Root · 44 in the Quran · 199 in 21 texts of the library
سررa single root gathering two branches — concealment of a thing, and what is pure/choice … (root srr)
السين والراء يجمع فروعه إخفاء الشيء وما كان من خالصه ومستقره لا يخرج شيء منه عن هذا فالسر خلاف الإعلان
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of س ر ر that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
25 words7 verbs5 verbal nouns1 participle2 intensives and elatives10 other nouns
- أَسَرَّhe concealed it
- سُرُر—
- سَرِيرَةconscience
- سُرُورhappiness, or joy, or gladness
- مَسْرُورhappy, or joyful, or glad
The whole family5 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs7سَرَّ · أَسَرَّ · سَرَّرَ
The root as an action: the bare Form I, and the Forms made by adding letters before, inside or after the root.grammar →
Verbal nouns5سُرُور · إِسْرَار · سَرَر
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
- سُرُورhappiness, or joy, or gladnessLaneForm I · Lane: inf. n.Qurʾān ×1library ×6LaneIbn Fāris
- إِسْرَارForm IV · Lane: inf. n.Qurʾān ×2LaneIbn Fāris
- سَرَرsecret discourse, or a secret communication, between two persons or partiesLaneForm I · Lane: inf. n.LaneIbn Fāris
- سِرَارForm III · Lane: inf. n.LaneIbn Fāris
- تَسْرِيرForm II · Lane: inf. n.Lane
Participles1مَسْرُور
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
Intensives, qualities and the elative2سَرُور · سَرِير
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
Other nouns10سُرُر · سَرِيرَة · أَسارِير
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
- سُرُرnounQurʾān ×6LaneIbn Fāris
- سَرِيرَةconscienceautonounlibrary ×9Lane
- أَسارِيرfeaturesautonounlibrary ×1Ibn Fāris
- سَرَائِرnounQurʾān ×1
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 13 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 · 170As-sirr (السر): what you keep secret.
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 · 393As-sirr (السر): that which is kept concealed;
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395Sīn and rā' (س ر) — its branches converge on: concealing a thing, and what belongs to its pure essence and its place of settling;
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Rāghib · 502Al-isrār (الإسرار): the opposite of al-iʿlān ('making public').
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 · 711As-sirr (السر): among the asrār (secrets) that are kept hidden.
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 definitions4 · Ibn ʿArabī’s Iṣṭilāḥ, al-Jurjānī’s Taʿrīfāt
السر
يطلق فيقال سر العلم بازاء حقيقة العالم به، وسر الحال بازاء معرفة مراد الله فيه، وسر الحقيقة بازاء ما تقع به الاشارة.
As-sirr (السر): it is applied such that one says 'the sirr of knowledge (sirr al-ʿilm)' corresponds to the reality of the one who possesses that knowledge; 'the sirr of the [spiritual] state (sirr al-ḥāl)' corresponds to knowledge of God's intent in it; and 'the sirr of the [ultimate] reality (sirr al-ḥaqīqah)' corresponds to that toward which allusion is made. AI
سر السر
ما انفرد به الحق عن العبد.
Sirr as-sirr (سر السر, 'the secret of the secret'): that with which the Truth [God] alone is singled out, apart from the servant. AI
السر
لطيفة مودعة في القلب كالروح في البدن، وهو محل المشاهدة كما أن الروح محل المحبة، والقلب محل المعرفة.
As-sirr (السر): a subtle faculty deposited in the heart, like the spirit in the body; it is the locus of direct witnessing (mushāhadah), just as the spirit is the locus of love, and the heart is the locus of gnosis (maʿrifah). AI
سر السر
ما تفرد به الحق عن العبد، كالعلم بتفصيل الحقائق في إجمال الأحدية وجمعها واشتمالها على ما هي عليه، {وعنده مفاتح الغيب لا يعلمها إلا هو} .
Sirr as-sirr (سر السر): that with which the Truth [God] alone is singled out, apart from the servant — such as the knowledge of the detailed distinctness of the [divine] realities within the totality of Oneness (aḥadiyyah), their comprehensive unity, and their encompassing of what they truly are. 'And with Him are the keys of the unseen; none knows them but He' [Q. 6:59]. AI
The same letters, turned
The same three letters in all their orders. Choose one.
