Llah

Allah (; ar, الله, translit=Allāh, ) is the common Arabic word for God. In the English language, the word generally refers to God in Islam. The word is thought to be derived by contraction from '' al- ilāh'', which means "the god", and is linguistically related to the Aramaic words Elah and Syriac (ʼAlāhā) and the Hebrew word '' El'' (''Elohim'') for God. The feminine form of Allah is thought to be the word Allat.

The word ''Allah'' has been used by Arabic people of different religions since pre-Islamic times. The pre-Islamic Arabs worshipped a supreme deity whom they called Allah, alongside other lesser deities. Muhammad used the word ''Allah'' to indicate the Islamic conception of God. ''Allah'' has been used as a term for God by Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) and even Arab Christians after the term " al- ilāh" and "Allah" were used interchangeably in Classical Arabic by the majority of Arabs who had become Muslims. It is also often, albeit not exclusively, used in this way by Bábists, Baháʼís, Mandaeans, Indonesian and Maltese Christians, and Sephardi Jews.
"Allah." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, ''Allah'' Similar usage by Christians and Sikhs in West Malaysia has recently led to political and legal controversies.

Etymology

The etymology of the word ''Allāh'' has been discussed extensively by classical Arab philologists.D.B. Macdonald. Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed, Brill. "Ilah", Vol. 3, p. 1093. Grammarians of the Basra school regarded it as either formed "spontaneously" (''murtajal'') or as the definite form of ''lāh'' (from the verbal root ''lyh'' with the meaning of "lofty" or "hidden"). Others held that it was borrowed from Syriac or Hebrew, but most considered it to be derived from a contraction of the Arabic definite article '' al-'' "the" and ' "deity, god" to ' meaning ''"the deity"'', or ''"the God"''. The majority of modern scholars subscribe to the latter theory, and view the loanword hypothesis with skepticism.

Cognates of the name "Allāh" exist in other Semitic languages, including Hebrew and Aramaic.Columbia Encyclopaedia says: Derived from an old Semitic root referring to the Divine and used in the Canaanite '' El'', the Mesopotamian '' ilu'', and the biblical ''Elohim'' and ''Eloah'', the word Allah is used by all Arabic-speaking Muslims, Christians, Jews, and other monotheists. The corresponding Aramaic form is ''Elah'' (), but its emphatic state is ' (). It is written as () in Biblical Aramaic and () in Syriac as used by the Assyrian Church, both meaning simply "God".The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon
– Entry for ''ʼlh''

History of usage

Pre-Islamic Arabians

Regional variants of the word ''Allah'' occur in both pagan and Christian pre-Islamic inscriptions. Different theories have been proposed regarding the role of Allah in pre-Islamic polytheistic cults. According to the Islamic scholar Ibn Kathir, Arab pagans considered Allah as an unseen God who created and controlled the Universe. Pagans believed worship of humans or animals who had lucky events in their life brought them closer to God. Pre-Islamic Meccans worshiped Allah alongside a host of lesser gods and those whom they called the "daughters of Allah." Islam forbade worship of anyone or thing other than God. Some authors have suggested that polytheistic Arabs used the name as a reference to a creator god or a supreme deity of their pantheon. The term may have been vague in the Meccan religion.L. Gardet, ''Allah'', Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. by Sir H.A.R. GibbGerhard Böwering, ''God and his Attributes'', Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, ed. by Jane Dammen McAuliffe According to one hypothesis, which goes back to Julius Wellhausen, Allah (the supreme deity of the tribal federation around Quraysh) was a designation that consecrated the superiority of Hubal (the supreme deity of Quraysh) over the other gods. However, there is also evidence that Allah and Hubal were two distinct deities. According to that hypothesis, the Kaaba was first consecrated to a supreme deity named Allah and then hosted the pantheon of Quraysh after their conquest of Mecca, about a century before the time of Muhammad. Some inscriptions seem to indicate the use of Allah as a name of a polytheist deity centuries earlier, but nothing precise is known about this use. Some scholars have suggested that Allah may have represented a remote creator god who was gradually eclipsed by more particularized local deities. There is disagreement on whether Allah played a major role in the Meccan religious cult. No iconic representation of Allah is known to have existed. Allah is the only god in Mecca that did not have an idol. Muhammad's father's name was meaning "the slave of Allāh".

