87. Sūrat al-Aʿlā

Nineteen verses. There is something close to unanimity that it is Meccan, and in most lists of the order of revelation it is shown among the early ones.

It takes its name from the attribute in the first verse: ٱلْأَعْلَى. The sūra is also referred to by its first word, as Sabbiḥ.

The sūra opens with a command, and the content of that command is the whole of the rest of the sūra. "Declare the name of your Lord free of all imperfection" is said; then what that Lord has done is enumerated (2-5), what will be done for the addressee is stated (6-8), what is asked of the addressee is announced (9), the two answers people give to this request are distinguished (10-13), the description of the one who is saved is given (14-15), then the address suddenly becomes plural and a diagnosis is laid down (16-17), and the sūra ends by saying that this is not a new word (18-19).

The sūra, that is, is the unfolding of a single command, and the last link of that command returns to its first: in the first verse it is said "declare the name of your Lord free of all imperfection"; in the fifteenth the one who is saved is described as "one who mentioned the name of his Lord". The command is given, and then the portrait of the one who keeps it is drawn.

All nineteen of the nineteen verses end in the long ā sound. al-Aʿlā, sawwā, hadā, al-marʿā, aḥwā, tansā, yakhfā, li'l-yusrā, al-dhikrā, yakhshā, al-ashqā, al-kubrā, yaḥyā, tazakkā, fa-ṣallā, al-dunyā, abqā, al-ūlā, Mūsā.

This is the third instance in this region of the muṣḥaf. In Sūrat al-Shams fifteen of the fifteen verses, and in al-Layl twenty-one of the twenty-one, ended in the same sound; and in al-Aʿlā, nineteen of the nineteen.

And something like the phenomenon recorded in the section on al-Shams is seen here too: the sūra has chosen its words from the patterns that will fit this sound. In al-Shams taqwā and taghwā (normally ṭughyān) had been chosen on the same measure. In al-Aʿlā, by contrast, the elative pattern (ism al-tafḍīl) occurs with unusual density:

Seven words, a single family of patterns. This pattern has two properties: its sound ends in -ā (it fits the verse-ending) and its meaning states degree. The sūra, that is, builds both its sound and its way of thinking out of the same pattern: everything is on a scale, at one end or the other.

I record this observation as a point established about the texture of the text; I do not present it as evidence for meaning.

Since the basmala was treated in earlier sections it is not taken up again here; the verse numbers have been counted without the basmala.

Sabbiḥi'sma rabbika'l-aʿlā "Declare the name of your most high Lord free of all imperfection."

Root: س-ب-ح. This root was taken up in the section on Sūrat al-Naṣr. I recall briefly what was recorded there and add what is particular to this verse.

The concrete and surprising original sense of the root: to swim in water or in air, to flow along, to advance swiftly through a medium. The Qurʾān preserves this concrete sense: "Each one swims in an orbit" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/33; Yā Sīn 36/40).

When it passes into the tafʿīl form the word acquires the sense of tanzīh: keeping God far from everything that does not befit Him. The joining of the two senses is the lexicographers' interpretation: to swim is to move swiftly away through a medium and pass on; and tasbīḥ is to carry God far from deficiencies. In the section on al-Naṣr it was recorded that this link "is not forced, but neither is it certain"; the same caveat holds here.

The function of tasbīḥ is negative. It does not say "He is such"; it says "He is far from such". This is the very method treated in Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ: drawing a boundary instead of giving a description.

The command in Sūrat al-Naṣr was this: فَسَبِّحْ بِحَمْدِ رَبِّكَ — "Declare your Lord free of all imperfection together with praise of Him."

The command here: سَبِّحِ ٱسْمَ رَبِّكَ — "Declare the name of your Lord free of all imperfection."

The difference is in the word order: in al-Naṣr the object of the tasbīḥ is directly the Lord, and ḥamd has been added beside it. In al-Aʿlā, by contrast, the object is the name, and there is no ḥamd.

This difference can be explained by context. al-Naṣr is a closing command spoken at the end of a process; there ḥamd (changing the direction of the praise) was at the centre of the matter. al-Aʿlā, by contrast, is a text of beginning, and by making the object of the tasbīḥ the name it opens a question.

The first grammatical subtlety of the sūra, and its most debated place.

"Declare your Lord free of all imperfection" could have been said; the Qurʾān says it elsewhere (al-Wāqiʿa 56/74, 96 — fa-sabbiḥ bi-smi rabbika'l-ʿaẓīm; where "name" is present too, but with a bāʾ). Here the object is directly the name.

The explanations that stand out in the classical commentaries and in the books of grammar:

The third explanation is worth dwelling on, because it makes sense of the verse without altering its wording.

There was a point established in the section on Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ: "the only instrument of language by which a servant can point directly at the Essence is the pronoun; because the pronoun loads on no attribute." A human being's contact with God at the level of language, that is, is always established by way of a name. All the traffic between the Essence and the human being — prayer, oath, call, mention, writing — passes over the name.

In that case "to declare the name free of all imperfection" means to keep clean the place in which the name is carried. And this has concrete counterparts:

• Not making the name an instrument of a false oath.
• Not mentioning the name side by side with other beings — as the Arab of the Jāhiliyya would say "by the name of God and by the name of al-Lāt".
• Not using the name to confer rightness. This is the most widespread form today: one side making the name an instrument for extracting divine approval for its own decision. In the section on Sūrat al-Naṣr exactly this risk was recorded in the context of victory.
• Not making the mention of the name unserious.

I do not impose a preference. The second and third explanations do not exclude one another: to perform the tasbīḥ by mentioning the name is at the same time to keep the name pure.

A report widely transmitted in the tradition states that when this verse came down the Prophet asked that "subḥāna rabbiya'l-aʿlā" be said in prostration. This report is frequently conveyed in the books of exegesis and of law in connection with this verse; I issue no firm ruling on the state of its chain of transmission.

What is certain is this: as the tasbīḥ of prostration, the expression subḥāna rabbiya'l-aʿlā is built out of the words of this verse and is established in the daily practice of the Muslim community. In the same way the tasbīḥ of bowing (subḥāna rabbiya'l-ʿaẓīm) comes from the expression at al-Wāqiʿa 56/74 and 96.

There is a striking pairing here: the attribute the most high goes with the movement in which the body descends lowest; the attribute ʿaẓīm (great) with bowing. I record this pairing as an observation.

It is also transmitted in the hadith sources that the Prophet recited al-Aʿlā together with al-Ghāshiya in the Friday and festival prayers, and al-Aʿlā in the witr prayer.

Root: ع-ل-و. Height, superiority. Its derivatives: ʿuluww (height), ʿālī (high), taʿālā (He is exalted), iʿlāʾ (raising), aʿlā (the most high).

Pattern: the elative. This word was taken up in the section on Sūrat al-Layl — there too it occurred within the construct rabbihi'l-aʿlā: "only seeking the face of his most high Lord" (al-Layl 92/20).

The parallel between the two verses is striking:

Both verses attach the same attribute to the point at which a human being turns towards God: one to the place the intention turns to, the other to the place the tongue touches.

Whose attribute is it? Grammatically al-aʿlā can be the attribute of two things: rabb (the most high Lord) or ism (the most high name). Both are recorded in the classical analyses; the majority attach it to rabb, because the elative is better suited to qualifying a person, and there is no other word standing between it and "your Lord".

A contrast within the Qurʾān. It is necessary to note in whose mouth this word occurs. The Qurʾān records that the attribute al-aʿlā was once used by a human being of himself:

"He said: I am your most high lord" (al-Nāziʿāt 79/24)

This word belongs to Pharaoh, and it is exactly the usurped form of the construct at al-Aʿlā 87/1: rabbukumu'l-aʿlā / rabbika'l-aʿlā. The only difference between the two expressions is that in the first the owner of the claim is a human being.

al-Nāziʿāt and al-Aʿlā are not neighbouring sūras in the muṣḥaf (79 and 87). I record this link as an observation about the order of the muṣḥaf; it is not a claim about the order of revelation. But it shows the weight the word carries: "the most high" is the attribute a human being is most inclined to apply to himself.

In the section on Sūrat al-ʿAlaq this was recorded: "The first word of the revelation is a command… Religion opens not as a package of information but as a command."

al-Aʿlā too opens with a command, and the command is again a verb. But in al-ʿAlaq the command was iqraʾ (recite) — a verb of receiving. Here it is sabbiḥ (declare free of all imperfection) — a verb of giving. In the first the human being receives; in the second he gives something in return.

And the two will meet in the sixth verse of the sūra: sanuqriʾuka — "We shall make you recite". al-Aʿlā, that is, will turn the command of al-ʿAlaq into a promise. We shall return to this at verse 6.

Alladhī khalaqa fa-sawwā "He who created and proportioned."

The second, third and fourth verses begin with ٱلَّذِى. The three verses, that is, are attributes of the word rabbika in the first verse.

This is a method of introduction: a command is given, and then the one to whom the command is directed is introduced by the works He has done. We had seen the same structure in Sūrat al-ʿAlaq: iqraʾ bi-smi rabbika'lladhī khalaq — there too alladhī came immediately after the command, and the first work was again creating.

Note: in the second verse there is no conjunction (alladhī khalaqa); in the third and the fourth there is (wa'lladhī). The first attribute is directly attached to what it qualifies; those that follow are added to it. This is the same phenomenon as the one recorded at al-Ikhlāṣ 112/2: the dropping of the conjunction shows that the first quality is inseparable from what it qualifies.

The verb has no object: "He created" — created what? It is not said.

This was so at al-ʿAlaq 96/1 as well, and there the function of dropping the object was recorded: generality. When the object is not stated the verb stays open so as to cover every object that fits the subject.

Here this has a consequence: the following verses will give examples one by one (the pasture, the animal, the human being), but the first sentence stays without limit. First the scope is opened, then examples are placed inside it.

