Name 32 of 99

الحليم

The Forbearing

Al-Ḥalīm

The diverted channel — power held, and not used.

Meaning

From ḥ-l-m, whose first sense is the leaving off of haste: ḥilm is the contrary of rashness, the holding of the self and the temper back from the surge of anger. Forbearance in this Name is not the patience of the powerless; it is wrath fully earned, fully able, and deliberately held. The adjective stands fifteen times, eleven of them of Allah and never once alone: six beside Al-Ghafūr, three beside Al-ʻAlīm, one each beside Al-Ghanī and Ash-Shakūr. The one definite al-Ḥalīm in the Book is not said of Allah but thrown at a prophet as an insult. Were He to seize mankind for what they earn, He would leave no creature on the earth; but He defers them to an appointed term. The respite is real, and so is the term.

Root ḥ-l-m — the first of three roots: leaving off haste — self-command against the surge of anger

Computed from the Tanzil text, ḥ-l-m gives twenty-one words in twenty verses, 12:44 carrying two. The adjective stands fifteen times. Eleven are of Allah and none of them stands alone: 2:225, 2:235, 3:155 and 5:101 beside al-Ghafūr in that order, 17:44 and 35:41 in the other; 4:12, 22:59 and 33:51 beside al-ʻAlīm; 2:263 beside al-Ghanī; 64:17 beside ash-Shakūr. Nine of the eleven put the Name second, and the two that put it first, 17:44 and 35:41, both follow kāna. Four are of creatures: Ibrāhīm at 9:114 and 11:75, the promised boy at 37:101, and Shuʻayb at 11:87 — and that last is the only definite al-Ḥalīm in the Book, said by his people in mockery, as Ibn Kathīr reports from Ibn ʻAbbās, Maymūn ibn Mihrān, Ibn Jurayj, Ibn Aslam and aṭ-Ṭabarī. The noun ḥilm does not occur in the Qurʼan; the rest of the root is aḥlām, dreams at 12:44 and 21:5 and minds at 52:32, and al-ḥulum, maturity, at 24:58 and 24:59. Ibn Fāris gives three roots — leaving off haste, a thing riddled through, and seeing a thing in sleep — and calls them extremely divergent, using the entry against his own method. Ar-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī: ḥilm is the holding of the self and the temper back from the surging of anger, and is not in reality the intellect, though 52:32 was glossed so because it is among the effects of intellect. Ibn al-Athīr, in an-Nihāyah and quoted in Lisān al-ʻArab: He whom nothing of the disobedience of the servants makes light, and whom anger against them does not provoke, but who has set for everything a measure at which it comes to its end. Al-Jurjānī: tranquillity at the surge of anger, then the deferring of the wrongdoer’s requital. Al-Fayyūmī: he pardoned and covered. Al-Khaṭṭābī: the one who overlooks while unable does not deserve the name. Aṭ-Ṭabarī at 35:41 reads the ḥilm as His leaving off the hastening of punishment, and at 2:263 as His not hastening it on the man who makes a favour of his charity; Ibn ʻAbbās, there: al-Ghanī perfect in richness, al-Ḥalīm perfect in forbearance. Reports: al-Bukhārī 6099, with Muslim 2804a in another recension; al-Bukhārī 6114 with Muslim 2609a; Muslim 17c. The lists at at-Tirmidhī 3507, ḍaʻīf by al-Albānī, Aḥmad Shākir and Darussalam, and Ibn Mājah 3861 carry al-Ḥalīm.

Story

The water that fed Murad’s vineyard came down a channel his grandfather had cut, and one dry summer his neighbor Faruq dammed it and turned it into his own fields. It was theft, and it was provable, and everyone in the valley knew it.

Murad had every power he needed. The magistrate was a friend; the deeds were in his name; a word from him would have taken Faruq’s land and left his family with nothing. He went so far as to have the complaint drawn up. Then he put it in a drawer.

He was not being soft, and he was not pretending it had not happened. He had simply looked down the road a little further than his anger could see: Faruq had three young children, a wife who was ill, and a debt he could not carry. Ruin him and you ruin four innocent people, and the water still would not come back this year. So Murad waited. He lost the season. He said nothing.

Waiting is not restful. He took the complaint out of the drawer perhaps a dozen times in those two years, generally at night, and read it through, and put it back — reminded, each time he did, of how many complaints against himself must stand drawn up in a higher court, and never yet served.

His wife found it once and asked what it was, and he said it was nothing, and it was not nothing. Twice he came close to walking down there and saying something he would not have been able to take back.

