The Ninety-Nine Names99 Names, home
Name 5 of 99
السلام

The Source of Peace

As-Salām

The bridge between two villages — a ledger set down.

Meaning

The Arabic salām holds peace, safety and wholeness together. As a Name it is read as the One who possesses salām: safe from every defect, free of every deficiency and of the perishing that overtakes creatures — and, some add, the One who greets His servants in Paradise, or the One from whose injustice creation is safe. Where Al-Quddūs names His purity, As-Salām names His soundness and the safety that comes from Him alone. No creature is sound of itself; whatever safety anyone holds, As-Salām gave it and keeps it. Paradise is Dār as-Salām, read either as His abode or as the abode of safety. And the greeting Muslims exchange is not a peace they own: it is asked of Him on one another’s behalf.

Root s-l-m — peace, safety, wholeness

Qurʼan 59:23 — “the Source of Peace” (as-Salām); as a Name of Allah the definite form occurs there alone. The root s-l-m runs widely through the Book: Dār as-Salām, the Abode of Peace (6:127; 10:25) — His abode, as Qatādah and aṭ-Ṭabarī read it, or the abode safe from every affliction, as Ibn Kathīr does; subul as-salām (5:16), which aṭ-Ṭabarī reads as the ways of Allah, as-Salām being Allah; “Peace — a word from a Merciful Lord” (36:58), which Ibn ʻAbbās is reported to have taken as Allah Himself greeting the people of the Garden (via Ibn Kathīr); the peace laid over Yaḥyā and over ʻĪsā at 19:15 and 19:33. Meaning: Ibn al-ʻArabī, as al-Qurṭubī reports on 59:23, says the scholars agree the Name means dhū s-salāmah, the possessor of safety, and differ three ways over it — safe from every defect and free of every deficiency; the One who greets His servants in Paradise (36:58); the One from whose injustice creation is safe, which al-Qurṭubī identifies as al-Khaṭṭābī’s view, the last two making it an attribute of action. Ibn Kathīr on 59:23: safe from all defects and deficiencies, by His perfection in essence, attributes and acts. Ibn Fāris reports the scholars as saying He is as-Salām for His safety from the defect, deficiency and perishing that overtake creatures. Ḥadīth: al-Bukhārī 835 and Muslim 402a — Allah is Himself as-Salām; Muslim 591, from Thawbān, and Muslim 592a, from ʻĀʼishah — “O Allah, You are as-Salām and from You is peace; blessed are You, O Possessor of Majesty and Generosity.” The Name-form also stands in the enumerations at at-Tirmidhī 3507 and Ibn Mājah 3861. Dār as-salām stands at 6:127 as well as at 10:25; Ibn Kathīr reads the name of the abode there from their safety on the way — kept safe from the afflictions of crookedness on the straight path they walked, they come to the abode of safety — and ʻinda rabbihim states what Qatādah and aṭ-Ṭabarī read into 10:25. Muslim 54a, from Abū Hurayrah through al-Aʻmash from Abū Ṣāliḥ, afshū s-salāma baynakum, is the counterpart to al-Bukhārī 835: that one forbids the word said upward, this one commands it between people.

Story

Two villages on either side of a river had quarreled so long that no one living remembered the first wrong. They remembered only the last one, and the one before it, each side keeping its ledger of injuries as carefully as its grain.

An old weaver named Dara had buried two of her own — a son at nineteen, and a nephew not yet twenty, one from each of the last two rounds of it. Of her son she kept one thing and told no one about it: the spare shirt he had carried out the door folded under his arm, which came back to her afterward still folded the way she had folded it that morning, because nothing had come close enough to unfold it. She could no longer remember which side had been in the right either time, and she thought that was the whole difficulty in one sentence.

