Thread by @Safaitic

<Thread> Allāh is the word for ‘God’ in Arabic. But where did this word come from? Muslim scholars have several views. Some regard it as a basic noun, others the definite form of the word “lāh”, ‘lofty’ or ‘hidden’, but most see it as a contracted form of al-ʾilāh, = ‘the deity’

Islamic tradition holds that the pre-Islamic pagans worshiped Allāh beside other gods = shirk ‘association’. Are there examples of this in the epigraphic record? Yes, but before we get to those, the corpus of 6th. CE Christian Arabic inscriptions continues to grow...

New texts suggest that Allāh, in this exact form, was not the common Arabic name of the monotheistic god in the century before Islam. In the Zebed inscription, the Christian god is called al-ʾilāh 'the God'.

In a new Christian Arabic inscription from Dūmat al-Jandal (548/9 CE), God is called again al-ʾilāh. The text is a simple benediction: ḏakara al-ʾilāh Ḥgʿbw br slmh 'May God be mindful of Ḥgʿbw son of Salamah'. arabianepigraphicnotes.org/journal/articl…

Al-ʾilāh is attested in a 6th-7th c. ✝-ian Arabic text from Jordan, which states: ḏakara al-ʾilāh yazīd-w al-malik ‘may God by mindful of Yazīd the king’. See this article for more: academia.edu/35239575/Al-Ja…

In South Arabia, the monotheistic god was called Raḥmānān; sometimes he was referred to as ʾilāh-ān. The final ān is the definite article, so it is the equivalent of Arabic al-ʾilāh. "May God to whom belong heaven and earth bless king Ys¹f ʾs¹ʾr Yṯʾr, king of all the tribes"

al-ʾilāh in these early ✝-ian Arabic inscriptions appears to be a calque of the Greek ὁ Θεός. Does the form Allāh then derive from this usage? Probably not directly. As with most things Arabic, to find its origins, we need to go back to the Nabataeans.

The Nabataeans worshiped many gods but the primary deity of their state was ḏu-śaray (=Dusares), ‘he of the Sharay (mountains)’, the range near Petra. There is no direct evidence for the worship of Allāh (or al-ʾilāh). But their personal names contain references to him.

The divine name Allāh (written in Nabataean as (ʾ)lh or lhy and transcribed in Greek as αλλας) features in many Nabataean personal names: ʾaws-allāhi ‘gift of Allāh’, ǵawṯ-allāhi ‘help of Allāh’, ʿabd-allāhi ‘worshipper of Allāh’, saʿd-allāhi ‘fortune of Allāh’, etc.

Some have speculated that Dusares is the epithet of Allāh, but there is no evidence to support this. If the name Allāh existed in the late 1st millennium BCE, who worshiped him and what is its etymology? There are several prayers to Allāh in the #Safaitic inscriptions.

SIJ 293 contains a beautiful example: wa ʾaṣlaya wa ʾaqsama be-ʾallāh ḥayy la-hadaya ʿaẓīma ‘he made a burnt offering and swore by Allāh, who is living, that he shall command with greatness’

The vocative form Allāhumma is even attested. In the Hismaic inscription Jackobson D.3.A.7.b, the author invokes Allāh to curse the sons of ʿuray son of ʿaklam: hāllāhumma le-banī ʿoray ben ʿaklam boʾsa’!

Finally, at Qaryat al-Fāw, Allāh is invoked next to 2 other gods, a classic example of shirk ;) "and he placed it under the protection of Kahl, Allāh, and ʿaṯṯar of the East from strong and weak and purchase and pledge for all time".

Nevertheless, invocations to Allāh in the inscriptions are rare. There is no evidence that this was the proper name of the primary deity of any pagan cult. Let’s come back to our first Q: where does the word come from?

The best hypothesis IMO is that it is indeed a contracted form of al-ʾilāh, a dialectal feature that perhaps occurred in western dialects of Arabic, maybe in the southern periphery of Nabataea.

The same process produces Ram, as in Wādī Ram, from the original name ʾiram. A guess: al-ʾilāh > allāh was a way of referring to the most exalted deity, regardless of differences in time and cult, thus explaining the rarity of this general term in invocations to specific deities

This would have been the natural way speakers of western dialects of Arabic would have referred to the monotheistic god = 'the deity'. It is possible that Christians and Jews of the Ḥigāz used this form; we simply don't have the epigraphic evidence to confirm (yet).

Perhaps our earliest Christian Arabic use of Allāh for the name of God comes 7th c. CE. It is found in an amulet discovered in the excavations of al-Ḥīrah and states: barakah min allāh; ghafara allāh li-ʿabd al-masīḥ ‘blessings from God; may God forgive ʿAbd al-Masīḥ’

Conclusion: the term Allāh seems to be a contracted form of al-ʾilāh 'the deity'. This particular form was restricted to NW Arabia and southern Levant in pre-Islam. Allāh is relatively common in personal names but rarely invoked in the inscriptions.

6th c. Christian Arabic inscriptions use the term al-ʾilāh for 'God'. It isn't until the Islamic period that the contracted form <Allāh> becomes the general word for 'God' in all forms of Arabic and for all confessions.

Bibliography: Jumaili, Amir A. al-. “NaqshʿarabiGadīd Li-Tamīmah Mina L- Ḥīrah Li-ʿabd Al-Masīḥ Bin Buqaylah Al-Ghassānī Mina L-Qarn Al-Awwal Al-Higri.” Maǧallat Al-SiyāḥahWalĀthār 28, no. 1 (2016): 23–31.

Kiltz, David. “The Relationship between Arabic Allāh and Syriac Allāhā.”Der Islam 88 (2012): 31–50.
Winnett, Frederick Victor. 1957. Safaitic Inscriptions from Jordan. Near and Middle East 2. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

And as always, please forgive typos etc. -- always tweeting in haste.