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Name 8 of 99
العزيز

The Mighty

Al-ʻAzīz

The strong hand held back — might that answers to wisdom.

Meaning

The root ʻ-z-z means strength and overcoming; in ordinary use it also names what is hard to reach and what is scarce. Al-ʻAzīz is the Mighty who overcomes all things and is never overcome, whose side cannot be reached, and to whom all might belongs. Some read His might as belonging to His essence, His being beyond reach; others read it in His acts, His prevailing over all. In the Qurʼan the Name is most often joined to wisdom, and also to mercy and forgiveness. Where Al-Qawī names strength and Al-Qahhār subduing, Al-ʻAzīz names might that cannot be resisted or reached; Al-Muʻizz, from the same root, names His giving of honor to whom He wills. It asks the servant to seek honor through obedience to Him, not from those who hold power.

Root ʻ-z-z — strength and overcoming; also what is hard to reach or scarce

Qurʼan 59:23 — “the Mighty” (al-ʻAzīz), sixth of the eight Names in the verse. In the Ḥafṣ text ʻazīz occurs 99 times and the root ʻ-z-z 119 times; 89 of the 99 describe Allah. The ten that do not: the Egyptian official titled al-ʻazīz (12:30, 12:51), and Yūsuf so addressed in that office (12:78, 12:88); what weighs hard on the Prophet ﷺ (9:128); Shuʻayb’s people telling him he has no might over them (11:91); what is not difficult for Allah (14:20, 35:17); the Book (41:41); and the man taunted in the Fire (44:49). It is paired with ḥakīm in 47 verses, as at 2:209, and with raḥīm in 13, nine of them the refrain of Sūrat ash-Shuʻarāʼ (26:9). Ibn Fāris: the root denotes strength and force and what resembles them of overcoming and subduing, citing al-Khalīl that al-ʻizzah belongs to Allah. Al-Jawharī: ʻazza, to become strong after weakness; ʻazzahu, to overcome him; ʻazza sh-shayʼ, to become so scarce it is hardly found. Ibn al-Athīr, as quoted in a later compilation (his own text not read): al-ʻAzīz, the overcoming, strong One who is not overcome. Ibn Kathīr on 59:23: the One who has overcome all things and subdued them, whose side cannot be reached; on 3:6, His is the might that cannot be assailed. Ibn Ḥajar, on al-Bukhārī’s chapter heading in the Book of Tawḥīd, which joins 14:4, 37:180 and 63:8, reads the ʻizzah of 37:180 as overcoming, or possibly as possession, an attribute of essence. At 35:10 the noun is made exclusive; Qatādah, via Ibn Kathīr: let whoever wants it seek it through obedience to Allah. Ḥadīth: al-Bukhārī 7383, filed under that heading, with Muslim 2717 — the Prophet ﷺ sought refuge bi-ʻizzatika; Ibn Mājah 3522 and Abū Dāwūd 3891 give the refuge in the might and power of Allah from pain, which Muslim 2202 gives without the word ʻizzah.

Story

Kael was the strongest man the valley had ever known, and the gentlest ever to cross it. Bandits learned to route around his town, for those who came to take what was not theirs met a wall they could not break. He had broken a man’s arm and set it himself in the same hour.

When at last the bandit chief was beaten and lay in the dust expecting his end, Kael reached down and lifted him to his feet. He returned the man his sword and let him ride away with his dignity whole. “Strength that shames a fallen man,” Kael said, “is only weakness wearing armor.”

It had not been an easy thing. Kael had a brother buried on the ridge because of that man — Faro, who had been nineteen and no fighter, and had been in the wrong lane on the wrong evening, which was the whole of it — and for the length of one breath, standing over him, he had wanted very much to close his hand. In that breath he was not thinking about mercy, or honor, or what the valley would say of him after; he was thinking only of Faro, and how easy the last inch would be. He said afterward that the hardest thing he ever lifted was not the man but his own arm, stopping it.

The town thought him mad to spare an enemy, and for two years there were men who would not drink with him. Kael did not argue his case to anyone. He kept working his own land, mended what needed mending, and let the two years pass the way weather passes — without asking it to explain itself. But the chief, who had known only the kind of power that crushes, had never once been shown the kind that lifts. He did not come back to raid. Years later, in a hard winter, he sent grain. It came on six carts with no message attached. Carts went to two other towns that same winter, neither of which had ever spared anybody, and Kael never learned whether his had been sent for a different reason than theirs. He was old by then. He sat on the step and looked at it a long while before he had it unloaded.