It took two years. Faruq, who had braced for destruction and received silence instead, could not live with it — and one evening he came up the hill, opened the channel with his own hands, and stood there unable to speak. They were not friends afterward, exactly. But the water ran, and the children grew up with a father.

Poem

Every argument holds a moment like this:
the sentence that would end it, already assembled,
sitting right behind the teeth.

It would work — not a bluff, but the one true thing
that would land exactly where it needed to land,
and everyone in the room would know, at once, who had won.

And then it isn’t said.

Not because it wasn’t there. It was there, fully formed, fully deserved.
It stays where it was, unfired,
while the argument goes on being merely an argument, and not a wound.

This is harder than patience.
Patience can be the absence of a weapon.
This is the weapon — held, loaded, capable —
set back down on the table on purpose,
so the other person gets one more year, one more chance,
one more try at becoming someone
who never needed to be answered that way.

Now consider the One who hears, daily,
the worst that can be said of Him —
who is told He has a son, told He is not there at all —
and answers with wheat, with rain, with morning
delivered on time to the blasphemer’s window.

Al-Ḥalīm is not weakness mistaken for restraint.
His is the full retort, fully available,
and the silence chosen instead —
for as long as it takes,
however many chances that costs.

Reflection

The Restraint

The last Name left us with an acquaintance that misses nothing — the motive under the deed, read off before the deed. Here is the Name that says what is done with what has been read. Our version first, such as it is. Human restraint is mostly absence — we forbear what we barely noticed, forgive what never really landed, stay calm where nothing was at stake. The moment we hold real power over someone who has really wronged us, the retort leaves us almost by itself. Ḥilm begins exactly where our version runs out: full knowledge of the offense, full power to answer it, and the answer withheld on purpose.

The root is ḥ-l-m, and the lexicon sets ḥilm against rashness: the hot immediacy of the fool, the hand that moves the instant it is provoked. Ḥilm was the opposite temperament: weight, self-command, the strength to stay slow. Raised beyond all creaturely measure, the definitions keep the essential clause: nothing of the disobedience makes Him light, anger against them does not provoke Him, and — as al-Khaṭṭābī adds — the one who overlooks while unable does not deserve the name. Eleven times the Qurʼan names Him Ḥalīm, and never once alone. Six times the companion is Al-Ghafūr — because forbearance is the anteroom of forgiveness, the door held open so that pardon can walk through — and elsewhere ʻAlīm, Ghanī, Shakūr: knowing, and unprovoked; needing nothing, so needing no revenge. The pairings are the portrait.

The Qurʼan states the scale of it plainly: were Allah to seize mankind for what they have earned, He would not leave upon its surface a single creature; but He defers them to an appointed term. Read it twice: the respite is universal, and it is a respite, not an acquittal. And the Prophet ﷺ set the measure where no creature can reach it: no one is more patient of injury he hears than Allah; they ascribe a son to Him, and still He keeps them well and provides for them. That is the sobering face and the consoling face in a single sentence. Sobering, because every quiet day runs on borrowed clemency, and the term is set. Consoling, because the delay is not inattention — Al-Khabīr already ruled that out. It is invitation. Every morning that arrived without the account being called was the door held open another day.

The trace of this Name begins where the Prophet ﷺ relocated strength: the strong man is not the one who overcomes people by his strength; the strong man is the one who owns himself when anger comes. To a chief of ʻAbd al-Qays he said: in you are two qualities that Allah loves: forbearance and deliberateness. Loves — of everything a person might be praised for, ḥilm made that short list. The Qurʼan spends the description sincerely on only two of His servants: Ibrāhīm, who argued gently even on behalf of a city already condemned, and the son promised to him, named a forbearing boy before his birth and proven under the knife. So hold the answer you have every right to give — and hold it remembering that your own account has been deferred, morning after morning, by Someone with far better grounds to call it in. Restraint on this scale is not produced by smallness — the small retaliate instantly, having nothing else to spend. It is a function of sheer magnitude, and magnitude has a Name of its own — Al-ʻAẓīm, the Name after this one.

Answer slowly; you are being answered slowly.

Qurʼan

إِنَّ اللَّهَ يُمْسِكُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ أَن تَزُولَا ۚ وَلَئِن زَالَتَا إِنْ أَمْسَكَهُمَا مِنْ أَحَدٍ مِّن بَعْدِهِ ۚ إِنَّهُ كَانَ حَلِيمًا غَفُورًا

Truly Allah holds the heavens and the earth lest they cease. And were they to cease, none could hold them after Him. Truly He is Forbearing, Much-Forgiving.

