Root · 51 in the Quran · 106 in 21 texts of the library
حلل'opening a thing, from which nothing is exempt' — the single generative sense behind … (root hll)
الحاء واللام له فروع كثيرة ومسائل وأصلها كلها عندي فتح الشيء لا يشذ عنه شيء
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ح ل ل that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
30 words8 verbs7 verbal nouns3 participles1 place or instrument2 intensives and elatives8 other nouns1 plural
- أَحَلَّ—
- حَلَّhe untied, or undid, or opened, a knot
- حَلَالlawful, allowable, or free
- تَحَلَّلَit passed away by becoming dissolved, melted, or liquefied
- تَحَلُّلdissolution; separation
The whole family7 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs8حَلَّ · أَحَلَّ · تَحَلَّلَ
The root as an action: the bare Form I, and the Forms made by adding letters before, inside or after the root.grammar →
- حَلَّhe untied, or undid, or opened, a knotLaneForm IQurʾān ×14LaneIbn Fāris
- أَحَلَّForm IVQurʾān ×20
- تَحَلَّلَit passed away by becoming dissolved, melted, or liquefiedLaneForm Vlibrary ×4Lane
- حَلَّلَanalyze; dissolveautoForm IIlibrary ×1Lane
Verbal nouns7حَلَال · تَحَلُّل · تَحْلِيل
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
- حَلَالlawful, allowable, or freeLaneForm I · Lane: inf. n.Qurʾān ×6library ×3LaneIbn Fāris
- تَحَلُّلdissolution; separationautoForm Vlibrary ×3
- تَحْلِيلanalysis; dissolutionautoForm II · Lane: inf. n.library ×1LaneIbn Fāris
- تَحُلِيلForm II · Lane: inf. n.LaneIbn Fāris
Participles3مُحَلَّل · مُحَلِّل · مَحْلُول
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
Place, time and instrument1مِحْلَال
Where or when it happens, and what it is done with: the m- nouns.grammar →
- مِحْلَالplace, or a meadow , and a land , and a house , in which people alight, or …Lanenoun of instrumentLane
Intensives, qualities and the elative2حَلَّال · حَلِيل
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
Other nouns8إِحْلِيل · تَحَلْحَل · حَلَائِل
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
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-maḥall (المحل) is the opposite of al-murtaḥil (the departer).
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 · 393Ḥalaltu al-ʿuqdata (حللت العقدة) aḥulluhā ḥallan: I opened it, so it became untied.
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395Ḥāʾ and Lām has many branches and subdivisions, but their origin, all of it in my view, is 'opening a thing' — nothing deviates from this.
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 of al-ḥall (الحل) is untying a knot;
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 · 711Ḥalla bi-l-makān (حل بالمكان) yaḥillu ḥulūlan wa-maḥallan wa-ḥillan wa-ḥalalan (the last with the doubling separated, rare): this is the people's settling at an encampment (maḥallah), the opposite of al-irtiḥāl (departur
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 ↗
Technical definitions5 · Ibn ʿArabī’s Iṣṭilāḥ, al-Jurjānī’s Taʿrīfāt
الحلال
كل شيء لا يعاقب عليه باستعماله.
Ḥalāl (الحلال): everything the use of which incurs no punishment. AI
الحلال
ما أطلق الشرع فعله، مأخوذ من: الحل، وهو الفتح.
Ḥalāl (الحلال): that which the Sacred Law has left free to be done, derived from al-ḥall (الحل), which is 'opening/release.' AI
الحلول السرياني
عبارة عن اتحاد الجسمين بحيث تكون الإشارة إلى أحدهما إشارة إلى الآخر، كحلول ماء الورد في الورد، فيسمى الساري: حالا، والمسري فيه: محلا.
Al-ḥulūl al-siryānī (الحلول السرياني, 'pervasive indwelling'): an expression for the union of two bodies such that pointing to one of them is [also] pointing to the other, like the indwelling of rose-water in the rose; the pervading [element] is called ḥāll (حال), and that in which it pervades is called maḥall (محل). AI
الحلول الجواري
عبارة عن كون أحد الجسمين ظرفا للآخر، كحلول الماء في الكوز.