Poem

Some things cannot be taken, only given:
attention that was never demanded,
a welcome nobody arranged,
the truth told to you at cost to the one telling it.

Every power you have watched up close
was leaning on something —
a payroll, a majority, a room that kept agreeing.
Take the support away and see what is left standing.

Not that kind of strength,
not force that overwhelms because it must,
but a power already whole in itself,
needing no one’s witness to confirm it.

You cannot buy this.
You cannot threaten it into staying.
Every honor you have ever held
was held this way —
yours only for as long
as it was being given.

Al-ʻAzīz — mighty beyond the reach of anyone,
needing nothing from what He gives,
so that the least of the honor He lends
is more than any room could ever have owed you.

Reflection

The Falcon That Comes Back

A trained falcon can fly for miles, entirely free, with nothing stopping it from simply not returning. And yet it comes back — not because it is forced to, not because a leash pulls it home, but because it chooses to, again and again. Notice why the sight moves you: a cage is what power looks like when it is afraid of losing. The falconer’s hold is the smaller picture, and it is borrowed; the larger one is a might that has nothing to lose at all.

We are used to thinking of power as the ability to force compliance, and to thinking that whoever must force is the strongest. Al-ʻAzīz names more than that: a might that overcomes whatever it wills and that nothing can reach or resist. He does not need your return to remain what He is; His strength was never dependent on your consent. The return is for you.

And yet the falcon is only the first rung of the idea, not the top of it. The bird flies free inside a sky it did not make, on strength it did not give itself; its widest circle is still drawn inside what Allah upholds. His might is not one force among the world’s forces, prevailing more often than the rest. Everything that strives does its striving on strength He lends — which is why nothing has ever overcome Him, and nothing could.

The Qurʼan does not leave the word where a reader might want it. Having said that the whole of ʻizzah is Allah’s, it then says that it belongs to Him, and to His Messenger, and to the believers. Nothing in the sentence has been divided; the honor of the second and third parties is the first party’s, still His, lent and not transferred. The men the verse was answering had been doing the other arithmetic, computing which faction was strong enough to expel which, and the verse tells them what they had miscounted: not the strength, the ownership. It is the difference between holding something and being permitted to carry it.

This changes what you reach for on the day someone tries to strip you of standing. Honor, in most rooms, is treated as a scarce good — pried off one person so another can wear it. But real honor was never in their hands to confiscate, and you do not have to scramble for what they are holding. All of it is Allah’s, and He gives of it to whom He wills. Ask Him, not the room.

A cage is what power uses when it can be escaped. Nothing escapes Him.

Qurʼan

هُوَ اللَّهُ الَّذِي لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ الْمَلِكُ الْقُدُّوسُ السَّلَامُ الْمُؤْمِنُ الْمُهَيْمِنُ الْعَزِيزُ الْجَبَّارُ الْمُتَكَبِّرُ ۚ سُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ عَمَّا يُشْرِكُونَ

He is Allah, other than whom there is no god: the Sovereign, the Most Holy, the Source of Peace, the Giver of Security, the Preserver of Safety, the Mighty, the Compeller, the Supreme. Glory be to Allah above all that they associate with Him.

59:23 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Al-ʻAzīz stands sixth of the eight, after the Names of holiness and peace and before al-Jabbār and al-Mutakabbir. Ibn Kathīr reads it as the One who has overcome all things and subdued them, whose side cannot be reached, and joins it to the two Names that follow it.

هُوَ الَّذِي يُصَوِّرُكُمْ فِي الْأَرْحَامِ كَيْفَ يَشَاءُ ۚ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الْحَكِيمُ

He it is who fashions you in the wombs as He wills; there is no god but He, the Mighty, the Wise.

3:6 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The pairing al-ʻAzīz al-Ḥakīm closes the shaping of each person in the womb, male or female, as He wills. Ibn Kathīr glosses it as the One who created, alone deserving worship, whose might cannot be assailed, and whose are wisdom and precision, and reads the verse as a plain statement that ʻĪsā too was shaped in a womb. The shaping is the work of Al-Muṣawwir, with whom the verse is shared.

مَن كَانَ يُرِيدُ الْعِزَّةَ فَلِلَّهِ الْعِزَّةُ جَمِيعًا

Whoever wants might — then to Allah belongs all might.

