53. Sūrat al-Najm

Sixty-two verses. It is counted among the early sūras of the Meccan period, and there is no disagreement worth noting on this; the language of the sūra, its short verse-endings, and the fact that those it addresses are the party defending the idols of Mecca all support the finding.

It takes its name from its first word: ٱلنَّجْم — najm. What the word means is the sūra's first point of disagreement, and will be taken up separately below.

The sūra is one of the texts in which the Qurʾān discusses most intensively where knowledge comes from. And it sets that discussion up not as an abstract argument but as a comparison of two sources: on one side what has been seen, on the other what has been supposed.

Root: ن-ج-م. This root was analysed in the section al-Ṭāriq and put to work once more in al-Raḥmān; the analysis here rests on those two. What was recorded there:

Its proper sense is to appear, to become visible, to come out. The najm (star) took this name not because it flickers in the sky but because it appears out of the darkness. The same root is used for a plant coming up from the soil: najama — it grew, it came up, it appeared. And nujūm / tanjīm — an instalment; each instalment appears when its time comes.

In the section on al-Raḥmān it was shown in a table that this root produces a real disagreement between "the star in the sky" and "the stemless plant that grows from the ground". Here the disagreement is of another kind: in this verse there is no serious objection to najm being a star, because the verb is هَوَىٰ (it fell, it set) — and what falls is not a plant. The debate is over which star, and over why this word was chosen.

And the root's third sense — the instalment — lends itself here to a connection.

Tanjīm is the paying of a debt piece by piece, at fixed times. This usage, recorded by the classical lexicographers, fits exactly the naming of the Qurʾān's own manner of descent: the Qurʾān came down not at once but piece by piece over some twenty years; and the Qurʾān says this itself:

"And a Qurʾān We have divided into parts, that you might recite it to people at intervals; and We sent it down by successive sending." (al-Isrāʾ 17/106 — wa qurʾānan faraqnāhu li-taqraʾahu ʿala'l-nāsi ʿalā mukthin wa nazzalnāhu tanzīlā)

The connection can be made; but it must not be forced. The first verse of the sūra does not say "by the instalments of the Qurʾān"; it names a heavenly body in an oath. There is no proof that the root's third sense is deliberately being called up here. Against that, this is true and worth recording: the sūra's first four verses take as their subject exactly the manner in which the revelation comes, and the root of the word sworn by also names, in Arabic, "what comes piece by piece". I record this as an association, not as an interpretation.

It is transmitted that in the sources the sūra is referred to as al-Najm and, by its opening sentence, as Wa'l-najmi idhā hawā.

That the sūra was among the first to be recited openly in Mecca, and that at the verse of prostration at its end the company in the Sacred Mosque — the opponents among them — fell down in prostration, is widely transmitted in the hadith collections; it is stated that it occurs on the authority of Ibn Masʿūd in sources including al-Bukhārī. I do not quote its wording verbatim and I do not enter into the debates dwelt on over the details of the report (who prostrated, who did not).

I transmit the report not as material of exegesis but to show what kind of text the sūra is: for sixty-two verses the idols are rejected, the most basic belief of the one addressed is dismantled — and the text ends not with a sentence of argument but with a movement of the body. The sūra begins with speech and ends with the body.

There is a report attached to verses 19-20 and transmitted in some early collections of biography and exegesis: it is claimed that while reciting these verses the Prophet uttered a sentence praising three idols, and that this was afterwards corrected. I do not pass over this matter, because per the method (Method) disagreement is not concealed. But the following must be recorded:

• The report has been widely rejected in the tradition of hadith criticism; the broken state of its chains (their being mursal) and its not being established by a connected line are given as grounds.
• I do not transmit the wording of the sentence alleged.
• And the real matter is in the text itself: verses 21-23, which come immediately after verses 19-20, demolish the three idols with three separate proofs in succession. That within one text three sentences demolishing an idol should come immediately after a sentence praising it makes the claim inconsistent with the text's own fabric.

In this assessment I do not enter into any theological debate; the observation about internal consistency is mine, while the verdict in hadith criticism I give as transmitted.

The sūra consists of six blocks, and the boundaries of the blocks are drawn by the text's own markers.

The boundaries of the blocks are not arbitrary. Blocks III and IV end with the same pattern — huwa aʿlamu bi-man… (30 and 32) — and this repetition shows that the two blocks look at the same matter from two sides: who has gone astray (30), who has been guarded (32). The answer to both is the same: it is not you who know this.

This is the sūra's most easily verifiable and least discussed feature.

All fifty-six verses from 1 to 56, without exception, end on the long -ā sound. Hawā, ghawā, al-hawā, yūḥā, al-quwā, fa'stawā, al-aʿlā, tadallā, adnā, awḥā, raʾā, yarā, ukhrā, al-muntahā, al-maʾwā, yaghshā, ṭaghā, al-kubrā, al-ʿUzzā, al-ukhrā, al-unthā, ḍīzā, al-hudā, tamannā, al-ūlā, yarḍā… — and this runs unbroken not through ten verses but through fifty-six.

Then, at verse 57, the sound suddenly breaks:

And the sound breaks exactly where the subject changes. For fifty-six verses what was recounted was distant: a meeting in the sky, peoples of the past, ancient scrolls. At the fifty-seventh verse the text comes to the present — "the approaching has drawn near" — and at that moment the verse-ending gives up its place too.

I record this as my own reading. The data of the verse-endings are in the text itself and can be counted; that the break coincides with the change of subject deliberately is my inference. There may be other technical reasons for the breaking of the verse-ending.

From beginning to end the sūra compares two sources of knowledge, and its words say so explicitly.

The word ٱلظَّنّ occurs twice in the sūra, in the same pattern: in yattabiʿūna illā'l-ẓann (23 and 28). The same sentence is repeated in two verses — this is the sūra's own marker and leaves nothing to be read into it.

And the thirtieth verse ties this comparison together in a single word: مَبْلَغُهُم مِّنَ ٱلْعِلْمِ — "that is the extent of their reach in knowledge." The matter is thus not one of telling a lie; it is one of range. The sūra characterises the other party not by mendacity but by the limit of its reach.

Then at verse 36 a third source enters: "Or has he not been told of what is in the scrolls of Moses (Mūsā)?" The sūra thus sets out three things: the revelation coming now (1-18), the supposition coming from the fathers (19-30), the revelation that came before (36-55). And in the last verse it will gather all of these into one sentence: "This is a warner of the warners of old" (56).

The sūra opens with the sound هوى, and that sound comes back in three separate places within the sūra, doing three separate jobs.

The first and fourth rows are falling; the second and third are craving. And the sūra uses these two senses at most two verses apart.

Are the two the same root? The majority of the lexicographers gather the root ه-و-ي under a single entry and link the two senses to each other. This link was analysed in the section al-Qāriʿa and put to work in al-Nāziʿāt; what was recorded there was this:

"In Arabic 'craving' and 'falling' are from the same root. What the lexicographers say about this link is: hawā is what pulls a person downward; the word itself contains the fall. That is: whoever goes after his craving arrives at the hāwiya."

In counting the root's occurrences in the Qurʾān the section on al-Qāriʿa gave precisely the first verse of this sūra as an example. The link was made there; here it is completed.

And the nicety of word order is this. As a lexical question, "are the two senses one root or two?" may remain open. But for the reader who stays inside the text the question does not arise: the voice that says hawā in the first verse says hawā again in the third. Between them two verses complete an oath. The reader thus hears the same sound twice within forty words — once for a body falling from the sky, once for the thing that is not the source of the speech.

What is established is this, and I record it as my own reading: the oath is sworn upon something that falls; the answer to the oath says that the messenger does not speak from what makes one fall. The sound is the same, the direction is the same — downward. And the whole second block of the sūra will recount the exact opposite: something coming from above, drawing near, leaning down.

The sūra establishes the difference between falling and descending. The star falls (1). Craving makes one fall (3). Revelation descends (4-10). All three are a movement from above downward; but one is an extinguishing, one a pull, one a giving.

And at the fifty-third verse the root comes for the last time: وَٱلْمُؤْتَفِكَةَ أَهْوَىٰ — "and the overturned city He dashed to the ground." This time the verb is in Form IV, that is, transitive: ahwā — He brought down. The sūra opens with hawā (it fell) and closes its section of destruction with ahwā (He brought down). The same root, at the two ends of the sūra, once without an agent and once with one.

Short as it is, the sūra repeats certain words insistently, and the repetitions set up a web:

That the sixteenth and fifty-fourth verses are in the same pattern is especially striking. Both are of the form "there covered it what covered", and in both what covers is not named. One at the Lote Tree, the other over the destroyed city. The same sentence stands at the two ends. I record this as an observation; I do not present the relation between the two verses as a ruling.

The sūra's most striking grammatical structure lies between verses 38 and 54, and it will be treated in detail below in the section on verses 36-37. Briefly: eleven anna clauses linked to one another across seventeen verses, all attached to a single question — "Or has he not been told of what is in the scrolls of Moses and of Abraham (Ibrāhīm), who fulfilled?" (36-37).

All those principles in the second half of the sūra, then — that no one shall carry another's burden, that man shall have only what he strives for, that it is He who makes to laugh and to weep — are not independent sentences but the answer to a question. And that answer says: "these are not new."

The word-by-word analysis of the basmala was made in the section on al-Fātiḥa; I do not repeat it.

A note particular to this sūra: a text that opens with the names al-Raḥmān and al-Raḥīm recounts, in its first eighteen verses, a drawing near — danā fa-tadallā, he drew near and leaned down. The sūra's understanding of mercy stands there: a distance is closed, and the side that closes it is the one above.

Wa'l-najmi idhā hawā "By the star when it falls."

ٱلنَّجْم comes with the definite article: "the star" — not just any star. And the verb هَوَىٰ, by definition, can be applied not to a single star but to every body in the sky.

The disagreement in the classical commentaries is real and need not be concealed:

I do not impose a preference. This much can be said: the verb (hawā — to fall, to set) carries the first reading most easily, because falling and setting are facts that hold for every star and are confirmed by observation. The third reading has a firm ground in the root but a weak ground in the verb.

And there is this, which is a datum within the sūra: verse 49 says "and He is the Lord of Sirius". The sūra addresses directly, that is, a party who worshipped a star. That the sūra opens with a star and closes with the Lord of a star is an arrangement not to be counted accidental. I record this as an observation; I do not turn it into the claim that the najm of the first verse must be Sirius.

Root: ه-و-ي. This root was treated in detail in the section al-Qāriʿa and analysed once more in al-Nāziʿāt; I do not repeat it. In counting the root's occurrences in the Qurʾān, the section on al-Qāriʿa gave precisely this verse as its first example.

The summary: هَوَىٰ — to fall from a height; هَاوِيَة — the place fallen into, one of the names of Hell; ٱلْهَوَىٰ — the desire of the soul, what pulls a person downward.

On the choice of the verb. The verse does not say gharaba (it set), nor afala (it vanished) — and the Qurʾān does use the word ufūl of the stars in the story of Abraham (al-Anʿām 6/76-78). It says هَوَىٰ: it fell.

The difference is real. Ufūl is a vanishing; hubūṭ is a coming down; hawā, though, is a fall drawn by weight. The word says that what falls is not coming down by its own will.

And this is the ground of the contrast the second verse will establish: an oath is sworn upon something that falls, and a man who has not fallen is to be spoken of.

The general structure of the oaths in the Qurʾān has been treated in several places in this commentary (the sections on al-Takwīr, al-Ṭāriq, al-Shams, al-Fajr). Briefly: an oath is used not to make something sacred but to put forward, as evidence, a fact standing before the eyes of the one addressed.

The fact put forward here is: even the things in the sky that look most fixed fall. The star is what you find your direction by all night, what you tie your calendar to; and it too goes below the horizon at some point.

And the answer to the oath — the second verse — will say the exact opposite: "your companion has not gone astray." The heavenly bodies appear to leave their courses; this man did not leave his.

I record this as my own reading. The relation of meaning between an oath and its answer has been established in different ways in the classical commentaries and there is no single right one; the above is a reading resting on the two verbs the text gives (hawā / mā ḍalla).

Mā ḍalla ṣāḥibukum wa mā ghawā "Your companion has not gone astray, nor has he been led away."

The first ruling of the sūra. And all three of its words are seen to be separately chosen.

Root: ص-ح-ب. This root was treated in the section ʿAbasa; what was recorded there holds here unchanged:

To be together, to keep company, to accompany. Ṣāḥib — a companion, a fellow traveller; ṣuḥba — being together; aṣḥāb — those who are together. Zawja relates a legal bond; ṣāḥiba relates companionship.

The section on ʿAbasa also pointed to the same usage at al-Takwīr 81/22: "Your companion (صَاحِبُكُم) is not possessed." The finding recorded there was: "the word rests on the acquaintance built by many years of living together: you know him."

In this verse the same word does the same work — and read together, the two sūras yield a system.

Both sūras use the same proof: you know this man.

And this is a very practical piece of reasoning. The verse displays no miracle and advances no transmitted proof. It appeals to the memory of the one addressed. The people of a town have an opinion about the character of a man who has lived among them for forty years, and that opinion is not easily changed by propaganda.

The verse does not say "my companion" or "the messenger of God"; it says "your companion". The pronoun belongs to those addressed. The relationship is theirs. And the most reliable testimony about a person is the testimony of the one who has lived with him.

What this says to the present: in weighing claims about a person, the first question to be asked is not the source of the claim but the known past of the person the claim is about. The verse sets that order: first acquaintance, then claim.

And the pairing here is one of the sūra's finest distinctions.

ضَلَّ — Root: ض-ل-ل. This root was analysed in full in the section al-Ḍuḥā; I do not repeat it. The summary of what was recorded there:

The root's proper sense is to be lost inside something and become invisible, to fail to find the way, to lose one's track. The heavy moral load carried by the usual renderings ("misguidance", "error") is not carried by the Arabic root. The evidence is the Qurʾān's own usage: "When we are lost in the earth…" (al-Sajda 32/10); "My Lord neither errs nor forgets" (Ṭāhā 20/52) — here the verb is used of God and negates a lack of knowledge.

Ḍalāl, by its root, is thus a failure to find the way; it is a defect of knowledge.

غَوَىٰ — Root: غ-و-ي. This root is analysed here for the first time in this commentary.

The concrete sense of the root: to go after a thing and come to harm, to plunge insatiably into something and be spoiled by it.

The most concrete usage the lexicographers record is worth noting: غَوِيَ ٱلْفَصِيل — the camel calf sucked too much milk, its stomach was upset and it fell ill. The calf is not deprived of milk; it takes too much and is spoiled by it.

The other derivatives:

• غَىّ (ghayy) — waywardness, going wrong; and in the Qurʾān it occurs as the name of a place in Hell as well (Maryam 19/59: fa-sawfa yalqawna ghayyā).
• غَاوِي (ghāwī), plural غَاوُون — the Qurʾān uses this word of those who follow the poets (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/224).
• أَغْوَىٰ — to lead astray. It occurs in the words of Iblīs: "Because You led me astray…" (al-Aʿrāf 7/16).

Now set the two words side by side:

The oppositions in the last row are the Qurʾān's own data:

"There is no compulsion in religion; rushd has become distinct from ghayy." (al-Baqara 2/256)

In this verse it is not hudā but rushd that is set over against ghayy. And rushd in Arabic conveys not knowledge but maturity: a person's becoming able to manage his own affairs. Ghayy, then, is the name not of a lack of knowledge but of an inability to govern oneself.

Against that, the Qurʾān regularly sets hudā over against ḍalāl — and indeed the thirtieth verse of this sūra does exactly that: "who has strayed (ḍalla) from His way… who has found the guidance (ihtadā)."

What the second verse says, then, is this:

This man neither lost his way (the side of knowledge) nor departed from the way he knew out of desire (the side of will).

Both doors are closed. For a person's speech can be corrupted in two ways: either he does not know the truth, or he knows it and says otherwise. The verse refuses both at once, and does so with two separate verbs.

مَا + a perfect verb. In Arabic the negation of a perfect verb with mā conveys that a completed past act definitely did not occur. Had it said lā yaḍillu (he does not stray), the claim would have been that he will not stray in the future either — a sentence that cannot be said of a human being. With mā ḍalla the claim concerns a record of the past: this man has not strayed up to now.

