al-Mursalāt 77:12-13

Li-ayyi yawmin ujjilat · Li-yawmi'l-faṣl "For what day were they deferred? — For the day of separation."

Four idhā clauses have come one after another and none of them was completed: "when…", "when…", "when…", "when…". In Arabic idhā conveys a condition and calls for an apodosis. The apodosis does not come.

In its place comes a question.

This is a structure the grammarians have dwelt on. The explanations given:

The first and third readings are the more widespread. It makes no great difference to the sense.

But this should be recorded: the sūra counts four ruptures and, without giving an answer, turns to a question. This is a technique that leaves the telling to the reader. Across four verses a scene has been set; at the fifth step the text stops and asks: "For what day was all this held back?"

Who asks the question? Two explanations are given in the classical sources: either the question is one of taʿajjub (wonder) and is the text's own voice, or it is a question that will be put to people on that day. The first is the more widespread.

Root: أ-ج-ل. Ajal — an appointed term, the end of a term. In Turkish the borrowed word ecel is used only of death; in Arabic it means any appointed term whatever. The term of a debt is an ajal too.

• أَجَل — a term, a period. "Every community has its term" (al-Aʿrāf 7/34).
• مُؤَجَّل — bound to a term. "A decree with a fixed term" (Āl ʿImrān 3/145) — kitāban muʾajjalā.
• آجِل — what is left for later; its opposite is ʿājil (what is immediate).
• مِن أَجْلِ — "on account of…". The Turkish expression ecilden comes from this.

The verb is again passive and of the tafʿīl form: ujjilat — they were deferred, they were bound to a term. It is in the same pattern, the same voice and the same verse-ending as uqqitat in the preceding verse. The two verses read as continuations of one another.

And the two words say the same idea with two separate roots: being bound to a time (w-q-t) and being bound to a term (a-j-l). Not repetition but emphasis.

Root: ف-ص-ل. This root was treated in detail in this commentary in the section on al-Ṭāriq (innahū la-qawlun faṣl) and I do not repeat what was recorded there. What is to be taken from it:

- فَاصِلَة (fāṣila) — that which separates; the name of verse-endings. - مَفْصِل (mafṣal) — a joint; the place where two bones part. - تَفْصِيل (tafṣīl) — to explain a thing by separating it into its parts. - فَيْصَل (fayṣal) — a decisive judgement, the decision that ends a matter. - فَصْل also: a season, a chapter, a class. All of them are separated units.

And there it was recorded that faṣl works on three levels: it separates truth from falsehood, it delivers a decisive judgement, and it divides people in two.

As the name of a day this construct occurs in several places in the Qurʾān: al-Ṣāffāt 37/21; al-Dukhān 44/40; al-Nabaʾ 78/17; and in this sūra three times (13, 14, 38).

Here is one of the strongest internal links of the sūra.

In the fourth verse the oath was sworn by those that separate: ٱلْفَٰرِقَٰتِ فَرْقًا — root ف-ر-ق.

In the thirteenth verse the day is named: يَوْمُ ٱلْفَصْلِ — root ف-ص-ل.

The same idea, a different root. Both mean "to separate". The sūra builds its oath on separating, and names the day in the answer to the oath separating too.

What is the difference between the two roots? Arabic does not use them as synonyms, and the difference is worth recording:

Roughly: farq opens a distance, faṣl gives a decisive verdict. The first is a distance, the second a judgement.

And the work the sūra does is visible in the order of these two roots:

• In the oath (verse 4): separating occurs as a process — a work continually done.
• In the answer (verse 13): separating turns into a day — once and decisive.

That is, the sūra ties a separating that goes on in this world to a separating completed in the hereafter. What separates truth from falsehood has been sent and is at work; the final result of that work is a day.

I record this as my own reading. The senses of the two roots and the text of the two verses are not in dispute.

And the triangle with al-Bayyina is completed. In the section on al-Bayyina tafriqa (dividing along the wrong axis) was blamed. Now we have three points:

The third is the correction of the first: in this world people had divided along the wrong axis; on that day they will be divided along the right one. This is the counterpart of the diagnosis of "dividing along the wrong axis" recorded in the section on al-Bayyina.

I offer this triad as my own reading.