Name 38 of 99

الحفيظ

The Preserver

Al-Ḥafīẓ

The seed room — what would have been lost, kept.

Meaning

From ḥ-f-ẓ, which Ibn Fāris makes one root meaning the tending of a thing, and al-Khalīl glosses as the opposite of forgetting — the root that also gives ḥifẓ, memorization, and ḥāfiẓ, one who carries the Qurʼan by heart. Al-Khalīl’s word for a ḥafīẓ is muwakkal: the one entrusted with a thing, who keeps it. Of Allah the word stands three times and never once with the article; the definite Name comes from the enumeration and not from the Book. Az-Zabīdī glosses it as the One from whose keeping nothing escapes, not the weight of a speck in the heavens or the earth, who keeps them both by His power and whom their keeping does not weary. Nothing entrusted to Him is lost: not a deed, not a soul.

Root ḥ-f-ẓ — one root: the tending of a thing, the opposite of forgetting

Counted by hand from the Tanzil text, ḥ-f-ẓ gives forty-four words in twenty-eight forms, and the adjective ḥafīẓ stands eleven times, always indefinite. Only three of the eleven are said of Allah: 11:57 and 34:21, my Lord and your Lord is Guardian over all things, and 42:6, Allah is Guardian over them. Three deny it of the Prophet ﷺ — 4:80, 6:107 and 42:48, We did not send you over them as a keeper — and two more are a speaker disclaiming it of himself, the Prophet ﷺ at 6:104 and Shuʻayb at 11:86. Yūsuf claims it for himself at 12:55; 50:4 gives it to the Book, and 50:32 to the penitent servant. So the word is withheld from a creature five times for every three it is affirmed of Allah. The clause wa-innā lahu la-ḥāfiẓūn stands three times: 15:9, where Allah says it of the Reminder, and 12:12 and 12:63, where Yūsuf’s brothers say it of Yūsuf and then of Binyāmīn, and lose both. Ibn Fāris: one root, the tending of a thing. Al-Khalīl: the opposite of forgetting, and a ḥafīẓ is one entrusted with a thing who keeps it. Ar-Rāghib takes the word from the soul’s retaining faculty outward to every tending and care, opens his examples with the clause his editor places at 12:12, and calls taḥaffuẓ the effortful keeping that comes of a weak retaining faculty. Az-Zabīdī glosses the divine Name and quotes 2:255 for it. At 12:64 the readings divide: aṭ-Ṭabarī gives ḥifẓan from Madīnah and some of Kūfah and Baṣrah, and ḥāfiẓan from most of Kūfah and some of Makkah, the first meaning His keeping is the best keeping and the second that He is the best of keepers, and he holds either reading right, the two being close in meaning. The English sits close to Name 7, Al-Muhaymin: h-y-m-n names oversight that witnesses and testifies, ḥ-f-ẓ names custody. Reports: al-Bukhārī 2311; at-Tirmidhī 2516; Muslim 809a. Supplications at Muslim 2708a and Ibn Mājah 3871. The list of Names at at-Tirmidhī 3507 carries al-Ḥafīẓ, and is ḍaʻīf by al-Albānī, Aḥmad Shākir and Darussalam.

Story

In a stone room under her house, Rula kept seeds. Hundreds of small labeled jars: wheat her great-grandmother had grown, a bean nobody planted anymore, a melon from a village that no longer existed. Her neighbors found it eccentric. The varieties she guarded most carefully were the ones that had gone out of fashion — which meant, though nobody thought of it that way, that they stood three or four bad decades from vanishing off the earth entirely.

She turned the jars, checked them for damp, and grew a small plot of each variety every few years to renew it, because a seed kept too long stops being a seed and becomes only a dry husk of one. Preserving a thing, she knew, is not the same as putting it away. It is constant, patient, unglamorous work.

Nobody paid her for it. She had been at it twenty-eight years by then, and had spent on jars and on the renewal plots money that her son thought should have gone on the roof, and he told her so more than once. She could not explain it in a way that satisfied him. She said the seeds were not hers, which he took for evasion, and which was the most exact thing she knew how to say. The roof was never mended. Her son came less, and she did not go up to ask why, and between them it stayed a thing about money.

The blight came in her sixty-second year, and it took the region’s whole wheat crop, and it took the next year’s seed with it. There was nothing to plant the following spring — nothing anywhere in the province, except in a cool stone room under an old woman’s house, in jars, labeled, alive.

