al-Nās 114:6

Mina'l-jinnati wa'n-nās "Of the jinn and of people."

The last verse of the Qurʾān. And the verse that makes the whole structure of the sūra be read again.

There is disagreement about which element the preposition min in this verse attaches to, and the disagreement changes the meaning:

The first view is both the most widespread and the strongest, because another verse of the Qurʾān supports it directly:

"Thus We made for every prophet an enemy: the devils of humankind and of the jinn. They whisper gilded words to one another, to deceive." (al-Anʿām 6/112)

In this verse "shayāṭīna'l-insi wa'l-jinn" — the devils of humankind and the devils of the jinn — are named explicitly side by side. And the work they do is described not with the same word but with the same logic: "yūḥī baʿḍuhum ilā baʿḍin zukhrufa'l-qawl" — they whisper ornamented speech to one another.

In the Qurʾān, that is, "devil" is not only the name of an unseen being; it is an attribute, and it can be found in a human being too.

Root: ج-ن-ن. And the meaning of this root explains the force of the sūra's last sentence: to cover, to conceal, to hide.

This meaning is present in all that derives from the same root:

Al-jinna is the collective name of the jinn.

Here, then, is the fine point at the close of the sūra: jinn = what is covered, nās = (in its root, on the first view) what is seen, what is known, what one becomes familiar with. The last two words of the sūra set up an exact opposition: those who are hidden and those who are in the open.

The whispering can come from either.

The sūra began by saying "the Lord of the people". And it ends thus: "…and from people."

The same word. In the first as the party to whom the taking of refuge belongs, in the last as the source of the threat.

The meaning of this is heavy and should not be softened. The sūra places the human being both as the being to be protected and as the being to be protected against. The human being is both the target of the whispering and — sometimes — its source.

And more important still, the order is this: the jinn first, then human beings. The human being, that is, is named last. In rhetoric what is named last is most often where the emphasis falls; what is heard last is what stays longest in the mind.

Why should this be so? Several explanations can be thought of, and these are my own reading:

1. Because it is not expected. Throughout the sūra a hidden, stealthy, unseen enemy is described. The reader naturally expects an unseen being. The last word breaks that expectation: a human being does the same work.

2. Because it is more dangerous. Against a whispering that comes from a jinnī a person is already on his guard; he knows he is to protect himself, and he takes refuge. Against a whispering that comes from a human being he takes up no defensive position — because the one before him is familiar, is legitimate, may be someone he loves, may be someone in authority. Being visible secures being taken for trustworthy.

3. Because it brings responsibility back. To lay evil entirely upon an unseen being is the easiest way of acquitting the human being. The last word of the sūra closes that door.

The Qurʾān records this matter in another place as well:

"And there were men among human beings who took refuge with men among the jinn, and so they increased them in insolence." (al-Jinn 72/6)

In this verse the root ع-و-ذ, the backbone verb of al-Falaq and al-Nās, is used (yaʿūdhūna — they used to take refuge). The Qurʾān, that is, has also given a name to the taking of refuge that is made to the wrong address. That al-Muʿawwidhatān begin with "qul aʿūdhu bi-Rabbi" is a correction that puts that wrong address right.

The codex opens with the name "Allāh" in the basmala and closes with the word "al-nās".

This is an observation, and I do not present it as a theological claim; but it deserves to be recorded. From beginning to end the Qurʾān speaks of God and of the human being. In the first sūra it says "the Lord of all the worlds" — the human being is somewhere inside the worlds. In the last sūra it says "the Lord of the people" — the circle has narrowed and only the human being is left inside it. And the last word is that human being himself.

At the close of the Qurʾān the human being appears twice: as the one whose Lord the one with whom refuge is taken is (verse 1), and as the place from which the evil taken refuge from may come (verse 6). The distance between the two is the whole field of the sūra.

All six verses of the sūra end in س: nās — nās — nās — khannās — nās — nās.

The letter sīn is in Arabic a fricative sound: the air comes out by leaking continuously between the tongue and the teeth. It is not cut off; it lengthens; it hisses.

This needs to be compared with the sound texture of Sūrat al-Falaq. All five verses of al-Falaq end in letters of qalqala (ق ق ب د د) — plosive, cut-off, striking sounds.

And this overlaps with the two kinds of threat the two sūras describe: al-Falaq describes the blows that come from outside and ends with the sound of a blow; al-Nās describes the whisper that comes from inside and ends with the sound of a whisper.

I do not present this as a numerical claim or as a "miracle". It is an observation about the sound weave of the text, and one of the known examples of the accord between sound and meaning in the short sūras of the Qurʾān.

Moreover the word waswasa itself carries the sīn sound. The sūra makes, again and again, the very sound it describes.