Al-Qabid

The root. Al-Qabid comes from q-b-d, the root behind qabḍa, a grip or a handful, and the verb qabaḍa, to seize, grasp, or hold something back. What the root carries is contraction — closing the hand around something, drawing it in rather than releasing it — the physical image behind every abstract use the root is put to.

What it means here. Al-Qabid is understood as the one who withholds, constricts, or draws in — provision, ease, or, in the sense several commentators give it, the soul itself at the moment of death. The name is essentially never spoken of alone in the tradition; it is paired with its opposite, Al-Basit, the Extender, because withholding and giving are read together as two expressions of the same complete control, not as separate or conflicting powers.

Where it is met. The exact word Al-Qabid does not itself appear in the Quran as a name. What does appear, in one verse of Surah al-Baqarah, is the verb form of this same root, stating plainly that Allah withholds and extends — the action the name describes, stated in the Quran's own words even where the noun-form title is not used there directly.