Astaghfirullah

The two narrated counts

Each belongs to its own setting, and neither is obligatory.

• 3 times, straight after the salam of each fard prayer: Sahih Muslim 591, from Thawban.
• 100 times in a day: Sahih Muslim 2702, from al-Agharr al-Muzani.

Where it sits after salah

It comes first, before the 33s.

The order is Astaghfirullah 3 times, then the salam formula once, and only then SubhanAllah, Alhamdulillah and Allahu Akbar.

Most apps start at SubhanAllah and drop both of the first two steps. That gap is set out on the salam formula.

About benefits of astaghfirullah

Numbered benefit lists circulate widely, promising wealth, marriage, a job or a cure at 1,000 or 10,000 repetitions a day.

What is established about seeking forgiveness is substantial. What is not established is the arithmetic attached to it.

Neither Sahih Muslim 591 nor Sahih Muslim 2702, the two narrations that give this phrase a count, attaches any outcome to a number beyond the 3 after salah and the hundred in a day.

A claim of the form 'say it exactly 500 times and X follows' has nothing behind it. How to check one is on dhikr for rizq, shifa and hajat.

Longer forms

The short form is the bare phrase.

There is also Sayyid al-Istighfar, a longer text with its own narration, which we have not yet pinned down to a number here.

The expanded wording has now been pinned down, and it turns out to have two forms from one chain. Sunan Abi Dawud 1517 has Astaghfirullah alladhi la ilaha illa huwal-Hayyul-Qayyum wa atubu ilayh, graded sahih by al-Albani. Jami' at-Tirmidhi 3577 has the same report with al-Azim added, graded hasan by Darussalam, and at-Tirmidhi himself calls it gharib and says he knows it only through this route. Both run through Bilal ibn Yasar ibn Zayd, from his father, from his grandfather, so this is one narration with two transmitted wordings rather than two hadith.

Neither gives a count. Both promise forgiveness to whoever says it, even if he fled from battle. The form with al-Azim is the one recited across Turkey, which is why it was worth resolving rather than leaving as circulation.

The counter carries the short phrase and a longer form as separate presets, each with the source shown on screen, because a count narrated for one wording does not transfer to another.

Why the Prophet sought forgiveness daily

In Sahih Muslim 2702, al-Agharr al-Muzani reports the Prophet ﷺ saying that something comes over his heart, and that he seeks forgiveness from Allah a hundred times a day.

Scholars read this as rising through states rather than as a record of sins, with forgiveness sought for the state that was left behind.

For everyone else the practice does both jobs at once, and neither reading changes the count.

Practical notes

A hundred a day fits one circuit of a 99-bead strand plus a bead, and takes about 2 minutes.

3 after each of the 5 fard prayers is 15 a day and needs no counting device at all.

Either is on the counter, with the Arabic, the transliteration, the meaning and the source together on screen.