imam

plural imams · alternative archaic imaum · alternative archaic iman

1. IslamOne who leads the salat prayers in a mosque.

   Sheik Mohammad Seyed Tantawi, Egypt’s highest-ranking imam, led the prayers over the coffin, covered with an Egyptian flag.

   2007 April 10, Howard Blum, “Who Killed Ashraf Marwan?”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 26 Apr 2023, retrieved 18 Sep 2015

   4 more examples

   Now it chanced that in one of the mosques was an Imam. (footnote: The person specially appointed to lead the prayers of the congregation and paid out of the endowed revenues of the mosque to which he is attached)

   1901, John Payne, Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp

   But then there's a Christian cleric and an imam on each of the country's three regional censorship boards, in Kaduna, Lagos and Onitsha, although more than one producer told me that the brown envelope worked the same magic here as in any other Nigerian Government department.

   2001 May 10, London Review of Books

   In the 1980s, roughly six hundred young Algerian men, many of them protégés of Muslim Brothers from Egypt and Wahhabi imams from Saudi Arabia, went to Afghanistan to join the anti-Soviet jihad.

   2004 October 7, London Review of Books, page 3

   The critically low level of rainfall in the second half of 2020 – approaching 50% year on year for November – led the religious affairs directorate to instruct imams and their congregations to pray for rain last month.

   2021 January 13, Bethan McKernan, “Turkey drought: Istanbul could run out of water in 45 days”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 27 Aug 2025

2. capitalizedusuallyA Shi'ite Muslim leader descended from the prophet Muhammad and functioning as his spiritual successor.
   1. capitalizedusuallyOne of the Twelve imams, descendants of Muhammad from the seventh to ninth centuries CE who lived exemplary lives.

plural Imams

1. A surname from Arabic.