al-Ḥāqqa 69:21-24

Fa-huwa fī ʿīshatin rāḍiya · Fī jannatin ʿāliya · Quṭūfuhā dāniya · Kulū wa'shrabū hanīʾan bimā aslaftum fi'l-ayyāmi'l-khāliya "He is in a life well pleased — in a lofty garden, its clusters hanging low. 'Eat and drink with relish, for what you paid in advance in the days now gone.'"

This expression is word for word the same as al-Qāriʿa 101/7 and was treated in detail there. I do not repeat it; in summary:

• عِيشَة is on the fiʿla metre, and this metre conveys the manner of doing: jilsa (a manner of sitting), mīta (a manner of dying). Not "life", that is, but "a manner of living".
• For رَاضِيَة three grammatical explanations were given (an active participle in a passive sense / an adjective of relation / a figurative attribution); none was presented as certainly correct.
• The particle فِى conveys enclosure: the person does not possess the life, he is inside it.
• This verse was already mentioned in the section on al-Qāriʿa: "The same expression word for word… In al-Ḥāqqa this sentence is said of the man whose book is given in his right hand. Two sūras recount the same end in the same words."

What is to be added here is this: the two sūras arrive at the same sentence by different roads.

The same concluding sentence, two different criteria. Al-Qāriʿa sets up a balance, al-Ḥāqqa opens a ledger. In the section on al-Ṭāriq the difference between these two sūras was already recorded: "Sūrat al-Qāriʿa set up a balance; here there is no balance… There is no scene of a book as in Sūrat al-Inshiqāq and Sūrat al-Ḥāqqa."

The Qurʾān, that is, recounts the same end in three separate languages of measurement: the scale (al-Qāriʿa), the record (al-Ḥāqqa and al-Inshiqāq), the assay (al-Ṭāriq). Three languages, one verdict.

I record this as my own reading. The languages of measurement of the three sūras are, for their part, plain in the text.

جَنَّة — Root: ج-ن-ن. To cover, to conceal. This root was treated in the sections on al-Baqara 2/25 and al-Takwīr 81/22: janīn, jinn, majnūn, mijann (a shield), janna (a garden whose trees cover the ground). I do not repeat it.

عَالِيَة — Root: ع-ل-و. To be high. And the word is again on the fāʿila metre; it fits the sound-weave of the sūra.

The height has two readings, and both occur in the classical sources:

The two do not conflict. And at al-Ghāshiya 88/10 the same word occurs in the same context: "in a lofty garden" (fī jannatin ʿāliya) — the identical construction.

قُطُوف — Root: ق-ط-ف. Qaṭafa — to pluck fruit from its branch, to gather it in. قِطْف is the cluster to be plucked or the fruit gathered; its plural is quṭūf.

The word comes, that is, from the verb to pluck. The fruit is named as "the thing to be plucked".

دَانِيَة — Root: د-ن-و. Danā — to draw near, to be near. The word dunyā is from this root too and was treated in the section on al-Aʿlā 87/16: al-dunyā means "the nearest one".

And there is a fine link here. Dunyā and dāniya are from the same root: both convey nearness. In one sūra nearness is the name of an error of choice ("you prefer the life of this world", al-Aʿlā 87/16); here the same nearness is a reward.

I record this as an observation about the language; the shared root is not in dispute. I claim no wordplay.

What the expression describes. In a garden the fruit is above; to gather it one must reach, bend, climb the tree or use an implement. Gathering fruit is work that costs effort.

The verse removes that effort: the fruits are low down. There is no need to reach.

And join it with the preceding verse: the garden is lofty (ʿāliya), its fruits are near (dāniya). Two opposite words in the same place:

The place itself is high, its produce low. Height, that is, does not remove the person from his produce.

I record this as my own reading. The senses of the two words and their standing one after the other are in the text.

Parallels within the Qurʾān: "And the fruit of the two gardens to be gathered is near" (al-Raḥmān 55/54); "Its shades hanging close over them, its fruits made low to their hand" (al-Insān 76/14).

The telling changes once again here: the twenty-fourth verse is direct speech. Who says it is not stated; but it is addressed to those in the garden in the plural imperative.

