Name 62 of 99

الحي

The Ever-Living

Al-Ḥayy

The old olive — outliving everyone, and still borrowing.

Meaning

From the root ḥ-y-y, which Ibn Fāris gives two origins, life and shame; from the first, rain is called ḥayā — by it the earth lives. The Name is the root’s adjective, and the Qurʼan says it of Allah five times: three with al-Qayyūm, and twice alone, each with a command to the servant — rely upon the Ever-Living who does not die; call upon Him. The same word, the living, stands eight more times of what He brings out of the dead, and once it is denied: what they call upon besides Allah is dead, not alive. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: the One whose life is perpetual, with no first bounded by a limit and no last by an end. Abū Bakr, on the day the Prophet ﷺ died: whoever worshipped Allah, Allah is alive and does not die.

Root ḥ-y-y — life, the opposite of death; the living

Counted by hand from the Tanzil text. The sweep for ḥāʼ and yāʼ returns six hundred and seventy-five words; Name 60 counts the causative. The adjective ḥayy stands twenty-four times in twenty verses. The definite form, thirteen: of Allah five, three with al-Qayyūm (2:255, 3:2, 20:111) and two without it, each with a command (25:58, 40:65); of the living brought out of the dead, and the dead out of the living, eight (3:27, 6:95, 10:31, 30:19, twice each). The indefinite and plural, eleven, all of creatures: Yaḥyā (19:15); ʻĪsā (19:31, 19:33); the man who asks whether he will be brought out alive (19:66); whoever is alive to be warned (36:70); the slain in the way of Allah (2:154, 3:169); the living and the dead not equal (35:22); the earth gathering both (77:25–26); every living thing made from water (21:30); and, denied, what is called upon besides Allah (16:20–21). At 8:42 ḥayya is the verb. Al-Qayyūm stands only in the three verses of the pair. Ibn Fāris: two origins, the opposite of death and the opposite of shamelessness; rain is ḥayā because by it the earth lives; al-ḥayy, a tribe, he files under ḥ-w-y. Aṭ-Ṭabarī at 2:255: life perpetual, where every other living thing has a bounded first and a last cut off at its term; he records the people of inquiry, ahl al-baḥth, dividing over whether He is named living for His governing, for a life that is His attribute, or as a name accepted in submission. At 3:2 he gives Muḥammad ibn Jaʻfar ibn az-Zubayr: the Living who does not die, against the Najrān delegation’s claim about ʻĪsā. As-Saʻdī at 2:255: al-Ḥayy holds every meaning of perfect life, hearing, sight, power and will, as al-Qayyūm holds the attributes of action. Reports: al-Bukhārī 3667; Muslim 810; Muslim 2849a. The market dhikr at at-Tirmidhī 3428 says wa-huwa ḥayyun lā yamūt, graded ḥasan by Aḥmad Shākir, al-Albānī and Bashshār ʻAwwād Maʻrūf and ḍaʻīf by Darussalam. The Name-form stands in the list at at-Tirmidhī 3507, graded ḍaʻīf by al-Albānī, Aḥmad Shākir and Darussalam, and at Ibn Mājah 3861, with the caveat recorded at Name 12.

Story

The olive tree in the square of Beit Sahm was older than the village around it.

Nobody knew who had planted it. It had been standing when the mosque was built, and it had been standing before that; the oldest record anyone could find mentioned it as already ancient.

Generations used it as a measure. Children were told their great-great-grandfathers had played beneath it, and grew up, and grew old, and pointed it out to their own great-grandchildren, and were buried, and the tree went on. In four hundred years it had watched an entire village be born and die eight times over.

But it was dying now. It had been slowly dying for twenty-six years — a limb at a time, the trunk hollowing — and the village had begun to grow a cutting from it in a pot, which is what you do when even your oldest thing is mortal.

An old man named Hisham, who had spent his life beneath it, put it plainly to his grandson: “We measure ourselves against this tree because it lasts. But it does not last. It only lasts longer.”

His grandson did not take the point at the time. He was eleven, and what he heard was an old man being gloomy about a tree, and he went off to do something else. He understood it at thirty-four, standing in the same square on the morning they took the last of the trunk out, and what struck him then was not the tree at all but that Hisham had been dead for seven years and he could still hear him saying it.

That spring the cutting, kept in its pot all those years, was planted where the trunk had stood. Beside the tree it replaced, it is very small. Nobody now alive will see it be old.

Poem

Somewhere in a lab, a virus sits outside any cell,
folded into a shape closer to a crystal than to anything you’d call alive —
no metabolism, no hunger, no response to being touched,
inert enough that biologists have argued for decades,
without ever fully resolving it,
whether the word “alive” applies to it at all.

