Salat al-Janazah
Also called the Islamic funeral prayer.
The Islamic funeral prayer, said standing over the body, without bowing or prostration.
Salat al-Janazah is prayed standing throughout. It has no bowing and no prostration, which distinguishes it from every other prayer in Islam, and it is made of four takbirs with supplication between them.
It is a communal obligation: if enough of the community perform it, the obligation is discharged for everyone. It is normally offered soon after death, in keeping with the general practice of burying quickly.
The supplications said between the takbirs vary between schools of law and between communities.
Why the words are not here
The Qur'anic material here comes from a named edition with two witnesses agreeing. The supplications of this prayer are hadith-derived and vary by school, so publishing them means choosing a school and an edition, and neither choice is one this site can make without a reviewer.
Every text on this site names the edition it came from and was checked against it twice. A prayer nobody can cite an edition for does not get printed here, however well known it is. The verification record lists what was held back and why, and how rights are established explains the test.
What we do hold
When is this prayer said?
The moments this prayer is associated with. Each page carries cited guidance on how different traditions meet that moment.
Which tradition is this prayer from?
This page describes a prayer and, where we hold one, prints a named edition of it. It does not tell you whether to say it, or when. That judgment belongs to someone credentialed in the tradition, and nobody has signed anything here.
Content last changed 15 October 2026. Dates come from this page’s own revision history, not from the last time the site was deployed.