Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ DRS I (1994)#ʔL: Akk il‑, el‑, Ug ʔil, Phn Pun ʔl, Hbr ʔēl, EmpAram ʔl, JP ʔēl, Tham ʔl; (with final ‑h) epigrHbr ʔlh, Hbr, ʔᵉlōha, Ug ʔlhm (pl.m.), ʔlht (pl.f.), epigrAram ʔlh, JP ʔᵉlhā, BabAram ʔelāh, Syr ʔalaha, Mand alaha, Ar ʔilāh, SAr ʔlh ‘god, deity’.

DRS 1 (1994), Huehnergard2011, et al.: From CSem *ʔilāh‑ ‘god, deity’, extension in *‑h from Sem *ʔil‑ ‘dto.’.

Biblical names ending in ‑el are often composed of two elements, the second being Hbr ʔēl ‘God’. Cf., e.g., Azazel, from Hbr ʕᵃzā(ʔ)zēl, of uncertain etymology, perhaps corrupt for ʕᵃzaz-ʔēl, a name meaning ‘God has been strong’ < ʕᵃzaz, reduced form of ʕāzaz ‘he is/was strong’ (cf. Ar ↗ʕZː (ʕZZ)); Bethel, from Hbr bêt ʔēl ‘house of God’ (cf. Ar ↗bayt ‘house’); Daniel, from Hbr dānīʔēl / dānīyē(ʔ)l ‘my judge is God’ < Hbr dān ‘judge’ (cf. Ar ↗dīn ‘religion’, ↗madīnaẗ ‘town, city’) + ‑ī ‘my’ (suffix 1sg) + ʔēl; Ezekiel, from Hbr yəḥezqē(ʔ)l ‘God has strengthened’ < yəḥezq ‘he has strengthened’ (cf. Ar ↗ḤZQ) + ʔēl; Israel, from Lat, from Grk Israēl, from Hbr yiśrāʔēl ‘Israel’, name meaning ‘God has striven, saved’ < yiśrā ‘he has striven, saved’ (see śry) + ʔēl; Joel, from Hbr yôʔēl ‘Yahweh is God’ < yô, short form of yahweh ‘Yahweh’ (see hwy) + ʔēl; Michael, from Hbr mîkāʔēl ‘who is like God?’ < mî ‘who?’ + kā ‘like’ (cf. Ar ↗ka‑) + ʔēl; Samuel, from Hbr šəmûʔēl ‘name of God’, or, ‘the name is God’ < šəmû, archaic form of šēm ‘name’ (cf. Ar ↗SMY) + ʔēl; cf. also Schlemiel, from Yidd, perhaps from the Hbr n.prop. šəlūmîʔēl ‘Shelumiel’, meaning ‘my well-being is God’ < šəlūm ‘well-being’ (cf. Ar ↗salām ‘peace’) + ‑î ‘my’ (suffix 1sg) + ʔēl.
For other Engl words that go back to Ar allāh ‘God’, cf. ↗s.v..

► ʔallaha, vb. II, to deify, make a god of s.o.: caus. denom.
► taʔallaha, vb. V, to become a deity, a godhead; to deify o.s.: T-stem of II, inchoat., refl.

► ʔilāhaẗ, pl. ‑āt, n., goddess: f. of ʔilāh.
► ^BP#4130ʔilāhī, adj., divine, of God; theological: nsb-adj.; n.pl., al-ʔilāhiyyāt, theological, spiritual concerns: nominalized adj.f.pl., abstr. | ʕilm al-ʔilāhiyyāt, n., theology.
► aḷḷāh, n., Allah, God (as the One and Only): < *al-ʔilāh, see s.v.. | wa-ḷḷāhi, excl., by God!; bi-llāhi (ʕalayk), excl., for God’s sake, I implore you, I beg of you; li-llāhi darruka, exclamation of admiration and praise, see ↗darr.
► ^BP#784aḷḷāhumma, excl., O God!: see s.v. | ~ ʔillā, conj., unless, were it not that, except that, or at best (after a negative statement); ~ ʔiḏā, conj., at least if or when; if only; ~ naʕam, excl., by God, yes! most certainly!.
► ʔulūhiyyaẗ, n.f., divine power, divinity: abstr. formation.
► taʔlīh, n., deification, apotheosis: vn. II.
► ʔālih, n., (pagan) god: PA *I (?).
► ʔālihaẗ, pl. ‑āt, n., goddess: f. of ʔālih.
► ʔālihī, adj., divine: nsb-adj. from ʔālih.
► mutaʔallih, adj., divine, heavenly: PA V.

allāh الله

√ʔLH

Allah, God (as the One and Only) – WehrCowan1979.