She grew tired of burying young men. She began to cross the bridge — first to one village, then to the other — carrying no argument, only questions. The first time, she asked a man named Halim, who had lost a brother in the earlier round, what it would take for him to stop keeping his account of it. He would not look at her, and answered her question with one of his own — whether she had forgotten what her own boy’s death had looked like — which was not really a question so much as a wall he wanted built. She said she had forgotten nothing, and asked him again. He was quiet for a long time. “I do not know what I am afraid of,” he said at last. “Only that stopping might mean the dead did not matter.” “The dead mattered before the quarrel,” Dara told him, “and they will matter after it. That is the part the living cannot hold in mind while it is still going.” She said it twice, on two separate visits, before he heard it.

She did the same on the other side, and on the same side again, for longer than anyone counted. What she found was that nobody wanted to be the first to stop, and that this, and not the dead, was what the quarrel now ran on.

The peace she brokered was fragile. It held only where each side agreed to stop adding to its ledger — to let the last wrong be the last.

There was a morning, that final winter, when a boy from one house helped a woman from the other carry water up the bank after her hip gave out on the ice — neither of them thinking about it, both of them noticing, afterward, that they had.

It was done on the bridge itself, in the spring. Each village brought the book it had kept — one bound in red leather, one in plain board — and set them down on the stones and left them there. Afterward there were children crossing freely, and two markets becoming one, and a quiet in the chest that nobody in either village had felt in years. By autumn the rain had taken the ink, and nobody went to look.

Poem

There is a kind of quiet that follows danger —
the specific quiet of a door finally locked,
a child finally found,
a plane’s wheels touching the ground.

The storm is still overhead.
Whatever in the house is kept whole
is kept by Him.

Somewhere, right now, something breakable is being carried —
across a room, across a country, across a life —
and it will be set down exactly as it was lifted.

His is the word strangers exchange
without quite hearing what they’re saying:
I wish you unharmed. I wish you whole.

And His is the word waiting at the gate of paradise,
spoken to everyone who arrives —
not congratulations,
just: peace.

That is As-Salām: not the quiet, not the greeting —
the One no flaw has ever touched,
from whom every safe thing
borrows its safety,
and to whom it is handed back.

Reflection

The Calm in the Waiting Room

There is a particular kind of stillness some people carry into a hospital waiting room — not denial, not indifference to what might be coming, but a steadiness that holds while everything around them stays uncertain. You have probably met someone like this. Their calm did not depend on good news arriving; it was already there before the news came. What is worth asking is where it came from, because they did not manufacture it. Allah gave it, and what He gave them is a small borrowed piece of something that is wholly His.

Most of us wait for peace the way we wait for test results — as something that will finally arrive once the situation resolves in our favor. But the peace worth having does not work that way. As-Salām does not promise the absence of trouble; what He gives is a stillness available in the middle of it, a floor beneath you that does not depend on which way the diagnosis goes.

The word behind the Name is salām, and it holds three things at once: peace, safety, and being whole — not merely unattacked but with nothing in you broken. As-Salām is the One whose soundness is His own, necessarily, and every soundness anyone else has is lent by Him. There is a small correction in the sunnah that shows how carefully this runs one way. The Companions used to say, in the prayer, peace be upon Allah — and were told to stop: Allah is Himself As-Salām. Peace is not something to be wished on the One it comes from.

You do not reach that floor by solving your circumstances. You reach it by handing the future back to Allah, who was already holding it, and setting down, for a while, the argument you have been having with what you cannot control. The handing back changes nothing about who holds it. It changes only whether you are pulling against Him.

This steadiness is not passive, and it is not a possession. It is lent, and it can be withdrawn, and the one who has it is not stronger than the one who does not — only, at that moment, more provided for. Which is why it is asked for rather than guarded. Allah is As-Salām, and He does not issue safety once and then leave it standing on its own; He is its source continuously, in the waiting rooms behind you and in the ones still ahead.

Peace was never the news you were hoping for; it is the floor He set beneath you either way.

