Root · 879 in the Quran · 103 in 22 texts of the library
أمنPer Ibn Fāris, two closely related senses: amāna, 'trustworthiness', and taṣdīq, … (root mn)
الهمزة والميم والنون أصلان متقاربان أحدهما الأمانة التي هي ضد الخيانة ومعناها سكون القلب والآخر التصديق والمعنيان كما …
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of أ م ن that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
43 words5 verbs5 verbal nouns5 participles1 place or instrument4 intensives and elatives12 other nouns10 plurals1 relative or abstract
- ءَامَنَhe rendered him secure, or safe
- مُؤْمِنrendering secure
- مُؤْمِنِينplural of rendering secure
- إِيمَان—
- أَمِنَhe was, or became, or felt, secure, safe, or in a state of security or safety
The whole family8 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs5أَمِنَ · ءَامَنَ · أَمَّنَ
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.”)
- أَمِنَhe was, or became, or felt, secure, safe, or in a state of security or safetyLaneForm IQurʾān ×20library ×11LaneIbn Fāris
- ءَامَنَhe rendered him secure, or safeLaneForm IVQurʾān ×537Lane
- أَمَّنَinsure; guaranteeautoForm IIlibrary ×2LaneIbn Fāris
- اؤْتُمِنَLane: see Form IForm VIIIQurʾān ×1Lane
- استأمنَForm XLane
Verbal nouns5إِيمَان · إِيمَان · أَمْن
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
- إِيمَانForm IV · Lane: inf. n.Qurʾān ×45Lane
- إِيمَانbelief; faithautoForm IV · Lane: inf. n.library ×18Lane
- أَمْنsecurity; safetyautoForm I · Lane: inf. n.Qurʾān ×5library ×3LaneIbn Fāris
- أَمَانَةtrustinessLaneForm I · Lane: inf. n.LaneIbn Fāris
- تَأْمِينForm I · Lane: inf. n.Lane
Participles5مُؤْمِن · ءَامِن · مُؤْتَمَن
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
- مُؤْمِنrendering secureLaneactive, Form IVQurʾān ×202library ×22LaneIbn Fāris
- ءَامِنactive, Form IQurʾān ×6
- مُؤْتَمَنpassive, Form VIIILaneIbn Fāris
- مُؤْمَنthou art not granted security, or safetyLanepassive, Form IVLaneIbn Fāris
- مَأْمُونwoman whose like is sought after and eagerly retained because of her …Lanepassive, Form ILane
Place, time and instrument1مَأْمَن
Where or when it happens, and what it is done with: the m- nouns.grammar →
- مَأْمَنplace of security or safety or freedom from fearLanenoun of place or timeQurʾān ×1library ×2Lane
Intensives, qualities and the elative4أَمِين · آمِين · أَمين
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
Other nouns12آمِن · أَيْمَن · أَمَان
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
- آمِنsecure, safe, or free from fearLanenounlibrary ×4LaneIbn Fāris
- أَيْمَنright; right handautonounlibrary ×6
- أَمَانsafety; protectionautonounlibrary ×3LaneIbn Fāris
- أَمَنَةnounQurʾān ×2Ibn Fāris
Plurals10مُؤْمِنِين · مُؤْمِنَات · أَمِين
Broken plurals rebuild the word on a new pattern; sound plurals add an ending.grammar →
- مُؤْمِنِينplural of rendering securefrom the singularsound plural of مُؤْمِنQurʾān ×144library ×8
- مُؤْمِنَاتsound plural of مُؤْمِنَةQurʾān ×22
- أَمِينsound plural of أَمQurʾān ×14Ibn Fāris
- ءَامِنِينsound plural of ءَامِنQurʾān ×10
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 18 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-amn (الأمن) is the opposite of fear;
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-amān (الأمان) and al-amānah (الأمانة) have the same meaning.
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395The hamza, mīm, and nūn form two closely related root-meanings: one is amānah (الأمانة), 'trustworthiness,' the opposite of treachery, whose meaning is the tranquility of the heart;
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Rāghib · 502The root meaning of al-amn (الأمن) is the tranquility of the soul and the removal of fear.
al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī (d. c. 502/1108), al-Mufradāt. Quranic vocabulary, from core sense to Quranic usage.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowLisān · 711Al-amān and al-amānah have the same meaning.
