al-Aḥzāb 33:10

Idh jāʾūkum min fawqikum wa min asfala minkum wa idh zāghati'l-abṣāru wa balaghati'l-qulūbu'l-ḥanājira wa taẓunnūna bi'llāhi'l-ẓunūnā

"When they came upon you from above you and from below you; when the eyes swerved and the hearts reached the throats, and you entertained all manner of surmises about God."

This verse is the shortest and most concentrated place in which the Qurʾān describes a community under siege. There are four clauses, and all four look to the body: direction, eye, heart, surmise.

And the order is worth noting: it moves from outside inwards. First the place (from where did they come), then the eye (the organ that looks outward), then the heart (the organ within), then the surmise (what is not seen).

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the arrangement of the four clauses.

فَوْق — above. أَسْفَل — root س-ف-ل: to be below. Suflā — that which is lower.

Naming the two directions together conveys the completeness of the siege. One of the ways in Arabic of saying that a thing comes from every direction is to name two opposite directions — the remaining directions enter by implication.

In classical exegesis the geographical correspondence of these two directions is dwelt on, and it is transmitted that the besieging forces approached from two different sides of the city. I do not enter into detail; the wording of the verse gives only two directions.

But there is a linguistic note: min fawqikum is built as a construct, while min asfala minkum is built with a separate min. The lexicographers record this asymmetry; it has to do with asfal being a diptote (a noun that does not take certain inflectional endings). It produces no difference in meaning.

زَاغَ — root ز-ي-غ. To deviate from straight, to swerve, to slip out of place. The Qurʾān uses the root of the heart as well: "Those in whose hearts is deviation…" (Āl ʿImrān 3/7 — zaygh); "When they swerved, God made their hearts swerve" (al-Ṣaff 61/5).

And the use of the root here for the eye is striking. The word describes the eye's loss of focus: the gaze cannot fix on anything, it slides.

This is a physiologically accurate description of fear, and it is worth recording. Under intense threat the gaze loses its steadiness; as the eye tries to scan for the threat it can rest at no point. The verse records this not as a moral fault but as a state — indeed in the same verse the believers are not censured, and in the next verse it is said that "they were tested".

And the choice of the word abṣār links up with the verse-ending of the previous verse: the ninth verse ended with baṣīr. The same root, within two verses, with two different subjects: God is baṣīr, and the abṣār of the people swerve.

I record this link as my own reading; its ground is the repetition of the root in two consecutive verses.

This expression was treated at Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) at 40/18, and I rely on that treatment. What was recorded there:

• حَنَاجِر — singular حَنْجَرَة: the throat.
• The scene is bodily, and can be compared with the scene of the departing soul that rests on ḥulqūm (the gullet) at al-Wāqiʿa, 56/83.
• Both scenes point to the place through which voice and breath pass.

Now the real work: the comparison of the two occurrences. The construction occurs in only two places in the Qurʾān, and the two are entirely different scenes.

Three things emerge from this comparison, and I record all three:

One. The difference in the verb carries a difference in time. In Ghāfir a nominal sentence is used (with ladā) — a state is depicted, a fixed condition. In al-Aḥzāb a verb is used (balaghat) — a movement is described: the heart rose and arrived there. The resurrection scene is static, the siege scene is in motion.

Two. The same bodily state comes about from two different causes. In one the cause is the reckoning itself, in the other a military threat. And the Qurʾān uses the same expression for both. The meaning of this is: the Qurʾān describes the fear of the resurrection with a fear a person knows — and it also records an instance of that fear actually lived through in history. That is, not a metaphor but a scale: two intensities of the same state.

Three. What comes afterwards is different. In Ghāfir the scene is followed by swallowing (silence); in al-Aḥzāb it is followed by speech — from the twelfth verse onwards the sentences begin. At the resurrection no speech is left; under siege speech multiplies. And the whole diagnosis of the sūra will be built upon those utterances.

I record this third finding as my own reading.

Root: ظ-ن-ن. This root was treated in detail at al-Fatḥ (48/6, ẓanna'l-sawʾ) and at al-Ḥujurāt (49/12, ijtanibū kathīran mina'l-ẓann). I rely on that treatment.

What was recorded there: surmise is the zone between certainty and doubt — in Arabic it can mean both "to suppose" and (in some contexts) "to know for certain"; the context decides.

In this verse the word has three features:

One. The verb is imperfect (taẓunnūna). The three preceding clauses are perfect (jāʾūkum, zāghat, balaghat); this clause is imperfect. The word order conveys a continuity: the coming, the swerving, the reaching are each a moment; the surmising is an inner activity that runs on through those moments.

Two. Al-ẓunūnā — plural and with the definite article. "Surmises" — of every kind. Its coming with the article of definiteness (al-) carries the sense of surmises that are known, recognised. That is, the verse does not enumerate the content of the surmises but assumes that the one addressed knows them.

Three. The alif at the end of the word. Al-ẓunūnā — there is an alif at the end (likewise al-Rasūlā in verse 66 and al-Sabīlā in verse 67). This is one of the places where there is a difference of variant reading: some of the readers read this alif both in continuous recitation and at a pause, some only at a pause, some not at all. It does not change the meaning; it is a difference of reading bound up with the harmony of the verse-endings. In the script of the muṣḥaf the alif is written.

The verse records surmises entertained about God — and it does so in a section addressed to those who believe.

This must be recorded. The twelfth verse will separately relate what the hypocrites said; the tenth verse takes in everyone inside the address.

This attitude of the Qurʾān is consistent, and it was recorded at al-Baqara at 2/214: there too, at the point where the hardship reaches its limit, it was stated explicitly that the one who asks "when will God's help come?" is the messenger and those who believe with him, and the question was not censured.

The same thing happens here: the surmise is counted a fault but is not made a ground for excommunication. Indeed the next verse will name the event a test — that is, the state recorded is the sifting itself.

I record this as my own reading: the Qurʾān depicts the inward faltering of the moment of hardship not as something that takes a person out of faith, but as the place where faith is tried.