Name 26 of 99

السميع

The All-Hearing

As-Samīʻ

The letter-writer’s stall — a voice finally heard.

Meaning

From s-m-ʻ: the apprehending of a thing by the ear. The form is intensive, and the readings divide. Most take as-Samīʻ as simply the One who hears — no voice too faint and none too far, no two calls competing, no organ in it. Some read hearing said of Him as His knowing what is said and requiting it. Others add a sense the prayer itself uses: hearing that answers, as in the words said on rising from bowing, Allah has heard the one who praised Him. Said of Allah the Name never stands alone; it is joined to Al-ʻAlīm, to Al-Baṣīr at Name 27, and once to the Near. It asks the servant to speak as one already heard, to ask aloud or under the breath, and to give another the attention he wants given him.

Root s-m-ʻ — hearing: the apprehending of a thing by the ear

Computed from the Tanzil text, s-m-ʻ gives one hundred and eighty-five words, the proper name Ismāʻīl aside. The adjective samīʻ stands forty-seven times: forty-five of Allah, nineteen definite and twenty-six indefinite, and twice of a human being — at 11:24, the one definite form not of Allah, and at 76:2, where man is made samīʻan baṣīran. Of the forty-five none stands alone: thirty-two beside al-ʻAlīm, ten beside al-Baṣīr, twice samīʻu d-duʻāʼ (3:38, 14:39), once beside qarīb (34:50). The noun samʻ stands twenty-two times, and the intensive sammāʻūn four times, never of Allah (5:41 twice, 5:42, 9:47). Ibn Fāris: one root, the apprehending of a thing by the ear, in human beings and in every creature possessed of an ear. Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʻArab: of His attributes and His names, from whose perception no heard thing escapes though it be faint, and He hears without an organ; faʻīl is a pattern of intensity; the plainer and commoner usage makes samīʻ mean sāmiʻ, as ʻalīm means ʻālim, while samīʻ for musmiʻ is anomalous, on a line of ʻAmr ibn Maʻdīkarib that al-Jawharī gives too. Al-Azharī, in the same entry, objects to reading the Name as al-Musmiʻ to avoid ascribing hearing to Allah: He is samīʻ, possessed of hearing, without asking how and without likening it to the hearing of His creation. Ar-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī reads samʻ said of Allah as His knowledge of what is heard and His requital for it. Al-Fayyūmī separates samiʻa, with intent or without, from istamaʻa, which is only with attention, and gives samiʻa l-qāḍī l-bayyinah, the judge accepted the evidence. Ibn al-Athīr gives the answering sense, since the aim of listening is the answering; az-Zamakhsharī files that sense under the figurative; al-Khaṭṭābī, as quoted in al-Bayhaqī, has the loud and the hushed, the speaking and the silence, alike before Him. On 42:11 aṭ-Ṭabarī, al-Qurṭubī and al-Baghawī record the two parsings; as-Saʻdī reads its halves against two errors at once; Ibn ʻĀshūr takes it as the ground for denying organs and senses of Him. On samīʻu d-duʻāʼ aṭ-Ṭabarī reads hearing and Ibn Kathīr answering. Reports: al-Bukhārī 6384 with Muslim 2704a; al-Bukhārī 796 with Muslim 409a; Ibn Mājah 188. The lists at at-Tirmidhī 3507, ḍaʻīf by al-Albānī, Aḥmad Shākir and Darussalam, and Ibn Mājah 3861 carry as-Samīʻ.

Story

At the corner of the market, under a faded awning, Yusuf wrote letters for people who could not write them. A copper coin bought a page. Everyone assumed his gift was the writing. It was not. It was the listening.

They would sit down opposite him and begin to talk, and something would occur that most of them had not met in a long time: nobody interrupted. Yusuf did not hurry them, did not finish their sentences, did not glance past them at the next customer. He simply attended, fully, to whatever they had come to say. People arrived stiff and businesslike and ended up saying the true thing underneath, often surprised at themselves.

A widow came once and sat a long while without a word. When she finally spoke it was to say she had no letter to send; there was no one left to send one to. She had come, she said, because she had not been listened to since her husband died, and she had begun to feel that she had stopped existing. Yusuf put down his pen and listened to her for an hour, and charged her nothing.

