86. Sūrat al-Ṭāriq

Seventeen verses. On its being Meccan there is something close to unanimity; the style supports this too: short verse-endings, sequences of oaths, the defence of the hereafter and of revelation, the absence of legal content.

It takes its name from the word in the first verse: ٱلطَّارِق.

Seen from outside, the sūra looks scattered. An oath is sworn by a star; the question is asked what man was created from; sky and soil are spoken of; and then it ends with a sentence about a plot and a sentence about a respite. What is there between them?

In fact the sūra is a very tightly built text, and its backbone lies in a single word: رجع — return. The word occurs twice in the sūra. The first time it describes man's being brought back (verse 8), the second time the sky's own cycle (verse 11). That is, the sūra sets out a claim and comes back to its proof afterwards, with a second oath. The answer to the question whether it is possible for man to be brought back is a cycle that turns before our eyes every year: water comes down, the soil splits open.

Two oaths, two answers. This is not a structure often met with in the short Meccan sūras; mostly there is a single sequence of oaths and a single answer (al-Shams, al-Layl, al-Ḍuḥā, al-ʿĀdiyāt). Al-Ṭāriq goes forward in two rounds: in the first round the subject is man, in the second it is the word.

The sūra falls into three distinct sound-zones, and the boundaries of the zones coincide with the boundaries of the sections.

The first zone (1-10). All ten verses end on the same sound pattern: a syllable carrying kasra followed by a single consonant. al-ṭāriq, al-ṭāriq, al-thāqib, ḥāfiẓ, khuliq, dāfiq, al-tarāʾib, la-qādir, al-sarāʾir, nāṣir. It leaves in the ear not a monotony but a tapping — short, clipped, repeating.

The second zone (11-14). The sound hardens and shortens: al-rajʿ, al-ṣadʿ, faṣl, al-hazl. All four end with sukūn, on a cluster of consonants. Nothing is drawn out.

The third zone (15-17). The sound suddenly opens: kaydā, kaydā, ruwaydā. All three end on a long ā and with tanwīn.

That is, the sūra begins with a tapping, hardens, and at the close opens out and lengthens. That the last word should be ruwaydā — "a little, gently" — fits this movement of sound exactly. I record this as an observation about the sound; it is not a theological claim, but it is something anyone who reads the sūra aloud will hear.

The basmala was treated in earlier sections and is not taken up again here; the verse numbers are counted without the basmala.

Wa'l-samāʾi wa'l-ṭāriq "By the sky and by the ṭāriq."

The وَ at the head is the particle of oath; its function was treated in the section on Sūrat al-ʿAṣr, and it was recorded in al-Shams that it is there extended into a long sequence. I do not repeat it here. Briefly: an oath does not give information, it reinforces; and between what is sworn by and what is said a relation of proof is most often set up.

In this verse two things are sworn by, and the two are joined by the same wāw: the sky and the ṭāriq. The second wāw is the wāw of conjunction, not a second oath. That is, the oath is sworn by a single scene: the sky, and what appears in that sky.

The order too is worth noting: first the vessel, then what is inside it. The sky is already there, continuous and fixed; the ṭāriq, by contrast, comes. The verse states what is fixed and then places within it what moves.

Root: ط-ر-ق. The original sense of the root is to strike, to beat, to hit with something hard.

Its derivatives show how concrete the root is:

• مِطْرَقَة (miṭraqa) — hammer. The tool for striking. In Arabic today too this is the name of the hammer.
• طَرَقَ ٱلْحَدِيدَ — he beat the iron. The blacksmith's work.
• طَرَقَ ٱلْبَابَ — he knocked at the door. In Arabic, to knock at a door is to strike the door.
• طَرِيق (ṭarīq) — road. The track that feet open by beating and treading on it over and over.
• طَارِق (ṭāriq) — the one who comes by night. We shall open this up below.

How the word reached the sense "the one who comes by night" comes from a concrete fact of Arab life.

A guest who comes by day finds the door, is seen, calls out. One who comes by night cannot: the doors are shut, the houses are dark, the household has gone to bed. Therefore the one who comes by night has to knock. This is why in Arabic the traveller who arrives at night was called ṭāriq; the word itself does not state a time, it states a behaviour — and because that behaviour belongs to the night, the word has taken the time on as well.

The classical lexicons and works of exegesis agree at this point: the verb ṭarq is used of the night; one who comes by day is not called ṭāriq. The word is the name of the one who is obliged to announce his arrival.

From this comes the first image of the sūra: in the middle of the night, someone striking a closed door. The sleeping house is being woken.

In the section on Sūrat al-Qāriʿa we treated the root ق-ر-ع, and what was recorded there was this: the original sense of the root is to strike with something hard; qaraʿa'l-bāba means he knocked at the door; miqraʿa is a rod, qāriʿatu'l-ṭarīq the trodden middle of the road.

The two roots can now be set side by side, because they overlap to a surprising degree:

The first and third letters of the two roots are different, and these are separate roots; I set up no relation of derivation between them. But that their fields of meaning should overlap this far shows where Arabic produces its notion of "road" from: a road is what comes into being by being struck over and over. Both roots set out from the same place and arrive at the same place.

Their difference, in turn, settles the difference between the two sūras. Al-Qāriʿa is an active participle and names the blow itself: not the one who comes, but the impact of the coming. This is why in Sūrat al-Qāriʿa the word is repeated three times as the name of the sūra and then never occurs again — the blow falls once and is done.

Al-Ṭāriq, by contrast, names not the one who strikes but the person who comes by striking. To knock at a door is not a destruction; it is a notification. Al-Qāriʿa breaks the door; al-ṭāriq knocks at it. This is why Sūrat al-Qāriʿa is a sūra of the resurrection, while Sūrat al-Ṭāriq is a sūra of waking.

In the section on al-Fātiḥa the road-words of Arabic were distinguished: sabīl a particular route of going, ṭarīq a path and a track that is followed, ṣirāṭ a broad and busy highway. It was also recorded there that the origin of the word ṣirāṭ is disputed, and that some lexicographers attach it to a foreign word meaning "a paved road". And in the discussion of ʿibāda the expression ṭarīq muʿabbad occurred: a road levelled by much walking, its roughness worn away.

Now look at how these three words are built:

• ṣirāṭ — that which has been paved. What makes the road is a hand from outside.
• ṭarīq — that which has been beaten. What makes the road is the feet of those who pass over it.
• qāriʿatu'l-ṭarīq — the struck part of the road. The same idea, with a second root.

So Arabic names the road by two different routes: either someone has paved it, or those who walk have opened it by wearing it away. What is asked for in al-Fātiḥa is the ṣirāṭ — paved, prepared, open to everyone. Not the ṭarīq that a man opens with his own feet.

I record this link as an inference; the root senses of the words are given in the lexicons in this form, but it is I who set up the contrast between them. It is not a binding reading.

The first verse says the word but does not define it. The definition will come two verses later. This delay is itself a technique, and it will be taken up in the next verse.

Wa mā adrāka ma'l-ṭāriq "And what will make you know what the ṭāriq is?"

The pattern وما أدراك was treated in detail in the section on al-Humaza and applied twice in al-Qāriʿa. The rule recorded there was this:

In Sūrat al-Ṭāriq the pattern has come in the perfect, and the rule holds: there is an explanation in the very next verse — al-najmu'l-thāqib.

This is worth recording as one of the examples that show how sound the rule is. Twice in al-Qāriʿa, once in al-Qadr, once here; in all four the perfect came, and in all four the explanation followed.

To say a word, then to ask "do you know what this is?", and then to give the answer — this can look like a needless detour. It could have been said directly: "By the sky and by the piercing star."

That it was not so said has two consequences:

First, the word is heard twice. Ṭāriq occurs in the first verse and occurs again in the second. And note: no pronoun is used at the second occurrence — where "what is it?" (mā huwa) could have been said, the whole word is repeated. In Arabic, repeating the noun where a pronoun would have served conveys tafkhīm (magnification). We saw this technique in the second verse of al-Ikhlāṣ (Allāhu'l-Ṣamad) and in the first three verses of al-Qāriʿa as well.

Second, a gap opens in between. The moment the question is asked, the hearer's mind begins to search for the answer. When the answer comes one verse later, the hearer is no longer passive; he is waiting inside the question. This is the basic function of the pattern in the Qurʾān, and in the section on al-Humaza it was recorded thus: before it gives any information, this pattern announces that information will not be enough.

