Dalā’il al-khayrāt wa-shawāriq al-anwār fī ṣalāt ‘alá al-Nabī al-mukhtār (The Signs of Benevolent Deeds and the Brilliant Bursts of Light in Remembrance of the Prayers on/for the Chosen Prophet)

Dalā’il al-khayrāt is one of the most popular collections of prayers and invocations for the Prophet Muḥammad in Arabic across the Muslim world, from West Africa to Southeast Asia. This copy of the work is particularly notable for the beauty of its illustrations, including the bird’s-eye views of Mecca (right) and Medina (left). 



Maghribi scholar and Sufi Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān al-Jazūlī wrote Dalā’il al-khayrāt in 1453, compiling works from multiple sources and recording them with his own authorial voice. During the early part of the 17th century, copies arrived in the Ottoman Empire, where the work gradually gained renown. This Ottoman copy, completed in Turkey in 1792, is bound with two other manuscripts: a collection of prayers by the scholar ‘Alī al-Qārī (d. 1606) and a 19th-century devotional work that invokes the names of the Prophet’s companions who participated in the Battle of Badr.