Every Muslim ritual prayer pauses in a seated position, and in that stillness the worshipper recites the Tashahhud. The text transmitted from the companion Ibn Mas'ud, preserved in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, opens by offering greetings, prayers and all good things to God, then turns to greet the Prophet, peace be upon you, O Prophet, and the mercy of God and his blessings, then widens the greeting to us and to the righteous servants of God, before closing with the double testimony, that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is his servant and messenger.
Ibn Mas'ud reported that the Prophet taught him the text word by word as he would teach a surah of the Quran, palm between palms, a detail the tradition treasures as a picture of how carefully the liturgy was transmitted. The Tashahhud thus embeds the shahada, the confession that makes and marks a Muslim, inside the daily architecture of worship, so that the faith is not merely held but repeated, at minimum nine times across the five prayers of an ordinary day. It is followed in the final sitting by the prayer for blessings on Muhammad and his family as God blessed Abraham, completing the sequence before the worshipper turns the head with the closing salutation.