43. Sūrat al-Zukhruf

89 verses. It is widely reported that it was revealed in the Meccan period. It takes its name from a single word that occurs in verse 35: زُخْرُف — zukhruf, that is, gold ornament, gilding.

The sūra is one of the seven that open with ḥā-mīm. What this group has in common is that the opening is followed immediately by mention of the Book; al-Zukhruf opens the same way: letters, then an oath by the Book, then the quality of the Book.

What al-Zukhruf works on from beginning to end is the question of measure — and it appears in three distinct questions:

• What is counted as valuable? (the golden ceiling, the silver stairway, zukhruf)
• Who is seen as great? (rajulin mina'l-qaryatayni ʿaẓīm, a-laysa lī mulku Miṣra)
• Which proof is counted as valid? (innā wajadnā ābāʾanā ʿalā umma, fa-lawlā ulqiya ʿalayhi aswiratun min dhahab)

All three questions share the same structure: the other side has already set up a scale; the dispute is not over whether the scale is true but over the weight of what is placed on it. The sūra is disputing the scale itself.

And the sūra works this question not through an abstract principle but through scenes that complete one another:

The last row is worth recording and is the most striking choice the sūra makes: what is rejected is not gold itself. In the thirty-third verse a silver ceiling is named as a humiliation; in the seventy-first, a golden platter as a reward. The sūra is not disputing the material but where the material is placed.

The boundaries of the blocks are drawn by the sūra's own repetitions. The most visible is this: the verb refused in the fifth verse is commanded in the eighty-ninth. The same root, the same word, the opposite ruling — and eighty-four verses in between. I shall set this ring out in a table again at the end of the sūra.

What follows are repetitions that can be verified from the text; what is interpretation is the claim that they build an order, and I offer that as an observation.

The most striking of these is the root ض-ر-ب, because within the sūra it is used for three distinct pieces of work:

The same root: pushing the reminder aside, ascribing a likeness to God, throwing an example into a dispute. I record this as an observation about density; I do not claim that the sūra is constructing a deliberate play on words.

On the sūra's being Meccan there is something close to agreement. For certain verses (particularly 57-58 and 45) specific accounts of the occasion of revelation are transmitted in the classical commentaries; I shall give these in their places in the language of "it is transmitted", and I shall present none of them as firm historical information.

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

Ḥā-mīm · Wa'l-kitābi'l-mubīn · Innā jaʿalnāhu qurʾānan ʿarabiyyan laʿallakum taʿqilūn · Wa innahu fī ummi'l-kitābi ladaynā la-ʿaliyyun ḥakīm

"Ḥā-mīm. By the clear Book. We have made it an Arabic Qurʾān, so that you may reason. And it is with Us in the mother of the Book; truly exalted, truly wise."

The general note on the disconnected letters has been entered elsewhere in the corpus (al-Baqara, al-Qalam, Qāf, al-Aḥqāf); I do not repeat it here. Its summary is this: there is no certain knowledge about the meaning of these letters; many explanations are transmitted in the classical commentaries and none of them claims certainty. Per the method (Method), claims resting on letter-and-number calculation are not entered into.

What can be recorded is a verifiable fact of arrangement: in almost every sūra that opens with ḥā-mīm, the Book is named immediately after the opening. Here it comes twice over: the second verse swears by the Book, and the third says how the Book was made.

The root ب-ي-ن and the word mubīn have been treated in many places in the corpus (in detail in al-Aḥqāf at 46/7-8, by way of the contrast between bayyināt and mubīn). The core of the root: the opening of a gap between two things, an interval — and from there, to become distinguishable, to be clear.

Mubīn is an active participle of Form IV, and in Arabic this pattern can be read either transitively or intransitively:

The lexicographers regard both as possible, and both sit well here. I do not impose a preference; but I record this: the third verse builds a chain of reasoning that supports the second reading — the Book was made Arabic so that it might be reasoned out. Clarity is thus presented not as an ornament of the Book but as its work.

The sentence does not say "We sent it down". The verb is jaʿala: "he made, he set, he brought it about that it should be so".

Jaʿala in Arabic conveys placing something from one state into another — this is what distinguishes it from khalaqa (to bring into being out of nothing). The distinction is worth recording: the verse speaks not of the Qurʾān's coming into being but of the form in which it was given. In the tenth verse the same verb will be used of the earth (alladhī jaʿala lakumu'l-arḍa mahdan), and in the twelfth of mounts (wa jaʿala lakum mina'l-fulki wa'l-anʿāmi mā tarkabūn).

In all three the structure is the same: something already existing is put into a form a human being can use. The ground is levelled, the animal becomes a mount, speech enters a language.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the repetition of the verb within the sūra: the verse places the choice of a language inside an enumeration of favours.

The root was analysed in al-Wāqiʿa in the discussion of 56/37 (ʿuruban); I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it. What was recorded there as the core was this:

"The core meaning the lexicographers give for the root ع-ر-ب: to express clearly and plainly, to set one's meaning out without concealing it. Aʿraba ʿani'sh-shayʾ — he made a thing known openly. Iʿrāb — bringing out into the open (the grammatical term iʿrāb comes from this too: the word's bringing out into the open what it does in the sentence, by means of the vowel on its end)."

In al-Wāqiʿa this core was applied to an attribute of relationship (ʿarūb — one who does not conceal her state). Here the same core is applied to a text.

And what must be added here is this: the word ʿarabī does not stand here merely as the name of a people. The second verse described the Book as mubīn (clear); the third says the language is ʿarabī. The two words come from the same field: one is bayān, the other iʿrāb — both are "bringing to light".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the root meanings of the two words: the verse says the same thing twice in two successive descriptions. The Book is clear; and it was given in the language that makes clear.

The Qurʾān makes this description elsewhere too, and always ties it to the same ground: Yūsuf 12/2 (innā anzalnāhu qurʾānan ʿarabiyyan laʿallakum taʿqilūn — the identical sentence), Ṭāhā 20/113, al-Zumar 39/28, Fuṣṣilat 41/3, al-Shūrā 42/7, al-Aḥqāf 46/12, al-Raʿd 13/37. In al-Naḥl 16/103 the word occurs as an answer to an objection: lisānu'lladhī yulḥidūna ilayhi aʿjamiyyun wa hādhā lisānun ʿarabiyyun mubīn — here aʿjamī is set as the opposite of ʿarabī.

The root ع-ج-م is the exact opposite of the root ع-ر-ب, and the concrete sense of the root shows it: closedness, unintelligibility. ʿUjma — a block in the tongue, a stammer. ʿAjmāʾ — an animal that has a voice but does not speak. The contrast between the two roots is therefore not "Arab / non-Arab" but, at the level of the roots the lexicographers record, "clear / closed".

This distinction matters here, and per the method (Method) I must state it plainly: the verse is not proclaiming the superiority of a language or of a people. The ground the verse itself gives stands at the end of the verse — and that ground looks to the one addressed, not to the language.

At the end of the sentence there is a laʿallakum, and this is the ground for the choice of language.

The root ع-ق-ل has been treated in the corpus (al-Mulk, al-Ḥujurāt, al-Ḥashr, al-Fajr). The concrete sense of the root: to tie, to hold, not to let loose. ʿIqāl — the cord bound around a camel's knee. In the picture the root gives, the intellect is what holds a person, what keeps him from scattering.

Now the word order must be set out:

The verse thus ties the choice of language to a purpose, and the purpose is that the one addressed should understand.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the causal clause the verse builds for itself: if the language was chosen so that the one addressed should understand, then the value of the language lies in its intelligibility. This stands in the same direction as the whole later argument of the sūra: throughout the sūra the other side will tie value to appearance (gold, rank, lineage); the sūra ties value to function. For the Book too the measure is this — that it opens.

And one more note: the same ground will be turned over in the eighteenth verse. There, the expression used by the society speaking about a daughter is this: wa huwa fi'l-khiṣāmi ghayru mubīn — "one who cannot bring her meaning to light in a dispute". The sūra thus brings back before us, fifteen verses later and by way of a human being, the measure it gave to language in the third verse (clarity). I shall treat this repetition in detail there.

The root has come up twice in the corpus (al-Jumuʿa 62/2 — ummī; al-Qiyāma 75/12 — amāmahu). In the discussion of al-Qiyāma the family of the root was given as follows; I rely on that:

"Root: أ-م-م. And the family of this root is striking: umm (mother), umma (community), imām (the one who stands in front, who goes ahead), amām (the front). The shared idea: priority, being in front, being at the source."

I add here one further aspect of the root, because it is that aspect which is at work in this verse. The lexicographers describe the word umm not only as "mother" but as "the origin of a thing, the source to which it is referred back, the trunk to which it is joined", and they record these usages:

• أُمُّ الرَّأْس — the membrane of the brain; the place counted as the origin of the head.
• أُمُّ القُرَى — the mother of towns (of Mecca; al-Anʿām 6/92, al-Shūrā 42/7).
• أُمُّ الطَّرِيق — the main road; the principal road from which the branches separate.

