Theetymology of the wordAllāh has been discussed extensively by classical Arab philologists.[16] The majority of scholars consider it to be derived from acontraction of theArabic definite articleal- andilāh "deity, god" toal-lāh meaning "the deity, the God".[16] In some sources, the contracted and un-contracted forms are used interchangeably.[17] The contraction of the terms is mirrored by the parallel contraction ofal-ʾilāt toAllāt.[18] Originally,ʾilāh was used as an epithet for the West Semitic creator godʾIlu (theUgaritic version ofEl), before being adopted as the proper name itself for this god.[19]
A minority hypothesis posits that Allah is a loanword from theSyriacAlāhā.[20][21] However, this form is likely a phonetic adaptation of the Arabic.[22][23]
Grammarians of theBasra school regarded it as either formed "spontaneously" (murtajal) or as the determined form oflāh (from the verbal rootlyh with the meaning of "lofty" or "hidden").[16] Other Muslims scholars proposed that the term derives fromwilah (the object of mystery) since the nature of God is a mystery and incomprehensible for humans.[24][25]: 162
Semiticcognates of "Allāh" appear in Semitic languages,[26] such as the AramaicʼElāh (אלה) in the absolute form, and in its definite/emphatic form,ʼElāhā (אלהא), the form reflected inBiblical Aramaic. Also Syriacܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ (ʼAlāhā), both meaning simply "god", or "deity", used by both monotheists and pagans.[27] Others are Akkadian ʾilum, Ugartic ʾilu, and Phoenician ʾl.
Regional variants of the wordAllah occur in both pagan and Christian pre-Islamic inscriptions.[10][28] According toMarshall Hodgson, it seems that in the pre-Islamic Arabia, some Arab Christians undertook pilgrimages to theKaaba, a pagan temple at that time, honoring Allah there as the God Creator.[29]
In an inscription of Christian martyrion dated to 512, references to al-ilah (الاله)[30] appear in both Arabic and Aramaic. The inscription opens with the phrase "By the Help of al-ilah".[31][32]
Archaeological excavations have led to the discovery of ancientpre-Islamic inscriptions and tombs made byArab Christians in the ruins of a church atUmm el-Jimal in NorthernJordan, which initially, according toEnno Littmann (1949), contained references toAllah as the proper name of God. However, on a second revision by Bellamy et al. (1985 & 1988) the five-verse inscription was retranslated: "(1)This [inscription] was set up by colleagues of ʿUlayh, (2) son of ʿUbaydah, secretary (3) of the cohort Augusta Secunda (4) Philadelphiana; may he go mad who (5) effaces it."[33][34][35]
Irfan Shahîd quoting the 10th-century encyclopedic collectionKitab al-Aghani notes that pre-Islamic Arab Christians have been reported to have raised the battle cry "Ya La Ibad Allah" (O slaves of Allah) to invoke each other into battle.[36] According to Shahid, on the authority of 10th-century Muslim scholarAl-Marzubani, "Allah" was also mentioned in pre-Islamic Christian poems by someGhassanid andTanukhid poets inSyria and NorthernArabia.[37][38][39]
Different theories have been proposed regarding the role of Allah in pre-Islamicpolytheistic cults. According to the Quran commentatorIbn Kathir, Arab idolaters considered Allah as an unseen God who created and controlled the Universe. Pagans believed worship of humans or animals who had fortunate occurrences in their life brought them closer to God. Pre-Islamic Meccans worshiped Allah alongside a host of lesser gods and those whom they called the "daughters of Allah."[11] Islam forbade worship of anyone or anything other than God.[40] Some authors have suggested that polytheistic Arabs used the name as a reference to acreator god or a supreme deity of theirpantheon.[41][42] The term may have been vague in theMeccan religion.[41][43]
