Previously, we went through the word by word translation of دُعَاء قَبْلَ الْأَكْل.

Now, we’ll continue with translating the beginning of the du‘aa’ : بِسْمِ الله

بِسْمِ

bismi – with name

I know, that sounds kind of weird, right?  “with name”?  What’s up with that?  But really, that’s what بِسْمِ (bismi) means — “with name”.

بِسْمِ is two words.  The first one is بِ (bi) which means “with”.  It can sometimes be translated as “by” or “in”.  Basically, it indicates that something is accompanying something else.

In our Eid greetings, we see this in kul ‘aam wa antum bi khayr.  بِخَيْر – bi khayr means “with good”.

The second word is اِسْم (ism), which means “name”.

If you want to introduce yourself, you would say  اِسْمٍي فُلَان – ismee <your name>,  which means “my name is so-and-so” .

[note for nerds: فُلَان – fulaan is the Arab way of saying so-and-so]

الله

Allaah – God

الله (Allaah) is the Arabic word for “God”.  In the Arabic bible as well as the Qur’ aan, you will see the word الله many times.  It means God with  a capital “G”.  There’s no plural for this word.

بِسْمِ (bismi) means “with name” and الله (Allaah) means “God”, and ِبِسْمِ الله means “in the name of God”.

But…where did the “of” come from?

That’s a very good question 🙂

It has to do with a possessive structure in Arabic grammar called مُضَاف (muḍaaf) –  مُضَاف اٍلَيْه (muḍaaf ilayh).

We’re going to get into a little bit of grammar right now, so if you’re a beginner and you just want to learn words and get more comfortable with that first, feel free to skip this bit and go directly to the next portion of the translation here.

Grammar: The Possessive Phrase

مُضَاف (muḍaaf) and  مُضَاف اٍلَيْه (muḍaaf ilayh)

Again, the question is:

If بِسْمِ (bismi) means “with name” and الله (Allaah) means “God”, why does بِسْمِ الله mean “in the name of God”?  Where did the “of” come from?

The “of” comes from a possessive phrase, which in Arabic we call مُضَاف (muḍaaf) –  مُضَاف اٍلَيْه (muḍaaf ilayh).

We see possessive phrases in English all the time.

Whenever you see an “apostrophe s” (e.g. Zayd’s house) or the word “of” (e.g. house of Zayd), we know there is a possessive relationship between the two words.  One word (e.g. house) is owned by the other (e.g. Zayd).

In Arabic, they indicate possession using a مُضَاف (muḍaaf) –  مُضَاف اٍلَيْه (muḍaaf ilayh) structure.

How can we recognize a مُضَاف (muḍaaf) –  مُضَاف اٍلَيْه (muḍaaf ilayh) structure?

Good question.

A مُضَاف (muḍaaf) –  مُضَاف اٍلَيْه (muḍaaf ilayh) structure follows very specific rules (that’s how we can always recognize them when we’re reading).

1. The مُضَاف (muḍaaf), or the thing that’s being owned, must come first.
2. The مُضَاف must be indefinite.
3. The مُضَاف اٍلَيْه (muḍaaf ilayh), or the thing that owns the مُضَاف, must come second, after the مُضَاف.
4. The مُضَاف اٍلَيْه must be definite.
5. The مُضَاف اٍلَيْه must be in the state of جَرّ.  So what does جَرّ mean?  It’s a grammatical state and we’ll talk more about that later, but you can tell something is جَرّ because the last letter has كَسْرَة (kasrah) under it.

To say “Zayd’s house”, we would say بَيْت زَيْدٍ.

Notice that…

1.  بَيْت (house), which is the object that’s being owned, or the مُضَاف, comes first and
2. is indefinite.
3. زَيْدٍ, which is the owner, or the مُضَاف اٍلَيْه, comes second,
4. is definite (every proper name is definite),
5. and it is in a state of جَرّ, which we can see because the last letter has كَسْرَة (kasrah) under it.

In بِسْمِ اللهِ, notice that…

1. اِسْم comes first
2. اِسْم is indefinite (it means “name” and it doesn’t have the definite article ال in front of it, so it could be any name).
3. the word الله comes second
4. it’s definite
5. it’s in a state of جَرّ, which we can see because the last letter has كَسْرَة (kasrah) under it.

When we see those conditions, we know we have a possessive phrase, so when we translate into English we have to use the word  “of”.

We can’t just translate each word and say that بِسْمِ اللهِ means “with name God”.  That doesn’t make sense and it’s not accurate.

We see the possessive structure so we know we need to insert “of” in there so so we translate بِسْمِ اللهِ as “with the name of God” or “in the name of God”.

That’s the meaning of بِسْمِ اللهِ.

Go here to learn the meaning of the next part : اللَّهُمَّ بَارِكْ لَنَا