al-Wāqiʿa 56:8-9

Fa-aṣḥābu'l-maymanati mā aṣḥābu'l-maymana · Wa aṣḥābu'l-mashʾamati mā aṣḥābu'l-mashʾama "The men of the right — what are the men of the right! And the men of ill omen — what are the men of ill omen!"

ٱلْمَيْمَنَة (root ي-م-ن) and ٱلْمَشْـَٔمَة (root ش-ء-م) were dealt with in detail in the section on al-Balad 90/18-19. I do not repeat the analysis there. In summary, what was recorded there is this, and it is taken as the ground here:

• Both words are on the mafʿala metre: "the place where the right / good fortune lies", "the place where the left / ill fortune lies".
• In both words two senses work together: direction (right/left) and fortune (blessing/ill omen). No single English word covers both.
• The association of the names Yemen and Syria with these two directions is an explanation relayed by the lexicographers; no judgement was issued on its historical certainty in the section on al-Balad, and none is issued here.
• The pattern aṣḥāb was treated in the section on al-Fīl: "The Qurʾān names communities by attaching them to the single thing that defines them."
• A boundary was moreover drawn in the section on al-Balad: this distinction is a symbolism of direction; no ruling about the physical right or left hand can be drawn from it. That boundary holds here too.

The section on al-Balad had already mentioned these two verses in parallel. From here on I pass to what that section did not give.

Mā aṣḥābu'l-maymana — "what are the men of the right!"

This question is not a question for information. The name given for this usage in the section on al-Qāriʿa was: istifhām al-taʿẓīm or tafkhīm — the question is asked not to seek an answer but to show the greatness of what is asked about. The nearest in English is an exclamation of the sort "What a thing that is!"

And one further thing was recorded there: repeating the noun where a pronoun would have served conveys tafkhīm and tahwīl. It could have said "what are they?"; it does not, and the whole noun is repeated.

Al-Wāqiʿa uses this technique four times through the sūra:

Four times: two in the opening, two as the headings of tables.

And here there is something to notice.

In al-Qāriʿa and al-Ḥāqqa this pattern conveyed terror; what was asked about was the resurrection itself. Here the same pattern is used for both the good and the bad.

The pattern in itself, that is, carries no verdict. "What are the men of the right!" is an expression of admiration, "what are the men of ill omen!" one of horror — but both are built with the same three words.

This is another instance of the principle recorded in the section on al-Inshiqāq for the root ش-ق-ق and in the section on al-Qāriʿa for the root ب-ث-ث: form alone carries no verdict; what determines the verdict is what the form takes as its subject.

English has the same thing: the sentence "What a man!" is in itself neither praise nor blame. Context decides.

The grammarians' analysis is this:

• أَصْحَٰبُ ٱلْمَيْمَنَةِ — the subject.
• مَآ أَصْحَٰبُ ٱلْمَيْمَنَةِ — the predicate. Within it mā is subject and aṣḥābu'l-maymana predicate; this interrogative clause as a whole becomes the predicate of the first noun.

This is exactly the structure of al-Qāriʿa 101/1-2 and was tabulated there. The difference is that in al-Qāriʿa the structure covers three verses, while here it is completed in a single verse.

The eighth verse begins with فَ, the ninth with وَ.

In Arabic fāʾ conveys tafṣīl (a passing to particulars): it is used when the parts are enumerated after a whole has been stated. The seventh verse had said "three classes"; the eighth verse opens the counting of those three with fāʾ.

Wāw, on the other hand, is mere conjunction: an addition to the list.

And the tenth verse comes with wāw as well: wa'l-sābiqūna'l-sābiqūn. The three groups are thus ranged as grammatical equals: one opens, two are added.

This confirms something: the third group is not an exception cast outside the first two; it is the third item of the same list.

The double sense the two words carry — direction and fortune — is alive today too, and this side of language is used without being noticed.

In English: "a right-hand man", "a left-handed compliment", "gauche"; and from Latin, sinister (left → ill-omened), dexterity (right → skill). This tendency of language is nearly universal and is probably connected with most people being right-handed — this is an explanation recorded by historians of language, and it is plausible.

What the verse does is to take this ready-made association and change what is inside it. As was recorded in the section on al-Balad: the Qurʾān uses the settled association but loads it with a verdict.

And this is a general technique of the text: instead of demolishing a ready-made pattern, it takes the pattern and changes its measure. The right side is good fortune — but the measure of that fortune is no longer descent, wealth or luck.