تُسْقَىٰ مِنْ عَيْنٍ ءَانِيَةٍ لَّيْسَ لَهُمْ طَعَامٌ إِلَّا مِن ضَرِيعٍ لَّا يُسْمِنُ وَلَا يُغْنِى مِن جُوعٍ
Tusqā min ʿaynin āniya — laysa lahum ṭaʿāmun illā min ḍarīʿ — lā yusminu wa lā yughnī min jūʿ "It is given to drink from a boiling spring. They have no food but dry thorn; it neither nourishes nor avails against hunger."
The taṣlā of the preceding verse was active (it enters); the tusqā of this verse is passive (it is given to drink). This shift in the voice of the verb is meaningful: the person enters the fire himself, but does not choose the water himself. I record this as an observation.
The root itself (س-ق-ي) means to water, to give to drink. From the same root siqāya (the office of distributing water), siqāʾ (a water-skin), and in agriculture saqiy (irrigated land).
"…do not enter for a meal without waiting for it to be ready" (al-Aḥzāb 33/53). The word there is ināh: the time of the food's being ready.
From the same root anā — the moment at which a thing ripens; and taʾannī — not to hurry but to wait for its time.
Now let us look at the state of the word in the verse. Āniya, when used of water, means "arrived at boiling point". That is, the point at which the heat has ripened.
This is an interesting working of language and is worth dwelling on: the word is not negative in itself, indeed it carries a positive core — coming to one's proper state. The evil is not in the word but in the thing that comes to its proper state. The water's "ripening" is its becoming undrinkable.
The Qurʾān sets up the same idea with another word too: "They will be circulated between it and boiling water" (al-Raḥmān 55/44). The ānin there is from the same root.
| Hell (88/5) | The garden (88/12) | |
|---|---|---|
| The expression | ʿaynin āniya | ʿaynun jāriya |
| Its sense | A spring arrived at boiling point | A flowing spring |
| What the attribute conveys | Heat — a motionless extreme state | Movement — continuous flow |
The two words rhyme and are on the same pattern. Both are on the fāʿila measure, both qualify a spring, both stand in the position of the verse-ending. The ear notices the bond between the two verses before it works out the sense.
And the contrast is not only hot/cool: one boils, the other flows. Boiling water stays where it is and churns within itself; flowing water goes from one place to another. The idea the sūra has been building from the beginning — there is movement, there is no arrival — turns here into an image of water. I record this as my own reading.
According to what the lexicographers record, ḍarīʿ is the dried state of a thorny plant called shibriq in the region of the Ḥijāz. The description transmitted is this: while the plant is green the animals graze on it; when it dries its thorns harden and no animal comes near.
I transmit this information as the lexicographers have transmitted it, and I draw a limit: I do not give a modern botanical equivalent. The matching of plant names in the classical dictionaries with present-day species is most often conjectural; for this word I am in no position to make a definite match.
That the food's name should come from the root of abasement is an observation worth noting, and I present it as my own reading: the name of what is eaten states the state of the one who eats it. The word is at once the name of a plant and the name of a state of being brought low. And the sūra had already described the faces as khāshiʿa — brought low. The two words look in the same direction.
And there is this too: taḍarruʿ is the word used in the Qurʾān for entreating God. The name of what is set before the one who did not entreat in this world comes from the same root. I record this as an echo; I do not ascribe it to any classical exegete.
| View | What it says | Its ground |
|---|---|---|
| A known plant | A dry thorny plant known in the Ḥijāz | The majority of the lexicographers; the settled use of the word in Arabic |
| The name of something in hell | A substance belonging to hell, likened to the plant of this world | The Qurʾān also says of zaqqūm that it is "a tree growing in the bottom of hell" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/64) |
| Thorny / useless in general | Not a particular species but a name conveying a genus | The word's coming indefinite (min ḍarīʿin) |
All three views come out at the same place in the text and there is no need to choose among them: what is described is a substance counted as food but which is not food.
The verse sets up a sharp restriction: laysa lahum ṭaʿāmun illā min ḍarīʿ — "they have no food but this."
The verse of al-Ḥāqqa and the verse of al-Ghāshiya are on the same pattern: in both, "there is no food but…". But what is stated is different. This is a well-known matter of classical exegesis. The solutions put forward:
| Solution | How it works | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Different groups | Different ranks of the people of the fire eat different things | The Qurʾān uses the language of levels for hell (al-Nisāʾ 4/145, al-darki'l-asfal) |
| Different times | The same people meet with different things at different times | There is no notice in the text stating this directly |
| Taghlīb / conveying a genus | Each verse gives one genus of food as an example; the expression "there is no other" restricts not the kind but the quality: there is nothing at all that nourishes | The rest of the verse supports this: "it neither nourishes nor avails against hunger" — the restriction bears on the benefit, not on the foodstuff |
The third solution seems to me the most consistent, and its ground is the rest of the verse itself: verse 7 stresses the food's uselessness, not its kind. But I write this as a preference; it is not binding, and I have no proof in hand for counting the other two solutions weak.
1. To nourish — long-term; it keeps the body standing, gives strength, repairs. Its result is seen over days. 2. To satisfy — short-term; it cuts off the sensation of hunger. Its result is seen at once.
The verse cuts off both at once. Lā yusminu — it does not nourish. Lā yughnī min jūʿ — it does not avail against hunger.
The person bends, takes, chews, swallows — and nothing happens. Neither at the moment nor afterwards.
And now the sūra's pattern becomes visible. The same structure had been set up three verses earlier:
| Act | Is it done | Does it yield a result |
|---|---|---|
| عاملة ناصبة — to work, to grow weary | Yes | No |
| تسقى — to drink | Yes | (Boiling water; it does not quench) |
| طعام — to eat | Yes | No — it neither nourishes nor satisfies |
The sūra is built from beginning to end on "the act that is done but yields no result." I propose this as the sūra's central idea and I state that it is my own reading — I do not ascribe it to any classical exegete. But the pattern stands in the text and is registered by the choices of words.
Another form of the same structure was treated in the discussion of al-Humaza: ʿaddada — to keep counting one's wealth. What was recorded there was this: "the repetition lies not in the nature of the act but in the act's being of no use. If a procedure yields a result there is no need to repeat it." al-Ghāshiya carries the same logic into the hereafter: the counterpart of an act that yields no result in this world is an act that yields no result there either.
This root was treated in the discussions of al-Layl (92/8) and al-ʿAlaq (96/6-7) in the form istighnāʾ, and the finding there was this: Form X (istifʿāl) here has the sense of "counting / seeing as" — istaghnā is to count oneself free of need, to think one has no need. And in the discussion of al-ʿAlaq this note was made: being ghanī is God's attribute; when the human being ascribes it to himself a displacement occurs.
In al-Ghāshiya the same root returns in its real sense and in the negative: lā yughnī — it does not suffice, it does not meet the need.
The link is this, and I write it as my own reading: in this world there was supposing oneself sufficient (istighnāʾ); there, there is nothing at all sufficing (lā yughnī). The sufficiency that was supposed is met by a real insufficiency.
The word has one further use, and it is meaningful for this sūra: "His wealth and what he earned did not avail him" (al-Masad 111/2). The same root, the same negation, the same coming to nothing.