al-Ḥāqqa 69:12

Li-najʿalahā lakum tadhkiratan wa taʿiyahā udhunun wāʿiya "That We might make it a reminder for you, and that a retaining ear might retain it."

The لِـ at the head is the lām of causation: it conveys cause and purpose. The carrying of the eleventh verse, that is, was done not for its own sake but for this.

This is a striking sentence. What is given as the ground of an act of rescue is not the rescued themselves but being remembered. The purpose of the event, that is, is something that continues after the event is over.

Root: ذ-ك-ر. To remember, to call to mind, to mention.

The word has occurred in several places in this commentary; it was treated by way of dhikr and mudhakkir in the sections on al-Aʿlā and al-Ghāshiya. I do not repeat that here. The one thing that must be recorded is the pattern: tadhkira is on the tafʿila metre and conveys a verbal noun — the act of reminding itself, or the thing that reminds.

And this word occurs twice in this sūra:

The sūra names two different things with the same word: an event and a text.

This link explains the structure of the sūra. The first part (1-12) recounts history and ends by calling it a tadhkira. The third part (38-52) defends the text and defines it as a tadhkira. Two things that do the same work: an event that happened and a speech that is recited.

And the difference between them is stated in the forty-second verse: "How little you reflect" — qalīlan mā tadhakkarūn, the same root. The sūra uses this root in three places, then: a reminder was given (12), it is not remembered (42), and it is a reminder all the same (48).

I record this as a weave of words within the sūra; the three occurrences can be verified.

As was recorded in the section on ʿAbasa, the Qurʾān calls itself a tadhkira in many places (al-Muzzammil 73/19, al-Muddaththir 74/54, and verse 48 of this sūra). The text, that is, gives here to a flood the name it has chosen for itself.

Root: و-ع-ي. This root was treated in detail in the section on al-Inshiqāq 84/23, and this verse was already mentioned there. Rather than repeat the findings there, I summarise them:

• The concrete centre of the root is an object: وِعَاء — a vessel, a sack, a thing into which something is put. At Yūsuf 12/76 the word is plainly a baggage sack.
• وَعَىٰ — to hold in the mind as one puts a thing into its vessel, to retain.
• أَوْعَىٰ (Form IV) — to fill a vessel, to store up.
• The conclusion recorded in the section on al-Inshiqāq: "a good ear is an ear that takes in what it hears and keeps it"; and "the vessel is not empty, it is only not full of the right thing."

There are three things I need to add here.

One — three vessels. When the three uses of the root in the Qurʾān are set side by side, a table emerges, and this table joins three separate sections of this commentary:

Three verses, three vessels. And two of them are next door to this sūra: al-Maʿārij comes immediately after al-Ḥāqqa in the arrangement of the codex. Two neighbouring sūras use the same root and put two different things into the vessel: the one a reminder, the other wealth.

I shall return to this link in the section on al-Maʿārij. What I record here is the shared root, and that is not in dispute. The interpretation that the three verses form a weave is mine.

Two — why is the ear singular and indefinite?

The verse does not say "ears", nor "their ears". أُذُنٌ — an ear. Singular and indefinite.

And compare it with the preceding clause: "that We might make it a tadhkira for you" — there the address is plural (lakum). Here it is singular.

The reminder, that is, has been given to everyone; the retaining has been left to individual persons.

The indefiniteness may have a further function here. As was recorded in the sections on al-Qāriʿa and al-Ikhlāṣ, indefiniteness sometimes conveys magnification and sometimes fewness. Read as fewness, the sense here becomes: "let at least one ear retain this" — few in number, but even one is enough.

I record this reading as a possibility; I do not present it as certain.

Three — why the ear and not the eye?

The sūra had just used the verb of seeing twice (fa-tarā, fa-hal tarā, 7-8). Now it moves to the ear.

The reason may be this: what is to be seen is wreckage, and wreckage passes. The seventh and eighth verses had already said as much: you look, and nothing is left. Sight depends on a source that does not last.

News, on the other hand, is carried by the ear and handed on from generation to generation. Even after the wreckage of an event has disappeared, the report of it remains.

In the twelfth verse, that is, the sūra changes the channel of transmission: from a witness resting on the eye to a handing-on resting on the ear. And this transition prepares the sūra's last part in advance — because what will be disputed there (38-52) is precisely this: the source of a speech that comes to the ear.

I record this as my own reading. Its ground is the move, within two verses, from the verb of seeing to the organ of hearing.

The idea of the ear's "holding" is framed elsewhere in the Qurʾān too, and generally by way of its negative:

• "They have hearts with which they do not understand; they have eyes with which they do not see; they have ears with which they do not hear." (al-Aʿrāf 7/179)
• "In their ears there is a heaviness." (Fuṣṣilat 41/44)

Everyone has the organ, that is; not everyone has its function. Al-Ḥāqqa 69/12 says the same thing from the positive side: there is an ear that retains.

And this ties to the forty-ninth verse of the sūra: "We know full well that among you there are deniers." From beginning to end, that is, the sūra assumes that its audience is divided: there is an ear that retains, and there are also deniers.

In the section on al-Inshiqāq an application was made by way of this verse, and I do not repeat it. The one thing I shall add here is that the verse is a sentence of purpose.

The verse says this: the reason an event happens is that it be remembered.

This yields a practical consequence for the way we look at history. The meaning of an event is not exhausted at the moment it occurs; it continues as long as it is handed on. And what is chosen as the carrier of that handing-on is not an institution, a monument or a record: it is an ear.

Monuments fall, records are lost, institutions break up. The ear, meanwhile, is there afresh in every generation. But in every generation there must again be one that retains; the ear itself is not enough, its attribute is required.