Three verses, ten words. Counts vary a little by method, but the number of letters is around forty. It is the shortest sūra in the Qurʾān. There are other sūras of three verses — al-ʿAṣr (103) and al-Naṣr (110) — but they are longer in words.
Inside a text this small a complete structure is built: a statement (We have given you), a command (so pray and sacrifice), a ruling (the one truly cut off is the one who reviles you). What is given, the return for what is given, and the standing of the one who claims it was not given. Three verses do three separate pieces of work, and none of them repeats another.
Another feature of the sūra is that it is an answer given to an insult. As we shall see below, the event transmitted as the occasion of revelation is a humiliation. How the answer is built — whose name is not spoken, what language is not used — is as instructive as the content of the sūra.
The name comes from the word الْكَوْثَر in verse 1. The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān; the name of the sūra is thus also one of the Qurʾān's single-occurrence words. This explains too why the debate over the word's meaning is so wide: there is no second use inside the Qurʾān to explain it.
The majority say it is Meccan. Content and style — short verse-endings, direct address to a single person, consolation in the face of mockery — fit the character of the sūras of the Meccan period. Moreover the humiliations the Prophet was subjected to during the Meccan period are recorded elsewhere in the Qurʾān as well.
Against this there is also a view that it is Medinan, and two grounds are cited for it: (1) a report describing the sūra's revelation transmitted from the Medinan Companion Anas b. Mālik, (2) the idea that sacrifice (naḥr) was instituted in Medina. The second ground is weak; that sacrifice was performed in Mecca too is plain both from the practices of the jāhiliyya the Qurʾān describes and from the roots of the pilgrimage. The first ground has been criticised on the ground that a transmitter's being a Medinan does not require the sūra to be Medinan.
I issue no definitive ruling. But it should be said that the distinction matters here somewhat more than usual: if the sūra is Meccan, then the sentence "We have given you abundance" was said in the period when the Prophet was at his most alone and most powerless. This bears directly on the matter of verb tense we shall see below.
Al-Kawthar stands between al-Māʿūn (107) and al-Kāfirūn (109), and it has a striking link with each of its neighbours.
With al-Māʿūn. Sūrat al-Māʿūn describes a type who is heedless of his prayer and prays for show, and who withholds even the smallest help: "Woe to those who pray — who are heedless of their prayer, who make a display, and who withhold the māʿūn (the smallest assistance)" (al-Māʿūn 107/4-7). Al-Kawthar, coming immediately after, commands the same two acts, but both of them in corrected form: prayer — but "for your Lord"; and sacrifice — that is, the exact opposite of withholding: to slaughter and to hand out. One sūra describes what is broken, the next commands what is sound. This correspondence is often voiced in the classical exegetical tradition.
With al-Kāfirūn. Al-Kawthar ends by saying "the one who reviles you is the one cut off"; al-Kāfirūn opens with "O you who disbelieve!" The two sūras seem to take over from one another a single speech about the same addressee.
إِنَّا أَعْطَيْنَاكَ الْكَوْثَرَ
The sūra opens with a particle of emphasis. Inna makes a statement certain in Arabic; there is no exact equivalent in English, the nearest being words like "truly" or "indeed", but these do not carry the full weight of the particle.
The presence of emphasis says something else as well: there is a denial or a hesitation on the other side. In Arabic inna is used where the one addressed is not ready to accept the statement. The sentence is therefore not an announcement made into empty air; it is a finding delivered in answer to a claim.
The third verse of the sūra also begins with inna. A text of three verses uses the same particle in its first and its third verse, sealing itself at both ends: innā aʿṭaynā… / inna shāniʾaka…
The verb is in the plural: aʿṭaynā — we have given. That God should speak of Himself in the Qurʾān sometimes in the singular ("I") and sometimes in the plural ("we") is not a numerical plurality but the Arabic plural of majesty (taʿẓīm, the plural that conveys grandeur). English has its like in institutional or official language.
The choice here has to do with the context: the greatness of what is given is named together with the greatness of the giver. Not "I gave you" but "We gave you". The register of power and the act of bestowal come together.
Root: ع-ط-و. The concrete sense of the root is to stretch out the hand, to reach out and take or to hold out and give. From the same root: ʿaṭāʾ (bestowal, largesse), ʿaṭiyya (gift), taʿāṭī (holding out to one another, passing from hand to hand). Behind the word lies a movement passing from hand to hand.
