25.06.2026
Ask a Pakistani scholar to describe the amulet he has just written, and he will call it a taweez. Ask an Iranian or Tajik scholar to describe the same object, the same folded paper, the same Quranic verses, the same intention of protection, and he will call it a naqsh (نقش). Two traditions. Two words. One object, and a real taweez vs naqsh difference that almost no English-language source explains correctly.
This is not a trivial difference in vocabulary. The choice between taweez and naqsh reflects two distinct philosophies about what an Islamic amulet actually is, how it works, and what the person who writes it is doing when they put pen to paper. So what is naqsh in Islam, exactly? Persian scholars chose the word deliberately, and the reason they chose it reveals an entire hidden science, ilm al-huroof, the Islamic mysticism of letters, numbers and sacred geometry, that developed in parallel with the Arabic tradition over more than a thousand years.
Before entering the history, it is necessary to be precise about what each word actually means, not in the general sense that English translations tend to flatten them into, but in the sense that scholars writing in Arabic, Persian and Urdu have used them.
The word taweez derives from the Arabic root ta'widh (تعوذ), which comes from the verb aadha (عاذ), to seek refuge, to take shelter in something greater than oneself. The Quranic declaration a'oodhu billahi min al-shaytaan il-rajeem uses this same root. The word taweez, therefore, is oriented toward function: the object is defined by what it does, which is to provide a channel through which the wearer seeks divine protection. The Arabic tradition, and the Urdu tradition that inherited from it, kept this functional emphasis at the centre of the term.
The word naqsh comes from the Persian and Arabic verb naqasha (نقش), to engrave, to carve, to imprint, to paint a pattern. A naqqash (نقاش) in classical Persian is an artist who engraves or paints intricate geometric patterns, the same craftsman who decorated the tilework of Persian mosques and the carved plasterwork of Safavid palaces. The word carries connotations of precision, geometry, pattern and the permanent transfer of form from mind into material. When Persian scholars chose this word for the Islamic amulet, they were making a statement: what the writer of an amulet is doing is not merely inscribing a prayer, he is engraving a geometric and numerical pattern of divine meaning into physical matter.
The difference is philosophical before it is terminological. Taweez asks: what does this object do? Naqsh asks: what is this object, and how is it constructed? The Persian scholarly tradition was far more concerned with the second question than the first.
The story of why Persian scholars settled on naqsh begins not in Iran but in the Arabic-speaking world of the eighth and ninth centuries, with the emergence of a discipline the scholars called ilm al-huroof wa al-asma' (علم الحروف والأسماء), the science of letters and names. This was the study of the numerical and spiritual properties of the Arabic alphabet and of the divine names encoded within it.
Ibn Khaldun (ابن خلدون), the great fourteenth-century Arab historian and sociologist, documented the moment when this science crossed from the Arab world into Persian Sufi circles. In his Muqaddima, his monumental introduction to history, he described how the science of letters had originally been rooted in the study of talismans, and how Persian Sufi scholars had then adapted and transformed it. He wrote: "naqala wad'ahu min al-talasanat ilayhi fi istilah ahl al-tasarruf min al-mutasawwifa", they transferred its foundation from the domain of talismans into the domain of spiritual practice, in the terminology of the Sufi masters who engaged in it.
What Ibn Khaldun was observing was a translation, not just of vocabulary, but of an entire conceptual framework. As the science of letters moved from Arabic scholarship into Persian Sufi academies, it acquired a new emphasis: the geometric and numerical construction of the amulet became as important as its Quranic content. And the Persian word for geometric construction, for the act of engraving a pattern, was naqsh.
Ibn Khaldun also noted that this science had produced a vast literature, naming among its authors the Arab mystic Ahmad ibn Ali al-Buni and the Andalusian Sufi Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, both of whose works had their greatest influence not in the Arabic-speaking world but in the Persian-speaking East, where their systems of letter-science and numerical squares were developed, systematised and transmitted across generations.
