al-Dukhān 44:1-2

Ḥā-mīm · Wa'l-kitābi'l-mubīn

"Ḥā-mīm. By the clear Book."

The general record on the disconnected letters was entered at length in the section al-Baqara 2/1, and in summary at Qāf 50/1. I do not repeat it here.

The summary of the records made there is this:

The meaning of these letters is not known with certainty. One group of scholars refers the meaning to God (tafwīḍ). Among the views that seek an explanation, the one that finds most support from within the text is the explanation that the letters make the challenge meaningful by pointing to the raw material of the Qurʾān. And no numerical reckoning, no abjad and no counting of letters is done over these letters.

In Qāf this record was entered once again, in bold. I enter it here for the third time, and I write the reason: ḥā-mīm stands at the head of seven sūras, that is, it is the most frequently repeated of the groups of disconnected letters; and repetition is the place most open to the manufacture of claims. This commentary does not go down that road.

What can be recorded is a verifiable fact of word order, and it was already recorded in al-Aḥqāf:

"In almost all the sūras that open with ḥā-mīm, the Book is named immediately after the opening."

al-Dukhān is one of the shortest examples of this pattern: the letters are said, and in the second verse al-kitāb comes with nothing at all between.

The table drawn up in Qāf for the three sūras with a single letter gains one more row here:

The difference is worth recording: of two sūras opening with the same group of letters, one speaks of the Book by swearing by it, the other by making a statement. I give this as an observation; it agrees with the difference in how the two sūras work — al-Aḥqāf demands proof, al-Dukhān commands watching.

The Qurʾān's swearing by itself was treated in Qāf; the record made there was this: the text begins its work by swearing by itself and ends it by commanding a reminding by means of itself.

In al-Dukhān the same chain is built more plainly still:

The sūra opens by swearing by the Book and closes by saying that the Book has been made easy. The referent of the pronoun -hu in the fifty-eighth verse is disputed and will be taken up there; but the most widespread reading refers it to the Qurʾān.

Root: ب-ي-ن. In al-Aḥqāf the double use of this root at al-Aḥqāf 46/7-8 was treated; the concrete sense of the root is "the opening of a space between two things". Bayn — the space between. Bāna — it parted, it was distinguished. Bayān — making distinguishable. Mubīn — the active participle of Form IV.

And the most instructive side of the root is that Form IV works in Arabic both transitively and intransitively:

The lexicographers transmit both readings, and no preference is imposed in this commentary. The two do not exclude one another: a thing that is not itself clear is hardly to be expected to make anything else clear.

Now we come to the count within the sūra, and this is the most conspicuous fact of wording in al-Dukhān.

The word mubīn occurs five times in this sūra, and each time it qualifies something else:

Five separate things, one single adjective. And the things qualified form a series: the Book (a word), the smoke (an image), the messenger (a person), the proof (evidence), the trial (a situation).

I present this as my own reading, and its ground is the wording of the five verses: the sūra names with the same adjective every kind of evidence that can be brought against the addressee. It leaves, that is, no claim of unintelligibility standing. And the consequence of this will be stated plainly in the thirteenth verse: "how should the reminder come to them, when a manifest messenger has come to them?" — that is, the plea of obscurity has been closed off.

In al-Aḥqāf it was recorded that the same root is used by the other party as well (hādhā siḥrun mubīn — "this is manifest sorcery"). The finding recorded there works here too: the dispute is over what the manifest thing is, not over whether it is manifest.

In Qāf the question of the answer to an oath was taken up. In al-Dukhān the case is easier: the answer comes at once.

The third verse begins innā anzalnāhu, and the pattern inna + past tense at its head is one of the known forms of the answer to an oath in Arabic. Nothing, then, is left out here; the thing sworn by (the Book) and the thing said in the answer to the oath (the sending down of the Book) are the same thing.

And this is not a vicious circle but a deliberate one: the Book is sworn by, concerning how the Book came.