وَلَيَالٍ عَشْرٍ
The grammatical detail here is the source of the whole disagreement over the verse, and it is generally passed over.
In the preceding verse the word was definite: al-fajr. In this verse it is indefinite: layālin — "nights", "a ten of nights". The verse does not say al-layāli'l-ʿashr.
In Arabic indefiniteness does two things: it either conveys indeterminacy (which one is not said) or magnification (such a ten nights). In the classical sources the second is defended here as well.
But whichever it is, the result is the same: the text does not say which ten nights. And this is the reason the exegetes part company — they are trying to fill a gap.
This should not be read as a defect. The existence of the disagreement is a feature of the text. Had the Qurʾān wished to fix a time, it would have fixed it; as it names the Night of Power when it mentions it, as it names Ramaḍān when it mentions it. Here it has not. In that case the interpreter's task is not to close the gap but to ask what the gap does.
The effect the gap produces is this: the oath is made not upon a particular calendar day but upon a counted stretch of time. Ten nights — a countable span with a beginning and an end.
Still, the views transmitted must be recorded; because they have been seriously defended in the history of exegesis, and none of them is arbitrary.
| View | Its ground | Its weak side |
|---|---|---|
| The first ten nights of Dhu'l-Ḥijja | The most widespread view. That the rites of the pilgrimage fall in these days; the reading of the expression "that they may mention the name of God on appointed days" (ayyāmin maʿlūmāt) at al-Ḥajj 22/28 as referring to these days; that the next verse (the even and the odd) can be tied to the days of the pilgrimage | There is nothing about the pilgrimage in the text; the link is established from outside |
| The last ten nights of Ramaḍān | That the Night of Power is sought within this ten; that the nights are spent in worship | The expression "ten nights" is not used anywhere else in the Qurʾān for the last ten of Ramaḍān |
| The first ten nights of Muḥarram | The opening of the year; the value ascribed to these days | The view that finds the fewest supporters in the sources; the one with the weakest proof |
| Indeterminate — general | The text does not determine it; the indefiniteness is deliberate | It may be said that it reduces the concreteness of the oath |
The first view is widespread, but I do not impose it as a preference. The working of the sūra depends on no one view: whichever ten nights it is, the work the oath does within the text does not change. This is one of those places where the disagreement should be recorded and not magnified.
Layālin is a feminine plural, and the numeral has come in the form عَشْر, without the tāʾ. In Arabic, with the numbers from 3 to 10 there is inverse agreement between the numeral and what is counted: if what is counted is feminine the numeral is masculine (without tāʾ), and if what is counted is masculine the numeral is feminine (with tāʾ). Here, because what is counted, layālī, is feminine, the numeral is ʿashr — without tāʾ. The rule is working.
It looks like a small detail; but it also determines the verse-ending: ʿashrin ends with the same sound as the fajr of the preceding verse and the watr of the next. That the word comes in this form is required by both the grammar and the sound.