Root · 28 in the Quran · 14 in 9 texts of the library
رجوIbn Fāris identifies two distinct nuclei under this root: rajāʾ, 'hope, expectation', and … (root rjw)
الراء والجيم والحرف المعتل أصلان متباينان يدل أحدهما على الأمل والآخر على ناحية الشيء
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ر ج و that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
16 words5 verbs3 verbal nouns4 participles3 other nouns1 relative or abstract
- رَجاrequest; hope for
- أَرْجَتَshe (a camel, S, or a pregnant female of any kind, TA) was, or became, near …
- مَرْجُوّrequested; hoped for
- مُرْجَوْن—
- أَرْجَاء—
The whole family5 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs5رَجا · أَرْجَتَ · رَجَّوَ
The root as an action: the bare Form I, and the Forms made by adding letters before, inside or after the root.grammar →
- رَجاrequest; hope forautoForm IQurʾān ×22library ×7LaneIbn Fāris
- أَرْجَتَshe (a camel, S, or a pregnant female of any kind, TA) was, or became, near …LaneForm IVQurʾān ×3LaneIbn Fāris
- رَجَّوَLane: see Form IForm IILane
- تَرَجَّوَLane: see Form IForm VLane
- إِرْتَجَوَLane: see Form IForm VIIILane
Verbal nouns3إِرْجَاء · تَرْجِيَة · رَجْو
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
Participles4مَرْجُوّ · مُرْجَوْن · مُرْجَى
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
- مَرْجُوّrequested; hoped forautopassive, Form IQurʾān ×1library ×1
- مُرْجَوْنpassive, Form IVQurʾān ×1
- مُرْجَىpostponed, put off, deferred, or delayedLanepassive, Form IVLane
- مُرْجِيactive, Form IVLane
Other nouns3أَرْجَاء · رَجَاء · أُرْجُوَان
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-Rajāʾ (الرجاء), with a long ā: the opposite of despair.
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 · 393Arjaʾtu al-amra (أرجأت الأمر): I delayed it.
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395The letters rāʾ, jīm, and the weak letter [و/ي] form two divergent original meanings: one indicates hope, and the other indicates the side/edge of something.
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowLisān · 711Arjaʾa al-amra (أرجأ الأمر): he delayed it;
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.
ر ج و
الراء والجيم والحرف المعتل أصلان متباينان يدل أحدهما على الأمل والآخر على ناحية الشيء
r-j and the weak letter: two distinct roots, one of them indicating hope, and the other the side of a thing. AI
Ibn Fāris ↗Lane ↗al-Khalīl: used ↗Quran ×28
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
- رrāʾtip of the tongue, near the nūn · voiced, in betweenSīb. · I. Jinnī
- جjīmmiddle of the tongue · voiced, stopSīb. · I. Jinnī
- وwāwbetween the lips · voiced, in betweenSīb. · 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
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 ↗
ج
ومن وسط اللسان بينه وبين وسط الحنك الأعلى مخرج الجيم والشين والياء
From the middle of the tongue, between it and the middle of the upper palate, is the place of the jīm, the shīn and the yāʾ. Sībawayh, line 26553 ↗
ومن وسط اللسان بينه وبين وسط الحنك الأعلى، مخرج الجيم والشين والياء
From the middle of the tongue, between it and the middle of the upper palate, is the place of the jīm, the shīn and the yāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 974 ↗
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 ↗
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
ر
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 2582ج
Level of existence: الفلك الأطلس فلك البروج · the Atlas (starless) sphere, the sphere of the zodiacal signs
Divine Name: الغني · al-Ghanī, the Independent
Lunar mansion: الطرف · al-Ṭarf
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62085Spheres 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 2582و
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 2582Meaning by vowelal-Dabbāgh · a visionary claim about a primordial “Syriac”, not historical Syriac
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
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.
ج
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي نبوة أو ولاية إذا كان قبلها أو بعدها ما يدل على ذلك، وإلا فهي للخير الذي لا يزول أبدا.
It is prophethood or sainthood (walāya) if something before or after it indicates that. Otherwise it is for the good that never ceases.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي الخير الذي يؤكل أو ينتفع الناس منه.
It is the good that is eaten, or from which people derive benefit.
With kasra ـِ
فهي الخير القليل الذي في الذات من نور الإيمان.
It is the small good within the self from the light of faith.
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.
