al-Nūr 24:44-45

Yuqallibu'llāhu'l-layla wa'l-nahār, inna fī dhālika la-ʿibratan li-uli'l-abṣār · Wa'llāhu khalaqa kulla dābbatin min māʾ, fa-minhum man yamshī ʿalā baṭnihī wa minhum man yamshī ʿalā rijlayni wa minhum man yamshī ʿalā arbaʿ, yakhluqu'llāhu mā yashāʾ, inna'llāha ʿalā kulli shayʾin qadīr

"God turns the night and the day about. In that there is a lesson for those who have eyes. God created every moving creature from water: some of them go upon their bellies, some upon two feet, and some upon four. God creates what He wills. God has power over everything."

The root ق-ل-ب was analysed at the thirty-seventh verse. And there tataqallabu'l-qulūbu wa'l-abṣār — the turning about of hearts and eyes — was named.

And here the same root comes in Form II, and as God's act: yuqallibu.

The same root, the one a turning of itself, the other a turning of something else. I record this as an observation about the word order.

And the sūra's weave of the eye closes here.

Five occurrences, the word five times, from one end of the sūra to the other.

And the last occurrence uses the word as a capacity: ulu'l-abṣār — "those who have eyes, those who can see".

This is of the same kind as the pattern recorded at al-Baqara, 2/179: there stood ulu'l-albāb (those who have pith), and this note was entered: "All three measure not a capacity but a function."

Here it is the same: ulu'l-abṣār is not everyone who has an eye — it is the man who can look.

And this forms a ring with the command at the head of the sūra: in the thirtieth verse the glance was lowered; in the forty-fourth those who can see are named.

The sūra, that is, begins with a command that narrows the eye and arrives at a sentence that praises the man who sees.

I record this reading as my own reading; the places of the words can be counted in the text.

عِبْرَة — root ع-ب-ر: its concrete sense is to pass from one place to another, to cross over. ʿUbūr — a crossing; maʿbar — a ford; taʿbīr — to interpret a dream (to pass from the image to the meaning); ʿibāra — the wording of a saying (the bridge over which the meaning is crossed).

And ʿibra: to pass from what is seen to what is not seen.

The concrete sense of the root gives exactly the work of the word, and I record this as an observation about the root: to take a lesson is not to stay within an event — it is to pass from that event to somewhere else.

دَابَّة — root د-ب-ب: to move upon the ground, to walk. Dabba — it walked. And dābba: every living thing that moves upon the earth.

The scope of the word is wide: not only four-footed animals but every living thing that moves. The threefold enumeration in the rest of the verse bears this out.

مِّن مَّآءٍ — "from water". And a note is needed about the function of the particle min.

The particle can be understood in two ways, and both are transmitted in the classical commentaries:

I impose no preference.

And a note of method: no claim of "foretelling" modern biology is drawn from this verse. The Qurʾān's naming of water as the source of life occurs in other places too (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/30), and this is an expression that stands within the text itself.

The verse divides living creatures in three according to their manner of movement:

And the measure of the classification is worth noting: the number of feet — that is, the manner of movement.

The verse divides living creatures not by size, by usefulness, by where they live, or by kind — but by their walking. And this agrees with the verse's own word: dābba, by its root, is "the one that walks".

The verse, that is, classifies what it names by the measure of that name itself.

I record this as my own reading; the root of the word and the measure of the classification stand in the text.

And the clause yakhluqu'llāhu mā yashāʾ conveys that the enumeration is not closed. The list is not limited to three; the verse leaves the list open itself.