He was not a patient man by nature. He had been a clerk for a shipping office for seven years and had been let go for rudeness, which he did not dispute. What he had discovered under the awning, late and by accident, was that listening was the one thing he had never tried, and that he was unaccountably good at it, and that it cost him nothing he had ever wanted to keep.

What he heard, he kept. Debts, shames, quarrels that had outlived everyone but the quarrelers — thirty years of the market’s private weather crossed that table, and none of it ever came out of him again. A customer once asked how he carried it all. Yusuf said he didn’t. The words were only resting at his stall, he said, on their way to somewhere they would be fully understood; his work was the resting, not the understanding.

He thought about the widow for years afterward — and, through her, about the sheer number of people moving through that market carrying words no one would ever hear. It comforted him, more than anything else he believed, that not one of those words was actually lost.

Poem

Say a name quietly — not shouted, just spoken —
into a room already full of louder things:
a hundred other conversations, a radio, a slammed door.

The one person it belongs to turns their head
before they’ve even decided to listen.
Often enough to be uncanny. The mind does this —
pulling one voice out of a wall of noise,
and mostly keeping hold of the thread.

Eyes have lids. They close. They rest. They’re permitted not to look.
No fold of skin has ever closed over an ear.
Even asleep, even mid-dream, it stays open,
still catching what falls into it,
whether it was meant to be heard or not.

A prayer said under the breath, meant for no one.
A door, three rooms away, closed softer than a door should close.
A confession that was never meant to travel
past the person confessing.

As-Samīʻ does not lean in to catch this.
This is not listening as a person listens, straining toward a sound.
His is hearing that was never, for one instant, not hearing —
the name spoken quietly, and heard anyway,
nothing so faint
it ever had a chance
of going unheard.

Reflection

The Hearing

Every human ear is a compromise. It selects — one voice kept, a hundred discarded; it tires; it files whole rooms of sound as noise so that its owner can survive the day. And still, being heard is one of the things people go looking for, and in a room where everyone is speaking a listener is rare. Which tells you what this Name is worth. The thing we ration by the hour, He is.

There is a chapter of the Qurʼan named for a woman’s complaint. She came to the Prophet ﷺ about her husband, speaking low, and ʻĀʼishah — in a corner of the same house — could not make out her words. Then the revelation came down: Allah has heard the words of her who disputes with you concerning her husband. And ʻĀʼishah, who had missed it from a few feet away, began her account of it with praise — Praise be to Allah, whose hearing encompasses the voices. Long afterward, in a report whose chain Ibn Kathīr calls broken, ʻUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb stopped in the road for that same woman, and when a man objected that he had kept the men of Quraysh waiting for an old woman, he answered that this was a woman whose complaint Allah heard from above the seven heavens. That is As-Samīʻ — not sharper ears but no distance, no threshold, no noise floor beneath which a servant’s voice stops registering. And in the Book the Name does not travel alone: All-Hearing, All-Knowing; All-Hearing, All-Seeing — because His hearing is not the reception of sound but the comprehension of the one making it: the words, the weight under them, the sentence you could not finish.

The Name faces two directions at once. Toward the caller it is pure provision: when the companions raised their voices in remembrance on a journey, the Prophet ﷺ steadied them, in a report from Abū Mūsā al-Ashʻarī — O people, go easy on yourselves; you are not calling upon one who is deaf or absent. You are calling upon One who hears, who is near, and He is with you. Mūsā, sent to face the loudest throne on earth, was given the same assurance in a single line: fear not — I am with you both; I hear and I see. Half of that promise is this Name; the rest of it waits in the Name that follows — Al-Baṣīr, the All-Seeing. But turn the Name toward the speaker and it becomes weather: Or do they think that We do not hear their secret and their private counsel? Indeed We do — and Our messengers are with them, recording. The whispered cruelty is on the record with the whispered prayer. A hearing this total consoles and sobers in the same breath — nothing you cried in the dark was wasted, and nothing you muttered in it was free.

The trace of this Name is attention. You cannot hear everything; you can hear one person all the way to the end — without planning your reply, without finishing their sentences, without steering the conversation home to yourself. Done fully, that is a real gift: for an hour, you hand someone the nearest created shadow of being heard — and then you guard what fell into you, because what falls into a listener is a trust. And speak, yourself, like a person overheard. You are. The prayer said under the breath reaches Him whole — and so does everything else.

