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Allah ( ; "Allah". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. , ) is an Arabic term for God, specifically the monotheistic God. Outside of Arabic languages, it is principally associated with Islam (in which it is also considered the proper name), although the term was used in pre-Islamic Arabia and continues to be used today by Arabic-speaking adherents of any of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism and Christianity."Islam and Christianity", Encyclopedia of Christianity (2001): Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews also refer to God as Allāh. It is thought to be derived by contraction from al-Ilah (rtl=yes, ) and is linguistically related to God's names in other Semitic languages, such as Aramaic (rtl=yes ) and Hebrew language (rtl=yes ).
The word "Allah" now conveys the superiority or sole existence of Monotheism, but among the pre-Islamic Arabs, Creator deity and was worshipped alongside lesser deities in a pantheon. Many Jews, Christians, and early Muslims used "Allah" and "al-ilah" synonymously in Classical Arabic. The word is also frequently, albeit not exclusively, used by Bábists, Baháʼís, Mandaeans, Indonesian Christians, Maltese Christians, and Sephardic Jews, "Allah." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, AllahWillis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition Shambhala Publications 2009 page 531 as well as by the Gagauz people.
A minority hypothesis posits that Allah is a loanword from the Syriac language Alāhā.Gerhard Böwering. Encyclopedia of the Quran, Brill, 2002. Vol. 2, p. 318 However, this form is likely a phonetic adaptation of the Arabic. (2025). 9781948488259, American Oriental Society. ISBN 9781948488259Kiltz, David. "The Relationship between Arabic Allāh and Syriac Allāha." Der Islam 88.1 (2012): 47.
Grammarians of the Basra school regarded it as either formed "spontaneously" ( murtajal) or as the determined form of lāh (from the verbal root lyh with the meaning of "lofty" or "hidden"). Other Muslims scholars proposed that the term derives from wilah (the object of mystery) since the nature of God is a mystery and incomprehensible for humans.Ibrahim, Zakyi. "To Use “God” or “Allah”?." American Journal of Islam and Society 26.4 (2009): v.
Semitic cognates of "Allāh" appear in Semitic languages,Columbia Encyclopaedia says: Derived from an old Semitic root referring to the Divine and used in the Canaanite El, the Mesopotamian Ilah, and the biblical Elohim and Eloah, the word Allah is used by all Arabic-speaking Muslims, Christians, Jews, and other monotheists. such as the Aramaic ʼElāh (אלה) in the absolute form, and in its definite/emphatic form, (אלהא), the form reflected in Biblical Aramaic. Also Syriac ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ (), both meaning simply "god,” or “deity,” used by both monotheists and pagans. The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon – Entry for ʼlh Others are Akkadian ʾilum, Ugartic ʾilu, and Phoenician ʾl.
In an inscription of Christian martyrion dated to 512, references to al-ilah (الاله) appear in both Arabic and Aramaic. The inscription opens with the phrase "By the Help of al-ilah".Adolf Grohmann, Arabische Paläographie II: Das Schriftwesen und die Lapidarschrift (1971), Wien: Hermann Böhlaus Nochfolger, Page: 6-8Beatrice 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:
Archaeological excavations have led to the discovery of ancient pre-Islamic inscriptions and tombs made by Arab Christians in the ruins of a church at Umm el-Jimal in Northern Jordan, which initially, according to Enno Littmann (1949), contained references to Allah 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."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."Enno Littmann, Arabic Inscriptions (Leiden, 1949)
Irfan Shahîd quoting the 10th-century encyclopedic collection Kitab 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.Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, page 418. According to Shahid, on the authority of 10th-century Muslim scholar Al-Marzubani, "Allah" was also mentioned in pre-Islamic Christian poems by some Ghassanid and Tanukhids poets in Syria and Northern Arabia.Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, Page: 452A. Amin and A. Harun, Sharh Diwan Al-Hamasa (Cairo, 1951), Vol. 1, Pages: 478-480Al-Marzubani, Mu'jam Ash-Shu'araa, Page: 302
