The Lord of Majesty and Honour

Meaning

The Name joins two words: jalāl, the noun of j-l-l (Name 41), and ikrām, the verbal noun of the fourth form of k-r-m (Name 42). The phrase stands twice, both in ar-Raḥmān: at 55:27 as dhū, describing the Face of your Lord, and at 55:78 as dhī, describing your Lord; aṭ-Ṭabarī records ʻAbd Allāh reading dhī at 55:27 too. Jalāl stands nowhere else. The fourth form of k-r-m stands 12 times: ikrām twice, in the Name; Allah honouring man twice, at 89:15; none to honour whom He abases, 22:18; the honoured, mukram, five times; and people honouring or failing to, twice. In the six ḥadīth editions the Name is said on turning from the prayer (Muslim 591, 592a) and commanded in aliẓẓū (at-Tirmidhī 3524, 3525).

Root j-l-l, k-r-m — greatness of worth (j-l-l); nobility (k-r-m)

Counted on the Tanzil text, every word read in its verse; j-l-l is counted at Name 41 and k-r-m at Name 42, whose glosses are greatness of worth and nobility. Dhū l-jalāli wa-l-ikrām 2: 55:27 (dhū, of the Face) and 55:78 (dhī, of your Lord); jalāl nowhere else. Fourth form of k-r-m 12: ikrām 2 (55:27, 55:78); akrama of Allah 2 (89:15, fa-akramahu and the man’s rabbī akramani); mukrim denied 1 (22:18); mukram 5 (21:26, 36:27, 37:42, 51:24, 70:35); of people 2 (12:21, 89:17). Excluded: the elative akram (49:13, 96:3) and the second form, mukarramah (80:13), karramta (17:62) and karramnā (17:70). Aṭ-Ṭabarī at 55:27: everyone on the face of the earth, jinn and human, perishes, and the Face of your Lord remains; dhū is an attribute of the Face, and ʻAbd Allāh’s reading dhī makes it the Lord’s. Name 41 records the reading dhū at 55:78 (al-Qurṭubī, al-Baghawī) and Ibn Kathīr on the Rabīʻah ibn ʻĀmir chain in Aḥmad and an-Nasāʼī’s as-Sunan al-Kubrā, aliẓẓū bi-dhī l-jalāli wa-l-ikrām. The six ḥadīth editions: the phrase in 23 records, 24 with Ibn Mājah 706, where ʻAbd Allāh ibn Zayd’s verse puts dhā before each word; on turning from the prayer, among them Muslim 591 (Thawbān, tabārakta dhā), Muslim 592a (ʻĀʼishah; Ibn Numayr’s wording yā dhā) and Ibn Mājah 928 (yā dhā); aliẓẓū bi-yā dhā l-jalāli wa-l-ikrām at at-Tirmidhī 3525, gharīb and not preserved in his verdict, the sounder route reaching only al-Ḥasan, and 3524, gharīb; asking by His Name, among them Abū Dāwūd 1495 (al-ʻaẓīm), at-Tirmidhī 3544 and Ibn Mājah 3858 (al-aʻẓam). Duʻāʼ: Abū Dāwūd 1495; Muslim 592a. Reports: at-Tirmidhī 3525; Muslim 1348. Appended: 89:15–16, an exact share with Name 21. The description counts the fourth form of k-r-m and names Allah honouring man twice at 89:15; both are in this āyah, akramahu and akramani, and the man reads the widening as honour and the straitening as humiliation, which the āyāt after correct.

Story

Kamal had put off the pilgrimage for thirty years, and the reasons were real every time: a business that could not be left, a mother who was ill, a year when the money went on a roof. He had also known, privately, that he was afraid, though he could not have said of what. He had assembled thirty years out of good reasons the way a man builds a wall without noticing he is standing inside it.

He went at fifty-eight. He expected to feel small. He had prepared for that the way you prepare for cold weather.

What he had not prepared for was that both things would happen at once. He stood on that plain with more people than he had seen in his life, every man among them down to the same two pieces of unsewn white cloth — princes, drivers, men who owned companies, men who owned nothing. It was very hot. The sound of it was not a roar but a low continuous murmur, like weather moving through a valley. He felt an awe that flattened him completely. And in the same moment — not afterward, not alternately, the same one — he felt personally expected. Not tolerated in a crowd. Invited. Honored, absurdly, as though the whole enormous thing had gone ahead in part on his account.

He could not get the two feelings to resolve into each other, and after a while he stopped trying. At home, greatness and welcome were opposites; the greater the man, the further off you stood. He had built twenty-seven years of dealing with people on that principle. Here the majesty was the welcome. The same thing, felt from inside it.

He started a letter to his brother that night and tore it up. He started again the next night and tore that one up too. What he had been trying to say, both times, was that he had spent thirty years quietly afraid of being made small by Allah — and had been made small, thoroughly, in about four seconds — and had found that being made small by Him is not the same act as being pushed away. That it was the form the welcome took. That he had had it backwards for his entire adult life and had built a wall out of it. He could not get the sentence to stand up. In the end he sent something short that said none of it.

He brought the two cloths home. They are ordinary cloth. His wife, not knowing what else to do with them, washed them and folded them into the chest with the household linen, where they are.

Poem

He asked to see. Stop on that first —
he asked, and no rebuke is written for the asking.
My Lord, show me Yourself, that I may look at You.
The answer was no. You will not see Me.
And then, rather than leave it at no,
He did something to a mountain.

