Name 45 of 99

الواسع

The All-Encompassing

Al-Wāsiʻ

The house that never filled — room enough, and more.

Meaning

From the root w-s-ʻ. Ibn Fāris does not define it positively at all: it is a word for the opposite of narrowness and hardship, khilāf aḍ-ḍīq wa-l-ʻusr — vastness stated as the absence of a squeeze. He then glosses al-wusʻ as al-ghinā and says plainly that Allah is al-Wāsiʻ, meaning al-Ghanī, which ties this Name to Name 88. What is wide here is not a quantity but a capacity. The Qurʼan rarely lets the Name stand without al-ʻAlīm beside it — breadth held to precision, so that vastness is never confused with vagueness. And the same root measures the human side: five times the Book says Allah does not charge a soul beyond its wusʻ, so the word that names His breadth is the word that caps our own.

Root w-s-ʻ — khilāf aḍ-ḍīq wa-l-ʻusr — the opposite of narrowness and hardship

Counted by hand from the Tanzil text, w-s-ʻ occurs thirty-two times, and the look-alikes read out and set aside are s-m-ʻ, s-b-ʻ, t-s-ʻ, s-r-ʻ, s-ʻ-r, s-ʻ-y, s-ʻ-d, s-w-ʻ, ḍ-ʻ-f, ṭ-w-ʻ, ʻ-s-ʻ-s and s-f-ʻ, the names Ismāʻīl and Suwāʻ, and fifty-seven words in which the sīn of form ten or of the future comes before another root, together with al-Yasaʻ at 6:86 and 38:48, which is a prophet’s name and not this root. The adjective stands thirteen times. Masculine wāsiʻ stands eight times and all eight are of Allah: 2:115, 2:247, 2:261, 2:268, 3:73, 5:54 and 24:32 with ʻalīm, and 53:32 in construct, wāsiʻu l-maghfirah. Wāsiʻan at 4:130 is of Allah with ḥakīm. But the feminine wāsiʻah stands four times and only one is of an attribute of His — 6:147, a vast mercy. The other three describe His earth: 4:97, was not the earth of Allah wide, that you might have emigrated in it; 29:56, My earth is wide, so worship Me; 39:10, and the earth of Allah is wide. In all three the width is an argument against an excuse. The verb wasiʻa stands four times, of knowledge at 6:80, 7:89 and 20:98 and of the Kursī at 2:255; wasiʻat once, of mercy at 7:156, and wasiʻta once, in the prayer of the angels who bear the Throne, You encompassed, in mercy and knowledge together at 40:7. Saʻah stands six times, five of human means and once, at 4:130, His; al-mūsiʻ at 2:236 is the man who has them; at 51:47 la-mūsiʻūn is said of the building of the sky. And wusʻ stands five times, always of human capacity and always to cap it: 2:233, 2:286, 6:152, 7:42 and 23:62, Allah does not charge a soul beyond its wusʻ. Lexicon, Ibn Fāris read in his own text in Maqāyīs al-Lugha: the root is a word indicating the opposite of narrowness and hardship; al-wusʻ is al-ghinā, and Allah is al-Wāsiʻ, that is al-Ghanī; al-wusʻ is also means and capacity, and one spends to the measure of his wusʻ, for which he cites 65:7. No other lexicon was reached here. Tafsīr: as-Saʻdī on 53:32 says that but for His forgiveness the lands and the servants would perish. Ḥadīth: al-Bukhārī 6309. The Name is in the enumeration at at-Tirmidhī 3507.

Story

The war sent people down the north road for two years, and most doors along it closed. Halima’s did not. Her house was large and old and falling apart, and by the second winter it held forty-three people who were not her family.

Neighbors kept telling her she was full. She kept turning out to be wrong about that. There was the pantry, and then the pantry became a room for a family of five; there was the stable loft; there was the space under the stairs where a boy slept for a year and a half. Every time she was certain the house could hold no more, another knock came and another place turned up. “I have never once found the edge of it,” she said, baffled, to a neighbor. “I keep expecting to.”