From *al‑ ↗ʔilāh ‘the god, God’. Qurʔānic usage of the old Ar word may be influenced by Syr ʔalāhā.

▪ eC7 Q passim.

See ↗ʔilāh.

▪ Jeffery1938: »One gathers from al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ, i, 84 (so Abū Ḥayyān, Baḥr, i, 15), that certain early Muslim authorities hold that the word was of Syr or Hbr origin. The majority, however, claimed that it was pure Ar, though they set forth various theories as to its derivation.¹ – Some held that it has no derivation, being murtaǧal : the Kūfans in general derived it from al-ʔilāhu, while the Baṣrans derived it from al-lāhu, taking lāhun as a vn. from √LYH ‘to be high’ or ‘to be veiled’. The suggested origins for a ʔilāh were even more varied, some taking it from ʔalaha ‘to worship’, some from ʔaliha ‘to be perplexed’, some from ʔaliha ʔilà ‘to turn to for protection’, and others from waliha ‘to be perplexed’. – Western scholars are fairly unanimous that the source of the word must be found in one of the older religions. In the Sem area ʔLH was a widely used word for ‘deity’, cf. Hbr ʔᵆlōᵃh, Aram ʔᵆlāh, Syr ʔalāhā, Sab ʔlh; and so Ar ʔilāh is doubtless a genuine old Sem form. The form allāh, however, is different, and there can be little doubt that this, like the Mandaean ʔlʔhʔ and the Pahlavi ideogram,² goes back to the Syr ʔalāhā (cf. Grünbaum, ZDMG, 39: 571; Sprenger, Leben, i, 287-9; Ahrens, Muhammad, 15; Rudolph, Abhängigkeit, 26; Bell, Origin, 54; Cheikho, Naṣrāniya, 159; Mingana, Syriac Influence, 86). The word, however, came into use in Arabian heathenism long before Muḥammad’s time (Wellhausen, Reste, 217; Nielsen in HAA, i, 218 ff.). It occurs frequently in the NArabian inscriptions,³ and also in those from SArabia, as, e.g., ʕmn kl ʔlʔltm ‘with all the Gods’ (in Glaser, Abessinien, 50),⁴ as well as in the pre-Islamic oath forms, such as that of Qays b. Ḫaṭīm given by Horovitz, KU, 140, and many in al-Šanqīṭī’s introduction to the Muʕallaqāt. It is possible that the expression ʔallāhu taʕāla is of SAr origin, as the name tʕlw occurs in a Qat inscription.⁵ «
▪ Kiltz2003, however, showed that »there is no reason to assume a loan from Syr into Ar, as allāh is perfectly motivated, i.e. phonetically regular, in (some dialects of) Ar and its development within Ar is safely accounted for […]. There is, however, a good possibility that the prominence of Syriac allāhā and its near homophony positively influenced the use of allāh in the Qurʔān. That is to say, we find allāh in the Qurʔān not only because it was the most ‘fitting’ word to be used, in spite of or because of allah’s prominent position within pre-islamic religion, but perhaps because pre-islamic connotations were more easily superseded taking into consideration that its near homophone Syr allāhā was already prominently used in a monotheistic context.«

1. They are discussed in detail by al-Rāzī on pp. 81-4, of the first volume of his Tafsīr. 2. Herzfeld, Paikuli, Glossary, 135. 3. Cf. Littmann, Entzifferung der thamudenischen Inschriften, p. 63 ff.; Sem. Inscr, p. 113 ff.; and Ryckmans, Noms propres, i, 2; RES, iii, 441. 4. Derenbourg in JA, viiiᵉ ser., xx, 157 ff., wants to find the word in the ʔlhn of a Minacan inscription, but this is usually taken as a reference to a tribal god ʔlhān, vide Halevy, ibid, p. 325, 326. 5. Rhodokanakis, “Die Inschriften an der Mauer von Koḥlān Timnaʕ,” in SBAW, Wien, 1924.

