Root · 0 in the Quran · 8 in 5 texts of the library
أرقtwo unconnected primary senses — nafār al-nawm laylan, sleeplessness by night, and a … (root rq)
الهمزة والراء والقاف أصلان أحدهما نفار النوم ليلا والآخر لون من الألوان
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of أ ر ق that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
16 words4 verbs3 verbal nouns1 participle1 intensive or elative7 other nouns
- أَرِقsleepless or wakeful by night by reason of a malady, or a distracting …
- أَرَقّmore; most gentle
- أَرَقinsomnia
- أَرِقَhe was sleepless, or wakeful, or sleep departed from him, by night
- أَرَّقَنِيَsuch a thing rendered me, or caused me to be, sleepless or wakeful
The whole family5 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs4أَرِقَ · أَرَّقَنِيَ · آرَقَ
The root as an action: the bare Form I, and the Forms made by adding letters before, inside or after the root.grammar →
Form I vowels: فَعِلَ يَفْعَلُ (i – a; the imperfect from Lane's “aor.”)
Verbal nouns3أَرَق · إِيرَاق · تَأْرِيق
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
Participles1مَأْرُوق
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
Intensives, qualities and the elative1أَرَقَان
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
Other nouns7أَرِق · أَرَقّ · آرِق
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
- أَرِقsleepless or wakeful by night by reason of a malady, or a distracting …Lanenounlibrary ×3LaneIbn Fāris
- أَرَقّmore; most gentleautonounlibrary ×3Ibn Fāris
- آرِقnounLaneIbn Fāris
- أَرُقnounLaneIbn Fāris
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 9 patterns does
What each pattern does. The pattern gives a tendency, not a rule: many words have drifted into meanings of their own.
The pattern machinePour the root into a pattern; see whether the word exists
Choose a pattern; the root's letters pour into it. Then see whether the word exists in our sources. The machine makes shapes; only usage makes words.
Not in our sources. A possible shape, not a word we can show: the Quran, the library and Lane do not have it for this root.
Place noun with -a. The place noun with the feminine -a. Sometimes it is only a variant of mafʿal; often it names the place where a thing is found in abundance (maʾsada, 'a place full of lions'). So maktab is the place of writing, and maktaba, where writings are gathered: a library, a bookshop. Our summary AI
But: maktaba is not in our classical dictionaries for k-t-b: Lane and al-Jawharī give maktab ('a school'), none gives maktaba. Its sense of 'library, bookshop' fits the pattern of abundance, but that is our reading of the pattern, not a classical entry. Many mafʿala words are single items of usage (maqbara 'cemetery'), which the grammarians call heard, not formed by rule.
The grammarians on this pattern (4)
ما يكون مفعلة لازمة لها الهاء والفتحة … وذلك إذا أردت أن تكثر الشيء بالمكان، وذلك قولك: أرض مسبعة، ومأسدة
Chapter on what is mafʿala, with the -a and the a-vowel always: that is when you mean that a thing abounds in a place, as you say 'a land of many beasts of prey (masbaʿa), of many lions (maʾsada)' AI
Sībawayh (d. c. 180/796), al-Kitāb, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn, 3rd ed. (Cairo: al-Khānjī, 1988), 4:94 · OpenITI line 21027–21028 ↗ · on this site · OpenITI RELEASE v2025.1.9, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
و نحو المظنة و المقبرة فتحا و ضما ليس بقياس
and words like maẓinna and maqbara (with a or u) are not by rule AI
Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249), al-Shāfiya fī ʿilm al-taṣrīf, ed. Ḥasan Aḥmad al-ʿUthmān (Mecca: al-Maktaba al-Makkiyya, 1995), 1:30 · OpenITI line 223 ↗ · on this site · OpenITI RELEASE v2025.1.9, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- “designate the place where the object signified by the noun from which they are formed, is found in large numbers or quantities” Wright, Grammar I, §247, p. 148 ↗ · on nouns of abundance, maf'ala · 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1896) · public domain
- “Nouns of time and place not unfrequently take the feminine form” Wright, Grammar I, §225, p. 128 ↗ · on maf'ala as a variant of maf'al · 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1896) · public domain
This root has a weak or doubled letter, so real words change shape (qāla → qāʾil, not qāwil); the machine pours the letters in as they are, and matches attested words by their regular pattern.
About thisWhat “attested” means here; the sources
Attested means found in our data: the Quranic Arabic Corpus (lemmas, verb Forms, participles, verbal nouns, plurals), the library's words (automatic analysis), Lane's Lexicon (his headwords, the Forms he numbers, the verbal nouns and plurals he names) and Ibn Fāris's entry. Nothing is generated for this list. Meanings are Lane's first gloss in his entry, or else the analyser's gloss (“auto”). Vowelling follows the corpus, then Lane, then the analyser; verbs are given in the regular perfect. Lane's Lexicon thins out after qāf, and a few of his entries cover several roots at once: those roots show no Lane. The patterns, written with ف ع ل, are computed by us.
