The letter Dhal, Remembrance, the door that is marked and kept, the letter of dhikr

What Dhal encodes

Dhal is drawn as Dal with one point set above it. Dal is the door, the threshold crossed; the point is what marks the crossing so that it is not forgotten. The letter opens ذِكْر (dhikr. Remembrance), ذَات (dhat. Essence, the self a thing returns to), and ذُو (dhu. Possessor of, the word that attaches a quality to a bearer). Each is an act of holding: holding in mind, holding at the core, holding as one's own.

Ibn Arabi and the Science of Letters

The Qur'an names itself with this letter. الذِّكْر, al-Dhikr, the Remembrance, is what is sent down in Surah al-Hijr 15:9, and Surah Sad opens by swearing by the Qur'an as ذِي الذِّكْر, possessor of the Remembrance. A derivative of the root ذ-ك-ر appears in 261 verses. Surah al-Ra'd 13:28 gives the letter its clearest reading: أَلَا بِذِكْرِ اللَّهِ تَطْمَئِنُّ الْقُلُوبُ, in the remembrance of God hearts find their rest.

Dhal as the first letter

A name beginning with Dhal produces someone for whom nothing is finished simply because it is over. They carry what they have crossed. Where the plain Dal opens a door and walks through it, Dhal marks the threshold and keeps it. These are people with long memory, who return to what they were given and find it still working in them, and whose steadiness comes from that keeping rather than from force.

Dhal in the Quran

No surah opens with Dhal. Its presence in the Qur'an is carried instead by its root: 77 distinct word forms in the text begin with ذ, and derivatives of ذ-ك-ر run through 261 verses, including the Qur'an's own name for itself.

Names opened or shaped by Dhal

Each of the following names carries the Dhal principle. Either as the opening letter that governs the outward self, or within the name where it shapes the interior life. Click any name to read its full reading.

Letters whose principles interact meaningfully with Dhal:

Dhal is one of the six letters that join only on the right. It connects to the letter before it and never to the letter after it, so a word containing Dhal always breaks after it.

Dhal is a sun letter. When the definite article ال (al-) comes before it, the l is not pronounced. It assimilates into Dhal, which doubles instead. The word is still written with the ل, but you do not hear it. This is why الشمس is read ash-shams, not al-shams, and it is the reason these fourteen letters are called solar.