35:41 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The universe is described being held from collapse, and then the two attributes that explain why it still stands are named. Aṭ-Ṭabarī says what the forbearance consists of: Allah is Ḥalīm toward those of His creation who associate and disbelieve, in His leaving off the hastening of the punishment upon them, and Ghafūr toward the sins of whoever turns back. He cites the exchange in which ʻAbdullāh ibn Masʻūd answered a report brought to him from Kaʻb by reciting this verse. Forbearance is given here not as a temperament but as the reason there is anything left to stand on. This is one of the two places the Name stands first in its pair, and both follow kāna.

لَا يُؤَاخِذُكُمُ اللَّهُ بِاللَّغْوِ فِي أَيْمَانِكُمْ وَلَٰكِن يُؤَاخِذُكُم بِمَا كَسَبَتْ قُلُوبُكُمْ ۗ وَاللَّهُ غَفُورٌ حَلِيمٌ

Allah does not hold you accountable for what is thoughtless in your oaths, but He holds you accountable for what your hearts have earned. And Allah is Much-Forgiving, Forbearing.

2:225 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Ḥilm here is precision, not laxity: a distinction drawn between the careless word and the settled intention, in favour of the one who spoke carelessly. Aṭ-Ṭabarī collects the readings of al-laghw in oaths — the man’s no by Allah and yes by Allah with no intention behind it, and the oath sworn on what the swearer believed and found otherwise — and counts both as laghw, which for him is every oath the tongue ran to without the heart intending the sin, rejecting the reading that it is an oath sworn to a sin; he reads the close as forgiveness of what the tongue ran to and no hastening of the account for it. The pairing here is the commonest the Name has: ghafūrun ḥalīm, in this order, four times.

لَيُدْخِلَنَّهُم مُّدْخَلًا يَرْضَوْنَهُ ۗ وَإِنَّ اللَّهَ لَعَلِيمٌ حَلِيمٌ

He will surely admit them to an entrance with which they will be pleased. And truly Allah is Knowing, Forbearing.

22:59 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Paired with knowledge, as it must be: forbearance that did not fully know what it was withholding judgment on would only be inattention. Ibn Kathīr reads the two together as one act — Knowing of who emigrates and strives in His way and who deserves this, Forbearing in that He overlooks and forgives them their sins and effaces them by their emigration to Him and their reliance on Him. The entrance they will be pleased with is the Garden.

وَمَا كَانَ اسْتِغْفَارُ إِبْرَاهِيمَ لِأَبِيهِ إِلَّا عَن مَّوْعِدَةٍ وَعَدَهَا إِيَّاهُ فَلَمَّا تَبَيَّنَ لَهُ أَنَّهُ عَدُوٌّ لِّلَّهِ تَبَرَّأَ مِنْهُ ۚ إِنَّ إِبْرَاهِيمَ لَأَوَّاهٌ حَلِيمٌ

And Ibrahim’s asking of forgiveness for his father was only because of a promise he had made to him. But when it became clear to him that he was an enemy of Allah, he disowned him. Indeed, Ibrahim was compassionate and forbearing.

9:114 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Ḥalīm named of Ibrāhīm at the moment of a hard renunciation, not a soft one — restraint that does not prevent him from finally disowning his father once the enmity stood beyond doubt. Aṭ-Ṭabarī gathers the readings of awwāh before it — the one who calls much on his Lord, the merciful, the one certain, a word of Abyssinia for the believer, the one who glorifies Him and remembers Him much, the one who recites the Qurʼan much, one given to sighing, and one of understanding — and prefers Ibn Masʻūd’s outright, the one who calls much, because the verse has just described Ibrāhīm praying and asking forgiveness for his father; the causes others gave for it, the soundness of his certainty and of his faith, his recitation and the remembrance of his Lord, he says all come back to what he said, since the grieving man humble before his Lord is given to it when he calls on Him; and he glosses ḥalīm there as forbearing toward whoever reviled him and did him harm. The same two words stand in the other order at 11:75.

فَبَشَّرْنَاهُ بِغُلَامٍ حَلِيمٍ

So We gave him good tidings of a forbearing boy.

37:101 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The son promised to Ibrāhīm before the sacrifice narrative, named ḥalīm before he could have earned it. Who he is is disputed and the entry now says so: aṭ-Ṭabarī reports ʻIkrimah and Qatādah naming Isḥāq, and Qatādah adds that ḥilm was praised of no one but Isḥāq and Ibrāhīm, while Ibn Kathīr names Ismāʻīl, on the grounds that he was the first son promised and the elder of the two. Aṭ-Ṭabarī also reads the word forward in time: a boy possessed of ḥilm when he grows, for in his infancy in the cradle he is not so described. Qatādah’s remark is checkable against this page, and holds if the boy is Isḥāq and if 11:87 below is read as mockery.

