36. Sūrat Yāsīn

Eighty-three verses. It is widely reported that it came down in the Meccan period. It takes its name from the two letters of its first verse: يس.

The sūra builds a single claim along three separate roads, and all three converge at the same point.

• The first road is a story (13-32): messengers come to a town, they are called liars, a man comes running from the farthest part of the town, speaks, and receives what his speech earns him.
• The second road is looking (33-44): dead earth, a palm grove, night, sun, moon, ship.
• The third road is a person's own body (68, 77-79): the direction of a life turned back on itself, a man who comes out of a drop and sits down to argue, and a man who takes a crumbled bone in his hand and asks a question.

And the last sentence of the sūra is the same sentence as that of the man who came running. In the twenty-second verse the man says "…and to Him you will be returned"; in the eighty-third verse the sūra ends with the same two words: وَإِلَيْهِ تُرْجَعُونَ. This is a repetition that can be verified from the text, and it will be taken up separately below.

A great many reports about the merits of this sūra are in circulation. A significant portion of them are disputed in the tradition of hadith criticism; some have been judged weak, some fabricated (mawḍūʿ). In this commentary:

• Reports of merit are not admitted into the understanding of the sūra.
• Ascriptions such as "the heart of the Qurʾān" are not presented as certain knowledge; that such an ascription is transmitted is recorded, and no ruling is issued about its soundness.
• The ban on fabricated quotation is applied here with particular strictness: no saying that is not certain is ascribed to a source.

What is worth recording is this: the internal order of the sūra — the repetitions, rings and closures that will be tabulated shortly — shows itself without needing any report of merit at all. This section will concern itself with that alone.

The basmala was treated in earlier sections; the verses are numbered without it.

The sūra consists of eight blocks, and most of the block boundaries are drawn by the text's own words.

Three of the block boundaries are drawn with the same root: ر-ج-ع. Block V ends with lā yarjiʿūn, block VI with lā yarjiʿūn, block VIII with ilayhi turjaʿūn. This is a countable datum and will be tabulated separately below.

The root occurs five times in the sūra and falls into two groups:

The pattern can be verified: three negative uses in the middle, two positive uses at the ends. And the two positive uses are word for word identical.

I record this as my own reading: the sūra takes the verb "to return" out of a person's hands and binds it to a single direction. There is no going back — not for the perished generations to this world, not for the one seized all at once to his household, not for the frozen man from where he stands. The one return left is the ilayhi at the head of the sentence.

The most conspicuous device of word order in the sūra is the particle فَإِذَا, which conveys suddenness. In Arabic this is called idhā fujāʾiyya: it announces the emergence of an unexpected state of affairs. The English that carries it is "and all at once there they are".

Six occurrences, in four different blocks. I record this as an observation: every transition the sūra recounts — death, darkness, resurrection, coming-to-be — is given with no intermediate step shown. The particle erases the distance in between.

What follows are verifiable textual data.

The three most striking are these, and all three will be taken up again in the closing section:

1. ر-س-ل — In the third verse the Prophet is told "you are one of the messengers". In the fifty-second verse the same word is spoken by those who denied: "the messengers told the truth." 2. ض-ر-ب مثل — In the thirteenth verse the Prophet is told "strike for them a parable". In the seventy-eighth verse a man strikes a parable for God: "and he has struck a parable for Us." 3. ع-م-ل الأيدي — In the thirty-fifth verse it is said "their hands did not make it". In the seventy-first verse it is said "of what Our hands have made". The same construction, two different hands.

The adjective that recurs most often in the sūra is mubīn (root ب-ي-ن; the root was analysed in al-Baqara and at many points in the index, and I do not repeat it here).

I record this as a countable fact. The adjective is given to six different things in the sūra, and in all six its work is the same: not hidden, standing in the open. And two of them (24 and 47) are the same construction, spoken by opposing sides.

On its being Meccan there is something close to agreement. Individual reports of revelation are transmitted for certain verses; they will be mentioned only in the discussion of verses 77-78, cautiously and without naming names.

Yā-Sīn · Wa'l-Qurʾāni'l-Ḥakīm

"Yā-Sīn. By the Qurʾān full of wisdom."

The disconnected letters were treated at length in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/1; I do not repeat those findings here. The summary was this: twenty-nine sūras in the Qurʾān open with letters read one by one; the meaning of these letters is not known with certainty; one group of scholars refers the meaning to God; and no numerical reckoning, abjad calculation or letter-counting is carried out on these letters.

In the discussion of Qāf 50/1 the same caveat was entered once more, and more heavily. I enter it here a third time, because يس is one of the places in the Qurʾān where claims of that kind have been produced most abundantly. This commentary does not take that road.

The pronunciation should be recorded: this verse is read not as "yasin" but as "Yā-Sīn", the two letters named separately. That is, these are not a word but the letters themselves.

The table below is not a list of preferences; it is an inventory of what is transmitted. And this has to be written above the table: there is no certain knowledge.

I set the explanations "O man" and "a name of the Prophet" apart in particular, because these two reports circulate as though they were certain knowledge. They are not. I leave them where they stand in the table and issue no ruling upon them.

An observation about word order — an observation, not an explanation: the third verse begins with إِنَّكَ ("you"), that is, it turns to a person addressed directly. Those who say "Yā-Sīn is a vocative" take their ground from here. This is the only ground internal to the text for the second and fourth explanations in the table, and it must be recorded. But it is not sufficient by itself: there are other places in the Qurʾān where direct address follows the disconnected letters, and no claim of a vocative is made there.

The pattern established in the discussion of al-Baqara works here too: most groups of letters are followed immediately by an expression that speaks of the Book. In Yāsīn nothing at all comes in between.

In the discussion of Qāf 50/1 a table of the three single-letter sūras was given. Yāsīn has to be set beside that table:

In all four sūras the first thing that comes after the letters belongs to the domain of writing. In three the oath is by the text itself, in one by the instrument that writes it. This is a verifiable order.

The concrete sense of the root is to hold back. The core usage the lexicographers give has to do with an animal:

• حَكَمَة (ḥakama) — the iron bit put in a horse's mouth, the rein. It keeps the animal from going where it should not.
• أَحْكَمَ (aḥkama) — to make firm, to bring to a state in which nothing shifts.
• حُكْم (ḥukm) — to bind a matter to a settled place; to bring a dispute to a stop.
• حِكْمَة (ḥikma) — from here: the knowledge that holds one back from doing wrong.

The picture beneath the root, then, is not knowledge but a limit. In Arabic, to be wise is not to know much but to keep what one knows in its place. The work of the rein is not to stop the animal but to hold it on course.

A dispute about the pattern — a distinction the lexicographers record: the faʿīl pattern in Arabic can carry both the sense of an active participle and that of a passive participle.

Both are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. The common point is this: on either reading the word declares that there is no slackness — either in the one who speaks or in what is spoken.

In the discussion of Qāf 50/1 the fact that the answer to the oath is not given explicitly was treated as a problem, and four separate views were tabulated there.

In Yāsīn there is no such problem: the answer comes immediately after, in the third verse — innaka lamina'l-mursalīn, and with the lām that marks it as the answer clause (la-min).

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the subject matter of the two sūras: the subject of Qāf was the resurrection, and the oath pointed to an event that will come to pass; the first matter in Yāsīn is messengership itself. Because the answer to the oath is not an event but a standing, it can be stated.

Innaka lamina'l-mursalīn · ʿAlā ṣirāṭin mustaqīm

"You are indeed one of those sent. Upon a straight path."

The sentence carries three separate devices of emphasis, and for a short sentence this is extraordinary:

This is a verifiable accumulation. In Arabic the number of devices of emphasis rises with the resistance of the one addressed; the lexicographers grade this as ibtidāʾī (without emphasis), ṭalabī (a single emphasis) and inkārī (multiple emphasis). The sentence here is of the third grade — that is, an addressee who rejects is presupposed.

And the rest of the sūra bears this out: in the fifteenth verse the messengers will be told "you are only human beings like us", and in the sixty-ninth verse the rejection of a charge will come: "We did not teach him poetry."

A point of word order: the sentence does not say innaka rasūl ("you are a messenger"). It says lamina'l-mursalīn — "you are one of those sent".

That is, what is announced is not a singular attribute but inclusion in a body. Min here is partitive: part of a whole.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sūra's own story: thirteen verses later three messengers will come to a town, and they too will say innā ilaykum mursalūn (14) — with the same word. The sūra frames the Prophet's position not as an exception but as the continuation of an ongoing work. The place of the story in the sūra is prepared by this sentence.

The root ر-س-ل occurs in seven places in the sūra (3, 13, 14, 16, 20, 30, 52) and will be tabulated separately in the closing section.

صِرَاط — root ص-ر-ط. The lexicographers record the word's relation to the verb to swallow (saraṭa — to swallow): the wide road that takes the traveller in and swallows him. The word was treated in al-Fātiḥa; I do not repeat it here.

مُسْتَقِيم — root ق-و-م, the active participle of Form X: that which has straightened of itself, that which stands straight. Form X here conveys not a request but the acquiring of a state.

Word order: the particle ʿalā — "upon". The path is given not as a destination but as the ground one is standing on. The sentence has no verb; it is a nominal sentence. In Arabic the nominal sentence conveys continuity: not something set out on once but something stood upon.

A repetition inside the sūra — three times صراط:

All three occurrences can be verified. My own reading: the same word is used in the sūra first as a position (4), then as a definition (61), then as a supposition (66). And in the third the path is standing where it was — what is missing is not in the path but in the one looking.

Tanzīla'l-ʿAzīzi'r-Raḥīm · Li-tundhira qawman mā undhira ābāʾuhum fa-hum ghāfilūn

"The sending down of the Mighty, the Merciful. That you may warn a people whose fathers were not warned — for they are heedless."

The word is in the accusative, and its being in the accusative requires an implied element. The main explanations the lexicographers give:

A nominative reading (tanzīlu) is also transmitted in the sources on the variant readings; on that reading the word becomes subject or predicate and the sense comes to "this is the sending down of…". Since I am not certain of its details or of which authorities it belongs to, I name no names. The meaning comes out at the same place on either reading.

The pattern of the word is worth recording: tanzīl is the verbal noun of Form II. In Arabic this form can convey gradualness (tadrīj, doing something piece by piece, stage by stage) — as against inzāl (Form IV). The lexicographers record this distinction; but I do not claim that it operates everywhere, because the Qurʾān uses both patterns.

This matter was treated in Fuṣṣilat at 41/2, and a table was set up there: in the ḥā-mīm sūras the one who sends down is mostly named al-ʿAzīz al-Ḥakīm, whereas in Fuṣṣilat he is named al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm. The finding there was this: the pair of names changes with the subject of the sūra, and this is a verifiable difference.

I add the pair from Yāsīn to that table:

What is to be recorded is this: the pair in Yāsīn takes one name from each of the two ends of the table. Al-ʿAzīz from the side of power, al-Raḥīm from the side of mercy. This is a countable datum.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sūra's own arrangement: in Yāsīn the two sides stand side by side. In the seventh and ninth verses a state of being shut in will be described; in the eleventh verse forgiveness and a generous reward will be announced; in the fifty-eighth verse a peace will be given, and in the sixty-third a hell will be shown. From beginning to end the sūra holds the two scenes together, and the names of the one who sends down announce this from the first sentence.

One note: the same pair of names (al-ʿAzīz al-Raḥīm) also occurs as a recurring verse-ending in Sūrat al-Shuʿarāʾ. The pair, then, is not peculiar to Yāsīn; what is peculiar to Yāsīn is that the pair comes inside the sentence about sending down.

The meaning of the sentence depends on which mā the particle is, and this is one of the places where the classical commentaries dwell longest.

I do not impose a preference. But one observation can be recorded: the fa-hum ghāfilūn at the end of the sentence appears to support the first reading, because the fāʾ announces a consequence — "they were not warned, and so they are heedless." On the second reading the consequence the fāʾ attaches is weaker. This is an observation, not a preference; the defenders of the second and third readings explain the fāʾ otherwise.

And this must be recorded as well: the first reading does not mean "no messenger ever came to their fathers". It is widely said that the near forefathers are meant — that is, a period in which the warning was interrupted. The thirty-first verse will say "how many generations before them We destroyed"; the sūra does not presuppose a past without warning.

The concrete sense of the root: the absence of any mark upon a thing. The lexicographers describe the word ghufl as "unstamped, unmarked": arḍun ghuflun — land with no track or road upon it; dābbatun ghuflun — an unbranded animal.

From here comes the definition of ghafla: the state in which there is no mark for the attention to fall upon.

I record this as an observation, and it rests on the lexicographers' definition of the root: heedlessness is not ignorance. In ignorance there is no knowledge; in heedlessness the knowledge does not strike the attention. And the next verse of the sūra will describe exactly this: a word has come true, but "they do not believe"; then an obstacle to sight will be described.

The word closes the first block of the sūra and gives the block its closing sound: ghāfilūn.

Laqad ḥaqqa'l-qawlu ʿalā aktharihim fa-hum lā yuʾminūn

"The word has surely come true against most of them; so they do not believe."

The concrete sense of the root: a thing's settling into its place, coming to pass, becoming fixed. For ḥaqqa'l-amru the lexicographers give the definition "the matter became settled, became unavoidable". The root was analysed at length in al-Ḥāqqa; I do not repeat that record here.

What belongs here is the subject of the verb: al-qawl — the word.

It comes definite (al-), that is, a word whose identity is known. In the classical commentaries it is said that this is the sentence announced beforehand concerning those who persist in denial. The Qurʾān uses this pattern elsewhere too: at Fuṣṣilat 41/25, wa ḥaqqa ʿalayhimu'l-qawl — treated there in Fuṣṣilat.

A point of word order, and this is the most disputed place in the verse.

In Arabic the fāʾ announces consequence and sequence. The sentence is built in this order: the word came true → they do not believe.

