Name 22 of 99

الخافض

The Abaser

Al-Khāfiḍ

The empty stage — a fall that was also a rescue.

Meaning

From kh-f-ḍ, the opposite of rafʻ: to lower and bring down. Al-Khāfiḍ is the One who lowers whom He wills: He brings down the tyrants and the arrogant and humbles them, and lowers whatever He wills to lower. The Name-form stands in an enumeration whose chain is weak; a sound report gives His verb, He lowers al-qisṭ and raises it, read either as justice or as the balance of provision, while the Qurʼan gives the root of the Event that lowers some and raises others, and of a wing lowered in gentleness. The Name stands beside Ar-Rāfiʻ, the Exalter, and borders Al-Mudhill, the Giver of Dishonor. It asks the servant not to trust any height of this world, and to lower his own wing to his parents and to the believers.

Root kh-f-ḍ — to lower and bring down, the opposite of raising; also ease and gentleness

The definite Name does not occur in the Qurʼan. Computed from the Tanzil text, kh-f-ḍ gives 4 words in 4 verses, none of them of Allah: khāfiḍatun rāfiʻah at 56:3, of the Event, and the imperative wa-khfiḍ, lower the wing, at 17:24, toward parents, and at 15:88 and 26:215, said to the Prophet ﷺ toward the believers. The Name-form stands in the list at at-Tirmidhī 3507, graded ḍaʻīf by al-Albānī, Aḥmad Shākir and Darussalam, with the caveat recorded at Name 6, and in the list at Ibn Mājah 3861. The verb with Allah as its subject is in Muslim 179a, yakhfiḍu l-qisṭa wa-yarfaʻuh, and Muslim 179c, through Shuʻbah, gives the raising first; Abū Dāwūd 3450, from Abū Hurayrah, gives it plainly to one who asked for prices to be fixed, bal Allāhu yakhfiḍu wa-yarfaʻ. Ibn al-Athīr, an-Nihāyah, under the Names: al-Khāfiḍ is the One who lowers the tyrants and the pharaohs, that is, puts them down and humiliates them, and lowers everything He wills to lower; khafḍ is the opposite of rafʻ; and al-qisṭ in the report is justice, which He sends down to the earth at one time and raises at another. Lane’s Lexicon records that some read al-qisṭ there as the balance, alluding to the provision He decrees. An-Nawawī gives the balance from Ibn Qutaybah, through al-Harawī and al-Qāḍī ʻIyāḍ, and, as it is said, each creature’s share of provision. Al-Jawharī: al-inkhifāḍ is descent, and Allah lowers whom He wills and raises, that is, He puts down. On 56:3 aṭ-Ṭabarī: the Event lowers into the Fire peoples who were mighty in the world and raises to His mercy and Garden peoples who were lowly in it; Ibn Kathīr gives the same from al-Ḥasan and Qatādah. On 17:24 Ibn Kathīr: humble yourself before them in what you do; al-Qurṭubī takes the lowered wing as a likeness drawn from a bird and adh-dhull as gentleness. The act without the root: al-Bukhārī 2872, nothing of this world rises except that He puts it down; and 9:40, He made the word of those who disbelieved the lowest. Name 23 carries the raising.

Story

Sahar had the finest voice in the province, and she knew it. Nobles sent carriages for her. Lesser singers were dismissed with a word from her — and there were a great many of them. Her gift had lifted her so high above ordinary people that she had stopped, somewhere along the way, being able to see them at all.

The illness that took her voice took it slowly, over a winter, so that she had time to feel each note go. When it was finished she could speak, but never sing again. The carriages stopped coming. The nobles found another marvel. Within a year the woman whose name had filled every hall could walk through the market entirely unrecognized.

She expected to die of the shame. Instead something stranger happened. Standing unnoticed in that market, she found herself hearing things she had been too high up to hear for twenty years — a mother soothing a frightened child, two old men arguing happily over nothing, a beggar singing badly and with great joy. She had been given the best voice in the province and had used it to make herself unreachable. Now, voiceless, she was among people at last.

