Root · 1 in the Quran · 4 in 4 texts of the library
حوزPer Ibn Fāris: gathering and collecting together. (root hwz)
الحاء والواو والزاء أصل واحد وهو الجمع والتجمع
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ح و ز that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
20 words7 verbs5 verbal nouns1 participle1 intensive or elative4 other nouns2 plurals
- حازَhe drew, collected, or gathered, it together
- مُتَحَيِّز—
- حَوْزَةpossession; territory
- تحوّزَhe, or it, writhed, or twisted, about, and turned over and over
- تحاوزَthe two parties, or divisions, turned away, each from the other, in war or …
The whole family6 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs7حازَ · حوّزَ · أَحِزِ
The root as an action: the bare Form I, and the Forms made by adding letters before, inside or after the root.grammar →
Verbal nouns5حَوْز · اِحْتِيَاز · تَحْوِيز
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
Participles1مُتَحَيِّز
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
Intensives, qualities and the elative1حَوَّاز
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
- حَوَّازintensive (faʿʿāl)Lane
Other nouns4حَوْزَة · تَحَيَّز · حَيِّز
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 12 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-ḥawz (الحوز) is gentle driving/travel.
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-ḥawz (الحوز) is gathering.
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395Ḥāʾ, wāw, and zāy form a single root meaning gathering and congregation.
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Rāghib · 502God, the Exalted, said: "or withdrawing (mutaḥayyizan, متحيزا) to a company [of fighters]" [Q.
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-ḥawz (الحوز) means vigorous driving as well as gentle, slow driving;
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.
ح و ز
الحاء والواو والزاء أصل واحد وهو الجمع والتجمع
ḥ-w-z: one root, which is gathering and congregating. AI
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
- وwāwbetween the lips · voiced, in betweenSīb. · I. Jinnī
- زzāytongue-tip, by the front teeth · voiced, continuantSīb. · 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
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 ↗
و
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 ↗
ز
ومما بين طرف اللسان وفويق الثنايا مخرج الزاي، والسين، والصاد
From between the tip of the tongue and just above the front teeth is the place of the zāy, the sīn and the ṣād. Sībawayh, line 26560 ↗
ومما بين الثنايا وطرف اللسان، مخرج الصاد والزاي والسين
From between the front teeth and the tip of the tongue is the place of the ṣād, the zāy and the sīn. Ibn Jinnī, line 983 ↗
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 ↗
و
Level of existence: تعيين الرتب والمقامات والمنازل · the determination of ranks, stations and waystations
Divine Name: رفيع الدرجات · Rafīʿ al-Darajāt, Exalted in Degrees
Lunar mansion: الرشا · al-Rashāʾ
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62121Spheres 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 2582ز
Level of existence: ما يظهر في ركن الهواء · what appears in the pillar (element) of air
Divine Name: الحي · the Living (al-Ḥayy)
Lunar mansion: الشولة · al-Shawla
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64951Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 7 line 2570 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
منها دون الألف فطبعها الحرارة واليبوسة
[Zāy and lām] of it, excluding alif: their nature is heat and dryness.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 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.
و
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي الأشياء المشتبكة في الإنسان مثل العروق والأصابع وما أشبه ذلك.
It is the intertwined things in the human being, such as veins, fingers and the like.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي الأشياء المباينة لبني آدم مثل الأفلاك والجبال وما أشبه ذلك
It is things distinct from the children of Adam, such as the celestial spheres, mountains and the like.
With kasra ـِ
فهي الأشياء المشتبكة المستقذرة أو المبغوضة كالأمعاء ونحوها.
It is intertwined things that are filthy or detested, such as the intestines and the like.
ز
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي اسم للشيء الذي إذا دخل على الشيء ضره، وقال مرة: اسم للشيء وما يتحرز منه.
It is a name for the thing that harms another thing when it enters upon it. On one occasion he said: a name for the thing and what one guards against.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى القبيح الذي فيه ضرر كالكبائر.
It is an indication of the ugly thing that contains harm, such as the major sins.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى القبيح الذي لا ضرر فيه كالصغائر والشبهات والنجاسة.
It is an indication of the ugly thing that contains no harm, such as minor sins, doubtful matters and ritual impurity.
In the sister scriptsHebrew ח ו זSyriac ܚ ܘ ܙ
| Arabic | ح و ز |
| Hebrew | ח ו ז |
| Syriac | ܚ ܘ ܙ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩢 𐩥 𐩸 |
| Phoenician | 𐤇 𐤅 𐤆 |
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 anchors the root in ḥayyiz al-dār, the appurtenances and benefits attached to a house, and in the military sense of taḥayyuz (troops joining together) and inḥiyāz (abandoning one's position and shifting elsewhere);well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl anchors the root in ḥayyiz al-dār, the appurtenances and benefits attached to a house, and in the military sense of taḥayyuz (troops joining together) and inḥiyāz (abandoning one's position and shifting elsewhere); he notes the irregular plural aḥyāz rather than the expected aḥwāz, kept distinct to avoid confusion with another word. Al-Jawharī generalizes to al-ḥawz as simply al-jamʿ, 'gathering', and records a separate sense, the gentle driving of camels to water, plus the epithet al-aḥwazī, a skillful, light driver. Ibn Fāris's maqāyīs confirms the single underlying sense as gathering and territory (ḥawza, a guarded precinct one gathers and protects), and adds the image of the snake's taḥawwuz, its coiling. Al-Rāghib, glossing Qurʾān 8:16, defines mutaḥayyizan as 'becoming part of a ḥayyiz', a gathered mass, and flags the root's true radical as wāw. Ibn Manẓūr's Lisān synthesizes all these strands and adds a pastoral interjection (ḥayzi ḥayzi) used in driving goats; Lane confirms ḥāzahu as 'he drew, collected, or gathered it together', distinguishing this transitive sense from the reflexive taḥayyuz.
