Quranic root
دين
d · y · n
The root centers on submission, obedience, and being subject to an order or obligation.
From this orientation develop obedience and religious adherence, prescribed law, requital and accountability, and financial obligation; related derived forms extend to authority, subjection, and reciprocal credit.
- Maqāyīs · row 1875
- Mufradāt · row 496
- 5
- Quran-attested forms
- 9
- Quran senses
- 101
- Quran occurrences
Forms in the Quran
The forms this root actually takes in the Quran. Select one to jump to its senses and examples.
دَانَ
dāna
- Part of speech
- Verb · Form I
- Form
- I
- Quran occurrences
- 1 occurrence
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
To obey, submit to, or follow and adopt as one's religion.
In the Quranic occurrence, the verb appears in the construction of following or adhering to the true religion.
- Lane · entry 1765
Selected Quran examples
Quran 9:29word 16
“they acknowledge”
تَدَايَنَ
tadāyana
- Part of speech
- Verb · Form VI
- Form
- VI
- Quran occurrences
- 1 occurrence
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
To transact with one another on credit, whether by lending, borrowing, or buying and selling with deferred payment.
A reciprocal construction; in the Quranic usage it concerns a debt to be settled at an appointed term.
- Lane · entry 1770
- Mufradāt · row 496
Selected Quran examples
Quran 2:282word 5
“you contract with one another”
دَيْنٌ
daynun
- Part of speech
- Noun
- Quran occurrences
- 5 occurrences
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
A debt or financial obligation to be discharged.
It may denote an amount owed under a loan, sale, inheritance settlement, or other deferred obligation, especially one assigned a time for payment.
- Lane · entry 1773
- Mufradāt · row 496
Selected Quran examples
Quran 2:282word 6
“any debt”
Quran 4:11word 55
“any debt”
دِينٌ
dīnun
- Part of speech
- Noun
- Quran occurrences
- 92 occurrences
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
Obedience, submission, and service directed to God.
This sense emphasizes the act or state of obeying and submitting, including sincere religious devotion.
- Lane · entry 1774
- Mufradāt · row 496
Selected Quran examples
Quran 2:256word 4
“the religion”
Religion: an adopted system of belief, worship, and religious commitment, especially Islam.
It can refer to one's religion, the true religion, or the religion prescribed for a community; grammatical inflection and attached pronouns do not create separate senses.
- Lane · entry 1774
- Mufradāt · row 496
Selected Quran examples
Quran 3:19word 2
“the religion”
A law, statute, ordinance, or ruling governing a particular matter.
This construction can refer either to divinely prescribed religious ordinances or, as in the Quranic account of Joseph, to the governing law or ruling of a particular authority.
- Lane · entry 1774
Selected Quran examples
Quran 12:76word 19
“the law”
Requital, judgment, reckoning, or recompense for deeds.
Used for the day or event on which actions are assessed and their corresponding consequences are rendered; the result may be translated as judgment, recompense, or requital.
- Lane · entry 1774
- Mufradāt · row 496
Selected Quran examples
Quran 1:4word 3
“(of the) Judgment”
مَدِينٌ
madīnun
- Part of speech
- Passive participle
- Quran occurrences
- 2 occurrences
Selected examples are shown with the sense they illustrate — chosen to teach that sense, not the complete list of this form’s Quran occurrences.
Subject to requital, judgment, or reckoning; recompensed for one's deeds.
In the Quranic contexts, the passive participle describes people who will be brought to account or requited.
- Lane · entry 1781
- Mufradāt · row 496
Selected Quran examples
Quran 37:53word 7
“surely be brought to Judgment”
Quran 56:86word 5
“to be recompensed”
Held under authority or ownership; subject or enslaved.
This Quranic interpretation presents the participle as denoting one held in another's possession or dominion; the same occurrence also has an attested alternative interpretation referring to requital.