Root: س-و-ي. This root was taken up in the section on Sūrat al-Shams (wa nafsin wa mā sawwāhā). What was recorded there:

The idea beneath the root is equality and equivalence. In Form II (sawwā) the verb becomes transitive and intensive: to bring the parts of a thing into correspondence with one another, to get their proportions right, to make it complete and without flaw. To render it "to straighten" in English falls short; the work described is putting the parts of a thing into their right proportion — like bringing the walls of a building to the plumb line, or balancing the pans of a scale.

In the section on al-Shams the verses in which this verb occurs were listed, and al-Aʿlā 87/2 was on that list too. Let us now look at the list from here:

• "He who created you, proportioned you, and set your measure" (al-Infiṭār 82/7)
• "Then He proportioned him and breathed into him of His spirit" (al-Sajda 32/9)
• "When I have proportioned him and breathed into him of My spirit" (al-Ḥijr 15/29; Ṣād 38/72)

In all these verses there was a common order: first creating, then proportioning, then the giving of a capacity. al-Aʿlā 2-3 sets up the same order but names the third step differently: hadā.

In the section on Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā the function of this particle was recorded: taʿqīb (following immediately) and causation. There it was repeated in three verses: fa-āwā, fa-hadā, fa-aghnā.

In al-Aʿlā the same particle is repeated three times: fa-sawwā, fa-hadā, fa-jaʿalahu. And there is one verb common to the two sūras: fa-hadā.

The pattern set up in al-Ḍuḥā was this: a state of lack → a direct answer to it. In al-Aʿlā the pattern is different: a work → the completion of that work. In al-Ḍuḥā a deprivation is removed; in al-Aʿlā a process of making comes to its result.

The meaning of the particle here is this: there is no gap between creating and proportioning. What is created has not been left raw and put right afterwards; being created and being brought to its proportion are two moments of the same operation.

Wa'lladhī qaddara fa-hadā "And He who set the measure and guided."

One of the densest verses of the sūra. Two words, two great concepts, and a fāʾ between them.

There is a variant reading transmitted for this verse, and it needs to be recorded:

• قَدَّرَ (with the doubling, the tafʿīl form) — He determined, He measured and cut out, He fixed its quantity.
• قَدَرَ (without the doubling, Form I) — He measured; and also "He had power over".

Both readings are transmitted with ascription to the authorities of the variant readings; since I cannot give with certainty which authority preferred which, I write no name.

The difference in meaning: The reading with the doubling brings forward the comprehensiveness of the operation and its repetition — a measure being set for each thing separately. The reading without the doubling states the measuring itself and also keeps open the sense of qudra. The difference does not change the ruling; the two readings give two faces of the same verb.

Root: ق-د-ر. This root was taken up in detail in the section on Sūrat al-Qadr. There three wings of meaning of the root were distinguished, and the first sits directly here:

Measure, quantity, determination. Qadara — he measured, he cut out, he fixed its quantity. Its derivatives: qadar (a determined measure), miqdār (quantity), taqdīr (measuring and cutting out), qudra (the power to do a thing to its measure).

And the verse mentioned there is in a key position here: "We created everything according to a measure (bi-qadar)" (al-Qamar 54/49).

In the section on al-Qadr this was also recorded: the relation between determining a measure and worth is set up in the language itself — to know the qadr of a thing is to give it its right measure.

The only point to be added here is the scope of the word in this verse: taqdīr here is not the theological debate about destiny; it is the giving to each being of its own measure. A bird's wing, the germination time of a seed, the temperature of a body, the range of an eye's vision — each of them is a taqdīr.

Root: ه-د-ي. This root was taken up in the section on al-Fātiḥa and had occurred once more at al-Ḍuḥā 93/7.

What was recorded in al-Fātiḥa: the root carries two senses and the two are akin — to show the way and to give a gift. From the same root comes hadiyya. And this had been added: "To show the way is a gift; to describe the direction to someone who cannot find his way is to give him something."

In the section on al-Ḍuḥā the concrete core of the root was stated: not merely "to point out" but to offer forward gently. From the same root comes hady (the sacrificial animal driven to the Kaʿba). Guidance is showing the way and driving towards that way; it is not describing it from a distance.

This last point is decisive for al-Aʿlā 3. The verse does not speak of a transfer of information; it speaks of a driving forward.

The real matter of the verse is that these two verbs have been bound with a fāʾ: He measured, and as a result of this He guided.

Why should measure be the cause of guidance?

Because the way of each being is according to its own measure. The way given to a bee cannot be the same as the way given to a human being, because the capacity of the two is not the same. Guidance cannot be given without the measure of the one guided being known.

The verse that expresses this most plainly is in Sūrat Ṭāhā, and it is almost like a commentary on al-Aʿlā 3:

"Our Lord is He who gave everything its creation, and then guided" (Ṭāhā 20/50).

The same two steps, in the same order: first each thing is given its own portion, then it is guided. This is the answer Moses (Mūsā) gave to Pharaoh, and al-Aʿlā 3 has compressed the same sentence into two words.

The Qurʾān gives this principle with concrete examples as well:

• "Your Lord revealed to the bee: Take houses in the mountains, in the trees, and in what they build" (al-Naḥl 16/68). The bee's way is according to the bee — and the guidance given to it comes through a different channel from the one given to a human being.
• For the human being, guidance takes the form of a book; because in the human being's measure there is choice.

The scope of the verse comes out of this. The explanations given in the classical commentaries about the content of the verb hadā here:

These are not alternatives to one another but layers of a single verb. In the section on al-Fātiḥa the degrees of guidance had been distinguished — showing, making walk, holding firm; what is at issue here is the basic layer prior to all of them: that everything brought into being knows what it is to do.

Wa'lladhī akhraja'l-marʿā "And He who brought out the pasture."

Root: خ-ر-ج. To come out; in the ifʿāl form (akhraja), to bring out.

The verb is used regularly in the Qurʾān in the context of plants: "With it We brought out every kind of plant" (al-Anʿām 6/99); "so that with it We may bring out grain and plants" (al-Nabaʾ 78/15).

The image of the verb matters: the plant is not made, it is brought out. That is, it is taken outside from a place where it already was. This points to the state of the seed beneath the soil, and it is the same scene as the image of fāliqu'l-ḥabbi wa'n-nawā (He who splits the grain and the date-stone) treated in the section on Sūrat al-Falaq.

Root: ر-ع-ي. And the choice of this word is the most striking place in the verse.

The root has two wings of meaning, and the two are inseparable from one another:

1. To pasture, to graze. Raʿa'l-māshiya — the animal grazed; arʿā — he pastured. مَرْعَى (marʿā) — the place where grazing is done, a pasture; and the grazed thing itself.

2. To watch over, to look after, to tend and protect. رَاعٍ (rāʿī) — a shepherd; and, widening from there, "one who stands at the head of a community and watches over it". رِعَايَة (riʿāya) — tending and watching over. مُرَاعَاة (murāʿāt) — taking a thing into account, having regard to it. رَعِيَّة (raʿiyya) — the people a ruler watches over.

How do the two senses join? The shepherd, while pasturing the flock, at the same time watches over it. Riʿāya is "taking to pasture" and "standing guard over it" gathered into a single word. The relation in English between "to tend" and "to look after" is similar — to look after someone is both to feed him and to protect him.

For plants the Qurʾān generally uses the word نَبَات (nabāt). Here marʿā has been chosen, and the difference is meaningful.

Nabāt is a name that looks at the plant from its own side: the thing that grows, that comes out. Marʿā, by contrast, is a name that looks at the plant from the side of the one that eats it: the thing that is grazed.

The verse, that is, names the plant not for itself but for its function. What is brought out is not "greenery" but "fodder". The animal has not yet been mentioned in the sentence, but the animal is inside the word.

This sits within the context of the sūra. In the third verse it had been said that He guided each being according to its measure. The fourth verse gives an example of it: a pasture for the grazing being. Guidance is not merely the describing of a direction; it means that there is something to be found at the place one goes to.

And the sense of riʿāya sets up a second layer here: the one who brings out the pasture is at the same time the one who watches over. Within the word itself these two works stand together. I record this as an observation; the two senses of the root are given in this way in the dictionaries, but it is I who apply the relation between them to this verse.

Fa-jaʿalahu ghuthāʾan aḥwā "Then He made it dark scum."

The densest image of the sūra. A whole life-cycle in a single verse.

Again the fāʾ. And its function here differs from the previous ones: in verses 2 and 3 the fāʾ stated the completion of a work (He created → He proportioned). Here it states the ending of a work (He brought out → He turned it into scum).

And the choice of the particle is meaningful. Thumma (then, with time passing in between) could have been said. It was not; fāʾ (immediately after) was said. The turning of the greenery into refuse, that is, is described not as a long process but as an adjacent result.

This is a choice that fits the experience of a lifetime itself. A season is long while it is being lived; once it has passed it is short.

Root: ج-ع-ل. This verb was dwelt on in the section on Sūrat al-Fīl: when it takes two objects it states transformation — putting a thing into another state.

What was recorded there was this: "The plan was put into a state; then those who made the plan were put into a state. The same hand does both works."

Here too the same hand: the one who brings out the pasture and the one who turns it into scum are the same. The verse binds the two verbs to a single subject. In the section on Sūrat al-Shams, about the verb sawwā being used at the two ends of that sūra — one for building up, one for tearing down — this was recorded: "The one who gives and the one who takes are the same." al-Aʿlā 4-5 sets up the same principle within a single pair of verses.

Root: غ-ث-و / غ-ث-ي. Ghuthāʾ is the mixture of foam, refuse, broken branches and dry grass that a flood drags along and brings down. The heap that stays on the bank after the flood has drawn back, good for nothing.

