وَهَٰذَا ٱلْبَلَدِ ٱلْأَمِينِ
The most striking word in the series. The first two oaths were made with common nouns (the fig, the olive), the third with the name of a particular mountain, and the fourth with a demonstrative pronoun.
Hādhā in Arabic indicates what is near. What is indicated is therefore either beside the speaker or present in the mind of the one addressed. This separates the last member of the series from the other three: the fig and the olive are far off, Sinai is very far off, but this land is where the foot is standing.
We saw the same demonstrative used of the House in Sūrat Quraysh: "let them serve the Lord of this House" (Quraysh 106/3). The two uses do the same work: taking the evidence from directly in front of the eyes of the one addressed. Sūrat al-Fīl had the same method — instead of distant peoples, the history of the addressee's own city.
There is also the direction of the series. The series comes from far to near: the Palestine–Syria region → Sinai → Mecca. Geographically as well as historically, a movement narrowing towards the point where the one addressed stands. For those who accept the place reading this is the strongest proof of all; because four things chosen at random would not be expected to form such a direction.
Root: ب-ل-د. The original sense of the root is a place's having definite boundaries, an area's being marked off from what surrounds it. Balad: a settled place, a town, a country. Its plural is bilād. From the same root Turkish has borrowed belediye — the municipality, the body that runs the affairs inside a city's boundaries.
The word has one further interesting derivative: balīd — a heavy, sluggish, unresponsive person. The sense of "being fixed and bound to a place" in the root turns to the negative when it is applied to a human being. I record this as a nicety and do not include it in the meaning of the verse.
Here the definite article (al-) and the demonstrative come together: hādhā'l-balada. Not "a city", then, but "that known city". The name is not given, but it is pointed at.
This is a method the Qurʾān often uses for Mecca. In Sūrat al-Fīl too the name of the city did not appear; the event was told, the place was not shown. There is no need to give a name — the one addressed is there.
Root: ء-م-ن. The wide analysis of this root was done in Sūrat Quraysh: amn (safety), amān (inviolability), amāna (what is left in trust), amīn (trustworthy) and īmān all come from the same root. I do not repeat the criterion recorded there; I add to it.
In Arabic the faʿīl pattern can be used in an active sense (active participle) and in a passive sense (passive participle) alike. Two readings therefore arise:
| Reading | Meaning | Ground |
|---|---|---|
| Passive: a land given safety, a protected land | The city has been brought to safety; those inside it are safe | The affair of the Elephant, the inviolability of the sanctuary, "He secured them against fear" in Quraysh 106/4 |
| Active: a land that gives safety, that makes whoever enters it secure | The city gives safety to whoever takes refuge in it | The actual function of the sanctuary: even a man with a blood claim upon him was inviolable there |
| Reciprocal: a land faithful to what is entrusted to it, a land that is trusted | The place where a person leaves himself and which does not betray him | By analogy with the use of amīn of a person |
All three have been defended in the classical sources and in practice they lie close to one another. In my view the second reading sits best with the context of the sūra, because the verse seems to bring forward not something that has happened to the city but something the city does. This is a preference; it is not binding.
This expression meets us in other places in the Qurʾān as well, and all of them point to the same city:
- "My Lord, make this a secure land (baladan āminan) and provide its people with fruits" (al-Baqara 2/126) — Abraham's prayer.
- "My Lord, make this land secure (hādhā'l-balada āminan)" (Ibrāhīm 14/35) — the same prayer, in almost the same words.
- "Have they not seen that We made an inviolable and secure place (ḥaraman āminan) while people are snatched away all around them?" (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/67).
- "Have We not settled them in a secure sanctuary to which the fruits of all things are brought?" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/57).
These occurrences say something: the safety of the city is a thing that was asked for in a prayer and given. It did not come about of itself, it is not the gift of geography, and it is certainly not the achievement of Quraysh.
This was exactly the matter treated in Sūrat Quraysh: the city's trade and its safety were not their own work, and for that reason the one to whom thanks were owed was not themselves but the Lord of the House. Sūrat al-Tīn now makes the same city the subject of an oath. The two sūras complete one another: one states the source of the city's safety, the other calls that safety as a witness.
One further connection: Sūrat al-Balad (90) swears by the same city, with the same word, but in exactly the opposite tone. There it says "I swear by this land — and you are dwelling in this land / it will be made lawful to you", and immediately after comes "We created man in hardship." In al-Tīn "the finest stature" follows "the secure land"; in al-Balad "hardship" follows the same land. The two sūras set two different descriptions of man beside the same city. I shall come back to this pairing in a separate section at the end of the sūra.