al-ḥamdu li-llāhi alladhī — praise formula with a relative slot
ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ ٱلَّذِى
al-ḥamdu li-llāhi alladhī — The praise belongs to Allah, the One who…
A fixed nominal frame — a nominative noun al-ḥamdu, a prepositional phrase li-llāhi, and a masculine singular relative pronoun — whose relative clause slot is filled differently in each of the nine verses given — eight fillers name an act of Allah and 17:111 names a negation — so that each utterance names praise and grounds it in one specific act or negated claim.
In all nine verses given, the frame is grammatically constant: al-ḥamdu is a masculine nominative noun, li-llāhi a proper noun in the genitive after a preposition, and alladhī a masculine singular relative pronoun whose following clause supplies the content. What changes is the filler. The fillers fall into several patterns. Four are first-person plural past verbs with a suffixed object pronoun: faḍḍalanā 'he has given us advantage' (27:15), najjānā 'he has delivered us' (23:28), hadānā 'he has guided us' (7:43), and ṣadaqanā 'he has proven true to us' with wa'dahu as its object (39:74). One has a first-person singular pronoun after a preposition: wahaba lī 'He granted me' (14:39). The rest take third-person objects or none: khalaqa 'he created' the heavens and the earth (6:1), anzala 'he has sent down' the Book (18:1), adhhaba 'he has made go away' the sorrow (35:34), and the negative lam yattakhidh 'he has not taken' a child (17:111). The frame thus does two things at once: it assigns praise to Allah, and it specifies, in the relative clause, the particular act for which the praise is being declared. The speakers vary — an unnamed speaker is commanded to say it (17:111, 23:28), David and Solomon say it (27:15), and groups say it in scenes of deliverance (35:34, 39:74, 7:43) — but the frame itself is identical in wording across all nine verses, with only the verb in the slot changing.
Where it occurs
- 6:1 Grounds praise in Allah's creating the heavens and the earth and setting up the darknesses and the light.
- 7:43 Spoken by a group who credit their guidance to Allah, denying they would have been guided otherwise.
- 14:39 Grounds praise in the grant of Ishmael and Isaac despite old age.
- 17:111 Commanded utterance whose filler is a negation: Allah has not taken a child.
- 18:1 Grounds praise in the sending down of the Book upon His servant without crookedness.
- 23:28 Commanded utterance after settling on the ship, crediting deliverance from the darkening people.
- 27:15 Spoken by David and Solomon, crediting advantage over many of His believing servants.
- 35:34 Spoken by a group, crediting the removal of sorrow from them.
- 39:74 Spoken by a group, crediting the proving true of His promise and the inheritance of the land.
All Qur'anic expressions