al-Zukhruf 43:1-4

Ḥā-mīm · Wa'l-kitābi'l-mubīn · Innā jaʿalnāhu qurʾānan ʿarabiyyan laʿallakum taʿqilūn · Wa innahu fī ummi'l-kitābi ladaynā la-ʿaliyyun ḥakīm

"Ḥā-mīm. By the clear Book. We have made it an Arabic Qurʾān, so that you may reason. And it is with Us in the mother of the Book; truly exalted, truly wise."

The general note on the disconnected letters has been entered elsewhere in the corpus (al-Baqara, al-Qalam, Qāf, al-Aḥqāf); I do not repeat it here. Its summary is this: there is no certain knowledge about the meaning of these letters; many explanations are transmitted in the classical commentaries and none of them claims certainty. Per the method (Method), claims resting on letter-and-number calculation are not entered into.

What can be recorded is a verifiable fact of arrangement: in almost every sūra that opens with ḥā-mīm, the Book is named immediately after the opening. Here it comes twice over: the second verse swears by the Book, and the third says how the Book was made.

The root ب-ي-ن and the word mubīn have been treated in many places in the corpus (in detail in al-Aḥqāf at 46/7-8, by way of the contrast between bayyināt and mubīn). The core of the root: the opening of a gap between two things, an interval — and from there, to become distinguishable, to be clear.

Mubīn is an active participle of Form IV, and in Arabic this pattern can be read either transitively or intransitively:

The lexicographers regard both as possible, and both sit well here. I do not impose a preference; but I record this: the third verse builds a chain of reasoning that supports the second reading — the Book was made Arabic so that it might be reasoned out. Clarity is thus presented not as an ornament of the Book but as its work.

The sentence does not say "We sent it down". The verb is jaʿala: "he made, he set, he brought it about that it should be so".

Jaʿala in Arabic conveys placing something from one state into another — this is what distinguishes it from khalaqa (to bring into being out of nothing). The distinction is worth recording: the verse speaks not of the Qurʾān's coming into being but of the form in which it was given. In the tenth verse the same verb will be used of the earth (alladhī jaʿala lakumu'l-arḍa mahdan), and in the twelfth of mounts (wa jaʿala lakum mina'l-fulki wa'l-anʿāmi mā tarkabūn).

In all three the structure is the same: something already existing is put into a form a human being can use. The ground is levelled, the animal becomes a mount, speech enters a language.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the repetition of the verb within the sūra: the verse places the choice of a language inside an enumeration of favours.

The root was analysed in al-Wāqiʿa in the discussion of 56/37 (ʿuruban); I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it. What was recorded there as the core was this:

"The core meaning the lexicographers give for the root ع-ر-ب: to express clearly and plainly, to set one's meaning out without concealing it. Aʿraba ʿani'sh-shayʾ — he made a thing known openly. Iʿrāb — bringing out into the open (the grammatical term iʿrāb comes from this too: the word's bringing out into the open what it does in the sentence, by means of the vowel on its end)."

In al-Wāqiʿa this core was applied to an attribute of relationship (ʿarūb — one who does not conceal her state). Here the same core is applied to a text.

And what must be added here is this: the word ʿarabī does not stand here merely as the name of a people. The second verse described the Book as mubīn (clear); the third says the language is ʿarabī. The two words come from the same field: one is bayān, the other iʿrāb — both are "bringing to light".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the root meanings of the two words: the verse says the same thing twice in two successive descriptions. The Book is clear; and it was given in the language that makes clear.

The Qurʾān makes this description elsewhere too, and always ties it to the same ground: Yūsuf 12/2 (innā anzalnāhu qurʾānan ʿarabiyyan laʿallakum taʿqilūn — the identical sentence), Ṭāhā 20/113, al-Zumar 39/28, Fuṣṣilat 41/3, al-Shūrā 42/7, al-Aḥqāf 46/12, al-Raʿd 13/37. In al-Naḥl 16/103 the word occurs as an answer to an objection: lisānu'lladhī yulḥidūna ilayhi aʿjamiyyun wa hādhā lisānun ʿarabiyyun mubīn — here aʿjamī is set as the opposite of ʿarabī.

The root ع-ج-م is the exact opposite of the root ع-ر-ب, and the concrete sense of the root shows it: closedness, unintelligibility. ʿUjma — a block in the tongue, a stammer. ʿAjmāʾ — an animal that has a voice but does not speak. The contrast between the two roots is therefore not "Arab / non-Arab" but, at the level of the roots the lexicographers record, "clear / closed".