وَلَوْ يُؤَاخِذُ اللَّهُ النَّاسَ بِمَا كَسَبُوا مَا تَرَكَ عَلَىٰ ظَهْرِهَا مِن دَابَّةٍ وَلَٰكِن يُؤَخِّرُهُمْ إِلَىٰ أَجَلٍ مُّسَمًّى ۚ فَإِذَا جَاءَ أَجَلُهُمْ فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ بِعِبَادِهِ بَصِيرًا

And were Allah to seize mankind for what they have earned, He would not leave upon its surface a single creature. But He defers them to an appointed term; and when their term comes, then truly Allah is ever Seeing of His servants.

35:45 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The verse that states the scale of the forbearance. What it grants is not that some are spared but that the whole population of the earth is, and it sets the limit in the same breath: a deferral to an appointed term, not a remission. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: He defers their punishment and their being seized for what they earned to a term known with Him, bounded, which they neither fall short of nor pass once they reach it; and Qatādah, on not a creature left, says except what Nūḥ carried in the ark. Read beside 35:41 four verses earlier, the sūrah supplies the two halves together — what holds the heavens from ceasing, and what holds the account from being called. The closing clause names Him Seeing of His servants, which is Name 27’s attribute rather than this one; the deferral and the term are one sentence, and the seeing is what makes the delay forbearance instead of inattention — the point 22:59 above makes with knowledge.

قَالُوا يَا شُعَيْبُ أَصَلَاتُكَ تَأْمُرُكَ أَن نَّتْرُكَ مَا يَعْبُدُ آبَاؤُنَا أَوْ أَن نَّفْعَلَ فِي أَمْوَالِنَا مَا نَشَاءُ ۖ إِنَّكَ لَأَنتَ الْحَلِيمُ الرَّشِيدُ

They said: O Shuʻayb, does your prayer command you that we should leave what our fathers worship, or not do with our wealth what we please? Indeed, you are the forbearing, the right-minded.

11:87 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The only place the definite al-Ḥalīm stands in the Qurʼan, and it is not said of Allah: it is thrown at Shuʻayb by his own people. Ibn Kathīr reports Ibn ʻAbbās, Maymūn ibn Mihrān, Ibn Jurayj, Ibn Aslam and aṭ-Ṭabarī that they said it in mockery. Aṭ-Ṭabarī glosses al-ḥalīm as the one whom anger does not carry into doing what he would not do while content, and then says they said it to him in mockery. Lisān al-ʻArab preserves what the mockery was: al-Azharī says the commentators read it as a covering for you are the fool, the ignorant one, and Ibn ʻArafah calls it among the harshest abuse the Arabs had — to say to a man you think a fool, O forbearing one, meaning forbearing in your own eyes and a fool in everyone else’s; he sets beside it the words said to the man in the Fire, taste, you are the mighty, the noble. The verse is carried at Name 98, which reads it for ar-rashīd.

قَوْلٌ مَّعْرُوفٌ وَمَغْفِرَةٌ خَيْرٌ مِّن صَدَقَةٍ يَتْبَعُهَا أَذًى ۗ وَاللَّهُ غَنِيٌّ حَلِيمٌ

A kind word and forgiveness are better than a charity followed by injury. And Allah is Free of need, Forbearing.

2:263 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The one place the Name stands beside al-Ghanī. Aṭ-Ṭabarī glosses both halves: Free of need of what they give away, and Forbearing in that He does not hasten the punishment on the one among you who makes a favour of his charity and injures the man he gave it to. Ibn ʻAbbās, whom he cites: al-Ghanī is the one perfect in his richness, al-Ḥalīm the one perfect in his forbearance. The setting is the smallest possible provocation — not a war, not a blasphemy, but a gift spoilt afterwards by the giver — and the Name is set down on it. Aḍ-Ḍaḥḥāk, also in aṭ-Ṭabarī: that a man hold on to his wealth is better than that he spend it and follow it with reproach and injury.

Dua

لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ الْعَظِيمُ الْحَلِيمُ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ رَبُّ الْعَرْشِ الْعَظِيمِ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ رَبُّ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَرَبُّ الْأَرْضِ وَرَبُّ الْعَرْشِ الْكَرِيمِ

There is no god but Allah, the Magnificent, the Forbearing. There is no god but Allah, Lord of the Magnificent Throne. There is no god but Allah, Lord of the heavens and Lord of the earth and Lord of the Noble Throne.