Two different meanings have been drawn from this, and the exegetes differ:

I do not impose a preference. But two data internal to the text must be recorded, and both can be verified:

1. The verse says aktharihim (most of them) — not all of them. The sentence, then, has not been passed on the whole body. In the next block (11) the person on whom the warning does work will be described. The door has been left open. 2. The same root and the same word return in the seventieth verse: wa yaḥiqqa'l-qawlu ʿala'l-kāfirīn — and there the verb is not in the perfect but in the imperfect (muḍāriʿ, future or ongoing). The word, then, is named in the seventh verse as having come true and in the seventieth as coming true.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is these two data: the sūra says that a group has closed, but it gives that closing not as a declaration of destiny but as a statement of consequence — because it names the same word at the end of the sūra as a process still at work, and in between it describes whom the warning reaches.

And with this verse block II opens. The next two verses will be the description of the sentence "they do not believe".

Innā jaʿalnā fī aʿnāqihim aghlālan fa-hiya ila'l-adhqāni fa-hum muqmaḥūn · Wa jaʿalnā min bayni aydīhim saddan wa min khalfihim saddan fa-aghshaynāhum fa-hum lā yubṣirūn

"We have put collars on their necks, and those collars reach the chins, so their heads are forced up. We have set a barrier before them and a barrier behind them, and We have covered them over; so they do not see."

The root was analysed in al-Ḥāqqa (fa-ghullūh — "bind him"): ghull is the iron ring put on the neck or the hand, a shackle; its plural is aghlāl. And in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) at 40/71 the word was treated in this plural form (idhi'l-aghlālu fī aʿnāqihim wa's-salāsil). I do not repeat it here; I rely on that treatment.

What belongs here is a difference in the tense of the verses, and it can be verified:

In Yāsīn, then, the bond is not an instrument of punishment but the description of a present state. The word is the same, the scene different.

Dhaqan — chin. Its plural is adhqān. In the Qurʾān the word occurs at al-Isrāʾ 17/107 in the form yakhirrūna li'l-adhqāni sujjadan (they fall down upon their chins), and at 109 as yakhirrūna li'l-adhqāni yabkūn.

The description of the verse depends on where the word sits: the collar is on the neck, but it rises as far as the chin. A mass filling the space between neck and chin makes it impossible to bend the head forward.

The concrete use of the word has to do with the camel, and the lexicographers record this plainly:

• قَمَحَ البَعِيرُ — the camel would not drink the water and raised its head, drawing its mouth away from the water.
• أَقْمَحَ (Form IV) — to bring someone into this state; to hold the head up by force.
• مُقْمَح — the passive participle: one whose head has been forced up, who cannot bend forward.

A second branch of the root: qamḥ — wheat. The lexicographers record the two branches separately and do not agree on the relation between them. I issue no etymological ruling.

The whole of the description is this: a ring on the neck, the ring resting against the chin, the head fixed upward. Such a person cannot see what is in front of him, cannot look ahead, cannot see the ground he treads on. He looks upward — but looking upward here is not an ascent, it is a paralysis.

A point of word order: fa-hiya ila'l-adhqān — the pronoun hiya is feminine singular and refers back to aghlāl. In Arabic, non-rational plurals count as feminine singular. And two fāʾs come one after the other: *jaʿalnā … fa-hiya … fa-hum muqmaḥūn. Three stages, that is, are chained one to the next: the ring → its resting on the chin → the raising of the head.

One absence must be recorded: in Arabic aghlāl is generally used for the ring that binds the hand to the neck, and the verse does not mention the hand. In the classical commentaries it is widely said that the hands are meant as well; the wording of the verse does not say this. I transmit it; I issue no ruling.

The concrete sense of the root: to close an opening, a gap. Sadda'l-khurmata — he stopped up the hole. And the second branch of the root is worth recording: سَدَاد / سَدِيد — rightness, aptness. The lexicographers make the connection thus: a right word is a word that closes the place left open; an apt act is one that fills the gap.

Beneath the root, then, lies "closing what is open" — and the word can convey both praise and obstruction. I transmit this relation as the lexicographers frame it.

A variant reading — it affects the meaning:

Both readings are transmitted. Most of the lexicographers do not adopt this distinction and treat the two as synonyms. I do not impose a preference; I record it, because for those who do adopt the distinction the character of the barrier in the verse changes.

A point of word order, and it matters: the word saddan is spoken twice, separately — min bayni aydīhim saddan wa min khalfihim saddan. It could have been said with a single sadd, "before them and behind them". The repetition announces that the two barriers are set up separately.

To cover, to envelop, to overlay. Ghishāwa — the film over the eye (al-Baqara 2/7, wa ʿalā abṣārihim ghishāwa). Ghāshiya — that which covers over (al-Ghāshiya 88/1).

A third layer, then, is added. The description in full is three obstacles, and the three lie on three separate axes:

And the block ends with fa-hum lā yubṣirūn: "they do not see."

In Fuṣṣilat at 41/5 it was treated how the addressee counts off three obstacles in his own words: "Our hearts are within coverings, in our ears is a heaviness, and between you and us is a veil." The finding there was this: one of the obstacles is inside (the heart), one at the entrance (the ear), one in between (the veil); and it is the other side that says this — announcing its closedness not as a fault but as a statement of position.

These two places in the two sūras are two accounts of the same condition. A comparison table:

Two differences can be verified, and both must be recorded:

First: the speaker changes. In Fuṣṣilat it is the person himself who counts off the obstacles; in Yāsīn it is the narrator. The same closedness is stated once as a defence and once as a diagnosis.

Second: the sense changes. The axis of Fuṣṣilat is hearing — in that sūra the text arrives but does not get through, and in the twenty-sixth verse the words "do not listen, make noise" will be spoken. The axis of Yāsīn is sight — and the evidential section of the sūra (33-44) will call three times upon looking, saying "a sign for them".

I record this as my own reading: each sūra has chosen the sense that closes according to its own method of proof. Because Fuṣṣilat comes with a word, hearing closes; because Yāsīn comes with a sign, sight does.

The construction mā bayna aydīhim wa mā khalfahum occurs in several places in the sūra and in the index, and its work differs everywhere:

All three are verifiable textual data. My own reading: the same two directions become the object of three different operations — they are closed off, guarding against them is asked, they are decked out. And the two occurrences within Yāsīn itself run in opposite directions: in the ninth verse those two directions are closed, in the forty-fifth verse guarding against those two directions is asked of them. What is said to be closed is later named as a field of responsibility.

Wa sawāʾun ʿalayhim a-andhartahum am lam tundhirhum lā yuʾminūn · Innamā tundhiru mani'ttabaʿa'dh-dhikra wa khashiya'r-Raḥmāna bi'l-ghayb, fa-bashshirhu bi-maghfiratin wa ajrin karīm

"It is the same for them whether you warn them or do not warn them; they will not believe. You can warn only the one who follows the reminder and fears the Merciful unseen. Give him, then, the good news of forgiveness and a generous reward."

The sentence of the tenth verse is almost word for word the same as al-Baqara 2/6:

The difference lies in one thing alone: in al-Baqara the subject of the sentence is named at the outset (inna'lladhīna kafarū), in Yāsīn it is not named — because the subject had already been given in the preceding verse (aktharihim).

This is a verifiable commonality and can be used for the exegesis of the Qurʾān by the Qurʾān: this sentence was dwelt upon in the discussion of al-Baqara; I rely on that treatment. What belongs here is this: in Yāsīn the sentence comes after a description (8-9), in al-Baqara inside a classification.

سَوَآء — root س-و-ي: equality, equivalence. Istiwāʾ is from the same root. The word here does not mean "it makes no difference" but "the two possibilities carry equal weight".

Word order: a-andhartahum am lam tundhirhum — am here is the muʿādila, the am of equivalence: a link between two equal alternatives. It is close to the English "whether … or …".

And now comes the most important work of the verse: a limitation is set up with innamā (only).

What this sentence says is different from what it appears to say at first glance, and it must be read carefully. The sentence does not say "you can warn only these" — in the sixth verse of the sūra the Prophet was charged with warning a people, and in the seventieth verse the warning will still be going on.

What the sentence says is where the warning works. In Arabic a verb can be named by its outcome: tundhiru here means "you bring about the outcome of warning". The lexicographers and the exegetes record this distinction.

And two conditions are counted:

A point of word order: the first condition is an act (he followed), the second an inward state (he feared). And the order runs from outside inward. I record this as my own reading: the verse ties the measure neither to behaviour alone nor to feeling alone; it joins the two with a wāw and sets them side by side.

This construction occurs word for word in the same form at Qāf 50/33: man khashiya'r-Raḥmāna bi'l-ghaybi wa jāʾa bi-qalbin munīb.

In both places the same three elements are present: the verb khashiya, the name al-Raḥmān, the qualification bi'l-ghayb. This is a verifiable commonality.

خ-ش-ي — the root: a fear that rests on knowledge. The lexicographers distinguish khashya from khawf (fear): khawf is the fear felt in the face of danger, whereas khashya is the awe that arises from knowing the greatness of what is feared. The root has occurred in several places in the index; I do not repeat it here.

بِٱلْغَيْب — "without seeing". The bāʾ here announces a circumstantial state: the condition of the person. The awe, that is, is not towards something he sees.

And the choice of name is worth recording: al-Raḥmān. The one feared is named by the name of mercy. This was dwelt upon in the discussion of Qāf; I rely on that treatment.

A note within the sūra: al-Raḥmān occurs four times in Yāsīn, and the four are in four different mouths:

All four occurrences can be verified. My own reading: the same name occurs throughout the sūra in the mouth of the denier, of the believer and of the one raised alike. And those who deny use it inside the sentence of denial (15) — that is, they know the name; what they reject is the sending down.

Word order: fa-bashshirhu — the pronoun is singular. In the preceding clause man (whoever) had occurred; man is singular in form. The warning is directed to a body, the good news to one person. It is a difference of word order that can be recorded.

أَجْرٍ كَرِيم — root ك-ر-م. The lexicographers give the core of the root as "being the good of its kind, generosity". The adjective is used here of the reward: that what is given in return is of worth.

And it comes indefinite — maghfiratin, ajrin. The lexicographers explain this use of the indefinite as magnification (taʿẓīm): a quantity not stated, a limit not given.

Innā naḥnu nuḥyi'l-mawtā wa naktubu mā qaddamū wa āthārahum wa kulla shayʾin aḥṣaynāhu fī imāmin mubīn

"It is We who bring the dead to life, and We write down what they have sent ahead and the traces they leave behind. Everything We have counted up in a clear register."

A point of word order: innā already announces "we"; then comes naḥnu. In Arabic this is called the ḍamīr al-faṣl, the separating pronoun that comes between. Its function is restriction (qaṣr): to assign the act to that agent alone.

The sentence, then, announces not "we give life" but "giving life belongs to us alone".

And this matches the closing of the sūra: in the seventy-ninth verse it will be said "the One who brought them into being the first time will give them life". In the twelfth verse the assignment, in the seventy-ninth the ground for it.

Two things are recorded, kept apart from one another and joined with a wāw:

The root أ-ث-ر has been analysed in two places in the index, and I rely on those treatments:

• al-Aḥqāf 46/4 — athāratin min ʿilm ("a remnant of knowledge"): a crumb of knowledge left over from the past. The finding there: the demand is presented reduced to its minimum.
• Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) 40/21 — āthāran fi'l-arḍ ("traces in the earth"): the mark in stone left by past peoples. The finding there: those who had left marks in stone were destroyed too.

The core of the root: a trace, the mark that remains behind. Athar — a footprint; a report handed down; a remnant.

A table of three uses — all three treated in the index:

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the difference between these three uses: in al-Aḥqāf a trace was being asked for, in Ghāfir it was being said that a trace does not save, in Yāsīn the trace is written into the account. The same word, three different operations.

And the extent of āthār is not explained in the verse. It is widely transmitted that in the classical commentaries it is understood as the effects that continue after a person's death; concrete explanations such as the steps taken on the way to the mosque are also transmitted. I transmit the explanations; I do not add them to the wording of the verse: the wording says only āthārahum.

My own reading: the verse does not end the range of what enters the record with the person's lifetime. Mā qaddamū comes to a stop while āthār continues. And the direction of the two words is opposite: one is sent ahead, the other left behind.

إِمَام — root أ-م-م: to intend, to head towards; and to be in front. Umm — mother (the original, that to which one returns); umma — a body turned in one direction; imām — what is placed in front, what is looked to.

What the word is here is disputed:

I do not impose a preference. The common point can be verified: on all three readings the word announces a document that is consulted and followed — not a "ledger" but an "original".

أَحْصَيْنَٰهُ — root ح-ص-ي. The lexicographers connect the root with the pebble (ḥaṣā): the Arabs used pebbles in counting, and from this comes iḥṣāʾ — to count through one by one until the count is exhausted. The word is not "to record" but "to finish the counting".

I record this as an observation: the verb of recording (naktubu) and the verb of counting (aḥṣaynā) come one after the other, and the second is in the past tense. The writing is going on; the counting is named as finished.

And block II closes: fī imāmin mubīn — the first of the sūra's six occurrences of mubīn.

Wa'ḍrib lahum mathalan aṣḥāba'l-qaryati idh jāʾaha'l-mursalūn · Idh arsalnā ilayhimu'thnayni fa-kadhdhabūhumā fa-ʿazzaznā bi-thālithin fa-qālū innā ilaykum mursalūn

"Strike for them the parable of the people of the town, when the messengers came to it. We sent two to them, and they called them both liars; so We reinforced them with a third, and they said: 'We are messengers sent to you.'"

This has to be written first and plainly: the verse does not name the town, does not name the messengers, does not give the time.

Various names are transmitted in the classical commentaries, and these reports differ from one another; some rest on narratives regarded as Isrāʾīliyyāt, some on reports from a later period. In this commentary:

• No name is given for the town.
• No report is transmitted about who the messengers were.
• The names transmitted for the man who came running are not given.

The ground is the text itself, and it can be verified: the verse says "strike for them a parable" — mathal. The work of the narrative, that is, is not to give a historical record but to show a situation. When the names are not given the narrative loses nothing; that it loses nothing shows that the names are not part of the narrative.

