al-Masad 111:2

Mā aghnā ʿanhu māluhu wa mā kasab "Neither his wealth availed him, nor what he earned."

Mā occurs twice in the verse, and each time it does a different job.

The first mā — can be read in two ways, and both readings have been defended in the classical commentaries:

The second reading carries a stronger emphasis: to ask a question whose answer is known is sharper than to negate directly. The meaning comes out in the same place in the end.

The second mā — a relative pronoun: "the thing he earned".

Root gh-n-y: wealth, sufficiency, being in no need. From the same root ghanī (rich, in need of nothing — one of the names of God), ghinā (wealth), istighnāʾ (regarding oneself as self-sufficient).

The pattern aghnā ʿan carries a particular sense: to take someone's place, to meet his need, to ward a danger off from him. That is, not "to enrich" but "to be of use, to save".

This pattern is almost a standard formula in the Qurʾān, and it always says the same thing:

• "As for those who disbelieve, neither their wealth nor their children will avail them anything against God" (Āl ʿImrān 3/10).
• "His wealth will not avail him when he falls headlong" (al-Layl 92/11).
• "His wealth and his children added nothing to him but loss" (Nūḥ 71/21).

These verses set Sūrat al-Masad in a context: the sūra issues a ruling specific to a person, but the measure it uses is a general measure. Beyond a certain point, wealth loses its function — the Qurʾān is not inventing this for Abū Lahab; it already states it as a rule valid for everyone.

The verb's being in the perfect. It does not say "will not avail" but "did not avail". Two readings are possible: (a) a future event told in the perfect for the sake of certainty; (b) an actual reference to the past — his wealth has served him for nothing up to now either, except to hold him back from the right road.

Root m-w-l. Māl is what is owned. It is noted that in Arabic the word was earlier used especially of a herd of animals, and in the Bedouin context of camels; it then generalised and spread to wealth of every kind.

That Abū Lahab was among the men of means of Mecca is stated in the biographical sources. That the sūra names wealth in particular shows that it had a concrete counterpart for the addressees: what is meant is not an abstract idea of riches but a wealth everyone knew.

Root k-s-b: to obtain by working, to draw to oneself, to gather. The concrete core of the root is "to draw a thing towards oneself and take it".

The Qurʾān uses this root both for material gain and for deeds, and this duality is important:

"To its credit is what it has earned, and against it is what it has committed." (al-Baqara 2/286)

Here kasb describes directly what a person does, that is, the record of his deeds. The same root is used both for money that goes into the pocket and for an act that is written into the record — a pairing registered in the language itself.

What is "what he earned"? The views of the exegetes:

These views do not exclude one another. On the contrary, the breadth of the word appears deliberate: māl covers what is concrete, and mā kasaba covers "whatever he obtained". The sentence thus draws up a closed account — whatever was in his hand, none of it was of any use.

And its link with the first verse is this: there the two hands had been made to come to nothing. Here the produce of those hands is made to come to nothing. The hand is the act, kasb is the result of the act; the sūra cancels first the act, then the produce.