أَفَلَمْ يَسِيرُوا۟ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ فَتَكُونَ لَهُمْ قُلُوبٌ يَعْقِلُونَ بِهَآ أَوْ ءَاذَانٌ يَسْمَعُونَ بِهَا فَإِنَّهَا لَا تَعْمَى ٱلْأَبْصَٰرُ وَلَٰكِن تَعْمَى ٱلْقُلُوبُ ٱلَّتِى فِى ٱلصُّدُورِ
A-fa-lam yasīrū fi'l-arḍi fa-takūna lahum qulūbun yaʿqilūna bihā aw ādhānun yasmaʿūna bihā · Fa-innahā lā taʿma'l-abṣāru wa lākin taʿma'l-qulūbu'llatī fi'ṣ-ṣudūr
"Have they not travelled in the land, so that they might have hearts with which to understand, or ears with which to hear? The truth is that it is not the eyes that go blind; it is the hearts within the breasts that go blind."
The expected construction is: "had they hearts, they would travel and take a lesson." The verse builds the reverse: a-fa-lam yasīrū … fa-takūna lahum qulūb — "have they not travelled, so that they might have hearts?"
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the verb fa-takūna is in the subjunctive (conveying result): the verse says that seeing the ruins would bring an organ into being. The heart is not the precondition of travelling; it is its product.
I record this as an observation about word order: the eye is absent from the first list; and in the second sentence it is exempted from the ruling. The two moves face the same way: the eye is not the matter the verse is disputing.
At al-Aḥqāf 46/26 three organs were treated together: samʿ, abṣār, afʾida — hearing, eyes, hearts. There all three had been given, and all three had been of no use. I rely on that treatment.
| al-Aḥqāf 46/26 | al-Ḥajj 22/46 | |
|---|---|---|
| The organs | Three: ear, eye, heart | Two: heart, ear |
| The ruling | Fa-mā aghnā ʿanhum — none of them availed | Lā taʿma'l-abṣāru wa lākin taʿma'l-qulūb — the blindness of one is bound to the other |
| The order | From outside in — ear, eye, heart | From inside out — heart, ear |
The difference of order is worth recording, and I give this as my own reading: al-Aḥqāf enumerated the instruments in the order in which they were given. al-Ḥajj puts the heart first — and the end of the verse says why: the matter is in the heart.
At Fuṣṣilat 41/5 the other party had described its own condition by three obstacles: akinna (coverings on the heart), waqr (heaviness in the ear), ḥijāb (a veil between). And at Fuṣṣilat 41/44 the text itself gave the same verdict about them. I rely on that treatment.
| Place | Who says it | Organ | Obstacle |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fuṣṣilat 41/5 | The other party — about itself | Heart, ear, the space between | Covering, heaviness, veil |
| Fuṣṣilat 41/44 | The text — about them | Ear, eye | Waqr, ʿamā |
| al-Ḥajj 22/46 | The text — a general ruling | The heart | Blindness — and its place is specified |
The lexicographers explain this pronoun as a ḍamīru'sh-shaʾn (the pronoun of the situation): a pronoun that refers to nothing in particular but puts the whole sentence forward. Its counterpart in English is the expression "the truth is that".
I transmit this as a grammatical note in the form in which it is transmitted. The pattern lays stress on the sentence that follows.
The verse seems to deny an obvious fact: eyes do not go blind. Yet eyes do go blind, and everyone knows it.
The resolution of the sentence is this, and I give it as my own reading, its ground being the context:
The verse is not disputing the existence of blindness as a medical condition. The subject is the ruins described in the preceding verse: fallen roofs, abandoned wells, lofty palaces. These are being seen. The eye is working — indeed the verse assumes that these people travel in the land.
What the verse says, then, is this: what is missing here is not the image. The image is complete, the conclusion drawn is nil. And to name this state the verse takes the word "blindness" from the eye and gives it to the heart.
The word is carried from one organ to another — and as it is carried, its ruling in its old place is expressly cancelled (lā taʿma'l-abṣār). This is not a simile; it is the moving of a word's place.
This note has been dwelt on, because that the heart is in the breast is already known. Two explanations are transmitted in the classical commentaries:
| Explanation | Ground |
|---|---|
| A | Taʾkīd (emphasis) — in Arabic the repetition of a known thing is for stress. "The heart in one's own breast" |
| B | Specification — the word qalb is used in Arabic figuratively for "mind, consciousness"; the note states that the real place is what is meant |
As my own reading I add this, its ground being the verse as a whole: the verse performs a change of place — blindness is carried from the eye to the heart. And the new address of what is carried is given explicitly. The function of the note is to keep the transfer from hanging in the air: blindness is loaded not onto an abstract concept but onto a particular organ in a particular place.
The root ق-ل-ب: to turn, to bring the underside up. Inqilāb, taqallub are of the same root. And the root occurred in the eleventh verse of this sūra as well: inqalaba ʿalā wajhih — "he turned about on his face". The same root, one the name of an organ and one a verb.
The distinction the verse draws becomes still more visible in an age of information: images have never been so abundant, and the abundance of images by itself produces no conclusion.
The verse does not give this as a list of faults. It gives it as a diagnosis: what is lacking is not data. And the address of the diagnosis is specified.