al-Mursalāt 77:20-23 — The second of the three proofs: the body

A lam nakhlukkum min māʾin mahīn · Fa-jaʿalnāhu fī qarārin makīn · Ilā qadarin maʿlūm · Fa-qadarnā fa-niʿma'l-qādirūn

"Did We not create you from a despised fluid? · Then We placed it in a firm lodging · Until a known measure · So We measured — and how excellent are We at measuring!"

A sequence of four verses, and the four flow like a single sentence: a-lam + fa + ilā + fa. Unbroken.

This verse was quoted earlier in this commentary. In the section on al-Ṭāriq, when māʾin dāfiq (a fluid poured forth) was treated, this was recorded:

The word is indefinite: māʾin — "a fluid". Here the indefiniteness works in the direction of belittling (taḥqīr): an ordinary liquid, not even named. The Qurʾān gives the same image elsewhere in plainer words: "Did We not create you from a despised fluid?" (al-Mursalāt 77/20); "Then He made his progeny from an extract of a base fluid" (al-Sajda 32/8).

Now we are at that "plainer word" itself.

Root: م-ه-ن. It has two branches of meaning and the lexicographers record both:

• مَهَانَة — worthlessness, weakness, being held in contempt. مَهِين — despised, weak, of no worth.
• مِهْنَة — work, service, a craft. مَاهِن — a servant, one who does the work.

The link between the two branches is explained by the social lowness of service work. I transmit this as a relation drawn by the lexicographers, not as a settled etymology.

The pattern in the verse: فَعِيل — mahīn. And a caution is needed here, because the word is easily confused:

The verse has the first: the fluid is despised, not despising. (The second word occurs in the Qurʾān too — of punishment: ʿadhābun muhīn.)

The choice of the word. In al-Ṭāriq the fluid was described as dāfiq (poured forth) — by its movement. Here it is called mahīn (despised) — by its worth. The same object, two different adjectives; and the two sūras do two different things:

Al-Mursalāt's argument is this: the starting material was worthless and a human being came out of it all the same. If this happened once, there is no reason it should not happen a second time.

And it says one further thing from the other side — which accords with the sūra's general addressee: the source of the being who speaks with pride is a liquid he himself counts worthless.

In the section on al-Ṭāriq this was linked with Yāsīn 36/77: "Has man not seen that We created him from a drop? Yet there he is, an open adversary." The same link holds here.

قَرَار — root: ق-ر-ر. To stay in a place, to settle, to remain fixed. Its derivatives:

• قَرَّ — he settled, he remained fixed.
• قَرَار — a place of staying, a place of settling; and "decision" (steadiness, fixity).
• مُسْتَقَرّ — a place of settlement. "On the earth there is a dwelling place for you" (al-Baqara 2/36).
• قُرَّة — coolness of the eye; qurrat ʿayn, the thing on which the eye rests and does not stray.

The Turkish words karar, istikrar and mukarrer are from this root. The single idea beneath the root: to stay in place, not to move.

مَّكِين — root: م-ك-ن. This word was treated in this commentary in the section on al-Takwīr: dhī quwwatin ʿinda dhi'l-ʿarshi makīn (81/20). What was recorded there:

عِندَ ذِى ٱلْعَرْشِ مَكِين — firm in place in the presence of the source. Which question it answers: does he have access to the source, did he receive it directly?

And there this word was linked with Yūsuf 12/54: "Today you are with us firmly placed (makīn) and trusted" — a word describing an official's standing in the language of the court.

The root's sense: مَكَان (place) belongs to the same family. Makīn is one whose place is firm, whose position does not shift. Used of a person it means "of established standing", used of a place, "unshakeable".

In al-Takwīr the word conveyed the position of a messenger; here of a womb. The same word names two different kinds of firmness: one the firmness of authority, the other of protection.

I record this as an observation.

The pairing of the two words: قَرَارٍ مَّكِينٍ. Both say the same idea — to stay and to be firm. It looks like repetition but is not: qarār conveys the function (this is a place to stay in), makīn the quality (and it is firm).

And the sound. The verse-endings of the two verses: mahīn / makīn. The same metre (faʿīl), the same sound, two consecutive verses — and opposite content:

• Māʾin mahīn — a weak, worthless fluid that cannot hold on.
• Qarārin makīn — a firm, unshakeable place that holds.

The rhyme carries the contrast. The weak is placed inside the firm. The measure recorded for the pair āniya / jāriya in the section on al-Ghāshiya works here too: "the ear notices the link between two verses before it works out the meaning."

Interpreting the Qurʾān by the Qurʾān. The same construct occurs once more:

"Then We made him a drop in a firm lodging." (al-Muʾminūn 23/13) — fī qarārin makīn.

The two verses use exactly the same construct.

