al-Naṣr 110:1

Idhā jāʾa naṣru'llāhi wa'l-fatḥ "When the help of God and the opening come,"

Arabic has two basic particles of condition, and the difference between them is meaningful here.

إِنْ (in) is used for things whose occurrence is doubtful, merely possible: "if he comes". إِذَا (idhā) is used for things about whose occurrence there is no doubt, and only the time of which is unknown: "when he comes". This distinction is one of the standard entries in the classical books of grammar.

The verse does not say in jāʾa, it says idhā jāʾa. That is, the sentence carries this sense: this will come — the question is not whether it will come, but what is to be done when it does.

If the sūra was revealed in Medina, at a time close to the actual realisation of the victory, this choice of particle is self-explanatory. But the particle also conveys an attitude: the Qurʾān does not open the outcome itself to debate, it shifts the debate to what will happen after the outcome.

The verb is in the past tense but its sense is future. In Arabic, future events whose certainty is being stressed may be told in the past tense — because they are as certain as done, they are spoken of as done. The Qurʾān does this openly: "The command of God has come; do not seek to hasten it" (al-Naḥl 16/1). The rest of the verse shows that the command has not yet come; the verb is nevertheless in the perfect.

The verb itself is also a choice. Victory could have been spoken of as being "seized", "won", "taken". It is not. Victory is something that comes; something that arrives at the door, that reaches you, that moves of itself.

And in this verse there is no human act at all. All the labour, the travelling, the loss and the endurance of twenty years are left outside this sentence. The subject of the sentence is one thing only: naṣru'llāh.

Root n-ṣ-r: to help someone, to stand behind him, to support him.

One of the concrete uses of the root has to do with rain: the Arabic dictionaries record usages such as naṣara'l-ghaythu'l-arḍa (the rain helped the earth, that is, it fell abundantly); it is also noted that the word naṣr carries the sense of "rain". The image is clear: dry earth that can do nothing for itself, and something that comes down from above, revives it and makes it green. Help comes not by the effort of what is below but by the descent of what is above.

Derivatives. Nāṣir (one who helps), naṣīr (helper), nuṣra (help), anṣār (helpers), istinṣār (asking for help), tanāṣur (helping one another), manṣūr (one who is helped, who is brought to victory). That the Muslims of Medina are called the Anṣār comes from this root: their attribute is not the winning of victory but the taking in of someone who seeks refuge.

In the Qurʾān, the disciples' answer "We are the helpers of God" to Jesus's (ʿĪsā) question "Who are my helpers in the way of God?" is also built on this root (Āl ʿImrān 3/52; al-Ṣaff 61/14).

Naṣr and "victory" are not the same thing. In English this sūra is often called the sūra of "Victory", and that loses the direction of the word. Naṣr is not the victory itself but the support that produces the victory. Victory is the outcome; naṣr is the act that produces the outcome. And the act has an agent.

This construct is the first ruling of the sūra.

The sentence could have been built as "naṣruka" (your victory), "naṣrunā" (our victory), or without naming the agent at all. Instead the Qurʾān attributes the help directly to God. In grammatical terms the construct is an annexation to the agent: the one who does the helping is God.

This is an emphasis the Qurʾān sustains throughout:

• "Help is only from God" (Āl ʿImrān 3/126; the same expression occurs at al-Anfāl 8/10 as well). This sentence comes in a context that speaks of being supported by angels at Badr — that is, in the very place where the most concrete, most visible causes of the victory are enumerated, the causes themselves are not counted as the owners of the victory.
• "If God helps you, none can overcome you" (Āl ʿImrān 3/160).
• "On that day the believers will rejoice at the help of God. He helps whom He will" (al-Rūm 30/4-5).

And there is one further place where the Qurʾān uses this combination that throws direct light on Sūrat al-Naṣr: "a help from God and a near opening" (al-Ṣaff 61/13). There naṣr and fatḥ stand side by side as a promise. In Sūrat al-Naṣr the same two words stand side by side as a fulfilment. The words that were promised come back in the same order.