- Lane · entry 1781
Selected Quran examples
Quran 56:86word 5
“to be recompensed”
Occurrences in the Quran
Every place this root appears, in Quran order. The first few are shown here.
- 1:4ٱلدِّينِ(of the) Judgment
- 2:132ٱلدِّينَthe religion
- 2:193ٱلدِّينُthe religion
- 2:217دِينِكُمْyour religion
- 2:217دِينِهِۦhis religion
Broader Classical Arabic meanings
Recorded for this root in the Classical lexicons beyond its Quran usage. These are secondary to the Quran senses above.
Show 41 Classical meanings
دَانَ
To disobey.
An opposed Form I usage contrasted with obedience.
- Lane · entry 1765
دَانَ
To become mighty, powerful, elevated in rank, noble, or illustrious.
A contrary development reported alongside the meanings of obedience and submission.
- Lane · entry 1765
دَانَ
To borrow, incur a debt, or buy on credit.
An intransitive financial use; the person becomes indebted or takes a loan or goods on credit.
- Lane · entry 1765
دَانَ
To lend, grant a loan, give credit, or sell on credit; also to seek or receive a loan.
The transitive use has several reciprocal or oppositional valencies, including granting credit and seeking or receiving a loan.
- Lane · entry 1765
دَانَ
To repay, requite, compensate, recompense, or retaliate for an act.
The object is repaid or treated in accordance with a prior deed.
- Lane · entry 1765
دَانَ
To reckon with oneself or hold oneself to account.
Attested in the maxim concerning the intelligent person who assesses himself and prepares for what follows death.
- Lane · entry 1765
دَانَ
To abase, enslave, subjugate, or compel someone to do what he dislikes.
A transitive causative use involving subjection or compulsion.
- Lane · entry 1765
دَانَ
To rule, govern, manage, possess, or exercise authority over someone or something.
The object is placed under the speaker's or ruler's management, possession, or authority.
- Lane · entry 1765
دَانَ
To become accustomed or habituated, or to accustom oneself, to good or evil.
Some authorities treat دِينٌ in the sense of habit as a noun without assigning it a corresponding verb.
- Lane · entry 1765
دَانَ
To be smitten or affected by a disease.
A bodily-affliction use applied to a person.
- Lane · entry 1765
دَيَّنَ
To leave someone to his religion and refrain from opposing what he considers permissible.
A Form II causative use of allowing a person to retain his religious practice or belief.
- Lane · entry 1766
دَيَّنَ
To believe or credit someone in a judgment or in what lies between him and God.
A conventional professional usage concerning acceptance of another person's account or judgment.
- Lane · entry 1766
دَيَّنَ
To confirm or vindicate a person in what he has sworn.
Used of affirming the status or reliability of a swearer.
- Lane · entry 1766
دَيَّنَ
To appoint someone as ruler, governor, or manager, or to place something under his possession or authority.
A Form II causative use of conferring governance, ownership, or control.
- Lane · entry 1766
مُدَايَنَةٌ
Litigation or a mutual proceeding before a judge.
A specialized use of the verbal nouns associated with dealing or transacting with another party.
- Lane · entry 1767
اِسْتَدَانَ
To seek or demand a debt or loan, or to borrow.
The Form X verb may be used intransitively for becoming indebted or transitively for seeking a loan from another person.
- Lane · entry 1772
دَيْنٌ
Death, conceived metaphorically as an inevitable debt that every person must pay.
A figurative extension of the ordinary debt sense.
- Lane · entry 1773
دَيْنٌ
Harvested produce or fruit described as an amount that is gathered and used to discharge needs or debts.
A figurative poetic application rather than the ordinary financial meaning.
- Lane · entry 1773
دِينٌ
An inherited system of usages, rites, ceremonies, and communal ordinances.
Used of traditional practices transmitted from ancestors, including customs of pilgrimage, marriage, inheritance, commerce, and conduct.
