Root · 17 in the Quran · 38 in 8 texts of the library
زعمPer Ibn Fāris, two branches: speech uttered without certainty or verification, and … (root zm)
الزاء والعين والميم أصلان أحدهما القول من غير صحة ولا يقين والآخر التكفل بالشيء
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ز ع م that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
25 words5 verbs5 verbal nouns4 participles1 place or instrument2 intensives and elatives5 other nouns2 plurals1 relative or abstract
- زَعَمَallege; claim
- زَعْمallegation; claim
- زَعِيمresponsible, answerable, amenable, surety, or guarantee
- تَزَاعَمَthey two competed in discoursing of a thing, and differed respecting it
- زَعَمresponsibility, answerableness, amenableness, or suretiship
The whole family8 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs5زَعَمَ · زَاعَمَ · أَزْعَمَ
The root as an action: the bare Form I, and the Forms made by adding letters before, inside or after the root.grammar →
Form I vowels: فَعَلَ يَفْعُلُ (a – u; the imperfect from Lane's “aor.”)
- زَعَمَallege; claimautoForm IQurʾān ×13library ×8LaneIbn Fāris
- زَاعَمَForm IIILane
- أَزْعَمَForm IVLane
- تَزَعَّمَForm VLaneIbn Fāris
- تَزَاعَمَthey two competed in discoursing of a thing, and differed respecting itLaneForm VILane
Verbal nouns5زَعْم · زَعَامَة · زَعَم
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
- زَعْمallegation; claimautoForm I · Lane: inf. n.Qurʾān ×2library ×1LaneIbn Fāris
- زَعَامَةForm I · Lane: inf. n.LaneIbn Fāris
- زَعَمresponsibility, answerableness, amenableness, or suretishipLaneForm I · Lane: inf. n.LaneIbn Fāris
- زُعْمprideLaneForm I · Lane: inf. n.LaneIbn Fāris
- مُزَاعَمَةForm III · Lane: inf. n.Lane
Participles4مُزْعَم · مُزْعِم · مَزْعُوم
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
Place, time and instrument1مَزْعَم
Where or when it happens, and what it is done with: the m- nouns.grammar →
Intensives, qualities and the elative2زَعِيم · زَعُوم
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
Other nouns5زَعَّامَة · زَعِم · زَعْمَة
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
Plurals2زُعَمَاء · مَزَاعِم
Broken plurals rebuild the word on a new pattern; sound plurals add an ending.grammar →
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 16 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
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 · 170Zaʿama yazʿumu zaʿman and zuʿman (زعم يزعم زعما وزعما) — [said] when one is in doubt about his statement.
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 · 393Zaʿama (زعم) — zaʿman, zuʿman, and ziʿman — meaning: he said.
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395Zāʾ, ʿayn, and mīm are two roots: one is speech without soundness or certainty, and the other is undertaking responsibility for a thing.
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Rāghib · 502Al-zaʿm (الزعم): the report of a statement suspected of being false;
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 · 711God, exalted, said: "The disbelievers claim (zaʿama) that they will never be resurrected" [64:7].
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 definitions1 · Ibn ʿArabī’s Iṣṭilāḥ, al-Jurjānī’s Taʿrīfāt
الزعم
هو القول بلا دليل.
Al-zaʿm (الزعم): it is speech/assertion made without proof or evidence. AI
The same letters, turned
The same three letters in all six orders. Choose one.
ز ع م
الزاء والعين والميم أصلان أحدهما القول من غير صحة ولا يقين والآخر التكفل بالشيء
z-ʿ-m has two roots: one is speech without correctness or certainty, and the other is taking responsibility for something. 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
- زzāytongue-tip, by the front teeth · voiced, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
- عʿaynmiddle of the throat · voiced, in betweenSīb. · I. Jinnī
- مmīmbetween 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
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 ↗
ع
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 ↗
م
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
ز
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 2577ع
Level of existence: الطبيعة · Nature
Divine Name: الباطن · The Inward (al-Bāṭin)
Lunar mansion: الثريا · al-Thurayyā (the Pleiades)
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 63825Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 9 line 2572 ↗
م
Level of existence: الإنسان · the human being
Divine Name: الجامع · al-Jāmiʿ, the Gatherer
Lunar mansion: المؤخر · al-Muʾakhkhar
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62119Spheres 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
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.
ع
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي اسم لقدوم أو رحيل.
It is a name for arrival or departure.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي اسم للساكن في الذات التي تقوم به.
It is a name for that which dwells in the self and by which the self subsists.
With kasra ـِ
فهي اسم لخبث الذات.
It is a name for the foulness of the self.
م
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي جميع المكونات.
It is all created beings.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي العزيز القليل كماء العين، ومنه قيل مومو.
It is the precious, scarce thing, like the water of the eye; from it comes the expression 'mūmū'.
