al-Dukhān 44:3

Innā anzalnāhu fī laylatin mubārakatin, innā kunnā mundhirīn

"We sent it down on a blessed night. We are ever warners."

These three words are identical letter for letter with the first three words of al-Qadr 97/1. This was already recorded in al-Qadr:

"This verse begins word for word the same as al-Qadr 97/1; only the attribute of the night changes."

Let us set the two verses side by side:

The difference is not only in the word but in the definiteness. al-Dukhān says "on a night" and names the night by an attribute; al-Qadr says "on that night" and names the night by a name.

I record this as my own reading: the context of al-Dukhān does not require the giving of a name, because the sūra is concerned not with the identity of the night but with the work done on that night — the next verse will pass straight to the work (fīhā yufraqu).

أَنزَلْنَا — anzala or nazzala. This distinction was treated in al-Qadr; I do not repeat it here.

ٱلْهَاء — the referent of the pronoun is not stated. In al-Qadr it was recorded that this should be considered together with al-ʿAlaq 96/1. In al-Dukhān the case is different, and the difference matters: here the referent of the pronoun stands in the preceding verse — al-kitābu'l-mubīn. The gap that exists in al-Qadr, then, does not exist in al-Dukhān.

Which night this phrase intends is one of the known disagreements of exegesis. There are two main views, and I do not impose a preference.

I enter two records, and neither is a preference but a determination of the data:

One. "That the two sūras speak of the same night is the widespread view" — this is the stance of the majority in the exegetical tradition, and in al-Qadr too the reading was made through this link.

Two. The material on which the second view rests comes not from the wording of the verse but from outside the verse. This does not of itself make the view wrong; but the kind of ground of the two views differs, and the reader has a right to be told: one is from within the text, the other from outside it.

I declare no preference in this commentary.

The concrete sense, so far as the lexicographers record it, runs in two directions, and both are vivid:

• بَرَكَ — the kneeling of a camel, its settling in a place and staying there. From the same root mabrak — the place where a camel kneels.
• بِرْكَة — a pool; the place where water gathers and stands.
• بَرَكَة — blessing: the remaining and increasing of the good in a thing.

The link between the two branches is made by the lexicographers thus: blessing is the lastingness of the good. An abundance that comes and goes is not blessing; blessing is a small thing that stays and suffices. The camel's kneeling and the water's gathering carry the same idea: to stay in place.

And mubāraka is a passive participle: "made blessed". The blessing of the night, then, is not from itself; it has been given.

I record this as my own reading: the root's sense of "staying in place" makes its choice as an attribute of the night meaningful. A night is a thing that passes; the attribute given to it describes a thing that stands. That the work done on that night is described in the next verse as a fixing (ḥakīm — see below) agrees with this reading.

There are two innas in the verse: innā anzalnā and innā kunnā. And the pattern of the second is striking: kāna + a plural active participle.

In Arabic kāna + an active participle conveys not a single act in the past but an ongoing attribute. The sentence, that is, does not say "we warned"; it says "we are ever warners".

The root ن-ذ-ر was treated in many sections (al-Mulk, Nūḥ, al-Muddaththir, al-Mursalāt); I do not repeat it here. The summary: indhār is the announcing of an oncoming danger in time.

And the point of word order is this: the sending down is given as an event (a perfect verb), the warning as an attribute (kāna + active participle). The coming down of this Book, that is, is new; the work of warning is not new.

The same pattern will be repeated two verses later: innā kunnā mursilīn (5) — "we are ever senders". The same structure twice in two verses, and two separate attributes: to warn and to send.

Both are plural active participles, both with kāna. I record this as a verifiable repetition.