Belongs To Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Islam Mantras gathers eight formulas of Islamic devotional speech, catalogued here under a Sanskritic comparative term that several of the descriptions themselves note is the atlas's own framing and not a term Muslims apply to their own practice.

Four of the eight are the counted glorification formulas recited thirty-three or thirty-four times in the standard sequence after obligatory prayer: Tasbih, Tahmid, Takbir and, opening a session of Sufi remembrance, Istighfar. The Shahada, the testimony that makes a person Muslim, and the Basmala, which opens all but one chapter of the Quran, are recited far more widely still, in prayer, at birth and at death for the Shahada, before nearly every ordinary act for the Basmala; both articles note the old, unresolved dispute among the schools over whether the Basmala is itself a verse of each chapter or only a heading. Tahlil, the negation and exception that forms the first clause of the Shahada, is the formula most associated with Sufi gatherings, repeated in unison for hours.

Set against this public majority, Sufi Awrad and the Greatest Name records what the atlas withholds: the wird, a specific sequence of remembrance a shaykh assigns a disciple within an order, and the ism al-azam, the unidentified greatest name of God. Both are recorded as closed and neither is reproduced.