It was not only rooms. People arrived with things she had no experience of — languages she did not speak, griefs she could not imagine, a man who wept every night for a year, two orphaned sisters who would not talk to anyone for eight months. She kept waiting to reach the end of her own capacity, and kept discovering it went further back than she had known.

She was not equal to all of it. There was a fortnight in the second winter when she could not stand the noise of them and shouted at a woman over a broken jug, and went and sat in the stable in the cold until she could come back in. Nobody left.

The woman with the jug brought her out a blanket after a while and neither of them said anything about it.

When it was over and they had all gone home or gone on, she sat in the emptied house and found that the strange thing was not how much it had held. It was that it did not feel used up. It felt larger than before.

Poem

Ask any parent of more than one child
whether the love for the first one shrank
the day the second was born,
and watch them look at you like you’ve asked something absurd.

It didn’t divide. It didn’t thin out to cover more ground.
Somehow there was, impossibly, exactly as much love
left over for the first child as there had ever been —
and a whole new reservoir, entire, undiminished,
for the second, as if capacity itself
had simply expanded to meet what arrived,
rather than rationing what already existed.

No one can explain this by arithmetic.
Love was supposed to be a fixed amount, divided by however many
now needed a share of it.
It never once behaved that way.

Al-Wāsiʻ is not size the way a mountain has size,
something that could, in principle, be measured and found to end.
His is room that expands to meet whatever arrives needing to be held —
never strained, never rationed, never once
asked to choose
who receives the part
that’s left.

Reflection

The Widening

Al-Wāsiʻ means that His capacity has no far wall. Not His mercy, not His knowledge, not His provision — none of it is a container that fills and then must turn the next person away. The woman in the story keeps discovering rooms in a house she is certain has none left; that is the barest human echo of a vastness that has never once, in all of history, had to say: no more room.

This is not vastness the way a large thing is vast — a large thing can still be exhausted if enough is asked of it. His mercy has taken in every sin ever regretted and has never once run short. Allah holds in His knowledge every hidden thought, every unspoken grief, the number of leaves on every tree that has ever grown, without straining to hold the next one. His provision reaches everyone who calls on Him at the same hour, in full, none of it diminished by how many are asking.

This should change how a person prays. Most fear about forgiveness is really a fear of scarcity — the sense that too much has already been asked, that this next request for mercy might be the one that finally exceeds what is available. Al-Wāsiʻ removes the premise entirely. There is no ledger running low. However great the sin, however many times it has been repeated, His capacity to forgive was never the limiting factor — only the sincerity of the turning back to Him.

Scripture puts this beyond inference at one place, and it is worth naming. Almost everywhere else the Name arrives paired with knowledge — Allah is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing — a vastness stated in general, of everything at once. At 53:32 it is joined to one thing: your Lord is wāsiʻu l-maghfirah, vast in forgiveness. And of all the verses that could have carried that clause, it is one that has just finished conceding the small lapses of people who avoid the great sins. The vastness is not announced over an imagined congregation of the blameless. It is announced over the actual record of the people being addressed — measured against what you have done, not against what you might have been.

His mercy is not a resource to be rationed — not toward yourself, and not, more subtly, toward others, as though a hard heart toward another person’s failings were somehow protecting a mercy that needed protecting. It does not need protecting. His capacity was never in danger of running out. Whatever narrowness appears in this world, it is never His.

He has never once run out of room.

Qurʼan

وَلِلَّهِ الْمَشْرِقُ وَالْمَغْرِبُ ۚ فَأَيْنَمَا تُوَلُّوا فَثَمَّ وَجْهُ اللَّهِ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ وَاسِعٌ عَلِيمٌ

To Allah belong the east and the west; wherever you turn, there is the Face of Allah. Truly Allah is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing.

2:115 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The Name’s first occurrence, closing a verse on the directions of prayer whose occasion aṭ-Ṭabarī records as disputed — in Ibn ʻAbbās’s report the Jews’ objection when the qiblah was turned, in Qatādah’s a leave to face any direction that the fixed qiblah later abrogated — vastness stated as the reason no direction can exclude Him.

