Practice · 3 min read
Why 33?
The number 33 comes from the dhikr said after each fard prayer, and it is narrated rather than chosen. What confuses people is that more than one form is narrated, and the forms do not agree.
Some sources give 33, 33 and 34. Others give 33, 33 and 33 followed by a single tahlil to complete a hundred. A third narration has something different again. All three are in the sahih collections, which means the question is not which one is authentic but why there is more than one.
The number comes from the narrations
33 is not a number anyone selected for neatness. It appears in the reports of what the Prophet taught to be said after prayer, and the target in every case is a hundred.
That is the logic behind all the variants: three phrases, roughly a third each, reaching one hundred.
Form one: 33, 33, 33 and one tahlil
SubhanAllah 33 times, Alhamdulillah 33 times, Allahu Akbar 33 times, then La ilaha illallah once to complete the hundred. This is narrated from Abu Hurayrah (Sahih Muslim 597a).
The closing phrase has a longer wording given in Sahih al-Bukhari 844 and Sahih Muslim 593.
This is the form most apps and most strands are built around, and it is the one this site's guided sequence follows.
Form two: 33, 33 and 34
SubhanAllah 33, Alhamdulillah 33, Allahu Akbar 34, with no closing tahlil. This is narrated from Ka'b ibn 'Ujrah (Sahih Muslim 596a).
It reaches a hundred by a different route. This is where 33-33-34 comes from, and it is a separate companion's narration rather than a variant reading of the first.
Most blog posts merge the two into one hadith. They are two.
Form three: all three together
There is a third form in which the companions themselves disagreed about the distribution in front of the Prophet, and his answer was to say SubhanAllah, walhamdulillah, wallahu akbar together as a single unit until each reaches 33 (Sahih al-Bukhari 843).
This one is rarely mentioned, and it is the clearest evidence that the exact arrangement was not treated as fixed even by those who heard it directly.
So which should you do?
Any of them. They are narrated forms of the same practice, not competing claims about a single correct number.
Choosing one and keeping to it is simpler than switching, and most people follow whichever form they were taught. If you use a counter or a strand built for 33-33-33 plus one, that is a settled and well-attested form.
What is not correct is presenting one form as the hadith and the others as errors. That is the mistake almost every page on this topic makes.
What comes before the 33s
The sequence after salah does not begin at 33. Astaghfirullah three times and the salam formula come first, narrated from Thawban (Sahih Muslim 591).
The complete sequence, in order, with the source for every step, is set out on dhikr after salah.
Does the number have to be exact?
Falling short of a narrated number simply means you did fewer. Nothing is invalidated.
Exceeding it is generally regarded as unproblematic. What scholars have objected to is the opposite move: fixing a number to a dhikr where no narration gave one, and then treating that number as though it were established.
That distinction matters more than the difference between 33-33-34 and 33-33-33 plus one, and it is why this site shows no target at all for phrases the texts left uncounted.
Where to go next
For the full post-salah sequence with each step's source, see dhikr after salah. For why strands come in 33s and 99s, see how many beads are in a tasbih.