The Qur’anic Root B R Z KH (Barzakh)
A barrier or interval between two things; from the boundary of fresh and salt water to the interval between death and resurrection
Qur’anic and lexical forms
1. Introducing the word and its Qur’anic forms
In Arabic, بَرْزَخ (barzakh) denotes something lying between two things and separating them, or establishing an interval or limit between them. The separation may involve a tangible obstacle, a spatial distance, a boundary between conditions, or something preventing passage.
A barzakh need not be a wall or solid object. What matters is an intervening limit or interval and its role in separating things or preventing passage.
The word occurs three times in the Qur’an, in three verses of three surahs: بَرْزَخٌ (barzakhun) in Al-Muʾminūn 23:100 and Al-Raḥmān 55:20, and بَرْزَخًا (barzakhan) in Al-Furqān 25:53. These are inflections of one indefinite singular noun; the endings differ because of syntax. Neither a verb from this family nor the plural بَرَازِخ (barāzikh) occurs in the Qur’an.
Two occurrences concern water. Al-Furqān 25:53 places a barzakh between fresh and salt water; Al-Raḥmān 55:20 describes a barzakh between two bodies of water that meet without transgressing their appointed limit.
The third occurrence is Al-Muʾminūn 23:100. Following death’s arrival and the rejection of a request to return to worldly life, it describes a barzakh lasting until the day of resurrection.
The word is therefore not solely the name of a condition after death. Separation and an intervening barrier are recognizable in all three uses, but the things separated and the nature of their separation differ.
2. The semantic center in early Arabic
Barzakh: a limit or barrier between things
Kitāb al-ʿAyn, attributed to al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad, defines barzakh as follows:
«الْبَرْزَخُ مَا بَيْنَ كُلِّ شَيْئَيْنِ»
al-barzakhu mā bayna kulli shayʾayni
That is: “Barzakh is what lies between any two things.”
The same source records it for the interval between death and the hereafter, the boundary between shade and sunlight, and even the interval between doubt and certainty.
These uses matter because they do not restrict the word to one kind of barrier.
A wall may separate two plots of land; an open distance may lie between two regions. A boundary can also be recognized between shade and sunlit ground without a wall having been built there.
In all three examples, there are different sides and something establishing an interval or separation between them.
In discussion of doubt and certainty, barzakh can also describe a condition or interval between degrees of understanding. Neither water nor a physical wall is involved: the intermediate limit or nonphysical interval is intended.
That extension does not make doubt, a spiritual condition, or a level of knowledge the meaning of barzakh everywhere. They are particular instances of being between two conditions.
A barrier is not necessarily an impenetrable object
Al-Jawharī’s Ṣiḥāḥ defines barzakh as الْحَاجِزُ بَيْنَ الشَّيْئَيْنِ (al-ḥājizu bayna al-shayʾayni), “the barrier between two things.”
Al-Farrāʾ, an early linguist, offers a broader explanation: a barrier can be spatial distance or something preventing an action from occurring.
Two people may be unable to meet because of a long journey. Two others may live in one town yet be kept apart by hostility or an obligation. Something intervenes in either case, but the barriers differ in kind.
This matters for the Qur’an. The barrier between waters need not be the same kind as the obstacle between a dead person and return to worldly life in Al-Muʾminūn 23:100.
One concerns two bodies of water; the other concerns a completed condition and the possibility of returning to it.
The basic sense can therefore be expressed as a limit, interval, or barrier separating two things or conditions.
Its composition, dimensions, duration, and what it prevents from crossing must be established from context.
3. Word structure and historical derivation
Is barzakh derived from B R Z?
This study uses B R Z KH to index the word itself, rather than to establish a definite historical derivation. The Qur’anic morphological index likewise records three occurrences under the noun barzakh, without assigning it a root in its morphological data. Lexical sources differ over the word’s historical structure.
Under four-consonant words in Maqāyīs al-lughah, Ibn Fāris treats barzakh as containing an added consonant. His analysis takes khāʾ as additional and connects the word with بَراز (barāz), open, spacious ground.
