51. Sūrat al-Dhāriyāt

Sixty verses. It takes its name from the word وَٱلذَّٰرِيَٰتِ in the first verse.

This sūra differs in one respect from most of the sūras treated so far in this commentary: it builds a thesis and supports that thesis with three separate kinds of proof. Most of the short Meccan sūras show a scene and leave the interpreting of the scene to the reader. al-Dhāriyāt, by contrast, sets down a claim — what you are promised is true — and then goes in turn to nature, to history, and to the structure of creation.

The second feature of the sūra is this: it is a text that opens with two separate oaths. The first oath runs to four verses (1-4), the second to a single verse (7). Between them stands the answer to the oath. The sūra, that is, gives an oath, states the answer, and then gives a second oath. This arrangement is seldom met with in the Qurʾān, and I shall take it up separately below.

Its third feature is that the last part of the sūra carries one of the most frequently quoted verses of the Qurʾān: "I created jinn and mankind only that they might serve Me" (51/56). This verse is most often read torn away from the rest of the sūra. Yet the sentence that comes immediately after it (51/57) looks as though it had been set there to close off the misreading most often made of the verse. I shall take the two up together.

The basmala was treated in earlier sections and is not taken up again here; the verses are numbered without the basmala.

There is something close to unanimity that it is Meccan. Style and content support this: the opening with an oath, short verse-endings on a single sound, the dispute over resurrection, the destruction narratives set out one after another, the currency of the charges sāḥir / majnūn levelled at the one addressed, the absence of juristic content.

A small number of views are transmitted holding that the nineteenth verse ("in their wealth … there is a right") came down in Medina; the ground is that the verse is associated with the institution of alms. This view is in the minority, and I shall come to the matter separately below in the discussion of 51/19.

One thing is visible in the table: the sūra advances by widening, not by narrowing. The reverse of the structure recorded in the section on al-Mursalāt. There the sections came down to a single verse towards the end; here the first sections are of four or five verses, and the narrative in the middle is fourteen. Then it shortens again.

And one thing more: at the centre of the sūra there is a scene of hospitality. That a dining table should be found in the middle of a sūra about the resurrection is worth noticing; this will be taken up below in the discussion of 51/24-27.

Wa'l-dhāriyāti dharwā · fa'l-ḥāmilāti wiqrā · fa'l-jāriyāti yusrā · fa'l-muqassimāti amrā

"By those that scatter, scattering · by those that bear a heavy load · by those that run on with ease · by those that apportion a matter…"

Four verses, four attributes, and the thing sworn by is never named.

The general logic of this was treated in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt, and the analysis of the patterns was made in the section on al-Mursalāt. I repeat neither. The work here is to compare this series with those two and to show what belongs to this series alone.

Three of the oaths in the Qurʾān that are built on a series of active participles have now been dealt with in this commentary. Set side by side, the picture is this:

The arrangement of particles is the same as al-ʿĀdiyāt's — one wāw, then all fāʾ. The conclusion recorded in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt holds here as well: this arrangement makes the four verses a single oath. The oath is sworn not by four separate objects but by four moments of a single thing. The second wāw of al-Mursalāt is absent here; and so the possibility of "two separate oaths" that arose there does not arise here.

The arrangement of patterns, on the other hand, is close to al-Mursalāt's, but more regular than it. In al-Mursalāt the two ends of the series differed from its middle (1 and 5 from the ifʿāl form). Here the break comes only at the end: the first three triliteral, the fourth from the tafʿīl form (qassama). The series runs straight, that is, and changes pattern in the last verse.

The same break appears in the accusative words:

In al-Mursalāt the absolute object stood in three places and marked the middle of the series. Here the absolute object is in the first verse only, and marks the beginning of the series. The first verse strengthens "scattering" with its own verbal noun; the remaining three verses convey an object or a manner.

I record this as a reading drawn from the patterns themselves; the patterns are beyond dispute and were given one by one above.

And now the point at which this series really parts from the other two.

al-ʿĀdiyāt's series was a line of time: sound → spark → dawn → dust → contact. al-Mursalāt's series was a description of duty: to be sent, to blow, to spread, to separate, to deliver. al-Dhāriyāt's series is the four stages of a single operation, and the stages are each the product of the one before:

1. Scattering — something is lifted from its place and dispersed. 2. Carrying — what has been lifted is now a load; it is being carried. 3. Running — the load goes easily towards a place. 4. Apportioning — at the place reached, the load is divided out.

The four verses recount a thing's being taken up, carried off and distributed. And note: the use of the particle fāʾ in the series makes this necessary — the fāʾ of sequence establishes an unbroken succession. Without scattering there is no carrying, without carrying no arrival, without arrival no apportioning.

This is the most "resultative" of the three series. al-ʿĀdiyāt's series ended in contact; al-Mursalāt's in the delivery of a reminder; al-Dhāriyāt's ends in a distribution. The four verses, that is, close with a thing's being brought to its owners.

And this prepares the sūra's later logic: in the twenty-second verse it will be said "your provision is in the sky", and in the fifty-eighth God will be named al-Razzāq. The idea of "apportioning" at the sūra's opening, that is, will come back at its end in the form of a name.

I record this as my own reading. But the root senses of the four words will be given one by one below, and none of them is disputed.

Root: ذ-ر-و. Its concrete sense: to lift a thing into the air and disperse it, to toss, to strew.

• ذَرَا / أَذْرَىٰ — it scattered, it made fly.
• ذَرْو — the act of scattering.
• مِذْرَاة / مِذْرًى — the winnowing fork used on the threshing floor; the tool for tossing grain in order to separate it from the chaff.
• ذُرَة — millet. A small grain that scatters.

And the root's home is the threshing floor. After the wheat has been threshed and grain and chaff are mixed together, the heap is tossed up into the air with a fork against the wind: what is light flies off, what is heavy falls to the ground. The name of this operation is tadhriya.

In the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt, in treating the word ḥuṣṣila (to winnow the threshing floor and pick out the grain), this very operation was spoken of. The two words come from the same threshing floor, and there is a division of labour between them: dharw is the tossing, taḥṣīl is the name of what is left after the tossing.

The Qurʾān uses this root elsewhere too, and there the sense is plain:

"It becomes chaff that the winds scatter." (al-Kahf 18/45) — tadhrūhu'l-riyāḥ. The agent here is plainly the wind.

This verse will be decisive in the disagreement set out below.

The difference between مَنثُور and ذَرْو. The Qurʾān uses other words for dispersal as well (nashr, bathth, nasf). What separates dharw from the rest is that it is upward: to scatter, one must first lift. The fork throws the heap into the air, not onto the ground.

Root: و-ق-ر. Its concrete sense: weight, a load carried on the back.

• وِقْر (with kasra) — the load carried; especially the weight an animal or a cloud can bear.
• وَقْر (with fatḥa) — a heaviness in the ear, deafness. The Qurʾān uses it: "in their ears is a heaviness" (al-Anʿām 6/25; al-Isrāʾ 17/46).
• وَقَار — gravity of bearing, dignity. In Turkish the borrowed word vakur ("grave, dignified") comes from this root.
• تَوْقِير — to accord weight to someone, to show respect. In the Qurʾān: "that you may honour Him" (al-Fatḥ 48/9).

What is striking is this: the same root gives the weight carried, the ear that does not hear, and respect. The shared core is "weight"; and the weight has branched in three directions — as a load, as an obstruction, as worth.

The pattern in the verse is ḥāmilāt — an active participle, "those that carry". And the accusative word wiqran is the thing carried: the direct object.

The second verse is thus the continuation of the first: what was scattered is now a load, and it is being carried. That a thing lifted into the air should be called a "load" is worth noticing — because something in the air looks as though it had lost its weight. The verse denies this: what is carried is heavy.

Root: ج-ر-ي. Its concrete sense: to flow, to run, to move without interruption.

• جَرَىٰ — it flowed, it ran.
• جَارِيَة — both that which flows (feminine) and a ship. The Qurʾān uses this word for ships: "the ships that run on the sea like mountains" (al-Shūrā 42/32; al-Raḥmān 55/24).
• مَجْرَىٰ — the place of flowing, a channel. The Turkish mecra ("watercourse") comes from this.
• جِرَاء — a current.

One of the patterns the Qurʾān uses most often comes from this root: jannātun tajrī min taḥtiha'l-anhār — "gardens beneath which rivers run". And of the sun: "The sun runs to a resting place of its own" (Yā Sīn 36/38).

يُسْرًا — ease. The root ي-س-ر: to be easy, to be done without strain. From the same root come yusr (ease), taysīr (making easy), maysūr (made easy). This root was treated in the section on al-Inshirāḥ.

The grammarians differ over the case-role of yusran: a circumstantial accusative ("running easily"), an object of purpose ("running for ease"), or the adjective of an elided verbal noun ("running with an easy running"). There is no practical difference in the sense.

But that the word was chosen is meaningful. The second verse had spoken of a weight (wiqr); the third says that the weight is carried with ease. There is a tension between the two verses, and the tension looks deliberate: the load is heavy, but carrying it is not hard.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

Root: ق-س-م. Its concrete sense: to divide, to allot, to separate out shares.

• قِسْم / قِسْمَة — a share, a division. The Turkish kısım, kısmet and taksim come from here.
• قَاسَمَ — to share with someone.
• مُقَسِّم — one who apportions (the tafʿīl form: the act done repeatedly and widely).
• قَسَم — an oath. From the same root; the lexicographers make the connection by way of "to mark a thing off decisively, to fix it".

And the last detail is interesting: the sūra opens with an oath (qasam) and in the fourth verse uses a word from the same root as the oath (muqassimāt). I record this as an observation about the words; that the two senses come from the same root is beyond dispute in Arabic, but I do not claim that the sūra did this deliberately.

The pattern: the tafʿīl form. The first three of the series were from bare triliteral verbs; the fourth is from the faʿʿala form. In Arabic this form conveys multiplicity and repetition: not to divide once, but to divide out again and again, one by one.

The fourth verse, that is, parts from the first three not only in sense but in pattern as well: at the end of the series the work intensifies.

أَمْرًا — "a matter". Root أ-م-ر. In the Qurʾān the word occurs both in the sense of "command" and in the sense of "matter, affair, situation", and which it is here is disputed:

The two readings do not exclude one another, and both are transmitted in the classical sources. The common point: what is divided is one before it is divided. A command or a matter is broken up in order to be distributed.

For four verses the text lists only attributes; it does not say whose attributes they are. The general logic of this was treated in the sections on al-ʿĀdiyāt and al-Mursalāt; I do not repeat it.

Here the case is easier than in al-Mursalāt and harder than in al-ʿĀdiyāt. Easier, because the word of the first verse (dhāriyāt) is plainly tied to the wind in the Qurʾān's own usage. Harder, because the fourth verse (muqassimāt) has to be forced onto the wind.

The view of "four separate beings" is widely transmitted in the classical sources and takes this form: the winds, the clouds, the ships, the angels. The appeal of the view is plain — each attribute is given to its most natural owner and none is forced.

But it has a price, and the price is grammatical.

The rule recorded in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt was this: the fāʾ of sequence establishes unbroken continuity; and so an arrangement of one wāw + three fāʾ makes the four verses a single oath. The reading of four separate beings is forced to break this rule: no relation of "immediately after" can be established in passing from wind to cloud, from cloud to ship, from ship to angel.

This objection does not eliminate the view — the grammarians also record that fāʾ does not everywhere convey a strict succession — but it shows the view's cost.

In this sūra I do not impose a preference, and my ground is not the same as the one I wrote in al-Mursalāt.

My reason for adopting no preference in al-Mursalāt was that no view answered the whole of the text. Here the case is different: the wind view is all but certain in the first two verses, because the Qurʾān's own usage gives it (al-Kahf 18/45 and al-Aʿrāf 7/57). The beginning of the series, that is, is locked.

What is not locked is the end of the series. Muqassimāt has to be forced onto the wind.

For this reason the following seems the least interference with the text, and I record it as an inclination, not as a preference:

The series describes a work of carrying and distributing. The first two steps of the work are the wind's act, and this is fixed by the Qurʾān's own language. The last step — the division of the shares to their places — lies beyond the wind's visible work; by not naming the agent here, the text may be leaving the work open to the unseen side.

This is not binding, and it eliminates none of the classical views. The principle recorded in the sections on al-Ikhlāṣ, al-ʿĀdiyāt and al-Mursalāt holds here too: when the text swears by something it does not name, this is not a vagueness but a gain.

The question asked in the sections on al-ʿĀdiyāt and al-Mursalāt must be asked here too: why is the oath sworn by these four attributes?

The answer is in the fifth and sixth verses: "what you are promised is true" and "the reckoning will surely come to pass."

And the link is this: what is sworn by is the visible image of a word reaching its destination. Something is lifted, carried, taken away and distributed — and this repeats every year as an operation nobody can stop. The carrying and pouring out of rain is the most visible example of a promise being kept; because nobody can say to a cloud "set your load down here", and yet the load is set down every year.

In the section on al-Mursalāt this link was built as "the logic of having been sent": what is sent arrives. In al-Dhāriyāt there is one step more: what arrives is distributed. In al-Mursalāt, that is, delivery; in al-Dhāriyāt, division.

I present this as the application in this sūra of the link commonly built in the classical commentaries (that what is sworn by is shown as a proof); the distinction between the two series as "delivery / division" is my own reading.

Innamā tūʿadūna la-ṣādiq · Wa inna'l-dīna la-wāqiʿ "What you are promised is surely true. And the reckoning will surely come to pass."

The answer to the oath. And two sentences — in al-Mursalāt it was a single one.

The two verses have to be set side by side, because the first is all but identical:

al-Dhāriyāt, that is, splits al-Mursalāt's single sentence in two and shifts the word wāqiʿ from the first to the second.

The root analysis of the word wāqiʿ (و-ق-ع: to fall and to come to pass) was made in the section on al-Mursalāt; I do not repeat it. The summary of the finding there: in Arabic the concrete sense of the verb "to come to pass" is to fall; a thing's happening is its falling upon you.

What is to be added here is the splitting itself.

One has to see that a word can be disputed in two separate ways:

• Is the word true? — that is, is the speaker lying?
• Will what is said happen? — that is, even if the word is true, will it come to pass?

These are different objections. The first is directed at the source, the second at the event. And al-Dhāriyāt closes them separately: the fifth verse guarantees the truth of the word, the sixth the occurrence of the event.

al-Mursalāt had joined the two in one sentence. al-Dhāriyāt opens them out.

I record this as a reading drawn from the comparison of the two verses; the wordings of the two texts were given above.

Root: ص-د-ق. The lexicographers dwell on its concrete sense: at the core of the root lies firmness, durability. Rumḥun ṣadq — a firm, hard spear. From here comes the sense "a true word": a word that is true is one that holds; a lie collapses.

From the same root: ṣidq (truthfulness), ṣadaqa (what is given), taṣdīq (confirming), ṣadāqa (friendship), ṣiddīq.

And there is a point in the word order. The verse does not say "the one who promises you is true" — it calls not the promiser but the thing promised "true": innamā tūʿadūna la-ṣādiq.

In English the adjective "true" is given to a statement, not to an event. So it is in Arabic. The grammarians resolve this in two ways:

The second is simpler and needs no figure of speech. I do not impose a preference; it makes no difference to the sense.

Root: د-ي-ن. This root was analysed in the section on al-Fātiḥa in treating māliki yawmi'l-dīn; I do not repeat it. The summary of the finding there: the root has three branches — debt (dayn), judgement / requital (dāna yadīnu), and religion (a way, an order one follows). The shared core is a relation of obligation and requital.

Which branch is at work here? The context of the verse is the day of reckoning, and in the twelfth verse yawmu'l-dīn will occur explicitly. The dīn here, that is, is not "religion" but requital, the reckoning.

This builds a link within the sūra:

• Verse 6: inna'l-dīna la-wāqiʿ — the reckoning will come to pass.
• Verse 12: ayyāna yawmu'l-dīn — "when is this day of reckoning?"

The sixth verse lays down the ruling; the twelfth records the reaction to the ruling. Between them lie five verses, and those five verses explain why the reaction is what it is.

Wa'l-samāʾi dhāti'l-ḥubuk "By the sky that possesses ḥubuk."

The sūra's most disputed word, and the one word I have to leave untranslated.

First the structure has to be looked at. The sūra swore in 1-4 and gave the answer in 5-6. Now in 7 it swears again, and in 8 gives a new answer.

This is an arrangement seldom seen in the Qurʾān. Something like it was recorded in the section on al-Ṭāriq: there too the sūra sets down a claim (verse 8), then returns to its proof with a second oath (verses 11-12). And the finding recorded there was this: the second oath brings the proof of the first claim.

Here the function looks different. The answer to the second oath is not a proof but a diagnosis: "you are in a contradictory word." The first oath, that is, guarantees the report; the second oath establishes the state of the one addressed.

And the objects of the two oaths follow this division as well:

• The first oath: things in motion — scattering, carrying, running, apportioning. All in the state of an act.
• The second oath: something at rest — the sky, named by a quality.

This distinction will come before us again below, in the section on Sūrat al-Ṭūr, and will find its real function there: all five oaths of al-Ṭūr are sworn by things at rest.

Root: ح-ب-ك. What the lexicographers record about this root:

• حَبَكَ الثَّوْبَ — he wove the cloth tightly and evenly. At the centre of the root lies tight weaving, good plaiting.
• حِبَاكَة / حَبِيكَة — the line, track, ribbed pattern that appears in woven cloth.
• مُحْبَك — firm, tightly plaited.
• And one further usage the lexicographers record: ḥubuk is also said of the rippled tracks the wind leaves on sand, or of the wrinkles on the surface of water.