She gave it all away — all of it, and would not be thanked for it. You cannot give away, she told them, what was never yours. Within three years the fields were back. Nobody ever quite worked out how close it had come. Rula went on turning the jars.

Poem

Somewhere today, a child no older than eight
finishes reciting an entire book without the book,
every word in the exact place fixed for it fourteen centuries ago,
carried whole inside a skull that hasn’t finished growing.

No copy required.
Burn every book you can find,
and the words are still standing, whole and unlosable,
in ten thousand chests across a hundred countries,
none of them needing to consult the others
to be sure they have it right.

A vault preserves by locking one copy away
and hoping the lock holds, the roof holds, the years hold.

This is kept differently —
not one thing locked safe against every threat,
but the whole of it, complete, planted
into more keeping hearts
than any fire, any flood, any single silence
could ever reach at once.

That is Al-Ḥafīẓ: not the kept thing — the Keeper,
who sent this word down with a promise
to guard it Himself, and guarded it, not in a vault,
but in so many living chests at once
that it no longer has one place left
to lose.

Reflection

The Keeping

Everything we keep, we keep against loss. Keys, names, photographs, the dead — a human life is one long rearguard action, and the grip fails everywhere at once: the memory thins, the house burns, the language of the grandmothers goes quiet in a single generation. Even what we love best we cannot hold; sleep alone pries every hand open once a day. Into this comes a Name from the root ḥ-f-ẓ — to guard, to keep, to hold in the heart — cast in the form Arabic reserves for what is constant and complete. Al-Ḥafīẓ keeps. And the Verse of the Throne answers both of our failures in a single breath: no sleep takes Him, and preserving the heavens and the earth does not weary Him.

Al-Ghazālī heard two motions in this Name. The first is that He keeps things in being. Existence is not a push given once at the start; it is a holding, continuous, and if the holding paused there would not even be ruins left over — there would be nothing. Every orbit stays in its groove, every atom in its place, because the grip has not moved. The second is that He keeps things from each other: creation is built of opposites — fire and water, heat and cold, the body’s own warring elements — and they do not devour one another only because a balance is being actively held. My Lord, said Hūd, is Guardian over all things. He said it with the whole tribe against him.

Then there is the keeping we would rather forget and cannot: nothing is lost with Him. Over every soul a keeper is set; noble recorders write, and the writing does not fade. That is the Name’s severity — and its strange comfort is the same fact turned over. The good that no one saw was seen. The patience that earned nothing here was kept entire. The years you think you wasted were not mislaid by Him, even if they were by you. People fear, late in life, that it has all leaked away; with Al-Ḥafīẓ nothing leaks. The question was never whether the record would survive — only what we are writing in it.

To a boy riding behind him on a mount, the Prophet ﷺ turned and said: Be mindful of Allah, and He will keep you. Be mindful of Allah, and you will find Him before you. The Arabic uses one verb for both halves — iḥfaẓ, yaḥfaẓka — your small keeping of His limits met by His entire keeping of you, an exchange so unequal it can only be called mercy. And His keeping outruns the keeper: in the Qurʼan a wall is rebuilt over buried treasure so that two orphans will find it years later, because — the verse says simply — their father had been righteous. The man was gone. The keeping went on.

Once, about one thing, He put His keeping in writing: Truly it is We who sent down the Reminder, and truly We are its Keeper. Then He chose, for the vault, the least vault-like place on earth — the chests of the young. To this day a child who carries the whole Book by heart is called ḥāfiẓ, a keeper: a small title on loan from this Name, worn by someone who is himself being kept. That is the final shape of it. You were never the keeper of what you love; you were the witness of His keeping, given the care of it for a season — never the holding of it. When Yaʻqūb, who had already lost one son, was made to send away the other, he did not say, I will protect him. He said: Allah is the best of keepers — and He is the most merciful of the merciful.

Allah is the best of keepers — said first by a father handing over the last of what he loved; He gave him back both sons.

Qurʼan

إِنَّا نَحْنُ نَزَّلْنَا الذِّكْرَ وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ

Truly it is We who sent down the Reminder, and truly We are its Keeper.

