The Messenger of Allah—may blessings and peace be upon him—said:

“When the animal you are riding stumbles, do not say, ‘May Satan perish,’ for he swells with pride until he becomes as large as a house and boasts, ‘By my might I made it stumble.’ Instead, say, ‘In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful,’ for then he shrinks until he is like a fly.”

ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn, explaining the Almighty’s words, When you mention your Lord alone in the Qur’an, they turn their backs in aversion (17:46), said: “Its meaning is: when you say, ‘In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful.’”

Wakīʿ narrated—from al-Aʿmash, from Abū Wāʾil, from ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd—who said: “Whoever wishes Allah to rescue him from the nineteen wardens of Hell should recite, ‘In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful’; for Allah, Exalted is He, will appoint for him, for every letter of it, a shield against each one of them. The basmalah contains nineteen letters, matching the number of the angels of the Fire about whom Allah has said, Over it are nineteen (74:30). Those angels begin every deed of theirs with the words, ‘In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful’; from it they draw their strength, and through the basmalah they are empowered.”

Ibn ʿAṭiyyah remarked: “A similar case is their claim that Laylat al-Qadr falls on the twenty-seventh night, in deference to the occurrence of the word hiya (‘it’) among the words of Sūrat al-Qadr (Indeed, We sent it down). Comparable, too, is their reckoning of the number of angels who vied to record the statement of the man who said, ‘Our Lord, to You belongs all praise—abundant, pure, and blessed’; that phrase contains a little over thirty letters, and for that reason the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said, ‘I saw thirty-odd angels racing to see which of them would write it first.’”

He added, “This belongs to the subtleties of exegesis, not to its solid foundations.”

Third Issue: al-Shuʿbī and al-Aʿmash related that the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—used to write “In Your name, O Allah” until he was commanded to write “In the name of Allah,” which he then did. When the verse was revealed, Say, ‘Call upon Allah or call upon al-Rahman’ (17:110), he wrote, “In the name of Allah, al-Rahman.” When the verse was revealed, It is from Solomon, and it is: In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful (27:30), he wrote the full basmalah. In the Musannaf of Abū Dāwūd it is reported from al-Shuʿbī, Abū Mālik, Qatādah, and Thābit ibn ʿUmārah that the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—did not write the full phrase until Sūrat al-Naml was revealed.

Fourth Issue: It is related from Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (may Allah be pleased with him) that he said, “The basmalah is the crown of the sūrahs.”

I say: This suggests that it is not an āyah of al-Fātiḥah, nor of any other sūrah—though on this point the scholars have differed.