A property of the verb: it asks nothing in return. Some lexicographers draw a distinction between aʿṭā and ātā (ītāʾ, from the root أَتَى/آتَى): aʿṭā is a bestowal in which what is given becomes the property of the one addressed and no question of its being taken back arises; ītāʾ may also be used of what is given as the due of a return, a right or a duty. It must also be said that this distinction is not absolute, and that in some places the two verbs are used for one another. Still, the choice here is meaningful: the sūra presents what is given not as something earned or as a reward, but as a bestowal asking nothing in return.
Its link with the second verse is direct. If what is given asks nothing in return, then the command that follows — "pray and sacrifice" — is not a payment but a thanksgiving. Not settling a bill, but answering.
Tafsīr of the Qurʾān by the Qurʾān. In Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā the same root occurs in the future tense: "Your Lord will give to you, and you will be well pleased" (al-Ḍuḥā 93/5). The same verb, in two sūras, in two different tenses. Al-Ḍuḥā promises; al-Kawthar reports as though the promise were already done and finished. Reading the two sūras together opens the subject of the next heading.
Aʿṭaynā is the past tense: "we gave", "we have given". Yet a number of the views about the meaning of kawthar — especially the view of the river or basin in paradise, and the view of "a great community, a line that will continue" — point to things not yet realised, things that will be realised in the future. When the sūra came down the Prophet had in hand neither a river, nor a numerous community, nor anything visible that could be described as "abundance". Quite the reverse: he was in a position of few followers, encircled, insulted.
In Arabic a future that is certain to be realised may be told in the past tense. This is a settled stylistic choice conveying certainty. Its logic is this: if there is not the least doubt that something will occur, telling it in the future tense — a tense that by its nature carries contingency — weakens the word given. The past tense removes the contingency: it happened, it is finished, it is on record.
The best-known example of this usage in the Qurʾān is the opening of Sūrat al-Naḥl: "The command of God has come; so do not seek to hasten it" (al-Naḥl 16/1). The command has not yet come — indeed the rest of the sentence says "do not hasten", and one does not hasten what has already come. But its certainty is conveyed by reporting it as having come.
The usage in al-Kawthar is the same. The sentence says: this matter has already happened, outside what you are able to see. The present scarcity is no proof that nothing was given.
Its dimension as consolation is worth dwelling on. The sūra does not say "it will be given to you, be patient." It says "we have given." This gap between the present condition of the one addressed and the reality reported to him carries the whole weight of the sūra: what appears and what is are not the same thing.
Root: ك-ث-ر — abundance. From the same root: kathīr (much), kathra (abundance), akthar (more, most), takāthur (rivalry in piling up — the name of sūra 102).
Pattern: فَوْعَل (fawʿal). In Arabic this pattern conveys intensity (excess, overflowing). From the same pattern: jawhar, dawsar. Kawthar therefore means not merely "much" but "exceedingly much, abundant to overflowing". The word itself is cast in a pattern that lifts the sense of the root one degree higher.
The use of the word in Arabic outside the sūra runs the same way: a man of great wealth, a thing overflowing in number, was called kawthar. The word was not unknown in the poetry of the jāhiliyya.
The definite article. In the verse it comes with the article, as al-kawthar. This article can be read in two ways, and both have been defended in the classical sources: (1) ʿahd — a known, particular thing is meant; the one addressed knows, or will learn, what is meant. (2) istighrāq — comprehensiveness; abundance of every kind, all sorts of good.
This word is one of those on which the greatest number of views is transmitted in the history of exegesis. The reason, as noted above, is that the word occurs only once in the Qurʾān: the meaning must be drawn either from the use of the root in the language or from transmitted report.
| View | Ground | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| A river in paradise | Explanations transmitted from the Prophet. In the report transmitted from Anas b. Mālik in Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ, the Prophet, after reciting the sūra, asks "Do you know what al-kawthar is?" and says "It is a river my Lord has promised me." | This is the only view that rests on transmitted report; its weight is therefore of another order |
| The ḥawḍ (the basin on the Day of Resurrection) | The reports about the ḥawḍ occupy much space in al-Bukhārī and Muslim; associating the river with the basin is widespread | It may be counted an extension of the river view |
| Abundant good (al-khayr al-kathīr) | The primary sense of the word in the language. This explanation is ascribed to Ibn ʿAbbās | In point of language the widest and best-grounded reading |
| Prophethood and the Book | Their being the greatest of what was given to the Prophet | May be counted within "abundant good" |
| The Qurʾān | The same ground; and also that the Qurʾān is itself an "abundance" | |
| A great number of Companions, community and followers | The contrast set up with "abtar" (cut off) in verse 3 | Rests on the context within the sūra |
| Progeny, the continuation of the line | The same contrast; a direct link with the report about the occasion of revelation | |
| Intercession | Association with the reports about the ḥawḍ | A reading that came forward in a later period |
Are these views alternatives to one another? A significant number of the exegetes have said no, and there is a reasonable ground for this: in point of language the word means "overflowing abundance, abundant good"; the river is one instance within that abundance, the most distinct one and the one fixed by transmitted report. On this approach the two sides are joined: the general meaning is taken from the word itself, the particular instance from transmitted report.
