76. Sūrat al-Insān

Thirty-one verses. The sūra is the only text in the Qurʾān in which man begins from non-existence and ends in an act of thanks; that sentence is not praise but a description of the sūra's structure, and it will be demonstrated below.

It takes its name from the first verse: ٱلْإِنسَٰن. It is transmitted that the sūra is known by several names in the sources, and all of them are words that occur in the text: al-Insān (verse 1), al-Dahr (verse 1), Hal atā (the opening words), al-Abrār (verse 5). In the early period it was common for sūras to be known by a striking word inside them; this multiplicity is the trace of that. In this commentary the name in the order of the muṣḥaf is used.

In this sūra there is a genuine disagreement of a kind not found in most of the short sūras, and it would not be right to conceal it.

A note: it is not necessary to assume that the word asīr is confined to the prisoner of war. In Arabia captivity was not only an institution between armies; the word was also used of people taken in raids, given back for ransom, and enslaved if no ransom came — and this was a state of affairs Mecca too knew. That is, the word by itself does not amount to evidence for dating.

I adopt no preference in this commentary. The reading of the sūra does not change according to which view is accepted — this will be clear from the fact that none of the analyses below rests on the place of revelation.

For this sūra, and especially around verse 8, a report about the occasion of revelation is transmitted, and that report has been the subject of a dispute between the schools in the history of Islamic thought.

Here I write my position plainly: I do not relay the content of the report, and I issue no ruling on its soundness. There are two reasons. The first is that the dispute around the report is not an exegetical dispute but a sectarian one, and this commentary takes no side. The second is that whichever side of the dispute turns out to be right, the meaning of the verse does not change.

This second point rests on a measure of method that was used in the section on Sūrat al-Balad as well: al-ʿibratu bi-ʿumūmi'l-lafẓ lā bi-khuṣūṣi's-sabab — the ruling goes by the generality of the wording, not by the particularity of the occasion. The eighth verse gives no name. It describes "those who feed food, though they love it, to the needy, the orphan and the captive." Whoever comes under that description is included in the verse; whoever does not is not included, whatever may be transmitted about him.

This is the application of the principle recorded in Method: what the verse describes are attributes.

The sūra consists of six blocks, and the proportion in size between the blocks by itself gives away what the sūra means to say.

First block (1-3). The constitution of man. Four steps: there was a time when he was not mentioned → he was created from a mixture → he was made hearing and seeing → he was shown the way. And the block closes with a fork: either one who gives thanks or one who covers over.

Second block (4). A single verse. What is prepared for those who cover over: chains, collars, a blaze.

Third block (5-22). Eighteen verses. The table of the abrār. It divides internally into five parts: what they drink (5-6), what they do (7-10), what they are protected from and what they are given (11-12), where they are (13-21), and a single-sentence verdict (22).

Fourth block (23-26). The return to the addressee: We sent down, be patient, do not obey, remember.

Fifth block (27-28). The diagnosis of the other side: they love what comes quickly, they leave the heavy one behind them.

Sixth block (29-31). The close: this is a reminder, whoever wills takes a way, and the willing too rests on something.

Look at the proportions. One verse is allotted to those who cover over, eighteen to the abrār. What is usual in the short sūras of the Qurʾān is for the two tables to be of nearly equal length — in al-Infiṭār two verses answer two verses, in al-Ghāshiya seven verses answer nine. Here the ratio is almost twenty to one. The sūra is a text given over not to the description of punishment but to the description of reward.

And in the middle of this description of reward, exactly in the middle of the eighteen verses, stands the strangest sentence of the sūra: a speech from the mouth of the abrār themselves (9). Among the descriptions of the garden in the Qurʾān, the relaying of something the recipients of the reward said in this world is rare. What that sentence says will be treated separately below.

The whole structure of the sūra rests on two roots, and each of them occurs three times.

ش-ك-ر three times:

That is, thanks changes direction inside the sūra. First it is asked of man, then its being asked of man is refused, and at the end it is given to man.

ذ-ك-ر three times:

The sūra opens with a being that is not mentioned, and goes on by commanding that being to "remember".

The place where the two axes meet is the first verse and the twenty-second:

لَمْ يَكُن شَيْـًٔا مَّذْكُورًا — "he was not a thing worth mentioning." (1) وَكَانَ سَعْيُكُم مَّشْكُورًا — "and your striving has been met with thanks." (22)

Both sentences are built with the verb kāna, both end with a passive participle on the same pattern (the mafʿūl form: madhkūr / mashkūr), and there are only two letters of difference between them. The sūra is the story of a being that is not mentioned becoming a being that is thanked.

I record this as my own reading; the shared pattern of the two words and their positions in the sūra are the data of the text and can be counted.

The basmala was treated in earlier sections and is not taken up again here; the verses have been numbered without the basmala.

Hal atā ʿala'l-insāni ḥīnun mina'd-dahri lam yakun shayʾan madhkūrā "Has there not passed over man a long stretch of time in which he was not a thing worth mentioning?"

This formula was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Ghāshiya. The finding recorded there was this: the sentence is in the interrogative mood but asks for no information; in Arabic the interrogative form has functions such as warning, drawing attention and getting something conceded, and here the function is that of an opening formula — like the English "have you heard…?". After the formula a narrative always begins.

In the section on al-Ghāshiya this was also recorded, and rather than repeat it I recall it: the subject of the formula is the news, not the one addressed. The one addressed is not looking for anything; something is coming towards him.

What is peculiar to this passage is this: in al-Ghāshiya the formula looked to the future, here to the past. What is asked in al-Ghāshiya 88/1 is the news of a day that has not yet happened. What is asked here is a time that has long since happened — or rather, that never happened at all.

And this distinction was already recorded in the section on al-Ghāshiya: what the formula works upon is not the time of the event but the state of knowledge of the one addressed. In both cases the one addressed does not know. A day will come and he has not seen it; a time has passed and he does not remember it.

Why does he not remember? Because there was no self of his to do the remembering. The whole force of the verse is here.

The word carries the definite article: ٱلْـ. In the discussion of al-Inshiqāq 84/6 the function of this article — which holds good here too — was recorded: istighrāq, the encompassing of the whole genus. The sentence looks not at a person but at the quality of being human.

But there is a distinction. In al-Inshiqāq the genus was being addressed (yā ayyuha'l-insān — O man). Here the genus is spoken about, in the third person. The difference looks small; it is not. To address a being is to grant that it is there. This verse, however, speaks of exactly the time in which man was not there. That the sentence is built in the third person suits its subject.

The analysis of the root (أ-ن-س: familiarity, visibility, or forgetfulness) was made in earlier sections, so I do not repeat it here.

The verse sets two words for time one upon the other, and the two are not the same thing.

حِين — root: ح-ي-ن. An indefinite span; a piece of time whose beginning and end are not fixed. The Qurʾān uses this word precisely for its indefiniteness: in usages such as "it gives its fruit at every time (ḥīn)" (Ibrāhīm 14/25) the span is not measured. The word comes with tanwīn: ḥīnun — "a time", any time at all.

دَهْر — root: د-ه-ر. And this word is the opposite of ḥīn: the whole of time, unbroken, long, flowing on. Not the duration of an event but duration itself. In Turkish the borrowed word dehir has been used in this sense, and dehrî — a materialist, one who acknowledges nothing but time — comes from here.

So the construct sets up this: a slice out of boundless time. And inside that slice there was no man.

The particle مِنْ is here partitive (tabʿīḍ): a part of the dahr. This is the detail that establishes the scale of the verse. The verse does not say "there was time and there was no man"; it says "throughout a part of time there was no man". That is, man does not cover the whole of time — he is a guest who entered a portion of it later.

The Qurʾān has a warning about the word dahr as well, and it must be mentioned here: elsewhere, where the words of those who deny the resurrection are relayed, it is recorded that they said "nothing destroys us but the dahr" (al-Jāthiya 45/24). That is, dahr was in that world the name of a way of explaining things: tying everything to time itself, seeking no will behind it.

That the same word is used in the first verse of this sūra is striking. The sūra takes the word of explanation used by its opponents and sets it inside its own sentence. There is a dahr, yes — but within the dahr there is a slice in which man was not, and the passage from that slice to this one is not the work of the dahr.

I record this as my own reading. The existence of the verse in al-Jāthiya and the shared word are in the text; the relation I build between them is my own inference.

The most discussed expression in the sūra, and the one whose translation is most disputed.

شَىْء — root: ش-ي-أ. And this detail is important: this is the root of the verb shāʾa (he willed) at the end of the sūra. Shayʾ and mashīʾa (willing) are from the same root. Some of the lexicographers explain shayʾ as "what is wanted, what is willed" — what exists is what has been willed.

In the first verse of the sūra man was not a shayʾ; in the twenty-eighth through the thirtieth verses the verb shāʾa will come four times. The root stands at the two ends of the sūra. I record this as an observation; the derivational link between shayʾ and mashīʾa is drawn by the lexicographers, but I issue no firm ruling on the historical development of the root.

مَذْكُور — root: ذ-ك-ر. Passive participle: mentioned, recalled, named.

And the whole matter of the verse lies in this word. For the verse does not say "he was not".

There are two readings:

Both readings have been defended and neither spoils the work the verse does. For the work the verse does is not to give information about the matter man is made of but to issue a verdict about his standing: he had no name, he was not counted, he was not reckoned with.

I am for taking the choice of the word seriously, and I record this reading — it is not binding: the verse sets up a distinction between existing and being mentioned, and describes the beginning of man as not being mentioned. That is, the story of man is as much a story of "from namelessness to a name" as it is a story of "from nothing into being". The twenty-second verse of the sūra supports this reading: there man's striving becomes mashkūr — mentioned with thanks. The being that is not mentioned comes at last to be a being that is mentioned.

In the section on Sūrat al-Baqara this verse was treated as a four-stage proof:

"How can you deny God? You were dead, and He gave you life; then He will cause you to die, then give you life again, then to Him you will be returned." (al-Baqara 2/28)

The finding recorded there was this: the proof is built so as to show that the fourth step objected to (being raised again) is a repetition of the second step (the first giving of life), which has already taken place once; and the force of the argument lies in the one addressed being made to use his own existence as evidence.

al-Insān 76/1 takes the first step of that proof by itself and sets it out in front. Let us place the two verses side by side:

The difference is here: al-Baqara speaks of death, al-Insān of not being mentioned. To be dead is still a state; to be a thing that is not mentioned is not even a state. al-Insān takes al-Baqara's first step one further step back.

And the two verses arrive at the same conclusion: man's own beginning is the strongest evidence about himself. It asks for nothing from outside.

What the verse amounts to today is more concrete than a moral counsel such as "do not think yourself something".

Most of the sentences modern man builds about himself assume a continuity: my career, my savings, my standing, my record. All of these are lines extending through time, and all of them make a starting point invisible. The verse puts that point back and gives it a name: not being mentioned.

And this has a practical consequence. One who sees being mentioned as a gain has to protect it; one who sees being mentioned as a beginning does not have to protect it. Later in the sūra people will be described who give without expecting return or thanks. The psychological ground of that behaviour is established exactly in this first verse: one who began without being mentioned can give without being mentioned.

I record this as my own reading.

Innā khalaqna'l-insāna min nuṭfatin amshājin nabtalīhi fa-jaʿalnāhu samīʿan baṣīrā "We created man from a drop that is a mixture — We are testing him — and We made him hearing and seeing."

Root: ن-ط-ف. Its concrete sense is to drip, to seep, to flow little by little. Naṭafa'l-māʾ — the water dripped. From the same root نُطْفَة (nuṭfa) — a drop of water; and according to what the lexicographers transmit, the word is also used for the small amount of water left at the bottom of a vessel.

There are two things the word carries, and both are at work in this context: fewness and fluidity. A drop is what cannot be held and is not counted.

Root: م-ش-ج. To mix, to add one thing to another. Its singular is given as مَشَج or مَشِيج; amshāj is the plural.

The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

And here there is a grammatical question: nuṭfa is singular, amshāj is plural. In Arabic an adjective agrees with what it qualifies in number. How does a singular noun take a plural adjective?

The explanations the lexicographers give:

All four occur in the classical sources and they make no great difference in meaning. The common point is this: the beginning is not a single piece but a mixture.

The wish to attach this word to a modern description is a tendency often met with in the literature of exegesis. This commentary does not enter upon that tendency, and the grounds for that were written out in detail in the section on Sūrat al-ʿAlaq.

I summarise the position recorded there for the word ʿalaqa: the lexical sense of the word is given and not cut short; the reader may form an association for his own part; but this cannot be presented as the claim of the verse and cannot be turned into a proof of miracle. Five grounds were listed there; the most important was this: if you nail a verse to today's textbook, then when the textbook changes the question arises of where to put the verse. In wanting to defend the text you will have made it fragile.

The same position holds here and I do not repeat it. Amshāj means "mixture". Nor is the work of the verse to give information: it is to say where the being that was not mentioned in the previous verse came from. The sentence is a sentence about standing, not a description.

Root: ب-ل-و. It was treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/49; the finding recorded there was this: the usual English renderings show a drift — "trial" and "affliction" both pull towards misfortune — whereas in Arabic the root means to test, to try by wearing down, and it covers testing by good as well. The Qurʾān says this outright: "We test you with evil and with good, as a trial" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/35).

In the section on Sūrat al-Fajr it was likewise recorded that the same root works in both directions: abundance and straitness are both a testing, and that sūra rejects both inferences at once.

What is peculiar to this passage is the word's place in the sentence.

The verb is imperfect (muḍāriʿ) — that is, a work in progress. And it is set in the middle of the sentence, between the creating and the giving of the senses. The order is this:

1. خَلَقْنَا — We created (perfect: done, finished) 2. نَّبْتَلِيهِ — We are testing him (imperfect: ongoing) 3. فَجَعَلْنَٰهُ — and We made him (perfect, with the fāʾ of consequence at its head)

The grammarians count this second element either a circumstantial clause (ḥāl: "while We are testing him") or a causal one (taʿlīl: "in order to test him"). Both readings bring the meaning to the same place.

The real point lies in the particle فَ in the third element. The fāʾ denotes consequence and sequence. So the sentence sets up this: there is a testing, and therefore the senses were given.

Both words are in the intensive form (faʿīl): not merely "hearing" and "seeing", but one in whom the attribute of hearing and of seeing is settled.

And this pair is used in the Qurʾān of God as well — the formula inna'llāha samīʿun baṣīr is common. That is, the verse gives man two qualities named with the same words as the attributes of God. This is one of the most striking moves the Qurʾān makes about man, and it is recorded in the classical sources: the qualities are shared, their measures are not.

Note the order: hearing first, seeing after. The Qurʾān gives this pair in this order almost always. The classical sources offer several explanations for it — that hearing works in the dark too, that it is not cut off in sleep, and that revelation is received by being heard. The last reason is particularly meaningful in the context of this sūra: the twenty-third verse will speak of the sending down of the Qurʾān.

But the real point is why these two words are here at all.

The sentence does not say "We made him one who reasons" or "We gave him knowledge." It names two organs of sense. And the order is set: there is a test (nabtalīhi), and therefore (fa-) hearing and seeing were given.

That is, the verse describes the senses not as equipment but as an instrument of examination. Man hears and sees because he is being tested. Like being given paper and pen in an examination.

This has two consequences:

First: the senses are not neutral. The giving of an instrument means that it will be asked what was done with that instrument. The Qurʾān says this plainly elsewhere: "Hearing, sight and heart — each of these will be held answerable" (al-Isrāʾ 17/36).