Iltifāt. Adrā-ka — "you". While the sūra is speaking in the third person, in the language of the oath, it turns all at once to the second person singular. This device — iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address) — was treated in the sections on al-Humaza and al-Qāriʿa; its function here is the same: the telling halts, the hearer is drawn onto the stage, and then the telling goes on.

Al-najmu'l-thāqib "The piercing star."

The answer has come. But the answer is itself not a definition; it is a second naming — exactly the method of Sūrat al-Qāriʿa: a question is asked, no definition is given, another name or a comparison is given instead.

Root: ن-ج-م. Its original sense is to appear, to come into view, to emerge.

• نَجْم (najm) — star. What is seen, what appears.
• نَجَمَ — it grew, it came up, it showed itself. It is used of a plant coming out of the soil as well.
• نَجْم in a second sense: a plant without a stem. The Qurʾān uses this sense: "The najm and the tree prostrate" (al-Raḥmān 55/6). According to the majority of the classical works of exegesis, the najm here is not the star in the sky but the stalkless plant that grows from the ground — because it is set against shajar (the tree with a trunk).
• نُجُوم / تَنْجِيم — instalment. The paying of a debt at intervals, at set times. The naming comes once again from "appearing": each time an instalment falls due, it comes and shows itself.

So the root is a thing's becoming visible when it was not there. The star took this name not because it flickers in the sky but because it appears in the darkness.

This sits directly in the context of the sūra. All through the sūra the coming to light of what is hidden will be treated: in verse 9 the sarāʾir (the hidden things) will be tested. The root of the very word that is the object of the oath likewise means "to become visible after being hidden".

Root: ث-ق-ب. Its original sense is to pierce, to open a hole, to take something through and bring it out the other side.

• ثُقْب (thuqb) — a hole.
• مِثْقَب (mithqab) — a drill, the tool for piercing.
• ثَاقِب (thāqib) — piercing, going right through. An active participle.

The root has a second field of use, and it is recorded in the lexicons: the brightness of fire. Thaqabati'l-nāru — the fire blazed, it shone; athqaba'l-nāra — he made the fire blaze. From this, thāqib is also used in the sense of "very bright".

The two senses are not cut off from one another. Bright light pierces the darkness. In English too the phrase "a light that pierces the darkness" comes naturally; Arabic has set that relation inside the word itself.

The same word occurs once more in the Qurʾān, within the same frame: "…a piercing flame (shihābun thāqib)" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/10). There too brightness and piercing go together.

There is also, in Arabic, raʾyun thāqib — "piercing judgement", an apt thought that works its way into the heart of a matter. The abstract use of the word comes from the same image.

Here one must be honest: the verse does not say which star it means. The views transmitted in the classical works of exegesis can be gathered as follows:

The majority of the classical exegetes incline to the first reading and record the others as "the most conspicuous example of this genus". I too do not impose a preference; whichever is chosen, the argument of the sūra does not change.

In modern religious writing this verse is often made the subject of a claim to a "scientific miracle": the sense "to strike" in the word ṭarq is put together with the sense "piercing" in thāqib, and it is said that the verse announces pulsars (neutron stars that emit a regular signal).

The method of this commentary does not accept readings of this kind, and the grounds must be written out plainly here:

First, the word does not say that. Ṭāriq in Arabic does not mean "emitting a signal"; it means one who comes by night. The "striking" sense of the word is tied, by way of knocking at a door, to arriving at night — not to a periodic oscillation.

Second, the first hearers did not understand this, nor were they expected to. To suppose that a text secretly carries a piece of information that meant nothing at all in the community it came down to destroys the text's character as address.

Third, this reading adds nothing to the verse; it takes something away. The business of the verse is not to describe a heavenly body; it is to say, by swearing by a light that appears in the darkness and pierces the darkness, that over man there is a watcher. The relation between the object of the oath and the answer to the oath lies exactly here. To reduce the star to an object of physics makes that relation invisible.

The reasonable link that can be drawn between the verse and the real world is this, and it stands in the verse itself: the darkness of the night is not absolute. Even on the blackest night there is a light that pierces it. This is an observation, not a discovery; and it bears directly on the rest of the sūra — because verse 9 will say that concealment is not absolute either.

Now read the first three verses together and go on to verse 4:

By the one who comes by night, by the light that pierces the darkness: over every soul there is a watcher.

The link is clear. What is sworn by is the image of the answer:

• The night — the time when a man supposes himself hidden.
• Al-ṭāriq — the one who comes in spite of that concealment.
• Al-thāqib — the one that pierces right through what is closed.

That is, the first three verses are the picture of the fourth. Being behind a closed door does not mean not being seen.

In kullu nafsin lammā ʿalayhā ḥāfiẓ "There is no soul that does not have a keeper/watcher over it."

The answer to the oath. And, grammatically, the most technical verse in the sūra.

The إِن here is not the particle of condition; it is negative (nāfiya), that is, it stands in place of the mā that means "not, there is no". This use of in is common in Arabic: "in antum illā takdhibūn" — "you are doing nothing but lying" (Yāsīn 36/15).

لَمَّا, in turn, has here the sense of إلاّ (only, other than). This use is rare in Arabic, but the lexicographers have recorded it.

So the skeleton of the sentence is this: "There is no soul — except that a ḥāfiẓ is over it." The closest English rendering: "There is no soul that does not have a watcher over it."

This is a sentence built out of negation and exception; in Arabic this structure (nafy + istithnāʾ) is the strongest form of restriction (ḥaṣr). It could have been said directly: "over every soul there is a watcher". It was not. Why?

Because a plain affirmative sentence states a rule, whereas a negative-with-exception sentence closes off the exception from the start. When it is said "over every soul there is one", the mind can ask "is there perhaps an exception?" When it is said "there is no soul over which there is not one", that question is answered before it is asked.

For this verse a variant reading is transmitted that bears directly on the meaning, and it needs to be recorded.

• لَمَّا (with shadda) — the reading set out above: in is negation, lammā is "except". The meaning: "there is no soul over which there is not a watcher."
• لَمَا (without shadda) — on this reading in is taken as the lightened form (mukhaffafa) of inna, and the lām at the head becomes the lām al-fāriqa, the lām that distinguishes it from the negative in. The meaning: "Surely over every soul there is a watcher."

Both readings are transmitted with attribution to the imams of the variant readings. Because I cannot state with certainty which imam preferred which, I write no names.

Is there a difference of meaning? In the end so little as to be none; both set up the same ruling. The difference is in the kind of emphasis: the first brings the absence of any exception to the front, the second the certainty. This is the typical feature of most variant readings — it does not change the ruling, it shows another face of the ruling.

The fields of use of this word in the Qurʾān were treated in the section on Sūrat al-Shams; I do not repeat it here. The one point that belongs here is this: the word has come indefinite (nakira) and together with kull: kullu nafsin — "each single soul". That is, what is meant is not the human species but persons one by one. The watching is not collective but individual.

Root: ح-ف-ظ. Its original sense is to guard a thing from slipping away, from being lost, from being spoiled.

• حِفْظ (ḥifẓ) — guarding, preservation.
• مُحَافَظَة — guarding something by keeping it up. Turkish has borrowed muhafaza ("preservation") and muhafız ("guard") from this root.
• حَافِظَة — memory. That which does not let go of what it holds.
• حَفِظَ ٱلْقُرْآنَ — he memorised the Qurʾān. And from this, ḥāfiẓ: the best-known use of the word is in fact a special case of the root's sense of "guarding from loss".

The word opens in two directions at once, and this doubleness is decisive for understanding the verse: ḥifẓ is both to guard and to keep a record. One who memorises both guards and holds.

The verse does not say. The views transmitted in the classical works of exegesis:

That the word comes indefinite (without the article) is a clue: had a particular and known being been meant, al-ḥāfiẓ would have been expected. The indefiniteness here conveys either taʿẓīm (magnification) or the genus. Both are possible; I do not impose a preference.

But this must be stated: the views do not exclude one another. The one who keeps the record and the one who guards both act by leave and by command. What the verse says is not "who" but "there is" — and the whole weight of the sentence rests here.

This verse is the first thesis of the sūra, and what follows is built upon it:

• You are being watched (4).
• For the watching to have a meaning there must be a reckoning; for there to be a reckoning there must be a bringing back (8).
• The proof that the bringing back is possible is where you came from (5-7).
• And the reckoning will look not outward but inward (9).

That is, verse 4 lays down a ruling, and the six verses that follow show that the ruling is possible and necessary.

