al-ʿĀdiyāt 100:9-10

A-fa-lā yaʿlamu idhā buʿthira mā fi'l-qubūr · Wa ḥuṣṣila mā fi'l-ṣudūr "Does he not know — when what is in the graves is turned up and brought out, and what is in the breasts is sifted out and set forth?"

The two densest verses of the sūra. And the place where all the sūra's images of farming are gathered.

أَ — the interrogative hamza. فَ — a connective. لَا يَعْلَمُ — he does not know.

This is the kind of question called in Arabic istifhām inkārī or tawbīkhī: it is asked not to seek information but to reproach. Its answer is known already and it is negative — that is, "of course he knows" or "he ought to have known".

The closest thing to it in English is "Does he not know, then?" or "Can he really not know?"

That the verb is from the root of knowing. The sūra does not say "does he not reflect", "does he not fear", "is he not ashamed". It says "does he not know".

This is the same as the central verb of Sūrat al-Takāthur: sawfa taʿlamūn, sawfa taʿlamūn, law taʿlamūna ʿilma'l-yaqīn. Both sūras set the matter up as a matter of knowledge.

And the answer the two sūras give looks in the same direction as well. In al-Takāthur the diagnosis was this: the knowledge is there but it is not of the kind of certainty — although he knows the truth he does not live by it. In al-ʿĀdiyāt, in the seventh verse, it was said that the person is his own witness. That is, no lack of knowledge is spoken of here; what is spoken of is a knowledge that does not work.

What does he not know? The object of the verb is not expressly stated. The grammarians resolve this in two ways: either the object is elided and the idhā clause states its time ("does he not know the state of that day — when those in the graves are brought out"), or the idhā clause stands in place of the object. It makes no difference to the meaning.

What was recorded in the section on al-Takāthur holds here as well: a threat whose object is not stated is greater than one that is, because it has no limit.

Root: ب-ع-ث-ر — a four-letter root. Its meaning: to turn a thing upside down, to pour out what is inside it, to bring it out by scattering.

Some of the lexicographers count this word as a product of naḥt (the fusing of two words into one): بَعَثَ (to raise to life, to lift) + أَثَارَ / ثَارَ (to churn up, to turn upside down). I pass this view on as a possibility; it is disputed among the lexicographers, and I do not present it as a settled etymology.

But this is striking: whether the view is right or not, the second half of the word calls up the root ث-و-ر — and that root occurred in the fourth verse of this sūra: fa-atharna bihī naqʿā. The horses had lifted the soil; now the graves are lifted.

That the verb comes in the passive. Buʿthira — passive. Who turns them upside down is not said. The same choice was made in the first verse of Sūrat al-Zalzala (zulzilat). Both sūras build the scene without an agent.

Its other occurrence in the Qurʾān:

"When the graves are turned upside down…" (al-Infiṭār 82/4). The same verb, the same passive pattern, the same object. The word occurs in these two places in the Qurʾān.

A comparison with al-Zalzala. The two sūras tell of the same event with two different verbs, and the difference is meaningful:

In al-Zalzala the earth does something; in al-ʿĀdiyāt something is done to the earth. In al-Zalzala the verb calls up the plant (the soil yields its crop); in al-ʿĀdiyāt the verb calls up the plough (the soil is turned over).

The most beautiful word in the sūra, and the hardest to carry into English.

Root: ح-ص-ل. حَاصِل — what is left after a process, what is obtained. The root lives on as a loan in Turkish — hasılat (yield, takings), hâsılı (in short) — while English has no borrowing from it.

تَحْصِيل (Form II) — in the classical Arabic dictionaries it is described thus: to bring the kernel out of its husk. The examples given are taken from farming and from mining: separating the wheat from the chaff, separating the gold from its ore, taking the kernel out of its shell.

That is, taḥṣīl is an operation of sifting. There is a mixed heap; at the end of the operation there remains out of that heap one single thing, pure, and of a known identity.

The picture of the threshing floor. When wheat is harvested the straw and the grain are mixed together. On the threshing floor the sledge is drawn over it, and then it is winnowed against the wind: the light straw flies off, the heavy grain falls to the ground. What is left — what is obtained — is the grain.

