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Allah

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This article is about the Arabic word "Allah". For the Islamic view of God, see God in Islam. For other uses, see Allah (disambiguation).
The word 'Allah' in Arabic calligraphy

Allah (English pronunciation: /ˈælə/, /ˈɑːlə/ or /əlˈlɑː/;[1][2] Arabic: الله‎‎ Allāh, IPA: [ʔalˤˈlˤɑːh] ( listen)) is the Arabic word for God (al ilāh, literally "the God"), referring to the God in Abrahamic religions.[3][4][5] The word has cognates in other Semitic languages, including Elah in Aramaic, ʾĒl in Canaanite and Elohim in Hebrew.[6][7]

It is now mainly used by Muslims to refer to God in Islam,[8] but has been also used by Arab Christians since pre-Islamic times.[9] It is also often, albeit not exclusively, used by Bábists, Bahá'ís, Indonesian and Maltese Christians, and Mizrahi Jews.[6][10][11] Christians and Sikhs in West Malaysia also use and have used the word to refer to God. This has caused political and legal controversies there as the law in West Malaysia prohibits non-Islamic uses of the word.[12][13][14][15]

Etymology

File:Component letters in Allah.png
The Arabic components that build-up the word "Allah":
1. alif
2. hamzat waṣl (همزة وصل)
3. lām
4. lām
5. shadda (شدة)
6. dagger alif (ألف خنجرية)
7. hāʾ

The term Allāh is derived from a contraction of the Arabic definite article al- "the" and ilāh "deity, god" to al-lāh meaning "the deity", or "the God".[5] Cognates of the name "Allāh" exist in other Semitic languages, including Hebrew and Aramaic.[16] The correspondfing Aramaic form is Elah (אלה), but its emphatic state is Elaha (אלהא). It is written as ܐܠܗܐ (ʼĔlāhā) in Biblical Aramaic and ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ (ʼAlâhâ) in Syriac as used by the Assyrian Church, both meaning simply "God".[17] Biblical Hebrew mostly uses the plural (but functional singular) form Elohim (אלהים), but more rarely it also uses the singular form Eloah (אלוהּ). In the Sikh scripture of Guru Granth Sahib, the term Allah (Punjabi: ਅਲਹੁ) is used 37 times.[18]

The name was previously used by pagan pre-Islamic Arabs as a reference to a creator deity, possibly the supreme deity in pre-Islamic Arabia.[5][19]

In Islam, Allah is the unique, omnipotent and only deity and creator of the universe and is equivalent to God in other Abrahamic religions.[10][11] There are both similarities and differences between the concept of God as portrayed in the Quran and the Hebrew Bible.[20] It has also been applied to certain living human beings as personifications of the term and concept.[21][22]

There is a Unicode character for the word Allāh, ﷲ with the code point U+FDF2.[23] Many Arabic type fonts feature special ligatures for Allah.[24]

Usage

Pre-Islamic Arabians

In pre-Islamic Arabia, including Mecca, Allah was probably used by polytheistic Arabs as a reference to possibly a creator god or a supreme deity of their pantheon.[25][26] In pre-Islamic Arabia, Allah was not used to refer to the sole divinity as it is in Islam. The notion of the term may have been vague in the Meccan religion.[25][27] Muhammad's father's name was ʿAbd-Allāh meaning "the slave of Allāh".[27] Pre-Islamic Christians, Jews and the monotheistic Arabs called Hanifs used the name Allah and the terms 'Bismillah', 'in the name of Allah' to refer to their supreme deity in Arabic stone inscriptions centuries before Islam.[28]

Judaism

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Main articles: Mizrahi Jews and Names of God in Judaism

As Hebrew and Arabic are closely related Semitic languages, it is commonly accepted that Allah (root, ilāh) and the Biblical Elohim are cognate derivations of same origin, as is Eloah, a Hebrew word which is used (e.g. in the Book of Job) to mean '(the) God' and also 'god or gods' as is the case of Elohim. Elohim and Eloah ultimately derive from the root El, 'strong', possibly genericized from "El", the Northwest Semitic word meaning "god" or "deity", as in the Ugaritic ’lhm (consonants only), meaning "children of El" (the ancient Near Eastern creator god in pre-Abrahamic tradition).[7]