Fa'l-yanẓuri'l-insānu mimma khuliq "Let man look at what he was created from."

The فَ at the head states the consequence of the previous verse: since there is a watcher over him, then let him look. The proof comes after the ruling.

The verb has come with the lām of command: li- + imperfect = a command addressed to the third person. English has no exact equivalent; it is rendered with "let him look".

This has a consequence: the address is indirect. It does not say "look", it says "let man look". The one addressed is not called upon directly; a kind of general ruling is set up, and the hearer finds himself inside that ruling. The Qurʾān uses this pattern often where it calls to reflection: "Let man look at his food" (ʿAbasa 80/24); "Let them look at the camel, how it was created" (al-Ghāshiya 88/17).

Root: ن-ظ-ر. Not merely to see; to look attentively, to turn the eye upon something and dwell on it. Naẓariyya (theory), manẓara (a view, a scene) and intiẓār (waiting — the eye left on the road) are from the same root; Turkish has borrowed all of them.

The Qurʾān also uses the verb raʾā for "to see". The difference between naẓar and ruʾya is this: naẓar is the act of looking and may not end in seeing; ruʾya is the seeing itself. Here the verse commands not an outcome but an operation: turn and look.

Mimma = مِنْ + مَا. The mā here is the interrogative particle ("what").

In Arabic, when the interrogative mā comes after a preposition its alif drops: ʿan mā → ʿamma (al-Nabaʾ 78/1); fī mā → fīma; li mā → lima; min mā → mimma. This rule serves to tell the interrogative mā apart from the relative mā — because when it is the relative the alif does not drop (mimmā).

It looks like a small rule of spelling, but its function is large: that the verse is written mimma (without the alif) settles that the sentence is a question. Not "from the thing he was created from", but "from what he was created".

The verse does not say "let man look where he is going". It says let him look at "what he was created from". That is, the looking is not forward but back.

The reason for this is the subject of the dispute. The objection of those addressed was about the resurrection: "When we have become dust and are scattered, shall we really be in a new creation?" (al-Raʿd 13/5; the like in Sabaʾ 34/7, Qāf 50/3). That is, the objection was about the possibility of a future event.

Against this objection the Qurʾān regularly uses the same method: it does not argue about the future, it takes you back to the past. Because for a thing that has happened once to happen a second time is, in point of possibility, nothing new.

The verse is the shortest expression of this method: it does not give the answer, it shows where the answer is. It says "Look".

Khuliqa min māʾin dāfiq "He was created from a water flung out and poured."

The answer to the question of the previous verse. And note: the question was put to man, and the text gave the answer. The command to look was issued, but what would be seen on looking was stated too. Here the Qurʾān does not leave the one addressed on his own.

The repetition of the verb is meaningful too: khuliqa in verse 5, khuliqa again in verse 6. The verb of the question is repeated unchanged in the answer. The answer is given in the words of the question.

The verb is passive: "he was created", and the name of the creator is not given. This is a choice often met with in the Qurʾān where the agent is plain, and it does two things: it shifts the subject from the agent to the act, and it brings forward the position of the one addressed. Here man stands not as the doer but as the thing done — the whole argument of the verse rests on this.

The word is indefinite: māʾin — "a water". The indefiniteness here works in the direction of taḥqīr (belittling): an ordinary fluid, one not even given a name.

The Qurʾān gives the same image elsewhere in plainer words:

• "Did We not create you from a despised water?" (al-Mursalāt 77/20)
• "Then He made his progeny from the essence of a base water" (al-Sajda 32/8)
• "Has man not seen that We created him from a drop? And now he has turned into an open adversary" (Yāsīn 36/77)

The last verse is like an expanded form of al-Ṭāriq 5-6: the same beginning, the same conclusion — the disproportion between origin and pride.

Root: د-ف-ق. Its original sense is water's pouring out with force and all together, emptying out, gushing.

• دَفَقَ ٱلْمَاءَ — he poured the water out, he emptied it.
• تَدَفَّقَ — it flowed over, it gushed.
• دُفَّاق — water running like a flood.

The word describes not a flowing drop by drop but an emptying out at one go and under pressure. The English "to gush" is the nearest equivalent.

Here there is a matter on which the lexicographers have dwelt at length.

Dāfiq is an active participle: "pouring, making gush". Yet the water is not what pours but what is poured. The word to be expected would have been madfūq (poured out).

The explanations given by the classical linguists:

The second explanation is the easiest linguistically, and it yields a conclusion worth recording: the water is named as the subject of its own gushing. That is, the verse pictures man's origin not as a passive substance but as something in motion.

We saw something like this distinction in the word rāḍiya in Sūrat al-Qāriʿa: there too the choice of the active pattern was dwelt on.

What the verse says is simple, and hard precisely for that reason: man's beginning is a handful of fluid.

This observation does two jobs at once.

First, it settles the question of possibility. To bring out of a fluid a being that hears, sees, speaks and objects — this is a thing that has already been done. To bring the same being back after it has mingled with the soil is no harder than the first. The Qurʾān makes this comparison openly elsewhere: "Were We then wearied by the first creation?" (Qāf 50/15).

Second, it cuts pride off. In the last section of the sūra those who lay plots will be spoken of. To lay a plot is a claim to power. The verse recalls where that power came out of.

Yakhruju min bayni'l-ṣulbi wa'l-tarāʾib "That comes out from between the ṣulb and the tarāʾib."

The most disputed verse in the sūra. And one of the verses most abused in modern religious writing. Two things must therefore be done here separately: first to set out honestly the lexical sense of the words and the classical disagreement, then to write out plainly the position taken on the modern claims.

يَخْرُجُ is imperfect, third person masculine singular. Its subject is not stated; it is implicit.

The majority reading: the subject is the water (the māʾ of the preceding verse). The sentence then runs: "…a water such that it comes out from between the ṣulb and the tarāʾib." That is, the verse goes on qualifying the water of the preceding verse.

Another reading is transmitted as well: the subject is man. The sentence then runs: "Man comes out from between the ṣulb and the tarāʾib." This reading is a minority one and is strained linguistically — because the flow of the sentence is qualifying the water. I record it but do not dwell on it.

Root: ص-ل-ب. Its original sense is hardness, firmness.

• صَلُبَ — it became hard, it stiffened.
• صَلَابَة (ṣalāba) — hardness, sturdiness. Turkish still uses the word, borrowed as salâbet.
• صُلْب — the hardest structure in the body: the spine, the backbone. The name comes from its hardness.
• صَلِيب (ṣalīb) — the cross. It is counted from the same root; a structure that stands hard and crosswise.

The word occurs in the Qurʾān in the context of lineage: "…and the wives of your sons who are from your own loins" (al-Nisāʾ 4/23). The aṣlāb here is the father's spine as the place lineage comes from — this is the settled usage in Arabic.

Root: ت-ر-ب. Tarāʾib is a plural whose singular is تَرِيبَة.

And here one must be honest: the lexicographers and the exegetes are not agreed on exactly what this word indicates. The equivalents recorded in the lexicons and the works of exegesis:

The centre of gravity of the word in the lexicon is the chest region; the narrowings beyond that are at the level of interpretation.

The real dispute in the classical works of exegesis is not about the meaning of the words but about whom they belong to.

The majority of the classical exegetes hold the first view. But the second and third views have been recorded from an early period as well; these are not readings produced later.

I adopt no preference. The ground is this: the verse does not frame a description of anatomy; it states a place, and the function of that place is to say that the water comes from the centre of the body. Whichever view is taken, the argument of the verse — "you were created from such a thing, therefore you can be brought back" — stays the same.

For about a century this verse has stood at the centre of the claim that "the Qurʾān announced embryology". The theses put forward are roughly these: that the reproductive cells form in the embryo in the region of the kidneys, near the spine, and then descend; that the blood and nerve supply of the reproductive organs comes from the level of the lumbar vertebrae; and that the expression "between the ṣulb and the tarāʾib" therefore describes this embryological position.

The method of this commentary does not accept readings of this kind. The grounds:

First, the verse stands in one place and is pulled to another. The overwhelming majority of the classical exegetes understood this verse in terms of the anatomy of the adult body — the father's spine, the mother's chest. The modern reading carries the expression across to a temporary position in the embryo. This is to set aside all the readings of the verse over the first thirteen centuries and to find a new target for the word. Such an operation can be performed, but its result cannot be called "this is what the verse meant".