Second: the test is set up by something being given to man, not by something being withheld. The word order of the verse says this: the sentence of testing comes before the sentence of giving.

And the next verse will carry the same line further: the way too is given.

Innā hadaynāhu's-sabīla immā shākiran wa immā kafūrā "We showed him the way: he is either one who gives thanks or an ingrate."

The conceptual centre of the sūra, and the place where a promise made earlier in this commentary is to be fulfilled.

One must begin with a point of grammar.

In English we say "to show someone the way"; in Arabic the expected construction would be هَدَيْنَٰهُ إِلَى ٱلسَّبِيلِ — "we guided him towards the way". In the verse there is no preposition: hadaynāhu's-sabīla, two objects bound directly to the verb.

The grammarians call this نَزْعُ ٱلْخَافِض (nazʿu'l-khāfiḍ): the dropping of the preposition. The effect of the construction is this: the particle that puts a distance in between falls away. The difference between "guiding towards the way" and "guiding the way" is the difference between pointing and handing over.

The same construction is used in al-Fātiḥa: ٱهْدِنَا ٱلصِّرَٰطَ ٱلْمُسْتَقِيمَ — "guide us the straight path", not towards the path.

So the two texts use the same structure: one asks, one gives.

In the section on al-Fātiḥa the Arabic words for way were distinguished, and I summarise the finding there:

• sabīl — a definite route of travel, an itinerary
• ṭarīq — a track, a trail followed
• ṣirāṭ — a broad, open, main road; a busy route everyone can pass along

It was also recorded there that in the Qurʾān ṣirāṭ is always singular and subul (ways) is used in the plural: one road, many turnings.

What is peculiar to this passage is that the word takes the definite article: al-sabīl — "that way", the known way. Not an indefinite route but one that has been designated.

And keep this detail in mind: the same word will come once more in the twenty-ninth verse of the sūra — but this time indefinite. Fa-man shāʾa'ttakhadha ilā rabbihī sabīlā — "whoever wills takes a way to his Lord." There the preposition will come back (ilā) and the definiteness will go.

So at the two ends of the sūra the same word stands in two different arrangements:

The way that is given is definite and is handed over directly; the way that is taken is indefinite and is towards a direction. The sūra uses the same word once in a sentence of giving and once in a sentence of taking.

I record this as my own reading; the difference of arrangement in the two verses is the data of the text.

In the section on al-Fātiḥa the layers into which guidance is divided in the classical commentaries were recorded: showing the way (giving knowledge), making one walk on the way (giving will and power), holding one fast on the way (making one continue).

This verse states the first layer plainly: the way was shown. How the other layers relate to man's own act opens onto one of the longest disputes in theology. I do not enter that dispute here; the sūra itself saves it for the thirtieth verse, and it will be taken up there.

It is enough to record this much: the verse gives guidance before the two outcomes and independently of both outcomes. The fork comes after the way is shown; the showing is not made conditional on the fork.

إِمَّا (immā) denotes taqsīm (the dividing up of possibilities) in Arabic. The difference between it and aw ("or") is this: aw leaves room for preferring one option to the other; immā … wa immā sets out two possibilities as of equal weight and exhaustive. It leaves no third alternative.

Grammatically shākiran and kafūran are circumstantial (ḥāl): two states of the pronoun hu ("him"), the object of the sentence. That is, the verse says:

"We showed him the way — whether as one who gives thanks or as one who covers over."

This reading says something important: the showing of the way was done without regard to what the person would turn out to be. Guidance is not a privilege reserved for the one who gives thanks; it is something given to both.

The Qurʾān sets this up elsewhere too: "As for Thamūd, We showed them the way, but they preferred blindness to guidance" (Fuṣṣilat 41/17). The showing took place; the outcome differed.

In the discussion of al-Baqara 2/6 the following finding was made, and this very verse was given as its example:

Root k-f-r: to cover, to close over, to hide. In Arabic the farmer is called kāfir, because he covers the seed with earth; the night is called kāfir, because it covers everything over. The definition that follows from this is critical: unbelief is not not-knowing; it is covering over what one knows. And: in the Qurʾān what is set opposite unbelief is most often not īmān but thanks — immā shākiran wa immā kafūrā, al-Insān 76/3. That is, unbelief is at bottom a notion of ingratitude.

That was the promise given there; now that verse must be analysed in its own place.

The root ش-ك-ر. The original sense the lexicographers transmit is interesting: at the centre of the root lie fullness, abundance, giving much in return for little. A she-camel that gives plentiful milk for all that she eats little is called shakūr. Shukr follows the same logic: what is received is little, what is given in return is much.

I transmit this explanation; I issue no firm ruling on the historical development of the root. But this much is clear: thanks and unbelief are so built in Arabic as to be exact opposites of one another.

The object of both is the same: what has been given. The difference lies in what is done with what is given — is it uncovered or covered over?

And this draws a picture entirely different from the load the English word "infidel" carries. The verse is not conducting a survey of belief. It treats man as a being to whom something has been given, and asks a single question: what did you do with what was given?

The first two verses of the sūra had prepared exactly this. What was given has been counted out: existence (1), a body (2), the senses (2), the way (3). Four items. And immediately after the four are counted, the fork comes.

The finest detail of the verse is here, and it is easily missed.

The two words are not on the same pattern:

• شَاكِرًا — the fāʿil pattern. A simple active participle: one who gives thanks.
• كَفُورًا — the faʿūl pattern. The intensive form: one who covers much, who has made covering a habit.

The expected symmetry would have been either shākiran wa kāfiran or shakūran wa kafūran. The verse mixes the two.

There are two explanations, and both must be taken seriously:

The two do not cancel each other. If in a language both the sound and the sense of a word fall into place, we are not obliged to choose one of the two. But while the ground of sound stands there in the open, it would not be right to present the ground of meaning by itself as a proof — the same note was entered about sound-and-sense correspondence in the sections on al-Qāriʿa and al-Inshiqāq in this commentary.

This much can be said: the difference of pattern is real and is capable of carrying meaning; but by itself it is not a ground for a ruling.

The word kafūr occurs twice in the sūra: here (3) and in the twenty-fourth verse (wa lā tuṭiʿ minhum āthiman aw kafūrā — "obey none of them who is a sinner or an ingrate").

The difference between the two shows the structure of the sūra:

• In verse 3 kafūr is one of two states man may be in. Abstract, nameless, open to anyone.
• In verse 24 kafūr is concrete persons standing opposite the one addressed: minhum — "of them".

That is, the sūra shows that what was named as a possibility in the third verse is sitting across from one in the twenty-fourth. The possibility has become a person.

I record this as my own reading; the position of the word in the two verses is in the text.

Innā aʿtadnā li'l-kāfirīna salāsila wa aghlālan wa saʿīrā "We have prepared for those who cover over chains, collars and a blazing fire."

The single verse the sūra allots to this side.

Three verses of the sūra begin with the same word one after another: innā khalaqnā (2), innā hadaynāhu (3), innā aʿtadnā (4).

إِنَّ is a particle of emphasis, and نَا is the pronoun of majesty ("we"). Three verses, three verbs, one subject: creating, showing the way, preparing. Three works from the same hand.

And this triple will be repeated twice more later in the sūra: verse 23 will open with innā naḥnu nazzalnā, and verse 10 will come from the mouth of the abrār with innā nakhāfu. The formula itself has become the weave of the sūra.

Root: ع-ت-د. To prepare, to keep ready, to arrange beforehand. From the same root عَتِيد (ʿatīd) — ready, at hand. The Qurʾān uses this word of the recording angel: "He utters not a word but there is by him a watcher ready" (Qāf 50/18).

The idea the root carries is having been made ready in advance. That is, the verse does not say "punishment will be given"; it says "it has been prepared" — in the perfect, as a work done and finished.

A caution: in the last verse of the sūra another verb of "preparing" will come — أَعَدَّ (aʿadda). The two verbs are close in sense and similar in sound as well. But their roots are different: aʿtadnā → ع-ت-د, aʿadda → ع-د-د. I draw no derivational link from a similarity of sound. The same note was entered in the section on al-Aʿlā in this commentary (ص-ل-ي and ص-ل-و are not the same root).

The verse counts three things and the sequence does not look accidental.

سَلَٰسِل — chains. Its singular is silsila. The root is quadriliteral: س-ل-س-ل, and it is said that in Arabic roots of this reduplicated kind a movement denotes continuity and connection. From the same family of sounds comes سَلْسَل (salsal): water that flows easily, that passes down the throat without trouble.

That is, the same sequence of sounds names both links joined to one another and fluency. The common idea is probably "coming one after another".

And this will meet the eighteenth verse of the sūra in point of sound: there the name of the spring of the abrār will be سَلْسَبِيل. At one end of the sūra salāsil, at the other salsabīl.

I record this as an observation about sound, not as a claim of derivation. Whether the two words are from the same root is disputed, and it will be taken up separately at verse 18 below.

أَغْلَٰل — collars, yokes. Its singular is غُلّ (ghull): the iron ring put on the neck or the hand. The root is غ-ل-ل, and its derivatives are striking:

• غُلّ — a yoke, a collar.
• غِلّ — the rancour, the enmity held in the heart. The Qurʾān removes this in its description of the garden: "We shall pluck out whatever rancour is in their breasts" (al-Ḥijr 15/47).
• غُلُول — the pilfering of goods from the spoils.
• غَلَّة — the yield of a property.

The common idea of the root: something being put inside, coming in between. The yoke goes over the neck; rancour enters the breast; stolen goods are slipped in unseen.

This changes the flavour of the word in this context. Aghlāl is not merely an iron struck from outside; it is, in the logic of the root, what has passed inside.

سَعِير — a blazing fire. Root: س-ع-ر. To kindle, to set ablaze, to stoke. Saʿara'n-nār — he made the fire flare. From the same root comes mustaʿir (blazing up).

The word saʿīr is not ordinary fire (nār) but fire that has been stirred up, stoked. The pattern (faʿīl) here carries the sense of a passive participle: that which has been set blazing.

The three words trace a movement:

1. Chain — it binds, it cuts off movement. 2. Collar — it goes over the neck, it makes the contact permanent. 3. Fire — the outcome.

That is, first the capacity to move is taken away, then one is put into the fire. No possibility of escape is left.

And this link is important. Sūrat al-Qiyāma — the neighbour of this sūra in the muṣḥaf — set up the same idea as a question: "That day man says, 'Where is the place of flight?'" (al-Qiyāma 75/10). al-Insān 76/4 gives the answer to that question as a list of materials.

The most conspicuous disproportion in the sūra is here, and it is worth pausing over.

In the short sūras of the Qurʾān the two tables are generally balanced. In this sūra there is a ratio of eighteen to one. Several things can be said about this:

First — the subject of the sūra is not punishment. The sūra set up a fork (3) and, having closed one arm of the fork in a single verse, went on to describe the other arm. That is, the fourth verse is not a table but a record: the other possibility too has its counterpart, and it is this.

Second — the ending of the sūra keeps the same proportion. The last verse mentions mercy first and punishment after: "He admits whom He wills into His mercy; but for the wrongdoers, He has prepared a painful punishment" (76/31). The first of the sentence's two halves is mercy.

Third — the addressee is clear. The sūra is a text of encouragement. The twenty-ninth verse will say so plainly: "This is a reminder; whoever wills takes a way to his Lord." That an invitation should allot little space to threat is consistent.

I record these as my own reading; the proportion itself is a datum that can be counted.

In the writing of the muṣḥaf there is an alif at the end of the word سَلَٰسِلَا۟, and there is a difference among the imams of the variant readings about how this alif is pronounced — some read it in pausal form, some do not read it at all. The same situation holds for قَوَارِيرَا۟ in the fifteenth and sixteenth verses.

I do not give which imam holds which reading, because I am not sure. It makes no difference in meaning; the place of the difference is only in how the verse-ending closes.

Inna'l-abrāra yashrabūna min kaʾsin kāna mizājuhā kāfūrā · ʿAynan yashrabu bihā ʿibādu'llāhi yufajjirūnahā tafjīrā "The good drink from a cup whose admixture is kāfūr; a spring it is, from which the servants of God drink, making it gush forth in gushing."

Root: ب-ر-ر. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/44 and applied to this word at al-Infiṭār 82/13. I summarise the findings there: the original sense of the root is breadth — from the same root comes barr, the wide land facing the sea; accordingly the abrār are "the broad ones", and goodness is named not as a list of behaviours but as a breadth of space. Miserliness narrows, goodness widens.

In the section on al-Infiṭār it was also recorded that abrār and fujjār are plurals not of nouns but of adjectives; they state not an identity but an attribute, and whoever bears that attribute is included in it.

In the section on al-Muṭaffifīn a note about rank was entered: in that sūra a difference of degree is set up between the abrār and the muqarrabūn, and the same water reaches the two groups in two different ways (to one as an admixture, to the other pure). In this sūra there is no such second category. Here the abrār are a single group and the whole description of reward in the sūra belongs to them.

And now comes one of the most concrete comparisons in this commentary.

Three sūras open about the abrār with the same formula:

In the section on al-Infiṭār this was recorded: the particle la-fī states "being inside", and a nominal sentence states fixity — the abrār do not attain the bliss, they are inside the bliss.

al-Insān takes the same sentence and turns its predicate into a verb. Two sūras state a state; this sūra states an act. And the act chosen is the most ordinary thing the abrār do: drinking.

This is no coincidence, because the whole description of reward in the sūra will be built out of verbs: they drink (5), they make gush forth (6), they are reclining (13), it is passed round among them (15), they are given to drink (17), they are adorned (21). The other two sūras show a tableau; this sūra recounts a day.

I record this as my own reading; the difference of structure among the three verses is the data of the text.

Root: ك-أ-س. The distinction the lexicographers transmit is this: kaʾs is the cup with drink in it; an empty cup is not called kaʾs, and other names are given to it (such as qadaḥ).

This distinction agrees with the usage in the Qurʾān: the word always occurs full in the text and is always mentioned together with a drink. That is, the word "cup" itself states what is inside it too.

In the verse there is the particle مِن: min kaʾsin — "from a cup". It states tabʿīḍ (from a part of it). What is drunk is not the cup itself but some quantity from it; and this makes one sense that the drinking is not a single occasion.

Root: م-ز-ج. This word was treated in the discussion of al-Muṭaffifīn 83/27, and the finding there was this: mizāj is an addition that increases, not one that diminishes; it is the adding of something valuable, not the clearing away of a sediment. The word occurs in three places in the Qurʾān and all three are the admixture of a drink of the garden — two are in this sūra (76/5 kāfūr, 76/17 ginger), one in al-Muṭaffifīn (tasnīm).

The English word temperament carries the same idea by another road: it too comes from the notion of a mixture of the elements in the body. That link was recorded there; I do not repeat it.

What is peculiar to this passage is this: this sūra houses two of the three verses that use the word mizāj. That is, the sūra sets up the same structure twice: a cup + an admixture (5), then again a cup + an admixture (17). And the two admixtures are opposites of one another. This will be returned to at verse 17.

The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

Kāfūr — camphor — was a substance known in that world: a white, volatile, sharp-smelling, cooling resin. It was an article of trade originating in India and South-East Asia and was imported into the Arabian peninsula.