In the picture the root gives, then, umm is not primarily "the one who gives birth" but the one who is returned to. The branches part from it and are attached to it.

The expression ummu'l-kitāb occurs in three places in the Qurʾān, and in the three it may not carry the same sense:

The third is distinct from the others and must not be confused with them: there the expression is used of a group of verses inside the Qurʾān. I record this as a caution.

Whether this expression is the same thing as al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ has been debated in the classical commentaries. A note on this question was entered in al-Burūj, and I keep the same note here:

"There are expressions within the Qurʾān that can be related to one another — kitābin maknūn (al-Wāqiʿa 56/78), ummu'l-kitāb (al-Zukhruf 43/4; al-Raʿd 13/39), kitābin ḥafīẓ (Qāf 50/4) — but whether these expressions are identical with one another is itself disputed, and no ruling is issued here."

I keep the same limit here: I produce no description of the modality of this expression.

But the word order of the verse does say something, and that can be said:

The order moves in this direction: position, then possession, then two attributes.

The root ع-ل-و has been treated in many places in the corpus (al-Aʿlā, al-Nāziʿāt, al-Ghāshiya); its core is height. The root ح-ك-م has been treated as well (al-Baqara at 2/269 — ḥakama, by way of its relation to the bridle; al-Aḥqāf 46/2). Its core: to restrain and hold in place.

That the two attributes stand side by side is worth recording, and it can be compared with the opening of al-Aḥqāf: there ʿazīz (mighty) and ḥakīm (rightly placed) stood side by side, and what was recorded there was this — "one conveys power, the other rightness of placement; power is not named on its own". The same structure is here: ʿaliyy conveys height, ḥakīm conveys rightness of placement.

And these two attributes, read together with the third verse, produce a tension — I record it as my own reading: the third verse says the Book came down, into the language of the one addressed; the fourth says the Book is above, in the origin. The same thing is both sent down and high. The whole argument of the sūra about measure will be built on this tension: where a thing is located does not determine its value.

A-fa-naḍribu ʿankumu'dh-dhikra ṣafḥan an kuntum qawman musrifīn

"Are We then to turn the reminder away from you and set it aside, because you are a people who overstep?"

The question is one of denial: its answer is "no" — it is asked in order to refuse. In Arabic this pattern, opening with hamza + fāʾ, attaches to the preceding sentence and says "after all this, are we to do such a thing?"

What it attaches to is the third and fourth verses: the Book was made clear, was put into a language, is high and wise in its origin — is it then to be withdrawn?

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

The concrete sense of the root is the name of a surface: ṣafḥa — the side of a thing, its flat face.

• صَفْحَة — the side of the face, the cheek; the flat of a sword; the flat side of a thing.
• صَفَحَ عَنْهُ — he turned his face away from it; and from there: he pardoned, he let it pass.
• صَفَّحَ — he flattened it, made it into a sheet. Ṣafīḥa — a sheet, a plate.
• مُصَافَحَة (muṣāfaḥa) — shaking hands; the touching of two palms, that is, of two flat surfaces, one to the other. This is the source of the word musafaha in Turkish.
• تَصَفَّحَ الكِتَاب — he went through a book, turning its leaves one by one. The word صَفْحَة is also used for one face of a leaf. (Whether the Turkish word sayfa, "page", comes from this root or from the very close root ص-ح-ف — ṣaḥīfa — is recorded in different ways in the dictionaries; I adopt no preference.)

The picture beneath the root is this: turning the flat face of a thing.

And from here two opposite meanings emerge, both from the same movement:

This is the most striking ring in the sūra, and I point to it already now: the same root is refused in the fifth verse and commanded in the eighty-ninth. I shall give the difference in a table at verse 89.

The verb is ḍaraba, and here it stands inside an idiom. The lexicographers explain the construction thus: ḍaraba ʿanhu — to put a thing away from someone, to turn it aside, to withdraw it.

Two readings are transmitted for the role of the word ṣafḥan in the sentence:

Both come out at the same door, and I do not impose a preference. What is to be recorded is that the verb chosen is ḍaraba: the word carries a movement of the hand — pushing something aside with one's own hand. This is the sūra's first ḍaraba; the root will then return in verses 17 and 57.

The root ذ-ك-ر has been treated at length in the corpus (Qāf, al-Aʿlā, al-Muddaththir). Its core: to call to mind, to keep in memory; and to name with the tongue.

Here the word comes definite (al-dhikr) and in context indicates the Qurʾān. In the thirty-sixth verse the same word will return inside a construct: dhikri'r-Raḥmān — the reminder of al-Raḥmān.

Two readings are transmitted for this expression, and the difference touches the meaning:

Both are transmitted among the imams of the readings. The difference in meaning is this: in the first the situation is settled and the question says "are we then to abandon it on that account?"; in the second the situation is made conditional and the question says "even if you were so?" I do not impose a preference; on either reading the answer to the sentence is the same: no.

The sense the lexicographers give the root: to pass the boundary in something, to lose the measure. Isrāf — the usual English renderings stay tied to wealth, but in Arabic the root conveys overstepping the measure in any field whatever.

The lexicographers also record the word sarif: to go past without noticing, to let a thing escape one's eye. Marra fa-sarifahu — he passed by and did not see it. Alongside overstepping the measure, then, the root also holds a core of inattention.

This fits the word's place in the verse, and I record it as an observation: the verse names the other side not by the name of a crime but by the name of a fault of measure. And the whole subject of the sūra is measure.

The logic the sentence builds is this: the condition of the one addressed is not made the ground for cutting off the reminder.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the question is one of denial: the verse sets out the thought "these people do not understand, let us leave off" as an option, and rejects it. The reason the thing is given is not the state of the one who receives it; it is the quality of what is given — the quality enumerated in the third and fourth verses.

Wa kam arsalnā min nabiyyin fi'l-awwalīn · Wa mā yaʾtīhim min nabiyyin illā kānū bihi yastahziʾūn · Fa-ahlaknā ashadda minhum baṭshan wa maḍā mathalu'l-awwalīn

"How many a prophet We sent among those of old. And no prophet came to them without their mocking him. So We destroyed those stronger than these in violence. The example of those of old has passed."

The arrangement uses three distinct tenses, and the sequence is worth recording:

That the middle verse comes in the imperfect carries information. In Arabic the imperfect, used in a past context, brings the scene before the eye and conveys repetition. The verse is therefore not saying "they mocked"; it is saying "they would mock, every time".

This builds the same structure as verse 23 later in the sūra: there too it will say mā arsalnā … illā qāla mutrafūhā — "We sent to no town without those of it who lived in ease saying this". The same pattern: negation plus exception.

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

The sense the lexicographers give: to make light of someone, to belittle, to make a thing an object of amusement. Hazaʾa bihi / istahzaʾa bihi — he made sport of him.

The pattern is striking: Form X (istifʿāl). In Arabic this form most often conveys "to reckon a thing so, to find it so" — istaḥsana (he found it beautiful), istathqala (he found it heavy). The description that follows is this: istihzāʾ is to reckon someone a thing to be laughed at.

And this shows the family the root belongs to. Three more words of the same family will occur in the sūra, and all are inside the question of measure:

All four do the same work: lowering the weight of the one in front of them. I record this as a pattern, and I give its link to the sūra's main question as an observation: mockery is an operation of weighing. It puts the other on the scale and declares him light.

Mockery was treated in detail in al-Ḥujurāt at 49/11; I rely on that treatment. The finding recorded there was this: the one who mocks turns the other into an instrument of his own amusement — he removes him from being a subject.

بَطْش — root ب-ط-ش. The root was treated in Qāf and in al-Burūj. Its core: to seize a thing with force and speed, to grasp and strike.

This verse was already cited in al-Burūj: "We destroyed those stronger than them in violence (ashadda minhum baṭshan)" (al-Zukhruf 43/8).

The form of the comparison is worth recording: the verse does not say "We destroyed them". It says "those stronger than them". The one addressed is thus not threatened directly; what is recounted is what befell someone stronger than he is.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the comparative pattern (afʿalu min): the verse does not frighten the one addressed, it corrects his scale. Without asking "how strong are you?", it supplies the frame within which the answer lies.

The root م-ض-ي: to pass on, to go forward, to cut through. Māḍī (the past tense) comes from this; sayfun mādin — a sword that cuts.

Mathal is from the root م-ث-ل: a likeness, an example, a cautionary narrative.

Two readings of the expression are transmitted:

Both are possible in point of language, and I do not impose a preference. What is to be recorded is that the word will return within the sūra: in the fifty-sixth verse it will be said of Pharaoh and his people wa mathalan li'l-ākhirīn (and an example for those who come after).

