al-Ghāshiya 88:12-16

Fīhā ʿaynun jāriya — fīhā sururun marfūʿa — wa akwābun mawḍūʿa — wa namāriqu maṣfūfa — wa zarābiyyu mabthūtha "In it is a flowing spring. In it are couches raised high, goblets set out, cushions ranged in rows, and carpets spread out."

Five verses set up a single scene. Let us first work out each word separately, then look at the scene as a whole.

عين — the eye; and the same word means a spring. In Arabic these two senses are given under the same entry: a spring is the eye of the ground.

جارية — root ج-ر-ي: to flow, to run, to course. From the same root jārī (flowing, in force), majrā (a course of flow), and jāriya (a ship — al-Ḥāqqa 69/11: al-jāriya, the ship that runs along).

The word's coming indefinite: ʿaynun — "a spring". Its number, its size, its source are not stated.

And the contrast set up with verse 5: ʿaynin āniya / ʿaynun jāriya. Both are springs, both on the fāʿila pattern, both at the verse-ending. I gave this contrast in a table above; here one addition is enough: boiling water stays where it is, flowing water goes. The distinction between movement and arrival that the sūra has been building from the beginning has here turned into water.

سُرُر — the plural of the word sarīr: a throne, a divan, a high seat one sits and reclines upon.

A detail about the root is recorded by the lexicographers: sarīr is from the root س-ر-ر, and the same root also gives the word surūr (joy). The connection is explained by its being the seat one sits on in moments of joy. I transmit this as an explanation the lexicographers have transmitted; it carries no claim of certainty.

مرفوعة — root ر-ف-ع: to lift, to raise. Passive participle: raised.

The attribute has two layers:

One. Physical height. A seat raised above the ground. In al-Wāqiʿa 56/34 the same attribute is used of bedding: wa furushin marfūʿa.

Two. Standing. In Arabic rafʿ also conveys the raising of rank: "God raises in degrees those of you who believe and those who have been given knowledge" (al-Mujādala 58/11). The same root.

The cultural background makes this detail concrete. To sit high in an assembly was, in that society, a sign conveying position. That the couch is high is not a detail of comfort but an expression of status. And it had its counterpart in the sūra's first tableau: there the faces were khāshiʿa — brought low.

أكواب — the plural of the word kūb.

The detail the lexicographers record is important: a kūb is a cup without a handle and without a spout or lip. One with a handle is called ibrīq, and other names are given to what resembles a jug. The word occurs in several places in the Qurʾān: al-Zukhruf 43/71, al-Insān 76/15, al-Wāqiʿa 56/18.

The sense of this detail is this: a kūb is a vessel made not for carrying but for drinking. A handle serves for carrying; without one, the vessel stands where it is and you take it up with your hand.

موضوعة — root و-ض-ع: to put, to set down, to place. Passive participle: set out, put in place.

The nicety of the attribute: the goblets are not described as "full", "clean", "of gold". They are described as "set out". That is, ready. Under your hand, without any need to ask.

I read this as "the invisibility of the service", and I state that this is my own reading: there is a difference between a thing's being given to you and its being ready. To be given requires a request and a response; to be ready removes even the request. The verse describes an order in which the need is met without being put into words.

نمارق — the plural of the word numruqa: a small cushion, a bolster, a thing to lean on. The support placed in assemblies for leaning back or leaning to the side.

The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

مصفوفة — root ص-ف-ف: to form a rank, to set in a row. From the same root ṣaff (a row, a rank; the name of a sūra), maṣfūf (set in rows).

The sense of the attribute: not scattered but ordered. The cushions have not been thrown down at random; they are arranged in a row.

And now a link to the neighbouring sūra: the same root will occur in Sūrat al-Fajr — "when your Lord comes, and the angels, rank upon rank" (al-Fajr 89/22, ṣaffan ṣaffā).

In two neighbouring sūras the same root: one qualifies the cushions of the garden, the other the ranks of the angels. The word conveys an order in itself; when the object of the order changes, the scene changes completely. I record this as an observation. (The same link is made in the section on al-Fajr too.)