And this is a claim the one addressed can verify. A claim about the future cannot be verified; a claim about the past is put to those who shared that past.

And the particle of negation is repeated twice: mā ḍalla… wa mā ghawā. It could have been said with a single mā, "he neither strayed nor was led away". The repetition shows that the two verbs are refused separately — that is, they are not counted synonymous.

Wa mā yanṭiqu ʿani'l-hawā "Nor does he speak out of craving."

Root: ن-ط-ق. This root occurred in the sections al-Dhāriyāt and al-Mursalāt. Its concrete sense: to bring out speech aloud, in articulated form.

The root's derivatives are worth noting:

• مَنْطِق (manṭiq) — speech, discourse; and from there a method of thought. In the Qurʾān, Solomon's (Sulaymān's) knowing the manṭiqu'l-ṭayr (the language of birds) is said with this word (al-Naml 27/16).
• نِطَاق (niṭāq) — a belt, a band tied about the waist. The connection is not obvious; the lexicographers say the root carries the idea of "binding together, articulating" — sounds become speech when they are articulated, cloth becomes a belt when it is bound about the waist. This derivation is not certain; I transmit it with that reservation.

The choice of the verb. It could have said qāla (he said). It says naṭaqa. The difference: qāla looks to what is said (to the content), naṭaqa looks to the act of speaking (to what comes out of the mouth). The verse does not say "what he says is not craving"; it says "the act of speaking does not arise from craving".

And the most important word of the verse is this particle.

In Arabic naṭaqa bi- (with bāʾ) means "he uttered such and such"; it indicates the object. Here عَن is used. ʿAn in Arabic conveys source and point of departure: coming from something, proceeding from something.

The sentence says, then: his speech does not arise from craving, is not caused by craving.

The practical difference is this:

• Had it been "mā yanṭiqu'l-hawā": "he does not utter craving" — that is, the content of what he says is not desire.
• With عَن: "he does not speak out of craving" — that is, the cause, the motor, the point of departure of his speech is not desire.

The second is wider and more definite. For a person may say true things and still be speaking from his desire: someone who tells the truth because his interest requires it has, however true the content, spoken from craving in point of source. The verse closes off the source.

And the next verse will continue the same structure: in huwa illā waḥyun yūḥā — after saying what the source is not, it says what it is.

The sūra's clearest nicety of word order is here.

The first verse: wa'l-najmi idhā هَوَىٰ — "by the star when it falls." The third verse: wa mā yanṭiqu ʿani ٱلْهَوَىٰ — "nor does he speak out of craving."

The same three letters, the same sound, two verses apart. One a verb (it fell), the other a noun (desire).

As recorded above in the section "The structure of the sūra", the majority of the lexicographers gather these two under one root (ه-و-ي) and establish the link thus: hawā is what pulls a person downward. This analysis was given in detail in the section al-Qāriʿa.

But in this verse the real matter is not the lexicon but the sound.

The reader or hearer hears the same sound twice within forty words:

And the second verse, standing between the two, says exactly "he did not fall."

Look at the order:

1. An oath upon something that falls (hawā) 2. This man did not fall (mā ḍalla wa mā ghawā) 3. Because his speech does not come from what makes one fall (ʿani'l-hawā) 4. Its source is from above (waḥyun yūḥā)

Four verses are built along a single line of direction. It begins with a body falling downward and ends with a word coming down from above.

I record this as my own reading. The repetition of the sound and the direction of the verbs are data of the text and can be counted; reading the four verses as a single scheme of "direction" is a frame of my own construction. Attention is seen to be drawn to this sharing of sound in the classical commentaries, but I do not present it as transmitted that such a scheme was drawn from it.

The distribution of this word in the Qurʾān was given in the section al-Nāziʿāt; I do not repeat it. The summary: the word is in a negative context almost every time it occurs in the Qurʾān — "Have you seen the one who takes his craving as his god?" (al-Jāthiya 45/23; al-Furqān 25/43); "Do not follow craving, or it will lead you astray from the way of God" (Ṣād 38/26).

And this sūra itself will use the word in exactly this sense twenty verses later:

"They follow nothing but supposition and what the souls crave (wa mā tahwa'l-anfus)." (53/23)

The same root, in the same sūra, in two opposed positions: the thing that is not the source of the messenger's speech (3), and the thing that is what the one addressed follows (23). The sūra refuses the word on one side and uses it as a diagnosis on the other.

This is a verifiable datum within the sūra and is not a reading.

In huwa illā waḥyun yūḥā "It is nothing but a revelation revealed."

إِنْ … إِلَّا — Arabic's most widespread pattern of restriction (ḥaṣr, qaṣr). In is here a particle of negation (in place of mā), illā one of exception. The two together: "it is nothing else, it is only this."

This pattern is used in the Qurʾān to narrow the definition of something, and it occurs twice in this sūra:

The same pattern, two opposite rulings. One says that a thing is real, the other that a thing is only a name. The sūra uses the same grammatical instrument in both directions.

This repetition within the sūra is data of the text; that reading the two verses together is fruitful I record as my own reading.

Root: و-ح-ي. The concrete sense of the root: swift and hidden communication. The definition the lexicographers give joins two properties of the word — speed and concealment. To convey by a sign, by a whisper, by a short route.

The Qurʾān does not use this word only of the communication that comes to prophets; its field of use is wide, and that width shows what the word means:

• Zechariah (Zakariyyā), on the days when he could not speak, signalled to his people: "He conveyed to them (fa-awḥā ilayhim): glorify Him morning and evening." (Maryam 19/11). Here waḥy is communicating by a sign.
• To the bee: "And your Lord revealed (awḥā) to the honeybee." (al-Naḥl 16/68). Here it is a creature's knowing how it is to behave.
• Of satans to one another: "They whisper gilded speech to one another in deception (yūḥī baʿḍuhum ilā baʿḍin)." (al-Anʿām 6/112).

These three usages show that the root does not carry the sense of "prophethood". The root names only the manner of communication: swift, direct, without intermediary, and mostly by an unseen route.

The verse in which the Qurʾān describes the channels of revelation is worth noting separately:

"It is not for any human being that God should speak to him except by revelation, or from behind a veil, or by sending a messenger to reveal by His permission what He wills." (al-Shūrā 42/51)

Three channels are counted. And this verse will gain importance below in assessing the disagreement over verses 5-10.

It says waḥyun (a verbal noun), then adds يُوحَىٰ (a passive imperfect verb). In English it looks odd: "a revelation revealed."

In Arabic this structure conveys emphasis (taʾkīd) and does two things:

One: it prevents the verbal noun from staying "indefinite". Waḥy on its own is the name of an act and, as was seen above, spreads over a wide field. The addition of the verb says that here an actual act of revealing has taken place.

Two: the verb is passive, and this is a choice. Yūḥā — "is revealed". Who reveals is not stated in this verse.

And the agent will not be fully stated in the next verse either: ʿallamahu shadīdu'l-quwā — "he was taught by one of mighty powers." Again a description, again not a name.

For eight verses the sūra names the teacher by descriptions. This resembles the technique recorded in the section on al-Takwīr: there too the agent was kept hidden through twelve verbs and saved for the end. Here too the names are delayed.

And that the verb is in the imperfect (not the perfect ūḥiya but the imperfect yūḥā) conveys a continuing: revelation is not a completed event but an operation in progress. At the time the sūra came down the Qurʾān was not yet complete; the word says this from within the grammar.

Now it is possible to see the four together:

Three refusals, one acceptance. And the order is not accidental: first the person is cleared (2), then the source of the speech is cleared (3), then what the source is, is stated (4).

This order carries a method for how a report is to be assessed: first the carrier, then the channel, then the source. Verses 19-25 of Sūrat al-Takwīr do the same work at greater length and were treated in that section; the two sūras answer the same question at two different lengths.

ʿAllamahu shadīdu'l-quwā · Dhū mirratin fa'stawā · Wa huwa bi'l-ufuqi'l-aʿlā "He was taught by one of mighty powers. One of firm build. And he stood erect; and he was on the highest horizon."

Root: ع-ل-م. Form II: to convey knowledge to another, to teach.

The choice of the verb matters. The fourth verse had said "is revealed"; the fifth says "taught". The two verbs name the same event from two different places:

Waḥy is the name of a channel; taʿlīm is a claim about content. By setting the two side by side the verse says: what comes is not a breath, a rapture, a state — it is something taught. And what can be taught is by definition determinate, transmissible and repeatable.

This is the Qurʾān's general language about itself: as was treated in the section al-ʿAlaq, in the first verses to come down the verb is ʿallama too — "He taught by the pen, He taught man what he did not know" (al-ʿAlaq 96/4-5). Here the sūra applies that root to the messenger himself.

شَدِيد — root ش-د-د. Concrete sense: to bind tight, to draw taut. Shadda — he pulled the bond tight; shidda — tightness, hardness. For a thing to be shadīd in Arabic is for its slackening to be impossible.

قُوَىٰ — root ق-و-ي. The plural of the word قُوَّة (quwwa): powers.

And its being plural is a nicety of word order. It could have said shadīdu'l-quwwa (of mighty power). It says quwā — powers.

In Arabic, when the second element of an adjectival construction comes in the plural, it conveys that the quality is present in more than one field. Not a single power, then, but kinds of power. The difference between a being's being strong in one respect and its being strong in every respect.

In the classical commentaries it is widely said that this construction describes Gabriel (Jibrīl), and as evidence the Qurʾān's description in another place is adduced:

"It is the word of a noble messenger, possessed of power (dhī quwwatin), of high standing with the Owner of the Throne, obeyed there, trustworthy." (al-Takwīr 81/19-21)

These verses were treated in detail in the section al-Takwīr, and it was presented there that the carrier being an angel is an inference grounded in the context; it was recorded explicitly that the verse gives no name. The same reserve holds here.

مِرَّة — root م-ر-ر. And the semantic web of the root is wide:

• مَرَّ — it passed by. Marra — once, one time (a passing).
• مِرَّة — the sense the lexicographers give: firmness, strong build, durability. The root is said to be connected with the idea of "twisted rope": إِمْرَار — to twist a rope tightly. A twisted rope is many times stronger than a single strand.
• مَرِير — a tightly twisted rope; and مُرّ — bitter.

There is a disagreement about the word:

All three explanations are in the sources and they do not exclude one another. The common core is: firmness. Firmness in the body is strength, firmness in appearance is comeliness, firmness in the mind is sound judgement. In whatever field the word is used, it names the firmness of that field.

I make no choice. But there is something in the context that can be recorded: this construction completes the shadīdu'l-quwā immediately before it. One is power, the other firmness. And the two are not the same — power is being able to do, firmness is being able to remain uncorrupted. The second quality sought in the carrier of a message is exactly the ability to carry it without corruption.

Root: س-و-ي. Concrete sense: to be straight, to be equal, to be even. Sawāʾ — equality; sawī — even; taswiya — to level.

ٱسْتَوَىٰ — Form X. This verb occurs in the Qurʾān in several different contexts and its sense changes with the context:

• The completing of something: "When he reached his full strength and was matured" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/14: wa'stawā).
• Settling in a place: "The ship came to rest upon al-Jūdī" (Hūd 11/44: wa'stawat ʿala'l-Jūdiyy).
• Turning towards: "Then He turned to the sky" (al-Baqara 2/29: thumma'stawā ila'l-samāʾ).

The usage here — fa'stawā, followed by wa huwa bi'l-ufuqi'l-aʿlā — conveys a taking up of position: he stood up, he straightened, he took his place.

The verb's being joined with fāʾ (fa-istawā) sets up an order: the qualities were counted, then a movement came. The verse says who he is first, and then what he did.

أُفُق — root أ-ف-ق. The horizon: the visible boundary line where the sky meets the earth. Its plural is āfāq, and the Qurʾān uses that plural: "We shall show them Our signs on the horizons and in themselves" (Fuṣṣilat 41/53).

This verse and this word were already compared in the section al-Takwīr. There, in treating al-Takwīr 81/23 (wa laqad raʾāhu bi'l-ufuqi'l-mubīn — "and he saw him on the clear horizon"), reference was made to this verse and this was recorded:

The same word: الأفق. And in the same context: an act of seeing, and a teaching. The two sūras look at the same event. al-Takwīr says al-ufuqi'l-mubīn (the clear horizon), al-Najm al-ufuqi'l-aʿlā (the highest horizon).

The difference between the two adjectives is worth dwelling on:

al-Takwīr states the quality of the seeing: not blurred. al-Najm states the place of what was seen: above.

And this completes the line of direction established in the first three verses. In the first verse a body had fallen (hawā); in the third hawā was refused; in the seventh the position of the source is given: the highest horizon.

ٱلْأَعْلَىٰ is an elative: "higher / highest". This pattern was treated in detail in the section al-Aʿlā; it was shown there that the whole weave of that sūra rests on the elative. The same word comes here as an adjective of place.

Thumma danā fa-tadallā · Fa-kāna qāba qawsayni aw adnā "Then he drew near and leaned down. And he was at the length of two bows, or nearer."

The two most debated verses of the Qurʾān are here. First the words, then the disagreement.

Root: د-ن-و. This root has occurred in many places in this commentary (al-Raḥmān, al-Ḥāqqa, al-Insān, al-Nāziʿāt, al-Aʿlā). Its concrete sense: to be near, to close a distance.

Its derivatives:

• دُنْيَا (dunyā) — the feminine of the elative: the nearest. The word "dunyā" is thus from this root and means "the near life". The Qurʾān uses it explicitly with its opposite: al-ḥayātu'l-dunyā (the near life) / al-ākhira (the later).
• أَدْنَىٰ (adnā) — nearer; and in another sense "lower, less".
• دَنِيء — base, vile. Note: this word is from the root د-ن-أ, that is, with hamza; it is not the same root as dunyā. In Turkish both are read as deni, which produces a confusion; they are separate roots.

And verse 9 ends with a word from the same root: aw adnā — "or nearer". Verses eight and nine, that is, use the same root at their opening and at their close.

Root: د-ل-و. And the concrete sense of the root gives the image of the verse exactly.

دَلْو (dalw) — a bucket. The vessel tied to a rope and let down to draw water from a well. The Qurʾān uses this word: "He let down his bucket" (Yūsuf 12/19: fa-adlā dalwahu).

Derivatives:

• أَدْلَىٰ (adlā) — he let down, he lowered. Form IV, transitive.
• تَدَلَّىٰ (tadallā) — Form V, reflexive: he leaned down, he let himself down.
• دَلِيل / دَلَالَة — a proof, an indicating. Some lexicographers establish the link thus: a proof is the rope let down towards what is unknown. I cannot say this derivation is beyond dispute; I transmit it with that reservation.

The image is this: a bucket is let down into a well. The rope is held above, the vessel goes down. The bond does not break — what descends descends while remaining attached to what is above.

دَنَا فَتَدَلَّىٰ — "he drew near, then leaned down."

At first sight the order looks reversed. The expected order is: first you lean down, then you draw near. Leaning is the means of drawing near; the means does not come after the result.

The classical commentaries dwell on this order and transmit two explanations:

The second explanation is worth dwelling on, and I wish to add an observation — which I record as my own reading.

Danā and tadallā are not the same thing, because their forms differ:

• دَنَا — Form I, a simple verb. The closing of a distance. It may be horizontal or vertical.
• تَدَلَّىٰ — Form V, reflexive. And the sense of this form is: to perform the act upon oneself. Not "he was let down" but "he let himself down."

The difference is this: danā is about distance; tadallā is about will. A bucket does not fall into a well of itself; someone lets it down. Form V says that the letting down is his own act.

And this sets up a contrast with the hawā of the first verse:

This is what the sūra does in eight verses: it compares two downward movements. One an uncontrolled fall, the other a controlled descent. The star falls; the other leans down.

I record this contrast as my own reading. The forms and roots of the verbs are data of the text; establishing a contrast between the two is work of my own.

قَاب. The definition the lexicographers give: the distance between the grip of the bow (maqbiḍ) and the curve at its end (siya). That is, a length close to half the bow.

But the word is also used more generally in the sense of "as much as, to the measure of": qāba qawsayn — "as much as two bows."