What is seen when the two ends are set side by side is this: in the eighth verse the example is taken from the past; in the fifty-sixth the example is left to the future. The same word, two directions.

Wa la-in saʾaltahum man khalaqa's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍa la-yaqūlunna khalaqahunna'l-ʿazīzu'l-ʿalīm

"And if you ask them, 'Who created the heavens and the earth?', they will surely say, 'The Mighty, the Knowing created them.'"

The first block (1-8) set out the Book and the stance of the other side. The second block opens with a question — and the question is put to the other side.

The method is this, and it is one of the most effective moves in the sūra: showing the inconsistency of the other side's position out of their own answer.

The verse carries two lāms, and both are for emphasis:

Grammatically, then, the sentence is an oath formula: "by God, if you ask, by God they will say this".

This piling-up of emphasis carries information, and I record it as my own reading: the verse is not guessing what the answer will be, it is stating it as certain. What is being said is this: that they will give this answer is already settled. The dispute is not about who the creator is.

The answer the other side gives is this: khalaqahunna'l-ʿazīzu'l-ʿalīm.

Note: the answer does not stop at saying "God", it names two attributes. The exegetes have dwelt on this, and two readings are transmitted:

I do not impose a preference. But this can be recorded: the two attributes chosen (ʿazīz — mighty, unconquerable; ʿalīm — knowing) are exactly the subject of the sūra's later argument. The sūra will dispute who is great and who knows.

This is one of the methods the Qurʾān most often uses against its Meccan addressees, and it was recorded in al-Nabaʾ as follows:

"The Meccans did not deny that God was the creator (the Qurʾān records this in many places: al-ʿAnkabūt 29/61, al-Zukhruf 43/9). What they denied was that decayed bones could be gathered together again."

The same method will recur at the end of the sūra — in verse 87: wa la-in saʾaltahum man khalaqahum la-yaqūlunna'llāh — "if you ask them who created them, they will surely say 'God'."

The difference between the two verses is worth recording, and I give it as an observation:

The sūra thus asks the same question twice: once about the universe, once about the one addressed himself. The second comes at the end of the sūra, with the scale reduced. This stands in the same place as the observation about "the distance of the proof" recorded in the discussion of al-Aḥqāf: the proof is brought to where the one addressed can reach it.

Alladhī jaʿala lakumu'l-arḍa mahdan wa jaʿala lakum fīhā subulan laʿallakum tahtadūn · Wa'lladhī nazzala mina's-samāʾi māʾan bi-qadarin fa-ansharnā bihi baldatan maytan · Kadhālika tukhrajūn

"He who made the earth a cradle for you and opened roads for you in it — so that you may find your way. And who sent down water from the sky by a measure, and with it We gave life to a dead land. Thus shall you too be brought forth."

The verse begins with a relative clause attached to the answer in the ninth verse: alladhī — "he who". The sentence, that is, has not yet ended; the creator is being described.

And in the middle of the eleventh verse there is an iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address), and it must be recorded:

wa'lladhī nazzala (third person) → fa-ansharnā (first person plural)

The sentence begins "He sent down" and continues "We gave life". In Arabic this transition is a known device, and the lexicographers explain it as the drawing near of the narration: the agent described from a distance suddenly becomes the party who is speaking.

I record this as an observation about the structure: while the answer given from the mouths of the other side (khalaqahunna'l-ʿazīzu'l-ʿalīm) is still running on, the owner of the sentence steps in. The admission is theirs, then; the conclusion is the text's.

The root was analysed in detail in al-Nabaʾ (mihādan, al-Nabaʾ 78/6) and occurred also in al-Muddaththir and al-Dhāriyāt. I do not repeat the finding there; its summary is this:

"The concrete sense of the root is to smooth, to spread, to prepare — in particular to spread out a bed, to level the ground beneath and make it ready. مَهْد (mahd) — a cradle. مِهَاد (mihād) — a spread-out bed, a mattress."

In the discussion of al-Nabaʾ, firāsh and mihād were compared, and this was recorded: "Firāsh looks to the ground: this place has been spread. Mihād looks to the one on it: this has been prepared for someone."

What is to be added here is the difference of pattern, and the Qurʾān uses these two patterns in different places:

Mahd in the lexicographers means a cradle outright — the rocked, carried vessel in which a child is laid. The Qurʾān uses this word of Jesus (ʿĪsā) as well: yukallimu'n-nāsa fi'l-mahdi wa kahlan (Āl ʿImrān 3/46), kayfa nukallimu man kāna fi'l-mahdi ṣabiyyan (Maryam 19/29).

And this makes a link within the sūra — I record it as my own reading: the same word is used in the tenth verse of the earth, and in other places in the Qurʾān of Jesus son of Mary; and verses 57-59 of this sūra are about the son of Mary. I give this as an association, not as a link the text itself makes. The sūra makes no such link.

The work the word does in the verse is this: the earth is named not as a floor or a place but as a vessel of care. A cradle holds what is in it, carries it, and rocks it.

And can a link to natural science be made here? In some non-classical commentary one finds conclusions about the motion of the globe drawn from the word mahd. Per the method (Method) I do not go down that road: the meaning of the word in the lexicographers is plain, and the verse makes no claim about motion. What the word carries is a picture of care, not a piece of physics.

The root س-ب-ل has been treated in the corpus (al-Insān, Muḥammad, al-Munāfiqūn). Its core: a road that stretches out, that flows. Sabīl — a road; sābil — falling rain.

The order is worth recording: first the place (mahd — where one stays), then the road (subul — where one goes). Together the two describe a field of life: the place to remain and the place to go.

لَّعَلَّكُمْ تَهْتَدُونَ — and the ground: so that you may find your way.

This is the same pattern as laʿallakum taʿqilūn in the third verse, and the two should be compared:

The two grounds are not from the same root but they do the same work: one is the mind finding its direction, the other the foot. And the root ه-د-ي is a key word in the sūra: in verse 22 those who walk in the tracks of their forefathers will count themselves muhtadūn (guided); in verse 37 it will be said wa yaḥsabūna annahum muhtadūn — "and they suppose themselves to be guided"; in verse 49 the people of Pharaoh will give their word, innanā la-muhtadūn.

The same word in four places: once as the ground the verse itself gives, three times as the other side's verdict upon itself. I record this as a pattern: the sūra separates the word "guidance" according to whose mouth it comes out of.

The root has been treated in many places in the corpus (al-Aʿlā, al-Wāqiʿa, al-Mulk, al-Qamar, al-Fajr and others). Its core: to measure, to determine the quantity of, to apportion.

And here the word's place in the sūra is special — I record this as my own reading: the whole subject of the sūra is measure, and the word for measure itself is used here for the first time, of the coming down of water.

بِقَدَرٍ — "by a measure". It comes indefinite (nakira): the quantity is not stated, what is stated is that it has been measured.

Water is the most visible example of measure, and the Qurʾān records this elsewhere too: al-Muʾminūn 23/18 (wa anzalnā mina's-samāʾi māʾan bi-qadarin fa-askannāhu fi'l-arḍ), al-Ḥijr 15/21 (wa mā nunazziluhu illā bi-qadarin maʿlūm). Too little and there is drought, too much and there is flood. The measure is the narrow interval between two disasters.

I record this as an observation: the sūra opens its argument about measure with an example in which the measure works correctly. All the blocks that follow will show the faultiness of the measures human beings set up.

The concrete sense of the root: to spread, to lay out, to open. Nashara'th-thawb — he spread out the cloth. Nashara'l-kitāb — he opened the book.

And the second branch of the root: to bring to life. Ansharaʾllāhu'l-mawtā — God brought the dead to life.

The lexicographers make the link between the two branches thus: death is a folding up, resurrection an unfolding. The Turkish verb neşretmek ("to spread, to publish") is from this same root.

In this verse the word is in Form IV (anshara), and the lexicographers record that this pattern has settled into the sense "to bring to life". In al-Takwīr 81/10, in the expression wa idha'ṣ-ṣuḥufu nushirat (when the scrolls are spread open), the first branch of the root was at work; it was treated in al-Takwīr.

"Thus shall you too be brought forth."

This sentence does exactly the same work as the place where the same structure was treated in Qāf, and it was recorded there as follows: the coming forth of the plant from the soil is described, and then, with no pause at all, kadhālika'l-khurūj is said. In the discussion of Qāf this was identified as the sūra's form of proof: the proof is not an analogy but an image.

The same thing happens in al-Zukhruf, and even the pattern is similar:

The difference is worth recording: in Qāf the event is named; in al-Zukhruf it is attached to the one addressed — and in the passive: who brings forth is not stated, who is brought forth is.

This verse was already cited in Nūḥ (among the examples of "we gave life to dead soil… such too is the resurrection"); I complete that link here.

