al-Jinn 72:28

Li-yaʿlama an qad ablaghū risālāti Rabbihim wa aḥāṭa bi-mā ladayhim wa aḥṣā kulla shayʾin ʿadadā

"So that He may know that they have conveyed the messages of their Lord. He has encompassed what is with them, and has counted all things by number."

This is the last grammatical dispute of the sūra, and there are several views in the classical commentaries:

The first view is the most widespread but carries a theological difficulty: God's learning afterwards something He did not know beforehand cannot be conceived. The classical theologians resolve this thus: the ʿilm here is not the coming to be of knowledge but the coming to pass of what is known — that is, "so that what He knew would happen should actually happen and be known as such". Like patterns occur elsewhere in the Qurʾān (expressions of the type "so that We may know / try which of you is best in deed").

The second view sits more easily with the context: the preceding verse spoke of the protection of the messenger; this verse gives the aim of that protection — so that the messenger may be sure the conveying has arrived without loss.

I make no definite preference. Both readings have been defended in the classical commentaries and neither changes the sūra's conclusion: the conveying has been completed and put on record.

Both come from verse 23:

• balāghan (23) → ablaghū (28). The same root ب-ل-غ.
• risālātih (23) → risālāti Rabbihim (28). The same word, the same plural form.

In verse 23 the one thing the messenger has in his hand was stated: the conveying. Verse 28 records that this work has been done.

That is, the sūra defines the task of messengership in one sentence and five verses later registers that the task has been completed. The description of the task and the record of its completion are within the same sūra.

The verb is plural: ablaghū — "they conveyed". Not one messenger but messengers. The ruling, that is, concerns the whole chain of the prophets.

And the Qurʾān describes this task elsewhere thus: "Those who convey the messages of God, and fear Him, and fear no one but God" (al-Aḥzāb 33/39). The same word (risālāt), the same verb (yuballighūna).

The root ح-و-ط was taken up in al-Baqara, in the discussion of 2/81. The finding there: the root means to surround, to enclose, to shut in, and from the same root comes ḥāʾiṭ (a wall). There the word was used of sin's encompassing a person and this was recorded: "in the first case the person still has some point from which he can look at his own error… in the second, the outside has become invisible."

Here the same root is used of knowledge, and the image is reversed:

The same verb, in two separate places: in one, to be encompassed is a condemnation; in the other, a completeness. The image of the wall is in both; what changes is whom the wall encloses.

بِمَا لَدَيْهِمْ — "what is with them". Ladā is an adverb conveying beside, in the presence of, and it is said to express a closer adjacency than ʿinda.

That is, what is encompassed is what the messengers carry, hold in hand, have beside them. The message itself and everything belonging to it.

Root ح-ص-ي. And the concrete sense of the root is astonishingly tangible: حَصَاة (ḥaṣāt) — a pebble.

Iḥṣāʾ is to count with pebbles.

This is the oldest technique of counting: one stone for each object; when the stones are done, the objects are done too. This is how a shepherd counted his flock, how a merchant counted his goods — a handful of pebbles, a pouch, a notch. The word carries the notion of number in its state of being tied to body and object.

From here iḥṣāʾ comes to mean "to count completely and one by one". Iḥsâiyyât, the Turkish word for "statistics", comes from this root too.

Its occurrences in the Qurʾān show the load of the word:

• "What a book this is! It leaves out nothing small or great but has counted it" (al-Kahf 18/49).
• "He has indeed encompassed them and counted them one by one" (Maryam 19/94 — wa ʿaddahum ʿaddā).
• "And everything We have counted in a clear register" (Yā Sīn 36/12).
• "And everything We have counted in writing" (al-Nabaʾ 78/29).

عَدَدًا — grammatically a specification, or a verbal noun standing in place of an absolute object. Its function is to reinforce the verb iḥṣāʾ: not merely "He has counted" but "by number, in counting" — rounding nothing off, passing over nothing in the lump.

This reinforcement is not idle. Iḥṣāʾ already means to count; the adding of ʿadadā stresses that the counting is unit by unit.

And the sūra ends here: عَدَدًا.

In verse 24 the same word occurred in the context of human beings counting their own crowds: "whose number is fewer". Now it returns as the last word — this time the one counting is God and what is counted is all things.

The close of the sūra thus makes a reversal:

A society boasting of numbers is reminded to whom number belongs.

And this ties back to the first half of the sūra as well. The jinn's report was given item by item, counted off as wa anna… wa anna… — like a deposition. The sūra begins with a counting and ends with a counting.