As-salamu alaykum
As-salamu alaykum (, , ) is a greeting in Arabic that means "Peace be upon you". The "salām" (سَلَام) (meaning "Peace") has become a religious salutation for Muslims worldwide when greeting each other, though its use as a greeting pre-dates Islam, and is also common among Arabic speakers of other religions (such as Arab Christians and Mizrahi Jews), and is also widely used in cognate languges like Hebrew. In colloquial speech, often only the first part of the phrase (i.e. "Salām", "peace") is used to greet a person. The typical response to the greeting is "wa ʿalaykumu s -salām" (, ), "And peace be upon you." The complete phrase is "as-salāmu ʿalaykum wa-raḥmatu -llāhi wa-barakātuh" (, ), "Peace be upon you, as well as the mercy of God and his blessings." This greeting in its abbreviated form, "salām" (), has come to be used as the general salutation in other languages as well. Among Christians, during Mass or other liturgical services, the priest or pastor and the congregation often use the salutation, "peace be with you," sometimes replying, "and also with you." Pronunciation. The phrase is normally pronounced according to local dialects of speakers and is very often shortened. For  example: Grammatical variants. The expression commonly uses the second person plural masculine, even when used to address one person. It may be modified by choosing the appropriate enclitic pronoun to address a person in the masculine and feminine singular form, the dual form, or the feminine plural form. The conjugations are as follows (note: according to the standard pronunciation rules of Classical Arabic, the last short vowel in each word is not pronounced in pausa): A third-person variant, "ʿalayhi as-salām", "peace be upon him", is often used by Muslims for prophets other than Muhammad and other holy personalities , such as angels. In Islam. According to Islamic tradition, the origin of the greeting "Peace be upon you" dates back to the first human, Adam: Abu Huraira reported: The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Allah said: Go and greet with peace these groups of assembled angels and listen to how they greet you, for this will be the greeting among your progeny. Adam said: Peace be upon you. The angels said: Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah. Thus, they added the mercy of Allah” The final Prophet said, “None of you will enter paradise  until you believe and you will not believe until you love one another. Shall I not tell you about something which, if you do it, you will love one another? Spread salaam amongst yourselves.” It is also stated that one should give the Salam greeting upon entering a house. This is based upon a verse of the Quran: "However, when you enter houses, greet one another with a greeting ˹of peace˺ from Allah, blessed and good. This is how Allah makes His revelations clear to you, so perhaps you will understand." (An-Nur 24:61). The phrase appears a total of  7 times in the Quran, each time as "salamun ʿalaykum" (). In Classical Arabic, used in the Qur'an and early Hadith manuscripts, the phrase is spelled as . In Rasm, it is written as . Other variants, such as "salamun ʿalā" (), or the term "salam" () alone is also mentioned in several other Ayahs of the Qur'an.