Dua on Laylatul Qadr

When. On the odd nights of the last ten of Ramadan, when Laylat al-Qadr is sought. Aisha asked the Prophet ﷺ what to say if she knew which night it was, and this is what he taught her — which is worth noticing, because the answer to "the night when supplication is answered" was not a list of things to ask for.

The words. ʿAfuwwun is the intensive form: not one who pardons on occasion but one whose pardoning is constant and total. The root ع-ف-و carries erasure — ʿafw is a wiping away that leaves nothing behind, as against maghfira, which covers a thing over. So the request is not for the fault to be hidden but for it to be gone.

Tuḥibbu al-ʿafwa — "You love to pardon." The request is placed after a statement about what Allah loves, so the asking leans on His nature rather than on the asker's case.

Why it asks for so little. On the night the tradition holds to be better than a thousand months, the supplication taught is four words long and asks for one thing. The older commentators read that as the point: what a person most needs on such a night is not to be given more but to be relieved of what they carry.

Practical. It is short enough to repeat through a night, which is how most people use it. There is no fixed count and nothing else is required before it.