15:9 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The participle rather than the Name, and the preservation of the revelation undertaken by its Sender rather than delegated to its readers. The clause is not unique: wa-innā lahu la-ḥāfiẓūn is said twice more, at 12:12 and 12:63, by Yūsuf’s brothers, first of Yūsuf and then of Binyāmīn, and both times they lose the one they promised to keep. Ar-Rāghib’s first example of the root in the Mufradāt is these words, which his editor places at the brothers’ line. The words are the same; what differs is who is speaking.

إِنَّ رَبِّي عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ حَفِيظٌ

Truly my Lord is Guardian over all things.

11:57 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Hūd’s answer to a people who had said their gods had struck him with madness, and whom he had just told to do their worst. Aṭ-Ṭabarī reads the whole speech as the messenger stepping back: he has delivered what he was sent with, his Lord will put another people in their place, and they cannot harm Him at all. The Name is offered as the reason Hūd is unworried rather than as a threat against them. One of only three places the word is said of Allah; 34:21 is the same clause with your Lord for my Lord.

فَاللَّهُ خَيْرٌ حَافِظًا ۖ وَهُوَ أَرْحَمُ الرَّاحِمِينَ

So Allah is the best of keepers, and He is the most merciful of the merciful.

12:64 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Yaʻqūb says this having already lost one son to the same brothers’ keeping — a statement about who preserves, made by a man whose own precautions had failed. The readings divide here over a single word of the verse. Aṭ-Ṭabarī records ḥifẓan from most of the readers of Madīnah and some of Kūfah and Baṣrah, which makes it Allah’s keeping that is best, and ḥāfiẓan from most of Kūfah and some of Makkah, which makes Him the best of keepers, and he holds the two close in meaning and either reader right; the book prints the second. Ar-Rāghib gives both without choosing.

وَأَمَّا الْجِدَارُ فَكَانَ لِغُلَامَيْنِ يَتِيمَيْنِ فِي الْمَدِينَةِ وَكَانَ تَحْتَهُ كَنزٌ لَّهُمَا وَكَانَ أَبُوهُمَا صَالِحًا

And as for the wall, it belonged to two orphan boys in the city, and beneath it was a treasure for them, and their father had been righteous.

18:82 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The Name’s own root does not occur in this verse — a thematic parallel, not an occurrence. The keeping outlives the keeper here without the boys being told so. A dead man’s righteousness reaches the boys through a wall a stranger set upright. Aṭ-Ṭabarī gives a report that seven fathers stood between them and the righteous one.

إِن كُلُّ نَفْسٍ لَّمَّا عَلَيْهَا حَافِظٌ

There is no soul but that it has over it a keeper.

86:4 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The root occurring directly, predicated of a keeper set over every soul — keepers of the angels in the reports aṭ-Ṭabarī gives from Ibn ʻAbbās and Qatādah, though al-Qurṭubī records that some take the keeper to be Allah Himself. Ḥafṣ reads lammā; other canonical readers read the lighter lamā, without change to the sense. Al-Khalīl’s gloss of ḥafīẓ fits the appointment exactly — one entrusted with a thing, who keeps it — and the keeper here is entrusted with a soul.

وَإِنَّ عَلَيْكُمْ لَحَافِظِينَ كِرَامًا كَاتِبِينَ يَعْلَمُونَ مَا تَفْعَلُونَ

And indeed, over you are keepers — noble, recording — who know whatever you do.

82:10–12 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Continues through 82:12. The recorders are creatures, appointed; what they keep does not fade because the One who set them keeping does not tire. Az-Zabīdī, glossing the divine Name, puts the two together: He has kept against His creatures and His servants whatever they do of good or evil, and He keeps the heavens and the earth by His power. Ibn Sīdah and al-Jawharī both take al-ḥafaẓah, the recording angels, as the plural of this participle.

وَرَبُّكَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ حَفِيظٌ

And your Lord is Guardian over all things.

34:21 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The second of the three places the word is said of Allah, and the same clause as 11:57 with your Lord for my Lord. What it closes is severe: aṭ-Ṭabarī reads the verse as saying Iblīs had no authority over them except by Allah’s letting him have it, so that it might be known who believes in the Hereafter and who is in doubt of it. The keeping is stated at the end of a sentence about being tested, not about being spared.