Two properties the word carries are important:

First, lightness. Ghuthāʾ is carried on the surface of the water; had it weight it would not be carried. In the section on Sūrat al-Qāriʿa the likening of the mountains to "carded wool" (al-ʿihni'l-manfūsh) was treated, and it was shown there that the backbone of that sūra is the concept of weight. Ghuthāʾ belongs to the same family: a thing that once stood in its place becoming a thing that can be carried off.

Second, mixedness. Ghuthāʾ is not a single thing; it is the mixture of everything that has been dragged along. It has no distinguishable identity left.

Its other occurrence in the Qurʾān is very important:

"We made them scum (fa-jaʿalnāhum ghuthāʾan). Away with the wrongdoing people!" (al-Muʾminūn 23/41)

The same verb, the same word — but its object is not a plant but a community. The Qurʾān, that is, uses this image both for the pasture and for human beings.

This is something to be kept in view when reading al-Aʿlā 5. The verse speaks of a plant, but the word's other use in the Qurʾān shows that the plant is an example. In the sixteenth verse of the sūra the ruling to be drawn from this example will be stated plainly: "You prefer what is near."

Root: ح-و-و / ح-و-ي. Ḥuwwa — a dark colour; a green tending to black, or a redness tending to black. Aḥwā — that which is of this colour. In classical Arabic it is used in descriptions of lips and eyes as well: dark, swarthy.

The colour word itself carries an indeterminacy, and the lexicographers record this: aḥwā is not pure black; it is what has darkened. The state in which black has been mixed into the green or into the red.

The most debated place in the verse, and both readings are fine ones.

Both readings have been defended in the classical sources. And both come out at the same place, because in both the colour is inside the cycle:

• On the first reading: the green dries, darkens, becomes refuse.
• On the second reading: what is dark green turns into refuse.

Whether at the beginning or at the end, then, aḥwā is the mark of the colour. I do not impose a preference; but this must be stated: because the first reading requires fewer assumptions, it is the sounder in point of language.

Now read verses 4 and 5 together:

He brought out the pasture; then He made it dark scum.

The two verses contain three stages:

1. Coming out — rising from the soil, growing green. 2. Drying and darkening — the spoiling of the colour. 3. Being dragged along — becoming the mixture the flood carries off.

And among these three stages one thing is not said: the moment when it is greenest and fullest. The verse skips that moment.

There must be a reason for this, and this is what appears: that moment is the moment already being lived. The addressee is standing exactly there, and what needs to be described to him is not where he is but where he is going.

The Qurʾān's fullest account of this cycle is in Sūrat al-Ḥadīd, and it is like an expanded form of al-Aʿlā 4-5:

"Know that the life of this world is play, diversion, adornment, mutual boasting among you, and rivalry in the increase of wealth and children. It is like a rain: the growth it brings forth pleases the farmers; then it dries, and you see it turned yellow; then it becomes scum" (al-Ḥadīd 57/20).

And a shorter form of it:

"…then it becomes dry refuse that the winds scatter" (al-Kahf 18/45).

al-Aʿlā reduces all these accounts to two words: ghuthāʾan aḥwā.

At first sight it is strange. In the first verse the tasbīḥ was commanded; verses 2-4 introduced the Lord by the good works He has done: He created, He proportioned, He measured, He guided, He brought out the pasture. The fifth verse looks as though it breaks this sequence — it speaks of a spoiling.

But it does not break it. For the verse presents the drying not as a malfunction but as part of the order. The same subject does it. The pasture's coming out is a determining of measure, that is, exactly as much as its turning into refuse is.

This is directly connected with qaddara in the third verse. To set a measure is also to set how long a thing will last. What was recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Qadr was this: "The value of a stretch of time is measured not by its length but by its content." al-Aʿlā states the complement of this: everything has a duration, and the duration too is part of the determining of measure.

Sanuqriʾuka fa-lā tansā "We shall make you recite, and you will not forget."

The sūra changes direction here. The first five verses were introducing the Lord; now it turns to the addressee.

Root: ق ر أ. This root was treated in detail in the section on Sūrat al-ʿAlaq. What was recorded there:

There are two basic senses in the root: to gather, to bring together (the original sense) and to recite, to give voice to. The second is counted a special case of the first: to recite is to bring letters and words together in the mouth. The name "Qurʾān" is from this root as well.

Pattern: the ifʿāl form (أَقْرَأَ). Causative: to make someone recite, to bring it about that someone recites. English has no single verb for this; "to make someone recite" is its exact equivalent.

This is the most direct link that can be established between the two sūras, and it is worth dwelling on.

Sūrat al-ʿAlaq — the first text according to the order of revelation — opened with a command: ٱقْرَأْ (recite). And in the section on al-ʿAlaq this was recorded: when the command was given there was no text present to be recited; its object was not stated; according to the report the addressee's answer was "I am not one who recites".

al-Aʿlā 6 uses a verb from the same root — but it changes three things:

The command, that is, turns into a promise. In al-ʿAlaq something was asked of the human being; in al-Aʿlā it is announced that the work will be done.

In the section on al-ʿAlaq this was recorded as a second reading: "The command is the opening of a capacity… the answer is this: if you cannot recite, there is one who makes you recite." al-Aʿlā 6 is the explicit expression of that answer. The causative form (iqrāʾ) says exactly this: the work of reciting does not belong to you; you are made to recite.

In establishing this link I make no claim about the order of revelation. That the two texts use the same root, the one as a command and the other as a promise, stands in the text; it is I who establish the relation between them.

The grammatical question of the verse is here.

فَلَا تَنسَىٰ can be read in two ways:

1. Negation (a negative statement): "you will not forget." On this reading the sentence is a promise; lā is the particle of negation and the verb is in the indicative. This is the majority's reading.

2. Prohibition: "do not forget." On this reading lā is the particle of prohibition and the verb ought to be in the jussive.

The ruling grammar gives: Had it been a prohibition the alif at the end of the verb would have dropped — it would have been fa-lā tansa. In the verse the alif stands. This is the most concrete piece of evidence supporting the first reading.

The answer of those who defend the prohibition reading is this: the alif has been preserved for the sake of the verse-ending (in grammar this is called ishbāʿ). Since all the verses of the sūra end in -ā, had the alif dropped the weave of the sound would have been spoilt.

This answer is technically possible. But the principle recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā holds here too: the verse-ending ground is the soundest ground in point of language, but it does not suffice by itself to establish a reading. To show that the preservation of the alif is necessary for the prohibition is a separate task.

The difference in meaning is great:

• On the negation reading the verse is a guarantee: the preservation of the text is God's undertaking.
• On the prohibition reading the verse lays on a responsibility: not forgetting is the addressee's business.

The majority are on the first reading, and the flow of the sūra supports it too: that "save what God wills" is said in the following verse shows that not forgetting is a given state — because an exception can only be made from something that has been given.

What is this promise about? The closest parallel is in Sūrat al-Qiyāma, and it explains the subject directly:

"Do not move your tongue with it to hasten it. Its gathering and its recitation are Ours. So when We recite it, follow its recitation" (al-Qiyāma 75/16-18).

These three verses are like an explanation of al-Aʿlā 6. The same anxiety (missing it, forgetting it), the same answer (the gathering and the reciting are Ours), the same family of roots (qurʾānahu, fa-ttabiʿ qurʾānahu).

If the scene recorded in the section on al-ʿAlaq is recalled — a man who is given the command to recite and says "I am not one who recites" — it becomes clear what kind of anxiety this promise answers. A long text to be held in memory is being given to a person who does not know writing. In this situation the fear of forgetting is a technical and a real fear.

The verse answers that fear, and the form of the answer is striking: it does not say "try not to forget"; it says "you will not forget".

Illā mā shāʾallāh · Innahu yaʿlamu'l-jahra wa mā yakhfā "Save what God wills. Truly He knows what is made open and what is hidden."

A promise was given, and an exception was placed immediately after it. What this exception does is one of the questions the classical commentaries debate most.

The second view is worth dwelling on, because it explains how this pattern works in the Qurʾān.

"Illā mā shāʾallāh" and the like come frequently in the Qurʾān after a guarantee. Its best-known example:

"They will abide there as long as the heavens and the earth endure — save what your Lord wills. Truly your Lord is the doer of what He wills" (Hūd 11/107; similarly 11/108).

The same debate has been carried on about this verse too, and a significant part of the exegetes have said that the exception brings no actual limitation but states the absoluteness of the power.

The logic here is this: to say that a thing has been given is different from saying that the thing is necessary. The promise is certain; but the source of its certainty is the will of the one who gives it, not the capacity of the one who receives it. The exception preserves this distinction.

I do not impose a preference. The first and second views are the ones most defended in the classical sources, and they do not entirely exclude one another.

The second sentence of the verse is an independent statement, and it is worth dwelling on why it is here.

جَهْر — what is made open. Root ج-ه-ر: a thing's being open, manifest, uncovered.

• جَهَرَ بِٱلْقَوْلِ — he said the word aloud.
• مُجَاهَرَة — to do a thing openly.
• جَهْرَة — in a manner visible to the eye. In the Qurʾān: "Show us God openly" (al-Nisāʾ 4/153).
• جَهْرَاء — open ground without trees, without cover.

That recitation aloud in prayer is called jahrī and silent recitation sirrī comes from this root as well, and its opposite is sirr.

يَخْفَىٰ — what is hidden. Root خ-ف-ي: to hide, to cover. The lexicographers record that this root can carry opposite senses — the verb akhfā can be used both for "he hid" and for "he brought out into the open". In Arabic such words are called aḍdād. Here the context is clear: since its opposite is jahr, what is meant is "that which is hidden".

The two elements of the sentence have not been built in the same form, and this is a choice.

• ٱلْجَهْرَ — a definite noun (a verbal noun). A closed, finished concept.
• وَمَا يَخْفَىٰ — a relative clause: "the thing that is hidden". Open-ended.