This is an interpretation, and I record it as my own reading. But withholding the names is not an interpretation; it is what the state of the knowledge requires: there is no certain knowledge.

The sense of the root: likeness, being equivalent; and setting a thing up opposite. Muthūl — to stand upright, to stand in someone's presence; timthāl — an image. Mathal — a case set in front for comparison.

And the construction must be recorded: ḍaraba mathalan — "to strike a parable". In Arabic the verb ḍarb in this construction means "to set down, to put forward". The lexicographers explain it by likening it to the striking of coin (ḍarbu'd-darāhim): pressing a die into a material.

A repetition inside the sūra — and it has turned around:

The same verb, the same object, two different agents. In the thirteenth verse striking a parable is a charge; in the seventy-eighth it is a matter of accusation — because there a man sets out from his own crumbled bone and passes judgement about God. This repetition is a countable datum and will be taken up again in the closing section.

The town is called al-qarya in the thirteenth verse and al-madīna in the twentieth. This is a verifiable change of word.

ق-ر-ي — the sense of the root is to gather, to bring together. Qarā'l-māʾa fi'l-ḥawḍ — he gathered the water in the basin. And from the same root قِرَى (qirā) — the receiving of a guest, that is, gathering the guest in and feeding him. Qarya — the place where people are gathered. The root has occurred in Muḥammad.

م-د-ن — the relation of the root to dayn/dīn (ديـن) is disputed among the lexicographers; some explain madīna as "a governed place, a place under rule". The lexicographers do not agree on this explanation; I issue no etymological ruling. The common rendering of the word: a settled, ordered city.

Is there a point to the change? In the classical commentaries this is generally counted as stylistic variation. I record this as an observation and issue no ruling: the word changes precisely in the sentence in which the man comes from a distance — min aqṣa'l-madīna. To speak of the "farthest part" of a place presupposes that the place has boundaries and a centre. Madīna is the word that carries that measure.

عَزَّزَ — root ع-ز-ز. The core sense of the root is hardness and invincibility: arḍun ʿazāz — hard, stone-solid ground. From here ʿizza (invincibility) and ʿazīz (the one who prevails, who is not overcome).

Form II, taʿzīz: to strengthen a thing, to reinforce it, to make its rear secure.

The choice of word is worth recording: the verse does not say "We sent a third"; it says "We reinforced them with a third". The third messenger, that is, is not a new beginning but a support set behind the first two.

And this matches the first word of the verse: in the fifth verse the one who sends down had been named al-ʿAzīz — the same root. In the sūra ع-ز-ز occurs twice: at 5 and at 14. One is an attribute of the one who sends down, the other the reinforcing of the messengers. It is a verifiable connection; I do not claim that it establishes a point, I record it.

In the thirteenth verse, al-mursalūn — definite and plural. How many they were is not said. In the fourteenth verse, ithnayni — two people, then thālithin — a third.

The number, then, is not given first but afterwards. And the word order follows the order of the event: two went, they were called liars, a third was added. The narrative begins knowing the outcome but gives the event in sequence.

And a change of agent must be recorded: arsalnā — the sender is "We". The messengers did not come on their own account. This will determine what the objection in the fifteenth verse strikes against.

فَقَالُوٓا۟ إِنَّآ إِلَيْكُم مُّرْسَلُونَ — and the three speak together: innā ilaykum mursalūn. The very word used of the Prophet in the third verse (al-mursalīn / mursalūn). The sūra builds its own story with the word of its own opening sentence.

Qālū mā antum illā basharun mithlunā wa mā anzala'r-Raḥmānu min shayʾin in antum illā takdhibūn · Qālū rabbunā yaʿlamu innā ilaykum la-mursalūn · Wa mā ʿalaynā illa'l-balāghu'l-mubīn

"They said: 'You are only human beings like ourselves; the Merciful has sent down nothing. You are doing nothing but lying.' The messengers said: 'Our Lord knows that we are indeed messengers sent to you. Nothing lies upon us but the plain delivery of the message.'"

The other side says three separate things, and the three are of separate kinds:

A point of word order: all three sentences are in the pattern of restriction (ḥaṣr) — mā … illā, mā … min, in … illā. All three sentences, that is, say "only"; none of them leaves a possibility open.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is this threefold pattern: the objection asks no question. It builds three closed sentences. And precisely for that reason the argument does not grow in what follows — it turns into a threat (verse 18).

This objection is recorded many times in the Qurʾān, and the way it is recorded in Yāsīn is worth recording: the messengers do not reject it.

The answer given to the same matter at Fuṣṣilat 41/6 was treated there: qul innamā anā basharun mithlukum yūḥā ilayya — "I too am only a human being like you; it is revealed to me." There, that is, the premise of the objection is accepted and the ground is shifted.

The same move is made in Yāsīn, but more briefly: the messengers do not claim not to be human. The only thing they say is that they have been charged — innā ilaykum la-mursalūn.

My own reading: both texts take the argument out of the messenger's kind and carry it over to his charge. For the objection in fact states not a proof but an expectation: a messenger ought to have been of another kind. And an expectation has no evidential value — the very distinction set up for "astonishment" in Qāf at 50/2 is at work here.

A point of word order, and it matters: the messengers do not swear. They say rabbunā yaʿlamu — "our Lord knows".

The sentence does the work of an oath but is not one: it produces a witness. And the witness produced is the witness the other side does not accept.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the structure of the sentence: the messengers do not produce a proof. The other side said "you are lying"; the messengers do not say "here is the evidence", they say who it is that knows. And immediately afterwards they draw the boundary of their responsibility.

ب-ل-غ — the root: a thing's arriving at the place it is going to. Bulūgh — maturity (the body's arriving at the point it is going to); balāgha — a word's arriving fully at its aim. Balāgh — the act of delivery itself.

The work of the word is worth recording: balāgh is the delivering of the word, not the getting of it accepted. Where the act ends is the word's arrival at the one addressed.

ٱلْمُبِين — not one of the sūra's six occurrences of mubīn; here it comes definite, al-mubīn, and it is an attribute of balāgh. The delivery, that is, must also be plain: a delivery that cannot be understood does not count as delivery.

I record this as an observation: the sentence limits the responsibility from two sides at once. From above: they are not responsible for the outcome. From below: the delivery is required to be plain. The responsibility is neither widened nor lifted.

Qālū innā taṭayyarnā bikum, la-in lam tantahū la-narjumannakum wa la-yamassannakum minnā ʿadhābun alīm · Qālū ṭāʾirukum maʿakum, a-in dhukkirtum, bal antum qawmun musrifūn

"They said: 'We have met with ill omen through you. If you do not stop, we will surely stone you, and a painful punishment from us will surely touch you.' The messengers said: 'Your omen is with you. Is it because you have been reminded? No — you are a people who go beyond all bounds.'"

The concrete sense of the root is to fly. Ṭāʾir — a bird; ṭayr — birds. The root has occurred in al-Mulk and al-Wāqiʿa (the flight of birds, the use lāgha'ṭ-ṭayru); I do not repeat the basic analysis of the root.

What belongs here is the word in Form V: taṭayyara — to take as an ill omen. And behind this lies a documented Arab custom.

The custom is this, and the historians and the lexicographers record it: before setting about a task or setting out on a journey, a bird would be startled up and the direction of its flight watched.

This was called zajr al-ṭayr (the startling of the bird). And this business, born of putting a bird to flight, turned in the end into a word used with no bird left in it for taking anything whatever for a bad sign. This is what the English "ill omen" answers to.

The pattern must be recorded: Form V (tafaʿʿul). In Arabic this form most often conveys a person's taking something upon himself, appropriating it to himself. Taṭayyur, that is, is not ill fortune coming to a person but a person's counting something ill-omened. The subject of the verb is the one who does the reading.

And the messengers' answer presses on exactly this point.

The answer takes the word of the objection and changes its place. They said taṭayyarnā bikum — "we met with ill omen through you", that is, the cause is outside. The messengers say ṭāʾirukum maʿakum — "your bird is with you", that is, the cause is inside.

A point of word order: in both sentences the same root, but the particle changes: bāʾ (which announces cause) → maʿa (which announces accompaniment). With the change of one particle the responsibility changes place. This can be verified from the text.

And the choice of word must be recorded: the messengers do not use an abstract word, they use the other side's own word. The argument is carried on inside the other side's vocabulary.

The saying to messengers "you have brought ill fortune" is recorded in three separate stories in the Qurʾān:

All three are verifiable textual data. My own reading: the same move is repeated in three separate stories, and its structure is always the same: there is a hardship, and the newcomer is pointed to as the cause of the hardship. This is a move that produces no proof but ends the argument — because once the person named as the cause has been removed, the claim never gets tested.

The concrete sense: to throw stones, to stone. Rajm — stoning. And the second branch of the root: to revile, to drive off, to banish. Al-Shayṭānu'r-rajīm — the banished Satan.

In which sense in the verse? The lexicographers record both possibilities: actual stoning or stoning with words (grave insult). I do not impose a preference. But an observation: in the continuation of the sentence a ʿadhābun alīm (painful punishment) is named separately. Since the two are counted separately, rajm and ʿadhāb must be two different things — this appears to support the first sense. It is an observation, not a preference.

Word order: la-in lam tantahū — the protasis; la-narjumannakum — the apodosis, strengthened with the heavy nūn of emphasis (nūn al-tawkīd al-thaqīla). And the second clause with the same nūn: la-yamassannakum. Both threats are in the heaviest pattern of emphasis.

نَتَهُوا۟ / تَنتَهُوا۟ — root ن-ه-ي: to reach the last limit of a thing; from here nahy (prohibition) and, in Form VIII, intihāʾ — to desist, to bring to an end. "If you do not stop" — that is, what is asked for is the breaking off of the speech.

This expression is the most disputed place in the verse, because the sentence is not completed.

The structure: hamza (interrogative) + in (conditional) + dhukkirtum (the verb of the condition). The apodosis of the condition is not stated.

All three supplied readings are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. The common point can be verified: in all three the condition is the same — dhukkirtum, "you have been reminded."

The choice of word is worth recording: the messengers name their own work "reminding". The root is ذ-ك-ر. What comes, that is, is described not as new information but as the setting in front of what has been forgotten. And this is the same root as ittabaʿa'dh-dhikra in the eleventh verse.

Different readings of this word are transmitted in the sources on the variant readings (dhukkirtum / idhdhakkartum and the like). Since I am not certain of the details I give no names and no particulars; the difference in meaning is not fundamental.

The concrete sense: to pass the limit in something, to overstep the measure. In English extravagance is used only of spending; in Arabic the root announces overstepping the bound in every domain.

And the diagnosis must be recorded: the messengers do not call the other side "liars" or "ignorant". They say musrif — one who goes beyond the bound.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sense of the word: the diagnosis is not about the other side's state of knowledge but about its state of measure. The problem is not not knowing but not stopping where one should stop. And this agrees with the content of the eighteenth verse: to a word a threat of stoning has been given in return — the disproportion is plain.

Word order: bal — the particle of iḍrāb. This particle was treated in Qāf at 50/2: leaving what precedes and passing to the real matter. So here: the question is broken off midway and the diagnosis is laid down.

Wa jāʾa min aqṣa'l-madīnati rajulun yasʿā, qāla yā qawmi'ttabiʿu'l-mursalīn · Ittabiʿū man lā yasʾalukum ajran wa hum muhtadūn

"And from the farthest part of the city a man came running and said: 'O my people! Follow the messengers. Follow those who ask of you no reward and who are rightly guided.'"

The verse says four things, and all four are built on indefiniteness:

His name is not given. His trade, his age, his standing are not given. The only information about position that is given is a distance: aqṣā — farthest.

أ-ق-ص-ى / ق-ص-و — the root: distance. Qaṣā — he went far off; aqṣā — the elative: farthest. The word also occurs in the Qurʾān in the construction al-masjid al-aqṣā (al-Isrāʾ 17/1).

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the word itself: the man comes not from the centre but from the edge. The part of the city that decides, argues and threatens is in the middle; this person joins it on foot, from outside. And after he has said his say he is on his own again — no one joins him.

The concrete sense of the root: to walk fast, to go at a pace close to running. The root has occurred in many places in the index (al-Nāziʿāt, al-Jumuʿa, al-Layl and others); I do not repeat its basic analysis.

Two things belong here:

First — the second branch of the root: saʿy is at the same time "to work, to exert oneself". Wa an laysa li'l-insāni illā mā saʿā (al-Najm 53/39). The word, that is, announces both the speed of the body and the effort of the will. The lexicographers record this doubleness.

Second — word order: rajulun yasʿā — an imperfect verb serving as an attribute to an indefinite noun. In Arabic the imperfect verb announces continuity and liveliness. The man is introduced not as one who "had come" but as "a man coming at a run". The verb is still going on in the scene.

My own reading: running is the sign of being aware of lateness. The verse does not describe the man's intention; it describes his speed — and how much a person cares about a matter usually shows in the pace at which he goes to it.

The man's first word is yā qawmi — "O my people".

A point of word order: not qawmī but qawmi; the yāʾ at the end (the first-person pronoun) has been dropped and a kasra left in its place. In Arabic this elision is common in the vocative and announces closeness.

And the word itself must be recorded: the man says to them not "O people" but "O my people". He counts the body he has stepped in front of as his own body. This is the key to the whole story, and it will return in the twenty-sixth verse — there too he will say qawmī.

The argument the man builds is the most striking piece of the story, and its structure should be examined.

The man does not prove that the messengers are telling the truth. He gives a measure: lā yasʾalukum ajran — "they ask no reward of you."

The property of this measure is this, and it can be verified: the other side cannot test the messengers' word — because the word concerns the hereafter. But it can test the messengers' interest, because that is something visible. The man puts forward what can be tested.

And the word order supports this: the sentence is built twice with the imperative ittabiʿū — at 20 ittabiʿu'l-mursalīn (follow the messengers), at 21 ittabiʿū man lā yasʾalukum ajran (follow those who ask no reward). The second sentence is not a repetition of the first but its ground. The same command is given a second time with an attribute.