On that account, just as open space between places can separate them, the barrier sense can be explained through the same image.
The semantic explanation is understandable, but it should not be presented as an established history of the word’s origin.
First, Qur’anic بَرَزَ (baraza) concerns coming forth and becoming visible, while barzakh concerns an interval or limit between things. Shared initial consonants do not prove direct derivation.
Second, treating khāʾ as additional requires independent historical and morphological evidence. A possible semantic explanation alone does not establish an origin.
Third, barzakh occurs in the Qur’an as an independent noun. No verb from the family occurs there that could help test its derivational structure within that text.
Even if Ibn Fāris’ historical explanation were accepted, Qur’anic barzakh could not be translated as “something that has come forth” or “something visible.”
The possibility of a borrowed word
After defining barzakh as a barrier and limit between things, al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī reports another possibility in his Mufradāt:
«وَقِيلَ أَصْلُهُ بَرْزَهْ فَعُرِّبَ»
wa-qīla aṣluhu barzah fa-ʿurriba
That is: “It is said that its original form was barzah and that it was adapted into Arabic.”
The report matters to discussion of a possible non-Arabic origin. Some later writers connect barzah with Persian.
Al-Rāghib’s قيل (qīla), “it is said,” presents a reported view, rather than a conclusion demonstrated through a complete historical record.
Establishing borrowing requires the actual source-language form, its date of attestation, its meaning at that time, and the path by which it entered Arabic.
The evidence examined here does not complete that historical chain sufficiently to establish that Qur’anic barzakh certainly comes from a Persian barzah.
Equally, occurrence in the Qur’an alone cannot rule borrowing out. A word of external origin could have entered Arabic before revelation and become entirely familiar to its speakers.
Three things must therefore remain separate: the consonants used to index the word, Ibn Fāris’ proposed connection with B R Z, and al-Rāghib’s reported borrowing possibility.
The meaning in Qur’anic Arabic is more securely established than a definite historical origin.
4. Recorded early uses and extensions
Between shade and sunlight
Kitāb al-ʿAyn records مَا بَيْنَ الظِّلِّ وَالشَّمْسِ بَرْزَخٌ (mā bayna al-ẓilli wa-al-shamsi barzakhun).
It means that there is a barzakh between shade and sunlit ground.
Here the word concerns a boundary between two visible, physical conditions. One can see where shade ends and direct sunlight begins on the ground.
No independent object necessarily stands at that boundary.
The witness shows that barzakh can concern the dividing limit between conditions, rather than only a wall built between places.
Between doubt and certainty
The same source uses بَرَازِخُ الْإِيمَانِ (barāzikhu al-īmāni) in explaining the interval between doubt and certainty.
Barāzikh is the plural of barzakh. The reference here is to stages or intervals of understanding, rather than geography.
Religious-language reports also record the expression, but its circulation should not be dated to the pre-Islamic period without evidence.
Semantically, the example shows that an interval or barrier can be conceived between inward human conditions.
It does not establish a definite theory in which doubt and certainty always occupy opposite ends of a spectrum with a fixed number of intervening stages. It is an expression for the interval between conditions, not a definition of every stage of faith.
An interval that prevents arrival
Al-Farrāʾ explains that distance may prevent someone reaching one place from another. Sometimes the obstacle is not spatial: an obligation, hostility, or another condition may prevent two people meeting.
This shows two related functions: intervening between sides and preventing arrival or passage.
Not every distance is inherently impassable. Someone can travel between distant places, while a legal or social obstacle may prevent an action despite physical proximity.
Absolute impermeability is therefore not a fixed component of the word’s lexical meaning. Whether a barzakh can be crossed depends on its subject and context.
This matters particularly in Qur’anic use: the relationship between waters is described by لا يبغيان (lā yabghiyāni), while the barzakh in Al-Muʾminūn 23:100 follows rejection of a return to worldly life.
Later specialized uses
Barzakh also appears in specialized geographical, philosophical, and mystical usage.
In geography it can denote an isthmus, a strip of land between two bodies of water that connects two land areas.
