al-Kalim al-Tayyib
- Author died
- 728 AH
- Editions
- Dar Al-Fikr Al-Lubnani li-al-Tiba'ah wa-al-Nashr
al-Kalim al-Tayyib (The Good Words) is a handbook of prophetic supplications and daily invocations compiled by the Hanbali theologian and jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728 AH / 1328 CE) . Structured in the concise style of a foundational primer (matn), the book brings together established traditions on the remembrance of God (dhikr) and specific prayers for daily life and various occasions .
Content and Method
The work compiles reports and hadiths covering morning and evening supplications, words of remembrance for prayers, sleep, entering and leaving dwellings, seeking protection against harm, distress (karb), and various everyday circumstances . Ibn Taymiyya formatted the collection compactly, focusing on the texts of the invocations and attributing their narrations across the hadith corpus, occasionally offering evaluations of their transmission chains .
Reception and Related Works
al-Kalim al-Tayyib is regarded among the prominent classical compilations on supplications and devotional remembrance, frequently cited alongside al-Nawawi’s al-Adhkar and Ibn al-Qayyim’s al-Wabil al-Sayyib . Ibn al-Qayyim drew directly upon the work and composed his treatise al-Wabil al-Sayyib min al-Kalim al-Tayyib in connection with it .
Because the text was arranged as a concise primer, unlike many of Ibn Taymiyya’s longer polemical treatises, it received formal scholarly commentary . The Hanafi scholar Badr al-Din al-Ayni authored an extensive commentary on it titled al-'Alam al-Hayyib Sharh al-Kalim al-Tayyib .
In modern times, the work was verified and edited by several hadith scholars, notably Abd al-Qadir al-Arna'ut and Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani . Al-Albani produced a critical edition with hadith verification and also published an abridgment containing exclusively its authentic narrations, titled Sahih al-Kalim al-Tayyib .
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