54. Sūrat al-Qamar

Fifty-five verses. Meccan. It takes its name from the last word of the first verse: ٱلْقَمَر — the moon.

This sūra is a refrain sūra, and the third of them in this commentary. In the section on al-Mursalāt it was shown that a sentence of judgement repeated ten times divides the text into nine parts; in the section on al-Raḥmān it was treated how a question repeated thirty-one times sets the sūra on a double rhythm from beginning to end. Al-Qamar uses the same technique with two separate refrains, and at a far lower density than either of the earlier two.

The two refrains are these:

وَلَقَدْ يَسَّرْنَا ٱلْقُرْءَانَ لِلذِّكْرِ فَهَلْ مِن مُّدَّكِرٍ "We have indeed made the Qurʾān easy for remembrance; is there anyone who will remember?" — 17, 22, 32, 40

فَكَيْفَ كَانَ عَذَابِى وَنُذُرِ "How then were My punishment and My warnings!" — 16, 18, 21, 30

But these two lists are incomplete, and until the incompleteness is recorded the structure of the sūra does not come into view. The second half of the first refrain — fa-hal min muddakir — occurs six times in the sūra: four inside the full refrain (17, 22, 32, 40), and two at the end of another sentence (15 and 51). The second half of the second refrain — ʿadhābī wa nudhur — likewise occurs six times: four in the form of a question (fa-kayfa kāna, 16, 18, 21, 30), and two in the form of a command (fa-dhūqū, 37, 39).

So the sūra has not two refrains but two refrain cores, each of which returns six times. I give the table of this below.

The second defining feature of the sūra lies in its content. Al-Qamar is the Qurʾān's list of the peoples destroyed: Noah (Nūḥ), ʿĀd, Thamūd, Lot (Lūṭ) and the house of Pharaoh. Five peoples, thirty-four verses. And not one of these five accounts is told here from beginning to end; each of them is told at length elsewhere in the Qurʾān. What happens here is the drawing up of a list — and at the end of the list the text turns to the one addressed: "Are your disbelievers better than those?" (43).

The third feature is in the sound, and I take it up in a separate section: all fifty-five verses of the sūra end with the letter ر. In the Qurʾān, so unbroken a unity of verse-ending across so long a sūra is rare.

Since the basmala was treated in earlier sections it is not taken up again here; the verses are numbered without it.

There is wide agreement that the sūra is Meccan. The style supports this: short verses, a single-sounding verse-ending, accounts of destroyed peoples, a focus on resurrection and reckoning, the absence of any legal ruling, and the position of the one addressed as mukadhdhib (one who denies).

In some sources it is transmitted that verse 45 ("That host shall be routed, and they shall turn their backs in flight") was revealed at Medina, or that it points to Badr. That is a separate matter and I take it up under that verse; it does not change the judgement about the sūra as a whole.

The number of verses in the common counting is fifty-five.

Looking at a sūra's verse-ending (the sound that closes each verse) is something this commentary has done from the start. In al-Qamar the map of verse-endings is easy to draw, because it has no exceptions.

Below are the last words of the fifty-five verses in order:

The final letter of all fifty-five is ر. And more than that: nearly all of them close on a single syllable of the form -ur / -ir / -ar.

This has two consequences, and both of them govern how the text is read aloud.

One — the verse-ending is selecting the word-forms. In several places in the sūra one can see that, of two words that could have given the same sense, the one ending in ر has been chosen:

The elision of the yāʾ of annexation deserves attention, because it concerns the most frequently repeated word of the sūra. The nudhur of the phrase ʿadhābī wa nudhur is in fact nudhurī — "my warnings". The final yāʾ has been dropped for the sake of the verse-ending, and a kasra is left behind: نُذُرِ. The same elision, for the same reason, appears twice in Sūrat al-Mulk: kayfa kāna nakīr (67/18) and kayfa kāna nadhīr (67/17) — both are in fact nakīrī and nadhīrī. This was treated in the section on al-Mulk.

So there is an interesting situation: the pronoun "my" is erased from the writing for the sake of the rhyme, but stands in the meaning. Two words side by side: ʿadhābī — its yāʾ in place; nudhur — its yāʾ dropped. In the same sentence, with the same owner, visible in one word and invisible in the other.

Two — the sūra is built to be recited in a single breath. Because the verse-ending does not change, the reciter descends on the same sound for fifty-five verses. The refrains too end on that same sound (nudhur, muddakir). That is, between a refrain verse and a non-refrain verse there is no boundary in sound; the boundary is in the wording alone.

This must be compared with al-Raḥmān. There the refrain had a sound of its own — tukadhdhibān — which was in tune with the sūra's general dual sound. In al-Qamar the refrain has no separate sound; it dissolves into the sound of the sūra.

I record this as my own reading, but its ground is the table above and can be verified: in al-Qamar you have to look at the wording to notice the refrain; in al-Raḥmān the ear is enough.

One caveat. I draw no claim of a miracle from this unity of verse-ending. Rhyme of this kind is a widespread technique in Arabic poetry and in rhymed prose, and in the Qurʾān every sūra has an order of its own. What is worth recording here is the absence of exceptions and the length of the sūra; both are countable data of the text.

Three things emerge from the table.

One — the fifth account has no refrain. Four accounts close with wa-laqad yassarnā; the fifth does not. I take up separately, under verses 41-42, what this corresponds to in the structure of the sūra.

Two — the section on reward is two verses long. Of fifty-five verses, fifty-three are warning, punishment, account and reckoning; two are garden. In al-Raḥmān thirty-two verses were garden. Two refrain sūras have placed the weight at exactly opposite ends.

Three — the accounts are not equal in length, and the sequence is not a descending curve: Noah 6 verses, ʿĀd 3 verses, Thamūd 7 verses, Lot 6 verses, Pharaoh 2 verses. The longest account is thus in the middle (Thamūd), the shortest at the end (Pharaoh). The list shows no smooth diminution; there is an abrupt cut at the end.

The table below shows which refrain opens each account, which closes it, and where in the account the refrain falls. This table is the real map of the sūra.

What this table says is: the refrain is not mechanical. The same sentence does five different jobs in five accounts.

One — enclosure in ʿĀd. Verse eighteen stands alone as this: "ʿĀd denied; how then were My punishment and My warnings!" That is, the sentence is set at the opening of the account. Then comes a description of two verses (19-20), and then the same sentence comes again, alone, at verse twenty-one. The account of ʿĀd is thus framed by the same sentence placed on either side of a three-verse description.

Two — in Thamūd the question comes before the answer. Verse twenty-nine relates the crime (they hamstrung the camel). Verse thirty asks: "How then was My punishment!" Verse thirty-one answers: "We sent against them a single cry." That is, the sūra asks the question before its answer. In the other accounts the question comes after the event has been told; here it cuts in.

Three — in Lot the mood changes. In three of the four accounts the punishment refrain is a question: fa-kayfa kāna ʿadhābī wa nudhur — "how then was My punishment". In the account of Lot it occurs twice, and both times it is not a question but a command: fa-dhūqū ʿadhābī wa nudhur — "so taste My punishment and My warnings". A question speaks about a third party; a command turns directly to the one addressed. In the fourth account the sūra turns its language towards speaking with the one addressed — and in the next section (from 43 onward) it will turn to him entirely. The change of mood is therefore a preparation.

I record these three points as my own reading. The verse numbers of the refrains and their moods are data of the text and can be verified; the reading of their function that I draw from them is mine.

These two sūras stand side by side in the codex, and both are refrain sūras. The comparison is therefore unavoidable. In al-Raḥmān the refrain of al-Raḥmān was treated under four headings: where it occurs, what the word ālāʾ means, why the verb is dual, and what it means that it comes after the sections on punishment as well. I do not repeat those here; I set al-Qamar on top of that analysis.

Now let us look at what the differences mean.

One — the one points with a finger, the other sweeps the room.

The question of al-Raḥmān is in the dual, and its addressee is known: the two weighty kinds, humankind and jinn. The question is put to them directly, and every time it is put it returns to the same two addressees. The pronoun of address occurs twice in the sentence: Rabbi-kumā and tukadhdhibā-n.

The question of al-Qamar looks for an indefinite subject: hal min muddakirin — "is there anyone who will remember?" The sentence contains no pronoun of address. The question is asked of no one; it is asked into the open.

And this grammatical difference matches the subject of the two sūras exactly:

• A favour is given to someone. In counting a favour, al-Raḥmān has to point at the one addressed: this was given to you, that was given to you. Without an owner there is no favour.
• A lesson stands in the open. The four accounts of al-Qamar belong to no one; they lie before everyone. The question is therefore not "why do you not take the lesson" but "is there anyone who takes it".

I record this as my own reading. The grammatical structure of the two sentences is verifiable data; the connection between them is my inference.

Two — al-Raḥmān only asks, al-Qamar first states.

The refrain of al-Raḥmān is a question from beginning to end; it carries not a single declarative sentence. The first half of al-Qamar's refrain is a statement: "We have indeed made the Qurʾān easy for remembrance." The question comes only after that statement.

This narrows the scope of the question. Al-Qamar's question is not "why do you not take heed"; it is "given that it has been made easy, is there anyone who takes heed". The question, that is, closes off the excuse in advance. No excuse of difficulty remains.

Al-Raḥmān's question does not close off an excuse; it closes off a count: it asks which favour, and the list of favours it faces has already been enumerated.

Three — neither sūra gives an answer, but their silences differ.

The observation recorded in the section on al-Raḥmān was this: the question is asked thirty-one times and in none of them is an answer given. So too in al-Qamar: fa-hal min muddakir is asked six times, and not once is it said "yes, there was such a one" or "no, there was no one".

But the two silences are not of the same kind:

• In al-Raḥmān you cannot answer. The question "which favour do you deny" has no honest answer; it is asked precisely because it makes an answer impossible.
• In al-Qamar you can answer — and the one who answers becomes the answer. The question asks "is there anyone"; the answer is whether the one asked places himself in that empty place or not.

So al-Raḥmān's question is a closing question, al-Qamar's an open-ended one.

Four — the punishment refrain does not exist in al-Raḥmān.

Al-Qamar's second refrain — fa-kayfa kāna ʿadhābī wa nudhur — has no counterpart in al-Raḥmān. There the sections on punishment also close with the same question about favour; there is no separate sentence of punishment. This was dwelt on in the section on al-Raḥmān: that "which favour" is asked even after the description of the Fire was the ground for the second sense of the word ālāʾ that arises from the context.

Al-Qamar has split the job in two: there is no language of favour, there is a language of warning; and the warning has a sentence of its own.

To put it in one sentence: al-Raḥmān divides a list of favours with one question; al-Qamar divides a list of destructions with two. The same technique on two different grounds.

The root ر-س-ل occurs four times in the sūra, and in all four it is in the form of a verb or an active participle:

In none of the four is what is sent a prophet. Three are instruments of punishment, one an instrument of trial.

And more interesting still: the word رَسُول does not occur in the sūra at all. The messengers are named in only two places (Noah — 9, Lot — 33-37), and Noah is called "Our servant" (ʿabdanā), not "Our messenger". The names of Ṣāliḥ, Hūd and Moses do not occur at all. The presence of the messengers in the sūra is fitted into a single word: ٱلنُّذُر.

This word occurs eleven times in the sūra:

The word has two readings, and both are recorded by the lexicographers:

• نُذُر, the plural of nadhīr: warners — that is, the prophets.
• نُذُر, the plural with the sense of a verbal noun, from nudhr / nadhīr: warnings — that is, the messages brought.

According to the context, one or the other comes forward. "Thamūd denied the warners" is a correct reading, and so is "they denied the warnings". The Qurʾān does not separate the two senses here, and its not separating them is functional: to deny the warner and to deny the warning are, in the language of this sūra, the same act.

I record this observation as my own reading. The two senses of the word are lexical data; that the word rasūl does not occur in the sūra at all is data of the text; the conclusion I draw from the two is mine.

I apply here the method applied in the sections on Nūḥ and al-Raḥmān: to see what a sūra does, look first at what it does not do.

• No detail of the splitting of the moon. When, where, how many saw it, how they reacted — none of this is said. One sentence: "and the moon has split."
• Almost no prophets' names. Noah and Lot occur. Ṣāliḥ, Hūd and Moses do not; their peoples do.
• No building of the ship. Only its material is named (13). Noah's building of it is at Hūd 11/37-38.
• Noah's son, his wife, the length of his mission: absent. These are in other sūras and were itemised in the section on Sūrat Nūḥ.
• How the she-camel came: absent. As was recorded in the section on al-Shams, the Qurʾān nowhere says this.
• The city of Lot's people is not named. The same note was made in the section on al-Ḥāqqa.
• No account of Pharaoh. Even his name does not occur; āla Firʿawn occurs. Moses, the staff, the sea, the drowning — none of it.
• No legal ruling. There is a single command in the sūra, and it is directed at the Prophet: "so turn away from them" (6), "watch and be patient" (27, spoken as said to Ṣāliḥ).
• No description of the Garden. Two verses, a description of four words: jannātin wa nahar + fī maqʿadi ṣidqin ʿinda malīkin muqtadir.

All of these exist elsewhere in the Qurʾān. So this is not a lack but a choice. This sūra uses not the content of the accounts but their listability. What is told is not the events; it is the fact that the events came one after another.

Iqtarabati'l-sāʿatu wa'nshaqqa'l-qamar "The Hour has drawn near and the moon has split."

One of the most debated opening sentences in the Qurʾān. I shall look first at the words, then at the grammar, then at the disagreement — because the disagreement arises precisely from the grammar.

Root: ق-ر-ب. To be near. This root has been treated earlier in this commentary — in al-Maʿārij by way of qarīb (near), and in al-Nabaʾ and al-Dhāriyāt again in the context of nearness in time. The issue here is not the sense of the root but its form.

The verb is on the pattern إِفْتِعَال (iftiʿāl, Form VIII): iqtaraba. The basic load this form carries in Arabic is that the act is realised upon the agent himself, with an added effort or intensity. Kasara (he broke) → iktasara (he broke for himself, he took by breaking); jamaʿa (he gathered) → ijtamaʿa (they gathered together).

The difference between qaruba and iqtaraba, in the form the lexicographers transmit it, is this: qaruba states being near, iqtaraba states the movement of drawing near — it is approaching, the distance is closing.

The Qurʾān uses this verb of the Hour in two places, and both are on the same pattern:

"The reckoning of mankind has drawn near, while they turn away in heedlessness." (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/1) "The Hour has drawn near and the moon has split." (al-Qamar 54/1)

As was recorded in al-Takāthur, sūras that open straight into a statement without any preamble are few, and these two are on that list. The reader is set down in the middle of the scene.

Another trace of the same root in this sūra: the form مُقْتَرِب is not present here, but the pattern of iqtaraba is the same as that of مُقْتَدِر in verses 42 and 55 (the active participle of Form VIII). This is a relation of pattern, not of root; I draw no meaning from it, I only record it.

Root: ش-ق-ق. This root was treated in full in al-Inshiqāq and I do not repeat it here. Of what was recorded there, this is what is needed for this verse:

• The concrete sense of the root is to split, to divide in two, to break something apart by cracking it.
• شِقّ (shiqq) is one of the two pieces of what has been split; the Turkish word şık, "an option, one of the alternatives", comes from it.
• مَشَقَّة (mashaqqa) is hardship — on the lexicographers' explanation, what splits a person.
• شِقَاق (shiqāq) is separation, the division between communities (al-Baqara 2/137).
• شَقِيق (shaqīq) is a full brother — one split off from the same stock.

And the threefold distinction established in the section on al-Inshiqāq holds here too: falq opens what is closed; faṭr splits and founds out of nothing; shaqq divides what has already been founded. The splitting of the moon is told with shaqq of these three: there is no birth and no founding here; there is the dividing of something that stood together.

The verb is again on the pattern إِنْفِعَال (infiʿāl, Form VII): inshaqqa. As was recorded in the section on al-Inshiqāq, this form conveys the middle sense — undergoing an outside action, submitting to it. The moon does not crack of itself; it yields to something done to it. The agent is not named, but the form implies that there is one.