Introduce it to a single living cell, though, and everything changes.
It finds a way in, borrows the machinery already running there,
and begins, using a life that was never its own,
to multiply.

It was never alive by itself.
It only ever borrowed aliveness, briefly, from somewhere that already had it —
proof, in the strangest possible way,
that life isn’t a state a thing simply arrives at
by being complex enough, or organized enough, or old enough.

Something has to actually be alive first, originally, on its own terms,
before anything else has a source to borrow from.

Al-Ḥayy is not the persistence the virus manages,
folded and waiting, sometimes for years, for a cell to infect.
He is alive in Himself, needing no host —
not extended, not conserved, not borrowed from anywhere before it,
but the one true source
every borrowed flicker of life, everywhere,
has always been drawing from.

Reflection

Borrowed, Not Owned

You did not start your own heart, and you cannot stop it from stopping. Almost every breath you have taken tonight came without your instruction; your cells repair themselves on a schedule you never set and could not override if you tried. This is not evidence of some impersonal life-force running through you. It is evidence of Allah — Al-Ḥayy, the Ever-Living — sustaining a life in you that was never yours to generate in the first place.

The Qurʼan names Him so five times, and three of them are one phrase repeated — al-Ḥayy al-Qayyūm — standing at the center of everything: “Allah — there is no god but He, the Ever-Living, the Self-Subsisting” (2:255). Al-Ḥayy is not a quality He shares with you the way warmth is shared between two bodies near a fire. His life has no beginning, depends on nothing, and cannot be diminished by anything He creates. Yours has a beginning you can name, depends entirely on Him for its continuation, and will end on the day He has already appointed. The tree in the story outlived eight generations and is dying anyway — because it does not last. It only lasts longer. Nothing borrowed lasts absolutely, no matter how long the loan.

The poem makes this precise: even a virus, folded and inert, is not alive by itself — it borrows a life that was never its own from a cell that already had it. You are not the virus and you are not the cell either, not exactly. But your life is exactly this kind of borrowing, several steps further back — every heartbeat drawing, ultimately, on the one true, unborrowed Source every living thing has always been drawing from, whether it knows the Source’s Name or not.

This should not feel like diminishment. It should feel like relief. You were never meant to be the thing keeping yourself alive — that was never a job assigned to you, and you have been quietly failing at a task you were never given, every time you have felt the anxious need to manage, protect, or preserve your own existence by sheer will. Let Al-Ḥayy hold what was always His to hold. What is actually yours is simpler: to live, while the loan lasts, as someone who knows exactly whose it was.

Both verses where this Name stands without its companion arrive with an instruction attached: rely upon the Ever-Living who does not die; He is the Ever-Living; there is no deity except Him, so call upon Him. Not consider Him, not concede the point: rely, and call. And the supplication carried for the worst hours asks exactly what the borrowing implies, in the smallest unit of time the language has — do not leave me to myself for even the blink of an eye. That is the posture in one sentence. Not a request to be made self-sustaining, but a request never to be handed the job.

Your life was never yours to keep. It was always His, lent to you for a while — and the Lender does not grow old, or hollow, or die.

You are borrowing a life from the only One who was never lent His.

Qurʼan

اللَّهُ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ الْحَيُّ الْقَيُّومُ

Allah — there is no god but He, the Ever-Living, the Self-Subsisting.

2:255 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Āyat al-Kursī opens on the pair, the first of the three places al-Ḥayy and al-Qayyūm stand together, with 3:2 and 20:111. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: al-Ḥayy is the One who has perpetual life, and a remaining with no first bounded by a limit and no last bounded by an end, where everything else that lives has a bounded first and a last cut off when its term ends; he gives ar-Rabīʻ: living, not dying. Ibn Kathīr: living in Himself, never dying, and upholding everything else. As-Saʻdī reads al-Ḥayy as holding every meaning of perfect life, hearing, sight, power and will, and al-Qayyūm every attribute of action. In Muslim 810, on this Name’s Ḥadīth page, Ubayy names the greatest āyah by these words.

وَعَنَتِ الْوُجُوهُ لِلْحَيِّ الْقَيُّومِ

And all faces will be humbled before the Ever-Living, the Self-Subsisting.

20:111 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The third place of the pair, on the Day. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: the faces of creation are humbled and submit to the Living, the Self-Subsisting, who does not die; the root of ʻanat is abasement, and the captive is called ʻānin for it; he gives Ibn ʻAbbās: they were abased. The āyah goes on: and whoever bears a wrong has failed.

وَتَوَكَّلْ عَلَى الْحَيِّ الَّذِي لَا يَمُوتُ

And rely upon the Ever-Living who does not die.

