The Ninety-Nine Names · the 60th name
الْمُحْيِي
Al-Muhyi
The Giver of Life
- The rootح ي ي
- From the roothayya: to live; the root of hayah, life, and of haya', the modesty that keeps a soul alive
The essay
He gives life, and the Qur'an keeps pointing at the same evidence: look at dead ground after rain. Life is the thing no one has ever manufactured from nothing, only ever transferred from something already living. He gives it to the earth every spring, to the body in the womb, to a heart that had gone hard and then unaccountably softened. The last of those is the one the Book treats as the real miracle.
In the Qur'an
فَٱنظُرۡ إِلَىٰٓ ءَاثَٰرِ رَحۡمَتِ ٱللَّهِ كَيۡفَ يُحۡيِ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ بَعۡدَ مَوۡتِهَآۚ إِنَّ ذَٰلِكَ لَمُحۡيِ ٱلۡمَوۡتَىٰۖ وَهُوَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيۡءٖ قَدِيرٞ
So look at the traces of Allah's mercy, how He gives life to the earth after its death. That same One gives life to the dead, and He is able to do all things.
this Name is in the Qur’an
What it asks of you
If something in you has gone dead, a prayer, a relationship, an ability to feel, it is in the category of things He is described as reviving.
Read beside it
The words