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Concept
Allah
Summary
Allah (ˈæl.lə,_ˈɑːl.lə,_əˈl.lɑː; , ʔaɫ.ɫaːh) is the common Arabic word for God. In the English language, the word generally refers to God in Islam. The word is thought to be derived by contraction from al-ilāh, which means "the god", and is linguistically related to the Aramaic words Elah and Syriac ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ (ʼAlāhā) and the Hebrew word El (Elohim) for God.
The word Allah has been used by Arabic people of different religions since pre-Islamic times. The pre-Islamic Arabs worshipped a supreme deity whom they called Allah, alongside other lesser deities. Muhammad used the word Allah to indicate the Islamic conception of God. Allah has been used as a term for God by Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab), Judaeo-Arabic-speaking Jews, and Arab Christians after the term "al-ilāh" and "Allah" were used interchangeably in Classical Arabic by the majority of Arabs who had become Muslims. It is also often, albeit not exclusively, used in this way by Bábists, Baháʼís, Mandaeans, Indonesian and Maltese Christians, and Sephardi Jews, as well as by the Gagauz people. Similar usage by Christians and Sikhs in Peninsular Malaysia has recently led to political and legal controversies.
The etymology of the word Allāh has been discussed extensively by classical Arab philologists. Grammarians of the Basra school regarded it as either formed "spontaneously" (murtajal) or as the definite form of lāh (from the verbal root lyh with the meaning of "lofty" or "hidden"). Others held that it was borrowed from Syriac or Hebrew.
Most considered it to be derived from a contraction of the Arabic definite article al- "the" and "deity, god" to meaning "the deity, the God". Indeed, there is "the interchangeability of al-ilāh and allāh in early Arabic poetry even when composed by the Christian ʿAdī ibn Zayd".
The majority of modern scholars subscribe to the latter theory, and view the loanword hypothesis with skepticism.
The use of "Allah" as the name of a deity appears as early as the first century.
Official source
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