Peace Be Upon Him (Islam)

Peace Be Upon Him (Islam)

Peace be upon him is a phrase that practising Muslims often say after saying (or hearing) the name of one of the Prophets of Islam.

There are three variants of this phrase in Arabic:

• "Peace be upon him": (Arabic: عليه السلام‎ ʿalayhi s-salām - A.S.) - this expression follows after naming any prophet other than Muhammad, or one of the archangels (i.e. Jibreel, Mikaeel, etc.)
• "May Allah pray on him and grant him peace.": (Arabic: صلى الله عليه وسلم‎ ṣall Allāhu ʿalay-hi wa-sallam - S.A.W., SAAW, or SAAS) - this expression follows specifically after saying the name of the last prophet of Islam, Muhammad.
• "May Allah grant peace and pray on him and his family.": (Arabic: صلى الله عليه وآله‎ ṣall Allahu ʿalayhi wa-’ālih - S.A.W.W.) - this expression follows specifically after saying the name of the last prophet of Islam,

In Arabic these salutations are called ṣalawāt, and are abbreviated by some with the use of SAW (in accordance with the Arabic words sallallahu alayhi wasallam) or PBUH (which stands for Peace be upon him in English). However, this practice is considered to be controversial among senior Islamic scholars who disagree with this use on the basis that it demonstrates a lack of respect and laziness.

The phrase is also encoded as a ligature at Unicode codepoint U+FDFA ﷺ.

The same phrase is used in Judaism for the dead in general; it is not usually abbreviated pbuh.