Sabaʾ 34:15

Laqad kāna li-Sabaʾin fī maskanihim āyah, jannatāni ʿan yamīnin wa shimāl, kulū min rizqi rabbikum wa'shkurū lah, baldatun ṭayyibatun wa rabbun ghafūr

"For Sabaʾ there was a sign in their dwelling place: two gardens, one on the right and one on the left. 'Eat of the provision of your Lord and give thanks to Him. A good land, and a forgiving Lord!'"

The name of the sūra occurs in this verse, in a single word: li-Sabaʾ. And in the whole of the sūra the people are never named again.

سَبَإ — the name of a community that lived in southern Arabia, in the region of present-day Yemen. It occurs in two places in the Qurʾān: here and in Sūrat al-Naml (27/22). It is recorded that the word is transmitted both as the name of a person and as the name of a tribe; I issue no settled ruling.

There is a variant reading in the inflection of the word, and it must be recorded:

Both readings are transmitted and the sense does not change; I do not impose a preference.

"Two gardens, one on the right and one on the left."

How the description is built is worth recording, and I give this as my own reading: the verse does not describe the size of the gardens, their produce, or their system of irrigation. The only thing it describes is position: on the right and on the left.

This is a description that puts a human being at its centre. Right and left are fixed with respect to where an observer stands. The gardens, that is, are named as they appear to the person standing among them — and cultivated land stretching along the two slopes of a valley looks just so.

And the word āya comes in the singular: āyatun — a sign. There are two gardens, but the sign is one. That is, what is counted is not the gardens but the scene the gardens make.

Two commands: kulū (eat) and wa'shkurū (give thanks).

To whom the command is spoken is not stated in the verse — the wording is transmitted directly. And what is worth recording is that the first command is not a prohibition but a permission: kulū min rizqi rabbikum. That is, thanks is asked for not as abandoning the favour but as using it while keeping it attached to its source.

This should be read together with the command in the thirteenth verse: there it was iʿmalū … shukrā (work, thanks). Both commands tie thanks to an act: one to producing, the other to eating.

The sentence consists of two noun phrases and has no verb. In Arabic such sentences convey a fixed state.

And the setting of the two elements side by side must be recorded:

I record this as my own reading, and its support is the joining of the two phrases with a wāw: the verse sets the two conditions of prosperity side by side — a good place and a forgiving Lord. The soil is not named on its own; and the attribute that belongs to the relationship is forgiveness.

ط-ي-ب — the sense of the root: to be pleasant, clean, good. Ṭayyib is used of what is good both in taste and in quality. The root was treated at Fāṭir 35/10 (al-kalimu'ṭ-ṭayyib — the good word); I rely on that treatment. Here the same attribute is given to a land.

And how the next verse will undo this picture must be recorded: in the sixteenth verse the gardens will change, but the name of the land will never be mentioned again.