Some of the names of Allah arrive on almost every page of the Qur'an. This one comes once. A single word, near the close of a single verse, and then it is gone: wa-kana Allahu ala kulli shay'in muqita, and ever is Allah, over all things, a Keeper. You could read past it in a second. But the early scholars stopped on this one word and turned it over and over, because it carries a cluster of meanings that, taken together, describe a God who is holding your whole life at once.
Al-Muqit. The classical works gather it into two great senses. The first is bound to the Arabic word qut, the small daily portion of food that keeps a body alive: Al-Muqit is the One who measures out and gives every creature its sustenance, the One on whom the provision of every living thing depends. The second is the sense of a watchful, capable keeper: the Witness who sees all of it, the Guardian who preserves it, the All-Able who has power over every part of it. Hold the two together and you have a Lord who both feeds you and watches over you, who apportions the morsel and weighs the deed, and who has never once lost track of either.
The one word, and where it sits
مَّن يَشْفَعْ شَفَاعَةً حَسَنَةً يَكُن لَّهُ نَصِيبٌ مِّنْهَا ۖ وَمَن يَشْفَعْ شَفَاعَةً سَيِّئَةً يَكُن لَّهُ كِفْلٌ مِّنْهَا ۗ وَكَانَ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ مُّقِيتًا
“Whoever intercedes for a good cause will have a share [i.e., reward] therefrom; and whoever intercedes for an evil cause will have a portion [i.e., burden] therefrom. And ever is Allah, over all things, a Keeper.”
An-Nisa 4:85 Read 4:85 with tafsir
First, an honest word about the name itself. Most of the well known names of Allah appear in the Qur'an in their definite form, with the al- attached: Ar-Rahman, Al-Aziz, Al-Hakim. Al-Muqit, in that exact definite shape, is not one of them. What the Qur'an gives us is the word muqitan, indefinite, in the accusative, one time, at the end of An-Nisa 4:85. The definite name Al-Muqit, as it sits in the traditional list of ninety nine, is drawn by the scholars from this single Qur'anic word and from how the language uses it. We say that plainly, because this name deserves to be met for what it actually is in the Book.
And what a place the Book sets it in. The verse before it is about intercession, about putting your weight behind another person's cause: stand up for someone in a good matter and a share of that good is yours; throw your weight behind an evil one and a portion of that evil is yours. Then the verse seals with this name. Whatever you do for or against another person, weigh it carefully, because Allah is, over all things, muqita. The name lands as a reminder that nothing you set in motion falls outside His knowledge, His record, or His power.
Sahih International renders the word here as Keeper, and that single English word already hints at the breadth the mufassirun found in it. To keep is to preserve, to watch over, and to provide for, all at once. Sit with the verse, and then watch the scholars open the word.
How the early scholars read the word
When a word in the Qur'an carries several meanings, Ibn Kathir often does something generous: he lines up the readings of the early authorities side by side so you can see the full shape of it. On muqitan he does exactly that. He reports that Ibn Abbas, Ata, Atiyya, Qatada and Matar al-Warraq read it as hafiz, a Keeper and Guardian. Mujahid read it as shahid, a Witness, and in another narration from him, hasib, a Reckoner. Sa'id ibn Jubayr, al-Suddi and Ibn Zayd read it as qadir, the All-Able, the One with power over everything. Abdullah ibn Kathir read it as al-wasib, the One who is constant and unceasing in His care. And al-Dahhak read it with the meaning that gives the name its warmest color: ar-razzaq, the Provider.
Ibn Kathir then preserves a line that pulls all of this down to the level of a single human being. A man asked Abdullah ibn Rawaha about this verse, and he answered: He sustains every person according to his deeds. The God who measures the food also measures the recompense.
Al-Tabari, who collects the early views even more exhaustively, sorts them into three: that muqitan means hafiz and shahid, a Keeper and Witness; that it means the One who stands over everything with tadbir, with managing and maintaining it; and that it means qadir, the All-Able. He then leans toward qadir as the strongest, noting that this is the meaning in the dialect of Quraysh, and he cites an old Arabic line in which a man says he held himself back from someone he had the power to harm, using muqita to mean qadiran, able. So already, from these two scholars alone, the word is doing two jobs at once: it is about a watchful, sustaining keeper, and it is about sheer power that nothing escapes.
_Note: gathering these readings into the two clusters that organize this reflection (the Nourisher who provides, and the Keeper who witnesses and is able) is our way of holding the tafsir together for contemplation. Each individual reading above is the scholar's; the grouping is offered as tadbir over the Book, not as a formal scholarly category._
Muqit and the word qut: the morsel and the One who measures it
وَجَعَلَ فِيهَا رَوَاسِيَ مِن فَوْقِهَا وَبَارَكَ فِيهَا وَقَدَّرَ فِيهَا أَقْوَاتَهَا فِي أَرْبَعَةِ أَيَّامٍ سَوَاءً لِّلسَّائِلِينَ
“And He placed on it [i.e., the earth] firmly set mountains over its surface, and He blessed it and determined therein its [creatures'] sustenance in four days without distinction - for [the information of] those who ask.”