Had it been symmetrical it would have said al-jahra wa'l-khafā. It does not.

The reason must be this: what is open has a limit, what is hidden has none. The things a person makes open can be counted; the things he hides cannot — because hiding is itself a matter of layers. The particle mā in Arabic states generality: however hidden it may be, at whatever layer it may be.

We see the same asymmetry in another form in Sūrat Ṭāhā: "He knows the secret and what is more hidden than it" (Ṭāhā 20/7). There it is said explicitly that hiddenness is graded.

The placing of this sentence in this verse may look disconnected at first sight. The promise about forgetting was given, the exception was placed — and then suddenly "He knows the open and the hidden" is said.

The link can be established in several ways:

First, its bearing on the exception. The exception had said "what God wills". According to what the willing would go was not said. This sentence fills that gap: the willing rests on knowledge.

Second, its bearing on forgetting itself. Forgetting is something that happens inside; it is not seen from outside. A person may not even notice that he has forgotten. Only the one who knows the hidden knows this.

Third, its bearing on the following verses. In the ninth verse the reminder will be commanded; in the tenth and eleventh people will be divided in two: those who remember and those who avoid. Who will make this division? The division arises not from behaviour but from an inner state (khashya). The seventh verse says in advance that that inner state is known.

This third link is the strongest in point of the structure of the sūra, and I record it as my own reading.

Wa nuyassiruka li'l-yusrā "And We shall prepare you for the easiest."

Root: ي-س-ر. This root was taken up in two separate sections: in Sūrat al-Inshirāḥ within its opposition to ʿusr, and in Sūrat al-Layl in exactly this pattern.

What was recorded in the section on al-Inshirāḥ and will not be repeated here: the relation between ʿusr and yusr, the function of the particle مَعَ (together with), and the comparison set up with the expression "ease after a hardship" at al-Ṭalāq 65/7 — that is, the Qurʾān knows how to say "after", and in al-Inshirāḥ it does not say it.

In the section on al-Inshirāḥ al-Aʿlā 87/8 had already been mentioned: when the places were enumerated in which the root yusr occurs "as the name of a way".

In the section on al-Layl, however, the verb's use in this pattern was treated in detail:

"Whoever gives and guards himself, and confirms the finest — We shall prepare him for the easiest" (al-Layl 92/5-7) "Whoever is miserly and counts himself beyond need, and denies the finest — We shall prepare him for the hardest" (al-Layl 92/8-10)

Three details were recorded there: the sīn at the head states the near future; the nūn is the plural of majesty (taʿẓīm), that is, the easing does not happen of itself; and the particle لِ states direction and assignment — "the person is not being pushed towards ease; he is being prepared for ease, being made fit for it."

It was also recorded that al-yusrā is an elative on the fuʿlā measure, that is, that it means not "ease" but "that which is easiest", and that what it qualifies is not stated.

Now let us set al-Layl 92/7 and al-Aʿlā 87/8 side by side. The two verses use almost the same words but they part in three places, and the difference is decisive.

The first difference: the condition. In al-Layl the easing is a rule: whoever does these three things, this is done for him. The sentence is bound to the condition with a fāʾ. In al-Aʿlā there is no condition; the easing comes as a gift, as the continuation of the preceding promise (We shall make you recite).

The second difference: the absence of the sīn. In al-Layl sa-nuyassiruhu — the future. In al-Aʿlā nuyassiruka — the bare imperfect. In Arabic the bare imperfect states both the present and the general, and it carries continuity. In al-Layl, then, something that will happen in the future; in al-Aʿlā something that is going on.

This difference is not trivial. In the preceding verse sanuqriʾuka — there the sīn is present. In the following verse nuyassiruka — here it is absent. Two different tenses in the same sequence of sentences. The making to recite is a work that will be completed later on; the easing, by contrast, is a state that is in progress.

The third difference: the singularity of the addressee. al-Layl's sentence is for everyone; al-Aʿlā's is for one person. In the section on Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā this distinction was recorded: "The difference between stating a general truth and saying something to someone about himself."

In the section on al-Layl the function of the lām was dwelt on. There is a point to be added here, and it concerns the object of the verb.

In Arabic the usual object of the verb yassara is a task: yassir lī amrī — "make my task easy" (Ṭāhā 20/26). What is made easy, that is, is the task to be done.

Here the object is the person: nuyassiru-ka — "We shall ease you".

This sits oddly in English and is lost in translation. But what it says is clear, and it joins with the point established in the section on al-Layl: what is made easy is not the task but the person. The difficulty of the task may stay the same; the person is made fit for that task.

This distinction has a practical counterpart, and it comes out at the same place as the inference recorded in the section on al-Inshirāḥ in the context of the particle maʿa: "a task's being hard requires the forming of the capacity to do that task; and the capacity develops inside the hardship." al-Aʿlā 8 says that this capacity has been given.

As was recorded in the section on al-Layl, what the word qualifies is not stated. In the classical explanations supplements such as "the easiest state", "the easiest way", "the easiest law", "the garden" are supplied.

In the context of this sūra the most defended explanation is the religion itself: the ease of the law that is brought. The Qurʾān states this quality of itself in several places: "God desires ease for you, He does not desire hardship" (al-Baqara 2/185); "He has laid no hardship on you in religion" (al-Ḥajj 22/78).

But the text does not state it, and its not stating it serves the same function as what was recorded about the object of the verb yuʿṭīka not being stated at al-Ḍuḥā 93/5: what is named is limited.

Fa-dhakkir in nafaʿati'dh-dhikrā "So give the reminder — if the reminder will benefit."

The fāʾ at the head states the consequence of the three preceding verses (6-8): you will be made to recite, you will not forget, you will be prepared for the easy — so remind.

The command, that is, is built upon the things that have been given. The point established about the backbone of Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā holds here too: the favour received turns into a command given.

Root: ذ-ك-ر. Its meaning: to remember, to mention, to put into words. Within the root there is both remembering in the mind and mentioning with the tongue, and Arabic does not separate the two.

• ذِكْر (dhikr) — mention, being mentioned; and it is used in the sense of "honour, renown" as well.
• ذِكْرَى (dhikrā) — a reminding, a reminder. A verbal noun on the fiʿlā measure; the pattern carries continuity and intensity.
• تَذْكِرَة (tadhkira) — the thing that reminds.
• ذَكَّرَ (Form II) — to remind, to remind someone else.
• تَذَكَّرَ (Form V) — to remember of oneself.

The difference between these forms is necessary for understanding the next verse; we shall return to it when we come there.

Note: from the same root letters comes the word ذَكَر (male) as well. The lexicographers debate this relation; I establish no firm link.

The most debated place in the sūra, and it requires an honest handling.

The sentence can be read thus: "If the reminder will not benefit, do not give it." This reading looks as though it conflicts with the Qurʾān's understanding of the call — because the prophets conveyed the message in places where they knew it would not benefit as well.

The explanations given for this condition in the classical commentaries:

The first and the fourth explanations are the ones most defended, and they do not exclude one another.

I state no preference, but two points need to be recorded:

First, note the subject of the sentence. The verse does not say "if they will benefit"; it says "if the reminder will benefit". The subject of the verb is al-dhikrā. The condition, that is, has been attached not to the worth of the one addressed but to whether the reminder will work. This small difference takes the sentence out of being a classification of human beings.

Second, the limit of the command is laid down explicitly elsewhere in the Qurʾān:

"So remind; you are only one who reminds. You are not a tyrant over them" (al-Ghāshiya 88/21-22).

The same command (fa-dhakkir), and after it the limit: your business is to remind, the outcome is not your business. The condition at al-Aʿlā 9 can be read as another expression of this limit — a caveat showing where the responsibility ends.

And a third verse sets up the same pair:

"So remind by the Qurʾān those who fear My threat" (Qāf 50/45).

Here too the verb dhakkir has been paired with the one who fears — exactly as at al-Aʿlā 10.

Sa-yadhdhakkaru man yakhshā "The one who fears will remember."

The command in the preceding verse was ذَكِّرْ: the tafʿīl form, transitive, a work done from outside. To remind.

The verb in this verse is يَذَّكَّرُ: its origin is yatadhakkaru, the tafaʿʿul form (V), with the assimilation of the tāʾ into the dhāl. Reflexive: he himself remembers, he tries to remember, he brings himself round.

The difference between the two forms carries the whole ruling of the verse:

Reminding is done from outside; remembering happens from inside.

The one who receives the command, that is, can perform tadhkīr — he can remind. But tadhakkur — the coming about of the remembering — is not in his hands. A door can be knocked on; its opening is the business of the one inside.

This is the counterpart at the level of grammar of the limit at al-Ghāshiya 88/21-22: "you are only one who reminds".

A note on the pattern. In Arabic the tafaʿʿul form most often states takalluf (taking a work upon oneself, doing it with effort). Tadhakkur, that is, is not a passive remembering that simply happens; it is a turning towards remembering. There is a will inside the word.

سَ (the sīn). The sīn at the head of the verb states the near future. At al-Ḍuḥā 93/5 the difference between sawfa and sīn was recorded: sawfa states a wider and more distant future. Here sīn has been chosen — that is, the remembering is not a distant possibility but a near result.

Root: خ-ش-ي. To fear. But in Arabic there are several words for fear, and the difference between them matters.

The distinction the lexicographers generally record is this: خَوْف (khawf) is fear in general — the unease felt at the possibility of harm; what is feared may not be known. خَشْيَة (khashya), by contrast, is the fear felt with knowledge of the greatness of what is feared; there is knowledge and reverence within it.

The clearest evidence for this distinction within the Qurʾān is this:

"Among His servants it is only those who know who feel khashya of God" (Fāṭir 35/28).

Khashya, then, is a result of knowledge. One who does not know may be afraid; but he cannot feel khashya, because khashya requires knowing what one stands before.