This verse already appeared in the table in the section on al-Inshiqāq:

What is striking in the table is this: the only heavenly body on the list is the moon. In all the other uses of the root what splits is either the earth or the sky itself. The moon is the one single body.

The sentence consists of two verbs in the perfect and a wāw between them:

And the whole disagreement arises from this. For in Arabic a perfect verb can also relate an event that has not yet happened — and it does so on two different grounds:

One — as an expression of certainty. A future event whose occurrence is certain is related as though it had happened. The Qurʾān uses this often:

"The command of God has come; do not seek to hasten it." (al-Naḥl 16/1) — the command has not yet come. "And the trumpet was blown." (al-Zumar 39/68) — the scene of the resurrection in the perfect. "And Hell was brought that day." (al-Fajr 89/23) — treated in the section on al-Fajr.

This is not a stylistic preference but a settled possibility of Arabic, and it is treated under a heading of its own in the classical books on the language.

Two — the relating of an event that really is past. This is the perfect verb's own proper job, and it requires no separate justification.

Now the question is this: the first verb (iqtarabat) is beyond dispute of the first kind — the Hour has not yet come, yet "has drawn near" is said. And the second verb? Is inshaqqa, coming in the same sentence, with the same connective, in the same tense, also of the first kind, or of the second?

This is where the two great readings arise.

On this question I issue no definite ruling. Per the method (Method) I give the disagreement with its evidence and I do not impose a preference. There are two main views and one reconciling view.

A note is required. The ascription of the second view to al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī is widely transmitted in the classical commentaries; I do not speak with certainty about the soundness of the ascription, since I have no verified chain of transmission before me. The view itself is present in the sources; whose it is is another matter.

There is also a third, reconciling reading, adopted by a not inconsiderable number of exegetes: the event occurred in the past and is at the same time a sign that the Hour has drawn near. On this reading the two verbs are joined not as cause and effect but as sign and thing signified: the Hour has drawn near; as a token of this the moon has split. This reading tries to hold together both the transmitted ground of the first view and the concern for the unity of the sentence in the second.

No preference is adopted in this commentary. Both readings have a ground in the text, and neither blocks the reading of the rest of the sūra: whichever reading you take, from the second verse onward what the sūra says does not change — a sign is shown, it is turned away from, it is called "magic".

There is a kind of claim that circulates widely around this verse: the claim that some geological formation on the surface of the moon (most often a fissure or a rille) is the "scientific proof" of this verse, together with the various accounts that accompany it.

This commentary does not use these claims. The ground is an explicit clause of Method: "No hunting for scientific miracles. No modern piece of knowledge is forced onto a verse."

Beyond that there are two further practical reasons:

One. The claim itself has no support — what is said about the dating of formations on the lunar surface and about the mechanisms that produced them is not of a kind that can be made a support for this claim.

Two, and more important: the claim works against the verse, not for it. If you tie the truth of a text to a current scientific interpretation, then when the interpretation changes you have brought the text down with it. This is in any case not the Qurʾān's own answer in the second verse; that verse relates what those who see a sign do — not the physical explanation of the sign.

I record one further observation, and I state that it is my own reading: the verse itself does not relate the event, it only records it. Two words. No date, no place, no witness, no duration, no manner. If the purpose of the text were to present a miracle, the least it would do is to describe the event. The text does not do this; in the very next verse it moves to the reaction. What the verse is concerned with, then, is not the sign itself but the stance taken towards the sign.

Wa in yaraw āyatan yuʿriḍū wa yaqūlū siḥrun mustamirr "If they see a sign they turn away and say, 'a passing magic'."

The sentence is a conditional structure: in (if) + yaraw (they see) → yuʿriḍū (they turn away) + yaqūlū (they say). All three verbs are imperfect and in the jussive.

And at just this point a datum falls into the disagreement over the first verse. The first verse was in the perfect; the second is in the imperfect. The text is therefore moving from an event to a habit: this happened once; and whenever these people see a sign they do this.

The conditional particle chosen is إِنْ, not إِذَا. The difference the lexicographers record: idhā is used for a condition expected or certain to occur, in for a condition that is possible or rare. The use of in here implies that their seeing a sign is a rare situation — and this fits the exceptional character of the event the first verse relates.

I record this as an observation about the grammar; I do not claim that the in / idhā distinction works absolutely everywhere, since there are places in the Qurʾān where it is relaxed.

Root: ع-ر-ض. Concrete sense: breadth, width. ʿArḍ — the width of a thing (as against its length). ʿArīḍ — wide.

Two branches come out of this, and both are in active use in the Qurʾān:

• عَرَضَ — to turn a thing broadside and present it, to set it forth. ʿArḍ, maʿrūḍ, maʿriḍ (an exhibition), iʿrāḍ.
• أَعْرَضَ (Form IV) — to turn away. The lexicographers' explanation: to turn not one's face but one's side. That is, you show the one before you not your face but your width.

This detail matters. The English expression "to turn away" gives the movement correctly but not the picture inside the word. The picture in Arabic is this: the face-to-face stance is broken, the person turns himself sideways. To refuse, one need not speak; changing one's stance is enough.

And read together with the "presenting" sense of the same root, a contrast emerges: ʿarḍ is opening a thing to the one before you; iʿrāḍ is closing yourself to him. The same root names both the offering and the refusal of what is offered. This is a datum of the language; the reading of it as a contrast is mine.

This word has been treated in many places in this commentary and I do not repeat it. Only one point here: a sign exists not for its own sake but for what it points to. To see an āya is not to watch a display; it is to receive a direction. For the one who takes the sign and does not look where it points, the āya ceases to be an āya; only an event is left.

Further on in the sūra the same word will occur twice more: in verse 15, "and We left it as a sign"; in verse 42, "they denied all Our signs".

Root: س-ح-ر. This root was treated in this commentary in al-Muddaththir and al-Dhāriyāt. What was recorded there and is decisive here is this: the root yields two distinct words —

• سِحْر (siḥr) — magic.
• سَحَر (saḥar) — the last part of the night, the time just before dawn. Its plural is asḥār.

As was recorded in the section on al-Dhāriyāt, the lexicographers ground the relation between these two senses in the hour when light and darkness mix and the eye can be deceived. That explanation is ascribed to the lexicographers; it is not offered as a settled etymology, and I do not offer it as one here either.

But there is something that must be recorded for this sūra. Both words of the root occur in it:

So at the beginning of the sūra one group calls what it sees siḥr; thirty-two verses later another group is saved at saḥar. The same three letters.

I record this as my own reading, and I mark its limit: that the two words are from the same root is a datum of the language and can be verified. The claim that the two are set opposite one another in the sūra and that this is a deliberate choice is not mine, and I do not make it. I only record an overlap found in the text.

Root: م-ر-ر. The concrete sense of the root: to pass, to go by from one place to another. Marra / yamurru — he passed. Murūr — passage. Mamarr — a passageway.

The word is the active participle of the pattern إِسْتِفْعَال (istifʿāl, Form X): mustamirr. And this form opens here in two different directions:

First reading: "continuing, going on." The verb istamarra is settled in Arabic in the sense "it continued, it went on". On this reading what they say is: "This is unceasing magic — one ends and the next begins." That is, the addressees count the signs that come one after another as a single continuous act of sorcery.

Second reading: "passing, soon to be over." From murūr, the root's proper sense: this too will pass. On this reading what they say is: "This is magic that will pass — it is not worth dwelling on."

A third reading is also transmitted: from the root's مِرَّة branch (strength, firmness) — "a strong, thoroughly solid magic." The Qurʾān uses this word at al-Najm 53/6: dhū mirratin fa'stawā.

All three are recorded and I do not impose a preference. But one thing can be said: all three readings arrive at the same result. Whether they say continuous, or passing, or strong, one thing is common to all three — the refusal to let the sign be a sign. The word's several senses are not an ambiguity here; they are three separate tones of refusal.

That last sentence is my own reading.

The root occurs in three places in the sūra, and the three must be read together:

The أَمَرّ of verse forty-six is from another branch of the root: murr — bitter (in taste). Amarr is the comparative: "more bitter".

Whether the senses "to pass by" and "to be bitter" derive from the same root is a matter the lexicographers dispute, and I issue no definite ruling here. The classical dictionaries give both under م-ر-ر; whether the link between them is genuinely etymological or was drawn later is another question.

But the observation about word order within the sūra can be recorded and verified: in the second verse the deniers qualify the sign as mustamirr; in the nineteenth verse a people's day of destruction is qualified as mustamirr; in the forty-sixth verse the Hour is qualified as amarr. The word they themselves used comes back twice.

I record this as my own reading. The sūra will weave this kind of "return of a word to its owner" once more: in verse twenty-five what Thamūd say of Ṣāliḥ, kadhdhābun ashir, is made definite in verse twenty-six and turned back on them; and what they say in verse twenty-four, ḍalālin wa suʿur, is repeated word for word in verse forty-seven as the state of the guilty. The sūra does the same thing three times: it takes the denier's word and hands it back to him.

Wa kadhdhabū wa'ttabaʿū ahwāʾahum; wa kullu amrin mustaqirr "They denied and followed their own cravings. And every matter comes to rest."

Kadhdhabū — they denied. Root: ك-ذ-ب, and the verb is on the pattern تَفْعِيل (tafʿīl, Form II). Here that pattern conveys ascription: to call someone a liar, to count a word a lie. Kadhaba is to lie; kadhdhaba is to count someone else a liar. Two distinct acts.

This verb is one of the backbone verbs of the sūra; all four of the accounts open with it (9, 18, 23, 33) and the fifth continues with it (42).

Ittabaʿū ahwāʾahum — they followed their cravings. The root of هَوَىٰ / هَوَاء: ه-و-ي. This root was treated in al-Qāriʿa and al-Nāziʿāt: hawā is to fall from a height downward. Hāwiya — that which falls, or the deep abyss into which one falls.

And هَوًى (hawā) — a person's inclination, his craving — is from the same root. The explanation the lexicographers transmit: craving is what drags a person downward; the self falls towards it. I transmit this explanation; I do not offer it as a settled etymology.

The plural form of the word (ahwāʾ) is worth dwelling on. Guidance in the Qurʾān is singular (ṣirāṭ, sabīl, hudā), while craving is here plural. The same distribution appears elsewhere in the Qurʾān: "This is My straight path, so follow it; and do not follow the other ways, for they will divide you from His way" (al-Anʿām 6/153) — one path, many ways.

The order of the two verbs is worth recording. First the denying, then the following of craving. That is, the verse arranges craving not as the cause of denying but as its consequence. The order could have been built the other way; it was not.

I record this as my own reading: after a thing has been rejected no emptiness remains; something takes the place of what was rejected. The verse says what fills that place.

The sentence is a nominal sentence and it states a rule. There is no verb; there is continuity.

مُسْتَقِرّ — Root: ق-ر-ر. This root was treated in al-Qiyāma, al-Insān and al-Mursalāt. Its concrete sense: to settle in a place, to become fixed, to stand there.

Its derivatives:

• قَرَار — a place of standing, a fixed place, a base. "He made the earth a place of rest (qarār)" (al-Naml 27/61).
• مُسْتَقَرّ (with fatḥa, a noun of place) — the place where something comes to rest.
• مُسْتَقِرّ (with kasra, the active participle) — that which comes to rest, which settles into place.
• قُرَّة — coolness of the eye. The lexicographers' explanation: the state in which the eye, having found what it sought, becomes still. Qurrat ʿayn.

The form in the verse is the active participle: mustaqirr — coming to rest in its place.

What the sentence says is this: every matter arrives somewhere, stops there and stays there. There is no matter left hanging; what has been postponed is not without an outcome.

And the load carried by Form X (istifʿāl) here is worth recording. This form generally conveys seeking (istaghfara — he sought forgiveness), but it also has the sense of "to come into that state" (istaḥjara — it turned to stone; istaghnā — he became rich). Istaqarra is of the second kind: to come into a state of rest, to settle.

Its counterpart within the sūra. The word occurs once more, in verse thirty-eight: ʿadhābun mustaqirr — "a settled punishment" that came upon the people of Lot in the morning. That is, a word set down in the third verse as a rule comes back in the thirty-eighth as an event.

This is a small but clear example of how the sūra works: it states the rule at the beginning and gives the instance afterwards. I record it as my own reading.

The practical import of the sentence kullu amrin mustaqirr is an understanding of time.

Most of human life is lived without the outcome being seen. A word is spoken and its effect emerges years later; a deed is done and one passes on without seeing its return. This does not mean that there is no outcome; it means that it has not yet come to rest.

The verse separates these two: an outcome unseen and an outcome absent are not the same thing. And it says this not as a sentence of threat but as a description of how things work — the sentence is nominal, it addresses no one, it issues no ruling; it describes an order.

Wa-laqad jāʾahum mina'l-anbāʾi mā fīhi muzdajar — ḥikmatun bālighatun fa-mā tughni'l-nudhur "There has indeed come to them of the tidings that in which there is deterrence. A wisdom that has reached its full. Yet the warnings do not avail."

Root: ن-ب-أ. This root was treated in detail in al-Nabaʾ, and the distinction recorded there holds here too: a nabaʾ is not just any piece of news. It is a report that has weight, that carries benefit, a great report. Ordinary news is called khabar; nabaʾ is a layer of its own.

Its plural is anbāʾ. In the verse it comes with من: mina'l-anbāʾ — "of the tidings". This min is of the kind the lexicographers call partitive: it indicates a part of the whole. What has come, then, is not all the tidings but a portion of them. The sūra will give the list of them shortly: Noah, ʿĀd, Thamūd, Lot, Pharaoh.

Which tidings? The verse does not say; but the stretch running from verse nine to verse forty-two is exactly the unfolding of this sentence. Verse four is the heading, and 9-42 the text.

Root: ز-ج-ر. Its concrete sense: to drive off with a shout, to send away with a rebuke. A herdsman drives an animal off with his voice; that is zajr. At the centre of the word there is a sound, and that sound repelling something.

This root was treated in al-Nāziʿāt, and the two verses of this sūra were already cited there. Here I dwell on the pattern.

مُزْدَجَر is the passive participle / noun of place / mīmī verbal noun of the pattern إِفْتِعَال (Form VIII). The letter ت of the pattern, under the influence of the ز before it, has turned into د: muztajar → muzdajar. This is a regular assimilation in Arabic; the same change occurs in uzdujira in verse nine.

More than one solution is transmitted for the word's grammatical position:

In point of sense all three come out at the same place, and no preference is required.

The root's second occurrence in the sūra is worth recording. In verse nine, of Noah: wa'zdujira — "and he was driven off / rebuked". The same root, the same form, in the passive.

I record this as my own reading: the same root names, in one place, the thing that ought to have turned them back, and in the other, the person they turned back. Zajr had come; but the one who underwent zajr was the bearer of the tidings. This reversal stands in the root itself; the conclusion I draw from it is mine.

بَالِغَة — Root: ب-ل-غ. Its concrete sense: to arrive somewhere, to reach, to attain a goal. Balagha — he reached. Bulūgh — maturity, a person's arrival at the point of ripeness. Balāgh — delivery, the thing conveyed. Balīgh — one who brings his speech to its target.

Bāligha is the active participle: arrived, attained, come to its farthest point.

Two distinct readings can be made and both are recorded:

• The wisdom itself is complete — there is nothing lacking in it, it has arrived at the point of ripeness.
• The wisdom has reached them — it has come to them, it has passed into their hands; no excuse of its not having arrived remains.

The second reading seems more in keeping with the following clause: the wisdom was there, it arrived, and yet it did not avail. Still, the first reading is not contrary to the text, and I do not impose a preference.

More than one solution is also given for the word's case-analysis; the most widespread is to count it a substitute for the mā of the preceding verse, or the predicate of an elided subject (hiya ḥikmatun bāligha). The sense does not change.

أَغْنَىٰ — Root: غ-ن-ي. Its concrete sense: not to be in need of a thing, to have enough. Ghinā — wealth, that is, the state of not standing in need of another. Ghanī — one who is not in need. Istighnāʾ — to regard oneself as self-sufficient.

