al-Zukhruf 43:53

Fa-law lā ulqiya ʿalayhi aswiratun min dhahabin aw jāʾa maʿahu'l-malāʾikatu muqtarinīn

"Should bracelets of gold not have been cast upon him? Or angels have come with him in a train?"

This verse is the clearest expression of the sūra's main question, and it needs to be treated in detail.

Pharaoh asks for a proof. The proof he asks for is this: a gold bracelet.

And this must be read together with the forty-eighth verse of the sūra: there it was said that the signs came each greater than the last. The proofs, that is, had already come, and had been increasing.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the two verses stand in the same block: in order to show that a shortage of proof was not the issue, the verse says first that the proofs had come, and then reports the "proof" that is demanded.

And what is demanded is not a proof but an insignia.

The sense of the root: to encircle, to surround, to form a ring.

• سُور — a city wall; the wall that encircles.
• سِوَار — a bracelet; the ring that encircles the wrist. Its plural is aswira / asāwir.
• سُورَة — a section, a tier; and the name of the sections of the Qurʾān. The lexicographers attach this word too to the same root and explain it as "an enclosed section with settled bounds" or "a rising tier"; I transmit this derivation as it has been transmitted.

The concrete picture of the word: a ring, an encircling.

The root ذ-ه-ب: to go; and dhahab — gold. The lexicographers make the link thus: gold is the thing that keeps going out of one's hand, that keeps changing hands. I give this explanation as it has been transmitted.

In the classical commentaries this explanation is transmitted for this verse: that in ancient Egypt and the surrounding cultures, when someone was given authority, gold bracelets and a collar were put on him; that this was an insignia of rank.

I transmit this explanation as it has been transmitted.

And I can add this, because it is a verifiable field: that jewellery and collars were used as indicators of rank in ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern cultures is a matter known from archaeological finds and from the visual sources of the period. I record this as general historical knowledge, not in order to force a scientific confirmation onto the verse.

And a comparison can be made within the Qurʾān itself: Yūsuf 12/72 speaks of a king's drinking-cup in Egypt (ṣuwāʿa'l-malik); Yūsuf 12/31 recounts the women cutting their hands. The Qurʾān knows and uses the objects of this culture.

Now the verse must be read together with the name of the sūra.

In the thirty-fifth verse zukhruf (gold ornament) was named and tied to this verdict: wa in kullu dhālika lammā matāʿu'l-ḥayāti'd-dunyā.

In the fifty-third verse, the proof demanded for the truth of a prophet is gold.

I set this out in a table, because the backbone of the sūra becomes visible here:

Four occurrences, one material, four different positions.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is these four occurrences: the sūra neither forbids gold nor speaks ill of it. The only thing it does is to expose the use of gold as proof. In the thirty-fifth verse gold is a matāʿ; in the fifty-third it is put in the place of evidence. This is what the sūra objects to.

And I add this: Pharaoh's logic is this — one who comes from God must be marked with the most valuable thing here. The proof of divine approval, that is, is taken to be a local badge of status.

This logic is the very same as the objection in the thirty-first verse: there too the revelation was expected to be given to the man of highest rank in that society. The sūra, that is, shows the same error in two cultures, in two ages.

The root occurred in the thirteenth verse (muqrinīn) and in the thirty-sixth (qarīn). Here it comes for the third time, this time in Form VIII: muqtarinīn.

Form VIII (iftiʿāl) here conveys reciprocity or accompaniment: accompanying one another, in a train, rank upon rank.

I set the three occurrences out in a table, because a single root coming in three different patterns within one sūra is worth recording:

And the opposition between the thirteenth and the fifty-third verse is worth recording as my own reading:

The same root, two opposite stances. The one accepts his own measure before a possibility that has been given; the other makes a proof conditional on his own measure of splendour.

I record this as a pattern, and I do not claim that the sūra is constructing a deliberate play on words. What I record is that the root has been used in this sūra in three different patterns and in positions opposed to one another.