90. Sūrat al-Balad

Twenty verses. Meccan.

The sūra opens with an oath of three verses, in the fourth verse sets down a diagnosis of man, and then recalls two things that diagnosis forgets: what has been given to man, and the road set before him. Then it describes an ascent — and answers the question of what that ascent is from a place entirely other than the one expected.

The main question of the sūra is this: life is hard, and there are two attitudes to be taken towards hardship. The first is to use the hardship to one's own advantage — to accumulate power, to mention what one has spent as a heap, to suppose that no one can call one to account. The second is to enter hardship knowingly — but not one's own hardship; someone else's.

The sūra gives this second attitude a name: al-ʿaqaba, the steep ascent.

It takes its name from the word البلد in the first verse: land, city. The word occurs twice in the first two verses of the sūra.

On its being Meccan there is something close to unanimity, and the content supports it: short and hard verse-endings, Mecca being mentioned by indication, the portrait of a wealthy man of Quraysh, and — perhaps most decisive of all — the freeing of a slave being presented not as a legal regulation but as a personal call. This act, which in Medina will be given institutional form within the regulations of expiation and alms, is here still a proposal carrying no sanction whatever.

There is a striking proportion here: more than half of the sūra (11-17) turns around a single word — ʿaqaba. The word is first mentioned, then asked about, then described across five verses.

As to whom the saying "I have spent wealth in heaps" in the sixth verse belongs, several names from among the leading men of Quraysh are mentioned in the classical commentaries. The names do not agree with one another.

We saw the same situation in Sūrat al-Māʿūn, and the measure recorded there holds here too: the giving of more than one name for the same expression suggests that these names are answers given, after the event, to the question "who might have been meant?" For that reason I mention no name here; to convey an ascription I am not sure of would go beyond the knowledge we have.

The measure in the tradition of legal method is the same: al-ʿibratu bi-ʿumūmi'l-lafẓ lā bi-khuṣūṣi'l-sabab — the ruling goes by the generality of the wording. The sūra gives no name; it describes someone who says "I have spent wealth in heaps."

The basmala was treated in earlier sections and is not taken up again here; the verse numbers are counted without the basmala.

Lā uqsimu bi-hādhā'l-balad "I swear by this land."

The literal rendering of the sentence is this: "I do not swear by this land." But almost all translations give it as "I swear". The reason is the dispute over what the lā at the head is doing.

Let us first see the extent of the matter. This form occurs in several places in the Qurʾān:

• "No — I swear by the Day of Resurrection; and no, I swear by the self that reproaches itself" (al-Qiyāma 75/1-2)
• "No — I swear by the places where the stars fall" (al-Wāqiʿa 56/75)
• "I swear by what you see and by what you do not see" (al-Ḥāqqa 69/38-39)
• "I swear by the Lord of the easts and the wests" (al-Maʿārij 70/40)
• "No — I swear by the stars that recede and hide" (al-Takwīr 81/15)
• "I swear by the twilight" (al-Inshiqāq 84/16)
• And here, al-Balad 90/1

This is not, then, an oddity met with in one place; it is a settled form in the Qurʾān. That makes it impossible to say "it is a copyist's error" or "it is a chance usage".

The views:

My assessment — it is not binding: the first and third views come out in practice at the same place, and both allow the text to be read without damage. In my judgement the third reading is nearer to the spirit of the language, and for this reason: to refuse to swear by a thing is to count it too plain to require an oath. We do the like in English: "No need to swear to it — it's plain to see." Read in that tone, the lā does not stay without function and the oath keeps its validity.

Even so one has to be honest: none of these views is certain, and the dispute has not been closed since the classical period. The result that reaches the translation ("I swear") is the same on all three readings; the divergence is in how the tone is set.

The analysis of the root of balad was made in Sūrat al-Tīn (b-l-d: a settled place with definite boundaries), and the function of the demonstrative hādhā was treated both there and in Sūrat Quraysh: to bring the proof out before the eyes of the addressee.

There is a difference from al-Tīn here, and it matters. In al-Tīn the city took an attribute: al-amīn. Here it takes none. The city is left bare: hādhā'l-balad — only "this land".

This gap is filled in the next verse, but not with the expected attribute. What gets said about the city is not its safety but the Prophet's situation there.

Wa anta ḥillun bi-hādhā'l-balad "And you are in this land / this land will be made lawful to you."

The most disputed word of the sūra is here.

First a grammatical matter: is this sentence a part of the oath, or a parenthesis coming inside the oath?

There are two views. The first attaches the sentence to the oath: that is, a second thing is also being sworn by. The second — and the more widespread — counts the sentence a circumstantial clause: "I swear by this land, you being in it." On this reading the sentence states the quality of the thing sworn by; the city has become worth swearing by because the Prophet is there.

The second reading sits better in the flow of the sūra and agrees with the new oath in the third verse coming (with a wāw) as a separate element.

Root: ح-ل-ل. The concrete sense of this root is to untie, to open a bond. To untie a knot, to set down a load, to release what has been tied.

From this single sense comes the whole family of the root:

• ḥalāl — untied, released; that whose prohibition has been lifted. Its opposite is ḥarām — bound, made inviolable.
• ḥulūl — to come down at a place, to halt there. When a traveller arrives at a place he unties his load; from there comes the sense "to halt, to lodge".
• maḥalla — the place where one halts.
• ḥall — the resolving of a difficulty; also dissolving, a solution.
• iḥlāl — to break a bond.

The same root, that is, carries both "the lifting of a prohibition" and "settling in a place", and both come from "untying". And the disagreement in the verse arises exactly from these two branches.

The second reading is the one that agrees best with the sūra as a whole, and its ground has to be opened out.

Mecca, in that world, was a sanctuary. Within the bounds of the Ḥaram blood was not shed, game was not hunted, trees were not cut. When a man pursued in a blood feud entered the Ḥaram he was not touched; even the killer of a killer had to wait outside. This was one of the oldest and firmest institutions of Arabia, and Mecca's commercial standing rested directly upon it — this is the substructure of the question of safety treated in Sūrat Quraysh.

Now see the picture: in the city where everyone was inviolable, one person had been made touchable. The Prophet and those who followed him had been taken off the list of persons the Ḥaram protected. The verse says this in a single word: here you are ḥill — untied, released, the protection over you lifted.

On this reading the verse is a sentence of reproach, and it prepares the rest of the sūra: imagine a city in which it is forbidden to cut a tree, but there is nothing that is not done to the human being inside it. The sūra will speak after this of man's hardship, of the supposition that no one can call him to account, and of mercy. The opening sentence lays the ground of all of it.

The ground of the first reading is strong too and cannot be set aside.

It is transmitted that in the address the Prophet gave on the day of the conquest of Mecca he spoke of the inviolability of the city and said: this land is a land God made inviolable on the day He created the heavens and the earth; it was not made lawful to anyone before me, and to me it was made lawful only for an hour of the day, and that hour has passed — it is inviolable now until the Day of Resurrection. The report is found in al-Bukhārī and Muslim.

This hadith records the single moment at which a "being made lawful" took place, and it has been connected directly with the second verse of Sūrat al-Balad. For those who defend that connection the verse is an announcement: the Prophet, under pressure in Mecca, is being told in advance that one day he will hold this city.

My assessment — it is not binding: the two readings do not exclude one another, and the text can carry both. But in point of the sūra's own flow the second reading is stronger; for the sūra is not a text of promise but a text of diagnosis and of call. The first reading is built with a piece of historical knowledge from outside the text; the second comes out of the text's own context.

This too should be added: the word's having been left this wide may not be a defect. The same root relates two different times in the same city: today you are unprotected, tomorrow this place will be opened to you. The two ends of the word hold two periods. I record this not as a preference but as a possibility the text carries.

Notice: the expression bi-hādhā'l-baladi occurs twice in two verses. In the first verse as the place sworn by, in the second as the place where the Prophet is.

In Arabic the repetition of the noun where a pronoun would have sufficed conveys magnification and fixing. What it does here is this: the place sworn by and the place where the wrong is done are the same place. The sentence repeats the word in order to establish that equation. Had a pronoun been used ("there"), the contrast would not have stood so sharply.

Wa wālidin wa mā walad "And by a begetter, and by what he begot."

The third oath. And the most indefinitely left expression of the sūra.

Root: و-ل-د. To beget. From the same root come walad (child), wālida (mother), awlād, mawlid (place or time of birth).

Wālid is an active participle: one who begets. In Turkish the borrowed vâlid means "father" and vâlide "mother"; in Arabic wālid means properly "the one who begets", and its use for the father has become settled.

The word comes indefinite: wālidin — "a begetter". No particular person is pointed to. This is the source of the whole discussion in the next section.

There is a grammatical point here, and it is the key to the disagreement.

In Arabic مَنْ (man — who) is used for human beings; مَا (mā — what) for beings without reason and for indefinite things. Speaking of a father who begets a human being, the verse uses not man but mā.