The construction أَغْنَىٰ عَنْهُ is settled in the Qurʾān and means: to take another's place, to ward something off from him, to suffice him. "His wealth did not avail him" (al-Masad 111/2 — mā aghnā ʿanhu māluhu), "They can ward off nothing from them" (al-Jāthiya 45/10).

There is a disagreement over the مَا at the head of the sentence:

Both readings arrive at the same result; the second is sharper. I do not impose a preference.

A grammatical detail: the verb comes in the form تُغْنِ, with the final yāʾ dropped (not tughnī). This elision appears in the orthography of the codex and is connected with the harmony of the verse-ending. The same elision occurs in the words يَدْعُ and ٱلدَّاعِ in verse six, and I take it up separately there.

ٱلنُّذُر — this was dealt with above in the section on the backbone of the sūra: it can be read both as "warners" and as "warnings", and the sūra does not separate the two.

Verses four and five set up a frame for the rest of the sūra, and the frame is logical:

1. The tidings came (jāʾahum). 2. In the tidings there was deterrence (fīhi muzdajar). 3. The wisdom was complete and had arrived (ḥikmatun bāligha). 4. It did not avail (fa-mā tughni'l-nudhur).

That is, the lack is not on the sender's side. For three clauses the quality of what was sent is enumerated: the tidings, the deterrence, the complete wisdom. Then at the fourth step the result is given.

And this is the logic of the first refrain as well: "We have made the Qurʾān easy for remembrance — is there anyone who will remember?" The refrain has the same structure: first the quality of what was given, then the question about the result.

That is, the fifth verse is the refrain that begins at verse seventeen said in advance. I record this as my own reading.

Fa-tawalla ʿanhum; yawma yadʿu'l-dāʿi ilā shayʾin nukur "So turn away from them. On the day the caller calls to a thing unrecognisable…"

Root: و-ل-ي. Its concrete sense: to be near, to be adjacent. Walī — one who is near, a friend, a protector. Wilāya — nearness and the authority that comes with it. Tālī — one who follows behind.

And something interesting comes of this: تَوَلَّىٰ (Form V) carries two opposite senses —

• تَوَلَّىٰ عَنْ — to turn away from someone, to withdraw.
• تَوَلَّىٰ (without the preposition) — to take a matter on, to assume charge of it.

The same verb, when it takes the preposition ʿan, conveys withdrawal; without it, taking charge. Here it comes with ʿan: withdrawal.

The one commanded is the Prophet, and this is the only command the sūra gives him. In the second verse the deniers were said to perform iʿrāḍ; in the sixth tawallī is commanded of the Prophet. Two different roots, a similar movement — but one is censured and the other commanded.

Where is the difference? In its source. Their turning away is flight from a sign; the Prophet's turning away is stopping where the delivering of the message ends. Another form of the same command is at al-Dhāriyāt 51/54: "So turn away from them; you are not to blame" — and in al-Dhāriyāt that verse was treated in detail in this commentary. The note recorded there holds here too: this command is not to abandon the delivering of the message but not to take on responsibility for the outcome.

Two elisions of the codex's orthography come together in this expression:

• يَدْعُ — its original is yadʿū (يدعو). The final و is not written.
• ٱلدَّاعِ — its original is al-dāʿī (الداعي). The final ي is not written.

Elisions of this kind are found in several places in the written codex, and the letter is not pronounced in recitation. I record this as a datum of the language; I draw from it no meaning and no numerical claim whatsoever. The prohibition in Method on letter-and-number computation holds here too.

ٱلدَّاعِ — the caller. Root: د-ع-و, and this root was treated in detail in Nūḥ as the backbone of that sūra: it was shown there that the root does two jobs at once in Arabic (to call and to pray).

Who the caller is is not said in the verse. In classical exegesis it is widely said to be the angel who blows the trumpet; the Qurʾān does not name him and neither do I. That the word comes definite (al-dāʿī) shows that a caller known to the one addressed is meant; it does not give his identity.

The same expression occurs at Ṭāhā 20/108: "On that day they will follow the caller, from whom there is no swerving."

نُكُر — Root: ن-ك-ر. This root was treated in al-Mulk, al-Dhāriyāt, al-Mujādala and al-Mumtaḥana. Its concrete sense: not to recognise, not to know, to find strange.

Its derivatives show the field of the root:

• نَكِرَ / أَنْكَرَ — he did not recognise, he denied. To deny is to say "I do not recognise this".
• مُنْكَر — what is not approved, what is rejected. And its exact opposite is مَعْرُوف — "what is known, what is recognised". In Arabic, that is, good is named "the recognised" and evil "the unrecognised".
• نَكِير — repudiation, rejection. At al-Mulk 67/18: fa-kayfa kāna nakīr — treated in the section on al-Mulk.
• نَكِرَة — an indefinite noun (in grammar). Unrecognised, not determined.
• تَنَكَّرَ — he disguised himself, he became unrecognisable.

The form نُكُر is an adjective and means "unrecognisable, unfamiliar, without precedent".

And this is exactly what the verse says: what they are called to resembles nothing known. The verse does not describe what that day is; it states that it cannot be described.

This says something about the method of description itself, and I record it as my own reading. There are two ways of conveying a thing: to liken it, or to say that it is like nothing. The Qurʾān uses both — and in this sūra the two stand side by side:

The sixth verse says "it resembles nothing"; the seventh immediately makes a comparison. Not a contradiction but a division of labour: what resembles nothing is the event itself; what is likened is the appearance of the people. The nature of the resurrection cannot be described; but the state people will be in on that day can be.

Interpreting the Qurʾān by the Qurʾān. The same root, in the same sense, occurs in the account of al-Khiḍr in Sūrat al-Kahf: "You have done a most munkar thing" (al-Kahf 18/74) and "You have done a nukr thing" (al-Kahf 18/71). There too the sense runs towards "unheard-of, hard to take in".

Khushshaʿan abṣāruhum yakhrujūna mina'l-ajdāthi ka-annahum jarādun muntashir "With their eyes cast down they come forth from the graves as though they were locusts spread abroad."

Root: خ-ش-ع. Its concrete sense: to be lowered, the dropping of the voice, the descent of the eye. Khushūʿ is submission, but first of all it is a physical lowering: the head bows, the eye drops, the voice falls. At Ṭāhā 20/108: "Voices are hushed (khashaʿat) before the All-Merciful."

In al-Ghāshiya the word's use of the eye was treated and this verse was cited there; I do not repeat it.

There is a variant reading. The word is read in two forms:

Since I cannot state with certainty which reading belongs to which imām, I write no names. This is the same note applied in the section on al-Ḥāqqa.

There is no difference in sense, and there is a grammatical reason for this: in Arabic an adjective coming before its plural noun may remain singular. So khāshiʿan abṣāruhum also means "with their eyes cast down". The two readings give the same picture.

The word's case-analysis is that of a ḥāl (an accusative of state): "they come forth in the state of…".

A point of word order: the sentence begins with khushshaʿan — that is, the appearance comes before the verb. The normal order would be yakhrujūna khushshaʿan abṣāruhum. What is brought forward is the eyes. The reader sees the eyes first and the coming forth second.

Root: ج-د-ث. A grave. Its singular is jadath.

Arabic has several words for a grave and the Qurʾān uses them distinctly:

جَدَث occurs in only three places in the Qurʾān, and in all three in the same scene: the coming forth from the grave.

This root was treated in al-Maʿārij. What is to be added here is this: in all three verses there is movement, and the movement is fast — yansilūn (to walk quickly), sirāʿan (as if running). The word is never used in the Qurʾān in the context of "the dead lying"; always in the context of coming forth.

I record this as an observation about usage; the wording of the three verses can be verified.

جَرَاد — Root: ج-ر-د. Its concrete sense: to strip, to lay bare, to peel off the covering. Jarada — he stripped. Ajrad — hairless, bare. Jarīda — a palm branch stripped of its leaves (and from this the sense "newspaper" arose later).

And the lexicographers explain the giving of this name to the locust as follows: it strips the place it passes over and leaves it bare. That is, the word itself carries the work the creature does. I transmit this explanation ascribing it to the lexicographers.

Jarād is a generic noun; its singular is jarāda.

مُنتَشِر — Root: ن-ش-ر. This root was treated in al-Mulk, al-Takwīr, al-Mursalāt and al-Ṭūr. Its concrete sense: to spread, to lay out, to open.

Its derivatives and their uses in the Qurʾān:

• نَشَرَ — he spread, he opened. To open something folded.
• مَنشُور — spread open (of a page). "Pages spread open" (al-Muddaththir 74/52).
• نُشِرَتْ — "When the pages are spread open" (al-Takwīr 81/10).
• ٱلنُّشُور — the resurrection. "To Him is the rising and the gathering" (al-Mulk 67/15).
• مُنتَشِر — the active participle of Form VIII: spread abroad, scattered.

And there is an overlap here worth recording: the coming forth of people from the graves is called nushūr; and at the moment of that coming forth the people are likened to muntashir locusts. The same root gives both the name of the event and the adjective of the comparison.

I record this as my own reading, and I mark its limit: that the two words are from the same root is verifiable linguistic data. I do not claim that this was a deliberate choice.

In al-Qāriʿa the comparison at al-Qāriʿa 101/4 was treated in detail: ka'l-farāshi'l-mabthūth — "like scattered moths/butterflies". It was recorded there that rendering farāsh into English is a matter of choice and that the Arabic word covers both. The seventh verse of this sūra was moreover already cited in the section on al-Qāriʿa.

I now set the two comparisons side by side, because the same event is told with two different creatures and the choices say different things.

The two comparisons are not telling the same thing.

Al-Qāriʿa is telling of lightness. As was shown in the section on al-Qāriʿa, that sūra first empties out all the weight in the world: the lightest creature (the moth) and the heaviest body (the mountain) come to the same state; then at exactly that point the balance is set up and a single question is asked — whose scales are heavy? The moth comparison is a preparation for the balance.

Al-Qamar is telling of multitude. In al-Qamar there is no balance; there is a crowd. The next verse of the sūra says "they run with necks outstretched towards the caller"; its forty-fourth verse relates their claim "we are a host that cannot be defeated"; its forty-fifth announces the scattering of that host. From beginning to end the sūra is concerned with crowds — peoples, hosts, jamʿ, ashyāʿ. A swarm of locusts is the crowd itself.

And here it can be seen plainly that the comparison is chosen for the one addressed. For desert and desert-edge societies a swarm of locusts is not an abstract image. A locust invasion finishes a region's yearly crop in a few hours; it darkens the sky; it covers the ground; it can be heard. This is the densest and most threatening image of a crowd that such a society has seen.

The Qurʾān itself also names the locust as a punishment: "So We sent upon them the flood, the locusts, the vermin, the frogs and the blood" (al-Aʿrāf 7/133) — and this is about the people of Pharaoh; that is, the people who will be named in the forty-first verse of this sūra.

In one sentence: for al-Qāriʿa people are like winged things flung into a fire; for al-Qamar they are like a swarm covering the ground. One gives weightlessness, the other numberlessness.

I record this comparison as my own reading. The wording of the two verses, the senses of the two roots and the continuation of the two sūras are verifiable data; the difference in function I draw from the choice of comparisons is my interpretation.

Muhṭiʿīna ila'l-dāʿ; yaqūlu'l-kāfirūna hādhā yawmun ʿasir "Straining their necks towards the caller. The disbelievers say, 'This is a hard day.'"

Root: ه-ط-ع. This root was treated in al-Maʿārij. The description the lexicographers give: to go quickly with the head raised and the eye fixed on a single point, the neck stretched forward.

Three elements are together in the word:

1. Speed — not walking but hastening. 2. The stretching of the neck — the body inclined forward, the head thrust out. 3. The fixing of the eye — the gaze does not leave a single point.

All three of its occurrences in the Qurʾān are in the same scene:

• "Their heads raised, hastening; their gaze does not return to them" (Ibrāhīm 14/43 — muhṭiʿīna muqniʿī ruʾūsihim).
• al-Qamar 54/8 — here.
• "They come hurrying towards you with necks outstretched" (al-Maʿārij 70/36).

And there is a tension that must be recorded. In the seventh verse the eyes are cast down (khushshaʿan abṣāruhum); in the eighth the gaze is fixed and the neck stretched out (muhṭiʿīn). The two descriptions appear to conflict.

The classical explanation is this: khushūʿ here describes the abasement, ihṭāʿ the compulsion. The eye is lowered, but the body is being dragged towards the call. There is no resistance, and no desire either. A person is going quickly to a place he does not want to go, unable to raise his eyes.

I transmit this explanation; it is widely reconciled in this way in the sources.

The sentence is in the imperfect: yaqūlu — "they say". The verbs around it (yakhrujūn, muhṭiʿīn) are on the same plane; the scene is told as it happens.

That the speaker is specified is worth recording. The verse does not say "people say", it says "al-kāfirūn say". This is not, then, a sentence everyone will say on that day; it is a sentence a particular group will say.

Elsewhere the Qurʾān says how the same day will be for the believers: "The greatest terror will not grieve them" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/103), "On that day you will see the believing men and the believing women, their light running before them" (al-Ḥadīd 57/12 — treated in al-Ḥadīd).

Root: ع-س-ر. Its concrete sense: hardship, difficulty. ʿUsr — straitness, distress. And its exact opposite is يُسْر.

This opposition was treated in detail in this commentary in al-Inshirāḥ (inna maʿa'l-ʿusri yusrā) and I do not repeat it.

But the encounter within the sūra must be recorded, and it is the most striking weave of words in it:

The sūra places the sentences "a hard day" and "a book made easy" inside the same text — and repeats the second four times.

I record this as my own reading. The opposition of the two roots is linguistic data; the presence of the two expressions in the same sūra is data of the text; the relation I set up between them is mine. And it is this: the sūra sets an ease and a hardship side by side and says which one comes first. What has been made easy is in hand now; the hard thing comes after. What joins them is the question of the refrain — "is there anyone who will remember?"

The difference between عَسِر and عَسِير. At al-Muddaththir 74/9 the same day is called yawmun ʿasīr. That verse was treated in al-Muddaththir. The difference is in the pattern: ʿasir is a quasi-participle, ʿasīr an intensive form; the second is heavier. The verse-ending has a share in the choice here — all the verses of this sūra descend to the sound r on short syllables, and ʿasīr does not sit on that pattern. I gave this in tabular form in the section on verse-endings above.

Kadhdhabat qablahum qawmu Nūḥin fa-kadhdhabū ʿabdanā wa qālū majnūnun wa'zdujir "Before them the people of Noah denied. They denied Our servant and said, 'a madman', and he was driven off."

Verse nine opens the second section of the sūra, and the manner of the opening is decisive: the name of the people comes after the verb, while "before them" comes immediately after it.

Kadhdhabat qablahum qawmu Nūḥin.

That is, the second word of the sentence is an adverb of time. Before the reader hears the name of the people he hears the words "before you". In its very first sentence the list establishes its link with the one addressed.

The same pattern is not repeated in the other three accounts; there the start is straight from the name of the people (kadhdhabat ʿĀdun, kadhdhabat Thamūdu, kadhdhabat qawmu Lūṭin). "Before them" is only in the first account — because establishing the time once is enough.

The verb comes in the feminine: kadhdhabat. Yet the word qawm is masculine.

In Arabic, broken plurals and collective nouns can be treated as either masculine or feminine. Qawm comes both ways in the Qurʾān. The feminine here is referred to the sense of "community" (jamāʿa, umma, ṭāʾifa).

The same feminine is repeated four times in the sūra: kadhdhabat ʿĀdun (18), kadhdhabat Thamūdu (23), kadhdhabat qawmu Lūṭin (33). The names ʿĀd and Thamūd too become feminine when counted as tribal names. All four on the same pattern.

The fifth account falls outside this pattern, and that is no accident: wa-laqad jāʾa āla Firʿawna'l-nudhur (41) — the verb changes, the subject changes, the pattern is broken. I take this up under verse forty-one.

Noah is named here not as "Our messenger" but as "Our servant".

Root: ع-ب-د. This root has been treated in many places in this commentary and I do not repeat it. Our concern here is the choice of word.

