al-Mursalāt 77:8-11 — Four ruptures

Fa-idha'n-nujūmu ṭumisat · wa idha's-samāʾu furijat · wa idha'l-jibālu nusifat · wa idha'r-rusulu uqqitat

"When the stars are effaced · when the sky is parted open · when the mountains are scattered away · and when the messengers are appointed their time…"

The four verses are on exactly the same pattern, and the pattern itself does a work:

That is: particle of time + subject + passive perfect verb. In none of the four is the agent named. Who effaces, who parts, who scatters, who appoints the time — none of it is specified.

This preference has been recorded in several places earlier in this commentary: in the first verse of al-Zalzala (zulzilat), in the ninth verse of al-ʿĀdiyāt (buʿthira), in the opening sequences of al-Takwīr and al-Infiṭār. The scene is set without an agent; what happens is looked at, not who does it.

And all the verbs are in the perfect — the past tense. The use of the past tense for something that has not yet happened conveys in Arabic taḥaqquq: as certain as if it had happened. In the Qurʾān's scenes of the resurrection this is an established preference.

The verse-endings. All four verses end in the sound -at: ṭumisat, furijat, nusifat, uqqitat. And this sound continues into a fifth verse: ujjilat (12). An island of sound five verses long. Before it the endings were in tanwīned -ā (ʿurfā, ʿaṣfā, nashrā, farqā, dhikrā, nudhrā), after it they will be -īn/-ūn. The measure recorded in the section on al-Ghāshiya works here too: the sound changes where the subject changes.

A break in the sequence. The first three of the four verses tell of the cosmos: the stars, the sky, the mountains. It descends from above downward — the light in the sky, the sky itself, the heaviest body of the earth. An orderly descent.

The fourth, however, is not in the cosmos. The messengers.

This is one of the most striking transitions in the sūra and I shall take it up separately at verse 11 below. For now let us record: the scene begins cosmic, but it does not end cosmic.

Root: ط-م-س. The idea beneath the root: to destroy the trace, the form, the distinguishing lines of a thing. To erase a writing, to blur a road, to level a face.

Its derivatives and its uses in the Qurʾān:

• "Our Lord, efface their wealth" (Yūnus 10/88) — iṭmis ʿalā amwālihim. The wealth is not destroyed; it is made useless, unrecognisable.
• "Had We willed, We would have effaced their eyes" (Yāsīn 36/66) — la-ṭamasnā ʿalā aʿyunihim. The eye is not put out; its function of seeing is removed, and the eye becomes a flat surface.
• "We effaced their eyes" (al-Qamar 54/37).
• طَامِس — whose trace has been erased, become indistinct (used of a road, a track).

This is the root's most decisive feature: not to destroy but to render indistinguishable.

This distinction is decisive in reading the verse. The verse does not say "the stars went out" or "the stars fell". It says "the stars were effaced". What is effaced does not disappear; it becomes impossible to make out.

What does this mean for a star? A star's function is light; the function of light is to let things be distinguished. When a star is effaced the sky is not empty — it becomes indistinguishable.

And this connects with the whole of the sūra. The Qurʾān names one function of the stars plainly: finding one's way.

"It is He who made the stars for you, so that you may be guided by them through the darknesses of land and sea." (al-Anʿām 6/97)

The effacing of a star is the effacing of a mark of direction. The sūra opens the scene of the resurrection by removing the first instrument by which man finds his direction.

I record this as my own reading; the sense of the root and the content of al-Anʿām 6/97 are not in dispute.

A comparison with al-Takwīr. The same event is told in different sūras with different verbs, and the verbs do not say the same thing:

Three verbs point in three separate directions: dimming, dispersal, effacement. What they have in common is this: none of them says "went out." All three speak by way of the star's visibility. This stands out as a shared preference of the three sūras.

Root: ف-ر-ج. Its concrete sense: to open a space between two things, to leave a gap, to form a cleft.

Its derivatives show where the root opens out:

• فُرْجَة — a gap, a space, an opening.
• فَرْج — an opening, a cleft; and in the Qurʾān a veiled expression for a region of the body. This use too comes from the sense of "opening".
• فُرُوج — its plural: clefts, cracks.
• فَرَج — the opening up of a hardship, relief. In Turkish the borrowed words ferah ("at ease") and feraha çıkmak ("to come into relief") are from this root.
• تَفْرِيج — to open up a constriction, to relieve it.

Here is the root's most instructive side: the same root names both a cleft and a relief. The reason is plain — constriction is a narrowing, relief is a space opening between. The passing of a hardship is, in the word's own logic, the opening of a space between things that were pressed together.