The explanations the classical lexicographers give for this choice:

The first — generalisation. Mā is wider in scope than man; it increases the indefiniteness. "Whatever it may be that he begot" — without its kind, its number or its identity being specified.

The second — asking after quality. In Arabic mā sometimes asks not after the person himself but after his quality. On this reading the expression stresses not "whom he begot" but "what kind of thing he begot".

The third — magnification or belittling. Leaving a thing indefinite can be used both for enlarging and for diminishing.

The consequence of this choice is this: the verse deliberately does not say who is meant. This is not a lack but a method. And it is the reason that none of the views below is certain.

My assessment — it is not binding: the third view is the one most in keeping with the data of the language. The reason is this: wālid has come indefinite, mā has been used, and no determining indication has been placed. If the text has deliberately built the indefiniteness, then for the reader to make it definite is to add something to the text.

And this reading connects extraordinarily well with the next verse. The fourth verse will say "We created man in hardship". Birth is the most concrete scene of hardship in a human life — both for the one who bears and for the one who is born. The Qurʾān says this openly elsewhere:

"His mother bore him with hardship and gave birth to him with hardship" (al-Aḥqāf 46/15)

The third verse, that is, is the witness of the fourth. The bond between the thing sworn by and the ruling stated — the measure we treated in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr — is established here exactly: hardship is given the first scene of hardship as its witness.

One point should be recorded. Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ, in describing God, denied exactly these two verbs: "lam yalid wa lam yūlad" — "He has not begotten, and He has not been begotten" (al-Ikhlāṣ 112/3). The same root, the same two directions.

Sūrat al-Balad, describing the created being, uses the same two verbs: wālidin wa mā walad — the begetter and the begotten.

Read together, the two sūras yield a clear distinction: to beget and to be begotten is the description of the created. Where al-Ikhlāṣ lifts these away from God, al-Balad makes them the identity of man. And the chain of birth is also the source of the hardship the sūra will speak of in the next verse — because the being that is born is the being that will die.

I record this bond as my own reading; that the two sūras use the same root in opposite directions, however, stands in the text.

The series opens out from space to time, from a single moment to the whole chain of humankind. And in the fourth verse the ruling comes: man.

Laqad khalaqna'l-insāna fī kabad "We have surely created man in hardship."

The central sentence of the sūra, and one of the densest diagnoses of man in the Qurʾān.

This sentence is word for word the same structure as al-Tīn 95/4:

• لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ فِىٓ أَحْسَنِ تَقْوِيمٍ (al-Tīn 95/4)
• لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ فِى كَبَدٍ (al-Balad 90/4)

The same emphasis (laqad), the same verb and the same plural of majesty (khalaqnā), the same object and the same article of comprehensiveness (al-insāna), the same particle of containment (fī). The only thing that changes is the last element.

The analysis of the laqad pattern, of the plural in khalaqnā, of the generic article in al-insān and of the containing function of fī was made in the section on al-Tīn; I do not repeat it here. What belongs to this place is what that pattern is filled with.

Set the two verses side by side and the Qurʾān's description of man is completed:

• In point of capacity: in the finest stature.
• In point of condition: in hardship.

These do not contradict one another. A being may be both furnished without defect and set into a hard environment; indeed the meaning of the furnishing comes to light only in a hard environment. For an easy life "the finest stature" would not have been needed.

Root: ك-ب-د. This root has three distinct usages, and all three stand in the same dictionary entry. Seeing all three at once is required in order to understand what the verse says.

1. The liver. Kabid / kabd — the largest internal organ of the body. The connection sometimes made between this root and the word kebab is disputed and I do not go into it; but that the name of the organ in Arabic is from this root is beyond dispute.

2. The middle of a thing, its centre. Kabid al-samāʾ — the middle of the sky, that is, the point at which the sun stands highest. Kabid al-arḍ — the navel of the earth. This usage is widespread and shows that the root carries the idea of a centre.

3. Hardship, distress, toil. Kābada — he set his breast against a hardship, he struggled with distress. Mukābada — grappling with difficulty.

How do the three senses join? The explanation the lexicographers give is this: the liver stands in the middle and at the centre of the body; and the middle of a thing is also its hardest to reach, its most concentrated place; from there the sense "hardship" arose. The severity of the pain given by disease of the liver is also mentioned in this passage of sense.

All these explanations are transmitted in the classical dictionaries; as to which is historically correct I issue no firm ruling. But the important thing is this: at the centre of the word there is the idea of "centre". Hardship is not a fault at the edge; it is a thing standing in the middle.

To see what this does in the verse a comparison has to be made.

The verse could have said three things, and all three would have been reasonable:

• "Hardships come upon man." — Hardship would then be an event coming from outside.
• "Man was created for hardship." — Hardship would then be a purpose.
• "Man was created with hardship." — Hardship would then be a quality of the act of creating.

It says none of these. What it says is: "We created man inside hardship."

The particle fī conveys containment. As loss is an element in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr (la-fī khusr), so hardship is an element here. Man does not enter hardship; he begins inside it.

The meaning of this is: that life is toilsome is not a fault but a structure. Not a malfunction, not a misfortune, not an error to be corrected; the set-up itself.

This diagnosis has two distinct consequences, and both matter:

The first — a consolation. A person undergoing hardship may not be in difficulty because he has done something wrong. The sūra does not fasten life's being hard onto man's fault.

The second — a warning. To wait for a point at which hardship ends is in vain. The sentence "let this job be finished and I shall be at ease" runs contrary to the structure the verse describes — because being at ease means getting outside hardship, and there is no outside.

The Qurʾān repeats this description elsewhere with other words:

• "O man! You are toiling towards your Lord (kādiḥun), and you will meet Him at the last" (al-Inshiqāq 84/6). The root kadḥ: to work and be worn down, to make one's way by scraping. The same diagnosis, with another word.
• "His mother bore him with hardship and gave birth to him with hardship" (al-Aḥqāf 46/15).
• The content of the warning given to Adam in the garden is also striking: "Let him not drive you out of the garden, and then you would fall into distress" (Ṭāhā 20/117). The verb here is from the root shaqā and conveys toil. That is, the description of going outside the garden is directly to enter toil.

This last verse can be read as a kind of background to al-Balad 90/4: the place where man stands is by definition a place of toil.

Kabad has tanwīn, that is, it is indefinite: "a hardship". Like khusrin in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr, the indefiniteness here conveys magnification — a hardship whose kind and bounds are not drawn.

And this indefiniteness does one thing more: the kind of the hardship is not stated. Bodily, economic, moral, relational? The text does not distinguish. Everyone's own hardship is the hardship the verse describes.

From this verse the conclusion "then it is futile to try to lessen hardship" cannot be drawn — and the sūra itself does not permit it. For a few verses later the sūra will command exactly the lessening of someone else's hardship: to loose the slave, to feed the hungry.

The verse, that is, does not set up a fatalist resignation. What it sets up is this: hardship does not go away, but it can be shared. The second half of the sūra is the name of that sharing. The fourth verse lays down the diagnosis; the thirteenth says what is to be done.

A yaḥsabu an lan yaqdira ʿalayhi aḥad "Does he suppose that no one has power over him?"

Root: ح-س-ب. That this root carries two verbs — ḥasaba (he counted, he reckoned) and ḥasiba (he supposed, he thought) — was treated in detail in Sūrat al-Humaza. There the nearness between ʿaddada (he kept counting) and yaḥsabu (he supposed) was touched on: the man who counts is making a false reckoning.

The same nearness works here too, and even more plainly: the fifth verse has "he supposes", the sixth has "wealth in heaps". The same figure as in al-Humaza, that is, comes before us with the same root, in the same order.

The verb's coming in the imperfect conveys continuity: he has not thought this once; it is his supposition in a continuing state.

And the question is a rhetorical question of denial: no answer is expected, the question is itself a rejection. "Does he suppose?" = "Does he really suppose so?"

Root: ق-د-ر. This root works in two directions in Arabic, and both are present in the Qurʾān:

1. To have power, to be able. Qadīr, qudra, qādir — these are from this branch.

2. To measure, to determine, to straiten. To set a measure to a thing; to narrow the measure. The Qurʾān uses this openly: "He straitens his provision" (al-Fajr 89/16); "And whoever's provision has been straitened" (al-Ṭalāq 65/7).

The two senses come from the same place: to set a measure is both a mark of power and a limiting.

The usage here is in the first sense: that no one will have power over him.

A parallel within the Qurʾān. The same verb, in the same negative form, occurs in the story of Jonah (Yūnus):

"And remember Dhu'l-Nūn, when he went off in anger and supposed that We would have no power over him (fa-ẓanna an lan naqdira ʿalayh)" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/87)

The structure is almost the same: a verb of supposing + an lan naqdira/yaqdira ʿalayhi. This parallel is meaningful, because in the verse of al-Anbiyāʾ the ascription of this supposition to a prophet occupied the classical exegetes at length, and there the reading of the verb in its second sense ("he supposed that We would not straiten things upon him") is a widespread solution. Here there is no such difficulty: the subject is a man who supposes himself strong.

