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[English edition] الإبداع هو الخلق المطلق والتجديد على غير مثال. وليس المصطلح في أصله قرآنيّا، غير أنّ القرآن يسمّي الله البديع، الخالق المطلق، المجدّد. وتنصّ الآيتان (البقرة، 117) و(الأنعام، 101) على أنّ الله «بديع السماوات والأرض» والمفهوم من هذا بداهةً أنّه خالق كلّ شيء. ويؤكّد المفسّرون أنّ الله إنّما سُميّ البديع بفضل خلقه (المطلق) للجنّات والأرض، وسُمّي خالقا بفضل خلقه الإنسانَ ﴿من صلصال كالفخّار ﴾ (الرحمان، 14). ونجد في القرآن تمييزاً آخر، إذ غالباً ما يقابل النصّ بين الخلق الأوّل والخلق الثاني وهو بعثُ الأجساد. وفي هذه الحالة لا يُستعمل أبدا الفعلُ بدعَ…

[English edition] يَعني الذِكرُ «واذْكُرْ رَبَّكَ إذَا نَسِيتَ» (الكهف 18/24) فعلَ التذكّر، والتعبيرَ الشفويّ بالذكرى، وخصوصاً التكرارَ بلا كَلَلٍ للدعاء والتضرّع، وأخيراً تقنيةَ هذا التعبير نفسَها. وقد يكون الذِكر في التصوّف أكثرَ صيغ الدعاء اطِّرادًا، ويقابله «الفكر» [انظره]، والتفكير المنطقيّ، والتأمّل. ويقرّ الحلاّج في «الطواسين» بخصوص المعراج المحمّدي الليليّ كذلك بشرعيّة الطريقين: «جنّة الذِّكر» و«مسلك الفكر». إنّ الأصل القرآني للذِّكر عند الصوفيّة هو الآية المذكورة سابقاً، ويذكره الكلاباذي من جملة ما يذكر، مثلما تذكره الآية 41 من سورة الأحزاب …

[English edition] القضاء والقدر لفظان، إذا ما جمعا في عبارة واحدة، يكتسيان في الغالب معنى حكم الله، سواء الحكم الأزلي (وهوالمعنى الأكثر شيوعا لكلمة قضاء) أو الحكم باعتبار الوجود في الزمان (وهو المعنى الغالب لكلمة القدر). والقضاء، أي التحديد الحتميّ المسبق (وهو في العادة أزلي، إلاّ أنّه لدى بعض المدارس يجري في الزمان)؛ والقدر هو الحكم (وهو عادة يجري في الزمان، إلاّ أنّه أزلي في نظر بعض المدارس) أو المآل والمصير بمعنى أنّه محدّد. ويمكن أيضاً أن يستعمل لفظ القضاء وحده للدلالة على الحكم في معناه الأوسع…

[English edition] 1. الحدّ والمفهوم العام عادة ما نجد معاني ثلاثة مختلفة لكلمة دين:(1)الحكم والجزاء؛ (2) العرف والعادة؛ (3) والديانة. تحيل الأولى على جذر عبريّ آراميّ، والثانية على جذر عربيّ dāna ( dayn دان ودين)، والثالثة على جذر فهلوي dĕn (وحي، دين) وهو الأصل الإيتيمولوجي الذي استغله كل من نويلدكي وفولرز. ونتفق مع قودفروي دي مونبين ( Mahomet 504) في أنّ ما ذهبا إليه غير مقنع. وفي جميع الحالات فإنّ مفهوم «الدين» الذي نبحث فيه ليس متماثلا أبدا في كل من الإسلام والمجوسيّة. وفي المقابل يبدو الأصلان الايتيمولوجيان العبريّ والعربيّ متفاعلين وليسا على اختلاف كبير كما يقدمان عادة. هكذا فإنّ الجدل …

, appeal, invocation (addressed to God) either on behalf of another or for oneself ( li...), or else against someone ( ʿalā ...); hence: prayer of invocation, calling either for blessing, or for imprecation and cursing, connected with the Semitic idea of the effective value of the spoken word. Cf. Ḳurʾān XVII, 11: “Man prays for evil as he prays for good”.— Duʿāʾ therefore will have the general sense of personal prayer addressed to God, and can often be translated as “prayer of request”. I.—The scope and practice of duʿāʾ . 1. In the Ḳurʾān, duʿāʾ always keeps its original meaning of invo…

