Hadith Text
Hadith 13:
وَعَنْ أَبِي هُرَيْرَةَ رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ قَالَ: سَمِعْتُ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ يَقُولُ: «وَاللَّهِ إِنِّي لأَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهَ وَأَتُوبُ إِلَيْهِ فِي الْيَوْمِ أَكْثَرَ مِنْ سَبْعِينَ مَرَّةً». رَوَاهُ الْبُخَارِيُّ.
Hadith 14:
وَعَنِ الأَغَرِّ بْنِ يَسَارٍ الْمُزَنِيِّ رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ قَالَ: قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ: «يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ تُوبُوا إِلَى اللَّهِ وَاسْتَغْفِرُوهُ، فَإِنِّي أَتُوبُ إِلَيْهِ فِي الْيَوْمِ مِائَةَ مَرَّةً». رَوَاهُ مُسْلِمٌ.
Full Translation
Hadith 13 — On the authority of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say:
“By Allah — I seek forgiveness from Allah and turn to Him in repentance more than seventy times a day.”
Narrated by al-Bukhari.
Hadith 14 — On the authority of al-Agarr ibn Yasar al-Muzani (may Allah be pleased with him) who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:
“O people — turn to Allah in repentance and seek His forgiveness. For indeed I turn to Him in repentance one hundred times a day.”
Narrated by Muslim.
Meanings of Key Words
- Wallahi (وَاللَّهِ) — By Allah; an oath — the Prophet ﷺ is swearing to emphasise the reality of what he is about to say, so no one dismisses it as exaggeration
- Astaghfiru Allah (أَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهَ) — I seek forgiveness from Allah; istighfar — asking Allah to cover, protect, and pardon
- Atobu ilayhi (أَتُوبُ إِلَيْهِ) — I turn to Him in repentance; tawbah — returning, reorienting, coming back
- Akthar min sab’eena marratan (أَكْثَرَ مِنْ سَبْعِينَ مَرَّةً) — more than seventy times; seventy in Arabic denotes abundance — “more than seventy” means: beyond counting, beyond what you would expect
- Mi’ata marratin (مِائَةَ مَرَّةً) — one hundred times; a complete, rounded number — the full measure of a day given to returning to Allah
- Ya ayyuha al-nas (يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ) — O people; not “O sinners” — addressed to all humanity, the righteous and the struggling alike
Hadith Lessons
These two hadiths sit together and must be read together — because they are making the same profound point from two angles. Hadith 13 is a personal confession. Hadith 14 is a public command. In both, the Prophet ﷺ places himself at the centre of the practice he is describing. And that placement is the entire lesson.
The Oath That Should Stop You
Hadith 13 does not begin with a ruling or a teaching. It begins with an oath: “Wallahi — By Allah.”
The Prophet ﷺ swore by Allah before saying this. Why? Because he knew that what he was about to say would be difficult to believe. The companions who heard it knew who was speaking — the man whose past and future sins had been forgiven, the most beloved of Allah’s creation, the one whose character Allah described as “of the most exalted standard.” And that man is swearing — by Allah — that he seeks forgiveness more than seventy times every single day.
The oath is directed at the listener’s disbelief. Not disbelief in the Prophet ﷺ — but the quiet, unspoken thought that might arise: “Surely he doesn’t need to do this as much as we do.” The oath closes that thought before it forms. He is saying: do not reduce what I am about to tell you. Take it fully. This is real.
Why Does the Sinless Man Repent?
This is the question that unlocks both hadiths entirely. The Prophet ﷺ was ma’sum — protected from sin. Allah had forgiven him what came before and what came after. He had no record that needed clearing in the way ordinary human beings do.
So what was he doing seventy, a hundred times a day?
Scholars give three answers — and all three together form a complete picture:
First: He was the model. Everything he did was for the Ummah to follow. When he repented a hundred times a day, he was not confessing a hundred sins — he was teaching a hundred moments of return to Allah that his community needed to see lived out, not merely instructed.
Second: He was aware of his human limitations before Allah’s infinite greatness. Even a heart as pure as his — occupied with revelation, with worship, with the weight of prophethood — would experience moments of being less than fully, perfectly present with Allah. Not sin. But a human heart’s natural distance from the divine presence. And istighfar was the constant reorientation back.
Third: His love for Allah was so intense that even the most elevated state of connection felt insufficient in comparison to what Allah deserved. The repentance was not from wrong — it was from the gap between what he gave and what Allah deserved to receive.
For us — the lesson is both humbling and freeing. If the Prophet ﷺ, with everything he was, turned to Allah a hundred times a day — then our repentance is not a crisis response. It is not the emergency exit we run to when things collapse. It is the daily rhythm of a living heart that understands its own smallness before its Lord.
“O People” — The Universal Address
In Hadith 14, the Prophet ﷺ turns outward. He calls: “Ya ayyuha al-nas — O people.” Not “O sinners.” Not “O those who have fallen.” Everyone. The righteous and the struggling. The scholar and the beginner. The one who prayed fajr and the one who missed it.
Then he commands: repent and seek forgiveness. And then he gives the reason with the most powerful possible evidence: “For indeed I do it a hundred times a day.”
This is prophetic pedagogy at its most direct. He does not say “because you sin.” He says: “because I do it — and I am telling you to follow.” The example comes before the argument. The lived reality comes before the instruction. He is not standing at a distance telling people to repent. He is standing in the middle of the practice, showing them what a day looks like when it is threaded through with returning to Allah.
What This Means for the Way We Live
Most Muslims treat istighfar and tawbah as reactive — something you do after you sin, or in Ramadan, or when life gets difficult. These two hadiths dismantle that model entirely.
The Prophet ﷺ did not repent because his day went wrong. He repented as a structure of the day itself — woven into it the way breathing is woven into it. Morning, afternoon, evening — returning to Allah was not the exception in his schedule. It was the foundation of it.
What would it look like to carry even a fraction of this into daily life? Not a performance of counting. But a genuine, recurring, quiet return — in the car, between meetings, after salah, before sleep — a moment of saying: My Lord, I return to You. Whatever distance has grown between us in this hour — I am closing it now.
A hundred times. Not as burden. As habit. As love. As the recognition that the heart, left to itself, drifts — and the practice of returning is what keeps it oriented toward the only One who matters.
Three Questions to Close With
- Do I treat istighfar as a reactive emergency — or as a daily rhythm? What would change if I made it a hundred-times-a-day practice starting tomorrow?
- When I say “astaghfirullah” — is there any genuine heart movement in it, or has it become a sound my mouth makes without my soul present?
- The Prophet ﷺ repented a hundred times a day not from sin but from love and awareness. What would my relationship with Allah look like if I repented from that place — rather than only from guilt?