Speak as one overheard; listen as one entrusted.

Qurʼan

قَدْ سَمِعَ اللَّهُ قَوْلَ الَّتِي تُجَادِلُكَ فِي زَوْجِهَا وَتَشْتَكِي إِلَى اللَّهِ وَاللَّهُ يَسْمَعُ تَحَاوُرَكُمَا ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ سَمِيعٌ بَصِيرٌ

Allah has heard the words of her who disputes with you concerning her husband and complains to Allah — and Allah hears the two of you conversing. Truly Allah is All-Hearing, All-Seeing.

58:1 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Aṭ-Ṭabarī names the woman as one of the Anṣār and records the disagreement over her name — Khawlah or Khuwaylah, bint Thaʻlabah, bint Khuwaylid, bint aṣ-Ṣāmit, ibnat ad-Dulayj — and her husband as Aws ibn aṣ-Ṣāmit, who had pronounced ẓihār against her; Qatādah, whom he cites, gives her own words, that her husband did it when her years had grown and her bone thin. The sentence moves from the act to the Name: Allah has heard, then Allah hears the two of you conversing, then Allah is All-Hearing, All-Seeing. Ibn Kathīr opens the sūrah with ʻĀʼishah’s account, given on the Hadith page, and adds what ʻUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb said of the same woman when he stopped for her in the road and a man objected that he had kept the men of Quraysh waiting for an old woman — this is a woman whose complaint Allah heard from above the seven heavens; Ibn Kathīr states that the chain there is broken between Abū Yazīd and ʻUmar.

لَيْسَ كَمِثْلِهِ شَيْءٌ ۖ وَهُوَ السَّمِيعُ الْبَصِيرُ

There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.

42:11 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Ibn ʻAbbās, in al-Baghawī: He has no peer. The commentators divide over where the emphasis falls in laysa ka-mithlihi shayʼ. Aṭ-Ṭabarī gives both: that mithl is added to the kāf for emphasis, since the two differ in wording though not in sense, citing an-Nābighah adh-Dhubyānī and Aws ibn Ḥajar; and that the kāf is the added element. Al-Qurṭubī and al-Baghawī record the same two, al-Qurṭubī naming Thaʻlab for the first, the mithl the added element, and setting beside it Ibn Masʻūd’s reading of 2:137. Al-Qurṭubī then states the rule the Name is read by, quoting al-Wāsiṭī: no essence like His essence, no name like His name, no act like His act, no attribute like His attribute, except that the word agrees. As-Saʻdī reads the verse’s two halves as answering two errors at once — those who liken Him, in there is nothing like unto Him, and those who strip the attributes away, in and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing — and glosses the first of the two as hearing all voices, in their differing tongues and their various needs. Ibn ʻĀshūr takes the verse as the ground for declaring Allah free of organs, senses and limbs, so that samīʻ and baṣīr do not entail two organs.

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ الَّذِي وَهَبَ لِي عَلَى الْكِبَرِ إِسْمَاعِيلَ وَإِسْحَاقَ ۚ إِنَّ رَبِّي لَسَمِيعُ الدُّعَاءِ

Praise be to Allah, who has granted me, in my old age, Ismāʻīl and Isḥāq. Truly my Lord is the Hearer of supplication.

14:39 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Ibrāhīm’s praise after the gift of two sons in old age, and the first of the two places the construct samīʻu d-duʻāʼ stands. The commentators divide on it. Aṭ-Ṭabarī reads hearing: my Lord hears the supplication I call on Him with — make this land safe, and keep me and my sons from worshipping idols — and the supplications of others, and everything any speaker utters, none of it hidden from Him. Ibn Kathīr reads answering: He responds to whoever calls upon Him, and He has answered me in what I asked of a child. The other place is 3:38, Zakariyyā’s prayer, on this Name’s Duʻāʼ page; al-Qurṭubī glosses the construct there as its accepter, and joins to it the words said on rising from bowing. The rendering here is the one carried at Name 16, where the verse stands for the giving.

