al-Muddaththir 74:8-10

Fa-idhā nuqira fi'l-nāqūr / Fa-dhālika yawmaʾidhin yawmun ʿasīr / ʿAla'l-kāfirīna ghayru yasīr

"When the nāqūr is struck — that day is a hard day; for those who disbelieve it is not easy."

As recorded in al-Inshirāḥ: إِنْ conveys possibility, إِذَا certainty. Here there is idhā — "when", not "if".

Root: ن-ق-ر. Its concrete sense: to peck, to pierce by striking, to gouge, to hollow out.

Derivatives:

• مِنقَار (minqār) — a beak. The bird's instrument for striking and piercing.
• نَقِير (naqīr) — the small hollow on the top of a date stone. It is used in the Qurʾān as a measure of smallness: "and they will not be wronged by so much as a speck" (al-Nisāʾ 4/124); "They would not give people so much as the hollow of a date stone" (al-Nisāʾ 4/53).
• نَاقُور (nāqūr) — a noun of instrument on the pattern fāʿūl: an instrument resembling a horn, blown into or struck.

And there is a striking point.

For the summons of the resurrection the Qurʾān generally uses this expression: نُفِخَ فِى ٱلصُّورِ — "the trumpet was blown" (al-Kahf 18/99; Ṭāhā 20/102; al-Muʾminūn 23/101; Yāsīn 36/51; al-Zumar 39/68; Qāf 50/20; al-Ḥāqqa 69/13; al-Nabaʾ 78/18).

Here, however, another word is used: نُقِرَ فِى ٱلنَّاقُورِ. And this expression occurs in the Qurʾān only here.

What is the difference?

• نَفْخ (nafkh) — to blow. The giving of air.
• نَقْر (naqr) — to pierce by striking, to strike. A blow.

That is, the same event is recounted with two different verbs: the one a blowing, the other a striking.

And naqr is a sharper sound. The word itself is so: nūn, qāf and rāʾ — all three hard-released letters.

I record this as an observation about sound. I do not claim that the two expressions point to different events; most of the classical commentaries count the two as the same event.

The verb is passive: who strikes is not said.

The observation recorded in al-Inshiqāq holds here as well: the passive voice conceals the doer of the act and brings the event itself to the fore.

The ع-س-ر and ي-س-ر roots were fully analysed in al-Inshirāḥ. There:

• the opposition of the two roots,
• the function of the particle maʿa,
• and the comparison with al-Ṭalāq 65/7 ("the Qurʾān knows how to say 'afterwards', and in al-Inshirāḥ it does not say it")

were taken up. I do not repeat them. In al-Aʿlā the root was treated as well, in the pattern nuyassiruka li'l-yusrā.

What is to be added here is the word order.

The ninth verse: yawmun ʿasīr — "a hard day". The tenth verse: ghayru yasīr — "not easy".

The two look as though they were saying the same thing. The one by affirming the hardness, the other by denying the ease.

In Arabic this is a known technique of emphasis: to say a thing and to deny its opposite. English has it too: "it was hard — it was not easy at all."

But here there is an additional element, and that is the real point.

The tenth verse contains a restriction: "for those who disbelieve it is not easy."

In the ninth verse there was no such qualification — the day was called "hard" absolutely.

And the following inference is widely made in the classical commentaries: if it says "not easy for those who disbelieve", then it is implying that for others it is easy. In Arabic the assigning of a quality to a particular group suggests that the quality does not hold for those outside that group (mafhūm al-mukhālafa).

One must be honest about the standing of this inference in point of language: mafhūm al-mukhālafa is a disputed proof among the legal theorists and does not work everywhere. I therefore do not present it as a definite conclusion.

But there is support within the text: the Qurʾān uses the same root, in the same context, in a positive direction: "He who is given his book in his right hand will be called to an easy reckoning" (al-Inshiqāq 84/8) — ḥisāban yasīrā. This expression was treated in al-Inshiqāq.

That is, there is such a thing as an "easy reckoning". The same day carries two different degrees of hardness for two different sides.

I record this joining as my own reading.

That these three verses should come immediately after the sequence of commands is explanatory in point of context.

In the seventh verse it was said fa'ṣbir — be patient. And patience is meaningful when it is known that what is being borne has an end.

The eighth verse shows that end. The command to be patient is not left hanging in the air.

I record this link as an inference.