According to one hypothesis, theKaaba was first dedicated to a supreme deity named Allah and then hosted the pantheon of Quraysh (360 idols) after their conquest ofMecca, about a century before the time ofMuhammad.[10] Some inscriptions seem to indicate the use of Allah as a name of a polytheist deity centuries earlier, although the exact nature of this usage remains unclear.[10] Some scholars have suggested that Allah may have represented a remote creator god who was gradually eclipsed by more particularized local deities.[44][45] There is disagreement on whether Allah played a major role in the Meccan religious cult.[44][46] No iconic representation of Allah is known to have existed.[46][47] Muhammad's father's name wasʿAbd-Allāh meaning "the slave of Allāh".[43] The interpretation that Pre-Islamic Arabs once practicedAbrahamic religions is supported by some literary evidence, being the prevalence ofIshmael, whose God was that ofAbraham, in pre-Islamic Arab culture.[48][49][50]
In contrast with pre-Islamic Arabianpolytheism, as stated byGerhard Böwering, God in Islam does not have associates and companions, nor is there any kinship between God andjinn.[51] Pre Islamic Arabs believed in a blind, powerful, unstoppable and insensible fate over which man had no control. This was replaced with the Islamic belief of a powerful yet benevolent and merciful God's control over man's life.[12] According toFrancis Edward Peters, "TheQur'ān insists, Muslims believe, and historians affirm thatMuhammad and his followers worship the same God as the Jews (29:46). The Qur'an's Allah is the same Creator God who covenanted withAbraham". Peters states that the Qur'an portrays Allah as both more powerful and more remote thanYahweh, and as a universal deity, unlike Yahweh who closely followsIsraelites.[52]
Since the first centuries of Islam, Arabic-speaking commentators of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faith used the termAllah as a generic term for the supreme being.[53]Saadia Gaon used the termAllah interchangeably with the termʾĔlōhīm.[53]Theodore Abu Qurrah translatestheos asAllah in his Bible, as in John 1:1 "the Word was with Allah".[53] Muslim commentators likewise used the term Allah for the Biblical concept of God.Ibn Qutayba writes "You cannot serve both Allah and Mammon.".[53] However, Muslim translators of the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia rarely translated theTetragrammaton, referring to the supreme being in Israelite tradition, asAllah. Instead, most commentators either translatedYahweh as eitheryahwah orrabb, the latter corresponding to the Jewish custom to refer to Yahweh asAdonai.[53]
Most Qur'ancommentators, includingal-Tabari (d. 923),al-Zamakhshari (d. 1143/44), andal-Razi (d. 1209), regardAllah to be a proper noun.[54] While other names ofGod in Islam denote attributes or adjectives, the termAllah specifically refers to his essence as his real name (ism'alam li-dhatih).[54] The other names are known as the99 Names of Allah (al-asmā' al-ḥusná lit. meaning: 'the best names' or 'the most beautiful names') and considered attributes, each of which represents a distinct characteristic of Allah.[13][55] All these names refer to Allah, the supreme and all-comprehensive divine name.[56] Among the 99 names of God, the most famous and most frequent of these names are "the Merciful" (ar-Raḥmān) and "the Compassionate" (ar-Raḥīm),[13][55] including the previously mentioned aboveal-Aḥad ("the One, the Indivisible") andal-Wāḥid ("the Unique, the Single").
According to Islamic belief, Allah is the most common word to represent God,[51] and humble submission to his will, divine ordinances and commandments is the foundation of the Muslim faith.[12] "He is the only God, creator of the universe, and the judge of humankind."[12][13] "He is unique (wāḥid) and inherently one (aḥad), all-merciful and omnipotent."[12] No human eyes can see Allah till the Day of Judgment.[57] The Qur'an declares "the reality of Allah, His inaccessible mystery, His various names, and His actions on behalf of His creatures."[12] Allah does not depend on anything.[58] Allah is not considered a part of the Christian Trinity.[59] God has no parents and no children.[60]
The attributes of Allah Almighty are described in this way in theAyat al-Kursi ofSurah al-Baqarah in the Holy Quran.
