59. Sūrat al-Ḥashr

Twenty-four verses. Medinan. It takes its name from the expression لِأَوَّلِ ٱلْحَشْرِ in the second verse.

It is transmitted in the sources that the sūra is also known by another name: Sūrat al-Naḍīr. In a report it is related that when Ibn ʿAbbās was told "Sūrat al-Ḥashr", he answered, "Say Sūrat al-Naḍīr." This report occurs in the classical sources; it agrees with the subject of the first section of the sūra.

This sūra is a text that sets out from a single event and widens steadily. It begins with an expulsion, goes on with a division of spoils, passes to the description of three generations of believers, recounts the coming apart of the hypocrites, sharpens into a parable of Satan, and at the end arrives at the names of God.

This widening is not random. Throughout the sūra a single question is being worked on, and in every section it is repeated on a different scale: what are you relying on?

• Fortresses were taken for a guarantee; they were not (2).
• Wealth, if it circulates within a narrow circle, is no guarantee (7).
• Promises given were taken for a guarantee; they were not kept (11-12).
• Numbers were taken for a guarantee; the hearts were scattered (14).
• The instigator was taken for a guarantee; he said, "I am quit of you" (16).

And after all these collapsed guarantees the sūra closes with a series of names containing the name al-Muʾmin: who it is that gives security.

This stops the closing of the sūra from being a random "list of divine names". The list is the answer to the sūra's question.

The sūra opens with tasbīḥ and closes with tasbīḥ. And the last two words of the first verse and the last two words of the last verse are exactly the same: وَهُوَ ٱلْعَزِيزُ ٱلْحَكِيمُ. A closed frame.

Five sūras in the Qurʾān open with the verb sabbaḥa or yusabbiḥu: al-Ḥadīd (57), al-Ḥashr (59), al-Ṣaff (61), al-Jumuʿa (62), al-Taghābun (64). To these are added al-Aʿlā (87 — sabbiḥi'sma rabbika) and al-Isrāʾ (17 — subḥāna'lladhī), and together they are called al-musabbiḥāt.

There is a striking distinction: al-Ḥadīd, al-Ḥashr and al-Ṣaff open in the perfect (māḍī, the past tense) — sabbaḥa. al-Jumuʿa and al-Taghābun in the imperfect (muḍāriʿ) — yusabbiḥu.

The meaning of this difference has been dwelt upon. The perfect reports that the tasbīḥ is accomplished and fixed; the imperfect that it is still going on. The two together build a whole: the tasbīḥ is both a fact over and done with from the beginning, and something continuing at this moment.

And this sūra does both of them by itself: in verse 1 sabbaḥa (perfect), in verse 24 yusabbiḥu (imperfect). The sūra opens in the past tense and closes in the present.

The thing most often confused in this sūra is the boundary between what the Qurʾān says and what the reports of the biographical tradition (sīra) recount. I follow here the method applied in Sūrat al-Fīl: let us first draw the boundary, then pass to the verses.

The whole of what can be drawn from verses 2-14 of the sūra is this:

• There was a community referred to as "those of the People of the Book who disbelieved".
• They were driven out of their homes; this is referred to as "the first ḥashr".
• The Muslims did not suppose that they would go out; and they themselves supposed that their fortresses would protect them.
• They were come upon from an unlooked-for quarter; terror was cast into their hearts.
• They laid their houses waste with their own hands and with the hands of the believers.
• Had exile (jalāʾ) not been decreed, they would have met another punishment in this world.
• The ground given is that "they stood in a separate rank against God and His Messenger".
• Some of the date palms were cut down and some were left; this had become a matter of dispute and was settled by a verse.
• The property obtained was taken without fighting: "you spurred neither horse nor camel over it".
• The hypocrites promised them support and did not keep it.
• They looked united, but their hearts were scattered; they could fight only from behind walls.
• They met an end like that of "those shortly before them".

The name of the community does not occur. The expression "Banū al-Naḍīr" is not in the Qurʾān. The sūra says "those of the People of the Book who disbelieved".

Nor is there any of the following: the year of the event; the cause of the event (an attempted assassination, a breach of agreement, and the like); the length of the siege; how many they were; the place to which they were exiled; how much property was left behind; the kind and the number of the trees cut down; the leader of the hypocrites; who "those shortly before them" were.

All of this comes from the reports of the biographical and historical tradition.

The account gathered in Ibn Isḥāq's Sīra (in the transmission of Ibn Hishām), in al-Wāqidī's Maghāzī and in al-Ṭabarī's Tārīkh runs in its main lines as follows:

There was a community called Banū al-Naḍīr, settled in and around Medina, having date groves and fortresses of their own. After the emigration they were among the parties to the agreement made between the groups in Medina. Upon an incident — in the reports a matter of blood money and an attempt on the Prophet's life are recounted — the agreement was held to have been broken. They were asked to leave their homeland; they refused and withdrew into their fortresses. A siege was laid; during the siege some of the date palms were cut down. In the end they agreed to leave; of their property other than weapons they carried away on camels what they could. Some went to Khaybar, some to the region of Syria. As the leader of the hypocrites ʿAbdullāh b. Ubayy is named, and it is transmitted that he made a promise of support and did not keep it.

As to the date, most of the reports give the fourth year of the emigration; some say the third. There is broad agreement that it was after Uḥud.

A few measures need to be set down:

One. The reports are not worthless. A context is needed in order to understand the sūra, and only the reports supply that context. The Qurʾān makes reference to an event its addressee knows; it does not recount the event. And because it does not recount it, the text cannot be used by itself as a historical source.

Two. The reports are not of the same degree of certainty as the Qurʾān. They diverge from one another at the level of detail; the early maghāzī literature has its own internal problems. For this reason I give the details with the caveat "so it is transmitted".

Three. That the Qurʾān gives no name is not a deficiency but a choice. We saw this in the first verse of Sūrat al-Mujādala as well: there too the woman's name was not given. The sūra recounts not a people but a situation: a community that had made an agreement, then took up position in the opposing rank, relied on its defences and was mistaken. The addressee of the verse is everyone who carries that attribute.

Four — and most important of all: per the method (Method) no wholesale ruling is issued about an ethnic or religious group. This sūra takes as its subject a particular behaviour of a particular community at a historical moment. Indeed the sūra itself does not leave the picture one-sided: in the same section the hypocrites — that is, those who appear to be Muslims — are described in far heavier language (11-17). The criticism of the sūra is directed not at an identity but at a stance.

Moreover the Qurʾān itself closes off any general ruling of enmity that might be drawn from a conflict of this kind:

"God does not forbid you to do good to those who have not fought you over religion and have not driven you from your homes, nor to deal justly with them. Indeed God loves those who deal justly." (al-Mumtaḥana 60/8)

The analysis of the basmala was made at al-Fātiḥa. A point special to this sūra: a text that opens with the names al-Raḥmān and al-Raḥīm recounts an expulsion. And in the third verse this expulsion will itself be said to be a mitigation: "Had God not decreed exile for them, they would have met another punishment in this world."

Sabbaḥa lillāhi mā fi'l-samāwāti wa mā fi'l-arḍ, wa huwa'l-ʿAzīzu'l-Ḥakīm

"Whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth has declared God free of all imperfection. He is al-ʿAzīz, al-Ḥakīm."

Root: س-ب-ح. The original sense of the root is to swim in water, to move swiftly and without obstruction within a medium.

The concrete uses of the root in the Qurʾān bear this out:

• "By those that swim along" — وَٱلسَّٰبِحَٰتِ سَبْحًا (al-Nāziʿāt 79/3).
• "In the daytime you have a long swim" — سَبْحًا طَوِيلًا (al-Muzzammil 73/7). It was treated in the section on al-Muzzammil: the daytime was described as a medium in which a person is swept along and can find no ground to set his foot on.
• "Each one swims in an orbit" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/33; Yāsīn 36/40).

How, then, is the passage made from "swimming" to tasbīḥ?

The classical explanation is this: tasbīḥ is to put God far away from everything that does not befit Him — tanzīh. The act of swimming is a movement of going away: the swimmer leaves the point where he is, and leaves it fast.

That is, to say subḥānallāh carries something like the sense, "I make God swim away [from what does not befit Him]." The word is not an act of bringing near but an act of separating.

This changes what tasbīḥ is. Tasbīḥ is not a praise; it is a cleaning done before praise. In order to be able to speak rightly about a thing, what is wrong about it must first be put at a distance.

And the sūra will say this openly in the twenty-third verse: even after the names have been enumerated it says سُبْحَٰنَ ٱللَّهِ عَمَّا يُشْرِكُونَ.

The verb is in the past tense: "has declared free of all imperfection". Yet tasbīḥ is a continuous thing.

Two explanations are given:

1. Realisation: the perfect reports that a thing has taken place and is fixed. It does not mean "the tasbīḥ is over and done with"; it means "the tasbīḥ has occurred, it is beyond dispute". 2. From the beginning: a state continuing from the moment of creation.

And, as was said above, the sūra turns this form into the imperfect in the twenty-fourth verse and so completes the span of time.

مَا has been used, not مَنْ. In Arabic man is used for beings possessed of reason, mā generally for "thing".

That is, those who declare Him free of all imperfection are not only the beings possessed of reason. Stone, tree, water, star — all are included.

This prepares the twenty-first verse of the sūra in advance: there a mountain will feel awe before the Qurʾān and split apart. And the twenty-fourth verse will repeat the sentence of the first. Three times over, the sūra makes beings that are seen as lifeless the subject of tasbīḥ and of awe.

A grammatical note: in the first verse mā is repeated twice (mā fi'l-samāwāti wa mā fi'l-arḍ); in the last verse it comes once (mā fi'l-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ). In the classical commentaries differences of this kind are recorded; it is said that the repetition conveys separate emphasis and the single use a joining together. I transmit this as an observation.

عَزِيز — Root: ع-ز-ز. The concrete sense of the root is hardness and difficulty: arḍun ʿizāz, hard ground that cannot be dug. From this ʿizza: invincibility, superiority; and ʿazīz: at once strong and rarely found, precious.

حَكِيم — Root: ح-ك-م. The concrete sense of this root is worth dwelling on: ḥakama is originally to put the bridle on a horse, to hold it back. The ḥakama is the piece of iron put into a horse's mouth, and it serves to steer the horse.

From this come ḥukm (to bind a matter to one direction), ḥikma (to put a thing in the place it ought to be in, to keep it from being flung about) and ḥakīm (the one who puts everything in its right place).

That is, ḥikma carries in its root an idea of braking and steering. Wisdom is not knowing a great deal; it is putting what is known in the right place.

The pairing of the two names is meaningful. ʿAzīz is power, Ḥakīm is the direction of that power. Power named by itself is open to arbitrariness; named together with wisdom it is bound to a measure.

And this bears directly on the subject of the sūra: the sūra is going to recount a use of power — the driving out of a community, the division of property. The presence of the second name says from the outset that what is to be recounted is not an arbitrary display of power.

Huwa'lladhī akhraja'lladhīna kafarū min ahli'l-kitābi min diyārihim li-awwali'l-ḥashr, mā ẓanantum an yakhrujū wa ẓannū annahum māniʿatuhum ḥuṣūnuhum minallāh, fa-atāhumullāhu min ḥaythu lam yaḥtasibū wa qadhafa fī qulūbihimu'r-ruʿba yukhribūna buyūtahum bi-aydīhim wa aydi'l-muʾminīn, fa'tabirū yā uli'l-abṣār

"It is He who drove those of the People of the Book who disbelieved out of their homes, at the first mass driving-out. You had not supposed that they would go out; and they had supposed that their fortresses would protect them from God. Then God came upon them from where they had not reckoned, and cast terror into their hearts. They were laying their houses waste with their own hands and with the hands of the believers. O you who have eyes, take a lesson!"

The sentence opens with هُوَ ٱلَّذِىٓ: "It is He who". In Arabic this structure conveys restriction (ḥaṣr).

That is, the verse states the agent of the event plainly and restricts it: the one who drove them out is not an army. A military operation is being recounted, but the subject of the verb is God.

This choice will continue throughout the sūra. In the sixth verse it will say "you spurred neither horse nor camel over it" — that is, the human contribution will be reduced to a minimum. In the seventh verse it will say "the fayʾ God gave to His Messenger" — the property will be named not as taken but as given.

This has a function, and it is necessary for the rest of the sūra: if it was not people who produced the result, they cannot claim a share of the result. The regulation of the division in the seventh verse rests exactly on this ground.

This expression is disputed among the exegetes, and the disagreement runs along two axes.

The first axis: the function of the letter لِ.

The second axis: by reference to what the "first" is first.

I adopt no definite preference. But this observation holds on every reading: the sūra names an exile that happens in this world by the name of the resurrection.

Root: ح-ش-ر. And the meaning of the word is not merely "to gather".

The definition the lexicographers give contains two elements at once: to gather together, and to drive what has been gathered from one place to another. Ḥashara'l-nās: he gathered the people and drove them on.

That is, ḥashr is not a static gathering; it is a forced change of place. Within the word there is both a crowd and a movement, and the movement is not of one's own will.

This explains why the word was chosen for the resurrection: on that day people will be gathered in one place, but the gathering is not a response to an invitation, it is a transportation.

And the use of the same word for an exile positions the exile as a small-scale resurrection. People are driven out of their houses and driven towards a place they do not know; they have with them as much as they can carry; what they leave behind is no longer theirs. A rehearsal in this world of the scene of the resurrection.

And a link with the last section of the preceding sūra: al-Mujādala 58/9 closed with "fear God, to whom you will be gathered (تُحْشَرُونَ)". One sūra later, the same root becomes the name of a sūra. This link between the two sūras is striking in the arrangement of the muṣḥaf.

Note the symmetry in the structure of the verse: the same verb, with two different subjects.

Both sides reckoned wrongly. And this is what makes the sūra's call fa'tabirū meaningful: the side asked to take a lesson is the winning side. For the winning side had been mistaken too; it was not their reckoning that produced the result.

This observation is the side of the verse most easily skipped. The text does not set up a narrative of victory and put the reader at ease; it records that both sides were mistaken.

The ordinary order of the sentence would be ḥuṣūnuhum māniʿatuhum (subject + predicate). Here the predicate has been brought forward.

In Arabic bringing forward (taqdīm) conveys emphasis. That is, the emphasis lies not on the existence of the fortresses but on their being about to protect. Their supposition was not "we have fortresses"; it was "our fortresses will protect us". Not a claim of ownership but a claim of function.

And what is refuted is exactly this: the existence of the fortresses is not denied, their function is disproved.

مَّانِعَة — Root: م-ن-ع. To prevent, to hold back, to withhold.

This root has been treated in two places in this commentary:

• al-Māʿūn 107/7 — "and they withhold small kindnesses" (يَمْنَعُونَ): a behaviour. A person's not giving a small help.
• al-Maʿārij 70/21 — "and when good touches him, greatly withholding" (مَنُوعًا): the character out of which that behaviour comes.

Here a third position is added: an object that was expected to prevent and could not. Man withholds (al-Māʿūn), he has a withholding make-up (al-Maʿārij), and the thing he supposed would protect him cannot prevent (al-Ḥashr).

What emerges when the three positions of the root are set side by side is interesting: man is successful at withholding from another what he holds in his hand; but not at holding on to what would protect him.

Root: ح-ص-ن. To make firm, to take under protection, to make unreachable. From the same root ḥiṣn (fortress), muḥṣan (protected), taḥṣīn (making firm).

This root will occur once more in the sūra: at 59/14, قُرًى مُّحَصَّنَةٍ — "settlements protected by walls". There the same finding will be repeated: fighting from behind a defensive structure is recorded as a sign not of strength but of weakness.

The historical meaning of the fortress. In seventh-century Arabia the fortress was the largest investment in security a community could own. Stone wall, height, water cistern, granary — these are the product of an accumulation lasting years. To own a fortress is a declaration that you will be staying permanently in that region.

And it is for exactly this reason that the verse chooses the fortress. What is criticised is not the making of a defence; it is counting the defence itself as the ultimate guarantee. The difference between the two is the difference between precaution and tawakkul (reliance upon God).

يَحْتَسِبُوا۟ — Root: ح-س-ب. To count, to reckon. In the iftiʿāl form (Form VIII): to take into account, to foresee.

The irony of the sentence stands in this word. Fortresses are calculated things: the thickness of the wall, the quantity of water, how many months the provisions will last. A fortress is a calculation made material.

And the verse says: they were come upon from outside the calculation.

This does not say that the calculation was made wrongly. It says that the calculation itself left outside a field that was not taken into account. Every calculation is built upon a set of assumptions; what falls outside the assumptions does not invalidate the calculation — it only makes it irrelevant.

The same pattern occurs in the Qurʾān with an opposite content as well:

"And He provides for him from where he does not reckon." — وَيَرْزُقْهُ مِنْ حَيْثُ لَا يَحْتَسِبُ (al-Ṭalāq 65/3)

The two verses use the same expression: min ḥaythu lā/lam yaḥtasib. In the one, punishment coming from an unlooked-for quarter; in the other, provision coming from an unlooked-for quarter.