حُبُك is the plural of ḥibāk or ḥabīka.

Under the root, then, there are two things at once, and they are inseparable: tightness (being well woven) and pattern (the lines that arise from the weaving). When a cloth is tightly woven, regular marks appear on it; the mark is the visible face of the tightness.

All four views come out of the same root and do not exclude one another. The shared core is this: the sky is named as something well woven, with a regular pattern upon it.

I do not impose a preference. But this much I can say: that the word comes in the plural (not the singular ḥibāk but the plural ḥubuk) supports the first and the fourth views, because what is plural is many marks rather than a single quality. This is an observation about the language, not a ruling.

This verse is made the subject of a "scientific miracle" claim in modern religious writing: an equation is drawn between the sense "net, weaving" of the word ḥubuk and the large-scale structure of cosmology (the web-like distribution of galaxy clusters), or the curvature of space-time, or the orbits of the stars.

I do not build this claim, and I repeat my grounds in a form no different from what was written in the sections on al-Ṭāriq and al-ʿAlaq:

One. The meaning of the word is already disputed. To give a modern equivalent to a word whose meaning has not been settled is not to resolve the disagreement but to ignore it. If four separate views formed on this word in the classical period, then the word cannot be locked to a single technical sense.

Two. The operation runs backwards. The modern information is taken first, and then room is made for it in the word. The right order is the reverse: first it is shown what the word means, and then, if there is a connection, it is drawn.

Three. The verse's own work is something else. This is an oath, and the answer to the oath is in the next verse: "you are in a contradictory word." The sky here, that is, is named not as a source of information but as a contrast: above, order; below, disorder. This contrast will be taken up below, and the verse's real force is there.

Four. The rule of Method: no hunting for scientific miracles. The application here is plain — the meaning of the word is given and not cut short; a reader may take the image of "weaving" as an occasion for thought on his own account; but this cannot be presented as the verse's claim.

And now let us look at what the oath does. Set the seventh and eighth verses side by side:

وَٱلسَّمَآءِ ذَاتِ ٱلْحُبُكِ — "by the sky, ribbed with paths / tightly woven" إِنَّكُمْ لَفِى قَوْلٍ مُّخْتَلِفٍ — "you are indeed in a contradictory word"

In whichever sense the word is taken — path, firmness, pattern, order — the object of the oath is something ordered. And the object of the answer is something disordered: mukhtalif, that is, not holding together.

The oath sets up an opposition: above there is weaving, below there is unravelling.

I record this as my own reading. But the wordings of the two verses were given above, and that ḥubuk, in whichever sense it is taken, carries the idea of "order", while mukhtalif conveys "not holding together", is beyond dispute.

Innakum la-fī qawlin mukhtalif · Yuʾfaku ʿanhu man ufik "You are indeed in a contradictory word. Turned away from it is whoever has been turned."

مُخْتَلِف — from the root of ikhtilāf (خ-ل-ف), an active participle of the iftiʿāl form. The concrete sense of the root is to stay behind, to take another's place, to come after someone: khalafa (he stayed behind him), khalīfa (a successor), khilāf (the rear), mukhālafa (opposition).

Ikhtilāf passes from "being behind one another" to "not agreeing with one another". The Qurʾān names the succession of night and day with this root as well: ikhtilāfu'l-layli wa'l-nahār (al-Baqara 2/164) — there the sense is "coming one after the other", not contradiction.

Which sense here? Qawlin mukhtalif — "a word that does not hold together". And there are two readings:

The first is the more widespread and agrees with what comes later in the sūra: in the fifty-second verse it will be recorded that earlier peoples said the same two things.

But the second finds support in the text too. The finding recorded in the section on al-Muddaththir for 74/18-25 looks exactly at this: it was shown there that the two grounds the man produced (siḥr / qawlu'l-bashar) contradicted each other — a word cannot be both magic and an ordinary human word. The same contradiction is in the fifty-second verse of this sūra: sāḥir (a magician) and majnūn (one whose mind is covered) cannot both be true at once, because magic is a skill and madness an incapacity.

The definition "a contradictory word", that is, is confirmed by an example within the sūra itself. The two readings do not exclude one another.

Root: أ-ف-ك. Its concrete sense: to turn a thing from its direction, to invert it, to divert it from where it ought to be.

• إِفْك — a lie. A lie is a "turned word": the direction of the truth has been changed.
• مُؤْتَفِكَة — a city turned upside down. The Qurʾān uses this word for the cities that were destroyed (al-Tawba 9/70; al-Najm 53/53).
• أَفَّاك — one who lies much.

At the centre of the root, then, is "turning", and a lie is what that turning becomes in speech.

The structure of the sentence is interesting: yuʾfaku ʿanhu man ufik — both verbs from the same root, both passive, and one imperfect, one perfect.

Word for word: "from it he is turned, whoever was turned."

Two passives, one upon the other. The one who turns is not named — not named twice over.

And the difference of tense sets up a sequence: the one who was turned in the past is being turned now. Today's turning away, that is, is not a new event; it is the continuation of a movement that began earlier.

The grammarians differ over the meaning of the sentence:

The first is the more widespread. I do not impose a preference; but the first reading has a counterpart within the sūra: in the fifty-third verse it will be asked "did they enjoin this on one another?" — that is, it will be stressed that the same attitude has been repeated across generations.

To whom does the pronoun refer? ʿAnhu — "from it". Its antecedent is not stated. Three possibilities are transmitted in the classical sources: the Qurʾān, the Prophet, or the day of reckoning (the subject of the preceding sentence). It makes no great difference to the sense; all three are the object of the same turning away.

Qutila'l-kharrāṣūn · Alladhīna hum fī ghamratin sāhūn "Perish those guessers! They are heedless within an engulfing flood."

This pattern was treated in the discussions of Tabbat 111/1 and ʿAbasa 80/17; I do not repeat it. The summary of the finding there: qutila is in form an imprecation and in substance a ruling — it looks as though it framed a wish, but it states something that has happened. And in the section on ʿAbasa, when the pattern's three occurrences in the Qurʾān were enumerated, this verse was already named.

What is to be added here is who is addressed.

Let us set the three occurrences of the pattern side by side:

The third row looks strange beside the first two. Ingratitude and mass torture are grave offences. Why, then, is "speaking by guesswork" named with the same pattern?

The answer is in the root of the word.

Root: خ-ر-ص. And the concrete sense of this root explains the judgement the word carries.

خَرَصَ النَّخْلَ — he estimated by eye the crop on a date palm, before it had been gathered. This is a settled operation in Arab agricultural life: while the dates are still on the branch it is reckoned how much they will yield, and the calculation of shares is made on that estimate.

The person who does this is called خَارِص; the name of the operation is خَرْص.

And from here the second sense arises: خَرْص — a guess, a shot in the dark, a word not resting on certain knowledge. And from there the third: a lie.

The Qurʾān uses the root regularly at this third end:

• "They do nothing but guess." (al-Anʿām 6/116; similarly 6/148; Yūnus 10/66; al-Zukhruf 43/20) — in hum illā yakhruṣūn.

And now the real point. The root's first sense — the estimating of dates — is a legitimate operation. Nobody measures dates by counting them; measuring by eye is a necessity and an accepted method. This is not a lie; it is an estimate, and it is known to be an estimate.

The act under the root, that is, is not bad. What is bad is the estimate changing its place.

The estimating of dates is legitimate on this condition: it is known to be an estimate, and it is done because nothing better is possible. But if the same operation is applied to a matter about which certain knowledge has been given — the day of reckoning, for instance — then the estimate has taken the place of knowledge.

Note the pattern خَرَّاص: the faʿʿāl measure conveys a trade and a continuity in Arabic (najjār a carpenter, khayyāṭ a tailor, kadhdhāb an inveterate liar). Kharrāṣ, that is, is not one who makes a guess once; he is one who has made guessing his habit.

This is why the pattern of imprecation is so heavy: what is censured is not being wrong once, but making a method of living by guesswork instead of by knowledge.

What this says to the present. This diagnosis has become still more visible in an age of abundant information. As the cost of getting information about a matter has fallen, so has the cost of speaking without getting it. Reading about a question takes time; framing a sentence about it takes seconds. The description of the kharrāṣ sits exactly here: the person does not think he is lying — he is simply speaking about something he does not know, and supposing that he knows what he is speaking about.

Root: غ-م-ر. Its concrete sense: water's covering a thing, closing over it, sinking it.

• غَمَرَهُ ٱلْمَاءُ — the water covered him, closed over him.
• غَمْرَة — the place where the water is deep, where it covers a man.
• غَامِر — covered, overwhelmed.
• مُغَامَرَة — to throw oneself into deep water, into danger. The Turkish macera ("adventure") comes from this branch.

Ghamra, then, is being in water deep enough to drown in.

The Qurʾān uses this root elsewhere as well: "their hearts are in a ghamra away from this" (al-Muʾminūn 23/63); "in the ghamarāt of death" (al-Anʿām 6/93). In the second verse the word is plural and gives the image of drowning directly.

And the delicacy of the choice is this: the verse does not say "in darkness" or "in heedlessness". It says inside the water.

A man in the dark does not see, but he breathes. A man under water neither sees nor breathes. And what matters more: the man in the water does not know what surrounds him — water is transparent, the obstacle is invisible.

In the section on al-Muddaththir a word from the same field was treated: خَوْض (khawḍ) — to wade about in muddy water (74/45). And the finding recorded there was this: khawḍ is "an idle occupation carried on together". The same word will occur in Sūrat al-Ṭūr as well (52/12).

The two words have to be set side by side:

Khawḍ is an action; ghamra is a condition. And the verse joins the two: fī ghamratin sāhūn — covered over, and unaware of being covered.

Root: س-ه-و. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Māʿūn 107/5; I do not repeat it. The summary of the finding there: sahw is attention's straying elsewhere, the mind's not being present; and because sāhūn is an active participle it conveys a settled state, not a repeated action.

What is to be added here is what the word is attached to.

In al-Māʿūn sāhūn was attached to the prayer: ʿan ṣalātihim sāhūn — heedless of their prayer. Here it is attached to nothing; there is only the qualification fī ghamratin.

In al-Māʿūn, that is, the heedlessness is towards a particular thing; in al-Dhāriyāt it is a general state.

And reading the two verses together gives a sequence: al-Dhāriyāt describes the general state (covered over and heedless), al-Māʿūn gives that state's appearance in one field (heedless of his prayer). I record this as a link; it is not a claim that the two sūras refer to one another.

Yasʾalūna ayyāna yawmu'l-dīn "They ask: 'When is this day of reckoning?'"

In the discussion of al-Qiyāma 75/6 a question of exactly the same structure was taken up: yasʾalu ayyāna yawmu'l-qiyāma. And what was recorded there was this:

• The difference between ayyāna and matā transmitted by some of the lexicographers was reported, and no ruling was built upon it.
• It was recorded that the word's use in the Qurʾān shows a pattern, and this verse was already named there.
• The mood of the question was analysed: the question is not "will it happen?" but "when?"; that is, it is in appearance an acceptance, but a challenge in the dress of acceptance.
• And the question was shown to be an instrument of postponement: if the date of a thing is unsettled, that thing does not bind the present; the question suspends the ruling.
• It was recorded that the Qurʾān does not answer the question, but opens a scene in place of a date.

I do not repeat these. Three things are to be added here: that the verb is plural, the place of the question within the sūra, and the form of the answer given.

In al-Qiyāma the verb was singular: yasʾalu — "he asks". And there the sūra set the scene of the resurrection between one man's two questions.

Here the verb is plural: yasʾalūna — "they ask".

The difference comes from how the sūras are built. al-Qiyāma was following one person; al-Dhāriyāt is describing a group — since the eighth verse the address has been plural (innakum).

And that it is plural changes the nature of the question. A question asked by one person may be a curiosity or an objection. The same question asked by a group is a formula: the question is in circulation, it is repeated, it passes from one to another.

This joins with the question in the fifty-third verse: "did they enjoin this on one another?" The sūra, that is, is concerned with how repeated sayings circulate.

The question does not stand in a void. Note the arrangement:

Verse 6: inna'l-dīna la-wāqiʿ — the reckoning will come to pass. Verse 10: qutila'l-kharrāṣūn — the guessers. Verse 11: fī ghamratin sāhūn — covered over and heedless. Verse 12: ayyāna yawmu'l-dīn — "when is it?"

The question, that is, comes after a diagnosis. The text first describes the state of those who ask — speaking by guesswork, covered over, heedless — and then reports their question.

The sequence says where the question comes from. In al-Qiyāma the question was tied to an intention (yafjura amāmah — he wants to break open the way ahead of him). Here it is tied to a state: the source of the question is not a plan but a loss of attention.

The two sūras point to two different sources, and both are possible. I record this as a comparison.

In al-Qiyāma the answer to the question was a scene. Here it is too — but the scene begins from a different place.

The next verse: yawma hum ʿala'l-nāri yuftanūn — "the day when they are tested over the fire."

The answer, that is, is not a date but an adverb of time. Yawma — in the accusative, and attached to yawmu'l-dīn in the preceding verse.

The question says "which day?"; the answer says "that day", but defines the day not by a calendar but by what will happen on it. The finding recorded in the section on al-Qiyāma holds exactly: the question is asked as "when?", and the answer comes as "how it will be".

Yawma hum ʿala'l-nāri yuftanūn · Dhūqū fitnatakum; hādha'lladhī kuntum bihi tastaʿjilūn "The day when they are tested over the fire. 'Taste your testing! This is what you kept asking to be hastened.'"

Root: ف-ت-ن. This root was treated in detail in the discussion of al-Burūj 85/10; I do not repeat it. The summary of the finding there was this: the concrete sense of the root is to melt gold in fire and test its purity; the senses "torture", "testing", "temptation" and "inner turmoil" all derive from this single core; and the usual English rendering "sedition" holds only one end of this range.

And in the section on al-Burūj this verse was already named — as the indication within the Qurʾān that points directly to the concrete sense of the root.

What is to be added here is the standing of the two words side by side.

In the thirteenth verse, the verb: yuftanūn — they are tested / they are melted in the fire. In the fourteenth verse, the noun: fitnatakum — your fitna / your testing.

The same root, two verses apart, in two different patterns. And in the second use the word is annexed to those addressed: "your fitna".

This annexation is the harshest place in the verse. For the construction "your fitna" can be read in two ways, and both find support in the text:

The second reading fits a technique the Qurʾān uses often: the punishment named with the same word as the offence. Examples of this have been seen earlier in this commentary — in al-Humaza, the match between jamaʿa (he gathered) and ḥuṭama (that which crushes); in al-Māʿūn, the correspondence between yaduʿʿu (he thrusts away) and yudaʿʿūna (they are thrust) at al-Ṭūr 52/13; in al-Ṭāriq, kayd (a scheme) and kayd (a counter-scheme).

I do not impose a preference. The two readings do not exclude one another and both are transmitted in the classical sources. But the second reading gains a further layer when it is joined to the root's sense of "testing gold in fire": the melting is not a punishment but a separating out — what the thing put into the fire really is comes to light.

The finding recorded in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt for taḥṣīl (to winnow the threshing floor and pick out the grain) holds here as well: the Qurʾān often describes the reckoning in the hereafter as an operation of separation.

A small letter, but one that will not be missed: the verse does not say fi'l-nār (in the fire), it says عَلَى ٱلنَّار (over the fire).

And this agrees exactly with the concrete sense of the root. When gold is melted it is not thrown into the fire; it is put in a crucible, and the crucible is set over the fire. The metal does not touch the flame directly; it melts from the heat that comes from below.

I record this as an observation about the language. In the classical sources it is said that the particle ʿalā here conveys "contact and exposure"; what I add is the particle's agreement with the root's sense from the workshop, and I present this not as a settled explanation but as an observation.

This is not a real command. This use was treated in the section on al-Nabaʾ; I do not repeat it. The summary of the finding there: in Arabic the imperative is sometimes used for rebuke, mockery, or the carrying out of a sentence, and al-Ṭūr 52/16 was given there as an example ("enter it; whether you endure or do not endure, it is the same for you").

What is to be added here is the verb itself. Dhūqū — "taste". The root ذ-و-ق: to taste, to try with the tongue.

And the choice of the word is meaningful. Tasting is the form of knowing from the nearest distance. Seeing happens from afar, hearing happens from afar; tasting requires contact, and enters the body.

From the beginning the sūra had been setting up a question of knowledge: those who speak by guesswork (kharrāṣūn), those who are covered over (ghamra), those who are heedless (sāhūn), and those who ask "when is it?". All of them are forms of knowing from afar.

And now the form of knowing changes: dhūqū.

The distinction of ʿilma'l-yaqīn / ʿayna'l-yaqīn recorded in the section on al-Takāthur looks at this: it was said there that the kind of knowledge changes. Here the same change is made with a verb — and the verb chosen is the most closely touching of all the verbs of knowing.

Root: ع-ج-ل. ʿAjala — haste; the word has passed into Turkish as well, as acele. Istiʿjāl (the istifʿāl form) — to ask that a thing come in haste.

And this is an attitude the Qurʾān records: the deniers ask that the punishment come. The formula "they ask that the punishment be hastened" occurs in many places in the Qurʾān.

The logic of the attitude has to be seen. To ask that the punishment come in haste is the strongest expression of not believing in it: a person certain that it will not come supposes that by asking for it he proves as much. Istiʿjāl, that is, is not a request but a claim.

And it is of the same family as the question in the twelfth verse: the question "when is it?" and the demand "let it come, then" are two expressions of the same conviction.