35:10 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The Name’s own noun, ʻizzah, made exclusive: jamīʻan, the whole of it. Ibn Kathīr reads it as addressed to anyone who wants to be mighty in this world and the next — let him hold to obedience to Allah — and gives Qatādah’s wording, let him seek might through obedience to Allah, and Mujāhid’s, whoever seeks it through worshipping idols. The rest of the verse names the way up: good speech ascends to Him and righteous work raises it.

وَلِلَّهِ الْعِزَّةُ وَلِرَسُولِهِ وَلِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَلَٰكِنَّ الْمُنَافِقِينَ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ

And to Allah belongs all honor, and to His Messenger, and to the believers — but the hypocrites do not know.

63:8 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The answer to ʻAbdullāh ibn Ubayy ibn Salūl, who said that when they returned to Madīnah the mightier would drive out the humbler; aṭ-Ṭabarī gives Ibn ʻAbbās naming him and Jābir’s report of the quarrel behind it. Aṭ-Ṭabarī glosses ʻizzah here as strength and force. After 35:10 has said all of it belongs to Allah, this verse names the Messenger and the believers as its holders with Him, and the hypocrites as those who do not know it. Al-Bukhārī sets the clause in his chapter heading on this Name, with 37:180. It is shared with Name 24, which reads it for Al-Muʻizz, the giving of honor.

سُبْحَانَ رَبِّكَ رَبِّ الْعِزَّةِ عَمَّا يَصِفُونَ

Glory be to your Lord, the Lord of might, above what they describe.

37:180 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Near the close of Sūrat aṣ-Ṣāffāt, after the attribution of daughters to Allah has been refuted. Al-Bukhārī places the verse in his chapter heading on this Name, and Ibn Ḥajar reads rabb al-ʻizzah as the Lord of overcoming and subduing, or as the possessor of might, an attribute of His essence.

وَإِنَّ رَبَّكَ لَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الرَّحِيمُ

And indeed your Lord — He is the Mighty, the Merciful.

26:9 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The refrain of Sūrat ash-Shuʻarāʼ: said first after the sign of the plants the earth brings forth (26:7–8), and then at the close of each prophet’s account, nine times in all (26:9, 68, 104, 122, 140, 159, 175, 191, 217). Most of those accounts end with a people destroyed and a messenger saved, and each time the Name of might is followed by mercy rather than set on its own.

Dua

اللَّهُمَّ لَكَ أَسْلَمْتُ وَبِكَ آمَنْتُ وَعَلَيْكَ تَوَكَّلْتُ وَإِلَيْكَ أَنَبْتُ وَبِكَ خَاصَمْتُ اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَعُوذُ بِعِزَّتِكَ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا أَنْتَ أَنْ تُضِلَّنِي أَنْتَ الْحَيُّ الَّذِي لَا يَمُوتُ وَالْجِنُّ وَالْإِنْسُ يَمُوتُونَ

O Allah, to You I have submitted, in You I have believed, upon You I have relied, to You I have turned, and by You I have contended. O Allah, I seek refuge in Your might — there is no god but You — from Your letting me go astray. You are the Living who does not die, while the jinn and mankind die.

Muslim 2717 · ṣaḥīḥ

The refuge is taken by the Name’s own noun, bi-ʻizzatika, and what it is sought from is being led astray, a danger no standing of the servant’s own can guard against. It is the same report as al-Bukhārī 7383 on this Name’s Hadith page, from Ibn ʻAbbās through Yaḥyā ibn Yaʻmar, ʻAbdullāh ibn Buraydah, al-Ḥusayn al-Muʻallim and ʻAbd al-Wārith to Abū Maʻmar, from whom al-Bukhārī took it directly and Muslim through Ḥajjāj ibn ash-Shāʻir. Al-Bukhārī’s wording keeps only the refuge in His might and the clause after it; Muslim’s gives the whole supplication.

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ أَعُوذُ بِعِزَّةِ اللَّهِ وَقُدْرَتِهِ مِنْ شَرِّ مَا أَجِدُ وَأُحَاذِرُ

In the name of Allah. I seek refuge in the might and power of Allah from the evil of what I feel and what I fear.