وَالَّذِينَ اتَّخَذُوا مِنْ دُونِهِ أَوْلِيَاءَ اللَّهُ حَفِيظٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَمَا أَنْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ بِوَكِيلٍ

And those who take protectors besides Him — Allah is Guardian over them, and you are not a trustee over them.

42:6 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The third and last. The Name is said of Allah and the office of trustee, wakīl, denied of the Prophet ﷺ in the same breath — in aṭ-Ṭabarī’s words, the trustee over them for keeping their deeds — and the two halves belong together: the keeping of those who have turned away is not his work. Ar-Rāghib puts this verse beside 50:4 to show that ḥafīẓ carries the sense of the active participle ḥāfiẓ. No other verse gives the word to Allah and withholds that office in the same line.

فَمَا أَرْسَلْنَاكَ عَلَيْهِمْ حَفِيظًا ۖ إِنْ عَلَيْكَ إِلَّا الْبَلَاغُ

We have not sent you over them as a keeper; upon you is only the delivering.

42:48 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Aṭ-Ṭabarī: We shall not send you to them as a watcher over them, keeping and counting their deeds. Ar-Rāghib sets it beside two other denials in the same shape — you are not a tyrant over them at 50:45, you are not a trustee over them at 6:107 — and reads ḥafīẓan here simply as ḥāfiẓan. This is one of five places the word is taken away from a human being; the other denials to the Prophet ﷺ stand at 4:80 and 6:107.

قَالَ اجْعَلْنِي عَلَىٰ خَزَائِنِ الْأَرْضِ ۖ إِنِّي حَفِيظٌ عَلِيمٌ

He said: Set me over the storehouses of the land; truly I am a careful keeper, knowing.

12:55 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The one place a human being claims the word for himself and is not corrected. Aṭ-Ṭabarī reads it as Yūsuf asking the king for charge of the food of his country and its revenue, and gives from Ibn Zayd that the king handed over the whole of his authority to him. The pairing is the same shape as a divine pairing — ḥafīẓ with a second Name of knowledge — and it is said by a man who had been sold by his own keepers.

أَرْسِلْهُ مَعَنَا غَدًا يَرْتَعْ وَيَلْعَبْ وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ

Send him with us tomorrow to graze and play, and truly we are his keepers.

12:12 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The same three words that close 15:9, in the mouths of the men who were about to throw him into the well; they say them again at 12:63 of Binyāmīn and lose him too. Aṭ-Ṭabarī spends his discussion on the readings of yartaʻ and yalʻab and glosses the promise in one closing line: they are keeping him from anything that would harm him. The editor of ar-Rāghib’s Mufradāt places his first example of the root here, though the words stand at 15:9 as well. A promise to keep is the easiest sentence in the language to say and the hardest to be able to mean.

وَسِعَ كُرْسِيُّهُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ ۖ وَلَا يَئُودُهُ حِفْظُهُمَا

His Kursi extends over the heavens and the earth, and their preservation does not weary Him.

2:255 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The root said of Allah in a verbal noun rather than in the Name. Az-Zabīdī, glossing al-Ḥafīẓ among the Beautiful Names, quotes exactly this clause for it: He has kept the heavens and the earth by His power, and their preservation does not weary Him. The two failures of every human keeper are sleep and tiredness, and this verse denies Him both in one breath. Shared with Names 33, 36, 62 and 63.

فَلَمَّا رَجَعُوا إِلَىٰ أَبِيهِمْ قَالُوا يَا أَبَانَا مُنِعَ مِنَّا الْكَيْلُ فَأَرْسِلْ مَعَنَا أَخَانَا نَكْتَلْ وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ

So when they returned to their father, they said: O our father, measure has been denied to us, so send our brother with us that we may obtain measure; and truly we are his keepers.

12:63 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The brothers’ second use of the clause, wa-innā lahu la-ḥāfiẓūn, now said of Binyāmīn, as at 12:12, above, it was said of Yūsuf.

Dua

أَعُوذُ بِكَلِمَاتِ اللَّهِ التَّامَّاتِ مِنْ شَرِّ مَا خَلَقَ

I seek refuge in the perfect words of Allah from the evil of what He has created.

Muslim 2708a · ṣaḥīḥ

From Khawlah bint Ḥakīm as-Sulamiyyah, said on stopping at any place. Muslim publishes no grade rows, so the verdict is bare. The Name’s own root does not occur in it. Refuge is taken not in one’s own precautions but in something of His that does not fail, which is what the Name keeps by.