It was not gentle. For the first months she could not go past a hall where anyone was singing, and there was a stretch that winter when she did not leave the room she had rented and ate what her landlady left at the door. Nothing in her wanted this. It was done to her, and she came to be glad of it a long time afterward, which is not the same as consenting to it.

In her later years she taught poor children to sing, and she was good at it in a way she could never have been before, because she no longer needed any of them to be less than her. One of them went further than Sahar ever had. She sat in the hall the night it happened, well back, among people who did not know who she was, and she did not tell them.

Poem

Pour water into a basin and keep pouring —
however tall you’ve built one corner to seem —
and watch what happens to the height you were so proud of.

Water does not measure the effort it took to stack those stones,
does not admire the ambition, the years spent reaching upward.
It finds its own level, everywhere at once,
and the peak you built goes under
the same as everything else.

This is not cruelty. It is what water has always done,
long before anyone built something tall enough to test it.

Every tyrant believes, for a while, that his height is the exception —
that the water, this once, will make allowance.

It never has. It never will.

Al-Khāfiḍ is not the water, and not its level.
The water obeys Him, and so does every height:
nothing of this world rises
except that He puts it down —
everything that ever mistook
a stacked height
for a height
that was its own.

Reflection

The Lowering

Some lowerings you choose; most choose you. The title removed, the name that stopped opening doors, the season when rooms you once commanded went on without you. The Prophet ﷺ said something for exactly this, in a report from Anas, over a camel race: his she-camel al-ʻAḍbāʼ, which could not be outrun, was outrun at last by a Bedouin on a young camel, and when he saw how it weighed on the Muslims he said: It is a right upon Allah that nothing of this world rises except that He puts it down. The camel had done nothing wrong. Neither, necessarily, have you. Some lowering is not a verdict on the one lowered.

Al-Khāfiḍ is the Abaser — the One who brings down the tyrant and the arrogant, and whatever He wills to bring down. The Name stands first in its pair, and it is not to be read as cruelty: He wrongs no one, and what He brings down He brings down with knowledge of what it was and justice in where it goes.

And the root keeps gentler company. In the Qurʼan the same letters give a command to you: lower to them the wing of humility out of mercy — to your two parents — and al-Qurṭubī draws the likeness from a bird’s wing held out for its young. So the root has two uses, and you are assigned the second: not, first, to bring anyone down, but to lower yourself. Your voice, in their late years. Your height, to a child’s eye-line. Your certainty, in a room where someone smaller is trying to speak. The one who once stooped to reach you is the one you now stoop for. That is this Name’s root carried at human scale, feathers and all.

And here is the turn the whole pair makes. The Prophet ﷺ said, in a report from Abū Hurayrah: no one humbles himself for Allah but that Allah raises him. The way up that report names goes down first. And in another report from Abū Hurayrah he named the posture: The closest a servant is to his Lord is while he is prostrating. The lowest inch of the prayer is the nearest place in it. Put your forehead there, and you have already begun the next Name.

No one humbles himself for Allah but that Allah raises him — the floor is where the raising starts.

Qurʼan

إِذَا وَقَعَتِ الْوَاقِعَةُ ۝ لَيْسَ لِوَقْعَتِهَا كَاذِبَةٌ ۝ خَافِضَةٌ رَّافِعَةٌ

When the Event befalls — there is no denying its befalling — bringing low, raising up.

56:1–3 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The Event is the subject of both participles, khāfiḍatun rāfiʻah: the Name’s root describes the Hour, not Allah. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: it lowers into the Fire of Allah peoples who were mighty in the world, and raises to His mercy and His Garden peoples who were lowly in it; and it was said that it lowered and made the near hear, and raised and made the far hear. Ibn Kathīr: to the lowest of the low, to Hell, though they were mighty in the world, and to the highest ʻIlliyyīn, though they were lowly, as al-Ḥasan and Qatādah said; and he gives from Ibn ʻAbbās: it lowers some people and raises others.