Qurʼan

هُوَ اللَّهُ الَّذِي لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ الْمَلِكُ الْقُدُّوسُ السَّلَامُ الْمُؤْمِنُ الْمُهَيْمِنُ الْعَزِيزُ الْجَبَّارُ الْمُتَكَبِّرُ ۚ سُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ عَمَّا يُشْرِكُونَ

He is Allah, other than whom there is no god: the Sovereign, the Most Holy, the Source of Peace, the Giver of Security, the Preserver of Safety, the Mighty, the Compeller, the Supreme. Glory be to Allah above all that they associate with Him.

59:23 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The sole place the Name occurs as a divine title, third in the verse after Al-Malik and Al-Quddūs. Ibn Kathīr glosses it: safe from all defects and deficiencies, by His perfection in His essence, His attributes and His acts. The verses below extend its meaning rather than repeat it.

وَاللَّهُ يَدْعُو إِلَىٰ دَارِ السَّلَامِ

And Allah calls to the Abode of Peace.

10:25 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Paradise called dār as-salām. Qatādah, whom aṭ-Ṭabarī cites, said: Allah is as-Salām, and His abode is Paradise; Ibn Kathīr reads the name as the abode safe from every affliction, deficiency and calamity. The invitation is set against the life of this world, likened in the verse before (10:24) to a crop cut down as though it had not flourished the day before.

سَلَامٌ قَوْلًا مِّن رَّبٍّ رَّحِيمٍ

Peace — a word from a Merciful Lord.

36:58 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Salām as the word given to the people of the Garden. Ibn ʻAbbās is reported to have said that Allah Himself gives them the greeting, and Ibn Kathīr, citing him, sets it beside 33:44: their greeting on the Day they meet Him is peace. It is also the second of the three readings of the Name that al-Qurṭubī records — the One who greets His servants in Paradise. Here salām comes from its Source; it is not wished upon Him.

يَهْدِي بِهِ اللَّهُ مَنِ اتَّبَعَ رِضْوَانَهُ سُبُلَ السَّلَامِ

By it Allah guides whoever follows His good pleasure to the ways of peace.

5:16 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The ways of peace, subul as-salām, in the plural. Aṭ-Ṭabarī reads as-salām here as the Name itself — the ways of As-Salām, who is Allah — and cites as-Suddī for the way He laid down, Islam; Ibn Kathīr reads the paths of rescue and safety. The means is the Book, to which the pronoun in bihi, by it, returns, and whoever follows what pleases Him is guided along them. Where 10:25 names the abode, this names the roads to it.

لَهُمْ دَارُ السَّلَامِ عِندَ رَبِّهِمْ ۖ وَهُوَ وَلِيُّهُم بِمَا كَانُوا يَعْمَلُونَ

For them is the Abode of Peace with their Lord, and He is their Protector for what they used to do.

6:127 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The second of the two places dār as-salām stands, beside 10:25 carried above; with both here the phrase is complete on this page. Ibn Kathīr reads the name of the abode from their safety on the way: as they were kept safe from the afflictions of crookedness on the straight path they walked, they come to the abode of safety. ʻInda rabbihim adds what 10:25 does not say — the abode is with Him, which is the reading Qatādah and aṭ-Ṭabarī give the phrase at 10:25, that Allah is as-Salām and Paradise is His abode.

تَحِيَّتُهُمْ يَوْمَ يَلْقَوْنَهُ سَلَامٌ ۚ وَأَعَدَّ لَهُمْ أَجْرًا كَرِيمًا

Their greeting on the day they meet Him is: Peace. And He has prepared for them a generous reward.

33:44 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The greeting on the day they meet Him is salām, the Name’s own noun, and indefinite. The note on 36:58 above gives this verse from Ibn Kathīr.

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)

Shared with Name 62, in its English. Said of Yaḥyā, and the peace is salām, indefinite.

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)

Shared with Name 62, in its English. Here the word is definite, as-salām, the form of the Name itself, and it is in ʻĪsā’s own mouth.

Dua

اللَّهُمَّ أَنْتَ السَّلَامُ وَمِنْكَ السَّلَامُ تَبَارَكْتَ يَا ذَا الْجَلَالِ وَالْإِكْرَامِ

O Allah, You are As-Salām, and from You is peace. Blessed are You, O Possessor of Majesty and Generosity.

