Allah ( ;"Allah". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. , ) is the Arabic language term for God, and is mainly used for God in Islam as well as other monotheistic conceptions of the God of Abraham. Outside of Arabic languages, it is principally associated with Islam (in which it is also considered the proper name of the Islamic God), although the term was used in pre-Islamic Arabia and continues to be used today by Arabic-speaking adherents of any of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism and Christianity."Islam and Christianity", Encyclopedia of Christianity (2001): Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews also refer to God as Allāh. It is thought to be derived by contraction from al-ilāh (, ) and is linguistically related to other Semitic God names, such as Aramaic ( ) and Hebrew ( ).
The word "Allah" now conveys the superiority or sole existence of one God, but among the pre-Islamic Arabs, Allah was the supreme deity and worshipped alongside lesser deities in a pantheon. Many Jews, Christians, and early Muslims used "Allah" and "al-ilah" synonymously in Classical Arabic. The word is also frequently, albeit not exclusively, used by Bábists, Baháʼís, Mandaeans, Indonesian Christians, Maltese Christians, and Sephardic Jews,"Allah." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, AllahWillis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition Shambhala Publications 2009 page 531 as well as by the Gagauz people.
Etymology
The etymology of the word Allāh has been discussed extensively by classical Arab philologists.D.B. Macdonald. Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed, Brill. "Ilah", Vol. 3, p. 1093. The majority of scholars consider it to be derived from a contraction of the Arabic definite article al- and "deity, god" to meaning "the deity, the God" as in the contraction of to Allāt. In some sources, the contracted and un-contracted forms are used interchangeably. Originally, ʾilāh was used as an epithet for the West Semitic creator god (the Ugaritic version of El), before being adopted as the proper name itself for this god.
Semitic cognates of "Allāh" appear in Semitic languages,Columbia Encyclopaedia says: Derived from an old Semitic root referring to the Divine and used in the Canaanite El, the Mesopotamian ilu, and the biblical Elohim and Eloah, the word Allah is used by all Arabic-speaking Muslims, Christians, Jews, and other monotheists. such as the Aramaic () in the absolute form, and in its definite/emphatic form, (), as in reflected in Biblical Aramaic. Also Syriac “ ”(), both meaning simply "god", or "deity", used by both monotheists and pagans.The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon – Entry for ʼlh Others are Akkadian , Ugaritic , and Phoenician . A minority hypothesis posits that Allah is a loanword from the Syriac Alāhā.Gerhard Böwering. Encyclopedia of the Quran, Brill, 2002. Vol. 2, p. 318 A more likely theory is that, it is an adaptation of the word to the phonetic structure of Arabic.Kiltz, David. "The Relationship between Arabic Allāh and Syriac Allāha." Der Islam 88.1 (2012): 47.
Whether or not Allah can be considered as the personal name of God became disputed in contemporary scholarship.Andreas Görke and Johanna Pink Tafsir and Islamic Intellectual History Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre Oxford University Press in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies London p. 478 Islamic scholars have generally tried to explain the issue by rejecting approaches that associate this word with the names of other gods or that state it is derived from these names; grammarians of the Basra school regarded it as either formed "spontaneously" () or as the determined form of llāh (from the verbal root lyh with the meaning suggesting of "lofty" or "hidden"). Other Muslims scholars proposed that the term derives from ('the object of mystery') since the nature of God is a mystery and incomprehensible for humans.Ibrahim, Zakyi. "To Use 'God' or 'Allah'?". American Journal of Islam and Society 26.4 (2009): v. In Islamic usage and theology, Allah is God's most unique, proper name, and referred to as ('the Word of Majesty'). Jahm bin Safwan was reported in later sources as holding that divine names, including "Allah", were created rather than eternal. Ibn Hanbal rejected this view.Morris S. Seale Muslim Theology A study of Origins with Reference to the Church Fathers Great Russel Street, London 1964 p. 58
History of usage Pre-Islamic Arabia
Regional variants of the word Allah occur in both pagan and Christian pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions.
