Root · 31 in the Quran · 46 in 15 texts of the library
برأIbn Fāris's own chapter text for this root is not present in the excerpts; the … (root br)
English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ب ر أ that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
29 words7 verbs10 verbal nouns1 participle1 intensive or elative3 other nouns7 plurals
- بَرِىء—
- تَبَرَّأَ—
- بَارِئrecovering from his disease, sickness, or malady
- أَبْرَأacquit; absolve
- بَرَاءَةinnocence
The whole family6 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs7بَرَأ · تَبَرَّأَ · أَبْرَأ
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.”)
- بَرَأhe was, or became, clear, or free, of, or from, a thingLaneForm IQurʾān ×1library ×1Lane
- تَبَرَّأَLane: see Form IForm VQurʾān ×5library ×1Lane
- أَبْرَأacquit; absolveautoForm IVQurʾān ×2library ×2Lane
- بَرَّأَForm IIQurʾān ×2Lane
Verbal nouns10بَرَاءَة · بَرَاء · بَرَاءة
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
Participles1بَارِئ
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
- بَارِئrecovering from his disease, sickness, or maladyLaneactive, Form IQurʾān ×3library ×2Lane
Intensives, qualities and the elative1بَرِيء
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
- بَرِيءinnocent; exemptautoquality (faʿīl)library ×3
Other nouns3بَرِىء · بُرَاء · بُرُأَة
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
- بَرِىءnounQurʾān ×12Lane
- بُرَاءnounLane
- بُرُأَةhunter's lurking-place or covertLanenounLane
Plurals7بُرَءَاء · مُبَرَّءُون · أَبْرِئَة
Broken plurals rebuild the word on a new pattern; sound plurals add an ending.grammar →
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.
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-barʾ (البرء), with hamza: creation.
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 · 393You say: 'I am free (bariʾtu) of you,' and 'freedom (barāʾah) from debts and faults.' And baraʾtu (برئت) from illness, a barʾ (برء), with damma [on the ب].
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Rāghib · 502The root of al-barʾ (البرء), al-barāʾ (البراء), and al-tabarrī (التبرّي) is: withdrawal from what is disliked to be near.
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-Bāriʾ (البارئ): one of the names of Allah Mighty and Majestic;
Ibn Manẓūr (d. 711/1311), Lisān al-ʿArab. The great compendium of the earlier dictionaries (entry shortened).
AI AI translation of the Arabic below
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
- بbāʾbetween the lips · voiced, stopSīb. · I. Jinnī
- رrāʾtip of the tongue, near the nūn · voiced, in betweenSīb. · 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 ↗
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 ↗
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 2582ر
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 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.
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.
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 ר אSyriac ܒ ܪ ܐ
| Arabic | ب ر أ |
| Hebrew | ב ר א |
| Syriac | ܒ ܪ ܐ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩨 𐩧 𐩱 |
| Phoenician | 𐤁 𐤓 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 lexiconAl-Khalīl (al-ʿAyn) treats al-barʾ primarily as khalq (creation) — Allāh baraʾa al-khalq — but also as recovery from sickness (bariʾa yabraʾu/yabruʾu) and as legal/moral clearance from fault, noting bāraʾtu al-rajul for an amicable mutual release and abraʾtuhu min al-dayn for discharging a debt.well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl (al-ʿAyn) treats al-barʾ primarily as khalq (creation) — Allāh baraʾa al-khalq — but also as recovery from sickness (bariʾa yabraʾu/yabruʾu) and as legal/moral clearance from fault, noting bāraʾtu al-rajul for an amicable mutual release and abraʾtuhu min al-dayn for discharging a debt. Al-Jawharī (al-Ṣiḥāḥ) records both vocalizations of recovery, the Hijazis preferring fatḥa, the divine name al-bāriʾ for baraʾa al-khalq, and — citing al-Farrāʾ — a possible non-hamzated origin of al-barīya ('creatures') from al-barā, 'dust.' Ibn Fāris's Maqāyīs chapter for this root is not among the excerpts available here. Al-Rāghib (Mufradāt) names the unifying sense al-taqaṣṣī mimmā yukrahu mujāwaratuhu — getting clear of something whose contact is disliked — under which he places bariʾtu min al-maraḍ and tabarraʾtu, and surveys the Qurʾān's many declarations of disavowal (Q9:1, Q10:41, Q43:26). Ibn Manẓūr (Lisān al-ʿArab) singles out al-bāriʾ as a divine name distinctively tied to the creation of living beings rather than inanimate things, and confirms baraʾa applies to both jawāhir and aʿrāḍ, citing Q57:22 on what is preordained before We baraʾahā.
Draws on: al-ʿAyn · al-Ṣiḥāḥ · al-Mufradāt · Lisān al-ʿArab
- al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Mufradāt fī Gharīb al-Qurʾān, s.v. ب-ر-أ
- Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, s.v. ب-ر-أ
Letters & soundBāʾ is correlated by Ibn ʿArabī with the jinn and by al-Dabbāgh with a thing at the utmost of might or of abasement;speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
Bāʾ is correlated by Ibn ʿArabī with the jinn and by al-Dabbāgh with a thing at the utmost of might or of abasement; rāʾ is correlated with the fifth heaven and, for al-Dabbāgh, with 'all goods, outward and inward.' No data is supplied for the hamza/alif, so the triad cannot be read as a whole; what can be said is that rāʾ's association with comprehensive good sits suggestively beside barʾ's sense of recovery and wholeness. This belongs to a distinct interpretive tradition of letter-symbolism, not to historical linguistics, and the connection should be held as speculative.