This joining has one advantage: reducing the word to a single thing weakens the contrast the sūra builds with verse 3. If what stands opposite is "being cut off", its counterpart must be "abundance" — not one particular object.
Let me state my own conviction, and it is not binding: taking language and context together, the sense "abundant good" is primary; the transmitted report about the river then stands as the most clearly named part of that good.
فَصَلِّ لِرَبِّكَ وَانْحَرْ
The verse begins with a particle of consequence. In Arabic the fāʾ makes the sentence before it the cause of what comes after. That is: since We have given, therefore give the return.
This small particle builds the logic of the sūra. Worship, by the arrangement of the verse, is not a discharge of debt but a response. The bestowal comes first, then the service. Had the order been reversed — "pray so that we may give" — the sūra would be saying something else entirely.
Root: ص-ل-و. A detailed analysis of the word was made in the section on al-Fātiḥa; here let us look only at its place in the context.
The imperative is singular and its addressee is the Prophet. But that the commands to worship the Qurʾān directs to the Prophet include the community as well has been generally accepted in the exegetical tradition.
The most heavily laden qualification in the sūra is here. The command does not end with "pray"; a qualification of direction is added: li-Rabbika.
The lām at the head conveys purpose and belonging in Arabic (lām al-taʿlīl / lām al-ikhtiṣāṣ): "for…, as belonging to…". What it adds to the sentence is the determination of to whom the act is done.
To understand why this qualification is necessary, one has to recall a world in which it is absent. In the environment into which al-Kawthar came down there was prayer and there was sacrifice. The Meccan idolaters worshipped beside the Kaʿba; the Qurʾān records it thus: "Their prayer at the House was nothing but whistling and clapping" (al-Anfāl 8/35). They slaughtered too — but beside the standing stones (nuṣub), and with the name of one other than God pronounced. The Qurʾān records this plainly as well: "…what has been slaughtered in the name of other than God, and what has been slaughtered on the standing stones…" (al-Māʾida 5/3); "Do not eat of that over which the name of God has not been pronounced" (al-Anʿām 6/121).
There was thus no absence of worship, but a confusion of direction. Li-Rabbika corrects not the act but the address of the act. The one who says "we have given" in the sūra's first verse and the one for whom "do it" is said in the second are the same subject.
Tafsīr of the Qurʾān by the Qurʾān. This qualification is expressed in its most gathered form here: "Say: My prayer, my sacrifice (nusukī), my living and my dying are for God, the Lord of all beings" (al-Anʿām 6/162). This verse is the expanded form of al-Kawthar 2: the same two acts — prayer and sacrifice — are bound to God by the same lām, and then the scope opens out to the whole of life.
In what sense the sacrifice "reaches" God is made clear in another verse: "Neither their flesh nor their blood reaches God; but the godfearing from you reaches Him" (al-Ḥajj 22/37). This verse takes sacrifice out of being a rite of feeding or appeasement. In the conception of the jāhiliyya the sacrifice was a share offered to the god; the Qurʾān rejects this logic — nothing of what is slaughtered goes to God; what goes is the intention.
Root: ن-ح-ر. One needs to know the concrete sense of the word, because the English rendering "sacrifice" covers over the word's particular content.
The word naḥr denotes in origin the place where the neck joins the chest, the hollow of the throat. In the human body that hollow between the collarbones is the naḥr. From here the word also takes the sense "chest, the upper part of the chest".
As a verb, نَحَرَ means to slaughter an animal by piercing it at exactly that point — the hollow of the throat. And in Arabic this is a form of slaughter proper to the camel.
| نحر (naḥr) | ذبح (dhabḥ) | |
|---|---|---|
| Which animal | The camel | Cattle, sheep, goats |
| Point of the cut | Base of the neck / the hollow above the chest | The throat, under the jaw |
| Position of the animal | Standing, one foreleg bound | Laid on its side |
This distinction is confirmed by the Qurʾān's own language. Speaking of the sacrificial camels, Sūrat al-Ḥajj says "pronounce the name of God over them as they stand in rows" (al-Ḥajj 22/36) — the word ṣawāff describes standing upright, in a line. This description is not used for an animal laid down.