Islam

In Islam, ''Allah'' is the unique, omnipotent and only deity and creator of the universe and is equivalent to God in other Abrahamic religions. ''Allah'' is usually seen as the personal name of God, a notion which became disputed in contemporary scholarship, including the question, whether or not the word ''Allah'' should be translated as ''God''.

According to Islamic belief, Allah is the most common word to represent God,Böwering, Gerhard, ''God and His Attributes'', Encyclopaedia of the Qurʼān, Brill, 2007. and humble submission to his will, divine ordinances and commandments is the pivot of the Muslim faith. "He is the only God, creator of the universe, and the judge of humankind." "He is unique (') and inherently one ('), all-merciful and omnipotent." No human eyes can see Allah till the Day Of Judgement. The Qur'an declares "the reality of Allah, His inaccessible mystery, His various names, and His actions on behalf of His creatures." Allah doesn't depend on anything. God is not a part of the Christian Trinity. God has no parents and no children.

The concept correlates to the Tawhid, where chapter 112 of the Qur'an ( ''Al-'Ikhlās'', The Sincerity) reads:

: ۝ SAY, God is one GOD;
:۝ the eternal GOD:
:۝ He begetteth not, neither is He begotten:
:۝ and there is not any one like unto Him.

and in the Ayat ul-Kursi ("Verse of the Throne"), which is the 255th verse and the powerful verse in the longest chapter (the 2nd chapter) of the Qur'an, ''Al-Baqarah'' ("The Cow") states:

Allah! There is no deity but ''Him'', the Alive, the Eternal.
Neither slumber nor sleep overtaketh ''Him''.

Unto ''Him'' belongeth whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth.
Who could intercede in ''His'' presence without ''His'' permission?

''He'' knoweth that which is in front of them and that which is behind them,
while they encompass nothing of ''His'' knowledge except what ''He'' wills.

''His'' throne includeth the heavens and the earth,
and ''He'' is never weary of preserving them.

''He'' is the Sublime, the Tremendous.

In Islamic tradition, there are 99 Names of God (' lit. meaning: 'the best names' or 'the most beautiful names'), each of which evoke a distinct characteristic of Allah. All these names refer to Allah, the supreme and all-comprehensive divine name.
Among the 99 names of God, the most famous and most frequent of these names are "the Merciful" ('' ar-Raḥmān'') and "the Compassionate" ('), including the forementioned above ''al-Aḥad'' ("the One, the Indivisible") and ''al-Wāḥid'' ("the Unique, the Single").

Most Muslims use the untranslated Arabic phrase '' '' (meaning 'if God wills') after references to future events. Muslim discursive piety encourages beginning things with the invocation of '' '' (meaning 'In the name of God'). There are certain phrases in praise of God that are favored by Muslims, including " " (Glory be to God), " " (Praise be to God), " " (There is no deity but God) or sometimes "''lā ilāha illā inta/ huwa''" (There is no deity but ''You''/ ''Him'') and " " (God is the Most Great) as a devotional exercise of remembering God (dhikr).