Ibn Mājah 928 · ṣaḥīḥ (al-Albānī; Shuʻayb al-Arnaʼūṭ); Darussalam refers it to Muslim

Narrated by Thawbān: when the Prophet ﷺ finished his prayer he sought forgiveness three times and then said this; al-Awzāʻī, asked how, said: astaghfiru llāh, astaghfiru llāh. The wording printed, with yā, is Ibn Mājah 928’s, by the same route through al-Awzāʻī; Muslim 591 reads tabārakta dhā l-jalāli, without yā, and Muslim 592a, from ʻĀʼishah, has yā in Ibn Numayr’s wording and adds that he sat after the salām only as long as it takes to say it. Both of Muslim’s tellings are ṣaḥīḥ. The meaning is unaffected, dhā being vocative either way. The prayer ends on the Name: You are As-Salām, and from You is salām.

Hadith

لَا تَقُولُوا السَّلَامُ عَلَى اللَّهِ فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ هُوَ السَّلَامُ

Do not say “peace be upon Allah,” for Allah — He Himself is As-Salām.

al-Bukhārī 835 · ṣaḥīḥ (muttafaq ʻalayh)

Narrated by Ibn Masʻūd. The wording is al-Bukhārī 835’s; Muslim 402a records the same encounter from Ibn Masʻūd without the opening prohibition, beginning with Allah is Himself as-Salām, and al-Bukhārī 831 and 6230, from the same Companion, likewise give only that, so the prohibition is 835’s. In the prayer the Companions had been saying peace be upon Allah from His servants — before His servants, in 6230 — and then peace upon particular angels and people. The Prophet ﷺ stopped the first phrase and gave them the tashahhud in its place: peace is not wished upon the One it comes from. What the correction removes is a direction of travel — salām runs from Him outward, and is not sent back toward its Source.

لَا تَدْخُلُونَ الْجَنَّةَ حَتَّى تُؤْمِنُوا وَلَا تُؤْمِنُوا حَتَّى تَحَابُّوا أَوَلَا أَدُلُّكُمْ عَلَى شَيْءٍ إِذَا فَعَلْتُمُوهُ تَحَابَبْتُمْ أَفْشُوا السَّلَامَ بَيْنَكُمْ

You will not enter the Garden until you believe, and you will not believe until you love one another. Shall I not show you something which, if you did it, you would love one another? Spread the salām among you.

Muslim 54a · ṣaḥīḥ (Muslim)

From Abū Hurayrah, through al-Aʻmash from Abū Ṣāliḥ. The page’s other report guards the word from being said the wrong way — do not say peace be upon Allah, for He is as-Salām; this one commands it be said constantly the right way, between people. Set together they are the two halves of what this entry says at the end: the greeting is not a peace anyone owns, so it cannot be offered upward, and it is not anyone’s to withhold sideways.

Study Notes

Verified — directly attested

ShowHide the Study Notes (1,561 words)

117 OK, SECOND PASS.

CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: FIVE āyāt, four before and one appended; ONE duʻāʼ, unchanged; TWO reports, one appended.

APPENDED: 6:127, the SECOND of the two places dār as-salām stands, beside 10:25 already carried. WITH BOTH HERE THE PHRASE IS COMPLETE ON THIS PAGE. Ibn Kathīr reads the abode’s name from their safety on the way — kept safe from the afflictions of crookedness on the straight path they walked, they come to the abode of safety (corrected in build 144) — and ʻinda rabbihim adds what 10:25 does not say, which is exactly the reading Qatādah and aṭ-Ṭabarī give the phrase at 10:25: Allah is as-Salām and Paradise is His abode.

