Quranic root
رفع
r · f · ʿ
The root denotes raising or elevating, as opposed to lowering or putting down.
From physical elevation, the lexical field extends to making something high in rank or esteem, bringing it forward or near, making it known or attributing it to a source, and in some constructions removing or withdrawing it.
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- 5
- Quran-attested forms
- 9
- Quran senses
- 29
- Quran occurrences
Forms in the Quran
The forms this root actually takes in the Quran. Select one to jump to its senses and examples.
رَفَعَ
rafaʿa
- Part of speech
- Verb · Form I
- Form
- I
- Quran occurrences
- 22 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.
To raise, elevate, or lift a physical thing or person, including to rear or make a structure high.
Used for raising something from its resting place, making it high, and in constructions with an object raised above or toward a higher place.
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Selected Quran examples
To elevate in rank, dignity, esteem, or fame; to raise someone's standing or renown.
A figurative use for elevation of status, degrees, honor, or mention; it can also express holding someone or something above a lower matter.
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Selected Quran examples
Quran 43:32word 12
“and We raise”
Quran 94:4word 1
“And We raised high”
Quran 4:158word 2
“he was raised”
To accept and honor a righteous work, or to cause good speech to ascend toward acceptance.
A Quranic construction in which يَرْفَعُهُ is interpreted either as divine acceptance of righteous work or as righteous work raising good speech to acceptance.
- Lane · entry 23959
Selected Quran examples
Quran 35:10word 14
“raises it”
مَرْفُوع
marfūʿ
- Part of speech
- Passive participle
- Quran occurrences
- 4 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.
Raised, elevated, or set high.
Used of things physically elevated or placed above others, including the raised heavens and elevated furnishings.
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Selected Quran examples
Honored, exalted, or high in estimation.
A figurative interpretation in which elevation denotes distinction, honor, or elevated status.
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Selected Quran examples
Quran 56:34word 2
“raised”
Quran 80:14word 1
“Exalted”
Brought near or made readily presented to those concerned.
Especially in the interpretation of مَرْفُوعَةٍ in the expression وَفُرُشٍ مَرْفُوعَةٍ; this is a conventional extension of raising to bringing near.
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Selected Quran examples
Quran 56:34word 2
“raised”
رَافِع
rāfiʿ
- Part of speech
- Active participle
- 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.
One who raises or elevates; in the Quranic construction, the one who raises Jesus to God.
The raising in 3:55 is explained as physical elevation to heaven and/or elevation through distinction and honor.
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Selected Quran examples
Quran 3:55word 7
“and raise you”
رَفِيع
rafīʿ
- Part of speech
- Adjective
- 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.
High, exalted, or elevated in rank, dignity, or attributes.
In رَفِيعُ الدَّرَجَاتِ, it describes exalted degrees or attributes and may also be understood as the one who exalts the degrees of the believers.
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Selected Quran examples
Quran 40:15word 1
“Possessor of the Highest Ranks”
رَافِعَة
rāfiʿah
- Part of speech
- Active participle · substantivized noun
- 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.
That which raises or elevates; in the Quranic expression, a raising of people in rank or status.
In خَافِضَةٌ رَافِعَةٌ, the active participle is substantivized and describes the contrasting elevation of status in the eschatological scene.
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Selected Quran examples
Quran 56:3word 2
“raising up”
Occurrences in the Quran
Every place this root appears, in Quran order. The first few are shown here.
- 2:63وَرَفَعْنَاand We raised
- 2:93وَرَفَعْنَاand We raised
- 2:127يَرْفَعُ(was) raising
- 2:253وَرَفَعَand He raised
- 3:55وَرَافِعُكَand raise you
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 67 Classical meanings
رَفَعَ
To remove or transport harvested grain from the place of reaping to the threshing floor.
A specialized agricultural use, also naming the days on which harvested produce is carried.
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- Lane · entry 23968
رَفَاع
The storing-up of harvested grain.
A noun for storage after the produce has been gathered.
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رَفَعَ بِهِ
To look toward someone or pay regard or attention to him.
Occurs in the idiom of not raising one's head toward a person.
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رَفَعَ
To bring something into view or make a distant figure appear elevated to the eye.
Used of an object that seems to rise into view and of a mirage that visually elevates or magnifies a distant figure.
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رَفَعَ
To bring or present a person before a ruler or judge.
A conventional legal or administrative construction with إلى and an authority.
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رَفَعَ
To bring forward or adduce a text or argument against an authority.
In the expression of bringing the Quran against a ruler, it means interpreting or applying it as grounds for opposition.
