al-Tīn 95:6

Illā'lladhīna āmanū wa ʿamilu'ṣ-ṣāliḥāti fa-lahum ajrun ghayru mamnūn "Except those who believe and do righteous deeds; for them there is a reward unceasing."

This verse is in the same pattern as al-ʿAṣr 103/3, and setting the two texts side by side explains both.

There are two differences and both are meaningful.

The first: four conditions in al-ʿAṣr, two in al-Tīn. This does not mean that the two texts contradict one another. The ruling the two sūras set up is different: al-ʿAṣr takes as its subject man's balance-sheet within time, and there the social dimension is a necessary item — because staying on one's feet within time is not possible alone. Al-Tīn takes as its subject man's position in his creation, and there the minimum dividing line is faith and deed.

Even so, one observation is worth recording: the Qurʾān's description of "those who are saved" is not a fixed formula. Sometimes two conditions are enumerated, sometimes four, sometimes — as we shall see at al-Balad 90/17 — three. The common core is always faith and deed; what is added on top varies with the subject of the sūra. This is not looseness in the formula but the description working together with its context. To take one list as absolute and reduce the others to it goes against the text's own method.

The second: al-Tīn states the return, al-ʿAṣr does not. In al-ʿAṣr what those excepted will receive is not specified; it is only said that they are outside the loss. In al-Tīn there is a promise of a reward. This shows the difference in tone between the two sūras: al-ʿAṣr is a text of balance-sheet, al-Tīn a text of creation and reckoning.

The root analysis of these two verbs was done in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr: the link of the root ʾ-m-n with safety, and the sense of "repairing" in the root ṣ-l-ḥ — that a righteous deed is not a "good work" but a "repairing work".

The only thing to be added here is the particular sense this description takes on in the context of the sūra. The fifth verse spoke of a corruption: a turning back downwards from the finest stature. The sixth verse says ṣāliḥāt, that is, works that repair. The opposite of the root is fasād, corruption.

So the sūra sets this up: what is placed against corruption is repair. The choice of words is not accidental; there is an opposition at the level of the root between the two verses — fall and corruption against repair. I record this link as my own reading, but the meanings of the two roots stand there in the text.

Root: ء-ج-ر. Its original sense is the return for work done, a wage. From the same root come ījār (letting out for hire), ujra (wage), ajīr (a hired worker). Turkish icar (lease) and ücret (wage) come from this root.

The word is an economic word and this must not be passed over: an ajr is not a gift but an earned return. The Qurʾān uses other words too for merit (thawāb, jazāʾ, ḥasana); that it chooses here in particular the word "wage" is to say, in the language of a work relationship, that what has been done will not be left without return.

The word comes indefinite: ajrun — "a reward". Again it conveys magnification: a return whose amount is not stated, whose frame is not drawn.

Root: م-ن-ن. This root is used in Arabic in two distinct directions, and both have been read into this construct:

1. To cut, to diminish, to exhaust. Manna'l-ḥabl — he cut the rope. In this sense mamnūn means "cut"; and ghayru mamnūn becomes unceasing, inexhaustible.

2. To hold a favour over someone, to throw a kindness in his face. Minna is the reminding of someone of a good turn done him; manna ʿalayhi — he laid an obligation upon him. In this sense ghayru mamnūn means not held over one's head.

That the root also means to do good (manna — he bestowed; in the Qurʾān God's granting of favour is expressed with this root) makes the matter interesting: in one root there is both "bounty" and "the throwing of bounty in someone's face". Arabic has recorded in the root that kindness is the thing most liable to be held over one's head.

Which sense? The classical exegetes mention both, and the majority prefer the first (unceasingness). The ground is this: the word occurs in three places in the Qurʾān and in all three it comes together with ajr:

• "For them there is a reward unceasing" (Fuṣṣilat 41/8)
• "For them there is a reward unceasing" (al-Inshiqāq 84/25)
• "…for them there is a reward unceasing" (al-Tīn 95/6)

In all three verses the context is the reward of the hereafter; and about the reward of the hereafter the most meaningful attribute is inexhaustibility.

But it would not be right to throw out the second sense either. When the two are read together a very apt description emerges: a return that is neither cut off nor held over one's head. No wage in this world carries both these conditions at once — every wage has an end and every kindness its obligation. The verse uses the word for a worldly wage and then removes both defects of a worldly wage at once.

I record this reading not as a preference but as the result the two senses give together.