There are two views on the meaning of the word:

The strongest side of the second view is that the sixth verse speaks of a spring immediately afterwards. The strongest side of the first view is that the eighteenth verse uses the verb tusammā: when the sūra gives something a name it says so, and it does not say so here.

Weighing these two grounds I prefer the first — it is not binding.

The third verse ended with كَفُورًا. The fifth verse ends with كَافُورًا. Between the two words there is a single visible letter of difference.

Some of the lexicographers count kāfūr as from the root ك-ف-ر and give as their ground that the fruit of the camphor tree is covered by a husk. I transmit this explanation, but I do not present it as firm derivational data; it is also possible that the word entered Arabic from outside, and in that case the resemblance of root remains only apparent.

Accordingly I draw no link of meaning between the two words. What I record is only the sound itself: the third verse of the sūra ends with "one who covers", the fifth with "kāfūr", and the ear hears the two as close to one another. The same note was entered in a similar case in the section on al-Aʿlā: no meaning is to be drawn from a resemblance of sound.

The first four words of the sixth verse are exactly the same as the twenty-eighth verse of al-Muṭaffifīn. Only the subject changes:

In the section on al-Muṭaffifīn two grammatical questions about this expression were treated in detail and I do not repeat them:

• The reason for عَيْنًا being in the accusative (appositive substitute, accusative of commendation, specification or circumstantial — all four are defended, and the difference in meaning is small).
• Why in يَشْرَبُ بِهَا the particle بِ comes in place of min (particles being used one for another; or the verb taking on the sense of "to slake one's thirst" and taking that verb's particle).

There it was also recorded that the word عَيْن has several senses in Arabic (eye, spring, the essence of a thing, a spy) and that all of them come together in the idea of a "source".

There are two things peculiar to this passage.

The fifth verse said ٱلْأَبْرَار. The sixth verse calls the same people عِبَادُ ٱللَّهِ. Two names, one verse apart.

Root: ع-ب-د. Servanthood, service. The analysis of the word was made in the section on al-Fātiḥa; I do not repeat it.

I read the work this change of name does as follows — I present it as my own inference:

Abrār is a name of attribute: the broad ones, those who do good. It looks at what the person does. ʿIbādu'llāh is a name of belonging: it looks at whose he is.

And by putting these two names one upon the other the sūra sets up an equation: those who do good are the servants of God. The two are not two separate groups but two sides of the same group.

This agrees with what will be set up later in the sūra: in the ninth verse these people will say, as they give, li-wajhi'llāh (for the face of God). That is, they bind the work they do not to themselves but to whom they belong. The name in the sixth verse prepares the speech in the ninth.

The most striking word of the sūra is here, and it is usually passed over.

Root: ف-ج-ر. This root has been treated several times in this commentary — in the sections on al-Shams, al-Fajr and al-Infiṭār. I summarise the findings there: the concrete sense of the root is to split, to split open and make flow, to burst forth; fajr (the moment when the night is split and the light bursts through) and fujūr are from the same root; and fujūr is not a deficiency but an overflowing — the tearing of the boundary that holds a person, the bursting of a dam by water that will not stay in its vessel.

Now look at this verse.

The same root comes here as a reward. The abrār split the spring open and make it gush.

That is, the very movement the Qurʾān condemns as fujūr — splitting something and making it overflow — is recounted here as the work the good do in the garden.

Where is the difference? In what is split.

The fājir splits the boundary that holds him; the abrār split the spring in front of them. In the first case what is split is the person's own boundary, in the second a source outside him. The movement is the same, its object opposite.

This is exactly the principle recorded for the root ش-ق-ق in the section on al-Inshiqāq: "the root by itself states no destruction; what a splitting is depends on what the splitting leaves behind." There the same verb named both the tearing apart of the sky and the splitting of the earth for provision.

I record this as my own reading; the shared root and the description of fujūr are transmitted.

تَفْجِيرًا — the absolute object (mafʿūl muṭlaq). As was recorded for kadḥan at al-Inshiqāq 84/6, this structure emphasises the verb or states its kind. In English it is answered by a doubling: "making it gush and gush".

In the sūra's description of the garden the active verbs belonging to the abrār are found only at the beginning:

There is a movement in the table: the abrār first open and drink for themselves; then everything is done to them; and at the very end the one who gives to drink becomes the only subject that is named — their Lord.

In the section on al-Muṭaffifīn this was recorded about the verb yusqawna being passive: "they do not take for themselves, it is given to them." That finding holds here too; but this sūra adds two ends to the table: at the very beginning the hand of the abrār, at the very end the hand of the Lord.

I record this as my own reading; the moods of the verbs are a datum that can be counted.

Yūfūna bi'n-nadhri wa yakhāfūna yawman kāna sharruhū mustaṭīrā "They fulfil their vows and they fear a day whose evil is spread on every side."

Here the sūra begins to recount why the abrār are abrār. Over five verses (7-10) four things will be counted: paying the vow, fearing a day, feeding food, wanting no return.

And note: all of these are things done in this world. The sūra plants this world in the middle of its description of the garden.

Root: و-ف-ي. At the centre of the root lie completeness, absence of deficiency. Its derivatives show this:

• وَفَاء — to carry out a promise in full; fidelity.
• وَافِي — complete, without deficiency.
• أَوْفَىٰ (Form IV) — to pay in full, to hand over without shortfall.
• تَوْفِيَة — full payment.
• تَوَفَّىٰ (Form V) — to take in full. And the Qurʾān recounts death with this verb: "God takes the souls at the time of their death" (al-Zumar 39/42). That is, death is, in Arabic's own logic, a collection in full.

This last derivative is worth pausing over. The same root is used both for "pay your debt in full" and for "your soul is taken in full". That paying and being taken are named with the same word agrees with the context of the verse: the next clause will speak of fearing a day.

And look at its opposite: Sūrat al-Muṭaffifīn takes the negative of this root as its subject — taṭfīf is diminishing in the measure, and at the opening of that sūra yastawfūn (they take in full) and yukhsirūn (they diminish) are set against one another. al-Insān 76/7 uses the same root on the positive side: these people do not diminish.

Root: ن-ذ-ر. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/6 by way of indhār (warning), and this very link was made there. I recall the finding there just as it stands:

Indhār is the announcing in advance of a bad outcome. From the same root comes nadhr — a vow. What the two have in common is the making binding, here and now, of something that has not yet come about.

And this finding is the whole key to this verse.

Nadhr is a person's binding of his own future here and now: "if such a thing happens I will do such a thing", or directly "I will do such a thing". To fill a time that has not yet come with a word given now.

Now look at the twenty-seventh verse of the sūra:

وَيَذَرُونَ وَرَآءَهُمْ يَوْمًا ثَقِيلًا — "and they leave a heavy day behind them." (76/27)

The sūra describes two types of man, and both of them set up a relation with the future:

That is, the moral distinction of the sūra is not a list of behaviours but a stance towards time. One side counts what has not yet come as binding from now; the other counts what has not come as not counting at all.

I record this as my own reading; the words of the two verses and the link between nadhr and indhār are transmitted.

The word comes with the definite article: ٱلنَّذْر — "that vow". There are two readings:

The two do not exclude one another and a preference is not required. The common point is preserved: paying something that binds oneself.

In point of legal ruling there are differences among the schools of law regarding the kinds of vow, their bindingness and their expiation. No legal ruling is issued in this commentary; the verse sets up no ruling, it describes an attribute.

Note the object of the verb: what is feared is not the punishment but the day.

This is a construction the Qurʾān uses often, and its effect is this: fear is bound not to a penalty but to a time. A penalty may remain distant and abstract; a day is something that is coming.

كَانَ شَرُّهُۥ — "its evil … was". Again kāna. The sūra qualifies a future day in the perfect. This is a choice repeated throughout the sūra (5, 7, 15, 17, 22, 30) and will be taken up separately in the section on architecture below.

Root: ط-ي-ر. To fly. Ṭāʾir — a bird; ṭayr — birds; ṭiyara — the drawing of good or ill omen by putting up a bird.

Form X (istifʿāl): ٱسْتَطَارَ — to fly apart, to be scattered in every direction, to spread. In Arabic this verb is used of a crack running along a wall, of dust dispersing into the air, of the dawn spreading over the horizon.

The word mustaṭīr occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

The picture the word chooses is this: a spreading that leaves no direction to flee in. To flee an evil is possible by going in a direction where it is not. An evil that is mustaṭīr has gone in every direction.

And this speaks directly to the question of the sister sūra:

"That day man says, 'Where is the place of flight?' No! There is no refuge!" (al-Qiyāma 75/10-11)

al-Qiyāma asks the question and gives the answer; al-Insān states the reason with an adjective: the evil has spread on every side.

And one further detail: the abrār fear this day. That is, the sūra counts fear among the attributes of the abrār. Fear is given here not as a weakness but as a measure — because the next verse will show what that fear does: it makes them feed people.

Wa yuṭʿimūna'ṭ-ṭaʿāma ʿalā ḥubbihī miskīnan wa yatīman wa asīrā "And they feed food, in spite of their love for it, to the needy, the orphan and the captive."

The best known verse of the sūra, and the last step of a measure built up over several sections of this commentary.

Root: ط-ع-م. And the idea at the centre of the root is not nourishment but taste: ṭaʿima — he tasted; ṭaʿm — taste, savour; ṭaʿām — what is eaten; maṭʿam — the place or the thing to be eaten.

This distinction matters for what follows in the verse. The verse does not say "they distribute provisions" or "they give alms." They give what is tasted.

And the verb takes its object: yuṭʿimūna'ṭ-ṭaʿām — "they feed the food". It could have said only yuṭʿimūna and the sense would have been established. That the object is stated as well makes the thing given visible: what is there is not an abstract help but a plate of food.

This looks in the same direction as the measure set up in Sūrat al-Māʿūn. There too the matter was not an abstract generosity: al-māʿūn — the smallest, the most concrete thing, what passes from hand to hand.

The centre of gravity of the verse is in these three words.

The particle عَلَىٰ here has the sense of maʿa (along with / in spite of). This usage is common in Arabic: ʿala'l-ghinā — in spite of his wealth. That is, the particle states an obstacle: love was an obstacle to giving, and in spite of it they gave.

حُبّ — root: ح-ب-ب. To love. And this root will come once more in the sūra: in the twenty-seventh verse, يُحِبُّونَ ٱلْعَاجِلَةَ — "they love what comes quickly". It will be returned to there; for now let us record this much: the sūra uses the same root once for one who gives and once for one who holds.

What does the pronoun (هِ) refer back to? There are three readings:

The first reading is the strongest, and its ground is the exact parallel in al-Baqara 2/177. In the section on Sūrat al-Balad that verse was cited as well, with the same sequence of elements (faith → giving wealth → orphans, the poor, necks).

I state my preference and record that it is not binding.

Why has this note been put in? Because without it the sentence says nothing. That one who has a surplus should give is not news. The verse adds these three words in order to say that what is given created a lack in the giver as well.

In the section on Sūrat al-Balad the same idea was set up with another word: there the feeding was done on a day of hunger (fī yawmin dhī masghaba). That is, the giver too was hungry. al-Insān says the same thing by way of feeling rather than of time: the giver too wanted it.

All three are indefinite: "a needy man, an orphan, a captive". In the section on al-Balad this distinction was recorded: in al-Māʿūn the word came with the definite article and stated the genus (al-yatīm), while in al-Balad it came indefinite and pointed to individual persons. Here too it is indefinite: someone who comes before you.

The root analyses of the words مِسْكِين and يَتِيم were made in the sections on al-Māʿūn and al-Balad; I do not repeat them. It is enough to recall the measure recorded in al-Māʿūn: what the orphan and the needy have in common is that they cannot give anything back — at the root of yatīm lies infirād (being left alone, having no one behind one).

A note on the sequence. In the other sūras treated in this commentary the pair was always in the order orphan → needy (al-Māʿūn 107/2-3; al-Fajr 89/17-18; al-Balad 90/15-16). Here the order is reversed: needy → orphan → captive.

This should not be over-interpreted. The requirement of the verse-ending binds only the last word (asīrā), not the order of the first two; that is, the order is free and there may or may not be a reason for it. I give no firm explanation.

Here is the real move of the sūra.

Root: أ-س-ر. And the concrete sense of the root is to bind: asara — he bound, he held tight. إِسَار (isār) is the leather thong used in binding. Asīr is a faʿīl with the sense of a passive participle: one who has been bound.

That is, Arabic does not use a word like "captive" or "convict" for the prisoner. It names him by his bond.

And this root will come once more in the sūra — in the twenty-eighth verse: وَشَدَدْنَآ أَسْرَهُمْ ("and We made their binding firm"). It will be returned to there, but let us record the link now: the sūra names the person who is fed "the one bound", and twenty verses later names man's own body "his binding".

To see what it means for the captive to enter this list, one must know the institution of captivity in that world.

In Arabia captivity was not a practice of the state but a custom between tribes. Persons taken in raids and clashes stayed in the hands of the one who took them, were given back for a ransom, and if no ransom came were enslaved or exchanged. The captive was kept in the house of the one who took him and ate from that household's food.

Three things describe the captive's situation, and all three are needed in order to read this verse:

First: the captive is from the other side. The orphan and the needy are from within one's own community; the captive is from outside and most often from the enemy's ranks. The social return on doing him a kindness is not zero but negative: it creates a debt of explanation to one's own side.

Second: the captive has no one behind him — and this is a deprivation different from the orphan's. The orphan may have relatives, he has a neighbourhood, his name is known. The captive has no one at all in the place where he is. The infirād (being left alone) recorded in the section on al-Māʿūn reaches its furthest state here.

Third: the captive is in the hands of the one who feeds him. The person facing the orphan and the needy may do nothing for them. The person facing the captive already holds power. To give him food is not a donation but a decision about the manner in which power is used.

This third point separates the verse from the others. To feed the orphan and the needy is the behaviour of one who has the means. To feed the captive is the behaviour of one who has another human being in his hands.

In this commentary the same measure has been set up in four sūras, and each time it rose a little higher. Placing the four side by side shows what the verse does:

In all three of the other sūras the addressee was within his own community. al-Insān takes the same act and changes its object.

And this change also changes the logic of the measure. al-Māʿūn's measure was "being unable to give anything back." The captive meets that measure — indeed more than meets it. But he adds one thing more: the captive is the person to whom kindness is not required. No one blames anyone for not feeding a captive. For the orphan there is a social expectation; for the captive there is none.

That is, the verse carries the measure to the place where social expectation ends.

I record this as my own reading; the texts of the four sūras and the findings recorded earlier in this commentary stand where they are.

I draw from this verse no ruling about the legal status of captives. The Qurʾān's rulings about captives are dealt with in other verses and will be treated in this commentary when those sūras are reached. The verse here is not a verse of ruling but a verse of attribute: it describes who the abrār are.

Innamā nuṭʿimukum li-wajhi'llāhi lā nurīdu minkum jazāʾan wa lā shukūrā · Innā nakhāfu min Rabbinā yawman ʿabūsan qamṭarīrā "We feed you only for the face of God; we want from you neither return nor thanks. We fear from our Lord a day that scowls, a day of utmost harshness."

Something is missing in the verse, and this is its most disputed side: there is no "they said".

In Arabic a reported speech is generally attached to a verb of saying (qālū — they said). Here it is not attached; the sentence begins directly.

The explanations of the grammarians:

The second reading is worth pausing over.