وَاللَّهُ يُضَاعِفُ لِمَن يَشَاءُ ۗ وَاللَّهُ وَاسِعٌ عَلِيمٌ

And Allah multiplies for whom He wills. And Allah is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing.

2:261 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The close of the parable of the seven ears of grain, each bearing a hundred more — the Name given as the reason the multiplication in the image is not an exaggeration.

فَسَوْفَ يَأْتِي اللَّهُ بِقَوْمٍ يُحِبُّهُمْ وَيُحِبُّونَهُ … وَاللَّهُ وَاسِعٌ عَلِيمٌ

Allah will bring a people whom He loves and who love Him … and Allah is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing.

5:54 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Spoken of those who might turn away from the faith, and of a people who would be raised up in their place. The vastness here concerns love that is not diminished by anyone’s absence — a whole people replaced without the capacity to love them being any smaller for it.

الَّذِينَ يَجْتَنِبُونَ كَبَائِرَ الْإِثْمِ وَالْفَوَاحِشَ إِلَّا اللَّمَمَ ۚ إِنَّ رَبَّكَ وَاسِعُ الْمَغْفِرَةِ

Those who avoid the great sins and the shameful deeds, all but the small lapses — truly your Lord is vast in forgiveness.

53:32 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The only place on this page where the Name governs a noun. The three āyāt above all pair it with knowledge — wāsiʻun ʻalīm — a vastness stated in general; here it stands in construct, wāsiʻu l-maghfirah, and what it is vast in is named: forgiveness. And the setting is the argument. The clause arrives immediately after the verse has conceded al-lamam, the small lapses that even those who avoid the great sins commit, so the vastness is not declared over an imagined congregation of the blameless but over the actual record of the people being addressed. As-Saʻdī reads it hard: were it not for His forgiveness the lands and the servants would perish, and were it not for His pardon and forbearance the sky would fall on the earth and He would leave no creature on its back.

قَالَ عَذَابِي أُصِيبُ بِهِ مَنْ أَشَاءُ ۖ وَرَحْمَتِي وَسِعَتْ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ

He said: My punishment — I strike with it whom I will; and My mercy encompasses all things.

7:156 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The verb of this root, in the first person, with mercy as its subject. What the sentence does is set a limit against no limit: the punishment reaches whom He wills, the mercy reaches everything, and the two clauses are not parallel. Wasiʻat stands once in the Book, here; at 40:7 below the angels say wasiʻta, You encompassed, and give mercy and knowledge as what the encompassing is in — aṭ-Ṭabarī paraphrases Your mercy and Your knowledge encompassed all things.

رَبَّنَا وَسِعْتَ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ رَّحْمَةً وَعِلْمًا فَاغْفِرْ لِلَّذِينَ تَابُوا وَاتَّبَعُوا سَبِيلَكَ

Our Lord, You have encompassed all things in mercy and knowledge, so forgive those who have repented and followed Your way.

40:7 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The pairing this Name is known for — vastness with knowledge — put into the mouths of the angels who bear the Throne, and they put mercy first. Aṭ-Ṭabarī reads the whole passage as those angels asking forgiveness for the believers. It is the only place the two are joined in the verb rather than in the formula wāsiʻun ʻalīm, and it is a petition rather than a statement: the encompassing is recited back to Him as the ground of the request that follows it.

يَا عِبَادِيَ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا إِنَّ أَرْضِي وَاسِعَةٌ فَإِيَّايَ فَاعْبُدُونِ

O My servants who have believed, truly My earth is wide, so worship Me.

29:56 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The Name-form in the feminine, and it is said of the earth. Wāsiʻah stands four times; only 6:147, a vast mercy, is of an attribute of His, and the other three — 4:97, 39:10 and this — describe His earth, the ground under the reader’s feet. In every one of the three the width is an argument against an excuse: the earth is wide enough to move in, so there is no place a person may say they were kept from worshipping. Carried here because a page for this Name that prints only the vastness said of Allah has not counted the word.

