فلان وفلان

Arabic

Alternative forms

• فُلان وَعِلّان (fulān wa-ʕillān)
• فلان وفلان وفلان (fulān wa-fulān wa-fulān) (including Uthman, the third caliph)

Noun

فُلان وَفُلان • (fulān wa-fulān) m

1. (non-idiomatic) two persons of unknown or unmentioned names; so-and-so and so-and-so; somebody and somebody
2. (Twelver Shiite Islam, idiomatic) Abu Bakr and Umar, the first two caliphs of Islam (whom Shiites consider illegitimate)
   • 10th c. AD, Sheikh aṣ-Ṣaffār al-Qummī, Baṣaʾir ad-Darajāt (view online)

     حدثنا محمد بن هارون [...] قال سألت أبا عبد الله عليه السلام عن قبة آدم فقلت له هذه قبة آدم فقال نعم ولله قباب كثيرة أما إن خلف مغربكم هذا تسعة وثلاثين مغربا أرضا بيضاء ومملوة خلقا يستضيئون بنورنا لم يعصوا الله طرفة عين لا يدرون اخلق الله آدم أم لم يخلقه يبرؤون من فلان وفلان قيل له كيف هذا يتبرؤن من فلان وفلان وهم لا يدرون أخلق الله آدم أم لم يخلقه فقال للسائل أتعرف إبليس قال لا الا بالخبر قال فأمرت باللعنة والبراءة منه قال نعم قال فكذلك امر هؤلاء.

     Muḥammad b. Hārūn [...] relayed to us: I asked Abū ʿAbdallāh (peace be upon him) about the vault of Adam. “This is the vault of Adam?” I said. “Yes,” he said, “but Allah has many. Beyond this sunset of yours are nine-and-thirty [other] sunsets, white lands filled with beings irradiated by our [i.e. the Imams'] light that have never sinned against Allah, not for a blink of an eye. They do not know whether Allah made an "Adam" or not, and they execrate him and the other.” One said to him: “How can they anathematize him and the other while they do not know whether or no Allah has created an Adam?” He said to the asker: “Do you know Satan?” He answered: “No, only through that account.” He said: “Yet you were ordered to curse him and to deplore him.” He said: “Yes.” “Well,” he said, “such is their case also.”