قُلِ اللَّهُمَّ مَالِكَ الْمُلْكِ تُؤْتِي الْمُلْكَ مَن تَشَاءُ وَتَنزِعُ الْمُلْكَ مِمَّن تَشَاءُ وَتُعِزُّ مَن تَشَاءُ وَتُذِلُّ مَن تَشَاءُ ۖ بِيَدِكَ الْخَيْرُ ۖ إِنَّكَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ

Say: O Allah, Owner of Sovereignty — You give sovereignty to whom You will and strip sovereignty from whom You will; You honor whom You will and abase whom You will. In Your hand is all good; truly You have power over all things.

3:26 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The verbs are Allah’s, addressed to Him in prayer, but they are tuʻizzu and tudhillu, from ʻ-z-z and dh-l-l, the roots of Names 24 and 25; kh-f-ḍ is absent. The verse is carried here as nearest in meaning, for His bringing low whom He wills.

وَاخْفِضْ لَهُمَا جَنَاحَ الذُّلِّ مِنَ الرَّحْمَةِ وَقُل رَّبِّ ارْحَمْهُمَا كَمَا رَبَّيَانِي صَغِيرًا

And lower to them the wing of humility out of mercy, and say: My Lord, have mercy on them as they raised me when I was small.

17:24 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The Name’s root as a command to the servant: wa-khfiḍ, lower, with janāḥa dh-dhull, the wing of humility, from dh-l-l, the root of Name 25. Ibn Kathīr: humble yourself before them in what you do, and pray for mercy on them in their old age and at their death. Al-Qurṭubī: a metaphor for tenderness and mercy toward them, and for humbling oneself to them; the lowering of the wing is struck as a likeness from a bird’s wing held out for its young, and adh-dhull here is gentleness.

لَا تَمُدَّنَّ عَيْنَيْكَ إِلَىٰ مَا مَتَّعْنَا بِهِ أَزْوَاجًا مِّنْهُمْ وَلَا تَحْزَنْ عَلَيْهِمْ وَاخْفِضْ جَنَاحَكَ لِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ

Do not extend your eyes toward what We have given certain classes of them to enjoy, and do not grieve over them; and lower your wing to the believers.

15:88 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The root said to the Prophet ﷺ, as at 26:215 toward those who follow him among the believers. Ibn Kathīr: as We have given you the Mighty Qurʼan, do not look to the world and its adornment, the passing bloom We have given its people to enjoy to try them in it, and do not envy them, nor let yourself waste away in grief at their denial; and lower your wing means be gentle with them, as at 9:128.

وَجَعَلَ كَلِمَةَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا السُّفْلَىٰ ۗ وَكَلِمَةُ اللَّهِ هِيَ الْعُلْيَا ۗ وَاللَّهُ عَزِيزٌ حَكِيمٌ

And He made the word of those who disbelieved the lowest, while the word of Allah — it is the highest. And Allah is Mighty, Wise.

9:40 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The root is s-f-l, not kh-f-ḍ; the verse is carried as nearest in meaning, Allah making low what was set against His word, said of the Prophet ﷺ and his companion in the cave. Ibn ʻAbbās, in Ibn Kathīr: the word of those who disbelieved is shirk, and the word of Allah is lā ilāha illā llāh.

Dua

رَبِّ ارْحَمْهُمَا كَمَا رَبَّيَانِي صَغِيرًا

My Lord, have mercy on them as they raised me when I was small.

Qurʼan 17:24

The prayer the verse joins to its command, wa-khfiḍ lahumā janāḥa dh-dhull, lower to them the wing of humility. The Name’s root stands in the command, not in the prayer itself. Ibn Kathīr: pray for mercy on them in their old age and at their death, as they raised you when you were small.

اللَّهُمَّ آتِ نَفْسِي تَقْوَاهَا وَزَكِّهَا أَنْتَ خَيْرُ مَنْ زَكَّاهَا أَنْتَ وَلِيُّهَا وَمَوْلَاهَا

O Allah, grant my soul its piety and purify it — You are the best of those who purify it; You are its Guardian and its Master.

