al-Fatḥ 48:18

Laqad raḍiya'llāhu ʿani'l-muʾminīna idh yubāyiʿūnaka taḥta'sh-shajarati fa-ʿalima mā fī qulūbihim fa-anzala's-sakīnata ʿalayhim wa athābahum fatḥan qarībā

"God has indeed been pleased with the believers when they pledged allegiance to you beneath the tree. He knew what was in their hearts, sent down the sakīna upon them, and gave them a near fatḥ."

The verse opens with لَ (the lām of the oath) and قَدْ (the particle of verification). The two together make one of the strongest reinforcements possible in Arabic: "assuredly, beyond all doubt, truly".

And this reinforcement is here for a reason. The event the sūra recounts is transmitted as having ended in disappointment for some of those who took part. The verse comes down on top of that disappointment with the heaviest pattern of reinforcement there is: He was pleased.

The sense of the root: to be well pleased, to have one's heart settle on a thing, to accept. Riḍā, riḍwān, marḍī, tarāḍī (mutual consent).

This root was treated at al-Ḥadīd (57/20, riḍwān) and at al-Bayyina. It was recorded there that riḍwān is an intensive verbal noun — a great good pleasure; and that the Qurʾān sets it above the description of the Garden, as something higher than it.

There are two points that belong here.

One: the tense of the verb. Raḍiya — the perfect. The good pleasure, that is, had already come about at the moment the verse came down. It is not a promise but a declaration.

Two: the particle. Raḍiya عَنْ — "was pleased with". When riḍā comes with this particle in Arabic it carries the sense of being pleased with the person himself, not with the deed.

The Qurʾān's strongest expression of good pleasure is reciprocal: "God is pleased with them, and they are pleased with Him" (al-Bayyina 98/8; al-Tawba 9/100; al-Māʾida 5/119). In this verse there is no reciprocity; it runs one way. I record this as an observation.

A note on a name. In the sources the pledge beneath the tree is called Bayʿat al-Riḍwān. This name is derived directly from this verse; the name of the event, that is, comes not from the event itself but from the verse that came down about it. This is like a fact recorded at al-Naṣr: there too one of a sūra's names arose not from its content but from the meaning laid upon it.

There is a fine point in the word order.

إِذْ is an adverb of past time: "when…". What one expects after it is a verb in the perfect. But the verb that comes is in the imperfect: yubāyiʿūnaka — "while they are pledging", "as they pledge".

In Arabic this is a technique for bringing an event before the eye: a past scene is made living with the present tense. It is exactly what we do in English when we say "and that day he arrives there and sees this".

The verse, that is, is not recounting the event; it is rebuilding the scene. And at the centre of the scene there is a clasping of hands.

شَجَرَة — root ش-ج-ر: tree. The root has an interesting aspect that must be recorded: the same root carries the sense of interlacing, becoming entangled, branching. Tashājara — they became entangled with one another, they quarrelled. The Qurʾān uses this: "until they make you judge in what has become entangled between them…" (al-Nisāʾ 4/65 — shajara baynahum).

A tree is called shajara, then, because its branches interlace. And the same word is used of a tangled dispute between people.

The Qurʾān does not say what kind of tree it was. Nor does it say where. Only "al-shajara" — a particular tree, but undefined.

The layer of reports, and a note. It is transmitted in the sources that in later years the Companions differed as to which tree it was, and that its place could not be determined with certainty. It is also reported that ʿUmar had it cut down so that it should not turn into a place of visitation and veneration. The details of these reports vary; I do not present them as certain knowledge.

But the Qurʾān's own stance must be recorded, and that stance is plain: the verse does not identify the tree. It gives no place name, no species, no mark. What is of worth in the event is not the tree but what happened beneath it.

I record this as my own reading: this silence of the text appears deliberate. We have already recorded that throughout the sūra the Qurʾān refrains from giving names of places and persons (only Mecca occurs, 24). This is precisely the moment most open to the making of a sacred tree, a sacred stone, a sacred place of visitation — and at precisely this moment the text leaves no mark at all.

The measure of the sūra is in this sentence.

Attend to the word order. The verse could have been built like this: "they pledged, and God was pleased." It is not. A verb comes in between:

`` they were pledging ↓ God KNEW what was in their hearts ↓ He sent down the sakīna ``

The good pleasure, that is, is attached not to the pledge itself but to what stood behind the pledge. The clasping of hands is the visible part; the verse makes the invisible part the measure.

And this is the exact counterpart of the eleventh verse:

Two verses apply the same measure in two directions. And the measure itself does not change anywhere: the act visible from outside does not settle the outcome by itself.

One more note: the verse does not say what was in their hearts. It says only "He knew". This silence shows that the source of the ruling is not human observation. No one can look into another's heart and apply this measure.

I record this as my own reading: this is the most important side of the measure. The principle "the intention in the heart is what matters" turns into its opposite the moment it becomes an instrument of judgement between people, putting everyone in the position of ruling on someone else's intention. The construction of the verse does not permit this: the knowing subject is stated explicitly, and that subject is not a human being.

The comparison of the sakīna's three occurrences in the sūra will be made at verse 26. Here I record two points.

One: the difference of particle. In the fourth verse it was fī qulūbi'l-muʾminīn (into their hearts); here it is ʿalayhim (upon them). The two particles build two different images: the one a filling from within, the other a covering.

Two: the order. Here the sakīna comes down after the hearts are known. The sequence, that is, is this: there was something within → it was known → it was sent down upon them. In the fourth verse there was no such sequence; there the sakīna came down directly.

The primary sense of the root: to return, to come back, to revert to what one was.

And the words born from it are striking:

The link with al-Baqara 2/125 is particularly meaningful in this verse, and I record it as an observation: the same root names the Kaʿba in one place as "the place returned to"; here it names the recompense given to a body of people who could not reach the Kaʿba and turned back. I do not claim that there is a deliberate allusion between the two verses; the shared root is a datum that can be verified.

The choice of verb is meaningful too. Athāba — "he recompensed, he made it come back". What is given, that is, is not a gift but a return: the coming back of something that was done.

The second occurrence of the word fatḥ in the sūra. And note: the fatḥ of the first verse is mubīn (manifest), this one is qarīb (near).

What the "near fatḥ" is has been debated in classical exegesis. I transmit the disagreement:

In classical exegesis the first view is widely transmitted, because the very next verse speaks of spoils. But I impose no preference; the Qurʾān gives no name to the event.

What must be recorded is this: the fatḥ of the first verse is "manifest", this one is "near". The two adjectives say different things — the one has to do with visibility, the other with time. And the adjective qarīb states that the opening is not yet complete, that it continues.

The same construction was treated at al-Ṣaff: fatḥun qarīb (al-Ṣaff 61/13) occurred there as a promise, and it was recorded that "a note of time is being set upon the promise". Here the same construction occurs as a recompense.