To understand why the word naqsh was the right word for what Persian scholars were doing, it is necessary to understand the specific science they were practising, a science that sits at the centre of every wafq naqsh Islamic amulet ever produced within the Persian taweez tradition. Three concepts are central to it.
The most distinctive feature of the Persian naqsh tradition is the wafq (وفق), the numerical square, known in Western mathematics as a magic square. A wafq is a grid of numbers in which the sum of every row, every column and every diagonal is identical. In a 3×3 wafq, for instance, the numbers one through nine are arranged so that every line of three adds to fifteen. In a 4×4 wafq, the target sum changes, and the arrangement is correspondingly more complex.
Persian scholars developed ilm al-awfaq (علم الأوفاق), the science of numerical squares, to a degree of sophistication unmatched in the Arabic world. But what made it distinctly naqsh was not the mathematics. It was the way the numbers were derived. The numbers in a Persian wafq-based amulet are not arbitrary: they are the abjad numerical values of specific Arabic letters, letters drawn from divine names or from Quranic verses chosen for their spiritual properties. The wafq, in this tradition, is not a mathematical puzzle. It is a geometric imprinting, a naqsh, of divine language into the structure of number and form.
The wafq-e ism-e a'zam (وفق اسم اعظم), for instance, is a numerical square constructed around the abjad values of the Greatest Name of God. Every row and column of this square sums to a number that is itself the numerical encoding of a divine attribute. The Persian scholars considered this not decoration but ontology: the divine name was literally present in the geometric structure of the object. The same principle underlies our 99 Names of Allah taweez, in which the divine names are written into the amulet itself.
The system that makes all of this possible is huroof-e abjad (حروف ابجد), the ancient Semitic practice of assigning numerical values to letters, and the foundation of all abjad numerology taweez construction across the Arabic, Persian and Urdu worlds. In the Arabic and Persian tradition, every letter of the alphabet carries a specific number: alif is one, ba is two, jeem is three, and so on through a sequence that follows pre-Islamic Semitic conventions rather than the standard Arabic alphabetical order.
The Persian and Urdu scholarly traditions distinguish between two forms of amulet based on how this system is used. The Urdu scholars of Jamia Banuri Town document this distinction in their legal rulings: a jazr (جزر, "explicit") is an amulet in which the Quranic content is written in full Arabic letters, visible and legible as Quranic text. A mudmar (مضمر, "hidden" or "encoded") is an amulet in which the same Quranic content is rendered in its abjad numerical values, producing a grid of numbers that encodes the same meaning in a form that only those who know the system can decode.
The Jamia Banuri Town fatwa on this question is direct: writing a taweez using abjad numerals is permissible, provided the underlying content is lawful. The encoding does not remove the Quranic content, it conceals it within number. And the word for an object that conceals meaning within geometric pattern is, in Persian, precisely naqsh.
The Persian word naqsh appears throughout classical Persian literature and architecture in contexts that illuminate why scholars chose it for their amulets. The intricate geometric tilework of the Safavid mosques of Isfahan, patterns of stars and hexagons that encode mathematical relationships visible only to those who know how to read them, is described as naqsh. The carved plasterwork of shrine interiors, in which Quranic calligraphy is interwoven with geometric arabesque, is naqsh. Even the concept of a seal, the impression of a ring's design left in wax, is described in Persian as naqsh.
In each of these cases, naqsh refers to the transfer of a meaningful pattern from one domain into another, from mind into tile, from ring into wax, from divine name into numerical grid. When Persian scholars applied this word to their amulets, they were saying something precise: the amulet is not merely a written prayer. It is an engraving of divine meaning into the structure of matter itself.
