حمٓ · تَنزِيلٌ مِّنَ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ · كِتَٰبٌ فُصِّلَتْ ءَايَٰتُهُۥ قُرْءَانًا عَرَبِيًّا لِّقَوْمٍ يَعْلَمُونَ · بَشِيرًا وَنَذِيرًا فَأَعْرَضَ أَكْثَرُهُمْ فَهُمْ لَا يَسْمَعُونَ
Ḥā-mīm · Tanzīlun mina'r-Raḥmāni'r-Raḥīm · Kitābun fuṣṣilat āyātuhū qurʾānan ʿarabiyyan li-qawmin yaʿlamūn · Bashīran wa nadhīran fa-aʿraḍa aktharuhum fa-hum lā yasmaʿūn
"Ḥā-mīm. A sending down from al-Raḥmān and al-Raḥīm. A Book whose verses have been made distinct: an Arabic Qurʾān for a people who know; as a bringer of good news and as a warner. But most of them turned away; they no longer hear."
The concrete sense of the root: to separate two things from one another, to put a distance between them. The root was analysed at several points in this corpus — in al-Mursalāt and al-Nabaʾ, in the context of yawmu'l-faṣl (the day of separation). I do not repeat it here.
The pattern here is Form II, and it changes the sense: tafṣīl — to divide a whole into its parts, to set it out in detail. For a text to be mufaṣṣal is for its subjects to have been separated from one another and their boundaries drawn.
That this word became the name of the sūra is worth recording: the name of the sūra is about the form of the Book, not its content. And this name will return in the forty-fourth verse inside an objection — law lā fuṣṣilat āyātuh.
In the other ḥā-mīm sūras this sentence has the form mina'llāhi'l-ʿazīzi'l-ḥakīm (from God, the Mighty, the Wise) — it occurred thus at al-Jāthiya 45/2 and al-Aḥqāf 46/2, and was treated there.
| Sūra | The names it is sent down from |
|---|---|
| al-Jāthiya 45/2 · al-Aḥqāf 46/2 | al-ʿAzīz · al-Ḥakīm — power and fittingness |
| Fuṣṣilat 41/2 | al-Raḥmān · al-Raḥīm — mercy |
This is a difference that can be verified, and it fits the subject of the sūra. I record this as my own reading: the sūra is the sūra of a text that does not get through. In its first sentence the source of the text is named not by power but by mercy — that is, the failure to get through does not arise from the disposition of the sender.
Two fāʾs one after the other, and the order must be recorded: first aʿraḍa (he turned away), then lā yasmaʿūn (they do not hear).
That is, the not-hearing is set down as the consequence of the turning away — not as its cause. In Arabic the fāʾ conveys consequence and succession.
The reverse of this scene was treated at al-Jāthiya 45/8: there the type hears, and then resists. The two sūras describe two separate stages of the same matter: the one, hearing and then resisting; the other, resistance closing off hearing.