Invocations of god found in early Islamic texts tends towards the spur-of-the-moment, or those informed by pre-Islamic rituals and practices. Quranic recitation is more often practiced as a form of invocation and supplication than any other. However, this use of the Qur’an as invocation begins to change in the medieval period; and one easy method of measuring this change is with the increasing popularity of manuals involving supplication(du’a). Nowhere else is this more apparent than in the proliferation of Shi’a du’a manuals. However, while there is an acknowledgment of the importance of du’a in the Shi’a tradition, there is little study on how it is transmitted and practiced. More often, there is a gesture to the importance of du’a in practice, with little sustained study as to the structure and content of both individual du’a and du’a manuals. This study aims to rectify that lack of scholarship by adopting the methods used in historical analysis of pilgrimage (ziyara) texts, as well as the methods used in the study of the history of Christianity. First, there is an increasing awareness of the centrality of pilgrimage for the Shi’a community, and how that is expressed formally through ziyara manuals. Second, studies of Christian prayers and prayer manuals allows scholars to recreate the use of ritual in communal boundaries and performative practice in the history of Christianity. The methods used by these fields provides a method for examining the public and performative aspects of du’a in the Shi’a community, and the increasingly normative understanding of what constitutes appropriate practice. Studying the development of these manuals gives an insight into the development of a normative supplication system, its authorities, and its uses in the community. By tracing their development, from the Fada’il al-Ashhur al-Thalatha (The Benefits of the Three Months) of al-Shaykh al-Saduq (d. 381/991) to the to the Mafatih al-Jinan of Shaykh Abbas Qummi (d.1359/1940), this paper will examine how supplication manuals function as a site of justifying authority, reiterating common practice, and encouraging communal boundaries through ritual.