Some philosophical and mystical systems use it for an intermediate level between worlds or degrees of existence.
These uses draw on mediation and being between things, but none should automatically become the direct meaning of the verses.
An isthmus is one particular instance of an intervening barrier, rather than the word’s sole definition. Qur’anic use between waters may be related to that instance, but the word itself does not necessarily specify a strip of land.
The position of pre-Qur’anic evidence
The sources examined did not yield a securely worded and attributed pre-Qur’anic poetic witness explicitly containing barzakh.
Early dictionaries record shade and sunlight, doubt and certainty, and an interval between things. Being recorded in an old book does not establish that the same expression in the same form occurred in pre-Islamic poetry.
The absence of such a witness in this investigation does not prove the word was absent from pre-Qur’anic Arabic. The Qur’an’s three clear uses themselves show an available term for a barrier or interval in the text’s language.
Independent historical evidence is needed to establish precisely which related forms and expressions Arabs used before the Qur’an.
5. A barzakh between fresh and salt water
Al-Furqān 25:53: waters with different properties
Al-Furqān 25:53
وَهُوَ الَّذِي مَرَجَ الْبَحْرَيْنِ هَٰذَا عَذْبٌ فُرَاتٌ وَهَٰذَا مِلْحٌ أُجَاجٌ وَجَعَلَ بَيْنَهُمَا بَرْزَخًا وَحِجْرًا مَحْجُورًا
wa-huwa alladhī maraja al-baḥrayni hādhā ʿadhbun furātun wa-hādhā milḥun ujājun wa-jaʿala baynahumā barzakhan wa-ḥijran maḥjūran
Translation: “He is the One who released the two bodies of water, this one fresh and pleasant, the other salty and bitter, and placed between them a barrier and a forbidding restraint.”
بَرْزَخًا is an indefinite singular noun and the object of جَعَلَ (jaʿala). بَيْنَهُمَا (baynahumā) specifies its position: between the two waters.
The verse identifies the waters through their qualities. عَذْبٌ فُرَاتٌ (ʿadhbun furātun) describes fresh, pleasant water, while مِلْحٌ أُجَاجٌ (milḥun ujājun) describes salt water with intense salinity.
The two sides of the barrier therefore differ in their water’s properties.
Barzakh does not mean fresh water, salt water, or their meeting place. It names the intervening barrier; separate descriptions identify the waters.
Maraja and barzakhan
مَرَجَ (maraja) belongs to M R J, a family involving release and, in some uses, intermingling or mixing.
Al-Ṭabarī describes the waters being released and flowing into one another, reporting explanations of maraja as mixing or setting them flowing.
Maraja therefore should not be taken to mean that the waters have no contact or relationship.
By contrast, وَجَعَلَ بَيْنَهُمَا بَرْزَخًا describes an intervening barrier.
The verse presents both the waters’ flow and relationship and a limit between them.
The noun barzakh alone does not specify the nature of that limit.
Wa-ḥijran maḥjūran: emphasis on restraint
Barzakhan is followed by وَحِجْرًا مَحْجُورًا (wa-ḥijran maḥjūran).
حِجْر (ḥijr) belongs to Ḥ J R and concerns prohibition or restraint here. مَحْجُورًا (maḥjūran), from the same family, describes and reinforces that restraint.
There are thus two related expressions: barzakh identifies the boundary or barrier between the waters, while ḥijran maḥjūran foregrounds prohibition and restraint.
The combination matters lexically: severe restraint or the limitation concerned is not inferred solely from barzakh; another expression also conveys it.
B R Z KH’s definition should therefore not become “an absolute barrier that nothing ever crosses.”
The verse concerns a particular relationship and restriction between waters. Its extent and nature belong to examination of that event.
Is the barzakh here land between the waters?
Some early interpretive reports explain the barrier as intervening land.
Al-Ṭabarī transmits a report from Ibn ʿAbbās identifying it as the land between the waters. He also explains the wording through preventing either water from spoiling the other’s properties. He reports the land interpretation but does not prefer it in this verse, because he connects maraja with the waters mixing.
Intervening land fits some natural examples, since land can separate bodies of water.