The Qurʾān uses several designations for the prophets and they do not all do the same job:

And the designation ʿabd is an expression of honour in the Qurʾān; it is used at the highest stations. At al-Isrāʾ 17/1, in the account of the Night Journey, bi-ʿabdihi is said; at al-Jinn 72/19, ʿabdullāh; at al-Kahf 18/65 al-Khiḍr is named ʿabdan min ʿibādinā.

Its counterpart within the sūra: in verse nine Noah is set opposite the deniers as "Our servant". That is, the verse defines both sides by their relations — one is a servant, the others deniers.

And this detail of word order matters: after saying "the people denied" the sentence says again "they denied Our servant". The same verb twice. In the first there is no object, in the second there is. First the act of denying is set down absolutely, then its object is named — and the name of the object is not "Noah" but "Our servant."

I record this as my own reading: the one denied is named by his relation to God. Whoever the act may be aimed at, seen through the relation, whose the denied thing is changes.

Root: ج-ن-ن. Its concrete sense: to cover, to conceal. Janna'l-layl — the night covered. From this root: jinn (the unseen creature), janna (the garden whose trees cover the ground), janīn (the one covered in the womb), junna (a shield), majnūn.

Majnūn — passive participle: covered over. The Arabic picture of madness, that is, is of a covering drawn over the mind.

As was recorded in al-Dhāriyāt, this accusation has become a set formula in the Qurʾān: at al-Dhāriyāt 51/52 it is said, "No messenger came to those before them without their saying, 'a sorcerer or a madman'" — and the link between that verse and this sūra is direct: at al-Qamar 54/2 "magic" was said; at 54/9 "madman" is said. The two words of al-Dhāriyāt stand distributed across two verses of al-Qamar.

I record this link as an observation; the wording of the two sūras can be verified.

Root: ز-ج-ر, treated at verse four. There are two new points here.

One — the verb is passive. Uzdujira — "he was driven off, he was rebuked". The agent is not named. The same method was recorded in the section on al-Ḥāqqa for uhlikū (they were destroyed): the passive, by concealing the agent, brings the event itself forward. Here the concealed agent is obvious (his people), but not naming him generalises the act: it is not asked who did it; it is said that it was done.

Two — a disagreement over the sentence's construction. To what does the verb wa'zdujira attach?

The third solution is striking: on this reading uzdujira falls inside their speech and means "driven off / prodded by the jinn"; that is, it spells out the accusation.

All three solutions are transmitted and I do not impose a preference. The first is the simplest and fits best with the verb's being passive; but the third is not weak, since it makes use of the closeness in sense between majnūn and zajr.

Fa-daʿā Rabbahu annī maghlūbun fa'ntaṣir "So he called upon his Lord: 'I am overcome; give help.'"

Noah's prayer is three words: annī maghlūbun fa'ntaṣir.

In Nūḥ this verse was cited and this note was made: the imprecation at the end of Sūrat Nūḥ is "not an imprecation made from a position of power; it is the cry of a man who has been beaten", and it was stated that this is morally decisive. Here I add to that note.

فَدَعَا — Root: د-ع-و. In the section on Sūrat Nūḥ it was shown that this root is the backbone of that sūra: there Noah was calling his people (daʿawtu qawmī, 71/5); here he calls his Lord. The same root, the same man, two directions. That the root does both jobs at once was already recorded in the section on Sūrat Nūḥ.

And its link with verse six is worth recording: there, yadʿu'l-dāʿī — on the Day of Resurrection the caller calls. The root occurs three times in the sūra, in three distinct positions: a calling angel, a calling prophet, a called Lord.

Root: غ-ل-ب. Its concrete sense: to prevail, to overpower, to come out on top. Ghalaba — he overcame. Ghālib — the one who overcomes. Maghlūb — passive participle: the one overcome.

This root was treated in ʿAbasa.

The side of the sentence to dwell on is this: Noah speaks not about his people but about himself.

Think of the things he could have said: "They are wrongdoers", "They denied", "They drove me off". All would have been true, and all have already been said in the preceding verse. Noah says none of them. His one-sentence report is about himself: "I am overcome."

I record this as my own reading: this is not a complaint but a statement of condition. There is no accusation in the sentence, no epithet, no verdict. There is only a balance-sheet — and the one who draws it up is the losing side.

And the passive form of maghlūb strengthens this. He does not say "they overcame me" (ghalabūnī); he says "I am one overcome" (maghlūb). The name of the victor does not appear.

Root: ن-ص-ر. This root was treated in al-Ḥashr, al-Ṣaff, Nūḥ, al-Jinn and al-Ṭāriq. What the lexicographers record about its concrete sense: naṣr is help, but especially help that brings victory. Not merely lending support; support that changes the outcome.

The verb is on the pattern إِفْتِعَال (Form VIII): intaṣara. Here that form can give two senses:

• To take vengeance for oneself / to obtain one's right.
• To help, to give victory (in some usages close to naṣara).

The imperative: fa'ntaṣir — "prevail / take my right for me."

And now we come to one of the most striking weaves in the sūra. The same root occurs once more in the sūra, in verse forty-four — and this time from the mouths of the deniers:

One man says "I am overcome" and receives help; a host says "we cannot be beaten" and is routed. And the word the two sides use is two forms of the same root: intaṣir and muntaṣir.

I record this as my own reading. The wording of the three verses and the shared root are verifiable data of the text; the conclusion I draw from the contrast is mine.

Fa-fataḥnā abwāba'l-samāʾi bi-māʾin munhamir — wa fajjarna'l-arḍa ʿuyūnan fa'ltaqa'l-māʾu ʿalā amrin qad qudir "So We opened the gates of heaven with water pouring down. And We made the earth burst forth in springs. And the water met upon a matter already decreed."

These two verses are the most tightly built word order in the sūra, and they cannot be read without seeing the symmetry.

Let us first set the two verses side by side:

Four separate contrasts work at once: heaven/earth, opening/splitting, descent/ascent, pouring/bursting.

And then comes the third clause: فَٱلْتَقَى ٱلْمَآءُ — "the water met".

And here is the real point: the water is SINGULAR.

The verse does not say "the waters met" (al-miyāh). الْمَاءُ — definite, singular. What comes from two separate sources is, at the moment of meeting, named a single water.

What the word order does, then, is this: it sets up a duality and ties it to a unity. Two verbs, two directions, two descriptions — and then a single noun.

I record this as my own reading. That the word is singular and definite is data of the text; the reading of "from duality to unity" that I draw from it is mine.

In al-Infiṭār this verse was cited and it was recorded that the resurrection may be described as a repetition of the flood on a universal scale; in al-Nabaʾ in the context of the gates of heaven; in ʿAbasa in the context of fajjarnā. I rely on all three and do not repeat them.

Root: ف-ت-ح. In al-Mursalāt this root was distinguished from the other roots that describe the opening of the sky, and the distinction recorded there is decisive here:

ف-ت-ح is also an opening, but it is the opening of a door; it does not convey splitting.

This is why the verse speaks of gates. The root wants a door.

أَبْوَابَ ٱلسَّمَاء — the gates of heaven. The Qurʾān uses this expression elsewhere too:

• "The gates of heaven will not be opened for them" (al-Aʿrāf 7/40) — about the deniers.
• "And the sky is opened and becomes gates" (al-Nabaʾ 78/19) — treated in al-Nabaʾ.

The comparison with al-Aʿrāf 7/40 is worth recording. There the gates of heaven are not opened for the deniers; here they are opened for the deniers — but what comes through is not prayer, it is water. The same gate works in two directions.

I record this as a reading of the Qurʾān by the Qurʾān; the wording of the two verses can be verified, the contrast between them is my observation.

Root: ه-م-ر. Hamara — he poured, he made flow. Inhamara — it poured out, it came down in a downpour.

The word is the active participle of the pattern إِنْفِعَال (Form VII): munhamir. And Form VII, as was recorded in the section on al-Inshiqāq, conveys the middle sense: undergoing an outside action.

That is, the water does not pour of itself; it is released to pour. And this fits the preceding verb: the gates were opened, the water poured out. Another opened the gate; the water poured.

The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān. The note used in this commentary for words of this kind holds here too: a word with a single occurrence is read by its lexical sense, and no intra-Qurʾānic weave of usage is sought for it.

Root: ف-ج-ر. In al-Qadr this root was treated by way of fajr, and what was recorded there is this: the root's proper sense is to split, to crack, to open; infijār (an explosion), fajjara (to make a spring gush), tafjīr are from the same root. The name of the dawn also comes from here: the light that splits the darkness of the night and comes forth.

The verb here is on Form II (tafʿīl), and this form conveys multiplicity: not splitting once, but splitting all over.

عُيُونًا — a grammatical point.

The object of the sentence is the earth, not the springs: fajjarna'l-arḍa — "We split the earth". What, then, is ʿuyūnan?

ʿUyūnan is a specifier (an accusative of specification). That is, the sentence does not say "we opened springs in the earth"; it says "we split the earth into springs".

The difference matters, and it can also be seen:

The verse says the second. Not a part of the earth but the earth itself becomes a spring.

The same specifier structure occurs elsewhere in the Qurʾān: "The head has taken flame with old age" (Maryam 19/4 — wa'shtaʿala'l-raʾsu shayban) — there too what burns is the head, and old age is the specifier; not "my head has whitened" but "my head has caught fire with old age".

عَيْن — Root: ع-ي-ن. This word was treated in al-Raḥmān, al-Wāqiʿa, al-Mulk, al-Ṭūr and al-Mursalāt: it means both "eye" and "spring". The same word will come back two verses later (14) in the sense of "Our eyes".

One word, two verses apart, in two senses. I record this and draw no meaning from it; the polysemy of the word is settled in Arabic.

And the sentence ends here. The flood, the gates, the springs — all are tied to a single expression.

أَمْر — Root: أ-م-ر. Command, matter, decree. This word occurs three times in the sūra, and all three in decisive positions:

In verse three the rule, in verse twelve the instance, in verse fifty the source. The word does the same job on three separate layers of the sūra.

قَدْ قُدِرَ — Root: ق-د-ر. And here the backbone root of the sūra enters for the first time.

This root was treated in detail in al-Qadr in its three senses, and below, under verse forty-nine, I shall compare two of its uses. Here I record only this: the verb is passive (qudira — it was decreed) and is reinforced with قَدْ. Qad + the perfect conveys confirmation in Arabic: "decreed for certain".

That is, the verse says: the flood is not an overflowing; it is a measured matter.

And this is the most repeated theme of the sūra. The table below shows the root's four occurrences in it:

The sūra's first destruction and its last reward are sealed with the same root. I take this circle up again under verse forty-nine.

Wa ḥamalnāhu ʿalā dhāti alwāḥin wa dusur — tajrī bi-aʿyuninā jazāʾan li-man kāna kufir "And We carried him upon a thing of planks and nails. It ran under Our eyes — as a recompense for the one who had been denied."

The first thing to be noticed in this verse is the word that is not said.

The Qurʾān uses several words for a ship: fulk (Hūd 11/37 — wa'ṣnaʿi'l-fulk), safīna (al-Kahf 18/79), al-jāriya (al-Ḥāqqa 69/11). None of these is in this verse.

In their place there is a description: ذَاتِ أَلْوَاحٍ وَدُسُرٍ — "(that which is) possessed of planks and nails."

Dhāt in Arabic means "possessor of", and what it qualifies has been elided. There is in fact no noun in the sentence; there is a list of materials.

I record this as my own reading: the Qurʾān here does not call the ship a ship; it names it by taking it apart. The thing that saves a world is described as consisting of wood and nails. And the next clause will say what carried it: eyes.

Root: ل-و-ح. In al-Burūj this root was treated in detail (in the context of al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ), and this verse was cited there. The note made there holds here too:

"The same word is used of the planks of a ship. That is, lawḥ is not a sacred term; it is the name of a material. A flat, level piece."

The concrete sense of the root is to gleam, to appear (lāḥa — it appeared, it gleamed), and from this a flat, broad surface that can be written on. The alwāḥ given to Moses is the same word (al-Aʿrāf 7/145).

So the same word occurs in three separate places in the Qurʾān: the tablet on which revelation is written, the tablets of Moses, and the planks of Noah's ship.

Root: د-س-ر. Dasara — to push, to thrust in, to drive in, to pierce. At the centre of the root is thrusting in with force.

The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān and its sense is disputed:

All three views are recorded and I do not impose a preference. But it should be stated that the second view has a historical ground: the technique of joining planks by sewing them with palm-fibre cords rather than with nails is a known shipbuilding technique on the Arabian Peninsula and around the Indian Ocean, and it was used in the region for a long time. To read the word as "rope", then, corresponds to a technique the one addressed would have known.

I transmit this historical information as a datum of shipbuilding; I do not claim that the verse intends this technique, and I draw no miracle from it.

Whatever the view, the common point is this: both words are elements of joining. Alwāḥ are the parts; dusur is what holds them together. In the verse the ship is described as parts + what holds the parts.

The subject of the verb is God: ḥamalnā — "We carried". Noah's building of the ship is not mentioned here.

In al-Ḥāqqa the "three carryings" of this commentary were set out, and ḥamalnākum fi'l-jāriya at al-Ḥāqqa 69/11 was treated there in detail. The only thing to be added here is this:

In al-Ḥāqqa it is "We carried you" — to the one addressed. In al-Qamar it is "We carried him" — Noah. The two sūras name the same event with two different pronouns.

Al-Ḥāqqa ties the event to the reader; al-Qamar reduces the event to its material. This fits the general bearing of the two sūras: al-Ḥāqqa puts the addressee inside the event, al-Qamar sets the event before him as a list.

I record this as my own reading.

تَجْرِي — Root: ج-ر-ي. To run, to flow, to move along. It was treated in the section on al-Ḥāqqa by way of al-jāriya.

The verb is imperfect — among the perfect verbs around it. For a moment, that is, the scene becomes live: we carried… it is running. The same technique will be used in verse twenty (tanziʿu'l-nās — it tears people out).

بِأَعْيُنِنَا — and here a note on transcendence must be made.

Rendered word for word the expression means "with Our eyes / within Our eyes". And expressions of this kind — those that ascribe hand, eye, face or throne to God — are among the most disputed matters in the history of theology.

The note made in al-Ḥāqqa for ʿarsha Rabbika and in al-Fajr for the same question holds here in exactly the same way, and I do not repeat it: in the classical tradition there are two basic stances — tafwīḍ (referring the meaning to God, not speaking about the modality) and taʾwīl (interpreting the expression within the figurative possibilities of the language). This commentary takes no side in theology.

What can be said on the side of the language, however, is this, and it is not disputed: "to be before someone's eyes" is a settled idiom in Arabic and means to be under protection, to be watched over. English carries the same field with expressions such as "under one's eye" and "to keep an eye on".

The Qurʾān uses the same expression in three places and in all three with the same function:

• "Build the ship under Our eyes and by Our revelation" (Hūd 11/37) — the building of the ship.
• al-Qamar 54/14 — the running of the ship.
• "You are under Our eyes; so glorify your Lord with praise" (al-Ṭūr 52/48) — treated in al-Ṭūr.
• And in the singular form as well: "So that you might be reared under My eye" (Ṭāhā 20/39) — the chest of Moses.

In all four of these occurrences the context is a context of protection. And in all four what is described is a carrying under threat: the ship being built, the ship running, the prophet under threat, the infant set upon the river.

I record this as an observation about usage; the wording and contexts of the four verses can be verified.

A detail of form: here the plural (aʿyun) is used, at Ṭāhā 20/39 the singular (ʿaynī). The use of the plural to express majesty is settled in Arabic (as in ḥamalnā, fataḥnā, innā). I draw from this no number and no modality.

The last piece of the sentence, and it is disputed.

جَزَاء — Root: ج-ز-ي. Recompense, an equivalent payment. The word is used both of reward and of punishment; it is neutral. Its case-analysis is that of an object of purpose (an accusative of cause): "as a recompense for…".

كُفِرَ — Root: ك-ف-ر, and the verb is passive: "he was denied / he was met with ingratitude."

Who, then, is "the one denied"?

Both views are transmitted in the classical sources.

The ground of the first is the context: in the preceding verses Noah was denied, called "a madman", driven off; and he prayed. The sentence stands like the answer to his prayer.

