al-Ḥajj 22:1-2

Yā ayyuha'n-nāsu'ttaqū rabbakum inna zalzalata's-sāʿati shayʾun ʿaẓīm · Yawma tarawnahā tadhhalu kullu murḍiʿatin ʿammā arḍaʿat wa taḍaʿu kullu dhāti ḥamlin ḥamlahā wa tara'n-nāsa sukārā wa mā hum bi-sukārā wa lākinna ʿadhāba'llāhi shadīd

"O people! Be conscious of your responsibility towards your Lord. The shaking of the Hour is a tremendous thing. On the day you see it, every nursing woman will forget the child she nurses and every pregnant woman will set down her burden. You will see people drunk, though they are not drunk; but the punishment of God is severe."

The root was analysed in detail in al-Zilzāl — on the occasion of that sūra's name: a reduplicated quadriliteral root (muḍāʿaf rubāʿī), conveying a repeated, oscillating motion; ṣalṣala, qaʿqaʿa, waswasa have the same structure. I do not repeat it here.

The root was also treated at al-Baqara 2/214 — there the verb was used of people: wa zulzilū (they were shaken). The note made in al-Baqara holds exactly: the root describes the shaking of the earth, but what was shaken there was not the earth but people.

Setting the three places side by side shows how the word works:

The construct here must be recorded: zalzalatu's-sāʿa. The genitive binds the shaking not to a place but to a time. It is not "the shaking of the earth" but "the shaking of that Hour".

I give this as my own reading, and its ground is the genitive itself: what is shaken is not bounded as a place. In Sūrat al-Zilzāl the subject of the shaking was the earth; here it is a time.

The sentence ends with shayʾun ʿaẓīm: "a great thing".

The choice of word is striking, and I record it as an observation about word order: shayʾ is the most general, the most contentless word in Arabic — "a thing". It is not described; it is not named. Then comes the adjective: ʿaẓīm.

The first sentence therefore does not describe the event; it reports only its magnitude. The description is left to the second verse — and that description will not be a description of an event but a human scene.

The root occurs here for the first time in the index. The sense the lexicographers give: to be parted from something in terror and bewilderment; the mind's being severed from it.

What distinguishes the root is that it differs from ordinary forgetting (nisyān). The lexicographers generally give the difference thus: nisyān is the erasure of knowledge; dhuhūl is the forcible tearing away of attention while the knowledge stays in place. The person knows, but can no longer look there.

The verse does not say tansā (she forgets), it says tadhhalu. The mother does not forget her child — she is severed from it.

The burden the mother carries has been treated in two places in this commentary, and this place is their opposite:

In al-Aḥqāf and Luqmān the mother was named together with the hardship she endured; here the same relationship is named at the moment it breaks.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the shared subject of the three verses: in the two sūras motherhood was used as the proof of man's most durable bond — that was the ground of the counsel given. al-Ḥajj makes that bond a unit of measurement: the magnitude of the shaking, since it cannot be told on its own, is measured by the moment the strongest bond snaps.

The choice of word carries a grammatical point, and the lexicographers record it.

In Arabic a distinction is observed between مُرْضِع (murḍiʿ, without the tāʾ) and مُرْضِعَة (murḍiʿa, with the tāʾ):

The verse chooses the second. The scene is therefore not "a woman who has a child" but a woman nursing her child at that very moment.

I transmit this distinction as the lexicographers transmit it; I do not present it as a fixed rule, because the sources themselves debate whether it holds everywhere. But that it suits the context is plain: the force of the scene comes from the severing happening in mid-act.

"Every pregnant woman will set down her burden."

The repetition of the word must be recorded: ḥamlin … ḥamlahā — the same root twice, one indefinite, one definite.

And the verb taḍaʿu: the same verb was used of giving birth at al-Aḥqāf 46/15 (wa waḍaʿathu kurhā). There birth was a natural outcome arriving at the end of thirty months; here it comes before its time, in terror.

"You will see people drunk, though they are not drunk."

This is the most striking movement of word order in the sūra, and it deserves to be dwelt on in detail.

Simile is frequent in the Qurʾān. What happens here is different: a simile is built, and then withdrawn inside the same sentence. First sukārā (drunk) is said, and immediately after wa mā hum bi-sukārā (they are not drunk).

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the order of the sentence:

• The simile is necessary, because the state described has no name in human speech. The nearest counterpart is drunkenness: the loss of balance, the blurring of perception, the failure of self-command.
• The simile is insufficient, because drunkenness is the result of a substance and is temporary. The cause of the state here is not in a substance.
• For this reason the verse adds a third sentence: wa lākinna ʿadhāba'llāhi shadīd — the cause is stated.

There are thus three steps: liken, correct, give the cause. The simile is not erased — its boundary is drawn. Having taken the picture, the reader also learns how far the picture holds.

This procedure is of the same kind as the stance recorded at al-Zumar 39/67: there too a depiction is made, and then, within the same verse, a note of transcendence is entered. In both places the text itself enters the qualification upon its own simile.

It is transmitted that the word سُكَٰرَىٰ is also read as سَكْرَىٰ (sakrā). I do not name a reader. No decisive difference of meaning arises between the two readings: one is a plural pattern, the other a singular-adjectival pattern used of a group.

The verse's method of measuring teaches something in itself: the way to convey a vast event is not to line up vast words.

The verse does not say "it is dreadful, it is terrifying." It shows the distance between a mother and her infant. The scale is taken from the place a person knows best.