Articles
Who Is Allah: The Description He Gave of Himself
Before you can fear Him, hope in Him, or love Him, you have to know who He is — and the Qur'an answers that question directly, in His own words, in al-Ikhlāṣ, Āyat al-Kursī, and the closing verses of Sūrat al-Ḥashr.
- Author
- The Quran Gallery team
- Published
- Reading time
- 8 min read
“Describe your Lord to us.” Commentators record this question being put to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) more than once, by more than one group, in terms that treat Allah as one more object among objects — only bigger. Some asked whether He is made of gold, silver, iron or wood. Others, expecting an answer that matched what they had read in the Torah, asked whether He eats and drinks, and who will inherit what is His once He is gone. Both assume “God” is a larger, stranger version of a created thing, describable on the same scale as everything else.
The Qur’an’s answer to both is preserved together, in the body of al-Baghawī’s commentary on printed page 8/584 of : it names the questioners, records the question in each of its versions, and says plainly that a full sūrah was revealed in response. That sūrah, and two other passages the Qur’an itself uses to describe Allah, are not arguments. They are a description — the one He gave of Himself, in His own words, precise enough that a serious reader can hold Him in mind without ever mistaking Him for something He is not. This is the ground everything else stands on: you cannot fear, hope in, or love someone you have never actually been introduced to.
قُلْ هُوَ ٱللَّهُ أَحَدٌ ٱللَّهُ ٱلصَّمَدُ لَمْ يَلِدْ وَلَمْ يُولَدْ وَلَمْ يَكُن لَّهُۥ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌۢ
“Say: He is Allah, One. Allah, the Self-Sufficient Master, needed by all, needing none. He begets not, nor was He begotten. And there is none comparable to Him.”
Four short lines answer both questions at once. He is aḥad — one, without partner and without parts, which already rules out “gold or iron” as a category error rather than a wrong guess. He is aṣ-ṣamad — every needy thing in existence turns to Him for what it lacks, while He turns to nothing; this alone answers “does He eat and drink,” because eating and drinking are the behaviour of a thing that depends on something outside itself to keep existing, and dependence is precisely what aṣ-ṣamad excludes. He neither begets nor was begotten — no parent, no offspring, which closes the door on “who inherits from Him” before the question can even be asked; inheritance presumes death, and death presumes a beginning. And nothing is His equal — not in rank, not in kind. Four lines, and the entire architecture of mythological god-making — gods with bodies, gods with children, gods who age, die and pass their thrones to a successor — is ruled out by name.
ٱللَّهُ لَآ إِلَـٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ٱلْحَىُّ ٱلْقَيُّومُ ۚ لَا تَأْخُذُهُۥ سِنَةٌ وَلَا نَوْمٌ ۚ لَّهُۥ مَا فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَمَا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ ۗ مَن ذَا ٱلَّذِى يَشْفَعُ عِندَهُۥٓ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِهِۦ ۚ يَعْلَمُ مَا بَيْنَ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَمَا خَلْفَهُمْ ۖ وَلَا يُحِيطُونَ بِشَىْءٍ مِّنْ عِلْمِهِۦٓ إِلَّا بِمَا شَآءَ ۚ وَسِعَ كُرْسِيُّهُ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضَ ۖ وَلَا يَـُٔودُهُۥ حِفْظُهُمَا ۚ وَهُوَ ٱلْعَلِىُّ ٱلْعَظِيمُ
“Allah — there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of all existence. Neither drowsiness overtakes Him nor sleep. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. Who is it that can intercede with Him except by His permission? He knows what is before them and what is behind them, and they encompass not a thing of His knowledge except what He wills. His Kursī extends over the heavens and the earth, and their preservation tires Him not. And He is the Most High, the Most Great.”
Where al-Ikhlāṣ answers the question by exclusion — not this, not that, no equal — Āyat al-Kursī answers it by description. He lives, in a way that never began and will never end; He sustains everything else’s existence while depending on none of it. He does not doze off partway through governing creation, and He does not need sleep to recover from the effort. His knowledge is not gathered piece by piece from evidence, the way ours is; He simply knows, without a border to what He knows. His kursī — a word early commentators tied to His reign, distinct from the greater ʿarsh, His throne — reaches wider than the heavens and the earth combined, and holding it costs Him nothing.
وَلِلَّهِ ٱلْأَسْمَآءُ ٱلْحُسْنَىٰ فَٱدْعُوهُ بِهَا ۖ وَذَرُوا۟ ٱلَّذِينَ يُلْحِدُونَ فِىٓ أَسْمَـٰٓئِهِۦ ۚ سَيُجْزَوْنَ مَا كَانُوا۟ يَعْمَلُونَ
“And to Allah belong the most beautiful names, so call upon Him by them, and leave the company of those who distort His names. They will be recompensed for what they used to do.”