The ground of the second is the dominant use of the root ك-ف-ر in the Qurʾān: the root is used not for a denial between people but mostly for a stance taken towards God.

I do not impose a preference. Both readings are in keeping with the rest of the sūra and the practical result is the same: the flood is named not as a natural event but as a recompense. The verse gives the event together with its agent and its ground.

An observation about word order. The verb kufir is passive; and the agent of the passive verb — those who denied — is not named. Yet they are the whole subject of the sentence. The sūra does not mention the drowned. As was recorded in the section on Sūrat Nūḥ, the flood was fitted there into a single word (ughriqū); here it is not mentioned at all. The verse tells of the ship, of the water, of the recompense — but not of the drowning.

I record this as my own reading.

Wa-laqad taraknāhā āyatan fa-hal min muddakir "And We left it as a sign. Is there anyone who will remember?"

This verse is not the full refrain. It carries the refrain's second half (fa-hal min muddakir), not its first. This occurs twice in the sūra: here and in verse fifty-one.

Three first halves, one single second half. And all three begin with وَلَقَدْ.

So in the sūra the question fa-hal min muddakir is attached to three different things:

1. A sign left behind (15) — the remnant of an event in the past. 2. A Qurʾān made easy (17, 22, 32, 40) — the text in hand. 3. Destroyed counterparts (51) — those of the addressee's own kind.

The question rests, then, on three separate sources: the event, the text, and the addressee himself. And in all three it ends with the same sentence.

I record this as my own reading. The wording and distribution of the three verses are data of the text; the threefold classification is mine.

Root: ت-ر-ك. To leave, to abandon, to leave behind. Turāth / tarika — an inheritance, the property left behind.

The verb states that a thing was not removed. The verse does not say "we made it"; it says "we did not take it away". The sign is what remains of the event.

To what does the pronoun هَا refer? The verse does not say, and there is disagreement:

I do not impose a preference. The second view is the one that rubs least against the text, since āya in the Qurʾān generally names an event or a proof. But the reading "the ship" is not weak either; elsewhere the Qurʾān speaks as though pointing at a remnant of the ship: "We saved him and the people of the ship, and We made it a sign for all beings" (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/15).

Al-ʿAnkabūt 29/15 is worth reading together with this verse: there jaʿalnāhā (We made it), here taraknāhā (We left it). To make is to do; to leave is not to do. The two verbs say the same result from two different directions.

Root: ذ-ك-ر. This is one of the roots most often treated in this commentary — in al-Aʿlā, al-Muddaththir, ʿAbasa, al-Ḥāqqa, al-Dhāriyāt and in many other places. Its concrete sense: to remember, to call to mind, to keep in mind.

The issue here is the word's form, and it requires attention.

مُدَّكِر is in fact مُذْتَكِر: the active participle of the pattern إِفْتِعَال (Form VIII), from the verb iddakara.

The sound change occurred in two steps: 1. The letter ذ of the root and the letter ت of the form come side by side: mudhtakir. 2. The two letters assimilate to one another and merge into د (assimilation): muddakir.

There are two more changes of the same kind in this sūra: مُزْدَجَر (4) and ٱزْدُجِرَ (9) — there, under the influence of ز, ت became د. And ٱصْطَبِرْ (27) — there, under the influence of ص, ت will become ط.

The sūra thus displays three separate sound-assimilations of Form VIII together: muzdajar (ز→د), muddakir (ذ→د), iṣṭabir (ص→ط). I record this as a datum of the language; I draw no meaning from it.

What Form VIII contributes in sense is this: here the pattern conveys effort and acquisition. Dhakara is to remember; iddakara is to take a lesson, to draw a moral. The word describes not a passive remembering but taking a thing and making it one's own.

The question consists of three elements, and all three are meaningful.

هَلْ — the interrogative particle. The difference the lexicographers record between a- (hamza) and hal: hal asks a yes-or-no question (is there / did it happen), while the hamza can ask both a yes-or-no and an identifying question (is it this one or that one). Here it is hal: the question is not "who" but "is there".

مِنْ — this min is of the kind the lexicographers call exhaustive or redundant. The same structure was treated in the section on al-Ḥāqqa (fa-hal tarā lahum min bāqiya). Its function is to make a negation or a question fully comprehensive: "anyone at all", "so much as one person".

مُّدَّكِرٍ — indefinite. It is not a name that is sought but a quality.

Putting the three together, the question becomes: "Is there so much as one person who takes the lesson?"

And here exactly the difference from the refrain of al-Raḥmān appears. In al-Raḥmān's question there is a pronoun of address (Rabbi-kumā, tukadhdhibā-n): the question is put to you. In al-Qamar's question there is no pronoun at all: the question is put into the open, and whoever is to answer places himself in that empty space.

In the section "The refrain of al-Raḥmān and the refrain of al-Qamar" above I gave this difference in tabular form; here I show its counterpart in the grammar.

Fa-kayfa kāna ʿadhābī wa nudhur "How then were My punishment and My warnings!"

This sentence occurs six times in the sūra; four in this form (16, 18, 21, 30), two in the imperative (37, 39).

كَيْفَ is a particle that asks after a state: "how". But here it is not a genuine request for information.

The lexicographers give such questions separate names:

• The confirmatory question — one whose answer is known, asked in order to make the addressee concede it.
• The question of wonder — one that conveys astonishment and dread.
• The question of threat — one that conveys a threat.

All three have been defended for this sentence, and there is no sharp boundary between them. In rendering it into English, an exclamation mark rather than a question mark falls closer to the function of the sentence: "How was My punishment!"

In al-Mulk two sentences of exactly this pattern were treated: fa-kayfa kāna nakīr (67/18) and kayfa kāna nadhīr (67/17). I rely on the analysis there and do not repeat it.

The verb is perfect: kāna — "how was it".

And this is the most striking side of the sentence. The sentence is said to people who have not yet seen the punishment, about people who have — but the tense states that the event is over.

I record this as my own reading: this choice of tense places the addressee after the event. He hears, in the past tense, of something that has not yet come to him in the state in which it came to others. This is what the sūra does: it shows the future in the language of the past.

And this belongs to the same family as the grammatical question of the first verse. There iqtarabat was perfect and related something that had not yet happened. Here kāna is perfect and shows something that has happened to a community to whom it has not yet happened. The sūra bends the tenses in both directions at once.

ʿAdhābī — "my punishment". Nudhur — as was shown above in the section on verse-endings, its original is nudhurī; the yāʾ has been dropped for the verse-ending.

The same owner is thus present twice in the sentence, but visible once.

That the two words stand side by side is worth recording. ʿAdhāb is punishment; nudhur is warning. One is the outcome, the other what preceded it. The sentence gathers the two into one question: "How was My punishment — and how were My warnings!"

And what follows from this is: the warning is named as part of the punishment. The warnings too are the subject of the question "how was it". The verse asks, that is, not only about the severity of the penalty but about whether what was done before the penalty had also been carried out.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is that the two words are joined under a single attribution, and this is verifiable data of the word order.

Wa-laqad yassarnā'l-Qurʾāna li'l-dhikri fa-hal min muddakir "We have indeed made the Qurʾān easy for remembrance. Is there anyone who will remember?"

This sentence occurs four times in the sūra in exactly the same form: 17, 22, 32, 40. And all four are at the end of an account.

The sentence opens with three elements of reinforcement:

1. وَ — here counted as the wāw of the oath; it shows that the sentence is the answer to an oath. 2. لَ — the lām of the answer: the reinforcing lām that enters the answer to an oath. 3. قَدْ — confirmation at the head of a perfect verb.

The sentence is therefore rendered "We have indeed, most certainly", and this is not exaggeration; it is the counterpart of three separate grammatical elements.

And this triple occurs in every sentence in the sūra that begins with wa-laqad. There are eight verses in the sūra opening with wa-laqad: 4, 15, 17, 22, 32, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 51. The most heavily reinforced sentences in the sūra, that is, are the joints of the accounts.

Root: ي-س-ر. This root was treated in al-Inshirāḥ, al-Layl, al-Aʿlā, al-Inshiqāq, al-Muzzammil, ʿAbasa and al-Dhāriyāt. Its concrete sense: ease, suitability, being able to be done without strain.

In al-Layl precisely this verse was cited: "In Form II, يَسَّرَ — to make easy. In the Qurʾān: 'We have indeed made the Qurʾān easy for remembrance' (al-Qamar 54/17, repeated four times in the sūra)." I rely on that.

Two things are to be added here.

One — the pattern. The verb is on Form II (tafʿīl): yassara. The load this form carries here is transitivising and gradual: to make a thing easy. This does not mean that the Qurʾān was not easy and was made so afterwards; it means that it was given as easy.

The Qurʾān uses the same verb of itself once more: "We have made it easy in your tongue" (al-Dukhān 44/58; Maryam 19/97 — fa-innamā yassarnāhu bi-lisānik).

Two — what was made easy. The verse does not simply say "We made the Qurʾān easy"; it says "We made it easy للذِّكْرِ". The ease, that is, was given for a particular work.

لِلذِّكْرِ — the lām conveys purpose: "for remembrance". And dhikr here can be read in two senses, both of which are transmitted:

Both readings are widely transmitted and I do not impose a preference. But the context of the sūra appears to support the second: the word muddakir in the continuation of the sentence is from the same root and means one who draws a lesson. Since dhikr and muddakir are from the same root, then, what was made easy and what is expected are two faces of the same work.

I record this not as a preference but as an observation about the context; it is not binding.

The two halves of the refrain build a logic, and this logic covers all four accounts of the sūra:

The first half is a claim: the instrument was made easy. The second half is a question: is there anyone using it?

And what comes between them is the accounts. The sūra does this: it relates the destruction of a people, then asks "this is easy to understand — is there anyone who understands?"

Four times.

And in all four the same thing is said, but the material piled up behind it changes. At verse seventeen there is one account behind it; at twenty-two, two; at thirty-two, three; at forty, four.

This is the reverse of the "first pile up, then ask item by item" observation recorded in the section on al-Raḥmān. Al-Raḥmān piles up a list of twelve verses and then makes each item in turn the subject of a question. Al-Qamar asks the same question after each account, and each time the question rides on more material.

I record this as my own reading. The distribution of the refrains in the two sūras has been given in tabular form and is verifiable data; the interpretation "increasing weight" is mine.

Kadhdhabat ʿĀdun fa-kayfa kāna ʿadhābī wa nudhur "ʿĀd denied. How then were My punishment and My warnings!"

This verse is the most striking choice in the structure of the sūra, and I gave it in tabular form above: the punishment refrain has been placed at the beginning of the account, not at its end.

In the other three accounts the order is: name of the people → offence → punishment → refrain. Here the order is: name of the people → refrain → description of the punishment → refrain.

The result: the account of ʿĀd becomes nothing but a three-verse description with the same sentence set on either side of it.

I record this as my own reading: this arrangement puts verses nineteen and twenty inside a parenthesis. The question is asked and answered, then the question is asked again. The reader therefore reads the description as the answer to a question asked twice.

And this has to do with ʿĀd's being the shortest account. A narration of three verses may have been framed so that it should not be lost. This last sentence is a conjecture and I present it as one.

The people of ʿĀd and Iram were treated in detail in al-Fajr: where the people lived, the meaning of the expression dhāt al-ʿimād, the disagreements about them and the historical background are given there. In al-Ḥāqqa the destruction of ʿĀd was taken up in detail: the singular form of rīḥ, ṣarṣar, ʿātiya, ḥusūman, ṣarʿā, aʿjāzu nakhlin khāwiya.

I do not repeat these two. Below I give only what belongs to al-Qamar.

In the section on al-Ḥāqqa this observation was recorded and it holds here too: al-Fajr named ʿĀd by what they did, al-Ḥāqqa by what befell them. Al-Qamar does a third thing: it mentions neither what they did nor what they built. In al-Qamar ʿĀd has a single act: kadhdhabat — they denied.

Three sūras take three different faces of the same people. And the face al-Qamar takes is the one that suits this sūra's list: the sūra lists peoples by their common act.

Innā arsalnā ʿalayhim rīḥan ṣarṣaran fī yawmi naḥsin mustamirr "We sent against them a howling wind on a day of unrelenting misfortune."

In al-Ḥāqqa these two words were treated in detail and I do not repeat them. Two of the things recorded there hold here as well:

• رِيح comes in the singular, and in the Qurʾān the singular rīḥ occurs mostly in contexts of punishment, the plural riyāḥ mostly in contexts of mercy. The section on al-Ḥāqqa drew attention to this distribution and did not present it as a rule, since it could not be said with certainty whether it has exceptions. The same note holds here.
• صَرْصَر is a reduplicated pattern (a doubled quadriliteral) and has two explanations: howling (ṣarīr — a shrill continuous sound) and freezing (al-ṣirr — biting cold). Many exegetes combine the two. No preference was imposed there; I do not impose one here either.

The section on al-Ḥāqqa also carried this note: ṣarṣar occurs in the Qurʾān only of the people of ʿĀd; it is almost the name of a single event.

نَحْس — Root: ن-ح-س. The word means misfortune, a state turning to the bad, and its exact opposite is سَعْد (good fortune, felicity).

The same root yields one further word: نُحَاس — molten copper, or a smoke-like substance. The Qurʾān uses this at al-Raḥmān 55/35: yursalu ʿalaykumā shuwāẓun min nārin wa nuḥāsun. That verse was treated in al-Raḥmān.

I do not speak with certainty about the link the lexicographers draw between the two senses. Explanations connecting the tarnishing of copper with misfortune are transmitted in the sources; I do not present these explanations as etymological data.

And here a note is required.

This verse and its counterpart at Fuṣṣilat 41/16 (fī ayyāmin naḥisāt) have been made a support, throughout history, for teachings about lucky and unlucky days. It should be stated that the verse establishes no such system, and the ground for this is in the Qurʾān itself.

One. The verse does not speak of a kind of day; it speaks of the day of a particular event. Naḥs qualifies that day by what it was for them: that day went badly for them. The sentence is not a piece of calendar lore but the description of an event.

Two. The Qurʾān explicitly rejects the practice of tying events to days and omens:

"When good came to them they said, 'this is ours'; and when an evil befell them they took it as an ill omen from Moses and those with him. Know that their omen is with God." (al-Aʿrāf 7/131) "They said, 'We have met with ill fortune because of you.' They said, 'Your ill fortune is from yourselves.'" (Yā Sīn 36/18-19)

The root used in both verses is ط-ي-ر (ṭiyara — to take auguries by releasing birds), and in both verses the stance rejected is the same: attaching the cause of an event to some outward sign.

Three. The verse itself already names the agent: innā arsalnā — "We sent." The misfortune of the day is not a power; it is a characterisation of the event.

I give these three points together with the notes of Method that "the link with science, history and social science must not be forced" and that "where certainty is not spoken must be stated openly." All three rest on the text of the Qurʾān; the stance in the conclusion is mine.

The word treated at verse two comes back here, and in exactly the same form: مُّسْتَمِرّ.

At verse two the word could be read in three distinct senses (continuous / passing / strong). At verse nineteen only one sense works: continuous. For al-Ḥāqqa 69/7 gives the duration of the same event: seven nights and eight days.

In al-Ḥāqqa the relation between these two verses was already taken up and this was recorded: "The classical explanation is that the note mustamirr in al-Qamar conveys continuity and that the two verses do not conflict; the 'day of misfortune' gives the day the event began, while al-Ḥāqqa gives its duration." I rely on that note and do not repeat it.

The only thing I add here is the meeting of the two occurrences, and it is my own reading: the deniers had qualified a sign as "going on and on" and passed by. At verse nineteen the same adjective is given to a people's day of destruction. The word that enters the language of the sūra is the word that first came out of their mouths.

This is the first of the three times the sūra does this. The others will come at verse twenty-six (al-kadhdhābu'l-ashir) and verse forty-seven (ḍalālin wa suʿur).

Tanziʿu'l-nāsa ka-annahum aʿjāzu nakhlin munqaʿir "Tearing people out as though they were the trunks of uprooted palms."