Muslim 2730a; al-Bukhārī 6346 · ṣaḥīḥ (muttafaq ʻalayh)

From Ibn ʻAbbās, through Abū l-ʻĀliyah and Qatādah in both collections; the Prophet ﷺ said it at a time of distress. The duʻāʼ of distress asks for nothing. A person in trouble is given declarations, and the first attribute named beside the magnitude is the forbearance. The wording printed is Muslim 2730a’s, with three separate declarations, the second naming the Lord of the Magnificent Throne and the third the Lord of the heavens and of the earth and of the Noble Throne. Al-Bukhārī has the three word for word in the route through Musaddad, and a shorter, two-part form in the route through Muslim ibn Ibrāhīm, joining the heavens and the earth to the Throne in one closing sentence and keeping only the Magnificent Throne. All three were read against the six editions and the divergence is exactly that.

Hadith

لَيْسَ أَحَدٌ أَوْ لَيْسَ شَيْءٌ أَصْبَرَ عَلَى أَذًى سَمِعَهُ مِنَ اللَّهِ إِنَّهُمْ لَيَدْعُونَ لَهُ وَلَدًا وَإِنَّهُ لَيُعَافِيهِمْ وَيَرْزُقُهُمْ

No one — or nothing — is more patient of injury he hears than Allah. They ascribe a son to Him, and still He keeps them well and provides for them.

al-Bukhārī 6099 · ṣaḥīḥ

From Abū Mūsā al-Ashʻarī, whom Muslim’s third route names by his own name, ʻAbdullāh ibn Qays, where the first two name him Abū Mūsā. The printed text is al-Bukhārī 6099’s in full. The narrator’s alternative, aw laysa shayʼun, which al-Bukhārī sets between two dashes, is printed with the rest; the portion is thus continuous in the source rather than joined across a gap, and the doubt is the narrator’s own rather than an editor’s. The emphatic lām stands twice in his wording, la-yadʻūna and la-yuʻāfīhim, and he reads wa-innahu where Muslim reads otherwise. Muslim 2804a is a distinct recension rather than a variant of this string: it opens lā aḥada rather than laysa aḥadun, reads adhan yasmaʻuhu rather than samiʻahu, states the offence as yushraku bihi wa-yujʻalu lahu l-walad, association named beside a child, rather than yadʻūna lahu waladan, and closes thumma huwa rather than wa-innahu; all four of those divergences hold. The forbearance is not silence merely; it is continued provision to the one speaking. What is withheld is the answer, not the sustenance. The opening clause alone is carried at Name 99.

لَيْسَ الشَّدِيدُ بِالصُّرَعَةِ إِنَّمَا الشَّدِيدُ الَّذِي يَمْلِكُ نَفْسَهُ عِنْدَ الْغَضَبِ

The strong man is not the one who overcomes people by his strength; the strong man is the one who owns himself when anger comes.

al-Bukhārī 6114; Muslim 2609a · ṣaḥīḥ (muttafaq ʻalayh)

From Abū Hurayrah. Strength is relocated from the outcome of a contest to self-command in the moment of provocation — the creaturely form of ḥilm, and the exact quality the old Arabs set against rashness. Muslim 2609a carries the wording printed here word for word, through the same chain of Mālik from Ibn Shihāb from Saʻīd ibn al-Musayyab that al-Bukhārī 6114 uses; Muslim 2609b is a differently chained narration with the same content cast as a dialogue, they said, then who is strong, and he answered, rather than the innamā construction printed above.

إِنَّ فِيكَ خَصْلَتَيْنِ يُحِبُّهُمَا اللَّهُ الْحِلْمُ وَالْأَنَاةُ

In you are two qualities that Allah loves: forbearance and deliberateness.

Muslim 17c · ṣaḥīḥ

From Ibn ʻAbbās, in the account of the delegation of ʻAbd al-Qays, said to al-Ashajj. Of everything for which a man might be commended, ḥilm is named as beloved to Allah — and the noun the Qurʼan never uses of the quality arrives here, in the Sunnah. The exact wording printed is Muslim 17c; Muslim 18a gives the same sentence through another chain with an emphatic lām, inna fīka la-khaṣlatayn. A companion narration at al-Bukhārī, al-Adab al-Mufrad 584, from al-Ashajj himself, is reported to give the pair as ḥilm and ḥayāʼ instead; that work is not in the six editions this book verifies against, and the report is carried here as reported rather than as checked.

