Dua
Personal supplication in Islam, said in any words and any language.
The register in which most spontaneous Muslim prayer happens. Dua needs no ablution, no set time, no Arabic, and no particular posture, though raised open hands are common. Classical teaching gives it three purposes: praising God, asking for oneself, and interceding for others, which is why relatives gathered at a hospital bedside are usually engaged in dua.
Dua is asking, and it is the part of Islamic prayer that is not fixed. It may be said in any language, in any words, at any time, with hands raised or not, and it does not require ritual washing or a direction to face.
It sits alongside salah rather than inside it. Salah is the obligation with the fixed script; dua is what a person says in their own voice, and the tradition treats the two as different acts rather than as formal and informal versions of one act.
There are also transmitted duas for particular moments, said before travel, on entering a house, or at a sickbed, and many people use one of those and then continue in their own words.
Does it have a text?
Dua in its central sense has no text at all, and that is the whole character of it. The transmitted duas do have fixed Arabic wordings, but they are hadith-derived and vary by collection and by school, so publishing one means choosing both. None is published here.
When it comes up
Other forms of prayer in Muslim
- Salah — The five daily Islamic prayers, fixed in wording, posture and time.
- Jumu'ah — The Friday congregational prayer, with a sermon in place of part of the usual prayer.
- Dhikr — The remembrance of God through short repeated formulas.
- Tarawih — The long night prayers of Ramadan, in which the Qur'an is recited at length.
- Salat al-Janazah — The Islamic funeral prayer, prayed standing over the body with no bowing or prostration.
This page describes a practice. It does not tell you how to perform it, or whether you should. Practice varies by region, community and household far more than a page like this can carry, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed anything here. The full dossier names its sources.