Root · 0 in the Quran · 40 in 13 texts of the library
أزلStraitness/hardship (root zl)
وأما الهمزة والزاء واللام فأصلان الضيق والكذب قال الخليل الأزل الشدة تقول هم في أزل من العيش إذا كانوا في سنة أو بلوى …
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of أ ز ل that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
15 words3 verbs1 verbal noun1 participle1 place or instrument1 intensive or elative5 other nouns1 plural2 relatives and abstracts
- أَزَلeternity, with respect to past time, or considered retrospectively
- أَزَلِيّeternal, with respect to past time
- أَزَلَhe became in a state of straitness, or narrowness, and suffering from dearth …
- آزَلَتِthe year became severe, distressful, calamitous, or adverse
- تأزّلَit became strait, or straitened
The whole family8 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs3أَزَلَ · آزَلَتِ · تأزّلَ
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: فَعَلَ يَفْعِلُ (a – i; the imperfect from Lane's “aor.”)
Verbal nouns1أَزْل
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
Participles1مَأْزُول
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
- مَأْزُولhorse having his rope or tether shortened, and then left to feed at …Lanepassive, Form ILane
Place, time and instrument1مَأْزِل
Where or when it happens, and what it is done with: the m- nouns.grammar →
- مَأْزِلplace of straitness, or a strait placeLanenoun of place or timeLane
Intensives, qualities and the elative1أَزُول
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
- أَزُولsevere, distressful, calamitous, or adverse, yearLaneintensive (faʿūl)Lane
Other nouns5أَزَل · آزِل · أَزِل
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
- أَزَلeternity, with respect to past time, or considered retrospectivelyLanenounlibrary ×26LaneIbn Fāris
- آزِلman in a state of straitness, distress, adversity, or difficultyLanenounLaneIbn Fāris
- أَزِلnounLaneIbn Fāris
- إِزْلcalamityLanenounLaneIbn Fāris
- مُؤْزِلَةsevere year of dearth, or sterility, afflicting with droughtLanenounLane
Plurals1أُزْل
Broken plurals rebuild the word on a new pattern; sound plurals add an ending.grammar →
Relative and abstract2أَزَلِيّ · أَزَلِيَّة
-iyy relates a thing to its source; -iyya makes an abstract noun.grammar →
- أَزَلِيّeternal, with respect to past timeLanerelative adjective (-iyy)library ×5LaneIbn Fāris
- أَزَلِيَّةabstract noun (-iyya)Lane
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 11 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-azl: the hardship of the time.
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-azl: narrowness. One says: 'azila al-rajul yaʾzilu' azlan, meaning 'he came into narrowness and dearth.' Al-azl also [means]: confinement.
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395Hamza, zāy, and lām (الهمزة والزاء واللام) form two roots: 'narrowness/hardship' and 'lying.' Al-Khalīl said: al-azl means hardship.
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowLisān · 711Al-azl: narrowness and hardship.
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.
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
- زzāytongue-tip, by the front teeth · voiced, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
- لlāmedge of the tongue · voiced, in betweenI. 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 ↗
ز
ومما بين طرف اللسان وفويق الثنايا مخرج الزاي، والسين، والصاد
From between the tip of the tongue and just above the front teeth is the place of the zāy, the sīn and the ṣād. Sībawayh, line 26560 ↗
ومما بين الثنايا وطرف اللسان، مخرج الصاد والزاي والسين
From between the front teeth and the tip of the tongue is the place of the ṣād, the zāy and the sīn. Ibn Jinnī, line 983 ↗
ل
ومن حافة اللسان من أدناها إلى منتهى طرف اللسان، من بينها وبين ما يليها من الحنك الأعلى، مما فويق الضاحك والناب والرباعية والثنية، مخرج اللام
From the edge of the tongue, from its nearest part to the end of its tip, between it and the upper palate next to it, just above the premolar, the canine, the lateral and the central incisor, is the place of the lām. Ibn Jinnī, lines 977–978 ↗
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 2583ز
Level of existence: ما يظهر في ركن الهواء · what appears in the pillar (element) of air
Divine Name: الحي · the Living (al-Ḥayy)
Lunar mansion: الشولة · al-Shawla
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64951Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 7 line 2570 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
منها دون الألف فطبعها الحرارة واليبوسة
[Zāy and lām] of it, excluding alif: their nature is heat and dryness.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2577ل
Level of existence: السماء الثالثة · the third heaven
Divine Name: القاهر · the Subduer (al-Qāhir)
Lunar mansion: العوا · al-ʿAwwā
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64654Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 7 line 2576 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
منها دون الألف فطبعها الحرارة واليبوسة
[Zāy and lām] of it, excluding alif: their nature is heat and dryness.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2577Meaning 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.