The word also has derivatives such as تناحر (to fly at one another's throats, to contend fiercely); manḥar is the place where sacrifice is performed.
Why naḥr and not dhabḥ? Two grounds are mentioned. The first: the camel was the most valuable property in that society. Giving the command to sacrifice in terms of the costliest thing expresses that the return too should match the greatness of what was given — abundance was given, so let the return be from the most valuable. The second: the verse-ending. The word wa'nḥar makes all three verses of the sūra end in the sound rāʾ: al-kawthar / wa'nḥar / al-abtar.
| Explanation | Ground | Prevalence |
|---|---|---|
| Sacrifice | The word's primary and common sense in the language; agreement with al-Anʿām 6/162 and al-Ḥajj 22/36-37 | The overwhelming majority of the exegetes |
| Fold your hands on your chest (naḥr) in prayer | The word's sense of "chest"; explanations ascribed to certain Companions | A minority view |
| Raise your hands to the level of the chest at the opening takbīr | The same wing of meaning | A minority view |
| Turn your chest fully towards the qibla in prayer | The same wing of meaning | Rare |
What the minority views have in common is that they take the word's sense of "chest" as their basis. These are not impossible in point of language; but the verb in the verse comes in the imperative and unqualified, carrying no restriction such as "in prayer". This is why the majority prefer the sense of sacrifice. There is also debate over the soundness of the reports that ascribe these views to Companions; I refrain from giving names here.
Prayer first, sacrifice after. This order is built the same way in one other place in the Qurʾān: in al-Anʿām 6/162 as well, ṣalātī (my prayer) comes first and nusukī (my sacrifice) after.
The sense of the order is this: prayer is worship performed with the body, sacrifice worship performed with property. The one sets forth the person himself, the other what he possesses. Together the two complete the two wings of service. The Qurʾān sets this pair side by side in other contexts too (the pair prayer–alms is the most widespread form of it).
And there is this as well: the distribution of the meat of the sacrifice takes the act of worship out of being individual and makes it social. Prayer goes upward; the meat of the sacrifice spreads sideways. The two faults of the type criticised in the preceding sūra (al-Māʿūn) — prayer for show, and withholding the smallest help — are met exactly by these two commands.
إِنَّ شَانِئَكَ هُوَ الْأَبْتَرُ
Inna shāniʾaka huwa'l-abtar "The one truly cut off is the one who reviles you, who bears rancour against you."
Root: ش-ن-أ. Shanaʾān: rancour, hatred, loathing, dislike of someone. The verb shaniʾa: he loathed, he hated.
Shāniʾ is the active participle of this root: the one who hates, who bears rancour. The word does not simply mean "enemy"; there is an emotional charge in it. Enmity states a position; shanaʾān is an inward state. "The one who bears rancour" or "the one who harbours spite" comes nearer in English.
Tafsīr of the Qurʾān by the Qurʾān. This root occurs rarely in the Qurʾān, and the places where it occurs are interesting. Twice in Sūrat al-Māʾida, and in both as a warning directed at us: "Let the rancour you bear towards a people not drive you to injustice; be just, that is nearer to godfearing" (al-Māʾida 5/8; a similar expression occurs at 5/2 as well).
That is, the Qurʾān uses the same word in one place to describe the rancour borne towards us, and in another to forbid the rancour we bear. Setting these two uses side by side matters for what the sūra says to the present; we shall return to it.
Its being singular. In the verse shāniʾaka is singular — not "those who revile you" but "the one who reviles you". There are two readings of this: (1) a particular person is meant — which fits the reports about the occasion of revelation; (2) the class is meant — that is, everyone who bears this attribute. The second reading is the more widespread in the exegetical tradition, and it is more comprehensive because it does not confine the sūra to a single event. The verse's ruling is thus attached not to a person but to an attitude.
One more thing to note: the verse gives no one's name. The other side had fixed a name with an insult; in its answer the sūra fixes no name. The level of the answer does not come down to the level of the insult.
Root: ب-ت-ر. Its concrete sense is to cut, to sever — particularly to cut the end, the tail, of something.
The most concrete use of the adjective abtar in Arabic is for an animal with its tail docked. A horse or a camel whose tail has been cut is abtar. From here the metaphor widens:
- A man whose line is cut — one who has no male child to come after him.