And the verse answers this claim — not with a proof but with a pointing: hādha'lladhī — "this is it." The pronoun now points to the thing standing in the open. The argument is over; the showing has begun.

This builds a circle with the sūra's last verse. In the fifty-ninth verse the same verb will come back: fa-lā yastaʿjilūn — "let them not ask Me to hasten." The sūra, that is, will take up once more in the fifty-ninth verse the demand it mocked in the fourteenth, and this time will give its answer by way of time.

Inna'l-muttaqīna fī jannātin wa ʿuyūn · Ākhidhīna mā ātāhum rabbuhum; innahum kānū qabla dhālika muḥsinīn "The God-fearing are in gardens and springs — taking what their Lord has given them. Before this they were doers of good."

The preceding verse was saying "taste" to those in the fire. This verse opens with gardens. Between them there is no transitional sentence at all.

This is a technique the Qurʾān uses often and one recorded in many places in this commentary. What is peculiar here is that the two pictures are built with the same family of verb:

• Verse 14: dhūqū — taste (an imperative, a rebuke).
• Verse 16: ākhidhīna mā ātāhum — taking what they have been given.

Both are verbs of taking. One is made to taste by force, the other takes what is given.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

Root: و-ق-ي. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/2-3; I do not repeat it. The summary of the finding there: the concrete sense of the root is to protect oneself by putting something in between; wiqāya (a protective covering), taqwā (guarding oneself). And it was recorded that taqwā is not "to fear" but "to guard oneself", and that guarding requires a barrier.

And there is something worth noticing: the same root also occurred in the second verse of this sūra — wiqrā (a heavy load). No: wiqr is from the root و-ق-ر, while muttaqī is from the root و-ق-ي. They are two different roots and must not be confused. I enter this record because the closeness of the two words in transliteration is misleading.

The root جَنَّة (ج-ن-ن: to cover) was treated in the discussions of al-Qalam 68/2 and al-Baqara 2/25; I do not repeat it. In summary: a janna is a garden that covers the ground with its trees; the centre of the word is being covered over.

عُيُون — the plural of ʿayn: a spring, a well-head. The same word means "eye"; that a source of water should be called an "eye" in Arabic is built on the eye's also letting liquid flow. The same is said in Turkish, where a spring is a su gözesi, an "eye of water".

Their standing side by side builds a scene: shade and water. In a desert climate these two are the minimum condition of habitability.

And this must be recorded: in its descriptions of the garden the Qurʾān uses the things whose absence those addressed feel most. This is not a provincialism but a choice of address; a text can describe what is unknown only by way of what is known.

Root: أ-خ-ذ. To take, to hold, to grasp.

The word is a circumstantial accusative (it conveys a state): "…they are within, taking." Being in the garden and taking what is given happen at the same moment, that is.

And the choice of verb is interesting. The verse does not say "it is given" or "they attain"; it says "they take". Taking is a movement of the one who takes. The picture is thus not wholly passive: there is something given and there is a party taking.

A point about roots: ākhidhīna mā ātāhum — the two verbs are very close in sound (akhadha / ātā) but their roots differ (أ-خ-ذ / أ-ت-ي). One is to take, the other to bring, to give. The verse names the two sides of the same scene with almost the same sound.

I record this as an observation about sound; it is not a claim of shared root.

Root: ح-س-ن. To be beautiful, to be good. Iḥsān (the ifʿāl form) — to do beautifully, to do good.

And the word has two directions, and both are at work in the Qurʾān:

Muḥsin, that is, is both one who does his work well and one who does good to others. The two senses are inseparable in Arabic.

And these two words build the logic of the section.

The verse does not say "they are doers of good"; it says "before this they were doers of good". A record of time is entered: kānū (they were) + qabla dhālika (before this).

What is said, that is, is this: the state in the garden is the requital of the state before the garden. And the three verses that come immediately after (17, 18, 19) will itemise what they did "before this".

The structure is this:

Verse 16: They were doers of good — the heading. Verse 17: They slept little of the night — the first item. Verse 18: In the last hours before dawn they asked forgiveness — the second item. Verse 19: In their wealth there was a right — the third item.

Three items, and all three the unfolding of iḥsān. The sūra, that is, does not leave the word muḥsin abstract; it fills it in.

And note the distribution of the itemising: two concern God, one concerns people. The nine-item list treated in the section on al-Maʿārij showed the same mixture. The finding recorded in the section on al-Muddaththir looks the same way: the pair of prayer + feeding the poor occurs together in six separate places in the Qurʾān.

This sūra adds one more place to that list — and the pair here is built not on prayer but on the night.

Kānū qalīlan mina'l-layli mā yahjaʿūn · Wa bi'l-asḥāri hum yastaghfirūn "They slept little of the night. And in the last hours before dawn they asked forgiveness."

Rising at night was taken up in detail in the discussions of al-Muzzammil 73/2-4 and 73/6. I do not repeat it. A summary of the findings there:

• The command qum (rise) is directed at the night, and the measure of the command is loosened three times within that same sūra (illā qalīlā → a range → mā tayassara).
• The word nāshiʾatu'l-layl (the rising of the night) was analysed and the disagreement over it given.
• What was written about why the night was chosen was recorded not as the verse's ground but as an observation: the scarcity of outward stimulus, invisibility, the price paid out of sleep. And it was not tied to the modern literature on sleep.

Three things are to be added here: the change of mood, the word hajʿ itself, and the dispute in grammar.

And here is the difference.

In al-Muzzammil the rising at night was a command: qumi'l-layl — "rise for the night". The one addressed was the Prophet, and the sentence was in the imperative.

In al-Dhāriyāt the same thing is a description: kānū qalīlan mina'l-layli mā yahjaʿūn — "they slept". Those addressed are the God-fearing, and the sentence is a past-tense statement.

There is a difference of stage between the two sūras:

And the word of measure in the two verses is the same: qalīl. In al-Muzzammil the "little" of the night was excepted; in al-Dhāriyāt the "little" of the night is given over to sleep.

This agrees with the sūra's building of its picture of the garden as a requital: the sixteenth verse had said "before this"; the seventeenth recounts how that "before" was spent. The command in its carried-out form.

Root: ه-ج-ع. And this word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

The sense the lexicographers record: هُجُوع — to sleep during part of the night, a light sleep. Hajaʿa — he slept by night. Some dictionaries also enter for the word the note "to sleep in the first part of the night".

And Arabic has other words for sleep as well:

The verse, that is, does not name sleep by its general name. It uses a word peculiar to sleep at night.

This is an observation about the language; that the word occurs only once in the Qurʾān limits the possibility of comparison, and this has to be stated.

The word order of the verse has divided the grammarians, and the cause of the division is the word مَا.

Kānū qalīlan mina'l-layli mā yahjaʿūn.

The third view changes the sense seriously and remains in the minority in the classical sources. The reason is grammatical: had mā been the negating one, the place of the word qalīlan in the sentence would become problematic.

The first two views come to the same sense and the majority hold them. I too take these two as my basis; this is not binding.

And this record has to be entered: if the third view were accepted, the verse would be describing an extreme — not sleeping at all. This does not agree with the loosenings that Sūrat al-Muzzammil makes within itself. The finding recorded in the section on al-Muzzammil was this: the sūra loosens its own ruling three times, and does not declare as a rule that the demand should be adjusted to a person's condition — it applies it. To read al-Dhāriyāt's verse as "they never slept" would remove that adjustment.

I write this ground not as a support for a preference but as a record of consistency.

Root: س-ح-ر. Saḥar — the last part of the night, the hour just before daybreak. Its plural is asḥār.

And this root will come back further on in the sūra with an entirely different word: in the fifty-second verse, sāḥir (a magician). The same root.

This link was recorded in the section on al-Muddaththir: the lexicographers build the relation between siḥr and saḥar by way of the hour at which light and darkness mingle and the eye can be deceived. Here as there I ascribe this explanation to the lexicographers; I do not present it as a settled etymology.

But the picture within the sūra is worth recording:

• Verse 18: bi'l-asḥār — the God-fearing ask forgiveness in the last hours before dawn.
• Verse 52: sāḥir — the deniers call the prophets "magician".

The two ends of the same root: one an hour, the other a deception. I record this as an observation about the words; I do not claim that the sūra did this deliberately.

The hour itself. The saḥar is the part of the night at which it is hardest to rise. To stay awake at the beginning of the night is a choice; to wake at the end of it is an interruption — it requires rising from the middle of one's sleep.

The observation of "an hour with a price" recorded in the section on al-Muzzammil reaches its densest point here.

Root: غ-ف-ر. Its concrete sense: to cover, to close over. Mighfar — the war helmet that covers the head. From the same root. This root was treated in the discussions of al-Naṣr 110/3 and al-Muddaththir 74/56; I do not repeat it.

Istighfār (the istifʿāl form) — to ask that something be covered.

And the most striking side of the verse is here.

The sūra described these people as muḥsin (verse 16). They sleep little of the night (verse 17). In their wealth there is another's right (verse 19). The picture, that is, is a picture of the best things that can be done.

And what these people do in the last hours before dawn is ask forgiveness.

The text does not present this as a paradox; it simply sets the two side by side. But the very setting side by side says something: asking forgiveness is recorded as the work not of the faulty but of the attentive.

I record this as my own reading; the verse gives no ground.

And a point of word order: the verse could have said yastaghfirūna bi'l-asḥār. Instead the adverb of time has been brought forward (bi'l-asḥāri hum yastaghfirūn) and the pronoun هُمْ has been inserted between.

As was recorded in the sections on al-ʿĀdiyāt and al-Māʿūn: a fronted element gains emphasis, and the pronoun hum, not required by the grammar, conveys restriction. Joined together, the sentence says: the hour is decisive, and these are the ones who do this at that hour.

Wa fī amwālihim ḥaqqun li'l-sāʾili wa'l-maḥrūm "And in their wealth there is a right for the one who asks and for the one who is deprived."

This verse is all but identical with al-Maʿārij 70/24-25, and it was taken up in two places:

In the discussion of al-Māʿūn 107/3, in building the reading of ownership for the construction "the food of the poor", this verse and al-Maʿārij 70/24-25 were used together as support. The conclusion recorded there was this: in both verses the word used is right — not a favour, a kindness, a gift. And three consequences were listed: the giver's superiority falls away; the receiver's shame falls away; and not giving becomes not "failing to be generous" but "withholding a right".

In the discussion of al-Maʿārij 70/24-25 three things were added: what the qualification maʿlūm brings, the difference between the two recipients (sāʾil / maḥrūm), and the dropping of the pronoun. And the difference from this verse was stated there explicitly: "al-Dhāriyāt says only ḥaqq; al-Maʿārij says ḥaqqun maʿlūm."

I repeat none of these. This is the place where the threefold link has to be made, and what is to be added here is the following.

The three texts say the same idea at three different intensities:

The three texts show a concept being built:

• al-Māʿūn speaks by way of an object: a plate of food.
• al-Dhāriyāt turns the object into a legal concept: this is a right.
• al-Maʿārij adds a measure to the right: this right is a known one.

And note: the reading of ownership in al-Māʿūn was built by resting on al-Dhāriyāt and al-Maʿārij. The order works in reverse, that is — the most concrete expression (food) takes its sense from the most abstract ones (right).

I record this as a reading drawn from the comparison of the three texts. The wordings of the verses were given above.

In the section on al-Maʿārij this particle was dwelt upon, and the finding there holds here as well: فِى conveys containment; the right is not an obligation that comes from outside the wealth but something found inside it. And the sentence is a nominal sentence — it conveys not an act but a state.

What is to be added here is a comparison.

Set the nineteenth verse beside the two before it:

17: kānū … mā yahjaʿūn — a verb. They are doing something. 18: hum yastaghfirūn — a verb. They are doing something. 19: fī amwālihim ḥaqqun — a nominal sentence. Something is there.

The first two of the three-item list convey an action, the third a state. And the difference is meaningful: rising at night and asking forgiveness are works done; a right's being in one's wealth is not a work done but a quality of the wealth.

In the section on al-Maʿārij this grammatical difference was recorded (there by way of the dropping of the pronoun hum). The comparison here — a change of mood within the same list — is an observation about the structure.

The analysis of the root and its difference from sāʾil were given in table form in the section on al-Maʿārij; I do not repeat it. In summary: مَحْرُوم is a passive participle — deprived, cut off from his share; there are two main views (the poor man who does not ask / the man whose property has gone from him) and their common point is that the maḥrūm is the needy person who is not seen. And the conclusion recorded there was this: the presence of the word maḥrūm is the proof of the word ḥaqq — because what triggers a favour is a request, and what triggers a right is not.

The only thing to be added here: al-Dhāriyāt has no qualification maʿlūm, but it does have the two recipients. The "third support" argument built in the section on al-Maʿārij therefore works fully in this verse as well. Even without maʿlūm there is maḥrūm; and maḥrūm by itself shows that what is given is not a favour.

The ground of the view that the nineteenth verse is Medinan is that the verse is associated with the alms tax.

In the sections on al-Maʿārij and al-Māʿūn this difficulty was recorded twice: the institutionalising of alms at fixed rates belongs to the Medinan period; and so a reading of alms into a Meccan sūra is forced.

And in al-Dhāriyāt the difficulty is less, because the verse does not enter the qualification maʿlūm (determined). A right whose amount is not specified needs no institutional rate.

al-Dhāriyāt's wording, that is, is easier than al-Maʿārij's for a Meccan sūra. This is an indication weakening the view that the verse is Medinan.

I record this as an observation; I issue no firm ruling about where the verse came down.

And let us gather the section up. The sixteenth verse said "they were doers of good"; three verses filled that word in:

Two of the three items are invisible, one is visible. And the invisible ones come first.

I record this as my own reading. But the observation recorded for the night in the section on al-Muzzammil — "the night is the hour nobody sees; what is done cannot be displayed" — explains the first two rows of this table directly.

And this detail stands in the text too: the third item does not tie what is given to the giver's act. It does not say "they used to give", it says "in their wealth there is a right". Even the visible item, that is, has been taken out of the class of a display by the giver.

Wa fi'l-arḍi āyātun li'l-mūqinīn · Wa fī anfusikum; a-fa-lā tubṣirūn "In the earth there are signs for those who have come to certainty. And in yourselves too. Do you still not see?"

The two densest verses of the sūra. And neither is intelligible unless the two are read together.

First let us look at how the sentences are built, because the whole matter is there.

Verse 19: وَفِىٓ أَمْوَٰلِهِمْ حَقٌّ … Verse 20: وَفِى ٱلْأَرْضِ ءَايَٰتٌ … Verse 21: وَفِىٓ أَنفُسِكُمْ … Verse 22: وَفِى ٱلسَّمَآءِ رِزْقُكُمْ …

Four verses open one after another with the same pattern: wāw + fī + a place.

This is the sūra's most visible weave of word order, and it turns the four verses into a single list. The list enumerates these places: wealth, the earth, yourselves, the sky.

And note: all four convey a container. The particle fī conveys containment — as was recorded in the section on al-Maʿārij. The four verses, that is, say what is inside four separate containers.

The gap in the third row is deliberate, and I shall take it up below.

Root: أ-ي-ي (or أ-و-ي; the lexicographers differ). The sense of the word: a sign, a mark, an indication.

And the Qurʾān uses this word for three separate things:

The common point of the three uses is this: a sign is something that shows not itself but another. A signpost is not set up to be looked at for its own sake.

And this gives the logic of the verse: the earth is a sign, that is, looking at the earth is not for learning the earth but for arriving at what it shows.

Root: ي-ق-ن. Yaqīn — certain knowledge, knowledge in which no doubt remains. Īqān (the ifʿāl form) — to come to certain knowledge. Mūqin — one who has come to certain knowledge.

This root was treated in the section on al-Takāthur (ʿilma'l-yaqīn, ʿayna'l-yaqīn); I do not repeat it. In summary: yaqīn is a kind of knowledge — not a quantity of it.

And now the verse's hardest question.

The verse says: in the earth there are signs for those who have come to certainty.

Is this a restriction? Are the signs there only for those who have already come to certain knowledge? If so, a circle arises: to see the signs one must first believe, but to believe one must first see the signs.

In the classical sources this problem is resolved in two ways:

The first resolution is the more widespread. The second is strained by the word's being an active participle: a mūqin is not a seeker but one who has arrived.

I do not impose a preference. But this must be recorded: the same restriction is repeated regularly in the Qurʾān — li-qawmin yatafakkarūn, li-qawmin yaʿqilūn, li-ūli'l-albāb, li'l-muʾminīn. That a sign should be named together with a "receiver" is thus not peculiar to this verse; it is a settled pattern of the Qurʾān.

And what the pattern says is this: a sign is not enough by itself. A proof, to count as a proof, must meet an eye that looks. This is not the weakness of the proof but its nature.

And the most striking side of the verse is that the sentence is not completed.

The twenty-first verse reads: wa fī anfusikum. That is all. No predicate, no subject, only a prepositional phrase.

The grammarians resolve this thus: the sentence is joined to the preceding verse and takes its predicate from there. The supplied form, that is, is: wa fī anfusikum āyātun — "and in yourselves too there are signs."

But its not being said does something.

In the twentieth verse the word "signs" was uttered. In the twenty-first it was not. And immediately after comes a question: a-fa-lā tubṣirūn — "do you not see?"

The sentence is left half-finished, that is, and a question is asked. The reader is required to complete the sentence — and in order to complete it he has to do exactly what the question asks: look at himself.

I record this as my own reading. But that the sentence is grammatically incomplete and that the predicate is taken from the preceding verse is the common finding of the grammarians.