And the Qurʾān uses this root of the sky once more — in exactly the opposite sense:

"Have they not looked at the sky above them, how We built it and adorned it, and it has no clefts (furūj)?" (Qāf 50/6)

This verse is the direct counterpart of the verse before us. The same root, the same object, the opposite verdict.

• The sky as it is now: mā lahā min furūj — it has no gap at all.
• The sky on that day: furijat — it was parted open.

In Qāf the sky's evidential force rested on its flawless wholeness: nowhere left open, nowhere cracked. In al-Mursalāt that wholeness comes undone.

I record this connection as an observation; the root and the object of the two verses are shared and this is beyond dispute. I do not claim a deliberate reference between the two sūras.

In this commentary the opening of the sky has been treated with two other roots, and in those two sections the difference between the roots was framed. Now a third is added.

What was recorded for ف-ط-ر in the section on al-Infiṭār:

The root's chief weight is on beginning. From the same root come fāṭir (who brings into being from nothing), fiṭra (the state of first creation), ifṭār (the breaking of a fast). Faṭr is to split something open for the first time and bring it into being; and the same root is used for the final dissolution as well. This is why fāṭir is an attribute of creating while infiṭār is a verb of dissolving — and the two stand in one root.

What was recorded for ش-ق-ق in the section on al-Inshiqāq:

In this root there is neither birth nor establishing. What happens here is the breaking apart of a whole. The root's other branches — mashaqqa (wearing down), shiqāq (division) — all look the same way: something was holding together, and now it is not.

And there the three were gathered in one sentence: "falaq opens what is closed; faṭr splits from nothing and establishes; shaqq divides what has been established."

ف-ر-ج is added to this trio as a fourth, and it has a place of its own:

The difference can be put most shortly thus: shaqq breaks apart, furūj opens a space.

Something split is divided in two; something parted open is something in the middle of which a space opens — like a door, like a curtain. That is, ف-ر-ج conveys not a division but an opening.

And this accords with another resurrection verse of the Qurʾān: "The sky was opened and became gateways" (al-Nabaʾ 78/19) — fa-kānat abwābā. There the opening of the sky is described as a passage. The same idea.

There is a fourth root as well and it must not be confused: ف-ت-ح (al-Qamar 54/11, fa-fataḥnā abwāba's-samāʾ). That too is opening, but the opening of a door; it conveys no splitting.

A limit: the division of labour I have drawn among the four roots is my own reading; the dictionary senses of the roots are transmitted, the division of labour among them is not. The same qualification was set down in the section on al-Inshiqāq.

And an echo. Recall the sense of faraj as "the opening up of a hardship". Read with the word's second sense, the sky's being furijat carries a strange side: in this sūra the parting brings relief to no one. But the tableau that will be set up for the godwary in verse 41 of the sūra recalls that branch of the word. I record this as an echo, not as a claim of interpretation.

Root: ن-س-ف. And the root of this word carries the sūra's most concrete link with agriculture.

The root has two uses, and the second is decisive:

1. نَسَفَ — to tear something up by its roots and fling it away, to break it from its foundation and cast it off. 2. نَسَفَ ٱلْحَبَّ — to winnow grain, that is, to toss the threshed crop against the wind so that the chaff is separated from the grain. The implement used for this work is called مِنْسَف (minsaf): a winnowing tray, a threshing sieve.

So the root names both the tearing up of a mountain and the winnowing of a threshing floor. The common point: to lift what is light into the air and let it fly.

Its uses in the Qurʾān:

• "They ask you about the mountains. Say: my Lord will scatter them away." (Ṭāhā 20/105) — yansifuhā Rabbī nasfā. The same verb, the same object, the same absolute-object structure.
• "We shall burn it, then scatter it into the sea." (Ṭāhā 20/97) — of the calf idol.

The second verse is noteworthy: there nasf is the end of an idol. It is burnt, then scattered and dispersed — no piece is left to be gathered up.

Now this root must be added to two links framed earlier in this commentary.

In the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt, of the word حُصِّلَ (ḥuṣṣila) in the sūra's last verses, this was recorded:

Taḥṣīl is a process of sifting. When wheat is harvested, straw and grain are mixed together. On the threshing floor the sledge is passed over it, then it is tossed against the wind: the light straw flies off, the heavy grain falls to the ground. What remains — what is obtained — is the grain.

In the section on al-Fīl, the end of the army was named with عَصْف (scattered crop stalks).