This distinction cannot be presented as a firm rule — there are places in the Qurʾān where the two words are used in place of one another. But the general tendency runs this way, and in this verse it is meaningful.

The verse says this: the one who will remember is the one who fears.

Khashya, that is, is not the result of remembering but its condition. The expected order would have been the reverse: the reminder is given, the person remembers, then he fears. The verse breaks this order.

It is worth dwelling on what this means. The verse does not say that the reminder creates something in a person; it says that it sets in motion something already there. The reminder is not water poured into an empty vessel; it is a spark touching something ready to catch.

This has the same structure as the second verse of Sūrat al-Baqara: "…a guidance for those who are mindful of God" (al-Baqara 2/2). The Book is guidance for those who carry the concern to guard themselves — that is, for the Book to work, a prior turning is needed. This circle was taken up in the section on al-Baqara; al-Aʿlā 10 gives the same principle in a single sentence.

And this has a practical consequence: the reminder does not work unless it finds something answering it in the one addressed. This is not the fault of the one who gives the reminder. The condition in the ninth verse may be recording exactly this fact.

Wa yatajannabuha'l-ashqā "But the most wretched will avoid it."

Root: ج-ن-ب. Its original sense is side, flank, edge.

• جَنْب (janb) — the side, the flank. In the Qurʾān: "and lying on their sides" (Āl ʿImrān 3/191).
• جَانِب (jānib) — side, edge, direction.
• ٱلْجَارُ ٱلْجُنُب — the distant neighbour (al-Nisāʾ 4/36).
• ٱلصَّاحِبُ بِٱلْجَنۢبِ — the companion at one's side (al-Nisāʾ 4/36).
• ٱجْتَنَبَ / تَجَنَّبَ — to take a thing to one's own side, to draw aside from it, that is, to pass by it, to avoid it. In the Qurʾān: "…so avoid it" (al-Māʾida 5/90).

This is the image of the word: to avoid a thing is to leave it to one side and pass by it. There is an encounter — the person does meet the thing — but there is no contact.

This is the finest point of the verse.

The verse does not say "he calls it a lie". It does not say "he rejects it". It does not say "he denies it". It says he avoids it.

The verbs used for the same type in Sūrat al-Layl were these: "None enters the fire but the most wretched — the one who calls it a lie and turns away" (al-Layl 92/15-16). There are two verbs there and both are active: kadhdhaba (he called it a lie) and tawallā (he turned away).

In al-Aʿlā the verb is quieter: yatajannabuhā. No argument, no opposition, no objection. Only passing by it.

And this is the most widespread answer given to a reminder. To oppose a word requires taking that word seriously — as was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Ṭāriq, the side that opposes has at least accepted the weight of the word. The one who avoids does not even do that. He takes what comes before him aside and walks on.

I record this as my own reading; the root sense of the word is given in this way in the dictionaries, but it is I who compare the verbs of the two sūras.

Yatajannabu-hā — "he avoids it". The pronoun is feminine and refers back to al-dhikrā (verse 9).

What is avoided, that is, is the reminder itself; not the person of the one who reminds, not the subject, not the outcome. The reminding itself, directly.

Root: ش-ق-و. This word was taken up in the section on Sūrat al-Layl and had occurred at al-Shams 91/12 as ashqāhā.

The question recorded in the section on al-Layl was this: the word is an elative on the afʿal measure ("more/most wretched"), and this makes the sentence "none enters the fire but the most wretched" problematic — it comes to imply that those wretched in a middling degree will not enter. The answers given there were set out in a table, and it was stated that the first answer is the soundest in point of language: in Arabic the afʿal measure is sometimes used without comparison, simply to state the quality.

The same solution holds here; I do not repeat it.

The only point belonging here is the asymmetry of the opposition:

In al-Layl the two extremes had been built on the same pattern: al-atqā and al-ashqā. In al-Aʿlā the symmetry is broken: on one side there is a verb (yakhshā — he fears), on the other an attribute (al-ashqā).

What this means is interpretation, but a reading may be proposed: the side that remembers is described by a behaviour, the side that avoids by a position. The first is open to the door, the second has closed. I record this as my own reading; it is not binding.

Alladhī yaṣla'n-nāra'l-kubrā "He who will enter the greatest fire."

Root: ص-ل-ي. Its original sense: to be exposed to fire, to enter the heat of a fire, to be roasted.

• صَلَى ٱللَّحْمَ — he cooked the meat on the fire, he roasted it.
• صِلَاء (ṣilāʾ) — the heat of a fire, its glow.
• ٱصْطَلَى — he warmed himself at a fire. In the Qurʾān: "Perhaps I may bring you a brand from it, so that you may warm yourselves" (al-Naml 27/7).

The last item matters: the same root also describes drawing near to a fire in order to get warm. Beneath the root, that is, there is no idea of punishment; there is the idea of contact with fire. The result of the contact depends on the degree of the fire and on the duration of the contact.

This shows that the word the Qurʾān uses in its descriptions of punishment is a neutral verb. What makes the verse heavy is not the verb itself but its object: al-nāra'l-kubrā.

In the fifteenth verse of this sūra the verb فَصَلَّىٰ (he prayed) will come. In writing the two words look very much alike: يَصْلَى and صَلَّىٰ.

But these are not the same root. Yaṣlā (to enter the fire) is from the root ص-ل-ي; ṣallā (to pray) is, by general acceptance, from the root ص-ل-و. The last letter differs, and in Arabic the root is determined by the identity of the three consonants.

In the section on Sūrat al-Falaq the same warning was given about the resemblance between ف-ل-ق and ف-ل-ح. The principle recorded there holds here too: closenesses of meaning in roots that share their first two letters have been discussed in the tradition of the language, but they cannot be presented as a claim of unity of root.

That these two verbs occur three verses apart within one sūra leaves an echo in the ear. I record this as an observation about the sound; I do not present it as evidence for meaning and I make no claim of a play on words.

Pattern: kubrā is the feminine of akbar; an elative on the fuʿlā measure. Since nār is feminine in Arabic, the attribute has come in the feminine as well.

With what is "great" being compared? The explanations transmitted in the classical commentaries:

The first explanation is the most reasonable in point of context, and there is a reason for it: the addressee knows fire. The way to describe a thing that cannot be described is to place it relative to something known. The point established in the section on Sūrat al-Qāriʿa holds here too: "A thing whose nature cannot be known can only be described by comparison."

There is a verse-ending ground as well: al-kubrā fits the -ā sound of the sūra. Had al-nāra'l-ʿaẓīma been said, the sound would have been spoilt.

Thumma lā yamūtu fīhā wa lā yaḥyā "Then he neither dies there nor lives."

ثُمَّ in Arabic can state two things: an interval of time (then, after a period has passed) and an interval of rank (and what is more, moreover).

Here the second sense works as well. The verse does not merely set up an order of time; it makes a grading: to enter the fire is one thing — and what is more, there is neither dying there nor living.

The verse, that is, says something heavier than the one before it, and thumma carries this increase of weight.

The sentence denies two verbs at once, and the order is striking: death first, then life.

The expected order would have been the reverse — a being first lives, then dies. The verse breaks this order.

The reason lies in the context: what is wanted is death. The verse answers first what is wanted. The Qurʾān records this wanting explicitly elsewhere:

"They will call out: O Mālik! Let your Lord make an end of us. He will say: You are to remain" (al-Zukhruf 43/77).

"Death is not decreed for them, that they might die" (Fāṭir 35/36).

Death, that is, is wanted there as a deliverance, and it is not given.

Almost the exact counterpart of this verse is in Sūrat Ṭāhā:

"Whoever comes to his Lord as a guilty one, for him is the Fire; there he neither dies nor lives" (Ṭāhā 20/74).

The same expression, the same order, the same two verbs. The difference between the two verses lies in the context: in Ṭāhā the description mujrim (the guilty one), in al-Aʿlā the description al-ashqā.

The weight of what the verse says comes from the definitions of the two concepts.

What is death? It is the ending of a thing. However bad it may be, death is a bringing to an end. What a human being holds on to even in the hardest situations is the knowledge that the situation will end.

What is life? In the Qurʾān's concept of life there are several elements: movement, perception, and — most important of all — the possibility of change. The condition of a living being can change; where it is today it may not be tomorrow.

The verse does away with both definitions. There is neither an end nor change. What remains is a perpetual present.

And exactly here a contrast is set up with the fourth and fifth verses of the sūra. There was a cycle there: the pasture comes out, dries, becomes scum. Every stage of the cycle passes into the next. To come to an end is the law of this world and — however painful it may be — it is a relief.

The thirteenth verse describes a place where that law does not operate. I record this as my own reading; it is I who establish the contrast between the two verses.

This verse is one of the texts used in the debates about the everlastingness of the punishment of the Fire. The detail of that debate — the duration of the punishment, for whom it is everlasting, the scope of the word khulūd — has a long history in Islamic thought and goes beyond the limits of this text.

What I must state here is this: the verse states no duration. The expression "he neither dies nor lives" describes a state, not how long that state will last. I do not use the verse as evidence for any side of the debate.

Qad aflaḥa man tazakkā "He who purified himself has attained deliverance."

The sūra comes out of the darkness here. And as it comes out it uses one of the Qurʾān's most familiar patterns.

قَدْ, when it comes with a perfect verb, states taḥqīq (certainty). This was recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Shams.

And the pattern itself is repeated in the Qurʾān:

• "He who purified his soul has attained deliverance" (al-Shams 91/9)
• "The believers have truly attained deliverance" (al-Muʾminūn 23/1)
• "He who purified himself has attained deliverance" (al-Aʿlā 87/14)

Root: ف-ل-ح. This root was treated at al-Baqara 2/5 in connection with al-mufliḥūn, taken up again at al-Shams 91/9, and in the section on al-Falaq it was recorded that it must not be confused with ف-ل-ق.