25:58 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The first of the two places al-Ḥayy stands without al-Qayyūm, and both give the servant a command: here, rely, and glorify His praise; at 40:65, call upon Him. It is the only verse in which alladhī lā yamūt, who does not die, follows the Name; Abū Bakr’s words on this Name’s Ḥadīth page and the supplication of Muslim 2717 on its Duʻāʼ page say it again. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: rely, Muḥammad, on the One who has the perpetual life with which there is no death; trust Him in the matter of your Lord and hand it over to Him.

هُوَ الْحَيُّ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ فَادْعُوهُ مُخْلِصِينَ لَهُ الدِّينَ ۗ الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ

He is the Ever-Living; there is no deity except Him, so call upon Him, making the religion sincerely His. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds.

40:65 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The second place al-Ḥayy stands without al-Qayyūm, and like 25:58 it carries a command: fa-dʻūhu, so call upon Him. Ibn Kathīr: living from eternity and forever, who has not ceased and will not cease, the First and the Last. Aṭ-Ṭabarī reports scholars who told whoever says there is no god but Allah to follow it with praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, taking this verse as the command, and gives it from Ibn ʻAbbās and from Saʻīd ibn Jubayr.

اللَّهُ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ الْحَيُّ الْقَيُّومُ

Allah — there is no god but He, the Ever-Living, the Self-Subsisting.

3:2 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Shared with Name 63. The opening of Sūrat Āl ʻImrān after its letters, and the second place of the pair. Aṭ-Ṭabarī gives Muḥammad ibn Jaʻfar ibn az-Zubayr: the Living who does not die, whereas ʻĪsā died and was crucified in their claim, meaning the Christians of Najrān who disputed with the Prophet ﷺ; and his own reading is that Allah argued against His creation that whatever perishes and dies cannot be a god. He records al-qayyim and al-qayyām reported from ʻAlqamah, and holds al-qayyūm the only permissible reading.

أَوَلَمْ يَرَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا أَنَّ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ كَانَتَا رَتْقًا فَفَتَقْنَاهُمَا ۖ وَجَعَلْنَا مِنَ الْمَاءِ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ حَيٍّ ۖ أَفَلَا يُؤْمِنُونَ

Have those who disbelieve not seen that the heavens and the earth were joined, and We parted them, and made from water every living thing? Will they not then believe?

21:30 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Kulla shayʼin ḥayy, every living thing: the adjective at its widest. Aṭ-Ṭabarī prefers the reading that the heavens were closed from rain and the earth from plants, and that He parted the sky with rain and the earth with growth, and gives as his reason the clause that follows, We made from water every living thing. Ibn Kathīr: they see created things come into being one after another before their eyes, and that is proof of the Maker.

إِنَّ اللَّهَ فَالِقُ الْحَبِّ وَالنَّوَىٰ ۖ يُخْرِجُ الْحَيَّ مِنَ الْمَيِّتِ وَمُخْرِجُ الْمَيِّتِ مِنَ الْحَيِّ ۚ ذَٰلِكُمُ اللَّهُ ۖ فَأَنَّىٰ تُؤْفَكُونَ

Truly Allah is the splitter of the grain and the date-stone; He brings the living out of the dead, and brings the dead out of the living. That is Allah — so how are you turned away?

6:95 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The definite al-ḥayy said of a plant. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: He brings the living ear of grain out of the dead seed and the dead seed out of the living ear, and the living tree out of the dead stone; and the Arabs call a tree living while it stands on its roots and has not dried, and a plant while it stands on its stalk and has not withered, and call it dead once it dries or is cut from its root. Ibn Kathīr records other readings the words can hold: the chick from the egg, the righteous child from the disbeliever.

وَتُخْرِجُ الْحَيَّ مِنَ الْمَيِّتِ وَتُخْرِجُ الْمَيِّتَ مِنَ الْحَيِّ

And You bring the living out of the dead, and You bring the dead out of the living.

3:27 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Another portion of the āyah Name 40 carries, and the same clause addressed to Allah in the prayer that opens at 3:26. Aṭ-Ṭabarī records the commentators dividing — the living from the drop, which Ibn Masʻūd and Mujāhid give, and the grain from the ear among others — and prefers the first: the living human being and beast from the drop, which is dead once it has left the body, citing 2:28.

قُلْ مَنْ يَرْزُقُكُمْ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ وَالْأَرْضِ أَمَّنْ يَمْلِكُ السَّمْعَ وَالْأَبْصَارَ وَمَنْ يُخْرِجُ الْحَيَّ مِنَ الْمَيِّتِ وَيُخْرِجُ الْمَيِّتَ مِنَ الْحَيِّ وَمَنْ يُدَبِّرُ الْأَمْرَ ۚ فَسَيَقُولُونَ اللَّهُ ۚ فَقُلْ أَفَلَا تَتَّقُونَ

Say: Who provides for you from the sky and the earth? Or who owns hearing and sight? And who brings the living out of the dead and brings the dead out of the living? And who governs the affair? They will say: Allah. So say: Will you not then be mindful of Him?

