Original Arabic text
Published English translation
2. Ali ibn Ibrahim has narrated from his father from an-Nadr ibn Suwayd from Hisham ibn al-Hakam who has said that he asked abu ‘Abdallah (a.s.), about the names of Allah and their derivations and roots. “What is the root from which the word Allah is derived?” The Imam replied, “O Hisham, the word Allah is derived from ’ilah, that is, the One Who is worshipped and the One who is worshipped is supposed to be worth worshipping. The name of Allah is different from His Own self. Whoever worships the name not the meaning has disbelieved and has, in fact, worshipped nothing. Whoever worships the name and its meaning jointly, he becomes a polytheist because of worshipping two gods. Whoever worships the meaning of the word Allah only he, in reality, has worshipped the One Allah (God). O Hisham, did you grasp it?” Hisham requested, “Kindly enlighten me more.” The Imam added, “Allah has ninety-nine names. If each name had a separate meaning then each meaning would have been a god. Allah is One only and all His names stand for just One reality and all these names are other than Allah Himself. O Hisham, bread is the name of something to eat. Water is the name of something to drink. Dress is the name of something to wear on. Fire is the name of something that burns. O Hisham, did you fully grasp the point so you can defend your belief and contest successfully against our opponents, who, along with Allah, the Exalted, the Great, except things other than Him?” Hisham replied, “Yes, I did understand.” The Imam said, “O Hisham, may Allah benefit you thereby and grant you steadfastness.” Hisham (the narrator) says, “I swear by Allah, no one has ever defeated me on the issue of Tawhid until now.”
Narrator and transmission
See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.
Attributed scholarly assessments
Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi: حسن
Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (2/39)
Assessment transcribed from the source's named scholar and reference. No new grading or consensus is asserted; differing entries remain separate.
Shaykh Baqir al-Behbudi: Catalogue non-inclusion note (not an authenticity grade)
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Kāfī
Source records non-inclusion in this scholar's selection; this is not itself a weak or authentic grade.
Source, rights, and attribution
- dataset Name
- Thaqalayn public library, via ThaqalaynAPI snapshot
- source Url
- https://thaqalayn.com/hadith/1/3/16/2
- license
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- edition
- Al-Kafi, volume 1, Thaqalayn digital edition / Muhammad Sarwar translation
- imported At
- 2026-10-18T21:36:12.871Z
- license Url
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- rights Statement Url
- https://thaqalayn.com/terms
- attribution
- Source: Thaqalayn (Stichting Thaqalayn). Compiler: Shaykh Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī. Translation: Muhammad Sarwar. Data transport: MohammedArab1/ThaqalaynAPI. No endorsement implied.
- translator
- Muhammad Sarwar
- source Revision
- becbad600b693ce23735d7403c4126ce7c896d34
- content Hash
- 0c8f11e8945a24a100f571998a5842c57f44d73e5d2e2e5f1284c4e8d0a804b4
- source File Hash
- 30bc491c96eb3860f3d3dfe97f46353a88858d7cb9e06d662ebdd04252ac5a3e
- original Source Url
- https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/3/16/2
- changes
- Arabic and English texts preserved verbatim from pinned snapshot. Compiler introduction excluded where present; references mapped to fields; assessment whitespace trimmed; source-supplied English sanad retained separately. Search normalization is not applied to displayed text.
- verification Note
- Publisher content rights, translator attribution and structural checks, with independent publisher-page spot checks—not scholarly authentication or printed-edition collation. Historical text and scholarly reference strings may contain source errors; they are not silently corrected. No full commentary prose or inferred narrator identity is added. Muʿjam coverage, where present, is only the supplied excerpt, not the complete work.