The dictionaries
English: AI translation AIal-Khalīl · 170Al-arqān — though al-yarqān is the better [form] — [is] an affliction that strikes crops;
al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad (d. c. 170/786), Kitāb al-ʿAyn. The first Arabic dictionary, arranged by permutations of the root letters.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Jawharī · 393Al-araq: wakefulness (al-suhar).
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395Hamza, rāʾ, and qāf (الهمزة والراء والقاف) form two roots: one is the fleeing of sleep at night, and the other is a kind of color.
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowLisān · 711Al-araq: wakefulness.
Ibn Manẓūr (d. 711/1311), Lisān al-ʿArab. The great compendium of the earlier dictionaries (entry shortened).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowLane · 1876English, synthesising the classical dictionaries.
E. W. Lane (d. 1876), An Arabic-English Lexicon. English, synthesising the classical dictionaries.
Lane, Arabic-English Lexiconread Lane's entry online ↗
The same letters, turned
The same three letters in all six orders. Choose one.
أ ر ق
الهمزة والراء والقاف أصلان أحدهما نفار النوم ليلا والآخر لون من الألوان
ʾ-r-q: two roots: one of them is the fleeing of sleep at night, and the other is a color among colors. AI
an entry in Ibn Fārislater sources onlyin none of them
Do these six share one core meaning?
Reference
About thisal-Khalīl, Ibn Jinnī, Ibn Fāris; the counts across the dictionary
al-Khalīl (d. c. 170/786), Kitāb al-ʿAyn, as transmitted by al-Layth: a two-letter word “turns in two ways”, a three-letter word “in six ways” (masdūsa), four letters in 24, five in 120; “its used forms are written down and its unused ones dropped” (line 975 ↗). The dictionary is built on this: each chapter takes a set of letters and names which orders are used (mustaʿmal) and which unused (muhmal). The ring shows that verdict, from the chapter heading as edited (documented in the text; how much of the book is al-Khalīl's own is disputed).
A reported total. al-Suyūṭī transmits, from Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī, that al-Khalīl put the possible forms, used and unused, of two to five letters at 12,305,412 (al-Muzhir, line 1347 ↗). It is reported, not found in the ʿAyn. It equals exactly the arrangements of 2 to 5 different letters out of 28 (756 + 19,656 + 491,400 + 11,793,600); the breakdown printed beside it is corrupt, and al-Zubaydī's count, given next, differs (6,659,400).
Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002), al-Khaṣāʾiṣ, names the greater derivation (al-ishtiqāq al-akbar): bind a three-letter root and its six orders to one meaning, and bring stray members back “by the subtlety of the craft and interpretation” (line 7536 ↗). He says himself that it does not hold for every root (line 167 ↗; line 7603 ↗).
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004) gives each root its own aṣl and treats a rearranged word as maqlūb, “turned round”, and so not a root of its own: “j-b-dh is not a root, because it is a single word, turned round” (Maqāyīs, line 6147 ↗). The ring sets his aṣl for each order side by side; whether they meet is the question.
Neighbours on the ring differ by one swap of two letters.
The critique. A source quoted by al-Suyūṭī calls the greater derivation Ibn Jinnī's innovation, “not relied on in the language” (al-Muzhir, line 6159 ↗).
The other axis. The root's letters also go into patterns that keep their order and change the frame: the patterns (awzān) and the verb Forms I–X.
Across Ibn Fāris's dictionary. Of the 2,300 possible sets of three different sound letters (no hamza, w or y), 1,021 have at least one order as an entry. How many of their six orders are entries:
- 1 of 6319
- 2 of 6218
- 3 of 6164
- 4 of 6155
- 5 of 6107
- 6 of 658
- 1 of 6148
- 2 of 6108
- 3 of 6157
- 4 of 6179
- 5 of 6111
- 6 of 643
Of the orders al-Khalīl calls used, 2,097 are entries in Ibn Fāris and 267 are not; 17 that he calls unused are entries in Ibn Fāris.
Attested here means found in our digital texts (Ibn Fāris, Lisān al-ʿArab, Lane, the Quranic Arabic Corpus), with w and y kept apart and hamza spellings merged; it is our data, not a classical verdict. English beside the Arabic is AI translation. Sources and grades: docs/research/root-permutations.md.