Root: ن-ف-س. And the word's field in the Qurʾān is wide:

• The person himself — "every soul" (kullu nafsin), that is, every person.
• The inner world, the self — "whether you hide what is in your souls or make it known" (al-Baqara 2/284).
• Life — "every soul shall taste death" (Āl ʿImrān 3/185).
• And the concrete sense of the root: نَفَس — breath. Tanaffus is from the same root. The Qurʾān uses it: "by the morning when it breathes" (al-Takwīr 81/18) — wa'l-ṣubḥi idhā tanaffas.

That "breath" lies under the root is worth noting. The self takes its name from the body's most continuous and least noticed movement. I transmit this connection as a relation the lexicographers build, not as a settled etymology.

Which sense is at work in the verse? There is disagreement:

The third is the least interfering and agrees with the word's use in the Qurʾān — nafs is a word that does not separate the body from what is within it.

And now let us come to what the two verses say together.

The proof is shown in two places: in the earth and in oneself. And the difference between them is the most basic difference a proof can have:

And the last row of the second column is the verse's real force.

A person may not look at the earth. He may not leave the city, may not look at the sky, may examine no event in nature. The proof is there, but the one addressed can keep away from it.

He cannot keep away from himself.

He cannot stop breathing, cannot stop his heart beating, cannot switch off thinking, cannot cancel sleeping and waking. The second proof is the proof that cannot be escaped.

And this joins with the diagnosis the sūra has been building since the seventh verse: the one addressed is covered over and heedless (fī ghamratin sāhūn). Heedlessness is attention's straying elsewhere. And the one object attention cannot escape is attention itself.

I record this as my own reading. But the parallel the two verses build with the particle fī is plain in the text.

أَ the interrogative hamza, فَ the connecting particle, لَا تُبْصِرُونَ the negated verb.

This is the pattern of istifhām inkārī / tawbīkhī treated at al-ʿĀdiyāt 100/9: a question asked not to get information but to censure. I do not repeat it.

What is peculiar here is the choice of verb.

Root: ب-ص-ر. Baṣar — the eye, sight. Baṣīra — inner sight, discernment. This root was treated in the section on al-ʿAlaq, and it was recorded there that "a hierarchy of seeing" was set up.

And the verb stands in an interesting place. The twentieth verse said mūqinīn — certain knowledge. The twenty-first said tubṣirūn — seeing.

The two verses appeal to two different faculties: one to knowledge, the other to the eye.

And the order is meaningful: the earth is read with knowledge (it requires examining, thinking, drawing a conclusion); oneself is seen by looking. The proof inside requires no inference.

Moreover the root ب-ص-ر carries in the Qurʾān both outward seeing and inward grasp. The question is thus in two layers: "do you not see it with your eye" and "do you not grasp it". The word does not separate the two — just as nafs does not separate the body from what is within.

I record this as an observation about the words.

This pair touches on something particularly visible today.

Modern man's knowledge about himself has grown as in no other period of history: physiology, the nervous system, genetics, cognitive processes. But whether the time he spends looking at himself has grown is another question.

The verse issues no call to knowledge — it issues a call to attention. The verb is not taʿlamūn but tubṣirūn. And attention is a resource independent of knowledge: a person may know a great deal about his own body and never have looked at it.

The sūra's diagnosis in the eleventh verse — covered over and heedless — therefore points not to a lack of knowledge but to a scattering of attention. And the scale that scattered attention has today makes this verse easier to read.

I record this as an application; I state that the verse lays down a diagnosis, and that what I have done is to carry that diagnosis into the present.

Wa fi'l-samāʾi rizqukum wa mā tūʿadūn · Fa-wa-rabbi'l-samāʾi wa'l-arḍi innahū la-ḥaqqun mithla mā annakum tanṭiqūn "In the sky is your provision, and what you are promised. By the Lord of the sky and the earth, this is as true as that you are speaking."

The wāw + fī pattern is repeated for the fourth time and the list closes: wealth, the earth, yourselves, the sky.

And the fourth item parts from the first three in one respect: the first three were places the one addressed can reach. His wealth is in his hand, the earth is under his foot, he himself is himself. The sky is the one place that cannot be reached.

The list thus draws an arc: from the nearest (wealth) to the farthest (the sky).

Root: ر-ز-ق. The sense the lexicographers record: a share given to someone regularly; a portion, provisions.

• رِزْق — the share given.
• رَازِق / رَزَّاق — the giver; the second an intensive form.
• And the concrete use of the root: the rations distributed regularly to soldiers or to a company. This use plants in the word the idea of "being divided out within an order".

And here the fourth oath at the head of the sūra returns: al-muqassimāti amrā — those that apportion. Provision is by definition the thing that is apportioned.

The work of "apportioning", left unnamed at the sūra's opening, thus gains an object in the twenty-second verse (rizqukum) and an agent in the fifty-eighth (al-Razzāq).

I record this as a weave within the sūra. The roots of the words differ (ق-س-م / ر-ز-ق); what I claim is not a shared root but that the idea can be followed across the sūra.

This expression has been dwelt on since the classical period, because its literal sense raises a question: provision is eaten on the earth, not in the sky.

The three views do not exclude one another and all three are transmitted in the classical sources.

And the second half of the verse is decisive. Wa mā tūʿadūn — "and what you are promised". In the sky, that is, there are two things: your provision and your word.

That the two are named in the same place establishes an equivalence: as provision comes, so the promise will come.

And this is the very centre of the argument the sūra has been building from the start. In the fifth verse it was said "what you are promised is true"; the twenty-second verse repeats the same expression (mā tūʿadūn) and this time sets it beside provision.

The argument, then, is this: you do not dispute where your provision comes from — it comes every year, it has never failed. The promise will come from the same place.

I transmit this as a link commonly built in the classical commentaries; that the two halves of the verse stand in the same sentence is plain in the text.

This verse too is sometimes made the subject of a scientific claim: it is said that solar energy is the source of the whole food chain, and that "provision being in the sky" therefore announces photosynthesis or solar energy.

I do not build this, and my ground is the same as what was written in the sections on al-Ṭāriq and al-ʿAlaq: the explanation the classical exegetes give (rain) is already correct and sufficient, and it rests on an observation the one addressed can verify directly. No expertise at all is needed to see that water comes down from the sky and that without it there is no crop. To turn the verse into a description of energy takes it out of the reader's hands.

The sūra swears for the third time. And this time the oath is sworn not by a created thing but by the Lord Himself.

A series is being built:

The oath rises. First to the work itself, then to the place where the work is done, and at last to the one who does it.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

And one of the most unusual comparisons in the Qurʾān.

نَطَقَ — to speak, to express with the voice. Root ن-ط-ق. From the same root comes manṭiq (speech, reasoning); the Turkish word mantık ("logic") comes from here.

The verse says: this report is as true as the fact that you are speaking.

The working of the comparison has to be seen. What is the strongest criterion that can be given for a thing's truth? Usually a proof from outside: a witness, a document, an observation.

The verse does not do this. It takes as its criterion the speech of the one addressed.

And that speech is chosen is no accident. Speaking is the thing a person doubts least:

• It cannot be doubted. A person cannot ask "am I speaking?"; to ask it he must speak.
• It needs no proof. The proof of speech is speech itself.
• It is repeated continually. Hundreds of times a day.
• And precisely for that reason it goes unnoticed.

The last item establishes the verse's link with the twenty-first: wa fī anfusikum — in yourselves. Speaking is the most everyday of the signs that are "in yourselves".

The twenty-third verse, that is, carries out the command the twenty-first gave: look at yourself, it said; and then it set the most ordinary thing in yourself as the measure.

I record this as my own reading. But that there is only one verse between the two, and that both are directed at the one addressed himself, is plain in the text.

The dispute in grammar. The grammarians differ over the case-role of the word mithla (an adjective, a circumstantial accusative, an adverb in the accusative; and the difference between reading it in the accusative and in the nominative). I do not go into the detail of this dispute, because it makes no difference to the sense, and because I cannot give the variant readings with certainty I write no names and no attributions.

Hal atāka ḥadīthu ḍayfi Ibrāhīma'l-mukramīn · Idh dakhalū ʿalayhi fa-qālū salāmā; qāla salāmun qawmun munkarūn "Has the account of Abraham's honoured guests come to you? They had entered upon him and said 'Peace'. And he said 'Peace' — 'a people not known.'"

This pattern was taken up in the section on al-Burūj, and when its occurrences in the Qurʾān were enumerated there this verse was already named. I do not repeat it. In summary: the pattern hal atāka ḥadīthu… is used in opening a narrative and occurs in several places in the Qurʾān (Ṭāhā 20/9; al-Nāziʿāt 79/15; al-Ghāshiya 88/1; here).

What is to be added here is the pattern's oddity in this place.

Hal atāka — "has it come to you?" A question. And the answer to the question is not obvious: does the one addressed know this narrative or not?

In the classical sources the pattern is generally counted as taqrīr (eliciting assent): "of course it has come". But some exegetes count it as the opening of a real piece of information: "here it comes now".

There is a practical difference between the two readings, and it concerns who is addressed: in Mecca the narrative of Abraham was known — the Kaʿba was named with his name. The question therefore cannot be a question for information.

I do not impose a preference. But this must be recorded: where the same pattern is used in al-Ghāshiya the object (the day of resurrection) is new to the one addressed, whereas here it is old. The pattern is used in both situations; and so the state of the addressee's knowledge cannot be drawn from the pattern.

Root: ض-ي-ف. Its concrete sense: to incline to a side, to draw near, to join.

• ضَافَ إِلَيْهِ — he turned towards him, he alighted beside him.
• أَضَافَ — he added, he annexed. Not the Turkish ilave, but the Arabic iḍāfa (annexation — attaching one word to another) is from this root.
• ضَيْف — a guest. That is, "one who draws near, one who joins".

And the word's grammatical peculiarity is interesting: in Arabic ḍayf is used for both singular and plural — because it comes from a verbal noun it takes neither number nor gender. In the verse the word is singular (ḍayf) but its adjective is plural (al-mukramīn) and its verbs are plural (dakhalū, qālū). This is not a contradiction; it is a known usage of the word.

And that "joining" lies at the root of the word for "guest" is worth noting. A guest is not one who enters the house from outside but one who is added to it. The legal weight of the Arab tradition of hospitality stands in this word: from the moment he arrives the guest is a part of the house and under the host's protection.

Root: ك-ر-م. This root was treated in the sections on al-Fajr and al-Maʿārij; I do not repeat it. In summary: the centre of the root is worth and generosity, and in the section on al-Maʿārij the word mukramūn's being in the passive pattern was dwelt upon.

And here too the word is passive: al-mukramīn — "those who have been honoured", "those who are entertained".

Who honoured them? — two readings:

The two readings do not exclude one another and both are transmitted in the classical sources. The second has a certain force: the attribute is given at the beginning of the narrative — that is, while Abraham's entertaining has not yet been recounted. This suggests that the attribute already belongs to them.

But the first has a force too: the attribute may be the heading of what the narrative is about to recount.

I do not impose a preference.

And now the finest point of the verse. What the two sides say is not exactly the same word.

The guests: سَلَٰمًا — salāman (accusative) Abraham: سَلَٰمٌ — salāmun (nominative)

The same word, two different case-endings. And the grammarians do not leave this difference empty.

And that in Arabic the nominal sentence conveys thubūt (fixity) and the verbal sentence ḥudūth (coming to be) has been recorded in many places in this commentary.

Its consequence here is this: Abraham returns the greeting given him in a more lasting pattern. They gave a greeting; he stated a state of peace.

In the classical sources this difference is recorded regularly and is generally tied to this conclusion: the greeting has been returned with a better one. And this agrees with an explicit command of the Qurʾān:

"When you are greeted with a greeting, answer with a better one, or return the same." (al-Nisāʾ 4/86)

The verse, that is, shows a rule that will be laid down later in its carried-out form. I transmit this as a link commonly built in the classical sources; the wordings of the two texts were given above.

The root سلام. س-ل-م — soundness, freedom from flaw, completeness. Salāma, islām, muslim, taslīm are from the same root. That the word is used in greeting rests on the sense "you are safe from me" — a greeting, that is, is not a wish but a guarantee.

And the most realistic detail of the narrative.

Root: ن-ك-ر. Not to know, to find strange. Munkar — not recognised, found odd. From the same root come inkār (refusing to acknowledge), nakira (an indefinite noun), munkar (what is found repugnant morally).

Whose sentence this is has been disputed:

The first is the more widespread, because for a host to say to his guest "I do not know you" is contrary to the Arab etiquette of hospitality. And the rest of the narrative supports this reading: Abraham keeps his fear inside (fa-awjasa); he does not let it out.

And this detail of word order matters: Abraham first returns the greeting, and only then notices that he does not know them. That is the order.

Entertaining, that is, is not conditional on knowing. A guest is a guest even unknown.

I record this as an observation about the structure; the verse lays down no rule, it shows an order.

Fa-rāgha ilā ahlihi fa-jāʾa bi-ʿijlin samīn · Fa-qarrabahu ilayhim; qāla a-lā taʾkulūn "Then he slipped away quietly to his household and brought a fatted calf. He put it near them and said, 'Will you not eat?'"

Root: ر-و-غ. And the choice of this word is one of the finest details of the narrative.

The sense the lexicographers record: to withdraw to one side secretly, without being noticed; to slip away by changing direction.

• رَاغَ الثَّعْلَبُ — the fox fled by changing direction (so as not to be caught). This is the example most often given for the word.
• مُرَاوَغَة — to avoid someone, to give him the slip; in wrestling, to turn and deceive an opponent.
• رَوَغَان — swerving to right and left.

The word does not say "he went". It could have said dhahaba (he went), qāma (he rose), kharaja (he went out). It says رَاغَ: quietly, unnoticed, with a change of direction.

And its counterpart in the etiquette of hospitality is plain. If a host says to his guest "I will prepare food for you", the guest is embarrassed and most often says "do not put yourself to trouble". Abraham does not say it. He goes out without announcing it.

The Qurʾān uses this word of Abraham in another place too — in the scene of the breaking of the idols: "Then he turned quietly to their gods" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/91) — fa-rāgha ilā ālihatihim. The same verb, the same silent movement, an entirely different outcome.

Setting the two uses side by side is instructive: the same man, with the same verb, withdraws quietly once to fetch food for his guest and once to break idols. The word itself carries no value; secrecy is a neutral manner.

I record this as an observation about the words.

عِجْل — a calf, a young bovine. Root ع-ج-ل; and the same root as tastaʿjilūn (to demand haste) in the fourteenth verse. The lexicographers connect the giving of this name to the calf with the haste and liveliness of youth; I ascribe this explanation to the lexicographers and do not present it as a settled etymology.

سَمِين — fat, well fed. Root س-م-ن; samn (clarified butter) is from the same root.

And the placing of the adjective is meaningful. The verse does not say "he brought a calf"; it says "a fatted calf".

The concrete counterpart of this is: in a herd not every animal is of the same value. The fat one is the most valuable — the last to come up for slaughter, or the one slaughtered for a special occasion. Abraham slaughters the best of the herd for three travellers he does not know.

And note the narrative's economy: the text does not say how much time passed, how the calf was slaughtered, who cooked it. It says only "he brought". The account in another sūra of the Qurʾān adds one detail: "without delay he brought a roasted calf" (Hūd 11/69) — fa-mā labitha an jāʾa bi-ʿijlin ḥanīdh. The qualification mā labitha (he did not delay) there agrees with the speed given here by the fāʾ particles.

Three fāʾ in a row: fa-rāgha, fa-jāʾa, fa-qarraba. As was recorded in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt, the fāʾ of sequence establishes unbroken continuity. The scene flows without a pause: he withdrew — he brought — he set it near.

Root: ق-ر-ب. To be near. Qarraba (the tafʿīl form) — he brought near.

The verse does not say "he set it before them" (waḍaʿa), it says "he brought it near them". The difference between putting food on the table and pushing it in front of the guest.

And from the same root comes qurbān — what is offered in order to draw near to God. I do not build a connection between this branch of the word and the narrative; I record only that the root carries the idea of "offering".

And the turning point of the narrative.

Is the question an invitation or an observation? It may be either, and probably both at once: in Arabic a question opening with a-lā conveys both encouragement (ʿarḍ) and astonishment.

The account in another sūra of the Qurʾān fills the gap:

"When he saw that their hands did not reach out to it, he found them strange and conceived a fear of them." (Hūd 11/70) — fa-lammā raʾā aydiyahum lā taṣilu ilayhi nakirahum wa awjasa minhum khīfa.

What Abraham noticed, that is, is concrete: the hands do not reach out.

And the cultural weight of this has to be seen. In Arab tradition a guest's refusing the food is a grave sign: to eat is to establish a bond with the host. A person who refuses the food means that he does not wish to establish that bond — and this most often means hostility or a hidden purpose.

Abraham's fear, then, is not a groundless fear but a correct inference. Three strangers who do not reach out to the table are, in that culture, a sign of danger.

I record this as historical background; this side of the Arab tradition of hospitality appears widely in pre-Islamic poetry and in the later sources.

Fa-awjasa minhum khīfa; qālū lā takhaf; wa bashsharūhu bi-ghulāmin ʿalīm "A fear of them came upon him from within. 'Do not be afraid,' they said. And they gave him good news of a knowing son."

Root: و-ج-س. And this word is the psychological centre of the narrative.

The sense the lexicographers record: وَجْس — a faint, barely perceptible sound; a hidden feeling arising from within. أَوْجَسَ (the ifʿāl form) — he felt it inside, it came upon him inwardly.

The core of the word is "a sound hardly to be heard". The fear here, that is, is not a terror but an intimation: an unease for which no cause can yet be given, but which appears somewhere inside.