I record this as my own reading: the man advances in two steps. First he names them as messengers — he states his own acceptance. Then he names the same people with an attribute the other side too can accept. The argument, that is, comes down to common ground.

A point of word order — a shift of number: man lā yasʾalukum (singular verb), then wa hum muhtadūn (plural pronoun). In Arabic man can be singular in form and plural in sense; the sentence follows the form first and the sense afterwards. The lexicographers call this ḥamlu'l-lafẓ and ḥamlu'l-maʿnā. This is not an error but a settled usage.

مُهْتَدُون — root ه-د-ي, the active participle of Form VIII: one who has found the way. Form VIII here announces a state realised in the person himself. And note: not hādūn (those who guide) but muhtadūn (those who have found the way). The man names the messengers not as people who direct others but as people who themselves stand in the right place.

Wa mā liya lā aʿbudu'lladhī faṭaranī wa ilayhi turjaʿūn · A-attakhidhu min dūnihī ālihatan in yuridni'r-Raḥmānu bi-ḍurrin lā tughni ʿannī shafāʿatuhum shayʾan wa lā yunqidhūn · Innī idhan lafī ḍalālin mubīn

"And why should I not serve the One who brought me into being? — and to Him you will be returned. Shall I take gods besides Him? If the Merciful wills harm for me, their intercession will avail me nothing and they cannot rescue me. Then I would indeed be in plain error."

The man does not say to his people "why do you not serve?" He builds both sentences upon himself:

• Wa mā liya lā aʿbudu — "what is it to me that I should not serve?"
• A-attakhidhu — "shall I take?"
• Innī idhan lafī ḍalālin mubīn — "then I would be in plain error."

All three sentences are in the first person singular. This is a verifiable datum of word order.

And its consequence is this: the man does not accuse his people. He does not condemn what they do, he does not lay a verdict on them. He conducts a piece of reasoning upon himself, and they listen to it.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the pronouns: had the same reasoning been built as "why do you do this?", the other side would have gone on the defensive. Built in the first person there is nothing to defend — the listener does not hear a verdict about himself, he hears a person reckoning his own account. And if the reasoning holds, the listener draws the conclusion himself.

And precisely for this reason the twenty-fourth verse is striking: "then I would be in plain error." The man uses the word "error" only of himself — and this should be compared with the place in the forty-seventh verse where those who deny will use the same word of the believers (taken up below).

And now comes the most important point of word order in the sūra.

The sentence begins in the first person singular — faṭaranī ("brought me into being"). And the same sentence ends in the second person plural — wa ilayhi turjaʿūna ("and you will be returned to Him").

In Arabic the shift in the direction of address is called iltifāt. Here the iltifāt is made inside a single sentence, with no break at all.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is this transition: the man builds the proof upon himself but leaves the conclusion to them. The subject of the sentence is "I", its target "you". And he does this not in the language of accusation but with a subordinate clause — what is said is slipped in almost like a reminder.

And these two words — وَإِلَيْهِ تُرْجَعُونَ — are the last two words of the sūra. The eighty-third verse ends with this clause. The sentence spoken by the man in the story, that is, becomes the closing sentence of the sūra. This is the clearest internal repetition in the sūra and will be taken up separately in the closing section.

The concrete sense of the root: to split, to cleave lengthwise. Faṭara — he split. Its derivatives show the direction of the root:

• فُطُور — a rift, a crack. al-Mulk 67/3: hal tarā min fuṭūr — "do you see any crack?" (treated in al-Mulk).
• إِفْطَار — to break the fast, that is, to split open a closedness.
• فِطْرَة — the state in which one is first split out; the original creation.
• فَاطِر — the one who splits out, who brings into being for the first time.

The root has occurred in al-Infiṭār, al-Mulk, al-Shūrā and al-Mursalāt; I do not repeat its basic analysis.

What belongs here is this: the man names God not by a known name but by the relation He has with him — alladhī faṭaranī, "the One who split me out / brought me into being." The proof, that is, begins with a personal datum: with his own existence.

And the sūra will repeat this at the close: in the seventy-seventh verse it will be said "has man not seen that We created him from a drop?", and in the seventy-eighth "and he has forgotten his own creation". The man in the story is the one who does not forget; the man at the close is the one who forgets. Both are looking at the same datum. I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the shared subject of the two places.

Word order: a-attakhidhu — an istifhām inkārī (a question that conveys denial): no answer is expected, an impossibility is announced.

And a condition is set up inside the sentence: in yuridni'r-Raḥmānu bi-ḍurr — "if the Merciful wills harm for me."

The choice of name is worth recording and is striking: the willing of harm is attached to the name al-Raḥmān. The man could have used "God" or some other name. He uses the name of mercy.

I record this as an observation: the sentence says, without distinguishing them, that mercy and harm belong to the same will. And this agrees with the pair al-ʿAzīz al-Raḥīm in the fifth verse of the sūra — there too the two sides were named together in a single sentence.

شَفَٰعَة — root ش-ف-ع: to make what is odd even. Shafʿ — even; witr — odd (the two occur together at al-Fajr 89/3, treated in al-Fajr). Shafāʿa — to join oneself to someone as a second, not to leave him alone.

The picture in the word is worth recording: intercession is standing beside a person. And the verse says this will not happen: lā tughni ʿannī shafāʿatuhum shayʾan — "their standing beside me will gain me nothing."

ٱلْغَنِى / تُغْنِ — root غ-ن-ي: a thing's leaving no need for anything else. Lā tughnī — "it does not meet the need, it does not suffice."

وَلَا يُنقِذُونِ — root ن-ق-ذ: to pull a thing out of danger, to rescue. Inqādh — rescue. And note: the yāʾ at the end of the verb has been dropped (yunqidhūnī → yunqidhūn), for the sake of the verse-ending. The same elision occurs in the twenty-fifth verse too (fa'smaʿūn).

A repetition inside the sūra: the same root returns in the forty-third verse — wa lā hum yunqadhūn (of those who drown). Both occurrences can be verified: one is what the man says of himself, the other what is said of those who drown at sea. In both, the absence of anyone to rescue is announced.

Innī āmantu bi-rabbikum fa'smaʿūn

"I have believed in your Lord; so hear me."

The most striking word in the sentence is rabbikum, and it is required by the word order.

The man does not say "I have believed in my Lord". He says "I have believed in your Lord".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the pronoun: the man ascribes the being the other side rejects to them all the same. What he has believed in, that is, he names not as a choice belonging to himself but as a reality whose owner they are too. The same attitude was there at the beginning of the story: he had said to them not "O people" but "O my people". In both places the pronoun of belonging shows not separation but a share held in common.

There are two views about the addressee of the sentence:

Both views are found in the classical commentaries. I do not impose a preference.

But one datum internal to the text can be recorded: all the speech before this sentence (20-24) is addressed to his people — yā qawmi, ittabiʿū, turjaʿūn. There is no sign of a change of addressee. This appears to support the first view. It is an observation, not a preference.

The yāʾ at the end of the verb has been dropped: ismaʿūnī → fa'smaʿūn. The same elision as yunqidhūn in the twenty-third verse. This elision, made for the sake of agreement with the verse-ending, is seen twice in this part of the sūra (faṭaranī preserved, yunqidhūn and fa'smaʿūn shortened).

And the content of the command is worth recording: "hear me." What is asked for is not acceptance but hearing. The man is not asking them to believe — he is asking them to hear what he says.

This matches the messengers' sentence in the seventeenth verse: wa mā ʿalaynā illa'l-balāghu'l-mubīn — "nothing lies upon us but delivery." The messengers ask for delivery, the man asks to be heard. Neither asks for the outcome. I record this overlap as my own reading; its ground is that both sentences ask for the process and not the result.

The man's speech ends here, and it lasted six verses (20-25). I record a count:

The order can be verified and carries a design: call → ground → proof → elimination of the alternative → conclusion → declaration. The declaration of faith is placed last. My own reading: the man builds the reasoning first and discloses himself last. The weight of what he says, that is, is attached not to who he is but to the reasoning he has built.

Qīla'dkhuli'l-jannata qāla yā layta qawmī yaʿlamūn · Bimā ghafara lī rabbī wa jaʿalanī mina'l-mukramīn

"'Enter the garden,' it was said. He said: 'If only my people knew — how my Lord has forgiven me and made me one of those who are honoured.'"

The most striking thing about the verse is what it does not say.

The text does not tell what happened to the man. In the twenty-fifth verse he was speaking; in the twenty-sixth it is said "enter the garden". The event in between is not in the text.

It is widely transmitted in the classical commentaries that the man was killed by his people, and there are reports differing from one another about the manner of his death. In this commentary:

• That he was killed is a piece of information not present in the wording of the verse. I record that it is widely transmitted; I do not present it as a datum belonging to the verse.
• I do not enter into the reports about the manner of his death.

In Arabic the deliberate skipping of a part of a narrative is called ṭayy, and the lexicographers record it as a device of style.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the text's own gap: what the story skips shows what the story is not about. What is recounted is not what befell the man but what the man said. And the first sentence he says makes no mention at all of what befell him.

Word order: qīla — passive. The one who speaks is not named.

And there is no connective at all between the two clauses: qīla'dkhuli'l-jannata · qāla yā layta qawmī yaʿlamūn. In Arabic this is called faṣl — juxtaposition without a connective; it is generally used when the second clause is the direct answer to the first.

The answer, that is, comes without delay. "Enter the garden" was said — and the first thing he said was about his people.

لَيْتَ — the particle of wishing. In Arabic layta is mostly used for a wish that is not expected to be realised (laʿalla for one that is). The lexicographers record this distinction.

And both sides of the wish must be recorded:

First — for whom: qawmī — "my people". In the twentieth verse he had said yā qawmi; here he uses the same word again. The event that came in between — whatever it was — has not changed the pronoun of belonging. This can be verified from the text.

Second — what they are to know: bimā ghafara lī rabbī wa jaʿalanī mina'l-mukramīn — his being forgiven and his being honoured.

Counting what is absent from the wish makes what is present visible:

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the wording of the wish: the man wants not his people's punishment but their knowing. And what he wants to make known is not that he was in the right but the treatment he has received. What he wants is that they should understand that they too could receive the same treatment — because what he reports is not a victory but a forgiveness.

ك-ر-م — the root: being the good of its kind; generosity, worth.

And the pattern matters: mukram — a passive participle, from Form IV. Not "one who is worthy", that is, but "one to whom honour is shown".

I record this as an observation: the man counts no attribute for himself. Both verbs belong to God: ghafara lī (He forgave me), jaʿalanī (He made me). There is not one verb in the sentence of which the man is the subject.

And its link with the eleventh verse can be verified: there it had been said fa-bashshirhu bi-maghfiratin wa ajrin karīm — forgiveness and a karīm reward. Here the same two things are named as having come about: ghafara lī and mina'l-mukramīn. The same two roots, fifteen verses apart, once as promise and once as fulfilment. This is a countable repetition within the sūra.

In Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) at 40/28-44 the man who gives that sūra its name was treated: a man of Pharaoh's household, concealing his faith, unnamed, addressing his people as yā qawmi, standing alone. The findings there were these: his argument is a dilemma that covers both possibilities; he does not exclude the other side; the longest uninterrupted speech in the sūra belongs to him; and his speech ends with wa ufawwiḍu amrī ila'llāh.

The two stories come out of the same mould and must be compared. Every row of the table below can be verified from the two texts:

Three differences must be recorded in particular:

First — the places they come from are opposite. The man of Ghāfir speaks from within: he is of Pharaoh's household, his word carries weight, his risk comes from his position. The man of Yāsīn comes from outside: he is from the farthest part of the city, his word carries no weight, his risk comes from his defencelessness. The two stories give the same attitude as it appears in two different positions.

Second — their ends are opposite. The man of Ghāfir is protected, and this is written plainly. The man of Yāsīn is not protected; what is given him in return is shown in another place. I record this as my own reading: read together, the two stories show that the recompense of a true word has no single form. The Qurʾān recounts the same attitude with two different outcomes and counts both legitimate.

Third — the direction of their last sentences is opposite. The man of Ghāfir commits his affair upward: ufawwiḍu amrī ila'llāh. The man of Yāsīn turns his word back, towards his people: yā layta qawmī yaʿlamūn. One lets the outcome go, the other is still delivering the message.

And the shared point is more striking than the differences: neither of them has a name. In both sūras the person who builds the longest and most orderly argument is the person who is not named. I record this as an observation; its ground is that neither text gives a name.

Wa mā anzalnā ʿalā qawmihī min baʿdihī min jundin mina's-samāʾi wa mā kunnā munzilīn · In kānat illā ṣayḥatan wāḥidatan fa-idhā hum khāmidūn

"After him We sent down upon his people no army from the sky, nor were We going to send one down. It was but a single cry; and all at once there they were, gone out like a fire."

Root ج-ن-د. The lexicographers give the concrete sense of the root as hard, stony ground (janad); jund — a massed, close-packed crowd; from here, army.

A point of word order: the sentence is built as a negation, and it is negated twice:

• Wa mā anzalnā… min jund — We did not send down.
• Wa mā kunnā munzilīn — nor were We going to send down.

The second clause is not a repetition of the first. The first announces an event, the second an attitude: mā kunnā + the active participle negates continuity in Arabic, in the sense "this is not Our practice".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is this two-layered negation: the verse does not merely say that no army was sent down; it says that such a thing would be out of proportion. No army is needed to bring the people of one town to an end. And disproportion was precisely the diagnosis directed at the other side in the nineteenth verse of the story: musrifūn — those who go beyond the bound. Where the sūra condemns disproportion it keeps the measure in its own narrative too. This is an interpretation.

A repetition inside the sūra: the word jund returns in the seventy-fifth verse — wa hum lahum jundun muḥḍarūn. Both occurrences can be verified: one the army not sent down from the sky, the other the army named in the discussion of the gods that are taken up. In both the word announces a crowd that is of no use.

