Al Aakhir

Al-Muʾakhkhir’s root, seen from the other end: what follows, what remains when the rest has gone by. The same letters give ākhira, the life after this one, and al-ākhar, simply “the other”.

Of the 30 ayat carrying this written form, 26 are the phrase “the Last Day”, three are simply “the other one” — the second of two prisoners, the second of two brothers — and exactly one is the name, in the four-name ayah of Sūrat al-Ḥadīd, beside al-Awwal, aẓ-Ẓāhir and al-Bāṭin. Almost everything the Qur’an says with these letters is about a day that has not arrived yet. An ending, in this root, is a place rather than a stopping.