10:31 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The same clause put as a question to those who set up partners, and answered by them: Allah. Ibn Kathīr: He argues against the idolaters from their own acknowledgement of His oneness in lordship to the oneness of the One who is to be worshipped.

يُخْرِجُ الْحَيَّ مِنَ الْمَيِّتِ وَيُخْرِجُ الْمَيِّتَ مِنَ الْحَيِّ وَيُحْيِي الْأَرْضَ بَعْدَ مَوْتِهَا ۚ وَكَذَٰلِكَ تُخْرَجُونَ

He brings the living out of the dead and brings the dead out of the living, and gives life to the earth after its death; and thus will you be brought out.

30:19 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The fourth place of the clause, joined to the life of the earth and to the raising: and thus will you be brought out. Ibn Kathīr reads the run of āyāt as naming things and their opposites to show the completeness of His power, and lists among them the believer from the disbeliever and the disbeliever from the believer. The verb of life in the middle of the verse is Name 60’s.

وَالَّذِينَ يَدْعُونَ مِنْ دُونِ اللَّهِ لَا يَخْلُقُونَ شَيْئًا وَهُمْ يُخْلَقُونَ ۝ أَمْوَاتٌ غَيْرُ أَحْيَاءٍ ۖ وَمَا يَشْعُرُونَ أَيَّانَ يُبْعَثُونَ

And those they call upon besides Allah create nothing, and are themselves created — dead, not alive, and they do not perceive when they will be raised.

16:20–21 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The one place the adjective is denied of anything: what is called upon besides Allah is amwātun ghayru aḥyāʼ, dead, not alive. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: He made them dead, not alive, since there are no spirits in them; Qatādah: these idols worshipped besides Allah, dead, with no spirits in them. On the close aṭ-Ṭabarī reads the idols as not knowing when they will be raised, and records that it was said to mean the disbelievers. It stands against 40:65 on this page, where the One called upon is the Living.

وَلَا تَقُولُوا لِمَنْ يُقْتَلُ فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ أَمْوَاتٌ ۚ بَلْ أَحْيَاءٌ وَلَٰكِنْ لَا تَشْعُرُونَ

And do not say of those who are killed in the way of Allah: dead. Rather, they are alive, but you do not perceive.

2:154 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The plural set against amwāt and given to the slain. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: the dead among My creation is the one I have stripped of life and whose senses I have taken away, and those killed in My way are alive with Me; Mujāhid: provided with the fruit of the Garden, finding its scent, and not in it. Ibn Kathīr: alive in their barzakh, provided for, and he cites from Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim that the souls of the martyrs are in the crops of green birds. The close keeps that life from the sight of the living: you do not perceive.

وَلَا تَحْسَبَنَّ الَّذِينَ قُتِلُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ أَمْوَاتًا ۚ بَلْ أَحْيَاءٌ عِنْدَ رَبِّهِمْ يُرْزَقُونَ

And do not think of those who were killed in the way of Allah as dead. Rather, they are alive with their Lord, provided for.

3:169 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The same plural, now given its place: ʻinda rabbihim, with their Lord. Aṭ-Ṭabarī reads it of the Companions killed at Uḥud: do not think them dead, feeling nothing and enjoying nothing, for they are alive with Me, in bliss in My provision. The verb that opens it, taḥsabanna, is the supposing the Qurʼan corrects, which Name 40 records.

وَسَلَامٌ عَلَيْهِ يَوْمَ وُلِدَ وَيَوْمَ يَمُوتُ وَيَوْمَ يُبْعَثُ حَيًّا

And peace be upon him the day he was born, and the day he dies, and the day he is raised alive.

19:15 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Said of Yaḥyā. Ibn Kathīr gives Sufyān ibn ʻUyaynah, as Ibn Jarīr reports him: the creature is loneliest in three places — the day he is born and sees himself out of where he was, the day he dies and sees people he had not seen, and the day he is raised and sees himself in a great gathering — and Allah honoured Yaḥyā with peace in all three. The adjective, ḥayyan, closes the verse and names the third.

وَجَعَلَنِي مُبَارَكًا أَيْنَ مَا كُنْتُ وَأَوْصَانِي بِالصَّلَاةِ وَالزَّكَاةِ مَا دُمْتُ حَيًّا

And He has made me blessed wherever I am, and enjoined upon me prayer and zakāh as long as I remain alive.