Al-ḥulūl al-jawārī (الحلول الجواري, 'containment indwelling'): an expression for one of two bodies being a container for the other, like the indwelling of water in a jug. AI
المحال
ما يمتنع وجوده في الخارج، كاجتماع الحركة والسكون في جزء واحد.
Al-muḥāl (المحال, 'the impossible'): that whose existence in external reality is precluded, like the co-occurrence of motion and rest in a single [indivisible] part. AI
The same letters, turned
The same three letters in all their orders. Choose one.
ح ل ل
الحاء واللام له فروع كثيرة ومسائل وأصلها كلها عندي فتح الشيء لا يشذ عنه شيء
ḥ-l has many branches and matters, and their root, all of it, in my view, is the opening of a thing; nothing deviates from it. AI
Ibn Fāris ↗Lisān ↗Quran ×51
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
- حḥāʾmiddle of the throat · voiceless, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
- لlāmedge of the tongue · voiced, in betweenI. 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
ح
ومن أوسط الحلق مخرج العين والحاء
From the middle of the throat is the place of the ʿayn and the ḥāʾ. Sībawayh, lines 26548–26549 ↗
ومن وسط الحلق مخرج العين والحاء
From the middle of the throat is the place of the ʿayn and the ḥāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 970 ↗
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 ↗
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
ح
Level of existence: الجوهر الهبابي · the dust-like substance (spelled الهبابي in the text)
Divine Name: الآخر · al-Ākhir, the Last
Lunar mansion: الدبران · al-Dabarān
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62076Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 10 line 2573 ↗
ل
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 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
ح
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي تدل على الإحاطة والشمول للجميع.
It denotes encompassing and inclusion of everything.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي العدد الكثير الخارج عن بني آدم كالنجوم.
It is a great number external to the children of Adam, such as the stars.
With kasra ـِ
فهي العدد الداخل في الذات أو للذات عليه ولاية كملكية العبيد والدنانير والدراهم وغير ذلك.
It is a number contained within the self, or over which the self has authority, such as ownership of slaves, dinars, dirhams and the like.
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.
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.
Two-letter nucleus10 roots in Ibn Fāris’s chapterح ل
Ibn Fāris groups his roots under two-letter chapters (“the X and the Y and what makes them three”). These are the roots of this root's chapter with the core sense he gives each. Setting them side by side is our juxtaposition; he does not himself draw a shared meaning. His chapter heading, line 7473 ↗
- حلمالحاء واللام والميم أصول ثلاثة الأول ترك العجلة والثاني تثقب الشيء والثالث رؤية الشيء في المنام وهي متباينة جدا تدل على أن بعض اللغة ليس قياسا وإن كانQ 21 · L7474
- حلنالحاء واللام والنون إن جعلت النون زائدة فقد ذكرناه فيما مضى وإن جعلت النون أصلية فهو فعال وهو الجدى وليست الكلمة أصلا يقاس وقد مضى في بابهL7485
- حلوالحاء واللام وما بعدها معتل ثلاثة أصولL7487
- حلتالحاء واللام والتاء ليس عندي بأصل صحيح وقد جاءت فيه كليمات فالحلتيت صمغ ويقال حلت دينه قضاه وحلت فلانا إذا أعطاه وحلت الصوف مزقهL7517
- حلجالحاء واللام والجيم ليس عندي أصلاL7519
- حلزالحاء واللام والزاء أصل صحيحL7521
- حلسالحاء واللام والسين أصل واحد وهو الشيء يلزم الشيء فالحلس حلس البعير وهو ما يكون تحت البرذعة أحلست فلانا يمينا وذلك إذا أمررتها عليه ويقال بل ألزمته إيL7523
- حلفالحاء واللام والفاء أصل واحد وهو الملازمةQ 13 · L7536
- حلقالحاء واللام والقاف أصول ثلاثةQ 3 · L7542
- حلكالحاء واللام والكاف حرف يدل على السوادL7560
In the sister scriptsHebrew ח ל לSyriac ܚ ܠ ܠ
| Arabic | ح ل ل |
| Hebrew | ח ל ל |
| Syriac | ܚ ܠ ܠ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩢 𐩡 𐩡 |