قَالَ لَا تَخَافَا ۖ إِنَّنِي مَعَكُمَا أَسْمَعُ وَأَرَىٰ

He said: fear not — I am with you both; I hear and I see.

20:46 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Said to Mūsā and Hārūn after they had said they feared Pharaoh would strike first. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: do not fear him — I am with you both, helping you against him and watching over you; I hear what passes between you and him, and will make you understand what you say to him; and I see what you do and what he does, and none of it is hidden from Me. Ibn Kathīr adds that Pharaoh’s forelock is held by Him, so that he does not speak, nor breathe, nor strike except by His permission and after His command, and that the being-with here is protection, help and support. Al-Qurṭubī reads I hear and I see as an expression for the perception from which nothing stays hidden, and maʻakumā as help and power over Pharaoh. The two verbs are this Name’s and Name 27’s, given as one reassurance, which is why the verse serves both.

أَمْ يَحْسَبُونَ أَنَّا لَا نَسْمَعُ سِرَّهُمْ وَنَجْوَاهُم ۚ بَلَىٰ وَرُسُلُنَا لَدَيْهِمْ يَكْتُبُونَ

Or do they think that We do not hear their secret and their private counsel? Indeed We do — and Our messengers are with them, recording.

43:80 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

Aṭ-Ṭabarī: do these idolaters suppose We do not hear what they hid from people of their speech, and what they took counsel over among themselves and whispered apart from others, so that We will not punish them for it, it being hidden from Us? And on the answer: rather We know what they whispered and concealed of the secret of their speech, and Our guardians are with them, writing down what they uttered. Ibn Kathīr reads sirrahum wa-najwāhum as their secret and their open alike, and sets the verse after the plot contrived in the verse before it — Mujāhid: they wanted an evil scheme, so We schemed against them. The Name is turned here toward the speaker rather than the caller, and the hearing is joined to a record: what is not outside the hearing is also written down.

قُلْ إِن ضَلَلْتُ فَإِنَّمَا أَضِلُّ عَلَىٰ نَفْسِي ۖ وَإِنِ اهْتَدَيْتُ فَبِمَا يُوحِي إِلَيَّ رَبِّي ۚ إِنَّهُ سَمِيعٌ قَرِيبٌ

Say: If I stray, I stray only against myself; and if I am guided, it is by what my Lord reveals to me. Truly He is All-Hearing, Near.

34:50 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The one verse in which the Name stands beside qarīb rather than beside al-ʻAlīm or al-Baṣīr. Aṭ-Ṭabarī reads the first half as the Prophet ﷺ being told to say that his straying, were it to happen, would fall on himself, and that his guidance is by the revelation his Lord sends down to him and the success given him to keep to the road. Ibn Kathīr glosses the close: Hearing of the speech of His servants, Near, answering the call of the caller when he calls upon Him — and cites under it the report of Abū Mūsā that stands on the Hadith page, in an-Nasāʼī’s wording, that you are not calling upon one deaf or absent but upon One hearing, near and answering. That is why the verse belongs here: it is the Qurʼan’s own form of what the report says.

مَثَلُ الْفَرِيقَيْنِ كَالْأَعْمَىٰ وَالْأَصَمِّ وَالْبَصِيرِ وَالسَّمِيعِ ۚ هَلْ يَسْتَوِيَانِ مَثَلًا ۚ أَفَلَا تَذَكَّرُونَ

The likeness of the two parties is as the blind and the deaf, and the seeing and the hearing. Are the two equal in likeness? Will you not then take heed?

11:24 (Qurʼan, opens quran.com)

The only place the definite form of this Name is said of a human being, and it is set against al-aṣamm, the deaf. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: the party of unbelief does not see the truth so as to follow it and act by it, and does not hear the caller of Allah to right guidance so as to answer him, but stays in its straying; and the hearing and the seeing are the party of faith, who saw the proofs of Allah and acknowledged what they indicated. Ibn Kathīr reads the believer as samīʻ to the proof, telling it apart from a doubt so that no falsehood passes with him. Al-Qurṭubī gives aḍ-Ḍaḥḥāk dividing the four words between the two parties, and an-Naḥḥās parsing the sentence so that hal yastawiyāni returns to the parties and not to the four. It is carried here for what 42:11 above makes necessary: one word is said of Allah and of a creature, and what they share is the word.

