Origin

In one Islamic tradition, the Islamic prophet Muhammad used to call God by all His Names:

اللهم إني ادعوك بأسمائك الحسنى كلها "O Allah, I invoke You with all of Your Beautiful Names."

Muhammad is also reported to have said in a famous hadith:

Verily, there are ninety-nine names of God, one hundred minus one. He who enumerates [and believes in them and the one God behind] them would get into Paradise.

Of note is that this hadith does not say that there are only 99 names, but 99 names that are better than the others. This caused people to search them out in the Qur'an and Sunnah, and a list was compiled. Over time it became custom to recite the list in its entirety. While some Muslims believe that this list is mentioned by Muhammad himself, the specialist Muslim scholars argue strongly that the list was just compiled by a Muslim scholar as an addendum to the actual hadith (al-Waleed ibn Muslim). If it was only an attempt of a scholar, they are not necessarily the names proper, and other attempts may still be made. A recent scholar, Dr. Mahmoud Abdel-Razek, made an attempt of this kind and explained in detail why he differs in opinion with al-Waleed about enlisting some of the names.

However, reciting the traditional names has developed into a ritual by some Muslims as an attempt to enumerate them, while most other Muslims believe that the "enumeration" is not just the act of recitation, but applying the attributes that the names suggest.