وَقَالُوا۟ لَوْلَا نُزِّلَ هَٰذَا ٱلْقُرْءَانُ عَلَىٰ رَجُلٍ مِّنَ ٱلْقَرْيَتَيْنِ عَظِيمٍ
The fifth block of the sūra opens here, and this block (31-35) is its densest part. The name of the sūra will occur here too.
Law lā here is the particle of taḥḍīḍ: the pattern that asks why something was not done, conveying reproach.
The subject of the sentence is the Qurʾān, its predicate nuzzila (should it not have been sent down), and the condition is looked for in a person: rajulin … ʿaẓīm.
The point to notice, and I record it: the objection is directed not at the content of the Qurʾān but at its recipient. What the Qurʾān says is not disputed; to whom it was given is.
Which towns these are is not stated in the verse. In the classical commentaries it is widely transmitted that they are Mecca and Ṭāʾif. I transmit this as it has been transmitted; since the verse gives no name, I do not present it as certain knowledge.
Likewise, various names are transmitted in the classical commentaries for who is meant by "a great man". I do not report them, because the verse gives no name and I cannot issue a ruling on the soundness of the names.
That the verse gives no name is itself a piece of information, and I record this as my own reading: had a name been given, the matter would have been confined to that person. Because no name is given, it is the measure itself that becomes the subject.
The root ع-ظ-م: bone. ʿAẓm — bone. And from there greatness: the largeness of a thing's skeleton, of its frame.
The concrete sense of the root is meaningful here, and I give it as an observation: ʿaẓīm, in the picture of the root, means large of frame. The word conveys, that is, a greatness that is measurable and visible from outside.
- This verse was cited directly in al-Muṭaffifīn and al-Humaza.
- In al-Qamar it was given under the heading "the objection about selection", together with Ṣād 38/8: a-unzila ʿalayhi'dh-dhikru min bayninā — "has the reminder been sent down on him, out of all of us?"
And in al-Aḥqāf at 46/11 the same logic was recorded in another sentence — bringing it over here for comparison is called for, and the comparison is fruitful:
| al-Aḥqāf 46/11 | al-Zukhruf 43/31 | |
|---|---|---|
| Sentence | Law kāna khayran mā sabaqūnā ilayh | Law lā nuzzila … ʿalā rajulin … ʿaẓīm |
| Of whom it is said | About those who believe | About the Prophet |
| The logic | What is good comes first to the superior | What is valuable is given to the great man |
| Direction of inference | From the recipient → to the value of the thing | From the thing → to the person who ought to receive it |
| Shared assumption | Value is read off the position of the one who carries it | The same |
The finding recorded in al-Aḥqāf was this: "the objection is not an argument but an assumption about ranking." In al-Zukhruf the same assumption is built from the opposite direction.
I record the difference as my own reading: the objection in al-Aḥqāf draws a conclusion (if these people have received it, it is not good); the objection in al-Zukhruf frames a demand (then it should have been given to so-and-so). The first looks backward, the second forward. But the scale both rest on is the same.
And this too must be recorded: neither objection contains any information about a prophet or a message. Both are assumptions about social ranking.