And in the second verse of this sūra the oath was sworn by the scattering wind: al-ʿāṣifāti ʿaṣfā.

Let us set the four words together:

The four are four moments of the same process: the scatterer, the scattered, the scattering, and what remains after the scattering.

I record this as my own reading; I do not present it as transmitted material. But the root senses of all four words were given one by one above and in the relevant sections, and none of them is disputed.

And what the table says is this: the scattering of the mountains is, in the Qurʾān's language, a work of the threshing floor. The heaviest and most fixed-seeming body of the earth is likened to straw in the winnowing tray. When the measure of weight changes, the heavy becomes light.

This is the same idea as the mountains becoming "carded wool" in Sūrat al-Qāriʿa; and, as recorded in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt, a thing that has lost its weight and hangs in the air is one of the shared images of these sūras.

The single most discussed word in the sūra, both for its spelling and for its meaning.

Root: و-ق-ت. Waqt — an appointed time. From the same root:

• مِيقَات — an appointed time or place; a time of meeting. In the Qurʾān: "The day of separation is indeed an appointed time" (al-Nabaʾ 78/17) — kāna mīqātā.
• مَوْقُوت — bound to a time. "Prayer is prescribed for the believers at appointed times" (al-Nisāʾ 4/103) — kitāban mawqūtā.
• تَوْقِيت — the fixing of a time.

The verb is of the tafʿīl form and is passive. Its original form would be وُقِّتَتْ (wuqqitat): the root letter wāw, with a ḍamma on it.

And here a phonetic rule of Arabic comes into play. A wāw that has taken a ḍamma at the head of a word can turn into a hamza. This is a known transformation in Arabic with other instances as well (wujūh → ujūh in some dialects, wishāḥ → ishāḥ). Thus وُقِّتَتْ becomes أُقِّتَتْ.

So the hamza at the head of the word is not original; it has taken the place of a wāw bearing a ḍamma. Anyone looking for the root must look not to the hamza but to the wāw.

A variant reading. The word has been read both as wuqqitat and as uqqitat; a reading without the doubling is also transmitted. The meaning does not change — all three are from the same root and in the same sense. I give no imām's name.

The verb is plain, but its object is strange: the messengers are appointed a time. Two chief explanations are given in the classical sources:

The first reading is the more widespread and has strong indications within the Qurʾān:

• "On the day God gathers the messengers, He will say: 'What answer were you given?'" (al-Māʾida 5/109)
• "We shall question those to whom messengers were sent, and We shall question the messengers who were sent." (al-Aʿrāf 7/6)
• "How will it be when We bring a witness from every community, and bring you as a witness against these?" (al-Nisāʾ 4/41)

All three verses set up the same scene: on that day the messengers are called as witnesses.

The two readings do not exclude one another: the time of gathering is at the same time the moment at which the awaited term runs out.

Now let us look at the four verses together:

After three cosmic events the fourth is not cosmic. The scene leaps from the dissolution of the universe to the records of humanity.

And this leap explains the whole sequence. The dissolution of the universe is not the subject of the sūra; the subject of the sūra is the reckoning. The four verses set up a scene and at the fourth step show why that scene was set up: star, sky and mountain disperse, because the real matter is the opening of a session of testimony.

There is a similar movement in Sūrat al-Takwīr, treated in that section: into the middle of a twelve-verse cosmic sequence entered "when the girl buried alive is asked". There too the scene shifted from the universe to a human being.

The fifth verse of the sūra ran: fa'l-mulqiyāti dhikrā — those that deliver a reminder.

The eleventh verse runs: wa idha'r-rusulu uqqitat — when the messengers are appointed their time.

The same work, from two ends. In the oath there were those who carry the reminder; in the scene those who carried that reminder are called to account. And the verbal link between the two verses is plain too: the first word of the oath is ٱلْمُرْسَلَٰت, the subject of the eleventh verse ٱلرُّسُل — the same root, ر-س-ل.

The sūra opens with those who are sent and continues with the summoning of those who were sent.

And this is a datum bearing on the disagreement over the first five verses. What al-mursalāt is is disputed; but in the eleventh verse al-rusul, from the same root, occurs, and there who is meant is not disputed. This may be recorded as an indication supporting the "prophets" or "angels" reading.

But it does not count as decisive evidence: the use of the same root in two different fields within one sūra is ordinary in the Qurʾān. In this commentary, in the section on al-Ghāshiya, it was shown that the same roots (naṣb, rafʿ) were used at the two ends of the sūra with two different objects. I therefore record the indication without using it as a preference.