Letters & sound
- أhamzadeep in the throat · voiced, stopSīb. · I. Jinnī
- رrāʾtip of the tongue, near the nūn · voiced, in betweenSīb. · I. Jinnī
- قqāffar back of the tongue · voiced, stopSīb. · I. Jinnī
How each letter is made, in brief, from Sībawayh's and Ibn Jinnī's own sentences (linked); their words are under Reference.
Sharing two of its three letters (computed; kinship of form, not of meaning)
Reference
How it is madeSībawayh and Ibn Jinnī · phonetics
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
أ
فأقصاها مخرجا: الهمزة والهاء والألف
The furthest of them [the three in the throat] in place: the hamza, the hāʾ and the alif. Sībawayh, line 26548 ↗
فأولها من أسفله وأقصاه، مخرج الهمزة والألف والهاء، هكذا يقول سيبويه
The first of them [in the throat], from its lowest and furthest part, is the place of the hamza, the alif and the hāʾ: so Sībawayh says. Ibn Jinnī, line 965 ↗
ر
ومن مخرج النون غير أنه أدخل في ظهر اللسان قليلا لانحرافه إلى اللام مخرج الراء
From the place of the nūn, except that it goes a little further onto the back of the tongue, because it leans towards the lām, is the place of the rāʾ. Sībawayh, lines 26557–26558 ↗
ومن مخرج النون غير أنه أدخل في ظهر اللسان قليلا، لانحرافه إلى اللام، مخرج الراء
From the place of the nūn, except that it goes a little further onto the back of the tongue, because it leans towards the lām, is the place of the rāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, lines 980–981 ↗
ق
ومن أقصى اللسان وما فوقه من الحنك الأعلى مخرج القاف
From the furthest part of the tongue and the upper palate above it is the place of the qāf. Sībawayh, line 26550 ↗
ومما فوق ذلك من أقصى اللسان، مخرج القاف
From above that, at the furthest part of the tongue, is the place of the qāf. Ibn Jinnī, line 972 ↗
Sībawayh, al-Kitāb (ed. Hārūn) and Ibn Jinnī, Sirr ṣināʿat al-iʿrāb; OpenITI digital texts (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Full credits on each letter's page.
In the Breath of the All-MercifulIbn ʿArabī · metaphysics
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
أ
Nature (ch. 2)
وإلا الهاء والهمزة فإنهما باردتان رطبتان
And except hāʾ and hamza, for these two are cold and moist.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2583ر
Level of existence: السماء الخامسة · the fifth heaven
Divine Name: المصور · the Form-Giver (al-Muṣawwir)
Lunar mansion: الغفر · al-Ghafr
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64675Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 10 line 2573 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
المرتبة العشرية فحروفها حارة يابسة
The tenfold rank: its letters are hot and dry.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2582ق
Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 10 line 2573 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
المرتبة العشرية فحروفها حارة يابسة
The tenfold rank: its letters are hot and dry.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2582Meaning by vowelal-Dabbāgh · a visionary claim about a primordial “Syriac”, not historical Syriac
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
أ
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى جميع الأشياء قلت أو كثرت، وتكون الإشارة في بعض الأحيان من المتكلم إلى ذاته ونفسه، وهذه الإشارة سالمة من القبض.
It is an indication of all things, whether few or many. At times the indication is from the speaker to his own essence and self, and this indication is free of contraction (qabḍ).
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء القريب القليل.
It is an indication of the near, small thing.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء القريب المناسب.
It is an indication of the near, fitting (congruent) thing.
ر
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى جميع الخيرات الظاهرة والباطنة.
It is an indication of all goods, outward and inward.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الواحد في نفسه وهو ظاهر.
It is an indication of the one in itself, and it is manifest.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء الذي فيه الروح وليس من بني آدم، أو إشارة إلى الروح نفسها.
It is an indication of a thing that has spirit in it but is not of the children of Adam, or an indication of the spirit itself.
ق
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى حيازة الخيرات أو إلى جميع الأنوار.
It is an indication of the acquisition of goods, or of all lights.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى النشأة الأصلية أو العلم القديم وما أشبه ذلك.
It is an indication of the original creation, or eternal knowledge, and the like.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى الذل.
It is an indication of abasement.
In the sister scriptsHebrew א ר קSyriac ܐ ܪ ܩ
| Arabic | أ ر ق |
| Hebrew | א ר ק |
| Syriac | ܐ ܪ ܩ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩱 𐩧 𐩤 |
| Phoenician | 𐤀 𐤓 𐤒 |
Letter for letter, by the regular sound correspondences of the Semitic languages (Arabic keeps several sounds the others merged). This shows how the root would be spelled; whether a related word exists is a separate question, answered in the Semitic lens. Where an Arabic sibilant (s, sh) continues two older sounds, both spellings are shown.
