وَأَقِمِ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ لِذِكْرِىٓ
The verse is the last sentence of the fourteenth verse and deserves separate treatment. The sequence must be recorded:
| Order | Expression | What |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Innanī ana'llāh | Who |
| 2 | Lā ilāha illā ana | The note of uniqueness |
| 3 | Faʿbudnī | The general command — service |
| 4 | Wa aqimi'ṣ-ṣalāta | The particular command — the prayer |
| 5 | Li-dhikrī | The ground |
That is, the sentence descends from identity to service, and within service to a concrete act, and then states the ground of that act.
I record this as an observation about the structure: the prayer comes not as an instance of the command to serve but as an item named separately — the separate commanding of a single act after a general command is called in Arabic ʿaṭf al-khāṣṣ ʿalā'l-ʿāmm (the coupling of the particular to the general), and it conveys that the act has been brought forward.
More than one reading of the expression is transmitted in the classical commentaries, and the disagreement must not be concealed. One reason for this is that the verbal noun dhikr can be annexed either to its agent or to its object.
| Reading | What li-dhikrī means | Its ground |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | "So as to remember Me" — the verbal noun annexed to its object | The content of the prayer is remembrance; the most widespread reading |
| 2 | "So that I may remember" — the verbal noun annexed to its agent | Consistent with fa'dhkurūnī adhkurkum (al-Baqara 2/152) |
| 3 | "When you remember Me" — the lām conveys time | The time of the prayer for one who forgets and then remembers |
I record one indication, not as a preference, and its ground is the sūra's own weave of words: the root ذ-ك-ر is one of the spines of this sūra (tabulated in the section on structure) and in the hundred and twenty-fourth verse the subject of turning away is precisely dhikrī: wa man aʿraḍa ʿan dhikrī.
| Verse | Expression | What |
|---|---|---|
| 14 | Wa aqimi'ṣ-ṣalāta li-dhikrī | The prayer — for remembering |
| 124 | Wa man aʿraḍa ʿan dhikrī | Turning away — from remembering |
The same expression, at the two ends of the sūra: one a command, the other an abandonment. This is an overlap that can be verified within the sūra and an indication supporting the first reading — but it is not a proof.
The verse gives a ground for the prayer, and the ground is built not on benefit but on relationship. The sentence does not say "so that you may find peace" or "so that you may gain discipline". These may be results of the prayer; but they are not the ground the verse gives.
And a measure of time emerges: remembering is something that cannot be sustained continuously; forgetting is the ordinary state of a human being. Indeed the same sūra will name the first ancestor of humankind in the hundred and fifteenth verse in connection with forgetting. Read together with this verse, the binding of the prayer to fixed times appears as an acceptance of forgetting and the building of an order against it. I record this as my own reading; its ground is the verse's clause of purpose together with the sūra's axis of nisyān (forgetting).