Wa'lladhī khalaqa'l-azwāja kullahā wa jaʿala lakum mina'l-fulki wa'l-anʿāmi mā tarkabūn

"And who created all the pairs; and made for you, of ships and of livestock, that on which you ride."

The meaning of the root: the fellow of a thing, its counterpart; that which is one of two. Zawj in Arabic means one member of a pair — not the two together, as the English word "pair" does.

The exegetes differ over the extent of the word here:

The emphatic kullahā ("all of them") appears to support the second and third readings; but I do not impose a preference.

This breadth is supported within the Qurʾān itself: Yā-Sīn 36/36 (subḥāna'lladhī khalaqa'l-azwāja kullahā mimmā tunbitu'l-arḍu wa min anfusihim wa mimmā lā yaʿlamūn — "of what the earth brings forth, of themselves, and of what they do not know"), al-Dhāriyāt 51/49 (wa min kulli shayʾin khalaqnā zawjayn).

The note at the end of the Yā-Sīn verse is worth recording: wa mimmā lā yaʿlamūn — "and of what they do not know". In making this generalisation, that is, the Qurʾān itself says that the extent of it exceeds human knowledge.

I draw no direct indication from this verse to the paired structures of modern physics and biology (particle and antiparticle, chromosome pairs). Per the method (Method), no hunting for scientific miracles is done. What can be recorded is this: the verse names the principle of pairing as a matter of observation and leaves its extent open.

The sequence is striking: first the ship, then the animal.

فُلْك — root ف-ل-ك: the core the lexicographers give is roundness and turning. Falak — the orbit of a heavenly body; falka — the round weight at the head of a spindle. Its use for a ship is explained by the lexicographers by way of the ship's rounded hull or its going through the water by turning and rolling; I transmit this explanation as it has been transmitted.

In Arabic the word is used in the same form for singular and plural — here, since mā tarkabūn is plural, the plural is understood.

أَنْعَام — root ن-ع-م: softness and abundance. Niʿma is from the same root. The word denotes the domestic animals whose flesh and milk are eaten (camel, cattle, sheep, goat), and the lexicographers make its link with the root's core of "softness" by way of the softness of their coats and hides.

I record this as an observation: the name of the riding animal is from the same root as favour. And in the next verse, what is commanded to be named while mounting that animal is the favour: thumma tadhkurū niʿmata rabbikum.

The verse thus turns into a matter of worship what already stands in the root of the word. I make this link by way of the root the lexicographers record; I do not present it as a link the text makes explicitly.

Four steps, enumerating the fields of a single life. And all four are the continuation of the answer in the ninth verse: the other side said "He is the creator"; the text enumerates what "the creator" has done.

Li-tastawū ʿalā ẓuhūrihi thumma tadhkurū niʿmata rabbikum idha'stawaytum ʿalayhi wa taqūlū subḥāna'lladhī sakhkhara lanā hādhā wa mā kunnā lahu muqrinīn · Wa innā ilā rabbinā la-munqalibūn

"That you may settle upon their backs, and then, when you are settled, name the favour of your Lord and say: 'Glory be to Him who made this subservient to us; we could never have matched it. And to our Lord we are surely returning.'"

I shall dwell on these two verses in detail, because places where the Qurʾān gives the very wording of what is to be said in return for a favour are few.

The sentence opens with a lām al-taʿlīl (the lām of purpose), and three verbs are linked to one another:

The connectors must be recorded. The passage from the first to the second is with thumma: in Arabic thumma conveys an interval in between (this distinction was treated in al-Aḥqāf at 46/13). Between mounting and naming, then, there is a gap: first one sits, one settles, and then one names.

The passage from the second to the third is with wāw: no interval. Naming and saying are at the same moment.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the difference between the two connectors: the verse asks for the thanks not before mounting the animal but after one has mounted and settled. The favour is named, that is, while it is being used — not before it and not after.

The core of the root: flatness, equality, evenness. Sawāʾ — equal. Istiwāʾ — to come to be even and balanced, to settle.

The verb is not Form X (istifʿāl) but Form VIII (iftiʿāl): the initial sīn is a letter of the root itself. The meaning the lexicographers give here is to settle evenly upon something, to come to rest in balance.

The choice of word is worth recording: the verse does not say "you mounted", it says "you came into balance". To ride is to hold one's balance on top of a moving creature or of a hull going through water — and this is the word's own picture.

The verb comes twice: li-tastawū and idha'stawaytum. The repetition marks the time: once as the purpose, once inside the condition.

The root ظ-ه-ر: the outer face of a thing, its back; and from there to appear, to come out into the open, to prevail. Ẓāhir — the outer, the visible.

The pronoun comes singular: ẓuhūrihi — "its backs". Yet two things had been enumerated before it: ships and animals.

The lexicographers explain it thus: the pronoun refers back to the expression mā tarkabūn — "that which you ride" is singular in wording. Ship and animal are thus gathered under a single head: the thing ridden.

And this can be recorded as an observation: the verse names the ship and the camel in the same sentence, with the same pronoun. The difference of technology between the two is not the verse's concern; what they have in common is that a human being covers, on top of something, a road he could not cover by himself.

And this common feature can be thought together with the word maʿārij (stairways) that will occur in the thirty-third verse: as recorded in al-Maʿārij, maʿārij occurs in its concrete sense in this sūra alone in the Qurʾān. This is a sūra that draws attention to the means by which human beings climb and travel.

The root was treated in al-Ḥāqqa and in al-Ḥujurāt; I rely on those treatments. The finding recorded in the discussion of al-Ḥāqqa was this:

"The root س-خ-ر carries two branches of meaning: سَخَّرَ (Form II) — to make something submit, to press it into service; سَخِرَ مِن — to mock. The lexicographers give the shared core of the two branches thus: to put someone into a position outside his own will. In subjection it is the body that is at issue; in mockery, standing."

And this makes a very important link within the sūra — because the same root will return in the thirty-second verse: li-yattakhidha baʿḍuhum baʿḍan sukhriyyā.

The two occurrences must be set side by side:

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the root is shared: the sūra uses the same root in two different places — one for a possibility God has given to the human being, the other for the relation human beings set up with one another. And the first is answered with glorification, the second is the subject of an argument.

The root was treated in two places in Qāf (qarīn, 50/23 and 50/27; and qarn, 50/36). The finding there was this:

"Concrete sense: to bind two things to one another, to pair them. قَرَنَ بَيْنَ شَيْئَيْن — he brought two things together, bound them. قِرَان — joining. قَرْن — horn; and generation."

I add here the particular pattern of the word in this verse, because that is where the matter lies.

Muqrin is the active participle of Form IV (iqrān). The meaning the lexicographers give for this pattern is: to be a match for something, to be capable of it, to be in a state of being able to cope with it.

How is the link made? The lexicographers explain: for two camels to be harnessed to the same rope they must be matched. Aqrana li'sh-shayʾ — he was a match for a thing, he was able to bear it, he was capable of it. "To be capable", then, is in the root's picture "to be matched enough to be harnessed alongside".

From here the meaning of the sentence follows: wa mā kunnā lahu muqrinīn — "we were not its match", "we could not have harnessed this ourselves", "we would not have been capable of it".

The renderings given in the classical commentaries circle among these three aspects:

All three come out of the root, and I do not impose a preference. But the root's core of "matching" is directly related to the sūra's question of measure, and I record this as my own reading: as a person mounts his beast, he is not counting himself greater than his beast; on the contrary, he is saying that he is not its match.

And the word's return within the sūra must be recorded: the same root will come back in the fifty-third verse — aw jāʾa maʿahu'l-malāʾikatu muqtarinīn (Form VIII: "accompanying one another, in a train"). Pharaoh asks, as proof of prophethood, that the angels should come in a train.

The difference between the two uses can be given as an observation: in the thirteenth verse a human being says that he is not a match; in the fifty-third Pharaoh demands a visible procession. The same root, one in self-lowering, the other in a demand for splendour.

The root س-ب-ح: to swim, to glide through water or air; and from there to put far away, to declare free of. Subḥāna is a verbal noun in the accusative, its verb unexpressed (usabbiḥu).

The work of the word: to hold God far from what does not befit Him.

And this is part of a pattern within the sūra: the same word will come again in the eighty-second verse — subḥāna rabbi's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍi rabbi'l-ʿarshi ʿammā yaṣifūn.

The same word, for two distinct reasons. I record this as an observation: the sūra uses glorification as the language both of thanks and of refusal.

I come now to the most striking aspect of the verse, and I must treat it in detail.

It is a rare thing in the Qurʾān for the very wording of what is to be said in the face of a favour to be given. The words given here are two sentences, and the passage between them must be recorded:

What is said about mounting, then, does not end with mounting.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the two sentences are parts of the same utterance: as a person sets out on a journey, he says that the journey he has set out on lies inside a journey greater than himself. The mount is moving, the person is moving; and the words bind the whole movement to a single direction.