Fussilat 41:10 Read 41:10 with tafsir
To feel the first sense of this name, you have to feel the word underneath it. Muqit is built from the root q-w-t, and the noun from that root is qut: a person's sustenance, the measured daily portion of food that keeps them alive. Al-Qurtubi, working through the linguistics of the verse, lands on this directly. He explains that the meaning is that Allah gives every human being his qut, his sustenance, and he cites the early grammarian al-Farra' to the same effect: Al-Muqit is the One who gives every man his qut. An-Nahhas, he reports, even preferred the reading hafiz here precisely because the word derives from al-qut, the measure that preserves a person.
There is something striking in this root. It appears in only two places in the entire Qur'an, and the other place is a verse about Allah stocking the whole earth. In Surah Fussilat, describing the making of the world, the Qur'an says He determined therein its aqwat, its sustenances, the very same word, the plural of qut. Ibn Kathir explains that these aqwat are the provisions the inhabitants of the earth need, and the places where things are sown and planted. Al-Muyassar glosses it as the food and the livelihoods of the earth's people, apportioned for them. And Ibn Zayd, whom Ibn Kathir cites, reads the verse to mean that Allah measured it all out in accord with the need of everyone who would ever need it, so that whoever requires provision finds that Allah has already apportioned for him exactly what he needs.
Put the two verses on the same table and the name opens up. The One who is muqita over all things is the One who, before there was a single mouth to feed, laid the sustenance into the earth and measured it. The portion on your plate today is a thread running back to that apportioning. To call Allah Al-Muqit is to say He is not only the source of the harvest in the abstract; He is the One who measures the morsel to the mouth.
The provision of every living thing is upon Him
وَمَا مِن دَابَّةٍ فِي الْأَرْضِ إِلَّا عَلَى اللَّهِ رِزْقُهَا وَيَعْلَمُ مُسْتَقَرَّهَا وَمُسْتَوْدَعَهَا ۚ كُلٌّ فِي كِتَابٍ مُّبِينٍ
“And there is no creature on earth but that upon Allah is its provision, and He knows its place of dwelling and place of storage. All is in a clear register.”
Hud 11:6 Read 11:6 with tafsir
The sustaining sense of Al-Muqit does not stop at human beings, and the Qur'an widens it to every breathing thing. There is no creature that crawls on the earth, it says, but that its provision is upon Allah. Al-Sa'di, commenting on this verse, says it plainly: every living thing that moves on the face of the earth, human or land animal or sea creature, Allah has guaranteed their provisions and their sustenance, He has taken their rizq and their aqwat, that same word again, upon Himself. Al-Muyassar adds that He has guaranteed the provision of everything that walks the earth, out of His pure grace.
And al-Sa'di draws the comfort out of it for you. He knows, the verse continues, every creature's place of dwelling and its place of storage; all of it is written in a clear record. So, al-Sa'di concludes, let hearts be at peace with the One who has guaranteed their provisions, who has encompassed their very selves and their states in His knowledge, and whose provision is wide enough for them all. That is the heart of the name worked into an instruction: the same God who measured the food has also written down where you sleep and where you will be tomorrow, so the anxiety about whether there will be enough can finally rest somewhere.
The classical scholars place a sister name right beside this one. In Surah Adh-Dhariyat, Allah names Himself ar-Razzaq, the continual Provider, and seals it with power: the firm possessor of strength. That pairing, the Provider who is also the strong, is the very shape of Al-Muqit, which the salaf read as both ar-razzaq and al-qadir. The God who feeds you is not a kind but helpless friend. He is the Provider who has the strength to make good on every portion He has promised.
The Witness who keeps the account
Now turn the name to its other face, because the verse it lives in is not about food at all. An-Nisa 4:85 is about deeds: a good word spoken on someone's behalf, an evil one. And here the keeping sense of Al-Muqit comes forward. Al-Sa'di, commenting on the verse itself, says that the close, wa-kana Allahu ala kulli shay'in muqita, means Allah is a Witness, a Keeper and a Reckoner over these deeds, who will recompense each person with exactly what they deserve. Al-Muyassar reads it the same way: Allah is, over all things, a Witness and a Keeper.
This is the reading carried by the greatest of the early authorities. Ibn Abbas, as both Ibn Kathir and al-Tabari report, glossed muqitan as hafiz, a Keeper. Mujahid glossed it as shahid, a Witness, and as hasib, a Reckoner. So when the verse says weigh what you do for and against people, the name that seals it is the name of the One who is keeping the books. He witnessed the good word you put in for someone quietly. He witnessed the harm you helped along. None of it is unrecorded, and none of it is unweighed.