Two-letter nucleus12 roots in Ibn Fāris’s chapterر ج
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 12587 ↗
- رجحالراء والجيم والحاء أصل واحد يدل على رزانة وزيادةL12588
- رجسالراء والجيم والسين أصل يدل على اختلاطQ 10 · L12600
- رجعالراء والجيم والعين أصل كبير مطرد منقاس يدل على رد وتكرار تقول رجع يرجع رجوعا إذا عاد وراجع الرجل امرأته وهي الرجعة والرجعة والرجعي الرجوع والراجعة الQ 104 · L12604
- رجلالراء والجيم واللام معظم بابه يدل على العضو الذي هو رجل كل ذي رجل ويكون بعد ذاك كلمات تشذ عنه فمعظم الباب الرجل رجل الإنسان وغيره والرجل الرجالة وإنماQ 73 · L12628
- رجمالراء والجيم والميم أصل واحد يرجع إلى وجه واحد وهي الرمي ب الحجارة ثم يستعار ذلكQ 14 · L12648
- رجنالراء والجيم والنون أصلان أحدهما المقام والآخر الاختلاطL12659
- رجىالراء والجيم والحرف المعتل أصلان متباينان يدل أحدهما على الأمل والآخر على ناحية الشيءL12662
- رجدالراء والجيم والدال ذكرت فيه كلمةL12686
- رحضالراء والحاء والضاد أصل يدل على غسل الشيءL12689
- رحقالراء والحاء والقاف كلمة واحدة وهي الرحيق اسم من أسماء الخمر ويقال هي أفضلهاQ 1 · L12693
- رحلالراء والحاء واللام أصل واحد يدل على مضي في سفرQ 4 · L12694
- رحبالراء والحاء والباء أصل واحد مطرد يدل على السعةQ 4 · L12724
In the sister scriptsHebrew ר ג וSyriac ܪ ܓ ܘ
| Arabic | ر ج و |
| Hebrew | ר ג ו |
| Syriac | ܪ ܓ ܘ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩧 𐩴 𐩥 |
| Phoenician | 𐤓 𐤂 𐤅 |
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's entry (as preserved) already centers on the hamzated form arjaʾa/murjaʾūn, glossed as ta'khīr, 'deferral', citing the reading of 9:106 'wa-ākharūna murjawna li-amri Allāh'.well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl's entry (as preserved) already centers on the hamzated form arjaʾa/murjaʾūn, glossed as ta'khīr, 'deferral', citing the reading of 9:106 'wa-ākharūna murjawna li-amri Allāh'. Al-Jawharī expands this: arjaʾtu l-amra = akhkhartuhu, notes the Qurʾānic variants murjaʾūn/murjaʾūn, and derives the name of the Murjiʾa sect from this same sense of deferring judgment; he also records a dialectal form without hamza (arjaytu, on the pattern of a'taytu, tawaḍḍaytu). Ibn Fāris's own maqāyīs entry is the pivot: he separates a first aṣl, rajāʾ 'hope' — noting it can slide toward its opposite, 'fear', as in his reading of 71:13 'mā lakum lā tarjūna lillāhi waqāran' as 'you do not fear for God a majesty' — from a second, unrelated aṣl, rajā, 'the side of a thing' (of a well, or, per 69:17, of the sky: 'wa-l-malaku ʿalā arjāʾihā'). Ibn Manẓūr largely continues the Jawharī material on irjāʾ/tarjiʾa, adding the Qurʾānic 33:51 'turjī man tashāʾu minhunna' and confirming that the hamzated form is judged the more correct. Lane systematizes the hope-sense alone, listing the multiple verbal nouns (rajw, rujūw, rajāʾ, rajāwa, rajāt, marjāt) for 'he hoped for it'.
Draws on: cayn · sihah · Ibn Fāris · lisan · Lane
- Quran 9:106 ↗
- Quran 71:13 ↗
- Quran 69:17 ↗
- Quran 33:51 ↗
- Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. رجو
Letters & soundIn the letter-symbolism used by Ibn ʿArabī and al-Dabbāgh, rāʾ is tied to the fifth heaven and, per al-Dabbāgh, indicates 'all good, outward and inward';speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
In the letter-symbolism used by Ibn ʿArabī and al-Dabbāgh, rāʾ is tied to the fifth heaven and, per al-Dabbāgh, indicates 'all good, outward and inward'; jīm to the starless zodiacal sphere and, contextually, to prophethood or sainthood, or otherwise to unceasing good; wāw to 'the determination of ranks, stations, and waystations' and, per al-Dabbāgh, to the intertwined things within a human being. Read this way, rajāʾ — reaching, through a weak final radical, toward a station not yet attained — would combine the letter of stations (wāw) with letters of comprehensive and enduring good (rāʾ, jīm). This is a resonance noted for interest, not a claim about etymology or meaning; mainstream historical linguistics treats such letter-symbolism as at most suggestive, without explanatory force.
