Yāsīn 36:5-6

Tanzīla'l-ʿAzīzi'r-Raḥīm · Li-tundhira qawman mā undhira ābāʾuhum fa-hum ghāfilūn

"The sending down of the Mighty, the Merciful. That you may warn a people whose fathers were not warned — for they are heedless."

The word is in the accusative, and its being in the accusative requires an implied element. The main explanations the lexicographers give:

A nominative reading (tanzīlu) is also transmitted in the sources on the variant readings; on that reading the word becomes subject or predicate and the sense comes to "this is the sending down of…". Since I am not certain of its details or of which authorities it belongs to, I name no names. The meaning comes out at the same place on either reading.

The pattern of the word is worth recording: tanzīl is the verbal noun of Form II. In Arabic this form can convey gradualness (tadrīj, doing something piece by piece, stage by stage) — as against inzāl (Form IV). The lexicographers record this distinction; but I do not claim that it operates everywhere, because the Qurʾān uses both patterns.

This matter was treated in Fuṣṣilat at 41/2, and a table was set up there: in the ḥā-mīm sūras the one who sends down is mostly named al-ʿAzīz al-Ḥakīm, whereas in Fuṣṣilat he is named al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm. The finding there was this: the pair of names changes with the subject of the sūra, and this is a verifiable difference.

I add the pair from Yāsīn to that table:

What is to be recorded is this: the pair in Yāsīn takes one name from each of the two ends of the table. Al-ʿAzīz from the side of power, al-Raḥīm from the side of mercy. This is a countable datum.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sūra's own arrangement: in Yāsīn the two sides stand side by side. In the seventh and ninth verses a state of being shut in will be described; in the eleventh verse forgiveness and a generous reward will be announced; in the fifty-eighth verse a peace will be given, and in the sixty-third a hell will be shown. From beginning to end the sūra holds the two scenes together, and the names of the one who sends down announce this from the first sentence.

One note: the same pair of names (al-ʿAzīz al-Raḥīm) also occurs as a recurring verse-ending in Sūrat al-Shuʿarāʾ. The pair, then, is not peculiar to Yāsīn; what is peculiar to Yāsīn is that the pair comes inside the sentence about sending down.

The meaning of the sentence depends on which mā the particle is, and this is one of the places where the classical commentaries dwell longest.

I do not impose a preference. But one observation can be recorded: the fa-hum ghāfilūn at the end of the sentence appears to support the first reading, because the fāʾ announces a consequence — "they were not warned, and so they are heedless." On the second reading the consequence the fāʾ attaches is weaker. This is an observation, not a preference; the defenders of the second and third readings explain the fāʾ otherwise.

And this must be recorded as well: the first reading does not mean "no messenger ever came to their fathers". It is widely said that the near forefathers are meant — that is, a period in which the warning was interrupted. The thirty-first verse will say "how many generations before them We destroyed"; the sūra does not presuppose a past without warning.

The concrete sense of the root: the absence of any mark upon a thing. The lexicographers describe the word ghufl as "unstamped, unmarked": arḍun ghuflun — land with no track or road upon it; dābbatun ghuflun — an unbranded animal.

From here comes the definition of ghafla: the state in which there is no mark for the attention to fall upon.

I record this as an observation, and it rests on the lexicographers' definition of the root: heedlessness is not ignorance. In ignorance there is no knowledge; in heedlessness the knowledge does not strike the attention. And the next verse of the sūra will describe exactly this: a word has come true, but "they do not believe"; then an obstacle to sight will be described.

The word closes the first block of the sūra and gives the block its closing sound: ghāfilūn.