Draws on: al-ʿAyn · al-Ṣiḥāḥ · Maqāyīs · Mufradāt · Lisān · Lane
- Lisān al-ʿArab, ḥ-w-z
- Lane's Lexicon, ḥ-w-z
Letters & soundAl-Dabbāgh assigns ḥāʾ the sense of encompassing and including everything, wāw the sense of intertwined bodily connectors (veins, fingers), and zāy the sense of a thing that harms when it enters, or a thing to be guarded against.speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
Al-Dabbāgh assigns ḥāʾ the sense of encompassing and including everything, wāw the sense of intertwined bodily connectors (veins, fingers), and zāy the sense of a thing that harms when it enters, or a thing to be guarded against. Read together these fit the lexical cluster remarkably well: ḥawz as an encompassing gathering (ḥāʾ), wāw as the binding-together of what is gathered, and zāy as the guarded, defended precinct (ḥawza, what one 'hemis against harm'). The akbarī table's associations (ḥāʾ with the dust-like substance, wāw with the fixing of ranks and stations, zāy with what appears in the element of air) are less obviously connected to this root's sense. This kind of letter-symbolism is treated by mainstream historical linguistics as at most suggestive folk-etymology, not evidence of origin.
Draws on: al-Dabbāgh letter-meanings · Akbarian letter table (akbari198)
- Ibn ʿArabī, letter correspondences (akbari198)
Root structureOf the six possible orderings of ḥ-w-z, only ḥwz itself (gathering) and its reverse zwḥ (recession, moving away) are attested as roots.uncertain
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
Of the six possible orderings of ḥ-w-z, only ḥwz itself (gathering) and its reverse zwḥ (recession, moving away) are attested as roots. Ibn Jinnī's theory of the greater derivation (al-ishtiqāq al-akbar) looks for kinship of sense across such permuted triads; here the pairing is suggestive rather than demonstrated, since ḥwz denotes drawing-together and zwḥ denotes drawing-away, an antithetical rather than convergent relation. No nucleus siblings are given in the two-letter chapter for ḥ-w-z. The juxtaposition should be read as an observation about the permutation space, not an established etymological claim.
Draws on: Ibn Fāris nucleus · permutation table
- Ibn Jinnī, al-Khaṣāʾiṣ, bāb al-ishtiqāq al-akbar (link not verified)
Semitic kin & loanwordsNo confident Semitic cognate for ḥwz in the sense 'gather, enclose' is attested in Hebrew, Aramaic/Syriac, Akkadian, Geʿez, or Old South Arabian;plausible
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
No confident Semitic cognate for ḥwz in the sense 'gather, enclose' is attested in Hebrew, Aramaic/Syriac, Akkadian, Geʿez, or Old South Arabian; the root does not appear to be a loanword. Any resemblance to unrelated Hebrew roots built on ḥ-z (e.g. ḥāzāh, 'to see') is coincidental, sharing no semantic ground.
Draws on: comparative Semitic lexica
Quranic exegesisAt Qurʾān 8:16, the verse forbids turning one's back to the enemy in battle except for two cases: tactical repositioning (mutaḥarrifan li-qitāl) or 'becoming part of a group' (mutaḥayyizan ilā fiʾa).well attested
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
At Qurʾān 8:16, the verse forbids turning one's back to the enemy in battle except for two cases: tactical repositioning (mutaḥarrifan li-qitāl) or 'becoming part of a group' (mutaḥayyizan ilā fiʾa). Al-Ṭabarī glosses taḥayyuz as regrouping with another Muslim contingent to renew the fight, not flight. Al-Zamakhsharī and al-Rāzī elaborate the legal distinction between forbidden firār (desertion, one of the mūbiqāt) and permitted taḥayyuz, a repositioning that serves the collective military gathering rather than individual escape. Al-Rāghib's definition, 'becoming part of a ḥayyiz', underlies this reading: the soldier does not leave the fight but joins another gathered body within it.
Draws on: Ṭabarī · Zamakhsharī · Rāzī · Rāghib
Akbarian readingIn Faṣṣ Ādam, the human configuration (al-nashʾa al-insāniyya) is said to have 'gathered' (ḥāzat) all the names present in the divine forms, thereby attaining the rank of comprehensiveness (iḥāṭa) and gathering (jamʿ) through this existence, by which the proof (ḥujja) for God is established.plausible
The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.
In Faṣṣ Ādam, the human configuration (al-nashʾa al-insāniyya) is said to have 'gathered' (ḥāzat) all the names present in the divine forms, thereby attaining the rank of comprehensiveness (iḥāṭa) and gathering (jamʿ) through this existence, by which the proof (ḥujja) for God is established. Here ḥāzat carries the full classical sense of drawing-together into a single encompassing whole: Adam/Insān as the ḥayyiz in which the totality of divine names is collected. This use directly continues the lexicographers' core sense of gathering, applied to the ontological role of the human being as locus of comprehensive gathering (al-jamʿiyya).
Draws on: Faṣṣ Ādam excerpt
- Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, Faṣṣ Ādam
Reference