Muḥammad 47:24

A-fa-lā yatadabbarūna'l-Qurʾāna am ʿalā qulūbin aqfāluhā

"Do they not ponder the Qurʾān? Or are there locks of their own upon hearts?"

This verse is one of the most direct sentences the Qurʾān says about itself, and two of its words deserve to be analysed separately.

Root: د-ب-ر. And the concrete sense of the root carries the whole weight of the word: the back, the back of a thing.

دُبُر (dubur) — the back, the rear. And the family of meanings that comes out of this:

And the connection the lexicographers record is this: tadbīr is to arrange a matter by looking at its outcome. That is, the word names planning as "seeing the back of a thing".

This root was taken up in al-Nāziʿāt (79/5 — al-mudabbirāti amrā), Qāf, al-Ṭūr, al-Qamar, al-Muddaththir, al-Ḥashr and al-Maʿārij. The analysis here is particular to the word تَدَبُّر and is made for the first time in this commentary here.

تَدَبَّرَ — Form V. And this form announces two things:

That is, tadabbur is not something that happens at a glance. The pattern of the word says that the work takes time and requires labour.

Now let us put two things together:

• The root: to get behind a thing.
• The form: with effort, step by step.

The result: tadabbur is to advance step by step towards the back of a text, its end, the place it arrives at.

And this is different from "reading". Reading is advancing over a text: going from beginning to end. Tadabbur is getting behind the text.

A table of comparison:

Four verbs, four different works. And the verse asks about the third of the four.

And now we come to the most striking verbal weave in this sūra.

The root د-ب-ر occurs three times in this sūra, and all three within four consecutive verses:

Three verses, the same root, three different works.

And there is a relation of direction among them — I record this as my own reading, it carries no claim of deliberateness:

• 24: To get behind the text — a movement forward (going to see the end of a thing).
• 25: To turn upon one's own back — a movement backward (going back to where one came from).
• 27: Being struck on face and back — the closing of both directions.

That is, the sūra uses the word "back" three times and turns it each time in another direction. The person who does not get behind a thing turns upon his own back; and in the end both his front and his back are closed.

I record this weave as a fact standing in the text (that the three words are from the same root is beyond dispute); the relation of meaning set up among them, however, is my reading.

This root occurs in the sense of "to ponder" in four places in the Qurʾān, and in all four its object is the Qurʾān or its verses:

All four occurrences are tied to the same object. The word is used for nothing else in the Qurʾān.

And Ṣād 38/29 is striking: there tadabbur is given as the reason for the sending down of the book — li-yaddabbarū. That is, the text ties the cause of its own existence to this verb.

And at al-Nisāʾ 4/82 the verb is tied to a method: if there is pondering, contradiction will be looked for and will not be found. That is, tadabbur is not looking at the text with an acceptance brought from outside; it is testing the text.

When these two verses are read together it becomes clear what tadabbur is — I record it as an observation: the verb is neither a passive reading nor an advance assent. It is getting behind the text and probing its consistency.

In Arabic there are two kinds of am:

The am here is munqaṭiʿa and this determines how the verse is read.

That is, the verse is not asking for a choice between two alternatives. It says: "Do they not ponder? — No; is it that there are locks upon hearts, then?"

The second question is not the answer to the first; it is a possibility put forward as an explanation of the first. And the possibility is left in the form of a question.

Root: ق-ف-ل. قُفْل — a lock; أَقْفَال — locks.

And there is an interesting member in the family of meanings of the root:

The lexicographers record that the word qāfila originally meant "a company returning from a journey"; later it came to be used for the outgoing caravan too. The Turkish word kafile (a party of travellers) comes from this word.

The root also records a sense of dryness and hardness: qafala'l-jild — the hide dried out, it hardened.

I do not speak with certainty about how these senses are connected to one another. The lexicographers give different explanations and I have no sound measure by which to prefer among them. What I record is that the words are found in the same root — this is lexical data.