Knowing who Allah is means knowing what He is called, because the names are not decoration attached to Him after the fact — each one opens onto something true about Him that the others do not. Abū Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said:
“Allah has ninety-nine names, one hundred less one; whoever preserves them in memory will enter Paradise.”
This is recorded on printed page 3/198 of . “Preserves them” here means more than reciting a list — it means letting each name reshape how you actually address Him: turning to al-Ghafūr when you have sinned, to ar-Razzāq when you are afraid of want, to as-Samīʿ when a duʿāʾ feels too quiet to matter. The warning in the same verse — against those who yulḥidūn, who twist His names into something else, whether by denying them, emptying them of meaning, or attaching them to other than Him — marks how seriously this matters. Getting His names wrong is not a small error; it is a wrong turn at the very first step of knowing Him.
… لَيْسَ كَمِثْلِهِۦ شَىْءٌ ۖ وَهُوَ ٱلسَّمِيعُ ٱلْبَصِيرُ
“…There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.”
That single verse holds both halves of how Ahl al-Sunnah has classically approached every description Allah gives of Himself, including the ones that sound, on first hearing, unsettlingly physical — that He rose above the Throne (istiwāʾ), that He has a Hand, a Face, that He hears and sees. The first half refuses to strip those words of their meaning: He really does hear, really does see, really is described as rising above the Throne — the Qur’an said so, and emptying the words out to mean something vaguer is not reverence, it is editing the text. The second half refuses the opposite mistake: none of it resembles how a creature hears, sees or rises, because “there is nothing like unto Him” comes first and governs everything after it.
Asked directly how Allah “rose above the Throne” (Sūrat Ṭāhā, 20:5), Rabīʿah ibn Abī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān — the teacher of Imam Mālik — gave the answer that became the standard reply of the early generations to this category of question. It is preserved in Ibn al-Qayyim’s Ijtimāʿ al-Juyūsh al-Islāmiyyah, on printed page 189 of : ”al-istiwāʾ ghayru majhūl, wal-kayfu ghayru maʿqūl” — the rising is not unknown, the how of it is not something a mind can grasp; from Allah is the message, upon the Messenger the delivering of it, and upon us affirming it as true. Affirm the word Allah used, in the meaning it plainly carries; refuse to ask “how,” because “how” is a question about created things, and He is not created.
هُوَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِى لَآ إِلَـٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ۖ عَـٰلِمُ ٱلْغَيْبِ وَٱلشَّهَـٰدَةِ ۖ هُوَ ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنُ ٱلرَّحِيمُ هُوَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِى لَآ إِلَـٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ٱلْمَلِكُ ٱلْقُدُّوسُ ٱلسَّلَـٰمُ ٱلْمُؤْمِنُ ٱلْمُهَيْمِنُ ٱلْعَزِيزُ ٱلْجَبَّارُ ٱلْمُتَكَبِّرُ ۚ سُبْحَـٰنَ ٱللَّهِ عَمَّا يُشْرِكُونَ هُوَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلْخَـٰلِقُ ٱلْبَارِئُ ٱلْمُصَوِّرُ ۖ لَهُ ٱلْأَسْمَآءُ ٱلْحُسْنَىٰ ۚ يُسَبِّحُ لَهُۥ مَا فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ ۖ وَهُوَ ٱلْعَزِيزُ ٱلْحَكِيمُ
“He is Allah, other than whom there is no deity, Knower of the unseen and the witnessed. He is the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. He is Allah, other than whom there is no deity, the Sovereign, the Pure, the Source of Peace, the Grantor of Security, the Overseer, the Exalted in Might, the Compeller, the Supreme in Greatness. Exalted is Allah above whatever they associate with Him. He is Allah, the Creator, the Originator, the Fashioner. To Him belong the most beautiful names. Whatever is in the heavens and the earth exalts Him, and He is the Exalted in Might, the Wise.”
These closing verses gather the whole answer into one breath — deity, knower, merciful, sovereign, peace, security, might, creator, name after name laid down without a single “how” attached to any of them. Ma’qil ibn Yasār (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Prophet (peace be upon him) tied these three verses to a morning and evening habit: whoever recites them after saying, three times, “I seek refuge in Allah, the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing, from the accursed devil,” is placed under seventy thousand angels’ protection until evening. This is recorded on printed page 5/42 of , where al-Tirmidhī himself grades the chain gharīb — carried on a single route, not the strongest grade a narration can carry, and worth knowing honestly rather than repeating as beyond question.
That honesty is itself part of the point. Knowing Allah as He described Himself is not the end of worship — it is the ground every other part of it stands on. You cannot fear a name you have not learned, hope in a mercy you cannot describe, or love a Lord you have only ever imagined. The Adhkār collection on Quran Gallery exists for exactly this: sound wording, honestly graded, so that what you say about Allah — in the morning, in the evening, in every ordinary moment between — is something you can actually stand behind.
May Allah ﷻ make us of those who know Him as He described Himself, and call upon Him by His most beautiful names.