Surah al-Ikhlas is made of only 15 words, yet it introduces 22 new linguistic features. It is the third of the last three surahs and completes a powerful trio (Ikhlas, Al Falaq, An Nas) used often in worship and daily life.
This surah uses three words that appear nowhere else in the Quran: ahad (One), samad (the Absolute), and kufuwan (equal). Each of these carries deep, never-before-heard meanings.
For example, ahad here means absolute oneness, a meaning not used for anything but Allah. Samad carries many layers—He who is needed by all, who needs nothing, who does not eat or drink, and who remains forever. And kufuwan expresses that nothing is equal to Him, with a new structure and word order not found before.
Even the verb yakun (was) is used here in a unique way, expressing not just the past, but eternal negation—He never was, is not, and never will be like anything else. This usage of kana is distinct from normal Arabic and is used with special consistency across the Quran.
The surah uses unusual grammar and sentence structures that were unknown in pre-Islamic poetry. For example, the phrase “He is Allah, One” is constructed in a way that doesn’t follow usual Arabic speech. The sequence of “Allah is One, Allah is the Absolute” changes structure in a subtle but powerful way. It also shifts style when it moves to “He did not beget, nor was He begotten”, moving from noun-based descriptions to decisive action verbs that clearly deny any false beliefs.
The order of words in “There is none equal to Him” is also reversed from what we expect, and no poet before Islam used this kind of structure.
Each line in this surah is a short, sharp, powerful sentence. The surah becomes a summary of Islamic belief in Allah’s oneness, used repeatedly in hadith as equal to one-third of the Quran. Poets after Islam began copying its patterns, but they never appeared in Arabic before the Quran.
Surah al-Ikhlas is a model of rich, layered, and new language, proving the Quran’s complete originality and its deep impact on Arabic expression.
The Three Surahs (ثلاثية السور)
This is the third surah in reverse order among the last chapters, and together with the two before it, it forms a trio that holds more than one place in our daily acts of worship and is repeated on many different occasions.
Even though the number of words in Surat al-Ikhlas does not go beyond fifteen, the number of new linguistic positions it introduces into our vocabulary reaches twenty two.
The surah builds its special language from several elements. The most important are the three words that never appear again in the entire Book: ahad, samad, and kufuwan, as well as the unique expressions that make up all four of its verses.
Words and Expressions
Say (قل)
We will not repeat what was said before about the word say at the beginning of Surat al-Nas and Surat al-Falaq. It is enough to remember that the way the word is used in the Book is different from how the Arabs used it in more than one way. The Book introduced a new kind of speech where the entire unit, the surah, begins with a command that comes from an unknown source and is directed to an unknown addressee, though it sometimes becomes clear. It also carries a meaning beyond just inform, such as recite or repeat. Its position suggests a hidden condition with a linking fa, so the full meaning would be: If they ask you about Allah, then say…
But here, unlike the two previous surahs, the verb can also be understood simply as inform, as if Allah is telling His Prophet to say this to the idol worshippers. In that case, the meaning becomes tell them, not recite. Still, the word to them is not used, even though Arabs would normally say: Say to them.
Ahad (أحد)
This word appears twice in the surah: once at the beginning, which is our focus, and once at the end, which is not part of this discussion.
In our language tradition, ahad means a human, a person, or a being. Try replacing the word ahad in the following lines of pre-Islamic poetry with any of these meanings:
Time comes over people, but not over a single one
Until we met, and Mudar stood between us
Aʿsha Bahila
I swore I would never make peace with them
As long as one of us and one of them remains alive
al-Harith ibn ʿUbad
Let no one act ignorantly toward us
Or we will act even more ignorantly than the ignorant
ʿAmr ibn Kulthum
I stood there at dusk asking it
It gave no answer, and there was not a single being in the ruins
al-Nabighah al-Dhubyani
In all these lines, you can replace ahad with human or person, and the meaning stays the same. You can even do this in the final verse of the surah: no one is equal to Him. But you cannot do that in the first verse: Allah is ahad. Doing so would be a great mistake. Here, ahad means one or unique, and cannot be directed at anything other than Allah.
Notice the difference between its meaning at the beginning and at the end of the surah. At the end, we could explain the phrase no one is equal to Him by saying: no creature, person, or being is equal to Him. But this cannot be done with the word in the first verse.
al-Azhari said in Tahdhib al-Lughah: “No one is described with ahadiyyah (absolute oneness) except Allah. You do not say: a man is ahad, or a coin is ahad.”