ز
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي اسم للشيء الذي إذا دخل على الشيء ضره، وقال مرة: اسم للشيء وما يتحرز منه.
It is a name for the thing that harms another thing when it enters upon it. On one occasion he said: a name for the thing and what one guards against.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى القبيح الذي فيه ضرر كالكبائر.
It is an indication of the ugly thing that contains harm, such as the major sins.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى القبيح الذي لا ضرر فيه كالصغائر والشبهات والنجاسة.
It is an indication of the ugly thing that contains no harm, such as minor sins, doubtful matters and ritual impurity.
ل
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي حصول المتكلم على شيء عظيم، وتكون إشارة إلى شيء عظيم.
It is the speaker's attaining of something great, and it serves as an indication of something great.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء الذي لا نهاية له.
It is an indication of the thing that has no end.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة من المتكلم إلى وجود ذاته أو إلى ذاته.
It is an indication by the speaker of the existence of his self, or of his self.
In the sister scriptsHebrew א ז לSyriac ܐ ܙ ܠ
| Arabic | أ ز ل |
| Hebrew | א ז ל |
| Syriac | ܐ ܙ ܠ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩱 𐩸 𐩡 |
| Phoenician | 𐤀 𐤆 𐤋 |
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) glosses al-azl as severity of time — people 'in azl min al-ʿaysh' are enduring a hard year or trial — and azalat al-faras as shortening a horse's tether before releasing it to graze.well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl (al-ʿAyn) glosses al-azl as severity of time — people 'in azl min al-ʿaysh' are enduring a hard year or trial — and azalat al-faras as shortening a horse's tether before releasing it to graze. Al-Jawharī (al-Ṣiḥāḥ) confirms al-azl as straitness and confinement (azalū māla-hum: they withheld their livestock from pasture out of fear), and separately records al-izl (kasr) as lying, citing a verse that calls a false claim of love kadhib and izl. Ibn Fāris (Maqāyīs) codifies two distinct aṣlān under this root, ḍīq (straitness) and kadhib (lying), the former covering hardship, confinement of livestock, and the forbidden racing practice of leading a spare horse. Ibn Manẓūr (Lisān) gathers the ḍīq material — azala yaʾzulu (to confine), āzalat al-sana (the year grew severe), the ḥadīth phrase 'sana ḥamrāʾ muʾazzala' — and Lane confirms: to be in straits, dearth, or sterility; to confine or restrain; to shorten a horse's rope.
Draws on: al-Khalīl · al-Jawharī · Ibn Fāris · Ibn Manẓūr · Lane
- Wiktionary, Arabic root ء-ز-ل (link not verified)
Letters & soundIn al-Dabbāghī's letter-values, zāy marks something that harms upon entering, or that which must be guarded against, and lām marks the speaker's attainment of, or pointer toward, something great — jointly suggestive, at a stretch, of a harm to be warded off and a great thing reached for, loosely compatible with both the 'straitness to endure' and the 'lie to guard against' senses Ibn Fāris records.speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
In al-Dabbāghī's letter-values, zāy marks something that harms upon entering, or that which must be guarded against, and lām marks the speaker's attainment of, or pointer toward, something great — jointly suggestive, at a stretch, of a harm to be warded off and a great thing reached for, loosely compatible with both the 'straitness to endure' and the 'lie to guard against' senses Ibn Fāris records. Al-Akbarī's cosmological correspondences assign zāy to what appears in the element of air and lām to the third heaven, associations with no evident bearing on this root's sense. No letter-value is supplied here for hamza. This kind of sound-symbolism is suggestive at most and is not accepted by mainstream historical linguistics.
