al-Maʿārij 70:10-11

Wa lā yasʾalu ḥamīmun ḥamīmā · Yubaṣṣarūnahum "No friend will ask after a friend. Yet they will be made to see one another."

The eighth and ninth verses were a cosmic landscape: the sky, the mountains. The tenth verse descends all at once to a space between two people.

And this transition shows what the sūra means to do. The scene of the resurrection is scenery here; the real subject is what is left between people in that scenery.

Root: ح-م-م. This word was treated in detail in the section on al-Ḥāqqa 69/35: the two branches of meaning in the root (boiling water / close friend), the "heat" link drawn by the lexicographers, and the fact that ḥamīm means "one whose concern is warm". I do not repeat it.

And there a comparison with this verse was made:

The two sūras give two stages. In al-Ḥāqqa one man had no friend at all. In al-Maʿārij there are friends — and they are of no use.

The second is the heavier. For friendlessness is a lack; having a friend who is of no use is a collapse. In the first, something was missing; in the second, something present does not work.

I record this as my own reading. The wordings of the two verses are data that can be verified.

The verse does not use a pronoun. It could have said "a friend will not ask after him"; it does not. The word is repeated twice: ḥamīmun ḥamīmā.

As recorded in the sections on al-Qāriʿa and al-Ḥāqqa, in Arabic the repetition of a noun where a pronoun would serve is an act of emphasis.

Here the function of the emphasis may be this — I record it as my own reading: the word is given to both sides. That is, both ends of the relation are ḥamīm; one does not ask, and neither does the other. Reciprocity is shown by the repetition of the word.

And when the "warm" sense of ḥamīm is borne in mind, a scene is set in which nothing passes between two warmths.

And the choice of the verb is critical.

The verse does not say "will not help", does not say "will not save", does not say "will not recognise". It says "will not ask".

Asking is the smallest contact between people. Not an act of help but an enquiry after someone's state. It costs nothing.

That is, the verse picks the weakest link of relationship and says that even that has been broken. It is the very method recorded in the section on al-Māʿūn: "lowering the threshold step by step." Al-Māʿūn in its last verse asked for a bucket; al-Maʿārij here asks for a question.

I record this as my own reading. The finding in the section on al-Māʿūn is taken from there.

Two readings of the verb. It is transmitted in the classical sources that the verb is read both in the active (yasʾalu — "will not ask") and in the passive (yusʾalu — "will not be asked"). Since I cannot say with certainty which reading belongs to which imām, I give no names.

The two readings differ in sense but come out in the same place:

• Active: a friend does not ask after a friend — no one wonders about anyone.
• Passive: a friend is not asked [about] his friend — no one is held responsible for anyone, no one carries another's burden.

The second reading accords with the Qurʾānic principle that "no bearer of burdens bears the burden of another" (al-Anʿām 6/164 and elsewhere).

And here the hidden spine of the sūra is at work.

In the first verse there was a sāʾil: he was asking and did not want an answer. In the tenth verse there is a ḥamīm: he cannot ask, and he would want to.

Between the two scenes there is a reversal: in the world he asked questions but did not care about the answer; on that day the answer is everything, but he cannot ask.

I record this as my own reading. The two occurrences of the root can be counted in the text.

Root: ب-ص-ر. To see. And the verb here is two-layered: it is both in the tafʿīl form (to cause to see) and passive (yubaṣṣarūna — they are made to see).

That is: "they are shown", "they are subjected to being shown."

And this makes the tenth verse harder still.

Had the sentence run thus, it would have been intelligible: "a friend does not ask after a friend, because he cannot see him." They have been lost in the crowd; they cannot recognise one another.

The verse says exactly the opposite: they do see. Indeed they are shown — that is, the seeing is brought about not by chance but by an act.

So the scene is this: they recognise one another, they look at one another, and they do not ask.

This is a picture the Qurʾān sets up several times in its scenes of the resurrection, and it takes its clearest form in Sūrat ʿAbasa. I shall come to it shortly.

The arrangement of the pronouns. Yubaṣṣarūna-hum — "they are shown to them". Two plural pronouns. The verse moves from the singular (one friend) to the plural (all of them): the tenth verse described one relationship, the eleventh describes all relationships.

One link. The root ب-ص-ر also occurred in the thirty-eighth verse of the preceding sūra: "by what you see and what you do not see" (al-Ḥāqqa 69/38-39). There seeing was the line dividing an oath. Here seeing is a faculty that is of no use.

Two neighbouring sūras use the same root for two different tasks. I record this as an observation.