When his Lord manifested to the mountain He made it dust,
and Mūsā fell down senseless.
Notice the order. The mountain first.
A whole mountain leveled by something
the Book declines to describe any further
than to say where it was aimed —
and it was not aimed at the man who asked.

His veil is light. That is the wording, and it is exact.
Not distance. A veil.
And He is the one holding it,
and were He to remove it, the glories of His Face
would burn away everything of His creation His sight reaches.
So what stands between you and that
is not empty space and not good fortune.
It is a decision, and it is being taken continuously,
in your favor, tonight, while you are not thinking about it.

Then the verse where the two words finally arrive together,
and see where He set it down.
Directly after the end of everything.
Everyone upon it is perishing —
the entire standing population of the earth
disposed of in four words —
and there remains the Face of your Lord,
Possessor of Majesty and Generosity.

Read the second half again and hear what He did not say.
At the end of all things, with nobody left to reassure,
with no reason on earth to soften it,
He does not name Himself only the Majestic.
That might have seemed sufficient. That is what the moment seemed to call for.
He gives both words.
The Name still standing when everything else has gone
has generosity built into it.

Reflection

The Clinging

This Name occurs twice in the Qurʼan, and both times in the same sūrah — once early in ar-Raḥmān, once as its final verse, so that the sūrah arrives at it once and then closes on it. And the sūrah has been arguing for it the whole way. Thirty-one times it stops and asks: so which of the favors of your Lord will you two deny? It asks that over gardens and running springs and fruit and pearls, which is what you would expect. Then it asks it, in exactly the same words and the same cadence, over the splitting of the sky, and over the Fire, and over the moment when no one will be asked about his sin and the guilty will be known by their marks. The refrain does not change register. Seventy-eight verses that refuse to sort the terrible from the generous into two piles — and then, at the end, a Name that puts both words into one.

But the decisive verse is earlier, and it is placed where it is on purpose. First: everyone upon it is perishing. The entire standing population of the earth, disposed of in four words — every ruler, every scholar, every one of us, the whole census. Then: and there remains the Face of your Lord, Possessor of Majesty and Generosity. Sit with what He chose to say there; the last stanza in the poem stops on the same point. At the end of all things, with nothing left standing and nobody left to be comforted, the moment seems to call for majesty and for nothing else; Possessor of Majesty would have been complete, and awful, and sufficient. He gives both words. The Name that outlasts the annihilation of everything has generosity inside it. That is not a consolation added afterward to make the verse bearable. It is what He is, stated at the one moment when there is no audience left to soften it for.

Now be exact about the first half, because we are usually sentimental about it. Jalāl is not sternness. Mūsā asked to see Him — and the āyah writes no rebuke for the asking, though it was Mūsā himself, when he came to, who said tubtu ilayk, I turn to You in repentance: from asking for the vision, aṭ-Ṭabarī says with Mujāhid. The answer was you will not see Me, and then, instead of leaving it there, when his Lord manifested to the mountain He made it dust, and Mūsā fell down senseless. The mountain went first. And the reason you are not in the mountain’s condition is stated plainly: His veil is light … Were He to remove it, the glories of His Face would burn away everything of His creation His sight reaches. A veil — not a distance. Held by Him. Which corrects the instinct almost everyone carries: that closeness to Him would be dangerous and separation is what keeps us intact. It is the opposite. We are nearer to him than his jugular vein, He says; and the closest a servant is to his Lord is while he is prostrating.

And the second half is not decoration either. The fourth form of the word is said of Him in the Book — when his Lord tries him and honors him — and He has done it on record: We have certainly honored the children of Ādam. Watch it operate at the very place where a servant is most flattened. On the Day of ʻArafah, standing in the heat in two pieces of unsewn cloth as the man in the story does, indistinguishable from a million others, at the point of maximum smallness — that is the day the Messenger ﷺ spoke of: There is no day on which Allah frees more servants from the Fire than the Day of ʻArafah; He draws near, then boasts of them to the angels. Not tolerates. Boasts. The awe and the welcome are not two events taking turns in that plain. They are one event, and the man who cannot get them to resolve into each other has understood it correctly.

Which leaves what to do, and here is the thing almost nobody notices. We are told, in a report at-Tirmidhī calls gharīb and not preserved, and others grade ṣaḥīḥ, to cling to this Name — aliẓẓū, keep at it, do not let go of it. And you already say it. You have been saying it for years. Every time you finish a prayer, before you have moved, before your shoes: O Allah, You are Peace, and from You is peace. Blessed are You, Possessor of Majesty and Generosity. It is what the Messenger ﷺ said as he turned from his prayer. The most routine sentence in your entire week is the one that puts these two words together, and you have been saying it at a speed that suggests you think it is punctuation. So the correction is not that you need a new practice. It is that you have been quietly running your whole relationship with Him on a trade-off He never offered — as though His being truly majestic required you to stand further back, and His being generous required Him to be somewhat less than He is. Both halves of that are false, and you have been rationing yourself on the strength of it for years.

Everything on the earth is perishing, and the Name that outlasts it carries the second word as well as the first. You will say that Name again at the end of the next prayer, the way you have said it a thousand times — this once, say it to Someone.

Qurʼan

Dua

Hadith

Study Notes