"Allah! There is no god ˹worthy of worship˺ except Him, the Ever-Living, All-Sustaining. Neither drowsiness nor sleep overtakes Him. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. Who could possibly intercede with Him without His permission? He ˹fully˺ knows what is ahead of them and what is behind them, but no one can grasp any of His knowledge—except what He wills ˹to reveal˺. His Seat encompasses the heavens and the earth, and the preservation of both does not tire Him. For He is the Most High, the Greatest."[61]
In aSufi practice known asdhikr Allāh (Arabic:ذِكر الله, lit. "Remembrance of God"), the Sufi chants and contemplates the nameAllah or other associated divine names to Him while regulating his or her breath.[64]
The Islamic tradition to useAllah as the personal name of God became contested in contemporary scholarship, including the question, whether or not the wordAllah should be translated asGod.[65]Umar Faruq Abd-Allah encouraged English-speaking Muslims to use God instead of Allah for the sake of finding "extensive middle ground we share with other Abrahamic and universal traditions".[54]
Most Muslims use the Arabic phrasein shā'a llāh (meaning 'if God wills') untranslated after references to future events.[66] Muslim devotional practices encourage beginning things with the invocation ofbi-smi llāh (meaning 'In the name of God').[67] There are certain other phrases in praise of God that are commonly used by Muslims and left untranslated, including "Subḥāna llāh" (Glory be to God), "al-ḥamdu li-llāh" (Praise be to God), "lā ilāha illā llāh" (There is no deity but God) or sometimes "lā ilāha illā inta/ huwa" (There is no deity butYou/Him) and "Allāhu Akbar" (God is the Most Great) as a devotional exercise of remembering God (dhikr).[68]
Arab Christians have used two forms of invocations that wereaffixed to the beginning of their written works. They adopted the Muslimbismillāh, and also created their ownTrinitarianbismillāh as early as the 8th century.[70] The Muslimbismillāh reads: "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful." The Trinitizedbismillāh reads: "In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God." TheSyriac,Latin andGreek invocations do not have the words "One God" at the end. This addition was made to emphasize themonotheistic aspect of Trinitarian belief and also to make it more palatable to Muslims.[70]
Pronunciation
The wordAllāh is generally pronounced[ɑɫˈɫɑː(h)], exhibiting a heavylām,[ɫ], avelarized alveolar lateral approximant, a marginal phoneme inModern Standard Arabic. Since the initial alef has nohamza, the initial[a] is elided when a preceding word ends in a vowel. If the preceding vowel is/i/, thelām is light,[l], as in, for instance, theBasmala.[71]
As a loanword
English and other European languages
The history of the nameAllāh in English was probably influenced by the study ofcomparative religion in the 19th century; for example,Thomas Carlyle (1840) sometimes used the term Allah but without any implication that Allah was anything different from God. However, in his biography of Muḥammad (1934),Tor Andræ always used the termAllah, though he allows that this "conception of God" seems to imply that it is different from that of the Jewish and Christian theologies.[72]
Languages which may not commonly use the termAllah to denote God may still contain popular expressions which use the word. For example, because of the centuries longMuslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula, the wordojalá in the Spanish language andoxalá in thePortuguese language exist today, borrowed fromAndalusi Arabiclaw šá lláh[73] similar toinshalla (Arabic:إِنْ شَاءَ ٱللَّٰهُ). This phrase literally means 'if God wills'.[74] The German poetMahlmann used the form "Allah" as the title of a poem about the ultimate deity, though it is unclear how much Islamic thought he intended to convey.
