Root · 124 in the Quran · 44 in 14 texts of the library
خوفa single sound sense denoting dhuʿr wa fazaʿ — dread and fright. (root khwf)
الخاء والواو والفاء أصل واحد يدل على الذعر والفزع
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of خ و ف that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
24 words5 verbs3 verbal nouns4 participles2 places and instruments3 intensives and elatives4 other nouns3 plurals
- خَافَhe feared, or was afraid of, him, or it
- خَوْفfear
- خِيفَة—
- خَوَّفَhe put fear into him
- خَائِفfearing
The whole family7 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs5خَافَ · خَوَّفَ · أَخافَ
The root as an action: the bare Form I, and the Forms made by adding letters before, inside or after the root.grammar →
- خَافَhe feared, or was afraid of, him, or itLaneForm IQurʾān ×83library ×11Lane
- خَوَّفَhe put fear into himLaneForm IIQurʾān ×4library ×1Lane
- أَخافَthe enemies' frontier caused to fearLaneForm IVlibrary ×1Lane
- خَاْوَفَLane: see Form IForm IIILane
- تخوّفَForm VLane
Verbal nouns3خَوْف · تَخْوِيف · تَخَوُّف
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
- خَوْفfearautoForm I · Lane: inf. n.Qurʾān ×26library ×18Lane
- تَخْوِيفintimidationautoForm II · Lane: inf. n.Qurʾān ×1library ×1Lane
- تَخَوُّفForm VQurʾān ×1
Participles4خَائِف · مُتَخَوَّف · مُخَاف
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
Place, time and instrument2مَخُوف · مَخِيف
Where or when it happens, and what it is done with: the m- nouns.grammar →
Intensives, qualities and the elative3أَخْوَف · خَوَّاف · خُوَيْف
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
- أَخْوَفmore, and most, formidable, fearful, or fearedLaneelative or colour adjective (afʿal)library ×1Lane
- خَوَّافintensive (faʿʿāl)Lane
- خُوَيْفquality (faʿīl)Lane
Other nouns4خِيفَة · خَوَاف · خُوَيْفَة
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 17 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-khayfānah (الخيفانة): the locust before its two wings have become fully even/formed.
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-khayf (الخيف): what slopes down from the bulk of a mountain and rises above the watercourse.
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395Khā', wāw, and fā' constitute one root indicating alarm and fright.
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Rāghib · 502Al-khawf (الخوف): the anticipation of something disliked, based on a presumed or known indication — just as rajā' (hope) and ṭama' (desire) are the anticipation of something loved, based on a presumed or known indication
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 · 711Khayifa (خيف) [is said of] the camel, the human, the horse, and others, khayafan (خيفا);
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.
خ و ف
الخاء والواو والفاء أصل واحد يدل على الذعر والفزع
kh-w-f is one root indicating terror and fright. 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
- خkhāʾtop of the throat · voiceless, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
- وwāwbetween the lips · voiced, in betweenSīb. · I. Jinnī
- فfāʾlower lip and upper teeth · voiceless, 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
خ
وأدناها مخرجا من الفم: الغين والخاء
The nearest of them to the mouth in place: the ghayn and the khāʾ. Sībawayh, line 26549 ↗
ومما فوق ذلك مع أول الفم، مخرج الغين والخاء
From above that, at the start of the mouth, is the place of the ghayn and the khāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 971 ↗
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 ↗
ف
ومن باطن الشفة السفلى وأطراف الثنايا العلى مخرج الفاء
From the inside of the lower lip and the edges of the upper front teeth is the place of the fāʾ. Sībawayh, line 26562 ↗
ومن باطن الشفة السفلى وأطراف الثنايا العلى، مخرج الفاء
From the inside of the lower lip and the edges of the upper front teeth is the place of the fāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 985 ↗
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
خ
Spheres 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 2582ف
Level of existence: الملائكة · the angels
Divine Name: القوى · the Strong (al-Qawī)
Lunar mansion: سعد الأخبية · Saʿd al-Akhbiya
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 65823Spheres 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 2582Meaning by vowelal-Dabbāgh · a visionary claim about a primordial “Syriac”, not historical Syriac
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
خ
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي طول إلى النهاية مع رقة.