This shows that the expression is neutral: the outside of the calculation is open in both directions. Man's foresight is limited, and that limitation can work both for him and against him.

قَذَفَ — Root: ق-ذ-ف. To hurl, to throw from a distance. The word conveys not placing by hand but throwing from a distance.

The other uses of the root in the Qurʾān show this: Moses (Mūsā) being put in a chest and thrown into the sea (Ṭāhā 20/39), the truth being hurled upon falsehood (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/18), and qadhf in the sense of slander.

For the same event the Qurʾān uses a different verb in another place:

"I shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve" — سَأُلْقِى فِى قُلُوبِ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ ٱلرُّعْبَ (al-Anfāl 8/12)

There ilqāʾ (to let fall, to place), here qadhf (to hurl). Qadhf conveys a more violent and a more sudden movement.

رُعْب — Root: ر-ع-ب. The concrete sense the lexicographers give: to fill. Raʿabtu'l-ḥawḍ: I filled the cistern.

That is, ruʿb is fear filling its vessel — leaving no room inside for anything else. This is one of the most accurate descriptions of fear: fear is not an emotion but an occupation. It takes up room, it pushes other thought outside.

The two words together: something hurled from outside fills the inside. Fear is described not as a production but as a taking up of residence.

The most striking image of the sūra.

The root خ-ر-ب: to lay waste, to demolish, to empty out and make unusable. Kharāba is an abandoned ruin.

Two hands side by side: bi-aydīhim wa aydi'l-muʾminīn. The same verb, two groups of agents. The house is being demolished both by its owners and by the other side.

Why do they demolish their own houses? The Qurʾān gives no reason. In the reports two explanations are transmitted: to strip out and carry off the valuable timber, the doors and the beams; or so that what was left behind should not fall into the hands of the believers.

Both are intelligible and both come out at the same place: to destroy a thing you own, if it is not going to be yours any longer.

This is the most extreme form of the sense of ownership, and it is worth dwelling on. A house serves the function of shelter; but a house gives its owner not only shelter, it gives a belonging. To lose it is not merely to lose a possession, it is to cease being the owner of a place.

And at that moment a person makes a strange choice: rather than leave the shelter to somebody else, he chooses to turn it into a ruin in which nobody can shelter. That is, the house is preserved as a mark of ownership before it is preserved as a function — and it is preserved by having its function destroyed.

The expression بِأَيْدِيهِمْ is generally a pattern of responsibility in the Qurʾān: "because of what their hands have sent ahead" (al-Baqara 2/95, Āl ʿImrān 3/182 and elsewhere). That is, "with their own hands" comes close to meaning "as a result of what they themselves did".

In this context the sentence carries two layers: physically they are demolishing their houses with their own hands; and metaphorically, they prepared the situation they are in with their own hands.

The richest word of the sūra is here, and it needs to be dwelt on in detail.

Root: ع-ب-ر. The concrete sense of the root is to pass from one side of a thing to the other side.

When one looks at the derivatives, one sees how consistent this sense is:

Two direct uses from the Qurʾān:

• "Do not approach prayer while in a state of major impurity, except when you are travelling (عَابِرِى سَبِيلٍ)" (al-Nisāʾ 4/43).
• "If you know how to interpret (تَعْبُرُونَ) dreams" (Yūsuf 12/43). The king recounts the dream he has seen and asks for an interpretation — that is, for a passage from the image to the meaning.

It is also said that the word عِبْرَانِيّ (ʿibrānī, Hebrew) is attached to the sense "the one who comes from the opposite bank"; this derivation is disputed, and here I content myself with recording it as a possibility.

Iʿtibār — the iftiʿāl form. This form turns the verb back upon the subject: to do the crossing for oneself.

Let us now gather up what the word says.

An event has happened. The event has two banks:

• This bank: the event happened to them. I am here, watching.
• The other bank: the same thing could happen to me as well. Is what took them there present in me too?

To take a lesson is to make the crossing between these two banks.

And this yields the most important consequence of the word: a lesson is not a piece of knowledge but a movement. Knowing is possible on this bank too — you can know what happened, why it happened and to whom it happened, and have gone nowhere at all. A lesson is the carrying of knowledge towards yourself.

The usual English phrase "to take a lesson from" has lost something of this movement; a use such as "to watch it as a cautionary tale" runs against the logic of the word itself — to watch is precisely not to cross over.

The same root occurs in this sense in another place in the Qurʾān as well: "In their stories there is a lesson for those possessed of understanding" (Yūsuf 12/111). And "Surely in that there is a lesson for those who can see" (Āl ʿImrān 3/13) — there too seeing and the lesson stand side by side.

بَصَر — Root: ب-ص-ر. To see. Baṣar is seeing with the eye, baṣīra seeing with the heart.

أُو۟لِى ٱلْأَبْصَٰر — "those who have eyes", that is, those who possess the faculty of sight; as an idiom, "those possessed of insight".

And here there is a fine point: the verse does not say "see", it says "cross over". Sight is given as something the addressee already possesses (ūli'l-abṣār). What is asked is a step added on top of sight.

That is, the equation is: to see + to cross = the lesson. Sight by itself is not enough; and the verse says this by calling the addressee "those who see". It is as though it said: you have eyes, so now do the real work.

This is the side of this verse most easily missed, and it needs to be stressed.

The command is given to the winning side.

Fa'tabirū — a plural imperative, and its addressee is the group of which the preceding sentence said "you had not supposed". That is, the believers.

It is not said to the defeated, "take a lesson"; it is said to the victor. And this changes the whole weight of the verse.

To tell the winning side to take a lesson is to say this: this event is not the certificate of your superiority; it is the demonstration of a mechanism. And that mechanism includes you too.

The sūra will make this plainer still in the next section: in verses 18-19 the warnings will be directed at the believers themselves, and it will be said, "Do not be like those who forgot God, so that He made them forget themselves".

One. The difference between watching and taking a lesson. Today people see far more events than in any other period of history. A destruction far away, a collapse, a losing, passes before us many times a day. And what the root says fits exactly here: none of these is of itself a lesson. To watch is to stand on this bank. If the crossing has not been made, the number of things watched changes nothing.

This is the most concrete problem of an age of abundant information: as data increases, the lesson can decrease. For the lesson depends not on the quantity of the data but on the data being carried across.

Two. The victor's taking a lesson. The verse's choice of addressee sets up a measure that holds for today as well. The side that watches a collapse tends to count itself outside that collapse — because the side that has collapsed is the other side. The verse cuts this off: the mechanism knows no sides.

Three. The confusing of defence with guarantee. The matter of the fortress shows the difference between precaution and guarantee. Taking precautions is not blamed; counting the precaution itself as the ultimate security is blamed. Its equivalent today is wide: accumulated resources, an established system, a position held — all of these are precautions, and all of them are open to something coming from outside the calculation.

Four. The outside of the calculation. The expression min ḥaythu lam yaḥtasibū names the structural limit of foresight: every calculation is valid within its own assumptions. And what emerges when it is read together with al-Ṭalāq 65/3 is not a fear but a balance: the outside of the calculation holds both loss and gain.

Wa lawlā an kataballāhu ʿalayhimu'l-jalāʾa la-ʿadhdhabahum fi'd-dunyā, wa lahum fi'l-ākhirati ʿadhābu'n-nār

"Had God not decreed exile for them, He would have punished them in this world with another punishment. And in the hereafter there is for them the punishment of the Fire."

Root: ج-ل-و. The original sense of the root is to bring into the open, to lift the covering, to polish.

Derivatives:

• جَلَا (jalā) — he opened, brought out, cleaned. To polish a sword: jalā'l-sayfa.
• تَجَلَّى (tajallī) — to come into the open, to become visible.
• جَلَاء (jalāʾ) — the departure of the inhabitants of a place from it, the emptying of the place.

Two uses from the Qurʾān:

• "By the day when it brings it (the sun) into the open" — وَٱلنَّهَارِ إِذَا جَلَّىٰهَا (al-Shams 91/3). The day takes the sun out of being covered and shows it.
• "When his Lord manifested Himself to the mountain, He shattered it to pieces" (al-Aʿrāf 7/143).

Why this word for "exile"? Because jalāʾ is not so much the going of the one exiled as the emptying of the place that stays behind, and its coming into the open. The word looks at the event from the side not of the party that goes but of the place that remains: the house has emptied, its covering has been lifted, its inside has come into view.

This completes the image in the preceding verse: the houses were demolished, the roofs were lifted off, the inside was opened up.

An observation. At al-Aʿrāf 7/143 the same root occurred together with a mountain, and the result was the mountain's being broken to pieces. In the twenty-first verse of this sūra, too, the breaking of a mountain will be recounted (mutaṣaddiʿan). There is an echo between the two scenes; but because they are built with different roots I record it not as a link but as an observation.

This is the side of this verse most often skipped.

The structure لَوْلَآ ... لَـ gives in Arabic the sense "had that not been, this would have been": an unrealised condition and its unrealised consequence.

That is: had the exile not been decreed, another punishment would have come in this world.

This is a sentence that changes the tone of the sūra. The exile is not recounted as something heavy; it is recounted as something that has taken the place of what was heavier.

And this has a further consequence: the verse positions the event not as a revenge but as a measured requital. The name al-Ḥakīm in the verse-ending of the preceding verse is at work here — power bound to wisdom.

What the Qurʾān calls "punishment in this world" occurs frequently in the context of the destruction of earlier communities: ʿĀd, Thamūd, the people of Lot. This verse says that that pattern was not applied. That is, the exile is a ruling put in the place of destruction.

That the requital in this world has been lightened does not change the ruling in the hereafter. The two fields are kept apart.

This distinction is consistent in the Qurʾān and it is important: a thing's not befalling one in this world does not mean that the account is closed; and its befalling one does not mean that the account has been paid. The two ledgers are separate.

Dhālika bi-annahum shāqqullāha wa rasūlah, wa man yushāqqillāha fa-innallāha shadīdu'l-ʿiqāb

"This is because they stood in a separate rank against God and His Messenger. And whoever stands in a separate rank against God — surely God is severe in requital."

Root: ش-ق-ق. The original sense of the root is to split, to divide in two, to crack.

This root has occurred in several places in this commentary:

• In the section on al-Ṭāriq 86/12, as one of the three roots that describe the splitting of the soil: falq, ṣadʿ, shaqq.
• "Then We split the earth in a splitting" (ʿAbasa 80/26).
• Sūrat al-Inshiqāq — the splitting of the sky: idha'l-samāʾu'nshaqqat.

Now let us look at the mufāʿala form: شَاقَّ.

Shiqq is one of the two pieces that appear when a thing is split — a "half", a "side". That is, mushāqqa means "you in one piece, I in the other".

This is the root's own description of opposition, and it gives an extremely concrete image: there was a whole; one party split it in two and put himself into the other half.

And now a link with the preceding sūra needs to be made.

Throughout Sūrat al-Mujādala the root ح-د-د was used for the same phenomenon: muḥādda — to draw a boundary, to declare a frontier on the opposite side.

In al-Ḥashr ش-ق-ق is used for the same phenomenon: mushāqqa — to split the whole and cross over to the other piece.

Two neighbouring sūras give the same idea with two different concrete images. The one brings the boundary line to the fore, the other the whole that is split.

And the use of the root on three scales makes an interesting table:

The same verb, on three scales. The splitting of the soil is fertility; the splitting of the sky is the resurrection; the splitting of the ranks is recorded as a crime.

The second half of the sentence turns the event into an instance of a rule: "whoever … ".

And a detail: while the first sentence says "against God and His Messenger", the second says only "against God". The classical exegetes explain this thus: to stand against the Messenger is already to stand against God; in the second sentence the ruling is referred back to its origin.

شَدِيدُ ٱلْعِقَابِ — Root: ع-ق-ب. ʿAqib: the back of a thing, its end; the heel (ʿaqib). ʿIqāb: the requital that comes after an act.

That is, ʿiqāb is not an arbitrary punishment; it is the thing that comes on the heels of the act. The word sets up a bond of time and of causality between the punishment and the act. From the same root ʿāqiba (the end, the place arrived at) and taʿqīb (to follow, to go after).

This will return in the seventeenth verse of the sūra: فَكَانَ عَٰقِبَتَهُمَآ — "and the end of the two of them was this".

Mā qaṭaʿtum min līnatin aw taraktumūhā qāʾimatan ʿalā uṣūlihā fa-bi-idhnillāhi wa li-yukhziya'l-fāsiqīn

"Whatever date palms you cut down or left standing upon their roots — it was all by God's leave; and in order to disgrace those who transgress."

What the word is is disputed:

I adopt no definite preference. That the word occurs in the Qurʾān only here removes any possibility of comparison. The point in common is this: a date palm is being spoken of.

The place of the date palm in that society. The date palm was the foundation of the economy of Medina, and it was a means of investment: after a sapling is planted it takes years to bear, but after that it yields for decades. A date grove is an accumulation lasting generations.

For this reason, to cut down a date palm is to destroy not one year's crop but the accumulation of decades. The weight of the matter comes from here.

It is transmitted in the reports that some of the trees were cut down during the siege and that this gave rise to a dispute: some thought it a work of corruption, some held it necessary in order to break the enemy's will. It is also transmitted that the other side made this cutting a matter of accusation.

The verse closes this dispute. And the way it closes it is striking:

The verse does not say "cutting is right". Nor does it say "cutting is wrong". It binds both acts to the same ruling: the one who cut and the one who left did it by God's leave.

فَبِإِذْنِ ٱللَّهِ — "by God's leave".

إِذْن — Root: أ-ذ-ن. And the root itself is interesting: udhun means ear. Idhn is originally "making heard, making known" — what is permitted is what has been announced.

That is, "by God's leave" comes close to saying "God made this heard, made it known, it lies within His domain". Outside arbitrariness, inside a known frame.

Here one has to be careful, because this verse can be forced in both directions.

The verse does not give a general permission. It binds both acts to leave — that is, both rest upon an authorisation, and neither is left free. It does not say "do whatever you like"; it says "in this particular situation, both of the things done were within the authorisation".

And it gives a ground: وَلِيُخْزِىَ ٱلْفَٰسِقِينَ — a purpose clause. That is, the cutting is not an arbitrary destruction; it is an action bound to a particular result.

The root خ-ز-ي: to be disgraced, to be humiliated; and shame. Khizy: ignominy.

The root ف-س-ق: the concrete sense of this root is worth dwelling on. Fasaqati'l-ruṭabatu ʿan qishrihā: the date came out of its skin. That is, fisq is originally a thing's coming out of its protective skin.

The image of the word is this: a fruit is protected inside its skin; when it comes out of the skin it is both left unprotected and spoiled. The fāsiq is the one who has gone outside the boundary that protects him.

And there is an interesting intersection: while this verse speaks of date palms, a word derived from the date is used within the same verse. I record this not as a claim but as a point where the concrete origin of the word intersects with the context.

The word will occur once more in the sūra: at 59/19, of those who forget God. That is, the sūra gives the same attribute to two different groups — the one to those standing in the opposing rank, the other to the believers being warned. The attribute is bound not to an identity but to a state.

To draw from this verse a principle of the law of war is a task requiring care. Several things need to be kept apart.

One. There is disagreement in fiqh. The jurists differ over the cutting of trees, the burning of crops and the killing of animals in war. Some hold it permissible in case of military necessity, some count it reprehensible, some bind it to particular conditions. This is the subject of fiqh; I issue no ruling here and do not detail the views of the schools.

Two. There are transmitted reports about the practice of the early period. It is transmitted that the instructions given to the armies in the time of the first caliphs contained provisions such as not cutting trees, not burning crops, not touching children, women and the aged, and leaving undisturbed those who had withdrawn into seclusion for worship. The wording of these instructions is transmitted in different forms in the sources; here I give their content with the caveat "so it is transmitted".

Three — and the point that really matters: the existence of the verse says something in itself.

Consider this: the cutting of trees in a war is treated as a matter important enough to require a separate verse. That is, not everything done in war is automatically counted legitimate. A question was asked and an answer was given; that the question was asked means that the question was a legitimate one.

This is the core of the idea of the law of war: even in a state of conflict, certain acts require a separate justification. The alternative thought — "we are at war, everything is free" — is exactly what this verse cuts off.

And note: the verse binds the ground to a military aim (to disgrace those who transgress), not to an anger or to a desire to destroy. That is, the legitimacy of the cutting has been bound to its result.

This verse stands at the end of the first section and performs a function: it takes as its subject an action performed on the side of the believers.

The first four verses recounted the other side. The fifth verse brings up the winning side's own behaviour and binds that too to a ruling. This is the continuation of the call fa'tabirū in the second verse: the text does not leave the winning side outside the questioning.

