al-Muzzammil 73:8

Wa'dhkuri'sma rabbika wa tabattal ilayhi tabtīlā "Mention the name of your Lord; and cut yourself off and turn to Him, with a full cutting off."

The root ذ-ك-ر was treated in al-Inshirāḥ: it carries two fields of meaning — to remember and to mention / to utter — and the two are bound to each other.

What is striking here is the object of the mentioning: اسْمَ رَبِّكَ — "the name of your Lord".

It could have said udhkur rabbaka ("mention your Lord"). It did not; name has come in between.

This word order is settled in the Qurʾān and is repeated in several places:

• "And mention the name of your Lord" (al-Insān 76/25).
• "Glorify the name of your Lord, the Most High" (al-Aʿlā 87/1; al-Wāqiʿa 56/74, 56/96, al-Ḥāqqa 69/52).
• "Recite in the name of your Lord" (al-ʿAlaq 96/1) — treated in al-ʿAlaq.
• "Mention the name of your Lord and cut yourself off from everything and turn to Him" — this verse.

In the classical commentaries two explanations are given of the function of the word "name" here:

1. It is counted redundant and the meaning becomes "mention your Lord". This usage is known in Arabic. 2. It is functional: what is mentioned is not the Essence itself but the side of it the servant can reach. A human being can mention God only by His names.

The second explanation fits the stance treated in al-Ikhlāṣ: drawing a limit instead of describing. But I do not impose a preference; the first explanation is legitimate on linguistic grounds too.

Root: ب-ت-ل. Its concrete sense: to cut, to separate, to break something off from what it is attached to.

The primary usage the lexicons give is agricultural: بَتَلَ النَّخْلَة — to separate a palm shoot from the parent tree. The shoots that come up at the foot of a date palm are cut away from the root stock and planted separately. Batl is exactly this operation.

Derivatives:

• بَتُول (Batūl) — one who has been cut off, separated. The woman's name Betül, alive in Turkish, comes from here. In the tradition this attribute has been used of Mary (Maryam) and of Fāṭima; I do not go into the details of these ascriptions or into which report they rest on.
• صَدَقَةٌ بَتْلَة — a gift that is final, with no going back on it.

At the centre of the root there is a breaking off — and this breaking off does not mean that what is broken off disappears, but that it gains a separate existence. The palm shoot does not die when it is cut from the parent trunk; it becomes a tree of its own.

I want to record this detail, because it explains the use of the word here.

The verb is in Form V (تَفَعَّلَ): تَبَتَّلَ — to cut oneself off, to break away.

This is the form of mutazammil in the first verse: the act performed by the person upon himself. That is, the one who does the cutting and the one who is cut are the same person.

And the word order says something here:

The verb tabattal by itself means "cut, break away" — it conveys separation from somewhere. But after it comes إِلَيْهِ (towards Him).

So the sentence becomes: "Be cut off towards Him."

In Arabic this is a usage the lexicographers have noted: the verb of cutting normally requires the particle ʿan (to be cut off from something). Here there is ilā (towards something).

This is the finest point in the verse. The breaking off is set up not as a moving away but as a turning towards. The bond that is cut turns into another bond.

It was recorded in al-Inshirāḥ that the root رغب changes direction according to its particle (raghiba fī = to want, raghiba ʿan = to turn away). Something similar happens here but by a different route: the verb's own meaning conveys separation, the particle conveys turning towards, and the two are joined.

There is a grammatical point here, and it is treated particularly in the classical sources.

The verb is تَبَتَّلَ (Form V). The verbal noun of this form should have been تَبَتُّل (tabattul).

But in the verse تَبْتِيلًا (tabtīl) comes — and this is the verbal noun of تَفْعِيل (Form II), that is, the verbal noun of the verb بَتَّلَ.

So the verb from one form, the verbal noun from another.

The explanation for this is given in the classical sources as follows: Form II conveys transitivity and intensity. Form V, by contrast, is reflexive. When the two are brought together this is what results: the verb remains a work the person does upon himself (Form V), but the verbal noun adds an intensity and deliberateness to that work (Form II).

And its coming as a cognate accusative already conveys emphasis — like tartīlā in the fourth verse.

The upshot: "cut yourself off — and make this cutting complete." A cutting left half done is not a cutting; it is a bond not cut but merely thinned.

I record this as my own reading; the classical sources record the difference of pattern, but the conclusion I draw from it is interpretation.

A misreading must be closed off, because the word is open to it.

Tabattul became a technical term in the Sufi literature of later periods, and it was at times used in the sense of withdrawing from the world altogether, not marrying, retiring into seclusion.

The verse does not say this. For three reasons:

First: the verse itself specifies the direction of the cutting off (ilayhi), not its object. What one is to be cut off from is not said.

Second: the last verse of this same sūra counts setting out for trade and going to war as excuses — that is, it records worldly occupation not as a fault but as a reality.

Third: the Qurʾān records monasticism separately and openly: "As for the monasticism they invented — We did not prescribe it for them" (al-Ḥadīd 57/27).

Tabattul, therefore, is not the cutting of relations but the making of the turning single. The next verse will confirm this.