al-Fatḥ 48:4

Huwa'lladhī anzala's-sakīnata fī qulūbi'l-muʾminīna li-yazdādū īmānan maʿa īmānihim; wa li'llāhi junūdu's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ; wa kāna'llāhu ʿalīman ḥakīmā

"It is He who sent down the sakīna into the hearts of the believers, so that they might add faith to their faith. To God belong the hosts of the heavens and the earth. God is knowing, possessed of wisdom."

The first three verses were directed at a singular hearer: laka, dhanbika, ʿalayka, yahdiyaka, yanṣuraka. With the fourth verse the address opens out to the plural: qulūbi'l-muʾminīn.

The sūra proceeds, that is, in this way: first a fatḥ was given to a single person (1-3), then what that fatḥ does to a community is recounted (4-7). And the name of what is given to the community has nothing to do with victory: sakīna.

This shows the consistency of the sūra's choice of words. If fatḥ is "opening", then what answers to an opening in a human being must be a loosening, a settling. And that is exactly what the word is.

The primary sense of the root: to stop, to become motionless, to settle in a place.

This root was treated at al-Ṣaff (maskan) and at al-Ḥashr and al-Māʿūn (miskīn). I add here the detail that belongs to this place.

Derivatives:

At the centre of the word there is a single idea: the stopping of movement. And this idea can be either favourable or unfavourable — in miskīn it is a helplessness, in maskan a taking of shelter, in sakīna a peace. The difference lies in why the movement stopped: because it was blocked from outside, or because there was no longer any need for it.

The pattern: فَعِيلَة. In Arabic this pattern mostly conveys a state, a settled quality (ṭabīʿa, gharīza, ṣarīḥa). Sakīna, that is, is not a passing feeling but a condition that is established.

The word is hard to translate. "Peace", "stillness", "inward ease", "assurance" — each catches one face of it, none of them covers it.

It is more accurate to say this: sakīna is the stilling of the thrashing inside a person. Not the disappearance of fear — a weight that keeps a person from being shifted even while the fear is there. Indeed, in the situation the sūra recounts the thing to be feared has not been removed; what has been removed is the very motion that flings a person about.

It occurs six times in the Qurʾān, and three of them are in this sūra:

The common point is this: each time, the sakīna comes down at a moment of tension. It is a word not of easy times but of hard-pressed ones.

And the occurrence at al-Baqara 2/248 suggests that the word has a further function of holding a community together: there the sakīna is inside the sign that secures the acceptance of a claim to kingship. I record this as an observation; the verse itself says this much.

Root ن-ز-ل. The use of this verb for things that are not physical was treated in detail at al-Ḥadīd (in the discussion of iron), and exactly this verse was adduced there as evidence: sakīna is not a physical object, yet the verb is anzala.

The note made there holds here too: in Arabic inzāl conveys a transfer from what is high to what is low, and this transfer may be physical or may be a matter of rank. The passing of something from what is exalted to what is beneath it.

What belongs here is this: the choice of verb says that the sakīna is not produced. A person does not build his inward peace by his own effort; it comes down to him. The construction of the sentence reinforces this further.

The sentence could have been built as "God sent down the sakīna". It is not. هُوَ ٱلَّذِىٓ — the pattern "it is He who" is used.

In Arabic this pattern conveys restriction to one: the doer of the act is He alone, and no other. It works as the English cleft does in "it is He who sends it down", where the weight falls on "He".

And this pattern appears three times in the sūra — and each time it does the same work:

I record this as my own reading: the three sentences make up the three components of the event the sūra recounts — the stillness within, the ceasefire without, and the source of the whole matter. All three are bound by the same pattern to the same address. While the sūra does leave human beings a share in the event, it repeats three times where the decision was taken.

The particle فِى: into. The sakīna comes down not upon the hearts but into them.

This detail matters, because in the sūra's other two occurrences the particle is different: in verse 18 ʿalayhim (upon them), in verse 26 ʿalā rasūlihī wa ʿalā'l-muʾminīn (upon). Only here is it said "into the hearts".

In the classical commentaries this difference is not always worked out separately. I record it as an observation, and I shall compare the three occurrences at verse 26: the fourth verse is the only one that says where the sakīna comes down.

One of the most debated expressions in the sūra, and one that needs to be handled carefully.

First, the level of language.

ازداد — root ز-ي-د: to increase, to grow more. It is a derivative of Form VIII (izdāda; the dhāl sound has turned into a dāl for the sake of assimilation). Form VIII here conveys an increase that takes place in the person himself: "to increase, to gain an increase".

مَّعَ إِيمَٰنِهِمْ — "together with their faith", "on top of their faith".

