Mālik, who said: “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, recited: ‘Is there any reward for good other than good?’ Then he said: ‘Do you know what your Lord has said?’ They replied: ‘Allah and His Messenger know best.’ He said: ‘He says: “Is there any reward for one upon whom I have bestowed the blessing of affirming My oneness other than Paradise?”’”

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As for describing mercy—which has the feminine ending tāʾ—with the masculine adjective qarīb (near), there are twelve approaches to explaining this. We shall mention them and distinguish the sound, the unsound, and those that come close to being sound.

The first approach: The pattern faʿīl is of two kinds. The first carries the meaning of an active participle, as in qadīr (powerful), samīʿ (hearing), and ʿalīm (knowing). The second carries the meaning of a passive participle, as in qatīl (slain), jarīh (wounded), kaff khadīb (a dyed hand), tarf kahīl (a kohl-lined eye), and shaʿr dahīn (oiled hair). All these latter examples have a passive meaning.

When faʿīl has an active meaning, it normally follows the active participle in taking the ending tāʾ in the feminine but not the masculine: jamīl and jamīlah (beautiful), sharīf and sharīfah (noble), sabīh and sabīhah (fair), sabiyy and sabiyyah (boy and girl), malīh and malīhah (comely), tawīl and tawīlah (tall), and the like.

When it has a passive meaning, it either accompanies the noun it qualifies—as in rajul qatīl (a slain man) and imraʾah qatīl (a slain woman)—or is used without that noun. If it accompanies the noun, its masculine and feminine forms are identical, as in rajul qatīl and imraʾah qatīl. If it does not accompany the noun, it takes the feminine ending when referring to a feminine subject, as in qatīlat Banī fulān (the slain woman of such-and-such a tribe). Another instance is in the words of Allah Most High, “Forbidden to you is carrion,” up to His words, “and that killed by goring.”

This is the rule for faʿīl. The pattern faʿūl resembles it in both form and meaning: the two are similar in their morphological structure, their expression of intensity, and their use with both active and passive meanings.

Because faʿīl is lighter to pronounce, it is used instead of the active-participle pattern fāʿil with roots whose second and third consonants are identical, as in jalīl (majestic), ʿazīz (mighty), and dhalīl (abased). This avoids the heaviness of repeating the consonants in jālil, ʿāziz, and dhālil. Thus they used faʿīl, in which the two identical consonants are separated by a yāʾ bearing no vowel. They did not use faʿūl here because faʿīl is lighter. Likewise, its lightness accounts for its regular derivation from verbs of the pattern faʿula, as in sharīf (noble), zarīf (refined), jamīl (beautiful), and nabīl (distinguished), whereas faʿūl has no verb pattern from which it is regularly derived. Its lightness also accounts for its being more frequent among the names of Allah Most High than