Root · 15 in the Quran · 85 in 16 texts of the library
بدأal-iftitāḥ — the opening or first instance of a thing. (root bd)
الباء والدال والهمزة من افتتاح الشيء
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ب د أ that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
30 words4 verbs3 verbal nouns6 participles2 places and instruments13 other nouns2 plurals
- بَدَأَhe began with it
- مَبْدَأplace, and a time, of beginning
- أَبْدَأinitiate; begin
- اِبْتِداءbeginning; start
- اِبْتَدَأbegin; start
The whole family6 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs4بَدَأَ · أَبْدَأ · اِبْتَدَأ
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 يَفْعَلُ (a – a; the imperfect from Lane's “aor.”)
- بَدَأَhe began with itLaneForm IQurʾān ×12library ×9LaneIbn Fāris
- أَبْدَأinitiate; beginautoForm IVQurʾān ×3library ×2Lane
- اِبْتَدَأbegin; startauto · Lane: see Form IForm VIIIlibrary ×4Lane
- تبدّأhe, or it, began, or made a beginningLaneForm VLane
Verbal nouns3اِبْتِداء · بَدء · إِبْداء
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
- اِبْتِداءbeginning; startautoForm VIIIlibrary ×6Ibn Fāris
- بَدءthe act of beginningLaneForm I · Lane: inf. n.library ×3LaneIbn Fāris
- إِبْداءexpression; manifestationautoForm IVlibrary ×3Ibn Fāris
Participles6بَادِئ · مَبْدُوْء · مُبْدِئ
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
Place, time and instrument2مَبْدَأ · مَبْدَأَة
Where or when it happens, and what it is done with: the m- nouns.grammar →
- مَبْدَأplace, and a time, of beginningLanenoun of place or timelibrary ×12Lane
- مَبْدَأَةnoun of place (with -a)Lane
Other nouns13بَدَأَة · بَدِئ · بَدْأَة
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
Plurals2مَبَادِئ · بُدُوْء
Broken plurals rebuild the word on a new pattern; sound plurals add an ending.grammar →
- مَبَادِئbroken plural of مَبْدَأlibrary ×3Lane
- بُدُوْءbroken plural of بَدءLaneIbn Fāris
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 14 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.
- Attested: مَبْدَأَة, noun of place (with -a) (Lane)
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-Jawharī · 393بدأت بالشئ بدءا: ابتدأت به، وبدأت الشئ: فعلته ابتداء.
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
Ibn Fāris · 395Bāʾ, dāl, hamza (بدأ): [indicates] the opening/commencement of a thing.
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Rāghib · 502يقال: بدأت بكذا وأبدأت وابتدأت، أي: قدمت، والبدء والابتداء: تقديم الشيء على غيره ضربا من التقديم.
al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī (d. c. 502/1108), al-Mufradāt. Quranic vocabulary, from core sense to Quranic usage.
Lisān · 711في أسماء الله عز وجل المبدئ: هو الذي أنشأ الأشياء واخترعها ابتداء من غير سابق مثال.
Ibn Manẓūr (d. 711/1311), Lisān al-ʿArab. The great compendium of the earlier dictionaries (entry shortened).
The same letters, turned
The same three letters in all six orders. Choose one.
ب د أ
الباء والدال والهمزة من افتتاح الشيء
The letters b-d-ʾ are from the opening/commencement of a thing. AI
Ibn Fāris ↗Lisān ↗Lane ↗Quran ×15
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
- بbāʾbetween the lips · voiced, stopSīb. · I. Jinnī
- دdāltongue-tip, roots of the teeth · voiced, stopSīb. · I. Jinnī
- أhamzadeep in the throat · 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
ب
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 ↗
د
ومما بين طرف اللسان وأصول الثنايا مخرج الطاء، والدال، والتاء
From between the tip of the tongue and the roots of the front teeth is the place of the ṭāʾ, the dāl and the tāʾ. Sībawayh, line 26559 ↗
ومما بين طرف اللسان وأصول الثنايا، مخرج الطاء والدال والتاء
From between the tip of the tongue and the roots of the front teeth is the place of the ṭāʾ, the dāl and the tāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 982 ↗
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 ↗
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
ب
Level of existence: الجن · the jinn
Divine Name: اللطيف · al-Laṭīf, the Subtle
Lunar mansion: الفرع المقدم · al-Farʿ al-Muqaddam
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62118Spheres 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 2582د
Level of existence: السماء الدنيا · the lowest heaven (al-samāʾ al-dunyā)
Divine Name: المبين · the Clarifier (al-Mubīn)
Lunar mansion: الأكليل · al-Iklīl
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64682Spheres 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 2582أ
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 2583Meaning by vowelal-Dabbāgh · a visionary claim about a primordial “Syriac”, not historical Syriac
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
ب
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء الذي هو في غاية العز أو في غاية الذل.
