Original Arabic text
Published English translation
4. [4/-] al-Kafi: Ali b. Ibrahim from his father from al-Nadhr b. Suwayd from Hisham b. al-Hakam - that he asked Aba Abdillah عليه السلام about the Names of Allah and their derivation saying: What is Allah derived from? He [Hisham] said: so he [the Imam] said to me: O Hisham, ‘Allah’ is derived from ‘ilah’ and ‘al-ilah’ connotes ‘the one who is worshipped’. The name is other than the named. Whoever worships the name without the meaning then he has disbelieved and has not worshipped anything. Whoever worships the name and the meaning then he has disbelieved and worshipped two [distinct things]. Whoever worships the meaning without the name then that is true monotheism. Have you understood O Hisham? He [Hisham] said: I said: increase for me. He said: Allah has ninety nine names, if the name was identical to what is named then every name among these [ninety-nine] would be a god, rather Allah is a meaning to which these names point to, and each one of them is other than him. O Hisham, ‘bread’ is a name for what is eaten, ‘water’ is a name for what is drunk, ‘clothes’ is a name for what is worn, ‘fire’ is a name for what burns, have you understood Hisham? an understanding through which you can repel and defeat our enemies and those who betake others apart from Allah Mighty and Majestic [alone]. I said: Yes. He said: May Allah benefit you by it and make you firm O Hisham.Hisham said: by Allah no one has defeated me on the subject of Tawhid to this day when I stand in the position I do.
Narrator and transmission
See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.
Attributed scholarly assessments
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Source, rights, and attribution
- dataset Name
- Thaqalayn public library, via ThaqalaynAPI snapshot
- source Url
- https://thaqalayn.com/hadith/9/3/113/4
- license
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- edition
- Muʿjam al-Aḥādīth al-Muʿtabara, volume 1, Thaqalayn digital edition / Ammaar Muslim 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 Āṣif al-Muḥsinī. Translation: Ammaar Muslim. Data transport: MohammedArab1/ThaqalaynAPI. No endorsement implied.
- translator
- Ammaar Muslim
- source Revision
- becbad600b693ce23735d7403c4126ce7c896d34
- content Hash
- d1942eec001b2fdb50b8e9f915bee1981fb0e632d9f99a91556e0a4a63f81072
- source File Hash
- dd6ab8ed68633c092f938f895cc0a6428eecd77639bf5ce0087d6b592fc3aa79
- original Source Url
- https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/9/3/113/4
- 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.
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