On either reading the result comes out at the same place: a distance such that a man could touch it by stretching out his arm. The measure is small, and that is the point.

Root: ق-و-س. Qaws — a bow. Its plurals are aqwās, qisiyy.

Derivatives:

• تَقَوَّسَ — he bent like a bow, he became stooped. Shaykhun mutaqawwis — an old man bent at the back.
• قُوس — a measure, a length.

And a warning is needed. In Turkish the word kıyas ("analogy, comparison") is sometimes explained by attaching it to this verse, as though it meant "the measure of a bow". This is wrong, and the difference of root is plain:

• قَوْس (a bow) → root ق-و-س
• قِيَاس (qiyās, measuring) → root ق-ي-س (qāsa yaqīsu — he measured)

The middle letter differs (wāw / yāʾ), and in Arabic this difference determines the root. The same warning made for kawwara / kura in the section al-Takwīr holds here as well. No meaning is to be drawn from the resemblance of two words in their Turkish pronunciation.

That the measure is a bow is not accidental, and to see this one must know the world of objects of that society.

The bow is an implement that, in a desert society, everyone has and whose length everyone knows. To describe a distance you need a shared unit in hand; and units such as the cubit, the mile, the parasang are either too large or not in everyone's possession. The bow is an object carried by hunter and warrior alike, of roughly standard length.

The verse, then, measures the most abstract event with the most concrete instrument. The distance of something happening in the sky is given by the thing hanging on the shoulder of the one addressed.

This is something the Qurʾān does regularly and it has been recorded in several places in this commentary: in al-Takwīr, the placing of the pregnant she-camel in the middle of a cosmic list; in al-Wāqiʿa, the building of the descriptions of the garden out of known trees. The greatest claim is attached to the nearest object.

And this is transmitted, which I convey with reserve: it is said that in Arab custom, when two men made a pact they leant their bows against each other and drew them as a single bow, and that this was counted the emblem of the alliance. Some exegetes attach the expression qāba qawsayn to this. The historical ground of this explanation is disputed and I build no interpretation upon it; I record it only because it occurs in the sources.

The most striking part of the sentence is this addition.

Aw — "or". In Arabic this particle conveys doubt, choice or indeterminacy. But since there can be no doubt where God is concerned, what is it doing here?

Several explanations are transmitted in the classical commentaries and all converge on one point:

All three arrive at the same place, and there lies the real matter: the expression takes back in the same sentence the measure it has given.

And this is worth recording as a choice of expression. A distance is stated, then "or less" is said. The result: the reader receives not a number but a sense of nearness. A measure is seemingly given and not given.

I record this as my own reading: the expression finds the way to describe what cannot be described by declaring the description insufficient. And because the last word of the ninth verse (adnā) is from the same root as the first verb of the eighth (danā), the two verses close a circle: he drew near… and nearer still.

This is one of the oldest and most serious disagreements in the exegesis of the Qurʾān, and it would not be right to conceal it.

The problem is this: in verses 5-10 there are two parties — the one who teaches and the one taught, the one who draws near and the one drawn near to — but neither is named. There are pronouns and adjectives; there is no name.

Let us read the verses with their pronouns:

ʿAllamahu (5) — he taught him … fa'stawā (6) — he stood erect … wa huwa (7) — he … thumma danā fa-tadallā (8) — then he drew near and leaned down … fa-awḥā ilā ʿabdihi mā awḥā (10) — he revealed to His servant.

The expression عَبْدِهِ ("His servant") in the tenth verse is the knot of the debate: whose is the pronoun?

Behind this disagreement stands a larger theological debate: did the Prophet see his Lord with his eye?

The Qurʾān's own data touching the matter are these, and both are used in this debate:

"Eyes do not grasp Him; He grasps the eyes." (al-Anʿām 6/103)

"It is not for any human being that God should speak to him except by revelation, or from behind a veil, or by sending a messenger to reveal by His permission what He wills." (al-Shūrā 42/51)

"My Lord, show me Yourself, that I may look at You. He said: You shall never see Me." (al-Aʿrāf 7/143 — the request of Moses)

These three verses make it difficult to defend "seeing with the eye". Against that, verse 11 of this sūra says "the heart did not belie what it saw", and the organ named there is not the eye but the fuʾād — this distinction will be taken up below.

In this commentary I make no choice, and the grounds are these:

1. The verse gives no name. The text has chosen to speak in pronouns. To name what a text deliberately does not name is to add something to the text. 2. Both views were defended in the early period and by serious names. There is not enough data in hand to declare either "wrong". 3. Theological debate is not the subject of this commentary, and per the method (Method) no legal or theological ruling is issued.

But this can be recorded, and it is data of the text: the sūra recounts not what was seen but who saw and how near it came. None of the verses gives the shape, colour or form of what was seen. The one thing given is distance. The text has chosen not to describe but to report a nearness.

Relating these verses to the event of the miʿrāj is widespread in the tradition of exegesis. This must be recorded: the sūra does not use the word "miʿrāj" and speaks of no journey. The first verse of Sūrat al-Isrāʾ (17/1) speaks of a being taken by night but says nothing of the Lote Tree; this sūra speaks of the Lote Tree but says nothing of a being taken.

The joining of the two texts is done by way of transmitted reports. I record that joining as a transmission, not as the text's own statement.

Fa-awḥā ilā ʿabdihi mā awḥā "So He revealed to His servant what He revealed."

The verse gives no information. It does not say what was revealed.

مَآ أَوْحَىٰ — "what he revealed". The object is described by the verb itself. In English: "he revealed whatever he revealed."

This is a technique of expression called in Arabic إبهام (ibhām — deliberately leaving indeterminate), and it is used three times in this sūra:

All three are in the same pattern: verb + mā + the same verb.

And one must see what the technique does. The indeterminacy here is not ignorance; it is an instrument of magnification (taʿẓīm). Had it said "He revealed such and such", the content would have been bounded. When it says "whatever He revealed", the content is left outside the reader's guess.

This is one of the oldest instruments of language and it works in everyday speech as well: "what happened there happened", "I saw what I saw." The sentence gives no information but conveys a magnitude.

The sixteenth verse will repeat the same technique in the same sūra. And the fifty-fourth, this time for punishment. Three times, then, the sūra "says by not saying": once for revelation, once for light, once for punishment.

I record this as an observation; that the three verses are in the same pattern is a countable datum.

Root: ع-ب-د. This root was treated in the section on al-Fātiḥa (iyyāka naʿbudu); I do not repeat it. The summary: the concrete sense of the root is submission, entering into service; ʿabd — a servant, a slave.

The choice of the word here is worth dwelling on. The verse does not say rasūlihi (His messenger) or nabiyyihi (His prophet). It says عَبْدِهِ — "His servant".

The Qurʾān regularly uses this word when recounting the Prophet in the highest positions:

• "Who took His servant by night…" (al-Isrāʾ 17/1 — asrā bi-ʿabdihi)
• "Praise be to God, who sent down the Book to His servant." (al-Kahf 18/1 — ʿalā ʿabdihi)
• "And when the servant of God stood up calling upon Him…" (al-Jinn 72/19 — ʿabdu'llāh)

This regularity is striking. The epithet used where the highest nearness is recounted is the epithet that conveys the lowest position.

I record this as my own reading: that the epithet of servanthood is chosen while a drawing near is recounted says that the nearness does not change the position. He who has come within the length of two bows is still a servant; the closing of the distance does not mean that the parties change places.

And the verb of this sūra's last verse will be وَٱعْبُدُوا۟ — "serve". The same root: an epithet in the tenth verse, a command in the sixty-second.

Mā kadhaba'l-fuʾādu mā raʾā · A-fa-tumārūnahu ʿalā mā yarā "The heart did not belie what it saw. Do you then dispute with him about what he sees?"

Root: ف-أ-د. And the concrete sense of the root is analysed here for the first time in this commentary.

The root's proper sense: to heat over a fire, to roast on embers.

• فَأَدَ ٱللَّحْمَ — he roasted the meat in hot ash or embers.
• فَئِيد (faʾīd) — meat roasted on embers.
• مِفْأَد (mifʾad) — the skewer used for turning meat on the embers.
• And فُؤَاد — the heart.

The explanation the lexicographers give is this: the fuʾād is the burning, heating, kindling side of the heart. As an organ it is the same thing; but the word names that organ in its moving and heated state.

Now let us compare it with ق-ل-ب.

The root ق-ل-ب has been treated in several places in this commentary (al-Mulk, al-Muṭaffifīn, al-Inshiqāq, al-Humaza). Its concrete sense: to turn a thing over, to invert it. Qalaba — he turned; inqilāb — a turning about; munqalib — one who turns.

A picture of the two words:

The heart is named by its turning side; the fuʾād by its burning side.

And the verse's choice of word takes on meaning through this difference. The verse does not say "the qalb did not belie". For the root of qalb already contains turning; to say "the changing thing did not belie" would have weakened the sentence from within.

فُؤَاد was chosen: the place that is affected, that kindles, that is set in motion. The verse says, that is: the place affected by what he saw did not deny that thing.

I record this as my own reading. The concrete senses of the two roots are lexical data; this division of labour between the two words, and the reason for the choice in the verse, is a connection of my own making.

And there is this, which is a datum within the Qurʾān: the word fuʾād is named in the Qurʾān together with sight and hearing:

"Do not pursue what you have no knowledge of. For hearing, sight and the heart — all of these will be questioned about it." (al-Isrāʾ 17/36)

"He gave you hearing, sight and hearts, that you might be thankful." (al-Naḥl 16/78)

In both verses the order is the same: hearing, sight, fuʾād. The fuʾād, then, occurs in the Qurʾān's lexicon as an organ of perception listed alongside the senses — and, moreover, at the end of the list, that is, as the place where what comes from the senses is worked upon.

And this illuminates verse 11: the fuʾād here is not something independent of the senses; it is the place that assesses what comes from them.

Root: ك-ذ-ب. This root has been treated in many places in this commentary (al-Mursalāt, al-Muṭaffifīn and others); I do not repeat it.

There is a disagreement of recitation over the form of the verb here, and it changes the meaning:

I do not name an imam. Both recitations have been transmitted, and the more widespread is the second.

The difference is real and looks in two different directions:

• On the first recitation the matter is transmission: the heart reported what it saw without distortion. A truthfulness directed outward.
• On the second recitation the matter is recognition: the heart did not reject what its eye saw by saying "this cannot be". An acceptance directed inward.

It is worth dwelling on what the second recitation says.

When the human mind sees something unaccustomed, its first reaction is to belie its own eye. "I saw wrong", "it only looked so to me" — this is a healthy defensive mechanism and works rightly most of the time.

The verse describes a moment in which this mechanism did not operate: what was seen was so certain that the one who saw felt no need to reject it.

And this prepares the question of the twelfth verse.

Root: م-ر-ي. Mirāʾ / mumārāt — to wrangle about something, to dispute with one another, to cast one another into doubt.

The concrete sense of the root is dwelt on: مَرَى ٱلنَّاقَة — to rub a camel's udder in milking, to squeeze it and try to draw out milk. The root thus carries the idea of trying to obtain something by pulling at it.

From here mirāʾ: to pull at a statement, to worry at it, to try to extract something from the one opposite.

And this sūra will use the root once more: verse 55, fa-bi-ayyi ālāʾi rabbika تَتَمَارَىٰ — "which of your Lord's favours do you dispute?"

In the section al-Raḥmān these two verses were compared, and what was recorded there holds here:

Tamārī is Form VI from the root م-ر-ي: to be unable to be sure of a thing, to go back and forth, to wrangle. It is lighter than denial — doubt is not rejection.

The sūra thus uses tumārūnahu at verse 12 (Form III, mutual wrangling) and tatamārā at verse 55 (Form VI, a going back and forth within oneself). The same root in two different forms: one a dispute directed outward, the other a hesitation within.

And a variant reading is transmitted: when أَفَتَمْرُونَهُ (a-fa-tamrūnahu, Form I) is read, the sense is not "do you dispute with him" but "do you deny him, or make him doubted, concerning what he sees". I do not name an imam; both recitations are transmitted and both fit the context.

The word order of the verse is striking. The question is not "do you deny what he saw"; it is عَلَىٰ مَا يَرَىٰ — do you dispute "about what he sees".

The particle ʿalā marks here the subject of the dispute. Those addressed are disputing, that is, not whether an event occurred but what someone has seen.

And the tense of the verb changes:

The eleventh verse records a past seeing; the twelfth speaks of a continuing one. The imperfect in Arabic conveys repetition and continuance.

I record this as my own reading: the change of tense suggests that what is disputed is not a single event but a continuing state. But it is also possible that the imperfect is used here for narration (to make the past vivid); this is a widespread usage in Arabic.

And what the verse establishes is this.

To dispute with a person about what he has seen is, logically, a strange operation. What can one who did not see say about what the seer saw?

The things that can be disputed are known: the seer's honesty (he may be lying), the seer's soundness (he may be mistaken), his interpretation (he may be naming wrongly what he saw). But the thing seen itself cannot be disputed — because the disputing party has no datum in hand to compare it with.

And the sūra had already closed off the three things that could be disputed:

The question of the twelfth verse is thus not a rhetorical question but the conclusion of a piece of reasoning. The sūra first closed off every avenue of objection, and then asked.

Wa laqad raʾāhu nazlatan ukhrā · ʿInda sidrati'l-muntahā · ʿIndahā jannatu'l-maʾwā "And he saw him at another descent. By the Lote Tree of the Boundary. Near it is the Garden of Refuge."

نَزْلَة — root ن-ز-ل. To descend. Nazla is a pattern conveying a single occurrence of the descent (in Arabic this measure — faʿla — names one performance of the verb: ḍarba one blow, akla one eating).

And its grammatical position is debated: nazlatan is accusative and can be read as an adverbial or as an absolute object — "during a descent" or "with the seeing of a descent". Neither reading changes the sense much.

The real matter is this: since it says "another descent", there is a first one.

The text speaks, that is, of two separate seeings. The first is the one recounted in verses 5-10 (the highest horizon, the drawing near, the leaning down); the second is the one recounted here (by the Lote Tree).

And this bears directly on the disagreement above. That the text speaks of two separate scenes is what makes the "mixed reading" possible — the view that the first scene is Gabriel and the second something else. But the text does not itself establish that distinction; it says only "another".

The word أُخْرَىٰ occurs four times in this sūra (13, 20, 38, 47), and each time in a different job:

The sūra uses the same word for a seeing, an idol, a burden and a creation. I record this as an observation about the distribution of a word; I draw no conceptual link between them, because the word is everyday and ordinary.

Root: س-د-ر. سِدْر — a real tree, widespread in the lands of the Arabs.

This tree was treated in the section al-Wāqiʿa (al-Wāqiʿa 56/28: fī sidrin makhḍūd — "amid thornless lote trees"); what was recorded there holds here unchanged:

سِدْر — a tree widespread in the lands of the Arabs. In English it is called the lote tree, the jujube, or Christ's thorn. I do not speak with certainty about the tree's botanical identification; the properties described in the sources are these: it gives abundant shade, its fruit is eaten, and its branches are thorny.

سِدْرَة is the singulative (ism al-waḥda): a single sidr tree. In Arabic sidr conveys the species, sidra one of that species.

And the choice of the tree is worth dwelling on.

The sidr was, in that region, one of the few trees that gives shade in the desert. In hot, waterless country a sidr tree was a landmark and a resting place: its shade broad, its fruit (nabq) edible, its branches used as fodder. Travellers found their direction by it, and caravans camped beneath it.

The first thing the word raises in the one addressed, then, is nothing exotic but a tree he knows. And the first thing he knows about that tree: shade and a halting place.

A lexical note, with reserve. The classical dictionaries record under the same root entry the words سَدِرَ (to be dazzled, to be giddy, to be bewildered) and سَادِر (one who goes on heedlessly, with darkened eyes). Whether the two groups of sense (tree / dazzling) come historically from a single root is disputed, and I build no interpretation upon it. Only this is of interest, and it may be a coincidence: four verses later, at verse 17, there will come a sentence in which precisely the swerving of the eye is negated.

Root: ن-ه-ي. This root has occurred in several places in this commentary (al-Ḥashr, al-Nāziʿāt, al-Fajr).