For the sentence itself is a sentence that knows that boasting of wanting no thanks is also a way of expecting a return. To say "we expect no thanks from you" while giving food is precisely the refined form of expecting thanks. Counting the speech as unspoken dissolves this tension.

But I do not count the first reading invalid either, and for this reason: the Qurʾān relays the words of righteous persons elsewhere too, and such relaying does not mean the words are a boast. Moreover, the addressees of the sentence are the people being fed (nuṭʿimukum — "we feed you"), and to tell the person being fed "you are not in debt" is one way of removing the burden of obligation.

I adopt no preference; neither runs against the text and both come out at the same ruling.

إِنَّمَا is in Arabic the particle of qaṣr (restriction): "only, solely, nothing else". It locks the sentence onto a single cause.

That is, the sentence does not say "we do this for God as well." It says "only". All other causes are put out of doors — and the next clause will name two of those causes.

Root: و-ج-ه. This construct was treated in the discussion of al-Layl 92/20 (ibtighāʾa wajhi Rabbihi'l-aʿlā), and I summarise the finding there: wajh means face, and from there opens onto the sense of direction; to do something "for someone's face" means to seek in that work no addressee other than that person. There is no need to enter the theological disputes about the attributes; the usage is common in Arabic and requires no anthropomorphism.

In the section on al-Layl it was also recorded that this verse (al-Insān 76/9) is the closest counterpart of al-Layl 92/19-20.

In the section on al-Layl the possible motives behind an act of giving were counted out and it was shown how the verse closes them off. Let us bring that list here and see what al-Insān adds:

The two verses do the same work from two directions. al-Layl looks to the past: this man owes nobody. al-Insān looks to the future: these people expect nothing from you.

And al-Insān adds something. What was eliminated in al-Layl was the material return; al-Insān, having eliminated the material return (jazāʾ), eliminates the immaterial return (shukūr) as well.

This second elimination is harder than the first. To give without expecting money is common. To give without expecting thanks is not common — because thanks is what completes the sentence the giver builds about himself.

جَزَاء — root: ج-ز-ي. As recorded in the section on al-Layl: to give in return, to pay; and jazāʾ is used both of a good and of a bad return.

شُكُور — root: ش-ك-ر. Treated at verse 3.

That the two are counted separately is important, because they are different things:

• Jazāʾ comes from outside: a good, a service, a repayment.
• Shukūr comes from within and stays with the giver: the feeling of obligation, standing, the entry "a good person".

To refuse the first is a transaction; to refuse the second is a stance.

And now the backbone of the sūra becomes visible. In the ninth verse these people refuse shukūr. In the twenty-second verse God calls them mashkūr:

وَكَانَ سَعْيُكُم مَّشْكُورًا — "and your striving has been met with thanks." (76/22)

What they did not want from people is given to them by God. The sūra brings back from another hand the thing that was refused.

I recorded this link in the section on how the sūra is built as well; I mention it again here because the whole weight of the verse comes from it.

The tenth verse is the ground of what is said in the ninth. The answer to the question "why do you want no return?" is: because we fear.

Note the word order: مِن رَّبِّنَا. The verse does not say "we fear our Lord" — that would have been "nakhāfu Rabbanā". It says "we fear a day [coming] from our Lord". The particle min indicates the source: the day feared is a day that comes from the Lord.

This fine difference changes the object of the fear. What is feared is not God Himself but the day that will come from Him. And it sets up the same structure as the seventh verse: there too what was feared was a day.

عَبُوس — root: ع-ب-س. This root was treated in the section on Sūrat ʿAbasa, and the description there was this: to knot up the face, to knit the brows, the hardening of the countenance; عَبُوس (ʿabūs) — sour-faced, scowling.

What is peculiar to this passage is this: there the face that scowled was man's face, here it is the day's.

Sūrat ʿAbasa opened with a man's souring his face before a blind man. In this verse the same adjective is given to a day.

This is an isnād majāzī (figurative attribution): the taking of a quality from its real possessor and giving it to something related. A day has no face; what scowls is the faces of people on that day. The Qurʾān does this elsewhere too.

But the direction of the attribution is meaningful, and I record this reading — it is my own inference:

In ʿAbasa the one who soured his face was the side with power and position; the soured face was turned towards one in need. In al-Insān, however, it is the day that sours its face, and before it everyone is in need.

And a link of consequence is set up between the two sūras: whoever sours his face today meets a soured face on that day. The next verse of the sūra supports this reading — what is given to the abrār is precisely a quality of the face: naḍra (freshness, brightness).

قَمْطَرِير — a quadriliteral root (ق-م-ط-ر), and it occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

The sense the lexicographers give: utterly harsh, severe, violent; something that knits the brows and knots up the face. It is recorded that the root has been connected with the verb qamṭara (he gathered, he drew tight) — a hardness that draws in and contracts.

In Arabic quadriliteral roots generally state intensity and repetition. The placing of two adjectives one upon the other (ʿabūs + qamṭarīr) does the same work: the first gives the look, the second the severity.

Fa-waqāhumu'llāhu sharra dhālika'l-yawmi wa laqqāhum naḍratan wa surūrā · Wa jazāhum bimā ṣabarū jannatan wa ḥarīrā "So God protected them from the evil of that day and brought them to meet freshness and joy. And for their patience He rewarded them with a garden and with silk."

The verse begins with فَ: they feared, and therefore they were protected.

The relation between the two verses says more than a relation of recompense. In the seventh verse they were fearing; in the eleventh they were protected from what they feared. Fear becomes the cause of protection.

This is an equation the Qurʾān sets up in several places, and it is here in its plainest form: to fear a thing is the way to be protected from it.

Root: و-ق-ي. Its concrete sense: to set a shield before a thing, to cover it, to keep it safe.

Its derivatives:

• وِقَايَة (wiqāya) — a protective covering, a shield.
• تَقْوَىٰ (taqwā) — and this word is from the same root. That is, taqwā is, in the word's own logic, "being protected", "taking a shield for oneself".
• مُتَّقِى (muttaqī) — one who is protected.

And now the work of the verse becomes visible. These people feared a day (7, 10); God protected them from that day (11). The verb is the verb of the word taqwā.

That is, the sūra gives the description of taqwā without using the word taqwā: to fear something and behave accordingly, and then to be protected from it. The root of the word already carries this movement.

I record this as my own reading; the shared root is linguistic data.

شَرَّ ذَٰلِكَ ٱلْيَوْم — "the evil of that day". Dhālika is the demonstrative that points to what is far. In the seventh and tenth verses the day was indefinite (yawman — a day); here it becomes definite: dhālika'l-yawm — "that day". The indefinite day that was feared becomes the definite day one is protected from.

Root: ل-ق-ي. This root was treated in the discussions of al-Inshiqāq 84/4 and 84/6. The finding there was this: the root works in two directions — laqiya (he met, he attained) and alqā (he threw, he cast, he brought before) — that is, "to throw" and "to meet" are from the same root, because to throw something is to bring it before you.

What is peculiar to this passage is the pattern. The verb in the verse is of the تَفْعِيل (tafʿīl) form: laqqā. This form states causation and intensity. Laqqāhu'sh-shayʾ — he brought a thing before him, he made him meet with it.

That is, the verse does not say "He gave." It could have been aʿṭāhum or ātāhum. The verb chosen has the sense of "He brought before them, He made them meet with it."

And read together with the previous verse this sets up a scene: in the tenth verse there was the possibility of a scowling day coming before them. In the eleventh what comes before them is freshness and joy. The same movement, the opposite object.

Root: ن-ض-ر. This root was analysed completely in the discussion of al-Muṭaffifīn 83/24 (naḍrata'n-naʿīm). I summarise the findings there:

The proper field of the root is the plant: naḍira'sh-shajaru — the tree grew fresh, it greened. Naḍīr — fresh, green, bright; nuḍār — pure gold (for its brightness). That is, the word carries the look of a plant that has taken water over onto the human face. And the most concrete side of the verse is this: in describing the state in the garden the Qurʾān gives no name of a feeling — it states something seen in the face.

There the closeness in sound between ن-ض-ر and ن-ظ-ر (to look) was also treated in a table, and it was recorded that closeness of sound is not unity of root. The pair nāḍira / nāẓira in al-Qiyāma 75/22-23 and the question of the beatific vision around those verses are taken up in the section on al-Qiyāma; I do not carry it over here.

There are two differences peculiar to this passage:

First — direction. In al-Muṭaffifīn the naḍra was seen from outside: taʿrifu fī wujūhihim — "you will know it in their faces". There is an observer and he knows it. In al-Insān, however, the naḍra is given to them: laqqāhum naḍratan. There is no observer; there is a giver.

Second — the construct. In al-Muṭaffifīn it is naḍrata'n-naʿīm — "the freshness of bliss", that is, the source of the freshness is stated. Here there is no construct; the word stands alone and indefinite: naḍratan. The indefiniteness here states magnification (taʿẓīm).

Root: س-ر-ر. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Inshiqāq 84/9. I summarise the finding there: from the same root come surūr (joy), sirr (what is hidden) and sarīr (a throne); and according to the explanation the lexicographers transmit, surūr is the secret expansion of the heart within — that is, joy is akin to the "hiddenness" branch of the root, being what is inside before it shows outside.

Now set the two words side by side:

The verse gives the two together. That is, what is given is neither only an appearance nor only a feeling; it is both at once.

And this closes a gap. A person's face may shine while his inside is dark; his inside may be at ease while his face is closed. By setting the two words side by side the verse closes off this possibility.

I record this as my own reading; the semantic fields of the two roots are transmitted.

A side note: in the section on al-Inshiqāq sarīr (throne) was also attached to this root. This sūra uses for the couch not sarīr but the word أَرَآئِك (arāʾik) (verse 13). That is, the root is represented here only by its branch of joy.

One of the most frequently skipped sentences of the sūra, and the only place that names the ground of the reward.

In بِمَا the particle بِ is here the bāʾ of compensation: it states a return, an equivalent. "Because they …", "in return for their …".

And now the question is: in return for what?

From the seventh verse to the tenth the sūra counted four things: paying the vow, fearing a day, feeding food, wanting no return. None of these had been called "patience".

The twelfth verse gathers all four at once into a single word: صَبَرُوا۟.

Root: ص-ب-ر. It was treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/45, and the finding there is decisive here:

The root means to hold, to hold back, to confine: to stop something by force in a place. This is different from "enduring" — enduring is passive, you bear what comes upon you. Patience, however, is active: to hold the self, not to let it go where it wants to go. That is why patience is required not only in affliction but also in worship and in refraining from sin; in all of them the work done is the same — holding.

Now go back with this description to the four acts of the sūra:

All four are a holding. Having counted four separate behaviours, the sūra names the single movement beneath them all: ṣabr — holding oneself.

That is, the expression "in return for their patience" is not a substitution but a naming. The verse does not put something else in place of the deeds it counted; it says what the things counted are.

I record this as my own reading; the description of ṣabr and the content of the verses are in the text.

And this also explains why the note ʿalā ḥubbihī was put in the eighth verse. Without that note the act of feeding would not have been a patience; it would only have been a distribution. Without a wish to be held there is no patience.

Two things given are counted, and the two are not of the same kind: one is a place, one a garment.

جَنَّة — root: ج-ن-ن. Treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/25; I summarise the finding there: the sense of the root is to cover, to hide, and its derivatives all turn about invisibility (janīn — the one covered in the womb; jinn — the unseen; majnūn — one whose mind is covered; mijann — a shield). Janna is the garden that covers the ground with its trees; and the word carries both the sense "the covering garden" and "what is hidden from sight". What is promised is, by definition, what cannot be seen now.

حَرِير — silk. Root: ح-ر-ر. The derivatives of the root spread over a wide field: ḥarr (heat), ḥurr (free, not a slave), taḥrīr (setting free; and also committing to writing).

The lexicographers do not agree about the historical link of the word with these branches, and I make no firm claim of derivation. The sense "silk" for ḥarīr is settled; how that sense came out of ḥarr or ḥurr is disputed.

Why silk? Two observations:

First — silk was an imported commodity in that world. It came from China, passed from hand to hand along the road, and was a luxury with a heavy price. That is, the word is not the name of a cloth but the name of an unattainability. In the twenty-first verse of the sūra this will be opened out further with two separate words for silk (sundus and istabraq).

Second — place and garment are given together. Where a person is and what is on him are the two layers that surround him. By counting both at once the verse covers the whole of the environment.

And the sūra mentions these two here as names, then opens them out over the next nine verses: the garden between 13 and 20, the silk in verse 21. The twelfth verse is a heading, what follows is the detail.

Over nine verses a place will be described, and the description is sensuous from beginning to end: couch, shade, fruit, vessel, cup, drink, cloth, bracelet.

The question of how these descriptions are to be read was taken up in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/25 by way of the word مُتَشَٰبِهًا. I summarise the finding there and do not repeat it:

The note "resembling one another" used of the fruits of the garden determines how all the descriptions of the hereafter are to be read: the account must be given by way of the things the addressee knows — because language can find no material other than human experience. That the descriptions are sensuous follows not from what is described being sensuous but from there being no other way to describe it.

This principle holds for all nine of the verses below and will not be repeated at each verse. Only in the sixteenth verse is there a place where the principle is exemplified by the text itself; that will be pointed out separately when we come to it.

The real contribution of this section will lie in the words: the root of each, its counterpart in that world, and its place within the sūra.

Muttakiʾīna fīhā ʿala'l-arāʾik, lā yarawna fīhā shamsan wa lā zamharīrā · Wa dāniyatan ʿalayhim ẓilāluhā wa dhullilat quṭūfuhā tadhlīlā "There they recline upon couches; they see there neither a burning sun nor a freezing cold. Its shades have come near over them, and its clusters of fruit have been made to bow low."

Root: و-ك-أ. Form VIII: ٱتَّكَأَ — to lean on something, to recline, to let one's weight down somewhere. From the same root muttakaʾ — a support, a place to lean on.

What the word states is not a posture but a condition of safety. One who reclines is one who is not thinking of going anywhere; he has set his weight down. In that world, to eat standing or squatting was the condition of the traveller and of the man in a hurry; to eat reclining was the condition of a man at home.

Singular: أَرِيكَة. Root: أ-ر-ك. This word was treated in the discussion of al-Muṭaffifīn 83/23. I summarise the finding there: an arīka is a couch with a curtain or covering drawn over it, canopied and shaded — not an ordinary cushion but a sheltered and ornamented seat. It is also recorded that the word has been connected with the arāk tree, but that derivation is not certain. In the Qurʾān the word occurs only in descriptions of the garden.

And in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn a comparison was made; now we are at the other end of that comparison.

There this was recorded: the Qurʾān mentions this object elsewhere with the verb مُتَّكِئِين (reclining); al-Muṭaffifīn 83/23 puts in its place يَنظُرُون (they look), because the whole matter of that sūra is seeing. And this very verse — al-Insān 76/13 — was cited as the example.

That is, two sūras use the same object and choose different verbs:

In al-Muṭaffifīn the abrār look, because that sūra is the sūra of mocking glances. In al-Insān the abrār recline, because this sūra is the sūra of people who held themselves back, who grew tired, who gave. The reward of the one who has grown tired is somewhere to lean.

I record this as my own reading; the difference of verb in the two verses and the ground set up in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn are in the text.

زَمْهَرِير — a quadriliteral root (ز-م-ه-ر), and it occurs only here in the Qurʾān. Its meaning: severe cold, freezing frost.