ص-ي-ح — the root: to shout aloud, to cry out. The root was analysed in Qāf at 50/42 (yawma yasmaʿūna'ṣ-ṣayḥata bi'l-ḥaqq), and what was recorded there was this: the Qurʾān uses this word in scenes of destruction — of Thamūd, of Madyan and of other peoples it is said "the cry seized them". I do not repeat it here.

What belongs here is the threefold repetition within the sūra. This is one of the clearest internal repetitions in Yāsīn:

And this must be recorded as well: the first five words of verses 29 and 53 are exactly the same — in kānat illā ṣayḥatan wāḥidatan. After that they part: one ends with khāmidūn (gone out), the other with muḥḍarūn (brought present).

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is this exact repetition: the same sentence once ends and once begins. The sūra recounts the end and the beginning with the same sound. And the qualification wāḥida (a single one) stands in all three — no repetition is needed.

The concrete sense of the word has to do with fire: khamadati'n-nār — the fire went out, its flame died down, though its ash is still hot. The lexicographers distinguish khumūd from ikhmād: khumūd is the dying down of the flame, ikhmād is extinguishing.

And the choice of word is worth recording: the verse does not say "they died". It says "they went out".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the picture in the root of the word: going out is not a thing's ceasing to exist — it is the end of its burning. The town is standing, the people are standing; the motion has ended. And for the noise of a crowd the simile of fire has been chosen: what makes a sound while it burns and falls silent when it goes out.

And this agrees with the preceding verse: no army was sent down, because what was to be put out was a flame in any case.

Yā ḥasratan ʿala'l-ʿibād, mā yaʾtīhim min rasūlin illā kānū bihī yastahziʾūn

"Alas for the servants! No messenger ever comes to them but they mock him."

A point of word order, and it has a place of its own in Arabic.

Yā is the particle of calling, and it normally requires an addressee who can be called. What is called here is a feeling: ḥasra.

The lexicographers call this nidāʾ majāzī and explain it thus: to announce the intensity of a state, that state is called as though it were a being that could be called. What is implied is: "O regret! If you have a time to come, this is exactly that time."

There are similar usages in the Qurʾān — yā waylanā (36/52), yā ḥasratā ʿalā mā farraṭtu fī janbi'llāh (al-Zumar 39/56). The second is directly the same word.

The concrete sense of the root: to lift a covering, to strip off, to lay bare.

• حَاسِر — one left bare-headed, without a helmet (unprotected in battle).
• انْحَسَرَ — it drew back, it receded (of the sea going out).
• حَسِير — an animal broken down with exhaustion; whose strength is spent.

The root was treated in al-Ḥāqqa and recorded there as the doubleness of "stripping / regret"; it has occurred in al-Mulk too (yanqalib ilayka'l-baṣaru khāsiʾan wa huwa ḥasīr). I do not repeat it here.

What belongs here is this: ḥasra is the third branch of the root, and it derives from the first two. Regret is the state that appears when the lifting of the covering and the spending of one's strength come together: the person sees, but there is nothing left he can do. The word carries within it both the knowledge side and the power side of the feeling of "if only".

The owner of the regret is not stated in the sentence, and the exegetes differ:

I do not impose a preference.

And a caveat of transcendence must be entered — the caveat kept consistently across the index holds here too: states such as regret, sorrow and remorse cannot be ascribed to God in a way that would imply deficiency. Two attitudes are transmitted in the classical commentaries for expressions of this kind: to accept the wording as it stands and leave its manner to God (tafwīḍ), or to interpret it as a mode of expression (taʾwīl). I transmit both; I do not impose a preference.

A choice of word that must be recorded: in speaking of those who mock, the verse does not call them al-kāfirūn or al-mukadhdhibūn. It says al-ʿibād — "the servants".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the word itself: what is regretted is not their enmity but their being servants. The attribute may change, that is, but the belonging does not. And this agrees with the attitude of the man in the story: he too had called them qawmī.

Word order: mā … illā — the pattern of restriction. And the verbs are imperfect: yaʾtīhim, yastahziʾūn. In Arabic the imperfect announces a repeated and ongoing event.

The sentence, then, recounts not an event but a rule. And min rasūlin — indefinite, in a negative context: "no messenger at all".

My own reading: here the story stops being the history of a single town. In the twenty-ninth verse a people had gone out; the thirtieth verse ties this to a general rule; and the thirty-first will open it out onto history. The sūra widens the story in three steps: one town → all messengers → all generations.

The concrete sense: to make light of a thing, to laugh at it with contempt. Form X (istihzāʾ) here announces not a request but a person's counting a thing to be so — istahzaʾa bihī: he counted him worth mocking.

Worth recording: the verse gives the reaction the name not of denial but of mockery. And the standing of mockery before evidence is the same as in the table set up for "astonishment" in Qāf at 50/2: mockery rests on no premise, cannot be argued with, cannot be falsified. It makes its subject not what is said but the one who says it. And precisely for that reason it produces no answer.

Alam yaraw kam ahlaknā qablahum mina'l-qurūni annahum ilayhim lā yarjiʿūn · Wa in kullun lammā jamīʿun ladaynā muḥḍarūn

"Have they not seen how many generations before them We destroyed? They do not return to these. And all of them, gathered together, will be brought present before Us."

Qarn, root ق-ر-ن: to bind together, to yoke side by side. Qirān — the joining of two things; qarīn — a close companion (qarīn was treated in Qāf); qarn — an animal's horn (what is joined to the head).

From here comes the sense of qarn as a body of people: people who lived at the same time and are bound to one another — a generation.

The rendering "century" settled on the word later; the usage in the Qurʾān runs towards generation. The lexicographers differ over its length; I give no definite figure.

The parsing of the sentence, and therefore its meaning, is disputed:

I do not impose a preference. The common point can be verified: on all three readings what is announced is that there is no return.

And the word is the spine-root of the sūra: ر-ج-ع. A table of the five occurrences was given in the section on structure. This is the second occurrence of the root and the first negative one.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the distribution within the sūra: in the twenty-second verse the man had said "you will be returned to Him" — there is a return, but its direction is upward. In the thirty-first it is said "they do not return to these" — there is no going back. The sūra sets the two sentences nine verses apart and they complete one another: there is a return, but not to where it began.

This sentence is one of the most disputed places of parsing in the sūra, and two readings are transmitted:

Both readings are transmitted, and I record them, because they change the parsing entirely. But there is no difference in meaning: the first reading reaches the same result by way of restriction (only), the second by way of emphasis (surely). I do not impose a preference.

The root: to be present, to be in a place. Ḥāḍir — present; ḥaḍar — settled life (as against bedouin life).

And the pattern must be recorded: muḥḍar — a passive participle, from Form IV. Not "one who is present" but "one who is brought present" — that is, one who is brought. The verb is passive; who brings them is not said.

A repetition inside the sūra — three occurrences:

The three words in verses 32 and 53 are exactly the same: jamīʿun ladaynā muḥḍarūn. This is a verifiable repetition.

My own reading: the section of the story (block III) closes with this sentence, and the section on the resurrection is built with the same sentence. The sūra ties the outcome of the story and the outcome of the resurrection to the same words — that is, the story is set down not as an account of the past but as the same outcome seen in advance.

And a detail of word order: ladaynā — "with Us". The word announces a narrower nearness than ʿinda, and the lexicographers record this: ladā covers being in someone's presence; ʿinda covers belonging as well. What is chosen here is the word that announces presence.

Wa āyatun lahumu'l-arḍu'l-maytatu aḥyaynāhā wa akhrajnā minhā ḥabban fa-minhu yaʾkulūn

"A sign for them is the dead earth: We brought it to life and brought grain out of it, and of that they eat."

This construction occurs three times in the sūra and marks the three parts of block IV. This is a verifiable structural datum:

A point of word order: in all three sentences the predicate is brought forward (āyatun lahum) and the subject comes after (al-arḍ, al-layl, annā ḥamalnā). In Arabic the bringing forward of an indefinite predicate announces the drawing of attention to importance (ihtimām), and the lexicographers record this. Moreover an indefinite word is not normally permitted to be a subject; bringing the predicate forward resolves that difficulty as well.

And the word itself must be recorded: āya — "sign". Not a proof, but a sign. A sign exists not for itself but for what it points to. This was dwelt upon in Fuṣṣilat at 41/37: there, immediately after the sun and the moon are named as āya, prostration to them is forbidden, because "a sign exists for what it points to." I rely on that treatment.

The same proof was treated in Fuṣṣilat at 41/39, and the word used there was different: annaka tara'l-arḍa khāshiʿatan fa-idhā anzalnā ʿalayha'l-māʾa'htazzat wa rabat — "you see the earth with its head bowed; when We send down water upon it, it stirs and swells." The finding there was this: the word khāshiʿa is generally used in the Qurʾān of human beings, and here it is given to parched ground; three words build a process: bowed → stirred → swelled.

Yāsīn chooses another word: al-mayta — dead.

The comparison of the two sūras shows that the choice of word depends on the subject of the sūra:

Two differences can be verified, and both must be recorded.

First: because Yāsīn is a sūra of the resurrection it uses the word for death directly — al-mayta, aḥyaynā. The words are the words of the discussion of resurrection. Fuṣṣilat, whose axis is communication, gives the earth a human state (khāshiʿa) instead.

Second, and more striking: Fuṣṣilat draws the conclusion explicitly, Yāsīn does not. Fuṣṣilat says "the One who brought it to life will surely bring the dead to life". Yāsīn says that the dead earth was brought to life and ends the sentence with bread: fa-minhu yaʾkulūn.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is how the two verses end: Yāsīn does not state the proof, it shows it. The one addressed is already eating the grain that comes out of the dead earth; the verse gives him no information, it names what he already holds. And the sense that closed at the beginning of the sūra was sight (fa-hum lā yubṣirūn, 9). The evidential section returns to the same sense.

Root ح-ب-ب. Ḥabba — a grain, a seed. And from the same root comes ḥubb (love); the lexicographers explain the connection by the picture of "the kernel of the heart". I transmit this relation as the lexicographers frame it, not as a definite etymological ruling.

The choice of word is worth recording: the verse does not say "plant" or "crop", it says "grain". A grain is both the thing eaten and the beginning of the next plant — that is, it carries its own repetition inside itself. I record this as an observation; the verse does not work this detail out, it only uses the word.

Word order: fa-minhu yaʾkulūn — the fāʾ announces a consequence, and minhu is brought forward. The fronting draws attention to "the source of what they eat".

Wa jaʿalnā fīhā jannātin min nakhīlin wa aʿnābin wa fajjarnā fīhā mina'l-ʿuyūn · Li-yaʾkulū min thamarihī wa mā ʿamilat-hu aydīhim, a-fa-lā yashkurūn

"In it We made gardens of palms and vines, and We made springs gush forth in it — that they might eat of its fruit. Their hands did not make it. Will they not then give thanks?"

The sense of the root is to cover — the verb janna means "it covered, it hid"; janīn (covered in the womb), jinn (what is not seen), junna (a shield) and majnūn are from the same root. The root has been analysed in a great many places in the index (al-Wāqiʿa, Qāf, al-Jinn and others); I do not repeat it here.

What belongs here is the worldly use of the word. In saying "garden" the sūra here means not the garden of the hereafter but a garden in this world — the place where trees cover the ground. And in the fifty-fifth verse the same word will be used of the hereafter (aṣḥāba'l-janna). The sūra uses the word in both senses; this is a verifiable datum and is the word's natural breadth in Arabic.

Palms and vines are named together, as this pair, many times in the Qurʾān. Both are plants that grow in the surroundings of the one addressed, that require labour, and that yield seasonal produce.

And one link within the sūra must be recorded: nakhīl (palms) occurs here; in the thirty-ninth verse the dried branch of the same tree will be likened to the crescent moon — ka'l-ʿurjūni'l-qadīm, the old, dried stalk of a date cluster. Both occurrences can be verified: the same tree is named once with its fruit and once with its dried branch. I record this as an observation; I do not claim that the sūra makes the connection deliberately.

The concrete sense: to split, to split open and make flow. Fajara'l-māʾa — he split the water open, made it gush. And from the same root:

• فَجْر — dawn: the light that splits the darkness of the night.
• فُجُور — the splitting of a moral limit.

The root was treated in al-Fajr, al-Shams and al-Infiṭār; I do not repeat it here.

What belongs here is the pattern. Fajjarnā — Form II, and this form announces multiplicity and intensity. Not a single splitting, that is, but in many places. And the object is mina'l-ʿuyūn — with the partitive min: "some of the springs", that is, an unstated number.

عُيُون — the plural of ʿayn. And the doubleness of the word is worth recording: in Arabic ʿayn is both "eye" and "spring". The lexicographers explain the connection by the picture of water flowing. Since this section of the sūra is built upon sight the word is striking — but I make no point of it, I record the word's doubleness.

The meaning of the sentence again depends on the particle mā, and the exegetes differ:

Both readings are found in the classical commentaries. I do not impose a preference.

The upshot of the two readings differs, and this must be recorded:

• On the first reading the verse puts human labour outside the proof: what you eat is not of your making.
• On the second reading the verse takes human labour into the favour: both what comes of itself and what comes by the work of the hand.

One datum internal to the text can be recorded, and this is not to take a side in the disagreement: the same construction returns in the seventy-first verse — mimmā ʿamilat aydīnā ("of what Our hands have made"). The same verb and the same noun in both verses, but two different hands.

This repetition is a countable datum. And the caveat of transcendence entered in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) at 40/7 in the discussion of the Throne holds here too: expressions such as aydīnā cannot be understood as ascribing a limb or a body to God; two attitudes are transmitted in the classical commentaries (tafwīḍ and taʾwīl). I transmit both; I do not impose a preference.

This question occurs twice in the sūra, both times after an enumeration of favours:

Both occurrences can be verified. And there are two more questions in the same pattern in the sūra, but with different verbs: a-fa-lam takūnū taʿqilūn (62) and a-fa-lā yaʿqilūn (68).

