al-Qāriʿa 101:10

Wa mā adrāka mā hiyah "And what made you know what it is?"

In the third verse the sūra had said mā adrāka. Now in the tenth verse the same pattern is repeated.

The difference between the two questions lies in what is asked about:

• Verse 3: ma'l-qāriʿa — the question is asked by repeating the noun.
• Verse 10: mā hiyah — the question is asked by a pronoun.

In the first three verses the word was never turned into a pronoun; each time the whole of it was repeated. Here, for hāwiya, a pronoun is used.

I record this as an observation. Besides, hāwiya had occurred as an indefinite; to refer back to an indefinite word by a pronoun is natural.

The tenth verse is the text's own acknowledgement of the strangeness of the ninth.

"His mother is Hāwiya" had been said — an expression that will leave the hearer confused. And immediately after it: "And what made you know what it is?"

That is, the text knows that what it has said calls for an explanation, and before giving the explanation it declares that the explanation will fall short. As was recorded in the section on al-Humaza: the description is not a definition but a pointing.

The هـ at the end of the word bears in grammar the name هاء السكت (the hāʾ of pause).

Its function is this: in Arabic certain short words lose the sound at their end when they are stopped on (waqf). When one stops on the word hiya the final vowel drops and the word becomes unrecognisable. The vowelless hāʾ added at the end preserves that sound.

So this letter carries no meaning; it is there to preserve the sound.

Its densest use in the Qurʾān is in Sūrat al-Ḥāqqa:

"Here, read my record!" (al-Ḥāqqa 69/19 — kitābiyah); "Would that I had never known my reckoning!" (69/26 — ḥisābiyah); "My wealth has not availed me" (69/28 — māliyah); "My authority has perished from me" (69/29 — sulṭāniyah).

Al-Qāriʿa's mā hiyah and this series in al-Ḥāqqa are the same grammatical phenomenon. And if we recall that the first three verses of the two sūras are on the same pattern as well, there is a marked closeness between the two sūras in point of sound.

A note on the variant readings. There is agreement that this hāʾ is preserved when the word is read in pause. As to whether it is preserved in continuous recitation (waṣl, when one goes on without stopping), a difference is transmitted among the imams of the readings. Since I cannot give with certainty which imam held which preference, I give no names; it does not change the meaning.