Greeting, leave-taking and address

This lesson asks you to identify conventions of greeting and address, and to use them appropriately when you speak. The museum offers two: how a greeting is given on meeting and on parting, and how a person is honoured by a kunya. The phrases you practise, regional variants, and everyday formality, your class brings. ¹

Notice the occasions for the greeting in the record: on meeting and on parting. Then compare how you would address an older person, a friend and a stranger, and what changes between them.

The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence reports how a kunya may be taken by someone who has no child. A person without children may take the kunya of another's child, as the Prophet ﷺ told Aisha when she had no child to be named after: take the kunya of your son Abd Allah, her nephew ². A kunya may be taken from a quality, such as Abu Turab or Abu Hurayra (may God be pleased with him) ². On the kunya of a child, most jurists see no harm, on the report of Anas about Abu Umayr, on the words of Umar to hasten the kunyas of children lest bad nicknames stick, and on the report that the Prophet gave Ibn Mas'ud the kunya Abu Abd al-Rahman before he had children ^{2 3}. Scholars said children were given kunyas as an omen of living until they have children ^{2 3}.

On the kunya of a child, most jurists see no harm ^{2 3}. Ibn Abidin says that some dislike giving a child the kunya Abu Bakr, but most do not, since people intend an omen ³. So the majority accept it, some dislike one particular kunya for a child, and in the encyclopaedia the reason given for giving a child a kunya is an omen of a long life.

All these rulings come from one book, the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence, which names those who hold them and the reports they rely on: Ibn Muflih cites the report of Hani ibn Yazid ², and Ibn Abidin gives his view on the kunya Abu Bakr ³. The record on greeting with peace takes the meaning of the word taslim from the same encyclopaedia ⁴; its other sections are headed "Greeting as a brother's right in Sheikh Omar Abdelkafy's lesson" and "In Abd al-Rahman Mansour's programme 'Ahalina'", and they report what was said in a lesson and in a programme.

The encyclopaedia reports a kunya that a man takes from his eldest son, and a kunya given to a child as an omen of living until he has children ^{2 3}. Which kind is easier to use correctly when you meet a stranger, and why?

• Kunya: the rulings the jurists give, the kunya of the Prophet, and the kunya of a child.
• Greeting with peace: the meaning of taslim, and the sections of the record that report a lesson and a programme.
• Tasmiya: the jurists' senses of the word for naming, and the schools' differing views on the time of naming.

Read the records on the greeting of peace and on the kunya. Write a short role-play in which two people meet, honour each other by a name that begins with Abu or Umm, and take leave.