Sabaʾ 34:18-19

Wa jaʿalnā baynahum wa bayna'l-qura'llatī bāraknā fīhā quran ẓāhiratan wa qaddarnā fīha's-sayr, sīrū fīhā layāliya wa ayyāman āminīn · Fa-qālū rabbanā bāʿid bayna asfārinā wa ẓalamū anfusahum fa-jaʿalnāhum aḥādītha wa mazzaqnāhum kulla mumazzaq, inna fī dhālika la-āyātin li-kulli ṣabbārin shakūr

"Between them and the towns We had blessed We set towns within sight of one another, and We measured out the journeying between them: 'Travel through them by night and by day in safety.' But they said: 'Our Lord! Set our journeys far apart!' And so they wronged themselves. We turned them into tales and tore them utterly to pieces. In that there are signs for everyone who endures much and gives thanks much."

The construction describes an order of roads. Ẓāhira — root ظ-ه-ر: to appear, to be in the open, the back.

Two senses given by the lexicographers are transmitted:

The two readings do not exclude one another; I do not impose a preference.

And what is described is a concrete provision: a route with settlements to halt at along the way. That is, the road is described stripped of the risks of a desert crossing.

وَقَدَّرْنَا فِيهَا ٱلسَّيْرَ — "We measured out the journeying". The root ق-د-ر occurred in the eleventh verse in the command given to David (qaddir fi's-sard). The same root, the same form (Form II), for two different works:

The same root in three places. I record this as my own reading, and its support is the three uses of the root in the sūra: the sūra repeats the idea of "measure" in a craft, in a geography and in a distribution of provision. And in all three the measure is named as a part of the thing given.

سِيرُوا۟ فِيهَا لَيَالِىَ وَأَيَّامًا ءَامِنِينَ — "travel through them by night and by day in safety."

The order is worth recording: layāliya wa ayyāmā — nights first, then days. I record this as an observation: the dangerous time on a journey is the night. The verse speaks of safety beginning there.

ءَامِنِين — root أ-م-ن: fearlessness, security. And the word comes as a ḥāl, a circumstantial accusative: travel — while in safety. That is, safety is described not as a promise but as a condition already in hand.

The clause comes in the form of a prayer, and this must be recorded: rabbanā — "Our Lord!"

That is, what the verse describes is not a sentence of rebellion but a sentence of request. And what is requested is distance.

ب-ع-د — the sense of the root is remoteness. Bāʿid — an imperative of Form III: "open up the space between them, set them far apart."

And the ground of the request is not stated in the verse. It is widely transmitted that in the classical commentaries this request is explained as a weariness brought on by prosperity or as comfort become ordinary. Since the verse gives no ground, I do not settle on one either.

But something can be said about the structure of the sentence, and I record this as my own reading; its support is the preceding verse: what the eighteenth verse describes is that the journey had been made easy — the towns close together, the distances measured, the nights safe. What is asked for in the nineteenth verse is precisely the lifting of all that. The request, that is, is not for a lack to be made good but for an ease already given to be taken back.

And this is the exact opposite of the sūra's axis of thanks: in the fifteenth verse it was said "eat and give thanks". The sentence that comes in the nineteenth verse expresses discomfort at the gift itself.

And now the journey of this word through the sūra must be recorded, because the same root occurs in four separate places:

I record this as my own reading, and its support is the four occurrences of the root: the sūra has a people who ask for distance (19), and at the end a company trying to reach across a distance (52-53). The distance that was asked for comes back as the distance that cannot be closed.

This is one of the most striking sentences in the sūra.

أَحَادِيث — the plural of ḥadīth; root ح-د-ث. The root was analysed in detail at al-Ḍuḥā 93/11 (wa ammā bi-niʿmati rabbika fa-ḥaddith). What was recorded there holds here, and its summary is this: the primary sense of the root is "to be new, to come into being afterwards"; ḥādith what comes to be later, ḥadath an event, ḥadīth both what is new and a saying or a piece of news. I do not repeat it here.

What belongs here is the sense carried by the plural of the word. Aḥādīth in Arabic means things that are told over and over — and in this context it means "a narrative, a story, a cautionary tale, a report that circulates on people's tongues".

And the build of the clause is this: jaʿalnāhum aḥādītha — "We made them ḥadīths". That is, a community is turned into narrative.

I record this as my own reading, and its support is the root's principal sense as analysed in al-Ḍuḥā: at the core of the root lies being new. A people's turning into "ḥadīth" is its losing its real existence and becoming something reconstructed at every telling. What was concrete is gone; what remains lives in words.

And the character of the punishment changes here: in the sixteenth verse their gardens were exchanged — that is a material loss. Here the people themselves disappear and what is left is "a thing that is told".

What this word says to the present is worth recording: the measure of a community is, in the end, what is told about it. The verse names this as a punishment — that is, being spoken about is not the same thing as standing.

And here the overlap set up with the seventh verse is completed.

The construction is word for word the same and was tabulated above in the treatment of 34/7-8; I recall it briefly:

The same construction twelve verses apart. Those who disbelieved chose this word to make the resurrection look ridiculous; the sūra uses the same word for an event that happened in history.

That is, the tearing apart is set down not as a remote supposition but as a result that came about. This is one of the strongest textual data in the sūra, and it is easy to verify: in both verses, kulla mumazzaq.

And I make no firm claim about the historical counterpart of the dispersal. That this community of southern Arabia scattered to different regions at one period is transmitted; the verse does not enumerate the directions or the branches of the dispersal.

The verse ends with the backbone word of the sūra.

Two intensive forms side by side. And that the two attributes are named together is worth recording.

I record this as my own reading, and its support is the story itself: in the story of Sabaʾ there are two states — abundance (15) and want (16). The answer to abundance is thanks, the answer to want is endurance. The verse describes the one who is to take the lesson as the one who stands rightly in both states.

That is, the pair of attributes corresponds exactly to the two phases of the story.

And the number of the word āya changes: in the fifteenth verse it was āyatun (singular), here āyātin (plural). The gardens were one sign; what befell them is many signs. I record this as an observation.