al-Qalam 68:14-16

An kāna dhā mālin wa banīn — idhā tutlā ʿalayhi āyātunā qāla asāṭīru'l-awwalīn — sa-nasimuhu ʿalā'l-khurṭūm "Because he is a man of wealth and sons. When Our verses are recited to him he says, 'tales of the ancients'. Soon We shall brand him upon the snout."

Nine faults were counted in the portrait. Now the question is: how are these faults tolerated?

The verse gives the answer: wealth and sons.

And note the grammar of the answer. The function of the particle أَنْ at the head has been debated, and there are two readings:

This expression was treated in the discussion of al-Muṭaffifīn and this note was made: "The classical grammarians explain the an at the head of this expression as causal: that is, he says this 'because he has wealth and sons'."

And the conclusion reached there was this: "This is the plainest instance of what al-Muṭaffifīn 83/12 says: the cause of denial is not a piece of reasoning but a position."

For the second reading a variant reading is recorded (reading the hamza lengthened, āan, which gives an interrogative sense). I record it, but since I cannot state with certainty which reading belongs to which authority, I write no name. Both readings establish the same connection; the difference is whether the connection is a question or a statement.

Where the sentence attaches is also disputed:

The second and the first views do not exclude one another, and in my judgement the sūra says both at once: wealth and sons are the reason both for the toleration of the faults and for their owner's regarding himself as self-sufficient.

This is a preference, and it is not binding.

This pair is the Qurʾān's standard phrase for worldly power and is repeated in many places.

Why these two?

In seventh-century Arab society these two were the whole of a man's power. In the tribal order the number of male children meant political weight directly: the number of people who would stand beside him in a quarrel and seek his blood when he died.

And what the two have in common is this, as my own reading: both promise duration. Wealth meets future needs; sons continue after a man's death.

This finding was made in the discussion of al-Humaza and fits exactly here:

"The value of an instrument lies in its use; the value of an end lies in its existence." and "yaḥsabu anna mālahu akhladahu — 'my wealth makes me last'."

And in the discussion of al-Fajr a second layer was added: "rabbī akramani — 'my wealth shows my worth'."

Sūrat al-Qalam adds a third layer: wealth and sons give a man the nerve to reject the verses.

The third arrives at the same place as the concept of istighnāʾ treated in the discussion of al-Layl. The finding there was: "'I have no need of anything' is, in the language of the sūra, a moral position — and not a good one."

And there is a fourth layer, particular to this sūra, as my own reading: here wealth and sons affect not only their owner but those around him. The reason a man with nine faults is deferred to is that man's wealth. That is, wealth makes its owner's character invisible.

This makes the sūra's nine-attribute portrait meaningful anew: the portrait is long because ordinarily these faults are not counted. The faults of a man with wealth are not counted. By counting them one by one, the sūra lifts the veil of wealth.

This sentence is word for word the same as al-Muṭaffifīn 83/13 and was treated there; I do not repeat it here.

Summary of the findings in the discussion of al-Muṭaffifīn:

• تُتْلَىٰ — root t-l-w: to follow, to come after. "Reciting is the letters following one another. At the centre of the word is not sound but sequence." The verb is passive and, together with idhā, conveys continuity: the same thing happens every time.
• ءَايَٰتُنَا — "The construct is made to the first person plural… the verse states to whom the thing rejected belongs. The man is not rejecting 'a text'; he is rejecting a word whose owner is known."
• أَسَٰطِير — root s-ṭ-r: "saṭr — a line, a row, a series… Its sense: things written and compiled, narratives handed down from the ancients." And the disagreement about its singular was recorded there.

And in the discussion of al-Muṭaffifīn the overlap between the two sūras was set out in a table and this note was made: "I record this overlap between the two sūras as a datum. That the same phrase and the same sentence occur in two places is a fact of the text; I make no claim that there is a deliberate reference from one sūra to the other."

That note holds here as well.

The only thing I need to add as particular to Sūrat al-Qalam is this, and it was recorded earlier: in the first verse it was said wa mā yasṭurūn (by what they write). In the fifteenth verse, from the same root, asāṭīr. The sūra hears, in its fifteenth verse, as an insult the root it exalted in its first.

And the character of the objection is worth noting: to say "tales of the ancients" is not to deny the text; it is to refer it to history.

