As to the word ‘Adam...

As to the word ‘Adam,’ the Sihah states, “Originally it is with two hamzah’s, for it pertains to the form af’al, and the second hamzah has been altered into an alif, and when it is to be given a vowel sound it is changed into waw, whereat its plural is awadim.” The reason that Adam, the father of the human race ( abu al-bashar ) wag given this name is perhaps because he was had a brown complexion ( asmar al-lawn ) , as according to the lexicons al-adama min al-nas means someone who is brownish ( al-asmar ) .

And according to some traditions Adam was named so because he came from the adim of the earth[^5] adim being in the sense of ‘face’ and adim al-ard means the surface of the earth. As to the expression ‘ala Suratih, Surah in the lexicon is in the sense of picture and form, and it may be said that it has a general meaning common to different notions in which the commonality consists of the thingness of a thing and its actuality ( fi’liyyat ) .

However, everything has an actuality in respect of which it is said to possess a form ( dhu al-Surah ) and that actuality is called form ( Surah ) . The application of the term ‘form’ in the terminology of the philosophers to matters that are inclusive of a thing’s actuality and thingness is not contrary to its lexical meaning, and is not a technical or special term.

Shaykh Abu ‘Ali Sina, the chief of the Islamic philosophers, in the part on metaphysics of his book al-Shifa’, says, “At times Surah is applied to any configuration and act that is in a single or composite recipient so that its movements and accidents are called surah. Surah (form) is also applied to something by virtue of which matter is sustained in actuality; hence, the intellectual substances ( jawahir ‘aqliyyah ) and accidents cannot be called suwar (forms).

And surah is applied to something by means of which matter becomes perfect, though it should not be sustained by it in actuality, such as health and that towards which a thing moves by its own nature ( tab’ ) . Also, surah is applied to the species ( naw’ ) , genus, and differentia of a thing, or to all of them.

And the universality of the universal in the particulars is also surah.” Reflection on all the instances of the usage of surah shows that in all of them the criterion is actuality and it is used univocally in all the cases of its use, to the extent that even God, the Exalted, is called surat al-suwar (the actuality of all actualities).