Second, the claim is not verifiable. Ṣulb and tarāʾib are not medical terms but everyday Arabic words for parts of the body. To equate a word with a modern anatomical structure one must first show that the word indicates that structure; here, however, the operation runs the other way: the modern information is taken first, and then room is made for it in the word.

Third, the claim weakens the verse. The strength of the verse lies in its pointing to something everyone knows: man's beginning is an insignificant fluid. This observation needs no microscope; it is equally intelligible to a Meccan of fourteen hundred years ago and to a reader today. To load the verse with information that requires expertise takes it out of the reader's hands.

Fourth — and most important of all — the argument does not need it. The flow of the sūra is this: look at what you were created from (5) → from a water (6) → coming out of such a region (7) → therefore He is able to bring you back (8). The seventh verse is the qualification of the sixth; it is not a proof but a description. What serves as proof is the plainness of the water, not the coordinates of the place it came out of.

The rule laid down in the method of this commentary (Method) is applied here exactly: no modern information is forced onto a verse; a connection is drawn only where one really exists. The connection that really exists here is this, and it is enough: man's material origin is out of all proportion to the greatness he claims. This is an observation that both that day and this one can verify.

Innahū ʿalā rajʿihī la-qādir "Surely He is able to bring him back."

The conclusion of the five-verse chain of proof. And the second thesis of the sūra.

The natural order of the sentence would have been this: innahū la-qādirun ʿalā rajʿihī — "surely He is able to bring him back."

The verse breaks this order and pulls عَلَىٰ رَجْعِهِۦ in front of the predicate (la-qādir).

In Arabic an element brought forward from its normal place gains ihtimām (the marking of importance) and most often takhṣīṣ (restriction). Its effect here is this: the centre of gravity of the sentence becomes not "He is able" but "able to bring back". This was exactly what was in dispute — those addressed were not denying God's power in general; they were denying that He could do this particular thing. The verse puts the emphasis where the dispute is.

We saw something like this technique at al-Ikhlāṣ 112/4: there too lahū was brought forward, and the idea of "an equal to Him" was specifically rejected.

لَ (lām). The lām at the head of la-qādir is the lām of emphasis that enters the predicate of inna. Inna + lām + a nominal sentence: three emphases one on top of another.

Root: ر-ج-ع. Its original sense is to go back, to turn back.

• رُجُوع (rujūʿ) — return.
• مَرْجِع (marjiʿ) — the place to which one returns. It lives on in Turkish as merci, "the authority one applies to".
• رَجْعَة (rajʿa) — a going back.
• ٱسْتِرْجَاع (istirjāʿ) — to say "innā li'llāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn". This sentence, spoken at a moment of calamity, carries the word itself: "we are those who return to Him."

رَجْع is here a verbal noun, and by taking a genitive complement it has become rajʿihī: "his being brought back".

There are two pronouns in the verse, and the referent of both has been disputed.

إِنَّهُۥ — "He". According to the majority it refers to God. The name of God does not occur in the sūra; the pronoun has come without a stated referent. This is a known usage in the Qurʾān and was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Qadr: a pronoun whose referent is left unstated conveys taʿẓīm (magnification) and perfect notoriety — the thing is so plain that naming is not needed.

رَجْعِهِۦ — "his being brought back". Here there is a disagreement:

The first view is by far the stronger in point of context, and verse 9 confirms it: "the day when the hidden things are tested" — this is not the concern of a drop of water.

The second and third views have been recorded but do not agree with the flow of the sūra. I make my preference on the ground of context; and it is not binding.

This verse is the shortest form of the basic argument the Qurʾān uses in defending the resurrection. The argument is this: the first making is the proof of the second.

• "Have they not seen how He began the first creation? God will do it again" (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/19-20).
• "It is He who begins creation, then repeats it; and that is easier for Him" (al-Rūm 30/27).
• "He said: who will give life to these bones when they have rotted? Say: He who created them the first time will give them life" (Yāsīn 36/78-79).

The force of this argument is logical: the proof that a thing can be done is that it has been done. The objecting party already accepts his own existence; what he accepts is the proof of what he objects to.

The clause "and that is easier for Him" in al-Rūm 30/27 must also be noted. Ease here is not a grading on God's side — for absolute power there is no hard and no easy. The expression speaks by man's own measure: to make from nothing is harder than to make again what has been made once. The proof is built out of the logic of the one addressed.

This word occurs twice in the sūra: here (rajʿihī) and in verse 11 (dhāti'l-rajʿ).

At the second occurrence the word will be used of the sky. That is, the sūra does this:

1. First the claim is made: He is able to bring man back (8). 2. Then an oath comes: by the sky that has a return (11).

The same word, first inside the claim, then in the oath sworn on the proof of the claim. This is the tightest link in the sūra, and it will be taken up in detail at verse 11.

Yawma tubla'l-sarāʾir "The day when the hidden things are probed."

Yawma is in the accusative, and the grammarians differ over what it attaches to: to the verbal noun rajʿihī in the preceding verse (the return takes place on that day), or to la-qādir, or to an elided verb ("remember that day").

The difference in meaning is small. The commonest solution is the first: it states the time of the operation of bringing back. The same discussion arose in Sūrat al-Qāriʿa over the expression yawma yakūnu'l-nās; the solutions recorded there hold here as well.

Root: ب-ل-و / ب-ل-ي. This root was treated at al-Baqara 2/49 on the occasion of the word balāʾ. What was recorded there was this: the root means to try, to test by wearing down; in Turkish the borrowed word belâ has narrowed the sense to calamity alone, whereas in Arabic it takes in testing by good as well — "We test you with evil and with good, as a trial" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/35).

What belongs here is the concrete wing of the root, and it was not gone into in detail there:

• بَلِيَ ٱلثَّوْبُ — the garment grew old, wore out, went to rags.
• بِلًى (bilan) — decay, wearing out.
• أَبْلَى — to wear out; and also "to test".

The link between the two senses is this: the way to test a thing is to wear it down. The soundness of a cloth is found out by pulling at it; the strength of a rope by straining it. Testing is a wearing-away carried out in order to find the limit of endurance. Arabic has kept these two ideas in a single root.

Now go back to the verse: the verb is passive (tublā) and its subject is sarāʾir. That is, the hidden things are tried, probed, tested — and as a result of the testing what they are comes out.

It is most often rendered in English as "are brought to light". That is correct, but it misses how the word works: the verse does not say "are opened" or "are shown". It says are probed. That is, it is not merely that a veil is lifted; they are put through an operation, and the result of that operation comes out.

Root: س-ر-ر. Its singular is سَرِيرَة: what a person keeps inside and does not let out. Intention, motive, the real thought.

The derivatives of the root spread over a wide field:

• سِرّ (sirr) — the thing that is hidden. Turkish sır, "secret", comes straight from here.
• إِسْرَار (isrār) — to hide, to whisper. In the Qurʾān: "Whether you keep your speech secret or speak it aloud, He knows what is in the breasts" (al-Mulk 67/13).
• سَرِيرَة — what is kept inside.
• سُرُور (surūr) — joy.
• سَرِير (sarīr) — couch, throne, divan. The Turkish sedir, "divan", is related to this word.

The last two entries may look surprising. The lexicographers connect them thus: surūr (joy) is what is born inside and shows in the face — the coming out of what was hidden; sarīr, in turn, was named as a place of joy and of ease.

These connections are of the kind the lexicographers set up, and they cannot be presented as a settled etymological verdict. But they carry a side worth recording: the relation between concealment and joy has been made within the language itself. What a person hides most is most often what he most rejoices in, or wants to rejoice in.

The verse does not say "the day when the deeds are weighed". Sūrat al-Qāriʿa set up a balance; here there is no balance.

Nor does it say "the day when the records are opened"; there is no scene of a book such as those in Sūrat al-Inshiqāq and Sūrat al-Ḥāqqa.

What is chosen is sarāʾir: the side of which no record is kept, which is not seen from outside, which no one but its owner knows.

The reason for this is bound up with the fourth verse of the sūra. There was a ḥāfiẓ there — one who guards and who records. What is recorded is behaviour. But beneath behaviour there is one more layer, and that layer cannot be recorded, because it is not visible. The sūra says that the reckoning reaches to that layer too.

The nearest counterpart of this verse is in Sūrat al-ʿĀdiyāt, and unless the two verses are read together both remain incomplete.

