al-Isrāʾ 17:9-10

Inna hādha'l-qurʾāna yahdī li'llatī hiya aqwamu wa yubashshiru'l-muʾminīna'lladhīna yaʿmalūna'l-ṣāliḥāti anna lahum ajran kabīrā · Wa anna'lladhīna lā yuʾminūna bi'l-ākhirati aʿtadnā lahum ʿadhāban alīmā

"This Qurʾān guides to that which stands most upright; it gives the believers who do righteous deeds the good news that a great reward is theirs. And it announces that for those who do not believe in the hereafter We have prepared a painful punishment."

The most striking feature of the sentence is that the qualified noun (the thing described) has been elided.

The verse does not say "to the most upright way"; it says "to that which is most upright". Allatī — a feminine relative pronoun; the noun it qualifies is not spoken.

The lexicographers try to supply the missing noun, and they differ:

All three supplements are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.

But the elision itself carries a meaning, and I record this as my own reading: because the noun is not spoken, the expression stays open. The sentence is not confined to "the most upright way"; it can be read as a claim to guide, in every field, to whatever is "most upright" there. The gap, that is, widens the scope.

The root was treated with the word qawām at 25/67 in al-Furqān — it was recorded there that the root ق-و-م is "standing upright, being in balance", and that qawām conveys the point between two extremes. And this measure was read there together with the root qaṣd (keeping to the middle way) at 31/19 in Luqmān. I rely on that treatment.

The difference of pattern here must be recorded: aqwam is the elative pattern — "standing more upright / most upright".

Three patterns, one root — and the third occurs within this same sūra, in the verse about the balance. This is a weave that can be verified within the sūra.

I record this as my own reading: the concrete picture of the root is standing upright. What stands upright is what does not fall and does not go crooked. With this picture, the Qurʾān's work is described as directing towards "that which can stand without bending".

The ninth verse gives the good news, the tenth the warning — and the subjects of the two sentences differ:

I record this as an observation about the structure: the good news is attached to the Book, the warning directly to the one speaking. The two are thus not built as two arms of one sentence.