al-Layl 92:3

Wa mā khalaqa'l-dhakara wa'l-unthā "And by Him who created the male and the female."

The last link of the series of oaths, and the counterpart of "wa nafsin wa mā sawwāhā" in al-Shams.

The debate over مَا taken up at al-Shams 91/5-7 is repeated here exactly: is it maṣdariyya or relative?

The grounds and the objections were given in the discussion of al-Shams; I do not repeat them. This much has to be added: here the maṣdariyya reading works a little more easily than it does in al-Shams, because in al-Layl the following verse does not turn back to an agent. In al-Shams the eighth verse said "fa-alhamahā" (then He inspired it) and so attached itself to a hidden subject; here the fourth verse says "inna saʿyakum la-shattā" — it turns to the one addressed.

Even so, in point of meaning all three readings come out at the same place: the distinction between male and female is not a thing that came about of itself but a created distinction.

There is a report about this verse found in the hadith sources, and it needs to be recorded.

According to a report transmitted in al-Bukhārī and Muslim, when ʿAlqama, of the Successors, went to Syria he met Abū'l-Dardāʾ; Abū'l-Dardāʾ asked him how Ibn Masʿūd used to read this verse. ʿAlqama read it as "wa'l-dhakari wa'l-unthā" (وَالذَّكَرِ وَالْأُنْثَى) — that is, without wa mā khalaqa. And Abū'l-Dardāʾ said that he had heard it so from the Prophet.

Two things have to be kept apart about this reading:

1. The report is found in the sound sources. There is no reason to deny the transmission. 2. This reading is not the text of the muṣḥaf. In the science of variant readings it is counted "anomalous" (shādhdh, not transmitted by mass transmission); it is not recited in prayer and is not written as the text of the Qurʾān. The form that stands in the muṣḥaf and is read by all the imams of the variant readings is وَمَا خَلَقَ الذَّكَرَ وَالْأُنثَىٰ.

There is a difference in meaning: on the anomalous reading the oath is sworn directly by the male and the female; in the text of the muṣḥaf it is sworn by the one who created / the creating. The text of the muṣḥaf agrees with the other links of the series (mā banāhā, mā ṭaḥāhā, mā sawwāhā in al-Shams): the oath moves not to the object but to the one who brought the object into being.

My reason for recording this matter is the following: reports of this kind are sometimes put into circulation with the claim that "the Qurʾān has been altered". The correct frame is this — in the first generations the readings of certain Companions, readings that opened out or shortened the sense of a verse, were known and transmitted; these did not enter the muṣḥaf, and their not entering it is itself a sign of how the science of variant readings works.

ذَكَر (dhakar). The root is ذ-ك-ر. Interestingly, this root also means to remember, to mention: dhikr, tadhkira, dhikrā. How the two senses come together is disputed among the lexicographers; on one explanation maleness has been connected with "the one who is mentioned, whose name is carried on". There is no settled conclusion; the dictionaries give the two senses side by side.

أُنْثَى (unthā). The root is أ-ن-ث. The dictionaries connect the root with softness: al-anīth — soft, easily bent. The soft kind of iron is also given a name from this root.

Why this pair?

The subject of the sūra is the difference of human strivings and two opposed moral types. The series of oaths lays a ground for this, and the ground is built upon dualities:

1. Night / day — the duality of time 2. Male / female — the duality of the living 3. (In the answer) The giver / the miser — the duality of man

The sūra, that is, passes from the idea that "everything has been created in pairs" to a moral distinction. The Qurʾān states this idea openly elsewhere: "And of everything We created pairs, that you might reflect" (al-Dhāriyāt 51/49); "Glory be to Him who created all the pairs — of what the earth brings forth, of themselves, and of what they do not know" (Yā-Sīn 36/36).

And the verb matters: خَلَقَ — He created. The male-female distinction is not an accident but an act of creation.

And there is this as well: the duality stands as both the model and the opposite of the sūra's next section. Night and day complete one another; male and female complete one another. But the pair that is to come from the fifth verse onwards is not complementary but opposed: the giver and the withholder do not complete one another.

I say this as my own reading: the sūra sets side by side the fact that the duality in nature is a "balance" and the duality in morals a "separation". Night and day are parts of one and the same order; the miser and the open-handed man are not parts of one order.