Different theories have been proposed regarding the role of Allah in pre-Islamic Polytheism. According to the Quran commentator Ibn 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." Islam forbade worship of anyone or anything other than God. Some authors have suggested that polytheistic Arabs used the name as a reference to a creator god or a supreme deity of their pantheon.Zeki Saritopak, Allah, The Qu'ran: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Oliver Leaman, p. 34 The term may have been vague in the Mecca.L. Gardet, Allah, Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. by Sir H.A.R. GibbGerhard Böwering, God and his Attributes, Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, ed. by Jane Dammen McAuliffe
According to one hypothesis, the Kaaba was first dedicated to a supreme deity named Allah and then hosted the pantheon of Quraysh (360 idols) after their conquest of Mecca, about a century before the time of Muhammad. 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. Some scholars have suggested that Allah may have represented a remote creator god who was gradually eclipsed by more particularized local deities. There is disagreement on whether Allah played a major role in the Meccan religious cult. No iconic representation of Allah is known to have existed. Muhammad's father's name was meaning "the slave of Allāh". The interpretation that Pre-Islamic Arabs once practiced Abrahamic religions is supported by some literary evidence, being the prevalence of Ishmael, whose God was that of Abraham, in pre-Islamic Arab culture.The Treasury of literature, Sect. 437The Beginning of History, Volume 3, Sect.10The Collection of the Speeches of Arabs, volume 1, section 75
Since the first centuries of Islam, Arabic-speaking commentators of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faith used the term Allah as a generic term for the supreme being.Thomas, Kenneth J. "Allah in Translations of the Bible." The Bible Translator 52.3 (2001): 301-306. Saadia Gaon used the term Allah interchangeably with the term Elohim. Theodore Abu Qurrah translates theos as Allah in his Bible, as in John 1:1 "the Word was with Allah". Muslim commentators likewise used the term Allah for the Biblical concept of God. Ibn Qutayba writes "You cannot serve both Allah and Mammon.". However, Muslim translators of the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia rarely translated the Tetragrammaton, referring to the supreme being in Israelite tradition, as Allah. Instead, most commentators either translated Yahweh as either yahwah or rabb, the latter corresponding to the Jewish custom to refer to Yahweh as Adonai.
Most Qur'an Tafsir, including al-Tabari (d. 923), al-Zamakhshari (d. 1143/44), and al-Razi (d. 1209), regard Allah to be a proper noun.Ibrahim, Zakyi. "To Use "God" or "Allah"?." American Journal of Islam and Society 26.4 (2009): i-vii. While other names of God in Islam denote attributes or adjectives, the term Allah specifically refers to his essence as his real name (). The other names are known as the 99 Names of Allah ( lit. meaning: 'the best names' or 'the most beautiful names') and considered attributes, each of which represents a distinct characteristic of Allah. All these names refer to Allah, the supreme and all-comprehensive divine name. Among the 99 names of God, the most famous and most frequent of these names are "the Merciful" ( ar-Raḥmān) and "the Compassionate" (), including the previously mentioned above al-Aḥad ("the One, the Indivisible") and al-Wāḥid ("the Unique, the Single").
According to Islamic belief, Allah is the most common word to represent God,Böwering, Gerhard, God and His Attributes, Encyclopaedia of the Qurʼān, Brill, 2007. and humble submission to his will, divine ordinances and commandments is the foundation of the Muslim faith. "He is the only God, creator of the universe, and the judge of humankind." "He is unique ( ) and inherently one (), all-merciful and omnipotent." No human eyes can see Allah till the Day of Judgment. The Qur'an declares "the reality of Allah, His inaccessible mystery, His various names, and His actions on behalf of His creatures." Allah does not depend on anything. Allah is not considered a part of the Christian Trinity. God has no parents and no children.
The attributes of Allah Almighty are described in this way in the Ayat al-Kursi of Surah al-Baqarah in the Holy Quran.
ٱللَّهُ لَآ إِلَـٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ٱلْحَىُّ ٱلْقَيُّومُ ۚ لَا تَأْخُذُهُۥ سِنَةٌۭ وَلَا نَوْمٌۭ ۚ لَّهُۥ مَا فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَمَا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ ۗ مَن ذَا ٱلَّذِى يَشْفَعُ عِندَهُۥٓ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِهِۦ ۚ يَعْلَمُ مَا بَيْنَ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَمَا خَلْفَهُمْ ۖ وَلَا يُحِيطُونَ بِشَىْءٍۢ مِّنْ عِلْمِهِۦٓ إِلَّا بِمَا شَآءَ ۚ وَسِعَ كُرْسِيُّهُ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضَ ۖ وَلَا يَـُٔودُهُۥ حِفْظُهُمَا ۚ وَهُوَ ٱلْعَلِىُّ ٱلْعَظِيمُ ٢٥٥
"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."
