al-Dhāriyāt 51:17-18

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.