The 365 · Sunnah · Day 310 · Sleep
The Du'a on Waking
The hadith
كَانَ النَّبِيُّ ﷺ إِذَا اسْتَيْقَظَ مِنْ نَوْمِهِ قَالَ: «الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ الَّذِي أَحْيَانَا بَعْدَ مَا أَمَاتَنَا وَإِلَيْهِ النُّشُورُ».
When the Prophet ﷺ woke from his sleep, he would say: 'Praise be to Allah who gave us life after He had caused us to die, and to Him is the Resurrection.' (Bukhari 6324; Muslim 2711)
Svenska: När Profeten ﷺ vaknade från sin sömn sade han: 'Pris vare Allah som gav oss liv efter att Han fått oss att dö, och till Honom är Uppståndelsen.' (Bukhari 6324; Muslim 2711)
Bukhari 6324; Muslim 2711; Bukhari 183
The story
ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAbbās narrated: 'I spent a night at the home of my maternal aunt Maymūnah, the wife of the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ slept, then woke in the night. He looked at the sky, then recited the last ten verses of Āl ʿImrān, then performed wudu, then prayed.' (Bukhari 183) The Prophet's ﷺ awakening was structured: dhikr, then sky-gazing, then verses, then wudu, then prayer. Each waking was a rehearsal of the great one.
Why it's here
To wake is to be returned from the small death. The Prophet ﷺ named this gift every morning. The body that opens its eyes is the body that Allah chose to return; the first sound it makes is alhamdulillāh. The dhikr is also a rehearsal: 'ilayhi al-nushūr' (to Him is the resurrection) names the great waking that this small one is rehearsing.
Try it today
Before reaching for the phone, before opening any app, before even sitting up, say with the first breath: 'Alhamdulillāh alladhī aḥyānā baʿda mā amātanā wa ilayhi al-nushūr.' Then rub the eyes, recite the last ten verses of Āl ʿImrān (3:190-200) if you can, and rise to wudu.
In your day
The smartphone has hijacked the first ten seconds of millions of believers' mornings. The Sunnah reclaims those seconds: a single sentence of alhamdulillāh before any input. The first dhikr of the day sets the channel for everything that comes after.
A reflection to carry
We tend to wake forgetting. The Sunnah refuses to start the day without remembering. Alhamdulillāh, returned to me again.
Read the longer reflection
A believer dies every night. The Prophet ﷺ said so (Bukhari 6312). The soul leaves the body in a manner Allah knows, and Allah returns it to the body upon waking. To wake is to receive a second life that morning. The Sunnah of waking-duʿāʾ does three things at once: it names Allah as the One who took the soul; it names Allah as the One who returned it; and it names the destination of all soul-returns: al-nushūr, the great resurrection. Three theology lessons in one sentence. Every morning. May our first breath in the dunyā each day be praise, and may our first breath in the ākhirah be the same word.
Sources: Sahih Bukhari, Sahih Muslim. The Qur'an and its translation are verified; the scholarship is retold faithfully in our own words and credited to its sources, never reproduced verbatim.
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