The word alone, however, does not establish land as necessary in every instance.
Waters with different properties may flow near one another with a zone in which those properties change gradually. Such a setting differs from a stone wall or strip of land.
The verse identifies neither the barrier’s material nor its thickness or structure.
Land is therefore an instance proposed in early sources, rather than the only possible lexical meaning.
6. Baynahumā barzakhun lā yabghiyāni: waters that meet
Two consecutive verses in Al-Raḥmān present the image.
Al-Raḥmān 55:19
مَرَجَ الْبَحْرَيْنِ يَلْتَقِيَانِ
maraja al-baḥrayni yaltaqiyāni
Translation: “He released the two bodies of water, meeting one another.”
Al-Raḥmān 55:20
بَيْنَهُمَا بَرْزَخٌ لَا يَبْغِيَانِ
baynahumā barzakhun lā yabghiyāni
Translation: “Between them is a barzakh; they do not transgress the limit.”
A barrier and the waters meeting
The first verse’s يَلْتَقِيَانِ (yaltaqiyāni) concerns the waters meeting. The second describes a barzakh between them.
Barzakh should not be defined so as to negate their meeting in the first place.
The verses describe two features together: the waters meet, and a barzakh lies between them.
Semantically, contact or proximity need not erase every boundary and difference between things.
This should not become an unlimited philosophical principle. The passage concerns two bodies of water and their particular relationship.
What does lā yabghiyāni mean?
يَبْغِيَانِ (yabghiyāni) belongs to B GH Y and is a dual imperfect verb.
The family has different Qur’anic uses; here, going beyond a limit and one encroaching upon the other are appropriate senses.
لا يبغيان can accordingly be rendered “they do not exceed the limit” or “they do not encroach upon one another.”
Grammatically, the expression is distinct from بَرْزَخٌ. The noun names the barrier, while lā yabghiyāni describes the waters’ relation to the limit.
Not transgressing is therefore conveyed by baghy, rather than being the lexical meaning of barzakh itself.
Although the verb can express wrongdoing in human relationships, its use here does not imply that waters have moral agency and consciously decide not to wrong one another.
The Qur’anic language describes the waters’ behavior through a familiar expression of keeping or exceeding a limit.
Are these precisely the fresh and salt waters of Al-Furqān 25:53?
The comparison is worth considering: both passages mention maraja al-baḥrayni and a barzakh.
One distinction must remain visible.
Al-Furqān 25:53 explicitly identifies fresh and salt water.
Al-Raḥmān 55:19 and Al-Raḥmān 55:20 contain no such descriptions.
The passages can illuminate one another, but “fresh” and “salt” should not be inserted into Al-Raḥmān’s direct translation as if those words occurred there.
Early commentaries also differ over the waters’ referents. Some identify familiar terrestrial waters; others, including al-Ṭabarī’s preferred view, understand one as water of the sky and the other as water of the earth.
The exact referents of al-baḥrayn therefore cannot be determined through barzakh’s meaning alone.
Is it an invisible wall preventing all mixing?
The verses give no such description.
Fresh and salt water can mix where a river meets the sea. Differences of salinity and density can produce stratification and transition zones; currents, wind, tides, and other conditions affect the amount of mixing.
Oceanographic accounts show that the boundary need not be a perfectly sharp surface or an impermeable obstacle. In some places, waters intermingle gradually across a transition zone.
If the Qur’anic barzakh is related to such a phenomenon, one should therefore not claim that the waters never mix or that an impassable physical curtain separates them.
Nor does observing stratification establish that the Qur’an necessarily describes one particular scientific mechanism identified today.
Natural science can help identify possible instances, but cannot replace linguistic and contextual analysis.
What is more securely established in the Al-Raḥmān passage is that the waters meet, a limit or barrier intervenes, and they do not transgress the stated limit.
7. Wa-min warāʾihim barzakhun: death and the prevention of return
The third occurrence is in Al-Muʾminūn and concerns a different subject from the water passages.
