وَلَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا فَوْقَكُمْ سَبْعَ طَرَآئِقَ وَمَا كُنَّا عَنِ ٱلْخَلْقِ غَٰفِلِينَ
The root was worked out in al-Ṭāriq. The description given there: the original sense of the root is to strike, to beat, to hit with something hard. I do not repeat it here.
| Word | Meaning | The link |
|---|---|---|
| طَرَقَ | To strike, to hit | The core of the root |
| طَرِيق | Road | The track opened by feet striking it again and again — the explanation the lexicographers give |
| مِطْرَقَة | Hammer | The instrument of striking |
| طَرِيقَة | A road; and a layer of a thing laid one over another | The two branches |
| طَرَائِق | The plural of ṭarīqa | The word here |
| Reading | What ṭarāʾiq is | Its ground |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The seven heavens — a naming that stands in place of samāwāt | fawqakum (above you) and the number "seven"; at the sūra's 86th verse al-samāwāti'l-sabʿ occurs explicitly |
| 2 | Layers laid one over another | The sense of the word ṭarīqa as "a layer over a thing" |
| 3 | Paths — the paths down which the angels or the affairs descend | The original sense of the root |
I pass the disagreement on; I do not impose a preference. The first reading has a ground within the sūra, and I record it: the eighty-sixth verse will say rabbu'l-samāwāti'l-sabʿ. The same sūra names the same number with two different words.
And a limit, per the method (Method): on the basis of this verse I do not enter into any matching with layers of the atmosphere, belts of celestial bodies or similar modern classifications. The grounds written in al-Ṭāriq for astronomical claims and in al-ʿAlaq for embryological claims hold here as well. The meaning of the word is given; nothing is built beyond it.
The root غ-ف-ل: to remain unaware of a thing, to let it slip from mind, to give it no attention. Ghafla — inattention; ghufl — bearing no mark upon it, unrecognised.
The word order must be recorded: mā kunnā — a negated perfect, "We have not been". That is, at no time. And ʿani'l-khalqi has been brought forward (taqdīm): "of the creation — We are not heedless."
I give this as my own reading, its ground being the place of the sentence in the verse: after the seven layers have been named, the sentence one expects is a statement of power. The sentence that comes is a statement of attention. The verse, that is, speaks not of greatness but of not having been left.
The same idea was recorded in al-Fātiḥa in the analysis of the name Rabb: "Rabb is the name of an order that is working; not of a clock wound up and abandoned." I rely on that treatment.
And the scope of the word al-khalq must be recorded: the word means both "the act of creating" and "the created things"; both parsings are transmitted. In either case the verdict comes out at the same place.