Root: و-ح-د (the wāw at the head has turned into a hamza). The detailed analysis of this word was made in Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ: the difference between aḥad and wāḥid, and aḥad's being used in the overwhelming majority of cases in a negative context in the sense of "no one".

Here we have exactly that usage: in a negative sentence, "no one". This is the word's typical place in the Qurʾān — the positive use in Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ was the exception.

And a fine point: the word occurs twice in this sūra, in two verses (5 and 7). In both it does the same work: filling the void in the man's mind. "No one" has power, "no one" saw. In the man's world there are two "no ones".

Yaqūlu ahlaktu mālan lubadā "He says, 'I have spent wealth in heaps.'"

Root: ه-ل-ك. Its original sense is to perish, to be ruined. Halāk, hālik (one who perishes), tahluka are from the same root.

The pattern is ifʿāl (causative): ahlaka — he destroyed, he ruined.

This is the sharpest point of the verse. The man does not say "I spent", does not say "I gave", does not say "I disbursed". He says "I destroyed".

The words the Qurʾān uses for spending are known: anfaqa (he disbursed — from the root of maintenance, of providing for), ātā (he gave), taṣaddaqa (he gave alms). All of these are positive or neutral verbs; they state that the thing given went somewhere.

Ahlaka does not state this. It is a verb of annihilation. The man is relating not where his wealth went, but that it left his hand.

This choice of word says two things, and both are against the man:

The first: boasting. The man is relating how much he spent, "what money he got through". This is the tone carried by English expressions like "I burned through a fortune", "I blew a pile of money" — boasting of the size of the spending. The word brings forward not the amount of what was given but the power of the one spending.

The second: that what was given really did perish. Some of the classical exegetes read the verb here in this further way: the man is telling the truth — his wealth really has perished, because it was not spent where it should have been. The Qurʾān establishes this principle openly elsewhere: alms given for show are likened to a rock whose covering of soil a downpour sweeps away (al-Baqara 2/264). The wealth given has gone, but it has reached no one.

On this second reading the verse carries an irony: with the sentence he utters in order to boast, the man describes his own condition correctly.

It comes indefinite. In al-Humaza 104/2 it was indefinite in the same way: jamaʿa mālan — "he gathered a wealth". The measure recorded there holds here too: the kind, the amount and the source of the wealth are not stated. The criticism is directed not at where the wealth came from but at the relation set up with it.

Root: ل-ب-د. The concrete sense of the root is to pile one on another, to stick together, to become felted.

The derivatives bear this out:

• libd / libda — felt. The cloth got by wetting and beating wool fibres so that they interlock. It is not woven, it is pressed. It is one of the basic materials of Arabian and steppe cultures: the tent, the felt rug, the saddle pad.
• labada — it stuck to the ground, it crouched, it stayed motionless.
• lubda — the mane on a lion's neck; a mass of hair interlocked and felted.

Lubad, that is, does not simply mean "much". It means heaped one on another, stuck together, become a single mass.

The pattern of the word bears this out too: lubad is a form carrying a plural sense (the lexicographers count it either the plural of lubda or an adjective conveying multitude directly). Not "a heap", then, but "heaps".

The Qurʾān's own testimony. The same root occurs in one other place in the Qurʾān, and there the sense is extraordinarily plain:

"And when the servant of God stood up calling upon Him, they were all but piling up on him like felt (kādū yakūnūna ʿalayhi libadā)" (al-Jinn 72/19)

Here the word describes a crowd of people sticking together and becoming a single mass. People swarm to one point so closely that no space is left between them.

This occurrence gives exactly the image of the word in al-Balad 90/6: wealth like felt. Not coins that can be counted one by one; an interlocked, unseparable mass.

The person described in Sūrat al-Humaza and the person here are two states of the same type. But their relation is finer than is supposed:

This table yields a surprising result: the two men do opposite things but stand in the same place. One accumulates, the other spends. One counts his wealth, the other counts what he has flung away.

The common point is this: both use wealth as a mark of power. For the man of al-Humaza wealth is a shield; for the man of al-Balad it is a record. Both use wealth to set up a claim about themselves.

Where the Qurʾān's criticism of wealth is directed becomes clear here: not at the amount, but at the function. To spend little and to spend much can carry the same fault; what is decisive is for whom the spending is done. The later verses of the sūra (13-16) will describe exactly this: to whom, when, in what condition.

And there is this too: the last verse of al-Humaza said "a fire closed over them" (104/8). The last verse of al-Balad repeats the same expression (90/20). The two sūras end with the same word.

A yaḥsabu an lam yarahū aḥad "Does he suppose that no one has seen him?"

Two verses apart, the same structure: a yaḥsabu an… aḥad. The same verb, the same question form, the same word to end with.

This repetition binds the two suppositions together and establishes the logical relation between them:

The fifth verse: no one has power over me. → This is a supposition about power. The seventh verse: no one has seen me. → This is a supposition about knowledge.

The sixth verse in between is the bridge between the two: "I have spent wealth in heaps." The man, that is, trusts in both his power and his concealment, and builds both with wealth.

The order is itself a structure: the supposition of power first, the supposition of not being seen after. The reason may be this — the next step for one who supposes that others cannot reach him is to suppose that he will not be called to account. Not to be seen is the deeper state of not being reachable. The first says "I cannot be caught", the second says "no one even knows".

Root: ر-ء-ي. To see. In Sūrat al-Fīl it was treated that this verb takes in both seeing with the eye and knowing; here both senses are plain.

The verb's being in the past tense is striking. Not "that no one will see him", but "that no one has seen him". The matter, that is, is not being caught in the future but what was done in the past not having been entered into the record.

Joined with the context of the sūra this comes to mean: the man supposes that no one knows where he spent his wealth, how he earned it, what he did to whom. What lies behind the figure he boasts of.

The verse says "no one saw him" but does not say what it was that was not seen. This gap is deliberate: every reader fills in his own gap.

And the next verse closes this gap from an unexpected place. The answer given to one who says "no one saw" is not "of course you were seen"; it is "did We not give you two eyes?"

The answer, that is, turns the question of being seen back onto the man's own body. I take up this transition in the next section.

A lam najʿal lahū ʿaynayn • wa lisānan wa shafatayn "Did We not give him two eyes? And a tongue and two lips?"

The man said "no one saw me". The answer is not "We saw you" — the answer is "We gave you eyes".

This is a method the Qurʾān uses often: instead of rejecting the claim, to take away from the claimant the ground he stands on. The man is speaking by way of seeing and knowing; the verse asks him who gave him the faculty of sight.

The logic is this: the one who gives sight cannot be one who does not see. The Qurʾān establishes this inference openly in Sūrat al-Mulk. First what has been given is counted: "It is He who brought you into being and gave you hearing, sight and hearts" (al-Mulk 67/23). And in the same sūra the question is put: "Would He who created not know? He is al-Laṭīf, al-Khabīr" (al-Mulk 67/14).

The pattern treated in Sūrat al-Fīl: a lam + a verb is a strong affirmation. "Did We not give?" = "of course We gave, and you know it."

The verb is not "khalaqnā" (We created) but "najʿal" (We made, We set). The verb jaʿala in Arabic conveys bringing a thing into a state, setting it to a function. It occurred twice in Sūrat al-Fīl: He put their plot into the state of coming to nothing, He turned them into chewed-up straw.

The verse, that is, is speaking not of the organs' being brought into existence but of their being ordered for a function. The eye is not a substance but a possibility.

The verse counts three things and states their number:

• عَيْنَيْنِ (ʿaynayn) — two eyes. The dual form.
• لِسَانًا (lisānan) — one tongue. Singular.
• شَفَتَيْنِ (shafatayn) — two lips. Dual.

The stating of the numbers may look unnecessary — everyone knows a person has two eyes. But in Arabic the dual form is obligatory; to say "eyes" the dual is used. The emphasis on number, that is, is not the verse's own choice but the structure of the language.

Even so the rhythm of the series is striking: two – one – two. And this rhythm continues with two in the next verse: al-najdayn, two ways. Three of the four elements are dual.

The Qurʾān mentions various organs when it speaks of the human body; here only three are counted, and the choice is not random.

The eyes — taking in. The door by which knowledge enters. Man's first relation with the outside world. The tongue — giving out. The door by which knowledge leaves. The conveying of thought outwards. The lips — regulating. The place where sound is shaped and — this matters — where it can be shut off.

What is counted, that is, is not a list of organs but a circuit of knowledge: take in, process, give out.

And note: at the start of the sūra a saying of the man was conveyed — he says "I have spent wealth in heaps." That saying was uttered with exactly the instrument counted in this verse. The verse reminds him of the organs that let him frame his own sentence.

This is the finest point. The tongue having already been counted, was there any need to mention the lips as well?

In the classical explanations two things are mentioned as the function of the lips: helping speech, and closing the mouth — the holding in of food and drink, the covering of the mouth.

This second is worth dwelling on. The lip is a door that opens and closes. The tongue is always inside the mouth; the lip is the curtain that decides whether the word will go out or not.

