You can download it here: first is an updated explanation in text, and the one below it is a brief one-page summary + a Quranic Architecture chart for illustration:
This is a shortened version of the original that may help assimilate the idea (which can get very complex the more details you include). Photo of Al-Fatiha’s structure is below.
The paired names of the Basmalah represent how Allah relates to us: with His power/authority (Al-Rahman) and mercy (Al-Raheem). These two names contain 6 letters each for a total of 12 letters, and the number 12 is associated with 12 months, suggesting “in time.” The first 7 letters are the words “bism Allah” or “in the name of Allah.” The number 7 symbolizes 3 basic things: a test of what we value or “evaluation;” balancing “opposites;” and marriage or significant pairing (where the pairing involves a change in status, usually raising up in some way). Marriage can refer in Arabic to any pair somehow joined together: the body with the soul, the day and night as a dynamic duo, Allah and His messengers, the Almighty, All-Merciful, life and death as a cycle rather than a timeline, this world and the Hereafter, and our souls – if we choose the upright path seeking Allah – with the Almighty All-Merciful.
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(Note: New Improved Post, removed the excess for a different post.) The four suras (like chapters/sections) of the Quran most frequently recited in the canonical Islamic prayer called salat are the first sura, Al-Fatiha “The Opening” (1), the quintessential prayer of salat, and the final 3 suras, Al-Ikhlas “Sincerity” (112), Al-Falaq “Daybreak/ Breaking-open” (113), and An-Nass “The People” (114). They are all short suras, making them easy to recite. Allah the All-Merciful wants this prayer to be easy for us, and at the same time a powerful and effective “connection” to Him, to His all-encompassing power and mercy. These four suras form a {2,3,4} set, with three (3) together at the end, and the fourth (4) in the very beginning, and two of these suras form a pair (2) in the “middle.” Thus the end of the Quran re-connects us to the beginning, analogous to how Resurrection and Judgment Day reconnect us to Allah in paradise where Adam was created at the beginning of humanity – if we had faith in Allah, and made a genuine effort in Allah’s path of justice and compassion.
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This is a very real possibility, which I began to examine while thinking that possibly all numbers somehow relate to or are reflective of Allah’s name. That seems way beyond my limited mathematical abilities – yet after studying the Quran in details, I ran into a simple pattern expressed in two ayat, 4:3 (itself a {3,4} set) and 35:1, as “two and three and four,” essentially a {2,3,4} set, which in turn reflects the {3,4} set, as expressed in Allah’s name. I’ve discussed this {3,4} set previously as well as how Allah “wrote mercy upon Himself” (6:12 and 6:54). Here finally is a post that covers this topic.
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Most common counts of the moon in the Quran consider only the word qamar, the standard word for moon in general, mentioned 27 times, the sidereal lunar cycle count. But in the Quran are two more words related to the moon: alahilla, crescent moons, the plural of hilal; and badr, which means “full moon,” but is it used in reference to a famous battle victory, not the moon, except symbolically, which would have been understood by the Arabs at the time the Quran was sent. If we include these, the lunar mentions in the Quran increase to 29 mentions in 28 ayat (verses) and 25 suras. But if we choose not to count the Badr reference, the total would be 28 lunar mentions in 27 ayat in 25 different suras. In all three cases the numbers of mentions and ayat are “lunar numbers,” relating to cycles of the moon. Here we discuss how these mentions are arranged in the Quran and examine the ayat that use the two words different from the word qamar, showing how the word badr as symbolic refers to the apex of the moon’s luminescence as an example of how a battle victory can be a shining light or possibility for a beleaguered people, giving them patience through the “darker” or more difficult days.
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Despite the Basmalah (pictured above) being the first aya of Surat Al-Fatiha in most printed copies of the Quran including those printed in Saudi Arabia (a copy of the Quran in writing being called a mus’haf not a Quran), there are Muslims, especially of the Hanafi and Hanbali schools of the Sunnis, who believe the first numbered verse of Al-Fatiha to be not the Basmalah but instead what is aya 2 in its most commonly printed text meaning “Praise be to Allah, the Lord of all worlds!” (Pictured below.) We shall discuss the differences of opinion and examine the implications of each.
Listening to a khutba on thikr Allah today, a more comprehensive definition of thikr was brought to my attention: “anything you do to remember Allah.” Examples were salat (formal prayer connection), tasbih (glorification), du’a or supplication to Allah, acts of charity whether obligatory (zakat purification) or voluntary (sadaqa), making the Hajj pilgrimage, or even simply being honest in one’s work, or helping others in innumerable ways from thoughtful acts or greetings, bringing comfort to someone in distress, or acknowledgement of another’s point of view, or helping jump-start a car, anything really one does for no personal benefit or gain such as money but only for the sake of Allah, or out of innate charitable feelings if one is fortunate enough to have them.