Both imperatives are plural. The address, that is, is not to one person but to a company. And this pairs with the "take, read" of the nineteenth verse: there a man called out to a crowd; here a crowd is called out to.

Root: ه-ن-أ. Hanīʾ — food that is easily digested, harmless, whose end is good. The equivalent of the English "may it do you good".

The idea the word carries is not merely pleasantness: it is leaving no harm behind. In Arabic, food that is hanīʾ is food that is agreeable in the eating and causes no distress afterwards.

Another place where it occurs in the Qurʾān makes this clear: "If of their own good will they give up some of it to you, then consume it with relish" (al-Nisāʾ 4/4) — there the word conveys that what is taken is lawful and easy on the conscience.

Hanīʾan, that is, includes not only the taste of eating but its lawfulness. And the next clause explains exactly this.

One of the most striking words in the sūra.

Root: س-ل-ف. Salafa — to pass, to come before, to go ahead. Its derivatives:

• سَلَف — what is left in the past, the preceding generation. The Turkish selef (one's predecessor in an office) is a borrowing of this same word.
• أَسْلَفَ (Form IV) — to send ahead, to send on in advance.
• ٱلسَّلَف / ٱلسَّلَم — in law, a kind of sale: payment now, delivery later. The buyer pays today and receives the goods at a future date.

The third item frames the verse.

The verb is aslaftum — "you sent ahead". And its object is not named: bimā aslaftum — "for what you sent ahead". What was sent is not specified.

The scene, then, is this: the person made a payment in the past; now he is taking delivery of his goods.

And this changes the character of the garden's favours. What is given is not presented as a gift; it is presented as a return. The particle bāʾ says so plainly: bimā — "in return for…, because of…".

This is part of the Qurʾān's language on this subject and is seen elsewhere as well:

• "Whatever good you send ahead for yourselves, you will find it with God, better and greater in reward." (al-Muzzammil 73/20)
• "Whatever good you send ahead for yourselves, you will find it with God." (al-Baqara 2/110)
• "Every soul will know what it sent ahead and what it left behind." (al-Infiṭār 82/5)

These three verses and the aslaftum here carry the same idea: a deed is something sent ahead; the person comes after it.

And the framework of "payment in advance" says one thing more. In a contract of advance payment the payer pays without seeing the goods. At the moment he pays he has nothing in his hand; he has only a promise.

This is exactly the matter of ẓann in the twentieth verse: the man had said "I did think that I would meet my reckoning." He had paid, that is, without seeing.

Four verses apart, two sentences complete one another: "I did think so" (20) and "for what you paid in advance" (24). The supposition was the ground of the payment.

I record this as my own reading. The legal use of the root is recorded in the lexicons and in the literature of jurisprudence; the link I make between the two verses is mine.

Root: خ-ل-و. Khalā — to be emptied, to be empty; and from there, to pass away. Khalat al-ayyām — the days passed. Khalā bihi — he was left alone with him (the place emptied, the two remained).

Not "past days", that is, but exactly "emptied days": a stretch of time whose contents are spent, in which no one is left.

A note. In the seventh verse the sūra had used the word خَاوِيَة — and that too conveyed emptiness (hollow trunks of palm). The خَالِيَة here, however, is from a separate root (خ-و-ي / خ-ل-و). The two are akin in sense and both are on the fāʿila metre; but I make no claim of a shared root. I record only that in two places in the sūra two different roots of "emptying" occur on the same metre.

And there is a contrast worth recording: in the seventh verse it was bodies that were emptied, here it is time. In the one, destruction; in the other, a lifetime passing away.

Between the twenty-first and the twenty-fourth verses there is an order, and that order is worth recording:

1. 21 — state: in a life well pleased. 2. 22 — place: in a lofty garden. 3. 23 — detail: its fruits near. 4. 24 — address and ground: eat and drink, because you had paid.

The telling descends, that is, from the general to the particular (state → place → fruit) and then turns to speech.

And at the fourth step something happens: the scene closes with an explanation. The reward is given and its reason is stated.

This will take on meaning when compared with the next scene. For there too a ground will be given (33-34) — but the ground will come in the middle of the punishment, and from the mouth of the narrator rather than of the person.