Some Muslims retain the name "Allāh" untranslated in English, rather than using the English translation "God".[75]
Christians in Malaysia and Indonesia useAllah to refer to God in theMalaysian andIndonesian languages (both of them standardized forms of theMalay language). Mainstream Bible translations in the language useAllah as the translation of HebrewElohim (translated in English Bibles as "God").[76] This goes back to early translation work byFrancis Xavier in the 16th century.[77][78] The first dictionary of Dutch-Malay by Albert Cornelius Ruyl, Justus Heurnius, and Caspar Wiltens in 1650 (revised edition from 1623 edition and 1631 Latin edition) recordedAllah" as the translation of the Dutch wordGodt.[79] Ruyl also translated theGospel of Matthew in 1612 into the Malay language (an early Bible translation into a non-European language,[80] made a year after the publication of theKing James Version[81][82]), which was printed in the Netherlands in 1629. Then he translated theGospel of Mark, published in 1638.[83][84]
For a timeit became illegal for non-Muslims to use "Allah" after the country experienced a social and political upheaval in the face of the word being used byMalaysian Christians andSikhs. Thegovernment of Malaysia in 2007 prohibited usage of the termAllah in any other but Muslim contexts, but theMalayan High Court in 2009overturned the law, ruling it unconstitutional. WhileAllah had been used for the Christian God in Malay for more than four centuries, the contemporary controversy was triggered by usage ofAllah by the Roman Catholic newspaperThe Herald. The government appealed the court ruling, and the High Court suspended implementation of its verdict until the hearing of the appeal. In October 2013 the court ruled in favor of the government's ban.[85] In early 2014 the Malaysian government confiscated more than 300 bibles for using the word to refer to the Christian God in Peninsular Malaysia.[86] However, the use ofAllah is not prohibited in the two Malaysian states ofSabah andSarawak.[87][88] The main reason it is not prohibited in these two states is that usage has been long-established and local Alkitab (Bibles) have been widely distributed freely in East Malaysia without restrictions for years.[87] Both states also do not have similar Islamic state laws as those in West Malaysia.[89] The ban was overturned in 2021.[90][91][92][89]
In reaction to some media criticism, the Malaysian government has introduced a "10-point solution" to avoid confusion and misleading information.[93][94] The 10-point solution is in line with the spirit of the18- and20-point agreements of Sarawak and Sabah.[89]
The wordAllāh is always written without analif to spell theā vowel. This is because the spelling was established before Arabic spelling started regularly usingalif to spellā. However, in vocalized spelling, asmall diacriticalif is added on top of theshaddah to indicate the pronunciation.
In the pre-IslamicZabad inscription,[95] God is referred to by the termالاله, that is, alif-lam-alif-lam-ha.[30] This presumably indicatesAl-'ilāh means "the god", withoutalif forā.
Many Arabic type fonts feature specialligatures for Allah.[96]
SinceArabic script is used to write other texts rather than Koran only, renderinglām +lām +hā' as the previous ligature is considered faulty which is the case with most common Arabic typefaces.
This simplified style is often preferred for clarity, especially in non-Arabic languages, but may not be considered appropriate in situations where a more elaborate style of calligraphy is preferred.
Unicode has a code point reserved forAllāh,U+FDF2ﷲARABIC LIGATURE ALLAH ISOLATED FORM,[98]in theArabic Presentation Forms-A block, which exists solely for "compatibility with some older, legacy character sets that encoded presentation forms directly";[99][100] this is not recommended for new text. Instead, the wordAllāh should be represented by its individual Arabic letters, while modern font technologies will generate the desired ligature.
^"God".Islam: Empire of Faith. PBS. Archived fromthe original on 27 March 2014. Retrieved18 December 2010.
^"Islam and Christianity",Encyclopedia of Christianity (2001): Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews also refer to God asAllāh.
^Gardet, L."Allah". In Bearman, P.; Bianquis, Th.; Bosworth, C.E.; van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W.P. (eds.).Encyclopaedia of Islam Online. Brill Online. Retrieved2 May 2007.
^Merriam-Webster."Allah".Merriam-Webster. Archived fromthe original on 20 April 2014. Retrieved25 February 2012.
^abAnthony S. Mercatante & James R. Dow (2004). "Allah".The Facts on File Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend. Facts on File. p. 53.ISBN978-1-4381-2685-2.
^Carl Skutsch (2005).Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities. Routledge. p. 480.
^abcD.B. Macdonald. Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed, Brill. "Ilah", Vol. 3, p. 1093.