Al-Muʾminūn 23:99
حَتَّىٰ إِذَا جَاءَ أَحَدَهُمُ الْمَوْتُ قَالَ رَبِّ ارْجِعُونِ
ḥattā idhā jāʾa aḥadahumu al-mawtu qāla rabbi irjiʿūni
Translation: “Until, when death comes to one of them, he says: My Lord, send me back.”
Al-Muʾminūn 23:100
لَعَلِّي أَعْمَلُ صَالِحًا فِيمَا تَرَكْتُ ۚ كَلَّا ۚ إِنَّهَا كَلِمَةٌ هُوَ قَائِلُهَا ۖ وَمِنْ وَرَائِهِمْ بَرْزَخٌ إِلَىٰ يَوْمِ يُبْعَثُونَ
laʿallī aʿmalu ṣāliḥan fīmā taraktu kallā innahā kalimatun huwa qāʾiluhā wa-min warāʾihim barzakhun ilā yawmi yubʿathūna
Translation: “Perhaps I may do what is right in what I left behind. No! It is merely a word he speaks; and beyond them is a barrier until the day they are raised.”
The main subject: a request to return
The passage first introduces death’s arrival. The person then asks to return to the previous life to do what is right.
The reply begins with كَلَّا (kallā): the request is not granted. The request is then identified as something the person says.
The barzakh is mentioned after that response.
The order matters: the barrier is not introduced independently of the request to return.
The person seeks to cross death’s boundary again and recover the opportunity for action in worldly life. The reply refuses that return and announces a barrier until resurrection.
Preventing return to the previous life is therefore one of its clearest contextual functions.
Early commentaries record this reading. Al-Ṭabarī transmits Mujāhid’s explanation of a barrier between the dead person and return to the world. Other reports describe the interval between death and resurrection.
Min warāʾihim: behind them or ahead?
وَرَاء (warāʾ) can concern the far side of something or a direction beyond a reference point. Context can make this what is behind or what lies ahead.
In Al-Muʾminūn 23:100, al-Ṭabarī and other commentators explain min warāʾihim as “before them”: the dead person faces a condition continuing until resurrection.
That does not make “ahead” the meaning of warāʾ in every Arabic occurrence.
“Beyond them” can preserve the word’s broader range in translation. The explanation can then clarify the barrier or interval extending from death’s arrival until resurrection.
Spatial or temporal direction comes from warāʾ and context, rather than from barzakh itself.
Does barzakh here name an independent world?
The expression “the world of barzakh” became familiar in later religious and philosophical language.
It commonly denotes a condition or stage between death and resurrection. Some philosophical and mystical systems also describe an independent level of existence with particular properties.
Al-Muʾminūn 23:100 itself does not contain the word “world.”
It specifies neither structure, location, dimensions, nor levels of existence. It also does not identify an independent world’s inhabitants, way of life, or details of time passing there.
Two points are clear: a barrier lies beyond them, and the condition continues until the day of resurrection.
Barzakh can thus denote an intervening barrier between conditions and, through إِلَىٰ يَوْمِ يُبْعَثُونَ (ilā yawmi yubʿathūna), the interval between death and resurrection.
These readings are compatible. Arabic can use a boundary between stages to name the interval between them as well.
Calling the interval barzakh does not establish every property later assigned to “the world of barzakh.”
Does the verse establish the dead’s awareness or unawareness?
Al-Muʾminūn 23:99 and Al-Muʾminūn 23:100 describe death’s arrival, a request to return, and its rejection.
The word barzakh itself establishes neither uninterrupted awareness throughout the interval nor a complete absence of awareness.
Nor can the noun alone prove or disprove blessing, punishment, sleep, dreams, or a particular experience between death and resurrection.
Those questions require separate study of passages such as Al-Zumar 39:42, Yā Sīn 36:52, Al-Muʾminūn 23:112, Al-Muʾminūn 23:113, Ghāfir 40:46, and other relevant passages.
Such investigations should not begin by placing their eventual conclusions inside barzakh’s lexical definition.
A feature not mentioned in this verse is not thereby disproved throughout the Qur’an.
