وَذَكَرَ ٱسْمَ رَبِّهِۦ فَصَلَّىٰ
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.
- 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.
| View | What it says | Note |
|---|---|---|
| The known prayer | The act of worship performed at a set time and in a set form | The view of the majority |
| Supplication, a general turning | The "to supplicate" sense of the root; the sūra's being early Meccan | How far the form of the prayer had settled in this period is a separate debate |
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.