And this explains the choice of the word. The verse does not say khāfa (he feared). It does not say faziʿa (he was terrified). It says أَوْجَسَ: it fell within him.

The Qurʾān uses the same verb of Moses too: "Moses felt a fear within himself" (Ṭāhā 20/67) — fa-awjasa fī nafsihi khīfatan Mūsā. The same pattern, the same word (khīfa).

And what the two uses share is this: in both, the fear does not show outwardly. Abraham says nothing to his guests; Moses says nothing to the magicians. The fear stays on the inside.

خِيفَة — a derivative of khawf (root: خ-و-ف), and its form is indefinite: "a fear". The indefiniteness is meaningful here — what the fear is of is not said, because Abraham does not know either.

A small particle, but in its place: the fear arises from them. Not an abstract unease, that is; its source definite, its cause indefinite.

And here there is a question, because the text shows a prophet afraid.

The Qurʾān does not conceal this and repeats it in many places: Moses is afraid (Ṭāhā 20/67; al-Qaṣaṣ 28/18, 21, 31), Lot is distressed (Hūd 11/77), Abraham is afraid here. The fear of prophets is not presented in the Qurʾān as a fault; it is recorded as a human reaction.

And note: the angels' answer does not rebuke the fear. They say "do not be afraid" and immediately give the good news. The fear is treated as a misunderstanding, that is, not as a weakness — once information is given, it disappears.

I record this as an observation.

Root: ب-ش-ر. This root was treated in the discussions of al-Muddaththir 74/25 and 74/29; I do not repeat it. In summary: the centre of the root is the skin (bashara), and both good news and scorching show on the skin — the change in the face of the one who receives good news is the source of the word.

What is to be added here is the order of the good news.

Abraham feared → he was told "do not be afraid" → the good news was given.

Three steps, and the middle step is not enough by itself. Saying "do not be afraid" does not remove a fear; what removes it is what removes the fear's cause. And what removes the cause here is the disclosure of their identity: giving good news shows what the angels have come for.

غُلَام — a child, a youth, a young man. In the Qurʾān the word is used both of a newborn and of a grown child.

عَلِيم — one who knows much. And that the adjective is used of an infant is striking: the good news says not that the child will be born but what he will be.

The Qurʾān's adjectives of good news show a pattern:

The good news in the Qurʾān, that is, gives neither a number nor a date; it gives a quality.

I record this as an observation about the pattern.

The narrative of Abraham was treated in the section on al-Baqara, and what was recorded there was this: that Abraham made a request for his offspring ("and from my offspring too"), that the answer given to it was "My covenant does not reach the wrongdoers", and that Abraham's prayers stand in exactly the opposite direction from a claim of privilege, in that he does not count what he holds as a guarantee but asks that it be accepted.

In al-Dhāriyāt we have what came before that request.

In al-Baqara Abraham speaks as the owner of an offspring and asks for his offspring. In al-Dhāriyāt the moment when the offspring does not yet exist is recounted: his wife is old and barren, he himself is old; and a son is announced.

There is a relation of time between the two texts:

al-Dhāriyāt 51/28-30: The offspring is promised. al-Baqara 2/124: A request is made for the offspring, and a qualification is entered on the request.

And read together, the two scenes make al-Baqara's record heavier. For that offspring was given from a place where no natural expectation existed. That what was given should be so extraordinary makes it still more understandable that what was given should be counted a guarantee — and al-Baqara denies exactly this: "My covenant does not reach the wrongdoers."

I record this as a reading drawn from the comparison of the two texts.

Fa-aqbalati'mraʾatuhu fī ṣarratin fa-ṣakkat wajhahā wa qālat ʿajūzun ʿaqīm · Qālū kadhāliki qāla rabbuk; innahū huwa'l-ḥakīmu'l-ʿalīm "Then his wife came forward with a cry, struck her face and said, 'A barren old woman!' 'So your Lord has said,' they replied. 'He is the Wise, the Knowing.'"

One of the liveliest three-verse scenes in the Qurʾān. And what is striking is that the reaction is not softened at all.

Good news is given, and the one who receives it does not rejoice: she cries out, strikes her face, and calls herself a "barren old woman".

The text neither censures this reaction nor explains it. It only records it.

Root: ق-ب-ل. To turn to the front, to face towards. Aqbala (the ifʿāl form) — he turned towards, he came forward. Qibla is from the same root: the side one turns to.

The verb shows that the woman had not been in the scene until that moment: she is coming from somewhere. The account in another sūra of the Qurʾān confirms this: "His wife was standing, and she laughed" (Hūd 11/71).

Root: ص-ر-ر. And the lexicographers differ over the sense of the word:

The first is the more widespread and agrees with the context: the next verb (striking the face) is a reaction of astonishment, and its coming together with a sound is natural.

And the particle fī is interesting: "inside a cry". The sound, that is, is not an accompaniment to the movement but the medium within which the movement takes place. The woman does not come in silence and then cry out; she comes together with the sound.

I record this as an observation about the particle.

Root: ص-ك-ك. Its concrete sense: to strike with something hard, to hit. Ṣakka — he struck, he hit.

And this is a verb that occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

The movement itself is a cultural sign. Striking one's hand to the face — or, on some explanations, to the forehead or the cheek — is in Arab culture (and in many cultures) a reaction of astonishment and disbelief. In English today, clapping a hand to one's forehead, or slapping one's knee, serves the same function.

In the classical sources details are transmitted about the exact form of the movement (to the face or to the forehead, with the fingers or with the palm). Since I cannot give these details with certainty I do not transmit them; the verse says only "she struck her face".

Two words, and both about herself.

عَجُوز — an old woman. Root ع-ج-ز: to be powerless, to be unable. From the same root come ʿajz (powerlessness), ʿājiz, iʿjāz (rendering powerless). At the root of the word for "old woman", that is, lies being unable.

عَقِيم — barren, not bearing. Root ع-ق-م. The sense the lexicographers record: at the centre of the root lie dryness, unfruitfulness, a thing's being cut off.

And the structure of the sentence is striking: ʿajūzun ʿaqīm — two indefinite nouns, no verb. The supplied sense is "I am a barren old woman", but the pronoun is not spoken.

This is an expression of astonishment in Arabic: the person names herself as though in the third person. In English it might be rendered "an old woman — and barren at that!" That the sentence lacks a subject carries the speaker's looking at herself from outside.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

Two grounds, two separate obstacles. The woman says two things, and the two differ:

• عَجُوز — the obstacle of age. Formed over time, present in everyone.
• عَقِيم — barrenness. Independent of age, particular to the person.

The objection, that is, has two layers: I am old and besides I never bore a child at all. The second qualification also closes off the first one's possibility of "perhaps it would have happened when she was young".

And now the sūra's most striking internal link.

This word occurs twice in the sūra:

51/29: ʿajūzun ʿaqīm — a barren old woman. 51/41: al-rīḥa'l-ʿaqīm — the barren wind.

The same word, twelve verses apart, of two entirely different subjects.

And what the two have in common is explained by the sense of the root: ʿaqīm is what yields no produce. A womb yields nothing; a wind too yields nothing.

But this is not the usual adjective the Qurʾān uses of the wind. In the Qurʾān the wind is generally named with fruitfulness:

"And We sent the winds as fertilisers" (al-Ḥijr 15/22) — wa arsalna'l-riyāḥa lawāqiḥ. The word lawāqiḥ here comes straight from the field of fertilisation.

In the Qurʾān's own language, that is, the wind is what carries the cloud and fertilises the plant. The wind sent to ʿĀd, on the other hand, is named barren: it carries nothing, it leaves nothing behind it.

And now the comparison of the two uses:

The same word, in two opposite directions. In one place an attribute is lifted, in the other an attribute becomes a weapon.

I record this as my own reading. But the two occurrences of the word stand in the text, its root is not disputed, and that the two occurrences fall within the same sūra, while it may be a coincidence, is worth recording.

And the reason it is worth recording is this: this part of the sūra sets two sides of God's work side by side. From the twenty-fourth verse to the thirty-seventh a single delegation of angels is recounted, and that delegation has two tasks: good news for one party, destruction for another. In the thirty-first verse Abraham will ask about this: "What is your business, then, O messengers?"

The two occurrences of the word ʿaqīm are the trace of those two tasks at the level of the words.

And note the form of the answer.

The angels do not argue with the woman's objection. They do not say "you are not old", they do not say "you are not barren", they give no medical explanation.

They only point to the source: qāla rabbuki — "your Lord has said it."

This is a move the Qurʾān uses often: without entering into the content of the objection, the place of the matter is changed. The finding recorded in the section on al-Ḍuḥā (cutting off the source without entering into the content of the claim) and the one recorded in the section on al-Kawthar (changing the measure without arguing about the charge of deficiency) belong to the same family.

Note the pronoun كِ: rabbuki — a feminine addressee pronoun. The answer is given directly to the woman, not to her husband. Throughout the scene Abraham does not speak.

حَكِيم — root ح-ك-م. And the concrete sense of the root matters: حَكَمَة — the bit put in a horse's mouth. At the centre of the root lie restraining, bridling, holding in place. Ḥukm, ḥikma, muḥkam, ḥakam are from the same root.

Ḥikma, that is, is not "deep knowledge" but first putting in the proper place: holding a thing where it ought to be.

عَلِيم — root ع-ل-م. One who knows.

That the two names come in this order corresponds to the two layers of the objection:

• The woman put forward impossibility (I am barren, I am old) → حَكِيم: the one who puts things in their proper place.
• The woman put forward her knowing her own condition → عَلِيم: the one who knows.

The answer, that is, meets the two supports of the objection with two names: "you know your condition; He knows it better", and "you suppose it impossible; He puts things in their proper place".

I record this as my own reading; it is a link I have drawn from the order of the two names, and I ascribe it to no classical exegete.

And a link within the sūra: in the twenty-eighth verse the child announced was described as ʿalīm. In the thirtieth God is named al-ʿAlīm. The same word on two levels: the quality given, and the giver of the quality.

Qāla fa-mā khaṭbukum ayyuha'l-mursalūn · Qālū innā ursilnā ilā qawmin mujrimīn · Li-nursila ʿalayhim ḥijāratan min ṭīn · Musawwamatan ʿinda rabbika li'l-musrifīn "'What is your business, then, O messengers?' he said. 'We have been sent to a guilty people,' they said — 'to loose upon them stones of clay; stones marked in your Lord's presence for those who go beyond all bounds.'"

Root: خ-ط-ب. Its concrete sense: to address, to call out to someone, to speak.

• خُطْبَة — a khuṭba, an address made to a gathering.
• خِطَاب — address.
• خَاطَبَ — he addressed him.
• خَطَبَ ٱلْمَرْأَةَ — he asked for a woman in marriage. This too is a speaking: the request is put into words.
• خَطْب — an important matter, an affair. It means "what is worth speaking about".

The question "what is your business?", then, means at its root "what have you to say?"

The Qurʾān always uses this word inside a question: "What was your business, O women?" (Yūsuf 12/51); "And what is your business, O Sāmirī?" (Ṭāhā 20/95); "What is your business, you two?" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/23).

The pattern is the same: mā khaṭbukum / mā khaṭbuk. The word, that is, is used where "what is going on here?" is asked — in the face of something out of the ordinary.

Note the order. Abraham asks this question after the good news has been given.

The sequence is: fear → "do not be afraid" → good news → his wife's reaction → the answer → "what is your business, then?"

Abraham notices this, that is: this delegation cannot have come for good news alone. Three messengers are not sent for a piece of good news; and messengers depart when they have finished what they came for. These are still there.

I record this as an observation about the structure; the verse does not report Abraham's thought, only his question.

And the change of address: Abraham no longer calls them O guests, he says أَيُّهَا ٱلْمُرْسَلُونَ — "O you who are sent". The moment their identity is understood, that is, is recorded by this form of address.

In the thirty-second and thirty-third verses the same root occurs twice, and with two different subjects:

32: innā ursilnā — "we have been sent" (passive; we are not the subject) 33: li-nursila ʿalayhim — "that we may loose upon them" (active; we are the subject)

The messengers, then, are both sent and senders. They have come by a command themselves, and the work they have come for is to send something.

The finding recorded in the section on al-Mursalāt looks exactly at this: there the series' first word's being passive (mursalāt — those that are sent) was dwelt upon, and this was recorded: "That a thing which has been sent arrives is more certain than that a thing which has set out by itself arrives; because behind it there is a sender."

Here two links of the chain are visible at once: the sender → the messengers → the stones. And Abraham's form of address (al-mursalūn) names the link in the middle of the chain.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

حِجَارَة — stones (the plural of ḥajar). طِين — clay, wet earth.

And the construction is strange: stone and clay are opposites — one hard, the other soft.

Several explanations are transmitted in the classical sources:

The first and second explanations do not exclude one another. The word sijjīl was treated in the section on al-Fīl; that may be consulted.

And this detail is worth recording: the same event is recounted in several places in the Qurʾān, and each time the matter of the stone is named. The emphasis of the account, that is, is not on what the stone is but on where it comes from: from above.

Root: س-و-م. And the sense of the word needs to be dwelt on.

• سَامَ — to bring goods to market, to ask a price; and to put out to graze (sāʾima — a grazing animal).
• سِيمَا / سِيمَاء — a mark, a sign in the face. The Qurʾān uses it: "You will know them by their mark" (al-Baqara 2/273).
• مُسَوَّم — marked, stamped.

This root was touched on in the section on al-Fīl; I do not repeat it.

The word's function here: the stones are not random but addressed. The mark determines the target.

And this says that the punishment is not indiscriminate: destruction does not come down without distinction like a natural event; it comes down marked.

The thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth verses will confirm this: the believers are brought out. The distinction, that is, really is made.

The position of the adverbial phrase is striking: the stones are marked "in your Lord's presence". The marking, that is, is not done here, at the scene; it has been done at the source.

And note the change of pronoun: the angels say to Abraham "your Lord" (rabbika) — the second person singular. In the preceding verse too they had said to the woman "your Lord" (rabbuki).

The messengers do not speak in their own name; they point to the addressee's Lord. This agrees with the passive verb in the thirty-second verse (ursilnā): they do not present themselves as the source.

Root: س-ر-ف. Its concrete sense: to exceed the measure, to do more than is needed, to squander.

And in the Qurʾān the word is not used only of wealth; it is used for the overflowing of a measure in every field.

And what is striking is this: the verse names the people of Lot musrifīn. The Qurʾān describes this people with the same word elsewhere too: "You are a people who go beyond all bounds" (al-Aʿrāf 7/81) — bal antum qawmun musrifūn.

The word used in naming the people, that is, names not a sexual act but an overflowing of measure. This agrees with the general language the Qurʾān uses in describing this people.

I draw no ruling; I record the choice of the word.

And two words stand side by side: in the thirty-second verse mujrimīn (the guilty), in the thirty-fourth musrifīn (those who go beyond all bounds).

The root جرم: to pluck a thing off, to cut. Jarm — to pluck fruit from a branch. From here the sense "offence" arises: an offence is the breaking of a bond.

The two words say two different things: one the breaking of a bond, the other the exceeding of a measure.

Fa-akhrajnā man kāna fīhā mina'l-muʾminīn · Fa-mā wajadnā fīhā ghayra baytin mina'l-muslimīn · Wa taraknā fīhā āyatan li'lladhīna yakhāfūna'l-ʿadhāba'l-alīm "We brought out those of the believers who were in it. And We found in it but one household of those who submit. And We left in it a sign for those who fear the painful punishment."

The most striking side of the narrative is here: the destruction is not recounted.

The messengers stated their task (33-34), and the thirty-fifth verse passes straight to the outcome: We brought out. The falling of the stones, the overturning of the city — none of it is told.

The Qurʾān recounts this narrative in detail in other sūras (Hūd 11/77-83; al-Ḥijr 15/61-77; al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/160-175). Here it closes in three verses, and two of the three speak not of the destruction but of those who were saved.

The sūra's economy requires this: what is recounted in this section is not the history of the people of Lot but the outcome of the messengers' second task.

And there is a break in the grammar.

Up to the thirty-fourth verse it was the angels who spoke (innā ursilnā, li-nursila). In the thirty-fifth the subject changes: fa-akhrajnā — "We brought out".

This "We" is no longer the angels. For in the next verse comes fa-mā wajadnā ("We did not find") and in the thirty-seventh wa taraknā ("We left") — and the sign left in the thirty-seventh is not the angels' doing but the text's own act.

The telling passes, that is, from the mouth of the messengers to the mouth of God, and the passage is not marked.

This is a form of the technique called iltifāt in Arabic (the shift in the direction of the address or of the narrator). It is widespread in the Qurʾān and has been recorded in many places in this commentary.

Its function here is this: the distance between the two verbs disappears. The messengers said "we shall send"; the narrative says "We brought out". Nothing at all comes between the command and the outcome — no time, no process, no resistance.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

And two verses in succession use two different words. This is a detail dwelt on since the classical period.

35: mina'l-muʾminīn — of those who believe 36: mina'l-muslimīn — of those who submit

There is a wide dispute in the classical sources over the difference between the two words, and the central text of that dispute is al-Ḥujurāt 49/14: "The bedouin said, 'We believe.' Say: 'You do not believe; say rather, we have submitted — for faith has not yet entered your hearts.'"

There, that is, islām is set down as a more outward category than īmān.

But in these two verses the same group is meant, and the two words look as though they had been used interchangeably. In the classical sources this is explained as the two words coming together in the same person: the same household has both believed and submitted.

I do not impose a preference and I do not go into the detail of this dispute; the relation between the two words cannot be settled without taking up the whole of the Qurʾān.