The concrete sense of the root: to turn a thing inside out, to overturn it. Qalb (the heart) is from this root too — the lexicographers explain it by its constant turning, its passing from state to state.

Munqalib is the active participle of Form VII (infiʿāl), and this form conveys reflexivity: that which is itself turned, which turns.

The choice of word is worth recording: the verse does not say rājiʿūn (those who return), it says munqalibūn. The difference is this: rujūʿ is going back, whereas inqilāb is turning over, being overturned.

I give this as an observation about the word: the word placed in the mouth of a person moving forward on a mount is a word that conveys a reversal of direction.

It is transmitted in the ḥadīth sources that the Prophet recited the wording of this verse when setting out on a journey; the report occurs in Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ from Ibn ʿUmar as a prayer for travel, and the text of this verse occurs within it. On the details of the report (the whole of the wording, the additional portions) I issue no ruling; what I record is that the verse has been transmitted as having been used as the text of a prayer.

And this use accords with the structure of the verse itself: the verse already commands the words by saying wa taqūlū (and say). The verse is not giving a piece of information; it is teaching a sentence.

What the mount is has changed; the relation the verse builds has not.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sentence mā kunnā lahu muqrinīn: the work of the sentence is to say not that the vehicle does not belong to the person but that the person is not the vehicle's match. The vehicle is stronger than the human being; being able to use it does not mean being equal to it.

Today this is easily seen: a human body can neither travel a hundred kilometres in an hour, nor stand on water, nor stay in the air. What does these things is the result not of some equality granted to the human being but of a possibility harnessed from outside.

And that the verse places the thanks at exactly this point — at the moment of use — must be recorded: the thanks is placed not at the moment the vehicle is bought nor at the moment the journey ends, but at the moment one has sat down on it and come into balance. The moment a favour is most forgotten is the moment it is most used.

Wa jaʿalū lahu min ʿibādihi juzʾā · Inna'l-insāna la-kafūrun mubīn · Ami'ttakhadha mimmā yakhluqu banātin wa aṣfākum bi'l-banīn

"They assigned to Him a part of His own servants. Truly the human being is plainly ungrateful. Or has He taken daughters for Himself out of what He creates, and set aside sons for you?"

The fourteenth verse ended with a glorification from a human mouth: subḥāna'lladhī sakhkhara lanā hādhā. The fifteenth opens with an ascription made by that same human being.

The harshness of the transition must be recorded, and I give it as my own reading: the distance between the two verses is one word. Glorification and imputation are set side by side — and the connector between them is only a wāw.

The verb comes for the third time in the sūra, and this time the agent has changed:

The same verb, in the same sūra, three times. In the first two there is a real transformation: something is put from one state into another. In the third, a verdict is passed: "they reckoned it so".

In Arabic jaʿala carries this second sense as well: to accept something as such, to deem it so. And in the nineteenth verse the same verb will come again in this sense: wa jaʿalu'l-malāʾikata … ināthā — "they reckoned the angels female".

I record this as an observation about the structure: the sūra uses the same verb for making and for deeming, and shows the difference between them by changing the agent.

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

The sense of the root: to divide, to break into parts; and the part of a whole. Juzʾ — a part, a portion. The Turkish words cüz and cüzi come from here. From the same root ajzaʾa — he apportioned; jazāʾ (in the sense of sufficiency) — one part's standing in place of another.

What is the word's work here? The exegetes transmit two readings:

The first reading takes support from the context, since immediately after it comes "has He taken daughters and set aside sons for you". I do not impose a preference; but that this particular word was chosen is worth recording.

I give this as my own reading, and its ground is the meaning of the root: juzʾ means divisibility. For a thing to have a part, that thing must be divisible. Before rejecting the claim, then, the verse names what is inside the claim: division.

And this is the same line as the one treated in al-Ikhlāṣ. It was recorded there:

"The first addressees were not claiming that God was born… Their claim was that God had a child: the angels are His daughters. The Qurʾān raises this belief again and again and rejects it: al-Najm 53/21-22; also al-Naḥl 16/57, al-Ṣāffāt 37/149-153, al-Zukhruf 43/16-19."

The analysis of al-Ṣamad in the discussion of al-Ikhlāṣ attaches directly here: not divided, not hollow, not broken into parts. I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it.

The root ك-ف-ر: to cover, to conceal (a farmer is called kāfir because he covers the seed with soil). The root has been treated in many places in the corpus.

Kafūr is an intensive form (فَعُول): one who covers much, a deep ingrate. And mubīn comes beside it — "plainly".

The choice of word must be recorded: the verse does not say kāfir, it says kafūr. The lexicographers use the pattern kafūr mostly in the sense of covering over a favour — not so much the refusal of belief as failing to make a return.

And this accords exactly with the context — I record it as my own reading: the four preceding verses were enumerating favours (earth, road, water, mount). The fifteenth verse names the ascription made about the owner of those favours "ingratitude". The matter is set here, that is, not as an error of creed but as covering over what has been given.

This is the third occurrence of the word mubīn in the sūra (2: al-kitābi'l-mubīn; 15: kafūrun mubīn; and in 18 ghayru mubīn will come). The same root: the Book is clear, the ingratitude is clear, and a human being is reckoned "not clear".

The verse is a question, and the pattern of the question carries a refusal.

Am here is munqaṭiʿa: "or rather…" — and the lexicographers render it with bal + hamza (rather + the interrogative of denial).

أَصْفَىٰ — root ص-ف-و. The concrete sense of the root: a thing's being clear, unmixed, without sediment. Ṣafā — it became clear. Ṣafwa — the cleanest, choicest part of a thing. Iṣṭafā — he chose out and set apart.

In Form IV, aṣfā: to set apart and choose something for someone, to give it unmixed.

The choice of word does the verse's work, and I record it as an observation: the verse does not say "did He give the sons to you?" It says "did He set apart the sons for you, choose out the pure portion and give it to you?" The logic of division inside the claim is thus brought to light: He gave the good portion not to Himself but to the other side.

The same logic occurs in a sharper sentence in al-Najm 53/21-22: a-lakumu'dh-dhakaru wa lahu'l-unthā · tilka idhan qismatun ḍīzā — "is the male yours and the female His? That would be an unjust division." It was treated in al-Najm.

The root ض-ي-ز occurred there: crooked, unjust division. And in this sūra the same question will return in the thirty-second verse — a-hum yaqsimūna raḥmata rabbik (is it they who divide out your Lord's mercy?). The sūra thus takes up the idea of "dividing out" twice: once in the divine field (16), once in the human field (32).

Wa idhā bushshira aḥaduhum bimā ḍaraba li'r-Raḥmāni mathalan ẓalla wajhuhu muswaddan wa huwa kaẓīm · A-wa man yunashshaʾu fi'l-ḥilyati wa huwa fi'l-khiṣāmi ghayru mubīn

"And when one of them is given good news of what he has ascribed to al-Raḥmān, his face turns black and he is inwardly choked. Is one who is raised amid ornament and cannot bring his meaning to light in a dispute (to be ascribed to Him)?"

In treating these two verses I must keep one thing clear from the outset, per the method (Method).

The verse issues no ruling about women. The verse reports a society's attitude towards a daughter and shows the contradiction inside that attitude. I shall show step by step below how this is done; for the force of the verse lies exactly in this manner of reporting.

The verse does not say "when one of them is given good news of a daughter".

It says: bushshira aḥaduhum bimā ḍaraba li'r-Raḥmāni mathalan — "when one of them is given good news of what he has ascribed as a likeness to al-Raḥmān".

This is one of the most striking choices of arrangement in the sūra, and it must be treated in detail.

The word — "daughter" — does not occur in the sentence. In its place, the person's own ascription is used as the description. What the sentence does, that is, is this: "you ascribe such a thing to God; now let us look at what happens when the same thing is given to you."

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the expression itself: the verse joins two situations in a single sentence and forces the reader to set them side by side. A person ascribes something upward; when the same thing comes to him, his face turns black.

The expression occurs in open wording in al-Naḥl 16/57-59, and the expression in this sūra is like an abbreviation of it:

"And when one of them is given good news of a female, his face turns black and he is filled with rage. He hides from the people because of the bad news he has been given: is he to keep her in humiliation, or to bury her in the earth? Look how evil is the judgement they make!" (al-Naḥl 16/58-59)

This verse was treated in al-Takwīr, and there al-Naḥl's verb (dassa — to push into the earth in secret) was compared with al-Takwīr's word (mawʾūda — one on whom a weight has been laid). I rely on that treatment and extend the comparison to three columns:

Three verses take hold of the same fact from three different places. In al-Takwīr the victim herself was made to speak — and, as recorded in al-Takwīr, the question was put not to the doer but to the victim. In al-Zukhruf, neither doer nor victim is the one addressed: the one addressed is the mind that both belittles a thing and ascribes it upward.

