Abd El-Malik

The name means “servant of the King,” Al-Malik being one of the names of God in the Qur’an. The earliest form of the name was used to denote a prince/king or chieftain in the East Semitic Akkadian language of the Mesopotamian states of Akkad, Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldea. The Hebrew letters (m-l-k) usually stand for melek “king” (Proto-Northwest Semitic “malku”). Still, when vocalized as “mōlek” in Masoretic Hebrew text, they have been traditionally understood as a proper name “molóch (μολώχ),” (Proto-Northwest Semitic: Mulku) in the corresponding Greek renderings in the Septuagint translation, In Aquila, and the Middle Eastern Targum. The Arabic name “Mālik,” intimately connected with the root “m-l-k,” meaning “master, head,” also sometimes used in derived meanings. ‘Al-Malik’ (literally ‘the king’) is one of the Names of Allah. The Northwest Semitic “m-l-k” was the title of the rulers of the city-states of the Levant from the Late Bronze Age.