Draws on: akbari198 · dabbagh_fatha
Root structureThe ر-ج nucleus in Ibn Fāris's arrangement is not semantically unified across its neighbors: rjḥ gives weight/increase, rjs gives mixing, rjʿ gives return, rjl gives the leg, rjm gives stoning, rjn gives dwelling — no single thread runs through them, and Ibn Fāris does not claim one.plausible
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
The ر-ج nucleus in Ibn Fāris's arrangement is not semantically unified across its neighbors: rjḥ gives weight/increase, rjs gives mixing, rjʿ gives return, rjl gives the leg, rjm gives stoning, rjn gives dwelling — no single thread runs through them, and Ibn Fāris does not claim one. Among the permutations of the same three letters, رجو itself (28 occurrences) carries hope/edge; جور (jwr, 13 occurrences) is explicitly marked by Ibn Fāris as a distinct meaning, 'deviation from the road'; وجر (wjr) means forcing a drink into a child's mouth, and is itself flagged as dakhīl, a loanword; روج (rwj), unattested in the Qur'an, is likewise flagged dakhīl for the sense of currency (rawwaja) circulating. One could, in Ibn Jinnī's manner of greater derivation, juxtapose rajā 'to hope, to reach toward' with jāra 'to swerve from the path' as a shared image of movement toward or away from a line — but this is speculative patterning, not an asserted etymology.
Draws on: maqayis nucleusSiblings · maqayis permutations
Semitic kin & loanwordsFor the 'hope' sense, Syriac rgā, 'to desire, long for, covet', is a plausible West Semitic cognate to Arabic rajā/yarjū;plausible
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
For the 'hope' sense, Syriac rgā, 'to desire, long for, covet', is a plausible West Semitic cognate to Arabic rajā/yarjū; the semantic range (craving/expectation) sits close enough to Arabic 'hope' to support a shared root, though I hold this at medium confidence rather than certainty. I find no confident Hebrew, Akkadian, or Geʿez cognate for either the 'hope' sense or the distinct 'edge, side' sense (rajā, of a well or horizon); for the latter no clear Semitic cognate is known to me. The word is not a loanword; it patterns as inherited Semitic vocabulary, at least for the hope-sense.
Draws on: CAL
- CAL, rgʾ (Syriac) (link not verified)
Quranic exegesisAt 2:218, exegetes read 'those who hope for God's mercy' (yarjūna raḥmata Allāh) as naming believers whose hearts move between hope and fear (rajāʾ wa-khawf), a standard exegetical and spiritual pairing.well attested
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
At 2:218, exegetes read 'those who hope for God's mercy' (yarjūna raḥmata Allāh) as naming believers whose hearts move between hope and fear (rajāʾ wa-khawf), a standard exegetical and spiritual pairing. At 71:13, al-Ṭabarī and others record the dispute already visible in Ibn Fāris: does 'lā tarjūna lillāhi waqāran' mean 'you do not hope for' or, per a recognized usage, 'you do not fear' God's majesty — the latter reading treating rajāʾ as capable of denoting its opposite in certain contexts. At 9:106, 'wa-ākharūna murjawna li-amri Allāh' is read, following the lexicographers, as 'others deferred to God's command' — the three companions who stayed behind from Tabūk, whose case was left pending until God's judgment came down (later at 9:118); exegetes take murjawn here as mu'akhkharūn, not as bearing the 'hope' sense at all.
Draws on: quran occurrences · Ibn Fāris
Philosophy & kalāmRajāʾ is a technical term in the Sufi ethical vocabulary that al-Ghazālī systematizes in the Iḥyāʾ, where a whole book (Kitāb al-Khawf wa-l-Rajāʾ) treats hope and fear as paired states (maqāmāt) of the traveler's heart, neither alone being sound: fear without hope leads to despair, hope without fear to complacency.plausible
The word as a technical term in falsafa and theology.
Rajāʾ is a technical term in the Sufi ethical vocabulary that al-Ghazālī systematizes in the Iḥyāʾ, where a whole book (Kitāb al-Khawf wa-l-Rajāʾ) treats hope and fear as paired states (maqāmāt) of the traveler's heart, neither alone being sound: fear without hope leads to despair, hope without fear to complacency. Al-Ghazālī reads hope in this technical sense as an expectation grounded in a cause already present — the servant's good works or God's attributes of mercy — distinguishing it from mere wishing (tamannī), which lacks such grounding. This is an ethical-spiritual rather than strictly kalām or falsafa usage, but it is the discipline in which the term receives sustained technical treatment.
Draws on: classical
Reference