The root ب-ش-ر has been treated in the corpus (al-Baqara, ʿAbasa, al-Qamar and others). Its core: the outer surface of the skin (bashara); and from there, a piece of news striking the face.

The use of the word here produces a tension, and it must be recorded: bushshira — "he was given good news". The verb is the verb of good tidings. But the reaction that follows is the reaction to bad news.

In naming the event, that is, the verse declares its own side: what happens is good news. The wrongness of the reaction is marked at the very head of the sentence by the choice of verb.

In al-Naḥl 16/58 the same root turns up again elsewhere: min sūʾi mā bushshira bih — "because of the evil of what he was given good news of". There the word comes once more, but this time together with the person's own assessment. In ʿAbasa the root's core of "news that strikes the face" was treated; here what strikes the face is a darkening.

ظَلَّ — not a full verb but an incomplete verb (nāqiṣ): to be in some state throughout the day, to remain in that state. The lexicographers record that ẓalla is bound up with the day, bāta with the night.

The sentence does not say "his face turned black"; it says "his face remained blackened". It conveys duration.

مُسْوَدًّا — root س-و-د, an active participle of Form IX. In Arabic Form IX (ifʿilāl) is used almost only for colours and defects, and the lexicographers record that this form conveys a colour's settling upon a person.

This is a detail of language, but it carries the meaning: the pattern conveys not a passing flush but a colour that settles on the face.

The root was treated in detail in al-Qalam at 68/48 (makẓūm); I rely on that treatment. What was recorded there was this:

"The concrete sense of the root: kaẓama'l-qirba — he filled the mouth of the waterskin and tied it. That is, a vessel filled inside and stopped at the mouth. كَظِيم (kaẓīm) — one who has buried his grief within. The Qurʾān uses it of Jacob (Yaʿqūb): 'His eyes went white with grief; he was filled within (kaẓīm)' (Yūsuf 12/84)."

I add the difference of pattern here, because the two verses use two different patterns:

The difference is worth recording, and I give it as an observation: the mouth of the one who is makẓūm is tied by another; the one who is kaẓīm ties his own mouth.

And the root's picture works here exactly: the mouth of the skin is tied, but the skin is full. What is visible from outside is a darkened face; what stands inside is pressure.

And a comparison can be made: the same root occurs in Āl ʿImrān 3/134 as a virtue — wa'l-kāẓimīna'l-ghayẓ (those who swallow their rage). The same verb, then, is praised in one place and in another becomes the description of a reaction. What makes the difference is what is stopped up inside: in the one, rage is held back; in the other, the birth of a child.

The eighteenth verse is a question attached to the seventeenth, and the a-wa at the head of the sentence conveys denial.

Who is the subject of the sentence? Here the exegetes differ, and the disagreement must be set out in a table:

The majority stand around the first two readings. I do not impose a preference.

But whichever reading is taken, the work of the sentence is the same, and I record this as my own reading: the verse is not making a description, it is reporting a point of view.

The proof of this within the language is as follows: the sentence is a question of denial opening with a-wa. In a question of denial, the content put into the question is not the speaker's own verdict — it is taken from the addressee's own acceptance and handed back to him. The verse is not saying "a daughter is such and such"; it is saying "is one whom you see in such a way really so?"

Writing this distinction out plainly is required by the method (Method), and it also follows from the text. The one addressed by the verse is the mind that carries two verdicts at once: the mind that on the one hand counts a daughter low enough for its face to darken, and on the other sees no objection to ascribing the same thing to God. What the verse shows is that these two cannot stand together.

The root was treated in al-Insān at 76/21 (ḥullū asāwira min fiḍḍa). Its meaning: ornament, jewellery, adornment. Ḥuliyy — jewellery; taḥliya — adorning.

Yunashshaʾu — from the root ن-ش-أ, Form II, passive: "is raised". The root was treated in detail in al-Wāqiʿa at 56/35; the core recorded there was this: "it describes not bringing into being out of nothing, but being built upward from a ground that already exists."

The pattern matters, and I record it as an observation: the verb is passive. Yunashshaʾu — "is raised". The subject of the verb, that is, is not the person herself; the one who raises her is another.

Here lies the irony within the sentence: to be raised amid ornament is not the choice of the one who is raised. A community is putting forward its own manner of upbringing as a defect. I record this as my own reading; its ground is the passive pattern of the verb.

The root خ-ص-م: the tip or edge of a thing (khuṣm — the corner of a sack); and from there the opposing party, an adversary; contention. Khiṣām — dispute, the exchange of speech in a suit.

The word will return in the fifty-eighth verse: bal hum qawmun khaṣimūn — "they are a contentious people".

What emerges when the two occurrences are set side by side is worth recording, and I give it as my own reading:

The same root, forty verses apart, for two sides. On the one side, one counted small because she cannot contend; on the other, those who do nothing but contend.

ghayru mubīn — and here we return to the opening verses of the sūra.

The same word (mubīn) has occurred three times in the sūra:

And the same word will come in the fifty-second verse, of a human being: Pharaoh will say of Moses wa lā yakādu yubīn — "he can scarcely make his meaning plain".

This is one of the clearest patterns in the sūra, and it can be verified: the same root, throughout the sūra, always by the same measure. And twice it is used to make a human being small — in verse 18 of the one raised amid ornament, in verse 52 of Moses.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is this repetition: the sūra shows twice how the measure of "being able to state one's meaning clearly" is used to strip a human being of value. And in the opening verses it had set up the same measure positively, for the Book. The measure itself, that is, is not wrong; what is criticised is the use of the measure to establish a ranking of superiority among human beings.

The reaction the verse describes is not a record of history.

The note entered on this subject in al-Takwīr holds here too, and I repeat it: sex-selective practices have produced measurable population imbalances in some countries where the means of prenatal determination have become widespread, and have become the subject of legal regulation. I write this not as a "scientific miracle of the verse" but as a record that the motive the verse describes has not been buried in history.

And the verse's own method is one that can still be used today: the verse does not defend a verdict, it shows a contradiction. It says that it is not possible both to count a thing low and to ascribe it upward. This is a test that can be applied to any ranking of value.

Wa jaʿalu'l-malāʾikata'lladhīna hum ʿibādu'r-Raḥmāni ināthā · A-shahidū khalqahum · Sa-tuktabu shahādatuhum wa yusʾalūn · Wa qālū law shāʾa'r-Raḥmānu mā ʿabadnāhum · Mā lahum bi-dhālika min ʿilmin in hum illā yakhruṣūn · Am ātaynāhum kitāban min qablihi fa-hum bihi mustamsikūn

"They reckoned the angels, who are the servants of al-Raḥmān, to be female. Were they witnesses to their creation? Their testimony will be written down, and they will be questioned. And they said: 'Had al-Raḥmān willed, we would not have served them.' They have no knowledge of this; they are only guessing. Or did We give them a Book before this, so that they are holding fast to it?"

In the middle of the verse there is a relative clause, and the sense would have held even without it. But it is there, and its work must be recorded.

Malāʾika is not simply said and passed over; what is said is "the angels who are the servants of al-Raḥmān".

I give this as an observation about the structure: the claim is refuted not by an argument against it but by putting the right name to the being that is claimed about. What is a servant cannot be an offspring.

The root ع-ب-د has been treated in the corpus (al-Kāfirūn, al-Najm, al-Dhāriyāt and others). At its core stand the picture of submission and of a road levelled by the tread of feet (ṭarīqun muʿabbad).

And the word stands at a key point in the sūra: in the fifty-ninth verse the same word will be used of the son of Mary — in huwa illā ʿabdun anʿamnā ʿalayh. The sūra, that is, puts the same name to both the angels and Jesus: servant. Two separate ascriptions are met with a single answer.

The question is a question about evidence, and its form must be recorded: a-shahidū — "were they present?"

The root ش-ه-د: to be present at an event; and from there, eyewitness testimony. At the core of the root lies being there — testimony, therefore, comes not from hearsay but from being present in person.

The verse asks this: were you there when you passed this verdict?

And it passes on without giving the answer. In its place it states a consequence: sa-tuktabu shahādatuhum wa yusʾalūn — "their testimony will be written down, and they will be questioned".

What is to be recorded is this: the verse does not name the claim "a lie"; it names it "testimony" and enters it on the record. The word, that is, is bound to the one who said it.

This stands on the same line as verse 80 at the end of the sūra: wa rusulunā ladayhim yaktubūn — "and Our messengers are with them, writing". The same root (ك-ت-ب), the same work: what is said being put on record. The question of the record was treated in al-Infiṭār and al-Muṭaffifīn; I rely on those treatments.