In al-Ḥāqqa this verse was treated in detail in comparison with al-Ḥāqqa 69/7. What was given there and I shall not repeat:

• That the word أَعْجَاز comes from the root ع-ج-ز and means the trunk of a palm tree; and that the root's relation to the branch meaning incapacity is transmitted as ascribed to the lexicographers.
• Why the choice of نَخْل is meaningful: the palm is Arabia's tallest, most enduring tree, at the centre of the economy; the tree of permanence and of wealth.
• That the two verses show two moments of the same event: al-Qamar in the middle of it (while the wind blows), al-Ḥāqqa at the end of it (after the wind has passed).
• That the verb تَنزِعُ comes from the root ن-ز-ع and that the same root is used at al-Maʿārij 70/16 (nazzāʿatan li'l-shawā). That link was taken up in al-Maʿārij.
• The table of differences between خَاوِيَة (hollow) in al-Ḥāqqa and مُنقَعِر (torn up by the roots) here.

Below I give only the three things not taken up in the section on al-Ḥāqqa.

Root: ق-ع-ر. And this root was not taken up in the section on al-Ḥāqqa.

Its concrete sense: the very bottom of a thing, its base. Qaʿru'l-biʾr — the bottom of a well. Qaʿru'l-ināʾ — the bottom of a vessel. Qaʿīr — one whose bottom is deep.

The verb is on the pattern إِنْفِعَال (Form VII): inqaʿara — it broke away from its base, it was torn out together with its foundation. Its active participle is munqaʿir.

And this is exactly what the word says: the tree is not broken, it comes out from its base.

The difference matters, and it can be seen:

The picture the verse gives, then, is not of a fallen tree but of a tree taken out of its place. Its bond with the soil severed, trunk and root together in the air.

This must be read together with the khāwiya of al-Ḥāqqa, and the two words together give a complete description: al-Qamar says the root has broken away, al-Ḥāqqa says the inside was hollow. What was torn out from outside was already empty inside.

I record this joining as my own reading.

And Form VII conveys the middle sense here too — for the fourth time in this sūra: inshaqqa (1), munhamir (11), munqaʿir (20), and below, not muḥtaẓir but a similar structure. The sūra names everything that undergoes an outside action with this form. The moon was split, the water was released, the tree was torn out — none of the three of itself.

I record this as an observation about the pattern, and it can be verified.

The verb is imperfect, among the perfect verbs around it: arsalnā (perfect) — tanziʿu (imperfect).

The same technique was there in verse fourteen: ḥamalnāhu (perfect) — tajrī (imperfect).

The same work is done in both places: while the narrative advances in the past, a single scene is drawn into the present. For a moment the reader steps inside the event.

And note what the two scenes are: one is rescue (the ship running), the other destruction (the wind tearing out). The sūra brings both to life with the same choice of tense.

I record this as my own reading; the tenses of the two verbs are data of the text.

The verse does not say "them", it says "people" — and the word is definite (al-nās).

This is not a generalisation; the context is the people of ʿĀd. But the choice of word is worth recording: instead of the name of the people, the name of the species is used. The wind tears out not "ʿĀd" but "people".

I record this as my own reading: the choice of word enlarges the asymmetry in the scene. What stand opposite one another are named not a wind and a people but a wind and man.

Fa-kayfa kāna ʿadhābī wa nudhur — wa-laqad yassarnā'l-Qurʾāna li'l-dhikri fa-hal min muddakir

Verses twenty-one and twenty-two are one of the places where the two refrains come one after the other. This occurs twice in the sūra:

And in both places the order is the same: punishment first, remembrance second.

I record this as my own reading: the order could have been built the other way and was not. The text first asks "how was My punishment", then "is there anyone who will remember". That is, the event is set down first, and then what is to be drawn from it is asked. The second question rides on the first.

In the accounts of Thamūd and Lot this order is kept but other verses come between (30 → 31 → 32; 39 → 40). The paired sequence is unbroken, that is, only in the first two accounts.

Verse twenty-two is the second full occurrence of the refrain. The analysis given under verse seventeen holds here as well; I do not repeat it. The only difference is the material piled up behind it: here there are two accounts.

The longest account in the sūra: nine verses. And the only one with dialogue — the people's speech is reported (24-25), an answer is given (26), and instructions are given to the messenger (27-28).

In al-Shams what the Qurʾān says and does not say about the account of Thamūd was itemised in detail; the historical frame of the people (the Assyrian records, al-Ḥijr, their not being confused with the Nabataean structures) was also given there. I do not repeat these. Two verses of this sūra (54/28 and 54/29) were already cited in the section on al-Shams.

Kadhdhabat Thamūdu bi'l-nudhur "Thamūd denied the warnings."

In the two preceding accounts the verb had no object: kadhdhabat ʿĀdun — "ʿĀd denied", simply. Here there is an object: bi'l-nudhur.

And this object will be repeated in the remaining two accounts as well:

There is an intensification in the sequence, and I record it as my own reading. In the first two accounts the verb has no object — the denying is set down absolutely. In the third and fourth the object is nudhur. In the fifth the object is āyātinā kullihā — "all Our signs". The scope of the denying, that is, widens as the list advances.

A note on the particle بِ: in the Qurʾān the verb kadhdhaba takes both a direct object (kadhdhabū rusulanā) and a bi-object (kadhdhabū bi-āyātinā). When it comes with bi, the object is mostly a thing (a sign, a book, the Hour, the religion); when it comes directly, mostly a person (a messenger, a prophet). I draw attention to this distribution but do not present it as a rule; it may have exceptions.

If the distribution holds, then in the expression bi'l-nudhur the sense "warnings" (a thing) comes forward and the sense "warners" (persons) stays in the background. This is an inclination, not a ruling.

Fa-qālū a-basharan minnā wāḥidan nattabiʿuhu innā idhan la-fī ḍalālin wa suʿur — a-ulqiya'l-dhikru ʿalayhi min bayninā bal huwa kadhdhābun ashir "They said: 'A single human being from among us — are we to follow him? Then we should indeed be in error and madness. Has the remembrance been cast upon him alone out of all of us? No, he is a brazen liar.'"

The people's speech is spread over two verses and contains three distinct objections. Each rests on a single word:

The three objections stand on three separate grounds: kind (that he is human), number (that he is one), choice (that it is he).

And all three are objections repeated elsewhere in the Qurʾān:

• The objection of kind: "This is nothing but a human being like yourselves" (al-Muʾminūn 23/33-34); "Should an angel not have been sent down to us?" (al-Anʿām 6/8).
• The objection of choice: "Has the remembrance been sent down upon him out of all of us?" (Ṣād 38/8 — exactly the same objection); "Should this Qurʾān not have been sent down to a great man of one of the two cities?" (al-Zukhruf 43/31).

The comparison with Ṣād 38/8 is worth recording, because the wording is almost identical and there the speech belongs to the Meccans, here to Thamūd. The sūra, that is, makes its addressees hear their own sentence from the mouth of an earlier people.

I record this as my own reading. The closeness in wording between the two verses is verifiable data of the text.

بَشَرًا is in the accusative (a-basharan), yet the verb of the sentence comes afterwards: nattabiʿuhu.

This is the structure Arabic calls ishtighāl: the object is brought forward, remains in the accusative, and attaches to an elided verb (a-nattabiʿu basharan… nattabiʿuhu).

Its function is emphasis. The first word heard in the sentence becomes basharan. The centre of the objection, that is, has been brought to the front: "A human being!"

And the order is: basharan (a human being) → minnā (from among us) → wāḥidan (a single one) → nattabiʿuhu (are we to follow). The verb is left to the very end. All the grounds of the objection are enumerated first, and then what is being asked of them is said.

بَشَر — Root: ب-ش-ر. Its concrete sense: skin, the outer surface of the hide. Bashara — the skin. And bashar is the naming of the human being by his visible, touchable side. The word insān, on the other hand, comes from the root of intimacy/forgetting and looks in a different direction.

The objection, then, shows in the choice of word too: they speak of the messenger by way of his skin. Whoever says bashar counts the one before him as nothing more than what is visible.

I record this as my own reading; the root sense of the word is a datum of the language.

ضَلَال — Root: ض-ل-ل. Its concrete sense: to lose the way, to be lost, to miss where one is going. Ḍalla — he was lost. From the same root ḍāll (one who has lost his way) and — strikingly — ḍalla'l-shayʾu fi'l-shayʾi: one thing being lost inside another.

سُعُر — Root: س-ع-ر. Its concrete sense: to kindle a fire, to make it blaze, to make it fierce. Saʿara'l-nār — he made the fire blaze up.

And the word yields two distinct senses:

In the mouth of Thamūd the first sense is at work: "If we follow him we shall be in error and madness."

And now look at verse forty-seven:

إِنَّ ٱلْمُجْرِمِينَ فِى ضَلَٰلٍ وَسُعُرٍ "The guilty are in error and blazing fires." (54/47)

The two expressions are identical: ضَلَالٍ وَسُعُرٍ. The same two words, in the same order, in the same letters.

The difference lies only in whose the sentence is:

Thamūd had said, "if we follow him we shall become so." The sūra says, "those who do not follow him already are so" — and it says it with their own sentence.

And the word's two senses become functional here: they had said "madness"; in verse forty-seven the same word can also be read as "blazing fires". The word stays the same, its sense changes place.

This is the clearest example of the "handing the word back to its owner" that the sūra performs three times. The others:

I record this as my own reading. The wording and verse numbers of the three pairs are verifiable data of the text; gathering the three under a single technique is my reading.

أُلْقِيَ — Root: ل-ق-ي. Laqiya — he met, he encountered. Ilqāʾ (Form IV) — to cast, to let fall, to set before someone.

The verb is passive: ulqiya — "it was cast". The agent is not named.

The Qurʾān uses this verb of revelation:

• "You did not expect that the Book would be cast to you" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/86 — an yulqā ilayka'l-kitāb).
• "He casts the spirit of His command upon whom He wills of His servants" (al-Muʾmin 40/15 — yulqi'l-rūḥa min amrih).
• "We shall cast upon you a weighty word" (al-Muzzammil 73/5) — treated in al-Muzzammil.

The verb, then, is the Qurʾān's own verb for revelation. In making their objection Thamūd use the right verb — what they object to is not that revelation came but to whom it came.

I record this distinction as my own reading and I count it important: the sentence does not reject the possibility of revelation; it rejects the choice of recipient. The expression min bayninā — "from among us" — says exactly this.

كَذَّاب is, from the root ك-ذ-ب, the فَعَّال pattern, and in Arabic this pattern conveys intensity and a trade or habit: najjār (a carpenter), khayyāṭ (a tailor), kadhdhāb (one who makes lying his business). It means, then, not "someone who has told a lie" but "one who has made lying his habit".

أَشِر — Root: أ-ش-ر. Ashar — the insolence that comes of abundance of favour, self-satisfaction, excess. The word does not convey a haughtiness rooted in the self; it conveys an excess that comes of being sated.

Words close in sense: baṭaran (al-Anfāl 8/47 — going astray through ease), fariḥīn (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/76 — rejoicing insolently), maraḥ (Luqmān 31/18 — walking with a swagger).

Thamūd say two things of Ṣāliḥ, then: a liar and insolent. The second is interesting: to count a prophet "insolent" is to read his claim as overstepping his place.

Sa-yaʿlamūna ghadan mani'l-kadhdhābu'l-ashir "Tomorrow they will know who the brazen liar is."

This verse carries the clearest point of word order in the sūra, and it is built on a single letter.

In verse twenty-five Thamūd had said: كَذَّابٌ أَشِرٌ — indefinite, with tanwīn. "A liar, an insolent one."

Verse twenty-six answers: ٱلْكَذَّابُ ٱلْأَشِرُ — definite, with the article. "The liar, the insolent one."

The only difference between the two verses is the definite article. And that article turns an epithet from a description into an identity.

And the sentence does not say whose it is. It asks with man (who): "they will know who the liar and the insolent one is." The verse, that is, does not refute the claim; it leaves who the claim belongs to for the future.

I record this as my own reading. The wording of the two verses can be verified; the function of the article is grammatical data; the conclusion I draw from the two is mine.

Root: غ-د-و. Ghad — tomorrow. Ghuduww — to set out in the morning. Ghadāt — the morning hour.

The word here is not a calendar "tomorrow". In Arabic ghad has a settled use for the near future; the English "one of these days" does the same job.

The Qurʾān makes this use elsewhere too: "No soul knows what it will earn tomorrow" (Luqmān 31/34) — there too no particular day is meant.

The word's function here is to shorten the distance. The sūra names a future of uncertain arrival "tomorrow". And it says this to Thamūd — for Thamūd that "tomorrow" really was near: at Hūd 11/65 it is recorded that a term of three days was given.

I give this detail on the basis of Hūd 11/65; it was also recorded in al-Shams among the things the Qurʾān says about Thamūd.

Innā mursilū'l-nāqati fitnatan lahum fa'rtaqibhum wa'ṣṭabir — wa nabbiʾhum anna'l-māʾa qismatun baynahum; kullu shirbin muḥtaḍar "We are sending the she-camel as a trial for them. So watch them and be steadfast. And tell them that the water is divided between them; at each turn of drinking the one whose turn it is shall be present."

مُرْسِلُو is an active participle in annexation; hence the plural nūn has been dropped (its original is mursilūna).

And the active participle conveys the future here: "we shall send / we are sending". In Arabic the active participle may be past, present or future; the context decides. Here, since the command has not yet been given, it is future.

And the observation I recorded above is at work here: the root ر-س-ل occurs four times in the sūra, and in none of the four is what is sent a prophet. Here what is sent is a she-camel.

Root: ف-ت-ن. This root was treated in al-Burūj, al-Qalam, al-Muddaththir, al-Jinn and al-Dhāriyāt. Its concrete sense deserves attention.

Fatana'l-dhahaba — he put the gold into the fire. This is the root's proper sense: to cast a metal into the fire and separate the pure from the adulterated. Fattān — the goldsmith who melts gold.

The senses that arise from this: trial (separating out), turmoil / sedition (the state of being cast into fire), torment (at al-Burūj 85/10, fatanū — they burned).

And the naming of the she-camel a "trial" is worth dwelling on.

The camel is a miracle; but the verse does not call it a miracle, it calls it a trial. The function of the sign, that is, is not to offer an irresistible proof; it is to separate.

This is in keeping with the Qurʾān's understanding of a sign and is directly connected with the second verse of the sūra: there a sign was shown and "magic" was said. A sign is not something that convinces everyone who sees it; it is something that divides those who see it in two.

I record this as my own reading. The sense of the root and the choice of word in the verse are verifiable data.

ٱرْتَقِبْ — Root: ر-ق-ب. Its concrete sense: the neck (raqaba), and from this to stretch out one's neck and watch. Raqīb — one who watches, who oversees. Murāqaba — surveillance. Irtiqāb — to wait and observe.

The picture in the word is thus the same bodily movement as the muhṭiʿīn of verse eight: the stretching of the neck. There a compelled running, here a deliberate waiting.

ٱصْطَبِرْ — Root: ص-ب-ر. This root was treated in al-Qalam, al-Maʿārij, al-Muzzammil, al-Insān, al-Ṭūr and al-Muddaththir. Its concrete sense: to hold a thing in a place, to confine it, to bind it.

The issue here is the pattern, and it matters.

The Qurʾān generally gives the command to be patient with Form I: ٱصْبِرْ (iṣbir) — al-Qalam 68/48, al-Muzzammil 73/10, al-Maʿārij 70/5, al-Rūm 30/60.

Here, however, Form VIII is used: ٱصْطَبِرْ (iṣṭabir). Its original is iṣtabir; the letter ت, under the influence of the root's ص letter, has turned into ط.

The contribution of Form VIII in sense is effort and acquisition. Ṣabara is to be patient; iṣṭabara is to take patience upon oneself, to make patience one's work.

And this pattern occurs in only three places in the Qurʾān:

What all three have in common is the duration of the patience. In all three what is asked is not a brief endurance but a continuous bearing: perseverance in service, perseverance in prayer, perseverance in waiting.

I record this observation; the wording of the three verses can be verified.