It is length to the utmost, together with fineness/thinness.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي اسم لكمال في الحيوانات.
It is a name for a perfection in animals.
With kasra ـِ
فهي اسم لكمال في الجمادات.
It is a name for a perfection in inanimate things.
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.
ف
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي لنفي الخبث بعد ما كان جنسه معلوما بالخبث، فهي إشارة إلى أنه طاهر وجنسه خبيث، والخبث مثل المعاصي وما أشبهها.
It is for negating foulness in something whose genus is known for foulness. It thus indicates that the thing is pure while its genus is foul; foulness being like sins and the like.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي لتزويل الخبث.
It is for removing foulness.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى الذات وما احتوت عليه، وفي بعض الأحيان قد يكون معها التقليل.
It is an indication of the self and what it contains; at times it may carry a sense of diminution.
Two-letter nucleus14 roots in Ibn Fāris’s chapterخ و
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 9213 ↗
- خوىالخاء والواو والياء أصل واحد يدل على الخلو والسقوطQ 5 · L9214
- خوبالخاء والواو والباء أصيل يدل على خلو وشبههL9223
- خوتالخاء والواو والتاء أصل واحد يدل على نفاذ ومرور بإقدامL9225
- خوثالخاء والواو والثاء أصيل ليس بمطرد ولا يقاس عليه يقولون خوثت المرأة إذا عظم بطنها ويقال بل الخوثاء الناعمةL9238
- خوخالخاء والواو والخاء ليس بشيء وفيه الخوخ وما أراه عربياL9242
- خوذالخاء والواو والذال ليس أصلا يطرد ولا يقاس عليه وإنما فيه كلمة واحدة مختلف في تأويلهاL9246
- خورالخاء والواو والراء أصلان أحدهما يدل على صوت والآخر على ضعفQ 2 · L9249
- خوسالخاء والواو والسين أصل واحد يدل على فسادL9257
- خوشالخاء والواو والشين أصل يدل على ضمر وشبهه فالمتخوش الضامر ولذلك تسمى الخاصرتان الخوشينL9261
- خوصالخاء والواو والصاد أصل واحد يدل على قلة ودقة وضيقL9262
- خوفالخاء والواو والفاء أصل واحد يدل على الذعر والفزعQ 124 · L9280
- خوقالخاء والواو والقاف أصيل يدل على خلو الشيءL9284
- خولالخاء والواو واللام أصل واحد يدل على تعهد الشيءQ 8 · L9286
- خونالخاء والواو والنون أصل واحد وهو التنقصQ 16 · L9292
In the sister scriptsHebrew ח ו פSyriac ܚ ܘ ܦ
| Arabic | خ و ف |
| Hebrew | ח ו פ |
| Syriac | ܚ ܘ ܦ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩭 𐩥 𐩰 |
| Phoenician | 𐤇 𐤅 𐤐 |
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 khāfa primarily as a phonological problem — the wāw of yakhwafu becomes alif in yakhāfu by a regular process of dropping the letter while retaining the vowel-quality it conditions, and separately notes al-khāfa as a small vessel used by the honey-gatherer or water-carrier, unrelated in sense but sharing the root's letters.well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl (al-ʿAyn) treats khāfa primarily as a phonological problem — the wāw of yakhwafu becomes alif in yakhāfu by a regular process of dropping the letter while retaining the vowel-quality it conditions, and separately notes al-khāfa as a small vessel used by the honey-gatherer or water-carrier, unrelated in sense but sharing the root's letters. Al-Jawharī (al-Ṣiḥāḥ) gives the plain paradigm: khāfa yakhāfu khawfan wa khīfatan wa makhāfatan, active participle khāʾif, with the archaic plural khuwwaf preserving the original wāw. Ibn Fāris (Maqāyīs) confirms the single sense of dhuʿr wa fazaʿ, adding khāwafanī fa-khiftuhu (he tried to out-frighten me and I proved more fearful than him), and treats takhawwaftu l-shayʾ (I diminished it) as a distinct, if phonetically similar, sense reached by substitution from a root meaning nuqṣān (diminution). Al-Rāghib (Mufradāt) defines khawf precisely as anticipation of a disliked event on the basis of a conjectured or known sign, the structural mirror of rajāʾ/ṭamaʿ (anticipation of a loved event), applicable to both worldly and otherworldly matters — his gloss on 4:3 and 4:35 reads khiftum as 'if you know/suppose'. Ibn Manẓūr (Lisān) and Lane both preserve and elaborate this whole picture, with Lane noting that some grammarians treat khawf, khīf, and khīfa as underlying substantives rather than pure maṣdars.
