Names and Attributes of Allah

We accept that Allah exists with our minds, we feel Him in our souls and we believe in him with our hearts, but in order to serve him and live a life of which He is satisfied, we ought to know Him. Knowing leads to loving, and loving leads to bonding and obeying His commands.

To know Allah is to know His names and attributes, not His essence or His self. We believe in his essence but we do not try to conceive it’s nature. Trying to comprehend His nature results in resembling Him to a creation. He is exalted from everything that comes to our minds and imaginations, “There is nothing like unto Him.” (Shuraa, 42/11)

We know our Lord through His attributes and His actions. We know Him through the manifestation of His endless knowledge, matchless force and limitless power of creation onto nature and beings. By pondering the manifestations of his attributes into existence we gain information about Him. “Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of understanding.” (Ali ‘Imran, 3/190)

The names and attributes of Allah are explained below. All of them are located from the Qur’an and the Sunnah.