With kasra ـِ
فهي نور الذات ظاهرا كما في العين، وباطنا كما في القلب.
It is the light of the self, outwardly as in the eye and inwardly as in the heart.
Two-letter nucleus4 roots in Ibn Fāris’s chapterز ع
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 12932 ↗
- زعفالزاء والعين والفاء أصيلL12933
- زعقالزاء والعين والقاف أصل يدل على شدة في صياح أو مرارة أو ملوحةL12935
- زعمالزاء والعين والميم أصلان أحدهما القول من غير صحة ولا يقين والآخر التكفل بالشيءQ 17 · L12955
- زعجالزاء والعين والجيم أصل واحد يدل على الإقلاق وقلة الاستقرارL12981
In the sister scriptsHebrew ז ע מSyriac ܙ ܥ ܡ
| Arabic | ز ع م |
| Hebrew | ז ע מ |
| Syriac | ܙ ܥ ܡ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩸 𐩲 𐩣 |
| Phoenician | 𐤆 𐤏 𐤌 |
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 already marks zaʿama as doubtful speech, contrasted with dhakara (which is nearer to the truth), and glosses the Quranic bi-zaʿmihim as 'by their false saying';well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl already marks zaʿama as doubtful speech, contrasted with dhakara (which is nearer to the truth), and glosses the Quranic bi-zaʿmihim as 'by their false saying'; he also records zaʿīm al-qawm as their spokesman-chief and zaʿīm as kafīl (surety), citing the Yūsuf verse. Al-Jawharī confirms the triliteral vocalizations (zaʿm/zuʿm/ziʿm = qāla), the surety sense (zaʿamtu bihi = kafaltu, with the ḥadīth al-zaʿīmu ghārim), and zaʿāma as siyāda/chieftainship, plus a separate sense zaʿm = ṭamaʿ (covetise). Ibn Fāris in the Maqāyīs fixes the two aṣls explicitly — unverified speech (citing 64:7) and suretyship (deriving the chief's zaʿāma from his 'guaranteeing' affairs) — and adds zaʿama fī ghayri mazʿam, coveting without object. Al-Rāghib sharpens the Quranic usage: al-zaʿm is a reported saying that is maẓinnat al-kadhib (suspected of falsehood), so every Quranic occurrence carries censure of the speaker; he explains zaʿīm (guarantor or chief) as extended from this same suspicion attaching to a person's word. Ibn Manẓūr and Lane preserve both strands intact, with Ibn Manẓūr transmitting al-Layth's rule that dhakara implies certainty and zaʿama implies doubt or likely falsehood, directly applied to Q. 6:136/138.
Draws on: cayn · sihah · Ibn Fāris · mufradat · lisan · Lane
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha, s.v. ز-ع-م
- al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Mufradāt, s.v. زعم
- Quran 64:7 ↗
- Quran 12:72 ↗
Letters & soundIn the scheme attributed to Ibn ʿArabī, ز corresponds to 'what appears in the element of air,' ع to Nature (al-ṭabīʿa), and م to the human being — a triad that could be read, speculatively, as breath (air/speech) acting through nature upon the human hearer, apt for a root centered on spoken claims.speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
In the scheme attributed to Ibn ʿArabī, ز corresponds to 'what appears in the element of air,' ع to Nature (al-ṭabīʿa), and م to the human being — a triad that could be read, speculatively, as breath (air/speech) acting through nature upon the human hearer, apt for a root centered on spoken claims. Al-Dabbāgh's letter-values add that ز names 'a thing that harms another upon entering it, or what one guards against,' which resonates with al-Rāghib's point that zaʿm is inherently suspect speech, liable to do harm if believed uncritically; ع for him marks arrival or departure, and م the totality of created beings. These correspondences are drawn entirely from the symbolic systems supplied and are not endorsed by mainstream historical linguistics, which finds no causal link between individual Arabic letters and word-meaning; they are offered here only as an interpretive juxtaposition.
Draws on: akbari198 · dabbagh
- al-Dabbāgh, letter-meanings (fatḥa series)
Root structureAmong Ibn Fāris's chapter-neighbors, زعق denotes violence in shouting or a bitter/salty sharpness, and زعج denotes unsettledness and lack of stability — both suggest a family of ع-terminal roots touching agitation, into which زعم's 'unstable, unverified speech' could loosely fit.uncertain
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
Among Ibn Fāris's chapter-neighbors, زعق denotes violence in shouting or a bitter/salty sharpness, and زعج denotes unsettledness and lack of stability — both suggest a family of ع-terminal roots touching agitation, into which زعم's 'unstable, unverified speech' could loosely fit. Among the metathetic permutations, عزم (9 Quranic occurrences) is fixed by Ibn Fāris as al-ṣarīma wa'l-qaṭʿ, resolve and decisive cutting-off — the structural inverse, in juxtaposition only, of zaʿm's hesitant, doubt-laden assertion. زمع, glossed as lowliness/paltriness, and معز, glossed as hardness of terrain, are attested but their semantic link to زعم is not established by Ibn Fāris and should be read as bare phonetic kinship. No greater-derivation (al-ishtiqāq al-akbar) argument for this cluster is given in the excerpts, so any claim of a working ز-ع polarity between 'claim' and 'resolve' remains a juxtaposition, not an assertion.
