al-Naḥl 16:81

Wa'llāhu jaʿala lakum mimmā khalaqa ẓilālan wa jaʿala lakum mina'l-jibāli aknānan wa jaʿala lakum sarābīla taqīkumu'l-ḥarra wa sarābīla taqīkum baʾsakum, ka-dhālika yutimmu niʿmatahū ʿalaykum laʿallakum tuslimūn

"God made shade for you out of what He created; He made you shelters in the mountains; and He gave you garments that guard you from the heat, and coats that guard you in your own violence. Thus He completes His favour upon you — that you might submit."

The verse says jaʿala lakum four times (three in this verse, one in the eightieth) and at the end closes the whole enumeration with a single sentence.

The fourth item must be recorded, and it is the most striking thing in the verse: baʾsakum — "your own violence".

The fourth protection, then, is not a protection from nature but from man himself.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the pronoun itself: the first three items are against forces outside — the sun, the need for shelter, the heat. In the fourth the pronoun turns back upon the one addressed. In the last item of its enumeration of favours the sūra counts protection from what man does to man as a favour too.

And this agrees with the sūra as a whole: in the fourth verse man was named khaṣīmun mubīn (an open disputant). In the eighty-first, protection from where that disputing arrives is enumerated.

It must be recorded: in the forty-eighth verse the shadows were enumerated as a proof (yatafayyaʾu ẓilāluhū … sujjadan li'llāh). In the eighty-first the same word is enumerated as a favour.

This is a repetition verifiable within the sūra, and it is the sūra's characteristic movement: the same fact is enumerated twice, in two different columns. The same was done with water (10 and 65).

أَكْنَان — the plural of kinn, root ك-ن-ن: to cover, to hide, to protect. Maknūn — hidden (in the Qurʾān used of a pearl); kināna — a quiver. The word means "a place one goes inside and is hidden in".

سَرَابِيل — the plural of sirbāl: a shirt, a garment worn over. The lexicographers record that the word may have come into Arabic from another language; this is transmitted as a possibility, not as a settled ruling.

And the expression used of the second sarābīl must be recorded: taqīkum baʾsakum. The exegetes generally explain it as armour — indeed the making of armour is named elsewhere in the Qurʾān (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/80: wa ʿallamnāhu ṣanʿata labūsin lakum li-tuḥṣinakum min baʾsikum). The overlap with that verse is worth recording, and both verses use the same word: baʾsakum.

And the sūra's second enumeration closes here, with a sentence of purpose.

Three words must be recorded:

And the verb must be recorded: yutimmu — imperfect. The completing is thus not a finished work; it goes on. This is directly connected with the ruling lā tuḥṣūhā (you cannot count them) in the eighteenth verse, and I give it as my own reading: the reason they cannot be counted is that the list is still lengthening.

And the verb of purpose differs from the sūra's closing verbs. All seven of the closings tabulated above were verbs of cognition or of faith (to think, to reason, to remember, to hear, to believe). This eighth is a verb of stance: tuslimūn — to submit.

The same distinction was recorded at al-Rūm, 30/46: the link that stood apart in the wa min āyātihī series ended with a verb of response (tashkurūn). In al-Naḥl the enumeration ends with a verb of submission.

I record this as my own reading, my ground being the series of verbs: the sūra begins its counting with thinking and ends it with submission. And seven distinct verbs are enumerated in between. The enumeration thus moves from an operation of knowledge towards a change of stance.