al-Māʾida 5:1

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū awfū bi'l-ʿuqūd · Uḥillat lakum bahīmatu'l-anʿāmi illā mā yutlā ʿalaykum ghayra muḥilli'ṣ-ṣaydi wa antum ḥurum · Inna'llāha yaḥkumu mā yurīd

"O you who believe! Fulfil the contracts. Livestock animals have been made lawful to you, apart from those that will be recited to you, on condition that you do not hold hunting lawful while you are in the state of consecration. God judges as He wills."

This is the only sūra in the Qurʾān that opens with the address yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū. And the first command that follows the address is not an act of worship but an agreement.

This is an order worth recording. The sūra opens not with a profession of belief, not with a call to worship, not with good news or a warning; it opens with the command that the word given be kept.

The root was treated in al-Fatḥ at 48/10, and what was recorded there was this: wafāʾ — completing; īfāʾ — paying in full; wafāt — the completion of a lifetime. In Form IV (awfā) the sense is intensified: to carry out entirely. I rely on that treatment; I do not repeat it here.

The only addition that belongs here is this: at the centre of the root stands completeness. The command therefore does not mean "comply with the contracts" but "fulfil the contracts entirely". On the logic of the word itself, keeping part of one's word counts as not having kept it.

The root was analysed in al-Falaq (an-naffāthāti fi'l-ʿuqad). The summary recorded there: the concrete sense is to tie a knot, to bind two ends to one another; ʿuqda — a knot, plural ʿuqad; ʿaqīda — that to which the heart binds itself; iʿtiqād — being knotted to something. I rely on that treatment.

What belongs here is this: ʿuqūd is the plural of ʿaqd, and ʿaqd stands one step beyond ʿuqda:

And the word's coming in the definite plural (al-ʿuqūd) raises a question of scope: which contracts? The classical commentaries give different answers to this question, and the disagreement is not to be concealed:

I do not impose a preference. But this much can be recorded: the rest of the sūra contains both kinds — the undertaking given to God (5/7), the treaties made with communities (5/12-14), oaths (5/89), bequest and witness (5/106). That is, the text itself makes it hard to narrow the scope.

The Turkish words "akit", "akde", "akit yapmak", "münakit" come from this root; and the Latin origin of "contract" — contractus (to draw together, to draw tight) — gives the same picture: two ends drawn towards one another.

بَهِيمَة — root ب-ه-م: to be closed, indistinct, unintelligible. Mubham — vague, not open (the Turkish "mübhem" is used in the same sense). Bahīma — a dumb animal; it takes this name because it does not speak, because it cannot make its meaning plain.

That is: in Arabic the word for "animal" is derived not from something the animal does but from something it cannot do: get its voice out.

أَنْعَٰم — root ن-ع-م: softness, ease, favour. Anʿām — domestic animals of the camel, cattle and sheep-and-goat kind. That the root comes from the same place as "favour" (niʿma) shows that these animals are named as an ease granted to man.

The construction is a genitive: bahīmatu'l-anʿām — "the beast of the livestock". Two explanations of this are given in the classical commentaries: (a) the construction is for clarification, "that is, the animals which are livestock"; (b) the construction is for specification, and it also takes in wild species resembling livestock. I transmit both; no preference is adopted.

The sentence lays down an exception but does not give the content of the exception: "apart from those that will be recited to you". The content will come two verses later, at 5/3.

I record this as an observation about the word order: the ruling is given first in general terms, its exception is left suspended, and then it is set out in detail. That the verb is imperfect and passive (yutlā — "which is being recited / which will be recited") builds this suspension out of the language itself.

صَيْد — root ص-ي-د: to hunt; and the thing hunted itself. The word is analysed here for the first time in this collection. The root conveys pursuing something and taking hold of it; ṣayyād — hunter. From the same root مِصْيَدَة (a snare).

حُرُم — from the root ح-ر-م, the plural of ḥarām; here in the sense of "those in the state of consecration". The root was treated in al-Ḥajj and al-Mumtaḥana: the primary sense is a thing's being made inviolable, being closed off from access. I rely on that treatment.

And the usage here shows the logic of the root very well: the consecrated person is himself called "ḥarām". That is, the person himself is held to have become inviolable — both untouchable himself, and, through his hand, making his surroundings untouchable. The prohibition on hunting comes out of the name of the state the person is in.

In this section the legal detail of consecration, hunting and their penalties is not entered into; the subject will return at 5/94-96, and the same limit will be kept there as well.

The closing of the verse identifies the source of the rulings. And the position of the sentence is meaningful: it comes immediately after a list of lawful things has been given.

The root ح-ك-م has been treated in many places in this collection (al-Baqara, al-Ḥujurāt, al-Shūrā). The summary recorded there holds here too: the concrete sense of the root attaches to the bit that turns an animal's head (ḥakama) — that is, to restraining, to reining in. A ruling is what prevents things from breaking down.

The root will be used with extreme density in this sūra — the block between 41 and 50 is built from beginning to end around it. The sūra opens by ascribing the act of judging to God in the last sentence of its very first verse.