The pair the verse sets up is the climate of that world. In the desert the day has two enemies and both come within the same day: the burning sun of the daytime, the freezing cold of the night. The difference of temperature is the hardest fact of the day in the desert.

In describing the garden the verse adds nothing; it takes away two things. And the two things it takes away are two things counted in the addressee's life as antidotes to one another: from the sun you flee to the shade, from the cold to the fire. The verse removes both at once — that is, it leaves nothing to flee to.

A point about the verb: the verse does not say "they do not feel", it says "they do not see" (lā yarawna). Cold is not seen. In Arabic the use of the verb raʾā in the sense of "to encounter, to come upon" is common, and it has that sense here. But the choice of word does something: the two extremes cease to be something felt and become something not seen. They are not present.

Root: د-ن-و. And this root was treated in the discussions of al-Baqara 2/4 and 2/61. The finding there was this: the root carries together the senses to be near and to be low; from the same root comes دُنْيَا — the name of this life is "the near one". And the language was delivering a verdict: what is near and what is low are named with the same word.

What is peculiar to this passage is this: the same root is here on the positive side.

Dāniyatan — the shades have drawn near to them. In al-Baqara nearness was a fault (preferring what can be touched); here nearness is a favour (the shade being within reach).

There is no contradiction, because the subject of the nearness changes. In al-Baqara what was near was the thing preferred — man was leaving the far and choosing the near. Here what is near is the thing given; no one is making a choice.

I record this as my own reading; the shared root and the finding in al-Baqara stand where they are.

ظِلَال — shades. Root ظ-ل-ل: shade, to be shaded. In a desert climate shade is not a comfort but a condition of survival. The Qurʾān mentions shade often in describing the garden, and this is exactly why — it is what the addressee looks for most.

قُطُوف — its singular is قِطْف: a cluster of fruit that is picked. Root: ق-ط-ف — to pluck, to gather, to harvest.

ذُلِّلَتْ — root: ذ-ل-ل. Its concrete sense: to be lowered, to bow, to become docile. Its derivatives:

• ذَلِيل (dhalīl) — brought low, despised.
• ذُلّ (dhull) — lowering, submission.
• ذَلُول (dhalūl) — a trained animal, used to the yoke. A docile mount.

And this last derivative occurs in the story of the cow in Sūrat al-Baqara. In that story, treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/67-71, one item of the description narrowed down by questions was this: لَّا ذَلُولٌ تُثِيرُ ٱلْأَرْضَ — a cow "not broken to the yoke, that has not ploughed the field".

Setting the two usages side by side shows what the root does:

The verb in the verse is passive and of the tafʿīl form: dhullilat — "was made to bow", and the pattern states intensity. Then comes the absolute object: tadhlīlā — emphasis.

The picture the word chooses is this: the fruit does not stand high on the branch; it comes down towards the person. And the word chosen is not "was made easy" (yussirat) but "was made to bow" (dhullilat). That is, a taming has taken place — the fruit's resistance has been removed.

And this, together with the thirteenth verse, sets up a single idea. The place a reclining person cannot reach is the place to which the shade and the fruit come. The verses describe a place where the abrār do not have to move.

The opposite of this stood at the beginning of the sūra: in the eighth verse these people were carrying the food they themselves loved to someone else. The hand that gives no longer even reaches out.

I record this as my own reading.

Wa yuṭāfu ʿalayhim bi-āniyatin min fiḍḍatin wa akwābin kānat qawārīrā · Qawārīra min fiḍḍatin qaddarūhā taqdīrā "Round them are passed vessels of silver and cups of crystal — crystals of silver; they have measured them to their measure."

Root: ط-و-ف. To go round a thing. Its derivatives: ṭawāf (going round the Kaʿba), ṭāʾifa (a group — those who go about), ṭūfān (encompassing water), ṭāʾif (one who goes about).

The verb is passive and comes with ʿalayhim: "it is passed round over/about them". Who does the passing is not said — not until the nineteenth verse. There the subject will be given (wildānun mukhalladūn) and the verb will this time be active (yaṭūfu).

That is, the sūra uses the same verb twice: first without an agent (15), then with one (19). Four verses lie between. This is a technique of description: first the look of the scene, then the persons in the scene.

آنِيَة — its singular is إِنَاء: a vessel, a container. A general word.

أَكْوَاب — its singular is كُوب. And the description the lexicographers transmit is striking: a kūb is a cup without handle and without spout. That is, it has no place to grip and no mouth to pour from; a round vessel that can be drunk from at any point.

The Qurʾān prefers this word in its descriptions of the garden. That there is no handle and no spout means that the vessel imposes no direction as to how it is to be held.

Singular: قَارُورَة. Root: ق-ر-ر. And the sense of the root is to settle, to grow still, to remain fixed:

• قَرَار (qarār) — a place to settle, a fixed state.
• مُسْتَقَرّ (mustaqarr) — the place where one settles. And this word occurs in the sister sūra: "That day the place of settling (mustaqarr) is before your Lord" (al-Qiyāma 75/12).
• قُرَّة عَيْن — "the coolness of the eye"; according to the lexicographers' explanation, the eye's coming to rest upon something.
• قَارُورَة — a glass vessel. Its name comes from the liquid inside it settling in it; and besides, the transparency of glass shows what is inside.

This is the word's function in the description of the garden: a vessel that shows what is inside it. Glass was a valuable and rare material in that world; it was imported.

And here is the place where the text interprets itself.

To all appearance the sentence says something impossible. Glass is transparent; silver is not. The expression "glass of silver" describes neither of the two known materials.

The explanation of the classical exegetes is this: a material carrying together the whiteness of silver and the transparency of glass. That is, the verse recounts a thing not found in this world by setting one upon the other the names of two things found in this world.

This is the principle recorded above, applied by the text itself. In the discussion of al-Baqara 2/25 it was recorded: language can find no material other than human experience. This verse turns that constraint into a technique — it joins two known materials and names the unknown.

And for exactly this reason the verse is one of the clearest internal proofs that the descriptions of the garden are not to be read literally. The text shows the insufficiency of the very material it is using.

I record this as my own reading; the classical explanation about the joining of the two materials is transmitted.

A note on variant readings: as was recorded at the fourth verse, in the writing of the muṣḥaf there is an alif at the end of the word قَوَارِيرَا۟ and there is a difference of variant reading in its pronunciation. I do not give which imam holds which reading.

And there is the matter of the silver. The whole description of vessel and ornament in the sūra is of silver: āniya min fiḍḍa (15), qawārīra min fiḍḍa (16), asāwira min fiḍḍa (21). Three times, a single metal.

In other descriptions of the garden the Qurʾān mentions gold as well: "There they are adorned with bracelets of gold" (al-Kahf 18/31). That is, silver is not a necessity but a choice peculiar to this sūra.

There may or may not be a ground for this. The requirement of the verse-ending is not at work here, since fiḍḍa does not stand at the end of a verse. I record the following as a reading and state that it is not binding: the abrār of this sūra were described by their giving away what they had; that the description does not choose the most ostentatious metal agrees with that tone. But this is an inference, not the claim of the text.

Root: ق-د-ر. This root was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Qadr; there the root's three senses, connected but opening in different directions, were taken up. The branch needed here is this: to measure, to determine the amount of, to apportion. Qadr — measure, amount; miqdār — a measured amount; taqdīr — the determining of the measure.

Whose is the verb? There is disagreement:

Both have been defended in the classical sources. The common point in meaning is preserved: the measure has been hit exactly.

And this word carries a particular echo in this sūra. Taqdīr is the opposite both of diminishing and of adding — it is what is exact. Sūrat al-Muṭaffifīn took as its subject the diminishing of the measure (taṭfīf), and in that sūra the abrār were on the side that did not hold the measure in its own hands. Here the measure comes already hit exactly.

It is on the same line as yūfūna (they pay in full) in the seventh verse: these people paid without shortfall in this world, and here they receive vessels measured without shortfall.

I record this as my own reading.

Wa yusqawna fīhā kaʾsan kāna mizājuhā zanjabīlā · ʿAynan fīhā tusammā salsabīlā "There they are given to drink from a cup whose admixture is ginger; a spring there, whose name is Salsabīl."

Root: س-ق-ي. Treated in the discussion of al-Muṭaffifīn 83/25; I summarise the finding there: siqāya is the work of distributing water and was the name of an office at the Kaʿba; suqyā is a turn at drinking water (it was taken up at al-Shams 91/13). And on the verb's coming in the passive this was recorded: "they do not take for themselves, it is given to them."

What is peculiar to this passage is the difference from the fifth verse.

In the fifth verse the verb was active: yashrabūna — they drink. In the sixth verse they were splitting the spring open themselves. In the seventeenth verse the verb is passive: yusqawna — they are given to drink.

Within the same sūra, the same act, two different voices. The order is this: first they drink and open for themselves (5-6), then they are given to drink (17), and at the very end their Lord gives them to drink (21).

Three stages: their own hand → an unnamed hand → the hand of the Lord. The sūra uses the verb of drinking three times and each time carries the subject higher.

I record this as my own reading; the voices of the verbs are a datum that can be counted.

The words kaʾs and mizāj were treated at the fifth verse; I do not repeat them. The real matter here is what the two admixtures are.

زَنجَبِيل — ginger. A root plant; sharp, burning, warming. In that world it was an article of trade coming from the direction of India, and its addition to drinks was a known usage among the Arabs.

That the word entered Arabic from another language is widely accepted. I issue no ruling about its precise source.

Now set the two admixtures side by side:

The two admixtures are opposites of one another. One cools, one warms. And both are given to the same people.

And this sets up a tension with the thirteenth verse: there there was neither sun nor zamharīr — neither heat nor cold. The surroundings had been cleared of both extremes. But in the cup both extremes are present: coolness and warmth.

I read it thus — I present it as my own inference: what is removed from the surroundings is the compulsion of heat and cold; what is given in the cup is the same two qualities in a form that can be chosen. Heat endured and warmth drunk are not the same thing. The sūra rescues man from the two extremes and gives him back those same two extremes as a gift.

This is a reading; the verse sets up no such ground. That kāfūr cools and ginger warms is something that world knew.

The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān and there is disagreement about its meaning.

I adopt no firm preference. The first two views do not exclude one another: a name may be derived from a description — the same note was entered for tasnīm in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn.

It was recorded at the fourth verse: سَلَٰسِل (chains) and سَلْسَبِيل begin with the same sequence of sounds.

The fourth verse of the sūra says salāsil for those who cover over; its eighteenth verse calls the spring of the abrār salsabīl.

I record this as an observation about sound, not as a claim of derivation. Whether the two words come from the same root is disputed and I do not settle it. What I record is only this: at the two poles of the sūra stand two words that call one another to the ear — one that binds, one that flows.

As was recorded in the section on al-Aʿlā as well: no meaning is to be drawn from a resemblance of sound.

The verb is passive: "it is named". Who names it is not said.

And this word speaks quietly with the first verse of the sūra.

In the first verse man was not مَذْكُورًا — he was not a thing mentioned, he had no name. In the eighteenth verse a spring has a name, and it is said.

Without loading it too heavily, I record this as an observation: the sūra opens with a nameless being and, in the middle of its description, sets down a name.

Wa yaṭūfu ʿalayhim wildānun mukhalladūn, idhā raʾaytahum ḥasibtahum luʾluʾan manthūrā · Wa idhā raʾayta thamma raʾayta naʿīman wa mulkan kabīrā "Round them go youths made everlasting; when you see them you take them for scattered pearls. And when you look there, you see a bliss and a great dominion."

In the fifteenth verse yuṭāfu (is passed round) was passive. Here the same root comes active: yaṭūfu — goes round. And the subject is given.

The scene is completed: first the vessels going round were seen, now those who take them round become visible.

وِلْدَان — its singular is وَلِيد: newborn, child, youth. Root: و-ل-د — to beget, to be born. This root was taken up in the discussion of al-Balad 90/3.

مُّخَلَّدُون — root: خ-ل-د. To remain a long time, to be perpetual. From the same root khulūd (perpetuity), khālid (abiding), khuld (the state of perpetuity).

The word is a passive participle of the tafʿīl form: mukhallad — "made perpetual".

Several views are transmitted about what the word says:

All three are mentioned in the sources. I adopt no preference, and I write this plainly: about whom this word indicates and about the nature of these beings the text says nothing further.

The Qurʾān gives no detail on this matter, and neither do I. In the classical sources various explanations are advanced about these beings, and some of them are elaborations with no basis in the text. Because I am not sure of them I do not transmit them.

What the text says is this much: there are youths going round them, held fixed in their state, and their appearance is given by way of a simile.

لُؤْلُؤ — pearl. In that world it was the most valuable export of the Persian Gulf; it is a substance Arab trade knew.

مَّنثُور — root: ن-ث-ر. To scatter, to disperse, to sprinkle. Nathr — scattering; and this is why prose in Arabic is called nathr: speech not strung to a measure, left free.

What does the simile rest on? Two things at once:

1. Brightness — the colour and light of the pearl. 2. Dispersal — manthūr means not strung. A strung pearl (manẓūm) stays in a row; a scattered pearl is everywhere.

The second is the principal one here, because the verb is "they go round". What is described is a multitude that does not stay in place but moves about.

And this image is used elsewhere in the Qurʾān as terror.

In Sūrat al-Qāriʿa the following simile is made of people: كَٱلْفَرَاشِ ٱلْمَبْثُوثِ — "like scattered moths" (al-Qāriʿa 101/4). In al-Ghāshiya, of the cushions of the garden: وَزَرَابِىُّ مَبْثُوثَةٌ — "carpets spread out" (al-Ghāshiya 88/16).

A note: manthūr (ن-ث-ر) and mabthūth (ب-ث-ث) are separate roots; both mean "scattered" but they are not the same word. I draw no derivational link between them.

The link I draw is at the level of meaning: the same image — a scattered multitude — is terror in al-Qāriʿa and beauty in al-Ghāshiya and al-Insān. And this is another example of the principle recorded for the root ش-ق-ق in the section on al-Inshiqāq: a movement by itself carries no verdict; what determines the verdict is what the movement takes as its subject. If what is scattered is moths it is terror, if pearls it is beauty.

The address suddenly shifts to the second person singular: raʾaytahum (when you see them), ḥasibtahum (you take them for), raʾayta (you see).

This is the shift of address (iltifāt) taken up in the sections on al-Humaza and al-Muṭaffifīn. Into a scene recounted for nineteen verses in the third person, the reader is called directly.

And in the twentieth verse there is something more: the verb has no object.

Wa idhā raʾayta — "and when you see…" See what? It is not said. When the answering clause comes, the object is still indefinite: raʾayta naʿīman wa mulkan kabīrā — "you see a bliss and a great dominion."

In the section on al-Inshiqāq this was recorded about idhā clauses whose answer is not given: the answer's not being uttered does not mean that there is no answer; it means that it was not worth uttering, or that it could not be uttered. Here what is missing is not the answer but the object, yet the function is the same: what is to be looked at is not specified, because wherever one looks the same thing is seen.

ثَمَّ — and this word requires attention: it is not ثُمَّ (thumma, "then") but ثَمَّ (thamma) — an adverb of place meaning "there". The two words are very close in writing and are confused.

Root: م-ل-ك. To own, to hold in hand, to rule. From the same root malik (a king), mulk (ownership, sovereignty), mamlūk, malakūt.

And this is the quietest but the hardest sentence of the sūra.

In the eighth verse these people were giving their own food to a needy man, an orphan and a captive. The captive is the person who is the subject of ownership — a human being who has an owner.