It is clear that one is included in ahad, but ahad is not included in one. This shows the special use of the word and how it became one of the names of Allah.
Our language, before Islam and after, does not show this special use. Even the sayings of the Prophet do not include it in this meaning unless it is used in a verse from the Book, such as in the divine hadith:
“…And their insult to Me is that they say: Allah took a son. But I am the One, the Absolute, I did not give birth, and I was not born, and there is nothing equal to Me.”
Even though the word ahad appears seventy four times, this surah alone gives it this unique meaning not found in any other place.
The Eternal Absolute (الصمد)
This word is also special to this surah. It only appears in this one verse of the entire Book. It does appear once in pre-Islamic poetry, in a line by Tarafah ibn al-ʿAbd:
They drive away ignorance in their gatherings, and they are the supporters of the wise and the absolute.
But in Islam, the word takes on a new meaning. It becomes one of the names of Allah and carries meanings that it never had before. It now means: the one who is turned to in needs, the one who needs no one but is needed by all, the master whose mastery is complete, the one who remains forever, the one who does not eat or drink, or the one with no hollow inside. When all of these meanings come together in one word within the new context of the surah, the word becomes something new, a word with a new character unrelated to its earlier use.
It also does not appear in the sayings of the Prophet unless it is part of a verse, like in the divine hadith mentioned above.
Was Not (لم يكن)
This use of the verb yakun is one of the strange and special features of the Book. No other piece of poetry or prose, old or new, whether by people or by prophets, uses the verb in this way.
We already discussed the incomplete verb kana and how the Book gave it a new meaning that Arabs never used before or after. It took on the sense of certainty and continuity, something like the meaning of inna used for emphasis.
In this verse, kana appears in one of the few places where it is used in the present tense, not the past, and still carries this special meaning. It expresses complete and absolute negation that includes all times: it means He was not, is not, and will never be.
When the verb appears in the past tense, it usually means absolute confirmation of something. So when Allah says, That was easy for Allah, it does not mean it used to be easy in the past and is no longer so. It means it always was, still is, and always will be easy for Him.
But here in Surat al-Ikhlas, the purpose is to express absolute negation. There is nothing equal to Him, and that negation covers the past, the present, and the future.
Compare that with how we use the same verb in daily speech. For example, we might say: The seller was not in his shop. This refers only to the past. The same goes for these lines from old poetry:
Among us, there were no wild beasts, no hyenas, no son of Abu ʿAssam
Aws al-Hujaymi
I was struck by an arrow that fulfilled its aim
That was not something I chose
al-Harith ibn ʿUbad
In contrast, the Book uses the verb yakun 190 times with this new meaning. Fifty three of those times are in Surat al-Nisa alone. There is no trace of this verb in the same way in the first half of the Book, while the rest of the uses are scattered across the second half.
This organised pattern of distribution is a strong sign of how each surah has its own character and how the verses of each surah have not been mixed with others. It also supports the view that the arrangement of the surahs and verses was not done by people, but was revealed and set by Allah.
It is important to note that this new meaning of the verb has nothing to do with the full verb kana as in He became, which is found in the verse Be, and it is, meaning happen, and it happens. There is a big difference between this meaning of causing something to happen and the meaning of absolute negation or confirmation that covers all three times.
Equal (كفوا)
It is remarkable that this word, even though it is very common in our language today, is not found in any known collection of pre-Islamic poetry. This surah is the only place where it appears in the Book.
It also does not appear in the sayings of the Prophet unless as part of a verse, as in the divine hadith mentioned earlier.
Forms and Linguistic Relations
Often, the forms used in the Book resemble regular expressions, but at other times they belong to what we can call the distinctive linguistic patterns of the Book. Sometimes, these two types come so close that they seem to blend.
We can try to separate them by using this test: If the sentence differs from known language norms in only one part and does not change the grammatical structure overall, we may call it a form. But if the sentence changes the usual sentence structure in more than one way and affects grammar, we can call it a structure. These changes often affect two or more language elements.
Let us now look at some of the new forms and relations in this surah.
He is Allah, One (هو الله أحد)
There has been much discussion about how to understand and analyse this phrase. We are not so concerned here with which word is the subject and which is the predicate or modifier. What matters more is the presence of the pronoun he at the start of a sentence that is part of what the command say is telling us to say.
