al-Jinn 72:10

Wa annā lā nadrī a-sharrun urīda bi-man fi'l-arḍi am arāda bihim Rabbuhum rashadā

"And that: we do not know whether ill is intended for those on earth, or whether their Lord intends right judgement for them."

This verse is the most decisive sentence of the sūra on the matter of knowledge. And it is decisive because of who says it.

Against an order of divination built on the assumption that the jinn know the unseen, the sūra runs no polemic, writes no refutation, lines up no proof. It simply makes the jinn speak, and they say this:

لَا نَدْرِي — we do not know.

Beings supposed to be a source of knowledge declare their own ignorance. And this declaration stands in the very middle of the sūra, with no mark of emphasis, in the same sequence as the other items.

Root د-ر-ي: to know — but a particular kind of knowing. By the classical lexicographers' distinction, dirāya is knowledge reached as the result of an effort and a search; it is not absolute like ʿilm. From the same root idrāʾ, to make something known to someone.

The Qurʾān uses this root precisely to express unknowability: the pattern "Wa mā adrāka mā…" ("what will make you know what that is?") — this pattern was treated in the sections on al-Qadr, al-Humaza and al-Qāriʿa; the distinction established there was this: when mā adrāka (perfect) comes, an explanation follows; when mā yudrīka (imperfect) comes, it does not.

And in this sūra the root occurs twice: here (lā nadrī — from the mouth of the jinn) and in verse 25 (in adrī — from the mouth of the Prophet). Both are negative. Both say "I do not know".

This is one of the most striking parallels of the sūra:

That is, the sūra has it said in two separate places, from two separate mouths, that the unseen is not known — the one from beings supposed to be a source of divination, the other from God's messenger. If the messenger does not know, then nobody knows.

The two halves of the sentence are not mirrors of one another, and this is the finest place in the verse.

First half: a-sharrun urīda bi-man fi'l-arḍ — "is ill intended for those on earth?" The verb is passive. Its agent is not stated.

Second half: am arāda bihim Rabbuhum rashadā — "or does their Lord intend right judgement for them?" The verb is active. And its agent is named plainly: their Lord.

The symmetry has been deliberately broken. The expected sentence would have been: "does their Lord intend ill for them, or right judgement?" The verse does not say this.

What does this mean?

In the classical commentaries this is explained as decorum: ill is not ascribed to God directly. There are other instances of this attitude in the Qurʾān — indeed within the content of this same sūra a similar nicety is seen in another sentence framed in the mouths of the jinn.

And beyond mere decorum, a difference of sense arises too:

• Ill is named as an outcome: something was intended, and this will be ill for those on earth. That the agent is not named suggests that the ill is not "a thing wanted for its own sake".
• Right judgement is named directly and together with its agent: their Lord intended it for them. And moreover, by saying Rabbuhum — "their Lord" — the relation of care between the one who intends and the ones intended for is stressed.

And one further observation: in the second half the name "Lord" is used. In the section on al-Fātiḥa it was shown that the word Rabb carries ownership together with raising up. So the sentence, in naming the possibility of right judgement, chooses the name that nurtures. Rushd — coming to maturity — is in any case the outcome of nurture. The name and the result answer to one another.

bi-man fi'l-arḍ — "those who are on the earth". The choice of word is wide: it does not say "human beings". The jinn may be counting themselves inside this expression too.

And there is this: the jinn frame this sentence immediately after hearing something new. The situation they relate, that is, is this: something is happening on the earth — a book is coming down, the channels of the heaven are being closed, an arrangement is changing. They do not know where this change will arrive.

This is an extremely honest position. They have believed (verse 2), but they do not claim to have grasped the whole of the event. They keep the difference between faith and knowledge: they know what they have believed in, they do not know what will happen.

The word occurred in verse 2; here it returns. Between the two occurrences there is an advance:

• In verse 2 rushd was where the text takes one: "it guides to rushd."
• In verse 10 rushd is what God may intend: "did their Lord intend rushd for them?"

The word, that is, passes from being the function of a text to being an object of the divine will. The jinn are asking whether what they saw in their own experience (the text takes one to rushd) may hold on the scale of the earth too.

This is where this verse has most been used throughout history, and it must be given its due.

The Qurʾān says in many places that the unseen belongs to God alone: "Say: no one in the heavens or on the earth knows the unseen except God" (al-Naml 27/65). Verse 26 of this sūra will give the same ruling.

But what this verse does is different and more effective: it does not lay down the ruling, it transmits a confession. Not a rule but a testimony. And the testimony comes from the party counted as the source of the claim.

Rhetorically this is the most economical way of refuting a claim. Had the Qurʾān said "the jinn do not know the unseen", an addressee could have said "how do you know?" When the jinn themselves say "we do not know", there is no place left to object.

The Qurʾān uses the same method once more: in the scene of Solomon's death. Solomon had died leaning on his staff, and the jinn went on working without noticing; his death was understood only when worms ate the staff and it fell. And the verse ends thus: "The jinn realised that had they known the unseen they would not have remained in that humiliating torment" (Sabaʾ 34/14). Here too the ruling is not given directly; it is shown by setting up a scene.

The measure that follows: to assess a claim to hidden knowledge there is no need to discuss the content of that knowledge. One asks after the capacity of the source. And the answer the Qurʾān gives comes from the mouth of the source itself.