Wa mā afāʾallāhu ʿalā rasūlihī minhum fa-mā awjaftum ʿalayhi min khaylin wa lā rikābin wa lākinnallāha yusalliṭu rusulahū ʿalā man yashāʾ, wallāhu ʿalā kulli shayʾin qadīr

"As for the fayʾ that God gave His Messenger from them: you spurred for it neither horse nor camel. But God gives His messengers mastery over whomever He wills. And God has power over all things."

Root: ف-ي-أ. The original sense of the root is to turn, to come back.

And the most concrete use of the root is a very fine one: فَىْء (fayʾ) is, in Arabic, the state of the shadow after noon.

The lexicographers draw this distinction between ẓill (shade) and fayʾ: ẓill is the shadow from sunrise until the sun's decline — it shortens from west to east. Fayʾ is the shadow after the decline — the shadow that has turned back, lengthening towards the east.

That is, fayʾ is "what has turned back". In the morning the shadow goes one way; in the afternoon it comes back; and the name of that return is fayʾ.

And the choosing of this word for property obtained without fighting carries a ruling.

It is not said that the property was "taken"; it is said that it "turned back". As though it had left somewhere and had now come back to its proper place. The word shapes the claim of ownership from the outset: this property is not something gained but something returning.

The other uses of the root in the Qurʾān bear this out:

• "If they turn back (fāʾū), God is forgiving" (al-Baqara 2/226) — in the matter of īlāʾ, returning to one's wife.
• "until it returns to God's command" — حَتَّىٰ تَفِىٓءَ إِلَىٰٓ أَمْرِ ٱللَّهِ (al-Ḥujurāt 49/9) — in a conflict between two groups of believers, the aggressor party's returning to the command.

In both places the word means "to come back to the place where a thing ought properly to be".

The two notions are regulated separately in the Qurʾān:

al-Anfāl 8/41 lays down that a fifth of the spoils is to be set aside for God, the Messenger, the near of kin, the orphans, the poor and the wayfarer; that the remainder was distributed to those who took part in the fighting is a matter known from practice.

In the fayʾ there is no such division: the whole is set aside for the same items. And the reason is written openly in this verse: nobody spurred horse or camel, that is, nobody has any labour in it.

The logic of this regulation is simple and consistent: the share depends on the labour. If there is labour there is a share; if there is no labour the property goes to the common items.

In fiqh the details of the fayʾ — which properties fall within its scope, how it was applied in later periods, whether the revenues of the jizya and the kharāj are included in it — form a wide field of discussion. I issue no ruling here and do not enter the discussion; I content myself with showing the logic of the regulation.

Root: و-ج-ف. Its meaning: swift and trembling movement, a jolting motion.

And the most striking use of the root is in Sūrat al-Nāziʿāt:

"Hearts that day will throb" — قُلُوبٌ يَوْمَئِذٍ وَاجِفَةٌ (al-Nāziʿāt 79/8)

The same root names the movement both of the running animal and of the throbbing heart. Both do the same thing: a swift, repeated, jolting vibration.

This shows the concreteness of the word. Ījāf is to drive a horse or a camel hard — and the jolting that such speed produces in the body is named with the same word as the beating of the heart.

What does it say? "You spurred neither horse nor camel" — that is, you did not tire yourself for this property, you covered no road, you wore out no animal of your own.

خَيْل (horse) and رِكَاب (riding camel). The two are the two basic costs of war: a horse is expensive and hard to keep; a camel means load and distance. The verse enumerates the two items of expenditure in war and says "you spent none of them".

And note: the verse does not say "you did not fight", it says "you did not spur an animal". That is, the measure is not courage or intention; it is the resource spent. The claim to a share is bound to the resource spent.

Root: س-ل-ط. Sulṭān: power, dominion, proof. Salīṭ: sharp-tongued. Taslīṭ: to make one man master over another.

At the centre of the root there is sharpness and penetration: sulṭān is that which cannot be resisted.

The structure of the sentence: "God gives His messengers mastery over whomever He wills."

That is, the source of the result is again taken from the agent and given to God — the same structure as huwa'lladhī akhraja in the second verse. In this section the sūra insistently does the same thing: it makes invisible the human contribution that produced the result.

And the reason for this will be understood in the next verse: the regulation of the division can be laid down only upon this ground.

Mā afāʾallāhu ʿalā rasūlihī min ahli'l-qurā fa-lillāhi wa li'l-rasūli wa li-dhi'l-qurbā wa'l-yatāmā wa'l-masākīni wa'bni'l-sabīl, kay lā yakūna dūlatan bayna'l-aghniyāʾi minkum, wa mā ātākumu'l-rasūlu fa-khudhūhu wa mā nahākum ʿanhu fa'ntahū, wa'ttaqullāh, innallāha shadīdu'l-ʿiqāb

"The fayʾ that God gave His Messenger from the people of the settlements belongs to God, to the Messenger, to the near of kin, to the orphans, to the poor and to the wayfarer — so that it may not be a wealth circulating only among the rich among you. Whatever the Messenger has given you, take it; whatever he has forbidden you, give it up. Fear God; God is severe in requital."

This verse contains one of the clearest statements of principle in the Qurʾān on economic matters. And that the principle should be written out openly — given in the form of a clause of justification — is a rare thing.

Let us look first at the list of the division, then at the ground.

A note on word order: the letter lām is repeated in the first three items (lillāhi, li'l-rasūli, li-dhi'l-qurbā) and is not repeated in the last three — all of them come under a single conjunction. In the classical commentaries differences of this kind are recorded; it is said that the first three are emphasised separately and the last three taken as one cluster.

What does "belonging to God" mean? The classical explanation is this: it is an expression of blessing and of framing placed at the head of the division — it states who the real owner of the property is; it is not a separate share. For God has no need of property. Some exegetes interpret it of the Kaʿba and of general public expenditure. This is a discussion in fiqh; here I content myself with transmitting it.

And four of the list are directly people in need: the near of kin, the orphans, the poor, the wayfarers.

When this list is set beside the list in al-Baqara 2/177, something interesting appears.

al-Baqara 2/177 — those given to in the definition of personal goodness: relatives, orphans, the poor, the wayfarer, those who ask, the freeing of slaves.

al-Ḥashr 59/7 — those given to in the division of public revenue: the near of kin, orphans, the poor, the wayfarer.

Four items are exactly the same: relative, orphan, poor, wayfarer.

This overlap is noteworthy. For the two verses regulate completely different fields: the one the good a person does out of his own property, the other the division of a community's common revenue.

And the same names come out.

What this says is this: in the Qurʾān public finance and personal morality are bound to the same principle. The place where the revenue of the state is to go and the place where the money out of a person's pocket is to go share the same list.

This is a view that does not separate the two fields from one another. Personal generosity does not take the place of public regulation; nor does public regulation lift personal responsibility. The two look in the same direction.

And there is a third list: the places where the zakāt is to be spent (al-Tawba 9/60) — there too the poor, the destitute, the wayfarers and slaves are enumerated. Three lists, three different mechanisms, largely the same recipients.

The centre of the verse is here.

كَىْ لَا — a particle of purpose: "so that … may not be". That is, the division above is given together with a ground.

It needs to be stressed how out of the ordinary this is: a financial regulation is laid down and why it is laid down is written openly. Places where the ground of a ruling is given as clearly as this are few in the Qurʾān.

The open writing of the ground produces a consequence: the spirit of the ruling becomes knowable. If you know why a rule was laid down, you also know what is to be done in similar situations that fall outside the scope of that rule.

Root: د-و-ل. The original sense of the root is a thing's passing from hand to hand, its coming round by turns, the changing of the turn.

Dāla yadūlu: it came round, the turn changed. Mudāwala: to pass a thing round from hand to hand.

Its clearest use in the Qurʾān is in the context of Uḥud:

"Those days We turn about among people" — وَتِلْكَ ٱلْأَيَّامُ نُدَاوِلُهَا بَيْنَ ٱلنَّاسِ (Āl ʿImrān 3/140)

There "the days" — that is, superiority and the upper hand — turn among people. The same root, the same idea: the changing of the turn.

دُولَة and دَوْلَة. A distinction is transmitted among the classical lexicographers: dūla, with ḍamma, is used for property and wealth; dawla, with fatḥa, for war and rule. Some lexicographers count the two synonymous. I adopt no definite preference; but that both are from the same root means that they preserve a common idea.

And the word we use in Turkish today, devlet (state), is from this root.

This is worth dwelling on. Within the word there is an idea of taking turns: rule changes hands, the turn comes round. A word that names a political structure carries in its origin not "permanence" but, exactly the opposite, "changing hands".

Another Turkish word from the same root: not devir but tedavül — the circulation of money. And this sits directly on the subject of the verse: tadāwul is the changing of hands of property.

Here careful reading is needed, because the verse is very easily misunderstood.

The verse does not forbid wealth. There is nothing in the sentence saying "do not be rich" or "wealth is bad".

Nor does the verse forbid the circulation of property. On the contrary: dūla already means circulation, and circulation itself is natural. Property's changing hands is an economy's working.

What is forbidden is the scope of the circulation: بَيْنَ ٱلْأَغْنِيَآءِ — "among the rich".

That is, the property circulates, but it circulates within a closed ring. The one who takes in and the one who pays out are in the same set. Nobody outside can enter that circulation.

The verse takes as its target not the existence of wealth but the circulation of wealth forming a closed circle.

This distinction takes the verse out of being a text of hostility to wealth and makes it say something far sharper: the health of an order is measured not by how much wealth is produced but by among whom the wealth circulates.

When we read this verse together with two sūras concerning property that were treated earlier, a table appears.

al-Humaza 104/2 — "who gathers wealth and counts it over and over" (جَمَعَ مَالًا وَعَدَّدَهُۥ).

The finding set up there was this: the acts not mentioned are at least as important as those mentioned. The verse does not say "he spent, he used, he gave, he set it to work". Property does not appear at all as an economic instrument; it merely accumulates and is counted. That is, the property stands still. There is no circulation.

al-Ḥashr 59/7 — the property circulates, but in a narrow circle.

Two different faults:

The Qurʾān records both. The one diagnoses the relation an individual sets up with property, the other the relation a society sets up with wealth. And the two are not independent: when individual hoarding becomes widespread, the social result is a closed circulation.

al-Fajr 89/19-20 — "You devour the inheritance, gulping it down without distinguishing; and you love wealth with a heaped-up love."

The finding set up there was this: the verse does not say "wealth", it says "the inheritance" — that is, property for which no labour has been given. And the centre of the root lamm is "not distinguishing": not telling apart what is one's due from what is not.

Inheritance, if one thinks about it, is a particular form of dūla: the circulation of property within the same lineage. It passes from one generation to another, but it does not go outside the ring. There is a closeness between al-Fajr's choosing inheritance and al-Ḥashr's choosing "circulating among the rich".

I record this as my own reading; the two verses regulate different things and do not give exactly the same ruling. But the point to which both draw attention is a common one: how the property in one's hand came, and where it goes.

Here one must not force things. The verse does not set up an economic theory, does not give a rate of taxation, does not describe a system.

What it does is to lay down a measure: the rightness of a financial regulation can be tested by looking at among whom the wealth circulates.

This measure has counterparts in modern economics — the measurement of the distribution of wealth, the velocity of circulation, the accessibility of resources are studied separately. But to read these back into the verse would be forcing. What the verse gives is not an instrument of measurement but a direction.

And a record, per the method (Method): the concrete economic models drawn from this verse — which system, which rate, which regulation — are not the verse itself. The verse lays down a principle; how the principle is to be applied is the field of ijtihād, and it has been applied in different forms in history. I do not take sides in current political debates.

This sentence has been much discussed in the tradition of legal theory. First its place needs to be looked at.

Context: the sentence stands in the middle of a division of fayʾ. Immediately before it is the list of the division, immediately after it the command to fear God.

For this reason the first meaning of the sentence is contextual: "Take what the Messenger has given you in the division, and do not set your eye on what he has not given." That is, the sentence closes off the possibility of objecting to the decision of the division.

The second meaning comes from the generality of the wording. The sentence is built on a general pattern: mā … fa-khudhūhu. And in the tradition of legal theory this verse is counted one of the fundamental proofs of the binding force of the sunna.

Both are readings with a ground in the text, and they do not exclude one another: the sentence was said in a particular situation, but it was built on a general pattern. This is a structure often seen in the Qurʾān — the same principle was treated in Sūrat al-Māʿūn as well.

I adopt no preference here. But this much needs to be said: the second reading does not tear the sentence away from its context; it says that the narrowness of the context does not narrow the wording.

The sentence is built as two pairs, and the second pair differs from the first:

On the positive side, two different verbs: the giver gives, the taker takes. Two separate movements.

On the negative side, the same root: nahā (he forbade) and intahā (he stopped himself, he gave up). Intihāʾ is the iftiʿāl form of nahy — that is, "to forbid oneself".

What this tells is a fine thing: the nahy that comes from outside becomes intihāʾ inside. The prohibition ceases to be a rule that is obeyed and turns into the person's stopping himself. And the language shows this by choosing the two verbs from the same root.

On the positive side there is no such transformation, because what is given already comes from outside and is taken from outside. On the negative side the business is finished inside.

The verse ends with the same verse-ending as the fourth verse: shadīdu'l-ʿiqāb.

In the fourth verse this expression was used of those standing in the opposing rank. Here it is directed at the believers — and the subject is the division of property.

This repetition says something: the matter of the division is not regarded as a subject to be taken lightly. A warning of the same weight is given both to those standing in the opposing rank and to the believers who are dividing property.

Li'l-fuqarāʾi'l-muhājirīna'lladhīna ukhrijū min diyārihim wa amwālihim yabtaghūna faḍlan minallāhi wa riḍwānan wa yanṣurūnallāha wa rasūlah, ulāʾika humu'l-ṣādiqūn

"[This property] belongs to the poor emigrants who were driven out of their homes and their possessions. They are seeking a bounty from God, and His good pleasure; they are helping God and His Messenger. It is they who are the truthful."

Root: خ-ر-ج. And this is the same root as the verb in the second verse of the sūra.

The same root, in two sections, for two different communities.

And the difference lies in the form. In the second verse the verb is active and its agent is openly God: "it is He who drove them out." In the eighth verse the verb is passive: "they were driven out." Who drove them out is not said.

This choice is interesting. The driving out of the Muhājirūn was an event too, and its agents were known. But the verse does not name the agent.

As a reading: in the first case the driving out is a ruling, and so the name of the one who gives the ruling is mentioned. In the second case the driving out is a wrong, and the verse's interest lies not in the one who does the wrong but in the one wronged. The text stands on the side of the victim and feels no need to give the agent's name.

And the structure of the sūra emerges through this link: the same verb sets the two sections of the sūra opposite one another. One group was driven out of its homeland and this was a punishment; another group was driven out of its homeland and this was a trial. The same event carries two different meanings in two different places.

What makes the difference is not the event itself; it is what the one who lives through it went out for, and how.

The verse describes the Muhājirūn as the poor. And this is a striking way of naming them.

فَقِير — Root: ف-ق-ر. The concrete sense of the root has been dwelt on: faqāra is the vertebra; faqīr originally means one whose backbone is broken.

The image is a heavy one: poverty is named as the breaking of the structure that keeps a person upright. The backbone is what holds the body straight; when it is broken one cannot stand.

In Sūrat al-Māʿūn the word miskīn was treated (س-ك-ن, immobility: the one whom poverty does not let stir). Faqīr looks from a different place: not immobility, but the collapse of the load-bearing structure.

And now look at what the verse says: these people were not poor in Mecca. They had property, they had houses, they had work. They became poor because they were driven out of their homes and their possessions.

That is, the verse records poverty not as a fault or as a fate but as the price of a choice. These people did not lose their property; they left it.

فَضْل — Root: ف-ض-ل. Faḍl: what is left over, what is in excess, what is beyond need. From this "bounty": what is added on top of what is deserved.

The word is used in the Qurʾān for provision as well: "seek of God's bounty" (al-Jumuʿa 62/10; al-Muzzammil 73/20). That is, faḍl covers both material gain and divine bounty.

Here probably both are meant at once: these people who have left their homeland are seeking both a livelihood and God's good pleasure. And the two are bound to a single verb: yabtaghūna — they seek.

رِضْوَان — Root: ر-ض-و. This root was treated at al-Mujādala 58/22: mutual good pleasure. Riḍwān is the intensive form of the verbal noun: great good pleasure.

And note the order: faḍl first, riḍwān after. The material is named first. This is a realistic ordering — a person seeks his livelihood too, and this is not held against him.

نَصْر — Root: ن-ص-ر. To help. The root has another sense as well: naṣara'l-ghaythu'l-arḍa, the rain helped the earth — that is, it brought it to life, made it fertile.

This link between rain and help is a fine one: help is what comes from outside and sets in motion the capacity that is inside. Rain adds nothing to the soil; it brings out what is already in the soil.

