Dhikr, zikr, adhkar and azkar

What's the difference between adhkar and dhikr?

Dhikr is singular and adhkar is its plural. Dhikr means the remembrance of Allah, and it also names any single phrase said in remembrance. Adhkar means a set of those phrases, and in practice it nearly always refers to a fixed collection, like the morning and evening adhkar.

English usage follows the Arabic grammar even when the speaker has never studied it. You'd say someone is making dhikr, not making adhkar.

The morning and evening set shows the relationship. Sayyid al-Istighfar once (Sahih al-Bukhari 6306), SubhanAllahi wa bihamdih 100 times (Sahih Muslim 2692), the tahlil 100 times (Sahih al-Bukhari 6403, with Sahih Muslim 2691 as a parallel). Each is a dhikr. The collection is the adhkar. Sayyid al-Istighfar carries no narrated count of 70 or 100: Bukhari 6306 gives it once in the morning and once in the evening, and those numbers belong to the short Astaghfirullah.

The adhkar counter carries the phrases from those sets that have counts, with their sources. The full programs aren't shipped yet, because parts of them are Quranic and that text has to come from a verified source.

• Dhikr, singular: one remembrance, or the practice itself.
• Adhkar, plural: a set of them, usually a named collection.

What's the difference between zikr and azkar?

Zikr is singular and azkar is its plural, the same difference dhikr and adhkar carry. Zikr and dhikr are one Arabic word in two transliterations, and azkar and adhkar are its one plural in two. If you learned the word in Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Malay or Bengali, you met the z forms first.

Neither set is a corruption of the other. Both are searched heavily in English, so this site treats them as one page and the variant URLs redirect to their canonical sibling. Ask for a zikr counter and you get the same tool.

Why the same word has 4 English spellings

The Arabic letter dhal (ذ) has no single English equivalent. Transliteration systems write it dh, giving dhikr and adhkar. Persian, Urdu and Turkish pronounce that letter as a z, so writers working from those languages write zikr and azkar.

The dh stands for that single letter, not two sounds. It's the th in "this", tongue against the teeth. Read as an aspirated d, the way dh works in Hindi and Urdu spelling, it makes a sound the Arabic word doesn't contain. The same dh sits in adhkar, Dhul Hijjah and Mu'awwidhat.

Hadith databases and most English Islamic publishing use dhikr and adhkar. Zikr and azkar dominate India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, including the Roman-Urdu writing that moves through WhatsApp. Turkish and Malay write zikir, Indonesian writes dzikir, and those last two are separate conventions in separate markets, not typos.

Tasbih, tasbeeh, and the two things the word means

Tasbih means saying SubhanAllah, and it also names the bead string used to keep count of it. Tasbeeh is the same word spelled phonetically. Context tells you which sense is meant: "33 tasbih after salah" is the phrase, "my tasbih broke" is the beads.

Sahih Muslim 596a, from Ka'b ibn 'Ujrah, reads on sunnah.com as "33 tasbih, 33 tahmid, and 34 takbir". The 33/33/33 form with a closing tahlil is a separate narration, from Abu Hurayrah, at Sahih Muslim 597a. Merging the two into one hadith is the commonest error here.

The scholarly disagreement attaches to the beads and not to the phrase. Egypt's Dar al-Ifta holds them recommended. IslamWeb and Ibn 'Uthaymin hold them permissible with the fingers better. Al-Albani held them an innovation. Al-Suyuti and al-Laknawi wrote treatises defending them. Every one of those positions condemns using beads to be seen.

The rest of the vocabulary

• Tasbihat: the plural of tasbih. In Turkish, tesbihat names the post-salah set.
• Tesbih: the Turkish spelling of tasbih. Zikirmatik is Turkish for a digital counter.
• Misbaha, also subha: the Arabic names for the bead string.
• Tahmid, takbir, tahlil, istighfar: named categories of phrase, being Alhamdulillah, Allahu Akbar, La ilaha illallah and Astaghfirullah.
• Du'a, also written dua and duaa: a different category from dhikr, not a spelling of it.

