al-Awwal — The First: The Divine Name That Anchors All Time and Origin

Al-Awwal (الأَوَّل — the First; from *a-w-l* meaning first, prior, original; one of the 99 divine names; Quran 57:3 — *'Huwa al-Awwalu wa al-Akhiru wa al-Zahiru wa al-Batinu wa huwa bi-kulli shay'in 'alim'* — 'He is the First and the Last and the Outer (Manifest) and the Inner (Hidden) and He is of all things Knowing'; the four divine names in this verse — al-Awwal, al-Akhir, al-Zahir, al-Batin — constitute what Sufi theology came to call the 'four comprehensive names' (*al-asma' al-arba'a al-muhita*) that together encompass all of divine reality by spanning the temporal axis (first/last) and the epistemological axis (manifest/hidden)) is the divine name that affirms Allah's priority before all creation — not merely that Allah existed 'very early' or 'at the beginning of time' but that He is ontologically and logically prior to all temporal existence; 'before' applies to creation but not in the way 'before' normally works (implying a time when Allah existed alone and then creation began), because time itself is a created category that does not apply to the divine. The theological challenge of 'al-Awwal': if Allah is the First, what does 'first' mean when there was no time before creation? The Islamic philosophical tradition's answer (following Ibn Sina): 'first' here does not mean 'first in time' but 'first in existence' — Allah is the ontological ground, the one whose existence is intrinsic (Wajib al-Wujud), while all creation is derivative and secondary. Al-Awwal is not a temporal claim but an ontological one: Allah's existence requires no prior cause. Ibn Arabi's four-names cosmology: in *Futuhat al-Makkiyya*, Ibn Arabi reads 57:3 as the most comprehensive statement in the Quran about divine nature — the four names together eliminate every possible hiding place: if something seems first, that first is Allah; if something seems last, that last is Allah; if something seems manifest, that manifestation is a divine tajalli; if something seems hidden, that hiddenness is the divine batin; *wa huwa bi-kulli shay'in 'alim* — and He knows all of it completely.