اللَّهُمَّ اسْتُرْ عَوْرَاتِي وَآمِنْ رَوْعَاتِي وَاحْفَظْنِي مِنْ بَيْنِ يَدَيَّ وَمِنْ خَلْفِي وَعَنْ يَمِينِي وَعَنْ شِمَالِي وَمِنْ فَوْقِي

O Allah, cover my faults and make me safe in what I fear; guard me from before me and from behind me, from my right and from my left, and from above me.

Ibn Mājah 3871 · ṣaḥīḥ (al-Albānī; Shuʻayb al-Arnaʼūṭ), isnād ṣaḥīḥ (Darussalam)

From Ibn ʻUmar, said morning and evening. The Name’s own verb, iḥfaẓnī, in a transmitted supplication: keep me from before me and behind me, from my right and my left and from above me. The directions are the whole of it — a man can watch one side at a time and is asking to be kept on all of them at once. The last clause asks refuge from being taken from beneath, and Wakīʻ is reported saying that this means the swallowing up of the earth. Carried at Names 6 and 7 for the wellbeing and the covering asked for in the same breath. The wording printed is Ibn Mājah’s; at Abū Dāwūd the clause opens allāhumma ḥfaẓnī, and the supplication there is ṣaḥīḥ from al-Albānī, Muḥammad Muḥyī ad-Dīn ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd and Shuʻayb al-Arnaʼūṭ, and isnād ṣaḥīḥ from Darussalam.

Hadith

إِذَا أَوَيْتَ إِلَىٰ فِرَاشِكَ فَاقْرَأْ آيَةَ الْكُرْسِيِّ … فَإِنَّكَ لَنْ يَزَالَ عَلَيْكَ مِنَ اللَّهِ حَافِظٌ وَلَا يَقْرَبَنَّكَ شَيْطَانٌ حَتَّىٰ تُصْبِحَ

When you go to your bed, recite Āyat al-Kursī … then a keeper from Allah will remain over you, and no devil will come near you until morning.

al-Bukhārī 2311 · ṣaḥīḥ

The printed wording joins two parts of the report with an ellipsis: al-Bukhārī runs from recite Āyat al-Kursī through the quoted opening of the verse and then to say the end of it, before fa-innaka lan yazāla. The report opens on the root: Abū Hurayrah says the Messenger of Allah ﷺ put him in charge of the ḥifẓ of the zakāh of Ramaḍān, which is al-Khalīl’s own definition of a ḥafīẓ, one entrusted with a thing who keeps it. He then failed to keep it three nights running, caught the same thief three times and let him go each time, and what he was given in exchange for the keeping he could not manage was a keeping that does not need him: ḥāfiẓun min Allāh, posted rather than requested, and working while he is asleep. The Prophet ﷺ confirmed the words and said the thief had told him the truth though he is a liar. Al-Bukhārī gives it in suspended form, from ʻUthmān ibn al-Haytham.

احْفَظِ اللَّهَ يَحْفَظْكَ احْفَظِ اللَّهَ تَجِدْهُ تُجَاهَكَ

Be mindful of Allah and He will keep you; be mindful of Allah and you will find Him before you.

at-Tirmidhī 2516 · ṣaḥīḥ (al-Albānī; Aḥmad Shākir); ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ (at-Tirmidhī; Bashshār ʻAwwād Maʻrūf); isnād ḥasan (Darussalam)

From Ibn ʻAbbās, behind the Prophet ﷺ one day as a boy; also in Musnad Aḥmad, where he is riding behind him, and ḥadīth 19 in an-Nawawī’s Forty. The same verb carries both halves, iḥfaẓ and yaḥfaẓka — the small keeping asked of the servant met by the entire keeping done by Allah. The grade gives all five verdicts the six editions carry, Darussalam’s as a judgement on the chain, as at Names 7, 64, 70 and 92, which carry the same report.

مَنْ حَفِظَ عَشْرَ آيَاتٍ مِنْ أَوَّلِ سُورَةِ الْكَهْفِ عُصِمَ مِنَ الدَّجَّالِ

Whoever memorizes ten verses from the beginning of Sūrat al-Kahf will be protected from the Dajjāl.

