The Arabic word for sustenance assumes that provision comes from God, not from an employer.
Rizq (رزق) is an Arabic word meaning sustenance, provision, or livelihood. In Islamic theology, rizq encompasses everything that sustains a person, including food, income, health, knowledge, and relationships.1 The word appears in the Quran more than one hundred times, frequently in the context of God as the ultimate provider.
The concept carries a theological framework for understanding work that differs fundamentally from the industrial model. In the Islamic tradition, a person is expected to strive, but the outcome of that striving is understood as determined by God's decree, not solely by individual effort or market forces.2 This creates a relationship to work in which effort is obligatory but outcomes are not entirely within human control.
The word rizq does not distinguish between earned and unearned provision. An inheritance, a gift, a chance encounter that leads to opportunity, and wages from labor are all rizq. This breadth stands in contrast to the English salary or earning a living, both of which frame sustenance as something a person produces through their own labor within an employment system.
The Arabic root r-z-q appears across Islamic cultures from Morocco to Indonesia. In Turkish, rızık carries the same meaning. In Urdu and Persian, the word rizq is used alongside local terms for income and wages, maintaining the theological dimension that purely economic vocabulary lacks.