This distinction matters here, and per the method (Method) I must state it plainly: the verse is not proclaiming the superiority of a language or of a people. The ground the verse itself gives stands at the end of the verse — and that ground looks to the one addressed, not to the language.

At the end of the sentence there is a laʿallakum, and this is the ground for the choice of language.

The root ع-ق-ل has been treated in the corpus (al-Mulk, al-Ḥujurāt, al-Ḥashr, al-Fajr). The concrete sense of the root: to tie, to hold, not to let loose. ʿIqāl — the cord bound around a camel's knee. In the picture the root gives, the intellect is what holds a person, what keeps him from scattering.

Now the word order must be set out:

The verse thus ties the choice of language to a purpose, and the purpose is that the one addressed should understand.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the causal clause the verse builds for itself: if the language was chosen so that the one addressed should understand, then the value of the language lies in its intelligibility. This stands in the same direction as the whole later argument of the sūra: throughout the sūra the other side will tie value to appearance (gold, rank, lineage); the sūra ties value to function. For the Book too the measure is this — that it opens.

And one more note: the same ground will be turned over in the eighteenth verse. There, the expression used by the society speaking about a daughter is this: wa huwa fi'l-khiṣāmi ghayru mubīn — "one who cannot bring her meaning to light in a dispute". The sūra thus brings back before us, fifteen verses later and by way of a human being, the measure it gave to language in the third verse (clarity). I shall treat this repetition in detail there.

The root has come up twice in the corpus (al-Jumuʿa 62/2 — ummī; al-Qiyāma 75/12 — amāmahu). In the discussion of al-Qiyāma the family of the root was given as follows; I rely on that:

"Root: أ-م-م. And the family of this root is striking: umm (mother), umma (community), imām (the one who stands in front, who goes ahead), amām (the front). The shared idea: priority, being in front, being at the source."

I add here one further aspect of the root, because it is that aspect which is at work in this verse. The lexicographers describe the word umm not only as "mother" but as "the origin of a thing, the source to which it is referred back, the trunk to which it is joined", and they record these usages:

• أُمُّ الرَّأْس — the membrane of the brain; the place counted as the origin of the head.
• أُمُّ القُرَى — the mother of towns (of Mecca; al-Anʿām 6/92, al-Shūrā 42/7).
• أُمُّ الطَّرِيق — the main road; the principal road from which the branches separate.

In the picture the root gives, then, umm is not primarily "the one who gives birth" but the one who is returned to. The branches part from it and are attached to it.

The expression ummu'l-kitāb occurs in three places in the Qurʾān, and in the three it may not carry the same sense:

The third is distinct from the others and must not be confused with them: there the expression is used of a group of verses inside the Qurʾān. I record this as a caution.

Whether this expression is the same thing as al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ has been debated in the classical commentaries. A note on this question was entered in al-Burūj, and I keep the same note here:

"There are expressions within the Qurʾān that can be related to one another — kitābin maknūn (al-Wāqiʿa 56/78), ummu'l-kitāb (al-Zukhruf 43/4; al-Raʿd 13/39), kitābin ḥafīẓ (Qāf 50/4) — but whether these expressions are identical with one another is itself disputed, and no ruling is issued here."

I keep the same limit here: I produce no description of the modality of this expression.

But the word order of the verse does say something, and that can be said:

The order moves in this direction: position, then possession, then two attributes.

The root ع-ل-و has been treated in many places in the corpus (al-Aʿlā, al-Nāziʿāt, al-Ghāshiya); its core is height. The root ح-ك-م has been treated as well (al-Baqara at 2/269 — ḥakama, by way of its relation to the bridle; al-Aḥqāf 46/2). Its core: to restrain and hold in place.

That the two attributes stand side by side is worth recording, and it can be compared with the opening of al-Aḥqāf: there ʿazīz (mighty) and ḥakīm (rightly placed) stood side by side, and what was recorded there was this — "one conveys power, the other rightness of placement; power is not named on its own". The same structure is here: ʿaliyy conveys height, ḥakīm conveys rightness of placement.

And these two attributes, read together with the third verse, produce a tension — I record it as my own reading: the third verse says the Book came down, into the language of the one addressed; the fourth says the Book is above, in the origin. The same thing is both sent down and high. The whole argument of the sūra about measure will be built on this tension: where a thing is located does not determine its value.