Muslim 2722 · ṣaḥīḥ

From Zayd ibn Arqam, who said he would say to them only what the Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to say: a portion of a supplication that opens with refuge from incapacity, laziness, cowardice, miserliness, decrepitude and the punishment of the grave, and closes with refuge from knowledge that does not benefit, a heart that is not humbled, a soul that is not satisfied and a prayer that is not answered. The Name and its root are absent. It is carried for its asking: the soul’s purification is asked of Allah, the best of those who purify it, rather than claimed by the one praying.

Hadith

إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ لَا يَنَامُ وَلَا يَنْبَغِي لَهُ أَنْ يَنَامَ يَخْفِضُ الْقِسْطَ وَيَرْفَعُهُ يُرْفَعُ إِلَيْهِ عَمَلُ اللَّيْلِ قَبْلَ عَمَلِ النَّهَارِ وَعَمَلُ النَّهَارِ قَبْلَ عَمَلِ اللَّيْلِ

Allah, Mighty and Majestic, does not sleep, nor would it befit Him to sleep. He lowers al-qisṭ and raises it. The deeds of the night are raised to Him before the deeds of the day, and the deeds of the day before the deeds of the night.

Muslim 179a · ṣaḥīḥ

From Abū Mūsā: the Messenger of Allah ﷺ stood among us with five sayings; the report continues with the veil of light. Yakhfiḍu is the Name’s verb with Allah as its subject. Al-qisṭ is left in Arabic above because the readings divide: Ibn al-Athīr takes it as justice, which He sends down to the earth at one time and raises at another, and Lane’s Lexicon records that some read it as the balance, alluding to the provision He decrees. An-Nawawī gives the balance from Ibn Qutaybah, through al-Harawī and al-Qāḍī ʻIyāḍ, the deeds that go up and the provisions that come down being weighed in it, and, as it is said, al-qisṭ as each creature’s share of provision, lowered by straitening and raised by widening. Muslim 179c, through Shuʻbah, has yarfaʻu l-qisṭa wa-yakhfiḍuh, the raising first.

حَقٌّ عَلَى اللَّهِ أَنْ لَا يَرْتَفِعَ شَيْءٌ مِنَ الدُّنْيَا إِلَّا وَضَعَهُ

It is a right upon Allah that nothing of this world rises except that He puts it down.

al-Bukhārī 2872 · ṣaḥīḥ

From Anas: the Prophet’s ﷺ she-camel al-ʻAḍbāʼ could not be outrun, or, Ḥumayd said, could hardly be outrun; a Bedouin came on a young camel and outran her, it weighed on the Muslims until he saw it in them, and he said this. Waḍaʻahu, He puts it down, is not the Name’s root, and the report is carried as nearest in meaning. Al-Bukhārī 6501, through Ḥumayd, has inna ḥaqqan ʻalā llāhi an lā yarfaʻa shayʼan mina d-dunyā illā waḍaʻahu, that He raises nothing of this world but He puts it down.

Study Notes

Verified — enumerated; thematic caution noted

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CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: FIVE ayat. 56:1–3, with aṭ-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr, al-Ḥasan, Qatādah and Ibn ʻAbbās, carried at this Name only; 3:26, SHARED WITH NAMES 24, 25 AND 84; 17:24, with Ibn Kathīr and al-Qurṭubī, carried at this Name only, its prayer also standing on this Name’s supplication page; and, ADDED, 15:88, with Ibn Kathīr, and 9:40, with Ibn ʻAbbās in Ibn Kathīr, both at this Name only. They are appended, sub-items 0 to 2 keep their positions, and the distinct Qurʼan-page verse count in Notes on This Edition moves from 353 to 355.

NAMED HERE BUT NOT CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: 26:215, carried at NO Name; 9:128, carried at Name 83.

CORRECTED ON THE RECORD, THE COUNTS: the entry gave none; computed from the Tanzil text, kh-f-ḍ gives 4 words in 4 verses, none of them of Allah: 56:3, of the Event, and the imperative of the lowered wing at 15:88, 17:24 and 26:215.