19:31 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

ʻĪsā in the cradle, and the adjective as a term: the charge runs as long as he is alive, which as-Saʻdī glosses as the length of my life. Al-Baghawī records the question how one who had no wealth was charged with zakāh, and the answers: zakāh if I have wealth, or an increase in good.

وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَيَّ يَوْمَ وُلِدْتُ وَيَوْمَ أَمُوتُ وَيَوْمَ أُبْعَثُ حَيًّا

And peace be upon me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I am raised alive.

19:33 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The words of 19:15, now in ʻĪsā’s mouth and in the first person. Ibn Kathīr: an affirmation of his servanthood to Allah, that he is a creature of Allah’s creation who lives, dies and is raised like other creatures, but has peace in these states, the hardest there are on servants. Beside 3:2 on this page the difference is exact: the Name is said of the One who does not die, and the adjective here of one who says he will die and be raised.

وَيَقُولُ الْإِنْسَانُ أَإِذَا مَا مِتُّ لَسَوْفَ أُخْرَجُ حَيًّا

And man says: When I have died, shall I truly be brought out alive?

19:66 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The adjective in a denial. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: it is the disbeliever who does not believe in the raising after death who says it, and the next verse answers him, does man not remember that We created him before, when he was nothing? He prefers the reading yadhdhakkaru, to reflect, over yadhkuru.

لِيُنْذِرَ مَنْ كَانَ حَيًّا وَيَحِقَّ الْقَوْلُ عَلَى الْكَافِرِينَ

That it may warn whoever is alive, and the word may come due against the disbelievers.

36:70 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Of the Qurʼan, after the verse that says the Prophet ﷺ was not taught poetry. Ibn Kathīr: it warns every living person on the face of the earth, but only the one alive of heart, whose insight is lit, benefits by its warning; he gives Qatādah, alive of heart, alive of sight, and aḍ-Ḍaḥḥāk, one of sound mind. Yaḥiqqa, come due, is the verb of Name 51.

وَمَا يَسْتَوِي الْأَحْيَاءُ وَلَا الْأَمْوَاتُ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يُسْمِعُ مَنْ يَشَاءُ ۖ وَمَا أَنْتَ بِمُسْمِعٍ مَنْ فِي الْقُبُورِ

And not equal are the living and the dead. Truly Allah makes hear whom He wills, and you cannot make those in the graves hear.

35:22 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The last of a run of pairs that are not equal, after the blind and the seeing, the darknesses and the light, the shade and the heat. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: the living whose hearts live by faith in Allah and His Messenger, and the dead whose hearts disbelief has overcome.

أَلَمْ نَجْعَلِ الْأَرْضَ كِفَاتًا ۝ أَحْيَاءً وَأَمْوَاتًا

Have We not made the earth a gatherer of the living and the dead?

77:25–26 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Aṭ-Ṭabarī: kifāt is a container, and the earth holds your living in their dwellings and gathers them, and your dead in its belly, in the graves; he gives Ibn ʻAbbās, a shelter, and reports that Ibn Masʻūd, finding a louse in his garment, buried it in the mosque and recited the verse. Ibn Kathīr gives ash-Shaʻbī: its belly for your dead and its back for your living.

Dua

يَا حَيُّ يَا قَيُّومُ بِرَحْمَتِكَ أَسْتَغِيثُ

O Ever-Living, O Self-Subsisting, by Your mercy I seek help.

at-Tirmidhī 3524 · gharīb (at-Tirmidhī’s own verdict); ḥasan (al-Albānī; Darussalam)

From Anas: when a matter distressed him, the Prophet ﷺ said this. It addresses the two Names together, as 2:255, 3:2 and 20:111 do; al-Qayyūm never stands in the Qurʼan without al-Ḥayy, though al-Ḥayy stands twice without it. The same record goes on, by its chain, to aliẓẓū bi-yā dhā l-jalāli wa-l-ikrām, and at-Tirmidhī calls it gharīb. Given identically at Name 63.

فَلَا تَكِلْنِي إِلَىٰ نَفْسِي طَرْفَةَ عَيْنٍ وَأَصْلِحْ لِي شَأْنِي كُلَّهُ

Do not leave me to myself for the blink of an eye; and set right for me all my affairs.

Abū Dāwūd 5090 · ḥasan al-isnād (al-Albānī; Muḥammad Muḥyī ad-Dīn ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd); ḍaʻīf (Darussalam)

Shared with Name 63; Name 1 prints the whole of it. The Prophet ﷺ called these the supplications of the one in distress. The portion printed is the middle, between allāhumma raḥmataka arjū and lā ilāha illā anta; it carries no word of this root, and stands here for what it asks, not to be left to oneself for the blink of an eye. The six editions give it ḥasan al-isnād from al-Albānī and Muḥammad Muḥyī ad-Dīn ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd, and ḍaʻīf from Darussalam.