Draws on: cayn · sihah · Ibn Fāris · mufradat · lisan · Lane
- al-Khalīl, Kitāb al-ʿAyn, s.v. kh-w-f
- al-Jawharī, al-Ṣiḥāḥ, s.v. kh-w-f
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha, s.v. kh-w-f
- al-Rāghib, al-Mufradāt, s.v. kh-w-f
- Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, s.v. kh-w-f
- Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. kh-w-f
Letters & soundAl-Dabbāgh reads khāʾ as length carried to the utmost together with fineness/thinness, wāw as the intertwined things within the human being (veins, fingers, and the like), and fāʾ as a marker that negates foulness in a thing whose genus is known for foulness, indicating the thing's purity despite its foul kind.speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
Al-Dabbāgh reads khāʾ as length carried to the utmost together with fineness/thinness, wāw as the intertwined things within the human being (veins, fingers, and the like), and fāʾ as a marker that negates foulness in a thing whose genus is known for foulness, indicating the thing's purity despite its foul kind. Read together and only as a suggestive sequence, this could be heard as: something drawn out thin and intertwined within the person (an inner tremor along the veins), yet marked as not itself base — consonant with khawf's classical sense of a legitimate, even praiseworthy, inner state rather than a vice. Ibn ʿArabī's letter-heaven correspondences give wāw the third heaven and fāʾ the angels, with no assignment given for khāʾ here. This remains speculative letter-symbolism, not a claim about historical semantic causation.
Draws on: dabbagh_fatha · akbari198
- al-Dabbāgh, letter-meanings (fatḥa series)
- Ibn ʿArabī, letters and the seven heavens (Futūḥāt, correspondences)
Root structureIbn Fāris's kh-w chapter siblings cluster loosely around hollowness, weakness, and diminishment: khawiya (emptiness/collapse), khāba (a related failing-empty sense), khāra (weakness, opposed to a homonymous sense of sound), khāsa (corruption), and khāṣa (narrowness/thinness) — a neighborhood into which khawf's dhuʿr wa fazaʿ, read as an inner hollowing-out or collapse of resolve, would fit as a psychological extension of the physical cluster.uncertain
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
Ibn Fāris's kh-w chapter siblings cluster loosely around hollowness, weakness, and diminishment: khawiya (emptiness/collapse), khāba (a related failing-empty sense), khāra (weakness, opposed to a homonymous sense of sound), khāsa (corruption), and khāṣa (narrowness/thinness) — a neighborhood into which khawf's dhuʿr wa fazaʿ, read as an inner hollowing-out or collapse of resolve, would fit as a psychological extension of the physical cluster. Among the six permutations, khawf itself dominates with 124 occurrences; wakhf (و-خ-ف) is attested with the sense of stirring/beating a mucilaginous plant in a basin to mix it, and khafw/khafā (خ-ف-و) is glossed as containing two mutually opposed senses. Ibn Jinnī's greater derivation would invite, only as a juxtaposition, a pairing of khawf (an agitation within the breast) with wakhf (an agitation by beating within a vessel) — both naming a churning brought about from outside the thing churned; this is not asserted as an actual derivational relation.
Draws on: maqayis nucleus siblings · permutations table
- Wiktionary Arabic root appendix خ و ف ↗
- Ibn Jinnī, al-Khaṣāʾiṣ, chapter on al-ishtiqāq al-akbar (link not verified)
Semitic kin & loanwordsNo confident cognate for kh-w-f in the sense of fear is established here in Hebrew, Aramaic/Syriac, Akkadian, Geʿez, or Old South Arabian;uncertain
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
No confident cognate for kh-w-f in the sense of fear is established here in Hebrew, Aramaic/Syriac, Akkadian, Geʿez, or Old South Arabian; the standard Northwest Semitic terms for fear use different roots (Hebrew y-r-ʾ, p-ḥ-d). This is stated as a plain absence in the present data rather than a positive claim that Arabic khawf is an isolate within Semitic.
