Yāsīn 36:26-27

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.