In the context of the sūra this is meaningful: here there is a man who speaks, and what he says is against himself. In the counting of the organs of speech, the separate mention of the one that can stop speech recalls a possibility: not to say it was also in his hand.

I record this as my own reading, not as a classical transmission. In the classical explanations the function of the lips is generally set out in more concrete terms.

And there is this too: the lips also carry the two basic expressions of a human being besides speech — the smile and anger. The verse does not say this; I merely note the field the word carries.

Wa hadaynāhu'l-najdayn "And We showed him the two heights."

The finest verse of the sūra.

Root: ه-د-ي. The analysis of this root was made in Sūrat al-Fātiḥa on the occasion of ihdinā (show us); the root's sense of "to show the way, to direct towards the right side, to go in front" was treated there. Hadiyya (gift) is from the same root — that which is directed towards someone.

What has to be added here is this: the verb is perfect. Not "We shall show" or "We are showing", but "We showed". The work of showing the way, that is, is a thing completed; man was furnished with that knowledge at the moment he was created.

This corresponds to one of the two distinct usages of the root in the Qurʾān. The word hidāya means in the Qurʾān sometimes "to show the way" (given to everyone), sometimes "to bring onto the way" (given to particular persons). The usage here is the first: showing, not choosing. To show the way does not mean to put someone on that way; the verse states this already by showing the two ways together.

The Qurʾān makes this distinction openly elsewhere:

"We showed him the way; he is either grateful or ungrateful" (al-Insān 76/3)

The structure is almost the same: innā hadaynāhu'l-sabīl. In al-Balad, hadaynāhu'l-najdayn. The two verses say the same thing.

And a third:

"By the self and Him who shaped it; and inspired it with its wickedness and its guarding against evil" (al-Shams 91/7-8)

Here the verb is alhama (inspired) and what is given is again twofold: the knowledge both of the wickedness and of the guarding. Read together, the three verses yield this picture: man is born knowing what both ways are.

Root: ن-ج-د. And the point here is the most striking detail of the sūra.

The senses of the root:

1. A high place, an upland, a rise. Najd is the opposite of ghawr (a hollow), which is low and level. The inner plateau of Arabia is called Najd for this reason — the inner region that stays high, as against the low coastal region of Tihāma. This naming rests on a geographical fact and is still in use today.

2. What appears plainly, what is conspicuous. What is high is seen from far off. Najd therefore also comes to mean "a plain road".

3. To help, to come to the rescue. Najda — help, rescue. Najda also means valour. This branch comes from the first sense: the one who looks out from a height, who sees the danger first, who runs to help.

And now the real point:

The verse does not say "ṭarīqayn" (two roads) or "sabīlayn" (two paths) for the two ways. It says "najdayn" — and najd is by definition a high place.

The meaning of this is: both ways are an ascent. Good is hard and evil is hard too. It is not said that one is uphill and the other downhill.

This stands squarely against a widespread picture. In speaking about morals the picture generally drawn is this: goodness is a toilsome climb, while evil is simply letting go — a man who lets himself go goes down. The word of the verse does not say this.

And this agrees with observation. Evil does not come free: keeping up a lie takes memory, holding up an injustice takes force, protecting an unjust gain requires being always on the alert. The man in the sixth verse of the sūra is not idle either — he has earned wealth, spent it, related it, established his position. All of these are labour.

What the verse says, then, may be this: both ways are toilsome; the difference is in where the toil arrives. This reading agrees exactly with the diagnosis in the fourth verse — if man was created inside hardship, then neither of the two options before him can be free of toil. There is no escape from hardship; there is only which hardship will be chosen.

I offer this as my own reading. In the classical commentaries najdayn is generally explained as "the way of good and the way of evil", and the "height" sense of the word is not dwelt on this much. But the sense stands in the root and is not forced.

The view of the majority is by a wide margin the stronger, and it is supported by parallels within the Qurʾān. I record the second view because it really is transmitted in the classical sources; but it has to be said that it has been found weak.

Verses 8-10 are a series of reckoning up, and the end of the series is meaningful:

The series moves from matter towards decision. The last element is not an organ but knowledge: the knowledge of which way goes where.

And this sets up the sūra's reproach in the next verse. He has the instrument, the knowledge, the choice. And so?

Fa-la'qtaḥama'l-ʿaqaba "But he did not throw himself at the steep ascent."

The structure of the sentence is at first sight odd for those who know Arabic: لَا + a perfect verb.

In Arabic lā is generally used for negation with the imperfect. To negate a perfect verb mā would be expected. The pattern lā + perfect does exist, but its rule is this: normally it is repeated.

The plainest example from within the Qurʾān:

"He neither affirmed nor prayed" (fa-lā ṣaddaqa wa lā ṣallā) — al-Qiyāma 75/31

Two lās, two perfect verbs. In al-Balad 90/11 there is a single lā and it is not repeated. This has been a matter the classical lexicographers dwelt on.

The explanations given:

The first — the repetition is there, but hidden. The verses that follow (13-16) count the content of the ascent; the negation is in fact distributed over all of them. The sense "he neither loosed a slave nor fed anyone" is hidden in the structure.

The second — the reading of taḥḍīḍ (urging/reproach). The lā here is not a negation but an expression of reproach-and-urging: "If only he had thrown himself at that ascent!" In Arabic the reproach felt at a thing's not having been done, together with the implication that it ought to be done, can be expressed by this pattern. This reading agrees better with the detailed description that follows in the sūra — because the description seems less to relate what a thing not done was than to relate what ought to be done.

The third — the reading as a prayer or imprecation. The pattern lā + perfect is also used in Arabic for a prayer. On this reading the sentence becomes an imprecation. This view has been found weak and does not suit the tone of the sūra.

My assessment — it is not binding: the second reading is the one that best fits the flow of the text, but there is no practical difference between it and the first: on either reading the man has not thrown himself at the ascent, and it is expected that he should. The difference is whether the sentence is a statement or a reproach. In English it is hard to reflect both at once; "he did not throw himself in" keeps the statement, "if only he had thrown himself in" keeps the reproach.

Root: ق-ح-م. And this word carries the whole energy of the verse.

The concrete sense of the root: to plunge into a thing without thinking, without reckoning, with one's eyes shut. To throw oneself into a dangerous place. Qaḥama — he drove his horse into a place, he plunged in. Quḥma — hardship, distress; it also carries the sense of famine.

The pattern: افتعال (iftiʿāl). This pattern in Arabic conveys that the act is performed by the person's own effort and taken upon himself. Iqtaḥama, that is, is not "he plunged" but "he forced himself into it".

The word conveys an absence of calculation, a recklessness, a lunge. The English "to throw oneself in", "to plunge", "to chance it" come near it.

There is one further usage from the same root in the Qurʾān, and there the sense is plain: of a community thrown into Hell it is said "this is a company plunging in with you" (Ṣād 38/59); there too the word describes a mass being pushed into a place and plunging in.

Root: ع-ق-ب. The family of senses of the root is wide, and all of them come out of the idea of "coming behind, following after":

• ʿaqib — the heel; the back part of the foot. ʿAlā ʿaqibayhi — on his heels, that is, to turn back.
• ʿāqiba — the end of a matter, what comes after.
• ʿiqāb — punishment; what comes after the offence.
• taʿqīb — following, pursuing.
• ʿaqaba — a steep ascent, a mountain pass, a sharp slope.

How does the last sense arise? The steps of a person walking up a slope follow one another, and every step is above the one before. ʿAqaba is a place that is climbed and that requires step after step.

The concrete counterpart of the word: in the geography of Arabia an ʿaqaba is the narrow and steep pass between two mountains. It is the point at which caravans have the hardest time and are at their most exposed — they slow, they have to go in file, it is the place most open to ambush. There are passes of this kind in and around Mecca and their names are known. The word was, in the eye of the addressee, not an abstract "hardship" but a form of terrain he knew.

A historical note: a place near Mecca called ʿAqaba occurs in the biographical sources as the site of the pledges made between the group from Medina and the Prophet. I make no claim that the verse points to this; I record it as an example showing the word's use as a place name.

Iqtaḥama + ʿaqaba — the image of the sentence is this: to throw oneself, without reckoning, without blinking, at a steep ascent.

The choice of words says something: to go up the ascent is not a slow and calculated business. Iqtiḥām requires letting go of the reckoning. Because when it is reckoned it is not done.

This will agree exactly with the acts the verse is about to describe. To buy a slave and set him free, to give away the food in one's hand on a day of famine — these are things not done when the reckoning is made. The reckoning says, "myself first".

Now the series is complete:

• The man was created in hardship (4).
• He supposed that no one had power over him (5).
• He said he had spent wealth in heaps (6).
• He supposed that no one had seen him (7).
• Yet he had been given his eye, his tongue, his lips and the knowledge of the two ways (8-10).
• But he did not throw himself at the ascent (11).

The man had spent, that is — but he had not thrown himself at the ascent. This is the sharpest distinction in the sūra: to spend and to throw oneself at the ascent are not the same thing. There is no contradiction between the "wealth in heaps" of the sixth verse and the "he did not throw himself" of the eleventh; two separate things are being spoken of.

