Root · 293 in the Quran · 182 in 21 texts of the library
نزلa sound root indicating the descent and falling/occurrence of a thing. (root nzl)
النون والزاء واللام كلمة صحيحة تدل على هبوط شيء ووقوعه ونزل عن دابته نزولا ونزل المطر من السماء نزولا والنازلة الشديدة …
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ن ز ل that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
27 words6 verbs2 verbal nouns6 participles2 places and instruments1 intensive or elative6 other nouns4 plurals
- أَنْزَلَbring down; lower
- نَزَّلَ—
- نَزَلَdescend; stay
- مَنْزِلَةgrade; rank
- تَنزِيلreduction; subtraction
The whole family7 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs6نَزَلَ · أَنْزَلَ · نَزَّلَ
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 يَفْعِلُ (a – i; the imperfect from the Quranic Arabic Corpus)
- نَزَلَdescend; stayautoForm IQurʾān ×6library ×40Ibn Fāris
- أَنْزَلَbring down; lowerautoForm IVQurʾān ×183library ×16Ibn Fāris
- نَزَّلَForm IIQurʾān ×62Ibn Fāris
- تَنَزَّلَcondescendautoForm VQurʾān ×7library ×2Ibn Fāris
Verbal nouns2تَنزِيل · إِنْزال
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
- تَنزِيلreduction; subtractionautoForm IIQurʾān ×15library ×2Ibn Fāris
- إِنْزالlowering; disembarkingautoForm IVlibrary ×2
Participles6نازِل · مَنَازِل · مُنزَل
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
- نازِلstaying; lodgedautoactive, Form Ilibrary ×6
- مَنَازِلactive, Form IIIQurʾān ×2
- مُنزَلpassive, Form IVQurʾān ×2
- مُنَزَّلinlaidautopassive, Form IIQurʾān ×1library ×2
Place, time and instrument2مَنْزِلَة · مَنْزِل
Where or when it happens, and what it is done with: the m- nouns.grammar →
- مَنْزِلَةgrade; rankautonoun of place (with -a)library ×33
- مَنْزِلhouse; residenceautonoun of place or timelibrary ×18
Intensives, qualities and the elative1نَزِيل
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
- نَزِيلinmate; tenantautoquality (faʿīl)library ×1Ibn Fāris
Other nouns6نُزُل · نُزُول · مُنازَلَة
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
- نُزُلnounQurʾān ×8Ibn Fāris
- نُزُولdescent; resignationautonounlibrary ×11Ibn Fāris
- مُنازَلَةlining up for battle; hostile encounterautonounlibrary ×7
- نَزْلَةnounQurʾān ×1
Plurals4مُنزِلِين · مُنازَلات · مُنزَلِين
Broken plurals rebuild the word on a new pattern; sound plurals add an ending.grammar →
- مُنزِلِينsound plural of مُنزِلQurʾān ×5
- مُنازَلاتsound plural of مُنازَلَةlibrary ×5
- مُنزَلِينsound plural of مُنزَلQurʾān ×1
- نَوازِلbroken plural of نازِلَةlibrary ×1
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.
- Attested: مَنْزِلَة, noun of place (with -a), “grade; rank” (library)
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 · 170Al-nāzilah (النازلة): a severe calamity among the calamities of fate that befalls (tanzil bi-) people;
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-nuzl (النزل) is what is prepared for the guest (nazīl);
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395The letters nūn, zā', and lām form a sound root indicating the descent of a thing and its falling/landing.
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Rāghib · 502Nuzūl (النزول) originally means descending from a height.
al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī (d. c. 502/1108), al-Mufradāt. Quranic vocabulary, from core sense to Quranic usage.
AI AI translation of the Arabic below
Technical definitions3 · Ibn ʿArabī’s Iṣṭilāḥ, al-Jurjānī’s Taʿrīfāt
التنزيل
ظهور القرآن بحسب الاحتياج بواسطة جبريل على قلب النبي، صلى الله عليه وسلم.
Al-Tanzīl (التنزيل): the manifestation of the Qur'an, according to need, by means of Gabriel, upon the heart of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. AI
التنزيل
الفرق بين الإنزال والتنزيل؛ أن الإنزال يستعمل في الدفعة، والتنزيل يستعمل في التدريج.
Al-Tanzīl (التنزيل): the difference between al-inzāl and al-tanzīl is that al-inzāl is used for [a thing sent down] all at once, while al-tanzīl is used for the gradual [sending down]. AI
النزل
رزق النزيل، وهو الضيف.
