ʿAbasa 80:18-20

Min ayyi shayʾin khalaqah ۝ Min nuṭfatin khalaqahu fa-qaddarah ۝ Thumma's-sabīla yassarah "Out of what did He create him? Out of a drop He created him and gave him measure. Then He made the path easy for him."

In the third verse a question was asked and left unanswered. Here a question is asked and answered at once. The difference between the two questions shows the sūra's stance on knowledge:

• "Perhaps he will purify himself — what do you know?" → No answer. Because this is knowledge man cannot reach.
• "Out of what did He create him?" → There is an answer, and in the same verse. Because this is knowledge everyone has.

The sūra falls silent about what man does not know and speaks about what he does know. And the accusation comes out exactly from here: man's ingratitude arises not from something he does not know but from his disregarding something he does know.

مِنْ أَىِّ شَىْءٍ — "out of what". The indefiniteness of the word shayʾ and the interrogative sense of ayy carry here a note of belittling (taḥqīr): "out of how insignificant a thing". The tone is close to the dismissive English "out of what, of all things?"

In the section on al-ʿAlaq the recurrence of this pattern in the Qurʾān was recorded: man, when he grows proud, is reminded of the material he came out of. Al-Ṭāriq 86/5: "So let man look at what he was created from." The same movement.

Root: ن-ط-ف. Its concrete sense is to drip, to seep. Naṭafa'l-māʾu — the water dripped. Nuṭfa — a small quantity of water, a drop. Some of the lexicographers also give the word the sense of "clear water".

Take note: the word is not a technical term of reproduction. It means "drop"; and in choosing this word the Qurʾān is stating not a medical description but a quantity. The force of the accusation comes from here: out of a thing this small.

The Qurʾān's sequence of creation. This word occurs in many places in the Qurʾān as part of a sequence (al-Muʾminūn 23/12-14; al-Ḥajj 22/5); these sequences were gathered in the section on al-ʿAlaq and I do not repeat them here. Sūrat al-ʿAlaq did the same work with a different word: علق (that which hangs and clings). The two sūras choose two different stages; the point in common is that the stage chosen is the least prestigious one.

Root: ق-د-ر. To measure, to determine a quantity, to have power over. Qadr — quantity, value, measure. Taqdīr — determination by measure. Qadīr — the one who has power. Miqdār — a measure.

A difference of variant reading. Two readings are transmitted: فَقَدَّرَهُ (with shadda) and فَقَدَرَهُ (without it). In both the sense comes out as "He determined by measure"; the reading with shadda denotes repetition and detail. I give no imām's name.

What was measured? In the classical explanations: the place and proportion of the limbs, the term, the sex, the lifespan, the provision, the appointed end. The verse gives no detail.

But the word order says something: the letter fāʾ. Khalaqahu fa-qaddarah — no interval has been left between the creating and the measuring; the fāʾ denotes succession and adjacency. Creation and measure are two faces of the same operation.

And the meaning of this is: a drop by itself is nothing at all. What makes it something is the measure placed in it. The material is worthless, the ordering is what has value. And the logic of the accusation comes out of this too: man cannot boast of his material, and the ordering is not his own.

A nicety of word order. The normal order of the sentence would have been thumma yassara-hu's-sabīl. The object (al-sabīl) has been brought in front of the verb. In Arabic this is taqdīm, and it does two things: ikhtiṣāṣ (that thing precisely) and ihtimām (drawing further attention to that thing). It also preserves the harmony of the verse-endings (yassarah ends on the same sound as qaddarah and khalaqah).

So the sentence says: the path, yes the path itself, He made easy for him.

The particle ثُمَّ. Unlike the fāʾ, thumma denotes tarākhī: time comes in between. Creation and measure were adjacent; between the measure and the path there is an interval. The measure in the womb, the path in the world.

ٱلسَّبِيل — which path?

Preference: the second view looks the stronger, and its ground is that al-Insān 76/3 uses almost exactly the same expression and that there the continuation is openly bound to the dilemma of gratitude / ingratitude — and this passage of ʿAbasa too had opened with mā akfarah (how ungrateful he is). The two texts build the same chain: the path was shown, and man chose ingratitude.

This preference is not binding. And it does not exclude the first view: the making easy of birth can be read as the first step of the making easy of the path of life.

يَسَّرَ — to make easy. Root ي-س-ر. Yusr — ease; its opposite ʿusr — hardship. This pair was treated at al-Inshirāḥ 94/5-6; I do not repeat it here.

The choice of the word says something. The verse does not say "He showed the path" (hadā), it says "He made the path easy" (yassara). The difference is real: to show is to give knowledge; to make easy is to make the going possible. That is, man has not merely been told which path is the right one; he has also been given the equipment to walk it.

And this makes the accusation heavier. The excuse "I did not know" is closed off by hadā; the excuse "I could not do it" is closed off by yassara. The verse closes off the second excuse.