The distribution of the four questions shows a design, and I record this as an observation:

The sūra, that is, ties two different verbs to two different subjects: before a favour, thanks; before a fact, reason. This is an interpretation; its ground is where the four questions stand.

ش-ك-ر — the lexicographers dwell on the concrete sense of the root: shakarati'd-dābba — the animal grew fat on little fodder. In the root, that is, there is "making a little look like much, giving back more than was received". From here, thanksgiving: the making visible of what has been received.

Subḥāna'lladhī khalaqa'l-azwāja kullahā mimmā tunbitu'l-arḍu wa min anfusihim wa mimmā lā yaʿlamūn

"Glory be to the One who created all the pairs — of what the earth brings forth, of themselves, and of what they do not know."

The root س-ب-ح has been analysed in many places in the index (al-Aʿlā, al-Wāqiʿa, al-Ḥashr and others): the core sense is to swim away in water or in space, and from there tanzīh — to hold God far from everything unbefitting. I do not repeat it here.

What belongs here is the word's place in the sūra. The construction Subḥāna'lladhī occurs twice in Yāsīn, and both are turning points:

Both occurrences are in the same pattern: subḥāna + alladhī + a verbal or adjectival clause. And in both the word kull is present: al-azwāja kullahā (36) and kulli shayʾ (83). This is a verifiable overlap.

I record this as my own reading: the sūra says the glorification twice and at two different breadths — once for all the pairs, once for everything. The second contains the first. And both are sentences of comprehension; the glorification comes, in this sūra, after a whole that admits no limit.

Word order: subḥāna is in the accusative and is counted the absolute object of an elided verb (with usabbiḥu tasbīḥan understood). The lexicographers record that the word is frozen in this pattern.

A correction is needed about the sense of the word, because the usual English rendering is misleading.

In Arabic zawj is not "a pair" but one member of a pair. Each of two spouses, that is, is separately a zawj. The two together make zawjān (two singles). The lexicographers record this plainly: zawj — a single thing that has beside it its like or its opposite.

The root has occurred in many places in the index (al-Wāqiʿa, Qāf, al-Raḥmān, al-Nabaʾ and others); I do not repeat its basic analysis.

What belongs here is the extent of the word in this place. Al-Azwāj is plural and is followed by kullahā (all of them) — that is, the extent is left at its widest.

Two readings are transmitted for the extent of the word:

I do not impose a preference. The second reading has a ground internal to the text, and it must be recorded: mimmā tunbitu'l-arḍ — "of what the earth brings forth." That "pair" is said of plants shows that the word cannot be reduced to an animal mating alone.

This is the most striking place in the verse, and it must be handled carefully.

The sentence counts three sources and joins them with the particle min:

The third item comes in the same grammatical structure as the first two — the same min, the same mā. It is counted, that is, as a member of the list, with full standing. But its content is not given.

This is seen elsewhere in the Qurʾān too: at al-Naḥl 16/8 it is said "and He creates what you do not know".

And now a caveat of method must be entered — per the method (Method) and plainly:

This verse is one of the places most often used for claims of scientific miracle. Filling the third item with this or that fact known today is a widespread interpretation. This commentary does not take that road. The ground is the text itself:

The verse has deliberately left the third item unfilled. To fill it with the knowledge of any period destroys the work the verse plainly does — because the moment it is filled, the item ceases to be "what they do not know".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the structure of the sentence: the verse places the limit of knowledge not outside the proof but inside it. It does not say "you do not know these things, so be silent"; it says "what you do not know is part of the same order too". The force of the proof comes not from the content of the third item but from its having been left empty: the extent of the order is not bounded by the knowledge of the one who knows.

And this does not happen only here in the sūra. Yāsīn leaves a list open in three separate places:

All three occurrences can be verified. My own reading: in three separate contexts — creation, favour, recompense — the sūra does not close the extent. And in all three, what is not closed is that the extent is not measured by the knowledge of the one addressed.

تُنۢبِتُ — root ن-ب-ت: a plant's coming out of the ground. The verb is in Form IV (anbata) and its subject is al-arḍ — "what the earth brings forth". The lexicographers record: the earth is the means of the bringing forth; the verse gives the subject to the earth, but the sentence as a whole begins with glorification, so the real agent has already been named.

Wa āyatun lahumu'l-laylu naslakhu minhu'n-nahāra fa-idhā hum muẓlimūn

"A sign for them too is the night: We strip the day off it; and all at once there they are, left in darkness."

The concrete sense of the root belongs to the butcher's trade, and the lexicographers record this without hesitation:

• سَلَخَ الشَّاةَ — he flayed the sheep, separated the skin from the carcass.
• سَلَّاخ — a flayer, a butcher.
• مَسْلُوخ — flayed.
• سَلَخَ الشَّهْرُ — the month came to its end, ran out (the same picture: a husk being drawn off to the last).
• إِنْسِلَاخ — a snake's sloughing of its skin.

The picture beneath the word, then, is this: a covering drawn off a body whole and in one piece.

And now the word order of the verse must be recorded, because it is the reverse of the usual.

The sentence is built thus: al-laylu — the night is the sign. Naslakhu minhu'n-nahār* — the day is what we strip off it.

This is a verifiable datum of word order, and it is the reverse of the usual picture. In everyday speech the day is the body and the night is its withdrawal. The verse builds the opposite: the night is the body, and the day is what has been drawn over it and taken off again.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the direction of the verb: in the verb salkh what is drawn off is the skin and what remains is the body. If what remains once the day is drawn off is the night, then what is permanent is the night. And this determines the work of the proof: the one addressed counts the day as the ordinary case; the verse shows the day as something added. To show that what is counted ordinary is temporary is what the sūra has been doing all along.

A note: the Qurʾān recounts the relation of night and day elsewhere with other verbs too — covering, winding, bringing one after the other. The verb Yāsīn chooses is the most concrete of these. I record this as an observation; I do not build a claim that the sūra has made a deliberate choice.

Idhā fujāʾiyya — the second occurrence in the sūra. A table of the six occurrences was given in the section on structure.

مُظْلِمُون — root ظ-ل-م, the active participle of Form IV: those who have entered into darkness. The verb is ascribed to them — not "it grew dark" but "they were left in the dark".

The root ظ-ل-م has occurred in many places in the index (Nūḥ, al-Insān, al-Qalam and others), and the second branch of the root — ẓulm, wrongdoing — was treated there. The lexicographers make the connection as "putting a thing somewhere other than where it belongs"; and darkness is light's not being where it belongs. I transmit this relation as the lexicographers frame it; I do not repeat it here.

And a point of word order must be recorded: the verb muẓlimūn is used of people. The verse, that is, recounts not the darkening of the sky but people's being left in the dark. The sign is not what happens in the sky but what happens to a person.

Wa'sh-shamsu tajrī li-mustaqarrin lahā, dhālika taqdīru'l-ʿAzīzi'l-ʿAlīm

"And the sun runs on to a resting place appointed for it. That is the measure set by the Mighty, the Knowing."

This verse is one of the places in the Qurʾān where claims of scientific miracle have been produced most abundantly. Interpretations that draw this or that finding of modern astronomy out of the verse are widespread.

Per the method (Method) and plainly: this commentary does not take that road. The grounds:

1. The verse's own proof is not a piece of astronomical information. The second half of the sentence says so: dhālika taqdīru'l-ʿAzīzi'l-ʿAlīm — "this is a measure." The proof is not how the sun moves but that its movement is measured. 2. For the one addressed the sign is the order visible to the eye. The verse does not report a fact unknown to the one addressed; it names a fact he knows. In the thirty-third verse the dead earth, in the thirty-seventh the night — all of them were things seen. 3. The wording of the verse does not require any particular cosmological model, and because it does not require one it cannot count as the confirmation of any model.

Below I give the sense of the word and transmit the classical explanations. Modern correlations are one point of view; they are not the proof of the verse, and they are kept within that caveat.

The concrete sense: to flow. The flowing of water is expressed with this root. And the root's second use belongs to seafaring: الجَوَارِي (al-jawārī) — ships that run along. The Qurʾān uses this word of ships.

The choice of word is worth recording: the verse does not say "turns" or "walks", it says "runs". To run announces a movement that is unbroken and keeps on of itself — without a halt.

And two verses later the same field will come back: in the fortieth verse yasbaḥūn (they swim) will be said of the heavenly bodies, and in the forty-first fulk (ship) will come. Three times the sūra recounts the movement of the heavenly bodies in the language of water: it runs, it swims, and immediately after, the ship. This is a verifiable lexical field.

The root: to stay fixed in a place, to settle, to come to rest. Qarār — settledness; al-qarr — cold (air that stands still in a place). The root was treated in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) at 40/39 (dāru'l-qarār).

The pattern of the word here comes from Form X, and in Arabic this pattern can be three different things. This is a grammatical datum:

All three are grammatically possible, and the exegetes divide along these three possibilities.

The table below is an inventory of what is transmitted; it is not a list of preferences.

All five explanations are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. The common point can be verified, and it is what really needs to be recorded: on all five the running is not aimless. All of them announce a limit, a goal or an order. The second half of the verse already says this.

A reading in the form lā mustaqarra lahā is transmitted in the sources on the variant readings — "there is no resting place for it", that is, it runs without ever stopping.

This reading is not counted among the readings transmitted by mass transmission. I record it, because it reverses the meaning; but I issue no ruling upon it and do not go into the details of whom it is ascribed to.

The concrete sense of the root is to measure. Qadara'sh-shayʾa — he measured a thing, determined its quantity. Qadr — quantity, measure. Miqdār — a measuring instrument, or the quantity measured.

The Form II verbal noun taqdīr: the act of setting the measure, of determining.

And a repetition within the sūra must be recorded: the next verse begins with the same root — wa'l-qamara qaddarnāhu manāzil (39). Two verses in a row with the same root, one a noun and one a verb. This is a verifiable repetition.

I record this as my own reading: read together, the two verses say the setting of the measure separately for the sun and for the moon, and with the same word. The proof is not the movement itself; it is that the movement is bound to a measure.

In the fifth verse the sūra had named the one who sends down as al-ʿAzīz al-Raḥīm; here the same attribute comes with another partner: al-ʿAzīz al-ʿAlīm.

This should be read together with the table set up in Fuṣṣilat at 41/2: there the pair of Ghāfir 40/2 was al-ʿAzīz al-ʿAlīm — the same pair as Yāsīn 36/38.

My own reading: al-ʿAzīz occurs twice in the sūra, and in each its partner changes. The sending down is paired with mercy, the measure with knowledge. And al-ʿAlīm will return twice more towards the end of the sūra (79, 81) — both times in the discussion of creation. The distribution of the attribute is a verifiable datum.

Wa'l-qamara qaddarnāhu manāzila ḥattā ʿāda ka'l-ʿurjūni'l-qadīm

"And the moon — We have appointed stations for it, until it comes round again like an old dried date-stalk."

There is a difference of case between the two verses, and it can be verified:

On the accusative reading the structure Arabic calls ishtighāl is at work: with wa qaddarna'l-qamara qaddarnāhu understood, the verb is present both covertly and overtly. A nominative reading (wa'l-qamaru) is also transmitted in the sources on the variant readings; on that reading the sentence takes the same structure as the thirty-eighth verse. I give no names; the difference in meaning is not fundamental.

An observation: on the accusative reading what comes to the fore is that something is done to the moon (qaddarnāhu — We appointed for it), whereas on the nominative reading the moon is recounted in its own right. This is an observation; it is not a preference.

Manzil — a place one comes down to; the halting place where a traveller stops. Its plural is manāzil. The root also occurred in the sūra in the forms tanzīl (5) and munzilīn (28) — in the sūra ن-ز-ل appears in three different derivatives.

The background of the word is concrete and must be recorded: the Arabs followed the moon's positions in the sky, called them manāzil al-qamar, and reckoned the seasons, the times of rain and the times for travel by these positions. The verse, that is, uses a word belonging to a calendar system the one addressed himself used.

This determines how the verse is to be understood: manāzil is not a concept foreign to the one addressed — it is the name of his own calendar. The proof is built not from an unknown fact but from a measure used every day.

عُرْجُون — the stalk of a date cluster that remains on the branch after the fruit has been taken off. As it dries it grows thin, turns yellow and takes on a curve.

ٱلْقَدِيم — root ق-د-م: to go before, to grow old. Here: old, with time gone over it. That is, drier still and thinner still.

The picture the simile gives: a thin, yellowish, curved sliver — that is, the crescent.

And the material of the simile must be recorded, and this is the most striking side of the verse: a heavenly body is likened to the dried branch of a tree in the courtyard of the one addressed.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is what the thing is likened to: in recounting the sky the sūra reaches not upward but downward. The evidential section had begun with dead earth and continued with a palm grove; now the moon is recounted with a piece of the tree in that grove. Earth and sky are spoken of with the same vocabulary.

And the link inside the sūra can be verified: in the thirty-fourth verse nakhīl (palm trees) was named — in its fruit-bearing state. In the thirty-ninth the same tree is named — with its dried branch. Two occurrences five verses apart, in two different ages of the tree. I record this as an observation.

Word order: ḥattā — a particle announcing a goal; ʿāda — a perfect verb, "it returned, it came back".

The choice of verb is worth recording: ʿāda — not "it became" but "it returned". The crescent, that is, is not an end the moon arrives at but a beginning it comes back to. The word carries the cycle inside itself.

And the perfect tense is used — although the event is a recurring one. In Arabic the perfect is used for recurring events as well, in order to announce certainty; the lexicographers record this.

La'sh-shamsu yanbaghī lahā an tudrika'l-qamara wa la'l-laylu sābiqu'n-nahār, wa kullun fī falakin yasbaḥūn

"Neither may the sun overtake the moon, nor can the night outstrip the day. Each swims in an orbit."

The core sense of the root: to want, to seek, to go after. Baghā — he wanted, he sought. And the second branch of the root: to overstep the bound, insolence — baghy. The lexicographers make the connection thus: to want a thing too much leads to crossing the limit.