Draws on: nucleusSiblings · permutations
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha, nucleus and permutation entries
Semitic kin & loanwordsHebrew preserves a cognate root zʿm, but its attested sense is indignation, denunciation, or cursing (BDB), not 'assertion' or 'unverified claim' — a real but semantically diverged cognate rather than a confirming parallel.uncertain
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
Hebrew preserves a cognate root zʿm, but its attested sense is indignation, denunciation, or cursing (BDB), not 'assertion' or 'unverified claim' — a real but semantically diverged cognate rather than a confirming parallel. No confident Aramaic/Syriac, Akkadian, or Geʿez cognate matching either of Ibn Fāris's two Arabic senses (doubtful speech; suretyship) is available from standard comparative material. The Arabic root therefore appears to be an inner-Semitic survival that has shifted meaning independently in Arabic rather than a borrowing; there is no basis here for treating zaʿama as a loanword.
Draws on: hebrew
- Brown–Driver–Briggs, Hebrew Lexicon, s.v. זעם
Quranic exegesisIn verses like 64:7 ('zaʿama alladhīna kafarū an lan yubʿathū'), the exegetes read zaʿama as the disbelievers' unfounded claim about resurrection, a saying advanced without proof and thus deserving refutation.well attested
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
In verses like 64:7 ('zaʿama alladhīna kafarū an lan yubʿathū'), the exegetes read zaʿama as the disbelievers' unfounded claim about resurrection, a saying advanced without proof and thus deserving refutation. Al-Rāghib generalizes this: every Quranic occurrence of the root carries dispraise of the speaker, since zaʿm names a report suspected of falsehood — he lists 64:7, 18:48, 6:22, and 17:56 as instances where the speakers' claims are precisely what is being exposed as baseless. At 6:136 and 6:138 ('bi-zaʿmihim'), exegetes gloss the phrase as 'by their false assertion,' describing the pagans' self-devised claims about their idol-offerings. At 12:72 and 68:40 ('wa-anā bihi zaʿīm' / 'ayyuhum bi-dhālika zaʿīm'), the sense shifts to zaʿīm as guarantor (kafīl) — al-Rāghib notes explicitly that this may derive either from zaʿāma (suretyship) or from zaʿm (speech), since a guarantor's word, like a claimant's, is something the hearer must decide whether to trust.
Draws on: quran · tabari-style · mufradat
Philosophy & kalāmZaʿm functions in the broader epistemic vocabulary shared by uṣūl al-fiqh and kalām as the weakest grade of assertoric speech, below yaqīn (certainty) and ʿilm (knowledge) and even below ẓann (probable opinion) in some usages, denoting a claim advanced without warrant.plausible
The word as a technical term in falsafa and theology.
Zaʿm functions in the broader epistemic vocabulary shared by uṣūl al-fiqh and kalām as the weakest grade of assertoric speech, below yaqīn (certainty) and ʿilm (knowledge) and even below ẓann (probable opinion) in some usages, denoting a claim advanced without warrant. Al-Rāghib's characterization — that zaʿm is speech that is maẓinnat al-kadhib — situates it as the technical opposite of a verified khabar or a demonstrated qaḍiyya in the mutakallimūn's classification of assertions, marking it as testimony not admissible as proof (ḥujja) on its own.
Draws on: mufradat · epistemic-terminology
- al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Mufradāt, s.v. زعم
Akbarian readingIn the Faṣṣ Ādam excerpt, Ibn ʿArabī describes a faculty of the soul that is veiled by itself, unable to see anything more excellent than its own essence, and 'claims' (tazʿumu) for itself fitness for every lofty rank and station with God — precisely the classical sense of zaʿm as an unverified, self-interested assertion.plausible
The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.
In the Faṣṣ Ādam excerpt, Ibn ʿArabī describes a faculty of the soul that is veiled by itself, unable to see anything more excellent than its own essence, and 'claims' (tazʿumu) for itself fitness for every lofty rank and station with God — precisely the classical sense of zaʿm as an unverified, self-interested assertion. The usage is pejorative and consonant with the lexicographers: the faculty's zaʿm is a claim it makes about itself from behind its own veil, without the shuhūd or dhawq that would ground a true claim to rank. This is not listed among Ibn ʿArabī's technical terms (iṣṭilāḥāt) but is used in its ordinary censorious Quranic register.
Draws on: fassAdam
- Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, Faṣṣ Ādam
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