Arab by origin but Persian in influence, al-Buni is the foundational figure of the ilm al-huroof tradition. His Shams al-Ma'arif (شمس المعارف, The Sun of Knowledges) is the most comprehensive classical text on the science of letters, names and numerical squares. Ibn Khaldun named him explicitly alongside Ibn Arabi as one of the two authors whose works had shaped this entire field. Al-Buni was the first to systematise the correspondence between Arabic letters, their abjad values, and planetary and elemental forces, laying the foundation on which the entire Persian naqsh tradition was built. His wafq systems, particularly those associated with the ninety-nine names of God, remain the basis of amulet writing in both the Persian and Urdu scholarly traditions to this day.
The great Persian theologian and polymath from Khorasan, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi engaged with the question of taweez and naqsh in his monumental Quranic commentary Mafatih al-Ghayb (مفاتیح الغیب, The Keys of the Unseen). Al-Razi brought the intellectual rigour of Ash'ari theology to the question of whether the numerical encoding of Quranic content in amulets was legitimate, and his analysis became a touchstone for subsequent scholars in both the Arabic and Persian traditions. His name appears directly in the fatwa of Imam Ahmad Raza Khan in Fatawa-e-Razawiyya, where he is listed alongside al-Ghazali and Ibn Arabi as an authority who validated the science of awfaq. For al-Razi, the numerical square was a form of Quranic interpretation, a tafsir not of meaning but of structure, in which the mathematical relationships between the divine names were given visible, geometric form.
The Safavid Iranian scholar, mathematician, architect and mystic known as Sheikh Baha'i is perhaps the most practically detailed of the three. Working in the imperial Safavid court at Isfahan, the same court that produced the great mosques whose tilework made naqsh a household word in Persian culture, Sheikh Baha'i wrote detailed guides to the construction of naqsh-based amulets. His texts distinguished between naqsh-e hurufi (نقش حروفی, the letter-based naqsh, written in Arabic script) and naqsh-e a'adadi (نقش عددی, the number-based naqsh, written in abjad numerals). This terminological distinction, which Sheikh Baha'i systematised, became standard vocabulary in the Persian, Tajik and, through Mughal transmission, the Urdu scholarly tradition. He also documented the specific materials appropriate to different types of naqsh, copper for one purpose, silver for another, gold for a third, a system rooted in the correspondence between metals and planets that al-Buni had first established four centuries earlier.
The Mughal Empire, which ruled the Indian subcontinent from 1526, used Persian as its official court language. Persian scholars, Sufi masters and administrators moved freely between Iran and the subcontinent, bringing with them the Persian naqsh tradition and embedding it in the emerging Urdu scholarly culture of South Asia. The great Sufi orders that shaped Islamic practice on the subcontinent, the Chishti, the Qadiri, the Naqshbandi, all had Persian-language connections to the intellectual tradition we have been describing.
The result is that modern Urdu preserves the terminological distinction that Persian established. In everyday South Asian Muslim speech, taweez is the general term for any written amulet. But naqsh, used in exactly the same sense that Persian scholars used it, refers specifically to the numerical, grid-based form: the wafq-type amulet in which abjad values are arranged in a geometric square.
Imam Ahmad Raza Khan, in Fatawa-e-Razawiyya (Vol. 23, p. 406), was asked directly whether writing Quranic verses in abjad numerical form in a taweez was permissible. His answer was unambiguous: "The science of awfaq is from Imam Hujjat al-Islam al-Ghazali, Imam Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, Sheikh Akbar Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi and other great scholars. There is no basis for declaring it impermissible."
The Imam's use of the Persian-origin vocabulary, wafq, mudmar, in a legal fatwa written in Urdu demonstrates how completely the Persian science of naqsh had been absorbed into South Asian Islamic scholarship by the nineteenth century. The two traditions had not merely co-existed; they had merged, with the Persian technical vocabulary becoming the standard Urdu term for the numerical form of the taweez.
Understanding the distinction between taweez and naqsh is not merely a matter of historical interest. It has practical implications for anyone who wears an Islamic amulet or seeks to obtain one.