Study Notes

Verified — directly attested; quoted wording resolved

ShowHide the Study Notes (2,124 words)

CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: EIGHT ayat. Carried before and now with named commentators: 35:41, with aṭ-Ṭabarī on what the ḥilm consists of, the leaving off of hastening the punishment; 2:225, with aṭ-Ṭabarī (corrected in build 156); 22:59, with Ibn Kathīr, who reads the pairing as a single act; 9:114, with aṭ-Ṭabarī on awwāh and the five readings he collects; 37:101, WITH AN IDENTIFICATION CORRECTED, since aṭ-Ṭabarī reports ʻIkrimah and Qatādah naming the boy Isḥāq where the note gave only Ibn Kathīr naming Ismāʻīl; 35:45, with aṭ-Ṭabarī and Qatādah, AND WITH ITS PRODUCTION REMARK REMOVED.

ADDED: 11:87, SHARED WITH NAME 98 and keyed reciprocally, WHICH IS THE ONLY DEFINITE AL-ḤALĪM IN THE QURʼAN AND IS SAID OF A HUMAN BEING, IN MOCKERY, with Ibn Kathīr, al-Azharī and Ibn ʻArafah; and 2:263, ghaniyyun ḥalīm, the one pairing the entry left out of its own count, with aṭ-Ṭabarī and Ibn ʻAbbās. Both are appended, the six existing sub-items keep their positions, and the distinct Qurʼan-page verse count in Notes on This Edition moves from 377 to 378; 11:87 was already carried at Name 98 and adds nothing to the count.

NAMED HERE BUT NOT CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: 64:17, carried at Name 35; 17:44, carried at Name 56; 12:44, 2:235, 3:155, 5:101, 4:12, 33:51, 11:75, 52:32, 24:59, 21:5 and 24:58, all carried at NO Name.

CORRECTED ON THE RECORD, THE COUNTS: computed from the Tanzil text with strip, ḥ-l-m gives TWENTY-ONE words in TWENTY VERSES, 12:44 carrying two. The look-alikes a widened pattern returns and this one excludes are ḥawlakum and ḥawlahum from ḥ-w-l, ḥibālahum from ḥ-b-l, ḥalaltum from ḥ-l-l, ḥalaftum from ḥ-l-f, ḥaliyyihim from ḥ-l-y, taḥmilahum and aḥmilukum and ḥamaltum from ḥ-m-l, riḥālihim from r-ḥ-l, and al-ḥulqūm at 56:83.

THE ADJECTIVE STANDS FIFTEEN TIMES: ḥalīm ten, ḥalīman three, la-ḥalīm once and al-ḥalīm once. ELEVEN ARE OF ALLAH and the entry was right that they are, and right that it NEVER STANDS ALONE; but its account of the pairings was incomplete. Six are beside al-Ghafūr, at 2:225, 2:235, 3:155 and 5:101 in that order and at 17:44 and 35:41 in the other; three beside al-ʻAlīm, at 4:12, 22:59 and 33:51; ONE BESIDE AL-GHANĪ, AT 2:263, WHICH THE ref OMITTED ENTIRELY; and one beside ash-Shakūr, at 64:17. Nine of the eleven put the Name second; the two that put it first are 17:44 and 35:41, both after kāna.

FOUR ARE OF CREATURES: Ibrāhīm at 9:114 and 11:75, the promised boy at 37:101, and Shuʻayb at 11:87 — and the last of those is the only definite form anywhere in the Book. THE NOUN ḤILM DOES NOT OCCUR IN THE QURʼAN AT ALL: the quality is named only through the adjective, and the noun reaches the book from the Sunnah, in Muslim 17c. The rest of the root is the other two senses: aḥlām four times, three of dreams and once, at 52:32, of minds; and al-ḥulum twice, at 24:58 and 24:59, of the age of maturity.

