ق ب ل (q-b-l): Every Word From This Root in the Quran

Quran Root Words > Root q-b-l

The Arabic root ق ب ل (q-b-l) occurs 294 times in the Quran, in 13 different words, and is number 27 of the Quran's 1,642 roots by frequency. The most frequent word is قَبْل (qabl), 242 times, followed by تَقَبَّلَ (taqabbala), 10 times.

What the root q-b-l means

The Quranic Arabic Corpus glosses the root's form I verb يَقْبَلُ (yaqbalu) as "to accept". Its other verbs are glossed there as follows: تَقَبَّلَ (taqabbala), form V, "to accept" and أَقْبَلَ (aqbala), form IV, "to approach". In the MASAQ word-by-word glosses, قَبْل (qabl) is most often rendered "before".

All three letters of q-b-l, ق ب ل, 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 قَبْل (qabl) and تَقَبَّلَ (taqabbala) only the vowels and the added letters differ.

Every word from the root q-b-l in the Quran

The Quran builds 13 different words on q-b-l. 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. Verbs account for 28 of the 294 occurrences, in forms I, IV and V; 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 مُتَقَٰبِلِين (mutaqābilīn) 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 13 counts, and the root total of 294, with the corpus's own dictionary entry for q-b-l, and all of them match.

The root q-b-l in the verses of the Quran

Words from q-b-l appear in 282 verses spread over 64 of the Quran's 114 suras. Sura 2 has the most of them, 21 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.

قَبْل (qabl), 242 times

وَلَقَدْ ضَلَّ قَبْلَهُمْ أَكْثَرُ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ
Quran 37:71; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "before them"

إِنَّهُمْ كَانُوا۟ قَبْلَ ذَٰلِكَ مُتْرَفِينَ
Quran 56:45; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "before"

لَمْ يَطْمِثْهُنَّ إِنسٌ قَبْلَهُمْ وَلَا جَآنٌّ
Quran 55:74; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "before them"

تَقَبَّلَ (taqabbala), 10 times

رَبِّ ٱجْعَلْنِى مُقِيمَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةِ وَمِن ذُرِّيَّتِى ۚ رَبَّنَا وَتَقَبَّلْ دُعَآءِ
Quran 14:40; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "and accept"

قُلْ أَنفِقُوا۟ طَوْعًا أَوْ كَرْهًا لَّن يُتَقَبَّلَ مِنكُمْ ۖ إِنَّكُمْ كُنتُمْ قَوْمًا فَٰسِقِينَ
Quran 9:53; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "will be accepted"

أَقْبَلَ (aqbala), 9 times

فَأَقْبَلُوٓا۟ إِلَيْهِ يَزِفُّونَ
Quran 37:94; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "then they advanced"

فَأَقْبَلَ بَعْضُهُمْ عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍ يَتَلَٰوَمُونَ
Quran 68:30; word-by-word gloss of the marked word: "then approached"

Learning the words of q-b-l

قَبْل (qabl), no. 48 with 242, is on our list of the 100 most common Quran words, which counts it the same way. Its verbs follow the patterns of the Arabic verb forms (forms I, IV and V), and our Arabic verb conjugator conjugates any root in any form, so you can see how تَقَبَّلَ changes for person and tense. The root q-b-l 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.

Frequently asked questions

Keep learning Arabic

• Up one levelQuran Root Word Explorer: Every Root, Word and VerseFind the root of any Quran word: type Arabic letters, a word or a transliteration and see every derived word, its count and its verses. All 1,642 roots.
• In this topicق و ل (q-w-l): Every Word From This Root in the QuranThe root ق و ل (q-w-l) occurs 1,722 times in the Quran, in 6 words led by qāla. Each word with its count and type, plus the shortest verses it is in.
• In this topicق و م (q-w-m): Every Word From This Root in the QuranThe root ق و م (q-w-m) occurs 660 times in the Quran, in 22 words led by qawm. Each word with its count and type, plus the shortest verses it is in.
• In this topicك ف ر (k-f-r): Every Word From This Root in the QuranThe root ك ف ر (k-f-r) occurs 525 times in the Quran, in 14 words led by kafara. Each word with its count and type, plus the shortest verses it is in.