م ل ك (m-l-k): Every Word From This Root in the Quran

Quran Root Words > Root m-l-k

The Arabic root م ل ك (m-l-k) occurs 206 times in the Quran, in 10 different words, and is number 45 of the Quran's 1,642 roots by frequency. The most frequent word is مَلَك (malak), 88 times, followed by مُلْك (mulk), 48 times.

What the root m-l-k means

The Quranic Arabic Corpus glosses the root's form I verb مَلَكَتْ (malakat) as "to possess, to have power". In the MASAQ word-by-word glosses, مَلَك (malak) is most often rendered "an angel".

All three letters of m-l-k, م ل ك, are consonants with no weak letter among them, and every word the Quran builds on the root keeps all three in the same order. In مَلَك (malak) and مَلَكَتْ (malakat) only the vowels and the added letters differ.

Every word from the root m-l-k in the Quran

The Quran builds 10 different words on m-l-k. The table lists them from most to least frequent, with the spelling the corpus gives each one, its word type, its meaning and its number of occurrences. One verb, مَلَكَتْ (malakat), accounts for 44 of the root's 206 occurrences; the rest are nouns, adjectives and participles.

Meanings in quotation marks are MASAQ word-by-word glosses, the others the corpus dictionary's, and the word types follow the dictionary. The Arabic is the corpus's, in the Quran's own spelling, so مَٰلِك (mālik) keeps its small dagger alif. Every count on this page is a lemma count from the Quranic Arabic Corpus, version 0.4. We compared each of these 10 counts, and the root total of 206, with the corpus's own dictionary entry for m-l-k, and all of them match.

The root m-l-k in the verses of the Quran

Words from m-l-k appear in 191 verses spread over 63 of the Quran's 114 suras. Sura 2 has the most of them, 15 verses. Below are the shortest verses in which the root's most frequent words occur, with the word marked. The text is the Uthmani text of Tanzil, and each reference opens the verse on quran.com with translations.

مَلَك (malak), 88 times

وَجَآءَ رَبُّكَ وَٱلْمَلَكُ صَفًّا صَفًّا
Quran 89:22; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "and the angels"

فَسَجَدَ ٱلْمَلَٰٓئِكَةُ كُلُّهُمْ أَجْمَعُونَ
Quran 15:30; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "the angels"

أَمْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْمَلَٰٓئِكَةَ إِنَٰثًا وَهُمْ شَٰهِدُونَ
Quran 37:150; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "the angels"

مُلْك (mulk), 48 times

وَلِلَّهِ مُلْكُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ ۖ وَإِلَى ٱللَّهِ ٱلْمَصِيرُ
Quran 24:42; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "(the) dominion"

وَإِذَا رَأَيْتَ ثَمَّ رَأَيْتَ نَعِيمًا وَمُلْكًا كَبِيرًا
Quran 76:20; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "and a kingdom"

مَلَكَتْ (malakat), 44 times

قُلْ إِنِّى لَآ أَمْلِكُ لَكُمْ ضَرًّا وَلَا رَشَدًا
Quran 72:21; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "possess"

لَّا يَمْلِكُونَ ٱلشَّفَٰعَةَ إِلَّا مَنِ ٱتَّخَذَ عِندَ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ عَهْدًا
Quran 19:87; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "they will have the power"

Names of God from the root m-l-k

2 of the 99 names of God in the enumeration of at-Tirmidhi are built on m-l-k. Our table of the 99 names of Allah with their roots lists all of them, each with an everyday word from the same root.

• 3. الْمَلِكُ Al-Malik, The King
• 84. مَالِكُ الْمُلْكِ Malik al-Mulk, Owner of All Sovereignty

Learning the words of m-l-k

None of its words is among the hundred on our list of the most common Quran words. Its verb follows the pattern of form I, and our Arabic verb conjugator conjugates any root in any form, so you can see how مَلَكَتْ changes for person and tense. The root m-l-k is one of the 1,642 roots you can search in our Quran root word explorer; for the rest of the language, see our Arabic learning resources by level.

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