Dua

رَبَّنَا تَقَبَّلْ مِنَّا ۖ إِنَّكَ أَنتَ السَّمِيعُ الْعَلِيمُ

Our Lord, accept this from us — truly You are the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing.

Qurʼan 2:127

Said while the foundations of the House were being raised. Aṭ-Ṭabarī gives Ibn ʻAbbās, through Saʻīd ibn Jubayr: the two of them were raising the foundations and saying it, Ismāʻīl carrying the stones on his neck and the old man building; he records also that the commentators divide over the speaker, a group reading it of both and others of Ismāʻīl alone. Ibn Kathīr: they are in a righteous work and are asking Allah to accept it of them, and he cites Wuhayb ibn al-Ward, who wept at the verse and said, O Khalīl ar-Raḥmān, you raise the pillars of the House of ar-Raḥmān and you are afraid it will not be accepted of you. The Name is asked here with al-ʻAlīm, the commonest of its pairings; the verse stands also at Name 19, for the second of the two.

رَبِّ هَبْ لِي مِن لَّدُنكَ ذُرِّيَّةً طَيِّبَةً ۖ إِنَّكَ سَمِيعُ الدُّعَاءِ

My Lord, grant me from Yourself good offspring; truly You are the Hearer of supplication.

Qurʼan 3:38

Zakariyyā’s prayer, and the second of the two places samīʻu d-duʻāʼ stands; the other, 14:39, is on the Qurʼan page here. Aṭ-Ṭabarī places the prayer at the moment he saw the provision Allah had given Maryam. Al-Qurṭubī glosses the close as its accepter, and joins to it the words said on rising from bowing, Allah has heard the one who praised Him. Ibn Kathīr: he asked though he was old and his wife barren, and called on Him with a hidden call. The verse stands also at Name 16, where it is read for the imperative hab and not for the Name.

أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ السَّمِيعِ الْعَلِيمِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ مِنْ هَمْزِهِ وَنَفْخِهِ وَنَفْثِهِ

I seek refuge in Allah, the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing, from the accursed Shayṭān — from his prodding, his blowing and his spitting.

at-Tirmidhī 242 · ṣaḥīḥ (al-Albānī; Aḥmad Shākir); isnād ḥasan (Darussalam)

From Abū Saʻīd al-Khudrī: what the Prophet ﷺ said on standing for prayer at night, after the opening glorification. It is the transmitted supplication that calls on Allah by this Name, and it calls by the Name in its commonest pairing, as-Samīʻ al-ʻAlīm. The refuge sought is from three things a man cannot hear, which is the point of the Name it is asked by. The graders divide over the chain, as the grade shows, and the entry at Name 19 sets out the division in full; it is not presented as settled.

Hadith

أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ ارْبَعُوا عَلَىٰ أَنْفُسِكُمْ إِنَّكُمْ لَيْسَ تَدْعُونَ أَصَمَّ وَلَا غَائِبًا إِنَّكُمْ تَدْعُونَ سَمِيعًا قَرِيبًا وَهُوَ مَعَكُمْ

O people, go easy on yourselves — you are not calling upon one who is deaf or absent. You are calling upon One who hears, who is near, and He is with you.

Muslim 2704a · ṣaḥīḥ

Said to companions raising their voices in dhikr on a journey. The correction is not about reverence but about accuracy: volume is a concession to distance and to deafness, and neither applies. The wording printed is Muslim 2704a’s, and the seam is worth marking rather than smoothing: Muslim has innakum laysa tadʻūna and closes samīʻan qarīban wa-huwa maʻakum, whereas al-Bukhārī 6384 reads fa-innakum lā tadʻūna and closes wa-lākin tadʻūna samīʻan baṣīran — without qarīban and without wa-huwa maʻakum. The nearness this entry turns on is carried by Muslim alone. Muslim 2704f, from Khālid al-Ḥadhdhāʼ, adds a further clause: the One you are calling is nearer to one of you than the neck of his mount. Ibn Kathīr cites the report under 34:50, on the Qurʼan page, in an-Nasāʼī’s wording, which closes samīʻan qarīban mujīban.

