al-Shūrā 42:13

Sharaʿa lakum mina'd-dīni mā waṣṣā bihi Nūḥan wa'lladhī awḥaynā ilayka wa mā waṣṣaynā bihi Ibrāhīma wa Mūsā wa ʿĪsā, an aqīmu'd-dīna wa lā tatafarraqū fīh; kabura ʿala'l-mushrikīna mā tadʿūhum ilayh; Allāhu yajtabī ilayhi man yashāʾu wa yahdī ilayhi man yunīb

"He has laid down for you as a way in religion what He enjoined upon Noah, and what We have revealed to you, and what We enjoined upon Abraham, Moses and Jesus: uphold the religion, and do not fall into division in it. What you call them to is hard upon the mushrikūn. God chooses for Himself whom He wills, and guides to Himself whoever turns to Him."

One of the densest verses in the sūra. I treat it under three headings: the root, the list of names, and the shared foundation.

This root is analysed here for the first time in the corpus.

The concrete sense of the root is plain in the lexicographers' descriptions, and it carries a picture of water:

شَرِيعَة (sharīʿa) — the place by which one goes down to a river or a spring; the descent cut into the bank, used by animals and people to reach the water.

The lexicographers record the features of this place too, and the features carry the sense of the word:

The derivatives of the root widen this picture:

• شَرَعَ (sharaʿa) — to open a way; and to set about a thing, to begin. The Turkish şuru etmek ("to set about") is this verb.
• شَارِع (shāriʿ) — an open public road; a street. In Arabic today this is the word for a street or avenue. The road everyone passes along, the road that is not closed.
• شِرْعَة (shirʿa) — the same sense, with a difference of pattern.
• تَشْرِيع (tashrīʿ) — the laying down of rules.
• شَرَّعَ — to raise something, to set it up; some lexicographers attach the word شِرَاع (a sail) to this root as well. I do not give this link as certain; some of the lexicographers say so.

The Qurʾān uses the root in several places, and the uses support the concrete sense:

"For each of you We appointed a shirʿa and a minhāj." (al-Māʾida 5/48)

This verse is worth recording, because shirʿa has minhāj set beside it — and minhāj (root ن-ه-ج) too means an open, clearly marked road. Both words are words for a road.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the lexicographers' description of the root:

The connotation the word sharīʿa carries today is "a body of rules". The root itself, however, describes not a list of rules but a place of descent. And the difference between the two pictures is not trivial:

And the continuation of the verse supports this reading: what is commanded? An aqīmu'd-dīna wa lā tatafarraqū fīh — not a list but two verbs. Uphold it; do not divide.

I give this as an observation about the language; I do not claim that the root's original sense cancels present usage. Languages widen the senses of words, and that is ordinary. What I record is the picture that stands beneath the root.

Five names occur in the verse:

1. Noah 2. "What We revealed to you" — Muhammad 3. Abraham 4. Moses 5. Jesus

And the order is striking: at the second place, the sequence steps outside history. The chronological order would be Noah–Abraham–Moses–Jesus–Muhammad. The text has put the last in the second place.

The same five names occur together once more in the Qurʾān:

"And when We took from the prophets their covenant — from you, from Noah, from Abraham, from Moses and from Jesus son of Mary." (al-Aḥzāb 33/7)

I set the two lists side by side — this is a fact that can be verified from the text:

The last three names are in the same order; the first two have changed places. This is a fact worth recording.

The explanations transmitted about the order:

I do not impose a preference. But I record an observation about the arrangement: that in al-Shūrā the one addressed is placed not at the head of the list but immediately after the earliest sets "the most recent" beside "the most ancient". The thousands of years in between, that is, are fitted into two words within the sentence.

And there is a change of verb, and that too must be recorded:

The sentence, that is, begins in the third person and passes to the first plural — this is an iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address). And the shift comes exactly at the point where the one addressed is reached.

The verb changes as well: for Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus وصّى (to enjoin, to charge), for the one addressed أوحى (to reveal). The difference between the two verbs:

• وصّى — root و-ص-ي: to bind one thing to another, to join them; and from there charge, bequest. The lexicographers record that the root holds joining and continuity (waṣā'n-nabt — the plants grew joined and dense).
• أوحى — treated in al-Najm: swift and hidden communication.

The root's sense of "joining" is particularly apt here, and I record this as my own reading: a tawṣiya is something passed on by being attached to the next in line. The verse is speaking of a chain in any case.

What is enumerated as the shared foundation of five prophets is two verbs. And what these two verbs are is understood from what they are not.

What is not enumerated: the forms of worship, the list of the lawful and the forbidden, the detail of the law. The Qurʾān says elsewhere that these can differ: "For each of you We appointed a shirʿa and a minhāj" (al-Māʾida 5/48).

What is enumerated is two things:

إِقَامَة — root ق-و-م. It was treated in al-Baqara at 2/255 in connection with al-Qayyūm: to stand, to stand over a matter and keep it going. Form II (iqāma) is transitive: to hold something up, not to let it fall.

The command, then, is not "apply the religion" but "hold the religion up". The word presupposes the possibility of collapse: what is held up is what would fall if it were let go.

And the second command stands like the condition of the first. I record this as my own reading: holding something up is a collective work; those who have scattered cannot hold anything up. That the two commands come side by side is meaningful for this reason.

Why division arises was treated in al-Baqara at 2/213. What was recorded there was this:

"The verse frames a description of history, and its order is striking: 1. Unity — kāna'n-nāsu ummatan wāḥida. 2. Prophets and a Book — in order to settle the disagreement. 3. Disagreement — and this time among those who received the Book. The cause of division, that is, is not shown to be ignorance. The text says it plainly: min baʿdi mā jāʾathumu'l-bayyināt — after the clear proofs had come to them."

And the conclusion reached there was: "The sūra takes disagreement out of the class of a question of knowledge and makes it a question of character."

Al-Shūrā 42/13 gives the imperative side of that diagnosis. Al-Baqara had recounted what happened; al-Shūrā says what is to be done. And the next verse (14) will repeat al-Baqara's diagnosis in almost the same words.

كَبُرَ — root ك-ب-ر. It was treated in al-Aḥqāf and al-Muddaththir. Here the verb means "it came heavy, it weighed on them" — like the weight of a load.

And what is interesting is this: what is it that comes heavy? Mā tadʿūhum ilayh — "what you call them to". That is, the two commands just enumerated: upholding the religion and not dividing.

I record this as an observation about the context: in the first half of the verse unity is set down as the shared foundation of all the prophets; in the second half it is said that this foundation comes heavy. The reason for the heaviness is not given in the verse.

The verse closes with two verbs, and the objects of the two differ:

اجْتِبَاء — root ج-ب-ي: to gather a thing, to pick out and bring together. Jibāya — the collecting of taxes. In Form VIII: to pick out and set apart for oneself.

The difference between the two sentences must be recorded, and it matters:

• Choosing (ijtibāʾ) is not tied to a condition — this shows that a position given, such as prophethood, is owed to no one.
• Guidance, on the other hand, is tied to a condition: man yunīb — the one who turns back.

And the verb yunīb is the verb the Prophet used of himself in the tenth verse: wa ilayhi unīb.

The line set out from the third verse onward, then, is completed here: what the Prophet says about himself is set down three verses later as a condition valid for everyone. I record this as an observation about the arrangement.