al-Aḥzāb 33:25

Wa radda'llāhu'lladhīna kafarū bi-ghayẓihim lam yanālū khayrā, wa kafa'llāhu'l-muʾminīna'l-qitāl, wa kāna'llāhu qawiyyan ʿazīzā

"And God turned back those who disbelieved with their rage; they gained no good. And God sufficed the believers in the fighting. God is Strong, Mighty."

It is told in a single verse. Twenty verses were given to the inner world; the outcome fitted into one verse.

And this shows what the section is about: the text's interest lay not in the event itself but in the person inside the event.

To turn back, to return, to send back. Radd, irtidād, mardūd are from the same root.

And the choice of the verb is worth recording. The verse does not say "He defeated", "He scattered", "He destroyed". It says "He turned them back".

The verb describes a movement: those who came went back. And this agrees with the logic of the sūra's name: al-aḥzāb — companies that had come together. What came together dispersed; they returned to where they had come from.

That is, the verse depicts the event not as a defeat but as a cancellation. The siege did not take place; the undertaking was withdrawn.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the choice of the verb.

غَيْظ — root غ-ي-ظ. Rage swallowed down, boiling within. What the lexicographers record about its difference from ghaḍab: ghaḍab is anger that shows itself outwardly, ghayẓ is anger that boils within.

The preposition bāʾ here conveys accompaniment (muṣāḥaba): "together with their rage" — that is, they carried their rage away with them.

This expression should be compared with ḥamiyya (heat of anger) at al-Fatḥ 48/26, and the finding established there goes one step further here.

Both sūras record the same thing: heat of anger produces no result.

And the detail al-Aḥzāb adds is this, and I record it: the rage is named not at the beginning of the event but at its end. That is, the verse does not say that those who came came in rage; it says that they went back in rage. Rage is not the cause of the undertaking but its residue.

And the finding at al-Fatḥ is worth repeating: "What the verse does is not to criticise the heat of anger in a moral idiom; it is to name it as a state." So too here: the verse does not condemn the rage, it records it as the only thing left in hand.

نَالَ — root ن-و-ل. To stretch out one's hand to a thing and take it, to reach, to obtain.

And the choice of the word khayr must be dwelt on. The verse does not say "they gained no victory" or "they did not reach their aim". It says "they gained no good".

The word speaks with the besiegers' own measure. What they were seeking was, by their own lights, a "good" — a gain, an outcome. The verse takes that measure and reduces the result to zero.

This is a rhetorical choice worth recording: the verse does not pass judgement on the other side's aim; it says that they did not reach their aim. I record this as my own reading.

كَفَى — root ك-ف-ي. To suffice, to be enough. This root occurred in the third verse too: wa kafā bi'llāhi wakīlā.

The sentence has two objects: kafa'llāhu al-muʾminīna al-qitāl — "God sufficed the believers in the fighting / lifted the burden of the fighting from them".

Two senses are recorded in classical exegesis:

Both are possible in the language and they do not exclude one another. I do not impose a preference.

And I record a link: in the third verse it was said kafā bi'llāhi wakīlā — "God suffices as a trustee". In the twenty-fifth verse the same root is repeated inside the event: kafa'llāh. The declaration given at the head of the sūra is named in its middle as having come about.

I record this link as my own reading; its ground is the position of the root in the two verses.

قَوِىّ — root ق-و-ي. Strength. عَزِيز — root ع-ز-ز. And the concrete sense of the root is hardness, resistance to wear: arḍun ʿazāz — hard, impassable ground. From this "mighty, unconquerable, precious".

The coming of the two names together: one conveys strength, the other the unwearing quality of that strength. And this agrees with the content of the verse: the besiegers gathered a force and that force dispersed; the verse-ending names a strength that does not disperse.