al-Qiyāma 75:11-12

Kallā lā wazar · Ilā Rabbika yawmaʾidhini'l-mustaqarr "No! There is no refuge. That day, the place of rest is with your Lord alone."

كَلَّا in Arabic is the particle that cuts off a statement and rejects it: "no, it is not so." In the Qurʾān it comes almost always in Meccan sūras and after an objection.

It occurs three times in this sūra: 11, 20, 26. And all three stand at the head of a block:

So the particle is the sūra's section-mark. When the ear hears kallā it knows it has entered a new block.

Root: و-ز-ر. And this word meets us for the second time in this commentary — but with an entirely different meaning.

The same root was treated in the discussion of al-Inshirāḥ 94/2: وِزْر (wizr) — a heavy burden, and from there sin. What was recorded there: the wazīr is the one who shares the ruler's burden; when Moses (Mūsā) asked his Lord for a wazīr he was asking for a partner in the load; and in al-Inshirāḥ the wizr was a weight that was taken down.

Here the same root comes in the sense of "refuge". Wazar — the rock on a mountain that one shelters behind, a stronghold, a place of retreat.

How are the two senses connected?

The explanation the lexicographers transmit is this: at the centre of the root there is the idea of weight and mass. The wazar is the steep and heavy mass of rock on the mountain — the thing a person shelters behind. The wizr is the weight that is carried. The wazīr is the one who shares the weight.

That is, the same family of words names both what is loaded on you and what stands under you as support. Because both are weight: one rests on top, one underneath.

I offer this joining as my own reading; that both senses are present in the root is lexical data, the division of labour between them is a link I have made.

And now a confirmation from within the Qurʾān:

أَلَّا تَزِرُ وَازِرَةٌ وِزْرَ أُخْرَىٰ — "No bearer of burdens shall bear the burden of another." (al-Najm 53/38)

In this sentence three derivatives of the root stand together: taziru (bears), wāzira (a bearer of burden), wizr (burden). And what it says is: the burden cannot be transferred.

Now set the two verses side by side:

The same root carries two denials at once: on that day there is neither anything to hide behind, nor anyone on whom to load your burden. There are two roads of escape — to hide, or to put the responsibility on someone else — and the Qurʾān closes both with a word from the same root.

I record this as an observation; the sharing of the root is a datum of the text.

لَا وَزَرَ — the grammarians call this use of lā the lā that negates the genus: it negates the whole class. Not "there is no refuge" but "there is no such thing as a refuge". The fatḥa at the end of the noun (wazara) is the sign of this structure.

The word's coming indefinite works in the same direction: no kind is specified, and no kind of it exists.

The word order of the sentence is: ilā Rabbika — yawmaʾidhin — al-mustaqarr.

The expected order would be al-mustaqarru ilā Rabbika yawmaʾidhin. The verse draws the element that states place to the head of the sentence.

In Arabic this fronting conveys restriction (ḥaṣr): the place of arrival is only He, and no other. And it fits the context exactly — because the previous sentence had said "there is no other place". In the tenth verse it was asked "where?"; the eleventh said "not there"; the twelfth says "here".

There is one further grammatical detail. Mustaqarr is "the place where one comes to rest", and it normally takes fī (in) — one comes to rest in a place. The verse uses ilā: the particle of direction. That is, the place of settling is described not as a location but as an arrival.

Root: ق-ر-ر. To settle, to stand fixed, to stay in a place. Its derivatives are wide — and English happens to hold the same double sense in settle: a thing settles, and a matter is settled:

• قَرَار (qarār) — both "fixity, coming to rest" and "a decision reached". Both from the same idea: a thing's sitting down, coming into its place.
• ٱسْتِقْرَار (istiqrār) — settledness, stability.
• مُسْتَقَرّ (mustaqarr) — a noun of place from Form X: the place where rest is taken.
• قُرَّة (qurra) — coolness of the eye. The expression qurratu ʿayn comes in Arabic from the picture of the eye's staying in place and not roving: an eye that seeks nothing else to look at.

This last derivative is striking. The same root names both peace (the eye no longer searches) and arrival (the journey is over).

And a symmetry is set up within the sūra. This sentence will be repeated almost word for word in the thirtieth verse:

إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ يَوْمَئِذٍ ٱلْمُسْتَقَرُّ (75/12) إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ يَوْمَئِذٍ ٱلْمَسَاقُ (75/30)

The same three elements in the same order; the only word that changes is the last. I return to this at verse 30.

At al-Inshiqāq 84/6 this occurred: إِنَّكَ كَادِحٌ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ كَدْحًا — "You are toiling towards your Lord with much toil."

The finding recorded there was this: the crucial element of the verse is the particle ilā; whatever man does, the place he goes to is the same, and this is not a command but a statement of fact.

Three verses, the same two words:

Al-Inshiqāq states the walking, al-Qiyāma the arrival and the being driven. Together the three build a single sentence: the direction is given, the arrival is settled, and the going is not in the person's hands.

I draw this link from the expression the two sūras share; the sharing of the expression is in the text.