إِلَىٰ — a particle conveying a limit: "until". That is, the lodging is not indefinite but towards an end.

قَدَر — root: ق-د-ر. This root was analysed in three branches of meaning in this commentary in the section on al-Qadr, and it occurred in the section on ʿAbasa as well. What is to be taken from the section on al-Qadr:

Root: ق د ر. In Arabic this root carries three senses that are connected but open in different directions: 1. Measure, determination, apportioning. Qadara — he measured, he cut to size, he fixed its amount. Its derivatives: qadar, miqdār, taqdīr, qudra. From the Qurʾān: "We created everything according to a measure (bi-qadar)" (al-Qamar 54/49). 2. Worth, honour, elevation. "To know a thing's worth." "They did not appraise God with His true appraisal" (al-Anʿām 6/91). 3. Straitness, constriction. Qadara ʿalayhi — he narrowed it, he restricted it. "He whose provision is straitened" (al-Ṭalāq 65/7); "when He straitens his provision" (al-Fajr 89/16).

And the link recorded there: "the relation between measuring and worth is built into the language itself. To know a thing's worth is to give it the right measure. Measuring and valuing come from the same root in Arabic — because worth is the result of right measuring. One who measures wrongly cannot value either."

In this sūra the root occurs four times in three verses:

That is, the last two verses of a four-verse section rest entirely on this root. The subject of the section is measure.

What is the qadar of verse 22? Two chief explanations in the classical sources:

The first is the more widespread and fits better with the particle إِلَىٰ: ilā is more suited to conveying a limit of time.

مَّعْلُوم — known. A passive adjective. Known by whom? It is not said — but the next verse gives the answer by saying "We measured".

And the choice of the word says something: the term is called not determined but known. Determinedness stands, in the eye of an outside observer, like a rule; being known requires the existence of one who knows.

The close of the section, and one of the densest plays on sound in the sūra: the same root twice, one after the other, in two different patterns.

A variant reading. The verb has been read both as فَقَدَرْنَا (without the doubling) and as فَقَدَّرْنَا (with the doubling, the tafʿīl form). There is no marked difference of meaning between the two readings: the first is "we measured / we had the power", the second "we measured out, we determined". Since the tafʿīl form conveys repetition and refinement, the second reading leans a little more towards "we measured stage by stage". I give no imām's name.

فَنِعْمَ — niʿma is in Arabic a verb of praise: an uninflected verb conveying commendation. Its opposite is biʾsa (how evil). The pattern is: niʿma + the class praised + (sometimes) the person praised.

Fa-niʿma'l-qādirūn — "how excellent are We at measuring", or "what excellent measurers!"

The presence of this pattern here is striking. The sūra has been proceeding in a hard tone from the start: destruction, woe, scattering, effacement. And here, at the end of a four-verse section, a pattern of praise appears all at once.

There are parallels in the Qurʾān: "What an excellent Protector, what an excellent Helper!" (al-Anfāl 8/40) — fa-niʿma'l-mawlā wa niʿma'n-naṣīr. And "How excellent a servant he was" (Ṣād 38/30, 44) — niʿma'l-ʿabd.

Why here? One reading is this, and I record it as my own reading: the subject of the section is measure, and measure works in two directions across the whole sūra. The one who measures is at the same time the one who holds the reckoning. The one who measured the term in the womb and the one who will measure the reckoning in life are the same — and the section proves the second by the first.

The function of the pattern of praise is this too: the sentence "how excellent are We at measuring" is not an aesthetic appraisal but a declaration of competence. The party able to do the work of measuring can do the second measuring too.

Indeed the "power" wing of the root is at work here: al-qādirūn means both "those who measure" and "those who have the power". The two senses are not separated — because, as recorded in the section on al-Qadr, qudra is already "the power to do a thing to its measure".

Let us read the four verses together:

1. You were created from a worthless fluid. 2. That fluid was placed in a firm place. 3. Until a determined term. 4. We are the ones who measure, and We measure well.

The argument is: what has once been measured and made can be measured and made a second time.

And its subtlety is that the measuring is invisible the first time. The term that passes in the womb passes before no one's eyes; no one measures, no one counts — yet the term runs and at its end a human being comes out.

What the sūra says: the same invisible measure is at work for the whole of life too.

I record this as my own reading. The words of the section were given one by one above.

A limit. These verses are not to be read as a description of embryology. The verse does not tell of a process of development; it states the existence of a measure. None of the words (fluid, lodging, term) is a technical term, and all are things any person of the period knew. The force of the argument comes precisely from this: it sets out from a piece of knowledge the addressee accepts. As has been recorded earlier in this commentary, dressing a verse in modern knowledge does not strengthen the argument but weakens it — because a confirming question cannot be asked with something the addressee does not know.