The concrete sense of the root: a thing's ending, coming to its close, reaching its final bound.

And from here two separate directions come out:

• نِهَايَة (nihāya) — the end, the finish.
• نَهَىٰ (nahā) — he forbade. The link: a prohibition is the setting of a thing's bound; it fixes how far one may go.
• نُهْيَة / نُهَىٰ (nuhā) — the intellect. The Qurʾān uses this word: "In this are signs for those possessed of intellect (uli'l-nuhā)" (Ṭāhā 20/54). The lexicographers' explanation: the intellect is what restrains a person from what will harm him. The name of the intellect thus comes from a root of forbidding.

مُنْتَهَىٰ — the passive participle / noun of place of Form VIII: the place where things come to an end, the far limit reached.

And this word occurs twice in this sūra:

Verse 14: ʿinda sidrati'l-muntahā — "by the lote tree of the boundary" Verse 42: wa anna ilā rabbika 'l-muntahā — "and that the final end is to your Lord"

In the section al-Nāziʿāt these two verses were already set side by side (on the occasion of al-Nāziʿāt 79/44). There, in counting the uses of muntahā in the Qurʾān, both 53/14 and 53/42 were given.

Now it is possible to read the two together, and this is the sūra's own datum:

The sūra attaches the same word once to a tree and once to the Lord. And twenty-eight verses lie between them.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the repetition of the word: the fourteenth verse says how far an ascent could go — as far as a tree. The forty-second states the real end beyond which nothing can pass. The first end is a marker stone standing beside the second.

This compound occurs only here in the Qurʾān, and the Qurʾān does not explain it.

Various explanations are transmitted in the tradition of exegesis: that it is the last point those ascending can reach, that what descends from above and what rises from below meet there, that the knowledge of the angels ends there. Some of these explanations rest on transmitted reports and some on inference, and I do not put any of them forward as transmitted.

What the text says itself is this, and no more:

1. It is a sidr tree (sidrat). 2. It is the tree of a "boundary" (al-muntahā). 3. Beside it is the Garden of Refuge (15). 4. Something has covered it, and that thing is not named (16).

All four are a description of a place, and none of them is an explanation. The text gives the name of a place and does not describe it.

جَنَّة — root ج-ن-ن. This root was analysed in full in the section al-Baqara (2/25) and has been relied on in many places in this commentary; I do not repeat it. The summary: the sense of the root is to cover, to conceal, and all its derivatives turn about invisibility — janīn (covered in the womb), jinn (unseen), majnūn (whose mind is covered), mijann (a shield), janna (a garden that covers the soil with its trees).

And there is a coincidence of word order here: a tree (sidra) is named, and immediately after it comes a word whose root is "a garden that covers with its trees". The two words are from the same family of images.

مَأْوَىٰ — root أ-و-ي. This word was treated in the section al-Ḍuḥā (al-Ḍuḥā 93/6: a-lam yajidka yatīman fa-āwā); what was recorded there:

مَأْوَى (maʾwā) — a shelter, a place of refuge. In the Qurʾān it is used both of the garden and of Hell: "jannatu'l-maʾwā" (al-Najm 53/15) and "maʾwāhumu'l-nār" (Āl ʿImrān 3/151). Maʾwā thus conveys no valuation; it means simply "the place arrived at in the end".

The section on al-Ḍuḥā had already pointed to this verse; I complete the connection here.

That the word is neutral matters. A maʾwā is not a good or a bad place; it is the place one goes to. An animal's fold, a person's house, a traveller's inn — all are maʾwā.

And joined with the fourteenth verse this yields an image: the tree of an "end", and beside it a "place to be arrived at". Both convey arrival. The Lote Tree a boundary, the garden a halting place.

The word order of the fifteenth verse is inverted. The normal order would be jannatu'l-maʾwā ʿindahā (subject + predicate). The verse begins with عِندَهَا.

In Arabic the fronting of the predicate conveys specification (restriction) or emphasis. The sentence says, that is: "right there" — and nowhere else.

And this is an emphasis to be expected in a description of a place: to say that two things are in the same place.

Idh yaghsha'l-sidrata mā yaghshā "When there covered the Lote Tree what covered it."

Root: غ-ش-ي. Concrete sense: to cover over a thing, to veil it, to wrap it.

The derivatives show the web of the root:

• غِشَاوَة (ghishāwa) — the film that comes over the eye. The Qurʾān uses it: "and over their eyes is a covering" (al-Baqara 2/7).
• غَاشِيَة (ghāshiya) — what covers, what envelops. The name of a sūra; it was treated in the section al-Ghāshiya.
• تَغْشِيَة — to cover over a thing.
• غَشَيَان — a swoon; the covering over of consciousness.

At the centre of the root stands this: to come from above and cover. Not to wrap from below but to close over the top.

The technique recorded at the tenth verse is repeated here: verb + مَا + the same verb.

Yaghshā … mā yaghshā — "when there covered it what covered."

And this time the indeterminacy is more striking still, because two things at once are indeterminate in the sentence:

1. What is the covering? It is not said. 2. Who is the agent? The verb is active but its subject is mā (a thing) — that is, unnamed.

Various explanations of what it is are transmitted in the classical commentaries (light, angels, a colour). I do not put any of them forward as transmitted, because the verse has explicitly chosen not to name it, and to fill the place a text deliberately leaves blank is to add to the text.

إِذْ is an adverb used in Arabic for past time: "at the time when, in that hour."

And what it attaches to is disputed:

The first reading appears the stronger and its ground is the word order: verses 13-16 flow as a single sentence (he saw — where — what is beside it — when). This is a preference and is not binding.

And this verse's twin stands within the sūra:

Verse 16: idh yaghsha'l-sidrata mā yaghshā — "when there covered the Lote Tree what covered it" Verse 54: fa-ghashshāhā mā ghashshā — "so there covered it what covered"

The same root, the same pattern, the same technique of indeterminacy. The differences are real too:

The sense of the doubled pattern was dwelt on in the section al-Takwīr: the doubling of Form II conveys in Arabic repetition, multiplicity and comprehensiveness. The covering in verse 54 is thus a denser, more complete covering.

And I record the relation between the two verses as my own reading: the sūra uses the same verb once over a tree and once over a destroyed city. In both there is something that comes from above, and in both it is left unnamed.

The common point is this: in both, something coming from above covers what is below completely — one in a scene of drawing near, the other in a scene of destruction. In the sūra's lexicon, coming from above is not a one-directional thing.

I present this connection not as data of the text but as a relation of my own making. The sharing of the word and the pattern, on the other hand, is a countable datum.

Mā zāgha'l-baṣaru wa mā ṭaghā · Laqad raʾā min āyāti rabbihi'l-kubrā "The eye neither swerved nor overreached. He indeed saw of the greatest signs of his Lord."

The sūra's two densest words are here, and both have been analysed earlier in this commentary. What is new is what the two do together.

Root: ز-ي-غ. This root was analysed in full in the section al-Ṣaff, and precisely this verse was given there as an example. I do not repeat that analysis; I take its conclusion:

Its sense: to deviate from a straight line, to incline, to bend. Zāghati'l-shams — the sun declined from its zenith; it left its highest point and inclined. Zāgha'l-baṣar — the eye swerved, it missed the target. At the centre of the root stands this: a departure from a line, a difference of angle. And this is the most important feature of the word: zaygh is not a sudden break but an inclination. The sun does not drop suddenly from its zenith; it departs by a small angle, and that angle grows with time.

The section on al-Ṣaff also gave al-Aḥzāb 33/10: "when the eyes swerved" — the loss of focus in a moment of fear.

Root: ط-غ-ي. This root was analysed in the section al-ʿAlaq and has become one of the roots most put to work in this commentary (al-Nāziʿāt, al-Shams, al-Ḥāqqa, al-Raḥmān, al-Dhāriyāt). I do not repeat it; the summary:

The proper, concrete sense of the root is water passing its limit, overflowing. The evidence is the Qurʾān's own usage: "When the water overflowed (ṭagha'l-māʾ), We carried you in the running ship" (al-Ḥāqqa 69/11) — there the word carries no moral sense whatever, only the water's passing of its bound. Ṭughyān is a being's passing of its own limit. Water becomes a flood when it passes its bed.

The description added in the section on al-Raḥmān is useful here too: "transgression is not the possession of something bad; it is the carrying of something good beyond its own limit."

And now the work of the verse becomes visible.

To say that the eye saw truly the verse does not build a positive sentence. It does not say "the eye saw fully." It makes two negations: it neither swerved nor overreached.

For there are two ways in which a look can be corrupted, and the two are each other's opposite:

Swerving is the look's loss of direction; overreaching is the look's passing of its own limit.

And between the two there is a single point: exact hitting. For one who aims at a target there are three possibilities — to miss to the side, to overshoot, and to strike true. By eliminating the two, the verse describes the third.

I record this as an observation, and in this form it is my own reading. The concrete senses of the two roots (the sun's inclining / water's overflowing) are lexical data and have been recorded separately in two different sections of this commentary. What is new is the finding that the two together describe a "middle".

And this finding touches a general feature of observation.

When a person sees something unaccustomed he can make two kinds of error:

1. Failing to see. His mind cannot process the thing; he looks but cannot register, his eye swerves aside. Astonishment scatters the look. 2. Seeing too much. His mind fills the gaps; on top of what he saw he adds what he expected. Excitement magnifies what was seen.

The second error is more insidious than the first, because the person does not know that he is speaking falsely. Expectation mixes into perception, and the person is sincere when he says "I saw".

The verse closes off this second possibility too. And read together with verse 11 the system is complete:

Three possibilities, three negations. The sūra counts and closes one by one all the ways in which a testimony can be corrupted.

Root: ب-ص-ر. This root has been treated in many places in this commentary (al-Mulk, al-Ḥāqqa, al-Qiyāma, al-Inshiqāq and others). Its concrete sense: sight, perception by the eye. Baṣīra — inner sight; baṣīr — one who sees.

And note: at verse 11 fuʾād, at verse 17 baṣar.

Two different organs, two different verifications. One the recording instrument (the eye), the other the place of assessment (the heart). And the sūra clears each of them separately.

Why this is necessary is plain: in a testimony error can occur at two different places — at the stage of reception and at the stage of processing. The eye may see rightly and the heart assess wrongly; or the heart may be sound and the eye mistaken. The verses close off both at once.

I record this as my own reading; that two different words are used in two different verses is data of the text.

There is a grammatical disagreement in the eighteenth verse, and it changes the meaning.

Laqad raʾā min āyāti rabbihi'l-kubrā.

ٱلْكُبْرَىٰ is a feminine elative: "the greatest (feminine)". The question is what it qualifies:

The difference is real: on the first reading what he saw is some of the great signs; on the second, the greatest of them.

The particle مِنْ is decisive here: min āyāti — "of the signs of". In Arabic this particle is used for the partitive (conveying a part of a whole). What he saw, that is, is not the whole of the signs but a part of them.

This supports the first reading and says: he saw not all the greatest signs but some of them.

As a preference I find the first reading the stronger, on the ground that the particle min conveys a part. It is not binding.

And this must be added: in the section al-Nāziʿāt a warning was recorded about the word al-kubrā — "al-kubrā is used in other places in the Qurʾān as well (al-Najm 53/18; Ṭāhā 20/23). That a word occurs twice in one sūra is therefore not by itself evidence of intent." The same reserve holds here: the word is an ordinary adjective of superiority.

The eighteenth verse closes the sūra's second block, and the closing sentence is striking:

The verse does not say what he saw. For fourteen verses an act of seeing has been recounted — who taught, where he stood, how near he came, beside which tree he was, that his eye did not swerve — and the block closes without saying what the thing seen was.

The one thing said is a category: āyāti rabbih — "the signs of his Lord."

And this is directly connected with the sūra's next block. The nineteenth verse begins: "Have you seen al-Lāt and al-ʿUzzā?"

The same verb: رأى.

Immediately after saying "he saw", the sūra asks "and what have you seen?"

This transition is the very middle of the sūra's argument about knowledge, and I record it as an observation: two verses in succession, with verbs from the same root, compare two different claims of seeing. And what the second group saw will be stated four verses later: names.

A-fa-raʾaytumu'l-Lāta wa'l-ʿUzzā · Wa Manāta'l-thālithata'l-ukhrā "Have you seen al-Lāt and al-ʿUzzā? And Manāt, the third, the other?"

This pattern was treated in detail in the section al-Wāqiʿa. There it was shown in a table that all four proofs of al-Wāqiʿa begin with a-fa-raʾaytum, and the structure of the pattern was given.

The work of the pattern is this: "now tell me" — to set an object before the one addressed and require him to pass judgement on it. The English "well, what do you say to this?" is its counterpart.

And in this sūra the pattern occurs twice:

Both are sentences of display: something is set out and the one addressed is required to look at it.

There is a real disagreement about the origin of the name, and two paths are transmitted in the sources:

A variant reading is also transmitted in connection with the second explanation: it is stated that the word is read with a doubling (ٱللَّاتّ); on that reading the name is the active participle of the verb latta — "the kneader". I do not name an imam.

I make no choice. The first explanation is linguistically the neater (Allāh → al-Lāt is a feminising pattern that works in Arabic). The second rests on a narrative, and the historical value of the narrative is disputed.

But what the two explanations have in common is worth recording, and it bears directly on verse 23 of the sūra: on both explanations the name is a derived name. It derives either from ilāh or from a verb. The name, that is, does not come from the thing named; it comes from human language.

It is transmitted in the sources that al-Lāt was at Ṭāʾif and was adopted by the tribe of Thaqīf. I do not enter into the details, because this information belongs to the literature of biography and genealogy, and the Qurʾān does not give it.

Root: ع-ز-ز. This root has been treated in many places in this commentary (al-Ḥashr, al-Ḥadīd, al-Mulk, al-Burūj and others). What was recorded there:

The concrete sense of the root is hardness and durability. Arḍun ʿazāz — hard ground, difficult to dig. From here two directions come out: invincibility (unbreakable, not to be subdued) and rarity/value (ʿazza'l-shayʾu: it became rare). The two senses are linked to each other: what is hard to reach is both strong and valuable.

ٱلْعُزَّىٰ is the feminine of the elative أَعَزّ (aʿazz — the mightiest): the fuʿlā measure. The word-for-word sense of the name, then: "the mightiest (feminine)."

And this is the material of the proof that will be built two verses later.

For al-ʿUzzā is kin to ٱلْعَزِيز (ʿAzīz) from the same root — and ʿAzīz is one of the names of God in the Qurʾān. The name of the idol is thus the feminised superlative degree of an attribute of God.

I record this as a lexical observation. That the name is built in this way agrees with the ruling of verse 23, "they are nothing but names you and your fathers have given": the name has been gathered up from an existing religious vocabulary.

It is transmitted in the sources that al-ʿUzzā was near Mecca, in the valley of Nakhla. As recorded in the section al-Masad, the sources of biography give Abū Lahab's actual name as ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā — "the servant of al-ʿUzzā" — that is, the name had entered that society even into personal names.

Root: م-ن-ي. This root was treated in the section al-Qiyāma; what was recorded there:

- مَنَىٰ (manā) — he measured out, he apportioned, he determined. - مَنِىّ (manī) — what is poured out. - مَنِيَّة (maniyya), plural مَنَايَا — death; on the lexicographers' explanation, "what has been apportioned". - أُمْنِيَّة (umniyya), plural أَمَانِىّ — wishing, fancy. In the section on al-Qiyāma this kinship was transmitted as a lexical observation, with no interpretation built upon it.

Two explanations of the origin of the name are transmitted:

Both converge on the same root and both occur in the sources. I impose no preference.

But the first explanation makes a connection with verse 24, and the connection is worth recording:

Verse 24: am li'l-insāni mā تَمَنَّىٰ? — "Or shall man have whatever he wishes for?"

تَمَنَّىٰ is from the same root as Manāt. Five verses after naming an idol called "the apportioner of destiny", that is, the sūra says that man's wishing gives him nothing.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sharing of the root. The sharing of the root is a countable datum; that a deliberate relation is established between the two verses is my inference and is not certain — for the verb tamannā is widespread in the Qurʾān and does not carry an idol's association everywhere it occurs.