The order of the two commands is worth recording: first watch, then be steadfast. Patience here is therefore not inaction; it is being steadfast while watching. The man does not withdraw, he goes on looking.

This verse is the only one in the sūra that carries a concrete question of law, and it deserves separate treatment.

Root: ن-ب-أ, treated at verse four: a nabaʾ is a report that has weight.

The verb is in the imperative of Form II (tafʿīl): nabbiʾ — "make it known to them". The task given to Ṣāliḥ, then, is not to lay down the rule but to convey it.

Root: ق-س-م. Its concrete sense: to divide, to separate into parts, to apportion. Its derivatives: qism (a share), qisma (both the dividing and the share), taqsīm, qāsim (one who divides), muqsim.

The same root also yields the word qasam (an oath) — treated in al-Qalam and al-Dhāriyāt. The link the lexicographers draw: an oath is what separates truth from falsehood. I transmit this explanation; I do not offer it as a settled etymology.

And there is a point of word order here.

The verse does not say "the water has been divided" (al-māʾu maqsūmun). It says "the water is a division between them" (al-māʾu qismatun baynahum) — that is, it makes the verbal noun the predicate directly.

In Arabic, making a verbal noun the predicate conveys intensity: the thing is identified with the act itself. Zaydun ʿadlun — "Zayd is justice" (not just, but justice itself).

Its counterpart here is this: the water is not a thing that has been divided; it is the division itself. What is said is not what the water is but how it is ordered. Water is no longer a substance; it is an order.

I record this as my own reading. That a verbal noun made predicate conveys intensity is grammatical data; its application here is my reading.

شِرْب — Root: ش-ر-ب. And here there is a distinction between words that requires attention:

The form in the verse is شِرْب: not the act but the right. Not "every drinking", that is, but "every turn".

The Qurʾān uses the same word at al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/155, and there it gives the arrangement explicitly:

"This is a she-camel; she has a turn at drinking, and you have a turn at drinking on a known day." (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/155)

In al-Shams this verse was already recorded among the things the Qurʾān says about Thamūd.

مُحْتَضَر — Root: ح-ض-ر. Its concrete sense: to be present, to be at a place. Ḥaḍara — he was present. Ḥāḍir — one who is present. Ḥaḍāra — settled life (the opposite of nomadism: badāwa). Iḥtiḍār — being present.

This root was treated in al-Takwīr.

The word is the passive participle of Form VIII: muḥtaḍar — that at which one is present. Every turn, that is, is an occasion at which the one whose turn it is stands present.

What the sentence says is how the order works: the water is there; whoever's turn it is comes and takes it that day; the other does not come.

This verse is the most concrete and most worldly sentence in the sūra and is worth dwelling on, because what is related is not a miraculous prohibition; it is an arrangement for managing a resource.

The historical frame. On the Arabian Peninsula, and in arid regions generally, water has throughout history been the most tightly regulated resource. In oases and around wells the use of water is run on a system of turns: each household, each herd, each field has access to the water for a determined span of time. In Arabic such arrangements are generally called nawba (a turn) and qismat al-māʾ (the division of the water); similar arrangements are also documented in the irrigation systems of Iran, North Africa and South Arabia.

This is a piece of social history and I transmit it as such. I do not claim that the verse intends one of these systems; I say that the arrangement the verse describes would not have been strange to the one addressed.

And the character of the arrangement matters. The verse does not say that the water belongs to the she-camel; it says that it is divided. What is laid down, then, is not a prohibition but a turn. No one is left without water; each takes on his own day.

What the offence is therefore changes. What Thamūd did was not merely to kill an animal; it was to abolish the division. When the camel is killed, the water becomes one side's again. The hamstringing, that is, is an act of abolishing an order.

I record this as my own reading. The words of the verse (qismatun, shirb, muḥtaḍar) and the description at al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/155 are verifiable data of the text; defining the offence in this way is my reading.

What this verse says to the present lies not in the word "camel" but in the word "division".

When more than one party must have access to a shared resource, what has to be regulated before the resource itself is the turn. The verse first states that a division exists (qismatun baynahum), then says that everyone will be present at his own turn (kullu shirbin muḥtaḍar). Two sentences, two distinct pieces of work: the recognition of a right and the keeping of a turn.

And the violation the sūra relates begins not with a denial of the right but with the breaking of the turn. The camel is killed because it has a turn.

This yields a general observation about how shared resources — water, pasture, common ground, common time — are ruined: ruin usually comes not through the denial of a right but through the abolition of the turn. No one says "this has no right"; they simply do away with the turn.

That last sentence is my own reading, and I record it as an observation, not a ruling.

Fa-nādaw ṣāḥibahum fa-taʿāṭā fa-ʿaqar "They called their companion; he reached out and took, and hamstrung her."

The verse consists of four words and three of them are verbs. All three are joined with فَ.

The connective فَ conveys immediate sequence in Arabic: coming one after the other without a gap. Wāw only joins; thumma puts an interval between; fāʾ means immediately after.

The verse therefore gives the three acts as a single sequence of movement:

`` فَنَادَوْا → فَتَعَاطَىٰ → فَعَقَرَ they called he reached out he hamstrung ``

No pause between them, no thinking, no hesitation. This is the fastest verse in the sūra.

And this speed must be read together with the length of the ṣarṣar wind in verse nineteen (seven nights and eight days) and the instantaneity of the ṣayḥa in verse thirty-one. The sūra gives different durations for different events; here the duration is close to zero.

I record this as my own reading; the function of the connective fāʾ is grammatical data.

The verb is plural: nādaw — "they called". The calling, then, belongs to the group.

Root: ن-د-و / ن-د-ي. Nidāʾ — to call out, to summon. Nādī — a meeting place, an assembly (at al-ʿAlaq 96/17, nādiyah — treated in al-ʿAlaq).

And note: the root here is not د-ع-و. In verse six there was yadʿu'l-dāʿī, in verse ten fa-daʿā Rabbahu; both were from the root of daʿwa. Here the root nidāʾ is used.

The difference the lexicographers record: nidāʾ emphasises calling with the voice (shouting from a distance); duʿāʾ looks to the content of the call. I transmit this distinction; I do not claim that it works absolutely everywhere.

Root: ص-ح-ب. Ṣaḥiba — to be together with, to keep company. Ṣāḥib — a companion, one who is present with another, the owner of a thing.

The choice of word is worth recording. The verse names the man who hamstrung the camel neither by his name, nor by his offence, nor by an epithet. It says "their companion" — that is, it defines him by his relation to the group.

In the classical sources this man's name is transmitted, and as was recorded in al-Shams that name does not occur in the Qurʾān. The note made in the section on al-Shams holds here too; I do not repeat the name.

And the sūra's way of distributing the guilt shows here:

The plural verb comes before the singular verbs. The act begins with the group's call and ends by one man's hand.

In al-Shams this singular/plural difference was already recorded: al-Qamar uses the singular (ʿaqar), al-Shams the plural (fa-ʿaqarūhā, 91/14), and al-Aʿrāf and Hūd also use the plural (7/77; 11/65). In the section on al-Shams this question was moreover treated under the heading "a singular agent, a collective crime".

The only thing I add here, and it is my own reading: in al-Qamar both the singular and the plural occur in the same verse. Al-Shams names the singular agent in a separate verse (inbaʿatha ashqāhā, 91/12); al-Qamar joins the two in a single sentence. And the manner of the joining makes the call a part of the hamstringing: fa-nādaw… fa-ʿaqar. The same chain of fāʾ.

Root: ع-ط-و. Its concrete sense: to stretch out one's hand and take, or give. Aʿṭā (Form IV) — he gave. ʿAṭāʾ — a gift, the thing given.

This root was treated in al-Layl, al-Ḍuḥā, al-Kawthar and al-Nabaʾ — and there it always had the sense of giving: fa-ammā man aʿṭā (al-Layl 92/5), innā aʿṭaynāka'l-kawthar (al-Kawthar 108/1).

Here Form VI (tafāʿul) is used: taʿāṭā.

Form VI generally conveys reciprocity (taqātalū — they fought one another). But it also has the sense of giving oneself to a task, setting about it. Taʿāṭā is of the second kind: he stretched out his hand to a thing, he took the work upon himself.

And the most striking side of the verse is here: the object of the verb is not named.

Taʿāṭā — took what? The verse does not say. A sword, a knife, some other implement — none of it is written.

In the classical commentaries the object is widely supplied as "a sword". The Qurʾān does not say this.

I record this as my own reading: the ellipsis here is a choice of narration. The text does not name the implement; it names only the movement of the hand. And the next verb already gives the result. The verse is concerned not with the implement but with the hand.

The word's kinship with the sense of "giving" is also worth recording: the same root names a gift in the Qurʾān; here it names a hamstringing. What they have in common is the stretching out of the hand; what it is stretched out for is not written in the root.

That last sentence is my own reading; the two senses of the root are data of the language.

Root: ع-ق-ر. Its concrete sense deserves attention, because the English "to slaughter" does not give the word.

ʿAqara'l-baʿīra — he struck the camel in the legs, cut its leg and brought it down. ʿAqr, that is, is first of all the destruction of the power to move; slaughtering at the throat (dhabḥ) is a separate word.

The root's derivatives show where the sense opens out:

• عَاقِر — a woman or man who bears no child. In the Qurʾān: "My wife is barren" (Maryam 19/5, 19/8), "I am a barren old woman" (al-Dhāriyāt 51/29). The lexicographers' explanation: one whose line has been cut.
• عُقْر الدار — the middle of a house, its core, its main body.
• عَقِير — an animal struck in the legs.

The common core of the root: to cut off the continuance of a thing. The camel's walking is cut off, the woman's line is cut off, and the centre of a house is the place where continuance comes to a stop.

This root was treated in al-Shams. The only thing I add here is that this link between ʿāqir and ʿāqir is functional in this sūra, and I record it as my own reading: what Thamūd cut was not an animal but the continuance of an order. Verse twenty-eight had set up the order (qismatun baynahum); the verb of verse twenty-nine cuts off that order's continuing. The root names exactly this.

Fa-kayfa kāna ʿadhābī wa nudhur

This is the most striking placement I recorded in the table of refrains above, and I take it up separately here.

The order is this:

In the other three accounts the refrain comes after the description of the punishment. Here it comes in between.

The result is this: the reader hears the question "how was the punishment" before he learns what the punishment was. The question opens a gap; verse thirty-one fills it.

I record this as my own reading: this placement increases the force of verse thirty-one. An answer that has been asked for is heard more loudly than one that has not. And the account of Thamūd is the longest account of the sūra; the punishment of the longest account is given as the answer to a question that was asked.

This is a statement about a choice; the verse numbers can be verified.

Innā arsalnā ʿalayhim ṣayḥatan wāḥidatan fa-kānū ka-hashīmi'l-muḥtaẓir "We sent against them a single cry, and they became like the dry brushwood of the maker of a fold."

صَيْحَة — Root: ص-ي-ح. Ṣāḥa — he shouted, he cried out. Ṣayḥa — a loud sound made once. The pattern is مَرَّة (faʿla), and in Arabic this pattern conveys a single occurrence: ḍarba (one blow), naẓra (one look), ṣayḥa (one cry).

The word already carries the sense "once", then. The adjective وَاحِدَة reinforces this further.

The Qurʾān uses different words for the destruction of Thamūd in different sūras, and in al-Shams the itemisation of this was given: ṣayḥa (Hūd 11/67), rājifa / ṣāʿiqa (al-Aʿrāf 7/78; Fuṣṣilat 41/17), damdama (al-Shams 91/14), ṭāghiya (al-Ḥāqqa 69/5 — treated in al-Ḥāqqa). I do not repeat that table.

Al-Qamar's contribution is the word وَاحِدَة.

And this word will occur once more in the sūra — in verse fifty, in an entirely different context:

I record this as my own reading: verse fifty is the general rule of verse thirty-one. The destruction of Thamūd came by a single sound; verse fifty says that this is not an exception but the rule: the command is always one. And in verse fifty-one it will be said "We have destroyed your likes" and the refrain will be repeated.

In al-Ḥāqqa a similar weave was recorded under the heading "the repetition of wāḥida carrying the difference of speed between the two sections of the sūra"; there nafkhatun wāḥida and dakkatan wāḥida did the same job. The same word does the same job in two sūras: it reduces the duration of the event to zero.

The most original comparison in the sūra, and it is taken from a scene of shepherding.

هَشِيم — Root: ه-ش-م. Its concrete sense: to break something dry and brittle into small pieces, to crumble it. Hashama — he broke, he crushed.

هَشِيم is on the faʿīl pattern with the sense of a passive participle: broken, crumbled, dried up and scattered plant matter.

The Qurʾān uses the word once more, and there it gives the process as well:

"Set forth to them the likeness of the life of this world: it is like water We send down from the sky, and the plants of the earth mingle with it; then it becomes dry stubble that the winds scatter (hashīman tadhrūhu'l-riyāḥ)." (al-Kahf 18/45)

Hashīm, then, is a plant that was once alive and has dried and crumbled. There is a past inside the word: this thing was once green.

A note on the language. It is widely transmitted that the name Hāshim, borne by one of the Prophet's forefathers, comes from this root and is given the sense "one who crumbles bread for broth". I transmit this as a piece of lexical information; it has no bearing on the sense of the verse, and I make none.

ٱلْمُحْتَظِر — Root: ح-ظ-ر. And this word is the real key.

Ḥaẓara — to enclose a thing, to draw a fence around it, to close it off. And from this:

• حَظِيرَة (ḥaẓīra) — a fold. A shepherd weaves a fence of dry thorn and brushwood to gather his animals at night; the area this fence encloses is called a ḥaẓīra.
• مَحْظُور (maḥẓūr) — forbidden, fenced off. In the Qurʾān: "The gift of your Lord is not withheld" (al-Isrāʾ 17/20 — mā kāna ʿaṭāʾu Rabbika maḥẓūrā).

The same root, then, gives both "to make a fold" and "to forbid". The link is plain: to forbid is to fence something around.

ٱلْمُحْتَظِر is the active participle of Form VIII: one who makes a fold, who weaves a fence.

The exact rendering of the expression is therefore: "the dry brushwood of the one who makes a fold."

The picture is this. The shepherd weaves a fence of thorn and brushwood to protect his animals. In time the brushwood dries, breaks, and is crumbled underfoot by the animals. What collects at the base of the fence is the dust of broken dry thorn — no use for fuel, no use for fencing.

There is a variant reading. The word has also been read as ٱلْمُحْتَظَر (muḥtaẓar, with fatḥa); on that reading it is a passive participle / noun of place and means "the fold itself": "the dry brushwood of the fold". Since I cannot state with certainty which reading belongs to which imām, I write no names. Between the two readings the picture does not change.

This comparison is the clearest of the sūra's comparisons chosen to suit its addressee, and it works on the same logic as the locust comparison of verse seven.

Let us set the four great comparisons of the sūra side by side:

All three comparisons are taken from the addressee's own way of making a living: the crop, the palm grove, the fold. What the Qurʾān does here is to speak in a community's everyday images.

And there is something common to all three: each of them is the dead state of a thing. A swarm of locusts finishes the crop; an uprooted palm ceases to be a tree; dried brushwood ceases to be a fence.

I record this as my own reading.

One last note, and it is my own reading.

As was recorded in al-Shams, Thamūd are named in the Qurʾān as the people who carved houses out of the mountains (al-Aʿrāf 7/74; al-Ḥijr 15/82; al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/149), and at al-Fajr 89/9 they occur as "those who hollowed the rocks in the valley".

A people who made houses out of rock is likened to a shepherd's dry fence.

This contrast is the same as the one drawn for ʿĀd in the section on al-Ḥāqqa: there too the comparison was to the dead part of the palm, the tree of permanence, and it was recorded that what was raised up in al-Fajr and what was brought down in al-Ḥāqqa were set opposite one another.

Al-Qamar does the same thing a third time — and this time the material chosen is the thing furthest from stone that there could be: dry thorn.

I record this as a reading; the wording of the verses can be verified, the contrast is a reading I have set up.

The third full occurrence of the refrain. Behind it are three accounts: Noah, ʿĀd, Thamūd. The analysis under verse seventeen holds; I do not repeat it.