It is an indication of the thing that is at the utmost of might or at the utmost of abasement.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة معها قبض.
It is an indication accompanied by contraction (qabḍ).
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى ما دخل أو هو داخل على الذات.
It is an indication of what has entered, or is entering, upon the self.
د
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى خارج عن الذات.
It is an indication of something external to the self.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى ما هو قليل أو قبيح ومعه غضب فيهما.
It is an indication of what is small or ugly, accompanied by anger in both cases.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى ما في الذات أو إلى ما هو داخل عليها أو إلى ما هو قريب منها.
It is an indication of what is in the self, or what is entering upon it, or what is near to it.
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.
In the sister scriptsHebrew ב ד אSyriac ܒ ܕ ܐ
| Arabic | ب د أ |
| Hebrew | ב ד א |
| Syriac | ܒ ܕ ܐ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩨 𐩵 𐩱 |
| Phoenician | 𐤁 𐤃 𐤀 |
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 lexiconIbn Fāris (Maqāyīs) grounds the root in ‘the opening of a thing’ (iftitāḥ al-shayʾ), illustrated by the Qurʾānic badaʾa al-khalq and yubdiʾu wa-yuʿīd, and by the epithet al-badʾ for the chief named first among the sayyids.well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Ibn Fāris (Maqāyīs) grounds the root in ‘the opening of a thing’ (iftitāḥ al-shayʾ), illustrated by the Qurʾānic badaʾa al-khalq and yubdiʾu wa-yuʿīd, and by the epithet al-badʾ for the chief named first among the sayyids. Al-Jawharī (Ṣiḥāḥ) confirms this core sense — badaʾtu bi'l-shayʾ = ibtadaʾtu bihi, badaʾa al-shayʾ = did it first — and records the idiom ʿawdan wa-badʾan (‘going and returning’) alongside the same al-badʾ for the foremost chief, set against al-thinyān, the second. Al-Rāghib (Mufradāt) sharpens this into ‘placing one thing before another’ (taqdīm al-shayʾ ʿalā ghayrih) and introduces mabdaʾ as that out of which a thing is composed or from which it proceeds — letters are the mabdaʾ of speech, wood of the door. Ibn Manẓūr (Lisān) gathers the divine epithet al-Mubdiʾ, ‘He who originates things without prior model,’ and the cluster of nominal variants (al-badʾa, al-badīʾa, al-badāha) for ‘the first turn,’ transmitted with variant vocalization from al-Liḥyānī. Neither al-Khalīl’s ʿAyn nor a Lane entry for this root appears in the excerpts consulted.
Draws on: Ibn Fāris · sihah · mufradat · lisan
- Wiktionary root appendix ب-د-أ (link not verified)
Letters & soundIn the Akbarian correspondence of letters to the heavens, bāʾ is linked to the jinn and dāl to the lowest heaven;speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
In the Akbarian correspondence of letters to the heavens, bāʾ is linked to the jinn and dāl to the lowest heaven; al-Dabbāgh reads bāʾ as marking a thing at the utmost of either might or abasement, and dāl as marking something external to the self. Applied loosely to بدأ, the ‘opening’ of a thing could be read as a movement from an extremity (bāʾ) into externality (dāl), though no data for the alif is supplied in this set and the fit is impressionistic. This is traditional letter-symbolism, not linguistic evidence; mainstream historical linguistics does not support fixed meanings for individual consonants.
