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ʾIlāh (plural ʾālihah or ʾilāhūn), is the Arabic for "deity" or "god". The feminine is ʾilāhah إلاﻫﺔ "goddess"; with the article, it appears as al-ʾilāhah اﻻﻻﻫﺔ. It appears in the name of the monotheistic god of the Abrahamic religions as al-Lāh, literally "the God", which is paralleled in a feminine form by the pagan divinity al-Lāt "the Goddess".
ʾIlāh is cognate to Northwest Semitic ʾēl and Akkadian ilum. The word is from a Proto-Semitic archaic biliteral ʾ-l meaning "god" (possibly with a wider meaning of "strong"), which was extended to a regular triliteral by the addition of a h (as in Hebrew ʾelōah, ʾelōhim). The word is spelled either إله with an optional diacritic alif to mark the ā or (more rarely) with a full alif, إلاه .
In Islamic context, an ʾilāh is a deity and does not necessarily refer to the monotheistic God; it can also refer to polytheistic deities, the worship of which is considered shirk "idolatry"[citation needed]. The term is used throughout the Qur'an in passages detailing the existence of God and of the beliefs of non-Muslims in other divinities. Notably, the first statement of the shahadah is, "there is no ʾilāh but al-Lāh" "there is no god but God".
The alternative spelling له /Lah/ 'God'[1] is cognate with لاهوت /Lāhūt/ 'Godhead, Deity'[2]. As an ordinary, non-theological term, the word appears as لهو /lahw/ 'amusement, entertainment, fun'; ملهاه /ma-lhāh/ 'comedy'[3] (accounting for "a "considerable debt" to Islamic philosophy"[4] in Dante's Divine Comedy[5]). The form /ʔi-lāh/ exhibits a grammatical prefix "ʔalif" similar to the "ʔalif"-prefixed name /ʔa-ḥmad/ concurrent with (the differently-prefixed) forms /Mu-ḥammad/ and /Ma-ḥmūd/. The form /ʔal-Lāh/ contains a prefixed definite article /ʔal/ 'the' -- "Al-Lah or “the Divinity” (hence Lahut)"[6].
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Bibliography
- Georgii Wilhelmi Freytagii : Lexicon Arabico-Latinum. Librairie du Liban, Beirut, 1975.
- J. Milton Cowan : The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. 4th edn. Spoken Language Services, Ithaca (NY), 1979.
References
- ^ Freytagii 1975, vol. 4, p. 128b, citing Golius Bergius
- ^ Cowan 1979, p. 1002a
- ^ Cowan 1979, p. 1004a
- ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy#Islamic_philosophy
- ^ as suggested by Asin Palacios and by Henry Corbin http://henrycorbinproject.blogspot.com/2009/02/corbin-dante-i-fedeli-damore.html
- ^ http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Sufi
External links
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Look up Appendix:Proto-Semitic *ʾil- or *ʾil- in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
See also
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