The sentence says this: there was already a faith; something further was added on top of it. The function of the sakīna, that is, is described not as bringing faith into being but as increasing a faith already there.

This verse stands at the centre of one of the oldest debates in the history of theology. I transmit it without concealing the disagreement and without taking a side.

The source of the debate is a difference of definition: what is faith?

Those who defend the second view explain texts such as this verse as follows:

• What increases is the object of faith. Because the revelation came down piece by piece, the number of things to be assented to increases — faith has not weakened, its extent has widened.
• What increases is the quality of faith. Its steadiness, its brightness, its unshakeability increase; not the assent itself.
• What increases is the fruit of faith. Works and obedience increase; in ordinary speech this is ascribed to faith.

I take no side in this debate. Both views have been defended by major scholars from an early period, and the question is a debate about a definition: the two sides call different things "faith" and then argue over whether it increases. Per the method (Method), no theological partisanship is adopted.

Let us record what the verse says at its own level; these things are independent of the debate:

One. The verse says that faith is not static. It is not described as something set up once and then left.

Two. What is shown as the cause of the increase is not a piece of knowledge but a state: the sakīna. The verse does not say "they saw a proof and their faith increased"; it says "they were stilled within and their faith increased".

Three. The increase is given in a clause of purpose (li-yazdādū). What is shown as the aim of the sakīna's coming down, that is, is not relief but increase. Stillness is set down not as a place of arrival but as a possibility.

I record this as my own reading: this third point is the most striking side of the verse. Stillness is generally thought of as an end — "now I am at ease". The verse builds the opposite: stillness is the ground a thing needs in order to grow. Nothing collects in a vessel that is being shaken.

To see the subject whole, I list the places where the same verb occurs. All of them tie the increase to an event:

• "When His verses are recited to them, it increases their faith" (al-Anfāl 8/2) — a text that is recited.
• "Whenever a sūra is sent down… it has increased the faith of those who believe, and they rejoice" (al-Tawba 9/124) — new revelation.
• "So that those who believe may increase in faith" (al-Muddaththir 74/31) — in the context of the announcing of a number.
• "This only increased them in faith and in submission" (al-Aḥzāb 33/22) — at a moment of distress under siege.
• "People said to them, 'They have gathered against you, so fear them'; but this increased them in faith, and they said, 'God is enough for us'" (Āl ʿImrān 3/173) — news of a threat.

Looking at the list, something becomes visible: some of the things that set off the increase are good news and some are bad. At al-Aḥzāb 33/22 and Āl ʿImrān 3/173 what causes the increase is a threat outright. I record this as an observation: the increase the Qurʾān describes does not depend on conditions improving.

جُنْد — root ج-ن-د. The lexicographers dwell on the concrete sense of the root: jund originally means hard, stony, compacted ground; from this, it is said, it passed to the sense "a gathered, packed, close-standing body". The word's sense of "army" is born of that holding-together.

The word does not mean "soldier". Jund answers to every kind of force gathered for a purpose — it need not be human. The Qurʾān shows this openly: "We sent against them a wind and hosts you did not see" (al-Aḥzāb 33/9). What is called junūd there is the wind.

In this sūra the word occurs twice: in verses 4 and 7, in exactly the same wording. I shall take up this repetition at verse 7.

The function of the sentence here: it is set immediately behind the sentence about the sakīna. Two things thus stand side by side — the stillness that comes down within and the force standing ready without. And in naming the second the verse gives the ground of the first: what the sakīna rests on is not optimism but the knowledge of whose the hosts are.

A note of tanzīh: that "the hosts belong to God" does not mean that He has need of an army. On the contrary — the verse states ownership, not need. Indeed, when the sūra repeats the same sentence in verse 7, it will set the name ʿAzīz at its end: the one who cannot be withstood.

كَانَ — the perfect tense here conveys no time; on the classical explanation it conveys the fixedness of the attribute: "He has always been so, He is so at all times". This note was entered at al-Naṣr for kāna tawwābā.

عَلِيم — root ع-ل-م: to know. The faʿīl pattern conveys the settledness of the attribute. حَكِيم — root ح-ك-م: to make a thing firm, to set it in its proper place. From the same root come ḥikma, ḥukm, and — strikingly — ḥakama, a kind of لِجَام: the piece of the bridle that turns an animal's head. At the centre of the root lie holding firm and steering.

The two names coming together, and their place here. The context of the sūra is a decision people did not understand: they turned back, they could not enter, the ʿumra could not be performed. The two names set at the end of the verse answer to exactly this — He knows (what you do not know) and He sets in its proper place (an order you cannot see).

This is, in the fourth verse, the seed of the sentence fa-ʿalima mā lam taʿlamū in verse 27. The sūra prepares its central sentence at the very beginning with a pair of names.