الباطن
al-Bāṭin
Topic
A divine name meaning He who is hidden behind all phenomena; the opposite of al-Ẓāhir.
What it means
Al-Bāṭin means the Hidden. Faruqi explains that it names God as the One hidden behind all appearances, and gives al-Ẓāhir, the Manifest, as its opposite. The name does not say that God is absent. It says that His reality cannot be grasped by the senses, although His signs are everywhere. The Quran joins the two names with al-Awwal and al-Ākhir in a single verse: He is the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden (57:3). The verse ends with the statement that He has knowledge of everything. Taken together, the four names describe a God who is before and after all things and is both evident in His works and beyond sight.
Often misunderstood as
That God is distant, when the name says He is beyond the senses and yet close in knowledge.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 25, listed as AL BĀṬIN. The definition is restated here.