al-Balad 90:3

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.