al-Taghābun 64:1

Yusabbiḥu lillāhi mā fi'l-samāwāti wa mā fi'l-arḍ, lahu'l-mulku wa lahu'l-ḥamd, wa huwa ʿalā kulli shayʾin qadīr

"Whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth glorifies God. The dominion is His, the praise is His. And He is powerful over everything."

Root: س ب ح. The concrete sense of the root is to swim in water, to move through a medium without obstruction. Sabḥ is the swimmer's going by cleaving the water; sābiḥ is the one who swims.

This root is used in the Qurʾān in its concrete sense as well:

• "Each one swims in an orbit" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/33; Yāsīn 36/40) — kullun fī falakin yasbaḥūn. This is the verb used of the heavenly bodies.
• In the oaths of Sūrat al-Nāziʿāt al-sābiḥāti sabḥā occurs; the analysis of this root was done there (al-Nāziʿāt), and I do not repeat it here.

How, then, does one pass from "swimming" to "glorification"? The connection the lexicographers give is this: tasbīḥ is to hold God away from everything unworthy of Him, to cut past and away from those things. The swimmer cleaves the water and moves on; the one who glorifies likewise cleaves and passes the false conceptions about the divine Essence. Inside the word there is a movement of purifying and holding at a distance.

This is something other than what the English "to tell one's beads" suggests. Glorification is not an operation of counting; it is an operation of placing. It means "You are far from this."

The pattern: Form II (sabbaḥa). This form conveys intensity and repetition. Not a single utterance once made, but a continuous and widespread state.

This is the most easily skipped place in the verse.

In Arabic مَنْ (man — who) is used for beings that possess reason, and مَا (mā — what) for those without reason and for existents in general. The verse does not say man fi'l-samāwāt; it says مَا فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ.

That is, the glorifying subject is not confined to the angels and to human beings. It says "whatever there is" — stone, tree, water, air, star, all of them.

This shows that the Qurʾān sets up glorification not as an act of speech but as a state of being. And the Qurʾān defends this choice openly:

وَإِن مِّن شَىْءٍ إِلَّا يُسَبِّحُ بِحَمْدِهِۦ وَلَٰكِن لَّا تَفْقَهُونَ تَسْبِيحَهُمْ "There is nothing that does not glorify Him with praise; but you do not understand their glorification." (al-Isrāʾ 17/44)

This verse says two things: glorification is universal, and it is imperceptible. Without the second half the first half would be an assumption; the second half accepts imperceptibility from the outset.

I do not turn this into a claim about natural science — the verse speaks of no vibration and no frequency, and such a reading would be something put onto the text from outside. What the verse says is plainer: existence itself is a declaration. That a thing exists points to the one who brought it into existence; and this pointing is independent of whether the thing is aware of it or not.

And it would not be right to pass on here without making an observation about this group of sūras.

The sūras in the Qurʾān that open with a sentence of glorification are called the musabbiḥāt. Some of these sūras open with the perfect pattern (sabbaḥa), some with the imperfect (yusabbiḥu), and one with the imperative (sabbiḥi'sma rabbika'l-aʿlā — al-Aʿlā 87/1).

Al-Taghābun opens with the imperfect: yusabbiḥu.

What is the meaning of the difference? In Arabic the perfect conveys completedness, the imperfect ongoingness and renewal. From this the following reading can be made: the perfect pattern stresses that the glorification is ancient and fixed, the imperfect pattern that it continues and is repeated.

But here I must enter a reservation. I cannot claim that this difference is tied to a consistent rule in every one of the musabbiḥāt sūras; the exegetes have proposed various explanations on this point and none of them is certain. The difference of pattern is a fact standing in the text; the meaning drawn from it is interpretation. Here I only record the difference, and content myself with saying that for this sūra the imperfect suits the flow: the sūra will describe an order working at this moment, and will ask at the end for the things that must be done at this moment.

The sentence builds the same structure twice: lahu first, al-mulk and al-ḥamd after.

In Arabic the predicate's coming before the subject (taqdīm) conveys restriction (ḥaṣr). Not "the dominion is His" but "the dominion is His alone". In English we do this with stress; Arabic does it with word order.

And the choice of the two words is meaningful:

• الْمُلْك — ownership and disposal. Root م ل ك: to hold powerful disposal over something. The analysis of this root was done in al-Mulk; I do not repeat it here.
• الْحَمْد — praise. Root ح م د; its analysis was done in al-Fātiḥa.

The coming of the two side by side sets up an equation. Dominion is power; praise is an assessment of worth. A being may be powerful and yet not deserve praise; it may deserve praise and yet be powerless. The verse gives both to the same address.

And this is the precondition of the framework of exchange that will be set up at the end of the sūra: in a transaction one looks for both the capacity to pay and the trustworthiness of the other party. The verse records both at once. I write this as my own reading; I do not present it as a classical transmitted report.

قَدِير — root ق د ر. The three branches of meaning in this root (measure/determining, worth/honour, straitness/squeezing) were analysed in detail in al-Qadr; I do not repeat that analysis. The use here belongs to the first branch: the power to do a thing to its measure.

And this sense of the root separates the word "power" a little from what the English "almighty" suggests. Qadīr is not the one who can do everything; He is the one who can do everything to its measure. Power and measure stand in the same root.

This root will not return again in the sūra; but it will come back in Sūrat al-Ṭalāq (65/3) with the sentence "God has set a qadr — a measure — for everything". Two neighbouring sūras use the same root in two different directions: power here, measure there.