- Lane · entry 1774
دِينٌ
A custom, habit, established way, course, or manner of conduct.
This classical usage describes an individual's or group's customary way of acting and may overlap with the sense of habitual practice.
- Lane · entry 1774
دِينٌ
Business or occupation.
A classical nominal use distinct from the religious sense.
- Lane · entry 1774
دِينٌ
The management, conduct, or regulation of affairs.
A nominal use referring to the ordering or administration of matters.
- Lane · entry 1774
دِينٌ
A state, condition, or circumstance.
Used in expressions describing the condition in which a person or thing is found.
- Lane · entry 1774
دِينٌ
A property or characteristic that produces a known effect from an unknown cause.
A technical usage equated with a special inherent property.
- Lane · entry 1774
دِينٌ
Disobedience.
A nominal sense explicitly presented as the contrary of obedience.
- Lane · entry 1774
دِينٌ
Retaliation by a corresponding act, such as killing for killing, wounding for wounding, or mutilating for mutilating.
A specialized form of requital in which the response corresponds to the injury.
- Lane · entry 1774
دِينٌ
Compulsion, subdual, subjection, dominion, mastership, or possession of authority.
A nominal branch emphasizing imposed power or control over another.
- Lane · entry 1774
دِينٌ
A disease, especially an old or longstanding disease.
A bodily-affliction noun distinct from the abstract senses of the root.
- Lane · entry 1774
دَيْنَةٌ
A cause of death.
A feminine nominal form distinct from the broader metaphorical sense of دَيْنٌ as death.
- Lane · entry 1775
دَيِّنٌ
Religious; one who makes himself a servant of God.
An adjectival description of religious commitment or devotional service.
- Lane · entry 1777
دَيَّانٌ
A requiter who neglects no deed but repays it with good or evil.
With the definite article, this is applied as an epithet to God; without that restriction it can describe a human requiter.
- Lane · entry 1778
دَيَّانٌ
A subduer or possessor of commanding power.
Applied to a man, and with the definite article also used as an epithet of God.
- Lane · entry 1778
دَيَّانٌ
A judge, ruler, or governor.
A title of authority applicable to a human ruler and, with the definite article, to God.
- Lane · entry 1778
دَيَّانٌ
A manager, conductor, or orderer of another person's affairs.
Emphasizes administrative direction rather than judicial requital.
- Lane · entry 1778
دَائِنٌ
A debtor, borrower, or person who takes a loan or buys on credit.
This participial form is reported with opposite financial orientations in different usages.
- Lane · entry 1779
دَائِنٌ
One who repays a debt.
An attested use that reverses the usual debtor relation.
- Lane · entry 1779
دَائِنٌ
A creditor, lender, or person who grants credit or sells on credit.
The person becomes entitled to payment from the other party.
- Lane · entry 1779
مَدِينَةٌ
A city or settled urban center.
The noun is explained through the idea of a place held under authority or governed order.
- Lane · entry 1782
مَدِينَةٌ
A person intimately acquainted with a place or matter, in the idiom “son of its city.”
Occurs in an idiomatic expression meaning one who knows the place thoroughly.
- Lane · entry 1782
مِدْيَانٌ
One who frequently or extensively gives loans or grants credit.
An intensive epithet; the form may be used for a man or woman without a feminine suffix.
- Lane · entry 1784
مِدْيَانٌ
One who frequently seeks loans, buys on credit, or has many debts.
A contrary financial use of the same intensive epithet.
- Lane · entry 1784
Cautions
Points that affect how this root should be read.
The Form I Quran group is attested as the imperfect يَدِينُونَ but is displayed under the normalized perfect citation form دَانَ.
Lane's printed Quran references for the passive participle use historical numbering; the modern example locations here follow the independently supplied QAC locations 37:53 and 56:86.
The passive participle مَدِينٌ has competing Quranic interpretations in the supplied lexical evidence: being requited or reckoned with, and being held under authority.