al-Aḥzāb 33:35

Inna'l-muslimīna wa'l-muslimāti wa'l-muʾminīna wa'l-muʾmināti wa'l-qānitīna wa'l-qānitāti wa'l-ṣādiqīna wa'l-ṣādiqāti wa'l-ṣābirīna wa'l-ṣābirāti wa'l-khāshiʿīna wa'l-khāshiʿāti wa'l-mutaṣaddiqīna wa'l-mutaṣaddiqāti wa'l-ṣāʾimīna wa'l-ṣāʾimāti wa'l-ḥāfiẓīna furūjahum wa'l-ḥāfiẓāti wa'l-dhākirīna'llāha kathīran wa'l-dhākirāt — aʿadda'llāhu lahum maghfiratan wa ajran ʿaẓīmā

"Indeed the Muslim men and the Muslim women, the believing men and the believing women, the devoutly obedient men and the devoutly obedient women, the truthful men and the truthful women, the patient men and the patient women, the humble men and the humble women, the men who give alms and the women who give alms, the fasting men and the fasting women, the men who guard their chastity and the women who guard, the men who remember God much and the women who remember — God has prepared for them forgiveness and a great reward."

This verse is the longest parallel enumeration of man and woman in the Qurʾān: ten pairs, twenty words.

It was mentioned as "the widest example" at al-Burūj and at Nūḥ; here it is opened up.

Most of the roots have been analysed earlier in this commentary; I rely on those treatments and do not repeat them.

• س-ل-م — treated at verse 22 (taslīm): the concrete sense of the root is wholeness.
• أ-م-ن — treated at al-Baqara and al-Ḥujurāt; and it will return in verse 72 of this sūra as amāna. The same root occurs in this verse of the sūra as an attribute and at its close as a burden.
• ق-ن-ت — treated at verse 31: obedience that conveys continuity.
• ص-د-ق — treated at verses 8, 22, 23 and 24: truthfulness; and the concrete side of the root, firmness.
• ص-ب-ر — treated at al-Ḥujurāt 49/5: the primary sense of the root is to hold, to confine.
• ذ-ك-ر — occurred at verses 21 and 34; it will return as a command in verse 41.

Three roots need to be opened up here for the first time:

خ-ش-ع — To be lowered, to bend, the sinking of the voice. For the concrete sense of the root the lexicographers give the earth as an example: khashaʿati'l-arḍ — the ground sank, it was lowered. The Qurʾān uses this root for the sinking of voices too: "And voices are hushed before the All-Merciful" (Ṭāhā 20/108 — khashaʿati'l-aṣwāt).

ص-و-م — And the primary sense of the root is interesting: to hold oneself back from a thing, to stop. In Arabic ṣāma'l-nahār — the day reached its midpoint and the sun seemed to stand still; ṣāmati'l-khayl — the horses stopped eating their fodder. That is, ṣawm in its root is not "abstaining from food" but "standing still". The Qurʾān uses the root for not speaking too: "I have vowed a ṣawm to the All-Merciful" (Maryam 19/26) — there the fast is silence.

ح-ف-ظ — To guard, to watch over, to preserve. Ḥifẓ — memorisation (taking into safekeeping). Ḥāfiẓ — the one who guards.

Now the real matter: the form of this list.

In this verse the Qurʾān has chosen one thing: to repeat every attribute twice, in two gender forms.

And an alternative was possible. In Arabic the masculine plural can be used for a mixed group, and this is the normal working of the language. Had the verse gone on inna'l-muslimīna wa'l-muʾminīna wa'l-qānitīna…, it would grammatically have covered women too, and the verse would have been half as long.

The Qurʾān does not do this. It raises ten words to twenty.

And this repetition itself carries information. I record it as my own reading and set out its grounds.

One. An inclusive masculine form does not show what it includes. At the level of grammar the inclusion is there; but the person reading the list hears one gender. The verse takes the inclusion out of grammar and carries it into the wording. The inclusion is no longer a piece of information about a rule but something heard.

Two. The repetition changes the rhythm of the list. When the verse is recited every attribute comes twice, and the only difference between them is a gender ending. This sets the sound-structure of the verse into the rhythm of a pair — and this rhythm is repeated ten times. The verse says what it says with its sound as well.

Three. The length is itself an emphasis. There is no other such long dual enumeration in the Qurʾān. The length itself shows that the verse is not an exception but a deliberate choice.

Four. And the kind of attributes in the list is worth noting. Ten attributes are enumerated and not one of them is particular to a sex. Submission, faith, obedience, truthfulness, patience, humility, almsgiving, fasting, chastity, remembrance — all of them are things both sides can do. That is, the verse describes a shared field and names every item of that field twice.

And at the end of the list the symmetry breaks twice. This is a fact of the text that must be recorded.

In the first eight pairs both sides are named in exactly the same form. In the last two pairs the object is said only once.

The lexicographers explain this thus: in Arabic a complement mentioned in the first element need not be repeated in the second; in the second it is counted as elided (maḥdhūf) and the sense is not diminished. This is a widespread rule of economy in the language.

That is, in point of meaning there is no difference: the women who guard their chastity and the women who remember God much have been named in the same way.

But there is a fact of rhythm, and I record it: the verse keeps up the full repetition through eight pairs and shortens the repetition in the last two. And this produces a close that accelerates towards the end of the list — the sentence gathers itself after a long repetition and passes at once to the closing clause: aʿadda'llāhu lahum…

I record this as an observation about style; I draw no ruling from it.

And in the close the pronoun is masculine plural: lahum.

This is the normal working of the language: a pronoun returning to a mixed list of twenty items is masculine plural in Arabic.

And one further thing becomes visible here: having divided the list in two, the verse gives the recompense with a single pronoun. That is, the dividing is in the enumeration, the joining in the recompense.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is that the list is separated and the verse-ending joined.

مَّغْفِرَةً وَأَجْرًا عَظِيمًا — two recompenses: forgiveness and a great reward. The same verse-ending occurred in verse 29 as well (ajran ʿaẓīmā), and as was recorded at al-Fatḥ this is the pattern that states the recompense of an undertaking.

The verse's place in the sūra is no accident.

The preceding seven verses (28-34) addressed a particular group: the Prophet's wives. And in that block a particular standing, a particular responsibility and a particular measure were described.

The thirty-fifth verse, immediately afterwards, opens the extent all the way.

And this transition is worth recording: having recounted the particular situation of one group, the sūra gives, on the same page, a list that takes in everyone. That is, the particular does not annul the general.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the succession of the two blocks.

And the thirty-sixth verse that follows will be of the same width: mā kāna li-muʾminin wa lā muʾmina. That is, in verses 35 and 36 the sūra uses the man-woman pair twice in succession — once as a list of attributes, once as a ruling.

What this verse says to the present comes less from its content than from its form.

A text can say what it includes in two ways: by a rule, or by repetition. A rule is economical but invisible; repetition is expensive but visible.

This verse chooses the second and pays the price: twenty words instead of ten.

And its counterpart is this: a person whose name does not appear in a list does not find himself in that list, even if he knows the rule includes him. Naming is not inclusion itself — but it is the feeling of inclusion.

I record this as my own reading. And I record too that it carries an interesting tension with the founding principle of the sūra: from the beginning the sūra has been saying "a name does not change reality". This verse, by contrast, shows that naming does a piece of work — not in changing reality but in showing it. The two do not conflict: in the fourth verse a name was trying to make present something that was not there; here a name makes visible something that is.