سَلَٰمٌ هِىَ حَتَّىٰ مَطْلَعِ ٱلْفَجْرِ
The structure of the sentence: salāmun (predicate) — hiya (subject). That is, the normal order has been reversed; the ordinary word order would have been hiya salāmun.
In Arabic the element brought forward reports restriction (ḥaṣr) and magnification. We treated the bringing forward of lahu at al-Ikhlāṣ 112/4, and of ilā rabbika at al-ʿAlaq 96/8, within this frame.
Here the meaning becomes: it is nothing other than peace. Not merely "it is a peaceable night"; it is peace from beginning to end, so much so that no other quality of it will be mentioned.
The first: the sentence is a nominal sentence. There is no verb. As we treated in al-Fātiḥa and al-Ikhlāṣ, a nominal sentence in Arabic reports fixity and continuity. The night is not becoming peace, nor is it giving peace; it simply is peace.
The verse could have said "sālimatun hiya" (it is a sound, safe night). It does not. It says "salāmun hiya" — that is, the night is not given the attribute "peaceable"; the night is declared to be peace itself.
In Arabic this is a known way of expressing intensity: to exaggerate the quality of a thing, the verbal noun itself is predicated of it in place of an adjective. English does the same: instead of "that man is a model of kindness" one says "that man is kindness itself". An adjective reports a quality; a noun establishes an identity.
That is, the last verse of the sūra says: there is no peace inside the night; the night itself is peace.
Root: س ل م. This root produces the most central family of concepts in Islam: salām, salāma, silm (peace), taslīm, muslim, islām, sālim.
The root's original sense: flawlessness, completeness, being free of harm. Sālim is what has in it no defect and no break; salāma is a person's remaining unharmed.
- Being free of harm — safety, security.
- Submitting — giving oneself over as a whole, bringing a dispute to an end.
The two are bound to one another: peace is the ending of conflict; and conflict ends by the submission of one or both of the parties.
To whom the peace is, is not said. The verse does not say "it is peace for the believers" or "it is peace from the angels". It has been left absolute. This is the bearing the sūra has kept from the start: objects and limits are not stated, the scope is left open.
Peace in the Qurʾān. The word recurs in the descriptions of the Garden: "Their greeting there is peace" (Yūnus 10/10); "They hear there no idle talk, only peace" (Maryam 19/62); "Peace — a word from a Lord who is Merciful" (Yā Sīn 36/58). And it is one of the names of God: al-Salām (al-Ḥashr 59/23).
That is, "peace" is in the Qurʾān the name of the state of the hereafter and of final rest. Giving this name to the Night of Qadr sets the night in the position of an exception within this world: on that night the world passes out of its ordinary state into another.
مَطْلَع (maṭlaʿ) — Root: ط ل ع. To rise, to ascend, to come out. Ṭulūʿ (rising), ṭalīʿa (advance guard), iṭṭilāʿ (climbing on top of a thing and seeing it).
A variant reading. The readings maṭlaʿ (with fatḥa) and maṭliʿ (with kasra) are transmitted for the word; the second is ascribed to al-Kisāʾī, one of the imams of the readings. The difference concerns whether the form is a noun of time or a noun of place — "the time of rising" or "the place of rising". It does not change the meaning in any essential way; in this context both point to the same moment.
فجر (fajr) — Root: ف ج ر. The original sense of the root is to split, to crack, to open. Infijār (explosion, bursting), fajjara (he made a spring gush), tafjīr.
Dawn is the splitting of the darkness. Light does not come; the darkness splits and light comes out of it. The word describes a movement.
An interesting kinship: from the same root comes fujūr — going beyond the limit in sin, tearing the covering and doing evil openly. A fājir is one who does not hide his evil.
The link between the two words is this: both are the splitting of a covering. In dawn the covering of the night is split; in fujūr the covering of decency, of shame, of the limit is split.
And here a link is made with Sūrat al-ʿAlaq: the ṭughyān we treated there was water's overflowing its bed — the driving of a limit over. Fujūr too is a concept of the same family: the tearing of the limit. The last words of the two sūras come, conceptually, from kindred roots: one recounts the man who oversteps the limit, the other the light that splits the darkness. This is an observation; it is not a proof established between the two sūras.
The verse ties the limit of the night not to the rising of the sun but to the dawn. Between the two there is about an hour and a half.
Dawn is the moment not at which the night ends but at which it begins to end. The darkness has not yet fully lifted; the first splitting has occurred. In law too the time of the morning prayer and the beginning of the fast are tied to this moment.
That is, the sūra's last word is not a full closing but a handing over. The peace of the night lasts until the first sign of the day and lets go there.
One further observation: the sūra begins with a descent (anzalnā — from above downwards) and ends with a rising (maṭlaʿ — from below upwards). The first movement is downward, the last upward. I record this as an observation about the sound and the structure.