The Dua of Ibrahim: “My Lord, Make Me Steadfast in Salāh”
Consider what a man asks for at the summit of a life spent entirely in obedience. Ibrahim, peace be upon him, was the friend of Allah, the father of prophets, the one who was tested again and again and never turned back. When the Quran preserves his personal supplication in the surah that bears his name, what does he request? Not wealth. Not victory over an enemy. Not long life, and not even Paradise named outright. He asks to be made steadfast in prayer. He asks the same for his offspring. He asks forgiveness for his parents. And he asks it for every believer who will ever live.
The whole prayer is carried by two verses — Quran 14:40 and Quran 14:41 — and this article stays with those two verses alone, looking at them clause by clause. On this site, the duas of the prophets in the Quran are gathered together in one survey, prophet by prophet. Here, a single one of those prayers is given the space it deserves, because few duas in the Quran reach as far as this one does.
The reach of the prayer can be counted in four circles. It begins with Ibrahim himself. It moves forward in time to his descendants, most of them unborn when he spoke. It turns backward to his parents, the generation before him. And it opens outward to all believers, everywhere, until the end of time. One man’s prayer, carrying four generations and the entire ummah — that is the dua of Ibrahim.
1. The Words Themselves: Quran 14:40
رَبِّ ٱجْعَلْنِى مُقِيمَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةِ وَمِن ذُرِّيَّتِى ۚ رَبَّنَا وَتَقَبَّلْ دُعَآءِ
“My Lord, make me steadfast in Salāh, and my offspring as well. And, Our Lord, grant my prayer.” (Quran 14:40)
Three requests are packed into a single breath. The first is steadfastness in Salah for Ibrahim himself. The second extends that same steadfastness to his offspring. The third asks Allah to grant the prayer itself — to accept the very supplication being made. Nothing in the verse is wasted; every clause carries a person or a plea.
Notice, too, how the address shifts as the verse unfolds. It opens with “My Lord” — one man speaking to his Lord alone. It closes with “Our Lord” — and by then the prayer is no longer his alone; his offspring have been gathered into it, and the grammar itself has widened from the singular to the shared. The verse performs, in miniature, what the whole dua does at full scale: it starts with one soul and refuses to stay there.
2. He Asked for Himself First
“My Lord, make me steadfast in Salāh” (Quran 14:40)
The first beneficiary of Ibrahim’s dua is Ibrahim. Before the offspring, before the parents, before the believers of every age, the prayer begins with the one making it: make me steadfast. There is a humility in that order that is easy to miss. This is not a beginner at the door of obedience, asking to be started on the path. This is a prophet whose faith had already been proven in fire and exile and sacrifice — and still his first request is to be kept firm in prayer.
The lesson writes itself. Steadfastness is not a station a person reaches and then possesses, like a certificate framed on a wall. It is a gift that is asked for, again and again, by the very people who seem to need it least. If Ibrahim, peace be upon him, would not presume upon his own constancy in Salah, then no worshipper today is above making the same request for himself. A doctor does not stop taking his own medicine because he has prescribed it to others for forty years; and a believer does not stop asking to be kept steadfast because he has prayed for forty years.
Notice also what he asked to be steadfast in. Of all the works of religion, he named the prayer — the five daily meetings that structure a believer’s day and hold every other act of obedience upright. The importance of Salah in Islam is such that it is the first thing Ibrahim secured for himself: before asking for his children’s future or his parents’ forgiveness, he anchored his own prayer. Everything else in the dua flows out of that anchor.
3. “And My Offspring As Well”: A Prayer That Travels Forward
“make me steadfast in Salāh, and my offspring as well” (Quran 14:40)
The second circle of the dua moves forward in time. Ibrahim’s offspring — his children, and the generations descending from them — are folded into the same request he made for himself, with the small word “as well.” He does not ask for them something different from what he asked for himself. He asks for them the very thing he wanted most for his own soul: to be people of prayer.