This is an objection the Qurʾān records in many places (al-Anʿām 6/148, al-Naḥl 16/35). Its structure is this: had God not willed it, we would not have done this; since we have done it, He willed it.

The answer the verse gives looks not at the content of the objection but at its ground:

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that all three answers look in the same direction: the verse does not enter into the argument about decree. It does not argue whether the objection is right or wrong; it says that the one who advances the objection has no source of knowledge on the matter.

This is exactly the method of Sūrat al-Aḥqāf. It was recorded in al-Aḥqāf at 46/4: "the verse asks for two kinds of evidence: observation and transmission. It leaves no third way." In al-Zukhruf the same two ways are asked for: were you witnesses (observation — 19), was a Book given (transmission — 21).

That even the order is the same is worth recording.

The concrete sense of the root comes, in the lexicographers, from agriculture: kharaṣa'n-nakhl — he estimated by eye the crop on the date palm before it had been gathered.

The root thus conveys an estimate made without measuring. Khāriṣ — an estimator of crops. And from there: to lie, to make things up — because a statement made without measuring, if it hits the mark, does so by chance.

This word was treated in al-Dhāriyāt, and this verse was cited there too: "They are only guessing." (al-Anʿām 6/116; Yūnus 10/66; al-Zukhruf 43/20). I rely on that treatment.

I add here the word's place within the sūra, and I record this as my own reading: kharṣ is measuring by eye. The subject of the sūra is measure. The verse describes the other side's verdict not as "wrong" but as "unweighed". And in the eleventh verse it was said that the water was sent down bi-qadarin (by a measure). Water sent down by measure and a verdict passed by eye stand at the two ends of the same sūra.

The sense of the root: to hold, to grasp, to keep in hand. Form X (istimsāk): to hold on tightly, not to let go.

And the word will return in the sūra: in the forty-third verse, fa'stamsik bi'lladhī ūḥiya ilayk — "hold fast to what has been revealed to you".

The two occurrences must be compared, and this is a datum of the text:

The same pattern (Form X), the same root, twenty-two verses apart. I record this as a pattern: the sūra uses the verb "to hold fast" twice, and in both places asks what the thing held to is.

Bal qālū innā wajadnā ābāʾanā ʿalā ummatin wa innā ʿalā āthārihim muhtadūn

"No! They said: We found our forefathers on a way, and in their tracks we are guided."

This is the argument at the centre of the sūra, and it needs to be treated in detail.

The twenty-first verse had asked "or did We give them a Book?" The twenty-second begins with bal: "no, it is not that — what they actually say is this."

Bal (the particle of iḍrāb) was treated in Qāf at 50/2; I rely on that treatment. Two functions were recorded there: cancelling what precedes, or leaving what precedes and leaping to the real matter. Here it is the second.

The arrangement has proceeded thus:

The sūra, that is, asked the question of evidence twice and received no answer; then it stated the real ground itself. I record this as an observation about the structure.

In the sense in which it has settled into English usage, the word means "community, nation". But that sense does not sit in the sentence here — because it comes with the preposition ʿalā: "upon an umma".

Here the lexicographers and the exegetes record another sense of the word, and this sense follows from the root.

The root أ-م-م — as recorded in al-Qiyāma, its family is: umm (mother, origin), umma (community), imām (the one who stands in front), amām (the front). The shared idea: priority, being in front, being at the source.

And starting from the word imām, the word umma takes on the sense of "the road that is followed, the line that is held to, the method". The lexicographers record it thus: umma — the state a person is upon, the road he keeps to, the order he follows.

The renderings given for this verse in the classical commentaries are these:

All three come out at the same place, and I do not impose a preference. What is to be recorded is this: the word here conveys not a body of people but a line — and the preposition (ʿalā) confirms it: one stands upon a road, not upon a community.

And the word's three occurrences within the sūra must be compared:

The same root, in three distinct senses, in one sūra. I record this as a datum of the text.

And I add this observation as my own reading: in the fourth verse the origin of the Book was named — the source to which it is referred back. In the twenty-second verse the other side also points to an origin: their forefathers. Both sides rest on a source; the dispute is over what the source is.

The root was analysed in al-Aḥqāf at 46/4 (athārata min ʿilm — a remnant of knowledge); I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it. What was recorded there was this:

"The root أ-ث-ر: a trace, a sign left behind. Athar — a footprint, a remnant, a report that has been transmitted."

The root also occurred in al-Nāziʿāt, al-Aʿlā and al-Ḥashr; in al-Nāziʿāt this verse was already cited.

What is to be added here is that the word stays concrete in this verse — and this matters.

In al-Aḥqāf, athāra was a remnant of knowledge: something transmitted, and therefore something with content. In al-Zukhruf, āthār is plural and stands in the concrete sense that looks to footprints: innā ʿalā āthārihim muhtadūn — "in their tracks we find our way."

I set the difference out in a table:

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the difference of pattern and context between the two words: what was asked for in al-Aḥqāf was a scrap of knowledge; what is put forward in al-Zukhruf is a trace — a sign with no content, only a direction.

A footprint tells you who passed; it does not tell you where he was going.

The word is an active participle of Form VIII from the root ه-د-ي: "those who have found the way".

And this word is the very word the text uses of itself in the tenth verse of the sūra: wa jaʿala lakum fīhā subulan laʿallakum tahtadūn.

The two occurrences side by side:

I record this as a pattern: the same word, once as a possibility, once as a claim. And in the thirty-seventh verse the text will pass its verdict on that claim: wa yaḥsabūna annahum muhtadūn — "and they suppose themselves to be guided".

The sūra thus works the word in three stages: the possibility given (10), the claim advanced (22), and the name of the claim (37).

Wa kadhālika mā arsalnā min qablika fī qaryatin min nadhīrin illā qāla mutrafūhā innā wajadnā ābāʾanā ʿalā ummatin wa innā ʿalā āthārihim muqtadūn

"So it is: to whatever town We sent a warner before you, those of it who lived in ease said exactly this: 'We found our forefathers on a way, and we are following in their tracks.'"

A sentence was given in the twenty-second verse. The twenty-third gives the same sentence once more, but this time for all the communities of the past.

The two verses are almost word for word the same, and a single word changes:

This is the only word that changes, and the difference must be recorded.

The root ق-د-و — iqtidāʾ: to walk behind someone, to take him as a model. Qudwa — the one taken as a model. The word conveys behaviour, not a verdict: "we are following".

Muhtadūn, on the other hand, conveys a verdict: "we are in a state of having found the way".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the difference of sense between the two words: in the twenty-second verse those addressed claim the result (we have found the truth); in the twenty-third the earlier peoples confess the act (we are following). The same ground, at two different degrees of certainty.

And the verse's real work is to show that this sentence has been repeated throughout history.

The pattern of the sentence is: negation plus exception — mā arsalnā … illā qāla. "We sent no warner without their saying this." This pattern was used in the seventh verse of the sūra as well: wa mā yaʾtīhim min nabiyyin illā kānū bihi yastahziʾūn.

The two verses build the same structure, and I record this as a datum of the text.

I add as my own reading: what the verse does is not to isolate the one addressed but the very opposite — to show that the sentence he is uttering is not original. The other side puts its ground forward as though it were a choice; the verse says that the same sentence has come out of the same place in every age.

And this is a question of measure: if a ground is repeated in every age, in communities with no knowledge of one another, in the same words, then that ground is the result not of thinking but of a position. And the verse names the position too: mutrafūhā.

The root was analysed in al-Wāqiʿa at 56/45; I rely on that treatment. What was recorded there was this:

"The root meaning the lexicographers give: abundance of favour, and the softening and slackening that abundance produces. Tarifa — he lived in abundance. Atrafahu — he drowned him in comfort, spoilt him. The pattern matters: mutraf is a passive participle of Form IV. The word means not 'one who runs to excess' but 'one who has been made to run to excess'. The action worked on them from outside."

And this too was recorded there: "Wealth itself is not set down in the verse as the offence; what is set down as the offence is the state into which wealth brings a person." And also: "almost every time the word mutraf occurs in the Qurʾān it is in a context of destruction or of opposition. Al-Isrāʾ 17/16… In Sabaʾ 34/34 it is stated that the first to oppose every warner were the mutrafūn."

I add here what is particular to al-Zukhruf, and it is directly connected with the main question of the sūra.

The verse attaches the proof from the forefathers not to everyone but to a particular section: mutrafūhā — "those of that place who had been given ease".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the subject of the verse itself: the defender of the proof from the forefathers is shown to be not the ordinary people but the section with the greatest means.

The logic of this is consistent with the rest of the sūra, and it can be seen in two steps:

1. An inheritance concerns most the one who has most to inherit. Those with the greatest interest in the continuation of the existing order are those who stand highest within it. 2. And eight verses later the sūra will say this outright: law lā nuzzila hādha'l-qurʾānu ʿalā rajulin mina'l-qaryatayni ʿaẓīm (31) — the objection will again come from a measure of rank.

