Ad-Darr

The root. Ad-Darr comes from ḍ-r-r, a root meaning harm — ḍarar is damage or injury, and ḍarr names the causing of it directly. The same root gives ḍarūra, necessity, a state so pressing it leaves no other option, a sense that shares with harm the idea of something forced on a person against their preference. Ḍārr is the active participle, "the one who harms," built on the same fā'il pattern as its counterpart Naf', "the one who benefits."

What it means here. Ad-Darr is read always paired with An-Nafi', never alone, because on its own the name risks sounding like an accusation rather than a statement about power — the point the pairing makes is that both benefit and harm happen only by Allah's permission, so that nothing and no one, whether an idol, a person, or an object of superstition, can cause either independently of Him. It is a name meant to dissolve a fear as much as to state a fact: what looks like harm coming from another source is read as having no power of its own at all.

Where it is met. The exact word Ad-Darr does not appear as a name of Allah in the Quran. What recurs, in verses like Surah Al-A'raf 7:188, Ar-Ra'd 13:16, and Saba 34:42, is the pairing "harm nor benefit" — ḍarran wa lā naf'an — stated of everything besides Allah, prophets and idols alike, that none of them possesses for themselves any power to harm or help. The verses establish the principle the name is built on without using this precise noun-form title of Allah directly.