A misbaḥa (also subḥa, or tasbīḥ; tespih in Turkish) is a strand of beads for keeping count in dhikr, the remembrance of God, so the heart can stay with the words rather than the numbers.
The strand
Ninety-nine beads in three thirty-threes, divided by two small separators. A longer bead, the imām, gathers the ends and carries the tassel. Passing the imām after the ninety-ninth bead completes the hundred.
The three phrases
- سُبْحَانَ ٱللَّٰهِ
- Subḥāna-llāh: glory be to God
- ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّٰهِ
- Al-ḥamdu li-llāh: all praise belongs to God
- ٱللَّٰهُ أَكْبَرُ
- Allāhu akbar: God is the greatest
After the prayer, each is said thirty-three times, and the hundred is completed with the tahlīl, lā ilāha illa-llāhu waḥdahu lā sharīka lah…, as reported in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim. Another narration completes it with a thirty-fourth Allāhu akbar; both are offered here. Practice varies, so follow your own teacher.
Using this page
- Press Space, Enter or ↓, or tap anywhere, to pass one bead. Taps are never dropped.
- Drop lets the strand fall to the rug; drag any bead to lift it.
- Choose the beads (amber, olive, ebony), sound, and Flute: the ney, the reed flute of Sufi music, played softly.
- Each set remembers its count on this device. Reset starts the current set again.
- On a keyboard, Tab reaches every control; Esc hands the keys back to the beads. On a phone, More holds the beads, sound and flute.
Credits
Made by Muhammad Jameel. Type: Amiri by Khaled Hosny and Instrument Sans by Rodrigo Fuenzalida, both under the SIL Open Font License.
The flute is the ney, from recordings on Freesound: ney played by Hamza Zeytinoğlu, recorded by xserra (CC BY 4.0), and recordings by avnonsen, aliaref and KasDonatov (CC0).