Hūd 11:13-14

am yaqūlūna'ftarāh, qul fa'tū bi-ʿashri suwarin mithlihī muftarayātin wa'dʿū mani'staṭaʿtum min dūni'llāhi in kuntum ṣādiqīn · fa-illam yastajībū lakum fa'lamū annamā unzila bi-ʿilmi'llāhi wa an lā ilāha illā hū, fa-hal antum muslimūn

"Or do they say, 'He has invented it'? Say: 'Then bring ten sūras like it, invented, and call on whomever you can besides God — if you are truthful.' · If they do not answer you, then know that it was sent down only with God's knowledge, and that there is no god but He. Are you then submitting?"

This verse is the ten sūra scale of the challenge the Qurʾān makes about itself.

The challenge was treated at al-Baqara 2/23-24, where all the scales were tabulated; I rely on that treatment. The entry there ran:

The Qurʾān makes this challenge in more than one place and at different scales: bring a discourse (al-Ṭūr 52/34), bring ten sūras (Hūd 11/13), bring one sūra (al-Baqara 2/23; Yūnus 10/38). The classical interpretation reads this as a graded narrowing — the demand was made smaller and smaller and even so was not met. But since the order in which these sūras were revealed is not known with certainty, the chronological construction "much was asked first, then it was reduced" is an assumption; this needs stating.

I keep that entry exactly as it stands and I do not impose a preference. At al-Isrāʾ 17/88 (bi-mithli hādhā'l-qurʾān) the widest scale — the whole of the Qurʾān — occurs; that verse has not yet been treated under a heading of its own in the al-Isrāʾ section, so I do not rely on anything there, I only cite the verse.

A comparison of the four scales:

And there is a word Hūd adds to the scale, one that occurs in only this of the four verses: muftarayāt — "invented".

The root ف-ر-ي: the splitting, the cutting of a hide; and from there, to invent. Iftirāʾ — to bring a saying into being where there was none.

The work the word does here must be recorded, and I give it as an observation about the word order:

The objection was "he has invented it" (iftarāh). The answer hands the objection back its own word: "then bring ten invented sūras yourselves."

The answer, that is, takes the other side's claim as granted and lightens the condition: "it need not be revelation; bring something like it even if it is invented."

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the position of the word in the sentence. This qualification is not present at al-Baqara 2/23 or at Yūnus 10/38; it is peculiar to Hūd. This is a difference that can be verified from the text.

The last row is worth recording: al-Baqara has lan tafʿalū ("you will never do it"), and this is a categorical negation directed at the future. Hūd does not have that sentence; in its place come a conditional clause and a consequence.

I record this as a datum of the text and build no chronology on it — since it is not known with certainty which was revealed first, the entry in al-Baqara stands.

And the conclusion drawn in the fourteenth verse consists of two items:

And the way the second item is attached here is worth recording. The move is from the inimitability of the text to tawḥīd. I record this as an observation about the word order: the helpers called upon were min dūni'llāh — that is, the challenge was built from the start on who could be called; and the conclusion comes out of exactly that.

فَهَلْ أَنتُم مُّسْلِمُونَ — "are you then submitting?" A question, not a command. And it is a posture that will be repeated across the whole sūra: the decision is left to the one addressed.