(a.), the action of raising oneself, of rising, and of resurrection. The root ḳ-w-m is employed very frequently in the language of the Ḳurʾān. Ḳiyāma occurs there seventy times, always in the expression yawm al-ḳiyāma “the day of resurrection”. The resurrection of bodies follows the annihilation of all creatures ( al-fanāʾ al-muṭlaḳ ), and precedes the “judgment” ( dīn ), the “day of judgement” ( yawm al-dīn ).This will be the Last Hour ( al-sāʿa ). Al-sāʿa , yawm al-ḳiyāma and yawm al-dīn, taken as a whole constitute one of the “necessary beliefs” which determine the content…

, pl. afkār , thought, reflection. The Ḳurʾān employs the 2nd and 5th forms of the root fkr , to urge men “to reflect”. In the vocabulary of falsafa and ʿilm al-kalām , the maṣdar fikr denotes the intellectual faculty in the act of thought, reflecting upon an object of intellection. It is distinguished from idrāk , the intellectual faculty of grasping, of perception. The result of the operation of fikr is expressed by the noun of unity fikra . In taṣawwuf , fikr is used habitually in contrast to d̲h̲ikr [ q.v.], recollection. Fikr can thus be translated by reflectio…

, God the Unique one, the Creator and Lord of the Judgment, polarizes the thought of Islam; He is the sole reason for its existence. ¶ Allāh was known to the pre-Islamic Arabs; he was one of the Meccan deities, possibly the supreme deity and certainly a creator-god (cf. Ḳurʾān, xiii, 16; xxix, 61, 63; xxxi, 25; xxxix, 38; xliii, 87). He was already known, by antonomasia, as the God, al-Ilāh (the most likely etymology; another suggestion is the Aramaic Alāhā ).—For Allāh before Islam, as shown by archaeological sources and the Ḳurʾān, see ilāh . But the vague notion of supreme (not sole) di…

, “compulsion, coercion”, as opposed to ik̲h̲tiyār , “freedom of choice”. Although the term itself, in its maṣdar form, does not belong to the language of the Ḳurʾān, the verbal use of the VIIIth form is of relatively frequent occurrence there. The idea is that of an absolute necessity ( ḍarūra ), by means of physical (secondarily moral) compulsion. I.— Iḍṭirār takes on its technical sense in connexion with the theory of human actions. It thus belongs to the vocabulary of the “science of kalām ” (the “theology” or rather the “defensive apologia” of Islam). …

, “if God wills”, “If it pleases God”. The expression is usually called istit̲h̲nāʾ , “formula of exception” (or “de conditionnement”, tr. H. Laoust). It means that God alone is the master of all that happens, as well as of the thoughts, acts and plans of man. In Islamic countries in ordinary speech it is used to qualify anything in the future, even the near future. Massignon describes this formula ( Passion , 585) as one which “est restée le signe distinctif, la parabole type de la vie sociale, pour la Communauté islamique”. The expression in s̲h̲āʾ Allāh —or an equiva…

(a.), faith (in God), maṣdar of the 4th form of the root ʾ mn. The root has the connotations of “being secure, trusting in, turning to”; whence: “good faith, sincerity” ( amana ), then “fidelity, loyalty” ( amāna ), and thus the idea of “protection granted” ( amān ). The fourth form ( āmana ) has the double meaning of “to believe, to give one’s faith” and (with bi) “to protect, to place in safety”. The root ʾ mn is one of those most frequently found in the vocabulary of the Ḳurʾān, where īmān means sometimes the act and sometimes the content of faith, sometimes bot…

— "The most Beautiful Names", these being the divine Names. "To God belong the most Beautiful Names—pray to Him, using (these Names)", Ḳurʾān, vii, 179. Cf. xvii, 110; xx, 8; lix, 24 etc. Pious Muslims have always revered the mystery of the Name, which at one and the same time both designates and veils the Named (cf. ḥid̲j̲āb al-ism ). The Theological question. A chapter of "Muslim theology" ( ʿilm al-tawḥīd ) is devoted to the divine Names. Problem stated: can one name God, and what, with regard to God, do the Names attributed to Him mean? Preliminaries: What is the name ( ism …

, capacity, power to act, maṣdar of the tenth form of ṭāʿ , to obey. If the term itself is not ḳurʾānic, the verb istaṭāʿ is used frequently in the text. Like its maṣdar, it was to become a technical ¶ term of the uṣūl al-dīn and the ʿilm al-kalām . The translation “capacity” is generally used (for example Tritton, Muslim Theology , London 1947, 68 and n. 2). Wensinckprefers “faculty”, others “power” ( pouvoir ). In this last sense, the ʿilm al-kalām readily considers ḳudra and istiṭāʿa to be identical (see remarks of ʿAbd al-D̲j̲abbār, S̲h̲arḥ al-uṣūl al-k̲h̲amsa , ed. …