Wa mā adrāka ma'l-ʿaqaba "And what will make you know what the steep ascent is?"

This pattern occurs in about thirteen places in the Qurʾān and always does the same work: a word is uttered, then there is a pause, then it is described. It was treated in Sūrat al-Humaza (wa mā adrāka ma'l-ḥuṭama), and the same structure is present in such sūras as al-Qadr, al-Qāriʿa and al-Ḥāqqa.

The function of the pattern is to create a pause. The narrative is cut while it is flowing; the attention of the addressee is gathered; then the description comes. For an oral text this is a technique for preparing the hearer.

Root: د-ر-ي. To know a thing by investigating, by following its trace. Dirāya — comprehension. The causative of the verb, adrā — he made known.

A consistent distinction in the Qurʾān: the pattern mā adrāka (what made you know — perfect) is used in places where an explanation follows. The pattern mā yudrīka (what makes you know — imperfect) is used in places where no explanation follows, where the knowledge is left closed to man (for instance about the hour of the resurrection: al-Aḥzāb 33/63, "What will make you know? Perhaps the Hour is near").

This distinction has been recorded in the classical commentaries and is consistent within the Qurʾān itself. Here adrāka is used — that is, an explanation is to come. And indeed the next verse begins the description.

One point has to be seen: the question is not about something unknown. The word ʿaqaba is a word everyone who knows Arabic knows; what a steep ascent is, is plain.

What, then, does "what will make you know?" mean?

The answer lies in what the question is aimed at. What is asked is not the dictionary sense of the word but what that ascent corresponds to. And the addressee's guess on this point is most likely wrong.

For the things that come to mind at the words "steep ascent" are known: long acts of worship, night prayers, fasts, austerity, withdrawal, self-restriction. When hardship is spoken of, this is always what comes to mind in the religious life.

The sūra will say none of these.

Fakku raqaba "The loosing of a neck."

In this verse there is a variant reading that affects the meaning.

In the widespread text of the muṣḥaf (the transmission of Ḥafṣ from ʿĀṣim) the word is in the مصدر (verbal noun) form: fakku raqabatin — "the loosing of a neck", and in the next verse iṭʿāmun — "feeding". On this reading verses 13-16 are the answer given to the question in verse 12: what is the ascent? — It is the loosing of a neck, or feeding.

From some of the other imāms of the readings a verbal reading is transmitted: fakka raqabatan — "he loosed a neck", aw aṭʿama — "or he fed". On this reading the verses attach to the negation in verse 11: he did not throw himself at the ascent — he neither loosed a neck nor fed anyone.

I give no definite list as to which imām adopted which reading; the detail is recorded in the sources, and I do not convey an ascription I am not sure of.

The difference in sense is real but small: on the verbal-noun reading the ascent is defined, on the verbal reading the failure to climb it is exemplified. On both, the content of the ascent is the same. Besides, the verbal reading also solves the problem of "lā + perfect" discussed above at verse 11: the negation turns out to have been repeated.

Root: ف-ك-ك. Its concrete sense is to untie, to separate, to loosen a bond, to open a lock.

The concrete uses of the word: to untie a knot, a joint's coming out of place (infikāk), to open a lock, to separate two things from one another. The English verbs "to undo" and "to unfasten" cover this field well.

The choice of word is meaningful. The verse does not use the expression the Qurʾān uses elsewhere for "to free a slave". In contexts of expiation the Qurʾān says تحرير رقبة (taḥrīru raqabatin — to make a neck free) (al-Nisāʾ 4/92, al-Māʾida 5/89, al-Mujādala 58/3). Taḥrīr comes from the root of ḥurr (free) and conveys a legal act.

Here, though, we have fakk — to loose a bond. Not a legal but a physical image: the opening of the tie of something that has been tied.

This difference agrees with the sūra's being Meccan. In Mecca there was no legal regulation about slavery, no institution of expiation. The verse is not describing a legal act; it is describing an act of loosing a bond.

Root: ر-ق-ب. The original sense of the root is to watch, to observe, to wait. Raqīb — one who watches; one of the names of God. Murāqaba — surveillance. Taraqqub — to await.

And from the same root, raqaba — the neck.

The connection is this: the neck is the axis on which the head turns and towards which the gaze is directed. One who watches stretches his neck, turns it. The lexicographers establish the bond in this way.

The use of the neck for a slave. In Arabic it is common for a part of a person to be mentioned instead of the whole, and the part chosen for a slave is the neck. The reason is concrete: a bond, a ring or a rope used to be put on the necks of captives and slaves. The neck is the place where bondage is seen.

This completes the image of the verse: fakku raqaba — the loosing of the bond on a neck. Read together, the words yield not an abstract legal act but a scene that can be touched: the opening of the ring on someone's neck.

The Qurʾān uses this word too in one of the places to which alms are to be spent: "…and for the necks (fi'l-riqāb)" (al-Tawba 9/60). There too the same image is present.

To understand this verse the institution the word points to has to be seen. What I convey here is historical information; I establish no legal ruling.

In the world in which the Qurʾān came down slavery was not an aberration but a universal institution. It existed in Roman-Byzantine law, in Sasanian Persia, in Abyssinia, in the Indian and Chinese worlds, and in Arabia. No legal system questioned it; what was discussed was the rights of slaves and the manner of their treatment, not the institution itself.

The sources of slavery were principally these:

• Captivity in war. The largest source. The fighters of the defeated side, and sometimes their families, were enslaved.
• Birth. A child born of a slave mother counted as a slave.
• Debt. The giving of oneself or of a relative against an unpayable debt.
• Abduction and trade. Long-distance slave trading was an established sector; there were lines coming from East Africa, Central Asia and Europe.

Mecca was a trading city, and slave labour was used both within the household and in the work of the caravans. A slave's social position was defined in these respects: he counted as property, he could be bought and sold, he was subject to inheritance, his acquiring property in his own name was restricted, and he had no protection — a person without a tribal bond, in that order, meant a person unprotected.

This last point is decisive for the context of the sūra. In Mecca a person's safety of life depended on the will of the tribe he belonged to to protect him. The slave had no such backing; he had no one but his owner, and his owner was not his protector but his proprietor.

That slaves and freedmen were strikingly numerous among the first Muslims has to do with this picture. In the biographical sources the tortures these people underwent are related in detail, and it is transmitted that Abū Bakr bought and freed some of them. The details of this transmission vary among the reports; its main frame, however, appears consistently in the early sources.

Sūrat al-Balad's being Meccan is important at this point. When the verse came down there was neither a state nor a legal order. To say "loose a neck" was not to lay down a law; it was to tell one person, with his own money, by his own decision, under no one's compulsion, to buy a human being and set him free. And in that society this was an economically meaningless act: the goods bought were destroyed at the moment of purchase.

The sūra's calling this "a steep ascent" is precisely for this reason.

The Qurʾān's stance towards slavery is a matter that has to be conveyed honestly.

The Qurʾān lays down no single ruling of abolition. Instead it presses the institution from several sides:

• It makes freeing an expiation. In cases such as breaking an oath (al-Māʾida 5/89), killing by mistake (al-Nisāʾ 4/92) and ẓihār (al-Mujādala 58/3), the first option is to free a slave. The person who errs, that is, makes good his error by setting a human being free.
• It sets aside a share from the alms. Fi'l-riqāb (al-Tawba 9/60) — one item of the social fund is set aside directly for the freeing of slaves.
• It opens the way of mukātaba. "And those of your slaves who seek a contract (mukātaba), contract with them if you know some good in them; and give them of the wealth God has given you" (al-Nūr 24/33). A slave can buy his freedom by paying its price in instalments — and his owner is asked to contribute to that price.
• It puts freeing into the definition of goodness. In al-Baqara 2/177, where birr (true goodness) is described, "the necks" (the setting free of slaves) is among the things counted.
• And here, in al-Balad, it makes freeing the first item of the "steep ascent".

The debate is this: why is this approach not a direct prohibition?

The answer defended is gradualism: to abolish by a single ruling the basic form of labour of an economy would have meant leaving the people bound to that labour unprotected; instead the sources were narrowed and the exits multiplied. This answer is reasonable but does not close the debate.

The opposing view asks: if gradualism is a method, the completion of the process would have been expected; yet slavery lasted for centuries in the Islamic world.

This is one of the most disputed areas in the history of Islamic law, and I do not take a side here. There are two things that have to be conveyed:

The first: in the text of the Qurʾān there is no expression encouraging the acquiring of slaves; there are many expressions encouraging freeing. The direction of the text is one-sided.

The second: the form the law of slavery took in later centuries is a subject apart from the text itself, and has to be examined historically. What a text says and what the institutions claimed to rest on that text did are not the same thing.

Institutional slavery is today legally forbidden almost everywhere. But the situation the verse describes — a human being's standing under the disposal of another human being, with no way out — has not disappeared. Debt bondage, human trafficking, migrant labour whose passports have been taken, forced labour: under these headings the regular reports of international bodies speak of millions of people worldwide. The figures rest on estimates and vary between the bodies; for that reason I give no number here.