Think about how far that prayer reaches. A parent praying for his children today stands exactly where Ibrahim stood, and the distance between the prayer and some of its beneficiaries may be just as vast. Descendants are prayed for before they exist, before their names are known, before their choices are made. Of everything a parent can leave behind — property, reputation, advice — few gifts travel as far as a father’s dua for children and grandchildren he will never meet, asking Allah to keep them steadfast in the prayer long after his own voice has fallen silent.
The order of the request teaches, too. Ibrahim asked for his offspring’s prayer before anything else is mentioned for them — not their provision, not their safety, not their success. A parent’s deepest wish for a child, in this prophetic pattern, is that the child stands before Allah in Salah. Provision and protection matter, and other duas ask for them; but when Ibrahim compressed a father’s hopes into one clause, steadfastness in prayer is what he chose. Parents who want to follow him in praying for their children will find more in this site’s collection of duas for righteous children.
4. “Grant My Prayer”: Asking for the Answer Itself
“And, Our Lord, grant my prayer.” (Quran 14:40)
The verse then does something beautiful: it turns the dua back upon itself. Having asked for steadfastness for himself and his offspring, Ibrahim asks Allah to grant the prayer — to accept the supplication that contains those requests. The dua ends by asking for its own acceptance.
“My Lord, make me steadfast in Salāh, … And, Our Lord, grant my prayer.” (Quran 14:40)
There is a complete etiquette of supplication in that closing clause. A believer does not make his request and walk away as though the answer were owed to him; he asks, and then he asks for the asking to be received. It keeps the heart in its proper place — hopeful, but humble; confident in Allah’s generosity, but never presumptuous. Anyone who makes dua can borrow this ending: whatever you have asked for, finish as Ibrahim finished, by asking Allah to grant the prayer itself.
5. The Circle Widens: Quran 14:41
رَبَّنَا ٱغْفِرْ لِى وَلِوَٰلِدَىَّ وَلِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ يَوْمَ يَقُومُ ٱلْحِسَابُ
“Our Lord, forgive me and my parents and all believers on the day when reckoning shall take place.” (Quran 14:41)
The next verse changes the subject from steadfastness to forgiveness, and from this life to the last day. If Quran 14:40 is about being kept firm in prayer while we live, Quran 14:41 is about being forgiven on the day when living is over. Together, the two verses cover the whole span of a believer’s concern: the days he is living now, and the one Day that waits at the end of them.
Note the address this time. The verse does not warm up from “My Lord” to “Our Lord” the way the previous verse did; it begins at “Our Lord” from the very first word. By now the prayer has fully opened. The one who speaks is still Ibrahim, but the Lord he calls upon is called upon as the Lord of all the people named in the dua — himself, his parents, and all believers. The plural is not a formality. It is the sound of a prayer that was never intended to be private property.
6. Backwards in Time: “Forgive Me and My Parents”
“Our Lord, forgive me and my parents” (Quran 14:41)
Having prayed forward for his descendants, Ibrahim now prays backward for his parents. The dua covers both directions of a man’s life: those who came from him, and those he came from. His own name still comes first in the request for forgiveness — “forgive me and my parents” — because a man answers for himself before anyone; but his parents are immediately beside him in the plea, carried in the prayer of their son at the far end of his long life.
There is something deeply moving in the placement. In the previous verse, the offspring were asked a share in steadfastness; here, the parents are asked a share in forgiveness. What a believer most wants for the generation after him is that they pray; what he most wants for the generation before him is that they be pardoned. Between those two requests, a whole family’s past and future are gathered into one short prayer. To pray for one’s parents in this way — asking Allah to forgive them — is among the lasting forms of dutifulness, and this site’s dua for parents guide gathers the prayers a believer makes for them.
7. “And All Believers”: The Dua That Includes You
“forgive me and my parents and all believers” (Quran 14:41)
The final circle is the widest of all. After himself, and after his parents, Ibrahim’s prayer opens to all believers — not his tribe, not his city, not his century, but every person of faith, in every land, in every age, down to the last believer before the reckoning. He had never seen them. He did not know their names, their languages, or their struggles. He prayed for their forgiveness anyway.
