Yūnus 10:24

Innamā mathalu'l-ḥayāti'd-dunyā ka-māʾin anzalnāhu mina's-samāʾi fa'khtalaṭa bihī nabātu'l-arḍi mimmā yaʾkulu'n-nāsu wa'l-anʿām, ḥattā idhā akhadhati'l-arḍu zukhrufahā wa'zzayyanat wa ẓanna ahluhā annahum qādirūna ʿalayhā atāhā amrunā laylan aw nahāran fa-jaʿalnāhā ḥaṣīdan ka-an lam taghna bi'l-ams, kadhālika nufaṣṣilu'l-āyāti li-qawmin yatafakkarūn

"The likeness of the life of this world is this: like water We send down from the sky. With it the plants of the earth, from which people and cattle eat, mingle together. Until, when the earth has taken on its ornament and decked itself out, and its owners suppose they have power over it — Our command comes to it by night or by day, and We make it a mown field, as though it had never flourished the day before. Thus do We set out the signs in detail for a people who reflect."

This likeness was treated twice in the index.

At al-Kahf 18/45 (ka-māʾin anzalnāhu mina's-samāʾi fa'khtalaṭa bihī nabātu'l-arḍi fa-aṣbaḥa hashīman tadhrūhu'r-riyāḥ) and at al-Zumar 39/21 (a single sentence in five stages: He sent down → He made it run → He brought forth → it turned yellow → He made it chaff). And it was recorded there, together with al-Wāqiʿa 56/65, that three words (hashīm, ḥuṭām, ḥaṣīd) relate the same end.

The three likenesses can be compared:

And Yūnus adds two things, and they appear in exactly these two rows.

The root ز-خ-ر-ف was analysed in al-Zukhruf on the occasion of the sūra's name, and it was recorded there: zukhruf — gold; and from this ornament, adornment, gilding. It was also related there that the lexicographers connect the word with the verb zahara (to swell, to brim over): ornament is a thing's swelling, its appearing fuller than it is. That relation of derivation was given there "as the lexicographers record it"; I keep the same note.

And in the section on al-Zukhruf this very verse was named: "أَخَذَتِ الأَرْضُ زُخْرُفَهَا — the earth took on its ornament; the Qurʾān uses this at Yūnus 10/24… and there too the mowing away of everything is related immediately afterwards." This is that usage's own place.

And the verb must be recorded: akhadhat — "it took, it put on". The earth takes its ornament upon itself like a garment.

وَٱزَّيَّنَتْ — the root ز-ي-ن, Form V in its assimilated shape (tazayyanat → izzayyanat). Reflexive: "it decked itself out".

I record this as an observation about the word order: both verbs are ascribed to the earth — the taking and the adorning. Yet it was "We" who sent down the water (anzalnāhu). In the likeness, that is, there is a choice of words that separates the side which is adorned by what is given from the side that gives.

This is the real thing Yūnus adds to the likeness, and it must be compared with al-Kahf.

At al-Kahf 18/35-36 the sentence of the owner of the garden was treated: mā aẓunnu an tabīda hādhihī abadā · wa mā aẓunnu's-sāʿata qāʾimah — "I do not think this will ever perish; nor do I think the Hour will come." And it was recorded there: two acts of ẓann one after the other, the first about what is in hand, the second about what is to come; and the second is given as the natural extension of the first.

Now the two verses can be set side by side:

The two verses use the same root (ظ-ن-ن), but the direction of the ẓann differs.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the objects of the two sentences: in al-Kahf the error is about the garden — "it will not perish". In Yūnus the error is about themselves — "we have power over it". The one, that is, is mistaken about the lifespan of the thing, the other about the authority of the owner.

And the word qādirūn must be recorded: the root ق-د-ر. The same root had been used of God in the fifth verse: wa qaddarahū manāzil — "He measured out stages for it". Within the sūra the same root serves once for a real power and once for a supposed one. I record this as an observation about the wording.

And there is one more datum supporting the link between al-Kahf and Yūnus: immediately after the likeness at al-Kahf 18/45 came al-mālu wa'l-banūna zīnatu'l-ḥayāti'd-dunyā — the word for ornament is there too. In Yūnus zīna is given to the earth, in al-Kahf to wealth and children.

The time is given as a pair: by night or by day.

I record this as an observation: the expression does not state a time — it states the unfixedness of the time. And the same pair will be repeated in the fiftieth verse of the sūra: in atākum ʿadhābuhū bayātan aw nahārā — "if His punishment comes to you by night or by day". It is a repetition that can be counted between the two verses.

حَصِيد — root ح-ص-د: to mow, to cut the crop with a sickle. Ḥaṣīd — mown. The word states a remainder: the field is still there, what stood on it is gone.

كَأَن لَّمْ تَغْنَ بِٱلْأَمْسِ — "as though it had never flourished the day before."

The root غ-ن-ي: to settle and remain in a place, to be present there. Ghaniya bi'l-makān — he dwelt there. From the same root come ghinā (wealth) and al-Ghaniyy; the link is "to be able to stand without needing another".

And the construct is on the same pattern as ka-an lam yadʿunā in the twelfth verse:

The same pattern (ka-an lam + verb), two distinct erasures. I record this as my own reading: in the twelfth verse man erases the past, in the twenty-fourth the past erases itself. The sūra gives forgetting first as an attitude and then as a fact.

Where the likeness lands is worth recording, and I give this as my own reading: the disaster comes not after neglect but after the peak. The field is mown when it is at its most splendid. And the verse names the owners' error not as "behaving badly" but as qādirūna ʿalayhā — "supposing they have power over it".

What the verse points to, that is, is not ownership but the sense of control. The note recorded in al-Mulk holds here too: the verse takes as its subject not the taking of measures but the illusion that the taking of measures produces.