A note on a variant reading: it is transmitted that the word is also read مَنَاءَة (Manāʾa, with a lengthening). I do not name an imam.

These two adjectives in the word order need dwelling on, because both look superfluous.

Three idols have already been counted; there is no need to say "third". And after saying "third", to say "the other" looks entirely excessive.

The classical commentaries dwell on this excess and generally read it as a belittling (taḥqīr). The name is mentioned but not dwelt upon: "and there is the other one."

And there is one further observation in the word order — I record this as my own reading.

The first two idols are named directly: al-Lāta wa'l-ʿUzzā. The third comes by a number and the epithet "other". The list, that is, loses its definiteness as it goes: name → name → number + "the other".

That the last item of a list should fade in this way says something about the list itself. And the continuation of the verses will confirm it: verse 23 will call all three "names".

The word ٱلْأُخْرَىٰ has one further grammatical nicety: it is the feminine of ākhar (other) and in Arabic sometimes carries the association of "lower, left behind". This usage is disputed; I do not present it as a settled ruling.

The Qurʾān names these three only here, and together. And this must be recorded:

What the Qurʾān gives is very little, and it is this: they are names (23), the feminine is ascribed to them by their owners (21), and no proof has been sent down about them from God (23). The Qurʾān does not say where these idols were, what they looked like, or by whom and when they were adopted.

That information comes from biography, genealogy and works of the "book of idols" type. In this commentary I do not enter into them, and the ground is Method: no exegesis is built upon details the Qurʾān does not give.

The one historical frame the Qurʾān does give, and which matters, is this: the same society counted these three beings the daughters of God. The Qurʾān records this in many places:

• "They ascribe daughters to God — glory be to Him — and to themselves what they desire." (al-Naḥl 16/57)
• "Has your Lord then chosen sons for you and taken daughters for Himself from among the angels?" (al-Isrāʾ 17/40)
• "Ask them: has your Lord daughters, and they sons?" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/149)

In the section al-Ikhlāṣ the function of this belief was dwelt on, and the finding recorded there is decisive here:

They counted the angels the daughters of God; and al-Lāt, Manāt and al-ʿUzzā were named within the same frame. The function of this belief matters: daughters are intermediaries, intercessors. God is far, unreachable; He is approached through His daughters. The Qurʾān records this logic too: "We serve them only that they may bring us near to God" (al-Zumar 39/3). The claim of lineage, that is, is the foundation of the institution of mediation.

And this bears directly on the structure of the sūra. At verse 26 the sūra will enter precisely the subject of intercession. The order is thus: three names (19-20) → the contradiction in the claim of lineage (21-22) → the emptiness of the names (23) → the invalidity of wishing (24-25) → and that intercession does not work (26). The sūra dismantles the institution of mediation beginning from its foundation.

A-lakumu'l-dhakaru wa lahu'l-unthā · Tilka idhan qismatun ḍīzā "Is the male yours and the female His? That, then, is an unfair division."

What must be noticed is what the verse does not do.

The verse does not say:

• "These idols do not exist."
• "These are made of stone."
• "God has no child."

All three are true sentences and the Qurʾān says them in other places. They are not said here.

What is said is this: by your own measure this division is unjust.

The verse does not judge the other party by a measure from outside them. It takes the other party's own premises and shows the contradiction inside them.

The two premises of the one addressed are these, and both belong to them:

1. A daughter is something unwanted and shameful. — This is a fact the Qurʾān itself records: "When one of them is given news of a female, his face darkens and he is filled with rage" (al-Naḥl 16/58). This verse was treated in detail in the section al-Takwīr. 2. The angels and these three beings are the daughters of God.

What comes out when the two premises are set side by side: he gives to God what he does not want for himself.

In the section al-Ṭūr another instance of the same technique was treated (al-Ṭūr 52/39), and the note recorded there holds here unchanged:

A note is needed: the verse does not accept the worthlessness of a daughter; it uses the premise of the one addressed against him. This is a technique the Qurʾān often uses: to speak by the other party's own measure.

Repeating this note here is obligatory, because the verse is among those most open to being read wrongly. The logic of the verse is: "By your value system this division is unjust." The logic of the verse is not: "A daughter really is of less worth."

And the force of the proof lies exactly here. For a person to be caught by his own measure is far harder to answer than to be judged by a measure from outside. A measure that comes from outside can be refused; your own measure cannot.

The order of the sentence is inverted.

The normal order would be a-dhakaru lakum; the verse has a-lakumu'l-dhakar — here the prepositional phrase (lakum) has already been brought forward. And the same in the second clause: wa lahu'l-unthā.

In Arabic this fronting conveys restriction: "the male belongs to you, the female belongs to Him."

And setting the two sides opposite each other establishes a visual symmetry:

Two pans side by side. And the verse builds a third sentence to say that the pans are not equal.

قِسْمَة — root ق-س-م. To divide, to apportion. Qisma — a share, a portion; taqsīm — division; qāsim — the one who divides.

The choice of the word is worth recording. The verse does not say "this is a lie" or "this is a calumny". It says "this is a division" — and states the quality of the division.

The matter is reduced, that is, to a question of apportioning. And apportioning was the thing that society knew best: spoils are divided, inheritance is divided, well-water is divided, pasture is divided. Whether a division is just was a matter on which everyone in that society could pass judgement.

The verse carries the claim into a field in which the one addressed is an expert.

Root: ض-ي-ز. And this root occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

The sense of the root: to do wrong, to give a deficient share, to divide crookedly. Ḍāzahu ḥaqqahu — he gave him his due short, he gave it clipped.

The grammarians dwell on the pattern of the word and there is a finding worth recording.

The word ضِيزَىٰ appears on the fiʿlā measure. But in Arabic the fiʿlā measure is exceedingly rare as an adjective; the measure expected in adjectives is فُعْلَىٰ (fuʿlā) — as in kubrā, ṣughrā, ḥusnā.

The explanation the grammarians record is this: the word was originally ضُوزَىٰ (ḍūzā, on the fuʿlā measure); the middle letter و turned into ى because of the ى that follows it, and the ḍamma was changed to a kasra as well. The same thing is seen in other words in Arabic (bīḍ — whites, originally būḍ).

I give this explanation as transmitted from the grammarians; it is not a finding of my own.

And a variant reading is transmitted: it is stated that the word is also read ضِئْزَىٰ (with hamza). I do not name an imam. It produces no difference of meaning.

An observation on the rarity of the word — as my own reading. A word that occurs once in the Qurʾān and comes in an unaccustomed measure produces a pause in the sentence. A reader or hearer slows when he meets a word he does not know. And the verse ends exactly on a ruling — at a place where the ruling is meant to be dwelt on.

I do not present this as a claim of intent; the rarity of the word, on the other hand, is a countable datum.

A small but functional particle. إِذًا conveys a consequence in Arabic: "so then, in that case."

The verse does not deliver the ruling directly, then; it delivers it as an inference. Not "this is an unjust division" but "then this becomes an unjust division."

The difference: the particle ties the ruling to the premise of the one addressed. If you do not want a daughter, then this division is unjust. The first half of the conditional is not stated, because the one addressed already accepts it.

This is the placing of a logical inference inside the grammar, and the force of the verse comes from it.

In hiya illā asmāʾun sammaytumūhā antum wa ābāʾukum mā anzala'llāhu bihā min sulṭān · In yattabiʿūna illā'l-ẓanna wa mā tahwa'l-anfus · Wa laqad jāʾahum min rabbihimu'l-hudā "They are nothing but names you and your fathers have given; God has sent down no authority for them. They follow nothing but supposition and what the souls crave. And guidance has come to them from their Lord."

The longest verse of the sūra, and the close of the section of proof. There are three separate sentences and each does a separate job.

Root: س-م-و. This root has occurred in several places in this commentary (al-Dhāriyāt, Nūḥ, al-Infiṭār, al-Inshiqāq).

The semantic field of the root is worth dwelling on:

• ٱسْم (ism) — a name.
• سَمَاء (samāʾ) — the sky; سَمَا — it rose high.
• سَامٍ / سَامِي — high.

The majority of the lexicographers attach the noun to this root and their explanation is: a name is what raises a thing, what lifts it out from among the rest and makes it visible. A thing without a name is inside the heap; the moment it is named it is set apart.

A minority attach the noun to the root و-س-م (to brand, to mark); wasm — a brand, sima — a mark. I make no choice between the two derivations; both have been defended in the sources and both come out at the same place: a name is a mark of distinction.

The verse repeats the pattern of the fourth verse:

Verse 4: in هُوَ illā waḥyun yūḥā — "It is nothing but a revelation revealed." Verse 23: in هِيَ illā asmāʾun sammaytumūhā — "They are nothing but names."

The same pattern (إن … إلا); only the pronoun has changed: هو → هي.

This is a repetition verifiable within the sūra. And the contrast between the two verses is this:

The structure of the two sentences is the same as well: a noun + a verb from the same root. Waḥyun yūḥā (a revelation — is revealed); asmāʾun sammaytumūhā (names — you have named).

This is a pattern of emphasis in Arabic and it does the same work in both places: it confirms the content of the word by the verb.

But their results are diametrically opposite. In the first the agent of the verb is not stated and the passive pattern points upward. In the second the agent is stressed twice: sammaytumū-hā antum wa ābāʾukum — the tum pronoun inside the verb was not enough, and أَنتُم (you) has been added besides.

Such repetition of the pronoun is a strong emphasis in Arabic. The sentence says: the ones who gave these names are no one else, precisely you.

This principle was treated in the section al-Mujādala, and precisely this verse was used there as evidence. The note there:

This principle is the Qurʾān's general stance on false realities built with language. To give a thing a name does not make it that thing. The same logic is seen elsewhere: for the names given to the idols, "They are nothing but names you and your fathers have given" (al-Najm 53/23); for those who counted usury as trade, "They said: trade is just like usury" (al-Baqara 2/275) — and the verse refuses that equation. What this says to the present is entirely concrete: giving a practice a new name does not change it. Naming orders perception, not reality.

The section on al-Mujādala pointed to this verse; I complete the connection here and add one detail.

The verse does not say "you named them wrongly"; it says "you named them".

The difference matters. Had it said "you gave a wrong name", it would have implied that a right name could exist. The verse points at the act itself: the operation of giving a name does not prove that there is something there to be named.

And this is a finding about the everyday working of language. When the human mind hears a name it assumes there is something answering to it; because for the great majority of names this is true. When "camel" is said, there is a camel. A name works like the sign of an existence.

The verse cuts this automatic assumption. A name is a mark a person places; the existence of the mark does not require the existence of what is marked.

سُلْطَان — root س-ل-ط. The concrete sense of the root: the power of disposal over a thing, mastery. Sallaṭa — he set upon, he loosed against; salīṭ — sharp-tongued, and also oil (olive oil — that which "masters" burning).

The word سُلْطَان occurs in the Qurʾān in two senses: 1. Proof, evidence, warrant. What gives force to a claim. 2. Authority, power.

The sense here is the first, and the ground is the verb: anzala — He did not send down. What is sent down is a proof; power is not sent down.

And the choice of the word is worth recording. It could have said burhān (a decisive proof) or bayyina (a clear evidence). It says sulṭān — and in its root lies mastery.

The sentence says, that is: these names have no force that binds you. A proof, once accepted, sets up an authority over a person; these names carry no such authority.

مِن سُلْطَٰنٍ — the particle min is here pleonastic (added for emphasis) and generalises the negation: "no proof of any kind". Not even a weak proof, that is.

And the same pattern, a third time in the same verse: in yattabiʿūna illā'l-ẓann.

ظَنّ — root ظ-ن-ن. The sense of the root: a conviction that is not certain, a supposition, a surmise.

In Arabic ẓann is a neutral word, and this matters: it is used both for "a weak surmise" and for "a strong conviction". The Qurʾān uses it in both directions:

• Positively: "Those who know with certainty that they will meet their Lord" (al-Baqara 2/46: yaẓunnūna annahum mulāqū rabbihim). Here ẓann is in the sense of firm conviction.
• Negatively: as in this verse, a conviction that is not knowledge.

The word questions, then, not the strength of a conviction but its ground. A conviction may be very strong and still be ẓann — for what makes something ẓann is not how firmly it is believed but what it rests on.

And the sūra will say this explicitly five verses later:

Verse 28: wa mā lahum bihi min ʿilm; in yattabiʿūna illā'l-ẓanna; wa inna'l-ẓanna lā yughnī mina'l-ḥaqqi shayʾā "They have no knowledge of it; they follow nothing but supposition. And supposition avails nothing against the truth."

The same sentence (in yattabiʿūna illā'l-ẓann) is repeated twice in the sūra, five verses apart — and the second time a ruling is added. This is the text's own marker and leaves nothing to be read into it.

Root: ه-و-ي. The root the sūra has carried from the beginning comes here for the third time.

تَهْوَى — an imperfect verb: "it craves, it draws."

Now go back to the third verse:

Verse 3: wa mā yanṭiqu ʿani ٱلْهَوَىٰ — the messenger does not speak out of craving. Verse 23: wa mā تَهْوَى ٱلْأَنفُس — they follow what the souls crave.

The same root, the same sūra, in two opposed positions. One is refused, the other set down as a diagnosis.

And this completes the sūra's argument about knowledge. The verse counts two sources: ẓann and hawā.

And this pairing is the exact counterpart of the pairing in the second verse:

What the sūra negates about the messenger in the second verse, it affirms about those addressed in the twenty-third.

I record this as my own reading. The word and root data are the text's; comparing the two verses in a table and counting the symmetry between them deliberate is my inference.

The last sentence of the verse gives no information; it closes off an excuse.

"And guidance has come to them from their Lord."

That is: their following supposition is not because they had nothing else in hand. The alternative came and stands there.

ٱلْهُدَىٰ — root ه-د-ي. This root was treated in the section on al-Fātiḥa (ihdina'l-ṣirāṭa'l-mustaqīm); I do not repeat it. The summary: the concrete sense of the root is to show the way, to go in front.

And that the word comes definite (al-hudā) matters: not "a guidance" but "the guidance" — the known one, the one that has come, the one in hand.

The word order of the sentence carries an emphasis too: min rabbihim (from their Lord) has been inserted between. The source of the guidance is the one who is also their Lord. In the same verse there are beings whose names were counted daughters of God; and the sentence names the real source by the name Rabb — the one who nurtures, who brings up.

Am li'l-insāni mā tamannā · Fa-li'llāhi'l-ākhiratu wa'l-ūlā "Or shall man have whatever he wishes for? Yet to God belong the last and the first."

Root: م-ن-ي. This root was given above at verse 20 on the occasion of Manāt, resting on the analysis in al-Qiyāma.

تَمَنَّىٰ — Form V: to want a thing, to desire it, to wish it to be.

And the relation between the root's sense of "to apportion, to measure" and its sense of "to wish" is worth dwelling on. In the section on al-Qiyāma this kinship was transmitted as a lexical observation with no interpretation built upon it. Here I add a detail, and I state that it is my own reading:

Manā — he apportioned; tamannā — he apportioned for himself. Wishing, that is, is a person's writing his own destiny in his own head. And the verse refuses exactly this: apportioning is not man's work.

I present this as an inference; I pass no definite ruling on the historical relation between the two senses of the root.

Another derivative of the word in the Qurʾān: أَمَانِىّ (amānī — fancies). This word was treated in the section al-Baqara (2/78), and the finding recorded there holds here too: amānī is a conviction resting not on reality but on wish.

أَمْ joins one question to a previous one in Arabic: "or is it that…?"

And the connection here is this: verse 23 had said that those addressed follow what their souls crave. Verse 24 asks the natural consequence of that sentence: is wishing, then, enough?

The question tests the diagnosis of the preceding verse. If a person were vindicated by following what he desires, wishing would be enough. If not, the diagnosis in verse 23 is the diagnosis of a defect.

The verse does not answer the question — or rather, it gives the answer by another sentence: fa-li'llāhi'l-ākhiratu wa'l-ūlā.

This is a technique the Qurʾān often uses and it has been recorded in several places in this commentary (the opening question in the section al-Māʿūn; the closing question in the section al-Munāfiqūn). A question does not impose an answer, it makes one find it.

