al-Wāqiʿa 56:28-31

Fī sidrin makhḍūd · wa ṭalḥin manḍūd · wa ẓillin mamdūd · wa māʾin maskūb

"They are among thornless lote-trees, banana trees ranged in tiers, a spreading shade, and water poured out."

All of the six elements enumerated from the twenty-eighth verse to the thirty-fourth are qualified by the same grammatical pattern — by seven passive participles in all:

A passive participle conveys the thing upon which an act is done. None of the seven elements is so of itself, that is; all of them have been made so.

Stripped of thorns. Ranged. Spread out. Poured. Not cut off, not withheld. Raised.

This is a verifiable textual datum, and the conclusion I draw from it is my own reading: the table does not describe a garden, it describes an ordered place. Behind every element there is an orderer, and the grammar keeps recalling it.

And this will turn into an open verb in the thirty-fifth verse: innā anshaʾnāhunna inshāʾā — "We brought them into being". The agent that has stood hidden for seven verses comes into the open there.

سِدْر — a tree widespread in the lands of the Arabs. In English it is called the lote-tree, the Christ's-thorn jujube, or the sidr. I do not speak with certainty about the tree's botanical identification; the features described in the sources are these: its shade is abundant, its fruit is eaten, and its branches are thorny.

The root خ-ض-د. The sense the lexicographers give: to strip a thing of its thorns, or to bend a green branch without breaking it.

Both senses come out at the same place: the removal of the harmful side of the tree.

And here the method the sūra has been applying from the beginning shows once more: a tree the hearer knows is taken up and its known defect is subtracted. In the nineteenth verse drink was taken and its drunkenness subtracted; in the twenty-fifth the gathering was taken and its idle talk subtracted. Here the tree is taken and its thorn subtracted.

I record this regular method as an observation. The sūra does not proclaim it as a rule; but the number of examples is too great to be counted a coincidence.

The lexicographers and the exegetes have differed over what the word طَلْح is, and the disagreement must not be concealed.

I make no choice between the two. I record that the first view is widely transmitted in the classical exegeses; and that the second is closer to the known lexical sense of the word.

The root ن-ض-د. Sense: to range one upon another, in order. Naḍada'l-matāʿa — he stacked the goods one upon another.

The picture the attribute describes is this: the fruit is ranged on the tree in tiers from the top down — no bare trunk is left.

And this makes a pair with the preceding attribute:

Two directions: subtraction and addition. I give this as my own reading.

The root ظ-ل-ل. Shade. The distinction the lexicographers record matters: ẓill is the wider word, covering also the coolness before the sun rises and after it sets; fayʾ is specifically the shade that turns after noon (its root carries "to turn" — the same root as fayʾ at al-Ḥashr 59/6-7).

The root م-د-د. To stretch, to draw out, to make continuous. Madd — to extend a thing in time or in space.

The defect the attribute removes is this: in this world the definition of shade is transience. Shade turns with the sun, shortens, disappears. Mamdūd adds continuity to shade.

A comparison within the Qurʾān — and this is an important link for this commentary:

At al-Mursalāt 77/30-31 it is said of the deniers: inṭaliqū ilā ẓillin dhī thalāthi shuʿab · lā ẓalīlin wa lā yughnī mina'l-lahab — "go to a shadow of three columns; it gives no shade and does not avail against the flame."

There there is a shade and it does not shade. Here there is a shade and it has been stretched out.

Two verses use the same word in two contrary functions, and this should be added to the analysis made in the file al-Mursalāt. It is not claimed that there is a deliberate reference between the two sūras; the sharing of the word is a verifiable datum.

The root س-ك-ب. Sense: to pour, to make flow — especially without interruption and from above downward.

The defect the attribute removes is the most concrete one in the hearer's world. In the desert water is not something found but something brought out: it is drawn from a well, carried in a skin, used by measure.

Maskūb removes that whole labour: the water flows, is poured, comes of itself.

And the voice of the verb is again passive: poured. Even the flowing of the water, that is, is named as the result of an ordering.

A link within the sūra — and this link will be made later: in the sixty-eighth verse the same subject will return as a proof: a-fa-raʾaytumu'l-māʾa'lladhī tashrabūn · a-antum anzaltumūhu mina'l-muzni am naḥnu'l-munzilūn — "have you seen the water you drink? Did you send it down from the rain-cloud, or are We the senders?"

The sūra brings back in the sixty-eighth verse, as a proof, what it presented in the thirty-first as a favour. I record this as a verifiable textual datum; it will be taken up separately when we come to that verse.