As a reading — it is my own inference — I note this: a lock prevents a thing from being opened; and the sense of "turning" in the root brings to mind the working of a lock (the turning of the key). But this is a conjecture and I do not present it as a claim about derivation.

And now we come to the finest point of the verse.

عَلَىٰ قُلُوبٍ أَقْفَالُهَآ — there are two nouns in the clause and the two come in different forms:

The first point: qulūb is indefinite.

The verse does not say ٱلْقُلُوب (al-qulūb — "the hearts", definite). It says قُلُوبٍ — "some hearts", "a portion of hearts".

In grammar this is called tankīr li't-taqlīl: indefiniteness announcing fewness.

And its meaning is this: the ruling is set not upon all hearts but upon a portion of them. The verse does not say "people's hearts are locked".

In terms of the method (Method) this yields a direct consequence: the verse does not issue a blanket ruling upon a community. The indefiniteness narrows the scope.

The second point: aqfāl is made definite by a pronoun.

أَقْفَالُهَا — "their locks". The pronoun refers back to qulūb.

That is, the locks are not general locks brought from outside; they are locks belonging to those hearts. Each heart's own lock.

On a first reading this looks like a small detail, but it is not. The sentence could have been built like this:

• am ʿalā qulūbihim aqfālun — "are there locks on their hearts?" (the lock indefinite, the heart definite). It does not say this.
• am ʿalā qulūbin aqfālun — "are there locks on some hearts?" (both indefinite). It does not say this either.

The verse makes the heart indefinite and the lock belong to that heart.

And the picture that comes out of this is this — it is my own reading: the lock is not a foreign instrument fitted to the heart afterwards; it is that heart's own lock. That is, every closing has a form peculiar to itself.

I present this as a reading. That the pronoun refers back to qulūb is grammatical data; the "each heart's own lock" interpretation I draw from it is my own inference, and I ascribe it to no classical exegete.

The third point: the plural.

أَقْفَال is plural — not a lock but locks.

This too is worth recording: not a single obstacle but more than one. And if a door has more than one lock, opening one is not enough.

And the particle matters again: عَلَىٰ قُلُوبٍ — "upon hearts".

The lock is not inside the heart but on top of it.

This is the same structure as the seal in the sixteenth verse (ṭabaʿa'llāhu ʿalā qulūbihim) and was treated in al-Baqara in the expression khatama'llāhu ʿalā qulūbihim at 2/7.

And the picture itself is this: a lock is fitted from outside. The heart is not a locked chest; the lock is on the lid.

And who fitted the lock?

The verse does not say.

And this is striking when compared with the sixteenth verse:

The same sūra, eight verses apart, recounts the same operation once with an agent and once without.

This enters into the theological debate on destiny and I do not enter that debate. What I record is what stands in the text: the sūra houses both accounts and does not prefer one to the other.

A note on method is needed.

The verb of the verse is in the third person plural: yatadabbarūna — "do they not ponder?" That is, it is not asked of the addressee directly.

But the form of the question — a-fa-lā, an interrogative of denial — leaves the answer to the reader.

And the context of the verse had described who "they" are in verses 20-23: those in whose hearts is a disease, that is, those among the people who make a claim to faith.

This increases the hardness of the verse. The question is not put to someone who has never heard the Qurʾān. It is put to someone present in the setting in which the Qurʾān came down, who asks for sūras to be sent down, who sits in the gathering.

What this verse says to the present has to do not with drawing a method out of it but with keeping the word itself.

Three different relations can be had with a text, and the three are different things:

The verse does not reject the first two; but what it asks about is the third.

And the second half of the verse gives a possibility of diagnosis — it is my own reading: if a text is read over and over and nothing changes, the trouble is not in the text. The verse names this possibility "a lock" and places the lock on top of the heart.

I present this as an application; the wording of the verse does not describe a method, it asks a question.