The word the verse uses permits this widening. Fakk is not the changing of a legal status but the loosing of a bond. Whether the bond is legally recognised or not does not change the scope of the word.

Aw iṭʿāmun fī yawmin dhī masghaba "Or feeding on a day of hunger."

The conjunction states an option: the ascent has two separate doors. One is the freeing of a slave, the other is feeding.

This shows the realism of the verse. Freeing a slave requires great capital; not everyone can do it. Feeding, on the other hand, can be scaled. The sūra is not saying that there is only one expensive way up the ascent.

Root: ط-ع-م. Ṭaʿām — food. The ifʿāl pattern (iṭʿām) is causative: to give to eat, to feed.

I do not repeat the analysis of this word made in Sūrat al-Māʿūn; the two readings of the construct ṭaʿāmi'l-miskīn and the reason for the choice of the expression "not to urge the feeding" were treated there.

There is a difference of threshold here as against al-Māʿūn, and it has to be recorded:

Al-Māʿūn was bringing the threshold down: not giving — is not even urging enough? Al-Balad draws the threshold up: not urging, but the feeding itself. The two sūras take hold of the same matter from its two ends — one showing the minimum bound, the other the target of the climb.

مَسْغَبَة — Root: س-غ-ب. Hunger, going hungry. Sāghib — hungry. In Arabic the word is used particularly for severe and long-lasting hunger; not for daily appetite.

The pattern: مَفْعَلَة (mafʿala). In Arabic this pattern conveys the place or the time in which a thing is found in abundance. Masghaba, that is, is not "hunger" but "the condition in which hunger holds sway".

ذِى — "possessor of". Literally, then: "a day possessed of hunger." The day is qualified as the possessor of the hunger.

This is more than an ordinary qualification. Famine was the most concrete disaster of that country. In a year when the rain did not come the caravans halted, the flocks died, prices soared. The favour of "feeding against hunger" treated in Sūrat Quraysh is precisely against this threat.

And the condition lies here. To feed in a time of plenty is good too, but it is not hard. The verse chooses the day of famine — that is, a time when the giver is himself hungry, when he cannot put anything in the place of what he gives.

Here is where the "ascent" grows steep. To give one meal on a day of famine is harder than to give ten meals on a day of plenty; because what is given is subtracted from the giver's own chance of staying alive.

This explains the whole logic of the sūra: the hardship lies not in the amount of what is given but in the cost at the moment of giving. The man in the sixth verse said "I have spent wealth in heaps" — but he did not say on which day he spent it.

Yatīman dhā maqraba • aw miskīnan dhā matraba "An orphan who is kin, or a poor man cleaving to the dust."

The description of those who are to be fed. Two persons, two qualities.

Let us look at the structure first. In three verses three dhū constructs come one after another:

• yawmin dhī masghabatin — a day possessed of hunger
• yatīman dhā maqrabatin — an orphan possessed of kinship
• miskīnan dhā matrabatin — a poor man possessed of dust

All three are on the same pattern (mafʿala), all three end on the same sound (-raba / -ghaba), all three are joined by the same structure. This is a series in which the sound carries the sense: the three constructs, locked into one another, build a single scene.

The detailed analysis of this word was made in Sūrat al-Māʿūn: that the original sense of the root is infirād (being left alone, solitude), that at the centre of the word there is not helplessness but having no one behind one, and what it meant to be an orphan in the Mecca of the seventh century were treated there.

What has to be added here is that the word comes indefinite: yatīman — "an orphan". In al-Māʿūn it came with the definite article (al-yatīm — conveying the kind). The indefiniteness here points to individual persons: an orphan who comes before you.

The difference is small but meaningful: al-Māʿūn was criticising the treatment given to a category, al-Balad is describing the act to be done to a person.

Root: ق-ر-ب. To be near. Qurb (nearness), qarīb (near), aqribāʾ, qurba, taqarrub (drawing near) are from the same root. In the Qurʾān the expression dhi'l-qurbā (possessed of nearness) occurs often in the sense of a relative.

Maqraba is again on the mafʿala pattern: the condition in which nearness is found.

There are two readings:

1. Kinship. The orphan is a relative of the one who feeds him. 2. Neighbourhood / nearness. The orphan is one living near the person — near in distance.

The majority adopt the first reading, and the Qurʾān's use of the word qurbā for kinship supports it.

But why is it harder to feed an orphan who is kin?

At first sight the opposite would be thought: giving to a relative ought to be easier, because there is a belonging. But the logic of the sūra works from another place, and two grounds can be thought of:

The first — the absence of visibility. Help given to a poor person far off can be related, becomes known, brings standing. Help given to a relative is counted ordinary; no one records it as a good deed. To feed an orphan who is kin, that is, is a spending that brings no social return whatever.

The second — the weight of the relationship. A relative is the party with a claim on property. An orphan relative is most often the person who has, or is thought to have, a right in an inheritance. In the Mecca of the seventh century the devouring of an orphan's property was a widespread problem, and the Qurʾān speaks on this matter with unusual severity (al-Nisāʾ 4/10). An orphan who is kin, that is, is the person who can stand directly against one's own interest.

This second ground agrees very well with the verse's description of the "ascent". The sūra chooses the person to whom it is hardest to give: one who both brings no standing at all and with whom one may be in a conflict of interest.

I offer these readings as my own inference; in the classical sources the preference for the orphan who is kin is generally explained by way of the weight of the claim of kinship.

The analysis of this word too was made in Sūrat al-Māʿūn: the root س-ك-ن (sukūn, immobility), and that the miskīn is not "one who has nothing" but one who cannot stand up with what he has, one who is fragile, were treated there.

The sense of "immobility" in the root of the word, joined with the next qualification, gives a complete image.

Root: ت-ر-ب. Turāb — earth, dust. From the same root come tarība, turba (the place buried in earth), and the expressions in the Qurʾān relating man's creation from earth.

Matraba is again on the mafʿala pattern: the state in which the dust is found.

The concrete image of the word: a person stuck to the ground, covered in dust, with nothing left between himself and the earth. One who has no mat to lie on, nothing to cover himself with, no means of keeping the dirt off him.

The nearest English equivalents: "down in the dirt", "covered in dust", "grovelling". But none of them is as concrete as the Arabic — because the Arabic word derives directly from the word for earth.

This is not an abstract description of poverty but a physical one. The verse does not speak of income level, of lack of means, of deprivation; it speaks of the dust on the man. It shows the place where poverty is seen.

And joined with the immobility in the root of the word miskīn the image is complete: someone who cannot stir and who is stuck to the ground.

One further observation: the sūra does not mention man as "created from earth", but it meets earth once — and that meeting is on the back of a poor man. I record this not as an interpretation but as the word's single occurrence within the sūra.

Now the most important move of the sūra has to be seen, because the choice made here shows the Qurʾān's whole understanding of morals.

The twelfth verse asked: "What will make you know what the steep ascent is?"

The answers expected to this question are known. What a religious text will count when it says "the hardest thing" can be guessed: worship through the night, long fasting, withdrawal from the world, the breaking of the self, the long journey of the pilgrimage, the pursuit of knowledge. All of these are hard and all of them are parts of the religious life.

The sūra counts none of them.

What it counts is this:

1. The loosing of the bond on a human being's neck. 2. Feeding, on a day of famine, an orphan who is kin or a poor man cleaving to the dust. 3. (In the next verse) having believed, and joining the community that enjoins patience and mercy on one another.

The whole of the steep ascent, then — up to the third item — is social self-sacrifice. And the character of that social self-sacrifice is very marked: spending directed to places from which no return will come.

The slave is freed; the freed slave can give nothing in return. There is no one behind the orphan; the good done to him is written to no one's account. The poor man cleaving to the dust has nothing to give in any case. And the day of famine has been chosen — that is, the day on which the giver too is in straits.

The measure recorded in Sūrat al-Māʿūn was working here exactly: the common characteristic of the orphan and the miskīn is that they cannot give in return. Sūrat al-Balad takes the same measure and carries it a step further: to give to the person who cannot give in return, on a day when you cannot get anything in return.

What does this choice say?

Acts of worship are hard, but one side of them makes them easier: they are seen, they are measured, they are counted, they bring standing, and they raise the doer in his own eyes. In none of the works the sūra counts is this present.

This choice of the Qurʾān's is not isolated. The same structure is set up more openly in al-Baqara 2/177:

"Goodness (birr) is not that you turn your faces east or west. True goodness is that of one who believes in God, the last day, the angels, the Book and the prophets; who gives of the wealth he loves to kinsfolk, to orphans, to the poor, to the wayfarer, to those who ask, and for the necks; who performs the prayer and gives the alms…"

The same elements, the same order: faith → the giving of wealth → orphans, the poor, the necks. And that verse too opens with exactly a question: what is goodness not?