| Phoenician | 𐤇 𐤋 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 treats al-maḥall as the opposite of departure (al-murtaḥal), and glosses ḥall/ḥalāl/ḥulūl/ḥilal loosely as 'totality' (jimāʿ), already spanning the settling and the permissive senses.well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl treats al-maḥall as the opposite of departure (al-murtaḥal), and glosses ḥall/ḥalāl/ḥulūl/ḥilal loosely as 'totality' (jimāʿ), already spanning the settling and the permissive senses. Al-Jawharī isolates the primary act — ḥalaltu al-ʿuqda, 'I untied the knot' — then extends it to ḥalla bi-l-makān, 'he alighted/encamped', and to al-ḥill as the antonym of ḥarām, including the technical rajul ḥill, one released from iḥrām. Ibn Fāris names untying the knot as the one true origin (aṣl) from which ḥalāl (a thing rendered open/permitted) and ḥulūl (alighting, since the traveler who has bound his load unties it, yaḥillu, on arrival) both derive. Al-Rāghib confirms this genealogy explicitly, citing Q20:27 for the literal untying and deriving ḥalla = nazala ('he descended') from the untying of loads at the moment of arrival, later generalized to settling as such; he also notes ḥalla al-dayn, a debt 'becoming due' (released for collection). Ibn Manẓūr and Lane converge on the same order: untying/opening as the base sense, settling (ḥulūl, opposite of irtiḥāl) as its extension, and ḥalāl/ḥarām as the further legal extension of 'unrestricted, opened for use.'
Draws on: al-ʿAyn · al-Ṣiḥāḥ · Maqāyīs · al-Mufradāt · Lisān al-ʿArab · Lane
- Wiktionary Arabic root appendix ح‑ل‑ل ↗
- Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. حلل
Letters & soundIn the akbarian correspondence table, ḥāʾ is assigned to the dust-like substance (al-jawhar al-habāʾī) and lām to the third heaven;speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
In the akbarian correspondence table, ḥāʾ is assigned to the dust-like substance (al-jawhar al-habāʾī) and lām to the third heaven; al-Dabbāgh's fatḥa-readings give ḥāʾ the sense of encompassing and inclusion of everything, and lām the sense of the speaker's attainment of something great. Read together and against the grain of etymology rather than with it, one could see in ḥ-l-l's 'opening that admits everything' (Ibn Fāris's own gloss) a faint echo of ḥāʾ's encompassing-inclusion; this is a resonance a symbolist reader might notice, not a derivation. Mainstream historical linguistics treats such letter-meanings as without explanatory force for actual etymology; they belong to a separate, symbolic register of reading. The correspondence should be taken as suggestive at most.
Draws on: Ibn ʿArabī letters-in-the-Breath table · al-Dabbāgh letter values
Root structureIbn Fāris places ḥ-l-l among a set of ḥ-l chapters he explicitly does not unify: ḥ-l-m (three disparate senses — restraint from haste, piercing, dreaming), ḥ-l-s (one sense, something clinging to another, as the ḥils beneath a camel's saddle-pad), ḥ-l-f (one sense, close adherence, mulāzama), and ḥ-l-q (three senses).uncertain
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
Ibn Fāris places ḥ-l-l among a set of ḥ-l chapters he explicitly does not unify: ḥ-l-m (three disparate senses — restraint from haste, piercing, dreaming), ḥ-l-s (one sense, something clinging to another, as the ḥils beneath a camel's saddle-pad), ḥ-l-f (one sense, close adherence, mulāzama), and ḥ-l-q (three senses). He notes himself that this ḥ-l cluster shows language is not always analogically regular. The neighboring chapter ḥ-l-f (adherence) sits suggestively close to ḥ-l-l's sense of settling/alighting — both involve a body coming to rest against or with another — but Ibn Fāris keeps them as separate roots, not a shared origin; this is juxtaposition only. The permutation table shows no attested metathesis (lḥl, llḥ are unattested and not treated as real roots), so ḥ-l-l stands alone in its order.