In a Sufi practice known as ''dhikr Allah'' (Arabic: ذكر الله, lit. "Remembrance of God"), the Sufi repeats and contemplates the name ''Allah'' or other associated divine names to Him while controlling his or her breath. For example, in countless references in the context from the Qur'an forementioned above:

1) Allah is referred to in the second person pronoun in Arabic as "''Inta'' (Arabic: َإِنْت)" like the English "''You''", or commonly in the third person pronoun "''Huwa'' (Arabic: َهُو)" like the English "''He''" and uniquely in the case pronoun of the oblique form "''Hu/ Huw'' (Arabic: هو /-هُ)" like the English "''Him''" which rhythmically resonates and is chanted as considered a sacred sound or echo referring Allah as the "Absolute Breath or Soul of Life"—''Al-Nafs al-Hayyah'' (Arabic: النّفس الحياة, ''an-Nafsu 'l-Ḥayyah'')—notably among the 99 names of God, "the Giver of Life" ('' al-Muḥyī'') and "the Bringer of Death" ('' al-Mumiyt'');

2) Allah is neither male or female (who has no gender), but who is the essence of the "Omnipotent, Selfless, Absolute Soul (''an-Nafs,'' النّفس) and Holy Spirit" (''ar-Rūḥ,'' الرّوح) - notably among the 99 names of God, "the All-Holy, All-Pure and All-Sacred" ('' al-Quddus'');

3) Allah is the originator of both before and beyond the cycle of creation, destruction and time, - notably among the 99 names of God, "the First, Beginning-less" ('' al-Awwal''), "the End/ Beyond the Final Abode" Endless" ('' al-Akhir/ al-Ākhir'') and "the Timeless" ('' aṣ-Ṣabūr'').

According to Gerhard Böwering, in contrast with pre-Islamic Arabian polytheism, God in Islam does not have associates and companions, nor is there any kinship between God and jinn. Pre-Islamic pagan Arabs believed in a blind, powerful, inexorable and insensible fate over which man had no control. This was replaced with the Islamic notion of a powerful but provident and merciful God.

According to Francis Edward Peters, "The Qur’ān insists, Muslims believe, and historians affirm that Muhammad and his followers worship the same God as the Jews (). The Qur’an's Allah is the same Creator God who covenanted with Abraham". Peters states that the Qur'an portrays Allah as both more powerful and more remote than Yahweh, and as a universal deity, unlike Yahweh who closely follows Israelites.F.E. Peters, ''Islam'', p.4, Princeton University Press, 2003

Christianity

The Christian Arabs of today have no other word for "God" than "Allah", except Jehovah's Witnesses who add the biblical name "Jehovah" (يهوه) to the title "Allah". Similarly, the Aramaic word for "God" in the language of Assyrian Christians is ''ʼĔlāhā'', or ''Alaha''. (Even the Arabic-descended Maltese language of Malta, whose population is almost entirely Catholic, uses ''Alla'' for "God".) Arab Christians, for example, use the terms ' () for God the Father, ' () for God the Son, and ' () for God the Holy Spirit. (See God in Christianity for the Christian concept of God.)

Arab Christians have used two forms of invocations that were affixed to the beginning of their written works. They adopted the Muslim ', and also created their own Trinitized ' as early as the 8th century. The Muslim ' reads: "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful." The Trinitized ' reads: "In the name of Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God." The Syriac, Latin and Greek invocations do not have the words "One God" at the end. This addition was made to emphasize the monotheistic aspect of Trinitarian belief and also to make it more palatable to Muslims.Thomas E. Burman, ''Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs'', Brill, 1994, p. 103

According to Marshall Hodgson, it seems that in the pre-Islamic times, some Arab Christians made pilgrimage to the Kaaba, a pagan temple at that time, honoring Allah there as God the Creator.

Some archaeological excavation quests have led to the discovery of ancient pre-Islamic inscriptions and tombs made by Arab Christians in the ruins of a church at Umm el-Jimal in Northern Jordan, which initially, according to Enno Littman (1949), contained references to Allah as the proper name of God. However, on a second revision by Bellamy et al. (1985 & 1988) the 5-versed-inscription was re-translated as "(1)This nscriptionwas set up by colleagues of ʿUlayh, (2) son of ʿUbaydah, secretary (3) of the cohort Augusta Secunda (4) Philadelphiana; may he go mad who (5) effaces it."