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رَفَعَ
To trace a person's lineage upward to an ancestor, tribe, city, or other origin.
A conventional genealogical use synonymous with assigning or relating a lineage.
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رَفَعَ الحَدِيثَ
To trace or attribute a report to its author or ultimate transmitter.
Especially used of tracing a tradition through its transmitters to the Prophet or another source.
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رَفَعَ
To make a matter known, report it, or refer it to an administrator, ruler, or judge.
Covers reporting against someone and submitting or appealing a case or matter to an authority.
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رُفِعَتْ لَهُ غَايَةٌ
To have an objective proposed and aspire toward it.
An idiomatic construction in which a goal is raised before someone as an object of ambition.
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رَفَعَ البَعِيرَ
To make a camel or other beast exert itself to the utmost or go at great speed.
Used of urging an animal into the pace called مَرْفُوع.
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رَفَعَهُ إِلَى حَدِّ مَا عِنْدَهُ
To press someone to the utmost limit of what he knows.
A specialized questioning or inquiry construction.
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رَفَعَ النَّارَ
To stir up a fire and make it burn strongly.
A figurative extension of causing something to rise or flare.
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رَفَعَتِ النَّاقَةُ لَبَنَهَا
Of a she-camel, to draw up or withhold her milk.
Used when milk or colostrum is retained in the udder rather than yielded.
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رَفَعَهُ فِي خِزَانَتِهِ
To put away, preserve, store, or lay an object in a repository.
A conventional use for placing something into a chest, storeroom, or closet.
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لَا يَرْفَعُ العَصَا
To maintain severe discipline or beat and chastise persistently.
An idiom about not removing the staff from one's shoulder or household; it is not a literal statement about the staff's position.
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لَا يَرْفَعُ العَصَا
To undertake many journeys or be constantly traveling.
An alternative idiomatic interpretation of the same staff expression.
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رُفِعَ القَلَمُ
For legal or moral recording to be suspended for someone.
The idiom concerns the sleeper, the temporarily incapacitated or insane person, and the child until maturity; nothing is recorded for or against them during the stated condition.
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رَفَعَ
To withdraw, remove, do away with, annul, revoke, or remit something.
Used of removing distress or punishment and of putting away an existing condition.
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رَفَعُوا الحَرْبَ
To give over or relinquish war; in an exceptional contrary usage, to raise or make war.
The ordinary interpretation treats war as put away, while one cited usage employs the expression in the opposite sense.
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نَرْفَعُ طَرِيقًا
To exclude a way or passage from among the portions or shares of land or a house.
A specialized division-of-property construction.
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رَفَّعَ
To raise or advance something progressively, part by part.
The Form II use emphasizes successive advancement or raising.
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رَفَّعَ
To put, send, or advance people or a matter forward.
Used of sending people forward to battle or bringing an affair forward to a commander.
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رَفَّعَ الحِمَارُ
Of an ass, to run with one part of its pace quicker than another.
A specialized description of an uneven or variably rapid run.
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رَافَعَ
To try by every means to turn or induce someone, including by deceit or guile.
A Form III reciprocal or causative use.
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رَافَعَ
To spare, pardon, leave unmolested, or make peace with someone.
Used with the sense of leaving someone alone or reconciling with him.
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تَرَفَّعَ
To exalt oneself, become haughty, or disdain something as beneath oneself.
The Form V reflexive use expresses self-elevation and disdain.
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تَرَافَعَ
For two parties to bring their opposing complaints or cases before a ruler or judge.
A reciprocal legal construction involving mutual presentation or communication of each party's case.
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اِرْتَفَعَ
To rise, become elevated, or be taken away or removed.
The intransitive or quasi-passive counterpart of raising; of physical things it can mean rising from a resting place or going away.
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اِرْتَفَعَ قَدْرُهُ
For rank, value, or standing to become high or eminent.
A figurative intransitive use.
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اِرْتَفِعْ
To advance into a sitting-place, room, or assembly.
This imperative conventional use does not refer to physical height.
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اِرْتَفَعَتِ الضُّحَى
For the morning or day to advance as the sun rises higher.
A temporal use describing the progress of the day.
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اِرْتَفَعَ السِّعْرُ
For a price to rise or advance.
A conventional economic use.
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اِرْتَفَعُوا
To depart or remove from a place.
An intransitive movement-away use.
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اِرْتَفَعَ عَنْهُ
For a disease, pain, or affliction to leave or abate from someone.
A conventional intransitive use of withdrawal.