Muslim 809a · ṣaḥīḥ

From Abū d-Dardāʼ. Ḥafiẓa here is to hold in memory, and what is promised is protection, ʻuṣima, for the one who keeps ten verses: the keeping he does to the words answered by a keeping done to him. In Muslim 809b, Shuʻbah’s report has the end of al-Kahf, and Hammām’s the beginning, as here.

Study Notes

Verified — directly attested

ShowHide the Study Notes (2,071 words)

CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: TWELVE ayat. Carried before and now with named commentators or a named reading: 15:9, the participle said by Allah of the Reminder; 11:57, Hūd; 12:64, Yaʻqūb; 18:82, the wall, WHICH DOES NOT CONTAIN THE ROOT AND SAYS SO ON THE PAGE; 86:4; and 82:10–12.

ADDED: 34:21 and 42:6, WHICH WITH 11:57 ARE THE ONLY THREE PLACES THE WORD IS SAID OF ALLAH; 42:48, named in the entry since it was written and carried at no Name; 12:55, Yūsuf claiming the word for himself, also named and not carried; 12:12, THE BROTHERS SAYING THE EXACT WORDS OF 15:9; and 2:255, which the entry and the reflection both lean on while the page carried it nowhere of its own. All six are appended, the six existing sub-items keep their positions, and the distinct Qurʼan-page verse count in Notes on This Edition moves from 393 to 398. ADDED IN BUILD 182, BY THE AUTHOR’S DECISION (A50): 12:63, the brothers saying the same words of Binyāmīn, in his English.

NAMED HERE BUT NOT CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: 50:45, carried at Name 9; 4:80, 6:104, 11:86, 50:4, 50:32 and 85:22, all carried at NO Name; 6:107, which denies this Name and Name 52 in one breath, carried at Name 52.

CORRECTED ON THE RECORD, THE COUNTS, AND THE ENTRY HAD NONE: counted by hand from the Tanzil text with strip, ḥ-f-ẓ gives forty-four words in twenty-eight forms and no look-alike root falls inside the pattern. THE ADJECTIVE ḤAFĪẒ STANDS ELEVEN TIMES AND IS ALWAYS INDEFINITE — THE DEFINITE AL-ḤAFĪẒ IS NOT IN THE QURʼAN AT ALL, and the Name in its definite form comes through the enumeration at at-Tirmidhī 3507. The occurrence field stays attested, which is what the book uses for a word said of Allah without the article, as at Names 39 and 40.

ONLY THREE OF THE ELEVEN ARE SAID OF ALLAH: 11:57, 34:21 and 42:6.

FIVE ARE A DENIAL OR A DISCLAIMER: three tell the Prophet ﷺ he was not sent as a keeper over them, at 4:80, 6:107 and 42:48, and two are a speaker refusing the word for himself, the Prophet at 6:104 and Shuʻayb at 11:86. ONE IS A HUMAN BEING CLAIMING IT AND NOT BEING CORRECTED, Yūsuf at 12:55, in the same shape as a divine pairing. The last two go to the Book at 50:4 and to the penitent servant at 50:32. So the word is withheld from a creature five times for every three it is affirmed of Him, which is the shape this book has learned to look for and the entry had not looked for.

FOUND, AND THE BOOK HAD NOT NOTICED IT: the clause wa-innā lahu la-ḥāfiẓūn stands THREE times, not once. At 15:9 Allah says it of the Reminder. At 12:12 and 12:63 Yūsuf’s brothers say it, first of Yūsuf and then of Binyāmīn, and lose both. Ar-Rāghib, illustrating the root in the Mufradāt, quotes the words, and it is his editor who places them at the brothers’ line and not at the promise of Allah (corrected in build 162). 12:12 is now carried beside 15:9 and the note on each points at the other. CORRECTED, THE READING AT 12:64: the page printed khayrun ḥāfiẓan with no remark, and the readings divide. Aṭ-Ṭabarī records ḥifẓan from most of the readers of Madīnah and some of Kūfah and Baṣrah, and ḥāfiẓan from most of Kūfah and some of Makkah; az-Zabīdī adds that the Kūfans other than Abū Bakr read ḥāfiẓan. On the first, His keeping is the best keeping; on the second, He is the best of keepers. Ar-Rāghib gives both and chooses neither, and neither does this note.

