99 names of God

Al-Asmā' al-Husnà (الأسماء الحسنى), in Arabic, "the most beautiful names", transcribed Al asmá ul jusna, also called the ninety-nine names of God or Asma ul-lahil jusna (أسماء الله الحسنى), the sublime names of God; They are the ways of referring to God in Islam.

For the most part they are epithets that refer to divine attributes. The existence of the 99 names is due to a hadith (saying attributed to the prophet Muhammad): "God has ninety-nine names, one hundred minus one. Whoever counts them will enter Paradise. He is the singular, and he likes the non (odd number)" (hadith of Abu Hurayrah).

Although there is another hadith attributed to the Prophet in which the 99 names of Allah are detailed, Muslim scholars affirm that the list is not the work of Muhammad but of the transmitters of the hadith. The names have been taken from the Quran and the Sunna.

The Sublime Names

Other Names of God

Allah is also named in other ways. The most important one is Allah. The word Allah appears in the Arabic versions of the Bible and the Koran to name the Creator of the universe and the Only God of the Abrahamic religions. Some scholars propose that it is the proper name of God, without any derivation, since He Himself has been named that way in the Koran, it cannot be named with this name but only God Himself, this is the opinion of one of the wisest. grammarians of the Arabic language such as Sibuyé, it is also the opinion of al-Shafi'i, Al-Ghazali, al-Jatâbi and Ibn Kazir.[11] A very common one considers that Al-lāh comes from ʾilāh, a word that designates any divinity, preceded by the definite article al-. It would therefore be a contraction for the use of al-ʾilāh, that is, "The God", "The Worshiped One" and this is the opinion of Ibn Qaim.[12] Some linguists, however, consider the loss of the initial hamza of ʾilāh (Arabic consonant here represented with an apostrophe) to be implausible, since it is the first letter of the original name of God and sacred terms, due to taboo, tend to be remain little or not at all altered in their pronunciation. In other words, they do not believe that a religious person can diminish the name of God. These linguists think that Allah comes directly from the Semitic root ʾhe who designates divinity. This root, in Aramaic, gave rise to the term ʾāllāhā, which could have passed into Arabic with the disappearance of the final ā (in Aramaic it is a final vowel, and these tend to disappear in Arabic) and the shortening of the initial ā due to confusion with the article al-.

According to some Islamic scholars and Arabic scholars, Allah derives from the word Ilah, which means God, so Allah would literally be "The God". However, other scholars have studied the similarity in the pronunciation of God's name in Aramaic, ancient Hebrew, classical Arabic and other languages, and have concluded that Allah is the unique name of God in all ancient languages, which is then has been altered, which is why it has no derivatives nor is it derived from any other word.

In principle, the word Allah is translated as God, but some non-Arabic speaking Muslims prefer to use the Arabic term without translating, because it is the word used in the Quran to refer to to God directly or in the first person. Furthermore, because the word Allah in Arabic is unique, it does not allow derivations or change of gender or number, so that it represents in itself the concept of Unity and Oneness of God, which is a fundamental pillar of the Islamic faith.

It is also usually called Rabb (رب), which translates "Lord", and refers to the fact that God is the Master, Owner, Sovereign and Sustainer of everything that exists.

The Names of God and the name day

There is in Arabic (and by extension throughout the Islamic world) a category of male proper names formed from the word abd (عبد, "servant") followed by one of the names divine All of these names come to mean the same thing, that is, "servant of God", Abd Allah (or Abdullah, عبد الله) being perhaps the most widespread and the one that means exactly that. Others use the corresponding epithet to refer to God, and so we have, for example, Abd al-Qadir, "servant of the powerful"; Abd ar-Rahman, "servant of the merciful"; Abd as-Salam, "servant of the peaceful", etc. There is also the name Abduh (عبده), which means "His servant."

Names of this type are not exclusive, however, to Islam. In pre-Islamic Arabia there were already names that meant "servant of" different divinities, such as Abd Shams ("servant of the sun"; this was the name of an ancestor of the Umayyads), Abd al-`Uzza ("servant of Uzza", a goddess Arabic) or even Abd Allah, where Allah was already used to designate the supreme divinity (this is the name, for example, of Muhammad's father). These names could sometimes refer not to deities but to people, as in the case of Abd al-Muttalib (Muhammad's grandfather), so called because of his dependence on his uncle Muttalib.

Among Arab Christians there are also names of this kind, such as Abd al-Masih ("servant of the Messiah").

The difference between the Abd Allah type forms (Abd ar-Rahman, Abd al-Latif, etc.) and the Abdullah type forms (Abdurrahman, Abdullatif...) is that the latter add to the word abd the nominative ending (-u) of classical Arabic. In Arabic, both are written the same, and although they can be read in both ways, in oral language the less classic form is usually used. Classical forms, however, are preferentially used in non-Arab Muslim societies. In some cases these names have undergone transformations when passing through languages other than Arabic. Thus Abdullah gives Abdoulaye in Wolof; Abdulhamid becomes Abdülhamit in Turkish, etc.

The Hundredth Name of God

According to Muslim theology, the names of God are 4 thousand. One thousand are known only to God. Another thousand, for God and the angels. Another thousand, for God, the angels and the prophets. And the remaining thousand, by God, the angels, the prophets and the faithful. Of the last thousand names, 300 are cited in the Torah, another 300 in the Psalms, another 300 in the Gospels, and 100 in the Koran. Of the latter, 99 are known to the common faithful, and one is hidden, secret and accessible only to the most enlightened mystics.

According to the teachings of the prophet Muhammad, “there are 99 names that belong only to God, and he who learns them, understands them and lists them, enters paradise and achieves eternal salvation.” In fact, understanding “the essence” of those attributes is the first step to becoming spiritually enriched. That is why, on a strictly practical level, it is a Muslim custom to gather in prayer and pass the 99 beads of his rosary between their fingers. In any case, the names of God are not God, but a simple symbol of divine reality, adapted to the limits of human reason.