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ الَّذِي وَسِعَ سَمْعُهُ الْأَصْوَاتَ لَقَدْ جَاءَتِ الْمُجَادِلَةُ إِلَى النَّبِيِّ ﷺ وَأَنَا فِي نَاحِيَةِ الْبَيْتِ تَشْكُو زَوْجَهَا وَمَا أَسْمَعُ مَا تَقُولُ فَأَنْزَلَ اللَّهُ قَدْ سَمِعَ اللَّهُ قَوْلَ الَّتِي تُجَادِلُكَ فِي زَوْجِهَا

Praise be to Allah, whose hearing encompasses the voices. The woman who disputed concerning her husband came to the Prophet ﷺ while I was in a corner of the house, complaining of her husband, and I could not hear what she said. Then Allah sent down: Allah has heard the words of her who disputes with you concerning her husband.

Ibn Mājah 188 · ṣaḥīḥ (al-Albānī; Shuʻayb al-Arnaʼūṭ; Darussalam)

Narrated by ʻĀʼishah through ʻUrwah ibn az-Zubayr. She opens with her own ḥamd, and it is that line this Name is best known by. Fī nāḥiyati l-bayt — a corner of the same house, not another room; this report is what settles the setting of 58:1. Ibn Mājah files it in the Introduction under a chapter on what the Jahmiyyah denied, which is why a report about one woman’s complaint sits among the attributes: what is being argued is the hearing, not her case. Ibn Kathīr gives it from Aḥmad’s Musnad and says that al-Bukhārī carries it in suspended form in the Book of Tawḥīd, and that an-Nasāʼī and Ibn Abī Ḥātim carry it too; in Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s wording ʻĀʼishah says instead, blessed is He whose hearing took in everything, and that she could hear Khawlah bint Thaʻlabah speak but some of it escaped her.

إِذَا قَالَ الْإِمَامُ سَمِعَ اللَّهُ لِمَنْ حَمِدَهُ فَقُولُوا اللَّهُمَّ رَبَّنَا لَكَ الْحَمْدُ فَإِنَّهُ مَنْ وَافَقَ قَوْلُهُ قَوْلَ الْمَلَائِكَةِ غُفِرَ لَهُ مَا تَقَدَّمَ مِنْ ذَنْبِهِ

When the imam says: Allah has heard the one who praised Him — say: O Allah, our Lord, to You be the praise. For whoever’s saying coincides with the saying of the angels is forgiven what came before of his sin.

al-Bukhārī 796; Muslim 409a · ṣaḥīḥ (muttafaq ʻalayh)

From Abū Hurayrah, the wording of the two collections agreeing word for word. Samiʻa llāhu li-man ḥamidah is this Name’s own verb said of Allah in the prayer, at the rising from bowing, and it is the sentence the lexicographers turn to when they set out the second sense of the root: Ibn al-Athīr, that He answered the praise and accepted it, since the aim of listening is the answering; al-Fayyūmī, that He accepted the praise of the one praising, with Ibn al-Anbārī’s reading, that He answered it; az-Zamakhsharī files the sense under the figurative. The report leaves the two sayings divided — the imam’s is said of Allah, the congregation’s is said to Him — and makes the coinciding with the angels the occasion of the forgiveness, not the volume.

Study Notes

Verified — directly attested

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CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: SEVEN ayat. 58:1, with aṭ-Ṭabarī on the woman and her husband and Ibn Kathīr on ʻĀʼishah and on ʻUmar; 42:11, SHARED WITH NAME 27, with aṭ-Ṭabarī, al-Qurṭubī and al-Baghawī on the two parsings, al-Wāsiṭī as al-Qurṭubī quotes him, as-Saʻdī on the verse answering two errors at once, and Ibn ʻĀshūr on organs and senses; 14:39, SHARED WITH NAME 16, where aṭ-Ṭabarī reads hearing and Ibn Kathīr answering; 20:46, SHARED WITH NAME 27, with aṭ-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr and al-Qurṭubī; 43:80, with aṭ-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr and Mujāhid.