In Jewish scripture Elohim is used as a descriptive title for the God of the scriptures, whose personal name is YHWH, Elohim is also used for plural pagan gods.[7]

Christianity

The Aramaic word for "God" in the language of Assyrian Christians is ʼĔlāhā, or Alaha. Arabic-speakers of all Abrahamic faiths, including Christians and Jews, use the word "Allah" to mean "God".[6] The Christian Arabs of today have no other word for "God" than "Allah".[29] (Even the Arabic-descended Maltese language of Malta, whose population is almost entirely Roman Catholic, uses Alla for "God".) Arab Christians, for example, use the terms Allāh al-ab (الله الأب) for God the Father, Allāh al-ibn (الله الابن) for God the Son, and Allāh al-rūḥ al-quds (الله الروح القدس) 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 bismillāh, and also created their own Trinitized bismillāh as early as the 8th century.[30] The Muslim bismillāh reads: "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful." The Trinitized bismillāh 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 Trinitian belief and also to make it more palatable to Muslims.[30]

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.[31]

Some archaeological excavation quests have led to the discovery of ancient pre-Islamic inscriptions and tombs made by Arabic-speaking Christians in the ruins of a church at Umm el-Jimal in Northern Jordan, which contained references to Allah as the proper name of God, and some of the graves contained names such as "Abd Allah" which means "the servant/slave of Allah".[32][33][34]

The name Allah can be found countless times 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.[9][35]

A Christian leader named Abd Allah ibn Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad was martyred in Najran in 523, as he had worn a ring that said "Allah is my lord".[9][36]

In an inscription of Christian martyrion dated back to 512, references to Allah can be found in both Arabic and Aramaic, which called him "Allah" and "Alaha", and the inscription starts with the statement "By the Help of Allah".[9][37][38]

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.[39][40][41]

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.[42]

"Allah" was also mentioned in pre-Islamic Christian poems by some Ghassanid and Tanukhid poets in Syria and Northern Arabia.[43][44][45]

Islam

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Main article: God in Islam

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See also: Names of God in the Qur'an
Medallion showing "Allah Jalla Jalaluhu" in the Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey.

According to Islamic belief, Allah is the proper name of God,[46] and humble submission to his will, divine ordinances and commandments is the pivot of the Muslim faith.[10] "He is the only God, creator of the universe, and the judge of humankind."[10][11] "He is unique (wāḥid) and inherently one (aḥad), all-merciful and omnipotent."[10] The Qur'an declares "the reality of Allah, His inaccessible mystery, His various names, and His actions on behalf of His creatures."[10]

File:Dcp7323-Edirne-Eski Camii Allah.jpg
Allah script outside Eski Cami (The Old Mosque) in Edirne, Turkey.

In Islamic tradition, there are 99 Names of God (al-asmā’ al-ḥusná lit. meaning: 'the best names' or 'the most beautiful names'), each of which evoke a distinct characteristic of Allah.[11][47] All these names refer to Allah, the supreme and all-comprehensive divine name.[48] Among the 99 names of God, the most famous and most frequent of these names are "the Merciful" (al-Raḥmān) and "the Compassionate" (al-Raḥīm).[11][47]

Most Muslims use the untranslated Arabic phrase in shā’ Allāh (meaning 'if God wills') after references to future events.[49] Muslim discursive piety encourages beginning things with the invocation of bismillāh (meaning 'in the name of God').[50]

There are certain phrases in praise of God that are favored by Muslims, including "Subḥān Allāh" (Holiness be to God), "al-ḥamdu lillāh" (Praise be to God), "lā ilāha illā Allāh" (There is no deity but God) and "Allāhu akbar" (God is greater) as a devotional exercise of remembering God (dhikr).[51] In a Sufi practice known as dhikr Allah (lit. remembrance of God), the Sufi repeats and contemplates on the name Allah or other divine names while controlling his or her breath.[52]

Some scholars[who?] have suggested that Muḥammad used the term Allah in addressing both pagan Arabs and Jews or Christians in order to establish a common ground for the understanding of the name for God, a claim Gerhard Böwering says is doubtful.[46] According to 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.[46] 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.[10]