A taweez written in full Arabic letters, Ayat al-Kursi rendered in Quranic script, for instance, is a jazr, the explicit form. Its Quranic content is immediately visible. A taweez presented as a grid of numbers, with rows and columns that add to a specific sum, is a mudmar, the encoded form, and it is this form that the Persian tradition calls a naqsh in the strict sense. Both are legitimate according to the scholars cited above. Both have been written and worn by Muslims for more than a millennium.
When a taweez is made on metal, engraved or stamped into copper, silver or gold, the Persian word naqsh is not just a label. It is a literal description: the Quranic content has been engraved, in the precise sense of the word, into the material. This is why the metallic amulet is the form most naturally described by the Persian tradition, and why our gold taweez and taweez karma plate represent the naqsh tradition in its most literal expression. You may also find it useful to read our guide on how to decode a taweez, which explains how to read both the letter-based and numerical forms.
For those who have encountered a taweez with symbols, numbers or grids they could not read, the Persian naqsh tradition is usually the explanation. The grid is a wafq. The numbers are abjad values. The pattern is a naqsh, an engraving of divine meaning into geometric form. That is the real naqsh taweez meaning, and it is the product of a history of taweez in Persia and ilm al-huroof Islamic mysticism stretching back more than a thousand years.
Every taweez at taweez.co.uk is handwritten or engraved according to the classical conventions described above. Browse our most popular amulets:
The Persian taweez tradition grew out of ilm al-huroof Islamic mysticism, the science of letters and numbers, and placed special emphasis on the geometric construction of the amulet rather than only its written content. Where the Arabic tradition tends to call the object a taweez and focus on the written Quranic verse, the Persian tradition calls it a naqsh and treats every wafq naqsh Islamic amulet as an engraving of divine meaning into the structure of number itself. The whole history of taweez in Persia is, in effect, the history of this shift in emphasis from word to geometric form.
Not exactly. Both words refer to Islamic amulets containing Quranic content used for protection or spiritual purposes. However, taweez (from Arabic ta'widh) emphasises the function, seeking divine refuge, while naqsh (from Persian, meaning to engrave or imprint) emphasises the method of construction, particularly the use of numerical grids and geometric squares. In the Urdu tradition, naqsh has come to refer specifically to a taweez written in numerical form using abjad values, while taweez covers any written amulet.
According to Imam Ahmad Raza Khan in Fatawa-e-Razawiyya (Vol. 23, p. 406), the science of wafq is established through great Islamic scholars including Imam al-Ghazali, Imam Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and Sheikh Akbar Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi. He wrote that there is no basis for declaring it impermissible. The Deobandi school, while more cautious on some points, also permits the use of abjad numerals in taweez provided the content is lawful, as documented in rulings from Jamia Uloom Islamiyya Banuri Town.
This reflects the distinction between two forms documented in the Persian and Urdu scholarly tradition: jazr (جزر), in which the Quranic content is written in full Arabic letters, and mudmar (مضمر), in which the same content is encoded using its abjad numerical values. The mudmar form is particularly associated with the Persian naqsh tradition, where the numbers are arranged into a wafq, a geometric square in which every row, column and diagonal adds to the same sum, encoding divine names and Quranic verses into the geometry of number itself.
The classical scholars do not agree, and the disagreement is instructive. Imam Ahmad Raza Khan wrote that both forms are legitimate and that the numerical mudmar form is in some cases more appropriate, particularly where the taweez may be exposed to fire or water, as its encoded form protects the sanctity of the Quranic content. The Arabic tradition generally considers the written letter superior because it preserves the direct form of the Quran. What both traditions agree on is that the intention of the writer, the correctness of the content and the soundness of the scholar's belief matter far more than the form chosen.
Author: Salam Burdu
Salam Burdu is an Islamic scholar and lecturer from Pakistan who is known for his expertise in the field of Islamic spiritual healing and protection.