al-Qamar 54:9

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.