"…and what is in the breasts is sifted out" (al-ʿĀdiyāt 100/10)

In the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt the verb حُصِّلَ was treated in detail. What was recorded there was this: taḥṣīl is the taking of the kernel out of its husk; it is an image from the threshing floor — the wheat is winnowed, the chaff blows away, the grain remains.

Now set the two verses side by side:

The two verses say the same thing, and say it with an image taken from two different crafts: one from farming, one from weaving.

The point in common is that both are an operation. Neither verse says "is seen" or "is known". Something is done: it is winnowed, it is probed. That is, on that day what is hidden does not merely come to light; it is put through a test, and what it really is gets settled.

And there is a difference worth recording: in al-ʿĀdiyāt, as a result of the sifting the kernel remains — that is, something is left behind. In al-Ṭāriq, as a result of the probing, whether or not it holds becomes plain. One is a separating, the other a testing. Together, the two give the two stages of a reckoning.

This comparison is a link I set up; the root senses of the two words are given in the lexicons in this form, but it is I who set up the relation between them. I do not present it as a transmitted report.

A third expression of the same idea is in Sūrat Ṭāhā, and it uses directly the same root as verse 9 of al-Ṭāriq:

"…He knows the secret and what is more hidden than it" (Ṭāhā 20/7)

Al-sirr and akhfā. That is, concealment too has its degrees: what you hide and know you are hiding; and what you do not know you are hiding. The second is most often the more decisive — the motive you do not tell yourself.

Al-Ṭāriq 9 says that this layer is the subject of the reckoning.

Fa-mā lahū min quwwatin wa lā nāṣir "On that day he will have neither a strength nor a helper."

The fāʾ at the head states the consequence of the preceding verse: when the hidden things are probed, nothing is left in the person's hand.

Lahū — "his". The last singular person named in the sūra is man (verse 5). The majority attach the pronoun there. That is, the verse is speaking of the man whose hidden things are probed.

مِن here is a particle that adds nothing to the meaning — in the language of grammar, zāʾida, redundant. Its function is to make the negation all-encompassing.

The difference is this: mā lahū quwwatun = "he has no strength". Mā lahū min quwwatin = "he has not any strength at all". The redundant min spreads the negation over every single possibility (in grammar this is called istighrāq).

One of the best-known examples of this particle in the Qurʾān stands within the same frame: "He has, apart from God, neither a friend nor a helper" (al-Baqara 2/107 and similar expressions).

The verse rejects two things separately, and the two are different directions:

• قُوَّة (quwwa) — the person's own strength. What comes from inside. The possibility of defending himself, of resisting, of escaping.
• نَاصِر (nāṣir) — support that comes from outside. One who helps, who stands behind him.

There are two ways for a man to get out of a difficulty: either by his own strength, or by someone's help. The verse closes both doors separately. This is another example of the method we saw in Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ: when rejecting something, to enumerate every way out.

Root: ن-ص-ر. This root was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Naṣr. Briefly: to help someone against his enemy, to support him, to bring him victory.

A lexical note that belongs here: in Arabic the same root is used of rain as well. Naṣara'l-ghaythu'l-arḍa — the rain helped the soil; arḍun manṣūra — soil that has received rain. The lexicons record this use.

And what is striking is this: the next section of the sūra will set up exactly this image — water coming down from the sky, soil splitting open. That is, the person of whom it is said in verse 10 that he has "no nāṣir" will meet, in verses 11-12, the description of the nuṣra that comes to the soil. The soil receives help; on that day man does not.

I do not present this as a claim of word-play. The rain sense of the root is recorded in the lexicons, and the order of the verses stands in the text; it is I who set up the relation between them, and it is not binding.

For "helper" the Qurʾān generally uses the word نَصِير (naṣīr): "God is enough for you; what an excellent protector, what an excellent helper" (al-Anfāl 8/40 and the like).

Here nāṣir has been chosen. The two words are from the same root but on different patterns: naṣīr is a ṣifa mushabbaha and states permanence, nāṣir is an active participle and states the act.

The difference is fine: naṣīr is "someone who is a helper", nāṣir "someone who helps". The second brings the act forward. The verse says that on that day the act of helping will not take place.

There is also the verse-ending: the sound pattern of the first ten verses of the sūra is of the form -ir/-iẓ/-ib. Had it said naṣīr the sound would have fitted, but the pattern would have changed; nāṣir holds both the sound and the pattern. In cases of this kind the reason drawn from the verse-ending must be stated first, because otherwise we should be inventing an explanation based on meaning — this principle was recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā.

Ten verses are complete, and what has been said is this:

You are being watched (4). Look at where you came from (5-7). The one who brought you from there brings you back as well (8). On that day what is inside you will be probed (9). And on that day you will have neither strength of your own nor anyone's support (10).

Now the sūra stops and swears again. The second round begins.

Wa'l-samāʾi dhāti'l-rajʿ "By the sky that has a return."

Here the sūra goes back to the beginning. The first oath too began with the sky (wa'l-samāʾi wa'l-ṭāriq). The second begins with the sky as well. But this time what comes after the sky is not the ṭāriq but the earth.

A comparison of the two sequences of oaths:

The first oath is sworn by a moment, the second by a cycle. In the first something appears; in the second something is repeated.

ذَات is a word meaning "the one that has"; it is used for the feminine (samāʾ is feminine in Arabic). Dhāti'l-rajʿ — "possessor of return".

The choice of this construction is meaningful. It could have said "by the returning sky" (al-samāʾi'l-rājiʿa). It did not. A construct built with ذات is stronger than an adjective: it states the quality not as a passing condition but as a property possessed. The sky is not returning; the sky has a return.

The same construction will be repeated in the next verse (dhāti'l-ṣadʿ), so that the two oaths are bound to one another.

The root of the word was treated at verse 8. Here the question is this: what does the "return" of the sky mean?

The views transmitted in the classical works of exegesis:

The majority prefer the first view, and their ground is strong: the next verse speaks of the splitting of the soil. The relation between rain and the splitting of soil is too plain to need explaining. The two are the two halves of a single event.

Even so, the second and third views do not exclude the first. The word rajʿ means, before anything else, "a going back"; whichever return is meant, the work of the word is the same: the coming back of something that has gone.

Now we come to the tightest place in the sūra.

In the eighth verse this claim was made: "He is able to bring him back." — إِنَّهُۥ عَلَىٰ رَجْعِهِ لَقَادِرٌ

In the eleventh verse this is sworn by: "By the sky that has a return." — وَٱلسَّمَآءِ ذَاتِ ٱلرَّجْعِ

The same word. The same verbal noun. Three verses apart.

This is the architectural centre of the sūra. The claim is built with a word; the proof is given with the same word. The sentence turns into this:

You say that rajʿ is impossible. The name of the thing that happens over your head every year is rajʿ as well.

The structure of the argument is the same as in verses 5-8 — what has happened in the past is the proof of what will happen in the future — but the example has changed. There the proof was personal (your own beginning); here it is cosmic and repeated (each year's rain).

And the second is stronger than the first, because it is something that repeats. No one saw his own creation; everyone sees the rain every year.

Some of the classical exegetes set up this link; I too record it, resting on the repetition of the word in the text. Because both occurrences of the word stand in the text itself, this is not a reading at the level of inference but a direct observation.

Wa'l-arḍi dhāti'l-ṣadʿ "And by the earth that splits open."

Root: ص-د-ع. Its original sense is to split something, to crack it, to part it in two.

• صَدْع (ṣadʿ) — a split, a crack; and the act of splitting itself.
• تَصَدَّعَ — it cracked, it broke apart, it scattered. In the Qurʾān: "On that day they will be parted into groups" (al-Rūm 30/43).
• صُدَاع (ṣudāʿ) — headache. The naming comes from the head's feeling as though it were splitting. In the Qurʾān: "From it they suffer neither headache nor loss of their senses" (al-Wāqiʿa 56/19).
• ٱصْدَعْ — occurs in the Qurʾān as an imperative: "Proclaim openly what you are commanded" (al-Ḥijr 15/94). The iṣdaʿ here means "cut through, come out into the open, say it plainly" — to split the silence.

The first view is the preference of the majority and, because of the unity it forms with the preceding verse, the most consistent. The third view is not contrary to the text either, and it has an interesting side: if the resurrection is meant, the relation between the oath and the answer grows tighter still — because the sūra is in any case defending the raising of the dead.

But this must be stated: the two readings do not exclude one another, because both tell of the same act. The soil's splitting for a seed and its splitting for a dead man are two scales of one operation. The Qurʾān makes this likeness openly elsewhere: "Such is the coming forth" (Qāf 50/11) — immediately after the account of dead soil being revived by rain.

