What does "as-Samad" mean in Surah Al-Ikhlas?
The meaning of the divine name as-Samad in "Allah, the Eternal Refuge": the root of the word, and what al-Tafsir al-Muyassar, Tafsir al-Safi and Tafsir al-Mizan say about it.
Surah Al-Ikhlas is four verses long, and most Muslims learn it as children. Its second verse holds a word that appears nowhere else in the Quran:
Allah, the Eternal Refuge.
Sahih International renders as-Samad as "the Eternal Refuge". What does the Arabic word carry?
The commentaries below are in Arabic; the renderings are mine.
The root
In Tafsir al-Mizan, Allama Tabataba'i traces the word to its root: samada means to head for something, or to head for it relying on it. Of the many meanings given for as-Samad, he says, most come back to this: the master to whom one turns — the One sought in every need. Used without qualification, as it is in the verse, it means the One sought in every need without exception.
In al-Tafsir al-Muyassar
The King Fahd Complex commentary gives the verse a single sentence: God alone is the One turned to for every need and every wish.
In Tafsir al-Safi
Fayd Kashani gathers several reports. One, from Imam al-Husayn, lists meanings side by side: the One who has no hollow; the One whose lordship is complete; the One who neither eats nor drinks; the One who does not sleep; the Everlasting, who always was and always will be. Another, from Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah: the One who subsists by Himself and needs no one.
What joins them
The meanings differ in wording but converge. Most, as al-Mizan says, come back to the One sought in every need — the meaning al-Muyassar keeps to. "Having no hollow" and "needing no one" approach the same point from the other side: the One every need turns to needs nothing Himself.
The next two verses then deny Him everything a created being needs:
He neither begets nor is born,
Nor is there to Him any equivalent."
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