Is du'a the same as dhikr?

No. Dhikr is remembrance and praise. Du'a is asking. The two overlap, since praise often opens a request, but the fiqh literature keeps them as separate categories and so does ordinary speech. You make dhikr and you make du'a, and the words aren't interchangeable.

Two formulas show the line. The one said straight after the salam, Allahumma anta as-Salam, wa minka as-salam, tabarakta dha'l-jalali wa'l-ikram (Sahih Muslim 591), is praise. The du'a taught to A'ishah for Laylatul Qadr (Jami' at-Tirmidhi 3513, and see the Laylatul Qadr page for the word that gets added to it) is a request.

Salawat, durood, and where they sit

Salawat means sending blessings on the Prophet, one category of dhikr. Durood is the Urdu and Persian word for it. Durood Shareef covers any salawat, and Durood Ibrahim is the specific form taught for the tashahhud, whose wording is at Sahih al-Bukhari 3370. All Durood Ibrahim is Durood Shareef, and not the reverse (Askimam, the Hanafi fatwa service, answer 17587).

The short form, Allahumma salli 'ala Muhammad, carries the reward in Sahih Muslim 408: whoever sends one salah upon the Prophet, Allah sends ten upon him. That's a reward, not a count, and no number is narrated for it.

The narration that 80 salawat on Friday brings forgiveness for 80 years needs its grading beside it. Shaykh al-Munajjid's IslamQA, answer 202162, grades it da'if jiddan, very weak, with 3 weak narrators in the chain. Darul Ifta Birmingham permits acting on it under the classical allowance for weak narrations in fada'il. Both positions stand.

Wird, awrad and wazifa

A wird is a fixed portion of dhikr or Quran that a person commits to daily. Awrad is its plural. In Urdu and wider South Asian usage a wazifa, plural wazaif, is a prescribed litany recited a set number of times, where the count is the point.

That last part is where scholars differ, and this page reports the difference rather than settling it. Shaykh al-Munajjid's IslamQA holds that restricting adhkar to a specific number the texts don't mention falls under bid'ah, while exceeding a narrated number, or doing an unrestricted dhikr a lot, is fine (answers 259482 and 22457). SeekersGuidance is more permissive about a personally chosen daily amount.

The counter reflects that. A count a hadith states is labelled narrated, a count you pick is your target, and where the hadith gives no number it says so.

Muawwidhatayn and Muawwidhat, where a spelling hides a number

Arabic marks two of something differently from three or more. Al-Mu'awwidhatayn is dual and means 2 surahs, Al-Falaq and An-Nas. Al-Mu'awwidhat is plural and is read as 3, adding Al-Ikhlas. English transliterations blur the two, and the blur sits on reference sites, not only on blogs.

Sunan Abi Dawud 1523, from Uqbah ibn Amir, graded Sahih by al-Albani on sunnah.com, is the hadith about reciting them after every prayer. Its Arabic reads the plural, بِالْمُعَوِّذَاتِ, while sunnah.com's own English transliterates the dual, "Mu'awwidhatan", then glosses it as three surahs.

Jami' at-Tirmidhi 3575 goes the other way, using the dual "Al-Mu'awwidhatain" with Surah al-Ikhlas named separately beside it. Sunnah.com prints that one Hasan (Darussalam). Transliteration can lose grammatical information the Arabic carries plainly.

Frequently asked questions

• Is zikr the same as dhikr? Yes. One Arabic word, two English spellings, no difference in meaning.
• What is the plural of dhikr? Adhkar. Writers working from Urdu, Persian or Turkish spell it azkar.
• Which spelling is correct? Both are. English never settled on one system for Arabic words, so use the spelling your reader knows.
• Is tasbih the same as dhikr? Tasbih is one kind of dhikr, saying SubhanAllah. It also names the bead string, and its digital form is a tasbih counter.
• Is adhkar the same as du'a? No. Adhkar are remembrance phrases, du'a is asking, and fiqh writing keeps them apart.