Now read 11 and 12 together:

By the sky that has a return, and by the earth that splits open.

The two verses set two movements side by side:

• The sky: it turns — water comes down.
• The earth: it splits — the plant comes out.

These are the two halves of a single event, and the order is right: first the water comes down, then the soil splits. The Qurʾān recounts this cycle in the same order elsewhere too:

"And We sent down from the rain-laden clouds water pouring down, that with it We might bring forth grain and plants" (al-Nabaʾ 78/14-15).

Al-Ṭāriq 11-12 compresses these two verses of al-Nabaʾ into two words: rajʿ and ṣadʿ.

And the place of the cycle in the argument is plain: dead soil is brought to life. Before the rain comes down the soil is bone dry; no life is visible in it. The water comes down, the soil cracks, green comes out. This is a scene of revival repeated every year, and it is the small-scale, visible example of what the sūra is defending.

In the section on Sūrat al-Falaq the root ف-ل-ق was treated. What was recorded there was this: falq is the opening of something closed by a force, the parting of a whole and the coming out of something from between; and the Qurʾān uses this active participle of God in two consecutive verses:

"Surely God is the splitter of the grain and the date-stone" (al-Anʿām 6/95) "He is the splitter of the dawn" (al-Anʿām 6/96)

And this observation was made there: the seed under the soil is closed, it is in darkness, it looks dead; it cracks at one point and a green shoot comes out of it. The night is closed, it is dark; it cracks at one point on the horizon and light comes out of it.

Now compare with al-Ṭāriq 12:

The same event is recounted from two different places. In the verse of al-Anʿām the agent comes to the front: fāliqu'l-ḥabbi wa'l-nawā — He is the one who splits. In al-Ṭāriq, on the other hand, the act is named as a property of the earth: the earth is the possessor of splitting.

This difference is required by the context of the oath. An oath is sworn by something the one addressed can observe. He sees that the soil cracks; he does not see who cracks it. The sūra swears by the side that is seen and states the side that is unseen in the answer.

And there is a third root telling the same image: ش-ق-ق. "Then We split the soil in clefts" (ʿAbasa 80/26). The Qurʾān uses three separate roots for the same event — falq, ṣadʿ, shaqq. All three are splitting; their differences are at the level of emphasis, and I lay down no firm distinction here.

The two sūras use, surprisingly, the same set of images:

• Al-Falaq: the splitting of the darkness (the dawn) — in the context of taking refuge.
• Al-Ṭāriq: the star that pierces the darkness (verse 3) and the splitting of the soil (verse 12) — in the context of proof.

In both sūras something closed is opened and something comes out of it. In al-Falaq this is a guarantee against evil: the darkness is not absolute. In al-Ṭāriq it is a proof of power: the opening of what is closed is an ordinary business.

I record this link as an observation; it is not a claim that the two sūras are built around a common theme.

Innahū la-qawlun faṣl "Surely it is a word that separates."

The answer to the second oath.

Innahū — "it". It points to something not named earlier in the sūra.

The majority reading: the Qurʾān. The same case as the one treated in the section on Sūrat al-Qadr — there too the referent of the pronoun in the expression innā anzalnāhu was left unstated, and it was recorded that this conveys taʿẓīm and perfect notoriety: the thing is so plain that naming is not needed.

Another reading attaches the pronoun to what the sūra has said before: to the report of the resurrection, or to the ruling in verses 4-10. This reading too has been defended and is not contrary to the text. But the settled expressions used of the Qurʾān itself (qawlun faṣl, la-qawlu rasūlin karīm, and the like) support the first reading.

The word is indefinite: qawlun — "a word". The indefiniteness conveys taʿẓīm here: "such a word as…".

And note: it does not say "book", it does not say "revelation", it does not say "verse". It says word. This fits the reality of the period in which it came down — there was no volume in existence that day; there was a word recited and heard.

Root: ف-ص-ل. Its original sense is to separate, to detach one thing from another, to open a gap between them.

• فَصْل — separation; and the part separated off.
• فَاصِلَة (fāṣila) — that which separates. This is also the term we use in this commentary for the sound of verse-endings: the close that separates verses from one another.
• مَفْصِل (mafṣil) — a joint. The place where two bones part.
• تَفْصِيل (tafṣīl) — detail; to explain a thing by separating it into its parts. It occurs often in the Qurʾān: "And everything We have set out in detail" (al-Isrāʾ 17/12).
• فَيْصَل (fayṣal) — a decisive ruling, the decision that ends the matter.
• فَصْل also: season, chapter, class. All of them are separated units.

A point about the pattern. Faṣl is here a verbal noun but has been used as an adjective: qawlun faṣl = "a separating word". In Arabic the use of a verbal noun in place of an adjective conveys intensification — as though the word were the act of separating itself. It is like saying, instead of "a just man", "the man is justice itself".

The same pattern occurs elsewhere in the Qurʾān: in expressions meaning "He is the one who decides between us", and especially يَوْمُ ٱلْفَصْل — "the day of separation" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/21; al-Dukhān 44/40; al-Mursalāt 77/13-14, 38; al-Nabaʾ 78/17). This is one of the names of the day of resurrection.

The word's being a separator works at several levels:

First, it separates truth from falsehood. This is the commonest explanation. The word is a measure; something is measured by it, and what is true is separated from what is false.

Second, it states a decisive ruling. Faṣl is from the same root as fayṣal: the word that closes the matter. That is, there is in it no hesitation, no probability, no "perhaps".

Third, it separates people. When a word is set out, the answer given to it divides the hearers in two. The Qurʾān says this of itself: "By it He leads many astray, and by it He guides many" (al-Baqara 2/26). The later verses of the sūra (15-17) will be precisely the description of this division: one side lays plots, and the other is told to grant a respite.

These three explanations are not alternatives to one another; they are three faces of the word.

The second oath was sworn by a cycle: water comes down, soil splits. The answer, in turn, says that the word separates. Where is the link?

In the classical works of exegesis this link is generally set up thus: as the coming down of the rain is a promise and is kept, so too is this word. That is, the oath guarantees that the word will come to pass.

I think one further step can be taken, and I record this as my own reading: the splitting of the soil is an operation of separation. The rain comes down on all the soil in the same way; but not every soil yields the same thing. Under the rain, fertile soil grows green, barren soil stays as it was. Water is a measure, and it separates soils.

Qawlun faṣl is like this too: the same word is spoken to everyone, but it does not give the same result in everyone. What separates is not the word itself but the ground the word falls on.

This reading also agrees with the notion of kanūd (soil that yields no crop) in Sūrat al-ʿĀdiyāt. It is not a binding interpretation; the connections of the words stand in the text, but it is I who set up the relation between them.

Wa mā huwa bi'l-hazl "It is no joke."

The preceding verse gave an affirmative ruling (it is a word that separates); this verse gives a negative one (it is no joke).

This is another example of the method treated in Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ: in describing a thing, to say both what it is and what it is not. The relation of negation (nafy) and affirmation (ithbāt) set up between al-Kāfirūn and al-Ikhlāṣ is here gathered into a single pair of verses.

Wa mā huwa bi'l-hazl — the bāʾ that enters the predicate of a negative sentence adds nothing to the meaning but strengthens the negation. In Arabic this is one of the most forceful forms of negation.

The same use is widespread in the Qurʾān: "God is not one to wrong His servants" (bi-ẓallāmin, at Āl ʿImrān 3/182).

Further, al-hazl has come definite (with the article). Had it come indefinite ("it is not a joke") the meaning would have been close; its coming definite rejects the whole genus: this is not a thing of the sort called a joke.

Root: ه-ز-ل. The word has two wings of meaning, and the lexicographers give them under the same entry:

1. The opposite of seriousness; joke, jest, idle talk. In Arabic jidd (seriousness) and hazl are a classical pair of opposites. Hāzil — one who jests.

2. To grow thin, to become lean, to waste away. Hazala — he grew thin; huzāl — thinness, leanness; hazīl — scrawny.

The lexicographers connect the two senses thus: a joke is speech that has been emptied out. Serious speech is full, it carries a load, it produces a result; a joke is speech in a weakened, lightened state, with its binding force taken away. In English too the expressions "empty talk" and "a light remark" carry the same intuition.

This connection is of the kind the lexicographers set up, and it cannot be presented as a settled etymological verdict. But it is worth recording, because it sharpens what the verse says: "This word is not weak."