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

Shared with Name 8, which reads it for bi-ʻizzatika. From Ibn ʻAbbās: the Prophet ﷺ used to say it. It closes on the Name in the words of 25:58, anta l-ḥayyu lladhī lā yamūt, You are the Living who does not die, and sets beside it that the jinn and mankind die. Al-Bukhārī 7383, on Name 8’s Ḥadīth page, gives the report without al-ḥayyu: alladhī lā yamūtu.

Hadith

ثُمَّ يُقَالُ يَا أَهْلَ الْجَنَّةِ خُلُودٌ فَلَا مَوْتَ وَيَا أَهْلَ النَّارِ خُلُودٌ فَلَا مَوْتَ

Then it is said: O people of Paradise, eternity, and no death; and O people of the Fire, eternity, and no death.

Muslim 2849a · ṣaḥīḥ (muttafaq ʻalayh)

From Abū Saʻīd. The closing proclamation of the report Name 61 carries at greater length: death is brought as a ram, recognised by both peoples and slaughtered, and then this is said. The report carries no word of this root; khulūd, eternity, is kh-l-d. It is carried on this page beside 25:58, the Living who does not die. Al-Bukhārī 4730 has the proclamation with thumma yaqūlu, then He says, for thumma yuqālu, and the report around it in other wording.

أَلَا مَنْ كَانَ يَعْبُدُ مُحَمَّدًا ﷺ فَإِنَّ مُحَمَّدًا قَدْ مَاتَ وَمَنْ كَانَ يَعْبُدُ اللَّهَ فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ حَيٌّ لَا يَمُوتُ

Whoever used to worship Muḥammad ﷺ, Muḥammad has died; and whoever used to worship Allah, Allah is alive and does not die.

al-Bukhārī 3667 · ṣaḥīḥ

From ʻĀʼishah. On the day the Prophet ﷺ died, ʻUmar stood saying that he had not died. Abū Bakr came, uncovered his face, kissed him and said, you were good living and dead, ṭibta ḥayyan wa-mayyitan; then he went out, praised Allah, said these words, and recited 39:30, you will die and they will die, and 3:144, Muḥammad is only a messenger; and the people wept. The adjective is said here of Allah in nearly the words of 25:58, and in the same report of the Prophet ﷺ. The edition carries the same text under 3667 and 3668, and al-Bukhārī 1242 gives the words from Ibn ʻAbbās with 3:144 alone.

يَا أَبَا الْمُنْذِرِ أَتَدْرِي أَيُّ آيَةٍ مِنْ كِتَابِ اللَّهِ مَعَكَ أَعْظَمُ … قَالَ قُلْتُ اللَّهُ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ الْحَيُّ الْقَيُّومُ قَالَ فَضَرَبَ فِي صَدْرِي وَقَالَ وَاللَّهِ لِيَهْنِكَ الْعِلْمُ أَبَا الْمُنْذِرِ

O Abū l-Mundhir, do you know which āyah of the Book of Allah that you have with you is greatest? … I said: Allah — there is no god but He, the Ever-Living, the Self-Subsisting. He struck my chest and said: By Allah, may knowledge be a joy to you, Abū l-Mundhir.

Muslim 810 · ṣaḥīḥ

From Ubayy ibn Kaʻb. Asked the question twice, he first answered, Allah and His Messenger know best, and then gave the opening words of Āyat al-Kursī, the pair of this Name and Name 63; the Prophet ﷺ struck his chest in approval. Abū Dāwūd 1460 has the report through Muḥammad ibn al-Muthannā from ʻAbd al-Aʻlā, the chain Muslim gives above his own teacher, and Ibn Kathīr at 2:255 cites a longer wording from Aḥmad’s Musnad, noting that Muslim does not have the addition.

Study Notes

Verified — directly attested

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CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: twenty āyāt, every verse in which the adjective ḥayy stands. Carried before: 2:255, 20:111, 25:58 and 40:65. Appended in this pass: 3:2, shared exactly with Name 63, the second place of the pair; 3:27, the clause of the living and the dead, another portion of the āyah Name 40 carries; and fourteen carried at no other Name — 21:30, every living thing from water; 6:95, 10:31 and 30:19, the living brought out of the dead; 16:20–21, what is called upon besides Allah, dead, not alive; 2:154 and 3:169, the slain in the way of Allah alive; 19:15 and 19:33, peace on the day of being raised alive, for Yaḥyā and for ʻĪsā; 19:31, prayer and zakāh as long as ʻĪsā is alive; 19:66, the man who asks whether he will be brought out alive; 36:70, whoever is alive to be warned; 35:22, the living and the dead not equal; and 77:25–26, the earth gathering the living and the dead. The distinct verse count in Notes on This Edition moves from 516 to 530.