- An undertaking that comes to nothing, that does not continue — left half done, bearing no fruit.
- A man cut off from good — severed from every kind of benefit.
The conception behind the word matters: what is cut is the tail, that is, the part that comes behind. The cutting of a line is likewise "having no one come after". Words from the same root such as butr and battār preserve the act of cutting.
In the society of the jāhiliyya "abtar" was a heavy insult, and the reason was cultural: in that society a person's continuity, his standing and his protection ran through male offspring. To have one's line cut meant the loss of one's name and the erasure of one's weight within the tribe.
1. هُوَ — the pronoun of separation (ḍamīr al-faṣl). Placed in Arabic between subject and predicate, this pronoun adds to the sentence the sense of "the real", "precisely", "he alone". Without the pronoun the sentence would be "inna shāniʾaka'l-abtar" and would say "the one who reviles you is cut off". With the pronoun the sentence becomes: "the one truly cut off is he", "the thing called being cut off belongs to him".
2. الْأَبْتَر — the definite article. The word comes with the article. In Arabic a definite predicate conveys restriction (ḥaṣr). Not "a cut-off one" but "the cut-off one" — that is, the full and true bearer of the attribute of being cut off.
When the two instruments work together the sentence turns into an act of returning: the epithet thrown is given back to the thrower. And it is not merely given back; it is stated that he is its real owner, and that the other only carried it as a word.
| You | The one who reviles you | |
|---|---|---|
| What was given | al-kawthar — overflowing abundance | — |
| What happened | It was given (past, certain) | al-abtar — being cut off |
| Who says it | God ("we have given") | A human being (an insult) |
| Time | Lasting | Momentary |
The centre of the contrast is gathered in two words: كوثر (abundance, overflow, continuity) and أبتر (severance, breaking off, end). One continues, the other ends. Both are set against one another in the same sūra, within ten words.
It is worth looking at the distribution of the pronouns as well. The pronoun of the one addressed, كَ, occurs three times in the sūra: aʿṭaynāka (we have given you), li-Rabbika (for your Lord), shāniʾaka (the one who reviles you). In all three verses the one addressed is the same person, and in each verse he is touched once: once as recipient, once as servant, once as target. The other side is named only once and indirectly — not by his own name but by his position relative to the Prophet ("the one who reviles you").
All three verses end in the sound rāʾ: al-kawthar — wa'nḥar — al-abtar. Two of these (kawthar and abtar) echo one another in both sound and structure: both are of four letters, both end in -ر, and their meanings are exact opposites. The sound of the sūra carries the contrastive structure of its meaning.
The event transmitted as the occasion of the sūra's revelation is this — and it must be stated at the outset that it is a report:
One of the Prophet's male children dies. Someone from Quraysh thereupon says of him "abtar" (his line is cut); that is, "no one is left behind him to carry him on; when he dies his name ends too". The sūra comes down upon this.
One must be honest about this report. The accounts that transmit the event are found in the early sources of exegesis and of the biographical tradition, but they diverge from one another at several points:
- There is no single name for who said the words. Several different leading men of Quraysh are mentioned in the sources; the name that occurs most often is al-ʿĀṣ b. Wāʾil, but other names are transmitted too. This variety shows that it cannot be established with certainty who spoke the words.
- Upon which child's death it was said is not certain either. It is known that the Prophet had male children who died in Mecca; the reports differ over which one it was.
- In some transmissions the words occur not upon a death but in the context of mockery generally.
These divergences do not mean the report is fabricated. But they do mean it is not firm enough to allow one to say "the sūra came down definitely upon these words of this person." For this reason I refrain here from giving a name and from telling the event in the language of certainty.
On the other hand, the situation the report describes is entirely realistic. We have seen above what the insult "abtar" meant in that society. And the text of the sūra itself already confirms this background: verse 3 cannot be fully understood without assuming that someone had called the Prophet "abtar". The verse returns an epithet; for it to be returned it must first have been thrown.
Moreover, whatever the standing of the reports about the occasion of revelation, the content of the sūra points to its own context: someone with few followers, mocked, his future counted as nothing, is told "an overflowing abundance has been given to you". For that sentence to be meaningful, the one addressed must at that moment be spoken of not in terms of abundance but in terms of scarcity.
