al-Mursalāt 77:16-18 — The first of the three proofs: history

A lam nuhliki'l-awwalīn · Thumma nutbiʿuhumu'l-ākhirīn · Kadhālika nafʿalu bi'l-mujrimīn

"Did We not destroy the former peoples? · Then We make the later ones follow them · Thus do We deal with the guilty."

The argument section of the sūra begins here, and all three sections open with the same pattern:

Three sections, three identical openings. This is the sūra's second most visible structural feature (the first being the refrain).

أ + لم — the interrogative hamza + the particle of negation. In Arabic this combination frames an istifhām taqrīrī: a question asked not to seek information but to make the addressee concede. Its answer is known and it is affirmative.

Its English equivalent is the "did We not…?" pattern, and it does the same work: it appears to be asking a question while in fact obtaining assent.

Why confirmation? Because the things asked about are things the addressee cannot deny:

• He knows that peoples were destroyed in the past (their ruins lie around Mecca).
• He knows that he was created from a fluid.
• He knows that he buries his dead in the ground.

The sūra does not begin with a disputed piece of knowledge. It sets out from three things the addressee already accepts.

And all three have something in common: none of them concerns the hereafter. All three proofs are taken from this world. The sūra proves the hereafter not from the hereafter but from this world.

This is an established method of the Qurʾān and was recorded in the section on al-Ṭāriq:

The Qurʾān regularly uses the same method against this objection: it does not argue about the future, it takes you back to the past. For a thing that has happened once, its happening a second time is no novelty in point of possibility.

Root: ه-ل-ك. Halaka — he perished, he was destroyed, he was ruined. أَهْلَكَ (ifʿāl) — he destroyed.

The root's use in the Qurʾān is broad; but in the narratives of destruction this verb is used regularly. The word conveys not a natural perishing but the execution of a sentence: what perishes has been made to perish.

The voice of the verb matters: nuhlik — first person plural, active. In the preceding section (8-11) all the verbs were passive and the agent was not named. Here all at once the agent speaks: "We".

This transition is meaningful. In telling the scene the agent was concealed; in presenting the proof the agent comes forward. For the whole force of the proof lies in the doer's being the same: the one who destroyed in the past and the one who will hold the reckoning in the future are the same party.

ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ — the former ones, the first. ٱلْءَاخِرِينَ — the later ones, those who come after.

The two words form a regular pair in the Qurʾān. And in this sūra one of them will come back: in verse 38, jamaʿnākum wa'l-awwalīn — "We have gathered you and the former peoples".

That is, the sūra speaks in verse 16 of the destruction of the former peoples, and in verse 38 of the gathering of them all. The same group, in two separate scenes.

A small point, but one that has been dwelt on.

• Verse 16: nuhlik — past (in the interrogative pattern; lam + imperfect conveys the past).
• Verse 17: nutbiʿu — imperfect, general/future.

Between the two verses the tense changes: the destruction is an event that has happened, the following is an event that will happen.

ثُمَّ — in Arabic this is the conjunction that inserts an interval (unlike fāʾ). That is, there is a stretch of time between the first group and the second.

أَتْبَعَ (ifʿāl) — to make someone follow after another, to send behind. Root ت-ب-ع: to follow, to go after. From the same root come tābiʿ, tabaʿa, ittibāʿ, tābiʿīn.

The choice of verb is meaningful: it does not say "we shall destroy the later ones too". It says "we make the later ones follow them". That is, the second group is described as the party going after the first.

This is not a declaration of fate but the statement of a rule, and the next verse will say so plainly: whoever does the same act gets the same outcome. The being made to follow is the following of an act.

I record this as my own reading.

And the eighteenth verse explains what the two verses mean.

كَذَٰلِكَ — "thus". The kāf is the particle of comparison, dhālika the demonstrative. It points to what has been told above.

نَفْعَلُ — imperfect: "we do". Not a single event but an ongoing practice.

بِٱلْمُجْرِمِينَ — and here is the critical word.

Root: ج-ر-م. The concrete sense of the root is worth dwelling on. According to what the lexicographers record, jarm originally means to cut, to sever; and جَرِيم is associated with the gathering of dates or fruit. From here arises jurm (a crime): a crime is the act that severs the bond.

• جُرْم — a crime, an offence.
• مُجْرِم — one who commits a crime.
• إِجْرَام — to commit a crime. "My crime is upon me" (Hūd 11/35) — ʿalayya ijrāmī.
• لَا جَرَمَ — "assuredly, inevitably" — a fixed expression.

What the verse does is this: in verses 16 and 17 there were two groups — the former and the later. That is, a distinction by time. The eighteenth verse removes that distinction and puts in its place a distinction by act: al-mujrimīn.

That is, the measure is not "coming first" or "coming after"; it is committing a crime. If the former peoples were destroyed, they were destroyed not because they came first but because they were guilty.

This is another form of the principle recorded in the section on al-Humaza: the judgement is attached to an attribute, not to an identity. And in this sūra the same technique is present in the refrain repeated ten times: al-mukadhdhibīn too is an attribute.

The relation between the two attribute-words: in this section the sūra says mujrimīn, in the refrain mukadhdhibīn. Are they the same people?

The sūra will say so plainly in verse 46: "Eat, enjoy yourselves a little; you are the guilty" — there the addressee is the addressee of the refrain, and is named mujrimūn.

This is the same movement recorded in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn:

The sūra had pronounced woe upon the muṭaffifīn in the first verse. In the tenth verse it pronounces woe upon the mukadhdhibīn… The twelfth verse ties the head of the chain to its end. That is, the muṭaffif of the first verse and the mukadhdhib of the tenth are the same person — one named by his act, the other by his belief.

Al-Mursalāt does the same work: mujrim (act) and mukadhdhib (stance) are joined in verse 46.

For the addressee of these three verses "the former peoples" was not an abstract notion.

Mecca lay on the trade routes running north and south. The caravans of Quraysh set out twice a year, and their routes passed beside abandoned settlements. The Qurʾān says this plainly elsewhere: "You pass by them in the morning and at night" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/137-138) — this verse was touched on for another reason in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt.

That is, the question "did We not destroy the former peoples?" points to something the addressee saw on the road. This is why the answer to the confirming question is known: the question asks about something known.

In this section I give no names of historical peoples, because the verse gives none either. The sūra's preference is a general expression like al-awwalīn; to narrow that generality would be to add something to the text.