This is the verb the verse uses of the breasts.

Now read the two verses together:

• The graves: buʿthira — they are turned over, their bottom comes to the top, what is in them comes out. The outward.
• The breasts: ḥuṣṣila — they are winnowed, sifted, their kernel comes to light. The inward.

Both verbs come from farming, and they are two operations in sequence: first the soil is ploughed, then the crop is harvested and the threshing floor is winnowed. The sūra has built the scene of the hereafter like a farming season: the sowing begins with the turning of the soil, the harvest ends with the sifting of the grain.

And do not forget: in this sūra man's name was kanūd — soil that yields no crop.

Let us set the four words together:

I record this as my own reading; I do not present it as transmitted. But the root senses of all four words were given above one by one, and none of them is disputed. I make no claim as to whether the words come together in this way deliberately; I only show the picture that appears when they do come together.

And the picture is this: the sūra opens with war and closes with harvest. At the beginning the horses lift the soil and nothing comes of it but dust — a lifting without result. At the end the soil is lifted again, and this time a harvest is taken. The difference between them is that the second lifting ends in a sifting.

The verse does not say "what is in your deeds" or "what is in the records". It says "what is in the breasts".

صَدْر — the breast. Its plural is ṣudūr. The Qurʾān uses this word regularly for man's unseen inner world:

• "Whether you keep your word secret or speak it aloud, He knows what is in the breasts." (al-Mulk 67/13)
• "Know that they turn their breasts away in order to hide from Him." (Hūd 11/5)
• "A healing for what is in the breasts." (Yūnus 10/57)

That is, the ṣudūr is the place of which no record is kept. A deed is visible; the breast is not.

A note on the root. This root was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Inshirāḥ: the core of ص-د-ر is the sense of what comes to the front, the place of issuing — maṣdar is the place of issuing, ṣadr al-majlis the head of the assembly, ṣadr the part of the body that comes to the front. And in the preceding sūra the going forth of people was told with a verb from the same root: يَصْدُرُ (al-Zalzala 99/6).

That is, two neighbouring sūras tell with the same root, the one of the outside (the going forth of people) and the other of the inside (the sifting of the breasts).

What these two verses say together is the most important judgement of the sūra:

The reckoning has two layers. What is in the grave is brought out — this is the things done, the side that can be measured, that can be seen, that can be put on record. What is in the breast is sifted — this is the intentions, the motives, the real reasons.

The relation between the two is not one-directional, and this is the harshest side of the verse:

• The deed may be right and the intention corrupt. On the threshing floor the straw takes up as much room to the eye as the grain; when it is winnowed it flies away.
• The deed may be deficient and the intention sound. This possibility too is inside the same operation.

That the verb taḥṣīl has been chosen is meaningful for this reason: the verb is not a verb of destroying but a verb of separating. In the operation of winnowing nothing is destroyed; only the heavy and the light are parted from one another.

And note this detail: the light flies off, the heavy stays. This measure will come before us one sūra later in al-Qāriʿa as a balance. Al-ʿĀdiyāt winnows the threshing floor; al-Qāriʿa weighs what is left.

The idea of sifting what is inside the breasts is expressed in the Qurʾān with other verbs as well, and all of them come from the field of refining:

• "…and that He might test what is in your breasts and purge what is in your hearts." (Āl ʿImrān 3/154). The verb here is مَحَّصَ: to separate a thing from its admixture, to make it pure. The same operation, a different word.
• "So that God might purge those who believe and blot out those who disbelieve…" (Āl ʿImrān 3/141). The same verb again.
• "That He may set the bad apart from the good." (al-Anfāl 8/37; similarly Āl ʿImrān 3/179). The verb here is مَازَ / يَمِيزَ — to separate, to set apart.

What these verses have in common is this: the Qurʾān often describes the reckoning of the hereafter as an operation of separation — not as a punishing. Separation is the making visible of what is already there. This comes out at the same place as the verb "he shall see" in Sūrat al-Zalzala.