^Sinai, Nicholas (2019).Rain-Giver, Bone-Breaker, Score-Settler: Allāh in Pre-Quranic Poetry. Atlanta, GA: American Oriental Society. p. 7.ISBN978-1-948488-25-9.
^Reynolds, Gabriel Said (2020).Allah: God in the Qur'an. New Haven: Yale university press. p. 14.ISBN978-0-300-24658-2.
^Sinai, Nicholas (2019).Rain-Giver, Bone-Breaker, Score-Settler: Allāh in Pre-Quranic Poetry. Atlanta, GA: American Oriental Society. p. 8.ISBN978-1-948488-25-9.
^Kiltz, David. "The Relationship between Arabic Allāh and Syriac Allāha." Der Islam 88.1 (2012): 47.
^Ibrahim, Zakyi. "To Use 'God' or 'Allah'?".American Journal of Islam and Society 26.4 (2009): v.
^ibn ʿUmar al-Baydawi, ʿAbd Allah (2016).The Lights Of Revelation And The Secrets Of Interpretation. Translated by Haddad, Gibril Fouad. Beacon Books and Media Limited.ISBN978-0-9926335-7-8.
^Columbia Encyclopaedia says: Derived from an old Semitic root referring to the Divine and used in the CanaaniteEl, the Mesopotamianilu, and the biblicalElohim andEloah, the word Allah is used by all Arabic-speaking Muslims, Christians, Jews, and other monotheists.
^Hitti, Philip Khouri (1970).History of the Arabs. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 100–101.
^Marshall G. S. Hodgson,The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization,University of Chicago Press, p. 156
^abM. A. Kugener, "Nouvelle Note Sur L'Inscription Trilingue De Zébed", Rivista Degli Studi Orientali, pp. 577-586.
^Adolf Grohmann, Arabische Paläographie II: Das Schriftwesen und die Lapidarschrift (1971), Wien: Hermann Böhlaus Nochfolger, Page: 6-8
^Beatrice Gruendler, The Development of the Arabic Scripts: From the Nabatean Era to the First Islamic Century according to Dated Texts (1993), Atlanta: Scholars Press, Page:
^James Bellamy, "Two Pre-Islamic Arabic Inscriptions Revised: Jabal Ramm and Umm al-Jimal",Journal of the American Oriental Society, 108/3 (1988) pp. 372–378 (translation of the inscription) "This was set up by colleagues/friends of ʿUlayh, the son of ʿUbaydah, secretary/adviser of the cohort Augusta Secunda Philadelphiana; may he go mad/crazy who effaces it."
^Carl W. Ernst, Bruce B. Lawrence,Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and Beyond, Macmillan, p. 29
^Andreas Görke and Johanna Pink Tafsir and Islamic Intellectual History Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre Oxford University Press in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies LondonISBN978-0-19-870206-1 p. 478
^Gary S. Gregg,The Middle East: A Cultural Psychology, Oxford University Press, p.30
^Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban,Islamic Society in Practice, University Press of Florida, p. 24
^M. Mukarram Ahmed, Muzaffar Husain Syed,Encyclopaedia of Islam, Anmol Publications PVT. LTD, p. 144
^Lewis, Bernard; Holt, P. M.; Holt, Peter R.; Lambton, Ann Katherine Swynford (1977).The Cambridge history of Islam. Cambridge, Eng: University Press. p. 32.ISBN978-0-521-29135-4.
^abThomas E. Burman,Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs,Brill, 1994, p. 103
^But compare:Milkias, Paulos (2011). "Ge'ez Literature (Religious)".Ethiopia. Africa in Focus. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 299.ISBN978-1-59884-257-9. Retrieved15 February 2018.Monasticism played a key role in the Ethiopian literary movement. The Bible was translated during the time of the Nine Saints in the early sixth century [...].
^Barton, John (2002–12). The Biblical World, Oxford, UK: Routledge.ISBN978-0-415-27574-3.
^North, Eric McCoy; Eugene Albert Nida ((2nd Edition) 1972). The Book of a Thousand Tongues, London: United Bible Societies.