This is a special use not found in other texts. It leaves us with several possibilities. Is the pronoun a subject of an unstated topic, like: Are you asking me about Allah? Then, He is…? Or is it a pronoun of condition where Allah is the predicate? Or is Allah replacing the pronoun, and One is the actual news being told? Or maybe it is something else?
To see how this differs from regular speech, try saying the same thing in the way we are used to. We might say:
Allah is One
He is One
He is Allah
It is He, the One
But no one would naturally say: He is Allah, One. The placement of He between say and the name Allah shows a unique usage not found anywhere else in our language tradition except in this Book.
Allah, The Eternal Absolute (الله الصمد)
Remember the verses in Surat al-Fatiha that begin with names of Allah following each other: the Most Merciful, the Master of the Day of Judgement, the path of those You have blessed… And the verses in Surat al-Nas: The King of people, the God of people.
Now we find another verse that begins with the name Allah, following another verse that also began with the name Allah. This is a language feature that was unknown in Arabic before this Book and has not been used in this way afterwards either, not even in the sayings of the Prophet.
We are used to this: when a sentence begins with a definite noun, and its predicate is also definite, we usually place a separate pronoun between them, such as:
The king is the ruler
The righteous are the successful
We do not usually say:
The king ruler
The righteous successful
There is no grammar rule that forces us to add the pronoun, but it is a habit in Arabic speech and writing. The Book, however, breaks from this habit in many of its verses.
If this kind of sentence does occur in speech, it is usually in response to a question. For example, the Prophet was once asked about whether a woman can appear before her husband’s brother, and he replied: The in-law is death, meaning: He is death.
Look at this verse: They are the truthful, and those are the pious (al-Baqara: 177)
In the first half, the definite subject they is followed by the definite predicate the truthful, with no pronoun in between. But in the second half, the predicate the pious is preceded by a separate pronoun they are, because of how definite both words are. This shows that the usual speech habits were followed here.
But in Allah, the Absolute, both the subject and predicate are definite, yet no pronoun is placed in between, showing a break from language habits.
Allah is One. Allah is the Absolute. (الله أحد الله الصمد)
Another language habit is that when two sentences are similar and follow each other, their structure usually matches. For example, we expect both predicates to be either definite or indefinite, singular or plural, nouns or verbs. Like in the sayings:
To whom do You leave me? To a stranger who frowns at me, or to an enemy whom You gave power over me?
Whoever has his brother under him, let him feed him from what he eats and clothe him from what he wears
Insulting a Muslim is sin, and fighting him is disbelief
Notice how matching parts follow each other: stranger, enemy; feed, clothe; sin, disbelief.
But in the two verses in the surah, the first ends with the indefinite word One, and the second ends with the definite word the Absolute. This is a shift from normal language use, and it is a kind of artistic turning that is found in the language of the Book.
He did not beget (لم يلد)
You will rarely find anyone saying: A man begot a son. We usually say: He had a son, or he was given a son. We say: The woman gave birth, or delivered. So the use of the verb begot for Allah is a clear break from the usual ways of speaking. And this exact form only appears in this surah, never in any other.
Even when similar meanings are expressed in the Book, they use a different structure made of two words: took a son, as in:
They said: Allah took a son (al-Baqara: 116)
To warn those who say: Allah took a son (al-Kahf: 4)
It is not appropriate for the Most Merciful to take a son (Maryam: 92)
Strangely, the word we now use most often to mean this, gave birth, never appears in the Book at all. Even in the sayings of the Prophet, the verb gave birth is only used for women. For men, it is not used at all. Instead, we find phrases like she gave birth to his children or they had children from him, never he gave birth.
Even in verses that speak about humans having children, they never use a simple verb like he begot or he fathered. Look at these examples:
If he has no child and his parents inherit him… (al-Nisa: 11)
If a man dies with no child and has a sister… (al-Nisa: 176)
Praise to the One who granted me, in old age, Ishaq and Yaqub (Ibrahim: 39)
We granted him Ishaq and Yaqub (al-Anʿam: 84)
You see how none of these verses use any verb that clearly means to give birth. They avoid it.
Even in old poetry, the verb begot is rare. I only found it in this line by Ibn ʿAnqa’ al-Fazari:
Tamim, before it begot the stones in number,
Lived for a long time as a single man.
As for the verb give birth, it was only used by poets to speak about noble or exceptional children, not ordinary births. For example:
We saw generations from Jadila who gave birth to noble ones,
But the stud of Banu Nabhan was not noble.
