al-Qamar 54:29

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.