The concept correlates to the Tawhid, where chapter 112 of the Quran (Al-Ikhlas, The Sincerity) reads:Arabic script in Unicode symbol for a Quran verse, U+06DD, page 3, Proposal for additional Unicode characters
In a Sufi practice known as (Arabic: ذِكر الله, lit. "Remembrance of God"), the Sufi chants and contemplates the name Allah or other associated divine names to Him while regulating his or her breath.Carl W. Ernst, Bruce B. Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and Beyond, Macmillan, p. 29
Most Muslims use the Arabic phrase (meaning 'if God wills') untranslated after references to future events.Gary S. Gregg, The Middle East: A Cultural Psychology, Oxford University Press, p.30 Muslim devotional practices encourage beginning things with the invocation of Basmala (meaning 'In the name of God').Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Islamic Society in Practice, University Press of Florida, p. 24 There are certain other phrases in praise of God that are commonly used by Muslims and left untranslated, including "" (Glory be to God), "Alhamdulillah" (Praise be to God), "Shahada" (There is no deity but God) or sometimes "" (There is no deity but You/ Him) and "Takbir" (God is the Most Great) as a devotional exercise of remembering God (dhikr).M. Mukarram Ahmed, Muzaffar Husain Syed, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Anmol Publications PVT. LTD, p. 144
Arab Christians have used two forms of invocations that were to the beginning of their written works. They adopted the Muslim , and also created their own Trinity as early as the 8th century. The Muslim reads: "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful." The Trinitized reads: "In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God." The Syriac language, Latin and Greek language invocations do not have the words "One God" at the end. This addition was made to emphasize the monotheism aspect of Trinitarian belief and also to make it more palatable to Muslims.Thomas E. Burman, Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs, Brill Publishers, 1994, p. 103
Languages which may not commonly use the term Allah to denote God may still contain popular expressions which use the word. For example, because of the centuries long Al-Andalus, the word ojalá in the Spanish language and oxalá in the Portuguese language exist today, borrowed from Andalusi Arabic similar to (). This phrase literally means 'if God wills'.Islam in Luce López Baralt, Spanish Literature: From the Middle Ages to the Present, Brill, 1992, p.25 The German poet Mahlmann 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".F. E. Peters, The Monotheists: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Conflict and Competition, Princeton University Press, p.12
For a time it 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 by Malaysian Christians and Sikhs. The government of Malaysia in 2007 prohibited usage of the term Allah in any other but Muslim contexts, but the Malayan High Court in 2009 overturned the law, ruling it unconstitutional. While Allah had been used for the Christian God in Malay for more than four centuries, the contemporary controversy was triggered by usage of Allah by the Roman Catholic newspaper The 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. In early 2014 the Malaysian government confiscated more than 300 bibles for using the word to refer to the Christian God in Peninsular Malaysia. However, the use of Allah is not prohibited in the two Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak. 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. Both states also do not have similar Islamic state laws as those in West Malaysia. The ban was overturned in 2021. Sikhs target of 'Allah' attack, Julia Zappei, 14 January 2010, The New Zealand Herald. Accessed on line 15 January 2014. Malaysia court rules non-Muslims can't use 'Allah', 14 October 2013, The New Zealand Herald. Accessed on line 15 January 2014. Malaysia's Islamic authorities seize Bibles as Allah row deepens, Niluksi Koswanage, 2 January 2014, Reuters. Accessed on line 15 January 2014. [8]
In reaction to some media criticism, the Malaysian government has introduced a "10-point solution" to avoid confusion and misleading information. The 10-point solution is in line with the spirit of the 18- and 20-point agreements of Sarawak and Sabah.
In the pre-Islamic Zabad inscription,
God is referred to by the term الاله, that is, alif-lam-alif-lam-ha. This presumably indicates means "the god", without for ā.
Many Arabic type fonts feature special ligatures for Allah.
Since Arabic script is used to write other texts rather than Koran only, rendering + + as the previous ligature is considered faulty which is the case with most common Arabic typefaces.
The calligraphic variant of the word used as the emblem of Iran is encoded in Unicode, in the Miscellaneous Symbols range, at code point
U+262B Farsi Unicode
https://unicodeplus.com/U+262B (☫). The flags that include the word are also present in the regional indicator symbols of Unicode: 🇮🇶, 🇸🇦, 🇦🇫, 🇮🇷, 🇺🇿.
ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUmar al-Baydawi (2025). 9780992633578, Beacon Books and Media Limited. ISBN 9780992633578
History of usage
Pre-Islamic Arabia
Regional variants of the word Allah occur in both pagan and Christian pre-Islamic inscriptions. According to Marshall Hodgson, it seems that in the pre-Islamic Arabia, some Arab Christians undertook pilgrimages to the Kaaba, a pagan temple at that time, honoring Allah there as the God Creator.Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, University of Chicago Press, p. 156
Islamic period
In contrast with pre-Islamic Arabian polytheism, as stated by Gerhard Böwering, God in Islam does not have associates and companions, nor is there any kinship between God and jinn. 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. According to Francis Edward Peters, "The Quran insists, Muslims believe, and historians affirm that Muhammad and his followers worship the same God as the Jews (). The Qur'an's Allah is the same Creator God who covenanted with Abraham". Peters states that the Qur'an portrays Allah as both more powerful and more remote than Yahweh, and as a universal deity, unlike Yahweh who closely follows .F.E. Peters, Islam, p.4, Princeton University Press, 2003
قُلْ هُوَ ٱللَّهُ أَحَدٌ ٱللَّهُ ٱلصَّمَدُ لَمْ يَلِدْ وَلَمْ يُولَدْ وَلَمْ يَكُن لَّهُۥ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌۢ ١
Present day
Islam
The Islamic tradition to use Allah as the personal name of God became contested in contemporary scholarship, including the question, whether or not the word Allah should be translated as God.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 London p. 478 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".
Christianity
The Arab Christians of today have no other word for "God" than "Allah". (1977). 9780521291354, University Press. ISBN 9780521291354 Similarly, the Aramaic word for "God" in the language of Assyrian Christians is , or . (Even the Arabic-descended Maltese language of Malta, whose population is almost entirely Catholic Church, uses Alla for "God".)
Pronunciation
The word Allāh is generally pronounced , exhibiting a heavy , , a velarized alveolar lateral approximant, a marginal phoneme in Arabic phonology. Since the initial alef has no hamza, the initial is elided when a preceding word ends in a vowel. If the preceding vowel is , the is light, , as in, for instance, the Basmala.
As a loanword
English and other European languages
The history of the name Allāh in English was probably influenced by the study of comparative 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 term Allah, though he allows that this "conception of God" seems to imply that it is different from that of the Jewish and Christian theologies.William Montgomery Watt, Islam and Christianity today: A Contribution to Dialogue, Routledge, 1983, p.45
Malaysian and Indonesian language
Christians in Malaysia and Indonesia use Allah to refer to God in the Malaysian and Indonesian languages (both of them standardized forms of the Malay language). Mainstream Bible translations in the language use Allah as the translation of Hebrew (translated in English Bibles as "God").Example: Usage of the word "Allah" from Matthew 22:32 in Indonesian bible versions (parallel view) as old as 1733 This goes back to early translation work by Francis Xavier in the 16th century.The Indonesian Language: Its History and Role in Modern Society Sneddon, James M.; University of New South Wales Press; 2004The History of Christianity in India from the Commencement of the Christian Era: Hough, James; Adamant Media Corporation; 2001 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) recorded Allah" as the translation of the Dutch word Godt. Ruyl also translated the Gospel of Matthew in 1612 into the Malay language (an early Bible translation into a non-European language,
But compare:
made a year after the publication of the King James VersionBarton, John (2002–12). The Biblical World, Oxford, UK: Routledge. .North, Eric McCoy; Eugene Albert Nida ((2nd Edition) 1972). The Book of a Thousand Tongues, London: United Bible Societies.), which was printed in the Netherlands in 1629. Then he translated the Gospel of Mark, published in 1638.
National flags with "Allah" written on them
Typography
The word is always written without an aleph to spell the vowel. This is because the spelling was established before Arabic spelling started regularly using to spell . However, in vocalized spelling, a Dagger alif is added on top of the shadda to indicate the pronunciation.
Unicode
Unicode has a code point reserved for
in the Arabic Presentation Forms-A block, which exists solely for "compatibility with some older, legacy character sets that encoded presentation forms directly";UnicodeThe Unicode Consortium. FAQ - Middle East Scripts this is not recommended for new text. Instead, the word should be represented by its individual Arabic letters, while modern font technologies will generate the desired ligature.
See also
General and cited references
Further reading
Online
External links
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