Discover the meaning of the term Al-thaaniy (ثَّانِي) in Islamic vocabulary.
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Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 6 min readThat, when he sees the success of matters coming from Allah, he cuts off hope in aught other than Him and calls upon Him alone for his need; this is the root of worship; the aim of worship being the reward, which is what is sought through supplication.
The exposition of confirmation; the first cannot but be either an exposition of the speech's meaning or of what necessarily follows from it, such as duration.
The exposition of substitution; the first being either without alteration or with it.
The exposition of alteration; the first is the explanatory exposition.
Like serial succession in events.
Serial succession in rational souls.
It is said in consideration of the change, and two in consideration of its state.
That it is the answer to something unmentioned, to the extent of what the speaker believes.
That he affects it while saturated with it: this is the trait of the generality of people; the one described with pride in the first way is praised, and in the second way blamed; it shows that a man may be described with it and not be blameworthy (al-Mufradat, p. 422): "I shall turn away from My signs those who wax proud on the earth without right" (al-A'raf 7:146). That it be an elative (af'al tafsil) entailing sharing with another and being preferred over him; from this: "the twice-married woman (thayyib) has more right over herself than her guardian" ("The twice-married woman has more right over herself than her guardian, and the virgin seeks permission regarding herself, and her silence is her permission", related by Muslim in his Sahih and Ahmad in his Musnad from Ibn 'Abbas): the two share, but her right is firmer. Istahaqqa the matter: he deserved it; from this their saying "the sold thing came out mustahiqqa (as it deserved)", intending what is fitting to do, but which occurs otherwise than he wants: he is right in the willing and wrong in the doing; this is the sense of the hadith "There has been lifted from my community error and forgetfulness" ("Lifted from my community are error, forgetfulness and what they were coerced into", related by al-Tabarani in the Kabir from Thawban); and of the report "Whoever strives and errs has a reward" (Bukhari, Muslim and Ibn Maja related: "When the judge rules and strives and hits the mark, he has two rewards; if he rules and strives and errs, he has a reward", Bukhari, al-I'tisam, 21, hadith 7352; Fath al-Bari 13/318; Muslim, Kitab al-Aqdiya, 16, hadith 1716; Ibn Maja, Sunan, Kitab al-Ahkam, chapter 3, hadith 2314). By suggestion and imagination: seeking the devil's aid through a kind of drawing near to him. Lifting the veil of oneness from the existence of the inward multiplicity of knowledge; it is the journeying to Allah by being clothed in His attributes and realized in His names, the journeying in the Real by the Real to the highest horizon; it is the terminus of the station of oneness: that his issue be begotten of him, like one who drinks wine and from whom an objectionable utterance appears without intent. The first is excused and the second held accountable. It is said in the Misbah (al-Misbah al-Munir, root saha, p. 111): the active and the forgetful were distinguished in that the forgetful, when reminded, remembers, unlike the other; he is not cited in laying out the principles, for he is like the rejected; it is permitted the poet to return to him, he runs like the oath: one says: "I bear witness by Allah that it is so". The shahada expresses the attestation, as in: "and a witness of her family bore witness" (Yusuf 12:26), and confession, as in: "they would have had no witnesses but themselves" (al-Nur 24:6); al-Raghib mentioned it. In the Misbah (al-Misbah al-Munir, root shahada, p. 124): usage passed upon the tongues of the community, later and earlier, in rendering the attestation: "ashhadu", restricted to it over other expressions signifying affirming a thing, as more familiar and more certain, in accord with the expressions of the Book and the Sunna; so there was consensus upon this expression being fixed, and there is worshipfulness in not transmitting another; perhaps its secret is that the shahada is a name from the mushahada, the inspecting of a thing with the eye, so there was stipulated in the rendering what hints at the witnessable intellection that only the elite perceive: the image peculiar to man through intellect and discernment, and the meanings peculiar to man through the loss of the sensible faculty; from it: "and man will say: when I am dead..." (Maryam 19:66). What is one by connection, either in constitution, as your saying "one person" (shakhs wahid), or in respect of the making, as your saying "one craft" (hirfa wahida).