Dua of the indebted (taught by the Prophet)

When. Under a debt, and in the state that comes with one — the sleeplessness, the avoided phone call. It opens by naming Allah three times before asking for anything, which is worth noticing when the impulse is to start with the problem.

The words. Farij al-hamm and kashif al-ghamm look like the same phrase twice. They are not. Farj is a split, an opening made in something closed; hamm is the worry that presses. Kashf is uncovering, lifting a lid; and ghamm comes from a root meaning to cover over — the same root behind clouds covering the sky. So grief is described as something laid over a person, and the request is that it be lifted off, while worry is described as an enclosure, and the request is that it be split open. Two different shapes of trouble, two different verbs.

Mudtarrin. The third name is the striking one: 'Answerer of the call of the mudtarrin'. Mudtarr is passive — one who has been driven to necessity, backed into it, with no option left. It is the word of the Qur'an in an-Naml (27:62), where answering the compelled one who calls is given as something only Allah does. A person in debt is being invited to place himself in that category rather than pretend he is managing.

Then the request. Only after the three does iqdi anni dayni come, one short clause: settle my debt for me. The proportion is part of the lesson.

A note. It stands alongside the ordinary work of repayment, not in place of it.