al-Ḥajj 22:19-22

Hādhāni khaṣmāni'khtaṣamū fī rabbihim · Fa'lladhīna kafarū quṭṭiʿat lahum thiyābun min nār · Yuṣabbu min fawqi ruʾūsihimu'l-ḥamīm · Yuṣharu bihi mā fī buṭūnihim wa'l-julūd · Wa lahum maqāmiʿu min ḥadīd · Kullamā arādū an yakhrujū minhā min ghammin uʿīdū fīhā wa dhūqū ʿadhāba'l-ḥarīq

"These are two adversaries, contending about their Lord. For those who disbelieve, garments of fire have been cut; boiling water is poured over their heads. By it, what is in their bellies and their skins are melted. For them there are maces of iron. Whenever they wish to come out of it, out of anguish, they are returned into it: 'Taste the punishment of burning!'"

There is a striking shift of number in the sentence, and the lexicographers record it:

• هَٰذَانِ خَصْمَانِ — dual: "these two adversaries".
• ٱخْتَصَمُوا۟ — plural: "they contended".

The subject is dual, the verb plural.

The explanation the lexicographers give is this, and I transmit it as a report: khaṣm here conveys not a single person but a side. The sides are two, but the persons within each side are many. Hence the number is dual and the verb is plural.

And this is connected with the preceding verse. The seventeenth verse had named six groups. The nineteenth verse reduces those six to two.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sequence of the two verses: there were six names in the list; on the day of judgement there are two sides. The separation is therefore not made according to the names of the groups; and the verse does not say how the six names divide into two either.

خَصْم — root خ-ص-م: to contend, to go to law. Khuṣūma, mukhāṣama are of the same root. The word carries a legal resonance: a khaṣm is the party who stands opposite in a court.

And the subject of the contention is given: fī rabbihim — "about their Lord". A shared pronoun is used: the Lord of both parties. The dispute goes on over a shared subject.

The verb must be recorded: quṭṭiʿat — root ق-ط-ع, and in Form II (tafʿīl), the pattern that conveys intensity. The word belongs to the tailor's craft: the cutting of cloth.

I record this as an observation: the verse does not say "fire wraps them". It says garments of fire have been cut — that is, something prepared to measure, to the person. The choice of the verb builds a picture in which the punishment is not random but measured.

The root ح-م-م: to grow hot, to grow heated. Ḥamīm — boiling water.

The word was treated at al-Wāqiʿa 56/42, 54 and 93, and at Ṣād 38/57. I do not repeat it here. It was recorded there that in al-Wāqiʿa it occurs three times and that all three belong to the same group; and that in Ṣād it is paired with ghassāq.

What differs in the use here is its direction:

In the other two places ḥamīm enters by the mouth; here it is poured from outside. And the direction of the pouring is specified: min fawqi ruʾūsihim.

This difference prepares the word of the next verse.

The root occurs here for the first time in the index and deserves to be dwelt on in detail.

The core sense the lexicographers give: to melt metal or fat in fire. Ṣahara'sh-shaḥma is used of melting fat. The noun form ṣihr is melted fat.

The root has another branch as well: ṣihr — kinship established by marriage (affinity). The lexicographers generally join the two senses in the idea of "mixing and merging": things that melt run into one another; marriage too mixes two lineages. I transmit this connection as it is transmitted, and build no interpretation upon it.

The word's work here is to complete the picture:

In the nineteenth verse the water was poured over the head. The twentieth verse says where that water reaches: mā fī buṭūnihim wa'l-julūd — what is in their bellies, and the skins.

I record this as an observation about word order, and its ground is the juxtaposition of the two words: buṭūn (the inside of the belly) and julūd (skin) — the innermost and the outermost of a man. The verse binds both to the same verb. The liquid comes down from above and acts both from within and from without; no place is left between.

ٱلْجُلُود — skin. Skins were treated at Fuṣṣilat 41/20-22: there the skins were bearing witness (shahida ʿalayhim … wa julūduhum). The same organ, in two sūras, in two separate roles: in one a witness, in the other the place the punishment reaches.

مَقَامِع — its singular is مِقْمَعَة. Root ق-م-ع: to press down, to subdue, to drive back. Qamʿ is the forcing of a thing into its place; qumʿ — the bottom of a thing, the place it sits.

The pattern mifʿal is the pattern of instrument nouns in Arabic (miftāḥ — key, miqaṣṣ — shears, minshār — saw). The word therefore means, exactly, "an instrument of pressing down".

In English it is usually rendered "mace" or "club", and the lexicographers describe the word as a staff with an iron head.

And the root of the word prepares the subject of the next verse. I record this as my own reading: qamʿ means "to drive back" — and the twenty-second verse describes exactly a driving back: kullamā arādū an yakhrujū … uʿīdū fīhā. The name of the instrument and the verb of the scene do the same work.

The root غ-م-م: to cover, to overspread. Ghamām — cloud (that which covers the sky); ghamma — the distress that overspreads a man within; maghmūm — one who is covered over.

The choice of word is worth recording: the cause of their wanting to come out is given not as the fire but as being covered over. What is described, then, is less pain than enclosure.

كُلَّمَا — "every time". The particle conveys repetition: the wish to come out is not once but continual.

And I record this as an observation about word order: the verse builds a cycle — to want, to be sent back, to want again. The chief element in the scene is that the enclosure becomes continual.