س ر ر
السين والراء يجمع فروعه إخفاء الشيء وما كان من خالصه ومستقره لا يخرج شيء منه عن هذا فالسر خلاف الإعلان
s-r: its branches are gathered under the concealment of a thing, and whatever is of its pure essence and its settled place; nothing of it departs from this; so al-sirr is the opposite of disclosure. AI
Ibn Fāris ↗Lisān ↗Quran ×44
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
- سsīntongue-tip, by the front teeth · voiceless, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
- رrāʾtip of the tongue, near the nūn · voiced, in betweenSīb. · I. Jinnī
- رrāʾtip of the tongue, near the nūn · 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
س
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 ↗
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 ↗
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 ↗
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
س
Level of existence: ما ظهر في الماء · what appears in water
Divine Name: المحيي · al-Muḥyī, the Life-Giver
Lunar mansion: النعائم · al-Naʿāʾim
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62110Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 9 line 2572 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
السين والشين فطبعهما الحرارة واليبوسة
Sīn and shīn: their nature is heat and dryness.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2581ر
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 2582ر
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 2582Meaning by vowelal-Dabbāgh · a visionary claim about a primordial “Syriac”, not historical Syriac
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
س
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء المليح الذي من طبعه الرقة.
It is an indication of the comely thing whose nature is delicacy.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء القبيح الخشن، أو إشارة إلى سواد حسا ومعنى.
It is an indication of the ugly, rough thing, or of blackness, sensible and figurative.
With kasra ـِ
وبالكسر إشارة إلى الشيء الطابع وتكون الإشارة منه.
With kasra it is an indication of the impressing/stamping thing, and the indication proceeds from it.
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.
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.
In the sister scriptsHebrew ס/ש ר רSyriac ܣ/ܫ ܪ ܪ
| Arabic | س ر ر |
| Hebrew | ס/ש ר ר |
| Syriac | ܣ/ܫ ܪ ܪ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩯/𐩦 𐩧 𐩧 |
| Phoenician | 𐤎/𐤔 𐤓 𐤓 |
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) gives sirr as 'what you keep hidden' and sarīra as 'a secret deed, good or bad,' and already flags asarra as a word of contrary senses (aḍdād) — to conceal and to disclose — citing wa-asarrū l-nadāma as a case needing this double reading;well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl (al-ʿAyn) gives sirr as 'what you keep hidden' and sarīra as 'a secret deed, good or bad,' and already flags asarra as a word of contrary senses (aḍdād) — to conceal and to disclose — citing wa-asarrū l-nadāma as a case needing this double reading; he extends the root to the hidden creases of the palm/womb (asirrat al-raḥim) and to sirār, the night the new moon is hidden. Al-Jawharī (al-Ṣiḥāḥ) confirms sirr/sarīra as 'what is concealed,' adds euphemistic uses of sirr (coitus, the pudendum), and gives sirr al-nasab as 'the pure, best part of lineage' and fī sirr qawmihi as 'in the midst/best part of his people' — a second branch of 'purity, choice core' alongside secrecy. Ibn Fāris (Maqāyīs) states the root's branches converge on exactly these two things — concealment versus disclosure, and the pure essence/settled seat of a thing — and records the dispute over asarrū l-nadāma (Thaʿlab: concealed it from their chiefs; Ibn Sīda, whom Ibn Fāris judges correct: showed it). Ibn Manẓūr (Lisān) repeats this material, keeping the aḍdād question open. Lane suspects that the claim (in the Tāj al-ʿArūs) that sarrahu itself carries both contrary senses is a scribal error for asarrahu, and separately treats sarra 'to gladden' (surūr, masarra) as apparently the same triliteral shape — a caution that 'secret' and 'joy' may be historically distinct roots fallen together in form.
Draws on: khalil · jawhari · ibnfaris · ibnmanzur · Lane
- Wiktionary, Arabic root س-ر-ر (link not verified)
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha, s.v. s-r-r
- Lane's Lexicon, s.v. sarra
Letters & soundIn the Akbarian letter-table, sīn corresponds to 'what appears in water' and rāʾ to 'the fifth heaven';speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
In the Akbarian letter-table, sīn corresponds to 'what appears in water' and rāʾ to 'the fifth heaven'; al-Dabbāgh's fatḥa-values give sīn as 'an indication of the comely thing whose nature is delicacy' and rāʾ as 'an indication of all goods, outward and inward.' A sound-symbolist might read sirr as a movement from something delicate and barely apparent (sīn) toward a comprehensive good, outward and inward (rāʾ) — fitting imagery for the sirr as the subtle inward faculty through which hidden goods are eventually disclosed. This is a resonance within one esoteric letter-scheme, not an etymological claim, and mainstream linguistics gives it no evidentiary weight.