But this observation about the structure can be recorded: the thirty-fifth verse uses the word muʾmin with the verb of bringing out, the thirty-sixth uses the word muslim with the verb of finding. The one brought out is named by his inward state, the one found by his outward state. This is an observation, not a ruling.

And the number is frightening. In a whole city, one household.

The word bayt conveys both the building and the family inside it — as English "house" does in "the house of so-and-so". What is counted, that is, is not a building but a family.

And the Qurʾān records elsewhere that even this family was not complete: Lot's wife is among those left behind (Hūd 11/81; al-Aʿrāf 7/83).

And the word order of the verses sets up a sequence:

35: "We brought out those of the believers who were in it." — an operation is stated. 36: "And We found in it but one household." — the scale of the operation is given.

The thirty-sixth verse looks as though it were correcting the thirty-fifth: when "We brought out" is said, a crowd comes to mind; the second verse cuts that expectation off.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

And the section builds a circle with the sūra's twentieth verse.

Verse 20: wa fi'l-arḍi āyātun li'l-mūqinīn — in the earth there are signs. Verse 37: wa taraknā fīhā āyatan li'lladhīna yakhāfūn — We left in it a sign.

The same word, two different sources. The signs in the twentieth verse are part of creation; the sign in the thirty-seventh is part of history — what remains of an event.

And the recipient changes as well:

The difference in the second row is meaningful. The signs of creation address knowledge; the signs of history address fear.

I record this as my own reading. But the qualifications of the two verses are plain in the text, and they differ.

And the verb "We left" is concrete. As was recorded for Thamūd in the section on al-Shams: the caravan road from Mecca to Syria passed through these regions, and for the Qurʾān's addressees these were not distant legends but ruins seen along the road. The Qurʾān says this openly: "You pass by them in the morning, and by night" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/137-138).

The sentence "We left a sign", that is, is a claim the one addressed can verify.

Wa fī Mūsā idh arsalnāhu ilā Firʿawna bi-sulṭānin mubīn · Fa-tawallā bi-ruknihi wa qāla sāḥirun aw majnūn · Fa-akhadhnāhu wa junūdahu fa-nabadhnāhum fi'l-yammi wa huwa mulīm "And in Moses too — when We sent him to Pharaoh with a clear authority. But he turned away with his pillar of strength and said, 'A magician, or a madman.' So We seized him and his hosts and cast them into the sea; and he had brought blame upon himself."

And here the sūra's weave of word order comes into play a second time.

Up to the twenty-second verse four verses had opened with wāw + fī (wealth, the earth, yourselves, the sky). Now the same pattern opens four narratives:

38: وَفِى مُوسَىٰ — and in Moses too 41: وَفِى عَادٍ — and in ʿĀd too 43: وَفِى ثَمُودَ — and in Thamūd too 46: وَقَوْمَ نُوحٍ — and the people of Noah (the pattern changes here)

The first three are on the same pattern, the fourth is not. This will be taken up below.

And that the two lists share the same pattern says something: in the twentieth verse there were signs in the earth and in yourselves; here there are signs in Moses, in ʿĀd, in Thamūd. Because the pattern is the same, the object is counted the same too.

The text, that is, puts historical events in the same category as events in nature: both are signs.

I record this as an observation about the structure; the identity of pattern between the two lists is plain in the text.

And the thirty-seventh verse builds a bridge between the two: "We left in it a sign." The sentence of transition, that is, has already been given.

Root: س-ل-ط. Its concrete sense: to prevail, to be master, to hold power. Salaṭa — he was set over. Sulṭān — both authority and proof.

And both senses of the word are at work in the Qurʾān:

The link the lexicographers record is this: a proof too establishes a mastery — it wins in a dispute. I ascribe this explanation to the lexicographers.

And the choice here is interesting. What is given to Moses is named not "a miracle" but a sulṭān. It is spoken, that is, in Pharaoh's own language: Pharaoh holds authority, and Moses holds a sulṭān too.

I record this as an observation about the words.

And one of the most compressed expressions in the Qurʾān.

رُكْن — root ر-ك-ن: to lean, to prop oneself. Rukn — the corner of a building, its pillar, its bearing leg. From the same root comes rukūn (inclining to a side, leaning). The Qurʾān uses it: "Do not incline towards those who do wrong" (Hūd 11/113) — wa lā tarkanū ila'lladhīna ẓalamū.

And in another place the Qurʾān uses the word directly in the sense of "strength": "If only I had power against you, or could take refuge in some strong support (ruknin shadīd)" (Hūd 11/80) — the words of Lot.

The function of the particle bāʾ here is disputed:

The first two are the more widespread and both agree with the context: the fortieth verse will say "We seized him and his hosts" — the might, that is, is in the scene.

I do not impose a preference; it makes no great difference to the sense.

And this is worth recording: the verse does not say that Pharaoh refuted the proof. It says that he turned away. No answer is given; the other party is not engaged.

This looks the same way as the finding recorded in the section on al-Muddaththir for 74/18-25: there too it was shown that the verdict is given before the grounds, and the ground produced afterwards.

And the sūra's eighth verse finds an example here.

The eighth verse had said: innakum la-fī qawlin mukhtalif — "you are in a contradictory word."

And here is the contradictory word: sāḥirun aw majnūn — "a magician or a madman."

One has to see that the two charges cannot both be true at once:

A man cannot be both a master and a witless man. And the particle aw (or): the text itself records this contradiction — even Pharaoh cannot decide which of the two to say.

These charges were treated in the discussions of al-Qalam 68/2 and al-Ḥāqqa 69/41-42; I do not repeat them. In al-Qalam the root of majnūn (ج-ن-ن: to cover) was analysed and the finding made that "a majnūn is one whose word does not come from himself". In al-Ḥāqqa the charges of shāʿir and kāhin were taken up and it was recorded that human sources are being rejected.

And in the section on al-Inshirāḥ this verse was already named: in setting out the epithets ascribed to the Prophet, al-Ṭūr 52/29 and al-Dhāriyāt 51/52 were cited for sāḥir and kāhin. And the finding recorded there was this: "These are not random insults; they are the standard ways in that culture of invalidating a man's word — classifying the speaker instead of arguing with what is said."

What is to be added here is the charge's reach across time.

In the thirty-ninth verse the one who says these two words is Pharaoh. In the fifty-second it will be recorded that the same two words were said in every age:

"So it is: no messenger came to those before them but they said, 'A magician, or a madman.'" (51/52)

The same two words, in the same order, with the same particle aw. The sūra gives an example in the thirty-ninth verse, that is, and turns the example into a rule in the fifty-second.

This is one of the tightest internal circles of the sūra, and it is plain in the text.

Root: ن-ب-ذ. Its concrete sense: to throw a thing away as worthless, to fling it aside.

This root was treated in the section on al-Humaza and this verse was named there; I do not repeat it. In summary: nabadha is to throw without regard — in al-Humaza a reversal was set up between jamaʿa (he gathered) and nubidha (he was thrown).

What is to be added here is the proportion between the verb's subject and its object.

The verse does not say "We drowned them" (aghraqnā) — the Qurʾān recounts this event with that verb in other places. Here it says "We cast".

And casting is not a display of power; it is an act of devaluing. To drown a man requires a struggle; to throw a thing is to let it go from the hand.

In the thirty-ninth verse Pharaoh had acted bi-ruknihi — "relying on his strength". In the fortieth that strength becomes a thing thrown away.

I record this as an observation about the words.

يَمّ — the sea, a great body of water. That the word may have passed into Arabic from another language is discussed by the lexicographers; I do not enter that discussion. The Qurʾān uses the word regularly in the narrative of Moses (Ṭāhā 20/39, 78, 97; al-Aʿrāf 7/136; al-Qaṣaṣ 28/7, 40).

Root: ل-و-م. To blame, to reproach. Lawm — blame. Lāʾima — one who blames.

مُلِيم (an active participle of the ifʿāl form) — one who deserves blame, who has brought himself into a blameable state.

And the fineness of the pattern is here. Malūm (a passive participle) would mean "blamed". Mulīm is different: the person is himself doing something — he brings the blame upon himself.

The verse says, that is, not that Pharaoh was blamed but that he had come into a blameable state himself.

And the same root will return in the fifty-fourth verse of this sūra: fa-tawalla ʿanhum fa-mā anta bi-malūm — "So turn away from them; you are not to be blamed" (51/54).

Two patterns stand side by side in the sūra, that is:

Verse 40: Pharaoh — mulīm (one who brings blame upon himself). Verse 54: The Prophet — not malūm (not blamed).

The same root, two opposite positions. I record this as a link within the sūra; the patterns of the two words differ, and I noted that difference above.

Wa fī ʿĀdin idh arsalnā ʿalayhimu'l-rīḥa'l-ʿaqīm · Mā tadharu min shayʾin atat ʿalayhi illā jaʿalathu ka'l-ramīm "And in ʿĀd too — when We sent against them the barren wind. It left nothing it came upon without making it like crumbled bone."

The people of ʿĀd were treated in the discussion of al-Fajr 89/6-8, and what the Qurʾān gives and what report adds were given separately; I do not repeat it. A summary of what was recorded there: their land is al-Aḥqāf (the sand dunes); they were destroyed by a violent wind (al-Ḥāqqa 69/6-7); the disagreement over the expression Iram dhāti'l-ʿimād was given in table form; and it was stated that ʿĀd is an example of destruction lodged in Arab memory, which the Qurʾān names without any introduction.

What is to be added here is the wind's attribute.

The rule recorded in the section on al-Ḥāqqa is at work here: in the Qurʾān the singular rīḥ generally occurs in a context of punishment, and the plural riyāḥ in a context of mercy. And this verse was already named there.

What is to be added here is the attribute itself. I treated this word above in the discussion of 51/29 and built the link within the sūra; I do not repeat it. In summary: ʿaqīm means yielding no produce; the word occurs twice in the sūra (of the woman and of the wind) and the two occurrences run in opposite directions — in one the barrenness is lifted, in the other barrenness becomes a weapon.

One last record to be added here: the wind's being "barren" is the reverse of the usual attribute the Qurʾān uses of the wind. Normally the wind carries — so it was named in the second verse of this sūra too (al-ḥāmilāti wiqrā).

And a comparison with the sūra's first four verses is unavoidable:

The wind of the forty-first verse, that is, is the operation of the sūra's first four verses with two of its links missing. It scatters but does not carry; it comes but leaves nothing.

I record this as my own reading. The root senses of the words were given one by one above and are not disputed; what I claim is that the presence of the two passages within the same sūra is worth recording. I do not claim that it is a deliberate arrangement.

The sentence is built with a pattern of exception: "it leaves nothing without making it …".

Two negations one upon the other, and the result an absolute affirmation: mā … illā. In Arabic this pattern gives the strongest inclusiveness — it leaves no exception.

تَذَرُ — root و-ذ-ر: to leave, to abandon. And this verb has an interesting peculiarity: in Arabic the perfect (past) conjugation is not used; only the imperfect and the imperative forms are in use.

A command from the same root will come in Sūrat al-Ṭūr: fa-dharhum (52/45) — "leave them". The fa-tawalla ʿanhum of the sūra's fifty-fourth verse is from a different root.

Root: ر-م-م. Its concrete sense: to decay, to crumble, to fall apart.

• رَمَّ ٱلْعَظْمُ — the bone decayed, it grew old.
• رَمِيم — a decayed, crumbled thing; especially a decayed bone.
• رِمَّة — rotten bone.

The Qurʾān uses this word in one other place, and there the sense is certain: "Who will give life to bones when they are decayed?" (Yā Sīn 36/78) — man yuḥyi'l-ʿiẓāma wa hiya ramīm.

In the Qurʾān's own usage, that is, the word marks the furthest stage of death: not a corpse but a bone; not a bone but a decayed bone.

And note how the comparison works. The wind does not destroy what it comes upon — it turns it into decayed bone. Something is left, that is; but that thing is no longer what it was.

This agrees with the description reported in the section on al-Ḥāqqa: "You would have seen that people laid low there, as though they were hollow trunks of palm trees" (69/7). In both descriptions a form remains behind, and the content has gone.

And a point about time. Decay requires a long process: the crumbling of bone takes years. The wind, meanwhile, passes by.

The comparison conveys a speed, that is: doing in a moment what years would do.

I record this as my own reading; the verse says nothing of duration, but at al-Ḥāqqa 69/7 the qualification "seven nights and eight days" is entered for the same event — the duration is short, that is, but not instantaneous.

Wa fī Thamūda idh qīla lahum tamattaʿū ḥattā ḥīn · Fa-ʿataw ʿan amri rabbihim fa-akhadhat-humu'l-ṣāʿiqatu wa hum yanẓurūn · Fa-ma'staṭāʿū min qiyāmin wa mā kānū muntaṣirīn "And in Thamūd too — when it was said to them, 'Enjoy yourselves for a while.' They grew insolent against their Lord's command; and the thunderbolt seized them while they looked on. They could neither rise to their feet nor save themselves."

The narrative of Thamūd was treated in detail in the discussion of al-Shams 91/11-15; what the Qurʾān gives, what report adds, and the historical frame were given separately. I do not repeat it. A summary of what was recorded there: Thamūd is a people for whom there is a record in independent sources (Assyrian records, Greek and Latin geographers); the description "they carved houses out of the mountains" is associated with the region of al-Ḥijr, but the monumental façades standing today belong to the Nabataean period and are not the buildings of Thamūd; and for those addressed Thamūd was not a distant name — the caravan road passed through that region.

And the people were named in the discussion of al-Fajr 89/9 as well.

What is to be added here is what belongs to these three verses alone.

Root: م-ت-ع. Its concrete sense: to benefit from a thing, to enjoy it; and to be durable. Matāʿ — goods, property, provisions for a journey. Tamattuʿ — enjoying.

And the imperative here too is not a real command. What was recorded for dhūqū in the fourteenth verse holds here as well: the imperative can be used for rebuke, for mockery, or for the carrying out of a sentence.

But this use has a side of its own: a term is given.

Ḥattā ḥīn — "until a time". The word حِين conveys an indefinite span in Arabic; how long it is is not said.

And where the Qurʾān recounts this narrative elsewhere it gives the term explicitly: "Enjoy yourselves in your dwellings three days more" (Hūd 11/65) — tamattaʿū fī dārikum thalāthata ayyām.

Comparing the two texts:

And the indefiniteness has a function. The principle recorded earlier in this commentary in the discussions of al-Takāthur and al-ʿĀdiyāt is at work here too: a threat whose object is not named is greater than one that is named, because it has no limit.

But here there is one further layer. al-Dhāriyāt's addressee is not Thamūd but Mecca. And what is being said to Mecca is this: they too were given a term.

The indefinite term, that is, makes the one addressed think about his own situation: your term too is indefinite.

I record this as my own reading; the wordings of the two verses were given above.

Root: ع-ت-و. Its concrete sense: to exceed the bound, to swell up, to stiffen; and a thing's hardening and drying out.

A usage the lexicographers record: ʿatā al-ʿūdu — the branch dried and hardened, and would bend no longer.

And this explains the word's moral sense: ʿutuww is having lost one's flexibility. The insolent man breaks but does not bend.

The Qurʾān uses this root of Thamūd elsewhere too: the pattern "they grew insolent against their Lord's command" occurs at al-Aʿrāf 7/77 as well — wa ʿataw ʿan amri rabbihim.

And the choice of particle is interesting: ʿataw ʿan amri rabbihim — "they grew insolent away from their Lord's command". The particle ʿan conveys moving away. Insolence, that is, is not a resistance against the command; it is a moving away from the command.

The finding recorded for Thamūd in the section on al-Shams agrees with this: there the word ṭaghwā (excess) was treated and the conclusion reached that "the denial does not come first; the excess comes first". Thamūd, that is, did not first examine a proof and then reject it; they first overstepped the limit.

al-Dhāriyāt sets up the same order: a term was given → they grew insolent → they were seized.

Root: ص-ع-ق. Its concrete sense: to be struck by a violent sound, to faint, to fall down senseless.

• صَاعِقَة — a thunderbolt; and the striking of a thunderbolt.
• صَعِقَ — he was struck, he fainted. The Qurʾān uses it: "And Moses fell down senseless" (al-Aʿrāf 7/143) — wa kharra Mūsā ṣaʿiqā.
• صَعْق — being struck down.

And at the centre of the root lies sound. The thunderbolt is given this name because of its sound, not its light — the lexicographers record this regularly.

The Qurʾān uses several words for the destruction of Thamūd: ṣayḥa (a terrible cry, Hūd 11/67), ṭāghiya (the overwhelming one, al-Ḥāqqa 69/5), ṣāʿiqa (here and Fuṣṣilat 41/13, 17), rajfa (the quaking, al-Aʿrāf 7/78).

The itemising of these words was given in the section on al-Shams; I do not repeat it.

And the same root will return in Sūrat al-Ṭūr: yawmahumu'lladhī fīhi yuṣʿaqūn (52/45) — "the day on which they will be struck down". I shall gather this in the section on the links between the two sūras.

And the harshest detail of the three verses.

Root: ن-ظ-ر. To look, to watch; and to wait. The word carries both senses, and here it is disputed:

The first is the more widespread.

And on the first reading the function of the detail is this: the destruction did not come in sleep. It came while they saw, while they looked, while they were aware. They had time to flee — the next verse will say so: "they could not rise to their feet."

The detail shows an impossibility, that is: they saw, but they could not act.

Root: ق-و-م. To rise, to stand. This root was treated in the discussions of al-Fātiḥa, al-Bayyina and al-Baqara (mustaqīm, iqāma, qayyima); I do not repeat it.

And qiyām here is understood in two ways:

The two readings do not exclude one another. And the second half (wa mā kānū muntaṣirīn — "nor could they save themselves") looks to the second.