The expression "to help God" occurs in several places in the Qurʾān (Muḥammad 47/7; al-Ḥajj 22/40; al-Ṣaff 61/14). The expression itself raises a question: God has no need of help.

The classical explanation is this: the help is help given to His religion and His messenger; the expression carries an annexation and an honouring (tashrīf). Indeed at Muḥammad 47/7 the continuation comes: "If you help God, He will help you" — and the help in the second half is openly reciprocal.

صِدْق — Root: ص-د-ق. Truthfulness. But in the Qurʾān this word has a particular sense: the correspondence of word and deed.

The same word occurred at the close of al-Baqara 2/177: "It is these who have been truthful (صَدَقُوا۟)." And the finding set up there was this: ṣidq is the man whose saying and whose doing agree.

And what is the proof of ṣidq here? The emigration.

For a person to say "I believe" is cheap — a word asks no price. To leave one's homeland, one's property, one's work and one's house and go out is to pay the price of the claim. That is, the verse binds the attribute of ṣidq not to a word but to a loss.

This is another form of the measure set up in Sūrat al-Māʿūn: the proof of belief is not the belief itself but the price paid for it.

Wa'lladhīna tabawwaʾu'l-dāra wa'l-īmāna min qablihim yuḥibbūna man hājara ilayhim wa lā yajidūna fī ṣudūrihim ḥājatan mimmā ūtū wa yuʾthirūna ʿalā anfusihim wa law kāna bihim khaṣāṣa, wa man yūqa shuḥḥa nafsihī fa-ulāʾika humu'l-mufliḥūn

"Those who had made that abode and faith their dwelling before them love those who emigrate to them; they find in their breasts no want on account of what has been given to those others. They prefer them to themselves, even when they are themselves in need. And whoever is guarded against the shuḥḥ of his own soul — it is they who attain deliverance."

The first sentence of the verse raises a grammatical problem, and the problem comes out somewhere fine.

تَبَوَّأَ — Root: ب-و-أ. To take a place as a dwelling, to settle in it, to take it as one's abode. Mabāʾa: the place settled in. Bawʾ: settling.

From the Qurʾān: "when We made ready / settled for Abraham (Ibrāhīm) the place of the House" (al-Ḥajj 22/26); "We settled them in a goodly place" (Yūnus 10/93).

The problem is this: tabawwaʾa is a verb of place. One settles into a house, a homeland, a place. Faith is not a place. The sentence "they made faith their dwelling" is, grammatically, odd.

The classical explanations:

The third is worth dwelling on, because it agrees with the sūra as a whole.

This sūra is a sūra of places. Throughout the sūra words of place and of shelter are circulating:

Throughout the sūra every place collapses: houses are demolished, fortresses are of no use, homelands empty, walls become the sign of a fear.

And in this verse a dwelling that does not collapse is named: faith.

This reading takes the oddity of the sentence out of being a defect and makes it a choice. I record it as a possibility; the majority of the classical exegetes prefer the explanation by ellipsis or by taḍmīn.

Another problem: the Anṣār (the helpers of Medina) did not believe before the Muhājirūn. Chronologically the faith in Mecca comes first.

The classical explanations:

The majority incline towards the first explanation: the qualification "before" is attached to the dār. I content myself with transmitting this.

The context of the verse becomes critical here.

According to the reports the property of the fayʾ was distributed essentially to the Muhājirūn; it was not given to the Anṣār, or very little of it was. And the ground is in these verses: the Muhājirūn had lost their property, while the Anṣār were in their own homeland.

That is, this verse praises those who were given no share.

This changes the weight of the verse entirely. What is praised is not an everyday generosity such as sharing one's table; it is meeting exclusion from a public distribution with gladness of heart.

And this is a far harder thing. To give of one's own property is a choice; but to consent to what has not been given to one is not even a choice — it is only the holding back of a reaction.

حَاجَة — in what sense?

Root: ح-و-ج. Need. But here there are two readings:

Most of the classical exegetes stand close to the second sense: ḥāja here is a discomfort that stays in the breast.

The qualification فِى صُدُورِهِمْ supports this: the matter is not in the hand but in the breast. That is, at the level of behaviour there is no objection at all; the verse goes deeper and says that nothing was left inside either.

This distinction is important. A person may not object and yet may keep it inside. The measure of the verse covers the part that is not visible from outside as well.

The most quoted expression of the sūra.

Root: أ-ث-ر. And at the centre of the root there is the trace: athar (the mark a thing leaves behind), āthār, maʾthūr (a saying transmitted, a saying that leaves a trace).

Īthār (the ifʿāl form): to put someone in front, to prefer him, to choose him.

How do the two senses come together? The lexicographers set up different connections. One explanation: at the centre of the root there is "to put a thing in front / on top"; athar is the mark left by the one who passed, īthār is putting someone in front. Another explanation attaches īthār to "picking out and setting apart".

On how this connection is made the lexicographers differ; I give no definite line. But the meaning of the verb is beyond dispute: to put someone ahead of oneself.

The Qurʾān does not treat giving as a single category. In different verses different thresholds are set, and these form a stairway:

The first step — giving of what is left over (infāq).

"And out of what We have provided them they spend" (al-Baqara 2/3)

It was treated there: the letter min conveys partitiveness — "of what We have provided", that is, a portion of it. It is not asked that a man distribute everything he has. And the balance "Do not keep your hand chained to your neck, nor open it altogether" (al-Isrāʾ 17/29) completes this.

The second step — giving what one loves.

"And who gives his property, though he loves it, to relatives, orphans, the poor …" — عَلَىٰ حُبِّهِۦ (al-Baqara 2/177)

The finding set up in the section on al-Baqara was this: "the measure is not in the quantity given but in what is felt while giving. To give what is left over, to distribute the surplus beyond one's need, to donate what is in any case easy to part with — these do not enter the definition. What enters the definition is the man who gives the thing he wants to keep."

And the same qualification was there in Sūrat al-Insān as well: "Though they love it, they feed the poor, the orphan and the captive" (al-Insān 76/8).

The third step — giving although one has need oneself (īthār).

"They prefer them to themselves, even when they are themselves in need" (al-Ḥashr 59/9)

The whole stairway:

Three steps: three progressively harder states of the same act (giving). And note: the Qurʾān records all three, and counts none of them sufficient, nor makes any of them obligatory. Īthār is not laid down as something asked of everyone; it is praised as something that was done.

This distinction is important. The verse does not use an imperative, it uses an indicative: "they prefer." That is, no obligation is laid down; a behaviour is recorded.

The verb in the sentence has no object: "they prefer" — whom? It is not said.

From the context the Muhājirūn are understood. But the dropping of the object leaves the scope open.

This technique is used deliberately in the Qurʾān and has been treated in two earlier places: at al-Māʿūn 107/6 with yurāʾūna (they make a display — to whom?) and at al-Maʿārij 70/18 with the dropping of the object. In both, the gap widens the scope.

عَلَىٰ أَنفُسِهِمْ — "against their own souls", "upon themselves". The particle ʿalā here conveys being to one's own detriment: the preference is made to their own harm.

One of the finest words of the sūra.

Root: خ-ص-ص. And the concrete sense of the root is surprising: a gap, a chink, a crack.

• ٱلْخَصَاص (khaṣāṣ) — the holes and gaps in a thing; the chinks of a tent or of a wall.
• خُصّ (khuṣṣ) — a hut made of brushwood, with light leaking through its gaps. It takes its name from the empty spaces in its weave.
• خَصَاصَة (khaṣāṣa) — from this: poverty, need.

That is, khaṣāṣa does not mean "little property". It means "a hole in the fabric of life".

The image is very clear: there is a covering and it does not cover everywhere. One place is left exposed. The wind comes in there.

This is an extremely accurate description of poverty. Poverty is, most of the time, not having nothing at all; it is having one place left exposed. There is a house, there is no work. There is food, there is no medicine. There is today, tomorrow is uncertain. The covering covers most places, but a chink remains, and all the risk comes from there.

Three words for poverty have been treated in this commentary so far, and the three look from different places:

All three name the same phenomenon, but from three different directions: movement, endurance, wholeness.

This variety suggests that the Qurʾān does not see poverty as a one-dimensional matter of income. A person's poverty has to do not with how much money he has but with how much he can move, how much he can endure, and which of his parts are left exposed.

A note on the root: from the same root come khāṣṣ (particular), khuṣūṣiyya (particularity), takhṣīṣ (to set apart). The common core is explained as "separating, opening apart": a thing's being separated out from the general. It is interesting that both "particular" and "chink" come out of the same place. I record this as an observation about the language.

And the verse closes with a general rule.

Root: و-ق-ي. To protect, to take under protection. And this is the same root as taqwā.

The verb is passive: يُوقَ — "whoever is guarded". Who guards him? It is not said.

This choice is important. The verse says "whoever is guarded against the shuḥḥ of his own soul", not "whoever overcomes the shuḥḥ of his own soul".

That is, this is not a declaration of achievement. The person is not described as overcoming this trait by his own strength; he is guarded. The verb's being passive takes the business out of the person's own capacity.

And this also balances the praise that follows in the verse: those who attain deliverance are not people who have won a victory; they are people who have been guarded.

The link with taqwā: the same root will come twice in the imperative in the eighteenth verse of the sūra — ittaqullāh. That is, there is an effort at protection asked of the person (taqwā), and there is a protection that takes place (yūqa). Both are from the same root.

This distinction is the key to the verse.

بُخْل (bukhl) — miserliness. Not giving what one has in hand. At the level of an act: the person could have given in a given situation, and did not.

شُحّ (shuḥḥ) — the definition the lexicographers give: "al-bukhlu maʿa ḥirṣ" — miserliness combined with greed.

Let us gather the differences between the two words:

The most important difference is in the second row, and it is generally skipped: shuḥḥ is not merely not giving; it is resenting what another has received.

The miser is a party to the dispute over whether he gives what he has in hand. The man of shuḥḥ also looks at the share of the other.

And the context of the verse sits exactly here. What was the preceding sentence? "They find in their breasts no want on account of what has been given to those others." That is, it was not given to the Anṣār, it was given to the Muhājirūn. This is precisely where shuḥḥ would come into play: seeing in another's hand a thing that has not been given to you.

The verse first describes that situation, and then gives it a name.

And the verse annexes the word to the soul: شُحَّ نَفْسِهِ — "the shuḥḥ of his soul". It could have said shuḥḥuhu (his shuḥḥ). When it says shuḥḥa nafsihī, the trait is ascribed not to the person himself but to his soul. A distance is put between the person and his soul: shuḥḥ is not the person himself but an inclination within him.

Support from within the Qurʾān:

"Souls have been made ready for shuḥḥ" — وَأُحْضِرَتِ ٱلْأَنفُسُ ٱلشُّحَّ (al-Nisāʾ 4/128)

This verse says a great deal: uḥḍirat — passive, "was made present". That is, shuḥḥ is the default state of the soul; not a corruption added later but an inclination present from the start.

And this explains why the verb yūqa is passive. If the default state is shuḥḥ, then coming out of it is not an achievement but an exception — and the exception comes about by way of being guarded.

Root: ف-ل-ح. It was treated at al-Baqara 2/5: to split, to crack. Fallāḥ — the farmer; because he splits the soil.

And now put the two halves of the verse side by side:

Two opposite movements, in one sentence. Shuḥḥ closes the soul up; falāḥ is splitting and coming out. The verse recounts the splitting open of a soul that has closed.

And this connects directly with the axis set up in Sūrat al-Baqara. There were two poles there:

• al-Baqara 2/5 — mufliḥūn: those who split and come out.
• al-Baqara 2/74 — the hardened heart: "like stone, or even harder" — not splitting, not opening, with nothing coming out of it.

The finding in the section on al-Baqara was this: "the words the Qurʾān chooses for fertility come insistently from the root of splitting — falaq, falāḥ, fajr, shaqq, faṭr. The hardening of the heart is exactly the reverse of this."

al-Ḥashr 59/9 adds a third position to this axis: shuḥḥ is the counterpart, in the field of property, of the hardening of the heart. And the person guarded against it becomes a mufliḥ — one who is split open.

And one sūra earlier the same word had split a different shell: at al-Mujādala 58/22 the mufliḥūn were those who went beyond the bond of lineage. Here, those who go beyond the closedness of the soul.

Two neighbouring sūras name two different shells with the same word: the ring outside (lineage) and the ring inside (the soul).

The sentence وَمَن يُوقَ شُحَّ نَفْسِهِۦ فَأُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْمُفْلِحُونَ occurs once more in the Qurʾān, in exactly the same wording: al-Taghābun 64/16.

There the context is different: it comes after it has been said that property and children are a trial.

The exact repetition of a sentence in two separate sūras is a striking thing in the Qurʾān. And when the two contexts are read together the rule widens: shuḥḥ shows itself both in being troubled by what is given to another (al-Ḥashr) and in clutching at one's own property and children (al-Taghābun).

Wa'lladhīna jāʾū min baʿdihim yaqūlūna rabbana'ghfir lanā wa li-ikhwānina'lladhīna sabaqūnā bi'l-īmāni wa lā tajʿal fī qulūbinā ghillan li'lladhīna āmanū, rabbanā innaka Raʾūfun Raḥīm

"And those who came after them say: 'Our Lord! Forgive us and our brothers who went before us in faith. And do not leave in our hearts any rancour towards those who have believed. Our Lord! You are indeed most kind, most merciful.'"

Here the sūra completes a list:

What the three circles have in common is striking: not one of them is praised for its property. The first group lost its property, the second shared its property, the third group has no property at all in hand — it has a sentence.

And this becomes meaningful through the fact that it comes immediately after the section on the division of the fayʾ. A moment ago the division of a property was spoken of; now three groups are enumerated, and none of them is mentioned by the share it received.

The scope of this expression is disputed:

The majority incline to the second view: the wording is general and has no limit in time.

This reading brings everyone who reads the verse into the list. And this is the most noteworthy side of the verse: the text takes the one who is reading it into the group it describes.

The prayer asks for three things, and their order is meaningful:

One: forgiveness for oneself. ighfir lanā. Two: forgiveness for those who went before. wa li-ikhwānina'lladhīna sabaqūnā bi'l-īmān. Three: cleanness for one's own heart. wa lā tajʿal fī qulūbinā ghillā.

Note the order: the person asks first for himself, then for those who went before, then again for himself. The structure puts the prayer for those who went before in the middle — between two requests of his own.

And the third item is the natural continuation of the second: to ask forgiveness for those who went before requires bearing no rancour against them. The prayer builds its own consistency.

Root: غ-ل-ل. And the relation between the derivatives of this root is striking.

• غُلّ (ghull) — the iron ring or shackle put on the neck or on the hand. Its plural, أَغْلَال, occurs in the Qurʾān: "On their necks are rings" (Yāsīn 36/8; al-Raʿd 13/5; Ghāfir 40/71).
• غِلّ (ghill) — rancour, enmity kept inside, hidden anger.
• غُلُول (ghulūl) — secretly taking property from the spoils. "It is not for any prophet to commit ghulūl" (Āl ʿImrān 3/161).

The common core: a thing's getting in between and settling there, wrapping round, pressing tight.

That is, ghill is named not as an emotion in the heart but as a shackle fitted to the heart. The word positions rancour not as a feeling but as a constraint: the man who holds a grudge thinks he is holding, but it is he who is held.

And an interesting intersection: ghulūl — to steal from the spoils — is from the same root. And this sūra is speaking of a division of spoils and of fayʾ.

Two words come out of the same root: secretly taking property from the division (ghulūl) and holding rancour inside on account of the division (ghill). Both are two faces of the same situation: the corruption of the heart in the matter of a share.

I record this as an observation; I do not claim that the two words were chosen deliberately in this context. But that they stand side by side in the text is striking.

In the Qurʾān the removal of ghill occurs in the descriptions of the garden:

"And We shall tear out whatever of rancour is in their breasts" — وَنَزَعْنَا مَا فِى صُدُورِهِم مِّنْ غِلٍّ (al-Aʿrāf 7/43; al-Ḥijr 15/47)

The verb is nazʿ — to pull out, to wrench away. That is, ghill does not go of its own accord; it is torn out. Like taking off a shackle.

And in this verse the human being asks for that tearing out by way of prayer: "do not leave any rancour in our hearts." That is, the person accepts that he cannot himself remove what is in his own heart. This is the same logic as the passive form of the verb yūqa (is guarded) in the preceding verse.

This verse determines what relation the later generations are to set up with the earlier ones. And the stance it determines is this: not to judge, but to pray.

The one who comes afterwards can do two things about those who went before: call them to account, or ask forgiveness for them. The verse puts the second in place.

This has a practical consequence, and it is of use in the matter of assessing the internal conflicts of Islamic history. But here I take no side and do not enter into historical debates; I merely record the stance the verse lays down.

