Fitna (word)

Fitna (or fitnah, pl. fitan; Arabic: فتنة , فتن‎‎: "temptation, trial; sedition, civil strife") is an Arabic word with extensive connotations of trial, affliction, or distress. A word loaded with important historical implications, it is also widely used in modern Arabic.

As with any word in Arabic, one should distinguish between the meanings of fitna as used in Classical Arabic and the meanings of fitna as used in Modern Standard Arabic and various colloquial dialects. Furthermore, because of the conceptual importance of fitna in the Qur'an, its use in that work needs to be considered separately from, though in addition to, the word's general lexical meaning in Classical Arabic.

Aside from its use in the Qur'an, fitna is used as term for the four heavy civil wars within the Islamic Caliphate from the 7th to the 9th century AD.

Arabic, in common with other Semitic languages like Hebrew, employs a system of root letters combined with vowel patterns to constitute its whole range of vocabulary; it is, therefore, essential to identify the root letters of any word, in order to better understand the word's full semantic range.

Fitna has the triliteral root fā'-tā'-nūn (Arabic: ف ت ن‎‎). In addition to the feminine noun fitna, fitan, this root forms, in particular, a Form I active verb fatana, yaftinu (Arabic: فتن ، يفتن‎‎), a Form I passive verb futina, yuftanu (Arabic: فتن ، يفتن‎‎), a Form I maṣdar futūn (Arabic: فتون‎‎), a Form I active participle fātin (Arabic: فاتن‎‎), a Form I passive participle maftūn (Arabic: مفتون‎‎), and so on.

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