleeding, as the ignorant do: blood is impure, and the words of Allah may not be written with it.” Also recorded: Sūrah al-Ra’d 13:39 as a general writing; al-Baqarah 2:266 (“a whirlwind containing fire, so it is burned”) for shingles; al-Mulk 67:23 or al-An'ām 6:13 written on the cheek for toothache; Ṭā Hā 20:105 for an abscess.

Our note: none of these is an amulet. Nothing here is hung on the body or worn; the writing is dissolved and drunk or washed with, as treatment — the practice Ibn Bāz defended above. Hanging written amulets is a separate matter the site’s articles on ta’wīdh address, and the classical scholars named here forbade writing Allah’s words in blood or treating them with disrespect. And with every remedy on this page: medical care comes first, alongside, never replaced.

The article closes with Ibn Taymiyyah’s rule — “whatever is forbidden as a precaution (dharī'ah) may be done for a preponderant benefit” — and with the hadith that governs this whole chapter, from ‘Awf ibn Mālik: “We used to perform ruqyah in jāhiliyyah, and we said: O Messenger of Allah, what do you think of that? He said: Show me your ruqā. There is no harm in ruqyā so long as there is no shirk in them” (Muslim 2200).