In the twentieth verse the same people are told that a great dominion is seen.

The sūra gives dominion to those who gave away what they had. And the person to whom they gave was a human being who could be owned.

I record this as my own reading; the words of the two verses are in the text. The verse does not explain what the mulk is, and I add no elaboration either.

ʿĀliyahum thiyābu sundusin khuḍrun wa istabraq, wa ḥullū asāwira min fiḍḍah, wa saqāhum Rabbuhum sharāban ṭahūrā "Upon them are garments of fine green silk and of thick brocade; they have been adorned with bracelets of silver. And their Lord has given them a pure drink to drink."

There is a difference among the imams of the variant readings in the pronunciation of the word: in one reading ʿāliyahum (accusative, an adverbial or circumstantial in the sense of "upon them"), in another ʿāliyuhum (nominative, as subject or predicate).

I do not give which imam holds which reading, because I am not sure.

The consequence for meaning is small: on either reading the garments are upon them. The difference lies in how the sentence is built.

Root: ع-ل-و — height. It was treated in the discussion of al-Layl 92/20 (al-aʿlā).

The verse counts two separate names of cloth, and both are words that entered Arabic from outside. This is widely accepted among the lexicographers; I issue no firm ruling about which language the words came from or by what route.

• سُندُس (sundus) — fine, soft silk.
• إِسْتَبْرَق (istabraq) — thick, glossy, figured silk; brocade.

That the two are counted together is an elaboration: there is the fine as well as the thick. What was said in a single word in the twelfth verse (ḥarīr — silk) is here divided into two kinds.

Some of the words used in this sūra's description of luxury entered Arabic from outside: zanjabīl, sundus, istabraq; and for kāfūr the possibility exists as well.

The reason for this is not linguistic but commercial. All of these substances were imported goods — they came from India, from China, by way of Iran. In a language the name of an object most often arrives together with the object.

This is an observation and carries no verdict about the text. It shows only this: the picture of wealth the sūra draws is built out of things the addressee really knew but did not possess. This is the social side of the principle recorded at al-Baqara 2/25 — language is taken from the experience of the addressee, and that experience is the experience of the market.

أَسَاوِر — its singular is سِوَار or أُسْوِرَة: a bracelet. Root: س-و-ر.

حُلُّوا۟ — passive: "they were adorned". Root: ح-ل-ي — ornament, jewellery. Ḥuliyy — an ornament.

Silver again. As was recorded at the fifteenth verse, the Qurʾān speaks elsewhere of bracelets of gold as well (al-Kahf 18/31); this sūra stays with silver from beginning to end.

An observation, with its note entered: the أَسِير (captive) mentioned in the eighth verse was, by his root, "the one who has been bound" — a person whose wrist is tied. In the twenty-first verse an ornament is put on the wrists of the abrār.

The roots of the two words are different (أ-س-ر / س-و-ر) and I draw no derivational link between them. What I record is at the level of the image: the bound wrist and the adorned wrist. This is a reading; the text sets up no such link.

The most important sentence in the sūra's description of the garden is here, and it is generally taken for a last-place detail and passed over.

Throughout the description the verbs were either passive or without a stated subject: yuṭāfu ʿalayhim (15), dhullilat (14), yusqawna (17), tusammā (18), ḥullū (21). A world without an agent.

And the only subject given, in the nineteenth verse, was the servers.

Now, in the last sentence of the description, for the first and only time the subject of the verb is stated openly: رَبُّهُمْ — their Lord.

Saqāhum Rabbuhum — "their Lord gave them to drink." The verb is active, the subject explicit.

That is, the sūra leaves all the bounty unsigned and signs the last of it.

In the section on al-Takwīr a similar structure was recorded: in that sūra none of the twelve conditional clauses had an agent, and the name of the agent was given only in the last verse. The same technique is applied here inside the description.

And the finding recorded for yusqawna in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn — "they do not take for themselves, it is given to them" — here takes its last step: the giver becomes known.

Root: ط-ه-ر. This root was treated in detail in the discussion of al-Bayyina 98/2 (ṣuḥufan muṭahhara) and compared with ʿAbasa 80/13-16. I summarise the finding there: the root means cleanness, being far from filth; ṭahāra, ṭahūr, muṭahhar, taṭhīr are from the same root. And this distinction was recorded: مُطَهَّرَة is a passive participle — not "clean" but "made clean".

What is peculiar to this passage is the pattern. Here the word is not muṭahhar but طَهُور (ṭahūr) — the faʿūl pattern.

In Arabic this pattern states agency and intensity. That is, ṭahūr is not "that which is clean" but "that which cleans". It takes this name not because it is itself clean but because it cleans what it touches.

The Qurʾān uses the same word of rainwater: "And We sent down from the sky a pure (ṭahūr) water" (al-Furqān 25/48). Rainwater is ṭahūr because cleaning is done with it.

And now the work of the verse becomes visible.

The whole description of the garden in the sūra was in the language of pleasure: coolness, warmth, shade, fruit, silk, ornament. The last drink, however, is defined not by a pleasure but by a function: it cleanses.

That is, the last item of the reward is not an enjoyment but a purification. And the one who gives it is the only subject whose name is stated openly.

What it cleanses is not said. In the classical sources there are various explanations on this point — such as the removal of something left within. The text does not say it and I add no elaboration either. What is said is this much: the drink cleanses.

I record this as my own reading: the sūra closes its description not with a pleasure but with a cleansing, and it gives the subject of that close by name for the first time.

Inna hādhā kāna lakum jazāʾan wa kāna saʿyukum mashkūrā "This is a return for you; and your striving has been met with thanks."

The summit of the sūra. Seventeen verses of description close with a single sentence — and what the sentence does is to rename the whole description.

لَكُمْ — "for you". The verse shifts suddenly to the second person plural.

In the twentieth verse the address had shifted to the second person singular (raʾayta — you see); there the addressee was the reader. Here it shifts to the second person plural and the addressee is the abrār themselves.

That is, in its last sentence the sūra drops the description and speaks directly. This is a speech uttered in the garden — and the sūra relays it without putting it in quotation marks.

Root: ج-ز-ي. Treated at the ninth verse: to give in return, to pay; used both of a good and of a bad return.

And now go back to the ninth verse:

لَا نُرِيدُ مِنكُمْ جَزَآءً وَلَا شُكُورًا — "we want from you neither a return nor thanks." (76/9)

إِنَّ هَٰذَا كَانَ لَكُمْ جَزَآءً وَكَانَ سَعْيُكُم مَّشْكُورًا — "this is a return for you; your striving has been met with thanks." (76/22)

The same two words. In the same order. Once refused, once given.

Jazāʾ and shukūr — these two were exactly what was not wanted from people in the ninth verse. What is given in the twenty-second verse is exactly these two.

This is the tightest structural move of the sūra and it is built entirely at the level of the words. What the abrār refused comes back from another hand.

And its logic is plain: one who stops asking something of people is not deprived of receiving it; only from whom he will receive it changes.

I record this link as a reading drawn from the sharing of the words; the words in the two verses and their order are in the text and can be compared.

Root: س-ع-ي. Treated in the discussions of al-Layl 92/4 and al-Ghāshiya 88/9. I summarise the findings there: its concrete sense is to walk fast — the state between walking and running; from there it widened into "to strive, to run after a task". The conclusion recorded in al-Layl was this: man is not a standing being but a running one; the question is not "are you going?" but "where?"

At al-Ghāshiya 88/9 this word occurred in the construction لِسَعْيِهَا رَاضِيَة — "well pleased with its own striving". The finding recorded in the section on al-Ghāshiya: there too there is a striving, but the striving turns back to the one who strove.

al-Insān 76/22 takes the same word and changes its subject.

The two verses form a pair: one an approval from within, the other an approval from above.

Root: ش-ك-ر. Treated at the third verse, and there the explanation the lexicographers transmit was recorded: at the centre of the root lies giving much in return for little; a she-camel that gives plentiful milk for all that she eats little is called shakūr.

Here the word is a passive participle: mashkūr — "thanked, met with thanks". That is, not the one who thanks but the one who is thanked.

And who is the agent? It is not said — but it also cannot be said. The verb's coming in the passive is necessary; for had its subject been written openly, the sentence would have been built directly as God's thanking a servant. The verse says it with a passive participle: it states the outcome and leaves the agent implicit.

There are places where the Qurʾān uses this word of God as an attribute — in the shakūr pattern. That is, the idea is not foreign: the giver gives in return to the one given to.

And the root sense of thanks falls exactly into place in this sentence: much in return for little. The deeds the sūra counted were few — one meal, one vow, one fear. Their return ran to seventeen verses.

It was recorded in the section on how the sūra is built; here it is completed:

لَمْ يَكُن شَيْـًٔا مَّذْكُورًا — "he was not a thing mentioned." (1) وَكَانَ سَعْيُكُم مَّشْكُورًا — "your striving has been met with thanks." (22)

Both sentences are built with كَانَ. Both end with a passive participle on the same pattern. And between the two lies the whole story of man.

The being that is not mentioned becomes the being that is thanked.

And what closes the distance between the two words stands in the middle of the sūra: one meal, given though they loved it, without any return being asked.

I record this as my own reading. The pattern of the two words, their roots and their positions in the sūra are the data of the text.

Innā naḥnu nazzalnā ʿalayka'l-Qurʾāna tanzīlā "It is We who have sent down the Qurʾān upon you piece by piece."

Here the sūra changes direction. Seventeen verses of description end and the turn is made back to the addressee.

The sentence builds one of the densest accumulations of emphasis in Arabic:

1. إِنَّا — inna + nā: a particle of emphasis. 2. نَحْنُ — a separate pronoun. Grammatically it is unnecessary; the verb already carries the subject. The grammarians call it ḍamīr al-faṣl or the pronoun of corroboration: it states specification — "we, and no other". 3. تَنزِيلًا — an absolute object.

The threefold emphasis shows that the sentence is answering an objection. The objection is not in the text but is known from other places in the Qurʾān: the claims about the source of the text.

Root: ن-ز-ل. Treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/23. The finding there was this: in Arabic there are two patterns from the same root and the Qurʾān uses both — anzala and nazzala; the second states that the act was done piecemeal, by repetition. That the Qurʾān came down spread over twenty-three years is recorded in the pattern of the word.

What is peculiar to this passage is the addition of the absolute object: nazzalnā … tanzīlā. The verbal noun too is of the same pattern (tafʿīl). That is, the "sending down piece by piece" is itself stressed once more.

The place of the verse is strange at first sight. For twenty-two verses the garden and the abrār have been recounted; now suddenly the source of the revelation is spoken of.

The link appears in the next three verses. The twenty-fourth verse will give a command: be patient, do not obey. The twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth will give two more commands: remember, prostrate.

The establishing of the source before the command is the logic of the sūra. The bindingness of a command depends on who gives it. The twenty-third verse puts in place the ground on which the four commands rest.

And there is one more link: the abrār were people who paid their vows (7) — those who carry out what binds them. Now a bond is given to the addressee.

Fa'ṣbir li-ḥukmi Rabbika wa lā tuṭiʿ minhum āthiman aw kafūrā "So be patient for the ruling of your Lord; and obey none of them who is a sinner or an ingrate."

The verse begins with فَ: it is We who sent it down, so be patient. The command is given as the consequence of the previous verse.

The grammatical point is here, and it is usually lost in translation.

In English we say "to be patient with something", and that suggests putting up with it. Arabic too has the construction ṣabara ʿalā, and it means "to put up with something".

In the verse there is no عَلَىٰ, there is لِ.

The lām here states direction and purpose: "for your Lord's ruling", "until His ruling comes", "towards His ruling".

The difference is not small. Had it been built with ʿalā, the ruling would have been a burden and patience would have meant bearing it. Built with the lām, the ruling becomes something awaited and patience becomes the state of waiting for it.

That is, the verse does not say "put up with your Lord's ruling"; it says "wait for your Lord's ruling."

And this agrees with the sūra's description of the abrār: they too were people who awaited a day (7, 10).

Root: ح-ك-م. This root was taken up by way of the last verse of Sūrat al-Tīn (aḥkamu'l-ḥākimīn); I recall the description there: the usual English renderings — "ruling", "judgement" — carry nothing of the concrete sense of the root; at the centre of the root lie restraining and holding. The bit put in a horse's mouth (ḥakama) is from the same root: it keeps the animal from going where it wants.

And this binds the two halves of the verse together. In the first half a ḥukm (something that holds) is awaited; in the second half the command "do not obey" is given — that is, the addressee is asked to hold himself. And ṣabr was already "to hold" (al-Baqara 2/45).

Three words, one movement: ṣabr (holding oneself), ḥukm (the decision that holds), lā tuṭiʿ (not being dragged along).

I record this as my own reading; the description of the root is transmitted.

Root: أ-ث-م. Ithm — sin. According to the explanation the lexicographers transmit, beneath the root lies the idea of becoming heavy, slowing down, being left behind: sin is what holds a person back from good.

I transmit this explanation; I issue no firm ruling on the historical development of the root. But if it is right, the word carries a particular echo in this sūra: in the twenty-seventh verse these people will be said to leave a heavy day behind them. What makes heavy and the day that is heavy gather around the same people.

In a negative command أَوْ in Arabic means "both of them".

When it is rendered "obey not a sinner or an ingrate", it stands as though there were a possibility of choosing one of them. But in a sentence of prohibition aw widens the scope: whichever it may be. The English equivalent is "neither the one nor the other".

The word comes for the second time in the sūra.

In the third verse kafūr was one of the two states man may be in — an abstract possibility. Here it is concrete persons sitting opposite: مِنْهُمْ — "of them".

And this detail is important: āthim and kafūr are set side by side.

• Āthim — the one who does: faulty in his act.
• Kafūr — the one who covers: he has made a habit of covering what he sees.

They are two distinct faults and the verse counts both. As was recorded in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/6, unbelief is not not-knowing but covering over what one knows; ithm, however, is on the side of behaviour.

Against what is "obeying" (طاعة) a warning? The verse does not forbid a debate, it forbids following. In the discussion of al-Ghāshiya 88/22 this was recorded: "lasta ʿalayhim bi-muṣayṭir" — your task is not to compel. Here the other side of that is stated: do not let them drag you either.

Wa'dhkur isma Rabbika bukratan wa aṣīlā · Wa mina'l-layli fa'sjud lahū wa sabbiḥhu laylan ṭawīlā "And remember the name of your Lord morning and evening. And in a part of the night prostrate to Him; and glorify Him through a long stretch of the night."

Root: ذ-ك-ر. It occurs three times in the sūra and this is the second.

In the first verse man was not madhkūr — he was not mentioned. Here the addressee is commanded to remember.

And what the sequence says is this — I record it as my own reading: the first work given to the being that was not mentioned is to mention. The sūra opened with a lack and turned that lack into a command.

ٱسْمَ رَبِّكَ — "the name of your Lord". The verse does not say "remember your Lord", it says "remember His name". Remembrance is set down not as a state of thinking but as a work done with the tongue. The same construction is found at al-Aʿlā 87/15 as well (wa dhakara'sma Rabbihī).

بُكْرَة — root: ب-ك-ر. The first part of the day, early morning. From the same root bākūra (the first-ripening, the earliest produce), bikr (firstborn; untouched), ibtikār (to act early).

The idea of the root is priority: being at the head of the line.

