466 – Abū Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) said:

“Whenever the Messenger of Allah ﷺ performed the funeral prayer he would say:

‘O Allah, forgive our living and our dead, those present and those absent, our young and our old, our males and our females. O Allah, whoever among us You keep alive, keep him alive upon Islam; and whoever among us You cause to die, cause him to die upon faith. O Allah, do not deprive us of his reward and do not let us go astray after him.’ ”

Narrated by Muslim and the four Sunan compilers. (1)

Vocabulary of the ḥadīth:
• lā taḥrimnā: the imperative “do not deprive us,” with fatḥah on the tāʼ and kasrah on the rāʼ, from ḥirmān (deprivation).
• ajr-hu: “his reward,” i.e. the recompense for what has befallen us through his death.
• Islām: linguistically, submission and surrender. The Prophet ﷺ explained it as the outward acts of obedience.
• Īmān: linguistically, tranquil certitude. The Prophet ﷺ explained it as the inward acts of the heart—faith in Allah, and so on.
These two definitions apply when Islām and Īmān are mentioned together. If one term occurs without the other, then Islām includes Īmān and Īmān includes Islām.
• lā tuḍillanā: “do not lead us astray.” The verb ḍalla-yaḍillu (pattern: ḍaraba) means to slip away from guidance; the person is ḍāll (lost), the opposite of muhtadī (guided).
Al-Miṣbāḥ states: “This is the usage of Najd, and it is classical Arabic; the Qur’an was revealed with it.”
Al-Muḥīṭ says: “Ḍalāl was originally coined for departing from the straight path, whether intentionally or unintentionally, to whatever degree, and all its other senses branch out from this core meaning.”