وَمَآ أَدْرَىٰكَ مَا لَيْلَةُ ٱلْقَدْرِ
This is one of the Qurʾān's recurring patterns, and wherever it is used it does the same work: it announces that what follows is unreachable by human knowledge.
The other instances of the pattern in the Qurʾān: "What is the Inevitable? And what made you know what the Inevitable is?" (al-Ḥāqqa 69/2-3); "And what will make you know what Saqar is?" (al-Muddaththir 74/27); "What is the Striking Blow? And what made you know what the Striking Blow is?" (al-Qāriʿa 101/2-3); "And what made you know what the steep ascent is?" (al-Balad 90/12); "And what made you know what the Crusher is?" (al-Humaza 104/5).
The detailed analysis of the pattern was carried out in the treatment of Sūrat al-Humaza (al-Humaza); the difference between the perfect and imperfect usages was also treated there. Below I take that distinction up again within the sūra's own context.
Root: د ر ي. To know — but a particular kind of knowing. The lexicographers draw this distinction between dirāya and ʿilm: dirāya is knowledge reached by investigating, by following a trail, by inference. In the concrete field of the root there is the association of tracking game.
This distinction sharpens what the verse says. The question is not "do you know this?"; it is "could you have found this by investigating?" The answer: no. What the Night of Qadr is, is not something that can be found by observation, by inference, by reasoning. The worth of a night is not visible from outside; that night too darkens and whitens like the other nights.
The verb is in the past tense: أدراك. This looks like a detail but it is not. The Qurʾān uses this pattern in two different tenses, and the usage is consistent:
| Pattern | Tense | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| mā adrāka (ما أدراك) | Perfect | An explanation follows |
| mā yudrīka (ما يدريك) | Imperfect | No explanation follows; the knowledge stays hidden |
Instances of the second pattern: "What will make you know? Perhaps the Hour is near" (al-Aḥzāb 33/63; similarly al-Shūrā 42/17). There the time of the Hour is asked about and is not said.
In Sūrat al-Qadr the perfect pattern is used — and indeed an explanation comes in the third verse. That is, the verse says: you could not have known this; but now you will learn it.
This makes a direct link with Sūrat al-ʿAlaq. There we had: "He taught man what he did not know" (al-ʿAlaq 96/5). The same logic works here: a piece of knowledge man could not reach on his own is made known to him. Al-ʿAlaq said this as a principle; al-Qadr applies it to a single instance.
1. Wa mā adrāka — the first mā is interrogative: "what made you know?" 2. …mā laylatu'l-qadr — the second mā is again interrogative, but it builds an embedded question clause: "what is the Night of Qadr?"
The second question does not mean "which night is it?" but "what kind of thing is it?" In Arabic mā is used for non-rational things and for the nature of a thing, man for those possessed of reason. That is, the question is not looking for the night in the calendar; it is asking after its nature.
This distinction matters: across the whole sūra it is never said which night it is. The only thing said is what that night is.
The verse uses the construct laylat al-qadr for the second time. A pronoun would have sufficed: "What made you know what it is?" But the whole noun is repeated.
We saw the same technique in Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ: the second verse, instead of saying "huwa'l-Ṣamad", repeated the name and said "Allāhu'l-Ṣamad". The finding there holds here too: where a pronoun would do the work, the repetition of the noun reports magnification and fixing in Arabic.
And the repetition will come once more here: the third verse too opens with the same construct. In a sūra of five verses, the same two-word construct three times. This is close to a fifth of the total word count of the sūra.
The function of the repetition is also rhythmic: the ear hears the same sound three times and the construct becomes a beat.