The image set up in al-Baqara was this: the root means to split, to cleave; fallāḥ — the farmer takes this name because he splits the soil; falāḥ — to split an obstacle and come out, to break the husk, to come into a state of bearing fruit. And this had been added: "The seed is buried under the soil, stays in darkness, looks as though it is rotting. Its deliverance is its splitting the layer above it and coming to the surface."

In al-Shams this image had been completed with the verb دَسَّى (to bury).

In al-Aʿlā the image is completed a third time — and this time within the sūra itself.

Recall the fourth and fifth verses of the sūra: a plant was brought out and turned into scum. Now the fourteenth verse states deliverance with a verb whose sense is "splitting and coming out".

Two agricultural images, in the same sūra, with opposite results. One at the beginning of the sūra, one at the end.

I record this as my own reading. The root senses of the words were given above and in the earlier sections; it is I who set these two images side by side. It is not binding.

Root: ز-ك-و. This root was taken up at al-Shams 91/9 and occurred once more at al-Layl 92/18. What was recorded in the two sections:

Beneath the root there are two senses at once, and the two are inseparable: cleanness/purification and growth/increase/blessing. The dictionaries do not divide these into separate entries. Zakāt comes from the same root and shows how the two senses of the word join: wealth, when a portion of it is taken out, is cleansed and increases.

In the section on al-Shams this tension was also taken up: elsewhere the Qurʾān appears to forbid purifying the soul ("So do not claim purity for yourselves" — al-Najm 53/32). The solution lies in the verb's describing two different works: actually purifying is praised, claiming purity (making a claim to cleanness) is forbidden. And in that table al-Aʿlā 87/14 stood in the first column.

Now we can put the three verses together. The same root, in three different patterns and with three different works:

The three verses answer three separate questions: What is he to purify? (al-Shams: his soul.) How is he to purify it? (al-Layl: by giving his wealth.) What happened? (al-Aʿlā: he was purified.)

In the section on al-Layl this was recorded: "al-Shams's zakkāhā becomes yuʾtī mālahu yatazakkā in al-Layl. The Qurʾān makes its own abstract concept concrete in the next sūra."

al-Aʿlā takes the third step: it gives the verb as completed, without object and without means. The not stating of the object and the means does the same work as the principle recorded at al-Ḍuḥā 93/5: what is named is limited.

Different views are transmitted in the classical commentaries about the content of the word in this verse:

The difficulty the fourth view carries must be stated plainly; it is transmitted in the sources from the early period but it harbours a historical problem. I am also cautious about ascribing this view to particular persons; there are differences among the reports, and I give no name.

I do not impose a preference. But the word's coming absolute shows that the first view covers the others: purification is a genus, the alms are a species of it.

Wa dhakara'sma rabbihi fa-ṣallā "And mentioned the name of his Lord and prayed."

The most striking side of this verse is the relation it sets up with the first verse of the sūra.

87/1 — سَبِّحِ ٱسْمَ رَبِّكَ ٱلْأَعْلَى — "Declare the name of your Lord, the Most High, free of all imperfection." 87/15 — وَذَكَرَ ٱسْمَ رَبِّهِۦ فَصَلَّىٰ — "And mentioned the name of his Lord and prayed."

The same construct: ismu rabbi-. In the first it is commanded to the addressee (-ka); in the second it is described as the deed of the one who is saved (-hi).

The sūra, that is, shows within itself the kept form of the command it gave. The command in the first verse, its being carried out in the fifteenth. Everything that passes in between — the introduction of the Lord, the promise, the command to remind, the two types of human being, the fire — comes to be settled between these two verses.

This is an observation about the structure, and it stands directly in the text: that the same construct is found at the two ends of the sūra is not an inference but a point of fact.

A difference must be recorded too: in the first verse the verb is sabbiḥ (declare free of all imperfection), in the fifteenth dhakara (he mentioned). Tasbīḥ is keeping the name far from dirt; dhikr is putting the name into words. The one is protection, the other use. The command begins with protecting; its being carried out becomes visible in the mentioning.

The verse puts three verbs into an order: tazakkā (14) → dhakara (15) → ṣallā (15).

And there are different conjunctions between the verbs:

• Between 14 and 15 وَ (and) — sequence.
• Between dhakara and ṣallā فَ (the fāʾ) — immediately after, as a result.

Between purification and mention, that is, there is a sequence; between mention and prayer there is adjacency. The prayer comes as the direct continuation of the mentioning of the name.

This stands like a description of what prayer is: prayer is the mentioning of the name poured into the body. I record this reading as my own inference; the function of the fāʾ is beyond dispute, but the conclusion I draw from it is interpretation.

Root: ص-ل-و. The detailed analysis of this verb and of the word ṣalāt was made earlier in this commentary; I do not repeat it here.

One point must be stated: there are two views about the scope of the verb here.

The sūra's being early Meccan does not entirely exclude the second view, but the first view carries the weight in the classical commentaries and fits the established use of the verb ṣallā in the Qurʾān.

And a warning must be repeated: this verb is not the same root as يَصْلَى (to enter the fire) in the twelfth verse. It was recorded above.

Bal tuʾthirūna'l-ḥayāta'd-dunyā "No — you prefer the life that is near."

The sūra suddenly changes direction here, and the tone hardens.

بَلْ in Arabic is the particle of iḍrāb: turning from the preceding word and passing to something else. It works in two ways — either it annuls the preceding statement, or it leaves it and passes to a new subject.

Here the second function holds, and it carries a tone of reproach. The two preceding verses had drawn the portrait of the one who is saved: the one who purified himself, mentioned the name, prayed. With bal the sentence turns into this: "This was the way of deliverance — but you are doing something else."

Throughout the sūra the address had been directed either to a singular addressee (sabbiḥ, sanuqriʾuka, fa-dhakkir) or to the third person (man yakhshā, al-ashqā, man tazakkā).

In this verse it passes suddenly to the second person plural: tuʾthirūna — "you prefer".

This device (iltifāt) was treated in the sections on al-Humaza and al-Qāriʿa. Its function here is particularly harsh: the account stops, the whole body of listeners is made a direct addressee, and a diagnosis is laid down about them.

And this is the only direct plural address in the sūra. Once in nineteen verses. Its solitariness increases its harshness.

A variant reading is transmitted for this verse:

• تُؤْثِرُونَ — "you prefer". Direct address.
• يُؤْثِرُونَ — "they prefer". On this reading it is not an address but a statement about the third persons in the preceding verses.

Both readings are transmitted; since I cannot give with certainty which authority preferred which, I write no name.

The difference in meaning is marked. On the first reading the verse is a diagnosis spoken to the listeners' faces. On the second it is a piece of information given about a distant group. The first reading is preferred by the majority and fits the dramatic flow of the sūra better.

Root: أ-ث-ر. Its original sense: a trace, a mark, the sign left behind.

• أَثَر (athar) — a trace, a footprint, a remnant. The Turkish borrowings eser ("a work, a monument") and âsâr ("remains") come from here.
• مَأْثَرَة (maʾthara) — a fine deed that is mentioned and handed down.
• آثَرَ (the ifʿāl form) — to prefer, to put first, to hold superior.
• إِيثَار (īthār) — preferring another to oneself. In English it is rendered by "altruism".

How the verb passed from the sense of "trace" to the sense of "preference" is debated by the lexicographers; it is generally explained by way of "putting a thing forward, making its trace something to be followed". I do not present this connection as a firm etymological ruling.

The root that must not be confused with it: the root ث-و-ر treated in the section on Sūrat al-ʿĀdiyāt. There the verb in the verse "fa-atharna bihi naqʿā" (al-ʿĀdiyāt 100/4) was taken up, and the root's sense of "to raise a thing from its place, to stir it up, to turn it upside down" was given.

The two roots look close to one another in transliteration (atharna / tuʾthirūna) but they are different:

Something like the warning given in the section on al-Falaq about ف-ل-ق and ف-ل-ح is needed here too: words that resemble one another in transliteration are not the same root.

The most striking side of the word is here.

The verb آثَرَ occurs in another place in the Qurʾān as well, and there it is praised:

"They prefer them to themselves, even though they are themselves in need" (al-Ḥashr 59/9).

The same verb. The same pattern. In one place the name of the highest virtue, in another the name of the most basic error.

The difference is in the object. Īthār is a virtue when its object is other people: withdrawing oneself. It is an error when its object is the life that is near: putting oneself forward.

The verb, that is, carries no moral load; the object sets the load. This is another example of the principle recorded about the root ḍ-l-l at al-Ḍuḥā 93/7: it is the context that establishes the judgement, not the root.

I record this comparison as my own reading; the verb in the two verses is the same and this can be verified, but it is I who establish the relation between them.

Root: د-ن-و. This word was treated at al-Baqara 2/4 and at 2/61. What was recorded there:

The root carries the senses to be near and to be low together. At al-Baqara 2/4 this was stated: "The names the Qurʾān uses for the two lives state not a value judgement but a position: the one that is near and the one that comes after. This world is not given the name 'the nearer' because it is bad; it is so named because it is near."

At al-Baqara 2/61 the form adnā of the word was taken up, and this point was established: "The language itself gives a ruling: what is near and what is low are named with the same word. The thing that is tangible, immediately reachable, tasted now, is for that very reason the one that is low in worth."

This point works directly at al-Aʿlā 16. The verse does not say "you prefer what is bad"; it says you prefer "what is near". And the charge lies exactly here: the preference is not the result of an assessment; it is the result of a distance.

A person does not choose what is near because he finds what is far bad. He chooses what is near because it is under his hand. This is not a moral deviation but a property of perception — and precisely for that reason it is hard to correct.