Sūrat al-Māʿūn had set the matter up from the opposite direction: how do you tell that someone denies the religion? — From his repelling the orphan. Read together, the two sūras yield this: the Qurʾān puts both the floor and the ceiling of the religious life in the same place. The floor: not to repel the orphan, to lend what is asked for. The ceiling: to feed an orphan who is kin on a day of famine, to free a slave.

It is not that there are no acts of worship between the two — al-Baqara 2/177 counts the prayer and the alms as well. But the place of the test is not there.

And this joins with the sūra's diagnosis of "kabad". Man was created in hardship. Hardship is unavoidable. The question, then, is not: how do I get free of hardship? The question is: what shall I do with my hardship? The sūra's answer: you will use it to lessen someone else's hardship.

That is why the ascent is an ascent. For a person to bend towards someone else's hardship while his own hardship is there before him is to move against gravity.

Thumma kāna mina'lladhīna āmanū wa tawāṣaw bi'l-ṣabri wa tawāṣaw bi'l-marḥama "Then to be of those who believe, and who enjoin patience on one another, and who enjoin mercy on one another."

In Sūrat al-Tīn we distinguished two functions of this particle: an interval of time and an interval of rank.

Here the second sense must be preferred, and the ground is this: faith does not come after the acts counted. If the order is read chronologically, a result follows such as "first he freed a slave, then he believed", which is something neither the text nor the general logic of the Qurʾān would accept.

The use of thumma to convey rank solves this problem: "and moreover / and what is more". That is, the works counted must have been done, and besides this the person must be of this community.

The classical exegetes stop at this point and generally give this explanation: the good deeds counted carry a value only together with faith; thumma here conveys not time but the weight of the condition. This explanation is reasonable.

A striking word order. The verse does not say "he believed" (āmana); it says "he was of those who believe".

The difference is not unimportant. The first is an individual act. The second conveys entering into a community.

And this is necessarily bound to the rest of the verse: the other two things counted (tawāṣaw) are already in a pattern of reciprocity and cannot be done alone. A single person cannot be one "of those who enjoin on one another".

The verse, that is, draws faith too into the same frame: to believe is to enter into a community. This agrees with the observation in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr — there too the ruling was singular (al-insān) and the exception plural (alladhīna āmanū).

The detailed analysis of this word was made in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr: the root و-ص-ي, the difference of weight between bequest and advice, and the tafāʿul pattern's conveying reciprocity (mushāraka). I do not repeat it here.

The main measure recorded there was this: the pattern places inside the grammar the fact that the one who gives counsel is himself in need of counsel; an order of admonition that flows one way becomes impossible to correct.

The two verses are almost the same in structure, and their differences are meaningful:

There are two differences.

The first: the order has changed. In al-ʿAṣr patience is last, in al-Balad it is in the middle. In al-ʿAṣr patience was the bill for enjoining the truth — one who speaks the truth meets resistance, and they hold to one another in order not to break up. In al-Balad patience comes first and mercy after it.

The second, and the real one: mercy in place of the truth.

The reason for this change lies in the subjects of the two sūras.

Sūrat al-ʿAṣr is the sūra of time and of loss. There the matter is that man's balance is in deficit, and what is set against it is the speaking of the truth. Ḥaqq — what is fixed, what is in its right place, what is real.

Sūrat al-Balad, on the other hand, is the sūra of hardship and of the ascent. There the matter is that man was created in hardship and does not see the hardship of the one beside him. What is set against that is mercy.

In both sūras, that is, the fourth element is the answer given to that sūra's diagnosis:

• Loss → the enjoining of the truth (correction by right knowledge)
• Hardship → the enjoining of mercy (the sharing of the burden)

I offer this distinction as my own reading; but the contexts of the two sūras support it openly.

Root: ر-ح-م. The analysis of this root was made in al-Fātiḥa on the occasion of the names al-Raḥmān and al-Raḥīm: the root's bond with raḥim (the womb), and mercy's being set up in Arabic not as a "feeling" but as a relation of protection and nourishment.

What belongs to this place is the pattern.

The verse does not say raḥma, it says marḥama. The word is on the مَفْعَلَة (mafʿala) pattern — the same pattern that has occurred three more times in this sūra: masghaba, maqraba, matraba.

This is a consistency worth noticing. The sūra used this pattern three times in counting the content of the ascent; now it gives the counsel at the end of the ascent in the same pattern too. The state of hunger, the state of kinship, the state of dust — and the state of mercy. Four words in the same form.

The mafʿala pattern conveys the place, the time or the concentrated state of a thing. Marḥama, that is, is not a feeling of mercy; it is the condition in which mercy holds sway.

This distinction produces a practical consequence: what is enjoined is not a sentiment but a climate. Mercy's becoming, within a community, normal, expected and reciprocal. And precisely for this reason it comes with the tawāṣaw pattern — the pattern of reciprocity.

A question arises: mercy is an emotional state; does it come about by being enjoined?

The move the sūra makes is this: it treats mercy not as a feeling but as a norm. What is counted normal within a community is determined independently of the feelings of individual persons, and that norm in turn affects what those persons will feel.

The same logic was present in Sūrat al-Māʿūn: the expression "he does not urge the feeding of the needy" was a criticism not of a single act of help but of the establishing of a norm. As was recorded there — the alms one person gives feed one person, while a widespread conviction that they ought to be given changes the system.

Sūrat al-Balad sets up the positive form of this: a community that enjoins mercy on one another.

Ulāʾika aṣḥābu'l-maymana "It is they who are the companions of the right."

A demonstrative of the far. In Arabic the use of the demonstrative that points to what is distant for a group that is near conveys that the group is high in position — that is, the distance is not physical but conveys rank.

This agrees with the image of the ascent in the sūra: those who have climbed the ascent are now above.

Root ṣ-ḥ-b: to accompany something, not to part from it. The analysis of this pattern was made in Sūrat al-Fīl (aṣḥāb al-fīl), and the measure recorded there explains the usage here too: the Qurʾān names communities by tying them to the one thing that defines them.

In Sūrat al-Fīl an army was mentioned by the animal it trusted in. Here two groups are mentioned by the side they are on.

Root: ي-م-ن. Yamīn — the right hand, the right side. From the same root:

• yumn — blessing, good fortune, good. The association of the right side with good fortune is settled in Arabic (and in many languages).
• maymūn — fortunate, blessed.
• ayman — the one on the right.

The pattern is again mafʿala: maymana, "the place where the right / the good fortune is found".

Both senses of the word work at once: "the right side" and "good fortune, blessing". There is no single English word to carry both; "the companions of the right" gives one side, "the people of good fortune" the other.

A note on the language: according to what the lexicographers transmit, the names Yemen and Shām (Syria) are also connected with these two directions — the region falling on the right of a person facing east is Yemen, the region falling on his left is Shām. This explanation is found in the classical dictionaries; whether it is historically certain is a separate matter, but it is worth recording for what it shows about the bond between direction and fortune in Arabic.

Wa'lladhīna kafarū bi-āyātinā hum aṣḥābu'l-mashʾama "And those who disbelieve in Our signs, they are the companions of ill fortune."

Set the two verses side by side:

• 18: ulāʾika (it is they) + aṣḥābu'l-maymana
• 19: alladhīna kafarū bi-āyātinā (those who disbelieve in Our signs) + hum + aṣḥābu'l-mashʾama

In the eighteenth verse the subject is not described, only pointed to — because its description was already made in the preceding verses (the one who throws himself at the ascent, who believes, who enjoins).

In the nineteenth verse the subject is described anew and openly: "those who disbelieve in Our signs". And the pronoun هُمْ (they) comes in between, which in Arabic conveys restriction (ḥaṣr): it is they precisely.

What this asymmetry does is this: the first group had been defined by a process (climbing the ascent), the second group is defined by an attitude (denial). And the object of the denial is stated: āyātinā — Our signs.

One further observation: for the first group the verb "he believed" was never used on its own — it said "he was of those who believe". For the second group the verb is used directly: kafarū. Denial, that is, is described as an individual act, and faith as a belonging. I record this as my own reading.

Root: ش-ء-م. Shuʾm — ill fortune. Mashʾūm — unlucky. And from the same root shimāl — the left hand, the left side.

Again the two senses together: the left side and ill fortune. Just as in maymana the right and good fortune stood together.

The pattern is again mafʿala — the sixth use in this sūra (together with masghaba, maqraba, matraba, marḥama, maymana, mashʾama). In the last half of the sūra this pattern becomes a rhythm.

This distinction is used in other places in the Qurʾān as well. The plainest parallel is in Sūrat al-Wāqiʿa:

"When you are three kinds: the companions of the right — what of the companions of the right! The companions of the left — what of the companions of the left!" (al-Wāqiʿa 56/7-9)

The same two expressions, in the same structure. The Qurʾān also speaks of the record of deeds being given from the right or from the left/from behind (al-Ḥāqqa 69/19, 25; al-Inshiqāq 84/7, 10).

A bound has to be drawn: this distinction is a symbolism of direction and rests on a relation of fortune and misfortune established within the language itself. From it no ruling can be drawn about the physical right hand or the left hand themselves. What the Qurʾān is using is a distinction ready to hand in the language of the addressee.