ADDED: 34:50, the single verse joining the Name to qarīb, which Ibn Kathīr glosses with the very report this page carries, in an-Nasāʼī wording; and 11:24, the one place the definite form is said of a human being, SHARED WITH NAME 27, with aṭ-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr and al-Qurṭubī. Both are appended, the other sub-items keep their positions, and the distinct Qurʼan-page verse count in Notes on This Edition moves from 361 to 363.

NAMED HERE BUT NOT CARRIED ON THIS PAGE: 5:42, carried at Name 86; 76:2, 3:38, 5:41, 9:47, 2:137 and 2:127, all carried at NO Name.

CORRECTED ON THE RECORD, THE COUNTS: computed from the Tanzil text with strip, s-m-ʻ gives 185 words, leaving aside the 12 occurrences of the proper name Ismāʻīl, and look-alikes from m-t-ʻ were excluded. The adjective samīʻ stands 47 times, 20 definite and 27 indefinite; 45 of those are of Allah, 19 definite and 26 indefinite, and 2 are of a human being, the definite form at 11:24 and the indefinite at 76:2. Of the 45, NONE STANDS ALONE: 32 join al-ʻAlīm, 10 join al-Baṣīr, 2 are samīʻu d-duʻāʼ and 1 joins qarīb. The noun samʻ stands 22 times (corrected in build 153) and the intensive sammāʻūn 4, never of Allah.

CORRECTED, THE ROOT: the gloss followed nothing and now follows Ibn Fāris, with glossBasis ref, and a senseNote is added giving the form and the senses of the root that are not the Name’s.

READ: Ibn Fāris on the islamweb transcription; and on the Hawramani transcription Ibn Manẓūr, al-Jawharī, al-Fayyūmī, ar-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, az-Zamakhsharī, Ibn Sīdah, al-Muṭarrizī, al-Jurjānī, az-Zabīdī and Lane, with al-Azharī and Ibn al-Athīr as those entries quote them.

NOT READ: al-Bayhaqī and Ibn al-Qayyim in the original, both taken only as quoted in later works, and al-Ghazālī not at all.

CORRECTED, THE DESC: it asserted that He hears the ant’s footstep, that no complaint escapes Him and that nothing reaches Him in translation, none of which the sources give; it said the Name rarely travels alone, where the count shows it never does; it stated as fact that one room and one woman became a chapter without naming the report that settles it; and it closed on a promise, that He acts upon what He hears for the good of the caller. The new desc gives the root sense, the intensive form, the three readings, the pairings by count, and what the Name asks.

CORRECTED, THE REF: it carried long citation forms, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6384 and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2704a, now in house form; it named no lexicon and no commentator, and gave no counts. It now gives the counts, ten lexicographers, the commentators by name, the three reports, and at-Tirmidhī 3507 with its grades.

CORRECTED, THE QURʼAN NOTES: 58:1 asserted that Allah above the seven heavens heard the woman with no source, which is ʻUmar’s wording in a chain Ibn Kathīr himself calls broken between Abū Yazīd and ʻUmar, and the note now says so; 42:11 said the verse is what the tradition returns to, and now gives four commentators and the reading rule; 14:39 asserted decades of waiting, which aṭ-Ṭabarī gives only through a shaykh he does not name, and the note now rests on the verse’s own ʻalā l-kibar; 20:46 and 43:80 carried no commentator at all. THE TRANSLATION OF 14:39 DIVERGED BETWEEN NAMES 16 AND 26 for the same verse, in my old age against despite old age and the Hearer of prayer against the Hearer of supplication; both now read the Hearer of supplication, and Name 16’s 3:38 is brought to the same rendering of the same construct. THREE duʻāʼ. 2:127 CORRECTED: its note said the prayer was said with no one else present to hear it, which no source gives and which aṭ-Ṭabarī contradicts by recording a division over who the speaker was; the note now gives Ibn ʻAbbās through Saʻīd ibn Jubayr in aṭ-Ṭabarī, that division, and Ibn Kathīr with Wuhayb ibn al-Ward.