CORRECTED, THE ROOT: glossBasis was desc and senseNote was null; rootRelation was already own and is unchanged, correctly, since no other counted Name shares ḥ-f-ẓ. READ, in one fetch of the Hawramani aggregator, which surfaced for this root with fourteen dictionaries: AL-KHALĪL’S KITĀB AL-ʻAYN, the earliest of them, ar-Rāghib’s Mufradāt, Lane, az-Zabīdī’s Tāj al-ʻArūs, Ibn Sīdah’s Muḥkam, al-Jawharī’s Ṣiḥāḥ, al-Fayyūmī’s Miṣbāḥ, al-Muṭarrizī’s Mughrib, ar-Rāzī’s Mukhtār, al-Jurjānī’s Taʻrīfāt, aṣ-Ṣāḥib ibn ʻAbbād, al-Fattinī, Dozy and Salmone. IBN FĀRIS WAS NOT ON THE AGGREGATOR FOR THIS ROOT and was read instead in two independent transcriptions agreeing word for word, one of them citing the printed pagination. NOT READ in a printed edition. AL-KHALĪL’S DEFINITION IS THE ONE THE PAGE NOW TURNS ON: a ḥafīẓ is the muwakkal, the one entrusted with a thing, who keeps it — and al-Bukhārī 2311 opens with the Prophet ﷺ making Abū Hurayrah muwakkal over the ḥifẓ of the zakāh, which the note had not noticed. Az-Zabīdī glosses the divine Name by quoting 2:255 for it, which is why that verse is now on the page.

REMOVED, AS UNVERIFIED: MEDS 38 attributed the two-motions reading of this Name to al-Ghazālī. AL-MAQṢAD AL-ASNĀ WAS NOT READ, not in a printed edition and not in a quotation with a page, so the name is struck rather than hedged and the sentence now reads that two motions have long been heard in this Name. The first motion, the keeping of the heavens and the earth in being, is independently in az-Zabīdī and in Lane; THE SECOND, THE HOLDING OF OPPOSITES APART, HAS NO SOURCE IN ANYTHING READ FOR THIS PASS and is left standing as a reading the book has carried, flagged here (both motions are al-Ghazālī’s, found in build 162).

CORRECTED, THE REF: it carried one long citation form the house forms forbid, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 2311; it named no lexicon; it gave no count; and it named 42:48 and 12:55 while the page carried neither. ONE duʻāʼ BECOMES TWO. MUSLIM 2708a HAD NO GRADE AT ALL, which the whole-book audit had been counting; it now reads a bare ṣaḥīḥ.

ADDED: Abū Dāwūd 5074 with Ibn Mājah 3871, which puts the Name’s own verb, iḥfaẓnī, on a page that had been carrying a supplication its own note admitted does not contain the root. It is SHARED WITH NAMES 6 AND 7 and keyed reciprocally. TWO aḥādīth BECOME THREE. THE GRADE AT AT-TIRMIDHĪ 2516 CARRIED TWO OF THE DATASET’S FIVE VERDICTS and rendered Darussalam’s as ḥasan where it is a verdict on the chain; all five are now given, and NAMES 7 AND 70, which carry the same report with the same string, are corrected with it.

ADDED: Muslim 809a, ten verses of al-Kahf held in the memory, which is the sense of the root the reflection and the poem are built on and the page had nothing for. POEMS 38 and CH 38 read and left; the seed-viability claim in the story, that a seed kept too long stops being a seed, is sound.

OPEN: no lexicon was read in a printed edition.

OPEN: whether 12:63, the brothers’ second use of the clause, should be carried as well as 12:12 (it is carried from build 182, in the author’s English, A50).

OPEN: the two-motions reading is al-Ghazālī’s in both halves, al-Maqṣad al-Asnā p. 110, read on Shamela’s transcription and not in print; whether the reflection names him is the author’s (A50).

COHERENCE: Names 33, 36, 62 and 63 gain a reciprocal quran link at their 2:255 and no change of text; NAME 37’S STUDY NOTE LISTED THE CARRIERS OF 2:255 AND IS UPDATED; Names 6 and 7 gain a reciprocal duʻāʼ link; Names 7 and 70 gain the corrected grade.