ʿAlayhim nārun muʾṣada "Over them is a fire closed over."

This verse is almost the same as the last verse of Sūrat al-Humaza (innahā ʿalayhim muʾṣada — al-Humaza 104/8), and the analysis of that word was made there: the root ء-ص-د / و-ص-د, to shut a door, to close over; and the interpretation that the accumulating of wealth is the building of a closedness.

Two things have to be added here.

The first: the difference in the word order. In al-Humaza ʿalayhim had been brought before the predicate, and this conveyed emphasis. Here ʿalayhim is already at the head of the sentence and is the predicate; nārun muʾṣada is the subject. The structure is plainer.

The second: the two sūras ending with the same word. Al-Humaza related someone who accumulates wealth and closed with this word. Al-Balad relates someone who boasts of the wealth he has spent and closes with the same word. The two sūras tie two opposite relations with wealth to the same result.

And a contrast: throughout the sūra a verb of opening was treated — fakk, to loose a bond. In the last verse there is a closing — muʾṣada, closed over. The door is shut over the one who did not loose the bond on a neck.

I record this as my own reading; the opposition of the two roots, however, stands in the text.

The logic of the series is this: hardship is unavoidable (4); man tries to meet it with the supposition of power and of concealment (5-7); yet he has knowledge and choice in his hand (8-10); and an ascent has been left before him (11). The ascent is to use one's own hardship in order to lessen someone else's (13-16). This has to be done inside a community and with faith (17). The division passes through here (18-19).

Look at the verse-endings: balad, balad, walad, kabad, aḥad, lubad, aḥad — the first seven verses close on a single sound, the short -ad. Then the sound changes: ʿaynayn, shafatayn, najdayn, ʿaqaba, ʿaqaba, raqaba, masghaba, maqraba, matraba, marḥama, maymana, mashʾama, muʾṣada.

Two parts, two distinct sounds. The first part hard and short; the second flowing with the soft, lengthening sound of the duals (-ayn) and the mafʿala patterns.

This is a structure that coincides with the sense: the diagnosis and the reproach are given in short syllables, the description and the call in lengthening ones. In the short sūras the sound is the carrier of the sense.

The detailed form of this section was given in Sūrat al-Tīn; here I summarise it and make one addition from the side of al-Balad.

The shared pattern:

• لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ فِىٓ أَحْسَنِ تَقْوِيمٍ (al-Tīn 95/4)
• لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ فِى كَبَدٍ (al-Balad 90/4)

The same structure, a different complement: stature and hardship. The one states the capacity, the other the condition.

The shared oath: both swear by the same city — in al-Tīn with the attribute al-amīn, in al-Balad with no attribute and together with the Prophet's situation there.

Opposite directions: in al-Tīn man is turned downwards (asfala sāfilīn); in al-Balad a way upwards is set before man (al-ʿaqaba). The one relates the height that is lost, the other the height that is not gained.

An addition from the side of al-Balad. The exception in al-Tīn was abstract: faith and ṣāliḥāt (righteous deeds). Al-Balad becomes concrete at the same place and fills in the content of ṣāliḥāt: the loosing of a neck, the feeding on a day of famine of an orphan who is kin or a poor man cleaving to the dust.

Read together, the two sūras establish the bridge between the abstract concept and the concrete act. One of the most concrete answers within the Qurʾān to the question of what "righteous deed" means is al-Balad 90/13-16.

And a third sūra completes this axis: al-ʿAṣr. Read all three together, the Qurʾān's description of man comes to this:

In all three faith and deed are shared; in all three a communal dimension is either openly present (al-ʿAṣr, al-Balad) or implied (the plural exception of al-Tīn). And all three describe man's default state negatively and leave a way out.

First: life's being hard is not a mistake.

The diagnosis of the fourth verse conflicts directly with most modern accounts of living. The dominant account today is that hardship is a solvable problem: with the right system, the right habit, the right product, the right choice of career, life will become fluid. Hardship is presented as a malfunction, and the one responsible for the malfunction is most often shown to be the person himself — you did not plan enough, you did not optimise enough.

What the sūra says is otherwise: hardship is the set-up itself. The practical consequence of this is neither resignation nor despair; it is a correction of expectation. The person in difficulty does not, on top of it, blame himself for being in difficulty.

And this has a cost side: where hardship is counted a personal failure, people do not ask for help, because to ask for help would be to declare the failure. The sūra's diagnosis lifts that shame.

Second: that both ways are an ascent.

The fine point carried by the word najdayn in the tenth verse corrects a widespread error about morals. It is not the case that goodness is toilsome and evil easy. Evil takes labour too, and most of the time it takes more: the keeping up of the lie, the managing of relationships, the protecting of unjust gain, the repairing of standing.

The concrete counterpart of this is: the sentence "I took the easy way" is generally not true. What is chosen is not the easy way but the way whose cost has been deferred. By naming both ways high, the sūra makes that deferral visible.

Third: to spend and to give are not the same thing.

The man in the sixth verse had spent wealth in heaps, and in the eleventh verse he is counted as not having thrown himself at the ascent. The difference between the two is the most practical measure of the sūra.

Its counterpart today is concrete. How much an institution, a person or a company spends and how much it gives are two separate questions. Spendings that bring visibility, that secure standing, that set up a relation in return — sponsorships, publicised donations, support for which gratitude is expected — are, by the measure of the sūra, not the ascent. The definition of the ascent is spending directed to a place from which no return will come: the freed slave has nothing to give, there is no one behind the orphan, the thanks of a poor man cleaving to the dust have no price.

This changes the way giving is measured: the question becomes not "how much did I give" but "to whom, on what day and in return for what did what I gave arrive".

Fourth: to look for what is hard in religion in the right place.

The answer the sūra gives to the question "what is the steep ascent?" is a lasting warning about where it places the centre of the religious life. A piety that looks for what is hard in the quantity of worship — longer, more, heavier — may miss the ascent the sūra points to.

The reason for this is not that acts of worship are without value; it is that acts of worship are visible and countable. What can be counted forms a balance in a person's own eyes. In the works the sūra counts no balance forms, because there is neither anyone counting nor anyone giving in return.

Fifth: the establishing of mercy as a norm.

The seventeenth verse gives mercy not as an individual feeling but as a state mutually enjoined. Its counterpart for the present is that mercy cannot be left to personal good will.

What is counted normal within a community determines to a large degree what the people in that community will do. A circle in which help is ordinary, in which asking is not shameful, in which the one in difficulty is seen; and a circle in which help is exceptional, asking a weakness, the one in difficulty invisible — the same people behave differently in these two circles. This is why the sūra asks for mercy not with a singular command but with the pattern of reciprocity.

Sixth: the supposition "no one saw".

The supposition in the seventh verse is technically weaker today and psychologically stronger. In a world in which almost no transaction is left off the record, it has become harder to say "no one saw". But the multiplicity of being seen, oddly, lessens the sense of having been seen: if everything is being recorded, then nothing is being watched in particular.

The sūra's answer is striking at this point. It does not say "We saw you"; it says "We gave you eyes". The matter, that is, is not surveillance from outside but from whom a person's own faculty of sight comes. This is a different thing from the fear of being watched — and a thing harder to avoid.

• The function of the lā in the first verse is not certain; four views were given in a table, a preference was stated with its ground, but it was written that it is not binding and that the dispute has not been closed.
• The meaning of the word ḥill in the second verse is disputed; four readings were given, a preference was stated and it was recorded that it is not binding. The relation established with the hadith of the conquest was conveyed as an interpretation.
• Who "the begetter and what he begot" in the third verse are is not certain; four views were given, none was settled.
• The names occurring in the reports about the occasion of revelation were not mentioned, because they do not agree with one another.
• No ruling was issued as to which of the three senses in the root kabad (liver / middle / hardship) is historically the original; the explanations the dictionaries transmit were conveyed.
• The interpretation "that both ways are upward" at the tenth verse was offered as my own reading; it was stated openly that it is not stressed this much in the classical commentaries.
• The "two breasts" view about najdayn was recorded because it really is transmitted in the classical sources; it was stated that it has been found weak.
• The views on the lā + perfect structure in the eleventh verse were given; a preference was stated but it was written that the practical difference is small.
• The variant reading in the thirteenth verse (verbal noun / verb) was conveyed; no firm ascription was given as to which imām adopted which reading, because I am not sure.
• The two grounds for why feeding an orphan who is kin is harder were offered as my own inference.
• In the historical section on slavery no side was taken in the debate over gradualism in the Qurʾān's approach; both positions were conveyed. Because the modern figures for forced labour rest on estimates, no number was given.
• The bond established between maymana / mashʾama and the names Yemen and Shām was conveyed as an explanation the lexicographers transmit; no ruling was issued about its historical certainty.
• The observations on structure and sound within the sūra (the repetition of the mafʿala pattern, the opposition between fakk and muʾṣada, the verse-endings falling into two parts) were offered as my own reading, not as classical transmission.