زرابي — carpets, rugs, precious coverings laid on the ground. The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

There is disagreement over its singular: the lexicographers record the forms zirbiyya, zarbiyya and zurbiyya. That it is a plural is beyond dispute; with which vowel its singular is to be read is not certain. I record this and adopt no preference — it does not change the sense.

This word was treated in the discussion of al-Qāriʿa (101/4), and the finding there is of direct use here. In al-Qāriʿa people were described as ka'l-farāshi'l-mabthūth — "like scattered moths", and this note was made:

The same word qualifies in one sūra the cushions of the garden and in another the people at the resurrection. The word is not negative in itself; it conveys being dispersed. Whether being dispersed is good or bad depends on what is dispersed.

Now we set that finding up from the other end and can extend it:

The same verb, two objects, two opposite senses. The note added in the discussion of al-Qāriʿa — that the dispersal is passive, that is, "not what disperses but what is dispersed" — holds here too: the carpets have not spread themselves out, they have been spread out.

One further branch of the root was recorded in al-Qāriʿa and connects here in a sentence: بَثّ (bathth) — grief that cannot be held within and pours out; "I complain of my sorrow and my grief only to God" (Yūsuf 12/86). The root also recounts the spreading outward of something that has gathered within. Three uses — grief poured out, people flung about, carpets laid down — are three distinct objects of the same movement.

Now let us read the five verses together. Four objects, four attributes:

All four are passive. For all four the agent is left unstated.

The sense of this is: nothing in the garden is there of itself. Every object is the result of a preparation. The scene has not come about; it has been set up.

And this establishes a silent contrast with the sūra's first tableau. There the verbs were active and their subjects were those faces: ʿāmila (working), nāṣiba (growing weary). Here the verbs are passive and the subject is not stated. On one side, subjects working ceaselessly and obtaining nothing; on the other, guests who do not work and find everything ready.

I present this as my own reading, but the pattern stands in the text.

And now we come to the sūra's most striking structural feature.

The sūra uses four passive forms in each of two places:

Four passive participles, four passive verbs. The first series describes a room, the second the cosmos. And in neither is the agent stated.

Moreover, the two series share a root: رفع. In the garden the couches are marfūʿa — raised; in the cosmos the sky is rufiʿat — raised. The same verb, one lifting a seat and one lifting the sky.

I set up this link as my own reading and draw this conclusion: the sūra recounts the readiness of the garden and the readiness of the cosmos with the same grammar. Both have been set up; for neither is the one who set it up stated. What is asked of the one addressed is that, when he asks by whom the sky was raised, he should see by whom the couches will be raised too.

There are two errors made in reading this depiction, and both must be avoided.

The first error: reading it as an inventory. Reading the verses like a list of goods; debating the kind, the texture, the number of the furniture in the garden. This reading narrows the text.

The second error: turning everything into a symbol. Reducing the depiction wholly to metaphor by saying "the couch is really this, the carpet is really that". This reading too erases the text's concreteness and produces something like a distaste for the language the Qurʾān has chosen.

Both tendencies exist in the classical tradition — some scholars have said that the depictions are real and that their modality cannot be known, some have brought the representational side forward. I do not impose a preference between them.

What can be said is this: the objects chosen are the highest objects of comfort known to the one addressed. A high divan, a goblet ready at hand, cushions set in a row, a carpet laid down — these are, in a culture of tents and assemblies, the concrete signs of wealth and of hospitality. The depiction points to the unknown in the language of the known.

And the Qurʾān sets this limit itself:

"No soul knows what comfort of the eyes has been kept hidden for them, as a reward for what they used to do" (al-Sajda 32/17).

This verse is the Qurʾān's own note on how the depictions are to be read: what is given is incomplete, and its incompleteness has been declared in advance. The measure recorded in the discussion of al-Humaza for the pattern mā adrāka holds here too: the description does not take the place of what is described; it points to it.