The question of postmortem awareness therefore remains open in this lexical discussion, while the word’s meaning is clear: a barrier or interval between conditions.
Is barzakh the grave?
Some early interpretations call the grave a barzakh.
That is understandable: in ordinary experience, burial accompanies the end of worldly life and awaiting resurrection.
Yet barzakh does not lexically mean a grave or its soil.
Someone may die at sea, have a missing body, or die in another way. None of this removes the interval between death and resurrection.
Religious speech can therefore connect the grave and barzakh without making them exact lexical synonyms.
The actual expression in Al-Muʾminūn 23:100 is بَرْزَخٌ إِلَىٰ يَوْمِ يُبْعَثُونَ, rather than the name of a physical grave.
Does a barzakh provide a new opportunity for action?
The passage’s context does not support that reading.
The person asks to return and do what is right. The response is kallā, followed by mention of a barzakh.
The verse therefore cannot make barzakh a stage in which the same worldly opportunity to make amends is recovered.
It does not discuss every possible event between death and resurrection, but its response to returning and resuming worldly actions is clear.
This use shows more than an interval between times: in this context, a limit also blocks return to a previous condition.
9. Translation proposals for Forqan
The main natural English equivalents for barzakh are “barrier” and “intervening boundary.”
“Obstacle” also suits some contexts, particularly where passage or return is prevented.
Using barzakh untranslated can leave its general intervening sense unexplained or encourage a reader to import a specialized afterlife meaning into the water passages. A direct lexical equivalent avoids that restriction.
In Al-Furqān 25:53, “a barrier” suits barzakhan. In the full sentence, “placed between them a barrier and a forbidding restraint” distinguishes barzakh’s contribution from ḥijran maḥjūran.
In Al-Raḥmān 55:20, baynahumā barzakhun can be rendered “between them is a barzakh” or “between them is a barrier.” The preferred basic rendering is “a barrier,” which is clearer without specialized explanation.
In Al-Muʾminūn 23:100, wa-min warāʾihim barzakhun is close to “and beyond them is a barrier.”
The explanation can clarify that, in the setting of death and a request to return, the barrier marks the interval between worldly life ending and resurrection.
“World of spirits,” “waiting realm,” “grave,” “the sleep of the dead,” or “a world between this life and the next” should not replace the noun in the basic translation without justification.
If supported, such descriptions concern the condition after death rather than a brief lexical definition.
In the water passages, barzakh likewise should not be restricted to an invisible wall, a layer no molecule can cross, or land between two seas. These describe possible instances or physical models, rather than directly translating the word.
10. Conclusion
The Qur’an uses B R Z KH only through the noun barzakh: a limit, interval, or barrier between things or conditions.
Recorded early Arabic uses are not confined to solid obstacles. Shade and sunlight, doubt and certainty, and barriers between places or conditions all appear in its recorded range.
Historical origin is disputed. Ibn Fāris proposes an added khāʾ and a connection with B R Z; al-Rāghib reports possible adaptation from barzah. Neither account should be made certain without independent historical evidence.
In Al-Furqān 25:53, barzakh intervenes between fresh and salt water. In Al-Raḥmān 55:20, it lies between meeting waters, described as not transgressing the limit.
These uses do not make a barzakh the absence of every relationship, contact, or mixing. Nor does the word itself determine the barrier’s material and physical structure.
In Al-Muʾminūn 23:100, it follows rejection of a return requested at death’s approach and continues until resurrection. The context strongly supports a barrier against returning to the previous life; the interval between death and resurrection can also be called barzakh on the basis of this verse.
The noun itself does not explain postmortem awareness, the nature of the unseen, kinds of reward and punishment, or how time passes.
A suitable final definition for Forqan:
B R Z KH in Qur’anic use concerns a limit, interval, or barrier between things or conditions, which can prevent passage or arrival from one to the other. The Qur’an uses the word twice for a barrier between bodies of water and once for an interval and obstacle after death until resurrection. A barzakh need not be a physical wall or an independent world with specified properties; its nature is understood from context. The word’s direct meaning should remain separate from later philosophical, scientific, and theological descriptions attached to it.