al-Aḥzāb 33:70-71

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanu'ttaqu'llāha wa qūlū qawlan sadīdā · Yuṣliḥ lakum aʿmālakum wa yaghfir lakum dhunūbakum, wa man yuṭiʿi'llāha wa rasūlahu fa-qad fāza fawzan ʿaẓīmā

"O you who believe! Guard yourselves against God and speak a firm word. · Then He will set your works right for you and forgive you your sins. And whoever obeys God and His Messenger has attained a great attainment."

The sūra's axis of speech had opened in the fourth verse (qawlukum bi-afwāhikum) and taken a measure in the thirty-second (qawlan maʿrūfā). In the seventieth verse the final measure comes.

And the concrete sense of the root must be dwelt on, because the whole weight of the word lies there.

س-د-د: to close a breach, to stop it, to fill it. Sadd — a dam, a barrier (at al-Kahf 18/94 as saddan). Sidād — the stopper that closes the gap in a thing.

And the second branch of the root: sadād — accuracy, correctness, hitting the mark. Saddada'l-ramya — he made the shot hit its mark.

What joins the two branches?

The link the lexicographers record is this: both convey an exact fit. A dam is what fits the breach exactly; an accurate shot is one that lands exactly on the target. That is, sadīd means what has neither deficiency nor excess, what fills its place exactly.

And this describes what "firm speech" is, and I record it:

Qawlan sadīdā is not merely "true speech". In the logic of the root: speech that has no gap, that leaves no space, that hits its mark exactly.

Its opposite is not a lie — it is breached speech: true but incomplete, true but open to misunderstanding, true but out of its time or its place.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the two branches of sense in the root.

The Qurʾān uses the word once more, and the context there is instructive too: "Let them guard themselves against God and let them speak a firm word" (al-Nisāʾ 4/9) — there the context is the property of orphans and the situation of those left behind. In both places the word stands in a context of speech that produces consequences.

And the most striking link of the verse is here.

The seventieth verse is about speech; the seventy-first about works. And the two are joined by a relation of condition and consequence: speak a firm word so that your works may be set right.

أَصْلَحَ — root ص-ل-ح. To make a thing useful, workable, serviceable. Ṣalāḥ — a thing's being in a state fit for its own work; the opposite of fasād.

And what must be recorded is this: the verse ties the setting right of speech to the setting right of works.

This order looks reversed. The expectation was: set your works right so that your speech may be true. The verse says the opposite.

And the sūra as a whole supports this order:

• The fourth verse: a false word was trying to establish a false reality.
• The thirteenth verse: a word of excuse was covering a flight.
• The nineteenth verse: sharp tongues spoke after the danger had passed.
• The fifty-eighth verse: a word of slander was loading on something that had not been done.

Throughout the sūra the corruption of speech comes before the corruption of behaviour. The seventieth verse begins the setting right from the same place.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the speech-behaviour orderings in the sūra.

Again a cognate accusative. The ninth reinforcement in the sūra.

The root ف-و-ز: to be delivered, to attain one's desire; and a branch the lexicographers record: mafāza — a desert. The lexicographers differ on the link between the two senses; on one explanation the desert was named "the place of deliverance" in the hope of deliverance from it (an auspicious naming). This is not certain; I record it but build no meaning upon it.

The measure of the verse can be gathered into a single sentence: setting right begins with speech.

And the root of the word sadīd makes this concrete: firm speech is speech that leaves no breach.

Its practical counterpart is this: it is not enough for a sentence to be true. The place left incomplete, the side left open to misunderstanding, the part left unsaid — all of these are breaches. And a breach is later filled with something else.

All the measures set out about speech at al-Ḥujurāt gather in this word: the loudness of a voice, the share of surmise, the effect of a nickname, the anatomy of backbiting. All of them had to do with how a piece of speech leaves a breach.