CORRECTED, THE ROOT: the gloss had glossBasis desc and no source. Ibn Fāris’s entry on kh-f-ḍ and Lisān al-ʻArab were not read in this pass and are not cited; al-Jawharī, Ibn Sīdah and Ibn al-Athīr were read on the hawramani transcriptions. The gloss follows al-Jawharī and Ibn al-Athīr, with glossBasis ref, and a senseNote is added.

CORRECTED, THE DESC: it quoted 56:3 as the old verse; it said the Qurʼan gives the act, when the Qurʼan gives the root only of the Event and of the lowered wing, and the verb of Allah stands in Muslim 179a; it called Ar-Rāfiʻ this Name’s other hand, which makes a Name a hand, and said the two are never read apart; it called 17:24 the Book’s tenderest instruction and every lowering a correction, which have no source. It now gives the root, the gloss of the Name, the weak list and the sound report with the division over al-qisṭ, unnamed, the Qurʼan’s uses of the root, the neighbouring Names 23 and 25, and what the Name asks.

THE REF: its reading through the Event to the One who appoints it had no named source; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 179a stood in a form the book does not use; one balance with no pan falling but the other rises was an unsourced reading of the report; and Name 23 never read apart from it overstated the pairing. The ref now gives the counts, at-Tirmidhī 3507 with its grades, Muslim 179a and 179c, Ibn al-Athīr, Lane’s Lexicon, al-Jawharī, aṭ-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr, al-Qurṭubī, al-Bukhārī 2872 and 9:40.

CORRECTED, THE QURʼAN NOTES: 56:1–3’s note spoke of the tradition reading through the Hour and carried a process remark on the grammar; 17:24’s carried a pointer to the Meaning page and the reflection, an all-capitals phrase and hand imagery; each now gives the commentators; 3:26’s note is shortened and states the distance. TWO duʻāʼ.

ADDED FIRST: Qurʼan 17:24, the prayer the verse joins to the lowered wing, with Ibn Kathīr. Muslim 2722, carried at this Name only, CORRECTED: a Prophetic duʻāʼ, it had no grade and now reads ṣaḥīḥ; its note, that a soul which will not rate itself is the one thing this Name never has to bring down, had no source, and it now gives Zayd ibn Arqam and the supplication the portion belongs to, and states the distance. TWO tracked aḥādīth. Muslim 179a, SHARED WITH NAME 63 exactly and WITH NAMES 49 AND 93 as other portions (Name 63 named in build 151), source and grade identical at all four, CORRECTED: its Arabic lacked ʻazza wa-jall after the Name of Allah, now restored with the English; its English rendered al-qisṭ as the scale, one of two readings, and now leaves the word in Arabic with Ibn al-Athīr and Lane’s Lexicon in the note; the single balance with no pan falling but the other rises is removed; Muslim 179c is added in the note. al-Bukhārī 2872, carried at this Name only: its note called the saying a law rather than a consolation, the direct source of the reflection’s opening and arguably the plainest evidence for the Name, and these are removed; it now gives the account, states that waḍaʻa is not the Name’s root, and adds al-Bukhārī 6501.

MEDS 22: the old teaching becomes the Prophet ﷺ in a report from Anas, quoting al-Bukhārī 2872 in the book’s translation, and a stranger’s young colt becomes a Bedouin on a young camel; gravity applied in mercy before the height could kill you, a promise and a likeness of His act to a force, is removed; the Lowerer becomes the Abaser, the book’s rendering; the sterner hand of the pair, which makes a Name a hand, and water bringing a peak to its level and not below it, become His lowering with knowledge and justice; the old verse at 17:24 becomes the Qurʼan in the book’s translation, the bird’s wing now follows al-Qurṭubī, and the gentlest command in the Book, which has no source, is removed; never to lower people, that hand is not yours, becomes not, first, to bring anyone down; the only guaranteed elevator in creation is removed, and the two reports are named with Abū Hurayrah in the book’s translations of Muslim 2588 and Muslim 482; kneel becomes put your forehead there.