Draws on: akbari198 · dabbagh
Root structureNo ب-د chapter of Ibn Fāris’s own siblings is given for this root, so the two-letter nucleus cannot be compared directly here.plausible
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
No ب-د chapter of Ibn Fāris’s own siblings is given for this root, so the two-letter nucleus cannot be compared directly here. Among the attested permutations, بدأ (‘to begin’) stands beside أبد (‘length of time, wildness’), أدب (‘gathering people to a shared meal,’ hence adab) and دأب (‘constancy, habitual practice’) — the same three consonants rearranged between the instant of origination and unbroken duration. This is the juxtaposition the dictionary’s own permutation-list presents by shared radicals, not an asserted derivation between the entries. A resemblance to Ibn Jinnī’s ishtiqāq akbar (badʾ / abad as inception versus perpetuity) is suggestive but not demonstrated in the given data.
Draws on: maqayis-permutations
Semitic kin & loanwordsNo confident Semitic cognate for the sense ‘to begin, originate’ is established for this root.uncertain
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
No confident Semitic cognate for the sense ‘to begin, originate’ is established for this root. Hebrew has בדא (bādā), but it means ‘to invent, fabricate, tell lies’ — a different semantic field — so it cannot safely be treated as cognate to Arabic بدأ ‘to begin.’ There is no reason to treat بدأ as a loanword; it is ordinary native Arabic vocabulary.
Draws on: hebrew
Quranic exegesisAt 29:19, ‘have they not seen how God originates creation, then repeats it,’ al-Ṭabarī and al-Zamakhsharī read the ibdāʾ/iʿāda pairing as an argument from observed nature to the reality of resurrection: repetition is no harder than first origination.well attested
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
At 29:19, ‘have they not seen how God originates creation, then repeats it,’ al-Ṭabarī and al-Zamakhsharī read the ibdāʾ/iʿāda pairing as an argument from observed nature to the reality of resurrection: repetition is no harder than first origination. Al-Rāzī expands this into a full kalām argument against philosophical denial of bodily resurrection. At 7:29, kamā badaʾakum taʿūdūn (‘as He originated you, you will return’) is read the same way, the return mirroring the badʾ. Al-Rāghib’s gloss of badaʾa khalq al-insān min ṭīn as an instance of mabdaʾ, ‘that from which a thing proceeds,’ gives the term ontological as well as narrative force. At 9:13, badaʾūkum awwala marrah is read historically, as ‘they began hostilities against you first.’
Draws on: tabari · zamakhshari · razi · raghib
Philosophy & kalāmFrom this root falsafa derives the technical term mabdaʾ, ‘principle’ or ‘source’: Avicenna speaks of al-mabdaʾ al-awwal, the First Principle, as that from which the existence of everything else proceeds, and of mabdaʾ al-wujūd as the ultimate ontological origin.plausible
The word as a technical term in falsafa and theology.
From this root falsafa derives the technical term mabdaʾ, ‘principle’ or ‘source’: Avicenna speaks of al-mabdaʾ al-awwal, the First Principle, as that from which the existence of everything else proceeds, and of mabdaʾ al-wujūd as the ultimate ontological origin. The dispute over badʾ al-khalq — whether creation has a temporal beginning (ḥudūth) or proceeds eternally by emanation from this mabdaʾ — is the central fault line between al-Ghazālī and the falāsifa in the Tahāfut. The Qurʾānic vocabulary of yubdiʾu/yuʿīd thus becomes the linguistic anchor for the kalām–falsafa dispute over origination versus eternity of the world.
Draws on: avicenna · ghazali-tahafut
Akbarian readingIn Faṣṣ Ādam, Ibn ʿArabī states that ‘the whole affair proceeds from Him, its ibtidāʾ and its intihāʾ… as it began from Him’ — making beginning and end two faces of a single divine Command.well attested
The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.
In Faṣṣ Ādam, Ibn ʿArabī states that ‘the whole affair proceeds from Him, its ibtidāʾ and its intihāʾ… as it began from Him’ — making beginning and end two faces of a single divine Command. He ties this directly to Adam: the Command required the polishing (jalāʾ) of the mirror of the cosmos, and Adam became the very locus (ʿayn) of that polishing, the fruit in which the ibtidāʾ is realized. Beginning, on this reading, is not a past event but the constant issuing-forth of existence from the Real toward its own return.
Draws on: fassAdam
Reference