al-Ṭūr 52:21

Wa'lladhīna āmanū wa'ttabaʿathum dhurriyyatuhum bi-īmānin alḥaqnā bihim dhurriyyatahum wa mā alatnāhum min ʿamalihim min shayʾ; kullu'mriʾin bimā kasaba rahīn "Those who believed and whose offspring followed them in faith — We joined their offspring to them; and We diminished nothing of their deeds. Every man is held in pledge for what he has earned."

The densest verse in the sūra and the one that must be read most carefully. Because in a single sentence it says two things at once, and at first sight the two look as though they cancel one another.

First half: The offspring are joined to those who went before. Second half: Every man is held in pledge for what he himself has earned.

The first half states a joining, the second a separating. How the relation between them is set up is the whole matter of the verse, and I shall take it up below.

Root: ل-ح-ق. Its concrete sense: to catch up, to come up from behind and reach, to be reunited.

• لَحِقَ — he caught up, he reached.
• أَلْحَقَ (Form IV) — he brought together, he joined, he attached.
• لَاحِق — one who comes later. In Turkish the borrowed word lahika ("an appendix") is from this root.

And the root's sense of "catching up from behind" gives the picture of the verse: those in front are in a place, and those behind are brought up to them.

And the verb is in Form IV and with the plural of majesty: alḥaqnā — "We joined". That is, the joining does not happen of itself; it is done.

This verse was cited in the section on al-Inshiqāq: it was shown there when the bringing together of families in the Garden was spoken of.

Root: أ-ل-ت. Its concrete sense: to diminish, to reduce, to cut short someone's due.

And the word occurs in one more place in the Qurʾān, in the same sense: "He will diminish nothing of your deeds" (al-Ḥujurāt 49/14) — lā yalitkum min aʿmālikum shayʾā.

The pattern mā … min shayʾin — the absolute negation seen several times above. The min is redundant and gives the sense "not any".

And whom the sentence looks at is disputed:

The first view is the more widespread and agrees with the sequence of pronouns: the subject of the sentence (alladhīna āmanū) is the generation of the fathers and the pronouns refer to it.

And on the first view the logic of the sentence is this: a privilege appears to have been given to a family. And the verse at once enters a record: this privilege was not given by taking anything from anyone.

That is, the joining is not a transfer. Nothing is subtracted from anyone's account.

I record this as an observation about word order; both views have been maintained in the classical sources and I do not impose a preference.

And the two most critical words in the verse.

The verse does not say: "their offspring followed them." It says: wa'ttabaʿathum dhurriyyatuhum bi-īmān — "their offspring followed them in faith."

That is, a record is entered. The joining is tied not to the tie of descent but to faith. The one who follows carries something as he follows.

And without this record the verse would say something else entirely: descent would be a privilege of itself.

And it is exactly here that al-Baqara 2/134 comes in.

In the section on al-Baqara 2/134 and 2/141 were treated and what was recorded there:

"The two passages do the same work: each comes immediately after the counting of a chain of descent and cuts the chain… What it says is plain: ancestors leave an inheritance, they do not leave a record. To come of Abraham's line does not write Abraham's deeds to a person's account. And the reverse holds too — 'you will not be asked about what they did', that is, the fault of one's forefathers is not loaded onto anyone's back either."

At first sight al-Ṭūr 52/21 looks as though it says the opposite: there the chain of descent is cut, here the offspring are joined.

But there is no contradiction, and the reason can be gathered under three heads.

One — the direction is different.

Al-Baqara 2/134 was answering a claim: "we are of the line of so-and-so, therefore we are saved." The answer: your account is yours.

Al-Ṭūr 52/21 is not answering a claim; it is stating a gift.

The difference between them is the difference between a demand and a bestowal. To ask for a thing as a right is one matter; to find it given is another.

Two — al-Ṭūr's own record already contains al-Baqara's ruling.

The record bi-īmān rejects exactly what al-Baqara rejects: the tie of descent alone is not enough; the faith of the one who follows is required too.

That is, the child who is joined is a person who would have been there in his own right in any case. The joining does not put him there; it settles him beside his father.

Three — and the verse's own last sentence seals this record.

Kullu'mriʾin bimā kasaba rahīn — "every man is held in pledge for what he has earned."

This sentence closes off the wrong conclusion that could be drawn from the first half of the verse.

And this is the same technique seen at al-Dhāriyāt 51/56-57: there too a ruling had been laid down and, immediately afterwards, the wrong conclusion that could be drawn from it had been closed off.

Two neighbouring sūras make the same move at the same place:

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

To sum up: the two texts agree and complete one another.

• al-Baqara 2/134: Descent gives nobody a record. Salvation is not transferable.
• al-Ṭūr 52/21: Those who are saved are kept together. But the one who is joined is joined by his own faith too, and everyone is bound to his own earning.

That is, al-Baqara speaks of right, al-Ṭūr of gift. And the gift does not take the place of the right.

Root: ر-ه-ن. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Muddaththir 74/38 and this verse was shown there for comparison. I do not repeat it here.

The summary of the findings there: rahn is the security left against a debt; the thing left in pledge does not return to its owner until the debt is paid; the verse puts man in this position; and the one who pledges and the thing pledged are the same person — the debtor has pledged himself against his debt.

And there the root kasb was treated as well, and the difference between "what it earned" (kasabat) and "what he did" (ʿamila) was recorded: the language of earning sets up a relation of debt and credit and joins with the word rahīna.

And a grammatical point was recorded in the section on al-Muddaththir too:

"There رَهِين (masculine), here رَهِينَة (with a tāʾ)."

And two explanations had been given in a table: agreement with the feminine (the subject nafs / imriʾ), and the difference between noun and adjective. No preference had been imposed.

What is to be added here is the difference of context between the two verses.

And the fourth row is decisive.

In al-Muddaththir the sentence was opening a section: the absolute ruling is laid down first (kullu nafsin), then the exception comes. And the finding recorded there: "the rule is to be held in pledge; release is the exception."

In al-Ṭūr the sentence closes a section: the gift is described first, then the rule is recalled. And there is no exception — because the exception was already described in the ten verses before the sentence.

That is, the two verses say the same rule from two different positions: one sets up the rule and adds its exception, the other describes the exception and recalls the rule.

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

Root: م-ر-أ. Marʾ / imriʾ — a person, a man. Its feminine is marʾa (a woman).

And the choice of the word is striking. The verse could have said kullu nafsin (every soul) — al-Muddaththir says that. It says كُلُّ ٱمْرِئٍ.

Nafs states a living being; imriʾ states an individual. And because the context of the verse is family and descent, the "individual" side of the word does its work: immediately after a tableau of a family has been drawn, the single person is named as the unit.

I record this as an observation about a word.

This verse holds both sides of a tension at once, and the tension is the same today.

On one side: people do not live alone. There are families, traditions, communities; a person's belief and attitude most often come from those before him. The first half of the verse acknowledges this and says that the tie will be preserved in the hereafter as well.

On the other side: this tie is not a handing over. Nobody believes in another's place, nobody gives account in another's place.

And what the verse does is to hold the two side by side without deriving either from the other. It does not deny the tie; it does not count the tie sufficient.

I record this as an application of the verse.