And the verse itself also gives the ground of the stance: "do not leave … any rancour in our hearts." That is, the matter is not what will happen to those who went before; it is what will happen to the heart of the one who comes after. Holding rancour about the past does not change the past; it changes the one who holds it.

رَءُوف — Root: ر-أ-ف. Raʾfa: a fine-grained tenderness, the gentlest form of pity.

The lexicographers draw a distinction between raḥma and raʾfa: raḥma is general and can sometimes contain harshness (like a treatment that gives pain in order to heal a sick man); raʾfa involves not giving pain at all, not hurting. I transmit this distinction as a point about the language.

And it suits the content of the prayer. What is asked is that the heart should not be hurt, that the rancour should be torn out. And the name at the close is the gentlest name of mercy.

A-lam tara ila'lladhīna nāfaqū yaqūlūna li-ikhwānihimu'lladhīna kafarū min ahli'l-kitābi la-in ukhrijtum la-nakhrujanna maʿakum wa lā nuṭīʿu fīkum aḥadan abadā, wa in qūtiltum la-nanṣurannakum, wallāhu yashhadu innahum la-kādhibūn • La-in ukhrijū lā yakhrujūna maʿahum, wa la-in qūtilū lā yanṣurūnahum, wa la-in naṣarūhum la-yuwallunna'l-adbāra thumma lā yunṣarūn

"Have you not seen those who play the hypocrite? They say to their brothers among the People of the Book who disbelieved: 'By God, if you are driven out we shall certainly go out with you; concerning you we shall never obey anyone. And if you are fought, we shall certainly help you.' God bears witness that they are indeed liars. • By God, if those are driven out, these will not go out with them; if they are fought, they will not help them; and even if they do help them, they will turn their backs and flee, and then they too will not be helped."

The word given in the eleventh verse is built with the heaviest instruments of emphasis in Arabic. Let us take them apart one by one:

• لَ (the first) — the lām al-muwaṭṭiʾa: it reports that the conditional clause that follows is the answer to an oath. That is, there is an oath unspoken in the sentence, and this lām points to it.
• إِنْ — the particle of condition.
• لَ (the second) — the lām of emphasis that enters the answer to the oath.
• نَّ — the nūn al-thaqīla: the strongest verbal emphasis in Arabic.

That is, in a single sentence four separate instruments of emphasis have been laid one on top of another. It cannot be rendered fully in English; the nearest is a piling up such as "by God, we shall most certainly, absolutely go out".

وَلَا نُطِيعُ فِيكُمْ أَحَدًا أَبَدًا — "concerning you we shall never obey anyone". Here too there are two marks of absoluteness: aḥadan (anyone at all) and abadan (never, at no time).

وَإِن قُوتِلْتُمْ لَنَنصُرَنَّكُمْ — the same structure again.

How strongly the word is built is exactly what the verse means to show. And this is a pattern familiar in everyday life: how heavily a promise is reinforced is most of the time in inverse proportion to how far it will be kept. A promise that is going to be kept does not need this much swearing.

The twelfth verse takes up these promises in the same order:

The answer is longer than the promise. And the surplus lies in two items:

The third item closes off an assumption as well: suppose they did help — then too they will flee. That is, even the most optimistic possibility brings no result.

The fourth item was not in the promise at all, and it changes the subject: "and then they too will not be helped." The subject of the sentence has changed. The topic is no longer whether they will keep the word they gave; it is what will happen to themselves.

This is a fine leap. The man who does not keep his word will not win even if he does keep it; and in the end he too will be left without help. In three steps the verse passes from the promise to the agent's own end.

دُبُر — Root: د-ب-ر. The back, the end of a thing. From the same root tadbīr (to think out the end of a matter), mudbir (the one who turns his back), idbār.

Wallā'l-adbār, in the language of war, means to flee, and it occurs many times in the Qurʾān.

And there is something odd here: in the sentence the lām and the nūn al-thaqīla are used again — that is, the same instruments of emphasis as in the hypocrites' promise.

This can be read as a technique of mockery: the grammar of the other side's word is imitated and emptied out. They said "we shall certainly go out"; the verse says "they will certainly flee". With the same pattern.

This sentence is repeated almost word for word at al-Munāfiqūn 63/1: "God bears witness that the hypocrites are indeed liars."

شَهِدَ — Root: ش-ه-د. To be present, to be a witness. At al-Mujādala 58/6 the name Shahīd was treated: the witness is the one who does not forget, because he was there.

Witness to what? Note: to something that has not yet happened. Words were given; they have not yet been kept, or it is not yet clear that they have not been kept. But the witness is borne already.

That is, the witness is borne not to the event but to the intention. To what was inside at the moment the word was spoken. This is the continuation of the logic in the first verse of Sūrat al-Mujādala: as much as the word spoken, what is inside while it is spoken goes on the record.

La-antum ashaddu rahbatan fī ṣudūrihim minallāh, dhālika bi-annahum qawmun lā yafqahūn

"In their breasts the dread of you is stronger than the dread of God. That is because they are a people who do not understand."

This verse gives the most basic diagnosis of hypocrisy: the ordering of fear has broken down.

And the form of the expression is striking. The verse does not say "they do not fear God". They do fear — but less. The matter is not an absence but a matter of ordering.

This is a far more accurate diagnosis. Nobody says "I do not fear God". But when two fears collide in front of a decision, which of them weighs heavier shows what the person actually believes.

رَهْبَة — Root: ر-ه-ب. Fear; but a particular fear. The lexicographers draw this distinction between rahba and khawf: khawf is fear in general; rahba is fear combined with avoidance and shrinking back — the fear that pulls a person away.

From the same root rāhib (the man who withdraws himself from the world) and rahbāniyya. And tarhīb (frightening) occurs in the Qurʾān as the opposite of raghba (turning towards something with desire).

فِى صُدُورِهِمْ — "in their breasts". Again the inner place. In this sūra the breast occurs three times: in verse 9 for ḥāja, in verse 10 for ghill, here for rahba. The sūra insistently takes as its subject the layer that is not visible from outside.

The ground is given: they do not understand.

فِقْه — Root: ف-ق-ه. To understand; but the definition the lexicographers give is narrower: to know a thing by what it points to, to grasp the fine point beneath what is visible. That is, fiqh is knowing not the knowledge on the surface but the connection underneath it.

It is for this reason, indeed, that Islamic law is called fiqh: to pass from the text to the ruling, to draw out the ruling that lies beneath the visible wording.

And the next verse will end with a different verb: لَّا يَعْقِلُونَ (they do not use their reason). The verse-endings of the two verses differ, and the difference is meaningful.

عَقْل — Root: ع-ق-ل. The concrete sense of the root is to tie: the ʿiqāl is the hobble put on a camel's knee — it keeps the animal from running off.

From this two senses come out:

1. To set up a connection — to tie the parts to one another. 2. To hold back — to keep a person from what is harmful.

That is, ʿaql, in Arabic, is not a "faculty of thinking" but a work of tying.

The distinction between the two verbs:

And this agrees with the content of the two verses:

• In verse 13 the lack of fiqh: they confuse the visible power (the army of the believers) with the real power (God). They cannot see beneath the surface.
• In verse 14 the lack of ʿaql: they cannot connect the fact that a crowd which looks united has scattered hearts. They cannot join the appearance and the reality together.

The two verses describe two different cognitive faults, and their verse-endings show it.

Lā yuqātilūnakum jamīʿan illā fī quran muḥaṣṣanatin aw min warāʾi judur, baʾsuhum baynahum shadīd, taḥsabuhum jamīʿan wa qulūbuhum shattā, dhālika bi-annahum qawmun lā yaʿqilūn

"They will not fight you all together except in settlements protected by walls or from behind walls. Their violence among themselves is severe. You would think them united, whereas their hearts are scattered. That is because they are a people who do not use their reason."

قُرًى مُّحَصَّنَة — "settlements protected by walls". The root ح-ص-ن is the same as that of ḥuṣūn (fortresses) in the second verse.

The sūra brings the same root a second time. And the two occurrences say the same thing: leaning upon a defensive structure is recorded as a sign not of strength but of weakness.

مِن وَرَآءِ جُدُرٍ — "from behind walls". Judur is the plural of jidār (wall).

The concreteness of the word matters. The verse is not making a strategic military assessment; it is drawing a picture: men are standing behind a wall and fighting from there.

What does it say? Making a defence is not blamed — every army makes a defence. What is blamed is being able to fight only from behind a defence: the particle illā (except) marks this. That is, there is no other option.

And this is not a problem of capacity but a problem of unity. To fight in the open requires trust between the ranks. A man who is not sure that the one beside him will not run does not stand in the open.

And the verse gives the ground at once.

بَأْس — Root: ب-أ-س. The field of meaning of this root in Arabic is wide, and all of it points to a hardness: baʾs (fighting strength, violence, hardship), baʾsāʾ (distress, poverty), bāʾis (severe), biʾsa (how evil!).

At al-Baqara 2/177, where three states of patience are enumerated, two of them came from this root: baʾsāʾ (poverty) and ḥīna'l-baʾs (the moment of fighting).

The word order of the sentence is meaningful: baʾsuhum baynahum shadīd — "their hardness is severe among themselves". Baynahum has been put in between and carries the emphasis.

That is, the strength is not lacking; its direction is wrong. The hardness that cannot be used against the outside is being used inside.

This is the classic description of a community coming apart, and it is seen at every scale: groups that scatter in the face of an outside threat are most of the time extremely sharp inside. The energy is not lost, it changes direction.

The sharpest sentence of the sūra, and a diagnosis by itself.

تَحْسَبُهُمْ — Root: ح-س-ب. To count, to reckon, to suppose. This root occurs in the sūra for the second time (the first at 59/2: lam yaḥtasibū).

And in the second verse it was they who reckoned wrongly; here the danger of reckoning wrongly is in the one addressed: "you would think them united." The address is singular and direct.

جَمِيعًا — "united, together". This word circulates in this sūra and in the preceding one: at al-Mujādala 58/6 and 58/18, "God will raise them all" (a real gathering); here, a false appearance of unity.

شَتَّىٰ — Root: ش-ت-ت. Scattering, dispersal, falling apart from one another. Shattā is the plural of shatīt: "scattered, separate".

In the Qurʾān: "After that people will come forth in separate groups" (al-Zilzāl 99/6); "Your striving is various and separate" (al-Layl 92/4). Both occurred in this commentary.

The structure of the sentence is built on an opposition:

And the verb matters: taḥsabuhum — "you would think". That is, the appearance really is one of unity. The verse does not belittle the other side; it says that the appearance is deceiving.

This verse gives the measure of whether a community really is a community: not the number of bodies, but the state of the hearts.

And this connects directly with the notion of ḥizb in Sūrat al-Mujādala. There the root of ḥizb was "to gather around a common business". Here a crowd with no common business is described: they are standing side by side but they are not together.

The Qurʾān says the reverse of this too, and that verse completes the picture:

"Had you spent all that is in the earth, you could not have joined their hearts together. But God joined them." — لَوْ أَنفَقْتَ مَا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ جَمِيعًا مَّآ أَلَّفْتَ بَيْنَ قُلُوبِهِمْ (al-Anfāl 8/63)

The two verses together set up a principle: unity cannot be bought.

At al-Anfāl 8/63 all the wealth of the world is not enough to join hearts. At al-Ḥashr 59/14 it is said that a community whose hearts are not joined cannot fight, however numerous it may be.

And this connects quietly with the section of the sūra on the division of the fayʾ: property does not keep a community standing. The division in verse 7 regulated the circulation of property; verse 9 praised īthār; verse 10 asked for the tearing out of the rancour in the heart. What is being built throughout the sūra is not the distribution of property but the state of the hearts.

Ka-mathali'lladhīna min qablihim qarīban dhāqū wabāla amrihim wa lahum ʿadhābun alīm

"Just like those shortly before them: they tasted the evil consequence of their affair; and for them there is a painful punishment as well."

Who is meant? The Qurʾān does not say. In the reports two possibilities are mentioned: another community driven out of Medina earlier (Banū Qaynuqāʿ), or the Meccans defeated at Badr.

The sources differ on this, and there is not enough evidence for a definite preference. Both fit the qualification "recent".

The function of the word, however, is clear independently of who is meant: qarīban — "recently". That is, the example is not given from a distant history; it is given from the addressees' own memory.

This is one of the Qurʾān's ways of giving evidence. When the destruction of distant peoples (ʿĀd, Thamūd) is recounted, the addressee can say "that was another age". When a recent example is given, this escape is closed.

Root: و-ب-ل. And the concrete sense of the root is a kind of rain: وَابِل (wābil) — a heavy downpour with large drops.

This word occurred in Sūrat al-Baqara: "like a smooth rock with soil upon it; a heavy rain strikes it and leaves it bare" (al-Baqara 2/264); and immediately afterwards again, in a positive context (2/265).

The other branch of the root: wabīl is food that is hard to digest, that sits heavily, or unhealthy air. Wabāl is the heavy consequence of an affair.

How do the two senses come together? The common core is weight: large-dropped rain falls heavily, heavy food sits in the stomach, the consequence of an evil deed sits on the back.

And when it is joined with the verb in the verse the picture is completed: ذَاقُوا۟ — "they tasted".

That is, what they did is described as a food, and its consequence as indigestion. The verb (to taste) and the object (the thing that sits heavily) are chosen from the same field.

The Qurʾān often uses the verb "to taste" for punishment, and there is a reason for this: tasting is the most direct and the most personal of the senses. Seeing happens from a distance, hearing happens from a distance; tasting requires contact and cannot be handed over to another.

Ka-mathali'l-shayṭāni idh qāla li'l-insāni'kfur, fa-lammā kafara qāla innī barīʾun minka innī akhāfullāha rabba'l-ʿālamīn • Fa-kāna ʿāqibatahumā annahumā fi'n-nāri khālidayni fīhā, wa dhālika jazāʾu'l-ẓālimīn

"Just like the case of Satan: when he said to man, 'Disbelieve'; and when the man disbelieved, he said, 'I am quit of you; I fear God, the Lord of all the worlds.' • And the end of the two of them was that they are in the Fire, abiding therein for ever. That is the recompense of the wrongdoers."

This parable gives a name to the relation between the hypocrites and the community standing in the opposing rank. And the way it names it is very sharp.

The common structure is this:

1. Incite. 2. Stand behind him (or appear to). 3. When the outcome comes, separate.

This is a pattern of behaviour and it has been repeated many times in history: to push someone into a conflict, to give a promise of support, and to step aside when the time comes to pay the price.

The real point about the position of the instigator is this: it costs him nothing. Giving a word is free. And when the outcome comes, instead of paying what the word requires, it is possible to get out of the word.

The strength of the parable lies in its showing this pattern in its most extreme instance: Satan.

An observation needs to be made here.

In the Qurʾān Satan's way of working is generally described as waswasa (whispering) and tazyīn (adorning and making a thing look good). In Sūrat al-Nās he is called waswās; in al-Aʿrāf and al-Anfāl the adorning of deeds is spoken of.

Here, however, there is a bare command: ٱكْفُرْ — "disbelieve".

The reason for this is that the parable is compressed. A parable is set up not to show the detail of a process but to show its outcome. The intermediate steps — the adorning, the making easy, the manufacturing of excuses — have been skipped and the business has been reduced to its core.

Indeed in Sūrat Ibrāhīm Satan himself gives this detail:

"I had no power over you; I only called you, and you answered me. So do not blame me; blame yourselves." (Ibrāhīm 14/22)

That is, Satan's business is to call; the answering is the other party's business. This verse is the explanation of al-Ḥashr 59/16: what looks like a command given is in truth an invitation.

Root: ب-ر-أ. And this is the same root as the name ٱلْبَارِئ in the twenty-fourth verse of the sūra.

This is a very strong link built within the sūra, and it needs to be dwelt on.

The field of meaning of the root:

• بَرَأَ — to bring into being out of nothing; and to bring into being by separating.
• بَرِئَ مِن — to be far from a thing, to cut one's relation with it, to come out clean.
• بَرَاءَة (barāʾa) — acquittal, release from responsibility.
• بَرِيَّة (bariyya) — created beings.
• بُرْء — recovery from illness, finding health.

The common core: separation.

At al-Baqara 2/54 the name al-Bāriʾ was treated, and the finding set up there was this: "al-Bāriʾ, root b-r-ʾ: to bring out of non-existence into being, to create by separating and by making flawless." And in that verse the choosing of the name was a ruling: a community that had made a statue, when it was called to repentance, was called precisely by the name of "the one who really gives form".

And now, in this sūra, the same root occurs eight verses apart in two opposite positions:

Two separations, one root. The one creates, the other lets go.

The separating in creation is the giving to a thing of its own limit: separating a being out of confusion and giving it an identity. Satan's separating is exactly the reverse: withdrawing from what he built together with another and leaving it in the middle.

I record this link as an observation. That the two ends of the root should stand in the same sūra in this way is striking, and it helps one understand why the series of names in the last section of the sūra is in this sūra.