REPORT APPENDED: Muslim 54a, from Abū Hurayrah through al-Aʻmash from Abū Ṣāliḥ, afshū s-salāma baynakum. THE COUNTERPART TO al-Bukhārī 835 ALREADY ON THE PAGE: that report guards the word from being said UPWARD — do not say peace be upon Allah, for He is as-Salām — and this one commands it be said constantly SIDEWAYS, between people. Together they are the two halves of what this entry’s own description ends on: the greeting is not a peace anyone owns, so it cannot be offered to Him, and it is not anyone’s to withhold from others. DUʻĀʼ LEFT AT ONE: Muslim 591 from Thawbān with Muslim 592a from ʻĀʼishah is already carried as one entry with its variants, and it is THE supplication built on this Name. Nothing was substituted for the count. NAMED AND STILL NOT CARRIED, in order of priority for a third pass: 33:44, taḥiyyatuhum yawma yalqawnahu salām, which this page’s own note on 36:58 already cites from Ibn Kathīr without printing it — the first thing to carry next; then 19:15 and 19:33, the peace laid over Yaḥyā and over ʻĪsā, both of which are carried at Name 62 and would come here as shares. Checked 18 September 2026; every addition is an append, so no existing sub-item index moved. THE FIRST PASS RECORD FOLLOWS.

CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: FOUR ayat. 59:23, THE SOLE PLACE THE NAME OCCURS AS A DIVINE TITLE, shared with Names 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, its note now giving Ibn Kathīr’s gloss; and three verses that extend its meaning rather than repeat it, all carried at this Name only. 10:25, dār as-salām — CORRECTED: the note said flatly that Paradise is named for Him; that is Qatādah’s reading, cited by aṭ-Ṭabarī, and Ibn Kathīr reads the abode of safety, so both now stand. 36:58 — CORRECTED: the note said the greeting is given directly by Him; that is reported from Ibn ʻAbbās via Ibn Kathīr and is now attributed. 5:16, subul as-salām, which aṭ-Ṭabarī reads as the ways of Allah, as-Salām being Allah, and Ibn Kathīr as the paths of safety; its note had assumed the light of 5:15 is the Book, and now says only what aṭ-Ṭabarī says, that the pronoun in bihi returns to the Book.

NAMED HERE BUT NOT CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: 10:24, cited in a note, carried at Name 69.

CORRECTED ON THE RECORD, THE DESC: it named an-Nawawī and al-Khaṭṭābī for the first reading and al-Qurṭubī and Ibn al-Qayyim for a reading of Him as the one from whom salām begins and to whom it returns. Checked against al-Qurṭubī on 59:23, the three readings are Ibn al-ʻArabī’s report of the scholars — safe from defect; the One who greets His servants in Paradise; the One from whose injustice creation is safe, which al-Qurṭubī gives to al-Khaṭṭābī — and none of the desc’s other attributions could be confirmed, so the desc now gives the readings without names and the ref carries the sources, as the book’s convention for entries requires. The ref’s al-Ghazālī sentence could not be confirmed and is removed; its dominant-reading claim is replaced by Ibn Kathīr’s own words; Ibn Fāris supplies the perishing clause. ONE tracked ḥadīth, ṣaḥīḥ and muttafaq ʻalayh, checked: the tashahhud correction at al-Bukhārī 835, the only wording with the prohibition — al-Bukhārī 831 and 6230 and Muslim 402a give only that Allah is Himself As-Salām — now recorded in its source. ONE duʻāʼ: Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 591 with Ibn Mājah 928, whose wording with yā is the one printed, narrated by Thawbān and carried at this Name only, and linked since build 143 with Name 85, which prints Muslim 592a (recorded in build 144).

CORRECTED: the note said on finishing every prescribed prayer, which the text does not say; it now follows Thawbān’s wording, gives al-Awzāʻī’s answer on how the istighfār is said, and adds Muslim 592a, from ʻĀʼishah, where yā stands in Ibn Numayr’s wording — so the printed form is in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim as well. POEMS 5 no longer says He keeps nothing in the house from breaking, a promise the Name does not make, nor calls Him the One in whom nothing was broken; MEDS 5 no longer calls As-Salām the absence of trouble or soundness itself.