CORRECTED, THE ROOT: the gloss was the desc’s own phrasing and followed no lexicon, and senseNote was null. IBN FĀRIS GIVES THREE ROOTS AND SAYS OF THEM SOMETHING HE SAYS OF ALMOST NO OTHER ENTRY: leaving off haste, a thing being riddled through, and seeing a thing in sleep — and then that they are extremely divergent, and that this shows some of the language not to be analogical even though most of it is. He is using this very root against his own method, and the senseNote now says so. READ IN FULL, on the Hawramani aggregator page for the root: Ibn Fāris, Lisān al-ʻArab, ar-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, Ibn al-Athīr in an-Nihāyah, al-Jawharī, al-Fayyūmī, al-Jurjānī, az-Zamakhsharī in Asās al-Balāghah, Ibn Sīdah and az-Zabīdī. Ibn al-Athīr gives the Name: He whom nothing of the disobedience of the servants makes light, and whom anger against them does not provoke, but who has set for everything a measure at which it comes to its end — which Lisān quotes verbatim and which 35:45 states in the Qurʼan’s own words. Ar-Rāghib gives ḥilm as the holding of the self and the temper back from the surging of anger, and adds a distinction the other lexicons blur: ḥilm is not in reality the intellect, and those who glossed 52:32 so did it because ḥilm is among the effects of intellect. Al-Jurjānī gives two definitions and the second is this page in miniature, the deferring of the wrongdoer’s requital. Al-Fayyūmī: ḥaluma ḥilman, he pardoned and covered. NOT READ in a printed edition; all of it in transcription. AL-KHAṬṬĀBĪ was read only in a secondary transcription and is used for one sentence, that the one who overlooks while unable does not deserve the name, and that al-Ḥalīm is the one who overlooks while able.

CORRECTED, THE DESC: it said He sees every sin as it is committed and that Al-Khabīr guaranteed it, which makes one Name the warrant for another and is not how the Book speaks; it gave the ḥilm-against-jahl contrast with no lexicon behind it; and it said the Name never stands alone without giving the count that makes the claim checkable.

CORRECTED, THE REF: IT CARRIED TWO LONG CITATION FORMS, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6099 and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2804a, which the house forms forbid; it named no commentator and no lexicon; its pairing count left out al-Ghanī; and it did not carry at-Tirmidhī 3507 with its grades. All are fixed.

CORRECTED, THE QURʼAN NOTES: none of the six carried a named commentator, and 35:45 carried a production remark naming the Meaning page and the reflection, which is removed. ONE duʻāʼ, the duʻāʼ of distress. ITS SOURCE FIELD HELD AN ESSAY — some sixty words comparing two recensions, sitting where a citation belongs — AND IT HAD NO GRADE. The source now reads Muslim 2730a; al-Bukhārī 6346 (corrected in build 156, from 6345, which has the shorter form) and the grade a plain ṣaḥīḥ (muttafaq ʻalayh), with the whole comparison moved into the note and nothing of it lost. Both were verified against the dataset: Muslim 2730a carries the three declarations printed here, and al-Bukhārī 6345 carries two, joining the heavens and the earth to the Throne in one closing sentence — which is exactly what the old source field said, in the wrong field. THREE aḥādīth. al-Bukhārī 6099 CORRECTED TWICE: its Arabic carried the punctuation the book’s own rule forbids, which is stripped with the letters unchanged; and its note claimed the printed text follows al-Bukhārī’s exact wording, WHICH IT DOES NOT — al-Bukhārī’s text carries the narrator’s alternative, or is it that nothing is, between two dashes, and the book drops it silently. The note now says so and names Abū Mūsā al-Ashʻarī, whom the old note left out. Its four claims about Muslim 2804a were checked one by one against the dataset AND ALL FOUR HOLD. al-Bukhārī 6114 CORRECTED: ITS SOURCE FIELD HELD AN ESSAY of some forty words on the chain and on Muslim 2609b; the source now reads al-Bukhārī 6114; Muslim 2609a and the rest is in the note. Muslim 17 CORRECTED TO Muslim 17c: the exact wording printed here is 17c, and Muslim 18a, which the old entry did not mention, gives the same sentence with an emphatic lām.

MEDS 32: FOUR DEFECTS. Its first sentence quoted the closing line of MEDS 31, which the last pass removed as an unsourced assurance, so the paragraph pointed at something no longer in the book; it is rewritten. Three further quotations did not match the book’s own translations — 35:45, al-Bukhārī 6099 and al-Bukhārī 6114 — and now do. POEMS 32 and CH 32 read and unchanged.

OPEN: the claim that al-Bukhārī, al-Adab al-Mufrad 584 gives the pair as ḥilm and ḥayāʼ is carried forward unverified, since al-Adab al-Mufrad is not in the hadith dataset; it is marked in the note as reported rather than checked.

OPEN: no lexicon was read in a printed edition.

AUDIT: the count of 21 was taken by matching every word whose consonants run ḥāʼ, lām, mīm in that order with at most one weak letter between them, printing all eight distinct forms and reading them by hand, then widening the gap to two letters and reading the eleven further returns to drop the eight roots that are not this one (corrected in build 156).