The syriac word ܐܠܗܐ (''ʼĔlāhā'') can be found in the reports and the lists of names of Christian martyrs in South Arabia, as reported by antique Syriac documents of the names of those martyrs from the era of the Himyarite and Aksumite kingdoms

In Ibn Ishaq's biography there is a Christian leader named Abd Allah ibn Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad, who was martyred in Najran in 523, as he had worn a ring that said "Allah is my lord".

In an inscription of Christian martyrion dated back to 512, references to 'l-ilah (الاله) can be found in both Arabic and Aramaic. The inscription starts with the statement "By the Help of 'l-ilah".

In pre-Islamic Gospels, the name used for God was "Allah", as evidenced by some discovered Arabic versions of the New Testament written by Arab Christians during the pre-Islamic era in Northern and Southern Arabia. However most recent research in the field of Islamic Studies by Sydney Griffith et al. (2013), David D. Grafton (2014), Clair Wilde (2014) & ML Hjälm et al. (2016 & 2017) assert that "all one can say about the possibility of a pre-Islamic, Christian version of the Gospel in Arabic is that no sure sign of its actual existence has yet emerged." Additionally ML Hjälm in her most recent research (2017) inserts that "manuscripts containing translations of the gospels are encountered no earlier than the year 873"

Irfan Shahîd quoting the 10th-century encyclopedic collection Kitab al-Aghani notes that pre-Islamic Arab Christians have been reported to have raised the battle cry "''Ya La Ibad Allah''" (O slaves of Allah) to invoke each other into battle. According to Shahid, on the authority of 10th-century Muslim scholar Al-Marzubani, "Allah" was also mentioned in pre-Islamic Christian poems by some Ghassanid and Tanukhid poets in Syria and Northern Arabia.

Pronunciation

The word ''Allāh'' is generally pronounced , exhibiting a heavy lām, , a velarized alveolar lateral approximant, a marginal phoneme in Modern Standard Arabic. Since the initial alef has no hamza, the initial is elided when a preceding word ends in a vowel. If the preceding vowel is , the lām is light, , as in, for instance, the Basmala.

As a loanword

English and other European languages

The history of the name ''Allāh'' in English was probably influenced by the study of comparative religion in the 19th century; for example, Thomas Carlyle (1840) sometimes used the term Allah but without any implication that Allah was anything different from God. However, in his biography of Muḥammad (1934), Tor Andræ always used the term ''Allah'', though he allows that this "conception of God" seems to imply that it is different from that of the Jewish and Christian theologies.William Montgomery Watt, ''Islam and Christianity today: A Contribution to Dialogue'', Routledge, 1983, p.45

Languages which may not commonly use the term ''Allah'' to denote God may still contain popular expressions which use the word. For example, because of the centuries long Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula, the word ''ojalá'' in the Spanish language and ''oxalá'' in the Portuguese language exist today, borrowed from Arabic '' inshalla'' (Arabic: إِنْ شَاءَ ٱللَّٰهُ). This phrase literally means 'if God wills' (in the sense of "I hope so"). The German poet Mahlmann used the form "Allah" as the title of a poem about the ultimate deity, though it is unclear how much Islamic thought he intended to convey.

Some Muslims leave the name "Allāh" untranslated in English, rather than using the English translation "God". The word has also been applied to certain living human beings as personifications of the term and concept.

Malaysian and Indonesian language

Christians in Malaysia and Indonesia use ''Allah'' to refer to God in the Malaysian and Indonesian languages (both of them standardized forms of the Malay language). Mainstream Bible translations in the language use ''Allah'' as the translation of Hebrew ''Elohim'' (translated in English Bibles as "God"). This goes back to early translation work by Francis Xavier in the 16th century. The first dictionary of Dutch-Malay by Albert Cornelius Ruyl, Justus Heurnius, and Caspar Wiltens in 1650 (revised edition from 1623 edition and 1631 Latin edition) recorded "Allah" as the translation of the Dutch word " Godt". Ruyl also translated the Gospel of Matthew in 1612 into the Malay language (an early Bible translation into a non-European language,
made a year after the publication of the King James Version), which was printed in the Netherlands in 1629. Then he translated the Gospel of Mark, published in 1638.

