al-Dukhān 44:49

Dhuq innaka anta'l-ʿazīzu'l-karīm

"'Taste it! You were the mighty one, the noble one.'"

This is the sharpest point of word order in the sūra and deserves detailed treatment.

In the forty-seventh and forty-eighth verses the commands were plural and their addressees nameless: khudhū, iʿtilū, ṣubbū.

In the forty-ninth the command turns singular and the addressee is definite: dhuq — "taste".

The person spoken about throughout the scene, that is, is at the very end addressed directly.

I record this as an observation about word order, and the finding recorded for the same move in al-Wāqiʿa works here too:

"the narrative turns to the addressee at the very point where it grows most concrete. The classification is made in the third person, the scene is made to be lived in the second."

In al-Dukhān this is done on the scale of a single person.

The root was treated in al-Nabaʾ and this was recorded there:

"Tasting is the nearest of the senses: seeing happens at a distance, hearing happens at a distance, touching requires contact, but tasting requires taking in. And the Qurʾān uses this verb very often for punishment."

I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it.

What is peculiar to al-Dukhān is the root's second occurrence in the sūra:

The same root, one a command and one a denial. And their objects differ: the one punishment, the other death.

I record this as a verifiable repetition within the sūra.

Now we come to the real matter of the verse. And first the grammar of the sentence must be set out, because the point lies exactly there.

There are four separate elements of certainty in the sentence, and the four come one upon another:

In Arabic the coming together of these four elements builds the most certain sentence of identity the language can give. Normally this pattern is used to say that an attribute belongs solely and entirely to someone.

And the sūra had used this pattern for God seven verses earlier:

Four sentences, one pattern. And in the third the pattern is taken out of its place.

In Arabic rhetoric this is called tahakkum: to say a thing meaning exactly its opposite.

And the strongest form of tahakkum is the taking of a word from its claimant's own mouth and giving it back.

It is transmitted that there was someone who said these two attributes of himself — it is transmitted that he said he counted himself the mightiest and the noblest of his people. I give no name of a person or of a tribe; in this commentary accounts of occasions of revelation are transmitted without names, and I issue no ruling about the details of this account.

But even without the report, how the verse works can be read from the text, and it rests on these three data:

One. ʿAzīz and karīm are the two basic attributes a man in Arab society could want for himself: the one power (invincibility, inviolability), the other worth (lineage, generosity, standing).

Two. The sentence gives those two attributes to that man in the most certain language — and precisely at the moment they are taken from his hand.

Three. The sūra had given one of the same attributes (al-ʿAzīz) to God seven verses earlier.

And this is the mechanism of the mockery — I give it as my own reading:

The sentence is not lying; it is changing the place. The man really did bear those attributes — within his own people, on his own measure. The verse does not deny those attributes; it carries them somewhere else and measures them there. And there the same attributes mean nothing.

For a saying to be mockery in a language it need not be false. It is enough that it be out of place.

What the two attributes do here must be seen separately, because each takes back a different thing.

ٱلْعَزِيز — the root ع-ز-ز. It was recorded above (at verse 42): the concrete core of the root is "hard and impassable ground". ʿIzza — imperviousness, inviolability.

And now see what happens: in the forty-seventh verse that man is seized and dragged. That is, the exact opposite of inviolability.

ٱلْكَرِيم — the root ك-ر-م. As recorded in al-Wāqiʿa, one side of the word is "the useful of its own kind"; another side is one who is honoured, who is entertained as a guest.

And karam in Arabic is a word of hospitality: ikrām — the entertaining of a guest.

Now let us look at the forty-eighth verse — I give this as my own reading: something is served to that man. It is poured over his head. All the elements of a scene of hospitality are there: the arriving guest, the thing set before him, the manner of its presentation.

And in al-Wāqiʿa this was named with exactly one word: at al-Wāqiʿa 56/56 the food of the left hand is called nuzul — "the fare set before a guest". The sentence in al-Wāqiʿa was: hādhā nuzuluhum yawma'd-dīn.

The two sūras, that is, make the same inversion: al-Wāqiʿa uses the word hospitality, al-Dukhān the attribute karīm.

I present this as my own reading; the wording of the two sūras is verifiable, but it is I who establish the link between them.

The chain established for this word in al-Wāqiʿa was this, and it entered the closing table there too:

And the conclusion recorded in al-Wāqiʿa: "The same attribute, denied in one place and ascribed in another. And the sense the lexicographers give for karīm, 'the useful of its own kind', works in both places."

al-Dukhān does something different, and the difference matters.

And what the two sūras share is this: both use the same attribute more than once within the sūra and draw the difference of meaning from position.

I present this as my own reading and rely on the closing table of al-Wāqiʿa.

And one further link of method must be recorded.

In al-Qamar a technique was named: "giving the word back to its claimant". In al-Burūj the same thing was recorded with another word: "the verdict is announced in the language of the offence."

al-Dukhān 44/49 is one of the plainest examples of this technique — because what is given back here is not an act (baṭsh) or an accusation (siḥr) but the two attributes the man applied to himself.

And the giving back is done by way of mockery: the attribute is returned, but in a place where its owner cannot use it.

Finally I draw a limit.

There is disagreement over who the addressee of the verse is:

I do not impose a preference.

And one more record, required by Method: I issue no ruling about any particular person on the strength of this verse. What the text builds is an attribute and the counterpart of that attribute.