وَلَا نُكَلِّفُ نَفْسًا إِلَّا وُسْعَهَا وَلَدَيْنَا كِتَابٌ يَنطِقُ بِالْحَقِّ وَهُمْ لَا يُظْلَمُونَ

And We do not charge a soul beyond its capacity, and with Us is a record that speaks the truth, and they will not be wronged.

23:62 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The root turned on the creature. Wusʻ stands five times — 2:233, 2:286, 6:152, 7:42 and this — and every one of them says the same thing: the soul is not charged beyond its wusʻ. Ibn Fāris glosses wusʻ as means and capacity, so the word that names the breadth of God is the word the Book uses to state the limit of the creature and to forbid charging past it. The clause that follows here is the reason it can be said: the record speaks the truth, and so no one is wronged by the measure.

Dua

اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَسْأَلُكَ الْهُدَى وَالتُّقَى وَالْعَفَافَ وَالْغِنَى

O Allah, I ask You for guidance, piety, chastity, and sufficiency.

Muslim 2721a · ṣaḥīḥ

Narrated by Ibn Masʻūd. Al-ghinā here is not wealth but a contentment that has stopped straining after more — room made inside the self, which is the register al-Wāsiʻ operates in when the vastness is not external. Ibn Fāris makes the connection lexical rather than thematic: he glosses al-wusʻ as al-ghinā and says that Allah is al-Wāsiʻ, that is al-Ghanī. The same supplication is carried at Names 88 and 89 for the word it asks for; it is carried here for the word it is asking of.

Hadith

اللَّهُ أَفْرَحُ بِتَوْبَةِ عَبْدِهِ مِنْ أَحَدِكُمْ سَقَطَ عَلَىٰ بَعِيرِهِ وَقَدْ أَضَلَّهُ فِي أَرْضِ فَلَاةٍ

Allah is more joyful at the repentance of His servant than one of you who found his camel again after losing it in a barren land.

al-Bukhārī 6309 · ṣaḥīḥ

Narrated by Anas ibn Mālik, by two routes through Hammām from Qatādah. Given for the vastness of the welcome it describes rather than for the word al-Wāsiʻ, which is not in it. What the report makes room for is not more territory but a returning person, however late and however far they had gone. Name 80 carries the same report, for the turning back it welcomes. Muslim 2747a records the same event in a substantially longer recension, differently phrased throughout — ashaddu faraḥan rather than afraḥu, with the full narrative of the lost camel, the man’s despair, and his mistaken exclamation on finding it. It shares the theme and the outcome but not the wording, so only al-Bukhārī is cited for the text printed. Muslim’s telling comes through Isḥāq ibn ʻAbd Allāh ibn Abī Ṭalḥah, whose uncle Anas was.

Study Notes

Verified — indefinite form attested; definite traditional

ShowHide the Study Notes (1,512 words)

CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: EIGHT ayat. Carried before: 2:115, 2:261, 5:54 and 53:32.

ADDED: 7:156, 40:7, 29:56 and 23:62. All four are appended, the four existing sub-items keep their positions, none of the four is carried at any other Name so no reciprocal links were needed, and the distinct verse count in Notes on This Edition moves from 416 to 420.

NAMED HERE BUT NOT CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: 7:89, carried at Name 18; 2:255, carried at Name 33 and Name 36 and Name 38 and Name 62 and Name 63; 2:286, carried at Name 77 and Name 82; 6:152, carried at Name 86; 24:32 and 4:130, carried at Name 89; 39:10, carried at Name 99; 6:86, 38:48, 2:247, 2:268, 3:73, 6:147, 4:97, 6:80, 20:98, 2:236, 51:47, 7:42 and 65:7, all carried at NO Name; 2:233, carried at Name 97.