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 م ن
الهمزة والميم والنون أصلان متقاربان أحدهما الأمانة التي هي ضد الخيانة ومعناها سكون القلب والآخر التصديق والمعنيان كما قلنا متدانيان
a-m-n has two close roots: one is al-amāna, which is the opposite of treachery, meaning stillness of the heart; and the other is affirmation, and the two meanings, as we said, are close to one another. AI
Ibn Fāris ↗Lisān ↗Lane ↗Quran ×879
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
- مmīmbetween the lips · voiced, in betweenSīb. · I. Jinnī
- نnūntip of the tongue · voiced, in betweenSīb. · 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 ↗
م
ومما بين الشفتين مخرج الباء، والميم، والواو
From between the two lips is the place of the bāʾ, the mīm and the wāw. Sībawayh, line 26563 ↗
ومما بين الشفتين مخرج الباء والميم والواو
From between the two lips is the place of the bāʾ, the mīm and the wāw. Ibn Jinnī, line 986 ↗
ن
ومن حافة اللسان من أدناها إلى منتهى طرف اللسان ما بينها وبين ما يليها من الحنك الأعلى وما فويق الثنايا مخرج النون
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 and what is just above the front teeth, is the place of the nūn. Sībawayh, lines 26555–26556 ↗
ومن طرف اللسان بينه وبين ما فويق الثنايا، مخرج النون
From the tip of the tongue, between it and what is just above the front teeth, is the place of the nūn. Ibn Jinnī, line 979 ↗
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 2583م
Level of existence: الإنسان · the human being
Divine Name: الجامع · al-Jāmiʿ, the Gatherer
Lunar mansion: المؤخر · al-Muʾakhkhar
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62119Spheres 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 2582ن
Level of existence: السماء الرابعة · the fourth heaven
Divine Name: النور · the Light (al-Nūr)
Lunar mansion: السماك · al-Simāk
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64663Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 8 line 2571 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
الثمانية فحروفها حارة يابسة
The eightfold [rank]: its letters are hot and dry.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2580Meaning 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.
م
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي جميع المكونات.
It is all created beings.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي العزيز القليل كماء العين، ومنه قيل مومو.
It is the precious, scarce thing, like the water of the eye; from it comes the expression 'mūmū'.
With kasra ـِ
فهي نور الذات ظاهرا كما في العين، وباطنا كما في القلب.
It is the light of the self, outwardly as in the eye and inwardly as in the heart.
ن
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي الخير الساكن في الذات الشاعل فيها.
It is the good that dwells in the self, kindling [al-shāʿil, as written] within it.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الخير الكامل أو النور الساطع.
It is an indication of perfect good or radiant light.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى شيء يدركه المتكلم أو هو له.
It is an indication of something that the speaker perceives or that belongs to him.
In the sister scriptsHebrew א מ נSyriac ܐ ܡ ܢ
| Arabic | أ م ن |
| Hebrew | א מ נ |
| Syriac | ܐ ܡ ܢ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩱 𐩣 𐩬 |
| Phoenician | 𐤀 𐤌 𐤍 |
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 sets the base sense as ḍidd al-khawf, 'the opposite of fear', with amāna as ḍidd al-khiyāna, 'the opposite of treachery', and glosses al-īmān directly as al-taṣdīq nafsuhu, 'belief itself'.well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl sets the base sense as ḍidd al-khawf, 'the opposite of fear', with amāna as ḍidd al-khiyāna, 'the opposite of treachery', and glosses al-īmān directly as al-taṣdīq nafsuhu, 'belief itself'. Al-Jawharī adds the causative form: Allāh is al-Muʾmin because He āmana ʿibādahu, 'secured His servants' from being wronged, and derives al-muhaymin from a doubled-hamza root mu'ammin via consonant softening. Ibn Fāris (Maqāyīs) collapses the whole root into two nearby aṣl: amāna as sukūn al-qalb, 'stillness of the heart', and taṣdīq, judging the two 'close to one another' rather than distinct. Al-Rāghib refines the psychological core as ṭumaʾnīnat al-nafs wa-zawāl al-khawf, 'the soul's tranquility and the departure of fear', and treats amān/amāna/amānah as originally verbal nouns later specialized as names for a state or for a thing entrusted, discussing the Q33:72 amāna as variously tawḥīd, ʿadāla, the letters of the alphabet, or reason (ʿaql). Ibn Manẓūr consolidates al-īmān as ḍidd al-kufr and also as taṣdīq whose opposite is takdhīb, and notes the transitive āmanahu as the antonym of akhāfahu, 'he frightened him' — the same root running from felt security to given security to credal assent.
Draws on: al-khalil-cayn · al-jawhari-sihah · ibn-faris-maqayis · al-raghib-mufradat · ibn-manzur-lisan · Lane
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha, s.v. أمن
- al-Rāghib, al-Mufradāt fī Gharīb al-Qurʾān, s.v. أمن
Letters & soundIn the letters-in-the-Breath scheme attributed to Ibn ʿArabī, mīm corresponds to al-insān, 'the human being', and nūn to al-samāʾ al-rābiʿa, 'the fourth heaven';speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
In the letters-in-the-Breath scheme attributed to Ibn ʿArabī, mīm corresponds to al-insān, 'the human being', and nūn to al-samāʾ al-rābiʿa, 'the fourth heaven'; al-Dabbāgh glosses mīm as standing for all created beings and nūn as the good that dwells within the self, kindling there. On this reading amn, built from hamza (unglossed in the data) plus these two letters, would trace a movement from the human creature (mīm) toward an inward good that settles and kindles (nūn) — consonant with al-Rāghib's ṭumaʾnīnat al-nafs. This is speculative sound-symbolism; mainstream historical linguistics does not treat individual Arabic letters as bearing fixed semantic content, and the correspondence should be read as suggestive resonance only.