According to Francis Edwards Peters, "The Qur’ān insists, Muslims believe, and historians affirm that Muhammad and his followers worship the same God as the Jews (29:46). 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.[20]

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.[53]

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 (Arabic: إن شاء الله). This phrase literally means 'if God wills' (in the sense of "I hope so").[54] 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.[55]

Malaysian and Indonesian language

File:Vocabulariumoft00dancgoog.djvu
The first dictionary of Dutch-Malay by A.C. Ruyl, Justus Heurnius, and Caspar Wiltens in 1650 recorded "Allah" as the translation of the Dutch word "Godt".

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Main articles: Titular Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur v. Menteri Dalam Negeri and 2010 attacks against places of worship in Malaysia

Christians in Malaysia and Indonesia use Allah to refer to God in the Malaysian and Indonesian languages (both of which are 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").[56] This goes back to early translation work by Francis Xavier in the 16th century.[57][58] 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".[59] Ruyl also translated Matthew in 1612 to Malay language (first Bible translation to non-European language, only a year after King James Version was published[60][61]), which was printed in the Netherlands in 1629. Then he translated Mark which was published in 1638.[62][63]

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 that it was 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 appeal was heard. In October 2013, the court ruled in favor of the government's ban.[64] While in early 2014, the Malaysian government confiscated more than 300 bibles for using the word to refer to the Christian God in Peninsular Malaysia.[65] However, the use of Allah does not prohibited in the two Malaysian state of Sabah and Sarawak.[66][67] 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.[66] Both states also do not have similar Islamic state laws as those in West Malaysia.[15]

As a reaction to some media criticism, the Malaysian government has introduced a "10-point solution" to avoid confusion and misleading information.[68][69] The 10-point solution is in line with the spirit of the 18- and 20-point agreements of Sarawak and Sabah.[15]

In other scripts and languages

Allāh in other languages that use Arabic script is spelled in the same way. This includes Urdu, Persian/Dari, Uyghur among others.

Typography

File:Allahnameindifferentlanguages.png
The word Allah written in different writing systems.

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

One exception may be in the pre-Islamic Zabad inscription,[70] where it ends with an ambiguous sign that may be a lone-standing h with a lengthened start, or may be a non-standard conjoined l-h:-

  • الاه : This reading would be Allāh spelled phonetically with alif for the ā.
  • الإله : This reading would be al-Ilāh = 'the god' (an older form, without contraction), by older spelling practice without alif for ā.

Unicode

Unicode has a codepoint reserved for Allāh, ﷲ‎ = 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",[71] which is discouraged for new text. Instead, the word Allāh 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 codepoint U+262B (☫).