POEMS 22: water poured into a basin now keeps pouring, so that the built corner goes under; Al-Khāfiḍ as no hand reaching down and as the level all water obeys, which negates hand imagery and likens Him to a force, becomes the water and every height obeying Him, with al-Bukhārī 2872 in the book’s translation. CH 22 checked and unchanged.

OPEN: the lexica at kh-f-ḍ in print.

AUDIT: Name 49 quotes the same opening of Muslim 179a without ʻazza wa-jall, and its Arabic and English now carry it; Name 93’s source read Muslim 179a with the narrator in parentheses, and now reads Muslim 179a, identical with Names 22 and 49, the narrator already standing in its note; the comma in its Arabic, which the book does not print in ḥadīth text, is removed.

IN BUILD 151, FROM THE PHASE 2 READING: the share line above for Muslim 179a names Name 63, which carries the same portion exactly, linked, source and grade identical at all four. The ref names Ibn Mājah 3861’s list beside at-Tirmidhī 3507’s, and gives Abū Dāwūd 3450, from Abū Hurayrah, where Allah is the plain subject of the verb, bal Allāhu yakhfiḍu wa-yarfaʻ, graded ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī, Muḥammad Muḥyī ad-Dīn ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd and Shuʻayb al-Arnaʼūṭ and isnād ṣaḥīḥ by Darussalam; no page carries it. The reflection’s the commentators, for the bird’s wing held out for its young, waits on the author (A32), and so does Name 49’s Truly in Muslim 179a’s opening (A23).

BY THE AUTHOR’S DECISIONS OF 2026-09-25, IN BUILD 182: MEDS 22 gives the bird’s wing to al-Qurṭubī (A32); Muslim 2722 is carried at Name 55 as well, with this page’s Arabic, English, source and grade, linked both ways (A64); Muslim 179a keeps this page’s English, which Name 49 now gives (A23).

IN BUILD 197, FROM THE BACKLOG READING OF THE LEXICA: ar-Rāghib (al-Mufradāt, p. 289), Lisān al-ʻArab (vol. 7, p. 145) and al-Khalīl (al-ʻAyn, vol. 4, p. 178) are read at Shamela through its page reader, not in print, for kh-f-ḍ: khafḍ is the opposite of rafʻ, and in ar-Rāghib ease and gentle going; Lisān gives al-Khāfiḍ in Ibn al-Athīr’s words as the ref has them, the One who lowers the tyrants and the pharaohs, and khafḍ as ease of living; al-Khalīl, the opposite of rafʻ, and a soft life; Ibn Fāris was sought in bāb al-khāʼ wa-l-fāʼ (vol. 2, pp. 201–203) and bāb al-khāʼ wa-ḍ-ḍād (pp. 191–194) and not found, which is not taken to mean he has no entry; nothing on this page is at odds with them. IN BUILD 204, FROM THE READING OF THE ḤADĪTH COMMENTARY: an-Nawawī on Muslim 179 (vol. 3, p. 13) is read through Shamela’s page reader, not in print, and given here in English: he gives the balance from Ibn Qutaybah, through al-Harawī and al-Qāḍī ʻIyāḍ, and, as it is said, al-qisṭ as each creature’s share of provision; ʻAbd al-Bāqī’s note (vol. 1, p. 161) gives Ibn Qutaybah’s reading in the same words; so the reading of al-qisṭ as the balance no longer rests on Lane’s Lexicon alone, and the OPEN line no longer owes an-Nawawī.

IN BUILD 206, FROM THE BACKLOG READING OF THE LEXICA: Ibn Fāris is read at Shamela through its page reader, not in print: the Maqāyīs’s bāb of khāʼ and fāʼ (vol. 2, pp. 201–203) runs from khafaqa to khafaʻa and closes with no entry for kh-f-ḍ, so the Maqāyīs has none in Hārūn’s edition; his al-Mujmal carries it (p. 298): al-khafḍ is ease, and gentle going, and it is the opposite of rafʻ, as al-Jawharī and al-Khalīl above have it; the OPEN line no longer owes him, and nothing on this page is at odds with him.

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Ar-Rāfiʻ

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