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The name Allah in Arabic is written using 3 unique letters to form a 4-letter name. This pair of numbers — 3,4 — can be found reflected throughout the Quran in various ways. In the Basmalah it can be found in its verbal structure: 3 names of Allah in a 4-word statement. It can also be found specifically in the name Al-Raheem which is mentioned 34 times as it exactly appears in the Basmalah as a name, and 3⁴ times if one counts the adjective raheem.
From 3,4, we can also derive the numerical perimeters of the Basmalah: 3+4=7, the number of letters in the first 2 words of the Basmalah, and 3×4=12, giving us the number of letters in the last 2 words of the Basmalah. These two resulting numbers, 7 and 12, are significant Quranic numbers, which added together result in the third significant Quranic number, 19. This then is an “apex” number, expressed in how the Quran introduces it: “Over it is 19.” The “it” was referring to hell using the word saqar. But as a separate indefinite phrase, this expression is open to wider interpretation, as are other such expressions in the Quran. Below I have found another correlation between the Basmalah and the Quranic numbers 19, 7, and 3 that have bearing on its meaning and centrality to Quranic architecture.
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When I try to explain to other Muslims that the name Al-Rahman in Arabic is better translated as the Almighty as explained here in another post, most recoil from the idea, as if I am suggesting the removal of compassion from Allah’s primary attributes, even from the most important first aya of the Quran, the Basmalah. Most, if not all, major Islamic sites and organizations translate the name Al-Rahman as some variation of mercy such as The Most Merciful, The Compassionate, The Beneficent, and The Mercy-giver. This last name always struck me as the closest to the truth, although in a deeper sense, Al-Rahman is essentially a name, not simply an attribute. They say the name derives from the root word rahma, which means “mercy,” or possibly rahim, which means “womb.” But which came first, Al-Rahman, The Creator, or the “womb” which is part of creation?
Of all the major guidelines given us in the Quran, one of the most important is the Law of Reciprocity, repeated frequently in the Quran but of course, not using that term. I use the English term to convey its universality, as it is the Divine comprehensive application we discuss here, analogous to Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” What makes it so fundamental is that it applies not only to the physics, biology, and human social behavior of this life, but also to Al-Akhira, the Hereafter, insofar as what we do in this life brings consequences in the next. Not only that, but Allah the Exalted applies it not only to humans, but to all of creation in a sense, and even more stunningly, Allah applies this principle to Himself, as in the expression that Allah has “decreed mercy on Himself.”
At the very beginning of the Quran, in Surat Al-Fatiha “The Opening”, we are introduced to three great Names for God/ Allah in the Bismallah or Invocation which states “In the Name of Allah, Al-Rahman, Al-Raheem”. The meaning and significance of these two Divine names Al-Rahman — The Almighty — and Al-Raheem — The All-Merciful, reflect the polarity of Yang (might and majesty) and Yin (receptivity and mercy), dynamically interrelated in the context of the One who alone encompasses these names altogether in one Singularity, Indivisible and Eternal, Allah the Exalted.
Continue readingAn ancient method of literary writing that has (relatively) recently been re-discovered in t ancient and religious texts is Ring Composition, a form of mirror writing called chiasmus, described by the anthropologist and scholar Mary Douglas in her book Thinking in Circles: An Essay on Ring Composition (Yale University Press, 2010) as essentially “a framing device” wherein the first section of a text corresponds in some clearly evident way with the last section, and the middle sections form a mirror pattern around a middle section which is also the central idea or turning point for the entire text. The mirror pattern can be described as ABCBA, expandable to more or fewer (at minimum 3) sections as needed with a center section “C”. This website gives an excellent example from the Quran, analyzing Surat Al-Baqara (the Cow) as well as significant subsections of it, including the famous Ayat al-Kursi (2:255). But for this post I will analyze Surat Al-Fatiha in Ring Composition, which provides evidence of two things: that the first numbered aya must be the Bismallah, which precedes all other Surahs except the 9th (“Repentance”) without being numbered; and that the two great attribute names for Allah the Exalted, Al-Rahman (The Almighty), Al-Raheem (The All-Merciful) express the two polarities of Power/ Yang and Mercy/ Receptivity/ Yin. Below is a graphic of this analysis:
114 Chambers 