Every other page here is something offered to you. This one is the other way round. Asking Allah for somebody else is the one form of giving open to you from your very first week — it costs nothing, needs no Arabic, no knowledge and no money, and the person never has to know you did it.
How to say these
A du'a is simply asking Allah. You can say it out loud or silently, in English or in Arabic, sitting, standing, walking or lying down, and at any hour. Nothing here has to be memorised, and reading it from the screen is fine. You cannot get the words wrong — stumbling over them, forgetting half, or saying it in your own words instead does not spoil it. If you want to know more about how a particular one is said, that's a good question for a scholar — you can find someone to ask here.
Each one below is the full account it comes from, with the words of the du'a inside it. We show it whole rather than cutting it short, because deciding where a du'a begins and ends is for our scholarly board, not for us. A shorter, easier form is being prepared.
For someone who isn't there
What it's for
Asking Allah for somebody else — a parent, a friend, someone who is struggling, someone you have fallen out with.
When
Whenever they come to mind. They never have to know, and there is nothing to arrange first.
My husband reported that he heard Allah's Mes- senger (ﷺ) as saying: He who supplicates for his brother behind his back (in his absence), the Angel commissioned (for carrying supplication to his Lord) says: Amen, and it is for you also.
And [there is a share for] those who come after them, saying, "Our Lord, forgive us and our brothers who preceded us in faith and put not in our hearts [any] resentment toward those who have believed. Our Lord, indeed You are Kind and Merciful."
Grounded with quran.ai: fetch_translation(17:24, en-sahih-international); fetch_translation(59:10, en-sahih-international)
These are prayers for other people found in the Qur'an itself. The first is for the people who raised you — which some find easier to say than to feel, and it is worth saying anyway. The second is for people you will never meet.