Al-Akhir

The root. Al-Akhir comes from ʾ-kh-r, the same root behind Al-Mu'akhkhir, "the Delayer" — a connection worth noticing, since both names describe what stands behind or after, one in time generally and one in the specific act of postponing. Al-Akhir is the plain adjective, "last," naming a position rather than an action taken.

What it means here. Al-Akhir is read as the one who remains after everything else has perished — not last among things that end, since He does not end at all, but last in the sense that no ending follows His, which itself has none. Set against Al-Awwal, the pairing closes existence from both directions at once: nothing precedes Him and nothing outlasts Him, so that whatever exists between those two names exists only because He sustains it, and only for as long as He does.

Where it is met. Like Al-Awwal, Al-Akhir's essentially sole appearance in the Quran is the same verse, Surah Al-Hadid 57:3, naming Allah "the First and the Last, the Ascendant and the Intimate." The pairing of first and last recurs in supplications attributed to the Prophet as a phrase asking Allah's protection at the start and end of every matter, though those supplications belong to the hadith tradition rather than to the Quran's own wording.