al-Raḥmān 55:41

Yuʿrafu'l-mujrimūna bi-sīmāhum fa-yuʾkhadhu bi'l-nawāṣī wa'l-aqdām

"The guilty are known by their marks; and they are seized by the forelocks and the feet."

Root: ع-ر-ف. This root was analysed in detail in al-Mursalāt in the discussion of ʿurfā, and what was recorded there is decisive here:

The core of the root is to know, to recognise — but this is a kind of knowing different from ʿilm: to recognise a thing because one has seen it before.

And the verb is passive: yuʿrafu — "they are known", and who knows them is not stated.

The lexicographers differ over the root of the word: some attach it to the root و-س-م (to brand; it became sīmā by a transposition of letters), others to the root س-و-م. I do not speak with certainty.

Its meaning is beyond dispute: the mark on the face, the appearance, the distinguishing sign.

This word was briefly mentioned in al-Qalam: "سِيمَا (sīmā) — the mark on the face, appearance. It survives in Turkish as sima."

The word's uses in the Qurʾān give a table:

And between two of the verses there is an exact identity of structure:

al-Baqara 2/273: تَعْرِفُهُم بِسِيمَٰهُمْ — "you know them by their mark" (of the poor) al-Raḥmān 55/41: يُعْرَفُ ٱلْمُجْرِمُونَ بِسِيمَٰهُمْ — "the guilty are known by their mark"

The same verb, the same particle, the same noun. In one place a poor man hiding his need, in the other a guilty man. Both are read from the face.

I record this as an observation about the weave of words; the wording of the two verses is in the text.

In recounting that day the Qurʾān regularly looks at faces. This was treated in detail in two places in this commentary.

In ʿAbasa the last five verses were taken up: "On that day some faces are bright — laughing, rejoicing at good news. And on some faces there is dust; a darkness covers them." And the finding about word order recorded there was this:

| Structure | Adjective — musfira, ḍāḥika, mustabshira | Sentence — ʿalayhā ghabara, tarhaquhā qatara |

The good faces were recounted with an adjective, then, and the bad ones with a sentence: in the one the quality came from the face itself, in the other from something settling upon it.

In al-Qiyāma the two tableaux of faces (nāḍira/nāẓira and bāsira/fāqira) were treated, and this was recorded:

The same subject, the same adverb of time, a single word different in the same place — in Arabic this is called muqābala, and its effect is this: the difference between the two groups is presented not as a difference of treatment coming from outside but as two different fillings of the same sentence.

This verse of al-Raḥmān follows a third path, and the difference should be recorded.

ʿAbasa and al-Qiyāma recount the face as a state; al-Raḥmān uses the face as an instrument of recognition.

There the face was the sign of an outcome; here the face is an identity document. And this establishes the verse's link with the verse before it: no question is asked, because the face already says it.

ٱلنَّوَاصِي — the plural of nāṣiya. This word was analysed in detail in al-ʿAlaq, and precisely this verse was cited there. What was recorded there:

The forelock is the foremost and highest part of the head. A man who grows proud lifts his head; and what comes forward when he lifts it is the forelock. And when it is held, the head must go wherever the one holding it wills. - Hūd 11/56: "There is no living creature but He holds it by its forelock." — This verse establishes the matter at the root: the mastery is already in fact in His hand. - al-Raḥmān 55/41: "The guilty are known by their marks, and they are seized by the forelocks and the feet." Read together with these two verses, the threat of al-ʿAlaq becomes this: a man who has forgotten that he is held by the forelock is reminded that he will be seized by the forelock.

What is to be added here: the feet.

In al-ʿAlaq and in Hūd there was only the forelock. Here there are two points: forelock and foot.

The two are the two ends of the body — the highest and the lowest. To hold a person at these two points is to hold him entirely; no place in between is left unheld.

And expressing a whole by naming its two ends is a known usage in Arabic.

I record this as an observation about the word order.

And I add one further reading, as my own: the forelock is the seat of pride (recorded in the section on al-ʿAlaq); the foot is the seat of walking. The two points held are thus the places where a person lifts his head and where he walks. Both are indices of a will.