al-Ḥashr 59:1

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.