(Arabic: حنيف‎, Ḥanīf; plural: حنفاء, ḥunafā') refers to one who maintained the pure monothestic beliefs of the patriarch Ibrahim. More specifically, in Islamic thought, they are the people who, during the period known as the Pre-Islamic period or Age of Ignorance, were seen to have rejected idolatry and retained some or all of the tenets of the religion of Abraham (Arabic: Ibrāhīm) which was "submission to God" (Arabic: Allah) in its purest form.^[1]

Etymology and History of the term[edit]

The term is from the Arabic root ḥ-n-f meaning "to incline, to decline" (Lane 1893) from the Syriac root of the same meaning. The ḥanīfiyyah is the law of Ibrahim; the verb taḥannafa means "to turn away from [idolatry]", with a secondary and subsequent meaning of "to become circumcised". In the verse 3:67 of the Quran it has also been translated as "upright person" and outside the Quran as "to incline towards a right state or tendency".^[2] It appears to have been used earlier by Jews and Christians in reference to 'pagans' and applied to followers of an old Hellenized Syro-Arabian religion and used to taunt early Muslims.^[3]

Others maintained that they followed the "...religion of Ibrahim, the hanif, the Muslim..."^[3] It has been theorized by Watt that the verbal term Islam; arising from the participle form of Muslim (meaning: surrendered to God); may have only arisen as an identifying descriptor for the religion in the late Medinan period.^[3]