حييtwo roots, the opposite of death, and istiḥyāʾ, modesty or shame, the opposite of … (root hyy)

The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.

The al-ʿAyn excerpt supplied belongs to the neighbouring root ḥ-w-y (ḥawā, 'to gather, coil'), so it gives no evidence for this root. Excerpts from al-Jawharī, Ibn Manẓūr and Lane were not provided. Ibn Fāris separates two roots. The first is life (ḥayāh, ḥayawān), the opposite of death; rain is called ḥayā because the earth lives by it, and one 'finds a land living' when its plants are fresh. The second is istiḥyāʾ, shame, to which he tentatively attaches the she-camel's ḥayāʾ (pudendum), as what would be ashamed of being exposed. Al-Rāghib sets out graded senses of ḥayāh: the growing power in plants and animals, then the sensing power, from which the animal (ḥayawān) is named; the excerpt breaks off before his higher senses.

What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.

Al-Dabbāgh reads ḥāʾ as encompassing and including everything, which fits a notion of life as what pervades all things. In the Breath correspondences, Ibn ʿArabī assigns yāʾ to the First Heaven; al-Dabbāgh reads yāʾ as the particle of calling and of emphasis. In his pairs naḍḥ/naḍkh and qaḍm/khaḍm, Ibn Jinnī links ḥāʾ with the gentler and weaker action and khāʾ with the stronger. Mainstream linguistics treats all such correspondences as suggestive at most.

The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).

Ibn Fāris's ḥ-y chapter includes ḥ-y-th ('where', which he says is not a root), ḥ-y-r (hesitation, going back and forth), ḥ-y-s (mixing), ḥ-y-ṣ (swerving into wrong), ḥ-y-f (inclining) and ḥ-y-q (one thing befalling another). Several of these involve turning or veering, but none is close to the sense of life, and the grouping may be no more than alphabetical. The permutations yḥy and yyḥ are unattested as roots, so the greater derivation has nothing to work on.

Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.

The root is common West Semitic for 'live'. Cognates include Hebrew ḥāyâ 'to live' and ḥay 'living', Jewish Aramaic and Syriac ḥyā 'to live' with ḥayyē 'life', Geʿez ḥaywa 'to live', and Sabaic forms of ḥyw. Akkadian generally uses balāṭu for 'to live' instead. No confident cognate is known for the Arabic sense of shame (istiḥyāʾ). The word is native and not a loan.

How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.

For Q 2:28 ('you were dead and He gave you life…'), al-Ṭabarī records readings in which the first death is non-existence or the state of a drop of semen, followed by life, death and resurrection. For the martyrs at 2:154, the commentators discuss whether their life is bodily, spiritual, or a life of provision with God. On al-ḥayy al-qayyūm (2:255), al-Rāzī gives the kalām definition of al-ḥayy as the one of whom knowledge and power can validly be predicated, and discusses how God's life differs from creaturely life. On 2:26 (inna Allāha lā yastaḥyī), al-Zamakhsharī explains the ascription of ḥayāʾ to God figuratively, as its consequence, the leaving off of an act, rather than as the passion of shame.

The word as a technical term in falsafa and theology.

In kalām, ḥayāh is one of the essential divine attributes and the precondition for knowledge, power and will. The Ashʿarites hold it to be an attribute additional to the essence, while the Muʿtazila define 'living' as the one for whom knowing and being able are valid, without positing a distinct entity. Avicenna, in the Ilāhiyyāt of al-Shifāʾ and in al-Najāt, identifies the First's life with its being an intellect that knows itself, so that life adds nothing to the essence. Al-Ghazālī's creedal works keep life at the head of the seven attributes.

The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.

In Faṣṣ Ādam, life is Ibn ʿArabī's example, with knowledge, of a universal intelligible reality (ḥaqīqa maʿqūla). Such a reality has no concrete existence of its own yet governs the concrete existents that require it: 'as the relation of knowledge to the knower, and of life to the living'. Life is a distinct intelligible reality, differentiated from knowledge as knowledge is from life. Because the reality is one, both God and the creature are called 'living', though the attribution differs. Elsewhere he develops al-Ḥayy as a divine Name and holds that life runs through all things. No Iṣṭilāḥ definition was provided.

The word in Suhrawardī's philosophy of light.

In Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, Suhrawardī defines the living (al-ḥayy) as the one that perceives and acts (al-darrāk al-faʿʿāl). Every pure, self-aware light is perceptive and active, so every such light is living. Life is thus made convertible with incorporeal light and self-manifestation, with the Light of Lights as the most fully living.