The strangest sentence of the parable. The being that commands disbelief gives as his ground the fear of God.

Two readings are possible, and both are found in the sources:

The second reading is worth dwelling on, because it says something deeper.

One person drags another into an affair. All through the process he knows the outcome abstractly but does not feel it. And when the outcome takes place, the instigator too sees it. What he feels at that moment is not pity for the person he incited — it is fear for himself.

This is a genuinely familiar behaviour: the person who encouraged a thing, when the outcome is heavy, first calculates his own share.

The link with al-Anfāl 8/48. In the context of Badr the Qurʾān uses almost the same sentences:

"And Satan adorned their deeds for them and said, 'Today no one among people can overcome you, and I am your helper.' But when the two armies came in sight of each other he turned back and said, 'I am quit of you; I see what you do not see; I fear God.'"

The wordings common to the two verses: innī barīʾun minkum and innī akhāfullāh.

This shows that the parable in al-Ḥashr 59/16 is not taken out of the air: the same words are transmitted in a concrete event too. And in al-Anfāl there is an added detail — "when the two armies came in sight of each other": that is, the moment of separating is the moment at which the outcome becomes visible.

The seventeenth verse cuts the whole parable off in a single sentence.

أَنَّهُمَا فِى ٱلنَّارِ خَٰلِدَيْنِ فِيهَا — the dual form: "the two of them".

That is, the attempt at separating does not work.

Satan said "I am quit of you". The result: both of them in the same place. A separation set up by a word does not produce a real separation.

This is the summary of the whole section of the sūra on the hypocrites, and it joins with the central idea of the preceding sūra. The main thesis of Sūrat al-Mujādala was this: a word does not change reality. The word of ẓihār did not make a woman a mother (58/2); an oath did not make a man trustworthy (58/14-18).

al-Ḥashr 59/17 sets up the same thesis once again: saying "I am quit" does not bring it about that one really is quit.

Two sūras repeat the same principle in four separate situations: motherhood, trustworthiness, alliance, and slipping out of responsibility. In all four, something set up by language produces no counterpart in the world.

A grammatical point: fa-kāna ʿāqibatahumā annahumā… — the predicate of kāna (ʿāqibatahumā) has been brought forward and its subject (annahumā fi'n-nār) left to the end.

This is a technique of emphasis in Arabic, and here it brings the word "end" to the fore. And the word is from the same root as shadīdu'l-ʿiqāb in the fourth verse (ع-ق-ب): that which comes after an act.

That is, by using the root twice the sūra says the same thing: what is done has a back to it, and that back comes.

ظُلْم — Root: ظ-ل-م. The original sense of the root is darkness (ẓulma). And the definition the lexicographers give: to put a thing somewhere other than its own place.

This definition makes wrongdoing wider than a definition by "injustice": everything displaced from its place is wrongdoing. Darkness too is a displacement — light's not being where it ought to be.

And it sits on the context of the verse: what is recounted throughout the parable is the displacement of responsibility. The instigator tries to load the outcome onto the one he incited. And the verse, by putting both of them in the same place, sets the places right.

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanu'ttaqullāha wa'ltanẓur nafsun mā qaddamat li-ghad, wa'ttaqullāh, innallāha Khabīrun bimā taʿmalūn

"O you who believe! Guard yourselves against God. And let a soul look to what it has sent ahead for tomorrow. Guard yourselves against God. God is aware of what you do."

What was recounted from the eleventh verse to the seventeenth was about a third person: nāfaqū, yaqūlūna, lā yuqātilūnakum. The text was watching a community from outside.

In the eighteenth verse the address suddenly turns: يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟.

This is the first direct address in the sūra set up with a nidāʾ (a calling out). And its place is meaningful: it comes immediately after the coming apart of the hypocrites has been recounted. That is, the moment the text finishes what it is recounting about somebody else, it turns to the one addressed.

I think this is a way of reading, and I record it as my own inference: at the end of a section in which somebody else's fault has been recounted, it is natural for the reader to feel himself safe, because the one recounted is not he. The verse steps in at exactly that point.

The command is repeated twice in the same verse, with a single sentence coming in between. For a short verse this is a striking density.

تَقْوَىٰ — Root: و-ق-ي. The concrete sense of the root is to protect, to make into a shield. Wiqāya — the barrier that protects a thing from harm. From the same root tuqāt (guarding oneself); and the picture the lexicographers give is this: the person puts something between himself and the thing that does harm.

That is, in the root of the language taqwā is not a fear but a work of protecting. Fear is the cause that makes the protecting happen; the word itself names the work that is done.

This distinction shows why rendering the word in English as "the fear of God" falls short. The word is not "to fear God" but "to put oneself under protection" — and what one is protected from is understood from the context.

The sentence between the two commands matters: wa'ltanẓur nafsun mā qaddamat li-ghad. That is, the command of taqwā surrounds a work of looking. Command → look → command.

This arrangement says something about what sort of thing taqwā is: not an abstract state but a work of inspection. And inspection is done by looking.

The most striking place in the verse is here, and it has two details.

The first: the mood of the imperative. Wa'ltanẓur — the لْ at its head is the lām al-amr, which forms a third-person imperative. That is, the verse does not say "look"; it says "let it look".

While what comes before and after the sentence is in the second person plural (ittaqū, taʿmalūn), the imperative in the middle slides to the third person singular. There is a shift in the address.

The effect of this shift is this: had it been said directly "you look", the addressee could have gone on the defensive. When "let a soul look" is said, the sentence becomes a sentence of rule — it points at nobody, but it leaves nobody outside either.

The second: نَفْسٌ has come indefinite. "A soul." Not definite, not plural.

The indefiniteness here does not perform takthīr but taqsīm: it divides a community into single individuals. An accounting is not seen collectively. And the singular shows that the business cannot be handed over to anyone else.

نَفْس — Root: ن-ف-س. From the same root nafas (breath) and tanaffus. The sense the root carries is a thing's own self, its essence, its inside; in Arabic nafsuhū means "his very self".

And let us record in advance that the word will come back in the next verse: in verse 19, ansāhum anfusahum — "He made them forget themselves". The two verses are built on two states of the same word: the soul that looks / the soul that is forgotten.

نَظَر — Root: ن-ظ-ر. To look with the eye. But the second use of the root in Arabic is to wait: intiẓār, naẓira (he gave a respite), anẓirnī (give me a respite).

The two senses come together at one point: to look is to hold the eye on something; and to wait is to hold time on something. In both there is a fixing upon one direction.

And the verb here is not the verb of ruʾya (seeing). The verse does not say "let it see", it says "let it look". Ruʾya is a result, naẓar is a work — looking is something a person can do; seeing either happens as a result of looking or does not.

That is, the verse does not command a result, it commands an operation.

The root ق-د-م. The concrete centre of the root is the foot: qadam. From this taqdīm — to put a thing in front, to send it on ahead; qadīm — that which comes before; qudūm — arrival (coming to the front).

تَقْدِيم here sets up a picture of a journey: a person is going somewhere, and before he goes he sends something on ahead. What waits for him there when he arrives is what he sent.

This picture is set up with the same verb in other places in the Qurʾān too. At al-Baqara 2/110 the same pattern occurs: wa mā tuqaddimū li-anfusikum min khayrin tajidūhu ʿindallāh — "whatever good you send ahead for yourselves, you will find it with God." The same structure is at al-Muzzammil 73/20 as well.

And the tense of the verb matters: qaddamat — past tense. What is to be looked at is not what will be done but what has been done. The verse makes one look not forward but back; but the reason for looking back is ahead.

The verse does not say "for the hereafter". It says "for tomorrow". And ghad is indefinite: li-ghadin, "for a tomorrow".

This choice of word has two effects:

The first, bringing near. Ākhira is a distant and a large word; tomorrow is a word taken from a person's daily speech, a word one can take hold of. By naming the great thing with a small and near word, the verse removes the distance.

The second, the indefiniteness. A "tomorrow" left indefinite leaves the time indefinite as well. A tomorrow of which it is not said when it is, is a tomorrow that may be at any moment.

This must be separated out plainly: it is widely said in the classical commentaries that the verse means the hereafter by ghad, and the context supports it (the following verses pass to the distinction of the garden and the fire). But the word itself has been left general, and the reading of that breadth as covering tomorrow in this world too is my preference; it is not a binding interpretation.

The root خ-ب-ر. The sense of the root recorded by the lexicographers is to know the inner face, the hidden side, of a thing. Khabr — knowledge; but knowledge that comes not from the surface but from inside.

The use of the root having to do with the soil is also transmitted: khabīr is used as well of the man who ploughs the soil and knows what is under it. I transmit this explanation in the form in which the lexicographers record it; I do not present it as a definite etymological ruling.

The root has been treated in two places in this commentary before: at al-Zilzāl 99/4 the earth gives its akhbār, at al-ʿĀdiyāt 100/11 the Lord is Khabīr. Three verses set up the same idea: what is known is not what is visible from outside.

And that this verse-ending should sit on this verse is striking. The verse commands a self-inspection: let the person look at his own past. The known weakness of self-inspection is that the person is mistaken about himself — a man sees his own intention as better than it is.

The verse-ending closes exactly this gap: the looking itself may fall short, but the record that is looked at does not fall short.

Wa lā takūnū ka'lladhīna nasullāha fa-ansāhum anfusahum, ulāʾika humu'l-fāsiqūn

"And do not be like those who forgot God, so that He made them forget themselves. It is they who are the ones gone out of bounds."

The eighteenth verse was built with nafsun: let a soul look. The nineteenth verse closes with anfusahum: He made them forget themselves.

The same word, with two opposite verbs:

The two verses are the two ends of a single axis. And the command in the middle — "do not be like them" — says that there is a choice between these two ends.

نِسْيَان — Root: ن-س-ي. The root has two uses in Arabic, and both occur in the Qurʾān:

1. To go out of the mind — forgetting that happens unwillingly. At al-Kahf 18/63, wa mā ansānīhu illa'l-shayṭān. 2. To abandon, to take no interest in — a deliberate leaving. In this use, forgetting is not a loss of knowledge but a breaking off of concern.

That the second sense is what is meant in this verse is widely stated in the classical commentaries, and the context supports it: forgetting in the first sense is not voluntary and so cannot be a ground of blame, whereas the verse sets up an open blame (ulāʾika humu'l-fāsiqūn).

That is, "to forget God" is not ignorance here. These people do not deny God's existence; they do not take Him into account. The knowledge stands; its function has been removed.

This diagnosis agrees exactly with the description of the hypocrites in the preceding section: in verse 13 too there was fear, but its ordering was broken; here too there is knowledge, but it has no effect.

The structure: nasū (Form I, transitive) → ansā (Form IV, causative). The same root enters the causative pattern at its second occurrence: they forgot → He made them forget.

That punishment should come from the same kind as the act is a weave often seen in the Qurʾān. But here the object changes, and this is the real point:

• They forgot God.
• They were made to forget themselves.

The expected symmetry would have been "and God forgot them" — and indeed at al-Tawba 9/67 exactly that pattern occurs (nasullāha fa-nasiyahum). Here, however, something else is being said.

And this takes the punishment out of being a requital and makes it a consequence. I record it as my own reading: a person who leaves off taking God into account also loses the most basic piece of knowledge about himself — what he is, where he came from, what he is going towards. For a person's description of himself cannot be set up independently of what he is bound to. He who leaves off the measure also becomes unable to know the thing he was measuring.

This finding is not openly in the wording of the verse; the verse reports not the mechanism but the outcome. The explanation above is my own interpretation and is not binding.

A link within the sūra: verse 18 said "let it look". The punishment set opposite the command to look is not the taking away of the faculty of sight but the disappearance of the object to be looked at. The person can still look; there is no "self" of his left to look at.

The root ف-س-ق. The concrete sense recorded by the lexicographers is this: the date's coming out of its skin. Fasaqati'l-ruṭabatu — the date split its skin and came out.

The description that comes out of this: fisq is a thing's going outside the boundary that encloses it. The word is not the name of a "sin" but the name of a position: the thing that ought to be inside being outside.

The second occurrence of the root in the sūra. The fifth verse had ended with wa li-yukhziya'l-fāsiqīn — in the matter of the cutting of the date palms. The root now returns, and this time it is used to warn those addressed.

The difference between the two occurrences is worth recording: in verse 5 fāsiqīn was the attribute of a community outside; here it is used while the believers are being told "do not be like them". That is, the attribute has been bound not to a group but to a state — whoever enters that state is included in it. This is the measure recorded again and again in this commentary.

And the structure of ḥaṣr: ulāʾika hum al-fāsiqūn — the pronoun of separation (ḍamīr al-faṣl) coming in between makes the ruling definite: "it is these who are really they".

Lā yastawī aṣḥābu'n-nāri wa aṣḥābu'l-janna, aṣḥābu'l-jannati humu'l-fāʾizūn

"The people of the Fire and the people of the Garden are not equal. The people of the Garden — it is they who attain deliverance."

Root: س-و-ي. The concrete sense is to level, to make smooth. Sawwā — he straightened, he balanced. The description of the soul with sawwāhā at al-Shams 91/7 and fa-sawwāka at al-Infiṭār 82/7 are the structure-building side of this root.

Istiwāʾ (Form VIII) is two things' coming to the same level. That is, lā yastawī says something narrower than "they are different": they do not meet on the same scale.

The Qurʾān uses this pattern in several places, and in all of them there is a common function: to report that two things habitually compared are beyond comparison.

There is a deliberate asymmetry in the structure of the verse:

Lā yastawī aṣḥābu'n-nār and aṣḥābu'l-janna — the two are mentioned together. Aṣḥābu'l-jannati humu'l-fāʾizūn — a ruling is given about one of them only.

No separate sentence of judgement is set up for the people of the Fire. In the second sentence only the people of the Garden come back.

I record this as an observation about style: the balance of the sentence has been left broken, and the brokenness carries a meaning. Once it has been said "they are not equal", there is no need to say anything about the people of the Fire; what is not said has already been made clear by the repetition of the positive side.

And the repetition itself is meaningful. Aṣḥābu'l-janna occurs twice. That the noun should be repeated when a pronoun could have been used (hum humu'l-fāʾizūn) is a technique of emphasis and of fixing in Arabic.

Root: ص-ح-ب. Ṣuḥba — companionship, friendship; and the detail recorded by the lexicographers: in the root there is continuity and standing together. To be the ṣāḥib of a thing is to accompany it.

For this reason ownership too is expressed in Arabic with the word ṣāḥib: the thing owned is what accompanies the person.

The use of the word here is striking for this reason: the verse does not say "those who enter the Fire" or "those who are put into the Garden". It says "the companions of the Fire", "the companions of the Garden". That is, not a place but a relation of accompanying is set up — and accompanying conveys not a single event but continuity.

Root: ف-و-ز. The definition the lexicographers give has two parts: to reach what is sought and to be saved from what is feared. Without both together, fawz is not complete.

From the same root the word مَفَازَة is worth recording: it means both "a place of deliverance" and "desert". The lexicographers explain this second use either by tafaʾʾul (counting a thing auspicious, giving a good name to what is dangerous) or by the sense "the place from which one is delivered if one gets across". I give these explanations in the form in which they are transmitted; I make no preference between them.

A link within the sūra — with al-mufliḥūn in 59/9:

Both words are rendered in English as "those who attain deliverance", but they come from two different images: the one a seed coming out of the soil, the other a traveller who comes off the road alive.

And their places are separate too: falāḥ was used, in the ninth verse, of those guarded from miserliness — that is, of an inner working in this world. Fawz is here, in the verse that reports the outcome. The one names the process, the other the arrival. I record this link as my own reading.

Law anzalnā hādha'l-qurʾāna ʿalā jabalin la-raʾaytahū khāshiʿan mutaṣaddiʿan min khashyatillāh, wa tilka'l-amthālu naḍribuhā li'l-nāsi laʿallahum yatafakkarūn

"Had We sent this Qurʾān down upon a mountain, you would have seen it humbled and split apart out of the fear of God. These likenesses We set forth for people, that they may perhaps reflect."

The verse opens with لَوْ. In Arabic law is different from in: in sets up a possible condition, law an unrealised one — and, because it has not been realised, it reports that its consequence has not been realised either. The lexicographers call this ḥarf al-imtināʿ li'l-imtināʿ: one thing's not happening because of another thing's not happening.

That is, the first thing the verse reports is this: the Qurʾān was not sent down upon a mountain.

This may be more important than the apparent subject of the sentence (the cracking of the mountain). The construction marks what is by recounting what is not: the place it was sent down upon is not a mountain but a human being.

The verse does not make this comparison openly. It does not say "the mountain would have cracked, but you did not crack". The reading of the sentence in this direction is widespread in the classical commentaries and the context supports it; even so, I record that this is an inference and is not present in the wording of the verse.