The government of Malaysia in 2007 outlawed usage of the term ''Allah'' in any other but Muslim contexts, but the Malayan High Court in 2009 revoked the law, ruling it unconstitutional. While ''Allah'' had been used for the Christian God in Malay for more than four centuries, the contemporary controversy was triggered by usage of ''Allah'' by the Roman Catholic newspaper ''The Herald''. The government appealed the court ruling, and the High Court suspended implementation of its verdict until the hearing of the appeal. In October 2013 the court ruled in favor of the government's ban. In early 2014 the Malaysian government confiscated more than 300 bibles for using the word to refer to the Christian God in Peninsular Malaysia. However, the use of ''Allah'' is not prohibited in the two Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak. The main reason it is not prohibited in these two states is that usage has been long-established and local Alkitab (Bibles) have been widely distributed freely in East Malaysia without restrictions for years. Both states also do not have similar Islamic state laws as those in West Malaysia.

In reaction to some media criticism, the Malaysian government has introduced a "10-point solution" to avoid confusion and misleading information. The 10-point solution is in line with the spirit of the 18- and 20-point agreements of Sarawak and Sabah.

National flags with "Allah" written on them

File:Flag of Iraq.svg, Flag of Iraq with the Takbir written on it
File:Flag of Saudi Arabia.svg, Flag of Saudi Arabia with the Islamic holy creed written on it
File:Flag of the Taliban.svg, Flag of Afghanistan with the Shahadah written on it
File:Flag of Iran.svg, Flag of Iran with "Allah" written on it
File:"Allah" in Arabic script from stars on flag of Uzbekistan.gif, The 12 stars in the Flag of Uzbekistan form the inscription "Allah" in Arabic script

Typography

The word ' is always written without an to spell the ' vowel. This is because the spelling was settled before Arabic spelling started habitually using ' to spell '. However, in vocalized spelling, a small diacritic ' is added on top of the '' '' to indicate the pronunciation.

In the pre-Islamic Zabad inscription, God is referred to by the term , that is, alif-lam-alif-lam-ha. This presumably indicates ''Al-'ilāh'' = "the god", without ''alif'' for ''ā''.

Many Arabic type fonts feature special ligatures for Allah.

Arabic fonts and Mac OS X

Since Arabic script is used to write other texts rather than Koran only, rendering ' + ' + ' as the previous ligature is considered faulty which is the case with most common Arabic typefaces.

Unicode

Unicode has a code point reserved for ', = U+FDF2, in the Arabic Presentation Forms-A block, which exists solely for "compatibility with some older, legacy character sets that encoded presentation forms directly";The Unicode Consortium
FAQ - Middle East Scripts
this is discouraged for new text. Instead, the word ' should be represented by its individual Arabic letters, while modern font technologies will render the desired ligature.

The calligraphic variant of the word used as the coat of arms of Iran is encoded in Unicode, in the Miscellaneous Symbols range, at code point U+262B (☫).

See also

* Abdullah (name)
* Allah as a lunar deity
* Emblem of Iran
* Ismul Azam
* Names of God—Kalsang Bhutia, Gloria Lotha, Marco Sampaolo, Matt StefonTesc, Noah Tesch and Adam Zeidan

Citations

General and cited references

* The Unicode Consortium, ''Unicode Standard 5.0'', Addison-Wesley, 2006,
About the Unicode Standard Version 5.0 Book

Further reading

Online

Allah Qur'ān
in ''Encyclopædia Britannica Online'', by Asma Afsaruddin, Brian Duignan, Thinley

External links

Names of Allah with Meaning on Website, Flash, and Mobile Phone Software




by Abdul Mannan Omar



; Typography

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Arabian deities
Arabian gods
Islamic terminology
Middle Eastern gods
Names of God