Let that land where it deserves to land. A believer reading this verse today is reading a prayer that was made for him, personally, thousands of years before he was born, by the father of the prophets. The dua of Ibrahim is not merely a text to study; for every believer, it is a prayer already in progress on his behalf, preserved in the Book he recites. And it teaches by example: a dua is not diminished by being shared. Compare the scope of the very first prophetic supplication — the dua of Adam, spoken by Adam for himself and his wife at the moment of their slip — with this one, in which a single prayer takes in the whole family of faith across all of time. The family had grown, and the prayer grew with it. Ours should too: the believer who prays only for himself has not yet learned the dimensions of Ibrahim’s dua.
8. “On the Day When Reckoning Shall Take Place”
“on the day when reckoning shall take place.” (Quran 14:41)
The forgiveness Ibrahim requests is not left floating in general goodwill; it is dated. The day named is the day when reckoning shall take place — the day the accounts of every life are opened and settled. Ibrahim asks that when that day comes, he and his parents and all believers be found among the forgiven.
A prayer that names the last day keeps everything else in proportion. Requests for this world are real, and the Quran teaches many of them; but Ibrahim’s dua measures mercy by the moment it will matter most. Steadfastness in prayer for the days of life — and forgiveness for the day of reckoning: between those two requests, nothing a believer needs has been left out.
9. Praying Ibrahim’s Dua Today
The two verses need no improvement and no addition; a believer can take them onto his own tongue exactly as they stand, and millions do. But their pattern is also a map for our own supplications, and it is worth tracing once, slowly.
Begin with yourself — not with your complaints about others, not even with your hopes for your family, but with your own steadfastness in prayer, the request Ibrahim made first. Then move forward, to your children and the generations after you, asking for them the same prayerfulness you asked for yourself. Then turn backward, to your parents, and ask that they be forgiven. Then open the circle all the way, to the believers you know and the far greater number you do not, in places you will never visit and times you will never see. And at the end, do what Ibrahim did at the end of his first verse: ask Allah to grant the prayer itself.
Self, descendants, parents, all believers — and over it all, the day of reckoning. That is the reach of one man’s dua. It took only two verses to say, and it has been travelling through the centuries ever since, gathering in everyone who believes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What is the dua of Ibrahim in the Quran?
It is the prayer recorded in Surah Ibrahim, verses 40–41 of the Quran. In the first verse Ibrahim asks Allah to make him steadfast in Salah, and his offspring as well, and asks Him to grant his prayer:
“My Lord, make me steadfast in Salāh, and my offspring as well.” (Quran 14:40)
Q2. What did Ibrahim ask for first in his dua?
He asked first for himself — that Allah make him steadfast in Salah. Only after that did his prayer widen to his offspring, and then, in the following verse, to his parents and all believers:
“My Lord, make me steadfast in Salāh” (Quran 14:40)
Q3. Who is included in Ibrahim’s prayer for forgiveness?
Three are named together in Quran 14:41: Ibrahim himself, his parents, and all believers. The forgiveness is asked for them on the day when reckoning shall take place:
“Our Lord, forgive me and my parents and all believers on the day when reckoning shall take place.” (Quran 14:41)
Q4. Why does the dua mention the day of reckoning?
Because the forgiveness Ibrahim seeks is sought for that specific day — the day when the reckoning of every life takes place. His prayer joins steadfastness in prayer during life with forgiveness at the end of it:
“on the day when reckoning shall take place.” (Quran 14:41)
Q5. How does Ibrahim’s dua join parents and children in a single prayer?
In Quran 14:40 his children are prayed for in the same breath as himself, asked a share in steadfastness in Salah; in Quran 14:41 his parents are prayed for alongside him, asked a share in forgiveness:
“make me steadfast in Salāh, and my offspring as well” (Quran 14:40)
“forgive me and my parents” (Quran 14:41)