وَٱلسَّمَآءِ ذَاتِ ٱلْبُرُوجِ
The sūra opens with an oath. This is a common opening in the short Meccan sūras of the Qurʾān; it was treated in this commentary in the sections on al-Shams, al-Layl, al-Ḍuḥā and al-ʿĀdiyāt.
The function of the oath is particularly striking here: the things sworn by have to do with the answer of the oath. The sūra swears by the sky, by a day and by witnesses, and will then relate a scene of wrongdoing. That is, the notion of witnessing is built already inside the oath.
Dhāt is a word of annexation meaning "the one that possesses"; it is in the feminine form, because samāʾ counts as feminine in Arabic.
- ٱلسَّمَآءِ ذَاتِ ٱلْبُرُوجِ (1) — the sky, holder of the constellations.
- ٱلنَّارِ ذَاتِ ٱلْوَقُودِ (5) — the fire, holder of the fuel.
Two annexations on the same pattern. In the one, the sky and its constellations; in the other, the pit and its fire. An order established above, a fire lit below. By giving these two annexations in the same form, the sūra sets up the comparison.
Root: ب-ر-ج. The original sense of the root is to appear, to come out into the open, to be conspicuous. The derivatives of the root spread out from this centre:
- بُرْج (burj) — the tower of a fortress, a watchtower. It takes this name because it rises and is seen. Its plural is بُرُوج.
- تَبَرُّج (tabarruj) — a woman's displaying her adornment and her beauty, bringing it out into the open. The Qurʾān: "Do not flaunt your finery as in the first age of ignorance" (al-Aḥzāb 33/33); "without displaying their adornment…" (al-Nūr 24/60).
- بَارِج / بَرَّاج — open, plain, conspicuous.
The same root names both the tower of a fortress and the display of adornment. The shared core is "not being hidden, coming out into the open". The tower of a fortress is seen from far off across the plain; tabarruj is the making visible of what was covered.
I record this unity of root; I issue no moral ruling between the two usages, because the root itself carries no ruling.
| View | Explanation | Ground |
|---|---|---|
| The stations of the stars and planets — the constellations | The regions of the sky through which the sun and the moon travel | In the Arab astronomical tradition burūj is used in this sense; the idea of the mansions of the moon (manāzil) is in the Qurʾān as well (Yāsīn 36/39) |
| The great stars, the planets | The most conspicuous bodies "appearing" in the sky | The "to appear" sense of the root |
| Fortresses / palaces in the sky | Structures set up in the sky itself | The "tower of a fortress" sense of the root; and the context of al-Ḥijr 15/16-18 |
| The gates of the sky | The paths by which the angels descend and ascend | It has found few supporters |
Help from within the Qurʾān. The word occurs in four places in the Qurʾān, and in three of them the context helps:
"We have surely set constellations in the sky and made them beautiful for those who look." (al-Ḥijr 15/16)
"Blessed is He who set constellations in the sky and placed in it a lamp and an illuminating moon." (al-Furqān 25/61)
"Wherever you may be, death will reach you, even if you are inside solid towers (burūjin mushayyada)." (al-Nisāʾ 4/78)
In al-Nisāʾ 4/78 the word is beyond dispute in the sense of tower — and note: what is related there is the towers' failure to protect.
In al-Ḥijr and al-Furqān it comes together with the sky and is bound to the idea of adornment / order.
My assessment — it is not binding: both senses are alive in the text, and in the verse they do not exclude one another. Burūj carries both the regular regions seen in the sky and the idea of "a high and solid structure". Both these sides of the word set up a meaningful relation with what follows in the sūra.
What the sūra is going to relate is a pit in the ground: a trench dug out, low and narrow. And the sūra begins its work from the sky: a high, ordered, visible structure.
| The sky (verse 1) | The trench (verse 4) |
|---|---|
| Above | Below |
| Set up, ordered | Dug out, hollowed |
| Visible, lit | A dark hollow |
| Burūj — a structure that rises | Ukhdūd — a cleft that sinks |
The first four verses of the sūra bring the eye down from the sky to the earth. And this descent will be reversed in the last two verses of the sūra: facing the fire on the earth there will be set a preserved tablet.
And there is this too — if we take the "fortress" sense of the word seriously: al-Nisāʾ 4/78 said that towers do not protect against death. The sūra begins by swearing not by the fortresses people build but by the holder of the towers of the sky. I record this as my own reading.