, a term denoting, in the Ḳurʾān or ḥadīt̲h̲s , the smallest possible appreciable quantity. The Ḳurʾān uses it five times, in the expression mit̲h̲ḳāl al-d̲h̲arra , “the weight of a d̲h̲arra” ,—to extol the Omniscience of God (X, 61; XXXIV, 3), or His absolute Omnipotence (XXXIV, 20), or His supreme Justice in retribution: IV, 40 and the celebrated text XCIX, 7-8 “He who shall have done the weight of one d̲h̲arra of good shall see it; he who shall have done the weight of one d̲h̲arra of evil shall see it”. Commentators on the Ḳurʾān and interpreters of ḥadīt̲h̲s have explained d̲h̲arra by two im…

, “Garden”, is the term which, used antonomastically, usually describes, in the Ḳurʾān and in Muslim literature, the regions of the Beyond prepared for the elect, the “Companions of the right”. E.g.: “These will be the Dwellers in the Garden where they will remain immortal as a reward for their deeds on earth” (Ḳurʾān, XLVI, 14). Other Ḳurʾānic terms will be considered later either as synonyms or as particular aspects of the “Garden”: ʿAdn and D̲j̲annāt ʿAdn . (Eden, e.g., LXI, 12), Firdaws (“Paradise”, sg. farādis , cf. παράδεισος XXIII, 11), the Dwelling of Salvation or of Peace ( dār al-Sa…

, pl. afʿāl , actuation, act, and sometimes the result of an act, that is to say effectuation, effect. From its current usage in Arabic, this word very quickly became a technical term ( iṣṭilāḥ ), not only in grammar but also in falsafa and in ʿilm al-kalām . If ʿamal [ q.v.] designates the realms of ‘doing’ and ‘acting’ (whence ‘work’, human acts, and moral action), and thus has at least in its last meaning an ethical connotation, fiʿl refers above all to noetic and ontological values: the fact of actuating, of passing (or causing to pass) to the per…

(Ḳurʾānic term), “pious goodness” (R. Blachère’s translation; see Ḳurʾān, ii, 189). In the analysis of the spiritual states ( aḥwāl ) and the attitude of the soul towards God, it must at the same time be compared with and distinguished from taḳwā [ q.v.]. (L. Gardet)

The IVth form adds to the double idea of the root—purity and salvation—that of “dedicating, devoting or consecrating oneself” to something. Ik̲h̲lāṣ is pre-eminently an interior virtue of the faithful Muslim, which implies both the unadulterated purity (and thus sincerity) of religious actions, pure (exclusive) worship given to God and pure (absolute) devotion to God and the Community of Believers. The perfection of one’s adherence, and witness, to faith is gauged by ik̲h̲lāṣ and iḥsān (uprightness in good). The Ḳurʾān often uses the participle muk̲h̲liṣ , …

, Gehenna (Hebrew gēhinnōm , valley of the Gehenna); the Arabic word evokes etymologically the idea of “depth” (cf. infernus ). Used very often in the Ḳurʾān as a synonym of nār (“fire”), d̲j̲ahannam must accordingly be rendered by the general idea of Hell. The same is true in traditions. Exegetists and many treatises on kalām (or taṣawwuf ) were, subsequently, to give it a particularized connotation. The description of the Muslim Hell, the problems relating to it and consequently the references to verses in the Ḳurʾān mentioning d̲j̲ahannam, are considered in the article nār: here only …

(pl. ad̲j̲zāʾ), part, particle, term used in the technical language of kalām and of falsafa ¶ to describe the (philosophical) atom in the sense of the ultimate (substantial) part, that cannot be divided further, al-d̲j̲uzʾ allad̲h̲ī lā yatad̲j̲azzāʾ (cf. al-D̲j̲urd̲j̲ānī, Taʿrīfāt , ed. Flügel, Leipzig 1845, 78); al-d̲j̲uzʾ al-wāḥid is sometimes used. Synonym: “elementary and indivisible matter”: d̲j̲awhar fard ; al-d̲j̲awhar al-wāḥid allad̲h̲ī lā yanḳasim .—For other definitions of vocabulary see d̲h̲arra . Atomistic conceptions of the world (philosophical atomism) …