The answer given here is not a direct "no" but a declaration of ownership: everything is His.

And the logical link is this: to wish for a thing presupposes that you have some say over the distribution of that thing. If the distribution belongs to another, the wish is valid as a request but not valid as a right.

What is striking in the word order: the hereafter is named first and this world second.

The expected order would be "this world and the hereafter" — that is the order of time. The verse has inverted it.

In the classical commentaries it is recorded that this inversion may have to do with the verse-ending, and this explanation is strong: all the verses of the sūra end on the -ā sound, and al-ūlā fits that sound while al-ākhira does not. The order may therefore be one required by the rhyme.

But a dimension of meaning can be recorded too, and I present it as my own reading: in refusing man's wish the verse names the outcome first. A wish is about its outcome. And in whosever hand the outcome lies, the wish ends there.

In the section al-Aʿlā a similar inversion of order (Abraham–Moses / Moses–Abraham) was discussed, and there too the possibility of the verse-ending was recorded and no definite cause given. The same reserve holds here.

The word ٱلْأُولَىٰ occurs three times in this sūra (25, 50, 56) and each time qualifies something different: the life of this world (25), the first people of ʿĀd (50), the earlier warners (56). I record this as an observation about the distribution of a word.

Wa kam min malakin fi'l-samāwāti lā tughnī shafāʿatuhum shayʾan illā min baʿdi an yaʾdhana'llāhu li-man yashāʾu wa yarḍā "And how many an angel there is in the heavens whose intercession avails nothing — except after God gives leave to whom He wills and is pleased with."

As recorded above in the section on verses 19-20, the function of counting the three idols and the angels as daughters of God was mediation. In the section al-Ikhlāṣ this finding was made and al-Zumar 39/3 was given as evidence: "We serve them only that they may bring us near to God."

The sūra now comes, then, to the real matter.

Look at the order:

The sūra dismantles a belief from the outside inward. First the names, then the claim behind the names, then the psychological source of the claim (wishing), then the reason for the whole structure's existence: intercession.

I record this ordering as my own reading; the order of the verses is data of the text.

Root: ش-ف-ع. And the concrete sense of the root shows what the word means.

شَفْع — a pair, an even number. Its opposite is وَتْر (watr) — odd, single. The Qurʾān uses the two together: "By the even and the odd" (al-Fajr 89/3: wa'l-shafʿi wa'l-watr) — this verse was treated in the section al-Fajr.

Intercession, then, is by its root "making the single into a pair." Someone joining another who stands alone.

The image is this: a man comes before an authority on his own. Intercession is a second person standing beside him. The number rises from one to two.

And in that society this was a very concrete institution. In the tribal order a man could make no claim without someone standing behind him. A stranger entering a city took a jiwār (protection); a guilty man was protected by his tribe standing behind him. A man standing alone was legally weak.

For this reason the idea of an intermediary goddess was the direct extension of that society's social logic: just as one does not come before a great chief directly but through an intermediary, so one comes before God.

The verse cuts this analogy.

Root: غ-ن-ي. Ghinā — wealth, sufficiency, not being in need. Aghnā — he enriched, he sufficed, he met the need.

The verb أَغْنَىٰ is used regularly in the Qurʾān in the sense of "to avail, to be sufficient" — especially in negative sentences: "His wealth and what he earned did not avail him" (al-Tabbat 111/2: mā aghnā ʿanhu māluhu). This usage was treated in the section al-Masad.

And this sūra will use the same verb positively at verse 48: wa annahu huwa أَغْنَىٰ wa aqnā — "and that it is He who enriches."

The same root, the same sūra, in two opposed positions: the intercession of the angels avails nothing (26); it is He who gives wealth (48). I record this as a repetition of a word within the sūra.

كَمْ is here not an interrogative particle but the kam khabariyya: it conveys multitude. "How many, a great many."

And its work in the word order is this: it accepts the claim in its strongest form and then cuts it.

The verse does not say "there are no angels". It says "how many an angel there is in the heavens" — it accepts, that is, the beings the one addressed believes in, and even stresses their number. And then: their intercession avails nothing.

This is a strong move in an argument. Instead of refusing the other party's premise, to accept it and show that the conclusion he wants does not follow from it. The angels exist — but their existing does not mean that they can mediate.

The verse does not abolish intercession altogether; it ties it to conditions. And when the conditions are counted, what is left becomes visible:

All three conditions are in the hand of one party. Intercession is thus not an authority of the intermediary; it is a leave given by the ultimate authority.

And this inverts the logic of the institution.

The working logic of the institution of mediation is this: the intermediary sets up an influence over the ultimate authority. A chief cannot refuse his daughter; a friend cannot refuse his friend. The intermediary's power comes from his ability to bend the will of the authority.

The verse cuts exactly at this point: the leave comes first. Intercession is not something that changes the will; it is the manner in which a decision already given is carried out.

I record this as my own reading; the verse's three conditions are data of the text.

The subject of the verb وَيَرْضَىٰ is disputed:

Both readings converge on God and produce no practical difference. I record it but do not dwell on it.

Inna'lladhīna lā yuʾminūna bi'l-ākhirati la-yusammūna'l-malāʾikata tasmiyata'l-unthā · Wa mā lahum bihi min ʿilm; in yattabiʿūna illā'l-ẓanna; wa inna'l-ẓanna lā yughnī mina'l-ḥaqqi shayʾā "Those who do not believe in the hereafter name the angels with the naming of the female. They have no knowledge of it; they follow nothing but supposition. And supposition avails nothing against the truth."

The word order is odd, and its oddity is deliberate.

The expected sentence is: "they count the angels female" or "they call the angels daughters." The verse does not say this.

تَسْمِيَةَ ٱلْأُنثَىٰ — an absolute-object construction: "they name them with the naming of the female."

The verse characterises what is done, that is, as an act of naming, and lodges this inside the grammar. The verb is yusammūna (they name), the verbal noun tasmiya (naming) — both from the same root.

And this is a repetition of the pattern of verse 23:

Verse 23: asmāʾun سَمَّيْتُمُوهَا — "names you have named" Verse 27: لَيُسَمُّونَ … تَسْمِيَةَ — "they name with a naming"

The same root (س-م-و) twice, four verses apart, both times with the same pattern of emphasis.

The sūra insistently keeps the matter as a matter of naming. Not a dispute about belief; a dispute about an operation of language. And it says this twice, with the same grammatical instrument.

This is a repetition verifiable within the sūra.

The subject of the sentence is worth recording. The verse does not say "the mushrikūn" or "the unbelievers". It says "those who do not believe in the hereafter".

Why was this attribute chosen?

I offer a possible reading and state that it is my own: a person who does not believe that a naming will bring responsibility is free in his naming. If there is no reckoning, what you say does not matter either.

The verse shows, that is, the cause of arbitrary naming: believing that it will have no consequence.

And there is a datum within the sūra that supports this reading: verse 31, in the sūra's next block, will establish precisely the principle of requital — "that He may requite those who do evil for what they did, and reward with the best those who do good." The order is: naming is arbitrary because there is no reckoning (27); yet there is a reckoning (31).

I present this as an inference, not as transmitted.

And this must be added: per the method (Method), no wholesale ruling about a community is issued in this commentary. What the verse describes is an attribute: not believing in the hereafter and, proceeding from that, naming arbitrarily. Whoever bears that attribute falls under the ruling.

Root: أ-ن-ث. This root occurred in the sections al-Qiyāma and al-Layl. The note recorded in the section on al-Qiyāma: "the 'softness' explanation for the root أ-ن-ث was transmitted, with no claim of certainty."

The explanation the lexicographers transmit is that the root carries the idea of softness and pliancy — it is related to words such as anīs, anas. This derivation is not certain and I transmit it with that reservation.

And now look at the distribution of the word in this sūra:

The forty-fifth verse takes the word back from the first two uses.

In the first two verses unthā is an attribute people impute to God. In the forty-fifth it is something God created — and, together with the male, as one half of an equal pair.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the repetition of the word: the sūra first shows a word as the material of a calumny, then places it inside creation. The matter is thus not femaleness itself but where femaleness is placed. What belongs to the created becomes a calumny when it is imputed to the Creator.

The three occurrences of the word are data of the text; establishing this relation among them is my reading and is not transmitted.

The sentence is emphasised twice: mā lahum (absence) + min ʿilm (min pleonastic, generalising the negation). "They have no knowledge of any kind."

To what does the pronoun بِهِ refer? There are two readings: to the naming, or to the sex of the angels. Both readings are possible and neither changes the sense much.

The Qurʾān asks this question more explicitly in another sūra:

"They have made the angels, who are servants of al-Raḥmān, female. Did they witness their creation? Their testimony will be written down and they will be questioned." (al-Zukhruf 43/19)

The question there illuminates this verse: knowledge comes either by witnessing or by communication. The angels have not been seen, and no communication has come down on the matter (53/23: mā anzala'llāhu bihā min sulṭān). One road only is left: guesswork.

This sentence is the sūra's widest-reaching ruling and it establishes a principle of knowledge.

مِنَ ٱلْحَقِّ — min here conveys substitution: "in place of the truth, as a substitute for the truth."

The sentence, that is: supposition does not take the place of truth.

And this is visible in the choice of words:

• Lā yughnī — "does not suffice." The verb was used two verses earlier as well (lā tughnī shafāʿatuhum). The same verb twice, two verses apart.
• Shayʾan — "in anything." Not even partly sufficient, that is.

The structure of the ruling is this: between supposition and truth there is not a difference of degree but a difference of kind. Supposition does not turn into truth by being multiplied. A thousand people supposing the same thing does not make that thing true.

And this is a measurable finding. There is no necessary relation between how widespread a conviction is and how true it is; they are two separate questions. The verse establishes that distinction.

What this says to the present will be taken up together below; but this much can be recorded here: in claiming that a belief is false the sūra does not dispute the sincerity of the other party. What it disputes is the ground. This distinction is worth recording in point of the manners of argument as well.

Fa-aʿriḍ ʿan man tawallā ʿan dhikrinā wa lam yurid illā'l-ḥayāta'l-dunyā · Dhālika mablaghuhum mina'l-ʿilm; inna rabbaka huwa aʿlamu bi-man ḍalla ʿan sabīlihi wa huwa aʿlamu bi-mani'htadā "So turn away from him who turns away from Our reminder and wants nothing but the life of this world. That is the extent of their reach in knowledge. Your Lord knows best who has strayed from His way, and He knows best who has found guidance."

Root: ع-ر-ض. The concrete sense of the root: breadth, width. ʿArḍ — breadth (the opposite of length); ʿarīḍ — wide.

And أَعْرَضَ (Form IV): to turn one's side, to turn away. The link is visual: if you do not turn your face to someone you show him your breadth — that is, you stand sideways.

Two notes about the word:

One: the verb belongs both to the one addressed and to the other party. The same movement is used twice in the verse:

• Aʿriḍ (an imperative, to the Prophet) — you turn away.
• Tawallā (of the other party) — he has already turned his back.

Two different roots (ع-ر-ض and و-ل-ي) but the same movement. And the order is this: first he turned, then you turn. What is commanded is not an initiation but a response.

Two: this command has a limit, and it must be said. In some places the Qurʾān commands turning away from the one addressed, in others it insistently commands the delivery of the message. How the two kinds of command are reconciled is a question of exegesis and has no single answer. I issue no ruling. The verse's own note is this: the person to be turned away from is one who bears a particular attribute — and that attribute is described in two clauses.

Root: و-ل-ي. This root was analysed in full in the section al-Ghāshiya, and verse 33 of this sūra was given there as an example. I do not repeat that analysis; the summary:

Tawallā is in Form V, and in this form the root turns in the opposite direction: to come out of nearness, to turn one's back and move away. That the same root carries both "to be a friend" and "to turn one's back" gives the picture of the word: both are a matter of direction. The one who is near has turned his face; the one who withdraws his back. The verb has one further nicety: tawallā conveys a physical movement — to turn one's back and go. Refusal is described here not as an argument but as a withdrawal. The person does not oppose; he leaves.

The closing sentence of the section on al-Ghāshiya is decisive here: the person does not oppose, he leaves. And this coincides exactly with the attitude described in verses 29-30: not an argument but an indifference.

And the verb occurs twice in this sūra: 29 (man tawallā) and 33 (alladhī tawallā). In the second a particular person will be recounted. The sūra describes the attribute first, then shows an example who bears it.

And without this second clause the first would remain incomplete.

Turning away is not an attribute on its own; it may have a cause. The second clause gives the cause: he wants nothing else.

أَرَادَ — root ر-و-د. The concrete sense of the root is of interest: رَادَ — to go about seeking a place, to seek pasture. رَائِد (rāʾid) — the scout who seeks water and pasture for the tribe; the guide who goes ahead of the caravan.

Irāda, then, carries in its root the idea of seeking: to seek a thing, to go after it.

And the structure of the negation matters: lam yurid illā — "he wanted nothing else." The verse does not censure the person's wanting the life of this world; it records his wanting only that.

The difference is real. Wanting the life of this world is not something the Qurʾān censures; indeed the Qurʾān teaches as a prayer the sentence "Our Lord, give us good in this world and good in the hereafter" (al-Baqara 2/201). What is censured is the limit of the wanting.

مَبْلَغ — root ب-ل-غ. This root was treated in the sections al-Qalam and al-Jinn. What was recorded in the section on al-Jinn:

To arrive somewhere, to reach, to attain. Balagha — he reached. Bāligh — one who has reached the age of maturity. Balāgha — the art of bringing a statement's meaning to its target.

مَبْلَغ is the noun-of-place pattern: the place reached, the point arrived at, the stage.

And one must see what the sentence says.

The verse does not say: "these are ignorant", "they do not know", "they are lying." It says: "that is the extent of their reach in knowledge."

The matter is thus not one of lying but one of range.

The particle min again conveys a part: mina'l-ʿilm — "of knowledge". There is a field called knowledge; they have gone a certain distance into that field and stopped.

And the point at which they stopped was described in the preceding verse: the life of this world. The limit of the wanting has become the limit of the knowing.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the order of the two verses: verse 29 describes the wanting, verse 30 the knowledge. The two are set one after the other. And the relation between them may be this: a person cannot find what he does not seek. The idea of "seeking" in the root of irāda (recorded above) supports this reading — but I do not present it as a claim of certainty.

And the tone of the diagnosis is worth dwelling on. The verse does not humiliate; it measures. To say how far a person has been able to go is a different operation from accusing him of lying. The first is a finding, the second an accusation.

Per the method (Method) this must be added: the verse describes not a community but an attribute — limiting one's wanting to the life of this world, and one's knowledge stopping at that limit. Whoever bears that attribute falls under the ruling.

The sentence is repeated twice: huwa aʿlamu bi-man ḍalla … wa huwa aʿlamu bi-mani'htadā.

The same structure, two directions: the one who strays and the one who finds the way.

And note: the verb of verse 2 comes back here.

Verse 2: mā ضَلَّ ṣāḥibukum — "your companion has not gone astray." Verse 30: bi-man ضَلَّ ʿan sabīlih — "who has strayed from His way."

The same root (ض-ل-ل), at the two ends of the sūra. The verb negated of the messenger in the second verse is asked about the other party in the thirtieth. And the deciding authority changes: who has strayed — it is the Lord who knows this.

This is worth recording as a closing sentence. For twenty-nine verses the sūra has passed judgement about one party; and in closing the block it leaves the judgement to God.

أَعْلَم is an elative: "who knows better / best." And this word will occur three times within two verses (twice at 30, once at 32). In finishing the argument about knowledge, the sūra says three times with whom the knowledge lies.

This repetition is data of the text and is countable.

Wa li'llāhi mā fi'l-samāwāti wa mā fi'l-arḍ · Li-yajziya'lladhīna asāʾū bimā ʿamilū wa yajziya'lladhīna aḥsanū bi'l-ḥusnā "To God belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth — that He may requite those who did evil for what they did, and requite with the best those who did good."

The particle لِ (li-yajziya) is here for causation (taʿlīl): "in order to…".

And at first sight this is a strange link. "To God belongs whatever is in the heavens and the earth" — and the reason for this is to give requital?