هَٰذَا — the demonstrative of nearness. The text points to itself: "this Qurʾān".

This is not a definition but a showing. The verse does not recount what the Qurʾān is; it points at the thing standing in the hand, being recited, and has its weight measured against a mountain.

The root ق-ر-أ was analysed in Sūrat al-ʿAlaq (al-ʿAlaq) and that analysis will not be repeated here. Let only this be recalled: the root has been explained both in the direction of reading and in that of gathering / bringing together.

Let us recall the vocabulary of the sūra. From the beginning this text has been built upon hard and durable things:

The sūra, having enumerated one by one all the solid structures man has built, brings in the most solid thing man has not built. And it cracks that too.

This arrangement is a reading of my own; it is not claimed that the sūra observes such an order. But that the words are present in the text is a datum that can be verified.

And its link with the first verses is this: in the second verse a community had supposed that its fortresses would protect it (māniʿatuhum ḥuṣūnuhum minallāh). The fortresses could not protect. The twenty-first verse finishes the same idea with the most extreme instance: being fortified is not itself a guarantee.

The root خ-ش-ع. The definition the lexicographers give: lowering, cowering, bending. The word is close in meaning to khuḍūʿ (bowing the neck); the lexicographers record the difference between them thus: khuḍūʿ appears in the body, khushūʿ more in the voice and in the eye.

The use of the root having to do with the soil is important: الأرض الخاشعة — dried, sunken, lowered ground. At Fuṣṣilat 41/39, wa min āyātihī annaka tara'l-arḍa khāshiʿatan — "that you see the earth with its neck bent". There the earth comes to life when water arrives.

That is, the word is not a word of "fear" but a word of appearance: a lowering from a height, the going of uprightness. Its use for a mountain is therefore apt — the description of a mountain is height itself.

The root ص-د-ع. The concrete sense: the splitting of a hard thing. The lexicographers record that the root is used especially of solid bodies — glass, stone, bone.

The occurrences of the root in the Qurʾān have come before us in three further places in this commentary:

The root always does the same work: the coming apart of a thing that was whole. What changes is what it is that comes apart.

The pattern too is meaningful: mutaṣaddiʿ is the active participle of Form V (tafaʿʿul). In Arabic this form conveys gradualness and coming about upon itself. That is, not "shattered all at once" but coming apart crack by crack.

The two adjectives together set up a sequence: first bending (khāshiʿ), then splitting (mutaṣaddiʿ). Enduring, then breaking.

The root خ-ش-ي. There are three principal words used for fear in the Qurʾān, and the differences between them have been recorded by the lexicographers:

The distinguishing aspect of khashya is that it carries a component of knowledge: a person fears because he knows what he is up against. At Fāṭir 35/28, innamā yakhsha'llāha min ʿibādihi'l-ʿulamāʾ — this is the clearest record of the distinction within the Qurʾān.

And this sets up a contrast with the rahba of verse 13. What was said about the hypocrites was this: in their breasts the dread of you is stronger than the dread of God — and its ground was lā yafqahūn (they do not understand).

The two verses together set up a single equation: he who does not understand fears the wrong thing; he who understands fears the right thing. And the mountain is put forward as the place where understanding is made concrete.

This joining is my own reading, and it rests on the shared root-vocabulary of the two verses; it is not claimed that the sūra set it up deliberately.

The root ض-ر-ب — "to strike a likeness". The verb used for a likeness in Arabic is ḍarb: to strike, to beat.

The lexicographers explain this use in several ways; the most widespread is the image of striking a coin: a metal is struck and a shape comes out upon it. So it is with a likeness — a mould is struck upon what is abstract and it becomes visible. I transmit this explanation in the form in which the lexicographers record it, not as a definite ruling.

تِلْكَ — the demonstrative of distance. In the preceding sentence hādhā (near) was used; here tilka (far).

This shift shows that what is pointed at has changed: hādhā points to the Qurʾān standing in the hand; tilka to the likenesses left behind.

And it comes in the plural: ٱلْأَمْثَٰل. Yet what is recounted in this verse is a single likeness. The reason for the plural is that the verse gathers up not only itself but the whole of the section:

Three parables have come one after another, and the twenty-first verse closes all three at once. This is the mark of the end of a section: from here on the text will come out of parables and pass to the names.

The root ف-ك-ر. The lexicographers describe fikr as "to turn a thing over and over in the mind, to walk it round". The pattern is again Form V (tafakkur): continuity, and a work the person carries out upon himself.

The closeness in sound of the root to ف-ر-ك (to rub, to crumble) has been recorded by some lexicographers. I transmit this link as a possibility; I do not present it as a definite relation of derivation. If it is right, the image the root carries is this: to break a thing up by rubbing it in the hand, to separate its parts.

And this overlaps in an interesting way with the verbs of the verse: the mountain becomes mutaṣaddiʿ — it splits, it is broken into pieces. What is asked of man is tafakkur — to separate a thing into its parts in the mind.

I record this parallel between the two verbs as my own reading. The verse sets up no such link; but that both words carry an image of "coming apart" can be drawn from the definitions the lexicographers give.

لَعَلَّ — "perhaps". This particle comes very often in the Qurʾān, and in most places it functions not as a hope but as the leaving open of the door. The verse does not say "they will reflect"; it says that reflection is possible and that the text has been given for it. The outcome is not guaranteed.

Huwallāhu'lladhī lā ilāha illā hū, ʿālimu'l-ghaybi wa'l-shahāda, huwa'l-Raḥmānu'l-Raḥīm

"He is God, besides whom there is no god. He is the knower of the unseen and of what is witnessed. He is al-Raḥmān, al-Raḥīm."

The last three verses have a texture distinct from the rest of the sūra. Here there is no narrative, no ruling, no addressee. There are only names.

The opening of all three is the same: Huwallāhu… — "He is God…". This repetition makes the three verses into a single unit.

But in the third verse an element drops out:

In the twenty-fourth verse both the relative pronoun (alladhī) and the sentence of tawḥīd drop out, and the text passes straight to the names. I record this as an observation about the structure: the frame set up twice is lifted at the third, the sentence quickens, and the section compresses towards its close.

Concerning the number and classification of the names occurring in these three verses, different countings have been made in the classical sources. The counting varies according to which construct is to be counted a "name" (is ʿālimu'l-ghaybi wa'l-shahāda one name or a qualifying construct?). In this commentary no number will be given; the names will be taken up in the order in which they occur.

The finding recorded in the introduction to the sūra is completed here. From the beginning the text has been recounting collapsing guarantees: fortresses (2), wealth circulating in a narrow circle (7), promises not kept (11-12), a crowd with scattered hearts (14), an instigator who slips away (16), a cracking mountain (21).

And now it is said where the guarantee lies. The list is not an "appendix of divine names"; it is the answer to the sūra's question.

Indeed within the list stands the name ٱلْمُؤْمِن — its root أ-م-ن, that is, security. That this name occurs in the Qurʾān only here is a datum that deserves to be read together with the context.

The structure of the sentence: first negation in its entirety (lā ilāha — there is no god at all), then exception (illā hū).

This is one of the strongest forms of restriction (ḥaṣr) in Arabic. Had it simply been said "God is a god", the sentence would not have left others outside. The structure that first erases them all and then brings one back makes the leaving-outside the sentence's own work.

لَآ إِلَٰهَ — the lā here is the lā that negates the genus (lā al-nāfiya li'l-jins): it removes not one instance but the whole kind.

A similar structure was treated in Sūrat al-Kāfirūn (al-Kāfirūn): there negation and affirmation were distributed over two separate sūras (al-Kāfirūn sets up the rejection, al-Ikhlāṣ the acceptance). Here the two are in a single sentence.

The root غ-ي-ب. Concrete sense: to disappear from sight, to be covered. The lexicographers record the word ghayba: a hollow or depression which, when one enters it, one becomes invisible. The ghayābati'l-jubb (the bottom of the well) at Yūsuf 12/10 is from the same root.

That is, ghayb is not "what does not exist" but "what is not seen". The word says something not about existence but about the range of sight. This distinction is important: the unseen is not the unknowable but what we cannot see.

The root ش-ه-د. Concrete sense: to be present. Shāhid — the one who was there at the event; shahāda — the report given by the one who was present; mashhad — the place at which one is present.

The two words together form a pair, and the pair conveys completeness: the seen and the unseen — that is, everything. In Arabic this technique is called mentioning the two extremes and meaning what lies between them.

Its link with the context of the sūra is direct: from the beginning this text has been built upon the difference between what appears and what is real. In the fourteenth verse, taḥsabuhum jamīʿan wa qulūbuhum shattā — "you would think them united, their hearts are scattered". In the thirteenth verse, the fear inside the breasts.

That is, throughout the sūra a layer that man cannot see has been recounted. The twenty-second verse says to whom that layer is open.

The ordering too deserves to be recorded: first ghayb, then shahāda. What is hard to know has been placed first.

The root analysis of these two names was made in detail at al-Fātiḥa (al-Fātiḥa) and will not be repeated here. Let only this be recalled: both are from the root ر-ح-م; raḥmān is the intensive pattern (faʿlān), raḥīm the pattern of the assimilate adjective (ṣifa mushabbaha, faʿīl). The widespread explanation of the difference of pattern is that the one conveys breadth and overflowing, the other continuity.

The real matter here is the presence of the two names in this verse.

The last section of the sūra will continue with a list of power and authority: Malik, Quddūs, Salām, Muʾmin, Muhaymin, ʿAzīz, Jabbār, Mutakabbir. These are the vocabulary of sovereignty.

And the list begins not with them but with mercy. The last two words of the twenty-second verse come before the eight-name series of the twenty-third.

I record this as an observation about ordering, and I give the following conclusion as my own reading: that the section of names which follows a narrative of punishment and exile should open with mercy makes it hard to read the section as an extension of a threat.

Huwallāhu'lladhī lā ilāha illā hū, al-Maliku'l-Quddūsu'l-Salāmu'l-Muʾminu'l-Muhayminu'l-ʿAzīzu'l-Jabbāru'l-Mutakabbir, subḥānallāhi ʿammā yushrikūn

"He is God, besides whom there is no god. He is al-Malik, al-Quddūs, al-Salām, al-Muʾmin, al-Muhaymin, al-ʿAzīz, al-Jabbār, al-Mutakabbir. God is far above what they associate with Him."

The names come one after another with no conjunction between them (without ʿaṭf). In Arabic this arrangement is called taʿāqub, and its effect is this: the names are read not as qualities enumerated one by one but as the successive faces of a single whole.

The series has a curve, and I record this as an observation:

The series opens with authority, descends in the middle to the names of security and protection, then rises again to the names of power. The gentle ones are in the middle, the hard ones at the two ends. I do not claim that this symmetry was set up deliberately; this is the state of the ordering in the text.

The root م-ل-ك. The lexicographers record this distinction concerning the root: mulk is to own, while malik is to have the authority to dispose over what one owns. That is, not every mālik is a malik; in malik there is power and execution.

The variant reading mālik / malik at al-Fātiḥa 1/4 and the difference of meaning between the two readings were taken up in the file al-Fātiḥa; it is not repeated here.

Its link with the context of the sūra: this text has been recounting a changing of hands of land, houses and property. The seventh verse regulated to whom the property belonged and how it was to be distributed. In the eighth verse, ukhrijū min diyārihim wa amwālihim — those driven out of their houses and their possessions.

That the first name coming at the end of a sūra in which ownership is constantly changing hands should be al-Malik deserves to be recorded as a reading. I give this not as the claim of the verse but as a view that the context permits.

The root ق-د-س. The sense of the root recorded by the lexicographers is cleanness and purification. Taqdīs — to purify, to hold pure.

A use of the root having to do with the soil is also transmitted: al-arḍu'l-muqaddasa, blessed and purified ground. The word qads, used of a water vessel, is also recorded. I give these second explanations in the form in which they are transmitted.

The pattern: فُعُّول. In Arabic this pattern conveys intensiveness and is rare. Apart from Quddūs and Subbūḥ there are few widespread examples.

The link with al-Baqara 2/30: the angels had said wa naḥnu nusabbiḥu bi-ḥamdika wa nuqaddisu lak. There taqdīs was the act of the angels; here al-Quddūs is a name of God. The same root: in the one place a work that is done, in the other a quality.

The direction of the meaning: taqdīs is to hold a thing far from all deficiency. That is, the word is less a declaration of "holiness" than a work of purifying — and what it is purified from will be said by the ʿammā yushrikūn at the end of the verse.

The root س-ل-م. The sense of the root the lexicographers give: to be far from deficiency and from disorder, to be sound and whole. Salīm — flawless; salāma — the state of a thing that has taken no harm.

From the same root Islām (to give oneself over), silm (peace), salām (the wish of well-being), sullam (ladder — that which is climbed step by step in soundness).

That the name should come in this form is striking: not sālim or musallim, but the bare verbal noun — al-Salām. In Arabic the use of the verbal noun in place of an adjective conveys intensiveness: not the bearer of the quality, but the quality itself.

The context of the sūra: this text recounts a war, a siege and an exile. Within it are the cutting of trees, the demolition of houses, the falling of terror into hearts.

That al-Salām should be found in the section of names of such a sūra produces a tension, and rather than hide it one must record it. The verse does not resolve this tension. The distance between the root sense of the word (flawlessness) and its widespread use (peace) leaves room for two readings at once:

I make no preference between the two readings. Both are transmitted in the classical commentaries.

The root أ-م-ن. The sense of the root recorded by the lexicographers: the heart's coming to rest, the going away of fear. Amn — the state of being in security; amāna — what is left in trust; īmān — to trust and to hold true.

The pattern is the active participle of Form IV (aʾmana → muʾmin), and the meaning of the form is causative: the giver of security.

In this commentary the root of īmān was taken up in the section on al-Baqara 2/3-5; that analysis is not repeated. Let only this be recorded: what the root carries is not an "acceptance" but the notion of security. To believe is to give security.

That the name occurs in the Qurʾān only here I can verify from the text, and this deserves to be read together with the place in which the name stands.

The finding recorded at the beginning of the sūra (in the section What the sūra does) was this: throughout the text a single question was being worked on — what are you relying on? Fortresses, wealth, promises, numbers, the instigator: all five collapsed.

And in the very middle of the eight-name series stands the name derived from the root of security. I record this as a datum of the text that can be verified; the claim that the ordering was set up accordingly is mine and is not binding.

Concerning the root of this name the lexicographers have differed, and the disagreement must not be concealed.

If the second view is right — and some of the lexicographers record it — then al-Muʾmin and al-Muhaymin are two names from the same root, and their standing side by side is not a repetition but an unfolding.

I find this possibility interesting but do not count it certain. The question of the root has not been settled among the lexicographers; here I content myself with transmitting both views.

On the meaning, however, the situation is close to agreement: muhaymin is the one who stands over a thing and watches it, protects it and bears witness to it. The image of a bird spreading its wing over its young is mentioned by the lexicographers.

At al-Māʾida 5/48 the same word is used of the Qurʾān: wa anzalnā ilayka'l-kitāba bi'l-ḥaqqi muṣaddiqan limā bayna yadayhi mina'l-kitābi wa muhayminan ʿalayh — confirming the books before it and watching over them.

This use makes the meaning clear: haymana is to stand above and to be the measure. Not merely to protect, but to be in the position of separating true from false.

The context of the sūra: in the fourteenth verse there was a scatteredness that people could not see (taḥsabuhum jamīʿan wa qulūbuhum shattā). Al-Muhaymin names the one who stands above that layer.

The root ع-ز-ز. The concrete sense recorded by the lexicographers: hardness and endurance. Arḍun ʿazāz — hard soil, difficult to dig.

Two directions come out of this:

1. Invincibility — that which does not break, which cannot be made to submit. 2. Rarity and worth — ʿazīz, that which is precious because it is scarce (ʿazza'l-shayʾu: it became rare).

The two senses are bound together: what is hard to reach is both strong and valuable.

This is the third occurrence of the name in this sūra:

The first and the last verse end with exactly the same construct; the twenty-third verse places the name inside the series. The sūra uses the same name both as frame and as content.

And the sense of hardness sits on the vocabulary of the sūra: fortresses, walls, a mountain — all of them were hardness, and all of them came apart. Al-ʿAzīz names what does not come apart.

The root ج-ب-ر. The sense of the root the lexicographers give is two-directional, and both are alive in Arabic:

1. To bind up a break, to mend. Jabīra — the splint bound to a broken bone; jabara'l-ʿaẓma — he set the bone back in place. This is the medical use of the root, and the lexicographers count it the original sense. 2. To force, to make submit. Ajbara — he compelled; ijbār.

The link between the two senses is this: to bind up a broken bone is also to force the bone back into its place. Mending is bringing a thing, by an intervention from outside, to the place where it ought to be — and this does not wait for the patient's consent.

The "algebra" of mathematics is from this root too: the operation of restoring the broken balance of an equation. This is a note about the language; no mathematical meaning is being loaded onto the verse.