مُنتَصِر — root ن-ص-ر: to help. Intiṣār (the iftiʿāl form) — to help oneself, to save oneself. This root was treated in the section on al-Naṣr.

And the reflexive pattern is meaningful: it is not said that they received help from no one; it is said that they could not even help themselves.

This sets up a parallel with Pharaoh in the thirty-ninth verse: there he had acted bi-ruknihi (relying on his strength). Here Thamūd is left without even strength enough for itself.

Wa qawma Nūḥin min qabl; innahum kānū qawman fāsiqīn "And before them the people of Noah. They were a people who had strayed from the way."

And there is a break in the grammar.

Three narratives had opened with wāw + fī: wa fī Mūsā, wa fī ʿĀdin, wa fī Thamūda. The fourth is different: وَقَوْمَ نُوحٍ — there is no fī, and the word is in the accusative (qawma, not qawmin).

The grammarians resolve this accusative in two ways:

Both views arrive at the same result: the sentence no longer conveys "a sign", it conveys a verb directly.

And the meaning of the break may be this: the first three narratives were presented as "in … too there is" — that is, as a list of proofs. The fourth is added to the list but stands outside the pattern, and so the list closes.

I record this as an observation about the structure; the grammarians' solutions were given above and both have been defended in the classical sources.

The people of Noah are among the peoples most often recounted in the Qurʾān — a whole sūra (71, Nūḥ) is given to it, and it was treated in this commentary.

Here, one verse. Indeed the event itself is not recounted at all: no flood, no ark, no span of time. Only a judgement: kānū qawman fāsiqīn.

And the order is meaningful: the five narratives shorten fast — from fourteen verses to one.

The structure of "ending by narrowing" recorded in the section on al-Mursalāt is at work here within a single section: the list closes by accelerating.

And the qualification min qabl corrects the sequence. Noah is before all those enumerated; he has been put last in the list. The list, that is, is not chronological.

This shows that the list is not a telling of history: the examples are arranged not by order of time but by some other logic. Without imposing a preference I can record this much: the example put last is the oldest — and so the list closes not "from nearest to farthest" but the other way about.

Root: ف-س-ق. And the concrete sense of the root corrects the word's present-day use.

The proper sense the lexicographers record: فَسَقَتِ ٱلرُّطَبَةُ — the date came out of its skin. Fisq, that is, is a thing's coming out of its own skin, its own husk.

From the same root fāsiq — one who comes out, who spills beyond.

And this shows where the word sits: fisq is not "committing a sin"; it is going outside the order one is in. A date that comes out of its skin spoils — it is left unprotected.

The Qurʾān uses the word over a wide field, and its centre is always this: going outside a limit.

And in the last verses of the sūra its opposite will come: the fifty-sixth verse will say what man and jinn were created for. An order will be described, that is. The fāsiq is the one who goes outside that order.

I record this as a link between the words.

Wa'l-samāʾa banaynāhā bi-aydin wa innā la-mūsiʿūn "And the sky — We built it with power; and We are indeed possessed of vast means."

One of the verses of this sūra — and perhaps of the whole Qurʾān — most exploited in the modern period. For this reason three separate tasks have to be done here: first to set out honestly the word order and the lexical sense of the words, then to report what the classical exegetes understood, and then to write out, with its grounds, the position taken towards the modern claim.

I apply exactly the method applied in the discussions of al-Ṭāriq 86/7 and al-ʿAlaq 96/2.

First let us look at how the sentence is built, because there is a grammatical point here.

وَٱلسَّمَآءَ — in the accusative. But the sentence already has an object: banaynāhā — "We built it", the pronoun hā referring back to the sky.

The object has been named twice, that is: once as an explicit noun (in the accusative, brought forward), once as a pronoun.

The grammarians call this اِشْتِغَال (ishtighāl): a noun is brought forward, read in the accusative, and the verb comes after it and returns to that noun with a pronoun. The supplied form is: wa banaynā'l-samāʾa banaynāhā.

And the function of ishtighāl is emphasis. By bringing the noun forward attention is drawn to it, and then the verb takes it up again.

This pattern is in the next verse too: wa'l-arḍa farashnāhā — the same structure, the same emphasis.

And the word order builds a pair:

47: The sky — banaynāhā (We built) 48: The earth — farashnāhā (We spread)

The two verses mirror one another. The same pair was in al-Baqara 2/22 (firāsh / bināʾ), and the comparison of that pair was recorded in the section on al-Shams: "the sky a building, the earth a bed: the same pair, there a proof, here an oath."

And here there is a genuine confusion, because two separate words look the same in writing.

In the indefinite both are written بِأَيْدٍ.

The first word — the root أ-ي-د:

• أَيَّدَ (the tafʿīl form) — to strengthen, to support. The Qurʾān uses it often: "We supported him with the Holy Spirit" (al-Baqara 2/87, 253) — wa ayyadnāhu.
• تَأْيِيد — strengthening, supporting.
• مُؤَيَّد — supported.
• أَيْد — power, strength. The Qurʾān uses it of David (Dāwūd): "Remember Our servant David — he was a man of strength" (Ṣād 38/17) — dha'l-ayd.

Ṣād 38/17 is a decisive indication, because there the word occurs without tanwīn and in a construct (dha'l-ayd), so there is no possibility of its being the plural of yad — it is plainly in the sense of "strength".

The overwhelming majority of the classical exegetes read the first word in this verse: bi-aydin = with power, with might.

Their grounds:

1. The Qurʾān's own usage (Ṣād 38/17). 2. To ascribe the plural of yad to God is not found in the Qurʾān's ordinary language — the Qurʾān uses the singular (yad) and the dual (yadayn), but does not use the plural in this context. 3. The context: the sentence recounts a work of building, and building is done "with power".

I too take this reading as my basis, and its grounds are above. It is not binding, but I must also state that the minority reading has no serious support.

And I enter this record: the confusion of the two words appears in English renderings as well, and the phrase is sometimes translated "with hands". That rendering arises from identifying the root wrongly.

And the whole dispute over the verse lies in this word.

Root: و-س-ع. Its concrete sense: breadth, a thing's capacity to hold something inside it.

The branches of the root:

And now the Qurʾān's own usage — this is the datum that settles the dispute.

The word مُوسِع occurs in one other place in the Qurʾān, and there its sense is beyond dispute:

"Provide for them: the one of ample means (al-mūsiʿ) according to his measure, and the one of straitened means (al-muqtir) according to his." (al-Baqara 2/236)

The mūsiʿ here is not "one who widens" but "one who has ample means". And its opposite is set down as muqtir (of straitened means).

And the same root again in a similar sentence:

"Let the man of ample means spend out of his amplitude." (al-Ṭalāq 65/7) — li-yunfiq dhū saʿatin min saʿatih.

The word wusʿ also occurs in the Qurʾān in the sense of "capacity to bear": "God does not burden a soul beyond its capacity (wusʿ)" (al-Baqara 2/286).

In the Qurʾān's own language, that is, this root chiefly conveys a being's capacity — not the physical growth of an object.

The explanations given to this verse in the classical sources gather under a few heads:

The first two explanations predominate in the classical sources and both establish an agreement with the word bi-aydin: if the sentence conveys a power, its second half should convey a power too.

I record that the third and fourth explanations are transmitted as well. But I have to state this: because I cannot give with certainty whose these explanations are, or their exact distribution in the classical sources, I write no names and no attributions. What I can say is that the first two explanations are widespread and the last two less so.

For about a century this verse has stood at the centre of the claim that "the Qurʾān announced the expansion of the universe". The claim is built thus: the word mūsiʿūn means "those who widen"; modern cosmology has established that the universe is expanding; therefore the verse announced this fact.

I reject this claim, and I write out its grounds one by one.

One — the word has no object.

La-mūsiʿūn is an active participle, and its object is not stated. What it widens is not written.

This is a decisive grammatical record. If a verb is to be read as transitive, its object is either stated or drawn with certainty from the context. Here neither is present — and precisely for this reason the classical exegetes read the word as intransitive: "we are possessed of ample means".

The modern claim inserts an object (the universe) that is not there.

Two — even if an object is inserted, that object is not "the universe".

The claim assumes that the object is the preceding word: al-samāʾ (the sky). But the Qurʾān's word samāʾ does not correspond to modern cosmology's concept of "the universe".

Samāʾ in Arabic means "what is above" (root س-م-و: to rise). The Qurʾān uses this word for the place from which rain comes down ("He sent down water from the sky"), for the place where birds fly, and for the place where the stars are. The whole of the universe — the entirety of space-time — is not a concept this word answers to.

And in modern cosmology what expands is not "the sky" but space itself; galaxies are not moving apart within space, the scale of space is growing. The two concepts do not coincide.

Three — the operation runs backwards.

The objection of method recorded in the sections on al-Ṭāriq and al-ʿAlaq holds here exactly: the modern information is taken first, and then room is made for it in the word. The right order is the reverse.

The test of this is simple: if the word really meant "we are expanding the universe", the fact that for fourteen centuries nobody understood it so would be a situation requiring explanation. Yet no explanation is offered; it is only said "that was not known then". But the question is not the absence of knowledge, it is what the word says; and what a word says is what those who speak that language understand by it.

Four — the claim makes the verse fragile.

The finding recorded in the section on al-ʿAlaq: "To tie the truth of a verse to a current scientific description is to make that verse share the fate of that description."

The expansion of the universe is a model widely supported today. But the details of the model (the rate of expansion, the source of the acceleration, its behaviour in the far past and in the future) continue to be debated. To nail the verse to this model is to carry every correction of the model into the verse as a problem.

Five — the verse's own work is something else, and that work is stronger than the claim.

Look at the verse's context. The forty-seventh, forty-eighth and forty-ninth verses set out three proofs from creation (the sky, the earth, pairs). And the fiftieth gives the conclusion: فَفِرُّوٓا۟ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ — "so flee to God".

The work of the three verses, that is, is not to give information but to prepare the ground for a call. The argument is: the one who built this is possessed of power, so take refuge in Him.

And this argument works equally well for a Meccan of the seventh century and for a reader today. To turn the verse into a description in cosmology makes the argument invisible.

To sum up: the word's sense of "breadth" is given and not cut short; the "widening" branch of the root wusʿ is real and is not hidden; but the claim that the verse announces the metric expansion of the universe lacks grammatical support (there is no object), does not coincide conceptually (samāʾ ≠ the universe), runs backwards in method (the information is taken first), and weakens the verse. The rule of Method that no hunting for scientific miracles is done exists precisely to preserve this distinction.

One further record. This rejection does not mean that the verse contradicts modern science. The verse makes no such claim; and so there is nothing for it to contradict. The same record entered for 86/7 in the section on al-Ṭāriq holds here as well.

Wa'l-arḍa farashnāhā fa-niʿma'l-māhidūn "And the earth — We spread it out. And how excellent are We who made it ready!"

Root: ف-ر-ش. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/22; I do not repeat it. The summary of the finding there: firāsh means a bed, the root is "to spread, to lay out", and this expression does not say that the earth is flat — a bed is not flat either; it is spread, it folds, it follows the ground beneath it. What the word states is not a shape but a function.

And it was recorded there that the Qurʾān names the same function with other words too: mihād (a cradle, al-Nabaʾ 78/6) and dhalūl (a docile mount, al-Mulk 67/15).

And this root had occurred once more in the section on al-Qāriʿa: there the contrast was set up between firāsh (the bed that is spread) and farāsh (the moths that are scattered) — the earth is spread for man, and on that day men are scattered.

Two things are to be added here: the second word itself, and the pattern of praise.

Root: م-ه-د. And the word mihād named in the discussion of al-Baqara is from this root.

• مَهْد — a cradle. The Qurʾān uses it: "he will speak to people while in the cradle" (Āl ʿImrān 3/46; al-Māʾida 5/110).
• مِهَاد — a bed, a couch; and a spread-out ground.
• مَهَّدَ — he smoothed, he made ready, he spread and softened.
• تَمْهِيد — preparation, the making ready of a ground. The Turkish temhid comes from this.

And that mahd (a cradle) lies in the root is meaningful.

A cradle does two things: it carries and it rocks. Not a motionless ground, that is; a ground that has movement but does not disturb what is inside it.

This was recorded in the section on al-Nabaʾ in treating the word mihād; I do not repeat it.

And the use of the two words together adds a layer:

farashnāhā — We spread (ف-ر-ش: to lay out) al-māhidūn — those who make ready (م-ه-د: a cradle, to prepare)

The first verb conveys spreading, the second word making ready. The earth has not merely been spread, that is; it has been made ready for use.

I record this as an observation about the words.

نِعْمَ is in Arabic a fiʿl al-madḥ: a verb of praise. Its opposite is بِئْسَ (a verb of blame).

The peculiarity of the pattern is this: its subject is general, and the thing praised is most often dropped. Here the supplied form is: fa-niʿma'l-māhidūna naḥnu — "how excellent are those who make ready — We".

And the subject of the praise is God Himself. This is a usage found in the Qurʾān and it is striking: the sentence is not a servant's praise but the doer's own judgement about his own work.

Moreover a plural pattern is used (al-māhidūn) — the plural of majesty (naḥnu, innā) is widespread in the Qurʾān and has been recorded earlier in this commentary.

And there is a balance within the sūra:

Verse 47: wa innā la-mūsiʿūn — we are possessed of ample means. Verse 48: fa-niʿma'l-māhidūn — how excellent are We who make ready.

Both verses close in the same way: an active participle in the plural pattern, and the agent God. The sound agrees too (mūsiʿūn / māhidūn).

I record this as an observation about sound and structure.

Wa min kulli shayʾin khalaqnā zawjayni laʿallakum tadhakkarūn "Of everything We created two of a pair — that you might perhaps call it to mind."

Root: ز-و-ج. And the sense of the word differs from the way the English "pair" is used, and the difference matters.

In English "pair" names two things together. In Arabic زَوْج conveys one member of the pair: one of the two.

• زَوْج — the mate of a thing, the single one that is its counterpart. That is, "one half of a pair".
• زَوْجَان / زَوْجَيْنِ — two mates, that is, both of the pair.
• أَزْوَاج — mates (plural).

And the verse uses the dual: zawjayni — "two mates". Of everything, that is, a pair has been created.

In the Qurʾān the word is used of human spouses (azwāj), of kinds of plants (azwājin min nabātin shattā, Ṭāhā 20/53), and generally.

This idea was treated in the discussion of al-Layl 92/1-3, and this verse was named there. I do not repeat it. The finding there: the sūra passes from the idea that "everything has been created in pairs" to a moral distinction, and the Qurʾān states this idea explicitly (al-Dhāriyāt 51/49; Yā Sīn 36/36).

Two things are to be added here: the work of the particle min, and the closing sentence.

Note the particle. The verse does not say kulla shayʾin (everything), it says مِن كُلِّ شَىْءٍ (of everything).

The grammarians differ over the particle's function here:

The first view is worth recording, because it softens a claim of absoluteness. The Qurʾān itself says that some things are single — the oneness of God is the subject of this sūra and of al-Ikhlāṣ.

And in the classical sources this record is regularly entered: being paired is an attribute of created things; not of the Creator.

I too take this record as my basis. I impose no preference about the exact function of min; but it must be stated that the verse lays down a ruling about created things, and that this is plain from the context.

And the close states the purpose of the three-verse series of proofs.

تَذَكَّرُ — root ذ-ك-ر: to remember, to call to mind. The tafaʿʿul form conveys the act's taking place in the person and being done with effort: "to try to remember, to bring oneself to it".

And that the verb is not knowing but remembering is decisive.

The verse does not say laʿallakum taʿlamūn (that you might know). It says tadhakkarūn — that you might remember.

To remember is to return to something known before. The verse, that is, does not claim that being paired is a new piece of information. It draws attention to something everyone sees, and asks that a conclusion be drawn from it.

And which conclusion?

The verse does not say. And this gap is filled in several ways in the classical sources:

The first explanation is the most widespread and ties directly to Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ: lam yalid wa lam yūlad wa lam yakun lahu kufuwan aḥad. There were three negations there, and the third rejected an "equal" — that is, the having of a mate.

And the sūra's next verse supports the first explanation: the fiftieth and fifty-first verses will call to tawḥīd — "do not set up another god alongside God."

The inference of the forty-ninth verse, that is, is stated openly two verses later.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

This verse too is sometimes made the subject of a modern claim: the equating of the word "pair" with matter and antimatter, or with the counterparts of subatomic particles, or with the later discovery of sexual reproduction in plants.

I do not build this. Its ground is the same as what was written in the sections on al-Ṭāriq, al-ʿAlaq and in the discussion of 51/47 above. The only thing I will add is this: the verse itself says tadhakkarūn (that you might remember). A thing to be remembered is a thing the one addressed already knows. The verse's own word, that is, says that it is not the announcement of a discovery.

This is a record that comes against the claim from within the verse itself, and it is worth recording.

Fa-firrū ila'llāh; innī lakum minhu nadhīrun mubīn · Wa lā tajʿalū maʿa'llāhi ilāhan ākhar; innī lakum minhu nadhīrun mubīn "So flee to God. I am to you a clear warner from Him. And do not set up another god alongside God. I am to you a clear warner from Him."

Root: ف-ر-ر. Its concrete sense: to flee, to escape.

• فِرَار — flight. The Qurʾān uses it: "That day man will say: where is the place of flight?" (al-Qiyāma 75/10) — ayna'l-mafarr.
• مَفَرّ — a place of flight.
• And one concrete use of the root: فَرَّ ٱلْفَرَسَ — to open a horse's mouth and look at its teeth in order to know its age. The lexicographers record this use and build the link by way of the idea of "bringing to light"; I do not present this link as a settled etymology.

