and the west. So wherever you turn, there is the Face of Allah.” That is, the direction of prayer appointed by Allah and the direction towards which He directs people. This is how the majority of the early generations explained it, although some counted it among the verses concerning the divine attributes. It may also indicate the attribute through a line of reasoning that is open to question. His words:

“Wherever you turn”

mean tatawallaw (“you turn towards”), that is, you direct yourselves towards something and face it. The verb takes a single direct object, in the sense of yatawallāhā (“he turns towards it”). Comparable to the pair waliya and tawallā are qadima and taqaddama, and bayyana and tabayyana, as He says:

“Do not put yourselves before Allah and His Messenger.”

And He says:

“With a manifest indecency.”

This is the direction that belongs to Allah and that Allah has commanded us to face. His words:

“To Allah belongs the east and the west”

indicate that the Face of Allah mentioned here is among the directions of east and west that belong to Allah, as in the verse concerning the direction of prayer:

“The foolish among the people will say, ‘What has turned them away from the direction of prayer they used to face?’ Say, ‘To Allah belongs the east and the west. He guides whom He wills to a straight path.’”

Thus, when they asked why people had turned away from the direction of prayer, He declared that the east and the west belong to Him.

As for the word wijhah (“direction”), as in His saying:

“For everyone there is a direction towards which he turns,”

one might likewise suppose that it is a verbal noun, like wajh, just as wa‘dah relates to wa‘d (“promise”), and that it has been left intact without dropping its first root consonant. But this is not so. Had it been a verbal noun, its wāw would have been dropped, yielding jihah. The wording would then have been, “For everyone there is a jihah,” or “a wajh.” Rather, the fi‘lah pattern here denotes the object of the action, as in qiblah, bid‘ah, dhibhah, and similar words.

Thus, qiblah is what is faced; wijhah is what one turns towards; bid‘ah is what is newly introduced; and dhibhah is what is slaughtered. This is why the form remains intact and its first root consonant is not dropped: such elision occurs only in verbal nouns, not in