Draws on: Maqāyīs chapter neighbors · permutation table
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha, bāb al-ḥāʾ wa-l-lām
Semitic kin & loanwordsArabic ḥ-l-l has a solid comparative footing: Hebrew ḥālal (III) 'to begin, to profane/release from sanctity' and Aramaic/Syriac ḥll 'to loose, untie, release, permit, begin' show the same untying-releasing core attested by the Arabic lexicographers.plausible
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
Arabic ḥ-l-l has a solid comparative footing: Hebrew ḥālal (III) 'to begin, to profane/release from sanctity' and Aramaic/Syriac ḥll 'to loose, untie, release, permit, begin' show the same untying-releasing core attested by the Arabic lexicographers. The semantic bridge from 'untying' to 'beginning' (releasing something into motion) and to 'permitting' (releasing a restriction) runs parallel in both branches, which supports treating ḥ-l-l as an inherited common Semitic root rather than a later specialization. No loanword scenario is indicated; the root's behavior across languages looks like independent but cognate development from a shared Proto-Semitic base.
Draws on: comparative Semitic ḥll
- Brown–Driver–Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon, s.v. חלל
Quranic exegesisAt Q2:275 (aḥalla Allāhu al-bayʿa wa-ḥarrama al-ribā) al-Ṭabarī reads aḥalla as God's legislative act distinguishing licit sale from usury by declaration, not by any inherent difference exegetes could otherwise specify.well attested
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
At Q2:275 (aḥalla Allāhu al-bayʿa wa-ḥarrama al-ribā) al-Ṭabarī reads aḥalla as God's legislative act distinguishing licit sale from usury by declaration, not by any inherent difference exegetes could otherwise specify. Al-Rāghib's lexical note — that ḥalāl is 'untying' extended to legal release from restriction — is the semantic key the exegetes lean on throughout: what is ḥalāl has had a binding restriction removed by revelation. At Q2:229, on the third divorce, al-Zamakhsharī and al-Rāzī discuss lā taḥillu lahu min baʿdu ḥattā tankiḥa zawjan ghayrahu, generating the fiqh category of the muḥallil (one whose marriage makes the woman lawful again to the first husband) directly from this root. Al-Ṭabarī also glosses Q2:168's ḥalālan ṭayyiban as the positive counterpart to ḥarām, reinforcing the root's basic legal binary across the corpus.
Akbarian readingIn Faṣṣ Ādam, Ibn ʿArabī uses maḥall (the locus, from this root) as the term for whatever receives a divine self-disclosure and thereby becomes, like a mirror, the means by which something is shown a form of itself it could not otherwise see — 'the maḥall looked into gives what would not have appeared without the existence of this maḥall and its self-disclosure to it.' He states as a rule of divine governance that God fashions no maḥall without it receiving a divine spirit, described as the breathing-into it (al-nafkh fīhi).well attested
The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.
In Faṣṣ Ādam, Ibn ʿArabī uses maḥall (the locus, from this root) as the term for whatever receives a divine self-disclosure and thereby becomes, like a mirror, the means by which something is shown a form of itself it could not otherwise see — 'the maḥall looked into gives what would not have appeared without the existence of this maḥall and its self-disclosure to it.' He states as a rule of divine governance that God fashions no maḥall without it receiving a divine spirit, described as the breathing-into it (al-nafkh fīhi). The maḥall is compared to the setting (fibre/bezel) of a signet-ring relative to the ring itself: the cosmos stands by the existence of the locus as the ring's bezel stands by the ring, and it is the maḥall of the engraving, the mark by which the King seals His treasury. Here ḥ-l-l's root sense of 'that which receives, admits, opens to' is put to direct metaphysical use as the technical term for the receptive site of tajallī.
Draws on: Faṣṣ Ādam excerpts on maḥall
- Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, Faṣṣ Ādam
Reference