أَصِيل — root: أ-ص-ل. The last part of the day, the time from the afternoon to sundown.

From the same root أَصْل (aṣl) — root, foundation, origin. The historical link between the two senses is disputed among the lexicographers and I make no firm claim of derivation. But that the two stand together is striking: aṣl is the bottom of a thing, aṣīl the bottom of the day.

Together the two words give the two ends of the day. In Arabic this is one way of saying "continually": when the two ends are named, what lies between them is covered.

The particle مِنْ is partitive: in a part of the night. The whole is not asked.

Then comes the second clause: wa sabbiḥhu laylan ṭawīlā — "glorify Him through a long night."

There is an apparent tension: one says "in a part of it", the other "long". The classical explanation is this: two separate spans are given for two separate works — a portion of the night for prostration, a long portion for glorification. That is, the clauses do not cancel one another, they divide.

فَٱسْجُدْ — root: س-ج-د. To put the forehead to the ground; and in the root sense of the word lie bending, submitting. This root was treated in earlier sections.

سَبِّحْ — root: س-ب-ح. Its concrete sense is to move swiftly in water or in air, to swim. Tasbīḥ is to hold God far from deficiency — in the logic of the word there is a moving away, a stripping clear. This root was taken up in the discussion of al-Aʿlā 87/1.

In the classical commentaries it is said that these two verses point to particular times of prayer, and different pairings are made as to which time corresponds to which word.

No legal ruling is issued in this commentary and I adopt no preference as to which of these pairings is correct. The wording of the verse gives no particular name of a time; what it gives is a distribution: the two ends of the day and a portion of the night.

And now the quietest contrast of the sūra becomes visible.

In the thirteenth verse the abrār were مُّتَّكِئِين — reclining, having set down their weight, not needing to move.

In the twenty-sixth verse the addressee is told فَٱسْجُدْ — prostrate; and through a long portion of the night.

That is, the sūra describes the reward as rest and the road as sleeplessness. And it sets the two side by side in the same text, thirteen verses apart.

I record this as my own reading; the content of the two verses is in the text.

Inna hāʾulāʾi yuḥibbūna'l-ʿājilata wa yadharūna warāʾahum yawman thaqīlā "These people love what passes quickly and leave a heavy day behind them."

The verse begins with the demonstrative that points to what is near: hāʾulāʾi — "these, the ones here".

The fifth verse, speaking of the abrār, used the definite article (al-abrār) — a genus. Here there is a demonstrative: persons standing opposite, who can be pointed at.

It points to the same group as minhum ("of them") in the twenty-fourth verse.

Root: ح-ب-ب. For the second time in the sūra.

In the eighth verse: عَلَىٰ حُبِّهِ — they gave though they loved it. In the twenty-seventh verse: يُحِبُّونَ ٱلْعَاجِلَةَ — they love what comes quickly.

The same root, two types of man, two different acts:

The sūra does not condemn love; there is love on both sides. What it separates is whether the love can be let go of.

I record this as my own reading; the shared root and the arrangement in the two verses are in the text.

This word was treated in detail in the discussion of al-Qiyāma 75/20; I summarise the finding there: the root ع-ج-ل is to hurry, to bring forward, and al-ʿājila means "what comes quickly, what is had in advance"; in one place the Qurʾān calls this life al-dunyā ("the near one"), here al-ʿājila ("the hurried one") — two separate names for the same idea, one measuring distance and one speed.

I do not repeat it. What is peculiar to this passage is the second half of the sentence.

In al-Qiyāma the sentence ran thus: "No! You love what comes quickly and you leave the hereafter" (al-Qiyāma 75/20-21). In al-Insān the same sentence has changed at three points:

The first difference — person. al-Qiyāma says it straight to their faces; al-Insān speaks of them in a sentence whose addressee is the Prophet. The context of the sūra requires this: in the twenty-fourth verse it had said "do not obey them", and the twenty-seventh verse explains who those "them" are.

The second difference — the name of what is left. al-Qiyāma says "the hereafter": a place, a period. al-Insān says "a heavy day": a load.

And this turns the sentence into a scale. Al-ʿājila is a word that measures speed; thaqīl is a word that measures weight. In language as in physics the two are opposites: what can be carried quickly is what is light. These people choose the light and the quick and leave the heavy — because it is not possible to carry both.

I record this as my own reading; the semantic fields of the two words are transmitted.

The third difference — وَرَآءَهُمْ. It is taken up separately below.

Root: و-ذ-ر. Its meaning: to leave, to abandon, to let go.

And this root has a striking property in Arabic: the perfect (past tense) form of the verb has dropped out of classical usage. Only the imperfect (yadharu) and the imperative (dhar) forms are used. When a past tense is required it is taken from another root, from ت-ر-ك (taraka).

The lexicographers call this a nāqiṣ (defective) verb: a verb whose conjugation is not complete. Arabic has several examples of this and wadhara is the best known of them.

The Qurʾān uses this verb only in the imperfect and the imperative — it observes the root's own constraint.

A caution: this root must not be confused with the root of the word نَذْر (vow) in the seventh verse of the sūra, namely ن-ذ-ر. The two roots are distinct; closeness of sound establishes no derivational link.

A further caution: the root of the verb yadharūna is not ذ-ر-ر either. That is a separate root (dharra — a mote, the smallest particle; dhurriyya — offspring) and has nothing to do with this verse.

The defectiveness of the root is not an instrument of interpretation — it is a historical fact of the language and I draw no meaning from it. I record it only because a reader who looks at the conjugation of the word will meet this gap.

Root: و-ر-ي. Warāʾ — behind, back.

And this word is counted among the aḍdād of Arabic (words of opposite meanings): it can mean both "behind" and "in front / beyond".

The first reading is the stronger and my ground is its agreement with the verb: the object of "to leave" stays behind. It is not binding; the second reading does not run against the text either, and when the two are combined a strangely accurate picture emerges: throwing behind you something that stands in front of you.

And a link: at al-Inshiqāq 84/10 the giving of the book وَرَآءَ ظَهْرِهِ — "from behind his back" — was treated. There too the same word, in the same direction: the side the person does not see.

Read together, the two verses yield a sequence: one who throws a day behind him in this world receives his book from behind him in the hereafter. I record this as a reading; the shared word of the two sūras is in the text.

Root: ث-ق-ل. Weight, load. Its derivatives are common in the Qurʾān:

• أَثْقَال (athqāl) — weights, burdens. At al-Zalzala 99/2 it is used of the earth: "when the earth brings forth its burdens" — treated in the section on al-Zalzala.
• مِثْقَال (mithqāl) — the weight of a thing, a unit of weight. At al-Zalzala 99/7-8: "the weight of a mote."
• ٱلثَّقَلَان (al-thaqalān) — "the two weights"; the Qurʾān uses this name for men and jinn (al-Raḥmān 55/31).
• thaqulat, used together with مَوَازِين — at al-Qāriʿa 101/6: "whoever's scales weigh heavy."

The root's work in the Qurʾān is measuring. Weight is what is weighed.

And its being used of a day does something here. The verse names the day not as a time but as a load — as something that can or cannot be carried. And in al-Qāriʿa what was weighed was deeds; here what is weighed is a day.

I record this as my own reading; the occurrences of the root in the Qurʾān are the data of the text.

Naḥnu khalaqnāhum wa shadadnā asrahum, wa idhā shiʾnā baddalnā amthālahum tabdīlā "We created them and We made their binding firm. And when We will, We replace them with their like."

As in the twenty-third verse, a separate pronoun stands at the head: naḥnu khalaqnāhum. "We created them."

In the twenty-third verse this stress was for the source of the text; here it is for the source of man.

أَسْر — root: أ-س-ر. And this root was treated at the eighth verse: its concrete sense is to bind; إِسَار (isār) is the leather thong used in binding; أَسِير (asīr) is "the one who has been bound".

The word here is the verbal noun of the same root: asr — a binding, a being bound, the state of having been bound.

شَدَدْنَا — root: ش-د-د. To make firm, to draw tight, to strengthen. From the same root shadīd (severe), shidda (tightness).

The classical explanations of what the word intends:

Both come out at the same place: the binding that holds man upright and keeps him from falling apart.

And now we come to the tightest internal link in the sūra.

The sūra names the person who is fed "the one who has a binding"; twenty verses later it names man's own body "his binding".

What it says is this: the captive's binding is visible, man's own binding is invisible. But both are bindings and both are in someone's hand. The one who draws the captive's binding tight is a man; the one who draws man's binding tight is God.

And this reading is completed by the second half of the verse: the one who drew the binding tight can loosen it.

I record this as my own reading. The shared root, however, is uncontested linguistic data and the two words are in the same sūra.

بَدَّلْنَا — root: ب-د-ل. To put another thing in the place of a thing. Badal — what takes the place; tabdīl — substitution.

أَمْثَٰل — root: م-ث-ل. A like, an equal. Mathal — an example, a simile; mithl — an equivalent.

The striking side of the verse is this: the threat is not "We destroy you" but "We replace you with your likes".

That is, what is said is not death but replaceability. The Qurʾān sets this up plainly elsewhere:

"If He wills, He removes you and brings a new people." (Fāṭir 35/16)

And this speaks with the first verse of the sūra. There, there was a time when man was not mentioned. Here it is said that another can be put in man's place.

The two verses together set up a frame: man was neither necessary at the beginning nor indispensable now. And precisely for this reason, the meeting of his striving with thanks in the twenty-second verse is not a right but a gift.

I record this as my own reading.

تَبْدِيلًا — again an absolute object. The sūra uses this structure five times — tafjīrā (6), tadhlīlā (14), taqdīrā (16), tanzīlā (23), tabdīlā (28) — and all five carry the verse-ending. This will be returned to in the section on architecture.

Inna hādhihī tadhkiratun fa-man shāʾa'ttakhadha ilā Rabbihī sabīlā "This is a reminder; whoever wills takes a way to his Lord."

Root: ذ-ك-ر. For the third and last time in the sūra.

1. مَذْكُورًا (1) — man was not a thing mentioned. 2. وَٱذْكُرْ (25) — remember. 3. تَذْكِرَة (29) — the text's own name.

The text names itself a "reminder" — not knowledge, not a book, not a ruling, not news. And the pattern tadhkira (tafʿila) states the instrument that does a work or the work itself: the thing that reminds.

This sentence pattern has come before us twice already in this commentary, and setting the three side by side shows what the text is doing:

Three sūras set up the same structure: the text is a reminder + whoever wills …

And the three complete it with different verbs. In ʿAbasa remembering (mind), in al-Takwīr going straight (posture), in al-Insān setting out on a road (movement).

In the section on al-Takwīr this was recorded about yastaqīm: the pattern (istifʿāl) states seeking, that is, not "he became straight" but "he wanted, he sought to become straight". al-Insān's verb carries a similar effort: ٱتَّخَذَ (Form VIII) — he acquired, he took to himself, he held. Not receiving something given, but making something one's own.

I record this triad as my own reading; the texts of the three verses can be compared.

It was recorded at the third verse; here it is completed:

The way was shown (3); the way is taken (29). The sūra closes its own fork: two possibilities were opened in the third verse, and in the twenty-ninth one of them is chosen.

And the expression إِلَىٰ رَبِّهِ has the same structure as ilā Rabbika, treated at al-Inshiqāq 84/6. The finding recorded there was this: the particle ilā states a going all the way to a goal, and in al-Inshiqāq this was a statement of fact — man was going in that direction anyway. Here, however, it is a choice: the taking of the way is left to whoever wills.

The two verses do not contradict: al-Inshiqāq states the inevitability of the arrival, al-Insān the selectability of the road.

Wa mā tashāʾūna illā an yashāʾa'llāh, inna'llāha kāna ʿalīman ḥakīmā "And you do not will unless God wills. Surely God is knowing, wise."

The first half of this verse is word for word the same as the last verse of Sūrat al-Takwīr: wa mā tashāʾūna illā an yashāʾa'llāh.

And that verse was treated in a table in the section on al-Takwīr. No side was taken.

I do not repeat the frame recorded there; I recall only two notes, because they hold good here as well:

First, the measure recorded in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/7: none of the parties has maintained that man is not responsible; the dispute is over how responsibility is established.

Second, the observation made in al-Takwīr about the sequence: the qualification comes after the invitation. First "whoever wills" is said, then "your willing too rests on something" is said. Had the order been reversed the text would have been inconsistent. That is, the qualification is put in not to cancel the invitation but to show what the invitation rests on.

No side is taken on this question in this commentary and there is no need to set out the theological views again; the table in the section on al-Takwīr stands where it is.

In the two sūras the same sentence comes with two different closes:

As was recorded in the section on al-Takwīr, in that sūra the construct Rabbu'l-ʿālamīn was the naming at last of the agent concealed for twenty-nine verses — a disclosure of identity.

al-Insān, however, closes the sentence with two attributes:

• عَلِيم — root: ع-ل-م. Knowing; an intensive in the faʿīl pattern.
• حَكِيم — root: ح-ك-م. Possessed of wisdom; one who does a thing in its proper place.

And the word ḥakīm sets up a link with the twenty-fourth verse. There the addressee was told "be patient for your Lord's ruling". Here it is said that the one who gives that ruling is wise.

That is, the sūra gives the quality of the awaited ruling six verses later: what is awaited is not an arbitrary decision but a decision in its proper place.

I record this as my own reading; the shared root in the two verses is in the text.

And this reading too is worth recording, not as a theological preference: having said that man's willing rests on something, the verse adds that what it rests on is one who knows and who does things in their place. That is, the limit itself is given together with the quality of the one who set the limit. This can also be read as a sentence of consolation — but that is my reading; the wording of the verse does not say it.

In the last four verses of the sūra this root comes four times, and the arrangement sets up a symmetry:

That is: God — man — both at once — God. The middle verse joins the two ends in a single sentence.

And recall the first verse: there man was not a شَىْء (thing). Some of the lexicographers attach shayʾ and mashīʾa to the same root. What I record is an observation; I issue no ruling about the historical unity of the root.

Yudkhilu man yashāʾu fī raḥmatih, wa'ẓ-ẓālimīna aʿadda lahum ʿadhāban alīmā "He admits whom He wills into His mercy. As for the wrongdoers, He has prepared for them a painful punishment."

The verb is not "He gives" but "He admits" (يُدْخِلُ), and the particle is فِى.

That is, mercy is described not as a thing given but as a place entered.

The finding recorded in the section on al-Infiṭār for la-fī naʿīm / la-fī jaḥīm works here too: "the abrār do not attain the bliss, they are within the bliss; the fujjār are not thrown into the fire, they are within the fire. Both are described not as entering a place but as being in a place."

This verse, however, uses the verb of entering explicitly. That is, the outcome is the same (being inside) but here the moment of passage is mentioned as well.

رَحْمَة — root: ر-ح-م. This root was treated in detail in the section on al-Fātiḥa (al-Raḥmān, al-Raḥīm); the finding there was this: the concrete counterpart of the root is رَحِم (raḥim) — the mother's womb. I do not repeat it.

But the word's use in this verse agrees with that analysis: a raḥim is already a place entered into. The verb and the particle agree with the root sense of the word.

I record this as an observation.

The point of word order is here.

The expected order would have been wa aʿadda li'ẓ-ẓālimīna ʿadhāban alīmā. The verse pulls the word ٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ in front of the verb and leaves it in the accusative.

