أنعم الله عليك
Anʿama Allāhu ʿAlayk
Topic
“May Allah bless you too”: the reply to naʿīman, a wish of comfort and well-being.
What it means
Anʿama Allāhu ʿalayk means “May Allah grant you favour”, and Faruqi lists it as the answer to the greeting naʿīman. The first greeting is a wish that the other person enjoy comfort and well-being. The reply returns the wish and turns it to God, who is the giver of every favour. The expression belongs to the daily courtesies of Muslim speech, where a kind wish is met with a prayer rather than with a bare word of thanks. The root n-ʿ-m, from which niʿma (favour) comes, is common in the Quran, which repeatedly reminds people to remember the favour of God upon them.
Often misunderstood as
That it is only a polite filler, when it is a short prayer that sends the blessing back and acknowledges God as its source.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 62, listed as AN‘AMA ALLAHU ‘ALAYK.. The definition is restated here.