al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:128-130

A-tabnūna bi-kulli rīʿin āyatan taʿbathūn · Wa tattakhidhūna maṣāniʿa laʿallakum takhludūn · Wa idhā baṭashtum baṭashtum jabbārīn

"Do you build a monument on every high place, to no purpose? · And take for yourselves strongholds, as though you would abide for ever? · And when you seize, you seize like tyrants!"

The most detailed list of offences a prophet directs at his people in the sūra is here. And the structure of the list must be recorded:

The first two are questions, the third a judgement. And the first two concern making, the third behaving.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the arrangement of the three verses: the list begins with stone and arrives at the human being. First what they build, then how they behave. And all three look to the same core: the claim to permanence.

The root ر-ي-ع: the senses the lexicographers give are to rise, to increase, to multiply. The renderings transmitted for rīʿ:

The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān. This is a datum that can be verified from the text.

And bi-kulli must be recorded: "on every". What is spoken of, that is, is not a single structure but a widespread practice: one on every rise.

The word occurs eight times in the sūra in the seal (inna fī dhālika la-āyatan) and had occurred in the fourth verse as well (mina's-samāʾi āyatan).

Here its sense is different, and the rendering the lexicographers give is: a mark, a sign, a landmark. This is already the core of the root (أ-ي-ي): a sign that makes a thing known.

So āyatan here means not "a miracle" but "a marker set up" — a structure built to be seen from afar.

And this is one of the most striking repetitions of a word in the sūra. I record it as my own reading: at the end of every account the sūra says "in this there is a sign". The people of ʿĀd, meanwhile, erect their own signs — one on every hill. One side sets up a sign, the other side does not see the sign that has been left. That this link is intended is not stated in the text; the two uses of the word are a datum of the text.

The root ع-ب-ث: to do a thing without purpose or use; to trifle. ʿAbath — idle work, aimless occupation. The Qurʾān negates the same root of creation: a-fa-ḥasibtum annamā khalaqnākum ʿabathā (al-Muʾminūn 23/115).

A point of word order: the verb taʿbathūn stands in the sentence as a circumstantial clause — "doing it to no purpose", "trifling". The offence, that is, is not the erecting of a structure; it is the manner of the erecting.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the position of the word in the sentence: the verse does not forbid building. It criticises purposelessness. ʿAbath is not a thing's having no use but the doer's regarding no purpose.

The root ص-ن-ع: to make, to manufacture, to work with skill. The plural of maṣnaʿ, maṣāniʿ: a thing made, a work of manufacture.

The renderings transmitted for the word:

I do not impose a preference. Both renderings accord with the continuation of the verse, because both are things made for permanence: a stronghold and a cistern are alike structures directed at the future.

The word occurs in this pattern only here in the Qurʾān.

The root خ-ل-د: to be lasting, to continue on. It is used often in the Qurʾān of the garden and of the fire (khālidīna fīhā).

And laʿalla must be recorded: in the third verse (laʿallaka bākhiʿun) it was recorded that this particle announces not expectation but anxiety. Here its function is different: it announces mockery or intent. The lexicographers explain it as "as though you would abide for ever".

What is blamed, then, is not the structure itself but the meaning loaded onto it.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the shared structure of the two verses: in 128 taʿbathūn (purposelessness), in 129 takhludūn (the claim to permanence). The two verses stand like opposites of one another — one to pursue no purpose at all, the other to pursue the greatest purpose. And the two are side by side in the same list. What they have in common is that both stand in the wrong place: a structure is built neither to pass the time nor for everlastingness.

The root ب-ط-ش was analysed in two places across the series, and I rely on those treatments.

al-Burūj 85/12 (inna baṭsha rabbika la-shadīd) — the detailed analysis of the root was made there. The description there: baṭsh is to grasp a thing violently and harshly, to seize by force. And something important was recorded there: the Qurʾān uses this root both of God and of wrongdoers. Indeed this verse (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/130) was already cited in al-Burūj — "This sentence Hūd says to his own people."

al-Qamar 54/36 (wa laqad andharahum baṭshatanā) — there the difference between baṭsha (the faʿla pattern, a single occurrence) and baṭsh (the verbal noun) was tabulated. I do not repeat it.

What is to be added here is the word order of the verse itself, and it is peculiar to this sūra.

The sentence has this structure: condition + apodosis, and both are the same verb.

Wa idhā baṭashtum — baṭashtum jabbārīn

The sentence thus stands like a tautology: "when you seize, you seize." And all the weight is in the last word: jabbārīn.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the structure itself: the verse takes as its subject not the act but the manner of the act. Seizing in itself is not counted an offence — governing, punishing, defending may require seizing. What is an offence is that the seizing is done as tyrants.

And the conditional particle is idhā, not in. As was recorded in the thirty-first verse, in Arabic in is used for the doubtful, idhā for the certain and recurring case. The verse therefore does not say "if you seize"; it says "whenever you seize". This announces that the behaviour is not an exception but a rule.

جَبَّارِين — root ج-ب-ر: the core the lexicographers give is to set a broken bone back in place by force, to mend (jabīra — a splint for a fracture; the jabr of mathematics — English algebra — comes from here as well). And from there it passes to "to make someone do a thing by force, to make submit".

The faʿʿāl pattern announces an intensive: one who compels continually and much.

And the word is used in two directions in the Qurʾān, and this must be recorded:

This distinction was treated in al-Ḥashr and I do not repeat it. The note there: the same attribute means "the one who sets right" of the one whose power is unlimited, and "a tyrant" of the one whose power is limited. The difference lies in whom the attribute is found.

And the verse recorded at Qāf 50/45 attaches here: wa mā anta ʿalayhim bi-jabbār — "you are not a tyrant over them". The Qurʾān, that is, counts the attribute it forbids to the messenger as the deed of the people of ʿĀd. This is an overlap that can be verified from the text.

The picture the three verses build together is concrete: a society is measured by the structures it produces and by the force it uses. And the measure is not what is done but why and how it is done — a monument with no purpose, a structure that hopes for everlastingness, a force used without measure.

None of the verses forbids building, wealth or power. What is criticised in all three is the same false assumption: being permanent. And one account later the sūra will show the same assumption once more from the mouth of Thamūd — wa tanḥitūna mina'l-jibāli buyūtan fārihīn (149).