About This Project

by Ibrahim Ibrahim

Disclaimer: I’m a computer science student, not a linguist or religious scholar. This is my take on the creative project for Professor bin Tyeer’s AHUM course at Columbia. My main role was compilation: gathering, organizing, and presenting research from the scholars cited on each page. Some of the language and analysis is borrowed directly from those sources. Words with can be tapped for definitions. I have not independently verified every claim, and this is a work in progress. Corrections are welcome.

I came across an Instagram reel about how Arabic prophetic names are tied to their missions. Ādam from adīm al-arḍ, Nūḥ from n-w-ḥ (to wail), Ṣāliḥ from ṣ-l-ḥ (righteous). It reminded me of something I kept doing in my discussion posts all semester: going back to the Arabic to find what the English translations miss. Things like losing the jamīl in Abdel Haleem’s translation of the Qur’an, or vs. carrying different theories of storytelling, or ẓālim literally meaning “oppressor” in Princess Fatima.

When I emailed Professor bin Tyeer about the idea, her response changed everything. She asked: does this apply to all prophets? Not all of them spoke Arabic. ʿĪsā spoke . Isḥāq is Yitzhak (Yiṣḥāq) in Hebrew, meaning “he laughs,” linked to Sarah’s laugh when she was told she’d have a baby at her age. So the question became: is the name-mission connection a rule, or does it apply sometimes but not others?

I traced all 25 prophetic names across Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and other Semitic languages. The pattern works for about a third of them, works through shared roots across languages for another third, and breaks down for the rest. This site organizes them into four tiers based on how transparent their names are in Arabic, from fully readable (Tier 1) to completely opaque (Tier 4).

The project picks up on the semester’s central concern: what Arabic does that English translations cannot convey. Our readings spanned the Qur’an, Kalīla wa-Dimna, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, The Thousand and One Nights, The Conference of the Birds, Rūmī, Ibn Khaldūn, and more. Across all of them, the Arabic root system kept surfacing as the key to meanings the translations couldn’t carry.

أَنا البَحرُ في أَحشائِهِ الدُرُّ كامِنٌ

فَهَل سَأَلوا الغَوّاصَ عَن صَدَفاتي

“I am the sea, in whose depths pearls lie hidden. Have they asked the diver about my shells?”

Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm, on the beauty of the Arabic language

How I Did This

For each prophet, I looked up the Arabic name and identified its root (the three core consonants that words are built from). Then I checked whether that root exists in the source language (usually Hebrew or ) and whether the meanings line up. For example, the Hebrew name Yitzhak (Yiṣḥāq) comes from a root meaning "to laugh," and Arabic has a (a related root inherited from the same ancestor language) that also means "to laugh." That's a match. But for a name like Mūsā (Moses), the Arabic gives you nothing because the name comes from Egyptian, not from a Semitic language at all.

I organized the 25 prophets into four tiers based on how much meaning an Arabic speaker can actually hear in the name. Tier 1 names are plain Arabic words. Tier 4 names are completely . The tiers in between cover the gray area.

Most of the analysis on this site comes from published scholarship, primarily 's Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān (1938, reprinted 2007), which catalogs borrowed words in the Qur'an, and 's work on the prophets shared between the Qur'an and the Bible. I also drew on classical Qur'anic commentaries () by al-Ṭabarī and , and on 's recent research on pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions. I compiled and organized this material, but the linguistic analysis is theirs, not mine.

Course Information

Asian Humanities: Major Texts from the Middle East, taught by Professor Sarah R. bin Tyeer. Spring 2026, Columbia University.

Feedback

Spotted an error? Have a correction or suggestion? I’d genuinely appreciate hearing from you.

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Or email me directly: igi2001 [at] columbia [dot] edu

Sources

The analysis on this site is compiled from the works listed below. I consulted these sources to varying degrees: some I read closely, others I accessed for specific entries, and in many cases one source led me to another, which led me to another. This list is not exhaustive. The scholars below cite each other and draw on further works that I have not listed here. The ideas and analysis throughout this site belong to them, not to me. I organized and presented their work, but I did not originate it. Additional works cited within the analysis text were encountered through the sources above and are included for attribution, not to imply direct consultation.

Qur’an Translations

Classical Arabic and Islamic Sources

Accessed through secondary scholarship and online databases, not read in full.

Modern Scholarship: Semitic Linguistics and Qur’anic Studies

Biblical Studies, Dictionaries, and Reference Works

Further Works Cited

Encountered through the sources above. Included for attribution.

Data and Tools