Another link runs backwards. Describing the moment of hardship of earlier communities, the Qurʾān frames this sentence: "…the messenger and those who believed with him were so shaken that they said, 'When will the help of God come?' Know well that the help of God is near" (al-Baqara 2/214). There naṣru'llāh is the subject of a question — asked, not yet seen. Sūrat al-Naṣr is the moment at which the same combination has ceased to be a question.

Root f-t-ḥ: to open. The opening of something closed; of a door, a lock, a knot, a road that has been shut.

Derivatives. Miftāḥ (key — the instrument that opens), fātiḥa (the opening part of a thing), iftitāḥ (inauguration), istiftāḥ (seeking an opening, seeking a judgement), al-Fattāḥ (one of the names of God: the one who opens abundantly, who judges — "He is al-Fattāḥ, al-ʿAlīm", Sabaʾ 34/26).

The root has two basic directions in Arabic, and both are found in the Qurʾān:

1. To open. "Even if We opened to them a gate from the sky and they kept ascending through it…" (al-Ḥijr 15/14). "With Him are the keys of the unseen" (al-Anʿām 6/59).

2. To judge, to decide between two parties. "Our Lord! Judge between us and our people with truth; You are the best of those who judge" (al-Aʿrāf 7/89). The connection is this: to give judgement is to open a matter that has stayed closed; a dispute is a knot, and the judge unties it.

The military sense arises from these two directions. The taking of a city is the opening of the gate of a walled place; and it is the settling by judgement of a long dispute between two sides. The Qurʾān uses this sense in an interesting way in the context of Badr: addressing the polytheists, "If you were seeking a decision, the decision has come to you" (al-Anfāl 8/19) — that is, "you asked for a judgement, and the judgement has come". It is used not of the winning side but of the losing one.

Victory being called an "opening". The real point here is this: Arabic had other words for a military outcome — ghalaba (overcoming), ẓafar (obtaining), not fatḥ. The Qurʾān chooses not "overcoming" but "opening".

The meaning of this lies in the logic of the word itself. To open is not to create. What is opened is already there; it is merely shut. The one who opens the door does not produce what is behind the door, he only makes it accessible. With this choice of word the sūra describes what happened thus: nothing new was founded; what was closed was opened.

The second consequence follows from the first: a door is for entering. The point of a door's being opened is that someone will be able to come in. And indeed in the next verse people are entering. The first two verses of the sūra are built on a single spatial image: the door was opened, people are coming in. That the verb of dukhūl (entering) follows the opening is no coincidence; the word of the first verse prepares the verb of the second.

The definite article. Al-fatḥ — a particular opening. The majority of the exegetes understand this as the conquest of Mecca; the Medinan character of the sūra and the historical context support this. Some take the article as generic and read it as an opening in general. The two readings do not conflict in practice: the conquest of Mecca was itself the gateway to a wider opening.

This should be noticed: the most famous use of the word fatḥ in the Qurʾān, the verse "We have granted you a clear opening" (al-Fatḥ 48/1), is widely said in the classical commentaries to have been revealed regarding the treaty of al-Ḥudaybiya. No city was taken there; indeed that year they returned without even performing the ʿumra. It is nevertheless called an opening. This is the clearest proof that the word means not "taking a city" but "a door's being opened" — because what was opened at al-Ḥudaybiya was not territory but contact: the halting of war between the two sides, people becoming able to speak with one another.

Naṣru'llāhi wa'l-fatḥ — two elements joined by a conjunction. In the classical analyses this connection is read in two ways:

The second reading is supported by the order: the help is named first, the opening after. Cause first, outcome after.

And there is this too: naṣr is bound to God by annexation, fatḥ is given with the article alone. An element joined by a conjunction shares the ruling of what it is joined to; that is, the opening too is implicitly attributed to the same source. But at the level of language the difference is preserved: the owner of the help is stated openly, while the opening is left open. This accords with the fact that where the opened door opens onto is to be stated in the next verse.