AUDIT, FINAL CHECK OF NAMES 1 TO 25: the ref and the duʻāʼ source gave Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim and Jāmiʻ at-Tirmidhī in forms the book does not use; al-Bukhārī 835’s source field held the wording variance, now in its note, and the source reads al-Bukhārī 835; Muslim 402a with the grade ṣaḥīḥ (muttafaq ʻalayh); the gloss, which the ref sources to Ibn Fāris, now has glossBasis ref. AFTER THE CHAT-END AUDIT OF 81–85: the grade field of Muslim 591; Ibn Mājah 928; Muslim 592a now gives every grader in the dataset’s rows, each attributed to its record (the grade survey). AFTER THE CHAT-END AUDIT OF 1–99: the English of 36:58 drops the quotation marks around Peace, the last in the book’s Qurʼan English; the verse is carried at this Name alone, and the ref keeps the marks that every ref uses when it quotes a verse.

ON THE AUTHOR’S LIST, THE TITLE AND THE RENDERINGS: Name 85 now reads The Lord of Majesty and Honour while the āyāt, the supplications and the reports still read Possessor of Majesty and Generosity. All twenty places were found and weighed one at a time, and every one of them is the book’s own rendering of a verse or of a report and not the book’s own prose; so none of them follows the title, nothing was changed, and whether that English should follow the title stays with the author. At this Name they are the Duʻāʼ page’s Muslim 591 with Ibn Mājah 928 and Muslim 592a, and the same words of that report quoted in the ref. AFTER THE 1–40 HYGIENE READING: two segments of the named line are rebuilt from this page’s own fields: 6:127, the other dār as-salām locus, now says carried at NO Name, and 19:15 and 19:33, the peace on Yaḥyā and ʻĪsā, now say both carried at Name 62. The production note item opened in the first backlog is closed here. The whole book was swept for the phrases that mark a production remark and six survived, every one of them in a Names ref or senseNote, which is the pair of reader facing fields no gate reads for that language: at Names 45, 47, 49 and 53 a clause narrating the entry’s own earlier state, and at Names 70 and 87 a clause naming the creative page. All six are removed in this build with every fact they carried kept, and each is recorded at its own Name. The four capital runs are closed with them: the seven arrays were swept over all ninety-nine Names with the audit’s own pattern and again with one that allows capitals carrying diacritics, and both return zero.

IN BUILD 144, FROM THE PHASE 2 READING: the supplication is cited Ibn Mājah 928 alone, the one record that carries the printed wording, yā dhā included, in one run; its grade gives that record’s rows, Darussalam referring it to Muslim, and Muslim 591 and 592a stand in its note with their ṣaḥīḥ. The link with Name 85 by Muslim 592a stands, found now by the number the note names. The report is cited al-Bukhārī 835 alone, Muslim 402a in its note as before. The Arabic of Muslim 54a drops a question mark the book does not use, its letters unchanged. The ref cites Muslim 592a, names the list of Ibn Mājah 3861 beside that of at-Tirmidhī 3507, gives Ibn Kathīr at 6:127 as the 6:127 note and the appended line above now do, their safety on the way, and no longer narrates the page. The named line no longer lists 6:127, carried here since the second pass.

BY THE AUTHOR’S DECISIONS OF 2026-09-25, IN BUILD 182: 33:44 is carried in his English, and 19:15 and 19:33 in Name 62’s English word for word, linked to Name 62 both ways, the note on 19:33 giving the definite as-salām in ʻĪsā’s own mouth; the named line keeps only 10:24 (A25).

IN BUILD 207, FROM THE READING OF THE GRADES: Muḥammad Fuʼād ʻAbd al-Bāqī is no longer named as a grader on this page: the row the ḥadīth dataset gives in his name is al-Albānī’s ruling as it is printed with ʻAbd al-Bāqī’s edition of Ibn Mājah, read at Shamela through its page reader, not in print, and the edition gives no verdict of its own beyond quoting az-Zawāʼid; al-Albānī’s grade stands where it stood, and earlier records keep their words.

المؤمنNext · Name 6The Giver of Security
Al-Muʼmin