Al-Azeem

The root. Al-Azeem comes from ʿ-ẓ-m, the root behind ʿaẓm (bone, the frame that gives a body its structure) and ʿaẓama (to be great, to carry weight and consequence). The connection is not accidental: what has ʿaẓm is what a thing is built on, its solid core, so greatness in this root is not size for its own sake but a weight and substance that everything else rests on or answers to. Al-Azeem is shaped as an intensive adjective, naming a greatness that admits no larger measure beside it.

What it means here. Al-Azeem is read as a greatness beyond any scale that could be used to compare it — not the greatest of a category, but great in a sense that makes comparison meaningless, since everything else that could be called great draws its greatness from Him. It is paired with Al-Aliyy, its steady Quranic companion: where Al-Aliyy affirms that nothing stands above Him, Al-Azeem affirms that nothing carries weight beside Him, height and magnitude read as one description rather than two separate claims.

Where it is met. Al-Azeem closes Ayat al-Kursi in Surah Al-Baqara and a parallel verse in Surah Ash-Shura, both times paired with Al-Aliyy. Surah At-Tawba and Surah An-Naml name "the Lord of the Mighty Throne," and Surah Al-Waqi'a twice commands, "glorify the name of your Lord, the Mighty." The same root also describes a great triumph, a great favor, and a great trial across many verses — a greatness the Quran treats as radiating outward from the name itself.