The verse is making a defence. So there was an objection.

The Qurʾān regularly records the charges brought against it: poetry, sorcery, soothsaying, tales of the ancients, fabrication. Their common denominator is this: all of them aim at lowering the seriousness of the text. The cheapest way of refuting a word is to declare it not worth arguing about.

And this is the same logic as the observation recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā: there too it was said that the source was cut off without entering into the content of the claim. Here too the weight of the word is emptied out without entering into the content.

The verse rejects this move. And in rejecting it, it does not enter into argument — it says "it is this, it is not that". Because whether a word is serious is found out not by argument but by its consequences.

Verses 13 and 14 set up a hinge between the first ten verses of the sūra and the last three.

The first ten verses gave a report: you are being watched, you will be brought back, what is inside you will be probed. Now the text stops and speaks about itself: what I have said is serious.

Then the last three verses will say what is to be done about those who do not accept this seriousness.

Innahum yakīdūna kaydā · Wa akīdu kaydā "They are laying a plot; and I am laying a plot."

This word was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Fīl (a-lam yajʿal kaydahum fī taḍlīl). What was recorded there:

The root k-y-d: to try to do something secretly and by an indirect route; to prepare an arrangement the other side cannot see. The most decisive feature of the word is secrecy — an open attack is not called kayd.

And there, these two verses of al-Ṭāriq were mentioned thus: "They are like the general statement of the principle of Sūrat al-Fīl."

Let us now open that observation up. Sūrat al-Fīl recounts a particular event: an army comes, its plan comes to nothing. Al-Ṭāriq states the same principle without an event: they lay a plot, I lay a plot. In al-Fīl the outcome is recounted (fī taḍlīl — within a going astray); in al-Ṭāriq the outcome is not stated, and it is only made known that the other side too is doing something.

The measure recorded in al-Fīl holds here as well: the Qurʾān makes the subject of discussion not the evil plan itself but in whose hand the plan will end.

In both verses a verbal noun from the same root follows the verb: yakīdūna kaydā and akīdu kaydā.

In Arabic this is called the absolute object (mafʿūl muṭlaq), and its basic function is emphasis. English has no exact equivalent; it can be approached with expressions such as "they plot and plot", or "they are laying a plot — and what a plot".

Its coming indefinite may also carry taʿẓīm or nawʿ (the marking of a kind): "such a plot as…".

That the same structure is used in both verses tells of the two sides in exactly the same language. This is not a coincidence; it will be dwelt on below.

This is a known device in the Qurʾān, and in Arabic rhetoric it is called mushākala (using the same wording in the response).

Its examples are plain:

• "They plotted, and God plotted (makarū wa makara'llāh); and God is the best of plotters" (Āl ʿImrān 3/54).
• "They seek to deceive God, while it is He who deceives them" (al-Nisāʾ 4/142).
• "God mocks them in return" (al-Baqara 2/15).
• "The recompense of an evil is an evil like it" (al-Shūrā 42/40).

How these expressions are to be understood has been discussed at length in the classical literature of theology and exegesis. The general acceptance is this: the word is used as the name of the response. That is, the kayd ascribed to God is not a malicious trick; it is the response that turns the plot back on the one who laid it. As was recorded in the section on al-Fīl too, at Yūsuf 12/76 kayd is ascribed to God and carries no negative sense there.

Why is the same word used? In order to show that the response is exactly equal to the act. Had a different word been used, the response would have fallen into a separate category. The same word establishes the equality: neither less nor more.

The two verses use the same words but part company in three places:

First: singularity against plurality. They are a crowd; they make their plans together. The one facing them is one. The sūra sets up this disproportion by grammar.

Second — and the more striking: "I". For divine acts the Qurʾān mostly uses the plural of majesty (taʿẓīm): innā anzalnāhu, fa-sa-nuyassiruhū, naḥnu. Here the first person singular comes: akīdu — "I lay a plot".

This change makes the encounter one to one. Against a crowded side, a single one. And the institutional distance carried by the plural of majesty is removed.

Third: there is emphasis in the first sentence and none in the second. Innahum — "surely they". Akīdu — plain. Their plot is recounted with emphasis; the response is stated in a calm sentence.

This difference of sound prepares the close of the sūra. The text does not raise the dose of the threat; it lowers it.

First their plot, then the response. The order in Sūrat al-Fīl was the same: first Abraha's plan, then the outcome of that plan.

This order states a principle: the response comes after the act. The Qurʾān does not break this order — no one is punished before the deed.

Fa-mahhili'l-kāfirīna amhilhum ruwaydā "So grant the kāfirūn a respite; grant them a little respite."

The last verse of the sūra. And the place where the tone changes entirely.

The fāʾ at the head states the consequence of the two preceding verses: since a response will be given, what you must do now is wait.

That is, the command is not a command to act; it is a command to not act. What is asked of the one addressed is not to respond but to wait, knowing that the response will be given.

Root: م-ه-ل. Its original sense is not to hurry, to take it slowly, to grant time.

• مَهْل (mahl) — deliberateness, taking it slowly. ʿAlā mahlin — slowly, without haste.
• مُهْلَة (muhla) — the time granted. Turkish mühlet, "a term of grace", comes straight from here.
• إِمْهَال / تَمْهِيل — to grant time.

Note: there is also the word مُهْل (muhl) in the Qurʾān — molten metal, boiling dregs (al-Kahf 18/29; al-Maʿārij 70/8; al-Dukhān 44/45). The relation of this word to this root is disputed; I draw no connection here.

There are two imperatives from the same root in the verse, and the two are in different forms:

• مَهِّلْ — the tafʿīl form (Form II).
• أَمْهِلْ — the ifʿāl form (Form IV).

The lexicographers say that there is a difference between these two patterns; but they do not agree on what the difference is. Some count imhāl the gentler, closer to "leaving alone"; some regard tamhīl as the longer term. I lay down no firm distinction, because the reports do not agree with one another.

What is certain is this: the bringing of two verbs of the same meaning one after the other is emphasis. And there is no conjunction between them — it does not say "mahhil and amhil". In Arabic the dropping of the conjunction between two sentences (faṣl) shows that the second is an explanation or a confirmation of the first. We saw the same phenomenon at al-Ikhlāṣ 112/2.

The last word of the sūra, and its gentlest word.

Root: ر-و-د. Its meaning is slowness, moving little by little, gentleness.

• رَادَ / إِرْوَاد — to move slowly, with deliberateness.
• رَائِد — a scout, one who goes on ahead to reconnoitre. (In Arabic today it is used in the senses of "pilot" and "pioneer".)
• إِرَادَة (irāda) — willing. It is counted from the same root; the lexicographers connect it by way of "turning towards something".

The pattern: تَصْغِير (the diminutive of the noun). Ruwayd is the diminutive form of rūd. In Arabic the diminutive pattern (fuʿayl) states the smallness, the fewness or the shortness of a thing.

So the word may be counted as diminished twice over: the root already states "slowness", and the pattern makes it smaller still. The result: "a little, a very little, a short while."

Grammar. Ruwaydan is in the accusative, and the grammarians parse it either as an absolute object (amhilhum imhālan ruwaydan) or as a circumstantial qualifier. The difference in meaning is small.

Now read the last three verses of the sūra one after the other:

They are laying a plot. And I am laying a plot. So grant the kāfirūn a respite — grant them a little respite.

Sound and meaning come down together.

The fifteenth verse is the hardest sentence: emphasised with innahum, plural, continuous.

The sixteenth verse states the response, but without emphasis.

The seventeenth verse, in turn, is not a threat but a command to be patient. And its last word is the smallest and gentlest word in the whole text of the sūra: ruwaydā.

That a text should end in this way is striking. The expected close was the raising of a threat. Instead the voice drops.

The sūra states no term. And that it does not is meaningful.

There is one more expression like it in the Qurʾān:

"Leave Me with the deniers, those who live in ease, and grant them a little respite" (al-Muzzammil 73/11).

The same root (mahhilhum), the same note of fewness (qalīlan). The two verses are almost the same sentence.

Whose measure is the measure of the expression "a little"? For the one waiting the term is long; for the one who knows the outcome it is short. The word measures the term from the side of the outcome.

What this says to the one addressed is: what looks long by your measure is short by the measure of the matter. This is a sentence of consolation, not a sentence of threat — and the one addressed is not those who lay the plot but the one against whom it is laid.

