The Ninety-Nine Names · the 1st name
الرَّحْمَٰن
Ar-Rahman
The Most Merciful, whose mercy reaches all that is
- The rootر ح م
- From the rootrahim: the womb; and from it, the mercy that has no cause outside itself
The essay
Ar-Rahman is not a merciful being. It is mercy in the intensive form, the form Arabic keeps for a quality so full it overflows the one who has it. The root is the word for womb, which shelters what cannot yet ask to be sheltered, and this is the mercy the Book means: mercy before the request, before the deserving, before the one receiving it is even aware there is anyone to thank. It falls on the believer and the denier alike, on the field of the man who curses the rain. Every surah but one opens by naming Him this way, so the mercy is not a chapter of the Book, it is the doorway you pass through to reach every other chapter.
In the Qur'an
What it asks of you
Stop auditing whether you have earned the day you were given. You did not. Receive it, and let the mercy you have been shown set the floor for the mercy you show.
Read beside it
The words