Two Understandings of Rizq

Rizq carries two distinct meanings, one lughawī, lexical, and one properly religious, in the sense of the sharīʿah. In the lexical, dictionary sense of the Arabic language, anything at all that gives a person some use or benefit, some manfaʿah, is called rizq; the plural is arzāq, and the word carries other senses besides, though this is the one relevant here.

In the religious sense the schools of ʿaqīdah differ a little. According to some of the dictionaries, and to the Māturīdī school of thought, rizq is defined strictly: it is what Allah (swt) sends to a living being that He created, in order to maintain and sustain that being's existence — nourishment, in the strictest sense, whatever passes through the mouth into the stomach to keep a life going. The Ashʿarī school, the second school of thought in ʿaqīdah, defines it more broadly: not only what nourishes the body, but anything at all that Allah (swt) gives a person and from which that person benefits — clothing, a house, one's earnings, anything with a direct benefit to one's own person. Both understandings are accepted as valid.