ADDED: 3:38, the second and last place samīʻu d-duʻāʼ stands, SHARED WITH NAME 16, where it is read for the imperative hab; and at-Tirmidhī 242, the transmitted supplication that calls on Allah by this Name, SHARED WITH NAME 19, its source and grade strings copied unchanged so that the two pages agree. SHARED_LOCI: reciprocal dua links are added at 16, 19 and 26, and a dua key for 16 is created in numeric order. THREE aḥādīth. al-Bukhārī 6384 with Muslim 2704a, SHARED WITH NAMES 27 AND 53 as other portions (named in build 153), CORRECTED: the note carried a production remark and a capitalised field name, both removed, and it now adds Muslim 2704f, that the One called is nearer than the neck of a mount, and Ibn Kathīr citing the report under 34:50. Ibn Mājah 188 CORRECTED: its source was the long form Sunan Ibn Mājah 188, now in house form; its grade gave Darussalam alone, and the dataset carries four graders, al-Albānī, Muḥammad Fuʼād ʻAbd al-Bāqī, Shuʻayb al-Arnaʼūṭ and Darussalam, all ṣaḥīḥ; its note pointed at another page of the book and is now confined to the report, with Ibn Kathīr on its other routes and on Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s differing wording.

ADDED: al-Bukhārī 796 with Muslim 409a, from Abū Hurayrah, the Name’s own verb said of Allah in the prayer, carried at no other Name, ṣaḥīḥ muttafaq ʻalayh, with Ibn al-Athīr, al-Fayyūmī, Ibn al-Anbārī and az-Zamakhsharī on the sense of the verb there.

MEDS 26: p1 called being heard one of the deepest human needs and a listener a sanctuary, both unsupported, and now says only that people go looking to be heard and that a listener is rare; p2 quoted 58:1 and Ibn Mājah 188 in wordings the book does not use, now brought to the book’s own, and attributes the seven heavens to ʻUmar by name; p3 quoted the report of Abū Mūsā and 43:80 loosely, both now in the book’s own wording, with the Companion named; p4 claimed that everything entering a real listener stays there, replaced by what falls into a listener is a trust.

POEMS 26: stanza 2 said the head turns every time, which the work on selective attention does not support, and now says often enough to be uncanny, and the claim that the thread is never lost is softened to mostly.

CH 26: one phrase reworded.

OPEN: Ibn Kathīr reports that al-Bukhārī carries the ʻĀʼishah report in suspended form in the Book of Tawḥīd, and the printed edition footnotes it to 7385, but that number in the dataset is a different report, the night supplication of Ibn ʻAbbās, and the suspended text is not in the dataset at all; no number is asserted here.

OPEN: aṭ-Ṭabarī transmits, from Ḍirār ibn Murrah who heard it from a shaykh he does not name, that Ibrāhīm received the tidings at a hundred and seventeen; it is not used.

AUDIT: the samīʻ counts were taken by matching the adjective forms exactly and the partner word by position, so a reader checking them should count the word that follows each occurrence.

COHERENCE: Name 16 is edited twice, at 14:39 on its Qurʼan page and at 3:38 on its Duʻāʼ page, for the two renderings above; Name 19 gains a reciprocal shared link only, with no change to its text; Name 53, which carries al-Bukhārī 6384 with Muslim 2704a, already agrees in source and grade and is left alone.

IN BUILD 153, FROM THE PHASE 2 READING: the counts above are corrected in place, the noun samʻ standing 22 times, the form at 2:181 being the verb, baʻdamā samiʻahu, and the ref now reads twenty-two. The carried line names Name 27 at 42:11 and 11:24, and the ḥadīth line Names 27 and 53 for Abū Mūsā’s report. The ref names Ibn Mājah 3861’s list beside at-Tirmidhī 3507’s. The 42:11 note gives Thaʻlab to the first parsing, the mithl the added element, as al-Qurṭubī has it, and the 2:127 note gives aṭ-Ṭabarī’s a group where it said most.

FROM THE CENSUS: Abū Mūsā’s report cites Muslim 2704a alone, whose wording it prints, al-Bukhārī 6384 standing in the note; at Names 27 and 53 the pair stands. The reflection’s ʻUmar on the road waits on the author (A34).

BY THE AUTHOR’S DECISIONS OF 2026-09-25, IN BUILD 182: MEDS 26 tells ʻUmar’s stopping in the road as a report whose chain Ibn Kathīr calls broken (A34).

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.

البصيرNext · Name 27The All-Seeing

Al-Baṣīr

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