رَبِّ ٱجْعَلْنِى مُقِيمَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةِ وَمِن ذُرِّيَّتِى ۚ رَبَّنَا وَتَقَبَّلْ دُعَآءِ · رَبَّنَا ٱغْفِرْ لِى وَلِوَٰلِدَىَّ وَلِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ يَوْمَ يَقُومُ ٱلْحِسَابُ
Rabbi'jʿalnī muqīma'ṣ-ṣalāti wa min dhurriyyatī · Rabbanā wa taqabbal duʿāʾ · Rabbana'ghfir lī wa li-wālidayya wa li'l-muʾminīna yawma yaqūmu'l-ḥisāb
"'My Lord! Make me one who holds the prayer upright, and some of my offspring too. Our Lord, accept my prayer. · Our Lord! Forgive me and my parents and all the believers on the day the reckoning stands.'"
The prayer does not say "let me perform the prayer." Ijʿalnī muqīma'ṣ-ṣalāt — "make me a person who holds the prayer upright."
The pattern must be recorded: muqīm is an active participle, and in Arabic the active participle, unlike a verb, can convey a settled attribute.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the pattern itself: what is asked for is not an act but an identity. Had a verb been asked for, individual prayers would have been asked for; when a noun is asked for, it is the person who performs those prayers that is asked for.
The root ق-و-م and the construct iqāmatu'ṣ-ṣalāt have been treated in many places in the series (in al-Baqara, in al-Rūm and in al-Jumuʿa). The core of the root is "to raise upright, to hold straight", and the construct conveys more than "to perform": to keep a thing standing and in good order. I rely on those treatments.
The same particle was there in the thirty-seventh verse too: askantu min dhurriyyatī. In both occurrences min conveys the partitive.
I record this as an observation: the prayer does not ask a guarantee for the whole of the line. And this accords with the answer given at al-Baqara 2/124 (al-Baqara) when Abraham asked for his offspring: lā yanālu ʿahdi'ẓ-ẓālimīn — "My covenant does not reach the wrongdoers." I rely on that treatment.
Abraham's asking forgiveness for his father is taken up as a question in the Qurʾān: al-Tawba 9/114 declares that this asking arose from a promise and was later abandoned; and at al-Mumtaḥina 60/4 this asking is set outside the behaviour to be taken as a model — this was treated in al-Mumtaḥana and I rely on that treatment.
In the classical commentaries the principal views transmitted for the word wālidayya (my parents) in this verse are these:
| View | Explanation |
|---|---|
| 1 | The prayer was made before the asking was abandoned |
| 2 | Wālid here is not the father but a more distant forebear, or the mother is intended |
| 3 | The word is read differently in one variant reading and the sense changes |
For the reading intended in the third item the sources give differing formulations; I do not attribute it to a particular reciter and I do not use this variant reading as a datum.
What the wording of the verse says is this, and I keep within it: the prayer widens in three rings — himself, his parents, all the believers.
The verb yaqūmu is from the same root as muqīma'ṣ-ṣalāt, which occurred thirteen words earlier (ق-و-م).
| Verse | Word | What stands |
|---|---|---|
| 40 | Muqīma'ṣ-ṣalāt | The prayer — what the servant holds up |
| 41 | Yaqūmu'l-ḥisāb | The reckoning — what rises of itself |
The same root two verses apart, once as man's work and once as that day's work. I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the two verbs share a root: the prayer joins with a single word the thing that is held upright and the thing that will stand up.
And the closing of the block is a turning point in the structure of the sūra: the prayer is tied to a day of reckoning, and the next verse begins to recount that day directly.