99 names of Allah
The Quran talks about "beautiful names of Allah" and the hadiths further specify that there is exactly 99 names. Muslims are supposed to learn these these names of Allah, but there is a problem, because Muhammad didn't offer the full list of these names. Islamic scholars had to rely on ijtihad to find these names in the Quran and sunnah and different scholars came up with different lists. Out of the supposed 99 names of Allah, they together found at least 276 names.
The phrase "beautiful names of Allah" mentioned in the Quran
The Quran says that Allah has beautiful names (الأسماء الحسنى, al-asmaa' ul-husnaa), but doesn't specify what these names are and how many.
حسنى (husnaa) is translated as "beautiful", "best", "excellent" or "finest" [1]. The phrase "beaufiful names of Allah" and the word pig (خنزيير) were both mentioned exactly 4 times - for more word count "miracles" click here.
Hadith
There are many hadith claiming Allah has 99 names, this is one of them from Sahih Bukhari:
Some apologetic sources (including Wikipedia) claim that according to the hadith, there are at least 99 names. But the hadith doesn't say "at least". It says simply ninety-nine (تِسْعَةً وَتِسْعِينَ) and even adds that it's one hundred minus one, which seems to emphasize, that it is exactly 99 and not 100 or more. And the hadith also says that who memorizes all these names would go to paradise - such a task would be hard in the time of Muhammad, considering that in that time the ummah was illiterate. And even today, as we'll see, it seems impossible to find the 99 names.
The popular list
Source
The most popular list of 99 names of Allah among Muslims (which is also used on Wikipedia) seems to be a list from a weak (da'if) hadith from the collection of Tirmidhi.
This hadith is weak. Tirmidhi wrote about it:
Ibn Taimiyya said:
The list
Num. | In Arabic | Transliteration | Offical translation | Actual translation | Reference | Comment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | الرحمان | ar-rahmaan | The Most Gracious | The Gracious | Quran 1:1 | |
2 | الرحيم | ar-raheem | The Most Merciful | The Merciful | Quran 1:1 | |
3 | المالك | al-maalik | The King | The Posessor [2] | Quran 59:23 | Some translations sasy "sovereign" [3] |
4 | القدوس | al-quddoos | The Holy | The Holy | Quran 59:23 | |
5 | السلام | as-salaam | The Peace | Free from defect [4] | Quran 59:23 | Ibn Kathir understands it as "free from defect" |
6 | المؤمن | al-mu'min | The Granter of Security | The Believer [5] | Quran 59:23 | Mu'min in all other verses means "believer" [6] |
References
- ↑ http://quranx.com/7.180
- ↑ https://www.almaany.com/en/dict/ar-en/%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83/
- ↑ http://quranx.com/59.23
- ↑ http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1602&Itemid=115
- ↑ https://www.almaany.com/en/dict/ar-en/%D9%85%D8%A4%D9%85%D9%86/
- ↑ http://corpus.quran.com/qurandictionary.jsp?q=Amn