COHERENCE: Name 98 carries 11:87 and gains a reciprocal quran link and no change of text; its own reading of the verse as mockery, traced through Ibn Jarīr and Ibn Kathīr, agrees with what this page now carries and is left as it stands. Name 99 carries the shorter portion of al-Bukhārī 6099 and is already keyed to this page as another portion; its source and grade strings match this page and nothing there is touched.

HYGIENE AFTER NAME 61: the Qurʼan note on 2:263 narrated the page’s own editing — The one place the Name stands beside al-Ghanī, and the pairing this entry had left out of its own count — and the clause is removed with the fact it carried kept.

AFTER NAME 98: the note on 11:87 now gives aṭ-Ṭabarī’s own words, that after glossing al-ḥalīm and ar-rashīd he says they said it to him in mockery; the English of 11:87 is without quotation marks, the same here and at Name 98. ON THE AUTHOR’S DECISION, THE ENGLISH OF AṢBAR: the author has settled the one English the book gives to aṣbar in al-Bukhārī 6099, which stood as more forbearing at Name 32 and more patient at Name 99. It is more patient at both, because the word is of ṣ-b-r, which is Name 99’s root and not Name 32’s, and the English now answers to the Arabic rather than to the title of whichever page the reader is on. The record is not an exact share: Name 32 prints the report in full and Name 99 the opening clause, and the extents are unchanged. On this page the ḥadīth entry and the meditation both take the new wording; the point the page makes with the record, that Ibn al-Athīr puts the two Names close in meaning, is unaffected, and the word is now visibly on loan from Name 99.

IN BUILD 156, FROM THE PHASE 2 READING: the 9:114 note gives aṭ-Ṭabarī’s preference for Ibn Masʻūd’s reading of awwāh, the readings he gathers and his gloss of ḥalīm there. The note on al-Bukhārī 6099 keeps the narrator’s alternative without narrating the page’s editing, gives the emphatic lām its name, and says which of Muslim’s routes names ʻAbdullāh ibn Qays. The 35:45 note keeps its reason without narrating a choice of portion. The ref gives aḥlām at 12:44, 21:5 and 52:32 and al-ḥulum at 24:58 and 24:59, the two new verses joining the named line, and names Ibn Mājah 3861’s list beside at-Tirmidhī 3507’s. The AUDIT counts eight roots; the carried line gives 2:225 aṭ-Ṭabarī alone. The duʻāʼ of distress is cited Muslim 2730a; al-Bukhārī 6346, the route of al-Bukhārī that carries the printed wording, at this Name and Name 33 together, and the note says so. Aṭ-Ṭabarī’s preference at 2:225 stays unverified; the reflection waits on the author (A43).

BY THE AUTHOR’S DECISIONS OF 2026-09-25, IN BUILD 182: MEDS 32’s definitions keep the essential clause in the words of Ibn al-Athīr and al-Khaṭṭābī (A43); its old Arabs setting ḥilm against jahl waits on the reading of Lisān al-ʻArab (A43).

IN BUILD 195, FROM THE BACKLOG READING OF THE LEXICA: Ibn Fāris at ḥ-l-m is read at Shamela through its page reader, not in print, vol. 2, p. 93: three roots, mutabāyinah jiddan, showing that some of the language is not analogical though most of it is, as the ref gives it; the senseNote no longer says he does this almost nowhere else, which no count supported, since at sh-k-r, Name 35, he calls four roots mutabāyinah baʻīdat al-qiyās.

IN BUILD 204, FROM THE PHASE 2 READING: aṭ-Ṭabarī’s entry at 2:225 is read whole at the pin: he prefers neither reading of al-laghw, counting as laghw every oath the tongue ran to without the heart intending the sin, the careless no by Allah and the oath on what the swearer believed among them, and rejects the reading that it is an oath sworn to a sin; the 2:225 note no longer says he prefers the first.

IN BUILD 205, BY THE AUTHOR’S DECISION: A43 is applied by its reading: Lisān al-ʻArab, read through Shamela’s page reader, not in print, sets al-ḥilm against as-safah at ḥ-l-m (vol. 12, p. 146) and al-jahl against al-ʻilm at j-h-l (vol. 11, p. 129), and nowhere on those pages jahl against ḥilm; so MEDS 32 now says the lexicon sets ḥilm against rashness, as Ibn Fāris’s gloss above has it, and the rest of its sentence stands.

العظيمNext · Name 33The Magnificent

Al-ʻAẓīm

Read Name 32 in the full reader