Kadhdhabat qawmu Lūṭin bi'l-nudhur — innā arsalnā ʿalayhim ḥāṣiban illā āla Lūṭin; najjaynāhum bi-saḥar "The people of Lot too denied the warnings. We sent against them a stone-hurling wind — except the family of Lot; them We saved at daybreak."

This account differs from the other three at one point: the description of the punishment comes before the description of the offence.

Verse thirty-four gives the punishment (ḥāṣib), verse thirty-seven gives the offence (rāwadūhu ʿan ḍayfih). The order, that is, has been built in reverse.

In the other three accounts the order was always the same: denial → (offence) → punishment. Here: denial → punishment → rescue → warning → offence → punishment again.

I record this as my own reading: this break appears to have to do with the intervention of the sentence about the rescue (34-35). To relate those who were saved, the sūra must first state the destruction; a rescue can only be related as an exception within a destruction. This is already visible in the grammar of verse thirty-four: the particle illā (except).

Root: ح-ص-ب. Its concrete sense: gravel, small stones. Ḥaṣbāʾ — pebbles.

This word was treated in al-Mulk and this verse was cited there: "We sent against them a stone-hurling wind (al-Qamar 54/34) — about the people of Lot." The section on al-Mulk also gave in tabular form the contrast between a threat coming from the sky (ḥāṣib) and one coming from the earth (yakhsifa). I do not repeat these.

Two things are to be added here.

One — the form of the word. Ḥāṣib is an active participle: "hurling gravel". The word names not the wind but the work the wind does. Rendered into English as "a rain of stones", the agent's movement is lost.

Two — the root's second use. The same root occurs once more in the Qurʾān, in a completely different place:

"You and what you worship besides God are the fuel of Hell (ḥaṣabu jahannam)." (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/98)

There ḥaṣab is what is thrown into the fire. The root names both the thrown stone and the thrown fuel. The common core: being thrown.

I record this as a datum of the language.

The Qurʾān relates the destruction of the people of Lot with other words in other sūras and I do not repeat them here; in al-Ḥāqqa al-muʾtafikāt (the overturned cities) was treated in detail and it was recorded there that the Qurʾān does not give the names of the cities. That note holds here too.

آل — its root, according to the majority of the lexicographers, is أ-و-ل (awl — to return, to arrive); according to some it is a transformation of the word ahl. I issue no definite ruling.

The sense of the word: someone's circle, his household, those attached to him. It is not mere blood kinship; it conveys attachment.

And this word occurs twice in the sūra — and the two occurrences look at one another:

The same word at the two ends of what befell two peoples. One names those attached to a prophet, the other those attached to a tyrant.

I record this as my own reading. The wording of the two verses is verifiable data of the text; setting the two opposite one another is my reading.

And the word's sense of "attachment" is functional here: elsewhere the Qurʾān says that Lot's wife was not saved (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/32-33; al-Taḥrīm 66/10 — treated in al-Taḥrīm). Āl here, then, is not determined by blood. It is possible to be in the same household and stay outside the list.

Root: ن-ج-و. Its concrete sense: to bring a thing up to a high place, to set it apart. Najwa — high ground the floodwaters do not reach. And from this to be saved: to rise above and away from danger.

From the same root najwā (a secret conversation — treated in al-Mujādala): the setting apart of a conversation from the group.

The verb is on the pattern of Form II (tafʿīl): najjā — he saved. Here that form conveys both transitivity and multiplicity (number, thoroughness).

Root: س-ح-ر, treated at verse two, where it was recorded that the two words (سِحْر / سَحَر) come from the same root.

سَحَر — the last part of the night, the time just before dawn. The darkest and quietest hour of the night.

The word was treated in al-Dhāriyāt, and al-Dhāriyāt 51/18 was cited there: wa bi'l-asḥāri hum yastaghfirūn — "and in the hours before dawn they seek forgiveness."

A grammatical detail. The word here is indefinite and carries tanwīn: bi-saḥarin. There is a nicety the lexicographers record: when the saḥar of a particular day is meant, the word saḥar becomes diptote and takes no tanwīn (saḥarā); when an unspecified daybreak is meant, it takes tanwīn. I transmit this nicety as ascribed to the lexicographers; I do not claim that it works absolutely everywhere.

If it holds, then what the verse says is "at a daybreak"; no particular date is spoken of.

And now verse thirty-four must be read together with verse thirty-eight, because both give an hour:

Between the two events there is about an hour.

The rescue takes place a short time before the destruction — and the two times are neighbours. Saḥar is the last slice of the night, bukra the first slice of the day. Between them is sunrise.

I record this as my own reading. The senses of the two words are lexical data; the wording of the two verses is data of the text; the temporal relation between them is my inference.

And this is something the sūra does elsewhere too: it gives durations. The ṣarṣar lasted seven nights and eight days (the information al-Ḥāqqa gives); the ṣayḥa was a single instant (31); the flood came from two waters (11-12); the people of Lot were taken at a morning hour (38). The sūra gives events with their hours — and in verse fifty it will say where this comes from: ka-lamḥin bi'l-baṣar.

Niʿmatan min ʿindinā; kadhālika najzī man shakar "As a favour from Us. Thus do We recompense the one who gives thanks."

This verse carries the most striking choice of word in the sūra, and to see it one must recall the sūra as a whole.

Al-Qamar is a sūra of punishment. The greater part of its fifty-five verses is denial, warning, penalty and reckoning. The word "favour" occurs once in the sūra — and for a rescue.

نِعْمَة — Root: ن-ع-م. Its concrete sense: softness, ease. Naʿima — it became soft and easy. Nāʿim — soft, pleasant. Niʿma — a good thing given. Naʿīm — abundance, well-being. From the same root naʿam (yes) and anʿām (livestock — property given).

And the word's case-analysis is worth recording: niʿmatan is in the accusative and is an object of purpose (an accusative of cause). That is, "We saved them — as / because of a favour from Us."

The rescue could thus have been named in two different languages, and the text chose one:

And the difference is preserved in the continuation of the sentence too. The verse says "thus do We recompense", but the name of what is being recompensed is not obedience or faith: it is شُكْر.

This pattern occurs in several places in the Qurʾān, and in al-Raḥmān two of them were compared. I now complete the table by adding a third:

In al-Raḥmān the difference between the first two was recorded: "al-Mursalāt names the agent, al-Raḥmān the act." Al-Qamar takes a third path: it defines the person by his act — "whoever gives thanks".

And the relative pronoun مَنْ is indefinite here: not a name but a quality. This accords with the principle recorded in Method: "what the verse describes are qualities; whoever bears that quality is included in it."

And here the most direct link with al-Raḥmān is made.

شُكْر — Root: ش-ك-ر. The explanation the lexicographers transmit about its concrete sense: shakara'l-dābbatu — the animal grew fat on little fodder, its condition became visible. Shukr, that is, is the becoming visible of what has been received. From the same root shakūr (much given to thanks) and mashkūr (that for which a return is made).

And the exact opposite of thanks is كُفْر: to cover. Thanks makes visible, ingratitude covers over.

Now look at the refrain of al-Raḥmān:

fa-bi-ayyi ālāʾi Rabbikumā tukadhdhibān — "Which of your Lord's favours do you deny?"

Al-Raḥmān's whole question is about the denial of a favour. And in al-Raḥmān it was recorded that ālāʾ means "favour" and that the favour is "something asked to be remembered, something that can be forgotten": "The name of a favour carries within it the possibility of being forgotten."

Al-Qamar 54/35 is the exact other side. Here there is a favour (niʿmatan min ʿindinā) and the attitude that is recompensed is thanks — that is, making the favour visible.

I record this as my own reading. The wording and word-roots of the two sūras are verifiable data; setting up the contrast is my reading.

And one further conclusion follows, which I also record as my own reading: in describing the rescue al-Qamar uses the language not of law but of relation. In the language of punishment there are "seizing" (akhdh), "punishment" (ʿadhāb), "We sent" (arsalnā). In the language of rescue there are "favour" and "thanks".

The sūra works, that is, with two separate vocabularies: a vocabulary of act and force for destruction, a vocabulary of gift and return for rescue. And the second vocabulary lasts only one verse in the sūra — until verses fifty-four and fifty-five. There the same vocabulary will come back: jannāt, maqʿadi ṣidqin, ʿinda malīkin muqtadir.

Wa-laqad andharahum baṭshatanā fa-tamāraw bi'l-nudhur "He had indeed warned them of Our seizing; but they turned the warnings into a dispute."

Root: ب-ط-ش. This root was treated in detail in al-Burūj (inna baṭsha Rabbika la-shadīd, 85/12), and the description recorded there holds here too:

Baṭsh: to grip a thing violently and harshly, to fall upon it and seize it. The word describes the movement of the hand — clawing, snatching, taking hold and not letting go.

In the section on al-Burūj three elements of the word were enumerated and the first was suddenness: not a slow encirclement but a lunge. I do not repeat these.

What is to be added here is the pattern. The word comes here in the form بَطْشَة, that is, on the faʿla pattern: a single occurrence. The same pattern as ṣayḥa in verse thirty-one.

Al-Qamar, that is, names the destruction of both Thamūd and the people of Lot with the "single occurrence" pattern. In al-Burūj the same root came as a verbal noun, that is, in a form conveying continuity.

I record this as an observation about the pattern; the wording of the three verses can be verified.

The Qurʾān uses the same pattern once more: "The day We shall seize with the greatest seizing (al-baṭshata'l-kubrā)" (al-Dukhān 44/16).

The subject of the verb is singular: andhara-hum — "he warned them". Who? Lot.

And this is the only verb in the sūra of which a messenger is the agent.

The messengers' acts in the sūra are these: Noah prayed (10), Ṣāliḥ was commanded to watch and to be steadfast and to give notice (27-28), Lot warned (36). In all three accounts, then, what the messenger does is to convey or to pray — in none of them is there any use of force, any intervention, any producing of an outcome.

I record this as an observation; the verbs of the verses can be verified.

And the verb is on the pattern إِفْعَال (Form IV): andhara. The sense of the root ن-ذ-ر in this form is "to make known by way of a frightening report". The root was treated in al-Dhāriyāt, Nūḥ, al-Muddaththir and al-Mursalāt; I do not repeat it.

The root's turn within the sūra: immediately after the verb andharahum (he warned) comes bi'l-nudhur (the warnings). The same root twice in the same sentence: the act done and the name of the act done.

Root: م-ر-ي. And a caution is needed here: this root is NOT the root م-ر-ر of verse two.

The two roots are close in sound, distinct in sense:

I record this distinction explicitly, because the sūra's use of both invites confusion. A note of the same kind was made in the section on al-Ḥāqqa between wāhiya and wahn, and in the section on al-Qāriʿa between other pairs. I draw no meaning from the closeness in sound between the two roots.

The concrete sense of the root م-ر-ي: marā'l-ḍarra — to pull and squeeze the udder in order to milk it. And from this, figuratively: to pull a matter back and forth, to drag it this way and that, to wrangle over it.

Its derivatives:

• مِرْيَة / مُرْيَة — doubt. In the Qurʾān: "Be not in doubt concerning it" (Hūd 11/17; al-Sajda 32/23 — fa-lā taku fī miryatin minh).
• إِمْتِرَاء — to fall into doubt, to dispute. Maryam 19/34: "…the word of truth concerning which they fall into dispute."
• تَمَارِي — Form VI: to dispute with one another, to wrangle together.

The form in the verse is Form VI, and Form VI's conveying of reciprocity is fully functional here: tamāraw — they disputed with one another.

And this is the subtlest reaction the sūra describes, and it is worth dwelling on.

The reactions of the deniers are enumerated in the sūra:

The fifth differs from the others, and I record this as my own reading. Turning away, naming, objecting — all are open expressions of a stance. Tamārī, however, is not an open rejection; it is making the matter debatable.

And note what it is that is disputed in the verse: fa-tamāraw bi'l-nudhur. What they dispute is the warnings. A warning is turned into a subject of debate.

Form VI's reciprocity completes this: the dispute is conducted among themselves. Not with the warner, but with one another.

What this says to the present. The stance this verse describes is a less visible form of open rejection: to neutralise a warning, without rejecting it, by turning it into a topic. So long as the discussion goes on, no decision has to be made.

That last sentence is my own reading, and it is not a ruling but an observation drawn from the movement the word carries.

Wa-laqad rāwadūhu ʿan ḍayfihi fa-ṭamasnā aʿyunahum fa-dhūqū ʿadhābī wa nudhur "They had indeed pressed him for his guests. So We wiped out their eyes. 'Taste My punishment and My warnings!'"

Root: ر-و-د. Its concrete sense: to go back and forth in search of a thing, to range about. Rād — the scout who searches for pasture. Rāʾid — one sent out on behalf of a people to look for a place. Irāda — to want; to turn towards something.

This root was treated in al-Burūj, al-Ṭāriq and al-Qiyāma.

The verb is on the pattern of Form III (mufāʿala): rāwada. This form conveys persistence and mutual pressure: not asking once but asking insistently, again and again.

And the key to the pattern is the preposition: عَنْ.

Rāwada fulānan ʿan shayʾin is a settled construction in Arabic, and its exact sense is: to try to make someone give up something, to press him in order to prise that thing from him.

The Qurʾān uses this construction once more, and there its sense is beyond dispute:

"The woman in whose house he was pressed him against his will (rāwadathu'llatī huwa fī baytihā ʿan nafsih)." (Yūsuf 12/23)

The use in Sūrat Yūsuf and the use here are the same construction, and the difference lies in the word that comes after the preposition: there ʿan nafsihi (from himself), here ʿan ḍayfihi (from his guest).

Root: ض-ي-ف. Ḍāfa — he became a guest, he lodged. Aḍāfa — he received as a guest; and in grammar iḍāfa (making one noun a guest of another, annexation) is from the same root.

The word is a generic noun: it is used in the same form for the singular and the plural. The Qurʾān does this at al-Dhāriyāt 51/24 as well: ḍayfi Ibrāhīma'l-mukramīn — "Abraham's honoured guests" (a singular word, a plural adjective). That verse was treated in al-Dhāriyāt.

And the choice of the word is decisive, and I record this as my own reading.

In describing the offence the verse could have done three things: it could have named the act, characterised the perpetrators, or named the victim. The path it chose is the third, and the name it chose is "guest".

The offence, that is, is framed in the language of the sūra as the violation of guesthood. And this frame is one of the gravest violations in the addressee's own law: in Arab custom the protection of a guest is the host's personal obligation, and that obligation is binding in tribal law. To touch the guest is to touch the host.

This is a piece of social history and I transmit it as such. That hospitality (ḍiyāfa) was an institutional obligation in Arab society is widely documented in pre-Islamic poetry and in the later sources.

And the word order of the verse supports this: the direct object of the verb is Lot (rāwadū-hu), while the guest comes with a preposition (ʿan ḍayfihi). In the grammar, that is, the one pressed is Lot. The offence is directed at the host before it reaches the guest.

I record that the Qurʾān names the act of the people of Lot more explicitly in other sūras (al-Aʿrāf 7/80-81; al-Naml 27/54-55; al-ʿAnkabūt 29/28-29), and I do not go into the detail of those verses here, because what al-Qamar does is different: the sūra names the offence by way of the right of a guest.

Root: ط-م-س. This root was treated in full in al-Mursalāt and this verse was cited there. I take the finding there as it stands:

"The idea beneath the root: to destroy the trace, the shape, the distinguishing lines of a thing. To erase a writing, to blur a road, to flatten a face. … This is the root's most decisive feature: not to destroy but to render indistinguishable."

I likewise do not repeat the three Qurʾānic examples given in the section on al-Mursalāt: Yūnus 10/88 (iṭmis ʿalā amwālihim — the property is made useless), Yā Sīn 36/66 (la-ṭamasnā ʿalā aʿyunihim — the function of sight is removed), and this verse.

Two things I add here.

One — the matching of offence and penalty.

The offence begins with a look and the penalty takes the eye as its target.

In al-Ḥāqqa a "table of offence-and-return matching" was set up in this commentary (al-Ḥāqqa 69/33-34 ↔ 35-36). The same method is at work here.