The time that has passed over the sūra offers an opportunity to compare it with the text's claim. It is possible to say this at the factual level and without exaggeration:
The Prophet's male children died before him; his line continued through his daughter and by way of her sons. Today a broad tradition of genealogy that traces itself to this line (sayyid, sharīf ascriptions) exists everywhere in the lands of Islam. His name is spoken in the call to prayer recited five times a day and in the prayers of a community of some one and a half billion. The person or persons transmitted as having spoken the word "abtar" are remembered in history by that word alone — that is, as a footnote to this sūra.
The first: turning it into a declaration of victory. The sūra does not do this. The text does not wish disgrace upon the other side; it merely makes a finding.
The second — and this is the more important — reading the verse only as a demographic forecast. We have seen above the wings of meaning in the word "abtar": not only the cutting of a line, but being cut off from good, yielding no result, leaving nothing behind. To read the verse at the level of "he had grandchildren, the other did not" narrows both the word and the sūra. What the verse says concerns by what a life is to be measured: the sūra takes the measure away from the number of descendants and puts it somewhere else. Indeed, what is given in the first verse is not a child but "kawthar".
First: the eye that looks at what is lacking and the eye that looks at what is given. The sūra does not answer an accusation of deficiency by arguing about the deficiency. It does not say "I did have a son, but…" or "my line will continue because…". It changes the subject: look at what has been given to you. This is not a technique of argument but a change of gaze. A person's assessment of his own life is largely determined by what he looks at; and the list of what is lacking is always more visible than the list of what is given, because what is lacking draws attention while what is given turns into habit.
Second: the form of the answer given to humiliation. The sūra does three things it does not do, and these three hold equally today: it produces no counter-insult, it does not go on the defensive, it does not name the one addressed. The only thing it does is to void the measure on which the accusation rests. The weakest form of answer to attempts at discrediting is to accept the same measure and defend oneself within it — because then the one who sets the measure is still the other side.
Third: the measure of "productivity" itself. For a life to be counted "cut off" is always relative to some measure. The measure of the Arab of the jāhiliyya was male offspring. Today's measures have changed but the function is the same: visibility, follower counts, the rungs of a career, comparison with peers, the roughly quantitative reading of the question "what did you leave behind you". The sūra sets no counter-measure against measures of this kind — it changes the authority that holds the measure. The one who decides who is "cut off" is not the person making that decision.
Fourth: the two directions of thanksgiving. The second verse commands two things in return for what was given, and their directions differ: prayer goes upward, sacrifice sideways. One establishes the relation with the source, the other distributes what was given around. To count thanksgiving as consisting of the first alone is a widespread narrowing — and the sūra immediately before (al-Māʿūn) draws the portrait of exactly this narrowing: the man who prays but withholds the smallest help. Al-Kawthar closes that split by commanding the two acts in a single breath.
Fifth: rancour and justice. The other use of the root shanaʾān in the Qurʾān requires the reader of this sūra to turn back upon himself. In al-Kawthar the rancour is on the other side, and the verse states his condition. In al-Māʾida 5/8 the rancour is thought of as on our side, and there what the verse says is plain: rancour cannot be the ground for departing from justice. Reading the two verses together yields this: to be subjected to rancour is a wrong suffered, but bearing rancour — even where one is in the right — does not lift an obligation.
Sixth: the difference between what appears and what is. Let us return to the matter of the past tense in the sūra. The sentence "we have given" was said while there was no visible abundance at all in the hands of the one addressed. This is not optimism; it is a finding about the source of knowledge. A person's assessment of his own condition is limited to the data he can reach at that moment, and that data is incomplete. The sūra says this not with a sentence of consolation but with a verb tense — which is stronger than consolation: the whole of what has been given you is not what you can see at present.
- Whether the sūra is Meccan or Medinan is disputed; it was noted that the majority say Meccan, and no definitive ruling was issued.
- The event transmitted as the occasion of revelation was related, but the name of the person who spoke the words was not given and the event was not told in the language of certainty. That more than one name occurs in the sources shows that the identification is not certain.
- The multiplicity of views about the meaning of the word kawthar was given in a table; none was presented as certainly correct. My own conviction was stated, and it was written that it is not binding.
- The distinction of asking nothing in return between aʿṭā and ītāʾ is a distinction belonging to some of the lexicographers and is not absolute; this qualification was noted.
- The minority views about the word "wa'nḥar" (those resting on the sense of "chest") were related, but no names were given, because the soundness of the reports ascribing these views to particular Companions is disputed.
- The comparison regarding the historical outcome of the sūra was kept at the factual level; the verse's ruling was not reduced to a demographic prediction, and this limit was stated explicitly.