Hold this together with the feeding sense and you see why the early scholars would not reduce this word to one meaning. The very same name tells you that the God measuring out your daily bread is the God measuring out your daily deeds. He is provisioning your body and auditing your soul in the same breath, with the same total, unbroken attention. Abdullah ibn Rawaha's line returns here with its full weight: He sustains every person according to his deeds.
The All-Able, over every single thing
وَإِن مِّن شَيْءٍ إِلَّا عِندَنَا خَزَائِنُهُ وَمَا نُنَزِّلُهُ إِلَّا بِقَدَرٍ مَّعْلُومٍ
“And there is not a thing but that with Us are its depositories, and We do not send it down except according to a known [i.e., specified] measure.”
Al-Hijr 15:21 Read 15:21 with tafsir
There is a third strand the scholars pulled from this word, and it guards the other two from shrinking God down. Al-Suddi, Ibn Zayd and Sa'id ibn Jubayr, as Ibn Kathir and al-Tabari report, read muqitan as qadir, the All-Able. Al-Jalalayn glosses the word at 4:85 in one breath as muqtadiran, the All-Powerful, who recompenses every single person for what they did. Al-Tabari, weighing all the views, judged this the strongest meaning. And al-Qurtubi agrees that muqita here means muqtadir, the All-Able, citing the same line of old Arabic poetry to prove it.
Notice why this matters. The phrase the name closes is ala kulli shay'in, over all things, over every single thing without exception. A provider who could be overdrawn, a keeper whose records could be lost, would be no comfort at all. Al-Muqit is the Provider who cannot run short and the Keeper who cannot be overruled, because His provisioning and His keeping rest on absolute power over every atom of what He made.
The Qur'an gives that power a picture. There is not a thing, Allah says in Surah Al-Hijr, but that its treasuries are with Us, and We send it down only by a known measure. We might reflect that this is Al-Muqit seen from above: the storehouses of every good are with Him, and nothing leaves them except in a weighed, deliberate portion, a qadar. The same exact apportioning that fills the earth with aqwat in Surah Fussilat is the apportioning that releases every gift by measure here. He is never improvising. He is measuring.
Living with the One who measures your portion
A name of Allah is never only a definition. It is meant to move into your chest and change how you carry your days, and Al-Muqit changes at least three things.
First, it heals the anxiety about provision. So much of our fear is the quiet arithmetic of whether there will be enough: enough money, enough work, enough of whatever runs the household. Al-Muqit answers that fear at the root. The earth itself was stocked with its aqwat before you were born; the provision of every crawling creature, in al-Sa'di's words, is a debt Allah took upon Himself; and the One who measured it has the power, the strength of ar-Razzaq dhu al-quwwa al-matin, to deliver it. You are still required to work and to tie your camel. But you are not the source of your own sustenance, and you never were. The source is a name of God.
Second, it sobers you about your deeds. The same name that feeds you witnesses you. If you truly held it in mind that the One apportioning your next meal is also recording the word you are about to say behind someone's back, the slander would catch in your throat. Al-Muqit is shahid and hasib, Witness and Reckoner. People are careless with their tongues and their dealings because they imagine the account is loose. This name closes a verse about exactly that, about intercession for good and for ill, to tell you the account is precise.
Third, it teaches you how to give. The One who measures every portion does not measure stingily; He apportioned the whole earth so that, in Ibn Zayd's reading, whoever has a need finds it already met. A heart shaped by Al-Muqit cannot hoard while measuring out crumbs to others. There is even a hadith, which al-Tabari and al-Qurtubi cite while explaining this very word, warning that it is sin enough for a person to neglect the sustenance of those he is responsible to feed. To carry this name is to become, in your own small and human way, a keeper of other people's portions.
The name that holds your whole life
Step back and let the single word stretch to its full size. In this one moment, Al-Muqit is measuring the sustenance of every living thing on the earth at once: the grain to the sparrow, the milk to the infant, the strength to the worker, the rain to the field, each portion weighed and delivered, none forgotten, none confused with another. The earth He stocked with its aqwat is still feeding from that apportioning. And not one creature's provision has ever failed to arrive.
And in that very same moment, He is the Witness keeping the account of every one of those lives: the kind word, the broken promise, the quiet good no one else saw, the harm dressed up as help. The God measuring the morsel is the God weighing the deed, and He has the absolute power, over all things, to make good on both, to provide what He promised and to recompense what was earned.
That is why the early scholars would not let this rare word mean only one thing. It is too full. Al-Muqit is the Nourisher who feeds you, the Keeper who watches over you, the Witness who records you, and the All-Able under whom none of it can slip. You are fed by Him, seen by Him, kept by Him, and held by Him, in a single name that the Qur'an speaks just once, and means forever.