Lenses
AIClassical lexiconAl-Khalīl (al-ʿAyn) opens with the agricultural/medical sense, arqān/yaraqān, the blight that yellows crops and jaundices the body, and only then turns to arq as night-wakefulness, citing al-Aʿshā's line on sleepless longing.well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl (al-ʿAyn) opens with the agricultural/medical sense, arqān/yaraqān, the blight that yellows crops and jaundices the body, and only then turns to arq as night-wakefulness, citing al-Aʿshā's line on sleepless longing. Al-Jawharī (al-Ṣiḥāḥ) keeps both senses but foregrounds sahar (insomnia) as the primary gloss, treating arqān explicitly as a dialectal variant of the more standard yaraqān. Ibn Fāris (Maqāyīs) formalizes the split into two unrelated aṣl-roots, one of wakefulness and one of color/blight, supporting each with the same lines of verse the earlier lexicographers use. Ibn Manẓūr (Lisān) elaborates the insomnia sense with grammatical detail (forms āriq/ariq/arq) and cites Ibn Jinnī on a point of phonetic ishmām, relegating the color-sense to a brief aside. Lane synthesizes the insomnia sense as sahar/suhūd — specifically wakefulness caused by a disliked or painful matter, not mere absence of sleep.
Draws on: al-ʿAyn · al-Ṣiḥāḥ · Maqāyīs al-Lugha · Lisān al-ʿArab · Lane
- al-ʿAyn
- al-Ṣiḥāḥ
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha
- Lisān al-ʿArab
- Lane's Lexicon
Letters & soundNo entry is given for hamza in either Ibn ʿArabī's letter-heaven correspondences or al-Dabbāgh's fatḥa-glosses, so it drops out of this reading.speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
No entry is given for hamza in either Ibn ʿArabī's letter-heaven correspondences or al-Dabbāgh's fatḥa-glosses, so it drops out of this reading. Ibn ʿArabī places rāʾ at the fifth heaven; al-Dabbāgh's fatḥa-gloss for rāʾ calls it an indication of all goods, outward and inward — a positive valence that sits oddly against arq's sense of a privative, restless lack, whether of sleep or of healthy color. Al-Dabbāgh reads qāf's fatḥa as indicating the acquisition of goods or of all lights, again not obviously mirrored in a root about interrupted rest or diseased yellowing. This is speculative sound-symbolism; mainstream historical linguistics finds no causal link between a letter's articulation and a root's meaning, and Ibn Jinnī's own imsās doctrine is offered as a suggestive resonance, not a semantic law.
Draws on: akbari198 · dabbagh_fatha
- Ibn ʿArabī, letter-heaven correspondences
- al-Dabbāgh, letter meanings (fatḥa)
Root structureNo shared two-letter nucleus chapter is given for أرق in this material, so Ibn Fāris's nucleus method cannot be directly applied here.uncertain
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
No shared two-letter nucleus chapter is given for أرق in this material, so Ibn Fāris's nucleus method cannot be directly applied here. The permutation table is instructive mainly for its scatter: رقا yields رقأ, 'to stanch (blood or tears)'; قرأ yields 'to recite, to read'; أقر survives only as the toponym Arāq; رأق and قأر are unattested. Set beside أرق's own bifurcation (insomnia vs. blight), any resemblance between رقأ's sense of arrest (stanching flow) and arq's sense of arrest (of sleep, of healthy color) would be a juxtaposition of ideas, not an established derivation. Ibn Jinnī's greater derivation is not attested for this letter set in the material given.
Draws on: maqayis permutations
- Wiktionary, Arabic root ء ر ق (link not verified)
Semitic kin & loanwordsFor the color/blight sense, Arabic yaraqān/arqān sits within a well-attested Semitic color-root: compare Hebrew yereq/yārōq ('green, greenery'), Aramaic/Syriac yarqā ('herb, vegetable;plausible
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
For the color/blight sense, Arabic yaraqān/arqān sits within a well-attested Semitic color-root: compare Hebrew yereq/yārōq ('green, greenery'), Aramaic/Syriac yarqā ('herb, vegetable; pallor'), and Akkadian arqu ('yellow-green'), all plausibly continuing one inherited term for this color-field, with Arabic's own arqān noted by the lexicographers as a by-form beside the majority yaraqān. For the insomnia sense (araq, sleeplessness), no confident Semitic cognate is available in the sources at hand; it may be an inner-Arabic semantic extension from the color/blight branch, both denoting an abnormal, unhealthy state. There is no reason to treat أرق as a loanword; where a cognate set exists it points to shared Semitic inheritance, not borrowing.
Draws on: yaraqān/yereq comparison
- Brown–Driver–Briggs, s.v. yārōq
Reference