Al-Nuzl (النزل): the provision/sustenance of the nazīl (النزيل), who is the guest. AI
The same letters, turned
The same three letters in all six orders. Choose one.
ن ز ل
النون والزاء واللام كلمة صحيحة تدل على هبوط شيء ووقوعه ونزل عن دابته نزولا ونزل المطر من السماء نزولا والنازلة الشديدة من شدائد الدهر تنزل والنزال في الحرب أن يتنازل الفريقان ونزال كلمة توضع موضع انزل ومكان نزل ينزل فيه …
n-z-l is a sound word indicating the descent of something and its falling. Nazala ʿan dābbatihi nuzūlan - he dismounted from his mount. Nazala al-maṭar min al-samāʾ nuzūlan - the rain fell from the sky. Al-nāzila is a severe calamity among the calamities of fate that descends. Al-nizāl in war is that the two parties dismount against each other; nizāl is a word placed in the position of "dismount!" A place that is nazil is one descended upon, in which … AI
Ibn Fāris ↗al-Khalīl: used ↗Quran ×293
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
- نnūntip of the tongue · voiced, in betweenSīb. · I. Jinnī
- زzāytongue-tip, by the front teeth · voiced, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
- لlāmedge of the tongue · voiced, in betweenI. 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
ن
ومن حافة اللسان من أدناها إلى منتهى طرف اللسان ما بينها وبين ما يليها من الحنك الأعلى وما فويق الثنايا مخرج النون
From the edge of the tongue, from its nearest part to the end of its tip, between it and the upper palate next to it and what is just above the front teeth, is the place of the nūn. Sībawayh, lines 26555–26556 ↗
ومن طرف اللسان بينه وبين ما فويق الثنايا، مخرج النون
From the tip of the tongue, between it and what is just above the front teeth, is the place of the nūn. Ibn Jinnī, line 979 ↗
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 ↗
ل
ومن حافة اللسان من أدناها إلى منتهى طرف اللسان، من بينها وبين ما يليها من الحنك الأعلى، مما فويق الضاحك والناب والرباعية والثنية، مخرج اللام
From the edge of the tongue, from its nearest part to the end of its tip, between it and the upper palate next to it, just above the premolar, the canine, the lateral and the central incisor, is the place of the lām. Ibn Jinnī, lines 977–978 ↗
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
ن
Level of existence: السماء الرابعة · the fourth heaven
Divine Name: النور · the Light (al-Nūr)
Lunar mansion: السماك · al-Simāk
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64663Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 8 line 2571 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
الثمانية فحروفها حارة يابسة
The eightfold [rank]: its letters are hot and dry.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2580ز
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 2577ل
Level of existence: السماء الثالثة · the third heaven
Divine Name: القاهر · the Subduer (al-Qāhir)
Lunar mansion: العوا · al-ʿAwwā
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64654Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 7 line 2576 ↗
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 2577Meaning by vowelal-Dabbāgh · a visionary claim about a primordial “Syriac”, not historical Syriac
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
ن
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي الخير الساكن في الذات الشاعل فيها.
It is the good that dwells in the self, kindling [al-shāʿil, as written] within it.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الخير الكامل أو النور الساطع.
It is an indication of perfect good or radiant light.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى شيء يدركه المتكلم أو هو له.
It is an indication of something that the speaker perceives or that belongs to him.
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.
ل
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي حصول المتكلم على شيء عظيم، وتكون إشارة إلى شيء عظيم.
It is the speaker's attaining of something great, and it serves as an indication of something great.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء الذي لا نهاية له.
It is an indication of the thing that has no end.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة من المتكلم إلى وجود ذاته أو إلى ذاته.
It is an indication by the speaker of the existence of his self, or of his self.