Ibn Mājah 3522 · ṣaḥīḥ (al-Albānī; Shuʻayb al-Arnaʼūṭ); Darussalam refers it to Muslim

ʻUthmān ibn Abī al-ʻĀṣ complained of a pain that had nearly destroyed him, and was told to put his right hand on it and say this seven times. The wording printed is Ibn Mājah 3522’s. Abū Dāwūd 3891, through Mālik, has aʻūdhu bi-ʻizzati llāhi wa-qudratihi min sharri mā ajid, without wa-uḥādhir, and adds that he did so and Allah removed it. Muslim 2202, through Ibn Shihāb, has bismillāh three times and then aʻūdhu bi-llāhi wa-qudratihi, seven times, without the word ʻizzah; so the refuge in the Name’s own noun stands in the Sunan wording, and Muslim’s is the same prayer without it.

Hadith

أَعُوذُ بِعِزَّتِكَ الَّذِي لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا أَنْتَ الَّذِي لَا يَمُوتُ وَالْجِنُّ وَالْإِنْسُ يَمُوتُونَ

I seek refuge in Your might — there is no god but You — who does not die, while the jinn and mankind die.

al-Bukhārī 7383 · ṣaḥīḥ (muttafaq ʻalayh)

The Prophet’s ﷺ own refuge, taken in the ʻizzah of the Name, and the clause after it names what that might excludes: He does not die, while jinn and mankind do. Al-Bukhārī files it in the Book of Tawḥīd under the chapter heading wa-huwa l-ʻazīzu l-ḥakīm, joined with 37:180, glory be to your Lord, the Lord of might, and 63:8, to Allah belongs might, reading the report as a statement of this Name. Muslim 2717 gives the same report in full, carried on this Name’s Duʻāʼ page.

Study Notes

Verified — directly attested

ShowHide the Study Notes (1,142 words)

CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: SIX ayat. 59:23, where Al-ʻAzīz stands sixth of the eight, shared with Names 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10; 3:6, the shaping in the wombs, SHARED WITH NAME 13; 35:10, fa-lillāhi l-ʻizzatu jamīʻan, SHARED WITH NAME 24, with Name 23 carrying another portion of the verse; 63:8, SHARED WITH NAME 24; and, ADDED, 37:180, the verse al-Bukhārī sets in his chapter heading on this Name, and 26:9, the refrain al-ʻAzīz ar-Raḥīm of Sūrat ash-Shuʻarāʼ, both carried at this Name only. The distinct Qurʼan-page verse count in Notes on This Edition moves from 334 to 336, and sub-items 0 to 3 keep their positions, so SHARED_LOCI needs no remap.

NAMED HERE BUT NOT CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: 9:128, carried at Name 83; and 2:209, 14:4, 11:91, 14:20, 35:17, 41:41, 12:30, 12:51, 12:88 and the other eight Shuʻarāʼ refrains, all carried at NO Name; 12:78, carried at Name 37; 44:49, carried at Name 42 (named in build 145);

AUDIT: the cross-check of these claims against the arrays found 9:128 carried at Name 83, and it is now so recorded; ADDED AT THE CHAT-END AUDIT OF 71–75, the entry names these verses, which this note did not list: 26:7–8, carried at NO Name;

CORRECTED ON THE RECORD, THE REF: it said ʻazīz occurs 101 times and eleven times of something other than Allah; counted in the Tanzil Ḥafṣ text it occurs 99 times, as ʻazīz or ʻazīzan, 89 of Allah and 10 otherwise, and the ten are now listed (corrected in build 145: 44:49, said to the man in the Fire, is the tenth); the root total of 119 and the 47 verses pairing it with ḥakīm were re-counted and stand. It named only 12:30 and 12:78 for the official; 12:51 and 12:88 are added. Its three lexical senses were unattributed; they now rest on Ibn Fāris, citing al-Khalīl, and al-Jawharī, read through published transcriptions of their entries, and on Ibn al-Athīr as quoted in a later compilation, which is secondary. Ibn Kathīr on 59:23 and 3:6, Qatādah on 35:10 via Ibn Kathīr, and Ibn Ḥajar on al-Bukhārī’s heading, read on islamweb’s text of Fatḥ al-Bārī, are added. The stray remark that the Name is not the closing one is removed.

ROOT: the rootRelation was shared-unmarked with no related Name; the root is shared with Name 24, Al-Muʻizz, whose own entry names this Name, so it is now shared-explicit, evidenced in the desc; the gloss follows the lexicons with glossBasis ref, and a senseNote is added. THE DESC names no scholars, adds the reading of His might as essence or act, and distinguishes Al-Qawī, Al-Qahhār and Al-Muʻizz; it no longer promises that no humiliation lasts forever.