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Allah". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ "Islam and Christianity", Encyclopedia of Christianity (2001): Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews also refer to God as Allāh.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Columbia Encyclopedia, Allah
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Rick Brown, Who was 'Allah' before Islam? Evidence that the term 'Allah' originated with Jewish and Christian Arabs (2007), page 8.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 "Allah." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, Allah
  12. ↑ Sikhs target of 'Allah' attack, Julia Zappei, 14 January 2010, The New Zealand Herald. Accessed on line 15 January 2014.
  13. ↑ Malaysia court rules non-Muslims can't use 'Allah', 14 Oct. 2013, The New Zealand Herald. Accessed on line 15 January 2014.
  14. ↑ Malaysia's Islamic authorities seize Bibles as Allah row deepens, Niluksi Koswanage, 2 January 2014, Reuters. Accessed on line 15 January 2014. Archived 16 January 2014 at the Wayback Machine
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ 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.
  17. ↑ The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon – Entry for ʼlh Archived 18 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  18. ↑ http://www.srigranth.org Archived 11 January 2014 at the Wayback Machine
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 F.E. Peters, Islam, p.4, Princeton University Press, 2003
  21. ↑ Nation of Islam – personification of Allah as Detroit peddler W D Fard Archived 13 August 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 L. Gardet, Allah, Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. by Sir H.A.R. Gibb
  26. ↑ Zeki Saritopak, Allah, The Qu'ran: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Oliver Leaman, p. 34
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Gerhard Böwering, God and his Attributes, Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, ed. by Jane Dammen McAuliffe
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Thomas E. Burman, Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs, Brill, 1994, p. 103
  31. ↑ Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, University of Chicago Press, p. 156
  32. ↑ James Bellamy, "Two Pre-Islamic Arabic Inscriptions Revised: Jabal Ramm and Umm al-Jimal", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 108/3 (1988)
  33. ↑ Enno Littmann, Arabic Inscriptions (Leiden, 1949)
  34. ↑ Rick Brown, Who is "Allah" ? - International Journal of Frontier Missions, (23:2 Summer 2006), page 80.
  35. ↑ Ignatius Ya`qub III, The Arab Himyarite Martyrs in the Syriac Documents (1966), Pages: 9-65-66-89
  36. ↑ Alfred Guillaume& Muhammad Ibn Ishaq, (2002 [1955]). The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Isḥāq's Sīrat Rasūl Allāh with Introduction and Notes. Karachi and New York: Oxford University Press, page 18.
  37. ↑ Adolf Grohmann, Arabische Paläographie II: Das Schriftwesen und die Lapidarschrift (1971), Wien: Hermann Böhlaus Nochfolger, Page: 6-8
  38. ↑ Beatrice Gruendler, The Development of the Arabic Scripts: From the Nabatean Era to the First Islamic Century according to Dated Texts (1993), Atlanta: Scholars Press, Page:
  39. ↑ Rick Brown, Who was 'Allah' before Islam? Evidence that the term 'Allah' originated with Jewish and Christian Arabs (2007), page 10.
  40. ↑ Frederick Winnett V, Allah before Islam-The Moslem World (1938), Pages: 239–248
  41. ↑ Michael Macdonald, Personal Names in the Nabataean Realm-Journal Of Semitic Studies (1999), Page: 271
  42. ↑ Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, page 418.
  43. ↑ Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, Page: 452
  44. ↑ A. Amin and A. Harun, Sharh Diwan Al-Hamasa (Cairo, 1951), Vol. 1, Pages: 478-480
  45. ↑ Al-Marzubani, Mu'jam Ash-Shu'araa, Page: 302
  46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 46.2 Böwering, Gerhard, God and His Attributes, Encyclopaedia of the Qurʼān, Brill, 2007.
  47. ↑ 47.0 47.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  48. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  49. ↑ Gary S. Gregg, The Middle East: A Cultural Psychology, Oxford University Press, p.30
  50. ↑ Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Islamic Society in Practice, University Press of Florida, p. 24
  51. ↑ M. Mukarram Ahmed, Muzaffar Husain Syed, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Anmol Publications PVT. LTD, p. 144
  52. ↑ Carl W. Ernst, Bruce B. Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and Beyond, Macmillan, p. 29
  53. ↑ William Montgomery Watt, Islam and Christianity today: A Contribution to Dialogue, Routledge, 1983, p.45
  54. ↑ Islam in Luce López Baralt, Spanish Literature: From the Middle Ages to the Present, Brill, 1992, p.25
  55. ↑ F. E. Peters, The Monotheists: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Conflict and Competition, Princeton University Press, p.12
  56. ↑ Example: Usage of the word "Allah" from Matthew 22:32 in Indonesian bible versions (parallel view) as old as 1733 Archived 19 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  57. ↑ The Indonesian Language: Its History and Role in Modern Society Sneddon, James M.; University of New South Wales Press; 2004
  58. ↑ The History of Christianity in India from the Commencement of the Christian Era: Hough, James; Adamant Media Corporation; 2001
  59. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  60. ↑ Barton, John (2002–12). The Biblical World, Oxford, UK: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-27574-3.
  61. ↑ North, Eric McCoy; Eugene Albert Nida ((2nd Edition) 1972). The Book of a Thousand Tongues, London: United Bible Societies.
  62. ↑ (Indonesian) Biography of Ruyl
  63. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  64. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  65. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  66. ↑ 66.0 66.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  67. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  68. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  69. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  70. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  71. ↑ The Unicode Consortium. FAQ - Middle East Scripts Archived 1 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine

References

External links

Typography

te:అల్లాహ్

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