A Prayer from Inside the Fish

Al-Anbiya preserves the brief prayer attributed to Jonah, called here Dhul-Nun, 'the one of the fish', while in distress: 'there is no god but You, glory be to You, indeed I was among the wrongdoers' (21:87). Known widely as Dua Yunus, the supplication became one of the most frequently taught and recited prayers in Islamic devotional practice, recommended in hadith literature as a formula for relief from hardship and repeated independently of the fuller narrative context the Quran gives it, which appears in more detail in the later surah As-Saffat rather than here.

Job's brief prayer of affliction and mercy elsewhere in the same surah (21:83-84) is likewise treated in later devotional literature as a standing formula for enduring illness or hardship, and the pairing of these two short, quotable prayers within a single surah otherwise built from rapid summaries of many prophetic lives is noted by commentators as giving Al-Anbiya an unusually high concentration of verses adopted into everyday personal devotion relative to its length. Both prayers are commonly taught to children learning short, memorable supplications well before they encounter the fuller prophetic narratives the Quran tells elsewhere.