Say to al-Akhaytal: Your old mother did not give birth to you
Among those who give birth to great ones, nor was your father of noble stock.
His fathers gave birth to him when you were not there,
How many noble ones are there who father no one worthy?
How many bright students there are
Who entered life and gave birth to nothing great?
In all these lines, the idea of giving birth is tied to greatness or excellence, not to just any kind of birth.
He did not beget (لم يلد)
This is another description of Allah, added to the ones before it. But something changes here. The flow of speech shifts.
Before, the descriptions came in the form of names or noun phrases. These can often be understood in different ways. Take the Absolute (As-Samad) as an example. It could be a description, a replacement, or the start of a new sentence. This flexibility matches the vastness of Allah’s attributes and allows the mind to reflect and imagine.
But now, the verse moves to something more serious, a point where error has entered other religions. So the speech changes into clear action verbs. He did not beget, and He was not begotten. These two short sentences, side by side in one short verse, each made up of three simple parts: a negation, a verb, and a hidden subject. No names. No ambiguity. No room for debate in grammar or meaning.
Did not, Did not, Did not (لم، لم، لم)
In Surat al-Nas, all the verses ended with the same closing sound: nas. In Surat al-Falaq, the last four verses all began with from the evil of. Each of these formed a unique pattern.
Now, we see something similar in Surat al-Ikhlas. The last three verses each begin with did not. Between each did not and the next, only one word comes.
Distinctive Linguistic Patterns (السبائك القرآنية)
Say: He is Allah, One (قل هو الله أحد)
Before trying to show how this sentence has a unique structure, let us look at these lines of old poetry:
عليها فتىً لم تحمل الأرض مثله
أبرَّ بميثاقٍ وأوفى وأصبرا
هو المنزل الآلاف من جوٍّ ناعطٍ
بني أسدٍ حزناً من الأرض أوعرا
امرؤ القيس
Upon her was a young man, unmatched on earth, Most loyal, most patient, most truthful.
Imru’ al-Qays
رسا أصله تحت الثرى وسما به
إلى النجمِ فرعٌ لا ينالُ طويلُ
هو الأبلق الفرد الذي شاع ذكره
يعزُّ على من رامه ويطولُ
السموأل
His root settled deep in the earth,
His branches reached the stars.
al-Samaw’al
هو الواهبُ المائة المصطفاة
تجاوب منها العشارُ الفصالا
المسيب بن مالك
He is the giver of a hundred selected camels,
Whose cries echo from the herds.
al-Musayyib ibn Malik
The best way to see the difference is to look at the pronoun he in both types of texts. In the poetry, he is clearly a subject. You cannot remove it without breaking the sentence. Try saying: Giver of a hundred camels. It needs a subject: He is the giver.
But in the verse He is Allah, One, some commentators said the pronoun he is a pronoun of condition. If we remove it, the sentence still stands: Allah is One. That could be the basic sentence. If we bring back the pronoun, it might just be for style.
The structure He is Allah appears in other places in the Book:
He is Allah in the heavens and the earth (al-Anʿam: 3)
He is Allah, there is no god but Him… (al-Qasas: 70)
But in Say: He is Allah, One, the combination of the command say, the pronoun he, and the final word One, creates something found nowhere else. Not in poetry, not in speech, not even in other verses.
It is a sentence whose form, flow, and parts make it part of the distinctive linguistic patterns of the Book, something never seen before and never matched after.
He is Allah (هُوَ اللَّهُ)
Verses like “He is Allah, there is no god but Him, Knower of the unseen and the seen” (al-Hashr: 22), and “He is Allah, the Creator, the Originator, the Fashioner” (al-Hashr: 24), and “But as for me, He is Allah, my Lord, and I do not associate anyone with my Lord” (al-Kahf: 38), all begin with the pronoun “He” followed by the name Allah. But in none of them do we find the same exact structure as in “Say: He is Allah, One,” with both the command at the start and the word “One” at the end. This makes the verse in Surat al-Ikhlas a linguistic mould not found elsewhere.
He did not beget and was not begotten (لَمْ يَلِدْ وَلَمْ يُولَدْ)
The combination of these two verbs in one phrase is a new pattern introduced into the Arabic language. These two words never appear together in any line of pre-Islamic poetry, and even in the Book, they are found together only in this surah.
