وَٱلشَّفْعِ وَٱلْوَتْرِ
One of the verses on which the most views are transmitted in the Qurʾān. Let us first open the two roots, because without knowing the roots the views cannot be understood.
Root: ش-ف-ع. Its original sense is to add one thing to another, to make a single thing a pair, to join a mate to it.
That is, shafʿ does not mean "two"; it means "the undoing of singleness". It is the joining of another to something that stands alone.
And from here comes one of the most instructive word-links in Arabic: شَفَاعَة (shafāʿa, intercession) is from the same root.
This link is generally passed over, and when it is passed over the word becomes unintelligible. Intercession is mostly heard as something like "mediation, pulling strings". What the root says is more basic: intercession is someone joining himself to a person who stands alone. The person is single; when the intercessor comes he becomes a pair.
The Qurʾān always sets the condition of permission when it uses this word: "Who can intercede with Him without His permission?" (al-Baqara 2/255). That is, the pairing does not happen of itself; permission to join must be given.
In this commentary I issue no ruling on the nature of intercession — that is a matter of theology and has no place here. What I record is only the logic of the root: the undoing of solitude.
The root's other derivatives carry the same idea: shafʿ (even), shufʿa (in jurisprudence, a partner's right of pre-emption — a joining to a property), shafīʿ (the one who joins himself alongside).
- وَتَر (watar) — the string of a bow. The single cord stretched between the two ends of the bow. The Turkish veter, and vetere in music, are from this root.
- مَوْتُور (mawtūr) — one whose kin has been killed and who is left alone, who has not been able to take his revenge. That is, one who has been diminished, from whom a part has been torn away.
- The verb وَتَرَ (watara) carries the sense of "to diminish": "He will not diminish your deeds" (Muḥammad 47/35). The same root.
- تَتْرَى (tatrā) — one after another, at intervals (al-Muʾminūn 23/44). To come one by one.
These derivatives say something interesting: singleness is not a neutral number in Arabic. Within it there is either unmatchedness (superiority) or deficiency (solitude). The same root opens both to "unequalled" and to "having a piece torn away".
A variant reading. The word has been read as وَتْر (with fatḥa) and as وِتْر (with kasra). Both readings are transmitted and they do not change the meaning; both mean "odd". The difference is dialectal. Since I cannot say with certainty which reading belongs to which authority, I write no name.
| View | What it means | Its ground | Its weak side |
|---|---|---|---|
| Every even and every odd | All numbers; hence everything that can be counted, that is, the whole of creation | The general sense of the root; that the wording comes unqualified; "Of every thing We created a pair" (al-Dhāriyāt 51/49) | Its generality reduces the concreteness of the oath; the two preceding oaths were concrete units of time |
| Shafʿ = the created, witr = God | Everything created is paired; the only unpaired one is He | It connects directly with aḥad at al-Ikhlāṣ 112/1; the Qurʾān's counting of pairedness as the mark of being created | That one element of the oath should be God amounts to saying "by God", which is unusual in this context |
| The days of the pilgrimage | The 8th, 9th and 10th of Dhu'l-Ḥijja; or the distinction at al-Baqara 2/203 between "one who hastens in two days / one who stays behind" (an even day / an odd day) | If the preceding verse has been read as Dhu'l-Ḥijja, this is the natural continuation; al-Baqara 2/203 really does speak of two and three days | Again a link from outside the text; it does not agree with the class-reading of the first verse |
| The prayers | Prayers with an even and an odd number of cycles; or specifically the witr prayer | That the numbers of cycles of the prayers are a known distinction | There is nothing about the prayer in the text |
| The day of ʿArafa and the day of sacrifice | Two days, one counted odd and one even | A sub-proposal within the frame of the pilgrimage | The narrowest and most indirect reading |
The two views that stand nearest to the wording of the text are the first two, because both take the words with their own general senses, without qualifying them. I state this as a preference and I record that it is not binding; we have no proof for counting the other views weak, and some of them are transmitted in the early sources.
When the three verses so far and the next verse are read together, a pattern emerges. I present this as my own reading:
- The dawn — the beginning moment of the day. A boundary.
- Ten nights — a counted span. It has a beginning and an end.
- The even and the odd — number itself. The name of countability.
- The travelling night — time in passage. What makes its way and will end.
All four say that time is in pieces and has an end. Time is mentioned here not as a flow but in units: a moment, a ten, an even, an odd, a journey.
And in the twenty-fourth verse of the sūra man will say: "Would that I had sent something ahead for my life." That is, someone who supposed his lifetime a whole realises at the end that it was a span.
The sūra opens, to a man who thinks his life boundless, with countable units of time. I record this as an observation about the structure; I do not ascribe it to a classical exegete.