And this verse was already named in the section on al-Qiyāma. There, in treating the question "where is the place of flight?", this verse was cited.

What is to be added here is the strangeness of the command.

To flee is to move away from a danger. And the verse does not say "flee from God" — it says "flee to God".

The direction of the flight and the thing fled from, that is, come out at the same address. And this is a point regularly recorded in the classical sources: the flight is from God's punishment to God's mercy; the only place of refuge is the place that is feared.

The Qurʾān sets up this idea elsewhere too. And the structure of istiʿādha (taking refuge) treated in the discussions of al-Falaq and al-Nās in this commentary carries the same logic: the one taken refuge in is the owner of everything; and so there is no refuge apart from Him.

And the choice of verb conveys a speed. The verse could have said irjiʿū (return), tūbū (repent), āminū (believe). All of these convey a change of direction. فِرُّوا, on the other hand, conveys urgency: the one who flees does not deliberate, he runs.

I record this as an observation about the words.

And the particle fāʾ ties the command to the three preceding verses. The argument is complete, that is: the sky was built, the earth was spread, everything was created in pairs — so flee. No intervening sentence comes between the proof and the command.

The same sentence is repeated in two verses. And repetition has been treated several times in this commentary: the work a sentence repeated ten times does, in the section on al-Mursalāt; the refrain-like structures in al-Raḥmān.

What is peculiar here is that the repetition attaches to two different commands:

50: What is to be done — fa-firrū ila'llāh (flee to God). A positive command. 51: What is not to be done — lā tajʿalū maʿa'llāhi ilāhan ākhar (do not set up another god). A negative command.

And the same ground is given for both. The warner's existence, that is, grounds both what must be done and what must not be done.

This structure belongs to the same family as the pair of negation and affirmation recorded in the sections on al-Kāfirūn and al-Ikhlāṣ: one establishes what is rejected, the other what is accepted. There two sūras shared this work; here two verses.

And there is a grammatical question. The sentence is in the first person singular: innī — "I".

In the preceding verses the speaker was plural: banaynāhā, farashnāhā, khalaqnā — "We built, We spread, We created." And in the fifty-sixth verse it will be singular again: mā khalaqtu — "I created".

Who is the "I" in the fiftieth and fifty-first verses?

The first view is far more widespread and its ground is in the wording: minhu — "from Him". The speaker is speaking of someone other than himself. God does not say "from Him" of Himself.

I too take the first view as my basis. It is not binding, but I have to state that the second view has a serious problem with the wording.

And the matter of the elided qul: that the command "say" is dropped at the head of some sentences in the Qurʾān is a known situation, and the grammarians record it.

Root: ن-ذ-ر. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Mursalāt 77/6 (nudhr); I do not repeat it. In summary: indhār is to give notice before a thing comes; a warning cannot be made after the event.

And the second thing recorded there finds its work here: ʿudhr and nudhr were named together — leaving no excuse, and warning. The legal function of a warning is to remove the excuse.

مُبِين — root ب-ي-ن: to separate, to be clear. Ibāna (the ifʿāl form) — to make clear. Mubīn means both "what is clear" and "what makes clear"; the pattern can be read as transitive and as intransitive.

The phrase "a clear warner", that is, says two things: the warning is intelligible, and the warning brings something to light.

Kadhālika mā ata'lladhīna min qablihim min rasūlin illā qālū sāḥirun aw majnūn · A-tawāṣaw bih; bal hum qawmun ṭāghūn "So it is: no messenger came to those before them but they said, 'A magician, or a madman.' Did they enjoin this on one another? No — they are an insolent people."

I built this link above in the discussion of 51/38-40; I do not repeat it. In summary: the two words Pharaoh said (sāḥirun aw majnūn) are recorded here as the word of every age — the same two words, in the same order, with the same particle aw.

And it was shown there that the charges of sāḥir and majnūn are contradictory, and so the diagnosis of qawlin mukhtalif in the sūra's eighth verse finds an example here.

The same pattern as the one seen in the forty-second verse: mā … illā. Two negations, an absolute inclusiveness.

And the min in the construction min rasūlin is redundant — in a negative sentence it is used for generalising. In English it is answered by "no messenger at all".

The sentence, that is, leaves no exception: to every messenger who came the same two words were said.

This absoluteness may look exaggerated at first sight. But there is a counterpart to it in the Qurʾān's own telling: similar charges are levelled at Noah (al-Qamar 54/9: majnūn), at Moses (the thirty-ninth verse of this sūra), at Ṣāliḥ, at Shuʿayb. And the charges levelled at the Prophet were itemised in the section on al-Inshirāḥ.

And this is one of the most finely ironic questions in the Qurʾān.

Root: و-ص-ي. This root was treated in the discussion of al-ʿAṣr 103/3 and this verse was named there. I do not repeat it. The summary of the finding there: tawāṣaw is mutual enjoining; and this verse is surprising because the same pattern is used here in a negative context — that past communities all said the same two things, as though they had enjoined it on one another. And the conclusion recorded there: "the mechanism of mutual enjoining works in both directions… The mechanism is neutral; what is decisive is the content."

What is to be added here is the question itself.

The question is an istifhām inkārī: its answer is "no", and the answer is given in the next sentence in any case (bal).

And the logic of the question has to be seen. The text makes an observation: for centuries, communities who knew nothing of one another answered messengers who knew nothing of one another with the same two words.

There can be two explanations of this:

1. They agreed on it. But this is impossible — centuries and distances lie between them. 2. There is a common cause. And the text gives this second one: bal hum qawmun ṭāghūn.

The question performs an elimination, that is: the first possibility falls because it is absurd, and the second remains.

And in point of logic this is the same structure we shall see at al-Ṭūr 52/35. There too possibilities will be enumerated, the impossible ones eliminated, and a single explanation left. al-Ṭūr will do it with three possibilities; al-Dhāriyāt does it here with two.

This is the most striking similarity of method between the two sūras and will be taken up separately in the section on al-Ṭūr.

I record this as my own reading; the structures of the two verses are plain in the text.

Root: ط-غ-ي. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Shams 91/11 (ṭaghwā); I do not repeat it. In summary: the concrete sense of the root is water's swelling and overflowing — going beyond a bound. And it was recorded there that ṭaghwā and taqwā are on the same measure and end in the same sound: one is guarding oneself, the other going beyond the bound.

And both words are in this sūra:

Verse 15: inna'l-muttaqīna fī jannātin wa ʿuyūn. Verse 53: bal hum qawmun ṭāghūn.

The sūra's two main groups are tied to two roots: those who guard themselves and those who overflow. The similarity of sound recorded in the section on al-Shams holds here as well.

I record this as a link within the sūra.

And the work of the particle bal. بَلْ is in Arabic a particle of iḍrāb: it drops the preceding judgement and puts another in its place. In English it is answered by "no, on the contrary".

The sentence does this, that is: it rejects the question asked and sets down the real cause. The common word arises not from an agreement but from a common state.

Fa-tawalla ʿanhum fa-mā anta bi-malūm · Wa dhakkir fa-inna'l-dhikrā tanfaʿu'l-muʾminīn "So turn away from them; you are not to be blamed. And remind; for the reminder profits the believers."

And at first sight there is a contradiction: turn away, but remind.

In the classical sources this is resolved in several ways:

The third explanation is the most consistent and agrees with the text, because since the forty-ninth verse the commands have in any case been given to those addressed (fa-firrū, lā tajʿalū) — the delivering of the message, that is, continues.

And the finding recorded in the section on al-Maʿārij looks exactly at this: there the sūra's two commands (fa'ṣbir and fa-dharhum) were set side by side and this was recorded: "both come out of the same acceptance — the outcome is not in your hand."

The same acceptance is at work here. To turn away is not a giving up; it is to let go of responsibility for the outcome. The next sentence says so openly: fa-mā anta bi-malūm.

I built this link above in the discussion of 51/40; I do not repeat it. In summary: in the fortieth verse Pharaoh was named mulīm (one who brings blame upon himself); here the Prophet is not malūm (blamed).

What is to be added here is the sentence's emphasis.

Mā anta bi-malūm — and at the head of the predicate stands بِ. In Arabic this bāʾ coming at the head of the predicate in a negative sentence is redundant: it does not change the sense, it strengthens it.

This very structure was treated in the discussion of al-Qalam 68/2: mā anta bi-niʿmati rabbika bi-majnūn — there too the negation was strengthened with the same bāʾ, and the point of word order was recorded.

And it is instructive to set the two verses side by side:

al-Qalam lifts an accusation coming from outside. al-Dhāriyāt lifts a burden that might come from within.

A man may hold himself responsible when he has delivered his word and nobody has listened. The verse closes this off: your task was to deliver it.

I record this as my own reading.

And this sentence was treated in the section on al-Aʿlā. There, in discussing the conditional qualification of al-Aʿlā 87/9 (fa-dhakkir in nafaʿati'l-dhikrā), this verse was cited as a counter-indication, and this was recorded: "the same root, the same frame, without a condition."

I do not repeat it. What is to be added here is the difference between the two verses.

In al-Aʿlā there is a condition, in al-Dhāriyāt a ground. And al-Dhāriyāt sets a limit: the profit of the reminder is for the believers.

And this limit, joined with the preceding verse, completes the picture:

54: Turn away — you are not responsible. 55: Remind — for the reminder profits the believers.

The reminding is not abandoned, that is; but the expectation of it is adjusted. The reminder is not expected to produce a result in everyone.

And this ties to the sūra's twentieth verse: there too the signs were qualified as li'l-mūqinīn (for those who have come to certainty). The sūra, that is, says the same thing twice: a proof and a reminder both require a receiver.

I record this as a link within the sūra.

ٱلذِّكْرَىٰ — root ذ-ك-ر, and its pattern is striking: the fiʿlā measure conveys in Arabic the intensive and complete form of the verbal noun. Dhikrā, that is, is not an ordinary reminder; it is the reminding itself.

Wa mā khalaqtu'l-jinna wa'l-insa illā li-yaʿbudūn "I created jinn and mankind only that they might serve Me."

The most quoted verse of the sūra. And because it is generally read torn away from the rest of the sūra, it must first be set back in its place.

The verse does not stand in a void. What comes before it and after it is this:

54-55: Two commands — turn away, remind. 56: The purpose of creation. 57: "I want no provision from them, nor do I want them to feed Me." 58: "God is the Provider, the possessor of strength, the firm."

The verse stands in the middle of a three-verse block, that is. And this block answers the question the fifty-fifth verse left: if the reminder does not profit some, why is the reminder made at all?

The answer: because creation itself is built upon this.

Root: ع-ب-د. This root was analysed in full in the discussion of al-Fātiḥa 1/4 and was taken up at al-Baqara 2/21 as the Qurʾān's first command in the order of the codex. I do not repeat it.

A summary of what was recorded in al-Fātiḥa — and this commentary's basic finding about this root:

The concrete sense of the root is to bow, to submit. But a usage in Arabic lays the word's spirit open: طَرِيق مُعَبَّد (ṭarīq muʿabbad) — a road levelled by much walking, its roughness worn away, now easy to pass along. From the same root. ʿIbāda, that is, is within the word's own logic being levelled by being trodden, having one's roughness worn away, becoming passable. Servanthood here does not mean humiliation but being worked.

And what was recorded at al-Baqara 2/21: the command comes not as "serve God" but as "serve your Lord"; the demand for service, that is, is grounded not on authority but on nurture and care.

These two findings directly determine how the fifty-sixth verse is read and are the ground of the discussion below.

A small grammatical detail: the verb should have been li-yaʿbudūnī — with the first-person yāʾ at the end (Me). In the verse the yāʾ has dropped and only the kasra remains: li-yaʿbudūn(i).

This is a situation often met with in the Qurʾān for the sake of harmony with the verse-ending, and the grammarians record it. There is no change in the sense: the object is "Me".

And the presence of the object matters: the verse does not say "that they might serve", it says "that they might serve Me". The address of the service is inside the sentence.

Mā … illā — the pattern seen twice above (verses 42 and 52). Here for the third time.

And the function of the pattern here: the sentence first rejects all purposes, and then excepts one.

The structure of "first deny, then except" treated in the section on al-Ikhlāṣ belongs to this family; and the use of the same pattern in a denier's mouth was recorded at al-Muddaththir 74/24.

The verse says this, that is: creation has no other purpose.

And this is the real dispute over the verse.

In Arabic the particle لِ carries two separate functions, and if the two are confused the verse is read quite differently:

al-Qaṣaṣ 28/8 is a decisive example, because there it is beyond dispute that the lām conveys no purpose: Pharaoh's household did not take Moses up in order that he should become an enemy to them.

Now let us return to the fifty-sixth verse. Li-yaʿbudūn — "that they might serve".

The problem is this: if this is a purpose, and the purpose is not realised (not everyone serves), a difficulty arises. A significant part of classical theological debate has turned around this verse.

The explanations given in the classical sources:

The first two explanations are the explanation of the majority and they do not exclude one another: neither ties the realisation of the purpose to necessity.

I too take the first two explanations as my basis, and my ground is in the text itself: in the fifty-fifth verse the sūra had already granted that the reminder does not profit everyone (tanfaʿu'l-muʾminīn). For it to say one verse later that the purpose is realised in everyone would be inconsistent.

This preference is not binding. And I do not go into the detail of the theological dispute — the questions of decree, of will, of guidance; this exceeds the limits of commenting on a verse, and the position taken earlier in this commentary on similar matters (in the discussion of al-Muddaththir 74/56) is preserved exactly: the text counts two things as true at once, and no side is taken.

And a small detail: the jinn are named first.

The Qurʾān uses this pair often and the order is mostly the same: al-jinna wa'l-ins. It was treated in the section on al-Jinn in this commentary and this verse was already named there — as the proof that the jinn are under obligation.

I do not repeat it. The only thing to be added here: the verse says that responsibility is not peculiar to the human kind. "Service" here, that is, is described not as a human behaviour but as the position of a being possessed of mind and will.

And this is the objection most often levelled at the verse. It is built thus: if God created so that He might be served, this means a need or a demand; whereas God needs nothing.

And what is striking is this: the answer to the objection stands in the next verse, in the text itself.

57: mā urīdu minhum min rizqin wa mā urīdu an yuṭʿimūn — "I want no provision from them; nor do I want them to feed Me."

The text, that is, closes off the wrong conclusion that might be drawn from the fifty-sixth verse immediately after saying it.

I shall take this up in detail below in the discussion of 51/57. What is to be recorded here is this: the two verses cannot be separated. To quote the fifty-sixth verse by itself is to drop the qualification the text itself has entered.

And the root analysis in al-Fātiḥa gives a second answer to this objection.

If the root sense of ʿibāda is "to be levelled by being trodden, to become passable" — as was shown in the section on al-Fātiḥa — then the question of whom service profits is answered differently. A road becomes a road by being walked on; and it is the road that is levelled, not the one who walks on it.

I record this as the application of the analysis in al-Fātiḥa to this verse; it is my own inference, and I ascribe it to no classical exegete.

This verse is read as a sentence about "the meaning of life", and there is nothing wrong in reading it so. But attention must be paid to the form of the answer the verse gives.

The verse describes neither a feeling nor an achievement. It describes a direction: towards whom.

And this is a form of answer different from most modern searches for meaning. The usual answers given to the question "what is the meaning of life?" propose a content: happiness, leaving a mark, loving, producing. The verse proposes no content; it gives an address.

And giving an address has a practical consequence: proposals of content cover a part of life (working, loving, producing — each has its own field). An address knows no field; every work can have a direction.

I record this as an application of the verse, not as the verse's claim.

Mā urīdu minhum min rizqin wa mā urīdu an yuṭʿimūn · Inna'llāha huwa'l-Razzāqu dhu'l-quwwati'l-matīn "I want no provision from them; nor do I want them to feed Me. It is God who is the Provider, the possessor of strength, the firm."

As was recorded above: the fifty-seventh verse closes off the wrong conclusion that might be drawn from the fifty-sixth.

And the manner of the closing is striking: it is in two stages.

First: mā urīdu minhum min rizqin — I want no provision from them. Second: wa mā urīdu an yuṭʿimūn — I do not want them to feed Me.

Do the two sentences say the same thing? No. And the difference is in the pattern of the words:

The first sentence says "I do not want your property", the second "I do not want your service".

And the two are distinct. A master may expect both property and service from his servant; the verse rejects both, separately.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

And the choice of verb looks to a historical background.

Root: ط-ع-م. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Māʿūn 107/3 (ṭaʿāmi'l-miskīn); I do not repeat it. In summary: ṭaʿām can mean both "food" (the thing) and "feeding" (the act), and this double possibility determined the reading of the construction there.

The ifʿāl form (aṭʿama) — to feed, to satisfy with food.

And the verse's choosing this verb has a concrete counterpart. In many religious traditions of the ancient Near East offering food at the temple was a central form of worship: food was presented to the god, sacrifice was offered, his table was laid.

The Qurʾān rejects this conception openly elsewhere too — about sacrifice itself: "Neither their flesh nor their blood reaches God; what reaches Him is your taqwā" (al-Ḥajj 22/37).

The fifty-seventh verse, that is, says that service is not an operation of "feeding". And this is a record that looks directly at the religious practices around the one addressed.

I record this as historical background; the verse al-Ḥajj 22/37 is an indication that comes from within the Qurʾān itself.

Root: ر-ز-ق. Treated above in the discussion of 51/22.

And the pattern is of the faʿʿāl measure: the measure that conveys a trade and a continuity in Arabic. The same measure was recorded above for kharrāṣ (51/10).