Now set side by side the two words at the beginning of the sūra and in this verse:

87/1 — رَبِّكَ ٱلْأَعْلَى — "your most high Lord" 87/16 — ٱلْحَيَوٰةَ ٱلدُّنْيَا — "the nearest / lowest life"

Both are elatives: one on afʿal (أعلى), the other on fuʿlā (دنيا, originally the feminine of adnā). And both are the two ends of the same scale: one the highest, the other the lowest.

The sūra opens with "the most high", in its middle there are "the most wretched" and "the greatest fire", and in this verse it comes to "the lowest". The question of preference is set up exactly between these two extremes: towards which end are you turning?

I record this as my own reading. That both words are elatives is grammatically beyond dispute; it is I who read the contrast between them as an element of structure. It is not binding.

Wa'l-ākhiratu khayrun wa abqā "Whereas the hereafter is better and more lasting."

The pattern of this word was taken up in the section on Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā and there is no need to repeat it here; I only recall it: khayr here is an elative, that is, it means "better". In Arabic this pattern normally comes on the afʿal measure (akbar, aḥsan), but the words khayr and sharr are used without being put on that measure, with their hamzas dropped. This needs to be stated, because in an English rendering it is not visible where the comparative force of "better" comes from.

Root: ب-ق-ي. To remain, to continue, to be left over.

• بَقَاء (baqāʾ) — lastingness, permanence. The opposite of fanāʾ.
• بَاقِي (bāqī) — that which remains.
• بَقِيَّة (baqiyya) — the portion left over.

Pattern: the elative (afʿal): "more lasting".

Would it not have been enough to say "it is better"? Why is "it is more lasting" added as well?

Because the two attributes close off two separate objections.

"Better" is a judgement of value. But judgements of value do not by themselves change a preference — a person may know that one thing is better and still choose the other. Because there is a second factor that determines the choice: accessibility. The sixteenth verse had already said this: what is preferred is what is "near".

"More lasting" is what targets this second factor. The advantage of what is near is that it is in hand now; but that advantage is temporary. Lastingness is the only thing that can be set against nearness.

The verse, that is, does not make a comparison of value and leave it at that; it targets the ground of the addressee's preference.

And here the sūra closes within itself.

What had been said in the fifth verse? "Then He made it dark scum." The greening pasture turning into refuse dragged along.

The seventeenth verse says: the hereafter is more lasting.

The link between the two is direct: the "life that is near" which is preferred is exactly what was described in the fifth verse. It grows green, dries, darkens, is dragged along. The verse does not put forward a claim; it recalls an image given at the beginning of the sūra.

It must be for this reason that the sūra placed the fourth and fifth verses right at the beginning. The evidence was given twelve verses before the ruling.

I record this as a reading of the structure. The relation of subject between the two verses is clear; I make no claim that this is a deliberate construction.

The same ruling had been given in Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā as well, but with different words:

"And what comes after is better for you than what came before" (al-Ḍuḥā 93/4)

In the section on al-Ḍuḥā this was recorded: there al-ūlā was chosen instead of dunyā; because dunyā states a value while ūlā states an order. And this had been added: "To say to someone under strain 'what you were in was worthless anyway' is not consolation but belittlement. The verse does not do this."

Now compare the two verses:

The difference comes from the condition of the addressee. In al-Ḍuḥā the addressee is someone under strain, and what he has is not belittled. In al-Aʿlā the addressee is a community making a choice, and what its choice is is stated by name.

The same ruling is spoken to two different states in two different languages. This is an example worth recording about the Qurʾān's way of addressing.

These two attributes are repeated together in the Qurʾān:

• "But what is with God is better and more lasting" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/60; al-Shūrā 42/36)

The same pair of words (khayrun wa abqā), with the same function. And note: there the comparison is made with "the things you have been given" — that is, again between what is in hand and what lies ahead.

Inna hādhā la-fi'ṣ-ṣuḥufi'l-ūlā "Truly this is in the earlier scriptures."

The referent of the demonstrative has been debated:

The first view is the nearest and works most easily in point of language. The second view does not exclude it.

An important caveat: the verse does not say that the same wordings are found in the earlier books. The expression "this is in those scriptures" points to content. In establishing its relation with the earlier revelations the Qurʾān does not claim identity of text.

Root: ص-ح-ف. This word was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Bayyina. What was recorded there:

A ṣaḥīfa is a spread and flat surface on which writing is done; it may be leather, papyrus or parchment. Its plural is ṣuḥuf. From the same root comes مُصْحَف (muṣḥaf): that whose leaves have been gathered together. In modern Arabic ṣaḥāfa (the press) and ṣaḥafī (a journalist) are derived from the same root as well.

And in the section on al-Bayyina, when the word's occurrences in the Qurʾān were listed, al-Aʿlā 87/19 had already been mentioned: for the earlier revelations, "in the scriptures of Abraham (Ibrāhīm) and Moses".

In the Qurʾān ṣuḥuf occurs in three contexts:

1. The earlier revelations — here and at al-Najm 53/36-37. 2. The records of deeds — "When the scrolls are laid open" (al-Takwīr 81/10). 3. The Qurʾān itself — "a messenger reciting purified scriptures" (al-Bayyina 98/2); "…in scriptures honoured, exalted, purified" (ʿAbasa 80/13-14).

What the three uses have in common is that all of them describe what is written and preserved.

A caveat of attention is needed, because in this sūra this word can set a trap.

At al-Ḍuḥā 93/4 ٱلْأُولَىٰ had occurred, and there it had the sense of "the former life"; as the opposite of al-ākhira. And al-ākhira occurred in the seventeenth verse of this sūra as well.

But the ٱلْأُولَىٰ in the eighteenth verse is not in that sense. Here it is the attribute of al-ṣuḥuf: the earlier scriptures — that is, the revelations sent down before.

The sūra, that is, uses the same word in two different works one verse apart: at 17 al-ākhira is the life of the hereafter; at 18 al-ūlā is the earlier books. The two are not a pair to one another.

I record this as a warning about reading.

Ṣuḥufi Ibrāhīma wa Mūsā "The scriptures of Abraham and Moses."

This verse is the appositive substitute for the expression al-ṣuḥufi'l-ūlā in the preceding verse: it determines what had been left indeterminate. "The earlier scriptures" was said, and then which ones they are was stated.

This is a technique often seen in the Qurʾān: the general first, then the specification. It had been seen in Sūrat al-Qāriʿa as well — hāwiya was said, and then it was named by saying nārun ḥāmiya.

The choice of these two names is not accidental, and it has to do with those addressed.

Abraham. Mecca's claim to religious legitimacy rested on him. The belief that the Kaʿba was built by Abraham was the foundation of Quraysh's position, and the Qurʾān accepts this link — it is treated at length in Sūrat al-Baqara (2/124-129). The verse, that is, sends the addressee to the source he himself claims.

Moses. The prophet known in the region and having a book in his hand. The idea of revelation was already familiar by way of "the People of the Book".

The two names together cover two different addressees: the Meccans who carry a claim of descent, and the communities that possess a book.

The same two names come side by side once more in the Qurʾān, and there the order is reversed:

"Or has he not been told of what is in the scriptures of Moses, and of Abraham, who fulfilled?" (al-Najm 53/36-37)

In al-Aʿlā: Abraham, then Moses. In al-Najm: Moses, then Abraham.

I say nothing certain about the reason for this difference. The verse-ending may be a factor — since all the verses of al-Aʿlā end in -ā, Mūsā has to come last. The verse-ending of al-Najm, however, is different.

But this may be recorded: the order in al-Aʿlā is historical (Abraham first, then Moses), while the order in al-Najm goes by familiarity. Both carry a logic.

There is something that must be said about this verse.

Today we have to hand no text known as "the scriptures of Abraham". The Qurʾān does not give the name of a book; it says "scriptures". Various apocryphal texts have been referred to by this name throughout history, but their relation to what is meant in the verse cannot be established, and I make no such matching.

What the verse says is not a claim about a document but a claim about continuity: what is being said is not new.

This verse must be read together with the fourth verse of Sūrat al-Baqara.

In the section on al-Baqara 2/4 this was recorded: "As a condition of faith not only 'what has been sent down to you' but also 'what was sent down before you' is counted… The text presents itself not as a new religion but as the last link of a chain that had been interrupted."

The two verses set up the same chain from two different directions:

al-Baqara lays down a duty; al-Aʿlā states the fact on which that duty rests. If belief in the earlier revelations is asked for, the reason is that this revelation says the same thing as they do.

And the form of the claim in al-Aʿlā is striking: the text defends itself by saying that it is not new. This is not a usual defence — one would expect a text that claims to bring something new. The Qurʾān does the reverse.

The reason for this lies in the Qurʾān's own claim: what is brought is not a novelty but a reminder. Indeed the command in the ninth verse of the sūra was exactly this: fa-dhakkir — remind.

The sūra opened with a command and closed with a statement of source.

This is the second closing of the circle. The first was between 1 and 15 (the tasbīḥ of the name / the dhikr of the name). The second is this: in the ninth verse "remind" had been said; the nineteenth verse says where the thing recalled comes from. A reminder can only be given for something that has been said before.

The skeleton of the sūra is built on two commands, and both of them later find their counterpart:

The first circle shows the kept form of the command. The second circle shows the source of the command's content.

Everything in between — the introduction of the Lord, the promise, the two types of human being, the fire, the preference — settles inside these two circles.

Although the sūra is short it repeats certain roots, and the repetitions are not scattered at random:

The distribution of the root ذ-ك-ر in particular is striking: it begins as a command (9), then turns into a person's own deed (10), and at the end becomes the description of the one who is saved (15). The word travels a road within the sūra.