Draws on: al-Dabbāgh · al-Akbarī
Root structureIbn Fāris's own chapter for أزل already splits into two aṣlān, ḍīq and kadhib, so the root is internally divided rather than unitary.plausible
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
Ibn Fāris's own chapter for أزل already splits into two aṣlān, ḍīq and kadhib, so the root is internally divided rather than unitary. Among the metathetic permutations, لزأ is attested with a sense of tending camels well or, dialectally, begetting a child; ألز and زأل are marked attested but without a recorded gloss in the excerpt; زلأ and لأز are unattested. Any link between أزل's confinement/narrowness and لزأ's careful tending is only a juxtaposition of letters — Ibn Fāris records no semantic bridge, and Ibn Jinnī's greater-derivation method would require such a bridge to be more than coincidence.
Draws on: Ibn Fāris - Maqāyīs · permutations
Semitic kin & loanwordsHebrew has אָזַל (ʾāzal), 'to go away, be gone, be spent or exhausted' (e.g.plausible
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
Hebrew has אָזַל (ʾāzal), 'to go away, be gone, be spent or exhausted' (e.g. Deuteronomy 32:36, of strength that has 'gone'), and Aramaic/Syriac ʾzl is a very common verb meaning simply 'to go, depart.' These share the root letters with Arabic أزل and plausibly the underlying Semitic root, though the core sense in Hebrew and Aramaic is motion/departure while Arabic specializes it toward the resultant state of privation — straitness, dearth, want — as when provisions 'go away' and one is left constrained. This is an inherited Semitic root with sense-divergence across branches, not a loanword.
Draws on: Hebrew · Aramaic/Syriac
- Brown–Driver–Briggs, s.v. אזל
- CAL, ʾzl (verb) ↗
Philosophy & kalāmAzal (beginninglessness) is a standing technical term in kalām and falsafa, paired with abad (endlessness): azalī describes what has no first moment, abadī what has no last one.plausible
The word as a technical term in falsafa and theology.
Azal (beginninglessness) is a standing technical term in kalām and falsafa, paired with abad (endlessness): azalī describes what has no first moment, abadī what has no last one. The mutakallimūn treat azaliyya as a necessary attribute of God's essence, opposed to ḥudūth (temporal origination), the mark of created things; Avicenna likewise calls the Necessary Existent azalī, having existence with no beginning in time. Notably, this technical sense is not what the excerpted lexicographers define under this root (straitness, and separately lying); some grammarians instead derive azal as a contraction of lam yazal, from the unrelated root ز-و-ل ('to cease'), making the philosophical term's link to أزل itself a point of dispute.
Draws on: kalām · Avicenna
Akbarian readingIn Faṣṣ Ādam, Ibn ʿArabī calls the Perfect Human 'al-insān al-ḥādith al-azalī' — the temporally originated human who is nonetheless eternal-in-origin — holding ḥudūth and azal together in one description.plausible
The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.
In Faṣṣ Ādam, Ibn ʿArabī calls the Perfect Human 'al-insān al-ḥādith al-azalī' — the temporally originated human who is nonetheless eternal-in-origin — holding ḥudūth and azal together in one description. He affirms that azal and qidam (pre-eternity) properly belong to God precisely because awwaliyya (having a first, which entails an 'opening' of existence) is negated of Him. Azal thus functions technically as the negation of any first moment, securing God's absolute priority to, and independence from, the contingent (mumkin) human being under discussion.
Draws on: Faṣṣ Ādam
Reference