Two-letter nucleus10 roots in Ibn Fāris’s chapterن ز
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 31557 ↗
- نزغالنون والزاء والغين كلمة تدل على إفساد بين اثنين ونزغ بين القوم أفسد ذات بينهمQ 6 · L31575
- نزفالنون والزاء والفاء أصل يدل على نفاد شيء وانقطاع ونزف دمه خرج كله والسكران نزيف أي نزف عقلهQ 2 · L31578
- نزقالنون والزاء والقاف كلمة تدل على عجلةL31585
- نزكالنون والزاء والكاف أصيل يدل على طعن أو شبيه به منه النزك الطعن بالنيزك وهو الرمح القصير والنزك سوء الفعل والقول في الإنسان والطعن عليه وفي الحديث إن L31588
- نزلالنون والزاء واللام كلمة صحيحة تدل على هبوط شيء ووقوعه ونزل عن دابته نزولا ونزل المطر من السماء نزولا والنازلة الشديدة من شدائد الدهر تنزل والنزال في Q 293 · L31595
- نزهالنون والزاء والهاء كلمة تدل على بعد في مكان وغيره ورجل نزيه الخلق بعيد عن المطامع الدنيةL31607
- نزوالنون والزاء والحرف المعتل أصل صحيح يرجع إلى معنى واحد هو الوثبان والارتفاع والسموL31612
- نزبالنون والزاء والباء كلمةL31618
- نزحالنون والزاء والحاء كلمة تدل على بعد ونزحت الدار نزوحا بعدت وبلد نازح ومنه نزح الماء كأنه يباعد به عن قعر البئرL31620
- نزرالنون والزاء والراء أصيل يدل على قلة في الشيء ونزر الشيء نزارة وشيء نزر قليل وعطاء منزور مقلل وامرأة نزور قليلة الولدL31624
In the sister scriptsHebrew נ ז לSyriac ܢ ܙ ܠ
| Arabic | ن ز ل |
| Hebrew | נ ז ל |
| Syriac | ܢ ܙ ܠ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩬 𐩸 𐩡 |
| Phoenician | 𐤍 𐤆 𐤋 |
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 anchors the root in concrete descent — nazala ʿan al-dābba (dismounting), descent from high to low — then extends it to al-nāzila (a misfortune that 'descends' upon people), al-nuzl (what is prepared for a guest who alights), al-nuzl as agricultural yield, and al-nizāl, mutual 'descending' into single combat in war.well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
al-Khalīl anchors the root in concrete descent — nazala ʿan al-dābba (dismounting), descent from high to low — then extends it to al-nāzila (a misfortune that 'descends' upon people), al-nuzl (what is prepared for a guest who alights), al-nuzl as agricultural yield, and al-nizāl, mutual 'descending' into single combat in war. al-Jawharī preserves the hospitality and yield senses (nuzl, anzāl), adds land description (arḍ nazila — ground that floods from slight rain owing to its hardness), Ibn al-Aʿrābī's nazalāt (one's customary abodes or ways), and crucially al-manzil/al-manzila for a dwelling-place and, unpluralized, for rank or status. Ibn Fāris states the unifying sense directly — the falling and occurrence of a thing — deriving from it not only dismounting and rainfall but the metaphorical use of nuzūl for performing the pilgrimage, al-nazāla for semen, and al-nazīl for the honored guest. al-Rāghib generalizes furthest: nuzūl is fundamentally descent from height, and God's inzāl of blessings and punishments occurs either by literal descent of the thing itself, as with the Qurʾān (Q18:1, Q42:17), or by descent of its causes and the guidance toward it, as with iron (Q57:25) — inzāl becoming a general term for divine bestowal.
Draws on: al-ʿAyn · al-Ṣiḥāḥ · Maqāyīs al-Lugha · al-Mufradāt
Letters & soundIn Ibn ʿArabī's letter-cosmology, nūn corresponds to the fourth heaven and lām to the third, while zāy is 'what appears in the pillar of air';speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
In Ibn ʿArabī's letter-cosmology, nūn corresponds to the fourth heaven and lām to the third, while zāy is 'what appears in the pillar of air'; al-Dabbāgh reads fatḥa-nūn as the good dwelling and kindling within the self, fatḥa-zāy as marking a thing that harms upon entering another, and fatḥa-lām as the speaker's attainment of something great. Read speculatively, a word combining 'third heaven' and 'fourth heaven' with an airy middle radical could be heard, after the fact, to echo tanzīl — the Qurʾān's descent through celestial and aerial orders into the world. This is only a suggestive resonance between independent symbolic systems and the lexicographer's plain sense of 'falling'; it carries no explanatory weight in mainstream historical linguistics.
