al-Falaq 113:1

Qul aʿūdhu bi-Rabbi'l-falaq "Say: I take refuge with the Lord of the falaq (of the morning that is split open and lets the light out / of everything that is split open)."

The meaning of this imperative's having been left inside the text was treated in detail in the section on al-Ikhlāṣ; I shall not repeat it here. But two points need to be added as belonging particularly to this context.

First: the words of taking refuge are themselves taught words. When a person is afraid he says something of his own accord — a prayer, a cry, a word. The sūra meets this spontaneity with a formula: I am telling you how to take refuge as well. The moment of fear is the moment when a person is most defenceless and most easily directed; if in that moment the source of the words that come out of his mouth is left indeterminate, the taking of refuge may turn towards other doors. Indeed the Qurʾān records a practice in which people took refuge with the jinn, and states its outcome: "And there were men among human beings who took refuge with men among the jinn, and so they increased them in insolence" (al-Jinn 72/6). The same root is used in that verse too (yaʿūdhūna). The verb "to take refuge", that is, is not a neutral verb; made to the wrong address, it produces harm.

Second: the one addressed by the imperative is the Prophet. He is the first to learn the taking of refuge. This shows that taking refuge cannot be counted a mark of weakness — taking refuge is not the helplessness of one who has no protection but the right conduct of one who knows where protection lies.

The five sūras that open with "Qul". al-Jinn (72), al-Kāfirūn (109), al-Ikhlāṣ (112), al-Falaq (113), al-Nās (114). The last three are consecutive. In the section on al-Ikhlāṣ we touched on the point that these three are a sequence that states a position: in al-Kāfirūn the boundary of belief is drawn, in al-Ikhlāṣ the one believed in is described, in al-Falaq and al-Nās the taking of refuge is declared. The order is meaningful: first you say in whom you believe, then you take refuge with Him. That al-Falaq comes immediately after al-Ikhlāṣ does not look accidental in this respect — 112 answers the question "who is He", 113-114 the question "what then is to be done".

The verb of the sūra and the shared backbone of the two sūras.

Root: ع-و-ذ. The original sense of the root is to take hold of a thing, to cling to it, to get behind it and be protected. ʿĀdha bihi — he took refuge with him, he clung to him, he was protected by him. In taking refuge there are two movements at once: moving away from danger and drawing near to something. The English expression "to take refuge" carries the same doubling: one takes refuge from a thing and in a thing — going behind it, under it, inside it.

Derivatives of the same root:

• istiʿādha (استعاذة): the seeking of refuge. The isti- pattern (istifʿāl) conveys in Arabic "to want, to seek"; istiʿādha is to seek, to ask for refuge. This pattern occurs in the Qurʾān as an imperative: "When you are about to recite the Qurʾān, take refuge with God from the accursed devil" (al-Naḥl 16/98).
• maʿādh (معاذ): the place refuge is taken in, a shelter. Maʿādha'llāh — "I take refuge with God", the English "God forbid". It occurs in the Qurʾān on the lips of Joseph (Yūsuf): "Maʿādha'llāh!" (Yūsuf 12/23).
• ʿiyādh (عياذ): taking refuge. It is used in the expression ʿiyādhan bi'llāh.
• taʿwīdh / muʿawwidha (تعويذ / معوذة): the words recited in order to take refuge; and the text that contains those words. The name al-Muʿawwidhatān comes from here.

The conjugation of the verb says something. The verse has aʿūdhu — imperfect (muḍāriʿ, the present and general tense) and first person singular.

Its being imperfect: taking refuge is not a work done once and finished but an ongoing state. Not "I took refuge" but "I take refuge / I am taking refuge". In Arabic the imperfect verb conveys repeated and continuing action. Because the danger is continuous, the taking of refuge is continuous too.

Its being first person singular: it does not say "we take refuge". Istiʿādha, even when it is done in a crowd, is a work done one by one. No one can take refuge on another's behalf. This is to be thought together with another point that will meet us towards the end of the sūra: in Sūrat al-Nās the threat is directed at a plural field (the breasts of the people), but the one taking refuge is singular. The danger is shared, the taking of refuge is personal.

