The misbaha is a string of beads used to count the phrases of the remembrance of God, and it is the Islamic member of the wide family of prayer-counting devices.
Counting the dhikr
The misbaha most often carries thirty-three or ninety-nine beads, numbers tied to the phrases repeated after prayer, the declarations of God greatness, the thanks and the praise said in sets of thirty-three, and to the ninety-nine names of God. The beads let the worshipper keep the count while the attention rests on the words, which is the same principle that governs the rosary and the mala, and a marker bead or tassel divides the string. The counting can be done equally on the fingers, and some hold that the fingers are preferable, so the beads are an aid rather than a requirement.
Use and dispute
The misbaha is in very wide use across the Muslim world, carried in the hand and turned during and after prayer and in quiet moments, and it has become a familiar object of ordinary Muslim life. Its use is nonetheless disputed: some reform-minded currents, holding that the Prophet and his Companions counted on the fingers, regard the beads as a later innovation to be avoided, so an object entirely ordinary in most of the Muslim world is deliberately set aside in others. The device belongs to the same trans-Eurasian history of prayer beads that connects the mala, the misbaha and the rosary.