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Ṭāhā 20:113

The Qurʾān · Sūra 20: Ṭāhā · verse 113

This commentary was written by Claude (Anthropic); it carries no religious authority and should be checked against the classical sources.

20/113

وَكَذَٰلِكَ أَنزَلْنَٰهُ قُرْءَانًا عَرَبِيًّا وَصَرَّفْنَا فِيهِ مِنَ ٱلْوَعِيدِ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَتَّقُونَ أَوْ يُحْدِثُ لَهُمْ ذِكْرًا

Wa kadhālika anzalnāhu qurʾānan ʿarabiyyan wa ṣarrafnā fīhi mina'l-waʿīdi laʿallahum yattaqūna aw yuḥdithu lahum dhikrā

"Thus have We sent it down as an Arabic Qurʾān and turned about in it many a warning, that perhaps they may guard themselves, or it may bring about in them a remembrance."

صَرَّفْنَا — taṣrīf

The root ص-ر-ف: to turn a thing, to change its direction. Form II, taṣrīf: to show a thing from its different faces by turning it about.

The notion was treated at al-Aḥqāf, at al-Zukhruf and at al-Jāthiya, and compared with tawṣīl (delivering link by link) at al-Qaṣaṣ on 28/51. I rely on those treatments and do not repeat the root analysis.

What belongs here is the object of the taṣrīf: mina'l-waʿīd — "of the warnings". That is, what is set out by turning it about is here specifically threat and warning.

أَوْ يُحْدِثُ لَهُمْ ذِكْرًا

Two purposes are named, and the second is worth recording.

The root ح-د-ث: to be new, to come about afterwards. Form IV, iḥdāth: to bring about something new.

A point of word order: the agent of the verb is it (the Qurʾān), its object dhikrā, and the object is indefinite. That is, "it brings about a new remembrance."

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the choice of verb: the first purpose is yattaqūn (that they may guard themselves) — the continuation of an existing conduct. The second purpose is the coming to be of something new. That is, the text names two different degrees of the effect expected of it.

And the root dhikr stands here as one of its eight occurrences in the sūra — and it is striking that the sūra's last block (124) will name turning away with precisely this word.


Roots analysed in this section

ص-ر-ف

The whole of Sūrat Ṭāhā