وَنَفْسٍ وَمَا سَوَّىٰهَا
All six of the preceding oaths were definite: al-shams, al-qamar, al-nahār, al-layl, al-samāʾ, al-arḍ. Each has the article of definiteness at its head. In the seventh there is no article: nafsin — with tanwīn, indefinite. Not "by the soul" but "by a soul."
The first — magnification (taʿẓīm). In Arabic indefiniteness sometimes conveys diminution, and sometimes the exact opposite: dread and greatness. We saw this for khusrin (a loss) in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr: "such a loss that". So here too: "such a soul that." Something that cannot be described, whose bounds cannot be drawn.
The second — generality. An indefinite noun in an affirmative context generally indicates a single instance, but in some contexts it opens out to the whole of the kind. On this reading "a soul" = "every soul". The oath is sworn not by one person but by everyone who carries a soul.
These two explanations do not exclude one another. But I want to draw attention to a third thing — as my own reading: the indefiniteness completes the narrowing of the series.
The sun is one, the moon is one, the sky is one, the earth is one. These are things of which there is a single instance in the world, at which everyone looks at the same one; for this reason they take the article of definiteness. The soul, however, is many, and different in each. Everyone looks at the same sun; no one looks at the same soul. The dropping of the article lodges within the grammar itself the passage of the subject from what is shared to what is singular.
The series thus arrives here: what is to be looked at is no longer outside, and it is different for each person.
Root: n-f-s. Under this root lies breath. Nafas — the air that is breathed. Tanaffus — breathing in and out; in the Qurʾān it is used of the morning: "and by the morning when it breathes" (al-Takwīr 81/18) — the morning is described as a taking of breath after the constriction of the night. Nafīs — precious, of value; a thing that is sought after. Munāfasa — to compete for something of value; it occurs in the Qurʾān (al-Muṭaffifīn 83/26).
Two ideas, that is, stand side by side under the root: the breath that is the sign of life, and value.
Starting from this third use, three states of the soul are often named in the tradition: ammāra (commanding to evil — Yūsuf 12/53), lawwāma (blaming itself — al-Qiyāma 75/2), muṭmaʾinna (at rest — al-Fajr 89/27). All three are expressions occurring in the Qurʾān; but the Qurʾān does not present them as a "system of degrees". The systematising is the work of a later period. I record it, because it is a useful classification; but I do not present it as a scheme belonging to the Qurʾān.
The nafs of al-Shams is none of these three. Here the soul is named in its state before it has yet taken a direction: ordered, but not yet having chosen.
Root: س-و-ي. This root is one of the most productive in Arabic, and the idea beneath it is equality and evenness.
- سَوَاء (sawāʾ) — equal, the same. "It is all one to them (sawāʾun ʿalayhim)" (al-Baqara 2/6).
- مُسْتَوٍ (mustawin) — level, in balance.
- تَسْوِيَة (taswiya) — flattening, bringing into balance. The building trade still names exactly this operation: levelling a floor.
- سِوَى (siwā) — other, apart from. (A second branch of sense.)
In Form II (sawwā) the verb becomes transitive and intensive: to bring the parts of a thing into evenness with one another, to get their proportions right, to make it complete and without flaw.
Rendering it into English as "to straighten" falls short. The work the word describes is the setting of a thing's parts into their right proportion. Bringing the walls of a building to plumb, balancing the two pans of a scale, making the limbs of a statue to a measure fitting one another — all of these are taswiya.
- "He who created you, gave you balance (fa-sawwāka), set you in measure (fa-ʿadalaka)…" (al-Infiṭār 82/7)
- "Then He gave it balance and breathed into it of His spirit" (al-Sajda 32/9)
- "When I have given it balance and breathed into it of My spirit…" (al-Ḥijr 15/29; Ṣād 38/72)
- "who created and gave balance" (al-Aʿlā 87/2)
In all these verses there is a common order: first creation, then taswiya, then the breathing of the spirit or the giving of a capacity. Taswiya, that is, is the stage of bringing raw material to the point where it can work.
The conclusion that follows sits at the centre of the sūra: the soul was not created faulty or defective. What is called "sawwāhā" means brought into balance. The possibility of evil within man is not a manufacturing error; it is a part of the balance.
This is a necessary ground for understanding the next verse. Had the soul been created defective, evil would be its flaw and responsibility would fall away. The verse closes this off: the soul was made in balance — and because it is in balance it can incline in either direction.
And this must be noted too: the same verb will come once more at the end of the sūra, in the fourteenth verse — this time for the destruction of a people: "fa-sawwāhā". That the same word should stand at the two ends of the sūra does not look like coincidence; we shall dwell on it when we come there.