HYGIENE AFTER NAME 61: the Duʻāʼ note on Muslim 2708a narrated the page’s own editing — The grade was missing and is now given: Muslim publishes no grade rows, so the bare verdict is right — and the clause is removed with the fact it carried kept; the Ḥadīth note on al-Bukhārī 2311 narrated the page’s own editing — The printed wording had a silent splice and is repaired: al-Bukhārī runs from recite Āyat al-Kursī through the quoted opening of the verse and then to say the end of it, before fa-innaka lan yazāla, and the page had joined the two ends into a sentence that is not in the source. An ellipsis now marks the omission — and the clause is removed with the fact it carried kept; the Ḥadīth note on at-Tirmidhī 2516 narrated the page’s own editing — The grade recorded here had two of the dataset’s five verdicts and gave Darussalam’s as ḥasan where it is a judgement on the chain; all five are now given, and Names 7 and 70, which carry the same report, are brought into line — and the clause is removed with the fact it carried kept.

AUDIT AFTER NAME 70: SHARED_LOCI attached this page’s links for 2:255 (to Names 33 and 36, and as another portion to Names 62 and 63) to 34:21, so a reader saw them under the wrong āyah and none under 2:255; moved to 2:255. The note to Muslim 809a narrated the page’s own editing (the page had nothing for the sense of the root) and called memory both the root’s other sense and not a second meaning; rewritten, with the recensions in Muslim 809b named exactly: Shuʻbah has the end of al-Kahf, Hammām the beginning. AFTER THE CHAT-END AUDIT OF 81–85: the grade field of Abū Dāwūd 5074; Ibn Mājah 3871 now gives every grader in the dataset’s rows, each attributed to its record (the grade survey).

IN BUILD 144, AFTER THE PHASE 2 READING OF NAME 6: the supplication shared with Names 6 and 7 is cited Ibn Mājah 3871 alone, the record that carries the printed wording, its grade that record’s four rows; its note gives Abū Dāwūd 5074’s allāhumma ḥfaẓnī and four rows, and no longer says what this page lacked, a clause narrating the page’s own editing.

IN BUILD 162, FROM THE PHASE 2 READING: the 42:6 note gives the word withheld from the Prophet ﷺ as wakīl, with aṭ-Ṭabarī’s gloss, and no longer calls the verse the one where ḥafīẓ is affirmed and withheld; the 11:57 note gives Hūd the challenge he made and his people the madness they alleged; the 12:12 note gives aṭ-Ṭabarī’s closing gloss of the promise and three words for four; the 15:9 and 12:12 notes, the ref and this record give the placing of ar-Rāghib’s first example at 12:12 to his editor, the words standing at 12:12, 12:63 and 15:9 alike. The 12:64 note and the ref add aṭ-Ṭabarī’s verdict that either reading is right, the two close in meaning; the 42:48 and 2:255 notes no longer narrate the page’s editing; the at-Tirmidhī 2516 note names every Name carrying the report, 64 and 92 among them, and gives the riding to Musnad Aḥmad, at-Tirmidhī’s wording being behind him; the al-Bukhārī 2311 note says the report is in suspended form; the 86:4 note names the commentators on the keeper; the 18:82 note no longer says who built the wall and gives aṭ-Ṭabarī’s report of the seven fathers; the senseNote gives 85:22’s passive to the tablet in the reading printed and to the Qurʼan in Nāfiʻ’s; the ref cites the supplication by Ibn Mājah 3871, the record carrying the printed wording.

READ ON THE WEB, NOT PINNED: ar-Rāghib’s Mufradāt in two transcriptions of the Dāwūdī edition, whose verse numbers are the edition’s brackets; Musnad Aḥmad’s kuntu radīfa on dorar.net; al-Ghazālī’s al-Maqṣad al-Asnā on al-Ḥafīẓ, p. 110 of al-Jābī’s edition in Shamela’s transcription, where both motions of the reflection are his, the second the more apparent. The reflection’s 15:9, its once and his name wait on the author (A50).

BY THE AUTHOR’S DECISIONS OF 2026-09-25, IN BUILD 182: 12:63 is carried in his English, and the named line and the OPEN item say so in place; MEDS 38 quotes 15:9 in the book’s English and names al-Ghazālī for the two motions, and keeps Once, about one thing (A50); 2:255 takes Name 33’s His Kursi extends over and keeps this page’s preservation, which Names 33 and 36 now give, and the 2:255 note gives az-Zabīdī’s clause in that English (A23).

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.

المقيتNext · Name 39The Nourisher

Al-Muqīt

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