al-Najm 53:11-12

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.