al-Dhāriyāt 51:29-30

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.