The grammarians call this اِشْتِغَال (ishtighāl): the object is taken to the front, and the verb is then "occupied" with a pronoun referring back to it (lahum — "for them"). The function of the construction is emphasis and setting apart. In English it is answered by "as for the wrongdoers…".

And this divides the sentence in two. In the first half the verb is in front and the subject is God. In the second half the object is in front, and the group becomes a heading of its own.

In the fourth verse the group was named ٱلْكَٰفِرِين. In the thirty-first verse ٱلظَّٰلِمِين is said.

The sūra names the same pole with two different words, and the words look at different things:

ك-ف-ر — as recorded in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/6: to cover. The fault is in the relation to knowledge; covering what one sees.

ظ-ل-م — the concrete sense of the root is darkness (ẓulma). And its second sense: to put a thing where it does not belong. This is the definition given for ẓulm in the Arabic dictionaries: waḍʿu'sh-shayʾi fī ghayri maḥallih. Here the fault has to do not with knowledge but with placing.

That the word changes at the end of the sūra agrees with the content of the sūra — I record it as my own reading:

This sūra was built from beginning to end upon being in the right place. The abrār were people who put the food they loved where it belonged: to the needy, the orphan, the captive. The other side, however, was putting a heavy day where it did not belong — behind them (27). And the thirtieth verse qualified God as حَكِيم (one who does things in their proper place).

Ẓālim is the name of the exact opposite of this picture: to displace.

It was recorded at the fourth verse; I repeat it here because they are easily confused:

• أَعْتَدْنَا (4) → root ع-ت-د
• أَعَدَّ (31) → root ع-د-د

Both mean "he prepared" and their sounds are similar. But they are separate roots and I draw no derivational link between them.

The root of aʿadda is ع-د-د: to count, to make count. ʿAdad (number), ʿidda (a counted term), istiʿdād (preparation) are from the same root. The link between preparing and counting comes from the idea of "counting out and making ready".

The sūra opens with a sentence of preparing and closes with a sentence of preparing. And at both ends the space allotted to this side is small.

And note the order in the last verse: mercy first, punishment after. In the fourth verse there was no order — it stood alone. Here mercy has been brought to the front.

I record this as the last link in the chain of the observation about proportion that I recorded in the section on how the sūra is built.

The most conspicuous technique of the sūra is to establish links by using the same root in two or three separate places. The table shows how tight an economy has been set up:

In a text of thirty-one verses, an economy of repetition of this density shows that the sūra is not a randomly ordered series of descriptions.

I present this as my own reading; the repetitions themselves are the data of the text and can be counted.

All thirty-one of the thirty-one verses end with the same structure: a long vowel + a liquid consonant (r / l) + ā. This is one of the most uniform patterns of verse-ending among the sūras treated in this commentary.

And within the pattern there is a movement:

Three observations:

First: the r sound dominates the section of description, the l sound the section of address. The sound changes together with the subject.

Second: the single r exception in the second region is the twenty-fourth verse — and the word that ends that verse is كَفُورًا, that is, the word of the third verse. At the one place where the series is broken, a word comes back from the beginning of the sūra.

Third: the last two verses end with m and step outside the series. In a text of thirty-one verses the sound breaks only at the end — and at the place where it breaks, the subject changes too: description and command end and there is a passage to the attributes of God (ʿalīman ḥakīmā), then to the final verdict (ʿadhāban alīmā).

I record these as observations, not as a claim of miracle. As was stated in the sections on al-Qāriʿa and al-Inshiqāq in this commentary, sound-and-sense correspondence is a phenomenon found in all languages, and a pattern of verse-endings is something sought in Arabic poetry as well. What is recorded is that the pattern can be counted.

The sūra uses the same grammatical structure five times, and all five carry the verse-ending:

All five are of the تَفْعِيل pattern and all five are on the same measure. In the section on al-Inshiqāq the function of this structure was recorded: to emphasise the verb or to state its kind or amount; in English it is answered by a doubling.

The additional function here is this: the pattern is at the same time producing the rhyme. That is, the sūra uses an instrument of meaning as an instrument of sound as well.

The verb kāna occurs in the sūra with striking frequency: 1 (lam yakun), 5 (kāna mizājuhā), 7 (kāna sharruhū), 15 (kānat qawārīra), 17 (kāna mizājuhā), 22 (twice: kāna lakum / kāna saʿyukum), 30 (kāna ʿalīman).

And what is striking is this: most of these recount a future thing in the perfect tense. The garden has not yet been seen, but the admixture of the cup "was kāfūr"; the day of reckoning has not yet come, but "your striving had been met with thanks".

In Arabic the use of the past tense to state certainty is common, and the Qurʾān does this often in the scenes of the hereafter. It is also said that in some usages kāna states continuity or fixity (as in the formula kāna'llāhu ʿalīman ḥakīmā): "it has been so all along".

Both explanations exist in the classical sources and I leave both of them here as they are.

First: thanks too being refused.

The two things the ninth verse separates — jazāʾ and shukūr — are each concrete for today.

To give without return is most often understood as "to give without taking money". The verse finds this insufficient and adds a second item: not to want to be mentioned either.

Its present-day range is wide. The announcing of a help, the naming of a donation, the sharing of a good deed — none of these is money, but all of them are shukūr. And by the measure of the verse they are a return that has been taken.

In the section on al-Balad the same measure was set up from the side of wealth: "expenditures that bring visibility, that secure standing, that establish a relationship in return are not, by the measure of the sūra, the steep ascent." al-Insān says the same measure from the mouth of the giver.

And this distinction must be preserved: the verse does not forbid a good deed's being known; it puts doing a good deed in order to be known outside the measure. The difference between the two is at the level of intention and cannot be checked from outside. That the verse puts the sentence into the person's own mouth is meaningful for this reason too: only the person himself can know it.

Second: the captive entering the list.

This is the hardest and the most present-facing side of the sūra.

The orphan and the needy are on the list of every moral system. Helping them is socially approved as well; the one who does so is not blamed but praised.

The captive is outside this list, and his being outside it is no accident. The captive is the person who is not of one's own side. A kindness done to him requires explanation to one's own side.

The verse's carrying the measure to this point means this: the measure of goodness shows itself where goodness is not expected.

Its present-day counterpart requires no direct political example, and this commentary takes no side in current politics. The measure itself is clear enough: the measure of a person's or an institution's mercy is taken not by how it behaves towards its own circle but by how it behaves towards the one counted on the other side. And that behaviour has no social return at all — this is exactly the description of "the steep ascent" recorded in the section on al-Balad.

A further note: the feeding of the captive takes place within a relation of power. The eighth verse is addressed to a person who has another human being in his hands. That is, the measure is not only about generosity but about how power is used.

Third: the opposite of unbelief being thanks.

The fork the third verse sets up shifts the accustomed place of religious dispute.

The common construction is this: the believer and the unbeliever; one who accepts a view and one who does not. The verse's construction is different: one who sees and acknowledges what has been given, and one who covers over what has been given.

As was recorded in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/6, this distinction takes the word out of being a term of abuse and makes it a description of a state. And it has one further side: in this construction the matter is not an opinion but an accounting. What have you got, where did it come from, what did you do with it?

The first three verses of the sūra count out the items of this accounting as well: existence, a body, the senses, the way. And not one of these four items is the person's own earning.

Fourth: the senses being described as an instrument of examination.

The word order of the second verse — "We are testing him, and therefore We made him hearing and seeing" — is strangely concrete for today.

Hearing and seeing are today man's two most heavily used and most heavily steered capacities. What is watched, what is listened to, where attention is given — these have ceased to be personal choices and are fields upon which whole industries are built.

What the verse says is not a criticism of technology; but the frame it sets works directly: these two capacities have been given, and the reason for their being given is a testing. The measure recorded for the verb yūʿūn in the section on al-Inshiqāq attaches here — man's inside is a vessel and it is filled with things every day.

Fifth: the choice between weight and speed.

The contrast the twenty-seventh verse sets up — al-ʿājila (what comes quickly) against yawman thaqīlā (a heavy day) — describes a preference about time.

Put into today's language: the question of which term one looks to when deciding. The choice between outcomes that can be measured in the near term, that return quickly, that are seen at once, and outcomes that have weight in the long term.

And the verse's diagnosis is fine: no one denies the heavy day. He leaves it behind him. This is not an opinion but a placing — putting something where it will not be looked at.

The abrār of the seventh verse were doing the reverse: binding what has not yet come to the present by a vow. The difference between the two stances is, before a difference of belief, a difference of attention.

Sixth: the striving being met.

What the twenty-second verse says — "your striving has been met with thanks" — is one of the most unexpected sentences in the Qurʾān.

Throughout the sūra man's standing has been described: a beginning that is not mentioned (1), a drop that is a mixture (2), a firmly bound frame (28), a being whose like can be put in his place (28). None of these is a standing to boast of.

And the final verdict says that the striving of that being has not gone unanswered.

Its present-day counterpart lies here: whether one's labour is seen is one of man's oldest questions and most often it goes unanswered. The number of people who think that the work they do is unknown, that they have not received their due, that their effort has not been recorded, is not falling.

The verse answers this not as a consolation but as a verdict: a record is being kept and a return is being given.

And what is striking is with which word the return is given. Not "it was paid" or "it was met" — but "it was met with thanks". That is, the transaction is named not as the closing of an account but as an act of thanks.

I record this as my own reading; the word's being a passive participle is linguistic data.

Seventh: reclining and prostrating.

In the thirteenth verse the abrār are reclining; in the twenty-sixth the addressee is commanded to prostrate during a portion of the night.

That the two verses stand in the same sūra sets a measure: rest is the description of the reward, not the description of the road.

Its practical counterpart is a note about the recounting of religious life in terms of "peace of mind". The sūra does promise peace — but it puts it in the thirteenth verse, on the side of the reward. What stands on the side of the road is sleeplessness, patience, and giving away what one has.

I record this as my own reading; the moods of the two verses (one description, one command) are in the text.

• Whether the sūra is Meccan or Medinan: no preference was adopted; the three views were given with their grounds in a table, and it was recorded that the word asīr is not by itself evidence for dating.
• The content of the report transmitted as the occasion of revelation was not relayed and no ruling was issued about its soundness; the ground for this (not taking a side in a sectarian dispute, and the measure al-ʿibratu bi-ʿumūmi'l-lafẓ) was written out plainly.
• Two readings were given as to whether the expression lam yakun shayʾan madhkūrā in verse 1 means "he was not at all" or "he was, but was not mentioned"; one preference was stated with its ground and it was written that it is not binding.
• The derivational link between shayʾ and mashīʾa was transmitted from the lexicographers; no ruling was issued about the historical unity of the root.
• Four explanations were given as to the plural adjective qualifying a singular noun in amshāj in verse 2; no preference was adopted.
• The words nuṭfa and amshāj were not attached to any modern description; the position recorded for ʿalaqa in the section on al-ʿAlaq was preserved exactly and was recalled without repeating its grounds.
• It was not settled whether the asymmetry of pattern between shākir and kafūr in verse 3 has the ground of meaning or the ground of the verse-ending; both grounds were taken seriously and it was written that the ground of meaning is not by itself a proof.
• The explanation of the root shukr as "much in return for little" was transmitted from the lexicographers; no ruling was issued about the historical development of the root.
• It was not given which imam holds which reading in the difference of variant reading about the writing of the alif in verses 4 and 15-16; likewise no attribution to an imam was given for the reading of ʿāliyahum in verse 21. I am not sure.
• The closeness of sound between salāsil and salsabīl was recorded as an observation; no claim of derivation was made and it was not settled whether the two words are from the same root.
• No meaning was drawn from the closeness of sound between kafūr and kāfūr; the counting of kāfūr as from the root ك-ف-ر was relayed as something transmitted and was not presented as firm data.
• Two views were given as to whether kāfūr is a known substance or the name of a spring; one preference was stated with its ground and it was written that it is not binding.
• Two readings were given as to whether al-nadhr in verse 7 means their own vows or the obligations laid upon them; a preference was not held to be necessary. The legal rulings about vows were not entered upon.
• Two readings were given as to whether the speech in verse 9 was uttered with the tongue (an elided verb of saying / lisān al-ḥāl); no preference was adopted.
• Three views were given as to the antecedent of the pronoun in ʿalā ḥubbihī in verse 8; the first was preferred on the parallel with al-Baqara 2/177 and it was written that it is not binding.
• The order miskīn → yatīm in verse 8, differing from that of the other sūras, was given no firm explanation.
• No ruling was drawn from this verse about the legal status of captives; it was recorded that the verse is not a verse of ruling but a verse of attribute.
• The historical link of the word ḥarīr in verse 12 with the other branches of the root ح-ر-ر (ḥarr, ḥurr): no ruling was issued.
• On the question of whether the descriptions in verses 13-21 are to be read literally, reliance was placed on the principle recorded at al-Baqara 2/25; and it was presented as my own reading that verse 16 is a place where the text itself applies that principle.
• No firm ground was given for the choice of silver in verses 15-16 and 21; the reading recorded was not counted binding.
• Two views were given as to who the agent of the verb qaddarūhā in verse 16 is; no preference was adopted.
• Which language the words zanjabīl, sundus and istabraq come from: no ruling was issued; it was recorded only that their having entered Arabic from outside is widely accepted.
• Three views were given as to whether salsabīl in verse 18 is a proper name or a description; no preference was adopted.
• Three explanations were transmitted about wildānun mukhalladūn in verse 19 and no preference was adopted. No elaboration without basis in the text was relayed about the nature of these beings; because I am not sure of them they were not transmitted.
• No derivational link was drawn between manthūr (ن-ث-ر) and mabthūth (ب-ث-ث); the link drawn is at the level of meaning.
• What sharāban ṭahūrā in verse 21 cleanses was not said; the existence of classical explanations was mentioned and no detail was given.
• No derivational link was drawn between asāwir (س-و-ر) in verse 21 and asīr (أ-س-ر) in verse 8; the link drawn is only at the level of the image and it was written that it is a reading.
• The explanation of the root ithm in verse 24 as "becoming heavy, being left behind" was given as transmitted; no ruling was issued about the historical development of the root.
• Which times of prayer verses 25-26 correspond to: no preference was adopted and no legal ruling was issued.
• The derivational link between aṣīl (evening) and aṣl (root) in verse 25: no ruling was issued.
• Two readings were given as to whether warāʾahum in verse 27 means "behind" or "in front / beyond"; the first was preferred with its ground and it was written that it is not binding.
• The dropping out of the perfect tense of the verb wadhara was recorded as a fact of the language; no meaning was drawn from it. It was also stated that the root must not be confused with ن-ذ-ر and ذ-ر-ر.
• No side was taken on the question of will in verse 30; the table given at al-Takwīr 81/29 and the frame recorded at al-Baqara 2/7 were held sufficient and were not repeated.
• Two explanations were given as to whether asr in verse 28 is "the joints" or "the whole of the creation"; it was stated that the two come out at the same place and no preference was adopted.
• No derivational link was drawn between aʿtadnā (ع-ت-د) and aʿadda (ع-د-د); that the two roots are separate was written out as a caution as well.
• The observations about the sound regions of the sūra, the texture of the absolute object, the density of kāna and the economy of repetition were presented as my own reading, not as classical transmission.
• The madhkūr / mashkūr axis I set up between verses 1 and 22 is my own reading; the pattern of the two words, their roots and their positions in the sūra are the data of the text.
• The question of the beatific vision around al-Qiyāma 75/22-23 was not entered upon in this section; that dispute was left to the section on al-Qiyāma.