Draws on: comparative Semitic survey
Quranic exegesisAl-Rāghib's technical distinction — khawf as anticipation of harm from a conjectured or known sign, set against khashya as fear compounded with knowledge and reverence — becomes the standard exegetical tool for distinguishing the many Qurʾānic occurrences of the root.well attested
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
Al-Rāghib's technical distinction — khawf as anticipation of harm from a conjectured or known sign, set against khashya as fear compounded with knowledge and reverence — becomes the standard exegetical tool for distinguishing the many Qurʾānic occurrences of the root. On falā khawfun ʿalayhim wa lā hum yaḥzanūn (2:38 and its repetitions), al-Ṭabarī glosses the negation as covering both what is feared in the future and what is grieved over from the past, marking a state of security proper to the rightly guided. On fa-man khāfa min mūṣin janafan (2:182) and illā an yakhāfā allā yuqīmā ḥudūd Allāh (2:229), al-Zamakhsharī and al-Rāzī both read khāfa as a legal ẓann — a well-grounded supposition falling short of certainty — which is precisely why it can license an heir's mediation in a will or the wife's initiative in khulʿ. In verses pairing khawf with rajāʾ (32:16) or with raḥma (17:57), al-Rāzī treats the pairing as constitutive of a balanced servanthood, warning against either extreme of despair (qunūṭ) or false security (amn), a reading that feeds directly into later Sufi treatments of khawf and rajāʾ as complementary maqāmāt.
Draws on: 2:38 · 2:182 · 2:229 · 4:3 · 17:57 · 32:16
Philosophy & kalāmKhawf is less a term of falsafa proper than of kalām psychology and Sufi ethics, but it does carry technical weight there: in debates over the status of the grave sinner, the Murjiʾa's stress on rajāʾ (hope in God's mercy) is set against Muʿtazilī and Khārijite emphasis on the threat (waʿīd), with khawf functioning as the affective correlate of taking the waʿīd seriously.plausible
The word as a technical term in falsafa and theology.
Khawf is less a term of falsafa proper than of kalām psychology and Sufi ethics, but it does carry technical weight there: in debates over the status of the grave sinner, the Murjiʾa's stress on rajāʾ (hope in God's mercy) is set against Muʿtazilī and Khārijite emphasis on the threat (waʿīd), with khawf functioning as the affective correlate of taking the waʿīd seriously. Al-Ghazālī, in the Iḥyāʾ, treats khawf as an epistemic-affective state produced by knowledge (maʿrifa) of God's power and of one's own shortcomings, and ranks it as a station (maqām) whose completion is properly balanced by rajāʾ, following al-Rāghib's structural pairing of the two. It thus functions in post-classical kalām/taṣawwuf as a term describing the soul's calibrated response to the possibility of divine chastisement, rather than a purely emotional or purely legal category.
Draws on: kalam debates on iman and threat · Ghazali Ihya
- al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn, Kitāb al-Khawf wa-l-Rajāʾ
Akbarian readingNo separate Iṣṭilāḥ entry for khawf is given in the terminology excerpts, but in Faṣṣ Ādam Ibn ʿArabī ties the term directly to the two divine descriptions of riḍā and ghaḍab (contentment and wrath): God 'made the cosmos possessed of khawf and rajāʾ' precisely so that it would fear His wrath and hope for His good pleasure, and this pairing is presented as flowing from God's prior self-description as both jamīl (beautiful) and dhū jalāl (possessor of majesty).plausible
The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.
No separate Iṣṭilāḥ entry for khawf is given in the terminology excerpts, but in Faṣṣ Ādam Ibn ʿArabī ties the term directly to the two divine descriptions of riḍā and ghaḍab (contentment and wrath): God 'made the cosmos possessed of khawf and rajāʾ' precisely so that it would fear His wrath and hope for His good pleasure, and this pairing is presented as flowing from God's prior self-description as both jamīl (beautiful) and dhū jalāl (possessor of majesty). Khawf here is thus cosmologically grounded — not merely a creaturely emotion but the necessary correlate, within engendered existence, of the divine attribute of jalāl, just as rajāʾ correlates with jamāl.
Draws on: inFassAdam
- Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, Faṣṣ Ādam
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