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Meaning & History
From the Arabic name of a type of tree, known as the lote tree (or "lotus tree") in English, which is given in reference to an Islamic symbol of the upper limit of heaven. When the prophet Muhammad ascended to Paradise, saw at the end of the seventh, highest heaven a lote tree, marking the place "beyond which neither prophets nor angels may pass" (only Allah), which he called سدرة المنتهى (sidra-tul-muntaha) "lote tree of the utmost boundary, of the last frontier".