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يَرْتَفِعَانِ
In technical logic, for two contradictories not to be simultaneously nonexistent in the same thing.
A specialized logical expression concerning the two alternatives of existence and nonexistence, or motion and rest.
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اِسْتَرْفَعَ
To desire, demand, or ask that something be raised, elevated, taken up, or removed.
A Form X request construction, including asking that hands be raised for supplication.
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اِسْتَرْفَعَ الخُوَانُ
For what is on a table to be consumed and ready to be cleared away.
A specialized use implying that the table's contents are due to be removed.
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رِفْعَة
High or exalted rank, condition, or state; nobility and honor.
A noun denoting elevation of status.
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رَفِيع
Fine, delicate, thin, or fine-textured when applied to a garment or cloth.
A material-quality use distinct from elevation in rank.
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رَفِيع
High, loud, or strong in voice.
Applied to a person's voice.
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رَفِيع
A pace in which a beast is made to exert itself to the utmost.
A specialized description of rapid animal movement.
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رُفَاعَة
A string by which a shackled person raises his shackles.
A material implement attached to a fetter.
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رُفَاعَة
A device used to make a woman's buttocks appear larger.
An article of bodily padding; its plural is رَفَائِعُ.
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رَفِيعَة
A case or claim communicated or submitted to a legal administrator.
A feminine noun for a matter brought before an authority.
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رَفَّاع
One who traces traditions to the Prophet or his Companions, or communicates them.
A specialized agent noun connected with attribution and transmission of reports.
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الرَّافِع
The Exalter, as a divine name: the one who raises the believer through prosperity and the saints through teaching.
A theological epithet rather than the ordinary active participle alone.
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رَافِع
Of a she-camel, one that withholds or does not yield her milk.
A nominal use for the animal's withholding of milk or colostrum.
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رَافِع
A person going upward or traveling through lands.
A nominal description of one moving through countries.
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رَافِع
Rising lightning.
A specialized nominal use describing lightning's upward appearance.
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رَوَافِع
People traveling at the rapid pace called مَرْفُوع.
A plural nominal use connected with the specialized pace of camels or beasts.
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رَافِعَة السُّقْيَا
Land difficult to irrigate.
A specialized geographical expression, contrasted with land easy to irrigate.
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رَافِعَة
A hard, elevated tract of land.
A substantivized feminine adjective used as a terrain term.
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أَرْفَع
Higher, more elevated, or highest.
The comparative or superlative adjective of elevation.
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أَرْفَعُ لِلْحَدِيثِ
More skilled at tracing or attributing a tradition to its author.
A comparative technical use in hadith transmission.
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أَرْفَع
Faster than another part of the same run.
Used of an animal's unevenly varying pace.
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مَرْفَع
A place of elevation.
The basic place noun also extended to an elevated seat or throne.
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مَرْفَع
A chair or throne.
A specialized object placed at an elevated position.
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مِرْفَع
An implement used to raise, elevate, or take something up.
An instrument noun.
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مَرْفُوع
A specialized rapid pace of a horse, camel, or other beast.
A gait above the ordinary easy pace and below the more extreme running paces described in the lexical tradition.
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مُرْتَفِع
High or elevated, as a mountain.
An intransitive participial adjective describing physical height.
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رَفَعَ
For a people or company to go upward or travel through lands.
An intransitive Form I use describing people moving upward or through countries.
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رَفَعَ البَعِيرُ
For a camel or other beast to exert itself to the utmost or go at a rapid pace.
An intransitive Form I use describing the animal's own effort or pace; the pace is called مَرْفُوع.
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رَفُعَ
To become high, exalted, noble, or eminent in rank, condition, or state.
A stative Form I use describing elevation in rank, including high standing in lineage or grounds of honor.
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رَفُعَ
Of a garment or piece of cloth, to be fine, delicate, thin, or fine in texture.
A stative Form I use describing the material quality of cloth.
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رَفُعَ
To become high or loud in voice.
A stative Form I use describing the height or loudness of a voice.
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مَرْفُوع
A tradition attributed by a Companion to the Prophet.
A technical passive-participial use in hadith terminology, whether the Prophet is named directly or the chain is traced up to him.
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Cautions
Points that affect how this root should be read.
The Quranic phrase بَلْ رَفَعَهُ اللَّهُ إِلَيْهِ is explicitly presented with both physical-elevation and honor-based interpretations; it is therefore represented under both corresponding verb senses.
The interpretations of وَفُرُشٍ مَرْفُوعَةٍ include physical elevation, honor, and bringing near; these alternatives are retained as distinct but related senses.