al-Qiyāma 75:36

A-yaḥsabu'l-insānu an yutraka sudā "Does man suppose that he will be left to himself?"

The sūra's concluding question. And the return of the third verse.

The two questions open with the same pattern and thirty-two verses lie between them:

The sūra draws a circle, but does not return to the same point. The first question was an engineering question: can scattered pieces be brought together? The second is a question of meaning: can a life end without being tied to any outcome?

And the whole advance of the sūra is the distance between these two questions. The thirty-two verses in between have been spent showing that the first question was not the real question.

The fifth verse had already said this: "bal yurīdu'l-insān" — the matter is not what he supposes but what he wants. The thirty-sixth verse gives that want its name: to be left to himself.

The verb is passive: yutraka — "to be left". Who will leave him is not said.

Root: ت-ر-ك. To leave, to abandon, to leave behind. From the same root comes tarika (an estate — what is left behind).

It must be compared with the verb in the twenty-first verse:

وَتَذَرُونَ ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةَ (21) — "you leave the hereafter". أَن يُتْرَكَ سُدًى (36) — "that he will be left to himself".

Two different roots (و-ذ-ر and ت-ر-ك) but the same field of meaning: to abandon. And the direction turns around: man leaves the hereafter, and in return hopes to be left.

I record this as my own reading; the shared meaning of the two verbs is lexical data.

Root: س-د-ي / س-د-و. And the word's concrete field is herding: ibilun sudā — a herd of camels without a herdsman, let loose, left to itself. Nobody drives them, nobody follows behind them, nobody counts them and keeps a reckoning.

The lexicographers give the word as a synonym of muhmal (neglected). Another use of the same root in weaving is also transmitted (sadā — the lengthwise threads of the weave); this second use has little to do with the meaning in the verse and I build nothing on it.

The picture the word carries is this: a herd of animals, and no one at the head of the herd.

The sūra had already used this picture six verses earlier:

إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ يَوْمَئِذٍ ٱلْمَسَاقُ (30) — the driving. أَن يُتْرَكَ سُدًى (36) — being left loose.

Both are the language of herding. Masāq is being put in front and taken along; sudā is being left ungoverned. The same animal, two states.

And the sūra eliminates one: you were not left loose — you will be driven. As for the direction, the thirtieth verse had already said it: ilā Rabbika.

I record this as my own reading; the semantic field of the two words is lexical data, and it is I who make the link between them.

The question the verse asks looks at first sight like a threat: "does he suppose he will be left to himself?" — that is, you will not be left, there is a reckoning.

But the word's own meaning turns the question around.

To be sudā means that nobody cares. It is the state of an animal fallen out of the herd, not followed after, not counted. The word is not a name for freedom but for abandonment.

That is, the verse may also be saying this: what you want, to be left loose, is in fact that nobody should take any interest in you. Not to be called to account is not to be counted as mattering.

I offer this as my own reading; that the word comes from the field of herding is lexical data. The context of the verse is a warning; but the wording of the word is open to this direction too.