The man does not say "this is false". He says "this is old". That is, he never enters the content at all; he classifies the text as a genre and passes on.

I record that this is a technique of disputation and that it is widespread today as well, as my own inference: refuting a claim is hard; placing it in a category is easy. Once the category is applied, there is no need to look at the content of the claim.

The harshest sentence in the sūra.

وَسَمَ — root و-س-م. And the concrete sense of the root is to brand, to mark: wasama'l-baʿīr — he seared the camel with hot iron, he branded it.

Its derivatives:

• سِمَة (sima) — a brand, a mark.
• سِيمَا (sīmā) — the mark on the face, appearance. It survives in Turkish as sima.
• مَوْسِم (mawsim) — a time known by particular marks; the season of pilgrimage, the season of rain. The Turkish word mevsim comes from this root.

In the discussion of al-Fātiḥa this root was named while the root of the word ism was being debated. The note there was this: "There are two old views on its root: s-m-w (height) or w-s-m (mark, trace, brand). Both in fact arrive at the same place: a name is the mark that distinguishes a thing from others and makes it visible."

Now that note bears fruit here, as my own reading: if a name is a mark that identifies a thing, so is a brand. The difference is that one is given and the other struck. And the brand in the verse writes the man's real name on his face.

Brand and mark in the Qurʾān:

• "You will know them by their mark" (al-Baqara 2/273 — of the poor).
• "Their mark is on their faces from the trace of prostration" (al-Fatḥ 48/29).

And now see the contrast — I record this as my own reading:

Two faces, two traces. One that he placed himself, one that was placed upon him.

Root: خ-ر-ط-م. A four-letter root. Its sense: the nose of an animal — in particular the trunk of an elephant and the snout of a beast of prey. Used of a human being in Arabic it is plainly degrading.

And there are several layers in the choice of the word:

One. Degradation. For a human nose the word is anf. To say khurṭūm is to put a man down among the animals.

Two. The nose and pride. In Arabic the nose is the organ of pride — and so it is in English: "his nose in the air", "to look down one's nose". In Arabic shamakha bi-anfihī (he raised his nose) conveys arrogance.

So the punishment is struck on the organ of the offence. The man had raised his nose; the brand goes there.

Three. Visibility. The nose is the most protruding and most visible part of the face. Striking the brand there makes it impossible to hide.

Four. Permanence. A brand is not wiped away. And the sūra opened with a pen — the most distinctive property of writing is likewise permanence.

I record this fourth link as my own reading: the sūra opens with the idea of a permanent record and closes this section with the idea of a permanent brand. What is written stays; the brand that is struck stays too.

And the link with zanīm was recorded earlier: zanama is the mark on an animal's ear. In the thirteenth verse the man was described as a "marked animal"; in the sixteenth it is announced that the mark will be struck.

That the two words stand in the same sūra and that both concern the branding of animals is a datum of the text; the link I make between them is interpretation.

سَنَسِمُهُ — the prefix sa- conveys the future. But when?

All three views exist in the classical sources and they do not exclude one another. I state no preference; all three have support from the text and the verse does not explain the matter.

But one observation is worth recording: the verse says not what the punishment is but where it will be struck. The stress falls on the place. And this brings forward the punishment's visibility rather than its nature.

These three verses complete the sūra's social diagnosis: nine faults were counted, then the reason they are overlooked was stated.

And this is one of the most everyday observations there is: wealth suspends moral assessment.

A person's faults are talked about in inverse proportion to that person's power. A minor rudeness in someone powerless is recounted at length; a systematic fault in someone powerful is waved away as "his style".

What the verse does is to read the list anyway. Nine attributes are counted in spite of the veil of wealth.

A second aspect: the "tales of the ancients" technique.

Placing a view in a category without looking at its content and moving on is still today the commonest shortcut in argument. Once the category is applied the argument is over — because what is now being argued about is not the claim but the label.

And note the order of the verse: first the man's position is stated (wealth and sons), then what he says. That is, the sūra explains the word by the position of the one who speaks it.

It must be recorded that this can also work in the opposite direction, because it is dangerous: explaining a person's word by his position may be justified, as the sūra does here; but made into a method it becomes an easy way of refuting anything. The sūra does this for one man, after nine faults have been counted — not as a general rule.