Form VII (inbighāʾ) turns the direction of the root: yanbaghī — to be fitting, to be seemly, to lie within the possible.

And two readings are transmitted for the sense of the word here:

Both are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. And the common point can be verified: on either reading what is announced is a limit.

This verb occurs twice in the sūra, and both times it announces a limit. This is one of the most striking internal repetitions in Yāsīn:

Both occurrences can be verified. I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sharing of the verb: the sūra uses the same verb once for the order of the sky and once for the kind to which the revelation belongs. In the fortieth verse the sun cannot enter the moon's field; in the sixty-ninth the Qurʾān does not enter the field of poetry. What is said in both sentences is the same: everything has a field of its own, and the fields do not mix.

The concrete sense: to catch up, to come up from behind and seize. Adraka — he caught up, he reached. And from here إِدْرَاك (idrāk) — to grasp: the mind's catching up with a thing. The lexicographers record this connection. The root has occurred in al-Qalam.

The picture in the sentence, then, is a chase — and the verse does not say that the chase comes to nothing; it says that there is no chase.

A point of word order, and it must be recorded: the first clause was built with a verb (yanbaghī lahā an tudrika), the second is built with a noun (sābiqu'n-nahār — an active participle in a construct).

In Arabic the nominal sentence announces continuity and fixity. The second clause, that is, does not say "the night does not outstrip the day"; it says "the night is not an outstripper of the day" — that is, it has no such attribute, and never has had.

I record this distinction as an observation about word order.

The exegetes differ over what the sentence announces:

All three are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. The common point: the keeping of a limit.

The sense of the root: roundness, turning.

• فَلْكَة — the round weight at the head of a spindle; and the round of the knee.
• فَلَك — that which turns, that which is round; the circle a heavenly body follows.
• فُلْك — ship. The same root.

The lexicographers record that fulk and falak come from the same root and explain the connection by the picture of floating/turning on water. I transmit this relation as the lexicographers frame it, not as a definite etymological ruling.

And the link inside the sūra can be verified and is striking: in the fortieth verse falak, in the forty-first fulk. Two verses in a row, the same root, two different words — one in the sky, one at sea. I record this as an observation; I do not claim that the sūra sets up a deliberate play on words. What I record is that two derivatives of the root have been used one after the other.

And a caveat of method — per the method (Method): no modern model of orbits and no particular astronomical structure is drawn out of the word falak. The lexical sense of the word is "that which turns / that which is round", and that is the information the verse gives. Correlations beyond this are one point of view and are not the proof of the verse.

س-ب-ح — this root has been analysed in many places in the index: the core sense is to swim away in water or in space. I do not repeat it here.

There is a detail of word order that belongs here, and the lexicographers record it: the verb has come in the form yasbaḥūn — that is, the sound masculine plural, the plural form used in Arabic for rational beings. For non-rational plurals tasbaḥu would have been expected.

This usage is seen elsewhere in the Qurʾān too — for instance at Yūsuf 12/4, where the prostration of the stars is recounted, the form for rational beings is likewise used. The lexicographers record this as a style in which inanimate things are treated as rational.

I record this as a grammatical datum; I issue no ruling upon it.

And the choice of verb is worth recording: yasbaḥūn — "they swim." In the thirty-eighth verse tajrī (it runs) had been said of the sun. Both verbs belong to a liquid element. This section of the sūra recounts the sky in the language of water, and in the next verse it will pass to real water, to the ship. This transition can be verified.

Wa āyatun lahum annā ḥamalnā dhurriyyatahum fi'l-fulki'l-mashḥūn · Wa khalaqnā lahum min mithlihī mā yarkabūn

"A sign for them too is that We carried their offspring in the laden ship. And We created for them, of the like of it, things that they ride."

The third and last sign of the block. The first two were events of nature (the earth, the night); this third is a human making — or so it appears. And precisely for that reason the word order changes: in the first two the sign was a noun (al-arḍ, al-layl); here it is a clause (annā ḥamalnā — "our carrying").

The sign, that is, is not the ship but the being carried. This is a verifiable difference of word order.

This is the most disputed place in the verse, and there is no certain knowledge.

ذ-ر-ر / ذ-ر-و — the lexicographers differ over the sense of the root: dharr (a small particle, to scatter) or dharw/dharā (to winnow, to spread). I issue no definite etymological ruling. Dhurriyya — the line that spreads out from someone.

All three are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. And I write plainly that there is no certain knowledge: the verse does not mention Noah, gives no name of an event, states no time.

One observation can be recorded: the verse says ḥamalnā (We carried) — the agent is not the ship. Whichever ship it may be, that is, what the verse says is who the carrier is. The disagreement does not change the work of the verse.

The concrete sense: to fill or load a vessel or a vehicle to the brim. Shaḥana's-safīnata — he loaded the ship. Mashḥūn — a passive participle: filled to bursting.

The second branch of the root is worth recording: شَحْنَاء (shaḥnāʾ) — rancour, enmity. The lexicographers explain the connection by the picture of "being full inside": rancour is the state of a breast that has been filled. I transmit this relation as the lexicographers frame it.

And the choice of adjective is worth recording: the ship is described not as "large" or "sound" but as laden. My own reading: being laden announces that the ship's carrying capacity is used to the limit — that is, the weight of the load. And that is exactly the work of the verse: a heavy load standing on water.

The verse says one thing more but does not name it: min mithlihī mā yarkabūn — "of the like of it, things that they ride."

The exegetes differ over what this is:

All three are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.

And this must be recorded: the verse does not name. This is the third open list in the sūra — together with mimmā lā yaʿlamūn in the thirty-sixth verse and fī shughulin in the fifty-fifth.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is what these three places share: where the sūra does not close the extent, it does not take the knowledge of the one addressed as its measure. And in this verse the withholding of a name does work: the expression "of the like of it" says that the ship is an instance of a kind; the members of the kind are not enumerated.

And a caveat of method: filling this opening with today's means of transport is a widespread interpretation. This commentary does not carry out that filling — the wording of the verse gives no list, and because it gives none it cannot count as the confirmation of any list. This is the same caveat as the one entered at the thirty-sixth verse.

Wa in nashaʾ nughriqhum fa-lā ṣarīkha lahum wa lā hum yunqadhūn · Illā raḥmatan minnā wa matāʿan ilā ḥīn

"If We willed, We would drown them; then they would have no one to answer their cry, nor would they be rescued — except as a mercy from Us and an enjoyment for a time."

A point of word order, and it determines the whole work of the block: across three verses the ship was recounted as a favour. The forty-third verse puts that same ship inside a conditional clause: wa in nashaʾ nughriqhum.

The verse, that is, does not take the favour back; it says that the favour depends on a permission.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the conditional particle: in Arabic in is for a condition that is possible but not certain. The sentence is not a threat but a statement of dependence: to stand upon the water is a permission renewed at every moment.

ص-ر-خ — the root: to shout aloud, to cry out for help. Ṣurākh — a cry.

And the pattern of the word here (faʿīl) is open to two senses at once; the lexicographers record both:

The context requires the second sense: fa-lā ṣarīkha lahum — "there is no ṣarīkh for them", that is, there is no one who runs to their aid. The lexicographers prefer the second sense in this construction; I record it.

And the doubleness of the word is worth recording in itself: the same word announces both the one who calls and the one who comes. The lexicographers attribute this to the word's being built on a sound: the one who shouts and the one who answers the shout are the two ends of one event.

The root ن-ق-ذ occurs for the second time in the sūra. In the twenty-third verse the man who came running had said: wa lā yunqidhūn — "[those gods] cannot rescue me." Here: wa lā hum yunqadhūn — "they are not rescued."

Both can be verified. And the difference of pattern must be recorded: the first is active (they cannot rescue), the second passive (they are not rescued). My own reading: in the first sentence the one who cannot rescue is named; in the second the one who might rescue is not named at all. In the story a candidate had been eliminated; in the evidential section there is not even a candidate.

غ-ر-ق — the root: to sink into water, to drown. Ighrāq — to sink something. The word occurs often in the Qurʾān in the stories of Noah and Pharaoh.

Word order: illā here is counted an istithnāʾ munqaṭiʿ; that is, what is excepted is not of the same kind as that from which it is excepted. Ṣarīkh and inqādh are one kind, raḥma another. The lexicographers record that in this case illā comes to mean "but, only" — the same structure was treated in al-Wāqiʿa at 56/25-26; I rely on that treatment.

The sentence says this, then: there is no rescuer who saves — what saves is mercy.

My own reading: the verse does not deny the rescue, it changes its source. It says there is no help and then names the help.

م-ت-ع — the root: to take enjoyment of a thing, to benefit from it; and a thing's stretching out and lasting. Matāʿ — the thing enjoyed; household goods, provisions. The word is used often in the Qurʾān of the life of this world — it occurred in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) at 40/39 in the form innamā hādhihi'l-ḥayātu'd-dunyā matāʿ and was treated there. I rely on that treatment.

حِين — an unspecified term. Ilā ḥīn — "until a time." The length is not stated.

And that the block ends with this word is worth recording: block IV counted three signs — earth, sky, ship — and closed all of them with a time-limited qualification. My own reading: the evidential section counts the favours and at the end says that all of them are bound to a term. And the next block begins exactly from here: in the forty-fifth verse it will be said "guard against what is before you and what is behind you" — that is, be aware of the term.

Wa idhā qīla lahumu'ttaqū mā bayna aydīkum wa mā khalfakum laʿallakum turḥamūn · Wa mā taʾtīhim min āyatin min āyāti rabbihim illā kānū ʿanhā muʿriḍīn

"When they are told, 'Guard against what is before you and what is behind you, that you may be shown mercy'… No sign of the signs of their Lord comes to them but they turn away from it."

A point of word order, and this is the most striking place in the verse.

The forty-fifth verse begins with a conditional clause: wa idhā qīla lahum… — "when they are told…". And the answer to the condition is not given. Without the sentence being completed, the text passes to the forty-sixth verse.

The exegetes explain this thus: the answer has been elided and the next verse stands in its place — that is, "they turn away". In Arabic the dropping of the answer is common where the indication is plain; the same rule was mentioned in Qāf at 50/1 in the discussion of the answer to the oath.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the comparison of two verses — and this comparison can be verified within the sūra:

The two verses begin with the same pattern: wa idhā qīla lahum. Both report a command. But to one no answer at all is given, and to the other a detailed answer is given.

This is a countable difference. And my own reading is this: the call to guard concerns an inward matter, and what answers it is silence — there is nothing to argue about, one merely turns away. The call to spend concerns the hand, and what answers it is objection. The sūra shows which call produces speech: the one in which something is asked of a person.

What the construction announces is disputed:

All four are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.

And a contrast within the sūra must be recorded — this is the verse's most important link:

In the ninth verse those same two directions had been closed: wa jaʿalnā min bayni aydīhim saddan wa min khalfihim saddan — a barrier before them and behind them. In the forty-fifth verse they are asked to guard against those same two directions: ittaqū mā bayna aydīkum wa mā khalfakum.

These two occurrences can be verified. And I record this as my own reading: the sūra also names as a field of responsibility the very place it says is closed. Read together, the two verses show that the description in the ninth verse is not a declaration of incapacity — because a command is still being given for the same direction. A command presupposes that the one addressed can carry it out. Verses sixty-six and sixty-seven will support this reading further (taken up below).

The concrete sense of the root: to put a shield in front of a thing, to protect. Wiqāya — a shield, a protection. Form VIII, ittiqāʾ: to protect oneself, to take something as one's shield.

The root was treated in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) at 40/21 (mā kāna lahum mina'llāhi min wāq — they had no protector) and at 40/45 (fa-waqāhu'llāh — God protected him). I rely on that treatment.

What belongs here: the object of the verb. Ittaqū mā bayna aydīkum — what is to be guarded against is not a thing but a direction. The verse does not say "guard against such and such", it says "guard against what will come from that side".

Laʿalla — the particle of hope. And the verb is passive: turḥamūn — "you are shown mercy."

Worth recording: what guarding earns is given not as a right but as a hope; and the agent of the mercy is not named. The verse, that is, does not set up an equation: guarding does not make mercy necessary, it opens onto it.

The concrete sense of the root: a thing's turning broadside, standing sideways. ʿArḍ — breadth (as against length). Form IV, iʿrāḍ: to turn the face away — to turn one's side to someone, not to stand facing him.

The picture in the word is worth recording, and I give it as the lexicographers record it: turning away is not opposing. The one who opposes turns his face and argues; the one who turns away turns his side and does not speak.

And the word order generalises: mā taʾtīhim min āyatin min āyāti rabbihim illā kānū ʿanhā muʿriḍīn — the mā … illā pattern of restriction, and min āyatin indefinite in a negative: "no sign at all". The sentence, that is, announces not an event but a rule — the very same pattern as mā yaʾtīhim min rasūlin illā… in the thirtieth verse.

The two patterns are verifiably the same. My own reading: the sūra builds the same structure twice — once in the section of the story, once after the evidential section. In the first what comes is a person and the reaction is mockery; in the second what comes is a sign and the reaction is a silent turn. Neither reaction produces an argument.

Wa idhā qīla lahum anfiqū mimmā razaqakumu'llāhu, qāla'lladhīna kafarū li'lladhīna āmanū: a-nuṭʿimu man law yashāʾu'llāhu aṭʿamah? In antum illā fī ḍalālin mubīn

"When they are told, 'Spend of what God has provided you', those who deny say to those who believe: 'Are we to feed one whom God would have fed had He willed? You are in plain error.'"

This must be recorded first, because it determines the character of the objection.

Word order: qāla'lladhīna kafarū li'lladhīna āmanū — those who deny say it to those who believe.

This, then, is not a question of theology. No one is putting a question to God, no one is wondering what destiny is. The sentence is a move in an argument, directed at the other side.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the qualification li'lladhīna āmanū: the verse takes particular care to state to whom the words are said. Without that statement the sense would not have suffered. That it is stated shows that the words are not a thought but a retort.

And now comes the most important point of word order in the verse.

