al-Naḥl 16:10-11

Huwa'lladhī anzala mina'l-samāʾi māʾan, lakum minhu sharābun wa minhu shajarun fīhi tusīmūn · Yunbitu lakum bihi'l-zarʿa wa'l-zaytūna wa'l-nakhīla wa'l-aʿnāba wa min kulli'l-thamarāt, inna fī dhālika la-āyatan li-qawmin yatafakkarūn

"It is He who sends down water from the sky: from it you drink, and from it come the trees in which you pasture your beasts. With it He brings forth for you the crops, the olive, the date palm, the vine and fruits of every kind. In that there is a sign for a people who think."

The sentence divides the water in two and gives it with two mins:

Worth recording: the verse names man's share first, but it enumerates the animal's share in the same sentence. And both are tied to the same water.

تُسِيمُونَ — root س-و-م: to send an animal out to pasture and let it graze freely. Sāʾima — an animal turned out to pasture, not given fodder. It is recorded that the word occurs in this form only here in the Qurʾān.

I give this as an observation about the word order: in the sixth verse tasraḥūn (you drive them out), here tusīmūn (you pasture them). The two verbs tell of the same act from two different sides: the one, the sight of the driving out; the other, its yield.

The eleventh verse enumerates four crops, then opens the scope:

The same pattern again: things are enumerated, then the list is left open. The work done in the eighth verse with wa yakhluqu mā lā taʿlamūn is done here with wa min kulli'l-thamarāt. This is a repetition that can be verified from the text.

نَخِيل وَأَعْنَاب — the pair date palm and vine is named together regularly in the Qurʾān, and this pair was treated at al-Muʾminūn, 23/19; it was recorded there that the two plants are dependent on water in an arid climate and can be stored. The same pair occurred at Yāsīn, 36/34. I rely on those treatments.

And this pair will come back once more in the sūra, in the sixty-seventh verse — this time with the crop in its processed form (tattakhidhūna minhu sakaran wa rizqan ḥasanā). This is a repetition verifiable within the sūra.

From the eleventh verse on, the enumeration is divided into sections by closing sentences, and each closing uses a different verb:

Seven closings, five distinct verbs. This does the same work as the closings of the wa min āyātihī series tabulated at al-Rūm, 30/20-25 — there four closings addressed four distinct capacities (to think, to know, to hear, to reason). I rely on that treatment and record the difference:

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is how the two sūras use the formula: al-Rūm builds a series and frames it; al-Naḥl scatters its closings through the sūra. In al-Rūm the signs are gathered into a single section; in al-Naḥl they are worked into the weave of the sūra.