NAMED HERE BUT NOT CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: 3:26, carried at Name 22 and Name 24 and Name 25 and Name 84; 3:144, carried at Name 56; 2:28, carried at Name 60; 8:42, 29:64, 20:20 and 39:30, all carried at NO Name.

CORRECTED ON THE RECORD, THE COUNT: the entry had none. The root was swept at Name 60, six hundred and seventy-five words. THE ADJECTIVE ḤAYY STANDS TWENTY-FOUR TIMES IN TWENTY VERSES, counted on the pointed text; at 8:42 ḥayya is the verb and is set aside.

THE DEFINITE FORM STANDS THIRTEEN TIMES AND ONLY FIVE ARE OF ALLAH: 2:255, 3:2 and 20:111 with al-Qayyūm, and 25:58 and 40:65 without it. THE OTHER EIGHT ARE THE LIVING BROUGHT OUT OF THE DEAD, twice in each of 3:27, 6:95, 10:31 and 30:19, and at 6:95 aṭ-Ṭabarī reads the living as a plant. THE INDEFINITE AND PLURAL STAND ELEVEN TIMES AND EVERY ONE IS OF A CREATURE, and one of them, 16:21, denies life to what is called upon besides Allah. BOTH PLACES THE NAME STANDS WITHOUT AL-QAYYŪM GIVE THE SERVANT A COMMAND: rely, at 25:58, and call upon Him, at 40:65. Al-Qayyūm stands only in the three verses of the pair. The page had carried four of the twenty verses. FOUND / CORRECTED / REMOVED, AS UNVERIFIED: THE 40:65 NOTE CALLED IT THE ONLY OCCURRENCE OF AL-ḤAYY CARRYING A COMMAND, and 25:58 carries two; it also said the verse builds on the fact just stated, that He alone does not die, which 40:65 does not state, and it carried a production remark and a line narrating the page’s own editing; its English carried bracketed insertions and is now the book’s own. THE 2:255 NOTE PLACED THE PAIR IN THIS VERSE AND THE TWO FOLLOWING IT, and the other two are 3:2 and 20:111. THE DESC SAID THE PAIR STANDS THREE TIMES AT THE HEAD OF THE GREATEST VERSE, and it heads 2:255 once; it also said the Qurʼan will hardly say the Name alone, against the ref’s own except twice. The desc’s claim that every perfection rests on life, and the ref’s the scholars treat this as the root attribute, were unattributed; as-Saʻdī at 2:255, read here, says al-Ḥayy holds every meaning of perfect life, hearing, sight, power and will, and the ref now gives it to him. IBN AL-QAYYIM WAS STRUCK AS UNCHECKED, not as false: nothing of his was read. The 20:111 note was an unsourced reflection and now gives aṭ-Ṭabarī. THE DUʻĀʼ NOTE ON AT-TIRMIDHĪ 3524 SAID THE QURʼAN NEVER SEPARATES THE TWO NAMES; it separates al-Ḥayy twice, and Name 63’s note on the same record said the same and is corrected. ABŪ DĀWŪD 5090’S GRADE FIELD NAMED ONE GRADER OF THREE, at Names 1, 62 and 63; it now gives al-Albānī and Muḥammad Muḥyī ad-Dīn ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd ḥasan al-isnād and Darussalam ḍaʻīf, as the dataset does, and the note says the portion carries no word of this root. THE ḤADĪTH NOTE ON MUSLIM 2849A SAID AL-BUKHĀRĪ 4730 IS OTHERWISE WORD FOR WORD THE SAME; it is not — 4730 opens yuʼtā bi-l-mawti ka-hayʼati kabshin amlaḥ fa-yunādī munādin, and only the closing proclamation matches, with yaqūlu for yuqālu; the note also leaned on the poem, and it now says the report carries no word of the root. Its English rendered khulūd two ways and repeated O people of Paradise, and now matches Name 61’s English of the same portion.

ADDED: al-Bukhārī 3667, Abū Bakr on the day the Prophet ﷺ died, Allah is alive and does not die, carried at no Name before; Muslim 810, Ubayy naming the greatest āyah by the pair; Muslim 2717 on the Duʻāʼ page, identical to Name 8, anta l-ḥayyu lladhī lā yamūt. MEDS 62 SAID THE ONE VERSE WHERE THIS NAME STANDS ALONE ARRIVES WITH AN INSTRUCTION; there are two, and the sentence now quotes both. It also said every breath comes without instruction, and breathing can be taken in hand; narrowed to almost every breath. CH 62 HAD A CUTTING ALREADY GROWING IN A POT WHEN THE BOY WAS ELEVEN TAKE ROOT WHEN HE WAS THIRTY-FOUR, which a cutting does not do; it is now planted out that spring. POEMS 62 was read and not changed; its virus shaped closer to a crystal, and waiting sometimes for years, stand as figure.