CORRECTED ON THE RECORD, THE COUNT, AND THE ENTRY HAD NONE: counted by hand from the Tanzil text with strip, w-s-ʻ gives THIRTY-TWO words. The sweep run as sīn then ʻayn returns 475 words in 162 forms and almost none of them are this root; s-m-ʻ alone accounts for 185 (corrected in build 169), and s-b-ʻ, t-s-ʻ, s-r-ʻ, s-ʻ-r, s-ʻ-y, s-ʻ-d, s-w-ʻ, ḍ-ʻ-f and ṭ-w-ʻ take most of the rest, with the names Ismāʻīl and Suwāʻ, ʻ-s-ʻ-s and s-f-ʻ, and fifty-seven words in which the sīn of form ten or of the future comes before another root (named in build 169). One look-alike is worth naming because it is not obvious: AL-YASAʻ at 6:86 and 38:48 is the prophet Elisha, not the verb yasaʻu.

THE FIRST FINDING: the adjective stands THIRTEEN times, and the entry counted only the masculine. Masculine wāsiʻ stands eight times, all of Allah — seven with ʻalīm, which the ref had right, and 53:32 in construct. Wāsiʻan at 4:130 is of Allah with ḥakīm, which the ref also had. BUT THE FEMININE WĀSIʻAH STANDS FOUR TIMES AND THREE OF THE FOUR DESCRIBE THE EARTH: 4:97, 29:56 and 39:10. Only 6:147, a vast mercy, is of an attribute of His; the three earth-verses say His earth (corrected in build 169). In all three earth-verses the width is an argument against an excuse — was not the earth of Allah wide, that you might have emigrated in it; My earth is wide, so worship Me. 29:56 is carried for the set.

THE SECOND FINDING, AND IT IS THE COUNTERWEIGHT THE PAGE WAS MISSING: wusʻ stands FIVE times and every one is the human capacity, named in order to be capped — 2:233, 2:286, 6:152, 7:42 and 23:62, lā yukallifu llāhu nafsan illā wusʻahā. Saʻah stands six times, five of them human means and once, at 4:130, His, which aṭ-Ṭabarī reads as the breadth of His bounty (corrected in build 169); al-mūsiʻ at 2:236 is the man who has them. So the root that names the breadth of God is the root the Book uses to state the limit of the creature and to forbid charging past it. 23:62 is carried for it.

FOUND ALSO: the verb wasiʻa is in ĀYAT AL-KURSĪ, 2:255, wasiʻa kursiyyuhu s-samāwāti wa-l-arḍ — the verse Muslim 810 calls the greatest in the Book uses this root (corrected in build 169) and this Name’s page did not know it. It is carried at Names 33, 36, 38, 62 and 63 already and is named here rather than taken, because adding a sixth carrier would mean regenerating five reciprocal links for a word that is not the Name-form. And 51:47, wa-innā la-mūsiʻūn, is the same root said of the building of the sky.

CORRECTED, THE ROOT FIELDS: glossBasis was desc and senseNote was null, and the gloss read breadth, capacity, room enough. IBN FĀRIS WAS READ IN HIS OWN TEXT, in Maqāyīs al-Lugha at the chapter of wāw and sīn, and HE DEFINES THE ROOT NEGATIVELY: a word indicating KHILĀF AḌ-ḌĪQ WA-L-ʻUSR, the opposite of narrowness and of hardship. The vastness is the absence of a squeeze rather than a measured extent, which is why it sits on a capacity as easily as on a space.

HE THEN GLOSSES THE NAME WITH ANOTHER NAME: al-wusʻ is al-ghinā, and Allah is al-Wāsiʻ, that is AL-GHANĪ, which is Name 88 — and it is not an accident that the supplication on this Name’s Duʻāʼ page is the same one carried at Names 88 and 89, where what is asked for is al-ghinā. He also gives al-wusʻ as means and capacity, citing 65:7, which is the sense of all five wusʻ verses.

NOT READ: no other lexicon was reached for w-s-ʻ and nothing is claimed from one.