The command is this: anfiqū mimmā razaqakumu'llāh — "spend of what God has provided you."

The command states within itself the source of what is asked for. The command, that is, already contains this: what is in your hand is not yours, it has been given to you.

And the objection takes precisely this principle and turns it against the command: law yashāʾu'llāhu aṭʿamah — "had God willed, He would have fed him."

The same premise, two opposite conclusions. This is a verifiable textual datum.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the wording of the command: the objection brings no new information. It repeats the very principle the command rests on and draws the opposite conclusion from it.

This has to be written carefully and step by step, because the premise of the objection is not false.

The verse does not reject the sentence "had God willed, He would have fed him". The premise is true and the verse does not touch it at all. The break is in the conclusion, and it shows in three places:

First: the same reasoning collapses when applied to the objector's own provision. What they eat falls under the same rule. Mimmā razaqakumu'llāh — the command had already said so. If "had God willed, He would have given" is a ground for not giving, the same sentence makes what is in their own hands inexplicable too: there is no longer any ground for its having been given to them. The objection is a sentence that cuts away its own position as well.

Second: the sentence puts a piece of information in the place of an obligation. "Had God willed, it would have been" is a piece of information; "so I will not do it" is a decision. There is no logical link between the two — because the same sentence can be built for everything that has been done. A man eating a meal does not say "had God willed, He would have fed me" and give up eating.

Third: the objection uses the authority that issues the command against that authority. The one who commands spending and the one who gives provision are the same. The objection sets "the will of the giver" against "the command of the giver" — whereas the command itself is a part of that will.

I record these three points as my own reading, and their grounds are the wording of the verse — in particular the qualification mimmā razaqakumu'llāh.

This move is recorded in several places in the Qurʾān, and the structure is the same in all of them. The following three places can be verified:

All three sentences are in the same pattern: law + shāʾa'llāh + a negative conclusion.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the shared structure of these three places: every time, the pattern moves from a true premise to a false conclusion, and every time the work the move does is the same: to take the person out of the sentence. The subject of the sentence is God, its addressee no one; the speaker has placed himself outside the account.

And a limit is drawn in this commentary: the verses do not criticise belief in destiny. What is criticised is the use of a true belief to escape a task. When this distinction is not kept the verse is read wrongly: the verse does not say that the sentence "had God willed, it would have been" is false; it says that that sentence cannot be the ground for not spending.

The objection ends with a verdict, and that verdict had occurred earlier in the sūra — but in another mouth.

The same construction, two different mouths. This is a repetition that can be verified from the text.

And the difference must be recorded: the man uses the word of himself and conditionally — "if I take another, I would be in error." Those who deny use the word of another and absolutely — "you are in plain error."

I record this as my own reading: the same word is once a measure a person applies to himself and once a label stuck on someone else. The sūra sets the two side by side twenty-three verses apart, and there is no sentence of comment between them.

The root: to eat, to taste. Ṭaʿām — food; iṭʿām (Form IV) — to feed, to satisfy.

The choice of word is worth recording and is required by the word order: the command was anfiqū (spend) — a general word, "lay out, give." The objection slides to a narrower word: nuṭʿimu — "are we to feed".

My own reading: the objection reduces the command to its most concrete and most necessary form and rejects it in that form. And precisely for that reason the weight of the refusal increases: what is refused is not a gift but a feeding. This can be verified by the verse's own choice of word.

ن-ف-ق — the root: to be used up, to run out; and nafaq — an underground passage (one that is entered at one end and left at the other). The lexicographers describe infāq as "wealth going out of the hand". In the root of the word there is a diminishing — and the verse commands that diminishing while recalling its source.

The pattern of this verse requires no religious dress. The structure is this: to escape a task by making a truth that lies outside the task into a ground.

The same structure is seen in sentences like "that is just how the system works", "what would change if I helped", "whoever deserves it will find it anyway". The common point is that such sentences mostly rest on a true observation — and precisely for that reason they are persuasive.

The measure the verse sets is worth recording, and it comes out of the command itself: the question is not "how does the system work" but "what do you have in your hand". Mimmā razaqakumu'llāh — the scope of the command is limited to what is in the person's hand. A verdict about the system does not lift the responsibility for what is in the hand.

This is an interpretation and I record it as my own reading; its ground is the qualification in the wording of the command. And I take no side in any current dispute: what the verse describes is not a group of people but a sentence pattern; whoever builds that pattern falls under it.

Wa yaqūlūna matā hādha'l-waʿdu in kuntum ṣādiqīn · Mā yanẓurūna illā ṣayḥatan wāḥidatan taʾkhudhuhum wa hum yakhiṣṣimūn · Fa-lā yastaṭīʿūna tawṣiyatan wa lā ilā ahlihim yarjiʿūn

"They say: 'When is this promise, if you are truthful?' They are waiting for nothing but a single cry — which will seize them while they are wrangling. They will be able to leave no bequest, nor to return to their households."

ن-ظ-ر — the known sense of the root is to look. But the second branch of the root is to wait: intiẓār — waiting; naẓira — he waited, he granted a respite. Anẓara — he granted a respite (fa-naẓiratun ilā maysara, al-Baqara 2/280).

The lexicographers make the connection thus: to look is to watch for what is to come. I transmit this relation as the lexicographers record it.

And the sense here runs towards waiting: mā yanẓurūna illā ṣayḥatan wāḥida — "they wait for nothing but a single cry."

A point of word order: the sentence ascribes to them a waiting — whereas they are not waiting, they are asking in mockery (matā hādha'l-waʿd). The verse, that is, names the real state of affairs beneath the mocking question: something really does stand in front of the one who asks "when".

Word order: wa hum yakhiṣṣimūn — a circumstantial clause. The cry, that is, seizes them while they are at some occupation, and that occupation is named: wrangling.

خ-ص-م — the root: to be an adversary, to wrangle, to go to law. Khaṣm — the opposing party in a suit; khuṣūma — contention. The root has occurred in Qāf.

The form of the word here is striking: its original is yakhtaṣimūn (Form VIII), and the tāʾ has been turned into a ṣād and assimilated (idghām). Several different readings of this word are transmitted in the sources on the variant readings (yakhiṣṣimūn, yakhaṣṣimūn, yakhṣimūn and the like). Since I am not certain of their details or of their ascriptions I give no names. On one reading the sense slides towards "they wrangle with one another", on another towards "they are at enmity"; the difference is not fundamental.

And a repetition within the sūra can be verified:

The same root in two different places. My own reading: in the forty-ninth verse wrangling is a moment, in the seventy-seventh an attribute. The sūra first catches man in the act of arguing, then names him an arguer.

The concrete sense of the root belongs to plants, and the lexicographers record it: waṣā'n-nabtu — the plant grew thick, its branches ran into one another. It is close to waṣala: to join, to attach one thing to another.

From here waṣiyya: a person's attaching his word to what comes after him. A bequest, that is, is an attempt to continue by words the bond that death cuts.

The picture in the word determines the work of the verse: fa-lā yastaṭīʿūna tawṣiyatan — no word can be attached. The cut is complete.

The pattern must be recorded: tawṣiya — the verbal noun of Form II, that is, it announces the performing of the act. And it comes indefinite: "not even a single bequest."

The verse counts two things, and both belong to "afterwards":

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the direction of the two verbs: suddenness is the absence of an interval. And when there is no interval two things become impossible at once — leaving something behind and returning somewhere. All of a person's preparation with regard to death is these two; the verse removes both in a single sentence.

And the word ahl is worth recording: the verse does not say "to their houses", it says "to their households". What is prevented is returning not to a place but to people.

The third occurrence of the root ر-ج-ع in the sūra, and it closes block V. A table of the five occurrences was given in the section on structure.

Wa nufikha fi'ṣ-ṣūri fa-idhā hum mina'l-ajdāthi ilā rabbihim yansilūn · Qālū yā waylanā man baʿathanā min marqadinā? Hādhā mā waʿada'r-Raḥmānu wa ṣadaqa'l-mursalūn

"The trumpet is blown; and all at once there they are, streaming out of the graves towards their Lord. They say: 'Woe to us! Who has raised us from where we lay? — This is what the Merciful promised; the messengers told the truth.'"

This word was treated in al-Ḥāqqa at 69/13, and two readings were tabulated there. The finding there was this: the first reading (horn/trumpet) is the reading of the majority and agrees better with the structure of the verb — nufikha fī'ṣ-ṣūr, "it was blown into the ṣūr"; for blowing into a form a different word order would be expected. I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it here.

And as was recorded there, the Qurʾān speaks of two blowings (al-Zumar 39/68). In Yāsīn how many blowings there are is not said, and this must be recorded: the verse recounts a single blowing but gives no number. It is widely said in the classical commentaries that this is the second blowing; I transmit that, I do not add it to the wording of the verse.

Jadath — a grave, a tomb; its plural is ajdāth. The root was analysed in al-Qamar at 54/7, and the word's sense of "the pit itself, the dug place" was recorded there. It has occurred in al-Maʿārij at 70/43 too.

And in al-Qamar a comparison table of three verses was given — Yāsīn 36/51 was already named there. I do not repeat the table here; I rely on that treatment. The only thing that needs recording is that all three verses use the same noun and three different verbs: yansilūn (Yāsīn), yakhrujūn (al-Qamar), yakhrujūna sirāʿan (al-Maʿārij).

The concrete sense of the root: to separate from something and come out, to be shed.

• نَسَلَ الشَّعْرُ / الرِّيشُ — the hair fell out, the feathers were shed (separating from the body).
• نَسَل — offspring, descent: what separates and comes out from someone.
• نَسَلَ فِى المَشْيِ — he walked fast and without pause.

The lexicographers tie these branches to the same core: to separate from an origin and come out one after another.

The verb occurs in the same form in one other place in the Qurʾān: wa hum min kulli ḥadabin yansilūn (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/96).

And the choice of word must be recorded: the verse does not say "they rise" or "they come to life". It says "they stream out" — fast, one after another, without pause.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the two branches of the root: the same word recounts both coming out by birth (nasl) and coming out of the grave. The lexicographers record this shared ground; I make no point of it, I note that the two branches of the root come together in the same word. And the word's place within the sūra supports this: in the seventy-seventh verse man's coming out of a drop will be recounted. Two comings-out, standing at the two ends of the same sūra.

Yā waylanā — the same structure as yā ḥasratan in the thirtieth verse: calling to an addressee that is not there (nidāʾ majāzī). Wayl — perdition, woe.

There are two instances of nidāʾ majāzī in the sūra (30 and 52), and both call upon a word of regret. It is a verifiable repetition. And the mouths are different: the one in the thirtieth verse belongs to the narration, the one in the fifty-second to those raised.

The root: to sleep. Raqada — he slept; ruqūd — the state of sleep. The root has occurred in al-Dhāriyāt.

The pattern: marqad — a noun of place. "The place where one sleeps, a bed."

And the choice of word is the most striking side of the verse: those raised do not call the grave "a grave". They say "where we lay".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is whose mouth the word is in: this word belongs not to the narrator but to those raised. The verse gives no definition of the state of the barzakh; it reports the perception of the one speaking. For one who wakes there is no elapsed time — sleep is named as sleep only on waking.

And a note — the same line was kept in Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) at 40/46: it is transmitted that in the classical commentaries inferences about the state of the barzakh have been drawn from this verse. I content myself with transmitting that discussion and issue no ruling.

The exegetes differ over who speaks the sentence:

Both are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.

One datum internal to the text can be recorded: there is no new qālū in the sentence — it is joined by faṣl. This appears to support the first view. It is an observation, not a preference.

And now comes the most striking internal link of the sūra.

In the third verse the sūra had said this to the Prophet: innaka lamina'l-mursalīn — "you are one of the messengers." This was a sentence strengthened with an oath and built with three devices of emphasis — that is, an addressee who rejects was presupposed.

In the fifty-second verse the same word returns, and this time it is spoken by those who denied it: wa ṣadaqa'l-mursalūn — "the messengers told the truth."

This is a correspondence that can be verified from the text.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the word the two sentences share: the claim put forward with emphasis at the beginning of the sūra is spoken in the middle of the sūra by the other side and with no emphasis at all. And the falling away of the devices of emphasis is a datum of word order: in the third verse there were inna and the lām because there was resistance opposite; in the fifty-second there is none of them, because no resistance is left.

The root ر-س-ل occurs in seven places in the sūra (3, 13, 14, 16, 20, 30, 52) and will be tabulated separately in the closing section.

In kānat illā ṣayḥatan wāḥidatan fa-idhā hum jamīʿun ladaynā muḥḍarūn · Fa'l-yawma lā tuẓlamu nafsun shayʾan wa lā tujzawna illā mā kuntum taʿmalūn

"It is but a single cry; and all at once there they all are, brought present before Us. Today no soul is wronged in the least, and you are recompensed only for what you used to do."

This single verse carries two separate internal repetitions of the sūra at once, and both can be verified:

The fifty-third verse, that is, joins the first half of the twenty-ninth verse to the second half of the thirty-second.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is these two exact repetitions: in the section of the story the end of the people of the town (ṣayḥa → khāmidūn) and the end of the generations (muḥḍarūn) had been given separately. The scene of the resurrection joins the two in a single sentence. The sūra, that is, frames the resurrection not as a new event but as the gathering up of what has already been recounted piece by piece.

And the endings of the two sentences should be compared:

The same sound, two opposite outcomes: one an extinguishing, the other a being brought into the presence.

Al-Yawma — "today", definite. The word occurs five times in this section of the sūra, and this is a countable density:

Five occurrences within twelve verses. My own reading: the sūra frames the resurrection not as an account of the future but as a day one is inside of. Each time the word comes at or near the head of the sentence; the scene is recounted not as "that day" but as "today".

A point of word order, and it can be verified:

In Arabic the shift in the direction of address is called iltifāt. Here the general rule is given in the third person and its application in the second.

I record this as my own reading: the first clause lays down a principle and points at no one — nafsun, indefinite: "no soul at all." The second clause applies that principle to the one addressed. The principle first general, then personal.