The use of the word for a human being is always negative in the Qurʾān. At Maryam 19/32, wa lam yajʿalnī jabbāran shaqiyyā; at al-Qaṣaṣ 28/19, in turīdu illā an takūna jabbāran fi'l-arḍ.

The same word is blamed in a human being and occurs as praise in God. This is not a coincidence but a rule of the language: the value of an attribute depends on whether the one who bears it has a right to that attribute. In one who has no right to it, the same attribute is a usurpation.

This measure will become still plainer in the next name.

The root ك-ب-ر. Greatness. But the pattern matters: Form V (tafaʿʿul), in the state of the active participle.

In Arabic this form performs one of three functions: 1. To carry out a work upon oneself (tanazzul, taḥarruk). 2. To acquire a quality. 3. To claim a quality one does not possess (takalluf).

When it is used of a human being the third function applies, and for this reason mutakabbir is always blamed in a human being: at al-Muʾmin 40/35, kadhālika yaṭbaʿullāhu ʿalā kulli qalbi mutakabbirin jabbār — note: the same two words, in the same order, but of a human being and as a rebuke.

This is a striking datum of the text: al-Jabbār and al-Mutakabbir, standing side by side as praise at al-Ḥashr 59/23, occur side by side of a human being and as a rebuke at al-Muʾmin 40/35.

The conclusion I draw from this is my own reading: the sūra gives, as the names of the one who has a right to them, two attributes that are counted faults in a human being because he has no right to them. And it does this immediately after a narrative in which man relied upon his own power and collapsed.

The verse does not set up this link openly. The reading above is mine and is not binding.

The root س-ب-ح. The concrete sense recorded by the lexicographers: to move in water or in air, to flow along, to go far away. Sabaḥa fi'l-māʾ — he swam.

From this comes the meaning of tasbīḥ: to put God far away from everything that does not befit Him. That is, tasbīḥ is not a praise but a work of purifying — and for this reason it does the same work as the name al-Quddūs.

سُبْحَٰنَ — a verbal noun in the accusative as an absolute object; its verb has been elided (with usabbiḥu understood). In Arabic this pattern conveys certainty and continuity.

A link within the sūra: the first verse had opened with sabbaḥa lillāhi. The root now returns, and it will return once more in the twenty-fourth verse (yusabbiḥu lahū). Three occurrences set up the frame of the sūra.

عَمَّا يُشْرِكُونَ — ʿan + mā. The particle ʿan conveys moving away, and it agrees with the meaning of subḥāna: to be far above is to be far from something.

The root ش-ر-ك. Concrete sense: partnership, having a share in something. Sharika, sharīk. The image the root carries is the dividing up of a property.

And here there is a thematic contact with the seventh verse of the sūra: there, kay lā yakūna dūlatan bayna'l-aghniyāʾi minkum — it was regulated that property should not circulate in a narrow circle. That is, the sūra sets up two separate rulings on where sharing ought to be and where it ought not: property is to be shared, divinity is not to be shared.

I record this contrast as my own reading. The two verses speak with different roots (d-w-l and sh-r-k) and there is no verbal link between them; the link is in the subject.

Huwallāhu'l-Khāliqu'l-Bāriʾu'l-Muṣawwir, lahu'l-asmāʾu'l-ḥusnā, yusabbiḥu lahū mā fi'l-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ, wa huwa'l-ʿAzīzu'l-Ḥakīm

"He is God — the Creator, the Maker, the Fashioner. To Him belong the most beautiful names. Whatever is in the heavens and the earth declares Him free of all imperfection. He is al-ʿAzīz, al-Ḥakīm."

The three names in this verse have a different texture from the eight names of the preceding verse: all of them name a work. And the three set up a sequence.

The reading of this sequence as an order of production is widespread in the classical commentaries: determining, then bringing into existence, then shaping. I give this explanation in the form in which it is transmitted; the verse sets up no claim of such an order.

The root خ-ل-ق. The concrete sense recorded by the lexicographers: to measure and cut a thing to size. Khalaqa'l-adīma — he measured and cut the hide (before cutting it out).

For this reason the root carries less the sense of bringing into being out of nothing than that of determining by a measure. From the same root khulq (character — a person's cut measure) and khilqa.

And the root has a second use: to fabricate. Khalaqa'l-ifka — he made up a lie (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/17). The two senses come together at one point: in both there is the setting up of something that did not exist before.

The root ب-ر-أ. The sense of the root the lexicographers give: a thing's separating, slipping free, from another thing.

Three words come out of this root, and all three carry the same image:

And now let us go back to the sixteenth verse of this sūra. The word Satan spoke in the parable was this:

إِنِّى بَرِىٓءٌ مِّنكَ — "I am quit of you."

The same root. Satan claimed a separation by using the root ب-ر-أ — and the seventeenth verse showed that the claim was of no use: fa-kāna ʿāqibatahumā annahumā fi'n-nāri khālidayni fīhā. Both in the same place.

In the twenty-fourth verse the root returns, and this time it comes as a name of God: ٱلْبَارِئ.

The difference between the two occurrences is this:

I record this return of the root as a datum of the text that can be verified: the two words are from the same root and both are in this sūra.

The meaning I draw from it, however, is my own reading and is not binding: throughout the sūra the separations that were attempted by word all collapsed — the hypocrites could not separate themselves from their words (11-12), Satan could not slip out of his outcome (16-17). At the end of the text the same root comes as the name of the one who really can separate. The difference between claiming a separation and separating.

It is not claimed that this was set up deliberately by the sūra. That the root is found in two places can be verified; the interpretation of the relation between them is mine.

The root ص-و-ر. The sense recorded by the lexicographers: to give a thing shape and appearance. Ṣūra — the outward appearance of a thing; the visible state that distinguishes it from the rest.

It is also transmitted that the root has been connected with the verb ṣāra (to incline, to bend in a direction). I do not count this second explanation certain.

The pattern: the active participle of Form II (ṣawwara → muṣawwir). This form conveys intensiveness and repetition: giving form one by one, separately.

The link with al-Taghābun 64/3: wa ṣawwarakum fa-aḥsana ṣuwarakum. In the analysis of that verse (al-Taghābun) a distinction was recorded between taqwīm and taṣwīr: the one structure, the other appearance. The same distinction holds here — al-Khāliq names the measure, al-Muṣawwir the appearance.

And the relation of the three names to the context of the sūra deserves to be recorded: throughout the sūra people were demolishing — they demolished their houses with their own hands (2), trees were cut down (5), fortresses came apart. At the close come three verbs of making.

I give this contrast as an observation; the text does not say it.

Word order: lahū has been brought forward. In Arabic the predicate's coming first conveys ḥaṣr (restriction): "the most beautiful names belong to Him alone."

حُسْنَىٰ — the feminine elative of aḥsan. That is, not "beautiful names" but "the most beautiful names".

This construct occurs in four places in the Qurʾān (al-Aʿrāf 7/180, al-Isrāʾ 17/110, Ṭāhā 20/8 and here). It is a record that can be verified from the text.

Concerning the number of the names: a report stating that the names of God are ninety-nine is found in the collections of sound hadith. This much I am able to say. The case of the lists in which the names are counted one by one is different: it is known that these lists come in different forms in different sources and have been assessed differently by the scholars. For this reason no list is given here and no ruling is set up on the basis of a number.

Moreover the verse itself gives no number. Al-asmāʾu'l-ḥusnā reports not a closed set but a quality.

The sūra closes and returns to its opening. The first verse: sabbaḥa lillāhi mā fi'l-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ. The twenty-fourth verse: yusabbiḥu lahū mā fi'l-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ.

Almost the same sentence — but there are two differences:

The first difference was recorded in the section on the structure of the sūra and is now completed: the sūra opens in the past tense and closes in the present. The tasbīḥ is both a fact over and done with and an act still going on.

The second difference is finer: at the opening the explicit name (lillāhi), at the close a pronoun (lahū). A pronoun can be used only after its referent is known. That is, what was named at the beginning of the sūra is, by its end, enough to be merely pointed at.

This observation is mine; in Arabic the shift to a pronoun is in most places an ordinary avoidance of repetition, and no necessary meaning follows from it. Even so, considering that the sūra has put twenty-two verses of introduction in between, I find it worth recording.

The last two words of the first verse of the sūra and the last two words of the last verse are exactly the same. The frame closes.

The root ح-ك-م. The concrete sense recorded by the lexicographers: to hold back, to rein in. Ḥakama — the bit put in a horse's mouth; iḥkām — to make firm, to bring to a state in which a thing will not shift.

From this come ḥukm (the decision that settles a matter in its place) and ḥikma (the knowledge of putting a thing where it belongs).

That is, ḥakīm is not "a sage"; he is the one who settles a thing in such a way that it will not shift from its place.

And the two names together set up a balance:

• al-ʿAzīz — power. Being able to do.
• al-Ḥakīm — measure. Doing in the right place.

Had the power come alone it would have been deficient; had the measure come alone it would have been ineffective. That the two should stand together at the two ends of this sūra sets a frame around everything the sūra recounts: what has happened is neither arbitrary nor without measure.

And one last note: in the nineteenth verse fāsiqūn had occurred — the concrete sense of the root being "to come out of one's skin", that is, to come out of one's place. The sūra ends with ḥakīm — the one who puts in place.

I give the contrast of the two roots as my own reading; there is no verbal link between the verses, the link is in the senses of the roots.

At the beginning of the sūra this finding was recorded: the text repeats a single question at different scales — what are you relying on?

When the sūra ends the question has been answered, and the way the answer is given is striking: not with a sentence of admonition but with a list of names.

The road the sūra follows:

The eighth section is the answer to all the preceding ones. And the verses standing in between, 8-10 (the Muhājirūn, the Anṣār, those who came afterwards), are the sūra's only positive section — they recount not something that collapses but something that remains.

These are data of the text that can be verified; they are not a claim about intention.

Between the preceding sūra and this one there is a link recorded in the analysis of the seventeenth verse, and it deserves to be gathered up here.

The main thesis of al-Mujādala: a word does not change reality.

In all four cases something set up by language produces no counterpart in the world. I record the meeting of the two sūras on this common axis as an observation; no claim is set up about the order of revelation or about an intention in the arrangement.

First: the deceptiveness of a defensive structure. The sūra insistently separates being fortified from being secure. In the second verse there were fortresses, in the fourteenth walls, in the twenty-first a mountain. In all three the durability was real; it did not provide protection.

There is a side of this that has a counterpart today: the more a person or an institution strengthens the structure it thinks protects it, the more it can come to disregard the possibility that the threat will come from the direction that structure has not taken into account. The verse's expression min ḥaythu lam yaḥtasibū (from where they had not reckoned) is less a sentence of threat than a description of a weakness: the calculation itself makes what is not taken into account invisible.

Second: a word's not changing reality. The promise in the eleventh verse may even have been sincere at the moment it was given; the verse is not concerned with intention but with outcome. And it reports the outcome in advance.

This offers a measure that holds today, especially in crowded and fast environments of communication: the worth of an undertaking is measured not by the sincerity felt at the moment it is given but by the cost at the moment it is carried out. And words given before the cost has appeared are words not yet tested.

Third: the appearance of unity, and unity. The finding of the fourteenth verse, taḥsabuhum jamīʿan wa qulūbuhum shattā, says that a community cannot be measured from outside. That a structure holds together does not show that its members are looking in the same direction; a shared outside pressure can also hold people together.

The ground the verse gives is also worth attention: lā yaʿqilūn. The root of the word is to tie. That is, the name given to the inability to set up a connection is a deficiency of reason — scatteredness is diagnosed not as a moral fault but as a fault of seeing.

Fourth: the responsibility of the instigator. The parable in the sixteenth verse gives a name to one of the commonest ways of dodging responsibility today: the one who pushes someone into an affair puts a distance between himself and it when the affair is over. "I did not say it", "I only stated my opinion", "the decision was his".

The seventeenth verse does not recognise this distance. And the interesting thing is this: the verse does not clear the one who was incited either. Both are put in the same place. That is, responsibility is not a quantity that gets divided; it is a thing that stands entire on both sides.

Fifth: the commanding of looking. The eighteenth verse commands not a result but an operation: wa'ltanẓur nafsun. Let it look.

And the place to be looked at is the past — mā qaddamat. This proposes a stance outside both of two habits widespread today: neither running forward without weighing the past, nor staying in the past. The look is backwards, the reason for it is forwards.

Sixth: forgetting oneself. The link set up by the nineteenth verse — that the one who forgets God forgets himself — can be read as a sentence of punishment, and can equally be read as the description of a mechanism. The second reading is my preference and is not binding.

This much can be said: a person's description of himself cannot be set up independently of a measure to which he is bound. A thing that has no measure is neither large nor small; it is only without measure. And the one who loses his measure cannot notice that he has lost it — because noticing also requires a measure. The verse's saying "He made them forget" closes this circle.

Seventh: the measuring of weight. The twenty-first verse has the weight of a text measured against a mountain. And it implies this: when the same thing comes to a human being it may not produce this effect.

The side of this that looks to the present is the deadening power of habit. A text that is often read, memorised, made a part of daily speech can leave off carrying its weight. The verse does not declare this a fault; it leaves a comparison and, by saying laʿallahum yatafakkarūn, keeps the door open.

Eighth: the form of the answer. To the question "what will you rely on?" the sūra answers not with an instruction but with an introduction. In the last three verses there is no command, no prohibition, not even an addressee.

This is a method worth recording: trust cannot be established by command. It is established only by knowing what the thing to be trusted is. And the sūra does this, instead of giving an admonition, by enumerating the names.

At several points throughout the text definite language was deliberately not used; the reader needs to know these:

• The frame of the revelation. The historical background of the sūra was given within the boundary drawn in the section The historical frame: what we know, and from where: what the Qurʾān says and what the biographical reports recount were kept apart, no ruling was issued on the degrees of soundness of the reports, and the details of the reports were not presented as claims of the verses.

• The scope of li-ghad at 59/18. That the word means the hereafter is widely said in the classical commentaries and the context supports it; but to draw from the word's having been left general a reading that looks to this world is my own preference and is not binding.

• The mechanism of "forgetting oneself" at 59/19. The verse reports the outcome; it does not explain the cause. The explanation given in the text (that a person's description of himself cannot be set up independently of the measure to which he is bound) is my own reading, not a transmitted report.

• The reading of 59/21 in the form "the mountain would crack, but man does not crack". It was stated that this reading is widespread in the classical commentaries; it was also written separately that no such comparison is found in the wording of the verse.

• The closeness in sound between the root ف-ك-ر and the root ف-ر-ك was transmitted as a possibility; it was not presented as a definite relation of derivation. The parallel set up between tafakkur and taṣadduʿ is my own reading.

• The root of al-Muhaymin at 59/23. Two views were given in a table (an independent four-letter root / a transformation from أ-م-ن) and no preference was adopted. The possibility of its being from the same root as al-Muʾmin was found interesting but was not counted certain.

• The meaning of al-Salām at 59/23. Two readings (close to the root sense, "completeness" / close to the widespread use, "the giver of well-being") were given in a table; no preference was adopted. The tension between the war context of the sūra and the name was not resolved but recorded openly.

• The number of the names. It was recorded that the report stating the number ninety-nine is found in the sound collections; no ruling was issued about the lists in which the names are counted one by one, and no list was given in this commentary. The number of the names in this sūra was not given either, because the counting depends on which construct is to be counted a name.

• The symmetry in the arrangement of the eight names (the hard–gentle–hard curve) was presented as an observation; it was not claimed that the sūra set it up deliberately.

• The return of the root ب-ر-أ between 59/16 and 59/24. That the root is found in two places is a datum of the text that can be verified; the relation of meaning set up between them is my own reading and carries no claim of intention.

• The comparison between al-Jabbār and al-Mutakabbir at 59/23 and al-Muʾmin 40/35. That the two verses carry the same two words can be verified from the text; the measure of "having a right / not having a right" drawn from this is my own reading.

• The contrast set up between ʿammā yushrikūn at 59/23 and dūlatan at 59/7 is my own reading; the two verses speak with different roots and there is no verbal link between them.

• The meaning drawn from the shift of pronoun between the lillāhi of the opening and the lahū of the close at 59/24 was presented as an observation, and it was separately recorded that in Arabic the shift to a pronoun is in most places an ordinary avoidance of repetition.

• No legal ruling was issued. The regulation of the fayʾ at 59/6-7 was transmitted; the views of the schools were not classified and no ruling about the sharing of property today was drawn.

• No current political reading was made. The community in the first section of the sūra was mentioned with the attributes the verse records; no wholesale ruling was set up about any ethnic or religious group, and it was not attributed to any event of today.

• No attribution was made by name to any reciter, exegete or hadith source. Only in-Qurʾān indications and the root senses jointly recorded by the lexicographers were used; the report about the number of the names was transmitted without naming a source, with the note that it is found in the sound collections.