Root: ك-ف-ر. This root was treated at al-Baqara 2/6 on the occasion of kufr; what was recorded there was this: the concrete sense of the root is to cover — because the sower covers the seed with soil, he is called kāfir in Arabic.

The one point that belongs here must be recorded per the method (Method): the word states an attribute; it is not the name of a group. What the verse describes is an attitude that lays plots and counts the word a joke; whoever carries that attitude falls under the description. In this commentary no blanket ruling is issued about an ethnic or religious group.

The sūra does the same thing twice: it swears an oath, then states a ruling. But the subject of the two rounds is different.

The two rounds are not independent of one another. The first gives a report; the second says that the report is serious. That is, the sūra first says something, then states what kind of word the thing it has said is.

This is an unusual order. Generally a text first introduces itself and then speaks. Al-Ṭāriq does the reverse: it speaks first, and then says "what I have said is no joke". And this order follows the reaction of the one addressed — because the objection comes after the word has been spoken.

The connecting point of the sūra is the word رجع, and the distance between its two occurrences is the argument of the sūra itself:

• 86/8 — innahū ʿalā rajʿihī la-qādir. The claim: man can be brought back.
• 86/11 — wa'l-samāʾi dhāti'l-rajʿ. The proof: return already exists, it happens every year.

Man's objection was this: to come back after being scattered is not a thing that can happen. The sūra's answer: that thing already has a name, and it is repeated over your head every year.

The force of the argument lies in its giving no new information. The one addressed knows the rain, knows that the soil cracks, knows that dead soil grows green. The sūra adds nothing to these; it only names them with the same word.

I record this as an observation: all the images of the sūra are built on the opening of what is closed.

Five images, a single idea: nothing that is closed stays closed. Not the night, not the body, not the soil, not the intention.

This weave is the ruling of the fourth verse of the sūra — there is a watcher over him — spread across the whole text.

I record this as my own reading. The root senses of the words were given one by one above and not one of them is disputed; I am showing the picture that emerges when they are brought together, not claiming that there is a deliberate arrangement.

There is no particular, sound event transmitted as the occasion of revelation of the sūra. In the sources of exegesis no special report of an occasion of revelation stands out for this sūra; in cases of this kind, rather than invent an event, one must look to the sūra's own context.

The content of the sūra already shows its historical position:

• The resurrection is under dispute (5-9). This is the dispute that ran from beginning to end through the Meccan period.
• The seriousness of the revelation is defended (13-14). So the text is not being taken seriously; it is being made light of.
• It is said that plots are being laid (15). So the other side is no longer merely objecting; it is acting in an organised way.
• Patience is commanded (17). So there is no possibility of responding, or responding is not fitting.

These four items together describe a stage towards the middle or the end of the Meccan period: the call has been heard, rejected, made a subject of mockery, and is now met with a planned opposition. But this is an inference; it is not possible to place the sūra at a definite date, and the lists of the order of revelation are themselves a matter of independent judgement.

First: the meaning of being watched has changed.

For a certain period the fourth verse of the sūra was an abstract ruling: there is a watcher over him. Today being watched is one of the most concrete and most everyday of human experiences. Location records, search history, purchase data, cameras, algorithmic profiles — modern man lives a life more recorded than that of any generation in history.

But there is a basic difference between them, and this difference settles what the verse says today. Modern surveillance looks outward: it records what you did, where you went, what you bought. The ninth verse of the sūra, in turn, speaks of sarāʾir — that is, of the layer no system can reach.

This has a practical consequence: living a recorded life disciplines a person at the level of behaviour but does nothing at the level of intention. On the contrary, it opens the distance between the two — the outside orderly, the inside free. The verse speaks exactly to this distance.

Second: the disproportion between origin and claim.

The fifth verse is a command: look at what you were created from. The function of this command is not to give information but to give a measure.

A person's estimate of himself most often leaves his own beginning out of the reckoning. The Qurʾān recalls this reckoning regularly and always does the same thing: it takes the person back to his own material origin. This has a side that cuts pride off, but not only that — it also has a side that gives courage. One who has come to this state out of a fluid should not be in a hurry to find the work in front of him too great.

Third: not being taken seriously as a method.

The fourteenth verse says "this is no joke". So the way to neutralise a word is not to refute it but to make it light.

This method is more widespread today than it has ever been. To argue with a claim takes labour; to make it ridiculous fits into a single sentence. The form of social media supports this method in particular: mockery is short, the answer is long; mockery spreads, the answer does not.

The answer the verse gives to this is striking: it does not enter into argument, it merely states the position — this is a word that separates; it is no joke. The seriousness of a word is not settled by whether the other side takes it seriously.

Fourth: a respite is not tolerance; nor is it a postponement.

The last verse has a side that is easily misunderstood. The command "grant a respite" can be read as a call to tolerance — "leave them alone, there is no issue".

But the context of the verse does not say this. Immediately before the command a response was stated (wa akīdu kaydā). That is, the respite does not mean that the matter is closed; it means that it is not in the person's own hand.

The practical counterpart of this is: for someone who has been wronged, the hardest thing is to accept that the response is not in his own hand. A person wants either to respond or to close the matter and forget it. The verse proposes a third position: do not close it, but do not take it on yourself either.

This position holds anger without either legitimising it or soothing it. It is a hard place, and the sūra does not try to make it easier — it only makes the term smaller: ruwaydā.

Fifth: reading the cycle as a proof.

The eleventh and twelfth verses make a proof out of something everyone sees: the rain comes down, the soil cracks.

Today we know the mechanism of this cycle; evaporation, condensation, precipitation. Knowing does not remove the fact. But it removes one thing: attention. What has been explained is not looked at.

The work the verse does is not to explain but to make looking possible again. To know how an event happens is not to know what it means. The water comes down, the soil cracks, ground that looked dead grows green — whether or not the mechanism of this is known, what it shows is the same: the coming back of something that looked finished is an ordinary business in nature.

• Which star or stars ṭāriq indicates is disputed; the views were given in a table and no preference was imposed.
• The two variant readings in verse 4 (lammā / lamā) were recorded; because I could not state with certainty which imam of the variant readings preferred which, no names were written.
• Who the ḥāfiẓ is (angels / God) is disputed; the views were given and no preference was stated.
• To whom the ṣulb and the tarāʾib of verse 7 belong is disputed in the classical works of exegesis; three views were given in a table and no preference is adopted. The ground was explained in the text.
• The modern embryological claims about verse 7 were rejected. This does not mean that the verse contradicts modern science; it means that the verse makes no such claim and that the classical readings do not run in that direction. The ban on hunting for scientific miracles in the method (Method) was applied here exactly.
• The "pulsar" claim about verse 3 was rejected on the same ground.
• The referent of the pronoun in rajʿihī in verse 8 is disputed; a preference was made on the ground of context and it was stated that it is not binding.
• What the rajʿ of verse 11 is (rain / the return of the heavenly bodies / the water cycle) is disputed; the majority's preference was given together with its ground, and no certainty was claimed.
• What the ṣadʿ of verse 12 is (plant / water / the resurrection) is disputed; the views were given, and it was recorded that they do not exclude one another.
• On the referent of the pronoun innahū in verse 13 (the Qurʾān / the preceding ruling) the view of the majority was taken as the basis, and the second reading was recorded as well.
• Because the reports of the lexicographers do not agree about the difference of pattern between مَهِّلْ and أَمْهِلْ, no firm distinction was laid down.
• The connection between the senses "concealment", "joy" and "throne" in the root س-ر-ر was recorded as a relation set up by the lexicographers; it was not presented as an etymological verdict.
• The same note holds for the connection between the senses "joke" and "weakness" in the root ه-ز-ل.
• The relation set up between the rain sense of the root ن-ص-ر and verses 11-12 is my own reading; it was not presented as a claim of word-play.
• The overlap of meaning between the roots ق-ر-ع and ط-ر-ق was recorded, but it was not presented as a claim that the root is one; that they are two separate roots was stated plainly.
• The relation of "separating" set up between qawlun faṣl and the splitting of the soil is my own reading, not a transmitted report.
• The table concerning the weave of images in the sūra (the opening of what is closed) is mine; it was not presented as a claim of a deliberate arrangement.
• The observation about the sūra's falling into three sound-zones is an observation about the texture of the text; it was not presented as evidence of meaning.
• The inference about the period of the sūra's revelation rests on its content; no definite dating was made, and it was recorded that the lists of the order of revelation are a matter of independent judgement.