According to Marshall Hodgson, it seems that in the pre-Islamic Arabia, some Arab Christians undertook pilgrimages to the Kaaba, a pagan temple at that time, honoring Allah there as the God the Creator.Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, University of Chicago Press, p. 156 Archaeological excavations have led to the discovery of pre-Islamic inscriptions and tombs made by Arab Christians in the ruins of a church at Umm el-Jimal in Northern Jordan, which initially thought to be containing references to Allah by Enno Littmann, as the proper name of God; however, this view was rejected by a second translation of the five-verse inscription made by Bellamy et al. (1985–88).James Bellamy, "Two Pre-Islamic Arabic Inscriptions Revised: Jabal Ramm and Umm al-Jimal", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 108/3 (1988) pp. 372–378 (translation of the inscription) "This was set up by colleagues/friends of ʿUlayh, the son of ʿUbaydah, secretary/adviser of the cohort Augusta Secunda Philadelphiana; may he go mad/crazy who effaces it."Enno Littmann, Arabic Inscriptions (Leiden, 1949) In an inscription of Christian martyrion dated to 512, references to al-ilah () appear in both Arabic and Aramaic. The inscription opens with the phrase "By the Help of al-ilah".Adolf Grohmann, Arabische Paläographie II: Das Schriftwesen und die Lapidarschrift (1971), Wien: Hermann Böhlaus Nochfolger, Page: 6-8Beatrice 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: Irfan Shahîd quoting the 10th-century encyclopedic collection Kitab al-Aghani notes that 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.Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, page 418. According to Shahid, on the authority of 10th-century Muslim scholar Al-Marzubani, "Allah" was also mentioned in pre-Islamic Christian poems by some Ghassanid and Tanukhid poets in Syria and Northern Arabia.Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, Page: 452A. Amin and A. Harun, Sharh Diwan Al-Hamasa (Cairo, 1951), Vol. 1, Pages: 478-480Al-Marzubani, Mu'jam Ash-Shu'araa, Page: 302
Different theories have been proposed regarding the role of Allah in pre-Islamic polytheistic Meccan cults.L. Gardet, Allah, Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. by Sir H.A.R. GibbGerhard Böwering, God and his Attributes, Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, ed. by Jane Dammen McAuliffe According to Ibn Kathir, Arab idolaters considered Allah as an unseen god who created and controlled the Universe. Pagans believed worship of humans or animals who had fortunate occurrences in their life brought them closer to God. Pre-Islamic Meccans worshiped Allah alongside a host of lesser gods and those whom they called the "daughters of Allah". According to Islamic sources, the Meccans and their neighbors believed that the goddesses Al-lāt, Al-'Uzzá, and Manāt, and in some cases the Angels, were the daughters of Allah. Some authors have suggested that polytheistic Arabs used the name as a reference to a creator god or a supreme deity of their pantheon.Zeki Saritopak, Allah, The Qu'ran: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Oliver Leaman, p. 34 According to one Islamic hypothesis, the Kaaba was originally built by Abraham and his son Ishmael for the worship of a single supreme god, Allah, to whom people were called on pilgrimages. However, this place of worship was filled by the Quraysh with as many as 360 idols about a century before Muhammad's time. Some scholars have suggested that Allah may have represented a remote creator god who was gradually eclipsed by more particularized local deities. There is disagreement on whether Allah played a major role in the Meccan religious cult. No iconic representation of Allah is known to have existed. Muhammad's father's name was meaning "the slave of Allāh". The interpretation that Pre-Islamic Arabs once practiced Abrahamic religions is supported by some literary evidence, being the prevalence of Ishmael, whose God was that of Abraham, in pre-Islamic Arab culture.The Treasury of literature, Sect. 437The Beginning of History, Volume 3, Sect.10The Collection of the Speeches of Arabs, volume 1, section 75
Islamic period
Early Islam
The worship of Allah, to the exclusion of all other deities, is the fundamental tenet of Islam, encapsulated in the testimony La ilaha illa Allah. The Quranic discourse with pagan Arabs did not aim to prove Allah's existence, but rather to purge it of polytheistic accretions, reinforcing this core monotheism. Quran frames the worship of Allah as the shared mission of all prophets—including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus—and invites the People of the Book to unite under this common word (). "The Qur'ān insists that Muhammad and his followers worship the same God as the Jews (). The Qur'an's Allah is the same Creator God who covenanted with Abraham". Francis Edward 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.F.E. Peters, Islam, p.4, Princeton University Press, 2003 Since the first centuries of Islam, Arabic-speaking commentators of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faith used the term Allah as a generic term for the supreme being.Thomas, Kenneth J. "Allah in Translations of the Bible." The Bible Translator 52.3 (2001): 301-306. Saadia Gaon used the term Allah interchangeably with the term ʾĔlōhīm. Theodore Abu Qurrah translates theos as Allah in his Bible, as in John 1:1 "the Word was with Allah". Muslim commentators likewise used the term Allah for the Biblical concept of God. Ibn Qutayba writes "You cannot serve both Allah and Mammon." However, Muslim translators of the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia rarely translated the Tetragrammaton, referring to the supreme being in Israelite tradition, as Allah. Instead, most commentators either translated Yahweh as either yahwah or rabb, the latter corresponding to the Jewish custom to refer to Yahweh as Adonai.