The Ninety-Nine Names
Glossary
- Raḥmah (رحمة)
- Mercy. Its root, r-ḥ-m, names tenderness and compassion; raḥim, the womb and the bond of kinship, comes from the same root. Root of Ar-Raḥmān and Ar-Raḥīm.
- Ḥilm (حلم)
- Forbearance; the quality of not being provoked to anger despite full knowledge of an offense and full power to answer it. Root of Al-Ḥalīm.
- Luṭf (لطف)
- Subtlety joined with gentleness; kindness delivered so finely that it often goes unnoticed. Root of Al-Laṭīf.
- Khibrah (خبرة)
- Expert, inward acquaintance with a thing — knowledge of the motive or reality beneath the surface, not just the report of it. Root of Al-Khabīr.
- ʻIlm (علم)
- Knowledge in its full sweep; the general word for knowing, as distinct from the deeper, inward khibrah.
- Ghafara (غفر)
- To cover or veil a fault, implying the fault still exists beneath the cover. Root of Al-Ghaffār and Al-Ghafūr.
- ʻAfw (عفو)
- To efface entirely, leaving nothing underneath to be covered — distinct from ghafara. Root of Al-ʻAfuww.
- Qasaṭa (قسط)
- To lean off true, to take unjustly. With the privative hamza prefixed, aqsaṭa reverses it — to straighten, to deal justly. Root of Al-Muqsiṭ.
- Amn and īmān (أمن / إيمان)
- Security and faith, two words from one root, ʼ-m-n, whose senses Ibn Fāris gives as stillness of the heart and affirming as true. A muʼmin is a believer; as a Name of Allah, Al-Muʼmin is the One who gives security and affirms the truth. Root of Al-Muʼmin.
- Sakīnah (سكينة)
- Tranquillity; the stillness Allah sends down into believing hearts at moments of fear (48:4, 48:26).
- Hibah (هبة)
- A gift. Lisān al-ʻArab, under the Name Al-Wahhāb, defines it as a gift free of any return or aim, and calls one whose such gifts are many wahhāb. Root of Al-Wahhāb (Name 16).
- Rizq (رزق)
- Provision: whatever a creature draws benefit from. Lisān al-ʻArab divides it into the outward, for bodies, as food, and the inward, for hearts and souls, as knowledge. Root of Ar-Razzāq (Name 17).
- Isnād
- The chain of narrators through which a hadith is transmitted, used to assess its authenticity.
- Ṣaḥīḥ
- “Sound” — the highest grade of hadith authenticity, meeting the strictest criteria for chain and content.
- Ḥasan
- “Good” — a hadith grade one step below ṣaḥīḥ, still considered usable as evidence.
- Ḍaʻīf
- “Weak” — a hadith with a deficient chain or content, not reliable as independent evidence.
- Ḥadīth qudsī
- A report in which the Prophet ﷺ relates words from Allah that are not part of the Qurʼan; it is graded like any other hadith.
- Muttafaq ʻalayh
- “Agreed upon” — a report that both al-Bukhārī and Muslim carry in their Ṣaḥīḥ collections from the same Companion. Their wordings may differ, and this book states the difference where it bears on the Name.
- Mursal
- A report in which a Successor (tābiʻī) attributes a saying or event to the Prophet ﷺ without naming the Companion in between — a gap in the chain, which most hadith scholars treat as weak on its own.
- Gharīb
- A hadith, or a wording of one, that reaches the collector through a single chain at some point in its transmission. The term describes the route, not the grade; at-Tirmidhī pairs it with ṣaḥīḥ or ḥasan as well as leaving it alone.
- Mudraj
- Material inserted into a hadith by a narrator, such as an explanation or a list, and transmitted as though it were part of the original saying.
- Sirah
- The biography and life-narrative of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.
- Tafsīr
- Qurʼanic exegesis or commentary explaining the meaning of a verse.
- Tasbīḥ and taqdīs
- Declaring Allah glorified — subḥāna llāh — and declaring Him holy; both affirm that He is free of every defect. The angels speak of doing both at 2:30.
- Iʻrāb
- The grammatical parsing of a sentence — which word is subject, predicate, adjective and so on — as set out in the works that analyse the Qurʼan word by word.
- Qirāʼāt
- The canonical readings of the Qurʼan handed down from the early readers. Where they differ, as at 1:4 — Mālik or Malik — each mass-transmitted (mutawātir) reading is accepted as Qurʼan.
- Shādhdh
- Of a Qurʼanic reading: one reported outside the mass-transmitted readings. It may be cited in commentary for its meaning, but it is not recited as the Qurʼan.
- Sūrah / Āyah
- A chapter (sūrah) and verse (āyah) of the Qurʼan; references in this book are given as sūrah:āyah, e.g. 2:255.