Wila', walayah, wilayah, wali, mawla. The real, original meaning of all of these words comes from the root-word "waliya" (waw-lam ya). This root-word is among those which ap- pear with the greatest frequency in the Qur'an, being used in various forms: it appears in the Qur'an in 124 places in the noun form, and in 112 places in the verb form.
The original meaning of this root-word, according to the famous Qur'anic lexicon Mufradatu 'l-Qu'ran, is "the being situated of something beside something else, in the sense that there is no separation between them", that is to say that if two things are so contiguous one with the other that there is nothing between Wilayah - The Station of the Master them, the root-word "waliya" is used. As a result of this, the word has come to be used in the sense of nearness and affinity, usually to mean a special or spiritual affinity.
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