The link is this, and here lies the logic of the verse: the authority to requite arises from ownership. If you are not the owner of a thing you can pass no ruling over it. The right to call to account comes from ownership.

And this is a law that society knew very well: a master calls his slave to account, an owner keeps the reckoning of his flock, a proprietor makes the division of his property.

The verse carries this known principle to the scale of the universe. At verse twenty-five it had been said: "to God belong the last and the first." Verse thirty-one repeats the same ownership by way of place, and this time adds its consequence.

The two verses together make a whole: time and place. I record this as an observation.

The two clauses are built with the same verb but their ends differ:

The symmetry has been deliberately broken.

Had it been symmetrical: for those who did evil bimā ʿamilū, and for those who did good bimā ʿamilū as well. Or: for those who did evil bi'l-sūʾā, for those who did good bi'l-ḥusnā.

The verse takes a third path:

• The one who did evil is met with exactly what he did. No more. Bimā ʿamilū — "with what they wrought."
• The one who did good is met with "the best". Bi'l-ḥusnā — the feminine of the elative: "with what is more beautiful."

Punishment, that is, is exact measure; the reward is more.

This principle is made an explicit rule in the Qurʾān:

"Whoever comes with a good deed shall have ten like it. And whoever comes with an evil deed shall be requited only with its like, and they shall not be wronged." (al-Anʿām 6/160)

"The recompense of an evil is an evil like it." (al-Shūrā 42/40)

Both verses set up the same asymmetry: equivalence in evil, excess in good.

And verse thirty-one has lodged this inside the grammar. The choice of word changes: in the one a verb (ʿamilū — what they did), in the other an adjective (al-ḥusnā — what is most beautiful). The first party is attached to its own act; the second party passes beyond its act.

I record this as an observation; that the two clauses are built differently is data of the text and can be compared.

س-و-أ. Sūʾ — evil, ugliness. أَسَاءَ (Form IV) — he did evil. From the same root sayyiʾa (an evil deed), sawʾa (what must be covered).

ح-س-ن. Ḥusn — beauty, goodness. أَحْسَنَ (Form IV) — he did beautifully, he did good. From the same root iḥsān, ḥasana, ḥusnā.

Both are in Form IV, and this is a nicety of word order. In Arabic this form conveys transitivity and the bringing forth of something. The verbs mean, therefore, not "they became evil / they became good" but "they produced evil / they produced good."

The difference matters: the verse is not describing a character, it is recording a production. Not a bad person / a good person; one who does evil / one who does good.

Alladhīna yajtanibūna kabāʾira'l-ithmi wa'l-fawāḥisha illā'l-lamam · Inna rabbaka wāsiʿu'l-maghfira · Huwa aʿlamu bikum idh anshaʾakum mina'l-arḍi wa idh antum ajinnatun fī buṭūni ummahātikum · Fa-lā tuzakkū anfusakum; huwa aʿlamu bi-mani'ttaqā "Those who avoid the great sins and the shameful deeds — save for small lapses. Your Lord is wide in forgiveness. He knows you best, when He brought you forth from the earth and when you were embryos in the wombs of your mothers. So do not declare yourselves pure; He knows best who has guarded himself."

One of the densest verses of the sūra. There are five separate sentences, and the link between them is not visible at first sight.

Root: ج-ن-ب. Concrete sense: the side, the flank. Janb — the side; jānib — a side, a direction.

ٱجْتَنَبَ — Form VIII: to leave a thing to one side, to keep away from it. Not "not to do" but not to come near.

The choice of the verb is worth recording. It could have said lā yafʿalūn (they do not do). It says yajtanibūn — and this conveys a distance.

The practical difference: not doing a thing includes standing beside it and not doing it. Ijtināb, on the other hand, is moving away. The Qurʾān uses this verb regularly with prohibitions: "So avoid the abomination of idols" (al-Ḥajj 22/30: fa'jtanibū); "Avoid much supposition" (al-Ḥujurāt 49/12).

إِثْم — root أ-ث-م. The concrete sense of the root is dwelt on: to be slow, to lag behind, to be sluggish. Nāqatun āthima — a camel that lags behind.

The lexicographers' explanation: ithm is what holds a person back from good. Sin, by its root, is named as a delay — a load that slows the person down.

I give this derivation as transmitted from the lexicographers; I build no interpretation upon it.

كَبَٰٓئِر — the plural of kabīra (great). Kabāʾiru'l-ithm — "the great ones of sin."

فَوَاحِش — root ف-ح-ش. Fuḥsh — an ugliness that passes all bounds, excess. Fāḥisha, plural fawāḥish — a deed whose ugliness is plain.

The difference between the two categories:

A deed may be great and yet not plainly ugly; or a deed whose ugliness everyone knows may not be counted among the great sins. Two measures are set separately.

And this is the most disputed word in the sūra.

Root: ل-م-م. This root was treated in the section al-Fajr (al-Fajr 89/19: aklan lammā); what was recorded there:

لَمّ — root ل-م-م: to gather, to collect together. Lamma'l-shayʾa — he gathered up what was scattered.

And another derivative of the root is decisive here: أَلَمَّ بِ — to call briefly at a thing, to touch and pass on, to arrive without lodging. Alamma bi'l-manzil — he called at the house but did not stay.

Also: لَمَم — a light touch; and in one linguistic usage it is used of a slight clouding of the mind as well (someone being "lightly touched").

The common core of the root: to make contact but not to enter into.

And the disagreement is real:

There is a grammatical disagreement as well, and it matters:

Of what kind is the exception إِلَّا here?

It is transmitted that the majority of the grammarians call it munqaṭiʿ, and this reading appears the more consistent: if lamam were a kind of great sin, a person who did not avoid it could not be characterised as "one who avoids the great sins".

I state a preference and it is not binding: the root's sense of "to call and pass on, to touch and not stay" supports the second and third views; and these three (small sin / not repeated / approached but not done) do not exclude one another. The common core is: lamam is a fault that does not last, that does not settle in.

And this must be recorded explicitly: the boundaries of the distinction between "great sin" and "small sin" have been debated at length in the literature of law and theology, and there is no single list. Per the method (Method) no legal ruling is issued in this commentary; that the distinction exists is the Qurʾān's own datum (al-Nisāʾ 4/31: "If you avoid the great sins you are forbidden, We shall cover your lesser faults"), while where the boundaries lie is not the subject of this section.

And what is to be noticed in the word order: immediately after the fault is recorded, forgiveness is named.

وَاسِع — root و-س-ع. To be wide, to encompass, to suffice. Wusʿ — the limit of one's capacity; tawassuʿ — widening.

مَغْفِرَة — root غ-ف-ر. The concrete sense of the root: to cover, to close over. Mighfar — the protective helmet put over the head, from the same root. Maghfira is thus to draw a covering over something — not to erase but to cover.

The structure of the construction is worth recording: wāsiʿu'l-maghfira — "wide in forgiveness." Wideness is given as the attribute of the forgiving.

And this bears directly on the preceding sentence: lamam was recorded, then wideness was named. The recording of the fault and the naming of forgiveness are in the same sentence.

Before establishing the ruling "do not declare yourselves pure", the verse gives a proof. And the proof has to do with when a person's knowledge about himself begins.

أَنشَأَ — root ن-ش-أ. This root was treated in the sections al-Mulk, al-Muzzammil and al-Raḥmān. In the section on al-Mulk its difference from khalaqa was dwelt on. The summary: to be born, to grow, to come forth, to rise; inshāʾ — to build a structure step by step.

أَجِنَّة — root ج-ن-ن. The plural of janīn. The root was given above at verse 15: to cover, to conceal. Janīn — what is covered in the womb.

And what the sentence establishes is this:

Two stages are counted, and in both the person knows nothing about himself.

And the conclusion that follows is the ruling of the thirty-second verse: he is not in a position to pass judgement about himself.

This is a very firm piece of reasoning, and it works thus: to pass judgement on a file one must see the whole of the file. A person has not seen the beginning of his own story. The first part of the knowledge about himself is not in his hand.

I record this as my own reading; that the two records of time stand side by side in the verse is data of the text.

Root: ز-ك-و. This root was analysed in full in the section al-Shams, put to work in al-Layl and al-Aʿlā, and taken up as a tension in al-Jumuʿa. I do not repeat it; the summary:

Beneath the root lie two senses at once, and they are inseparable: cleanness/purification and growth/increase/blessing. The dictionaries do not divide these into separate entries. Zakāt comes from the same root and shows how the two senses join: property is cleansed and increases when a part of it is taken out. The joining of the two senses is seen in agriculture. A plant's growth depends on its being cleared of the weeds that choke it. Clearing is a diminishing, but its result is an increase.

And in this commentary a tension was taken up twice by way of precisely this verse. The section on al-Shams, in treating "he has prospered who purifies it" (91/9), and the section on al-Jumuʿa, in treating "He purifies them" (62/2), both pointed to this verse. In the section on al-Jumuʿa the resolution was given in a table:

And the conclusion recorded there: "what is forbidden is not the effort of purification but the claim of being purified. These are two different acts: one is working, the other is deciding about oneself."

That finding gains one further detail here, in the verse's own context.

For the word order of the verse establishes a cause and effect: the particle فَ (fa) attaches the ruling to the preceding sentence.

"He knows you best, when He brought you forth from the earth and when you were embryos in the wombs of your mothers. THEREFORE do not declare yourselves pure."

The ground of the prohibition is thus not moral but epistemological. The verse does not say "do not be proud", it does not say "be humble". It says "you do not have sufficient knowledge on this matter."

And this is a far more definite ground. Humility is the counsel of a virtue; a lack of knowledge is a finding of incompetence. The first depends on a person's choice, the second is his situation itself.

ٱتَّقَىٰ — root و-ق-ي. This root has been treated in many places in this commentary (al-Fātiḥa, al-Baqara and others); I do not repeat it. Its concrete sense: to be protected, to guard oneself from something. Wiqāya — a protective covering; ittiqāʾ — guarding oneself.

And the verse leaves the question "who is godfearing" in the same place: huwa aʿlamu bi-mani'ttaqā.

The link between the two sentences:

Verse 30: huwa aʿlamu bi-mani'htadā — "who has found the way, He knows." Verse 32: huwa aʿlamu bi-mani'ttaqā — "who has guarded himself, He knows."

The same pattern, two different verbs. The thirtieth verse closes off passing judgement about others, the thirty-second about oneself.

And this symmetry is the sūra's most practical finding:

Both directions are closed off. And I record this as an observation; that the two verses end in the same pattern is data of the text and can be counted.

A note: there is a link between the question of al-lamam and this ruling as well. The verse first accepts that small faults may occur, then names the wideness of forgiveness, then forbids declaring oneself pure. The order is: you have faults, they are covered, but it is not for you to decide that they have been covered.

A-fa-raʾayta'lladhī tawallā · Wa aʿṭā qalīlan wa akdā · A-ʿindahu ʿilmu'l-ghaybi fa-huwa yarā "Have you seen the one who turned his back? He gave a little and then stopped short. Does he have the knowledge of the unseen, so that he sees?"

The pattern of the nineteenth verse returns: a-fa-raʾayta — "have you seen?"

But there is a difference, and it is the nicety of word order:

The sūra passes from a plural address to a singular one. And what is shown becomes singular too: three idols in the nineteenth verse, one person in the thirty-third.

And this agrees with the general movement of the sūra. The scale narrows: a scene of seeing on the scale of the cosmos (5-18), the beliefs of a society (19-30), a principle (31-32), and now a single man.

I record this as an observation. This narrowing resembles the "circle" movement recorded in the section al-Wāqiʿa — there the sūra descended from the widest to the narrowest (a single person dying in a bed).

Reports are transmitted in the classical commentaries that these verses came down about a particular person, and several different names are given. I do not transmit these names, because the reports differ from one another and I am not certain which is established.

And in point of the text there is no need for it. The verse gives no name; with ٱلَّذِى ("the one who") it describes an attribute.

This principle was treated in the section al-Takwīr — al-ʿibratu bi-ʿumūmi'l-lafẓ (the ruling goes by the generality of the wording): "The verse gives no name; it gives a position." The same principle holds here.

And the position described is given by three verbs: he turned, he gave a little, he stopped short.

أَعْطَىٰ — root ع-ط-و. ʿAṭāʾ — a gift, a giving. Form IV: he gave, he bestowed. From the same root, aʿṭā wa'ttaqā treated in the section al-Layl (al-Layl 92/5).

أَكْدَىٰ — root ك-د-ي / ك-د-و. And the concrete sense of this word carries the whole force of the verse.

كُدْيَة (kudya) — the hard layer of rock beneath the ground.

أَكْدَى ٱلْحَافِر — the well-digger struck hard rock and could go no deeper.

The image is this: a man is digging a well. He digs for a while, the soil is soft, the work goes on. Then the pick strikes something — rock. And there the work stops. The well is left half-dug; no water comes.

And that the verb is in Form IV matters: akdā — "he struck rock, he stopped." The digger does not give up; the way ahead closes. Or, figuratively: he cuts himself off.

This is the work of the word in the verse, and it falls exactly into place.

The verse does not say "then he gave no more". It says "he struck rock". And this is the truest picture of not giving: you give up to a point, and then at some place you harden.

And the word qalīlan (a little) completes it. It is not said that the man gave nothing; it is said that he gave little. The well was dug but stayed shallow.

I record this as an observation: the concrete sense of the root (striking rock while digging a well) is a lexical datum; the assessment of the word's force as an image in this context is mine.

The order is striking: first he turns his back, then he gives, then he stops.

And the second verb looks as though it contradicts the first. Why should a man who has turned his back give anything?

I offer a reading and state that it is my own: the verse describes not a complete break but a half-attachment. The man does not withdraw entirely; he gives a certain amount, he comes a certain distance, and then he stops.

And this is a more common attitude than outright refusal. To enter upon a work and leave it half-done is seen more often than never entering upon it. The image of the well says exactly this: a well that has been dug but yields no water has taken more labour than an undug well and is just as useless.

I present this as an inference, not as transmitted.

And the sūra asks this man the sūra's central question: how do you know?

غَيْب — root غ-ي-ب. The concrete sense of the root: to disappear from sight, to pass out of the field of vision. Ghāba — it disappeared, it set; ghaybūba — disappearance.

Ghayb, then, does not mean "hidden" but "outside the field of vision". A thing's being ghayb is not its non-existence; it is its lying beyond the range of your sight.

فَهُوَ يَرَىٰ — "so that he sees?"

And the verb is again رأى. The verb the sūra uses six times. In this verse, inside a negative question:

The sūra uses the same verb in six places and compares two parties. One party saw; the other passes judgement about what it has not seen.

And the logic of the question is this: this man made a calculation. He gave, then stopped — that is, at some point he decided "this is enough" or "there is no return for this." Such a decision requires knowledge about the outcome.

The verse asks where that knowledge came from. And no answer is given — because the next verse moves elsewhere: "Or has he not been told of what is in the scrolls of Moses?"

The sūra does not say "you do not know", then; it says "the knowledge is elsewhere — have you looked at it?" This is not a refusal but a redirection. And the thirty-sixth verse will show that place.

Am lam yunabbaʾ bimā fī ṣuḥufi Mūsā · Wa Ibrāhīma'lladhī waffā "Or has he not been told of what is in the scrolls of Moses? And of Abraham, who fulfilled?"

And these two verses are the sūra's most important building block — because the whole of the seventeen verses that follow is the answer to this question.

The section running from the thirty-eighth verse to the fifty-fourth is not a series of independent sentences. All of them explain the mā in the expression بِمَا فِى صُحُفِ; they are أَنَّ / أَنْ clauses.

The grammar, that is, is this:

"Or has he not been told of what is in the scrolls — namely these: that no bearer of burdens bears the burden of another, that man shall have only what he strives for, that his striving will be seen, that he will be requited for it in full, that the final end is to his Lord, that it is He who makes to laugh and to weep…"

Let us set the clauses in order:

Eleven anna clauses, across seventeen verses, attached to a single question.

And this is the most important finding in the word order. If it is not seen, these verses are read wrongly.

For taken one by one these verses stand like independent rulings. Yet the text presents them as a list — and the heading of the list is: "what is written in the ancient scrolls."

The sūra says, that is: these principles are not new. They were in the scrolls given to Moses and in the scrolls of Abraham as well.

