The phrases · 3 min read
Hasbunallahu wa ni'mal-wakeel
Hasbunallahu wa ni'mal-wakeel: Allah is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs.
Unlike most of what gets counted on a tasbih, this is a verse of the Qur'an, Quran 3:173. It is carried in Sahih al-Bukhari 4563.
No count is narrated for it.
What it means
Hasbuna is: He is enough for us. Not enough alongside something else. Enough.
Wakeel is the one an affair is handed over to, completely.
Together they state reliance rather than ask for an outcome. The phrase does not name what should happen. It says whose hands it is in.
Its setting in scripture and history
The phrase is Quran 3:173, describing the response of the companions after Uhud when they were warned that a force was gathering against them. The warning increased their faith, and this is what they said.
Sahih al-Bukhari 4563 carries it from Ibn Abbas, who reports that it was said by Ibrahim when he was thrown into the fire, and said by Muhammad ﷺ when he was told an army had gathered.
That setting explains the phrase. It belongs to a moment when the odds have been described to you and you are outnumbered, not to a numbered daily routine.
It is a verse, which changes one thing
Most of what gets counted on a tasbih is dhikr. This is dhikr and Qur'an at once.
That matters for the discussion about reciting Qur'an in a state of major ritual impurity, where jurists distinguish reciting as scripture from saying a verse as remembrance or as a plea for protection. The distinction is real and the schools handle it differently.
This site is not the place to settle it for your case. The general position on dhikr and purity is on do you need wudu for dhikr.
Distinction between trust and demanding outcomes
There is a difference between asking Allah for a specific result and saying that He is enough.
Saying this phrase is not a way of insisting that a contract is signed, an illness lifts, or an opponent falls.
Reading it as a formula for forcing an outcome turns wakeel inside out. The word means handing the matter over, not directing it.
No narrated count
None is narrated, in the verse or in Bukhari 4563.
Numbers attached to it in devotional handbooks, 450 times after midnight or a thousand times for 7 nights, come from those handbooks and not from either source above.
Say it whenever the situation calls for it. A framework for testing any count you are handed is on dhikr for rizq, shifa and hajat.
Where to go next
For every phrase with its source, see what to say on a tasbih.
For the other Qur'anic phrase counted as dhikr, see the dua of Yunus.