The verb aʿūdhu does not take a direct object; it becomes transitive by means of the letter bāʾ: aʿūdhu bi- — "I am protected by…", "I cling to…".

In Arabic grammar this bāʾ is called bāʾ al-ilṣāq (the bāʾ of adhesion); it is the letter that brings two things into contact and removes the distance between them. The root's sense of "taking hold" is thus written into the grammar of the sentence as well: to take refuge is not to call for help from a distance but to make contact with something.

This also shows the fine difference between taking refuge and prayer. In prayer something is asked for; in istiʿādha one moves into a place.

The sūra does not say "aʿūdhu bi'llāh" (I take refuge with God); it says "aʿūdhu bi-Rabbi'l-falaq". Yet the best-known formula of istiʿādha is "aʿūdhu bi'llāh". This choice calls for attention.

The word Rabb. Root r-b-b: to raise a thing step by step, to look after and bring up, to nurture; and at the same time to own, to hold the authority of disposal over it. The detailed analysis of the word was made in the section on al-Fātiḥa. Three of its aspects come to the fore here:

1. Rabb is a name that conveys a relation. "Allāh" is a proper name and denotes the Essence; "Rabb", on the other hand, is always the Lord of something — Rabb al-ʿālamīn, Rabb al-falaq, Rabb al-nās. In the moment of fear a person turns to an authority with which he has a bond. Refuge is taken not with a power you do not know but with one who knows you.

2. Rabb means the one who looks after and watches over. Protection is contained within the concept of nurture: one who raises protects what he raises. This is exactly the name to be turned to for protection from evil. The choosing of an attribute to fit what is asked for is a widespread manner of the Qurʾān; an accord is established between the thing asked for and the name it is asked by.

3. Rabb means the one who has disposal. And this is the most critical point: the one with whom refuge is taken is also the owner of the thing refuge is taken from. The expression "the Lord of the falaq" states in whose hand the feared domain lies. The darkness is His and the morning is His; the creation that harbours the evil is His too.

This third point is the tawḥīd backbone of the sūra. None of the evils that will be counted through the sūra is an independent power. Evil is not outside the dominion but inside it. The one who takes refuge takes refuge with his enemy's master.

This is why it is striking that the overwhelming majority of the expressions of istiʿādha in the Qurʾān are built with the name "Rabb":

• "My Lord! I take refuge with You from the promptings of the devils; and I take refuge with You, my Lord, from their being present with me" (al-Muʾminūn 23/97-98).
• "I take refuge with You from asking of You that of which I have no knowledge" — the words of Noah (Nūḥ) (Hūd 11/47).
• "I have taken refuge with my Lord and your Lord from every arrogant one who does not believe in the Day of Reckoning" — the words of Moses (Mūsā) (Ghāfir 40/27; similarly al-Dukhān 44/20).
• In the words of Mary (Maryam), on the other hand, another name is chosen: "I take refuge with al-Raḥmān from you" (Maryam 19/18) — because what is asked for there is mercy, protection from a threat.

The choice of name, that is, varies with the context and is always meaningful.

The most debated word of the sūra, and its name.

Root: ف-ل-ق. Its concrete sense is to split, to crack, to divide in two. But falq in Arabic is not any kind of cutting; it is the opening of something closed from within or by a force, the parting of a whole and the coming out of something from between. Filqa is the name of the split-off piece — the half of a rock, of a stone, of a plank.

The derivatives of the root and their uses in the Qurʾān show the heart of the matter:

فَالِق — the one who splits. The Qurʾān uses this active participle of God in two consecutive verses:

"God is indeed the one who splits the grain and the date-stone. He brings the living out of the dead, and He is the one who brings the dead out of the living. That is God; how then are you turned away?" (al-Anʿām 6/95)

"He is the one who splits the dawn. He has made the night a rest, and the sun and the moon a measure of reckoning. That is the ordaining of the Mighty, the Knowing." (al-Anʿām 6/96)

The two verses follow one another and use the same word on two different scales: fāliqu'l-ḥabbi wa'n-nawā (the one who splits the grain and the date-stone) and fāliqu'l-iṣbāḥ (the one who splits the dawn).