Draws on: ibn-arabi-letters · dabbagh
- Ibn ʿArabī (attrib.), letter-meaning table (position 198)
- al-Dabbāgh, letter-meanings by vowel
Root structureNo nucleus-sibling chapter for s-r is given in the supplied Maqāyīs material, so no juxtaposition with neighboring bi-radical chapters can be drawn here.uncertain
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
No nucleus-sibling chapter for s-r is given in the supplied Maqāyīs material, so no juxtaposition with neighboring bi-radical chapters can be drawn here. Of the triliteral permutations, only s-r-r is attested as a root (44 Qurʾānic occurrences); r-s-r and r-r-s are not. The Qurʾānic data itself shows s-r-r spanning what look like separate lexical families — sirr 'secret,' surūr/masrūr 'joy, gladdened,' and sarīr/surur 'couch, throne' — better read as convergent homography of originally distinct roots than as one semantically unified aṣl; no Ibn Jinnī greater-derivation data is available here to test this.
Draws on: permutations
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha, permutation table
Semitic kin & loanwordsNo confident Semitic cognate exists for sirr in the sense 'secret.' Hebrew has a root s-r-r (סרר), but it means 'to be stubborn, rebellious' (as in ben sorer u-moreh), an unrelated sense and likely only a formal look-alike, not a semantic cognate;plausible
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
No confident Semitic cognate exists for sirr in the sense 'secret.' Hebrew has a root s-r-r (סרר), but it means 'to be stubborn, rebellious' (as in ben sorer u-moreh), an unrelated sense and likely only a formal look-alike, not a semantic cognate; Hebrew expresses concealment through the different root s-t-r. Aramaic/Syriac similarly carry the concealment sense chiefly through str, not srr. The word is native Arabic, not a loanword.
Draws on: comparative-semitic
- BDB, Hebrew s-r-r
Quranic exegesisIn 20:7, 'He knows the secret and what is even more hidden' (yaʿlamu l-sirra wa-akhfā), al-Rāzī and al-Zamakhsharī distinguish sirr as what a person consciously conceals within himself from akhfā as a deeper layer not yet formed into conscious intention.well attested
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
In 20:7, 'He knows the secret and what is even more hidden' (yaʿlamu l-sirra wa-akhfā), al-Rāzī and al-Zamakhsharī distinguish sirr as what a person consciously conceals within himself from akhfā as a deeper layer not yet formed into conscious intention. In 9:78, 'their secret and their private converse' (sirrahum wa-najwāhum) pairs sirr, unspoken inner concealment, with najwā, concealed speech between people; al-Ṭabarī reads the verse as asserting that God's knowledge reaches both registers of hiddenness. At 2:235, lā tuwāʿidūhunna sirran ('do not make secret promises to them'), exegetes read sirr along the euphemistic line al-Jawharī records, restricting believers to open, licit betrothal language. At 2:274, sirran wa-ʿalāniyatan ('secretly and openly') is read by al-Ṭabarī as praising both modes of charity without absolute ranking. The crux wa-asarrū l-nadāma is read divergently by exegetes along the same aḍdād fault-line found in the lexicographers: some take it as 'they concealed their regret' from their followers, others as 'they openly showed it.'
Draws on: tabari · zamakhshari · razi · raghib
Akbarian readingIbn ʿArabī distinguishes three technical registers: sirr al-ʿilm, corresponding to the very reality known by the knower;well attested
The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.
Ibn ʿArabī distinguishes three technical registers: sirr al-ʿilm, corresponding to the very reality known by the knower; sirr al-ḥāl, corresponding to knowledge of what God intends by a given state; and sirr al-ḥaqīqa, corresponding to that toward which an allusion (ishāra) points. He further defines sirr al-sirr, 'the secret of the secret,' as what the Real keeps exclusively to Himself, withheld even from the servant. In Faṣṣ Ādam this vocabulary appears where he speaks of the Real's sirr becoming manifest through the human being — the all-comprehensive Adam is the locus where God's own secret (His self-disclosure to Himself) becomes apparent, self-vision through another rather than bare self-vision. He also uses sirrī autobiographically, describing what God disclosed to him 'in my sirr' concerning the great Shaykh, treating sirr as the innermost faculty of unveiling, deeper than the qalb.
Draws on: ibn-arabi-istilah · fass-adam
- Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, Faṣṣ Ādam
- Ibn ʿArabī, Iṣṭilāḥāt al-Ṣūfiyya, s.v. al-sirr
Reference