QURʼAN NOTES: 3:6 had said no one is watching the shaping in the womb, which contradicts Al-Muhaymin and is removed; 63:8 had production notes and unsourced claims about the hypocrites’ reckoning, now replaced by aṭ-Ṭabarī’s occasion and gloss. TWO duʻāʼ, reordered so the refuge in the Name’s own noun comes first. Muslim 2717, from Ibn ʻAbbās, now first: its note carried process remarks on orthography and a live read, removed here; the Arabic was checked against the dataset text of Muslim 2717 and its chain against al-Bukhārī 7383, both through Abū Maʻmar. MUSLIM PRINTS NO GRADE ROW, so ṣaḥīḥ records inclusion in the Ṣaḥīḥ.

CORRECTED: the second duʻāʼ printed Muslim 2202, aʻūdhu bi-llāhi wa-qudratihi, which does not contain ʻizzah; the same prayer from ʻUthmān ibn Abī al-ʻĀṣ in Ibn Mājah 3522 and Abū Dāwūd 3891 reads bi-ʻizzati llāh, so Ibn Mājah’s wording is now printed, graded ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī at both, with Muslim 2202 kept in the source and its difference stated; Jāmiʻ at-Tirmidhī 2080, whose Arabic and English in the dataset disagree on the wording, is not cited. ONE tracked ḥadīth: al-Bukhārī 7383, the same report as Muslim 2717, its note now giving the full chapter heading as confirmed in Fatḥ al-Bārī. A NOTE ON WHAT IS NOT HERE, kept from the earlier record: the distress supplication at al-Bukhārī 6346 with Muslim 2730 reads al-ʻAẓīm al-Ḥalīm, not al-ʻAzīz, and belongs elsewhere. MEDS 8 no longer says the Name is a might that never needs to force, which contradicts the overcoming Ibn Kathīr gives it. POEMS 8 no longer calls Allah precious, a sense of the root the book cannot attribute to Him from its sources. CH 8 keeps its story; its def now points to might held by wisdom rather than to honor-giving, which is Al-Muʻizz’s sense.

AUDIT, FINAL CHECK OF NAMES 1 TO 25: al-Bukhārī 7383’s source field held a remark on Muslim 2717, now in its note, and the source reads al-Bukhārī 7383; Muslim 2717 with the grade ṣaḥīḥ (muttafaq ʻalayh); the duʻāʼ source now reads Muslim 2717, its narrator standing in the note.

AUDIT AFTER NAME 65: the Duʻāʼ source field for the supplication of ʻUthmān ibn Abī l-ʻĀṣ read Ibn Mājah 3522; Abū Dāwūd 3891; Muslim 2202 with the narrator, and its grade field paired three records; checked letter by letter, only Ibn Mājah 3522 carries the printed wording, as the note itself says, so the source is that record and the grade gives its four graders; the note’s account of the other two recensions stands.

IN BUILD 145, FROM THE PHASE 2 READING: the ref gives 89 of the 99 ʻazīz of Allah and ten that are not, 44:49 being the tenth, said in mockery to the man dragged into the Fire as Name 42’s note on it says, and 12:78, like 12:88, Yūsuf addressed by the office’s title; the record line above is corrected in place, the named line lists 44:49, and the senseNote no longer says the definite al-ʻazīz is Allah’s title everywhere outside Sūrat Yūsuf. The root total of 119 counts the words of ʻ-z-z with al-ʻUzzā, the idol’s name, set aside; with it the count is 120. Ibn al-Athīr is given in the ref as he was read, quoted in a later compilation. The second supplication’s grade gives Darussalam’s row as a referral to Muslim. The report is cited al-Bukhārī 7383 alone, the record that carries the printed words, Muslim 2717 standing in its note and on the Duʻāʼ page. BY THE AUTHOR’S DECISION (A22): 35:10 is rendered might here, the word this Name reads, and honor at Name 24, which reads the verse for Al-Muʻizz; both renderings stand, the Arabic linked exactly.

IN BUILD 207, FROM THE READING OF THE GRADES: Muḥammad Fuʼād ʻAbd al-Bāqī is no longer named as a grader on this page: the row the ḥadīth dataset gives in his name is al-Albānī’s ruling as it is printed with ʻAbd al-Bāqī’s edition of Ibn Mājah, read at Shamela through its page reader, not in print, and the edition gives no verdict of its own beyond quoting az-Zawāʼid; al-Albānī’s grade stands where it stood, and earlier records keep their words.

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