READ: the Tanzil text for every return of the adjective, on the pointed text. Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lughah, IN HIS OWN TEXT, in the Shamela copy of Hārūn’s edition, volume two, page 122 at ḥ-y and page 112 at ḥ-w-y: two origins, life and shame; rain is ḥayā; al-ḥayy, a tribe, filed under gathering; neither entry mentions ḥayyah. Aṭ-Ṭabarī at 2:255, 3:2, 20:111, 25:58, 40:65, 3:27, 6:95, 21:30, 19:66, 2:154, 3:169, 16:21, 77:26 and 35:22; Ibn Kathīr at 2:255, 40:65, 6:95, 10:31, 30:19, 21:30, 19:15, 19:33, 36:70, 2:154 and 77:26; as-Saʻdī at 2:255 and 19:31; al-Baghawī at 19:31 — through the tafsir dataset, several of whose Ibn Kathīr files begin at an earlier āyah and were read by content. Letter by letter with their grade rows: al-Bukhārī 1242, 3667, 3668, 4730 and 7383; Muslim 810, 2717 and 2849a; Abū Dāwūd 1460 and 5090; at-Tirmidhī 3428, 3507 and 3524; and all six editions swept for the Name-form said of Allah.

NOT READ: ar-Rāghib, Lisān al-ʻArab, az-Zamakhsharī; Ibn al-Qayyim; al-Ghazālī’s al-Maqṣad al-Asnā.

OPEN: whether ḥayyah at 20:20 is of this root’s sense: Lisān al-ʻArab, read on the web and not in print, files it here by its letters, Sībawayh proving its yāʼ by the relative ḥayawī, and gives its derivation from life only as the saying of some; neither Ibn Fāris entry mentions it. Aṭ-Ṭabarī’s text at 3:2 in the tafsir dataset prints the reading of ʻUmar and Ibn Masʻūd with the same word as the received reading, so what they read is not named here. Outside recitations of 2:255 and 3:2, the Name-form in the six editions stands in lists and supplications; no report was found in which the Prophet ﷺ glosses it.

COHERENCE: 3:2 is now carried at this Name and at Name 63 with the same Arabic and English, linked both ways, and Name 63’s Study Note says so. 3:27 is carried here and at Name 40 as two portions, linked. Muslim 2717 is on the Duʻāʼ pages of Names 8 and 62 with the same text, source and grade, linked. Abū Dāwūd 5090 carries one grade at Names 1, 62 and 63.

FOR NAME 63’S PASS: its Study Note calls at-Tirmidhī 3524 carried at Names 41 and 85, where the Ḥadīth pages cite 3525 with 3524 beside it, and uses the Jāmiʻ and Sunan Abī Dāwūd forms; its ref cites Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 179a and Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 43. AFTER THE CHAT-END AUDIT OF 1–99: the capitalised runs in the desc and the ref are set in lower case, the words unchanged. BY THE AUTHOR’S DECISION (A21), IN BUILD 145: the portion of Abū Dāwūd 5090 takes Name 1’s words, for the blink of an eye without even, so its English stands inside the whole supplication Name 1 prints; MEDS 62 keeps its own cadence.

IN BUILD 179, FROM THE PHASE 2 READING OF NAME 58: the ref’s pointer to the caveat on Ibn Mājah 3861’s list names Name 12, Al-Bāriʼ, whose Study Note records it; Name 13 carries none.

BY THE AUTHOR’S DECISIONS OF 2026-09-25, IN BUILD 182: 19:15 and 19:33 are carried at Name 5 as well, in this page’s English word for word, linked both ways (A25).

IN BUILD 184, FROM THE PHASE 2 READING: the Ḥadīth note gives Abū Dāwūd 1460 as Muslim’s chain above his own teacher, not another chain; the items for Name 63’s pass were settled at Name 63.

IN BUILD 207, FROM THE BACKLOG READING OF THE LEXICA: Lisān al-ʻArab at ḥ-y-y is read in a web transcription, not in print: the serpent is filed there, its derivation from life given as the saying of some, Sībawayh arguing from the relative ḥayawī that its middle letter is yāʼ, and Abū ʻAlī setting ḥayyah, of yāʼ and yāʼ, beside ḥawwāʼ, of wāw and yāʼ, as words near in root and meaning; Ibn Fāris’s two entries, read again at Shamela, name it under neither; the OPEN line says so.

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Al-Qayyūm

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