The Ninety-Nine Names · the 9th name
الْجَبَّار
Al-Jabbar
The Compeller, who sets the broken right
- The rootج ب ر
- From the rootjabara: to set a broken bone; and from there, to compel
The essay
This Name frightens people who meet it only in translation, because The Compeller sounds like a tyrant. The root's first and plainest use in Arabic is the setting of a fracture, which is why the splint is called jabirah and why the algebra of restoring a broken equation carries the same word. He compels the way a bone is compelled: by force, against the limb's own drift, and toward wholeness. Both meanings are true of Him. His will is not negotiated, and the direction it moves in is repair.
In the Qur'an
هُوَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِي لَآ إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ٱلۡمَلِكُ ٱلۡقُدُّوسُ ٱلسَّلَٰمُ ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُ ٱلۡمُهَيۡمِنُ ٱلۡعَزِيزُ ٱلۡجَبَّارُ ٱلۡمُتَكَبِّرُۚ سُبۡحَٰنَ ٱللَّهِ عَمَّا يُشۡرِكُونَ
He is Allah, other than whom there is no god: the King, the Most Holy, the Peace, the Giver of Security, the Guardian over all, the Almighty, the Compeller, the Supreme. Glory be to Allah, far above all they set beside Him.
this Name is in the Qur’an
What it asks of you
When you are being made to accept something you did not choose, ask what is being set. The answer sometimes takes years and is sometimes withheld.
Read beside it
A story