al-Maʿārij 70:15-16

Kallā innahā laẓā · Nazzāʿatan li'sh-shawā "No! It is a flame; it strips away the skin."

The function of this particle was treated in the sections on al-Takāthur 102/3, al-Humaza 104/4 and al-Fajr 89/17: radd (rejection) and zajr (rebuke). I do not repeat it.

The distinction recorded in the section on al-Fajr is useful here: there two instances of kallā were compared — one cut off an inference, the other a way of life.

The kallā here cuts off an offer.

For four verses the man bargained: let me give this, let me give that, let me give everything. And kallā closes the bargaining.

And note how it closes it: the answer is not "no, it will not be accepted." The answer is a name. "It is a flame."

That is, there is no other party to the bargain. The man was making an offer to an interlocutor; the verse shows him who the interlocutor is not: facing him is not a bargaining table but a fire.

I record this as my own reading. Its ground is that the sentence following kallā is not a refusal but a naming.

Root: ل-ظ-ي. Laẓā — flame, the tongue of fire. تَلَظَّىٰ — to blaze, to burn in flames.

And the verbal form was treated in this commentary:

"I have warned you of a blazing fire." (al-Layl 92/14 — nāran talaẓẓā)

This verse was taken up in the section on al-Layl; I do not repeat it.

Let us set the two verses side by side:

What in al-Layl is an attribute becomes in al-Maʿārij a name.

And the grammar confirms this: laẓā here takes no tanwīn and is diptote, that is, it is treated as a proper name. In the section on al-Qāriʿa the names of Hell were listed, and laẓā was among them.

So the word follows a course within the Qurʾān: first the work the fire does (al-Layl), then the name of the fire (al-Maʿārij).

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

إِنَّهَا — to what does the pronoun refer? It is feminine. The most widespread reading: al-nār (the fire) is meant implicitly; or it is a pronoun standing in for the ʿadhāb of verse 11. It makes no difference to the sense.

The two densest words in the sūra.

Root: ن-ز-ع. Nazaʿa — to pull, to pull out, to tear away. The concrete sense of the root is to pull with force: to tear something from where it is.

Its occurrences in the Qurʾān show the field of the root:

• "The wind was tearing people away as though they were uprooted palm trunks." (al-Qamar 54/20 — tanziʿu'n-nās)
• "We tore out whatever rancour was in their breasts." (al-Ḥijr 15/47; al-Aʿrāf 7/43)
• "You take away sovereignty from whom You will." (Āl ʿImrān 3/26)
• "He was stripping off their garments." (al-Aʿrāf 7/27 — of Satan)
• تَنَازُع — to quarrel, to fall into dispute. Two parties pulling one thing from two ends. "Do not quarrel among yourselves" (al-Anfāl 8/46).

Al-Qamar 54/20 is particularly worth noting — and the reason lies in the preceding sūra.

In the section on al-Ḥāqqa the following was recorded: the image of "hollow palm trunks" in al-Ḥāqqa 69/7 appears in al-Qamar 54/20 as "uprooted palm trunks", and the verb used there is تَنزِعُ.

So the root ن-ز-ع names, in al-Qamar, the wind that tore the people of ʿĀd from their places; in al-Maʿārij it names the work of the fire.

Two neighbouring sūras — al-Ḥāqqa and al-Maʿārij — stand at the two ends of the same root: one describes the result of that wind (trunks lying flat), the other gives the same verb to the fire.

I record this as my own reading. The wordings of the three verses and the shared root are data that can be verified.

The pattern: فَعَّالَة. This is the intensive pattern in Arabic: one who does the act much, who does it as though it were his trade. Kadhdhāb (a great liar), ghaffār (much forgiving), ḥammāla (treated in al-Masad 111/4).

So nazzāʿa is not "that which tears away" but "that which keeps tearing away". The act is repeated.

Grammar. The word has been read in the accusative (nazzāʿatan) and the grammarians generally take it as a circumstantial qualifier (ḥāl). A nominative reading (nazzāʿatun) is also transmitted; in that case it is an adjective of laẓā or a second predicate. The existence of the difference is set down in the sources; since I cannot say with certainty which reading belongs to which imām, I give no names. It makes no great difference to the sense.

The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān, and there is disagreement over its meaning.

Root: ش-و-ي. Shawā — to roast, to cook over fire (shiwāʾ, a roast). And from here another branch of meaning arises.

The meanings the lexicographers give:

The second meaning deserves attention, because it rests on an established usage in Arabic.

In Arabic the مَقَاتِل (maqātil) are the fatal points of the body: the heart, the neck, the temple. The places outside these are called شَوَى. And there is an idiom in the language: أَشْوَاهُ — "he struck him but could not strike a fatal spot."

So shawā is the name of the places that do not kill when struck.

And this gives the layer that must be read into the verse.

The fire tears away not the fatal points of the body but its non-fatal parts. That is, the act does not bring life to an end.

And this links up with the twenty-seventh verse of the preceding sūra. The man in al-Ḥāqqa had said: "Would that it had been the finisher!" (69/27) — al-qāḍiya, "that which finishes".

Al-Maʿārij explains at the level of the word why that wish is not granted: the places torn away are places that do not finish.

I record this as my own reading, and I set down one qualification: there is disagreement over the meaning of shawā, and the reading "non-fatal limbs" is not the only reading. Nor do I claim that the verse intends the link between the two sūras. What I record is that the Arabic idiom ashwāhu is set down in the dictionaries and that the senses of the two verses complete one another.

There are verses within the Qurʾān that support this idea:

• "Whenever their skins are burnt through, We shall exchange them for other skins, so that they may taste the punishment." (al-Nisāʾ 4/56)
• "Death is not decreed for them, that they might die, nor is any of their punishment lightened." (Fāṭir 35/36)
• "Then he will neither die there nor live." (al-Aʿlā 87/13)

Al-Aʿlā 87/13 was treated in this commentary. All three verses say the same thing: the act is an act that does not reach its conclusion.

Nazzāʿa is on the intensive pattern: a repeated act. Shawā is the non-fatal places: an act that does not conclude.

Together the two describe an unending cycle: it is torn away, it does not end; it is torn away again.

And a measure recorded in the section on al-Humaza works here in reverse. There, of the verb ʿaddada (he kept counting), this was written: "The repetition lies not in the nature of the act but in the act's not working. If a process yields a result, there is no need to repeat it."

The same measure holds here — but this time the cause of the repetition is not the person but the kind of act.

I record this as my own reading.