These two images say the same thing. The seed under the soil is closed, is in darkness, looks dead; it cracks at one point and a green shoot comes out of it. The night is closed, is dark, is motionless; it cracks at one point on the horizon and light comes out of it. In both, something closed and dark is split, and life comes out of it.

ٱنْفَلَقَ — it was split. The quasi-passive (muṭāwaʿa) pattern of the same root occurs in the splitting of the sea: "Thereupon the sea was split, and each part was like a great mountain" (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/63). Here too a mass that is closed and impassable is split, and a road is opened through it.

What, then, does "al-falaq" in the verse mean? Is the word here a verbal noun or a noun, and what concrete thing does it point to? The views transmitted in the classical commentaries can be gathered as follows:

The majority prefer the first view. But the second does not exclude the first; on the contrary, it widens it. The splitting of the morning is the most visible and most regular instance of the event of "splitting" — a splitting repeated every day and seen by everyone. The word's opening out from this concrete instance to the general sense is the familiar working of Arabic.

Why this name, in this context? The sūra is a sūra of taking refuge from evil. The densest representation of evil is darkness. And the one with whom refuge is taken is presented as the Lord of that very splitting which cleaves the darkness and brings the light out of it.

In the very first verse, that is, the sūra's whole answer has been given: the darkness itself looks closed and absolute; but there is a power that splits the darkness, and it is with Him that refuge is taken. The morning is the proof that darkness is not the last word — and it is repeated every day.

We can take this one step further. The image of splitting has three scales, and all three are images the Qurʾān uses: the splitting of the seed (the plant), the opening of the womb, of the egg (the birth of a living creature — the Qurʾān covers this too with the language "He brings the living out of the dead"), the splitting of the morning (the cosmos). At all three scales the same law works: life comes out by the splitting of a closed and dark place. This is not a claim of a "scientific miracle"; it is the finding that the image the Qurʾān has chosen catches a pattern that really does recur in nature.

There is a confusion into which readers in English, and sometimes even those who know Arabic, fall. فلق (f-l-q) and فلح (f-l-ḥ) are not the same root. Their last letters differ: one is qāf, the other ḥāʾ. In Arabic the root is determined by the identity of its three consonants; the change of one letter changes the root.

Even so, their fields of meaning overlap strikingly:

• ف-ل-ح: to split, to crack (especially the soil). From here fallāḥ — the one who splits the soil, the farmer. And from here falāḥ / aflaḥa / mufliḥ — to attain salvation, to attain what one hoped for, to succeed. "Qad aflaḥa'l-muʾminūn" — "The believers have indeed attained salvation" (al-Muʾminūn 23/1). The "ḥayya ʿala'l-falāḥ" of the call to prayer is from this root too.
• ف-ل-ق: to split, to crack. From here falaq — the splitting of the morning, the thing that is split.

The Arabic lexicographers noticed and debated such nearnesses of meaning among roots that share their first two letters; in the tradition of the language this topic is treated under the heading of "greater derivation". In the series of roots beginning with ف-ل (فلق، فلح، فلذ، فلج، فلي) a recurring sense of "separating, splitting" is observed.

But this is not a claim that they are one root, and it should not be presented as one. How much of it is a real historical kinship and how much is coincidence or a pattern constructed after the fact is disputed in linguistics. I make no claim about origin here.

A conceptual link, on the other hand, can be made, and this link is a reading of my own, not a transmitted report: Falāḥ is the splitting of the obstacle in front of one and the opening of the road. Without the soil being split the seed does not come out; the farmer splits the soil, and salvation too is the splitting of a closedness. Falaq, for its part, is the splitting of the night and the coming out of the morning. The two words are the counterparts of the same image in two separate fields — one a road opened by human effort, the other a road opened not of itself but by God's splitting.

I do not present this reading as "the Qurʾān says this". I record it only as a scene that appears when we set the two words side by side without confusing them.

Al-falaq has the article (with al-). Two of the three items of evil that come later in the sūra, on the other hand, are without the article (ghāsiqin, ḥāsidin). This opposition is meaningful: the side with whom refuge is taken is definite, the evils refuge is taken from are indefinite. The refuge is known, is one, has an address. The threats are countless and shapeless.

We shall see this again at the end of the sūra.