Draws on: ibn-arabi-akbari198 · al-dabbagh-fatha
Root structureNo siblings of the two-letter nucleus ʾ-m are supplied in the chapter data for this root, so the structural claim rests only on the six-way permutation table.plausible
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
No siblings of the two-letter nucleus ʾ-m are supplied in the chapter data for this root, so the structural claim rests only on the six-way permutation table. Among these, أمن itself is overwhelmingly the productive form (879 attestations), while its reversal نأم is a real but unrelated root denoting a faint inarticulate sound — the moan of a lion, the twang of a bow. أنم is attested once but its sense is not given here, and منأ and نمأ are unattested. The juxtaposition is worth noting without asserting a link: one ordering of ʾ-m-n yields the psychological stillness of security, the other an acoustic tremor — a divergence, not a derivation.
Draws on: permutations-table
Semitic kin & loanwordsThe root ʾ-m-n is solidly Common Semitic.plausible
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
The root ʾ-m-n is solidly Common Semitic. Hebrew he'emin 'to believe, trust' and 'emet 'truth, firmness' (from the same base), and the liturgical 'āmēn, all share the core sense of firmness/reliability; Aramaic and Syriac haymen 'to believe' is a haphel-type formation of the same root; Geʿez ʾamana 'to believe' is directly cognate. This points to a Proto-Semitic root meaning something like 'to be firm, reliable', from which West Semitic branches independently develop both 'security/trust' and 'credal belief'. Arabic āmana and its Hebrew/Aramaic/Geʿez cognates are parallel inheritances, not a case of borrowing in either direction; a confident Akkadian cognate is not established in the material available.
Draws on: comparative-semitic
Quranic exegesisAt Q2:3-4 the exegetes (al-Ṭabarī, al-Zamakhsharī) read yuʾminūna bi-l-ghayb as crediting what is beyond direct perception — revelation, the afterlife — as the defining act separating the muttaqūn from others, while at Q2:8 the same verb describes the munāfiqūn's false claim, āmannā, exposing the gap between spoken taṣdīq and inward conviction that later kalām discussion of īmān will turn on.plausible
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
At Q2:3-4 the exegetes (al-Ṭabarī, al-Zamakhsharī) read yuʾminūna bi-l-ghayb as crediting what is beyond direct perception — revelation, the afterlife — as the defining act separating the muttaqūn from others, while at Q2:8 the same verb describes the munāfiqūn's false claim, āmannā, exposing the gap between spoken taṣdīq and inward conviction that later kalām discussion of īmān will turn on. At Q33:72, on the amāna offered to the heavens, earth, and mountains and borne by man, al-Rāghib's own survey (given in the classical lens) of the competing identifications — tawḥīd, justice, the alphabet, reason — is representative of how the exegetes multiply referents for a single, deliberately unspecified term. Across these passages the root oscillates between its two Ibn Fāris senses: amāna as a burden entrusted, and īmān as an assent given.
Philosophy & kalāmĪmān becomes a central technical term in kalām, where the Ashʿarī and Māturīdī schools debate whether it consists solely in taṣdīq bi-l-qalb (inward assent of the heart) or requires in addition iqrār bi-l-lisān (verbal profession) and, for some, ʿamal bi-l-arkān (acting on the pillars) — the Murjiʾa/Muʿtazila controversy over whether sin diminishes īmān turns on exactly this question.plausible
The word as a technical term in falsafa and theology.
Īmān becomes a central technical term in kalām, where the Ashʿarī and Māturīdī schools debate whether it consists solely in taṣdīq bi-l-qalb (inward assent of the heart) or requires in addition iqrār bi-l-lisān (verbal profession) and, for some, ʿamal bi-l-arkān (acting on the pillars) — the Murjiʾa/Muʿtazila controversy over whether sin diminishes īmān turns on exactly this question. Al-Ghazālī treats taṣdīq as graded, running from the taqlīd of the common believer to the yaqīn of the mystic. The same word taṣdīq, drawn from this root by al-Khalīl's original gloss, is also adopted by the Arabic Aristotelian logical tradition (Avicenna) as the technical term for propositional assent, distinguished from taṣawwur (mere conception) — a semantic transfer from religious credence to logical judgment.
Draws on: kalam-general-knowledge
Akbarian readingThe Faṣṣ Ādam passage given speaks of al-taʿrīf al-ilāhī, the divine acquainting, by which al-Ḥaqq disciplined al-ʿibād al-udabāʾ al-umanāʾ al-khulafāʾ — 'the well-mannered, trustworthy vicegerents among His servants'.well attested
The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.
The Faṣṣ Ādam passage given speaks of al-taʿrīf al-ilāhī, the divine acquainting, by which al-Ḥaqq disciplined al-ʿibād al-udabāʾ al-umanāʾ al-khulafāʾ — 'the well-mannered, trustworthy vicegerents among His servants'. Here umanāʾ (plural of amīn, from this root) is bound directly to khulafāʾ: trustworthiness is the qualification for khilāfa, the very office Ādam is given in the Fuṣūṣ. This links the root's core sense of security/reliability to the larger Akbarian theme of the amāna of Q33:72 as the burden of vicegerency that only the human being, among all creation, accepts to bear.
Draws on: fass-adam-excerpt
Reference