Draws on: Ibn ʿArabī, letters and cosmic ranks · al-Dabbāgh, semantics of the letters
Root structureIbn Fāris's neighboring chapters to brʾ include baʾr (likely bi'r-related, a pit or concealment), rabaʾa (giving rabīʾa, 'a lookout, one who watches from a height'), raʾaba ('a joining and gathering,' as in mending the crack of a bowl), abara ('to prick with something pointed,' used of pollinating palms), and araba (four senses: need, intellect, portion/limb, and knot/tie).speculative
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
Ibn Fāris's neighboring chapters to brʾ include baʾr (likely bi'r-related, a pit or concealment), rabaʾa (giving rabīʾa, 'a lookout, one who watches from a height'), raʾaba ('a joining and gathering,' as in mending the crack of a bowl), abara ('to prick with something pointed,' used of pollinating palms), and araba (four senses: need, intellect, portion/limb, and knot/tie). A juxtaposition worth noting without asserting derivation: raʾaba's sense of rejoining what is split, and araba's sense of ʿaqd (knot/binding), sit as near-opposites to baraʾa's core sense of separation and release, while rabaʾa's 'watching from a raised distance' is itself a mode of holding apart. Ibn Jinnī's greater derivation would treat this family as radiating from some shared notion of holding-apart/distinguishing, but this is speculative patterning of the root-letters, not demonstrated etymology.
Draws on: Maqāyīs permutations · Ibn Jinnī, al-Khaṣāʾiṣ
- Wiktionary Arabic root appendix ب-ر-أ (link not verified)
Semitic kin & loanwordsArabic baraʾa has a strong Northwest Semitic cognate: Hebrew bārāʾ (ברא), 'to create,' the verb of Genesis 1:1, and Aramaic/Syriac brāʾ, likewise 'to create.' This is inherited common Semitic vocabulary, not a loan in either direction.well attested
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
Arabic baraʾa has a strong Northwest Semitic cognate: Hebrew bārāʾ (ברא), 'to create,' the verb of Genesis 1:1, and Aramaic/Syriac brāʾ, likewise 'to create.' This is inherited common Semitic vocabulary, not a loan in either direction. No confident Akkadian cognate exists for the 'create' sense — Akkadian's ordinary creation verb is banû, a different root — so an Akkadian connection should be treated as unestablished.
Draws on: Hebrew bārāʾ · Aramaic/Syriac brāʾ
- BDB, s.v. ברא ↗
- CAL, brʾ V (link not verified)
Quranic exegesisFor al-bāriʾ in Q59:24 (huwa Allāhu al-khāliqu al-bāriʾu al-muṣawwir), al-Ṭabarī glosses it as He who brings creation into being from nothing, distinct from al-khāliq (who decrees) and al-muṣawwir (who shapes).well attested
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
For al-bāriʾ in Q59:24 (huwa Allāhu al-khāliqu al-bāriʾu al-muṣawwir), al-Ṭabarī glosses it as He who brings creation into being from nothing, distinct from al-khāliq (who decrees) and al-muṣawwir (who shapes). Al-Zamakhsharī, connecting barʾ to farā ('to cut/fashion'), reads al-khāliq as fixing the measure, al-bāriʾ as actualizing the thing as distinct from non-existence and from other existents, and al-muṣawwir as giving it particular form. Al-Rāzī develops this into design, differentiated actualization, and formation, a passage frequently cited in kalām discussions of ṣifāt al-afʿāl. Elsewhere, exegetes read the Qurʾān's declarations of tabarruʾ/barāʾa (e.g. Q2:166, Q9:1) as formal disavowal — the severing of a prior bond of loyalty or protection.
Philosophy & kalāmAl-bāriʾ functions in kalām less as an independent metaphysical technical term than as one of three divine names of action analyzed together with al-khāliq and al-muṣawwir (Q59:24): commentators distinguish taqdīr (determining measure), the act of barʾ proper (bringing a thing from non-existence into distinct existence), and taṣwīr (giving form), treating these as conceptually separable aspects of a single divine act.plausible
The word as a technical term in falsafa and theology.
Al-bāriʾ functions in kalām less as an independent metaphysical technical term than as one of three divine names of action analyzed together with al-khāliq and al-muṣawwir (Q59:24): commentators distinguish taqdīr (determining measure), the act of barʾ proper (bringing a thing from non-existence into distinct existence), and taṣwīr (giving form), treating these as conceptually separable aspects of a single divine act. This discussion belongs to the theology of ṣifāt al-afʿāl (attributes of action) rather than to falsafa's technical vocabulary of wujūd or ʿayn.
Draws on: kalām, ṣifāt al-afʿāl
Reference