Allah (English
pronunciation: /ˈælə/ or /ˈɑːlə/;[1]
Arabic: الله
Allāh, is the Arabic word for God
(al ilāh, literally "the God".[2][3][4]
The word has cognates in other Semitic languages, including Elah in Aramaic, ʾĒl in Canaanite and Elohim in Hebrew.[5][6]
It is used mainly by Muslims to refer to God in Islam,[7] but it has also been used by Arab Christians since pre-Islamic times.[8]
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]
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.[29]
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.[30]
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.[22]
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".[5]
The Christian Arabs of today have no other word for "God" than "Allah".[21]
(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.)
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.[39]
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".[40][41][42]
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.[8][43]
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.[47][48][49]
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.[50]
"Allah" was also mentioned in pre-Islamic Christian poems by some Ghassanid and Tanukhid poets in Syria and Northern Arabia.[51][52][53]
References:
1 "Allah". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
2 "God". Islam: Empire of Faith. PBS. Archived from the original on 2014-03-27. Retrieved 18 December 2010.
3 "Islam and Christianity", Encyclopedia of Christianity (2001): Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews also refer to God as Allāh.
4 L. Gardet. "Allah". Encyclopaedia of Islam Online.
5 Columbia Encyclopedia, Allah
6 Brown, Francis; Driver, S.R.; Briggs, Charles. A. Hebrew and English Lexicon. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendricksen. p. 41, entry 410 1.b. ISBN 9781565632066.
7 Merriam-Webster. "Allah". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 2014-04-20. Retrieved 25 February 2012.
8 Rick Brown, Who was 'Allah' before Islam? Evidence that the term 'Allah' originated with Jewish and Christian Arabs (2007), page 8.
17 The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon – Entry for ʼlh Archived October 18, 2013 at the Wayback Machine
21 Lewis, Bernard; Holt, P. M.; Holt, Peter R.; Lambton, Ann Katherine Swynford (1977). The Cambridge history of Islam. Cambridge, Eng: University Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-521-29135-4.
22 F.E. Peters, Islam, p.4, Princeton University Press, 2003
29 Hitti, Philip Khouri (2002-09-06). History of the Arabs. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 800. ISBN 9780333631423.
30 Böwering, Gerhard, God and His Attributes, Encyclopaedia of the Qurʼān, Brill, 2007.
39 Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, University of Chicago Press, p. 156
40 James Bellamy, "Two Pre-Islamic Arabic Inscriptions Revised: Jabal Ramm and Umm al-Jimal", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 108/3 (1988)
41 Enno Littmann, Arabic Inscriptions (Leiden, 1949)
42 Rick Brown, Who is "Allah" ? - International Journal of Frontier Missions, (23:2 Summer 2006), page 80.
43 Ignatius Ya`qub III, The Arab Himyarite Martyrs in the Syriac Documents (1966), Pages: 9-65-66-89
45 Adolf Grohmann, Arabische Paläographie II: Das Schriftwesen und die Lapidarschrift (1971), Wien: Hermann Böhlaus Nochfolger, Page: 6-8
46 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:
47 Rick Brown, Who was 'Allah' before Islam? Evidence that the term 'Allah' originated with Jewish and Christian Arabs (2007), page 10.
48 Frederick Winnett V, Allah before Islam-The Moslem World (1938), Pages: 239–248
49 Michael Macdonald, Personal Names in the Nabataean Realm-Journal Of Semitic Studies (1999), Page: 271
50 Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, page 418.
51 Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, Page: 452
52 A. Amin and A. Harun, Sharh Diwan Al-Hamasa (Cairo, 1951), Vol. 1, Pages: 478-480
53 Al-Marzubani, Mu'jam Ash-Shu'araa, Page: 302
The word has cognates in other Semitic languages, including Elah in Aramaic, ʾĒl in Canaanite and Elohim in Hebrew.[5][6]
It is used mainly by Muslims to refer to God in Islam,[7] but it has also been used by Arab Christians since pre-Islamic times.[8]
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]
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.[29]
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.[30]
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.[22]
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".[5]
The Christian Arabs of today have no other word for "God" than "Allah".[21]
(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.)
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.[39]
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".[40][41][42]
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.[8][43]
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.[47][48][49]
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.[50]
"Allah" was also mentioned in pre-Islamic Christian poems by some Ghassanid and Tanukhid poets in Syria and Northern Arabia.[51][52][53]
References:
1 "Allah". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
2 "God". Islam: Empire of Faith. PBS. Archived from the original on 2014-03-27. Retrieved 18 December 2010.
3 "Islam and Christianity", Encyclopedia of Christianity (2001): Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews also refer to God as Allāh.
4 L. Gardet. "Allah". Encyclopaedia of Islam Online.
5 Columbia Encyclopedia, Allah
6 Brown, Francis; Driver, S.R.; Briggs, Charles. A. Hebrew and English Lexicon. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendricksen. p. 41, entry 410 1.b. ISBN 9781565632066.
7 Merriam-Webster. "Allah". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 2014-04-20. Retrieved 25 February 2012.
8 Rick Brown, Who was 'Allah' before Islam? Evidence that the term 'Allah' originated with Jewish and Christian Arabs (2007), page 8.
17 The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon – Entry for ʼlh Archived October 18, 2013 at the Wayback Machine
21 Lewis, Bernard; Holt, P. M.; Holt, Peter R.; Lambton, Ann Katherine Swynford (1977). The Cambridge history of Islam. Cambridge, Eng: University Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-521-29135-4.
22 F.E. Peters, Islam, p.4, Princeton University Press, 2003
29 Hitti, Philip Khouri (2002-09-06). History of the Arabs. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 800. ISBN 9780333631423.
30 Böwering, Gerhard, God and His Attributes, Encyclopaedia of the Qurʼān, Brill, 2007.
39 Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, University of Chicago Press, p. 156
40 James Bellamy, "Two Pre-Islamic Arabic Inscriptions Revised: Jabal Ramm and Umm al-Jimal", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 108/3 (1988)
41 Enno Littmann, Arabic Inscriptions (Leiden, 1949)
42 Rick Brown, Who is "Allah" ? - International Journal of Frontier Missions, (23:2 Summer 2006), page 80.
43 Ignatius Ya`qub III, The Arab Himyarite Martyrs in the Syriac Documents (1966), Pages: 9-65-66-89
45 Adolf Grohmann, Arabische Paläographie II: Das Schriftwesen und die Lapidarschrift (1971), Wien: Hermann Böhlaus Nochfolger, Page: 6-8
46 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:
47 Rick Brown, Who was 'Allah' before Islam? Evidence that the term 'Allah' originated with Jewish and Christian Arabs (2007), page 10.
48 Frederick Winnett V, Allah before Islam-The Moslem World (1938), Pages: 239–248
49 Michael Macdonald, Personal Names in the Nabataean Realm-Journal Of Semitic Studies (1999), Page: 271
50 Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, page 418.
51 Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, Page: 452
52 A. Amin and A. Harun, Sharh Diwan Al-Hamasa (Cairo, 1951), Vol. 1, Pages: 478-480
53 Al-Marzubani, Mu'jam Ash-Shu'araa, Page: 302
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