CORRECTED, A PRODUCTION REMARK LIVE IN CONTENT: the note on 53:32 ended with a line recording that the verse was read live at a website this session, that the Arabic was normalised and abridged, and a line of capitals. That is process and not content; it is removed, and the substance of the note is kept and extended with as-Saʻdī, who reads the verse hard — but for His forgiveness the lands and the servants would perish, and but for His pardon and forbearance the sky would fall on the earth. CORRECTED, THE ḤADĪTH: al-Bukhārī 6309 had a source field holding a paragraph of recension apparatus and a grade field holding a remark. A source field is a citation and a grade field is a verdict; both now are, the apparatus is in the note, and the claim in it was checked and holds — Muslim 2747a is a longer and differently phrased recension, ashaddu faraḥan for afraḥu, sharing the theme but not the wording, so only al-Bukhārī is cited for the text printed.

CORRECTED, THE HOUSE FORMS: the ref carried Jāmiʻ at-Tirmidhī 3507, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6309 and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2747a; all three are now house forms. MEDS 45, POEMS 45 and CH 45 read and left unchanged.

OPEN: 4:97 and 39:10, the other two earth-verses, and 6:147, the vast mercy, are named here and not carried; 39:10 is at Name 99 and the other two at NO Name.

OPEN: 2:255 should probably be linked to this Name when Names 33, 36, 38, 62 and 63 are next touched.

COHERENCE: the live shared differs at Muslim 2721a is CLEARED. Names 45 and 88 cited it as Muslim 2721a and NAME 89 AS ṢAḤĪḤ MUSLIM 2721a, which the house forms forbid and which the whole-book audit had been reporting since before this stretch began; Name 89 is converted and all three now match. Name 88's own duʻāʼ row is untouched and already correct. Two pre-existing hygiene faults at those Names are cleared while they are open: al-Bukhārī 6446 at Name 88 carried Arabic punctuation in its ar, now stripped with the letters asserted unchanged and contained in the source; and an-Nasāʼī 5465 at Name 89 had no grade and had its narrator sitting inside an eighty-five character citation, so the citation is now a citation, the narrator is in the note, and the grade gathers all three verdicts the page gives.

AFTER NAME 82: 2:286 is now carried at Name 82 too, and this note says so.

AFTER NAME 86: 6:152 is now carried at Name 86, and the NAMED line says so.

AFTER NAME 89: 4:130 is now carried at Name 89, and the NAMED line says so. 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. AFTER THE 1–40 HYGIENE READING: a clause in the senseNote narrated this entry’s own earlier state, saying that Ibn Fāris makes two moves the entry had not. The narration is removed and the sentence now reads that he makes two further moves; the two moves themselves, al-wusʻ is al-ghinā and al-wusʻ is al-jidah wa-ṭ-ṭāqah, are untouched.

IN BUILD 169, FROM THE PHASE 2 READING: the ref names ʻ-s-ʻ-s, s-f-ʻ, the names Ismāʻīl and Suwāʻ and the fifty-seven words of form ten and the future among the look-alikes, gives saʻah five times of human means and once, at 4:130, His, sets wasiʻat once at 7:156 and wasiʻta at 40:7, calls 6:147 the one attribute of His among the feminine and the other three His earth, and reads his own text; the senseNote gives the sixth saʻah as His; the 2:115 note gives the occasion as aṭ-Ṭabarī records it, disputed; the 53:32 note has the Name govern a noun; the 7:156 note no longer narrates its editing and gives wasiʻta at 40:7 with aṭ-Ṭabarī’s paraphrase; the 29:56 note calls the three His earth; the note on al-Bukhārī 6309 no longer narrates the move of its apparatus, names Name 80 and gives the route of Muslim 2747a.

COHERENCE, RECORDED: al-Bukhārī 6309 is carried at Name 80 as well, the same Arabic and English, linked. The Study Note’s s-m-ʻ, look-alikes, saʻah, His earth, the greatest verse and the named line’s stops are corrected in place.

BY THE AUTHOR’S DECISIONS OF 2026-09-25, IN BUILD 182: MEDS 45 says almost everywhere else the Name arrives paired with knowledge, and that at 53:32 it is joined to one thing (A56).

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