نَبَّأَ — root ن-ب-أ. Nabaʾ — an important piece of news. This root was analysed in full in the section al-Nabaʾ; I do not repeat it. The summary: a nabaʾ is not ordinary news (khabar) but great news that produces consequences.

And the verb is passive: lam yunabbaʾ — "has he not been told?"

The question asks, then, not about the man's ignorance but whether the knowledge has reached him. And the interrogative pattern (am… lam) is one in which the expected answer in Arabic is "no, he has been told".

And this completes the question of the thirty-fifth verse:

The two questions count two sources of knowledge: direct seeing, and communication. And both are refused — the first because it is impossible, the second because it has already taken place.

No excuse is left to the man, then: he has neither his own witnessing nor the claim of not having received the communication.

This word was treated in the section al-Bayyina and put to work in the sections al-Aʿlā and al-Takwīr. I do not repeat it; the summary: the root ص-ح-ف, a flat surface written upon; muṣḥaf is from the same root — that whose pages have been gathered together.

In the section on al-Aʿlā a table of the three uses in the Qurʾān was given, and precisely this verse stood there in the first category:

And in the section on al-Aʿlā a comparison was made with these two verses:

The same two names come side by side once more in the Qurʾān, and there the order is reversed. In al-Aʿlā: Abraham, then Moses. In al-Najm: Moses, then Abraham. I say nothing definite about the reason for this difference. The verse-ending may be a factor — since all the verses of al-Aʿlā end in -ā, Mūsā has to come last. The verse-ending of al-Najm is different.

Now I can complete that note, because the verse-ending of this sūra has been examined.

As recorded above in the section "The structure of the sūra", all the verses of al-Najm from 1 to 56 also end on the -ā sound. Both sūras use the same verse-ending, that is — and both Mūsā and waffā fit that sound.

In al-Najm, then, the order cannot be explained by the requirement of the verse-ending. Since both names suit the rhyme, the order may have been chosen for another reason.

I offer a possibility and do not present it as a definite claim: Ibrāhīm's coming last makes it possible to attach a qualifying clause to it — alladhī waffā. Such a qualifier, had it been placed in the middle of the sentence, would have broken the flow. The name with the qualifier may have been put last.

This does not close the question raised in the section on al-Aʿlā; but I record that the "verse-ending" possibility offered there does not work for al-Najm. A definite cause is still not given.

Root: و-ف-ي. Concrete sense: to be complete, to be without deficiency, to give a thing in full measure.

Derivatives:

• وَفَاء (wafāʾ) — fulfilling a promise completely.
• أَوْفَىٰ (awfā) — he measured in full, he gave without deficiency. The Qurʾān: "Give full measure" (al-Anʿām 6/152: awfu'l-kayl).
• تَوَفَّىٰ (tawaffā) — he took in full; and from there "decease" — the taking of the soul without remainder. The word wafāt thus means not "diminishing" but "being taken in full".
• أَوْفَى (awfā) as an elative: "the most complete" — and this will occur at verse 41 of this sūra: al-jazāʾa'l-awfā.

وَفَّىٰ — Form II (tafʿīl), and the doubling of this form conveys in Arabic repetition, multiplicity and comprehensiveness (this finding was given in detail in the section al-Takwīr).

The epithet means, therefore, not "faithful" but "one who fulfils exactly and again and again."

And the same root occurs twice in this sūra:

Verse 37: Ibrāhīma'lladhī وَفَّىٰ — "Abraham, who fulfilled completely" Verse 41: al-jazāʾa'l-أَوْفَىٰ — "the most complete requital"

A complete fulfilment on the human side, a complete payment on the side of requital. The same root, in the same section, at two ends.

I record this as an observation; the repetition of the root is data of the text.

What he fulfilled is not stated, and this resembles the technique of leaving indeterminate that the sūra has used from the beginning. Various explanations are transmitted in the classical commentaries (the commands given to him, the trials, the delivery of the message). I make no choice, because the verse gives no object.

But an observation about word order can be recorded, and it is my own reading: the first item that comes immediately after is that no one bears the burden of another (38). After a man "who did his own part in full" is named, that is, it is said that "no one bears another's burden." The two are two faces of one principle: everyone carries his own share, and Abraham carried his share in full.

I do not claim that the text establishes this connection; that the two verses stand side by side is data of the text.

Allā taziru wāziratun wizra ukhrā "That no bearer of burdens bears the burden of another."

This root was treated in two places:

• In the section al-Inshirāḥ, وِزْر (wizr) — a heavy load, and from there sin.
• In the section al-Qiyāma, وَزَر (wazar) — a refuge, the rock one takes shelter behind in a mountain.

In the section on al-Qiyāma it was analysed how the two senses join, and what was recorded there is decisive here:

The explanation the lexicographers transmit is this: at the centre of the root lies the idea of weight and mass. Wazar is the steep and heavy mass of rock on a mountain — the thing a person shelters behind. Wizr is the weight carried. Wazīr is the one who shares the weight. The same family of words names both what is loaded onto you and what supports you. For both are weight: one stands upon you, one beneath. I present this joining as my own reading; that both senses are present in the root is a lexical datum, the conceptual division of labour between them is a connection of my own making.

And the section on al-Qiyāma had put precisely this verse in its table of comparison:

And the conclusion there: "The same root carries two refusals at once: on that day there is nothing to hide behind and no one on whom to load your burden. There are two ways of escape — to hide or to throw the responsibility onto another — and the Qurʾān closes both with a word from the same root."

The section on al-Qiyāma made the connection; I complete it here and add two details.

The most familiar derivative of the root: وَزِير (wazīr). This word, which lives on in English as vizier, comes from the same root and means "one who shares the burden".

The Qurʾān uses this word — and where it uses it is instructive:

"And give me a helper (wazīran) from my family: Aaron (Hārūn), my brother. Strengthen me by him and make him a partner in my task." (Ṭāhā 20/29-32)

When Moses asked his Lord for a wazīr he was asking for a partner in a burden. And note: verse 36 of this sūra speaks precisely of the scrolls of Moses.

This may be a coincidence, and I think it is; yet when these two ends of the word-family stand together — a helper who shares a burden and a responsibility that cannot be transferred — a distinction becomes visible:

In a task one may be helped; in a reckoning one may not. A vizier shares the burden of the work; but on the day of reckoning no one takes another's wizr.

I record this distinction as my own reading. The two derivatives of the word are lexical data; this division of labour between them is a connection of my own making.

وَازِرَةٌ … وِزْرَ — and the verb is تَزِرُ as well. Three words in the sentence are from the same root:

Agent, verb and object — all three from one root. This is a strong emphasis in Arabic and turns the sentence almost into a formula.

And that the active participle is feminine is a grammatical matter: wāzira — "one who bears (feminine)". The reason is that the word nafs is feminine; that is, "a soul that bears a burden". This is the working of Arabic grammar, not a ruling about sex.

This sentence occurs in five places in the Qurʾān, and in almost the same wording:

This repetition was already recorded in the section Nūḥ and was used there as evidence in a theological debate:

The Qurʾān's general principle is the opposite of this. "No bearer of burdens bears the burden of another" (al-Anʿām 6/164; al-Isrāʾ 17/15; Fāṭir 35/18; al-Zumar 39/7; al-Najm 53/38). This principle is among the rulings the Qurʾān repeats most. No one is condemned for the family he was born into.

And the distinctive thing about the occurrence in this sūra is this: in the other four places the sentence is given as a ruling. Here it is given as the first item of "what is written in the ancient scrolls."

The sūra does not, that is, claim this principle as its own; it presents it as a foundation shared with the earlier revelations.

This is the real matter in the word order and must not be passed over.

I offer a reading and state that it is my own.

Those addressed by this sūra were a community who thought they were hearing something new. And the matter debated in the first half of the sūra was exactly this: where does this man speak from?

The thirty-sixth verse brings a third party into the debate: Moses and Abraham. Both are names known in that society and — Abraham especially — claimed by it. Mecca claimed to be the heir of Abraham.

What the sūra does, then, is this: it points to a source the one addressed accepts and says that the same principles are found there.

And this is the move that closes the sūra's argument about knowledge. The source of knowledge had been asked about twice: did he see (35), was he told (36). Now the third answer comes: these principles had already been communicated before.

One of the sūra's last verses will formulate this explicitly: هَٰذَا نَذِيرٌ مِّنَ ٱلنُّذُرِ ٱلْأُولَىٰ — "This is a warner of the warners of old" (56).

The sūra sets up a claim of continuity, then, not a claim of novelty.

The same matter was treated in the section al-Aʿlā, and the note recorded there holds here as well: "The scrolls of Abraham were not matched with any existing text. It was recorded that the verse carries not a claim about a document but a claim of continuity."

The same reserve is needed here: the Qurʾān does not say to which text now in hand "the scrolls of Moses" correspond, and I make no such matching.

Wa an laysa li'l-insāni illā mā saʿā · Wa anna saʿyahu sawfa yurā · Thumma yujzāhu'l-jazāʾa'l-awfā "And that man shall have only what he strives for. And that his striving will be seen. Then he will be requited for it with the most complete requital."

Root: س-ع-ي. This root was analysed in the sections al-Layl and ʿAbasa and put to work in al-Ḥadīd and al-Ghāshiya. And in all four, precisely this verse was given as an example. I do not repeat it; the summary:

Its concrete sense is to walk fast, to go at a pace close to running. The state between walking and running. From there the word widened in Arabic to mean to strive, to labour, to run after some business — the English "to run after" carries both of these senses, which makes it a good rendering. The choice of the word is meaningful. It could have said ʿamal (work), fiʿl (act), kasb (acquisition). It says saʿy — a state of being in movement, in haste, in pursuit of something.

Now something can be added to the finding made in the section on al-Layl, and here lies the real matter.

The verse does not say "man shall have only what he did." It says "man shall have only what he strove for."

And the difference is real.

ʿAmal (work) conveys an outcome: what came about. Saʿy conveys a movement: the labour expended.

A person's striving and the outcome of that striving do not always coincide:

• A farmer ploughs his field, sows, waters — and hail falls. The striving complete, the outcome nil.
• A person nurses a sick man, labours day and night — and the sick man dies. The striving complete, no outcome.
• Another comes into an inheritance without doing anything. No striving, an outcome.

Outcomes depend on hundreds of factors not in a person's hand. And a reckoning set up on what is not in a person's hand would not be just.

The verse shifts the measure from outcome to striving. And this is the most just construction of the principle of requital: a person is responsible for what he can control.

I record this finding as my own reading; the sense of the word (running, striving) is a lexical datum and has been recorded in four separate sections. What is new is the tying of this distinction between saʿy and ʿamal to the principle of requital.

And one further note is needed. This reading does not mean that the quality of the striving is unimportant. This point was treated in the section al-Ghāshiya:

al-Isrāʾ 17/19 sets a condition on striving: "Whoever wants the hereafter and strives for it with the striving due to it, being a believer — theirs is a striving that finds its return" — striving alone is not enough, that is; it must be fitted to its target.

The section on al-Ghāshiya also compared it with the verse of al-Layl, "your strivings are scattered" (92/4: inna saʿyakum la-shattā): "In al-Layl the strivings were shattā: scattered, separate from one another, not going to the same place."

The Qurʾān's ruling on saʿy is thus in two parts: you have only your striving (al-Najm 53/39), and where your striving goes matters (al-Layl 92/4; al-Isrāʾ 17/19).

The sentence is again built with a pattern of restriction, this time with laysa … illā.

And the restriction has two directions — both should be recorded:

The same sentence is both a limit and a guarantee. And which of the two comes forward depends on the position of the one reading it: a limit for one who expects a windfall, a guarantee for one whose labour has gone unrewarded.

I record this as an observation.

سَوْفَ is a particle of the future in Arabic and, compared with sa- (the near future), conveys the distant future. Not "soon" but "later, one day."

يُرَىٰ — passive: "will be seen." By whom it will be seen is not stated.

And the verb is again ر-أ-ي. The sixth and last use in the sūra.

Let us complete the sūra's series of seeing:

And the end of the series is striking: the sūra begins with what one person saw and ends at a point where everyone is seen.

In the first five the verb is active (someone sees). In the sixth it is passive: it is seen.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the series of verbs: the sūra uses the verb of seeing first as a privilege (the messenger saw), then as an incapacity (the man cannot see), and finally as an exposure (everyone's striving will be seen).

And what the passive pattern does here matters. Had it said "God will see his striving", only an observation would have been recorded. With yurā, the striving is made visible — brought out, put on display.

In the section al-Takwīr this was treated as the opening of the records (81/10: wa idha'l-ṣuḥufu nushirat), and the finding recorded there fits here: "the veil between what is seen and what is recorded is lifted."

The particle ثُمَّ conveys in Arabic a sequence with an interval: "then, after a while."

And this establishes a distinction in the word order:

The seeing and the requital are not the same moment. First the striving is brought out, then the requital is given.

And this sequence is a known condition of justice: judgement is given after the evidence has been produced. The verse lodges this sequence inside the grammar.

I record this as an observation; that the particle thumma conveys an interval is a grammatical datum.

Jazāʾ is a neutral word in Arabic: requital. Not punishment (the sense the borrowed word has taken on in Turkish); the requital of the good as much as of the bad. The Qurʾān shows this explicitly: "Is the requital (jazāʾu) of goodness anything but goodness?" (al-Raḥmān 55/60) — this verse was treated in the section al-Raḥmān.

ٱلْأَوْفَىٰ — an elative from the root wafāʾ: "the most complete, the most entire."

And as recorded above, the same root was used of Abraham at verse 37: alladhī waffā — who fulfilled completely.

A man did completely; his requital will be complete too. Two words four verses apart, from the same root.

I record this as an observation — the repetition of the root is a countable datum, while the establishing of a deliberate relation between them is my inference.

Wa anna ilā rabbika'l-muntahā "And that the final end is to your Lord."

In the section al-Nāziʿāt this verse was already entered in a table of comparison (on the occasion of al-Nāziʿāt 79/44), and the grammatical finding recorded there holds here as well:

The word order of the sentence is worth recording. "Ilā rabbika" (to your Lord) has been brought forward; muntahā left to the end. In Arabic an element brought forward from its normal place conveys restriction.

The sentence means, that is, not "the end is to your Lord" but "the end is to your Lord alone."

This link was made above in the section on verses 13-15; I complete it here.

The word ٱلْمُنتَهَىٰ occurs twice in the sūra, and twenty-eight verses lie between them:

The difference of particle is worth dwelling on. ʿInda conveys a static position: being beside a thing. Ilā conveys direction: going towards a thing.

The fourteenth verse stands in a place; the forty-second goes towards one.

And I record as my own reading: the sūra uses the word "end" first in the name of a place and then gives it as a direction. The Lote Tree is a boundary stone — one stops there. The Lord is not a boundary but an arrival.

The repetition of the word is data of the text and can be counted; this relation between the two verses is a reading of my own.

And something small but important happens in the word order: in the middle of the eleven anna clauses there is a sudden shift to the second person singular.

Wa anna ilā رَبِّكَ 'l-muntahā — "to your Lord".

There is no such address before or after it: 38-41 are general rulings (man, striving, requital); from 43 on it is the third person (wa annahu huwa). This verse alone, in the middle of the list, turns to the second person.

I offer a reading and state that it is my own. The list is a series of rulings, and rulings are abstract. In the very middle of the series the forty-second verse attaches the ruling to a person: your Lord. What stands behind all the items of the list is not a distant principle but the addressee's own Lord.

And the verse-ending may support this — rabbika'l-muntahā fits the -ā sound. The change of address may therefore have a technical cause too.

I make no definite claim of intent; the change of pronoun is data of the text.

And there is this too: the same second-person singular address will come once more at the end of the list — fa-bi-ayyi ālāʾi رَبِّكَ tatamārā (55). The list is thus centred by a "your Lord" and closed by a "your Lord".

This is a datum verifiable within the sūra.

Wa annahu huwa aḍḥaka wa abkā · Wa annahu huwa amāta wa aḥyā "And that it is He who makes to laugh and to weep. And that it is He who gives death and gives life."

Four verbs, all four in the same pattern: أَفْعَلَ (ifʿāl, Form IV).