Draws on: Ibn ʿArabī letter cosmology · al-Dabbāgh phonaesthetics
Root structureIbn Fāris places n-z-l among siblings sharing only the n-z skeleton with divergent senses: nazagha (inciting discord), nazafa (draining, exhaustion), nazaqa (hastiness), nazaka (a thrust), nazaha (distance, moral remoteness), nazā (leaping, rising — notably the reverse motion from nazala's descent), and nazura (scantiness).plausible
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
Ibn Fāris places n-z-l among siblings sharing only the n-z skeleton with divergent senses: nazagha (inciting discord), nazafa (draining, exhaustion), nazaqa (hastiness), nazaka (a thrust), nazaha (distance, moral remoteness), nazā (leaping, rising — notably the reverse motion from nazala's descent), and nazura (scantiness). Within نزل's own permutation set, نزل itself dominates (293 Qurʾānic occurrences) carrying the core sense of falling; three reversals (نلز, زنل, زلن, لنز) are unattested, while لزن survives independently, meaning 'narrowness or constriction in a thing.' Ibn Jinnī's greater derivation would juxtapose these two surviving anagrams — descent and constriction — as sharing an intuitable core of downward pressure or confinement, though this remains a speculative permutational echo rather than an established etymological claim.
Draws on: Ibn Fāris nucleus siblings · permutation table
- Ibn Jinnī, al-Khaṣāʾiṣ, al-ishtiqāq al-akbar (link not verified)
Semitic kin & loanwordsArabic nazala (descend, alight) has a plausible cognate in Hebrew נָזַל (nāzal, 'to flow, drip, trickle,' of water) and Aramaic/Syriac nzal ('to flow, go, depart'), both sharing an image of downward or outward movement, though the narrowing to 'alight/dismount' and the theological sense of inzāl (revelation) appear to be Arabic-internal developments.plausible
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
Arabic nazala (descend, alight) has a plausible cognate in Hebrew נָזַל (nāzal, 'to flow, drip, trickle,' of water) and Aramaic/Syriac nzal ('to flow, go, depart'), both sharing an image of downward or outward movement, though the narrowing to 'alight/dismount' and the theological sense of inzāl (revelation) appear to be Arabic-internal developments. No confident Akkadian or Gəʿez cognate is available in the present data. The root is judged inherited common Semitic vocabulary, not a loanword.
Draws on: comparative Semitic
- BDB, Hebrew-English Lexicon, s.v. נזל
- Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, s.v. nzl
Quranic exegesisBecause anzala/nazzala carry the Qurʾān's central vocabulary for revelation (Q2:4, Q18:1, Q42:17), al-Ṭabarī discusses whether inzāl implies literal descent — from the Preserved Tablet to the lowest heaven, then piecemeal to earth — the standard account behind gradual-revelation doctrine.well attested
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
Because anzala/nazzala carry the Qurʾān's central vocabulary for revelation (Q2:4, Q18:1, Q42:17), al-Ṭabarī discusses whether inzāl implies literal descent — from the Preserved Tablet to the lowest heaven, then piecemeal to earth — the standard account behind gradual-revelation doctrine. al-Zamakhsharī treats the language of 'descent' partly rhetorically, conveying the loftiness of the source rather than requiring strictly spatial motion. al-Rāzī draws out the distinction between anzala (a single, complete sending-down) and nazzala/tanzīl (intensive or gradual sending), grounding arguments about the twenty-three-year piecemeal revelation. al-Rāghib widens inzāl further to any divine bestowal, direct or mediated through provided means, as with iron (Q57:25) and clothing.
Akbarian readingIn the Fuṣūṣ passage on Adam, Ibn ʿArabī writes that the human being stands 'bi-manzilati insān al-ʿayn min al-ʿayn' — in the position (manzila) of the pupil within the eye, the point through which seeing occurs — glossed as that by which the Ḥaqq's own vision of Himself takes place.plausible
The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.
In the Fuṣūṣ passage on Adam, Ibn ʿArabī writes that the human being stands 'bi-manzilati insān al-ʿayn min al-ʿayn' — in the position (manzila) of the pupil within the eye, the point through which seeing occurs — glossed as that by which the Ḥaqq's own vision of Himself takes place. The chosen word, manzila, is the root's own noun of place/rank, tying this ontological claim to the same semantic field as 'alighting-place' and 'station' rather than a neutral term for position. This usage sits beside the wider Sufi technical vocabulary of manāzil (spiritual stations), where the root's core of a place one descends into and dwells is extended to mark degrees of spiritual attainment. No separate Iṣṭilāḥ definition for this root is supplied among Ibn ʿArabī's own terminological entries here, so the reading rests on usage rather than explicit definition.
Draws on: Faṣṣ Ādam usage
Reference