But not long after the Book was revealed, Arab poets began to adopt this new language structure and shaped it to fit the rhythms of their poetry. They shifted the order of words when needed and produced lines like:
تمنت الأزد إذ غبت أمورهم
أن المهلب لم يولد ولم يلد
ذو الرمة
The tribe of Azd wished, when you were away,
That al-Muhallab had not been begotten nor had begotten.
Dhul-Rumma (d. 117 AH)
الحمد لله الواحد الصمد
هو الذي لم يولد ولم يلد
أبو العتاهية
Praise be to Allah, the One, the Absolute,
The One who was not begotten and did not beget.
Abu al-ʿAtahiyah (d. 211 AH)
فإذا عزمت على مساءتهم
فاجهر بلم يولد ولم يلد
البحتري
If you decide to criticise them,
Then say aloud: He was not begotten and did not beget.
al-Buhturi (d. 284 AH)
There is none equal to Him (وَلَمْ يَكُن لَّهُ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌ)
The order of words in this verse is not the usual order in Arabic. The word “equal” comes before the noun “anyone,” and the phrase “to Him” comes even earlier, before both of them.
If we were to try to rearrange the sentence into everyday language and fill in what is hidden, it might become: There was not anyone equal, existing for Him. In this case, anyone would be the subject of the verb “was,” equal would be the predicate, and the word existing would be a descriptor of equal. This would then turn into a hal or adverbial phrase, since it comes before the word it describes, which is the hidden pronoun in “to Him.” The sentence would become: There was not, existing for Him, anyone equal.
Now try to write a human sentence with the same structure. For example:
There was not, over him, anyone capable.
But this human sentence will sound awkward, even laughable, especially when placed beside the expression from the Book. The double shift in word order in this verse stands out, and even though it may be difficult to confirm with certainty whether something similar appears in pre-Islamic poetry, with the current research tools available, it still remains far removed from our usual daily language.
We can better understand its uniqueness if we compare it to another verse: There is nothing like Him (al-Shura: 11). In that verse, the phrase “like Him” comes before the noun “thing,” but nothing else is placed before it, unlike the double shift in Surat al-Ikhlas.
Open Meanings
Even though poetry is usually where we look for expressive and multi-meaning language, especially language that can be interpreted in more than one way, we do not find examples like this in pre-Islamic poetry, as was explained in the beginning of this study.
But the Book goes beyond poetry and the literary language of its time. Its language is full of deep expressions and rich connections, open to change over time, responsive to new eras, and able to speak to the mind and understanding of people across generations.
We can see at least three examples of such open expressions in this surah:
Say (قل)
This word opens the speech without limiting it to any one person or group, as was already explained in the previous two surahs.
He is Allah, One (هُوَ اللَّهُ أَحَدٌ)
This sentence is extremely unique. It almost seems not to belong to the group of open expressions because of how tightly its meaning is fixed. Its grammar, as we saw, is open to several possibilities. Each word could be read as subject, predicate, or replacement. Does the meaning depend on “He”? Or “Allah”? Or “One”? Yet, in the end, despite this grammatical openness, the sentence only carries one meaning: Allah is One.
This is what makes the expression special. Its words are open to many possible grammatical analyses, but they all come together on one meaning: the oneness of Allah.
The Absolute (الصمد)
This word, as discussed earlier, carries many layers and meanings. Each one expresses a different attribute of Allah. This richness in meaning is what makes it part of the open and living language that continues to speak to people across places and times.
Comprehensive Speech
Each of the three phrases: Say: He is Allah, One, He did not beget nor was He begotten, and There is none equal to Him, has become a pillar of speech whenever Muslims speak about belief in Allah. These phrases summarise the Islamic belief and its message of oneness in the most direct and powerful way. The descriptions they carry express the essence of Allah’s being, making these verses flow easily on our tongues, just as they flowed on the tongues of the earliest Muslims in religious and intellectual settings.
The Entire Surah
The three surahs—al-Ikhlas, al-Falaq, and al-Nas—have gained a special place among Muslims. The sayings of the Prophet encourage us to repeat this trio during many moments of our day, as seen already in the two earlier surahs, and also in other sayings that focus specifically on Surat al-Ikhlas.
From Abu Hurayrah: The Prophet said, “Gather yourselves, for I will recite to you one third of the Book.” Those who could attend gathered. Then the Prophet came out and recited Say: He is Allah, One, and then went back in. Some of us said to each other, “It looks like he received news from the heavens, and that distracted him.” Then the Prophet came out again and said, “I told you I would recite one third of the Book to you. Surely, it is equal to one third of the Book.”