The sūra is a single piece of reasoning:

1. Keep the name of your Lord pure (1) — because He is the one who creates and proportions, measures and guides, brings out the pasture and turns it into refuse (2-5). 2. It will be given to you (6-8) — you will be made to recite, you will not forget, you will be prepared for the easy. 3. So remind (9) — what is given turns into something to be given. 4. People will be divided in two (10-13) — the one who fears remembers, the one who avoids enters the fire. 5. This is the one who is saved (14-15) — the one who purified himself, mentioned the name, prayed. 6. But you are not doing this (16-17) — you prefer what is near; whereas the other is better and more lasting. 7. And this is not a new word (18-19).

The point to note is this: the sūra has placed its evidence right at the beginning. The pasture-and-scum image in the fourth and fifth verses is the proof of the diagnosis in the sixteenth and seventeenth. But there are eleven verses in between.

The reader, that is, has already been exposed to the evidence by the time he hears the ruling — but he establishes the link between evidence and ruling himself. The sūra does not state this link explicitly.

I record this as my own reading.

There is a marked closeness in point of structure among these three sūras:

The three sūras treat the same family of concepts and use the same ordering of sound. This is not a claim about the order of the muṣḥaf or about the order of revelation; it is an observation that the three texts come from a shared world of words and sounds.

And one further point: these three sūras together hold three patterns of the root z-k-w and two occurrences of the root f-l-ḥ. The agricultural image set up at al-Baqara 2/5 — the seed splits the soil and comes out — is completed in these three sūras.

There is no particular and sound event transmitted as the occasion of revelation of the sūra. Its content fits the early Meccan period:

• The question of holding the revelation in memory (6-7). This anxiety points to a period in which the revelation had not yet been written down, or had been written down little.
• The command to convey the message, and its limit (9). The call has begun, and responses have started to come.
• The description of those who deny (11-13). But no organised opposition is yet spoken of — there is no mention of a "plot" as in Sūrat al-Ṭāriq.
• The reference to the earlier books (18-19). The Qurʾān's claim to place itself within a chain is present from the early period onward.

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 matters of considered judgement.

Its place in worship. It is transmitted in the hadith sources that the Prophet recited al-Aʿlā together with al-Ghāshiya in the Friday and festival prayers, and al-Aʿlā in the witr prayer. Moreover the saying of subḥāna rabbiya'l-aʿlā as the tasbīḥ of prostration comes from the first verse of this sūra and has settled into the daily practice of the Muslim community.

First: the keeping of the name pure is the principle most violated today.

The first verse makes the object of the tasbīḥ the name. And the most widespread way of soiling the name is not to blaspheme it; it is to take the name onto one's own side.

Its forms today are plain: a political position being presented as divine approval, a commercial transaction being legitimised with a religious label, a personal preference being closed off with "God wanted it so", an argument being ended by charging the other side with irreligion.

What these have in common is this: making the name into an argument in one's own favour. This was the risk recorded in the context of victory in the section on Sūrat al-Naṣr: "if we won we were right, and if we were right everything we did was correct." The command of tasbīḥ cuts this chain — because tasbīḥ is to say that God cannot be made part of any human reckoning.

Second: the personal counterpart of the link between measure and way.

The third verse was saying this: He set the measure, and guided according to that measure. The way of each being, that is, is according to its own capacity.

What this says to the present has to do with not knowing one's own measure. One of the most widespread unrests of modern life is a person's finding himself on a way that is not to his own measure: running at another's speed, taking another's goal for his own, trying to sustain a life outside his own capacity.

The measure that can be drawn from the verse is this, and I record it as my own reading: the way comes after the measure. A choice of way that does not take one's own measure into account cannot be walked, even if the way itself is right.

Third: the separation of reminding from remembering.

The ninth and tenth verses draw a boundary of responsibility by a difference of grammar: dhakkir (remind) from outside, yadhdhakkaru (he remembers) from inside.

The practical counterpart of this is one of the places where a person wears himself out most: taking another's change to be one's own responsibility. A person who tells what he holds to be true to a relative, a student, a child, a friend most often questions his own method when he gets no response — if I had explained it better, if I had said it at a more suitable moment.

The boundary the verse lays down cuts this off. Explaining can be done; being understood cannot. A door can be knocked on; its opening is the business of the one inside.

This does not devalue the effort — the ninth verse is a command, after all. It only corrects where the outcome belongs.

Fourth: avoidance being more widespread than rejection.

The verb in the eleventh verse is yatajannabuhā: to pass by. Not to call it a lie, not to argue — only to set it aside.

This has become easier today than ever before. Not to meet a view is technically possible: the feed is adjusted, the person is muted, the subject is skipped, the application is closed. The most marked property of the modern information environment is not access to information but the increase in the possibility of avoiding unwanted information.

What the verse draws attention to is that this attitude is not even a decision. To reject is to take a position; to avoid is not to take one. And precisely for this reason it goes unnoticed.

Fifth: the preferring of what is "near" is not a problem of morals but a problem of perception.

The diagnosis in the sixteenth verse stands in the word itself: what is preferred is al-dunyā — that which is near.

Its counterpart today is a phenomenon observed in the behavioural sciences as well: people systematically prefer the small gain in the near term to the large gain in the long term. This does not arise from a lack of information — the person knows which is better and still chooses the near one.

I do not present this connection as a claim of a "scientific miracle". The verse puts forward no thesis in psychology. But the choice of the word — not "what is bad" but "what is near" — shows where the diagnosis has been placed, and this point sits on a verifiable piece of human behaviour.

And the verse's answer fits this diagnosis too: the ruling has been given with two attributes, khayr and abqā. It does not merely say "better"; it says "more lasting" as well — because only duration can be set against nearness.

Sixth: being able to see the green turn into refuse.

The fifth verse describes a lifetime in a single sentence. And what it describes is not merciless but ordinary — the sūra presents it not as a disaster but as part of the order.

What this says to the present has to do with modern life's tendency to make this cycle invisible. Ageing is delayed, death happens in hospital, what dries up is thrown away and goes unseen, the seasons are flattened out by heating and cooling. The result is that the cycle drops out of everyday experience.

The work the verse does is not to give a warning; it is to show something to look at. And what it shows is not a graveyard or a hospital — it is a pasture. That is, the most harmless, the greenest example of what is inevitable.

This choice says something about the tone of the sūra: the text is not trying to frighten. It only asks that a place not looked at be looked at.

• On the explanation of the expression "to declare the name free of all imperfection" in the first verse, four views were given in a table; no preference was imposed.
• The report about the tasbīḥ of prostration was given in the language of "it is widely transmitted in the tradition"; no ruling was issued about the state of its chain of transmission.
• The reports that al-Aʿlā was recited in the Friday, festival and witr prayers were conveyed without the name of a source being given.
• The two variant readings in the third verse (qaddara / qadara) were recorded; since I cannot give with certainty which authority of the variant readings preferred which, no name was written. The same caveat holds for the difference of variant reading in the sixteenth verse (tuʾthirūna / yuʾthirūna).
• Of which word aḥwā in the fifth verse is the attribute is disputed; two readings were given and it was stated that the first requires fewer assumptions, but no firm preference was imposed.
• Whether fa-lā tansā in the sixth verse is a negation or a prohibition is disputed; the grammatical evidence was given, the majority's reading was taken as the basis, and the ground of the opposing view was recorded as well.
• On the meaning of the exception "illā mā shāʾallāh" in the seventh verse, four views were given in a table; no preference was stated.
• On the meaning of the condition "in nafaʿati'l-dhikrā" in the ninth verse, four explanations were given; no preference was stated, but a limitation was made by drawing attention to the fact that the subject of the verb is al-dhikrā.
• The distinction between khawf and khashya was given as the general tendency of the lexicographers; it was not presented as a firm rule, and it was stated that there are places where the two words are used in place of one another.
• The elative problem of al-ashqā in the eleventh verse was referred to the section on al-Layl; there too no firm preference had been adopted.
• The reading concerning the break of symmetry in the eleventh verse (the verb / attribute contrast) is mine; it is not binding.
• That the roots ص-ل-ي in the twelfth verse and ص-ل-و in the fifteenth are different was stated explicitly; no meaning was drawn from the resemblance of sound, and no claim of a play on words was made.
• The thirteenth verse was not used as evidence for any side in the theological debate about the duration of the punishment of the Fire; it was recorded that the verse states no duration.
• The content of tazakkā in the fourteenth verse is disputed; the views were given in a table. The historical difficulty carried by the view about the alms of the fast-breaking and the festival prayer was stated plainly, and that view was not ascribed to particular persons.
• On the scope of the verb ṣallā in the fifteenth verse (the known prayer / general supplication), two views were given; the majority's preference was stated.
• The explanation of the passage of the root أ-ث-ر in the sixteenth verse from the sense of "trace" to the sense of "preference" was not presented as a firm etymological ruling.
• That the roots أ-ث-ر and ث-و-ر are different was shown in a table; no meaning was drawn from the resemblance in transliteration.
• The referent of the pronoun hādhā in the eighteenth verse is disputed; the views were given and the majority's preference was stated.
• "The scriptures of Abraham" were matched with no existing text. It was recorded that the verse carries not a claim about a document but a claim about continuity.
• No definite reason was given for the difference in the order of the names between al-Aʿlā and al-Najm 53/36-37; the possibility of the verse-ending was recorded.
• The observations about the weave of sound and pattern in the sūra (the density of elatives, the -ā verse-ending) are points established about the texture of the text; they were not presented as evidence for meaning.
• The readings concerning the two circles of the sūra, the evidential relation between 4-5 and 16-17, and the elative contrast between 1 and 16 are mine; they were not presented as transmitted reports, and the textual data on which they rest were shown separately.
• The relation established between the sixteenth verse and the observation in the behavioural sciences was not presented as a claim of a "scientific miracle"; per the method (Method) this caveat was entered within the text as well.
• The structural resemblance among al-Shams, al-Layl and al-Aʿlā is an observation; it is not a claim about the order of revelation or about the order of the muṣḥaf.
• The inference about the period of the sūra's revelation rests on content; no definite dating was made.