▪ As a matter of course, Engl Allah (1702) is from Ar aḷḷāh. – The title Ayatollah is the Pers āyatollāh, which is from Ar ʔāyatu ’ḷḷāh ‘sign of God’, < ʔāyaẗ ‘sign; Koranic verse’ (↗ʔWY) + (a)llāh, and the name Bahaullah < Ar bahāʔu ḷḷāh, is composed of Ar bahāʔ ‘splendor’ (↗BHW) + (a)llāh ‘God’. – Hezbollah, the name of an extremist Shiite group active in Lebanon, founded c. 1982, entered Engl via Pers ḥezbollāh, which is from Ar ḥizbu ’llāh, lit. ‘Party of God’ (↗ḥizb); »[t]he name of various Islamic groups in modern times, the name itself is attested in English by 1960 in reference to an Indonesian guerilla battalion of 1945 that “grew out of a similarly named organization formed by the Japanese to give training in military drill to young Moslems.”¹ « – EtymOnline. – Other compositions with (a)ḷḷāh include inshallah (1857), phonetic spelling of Ar ʔin šāʔa ’ḷḷ̣āh ‘if God wills (it)’, and bismillah (first attested in Byron), from Ar bismi ’llāh(i) ‘in the name of God’.
▪ Less obviously related to Ar (a)ḷḷāh is Engl olé (1922). This is the Span expression of admiration olé ‘bravo!’, which—perhaps—is from Ar wa-llāh ‘by God!’ – Osman2002, Huehnergard2011.

1. Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java, Chicago 1960.

► wa-ḷḷāhi, excl., by God!
► bi-llāhi (ʕalayk), excl., for God’s sake, I implore you, I beg of you.
► li-llāhi darruka, exclamation of admiration and praise, see ↗darr.

► ^BP#784aḷḷāhumma, excl., O God!: see ↗s.v. | ~ ʔillā, conj., unless, were it not that, except that, or at best (after a negative statement); ~ ʔiḏā, conj., at least if or when; if only; ~ naʕam, excl., by God, yes! most certainly!.

allāhumma الّهُمّا

√ʔLH

interj.

God! – WehrCowan1979.

From Hbr ʔᵆlōhîm ‘God’, properly a pl., but used as sg., of Hbr ʔᵆlōᵃh ‘god’, which is of course cognate with Ar ↗ʔilāh.

▪ eC7 Q 3:26, 5:114, 8:32, 10:10, 39:46, in all places an invocatory name for God, used in contexts of absolute supplication, cf. e.g. 10:10 daʕwā-hum fī-hā subḥāna-ka ’ḷḷāhumma ‘their prayer in it [sc. Paradise] is “Glory to You, God!”’

…

▪ Jeffery 1938: »The form of the word was a great puzzle to the early grammarians:⁶ the orthodox explanation being that it is a vocative form where the final m takes the place of an initial yā. The Kūfans took it as a contraction of yā ʔallāhu ʔāminnā bi-ḫayr (Bayḍ. on iii, 25), but their theory is ridiculed by Ibn Yaʕīš, i, 181. As a vocative it is said to be of the same class as halumma ‘come along’. al-Ḫafājī, 20, however, recognizes it as a foreign word. – It is possible, as Margoliouth notes (ERE, vi, 248), that it is the Hbr ʔᵆlōhîm which had become known to the Arabs through their contacts with Jewish tribes.⁷ «
▪ …

6. Margoliouth, ERE, vi, 248. 7. There is to be considered, however, the Phoen ʔlm = godhead (see references in Harris’ Glossary, p. 77), which is evidence of a Sem form with final m. Cf. Nielsen in HAA, i, 221, n. 2.

▪ Not directly from Ar aḷḷāhumma, but from the same source as the latter, is Engl Elohim (c. 1600), a name of God in the Bible.

► allāhumma ʔillā, conj., unless, were it not that, except that, or at best (after a negative statement).
► allāhumma ʔiḏā, conj., at least if or when; if only.
► allāhumma naʕam, excl., by God, yes! most certainly!

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