The sūra thus attaches the proof from the forefathers and the measure of wealth to the same section, and this is a datum of the text: in verse 23 the subject is mutrafūn, in verse 31 the measure of the objection is ʿaẓīm (a great man).

And there is one further difference between the mutraf of al-Wāqiʿa and the one here, worth recording:

Al-Wāqiʿa uses the word as a state; al-Zukhruf as a position.

Qāla a-wa law jiʾtukum bi-ahdā mimmā wajadtum ʿalayhi ābāʾakum · Qālū innā bimā ursiltum bihi kāfirūn · Fa'ntaqamnā minhum · Fa'nẓur kayfa kāna ʿāqibatu'l-mukadhdhibīn

"He said: 'Even if I have brought you something that guides better than what you found your forefathers upon?' They said: 'We reject what you have been sent with.' So We took retribution from them. Look, then, how the end of the deniers was."

The warner's answer is not a refusal but a question. And the structure of the question is striking.

A-wa law — "even if…?" In Arabic this pattern supposes an acceptance and adds a condition on top of it.

The answer, that is, does not say: "your forefathers were in error."

It says: "granted that they were on a way; what if I have brought something that guides better?"

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the pattern used: the answer does not reject the other side's measure, it puts it to work. The other side's measure is "being on the right way" (muhtadūn, 22). The answer takes that same measure and puts it into the comparative: ahdā — "one that guides better".

The question, then, is this: if what you are looking for is the right way, why do you not take the one that is more right?

This stands on the same line as the answer recorded in al-Baqara at 2/170, which was cited in Nūḥ as well: "Even if their forefathers understood nothing and were not on the right way?" (al-Baqara 2/170).

The difference between the two answers is worth recording:

The second is less confrontational, and I give this as an observation: the verse does not speak ill of the forefathers, it only proposes a comparison.

And the answer given does not touch the offer at any point: innā bimā ursiltum bihi kāfirūn — "we reject what you have been sent with."

Note: the sentence is plural — ursiltum ("you [plural] were sent"), whereas jiʾtukum was singular.

The exegetes explain the shift thus: the answer is given not to a single warner but to the whole chain of warners. I transmit this as it has been transmitted.

And I record this as an observation: the verse leaves no debate at all between the offer and the answer. The question looked to content (is it more right?); the answer does not touch the content at all.

This is the same as the finding recorded in al-Aḥqāf at 46/11: "the objection is not an argument but an assumption about ranking." So it is here too: the answer is not an assessment but the announcement of a position.

The sense of the root: to find a thing ugly and reject it; and from there to punish, to return the like of it. Naqama minhu — he took retribution from him. Mā tanqimu minnā — what do you hold against us (it occurs in al-Aʿrāf 7/126).

The usual English rendering, "vengeance", is narrower than the root: in the root there stands first finding a thing ugly, withholding approval; the punishment is the consequence of that.

The word occurs three times in the sūra, and this is a pattern:

All three from the same root, all three in the same structure. I record this as a datum of the text: the sūra shows the same outcome at three separate times — it has happened in the past, it will happen in the future, and in one instance it is recounted in detail.

The root ع-ق-ب has been treated in the corpus (al-Balad, al-Shams, al-Ḥashr). Its core: the heel, what comes behind. ʿĀqiba — what follows upon a matter, its end.

And the word will return in the twenty-eighth verse: fī ʿaqibihi — "in his line / among those who come after him".

The two occurrences can be set side by side, and I give this as an observation:

The same root: one conveys an ending, the other a continuation. Three verses stand between them, and this prepares the passage to the next block of the sūra.

م-ك-ذ-ب — mukadhdhibīn, an active participle of Form II: the deniers. The root ك-ذ-ب has been treated in the corpus. What is to be recorded is that the verdict is attached to an act: no name of a people and no lineage is named; a behaviour is named. Per the method (Method) this distinction is kept everywhere: what the verse describes is an attribute.

Wa idh qāla Ibrāhīmu li-abīhi wa qawmihi innanī barāʾun mimmā taʿbudūn · Illa'lladhī faṭaranī fa-innahu sa-yahdīn

"And when Abraham (Ibrāhīm) said to his father and to his people: 'I am quit of what you serve — save Him who brought me into being. He will guide me.'"

The twenty-fifth verse ended by saying "look how the end of the deniers was". The twenty-sixth opens with a particle of recollection: wa idh — "and when".

And the example chosen is striking: the exact counter-example to the proof from the forefathers.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the placement of the block: against those who say "we found our forefathers on a way", the sūra recounts someone who parted from his father. And the person chosen is the name those addressed set at the very top of their own chain of descent.

The counter-argument, that is, is not fetched from outside. Those addressed said they were descended from Abraham; the sūra names their forefather as someone who refused to follow his forefathers.

This stands in the same place as the finding about "the distance of the proof" recorded in al-Aḥqāf: the proof is taken from what is nearest to the one addressed.

The root has come up in several places in the corpus (al-Mumtaḥana, al-Ḥadīd, al-Ḥashr, al-Infiṭār, al-Qamar). Here I dwell on the word's particular pattern.

The concrete sense of the root: to part from something, to come clear of it, to be cleared.

• بَرِئَ مِنَ المَرَض — he recovered from an illness, came clear of it.
• بَرِئَ مِنَ الدَّيْن — he was freed of a debt, his liability was cleared.
• بَرَاءَة — acquittal; a document declaring no connection, a distancing. The other name of Sūrat al-Tawba.
• بَارِئ — the creator; the lexicographers explain this as "the one who brings a thing into being by separating it out from something else, by singling it out".

The pattern of the word matters, and the lexicographers record it separately: barāʾ is a verbal noun, not an adjective.

The sentence therefore does not say "I am far from it" but, exactly, "I am the distance itself".

In Arabic the use of a verbal noun of a person conveys intensification — as in rajulun ʿadlun ("a man who is justice itself"). And because it is a verbal noun the word makes no distinction of singular and plural: the same word serves for one person and for a group. Thus in al-Mumtaḥana 60/4 it comes with a plural subject: innā buraʾāʾu minkum — there the plural pattern (buraʾāʾ) is used. It was treated in al-Mumtaḥana.

I record this as a point of grammar: Abraham is not stating an attitude here, he is stating a position. The construction of the sentence takes the separation out of the class of a temporary stance and makes it the definition of the person.

The sentence continues with an exception, and the exegetes dwell on what the exception attaches to:

The first reading accords with the fact that the Meccan addressees accepted God as well — the ninth and eighty-seventh verses of the sūra already record this. The second is possible in point of language as well. I do not impose a preference.

The root has come up in many places in the corpus (al-Mulk, al-Muzzammil, al-Inshiqāq, al-Infiṭār, al-Qamar, al-Mursalāt). Here I open the core of the root once more, in the aspect this verse requires.

The concrete sense of the root: to split, to crack, to open a thing from end to end.

• فَطَرَ النَّابُ — the camel's tooth split the flesh and came through.
• اِنْفَطَرَتِ السَّمَاء — the sky was split (al-Infiṭār 82/1 — treated in al-Infiṭār).
• فِطْر — to break a fast; the opening of the mouth's closure. Ifṭār and the feast of fiṭr come from here.
• فِطْرَة — the state of the first creation.

The picture of the root is this: something closed being split open for the first time.

And the sense of creating comes from here — the lexicographers record it plainly: faṭara is to bring a thing forth for the first time, with no prior model. There is indeed a well-known saying ascribed to Ibn ʿAbbās: it is transmitted that he understood the meaning of the word fāṭir from two bedouin in a dispute over a well who said "anā faṭartuhā" ("I opened it, I was the first to dig it"). I transmit this account as it has been transmitted; I issue no ruling on its chain.

Now the reason for the choice of this word in this verse can be seen, and I record it as my own reading:

In rejecting the proof from the forefathers, Abraham uses the verb faṭara. That is, the verb "the one who opened for the first time".

The words come from exactly opposite places: one is "what was found behind", the other "the one who first opened".

And this connects with the fourth verse as well: there it was said that the Book is in the ummu'l-kitāb — that is, in the origin. The sūra asks the same thing of both the Book and the human being: is your ground in the origin, or in the traces?

The verb is in the imperfect and has a sīn at its head: sa-yahdīn — "He will guide me".

Sīn in Arabic conveys the near future.

The construction of the sentence must be recorded, and I give this as my own reading: Abraham does not say "I am on the right way." He says "He will guide me."

Guidance, that is, is set down not as a property held in hand but as a work that is awaited.

And this stands in exact opposition to the sentence in the twenty-second verse:

The difference is at the level of grammar, and for that reason it is a verifiable datum. In Arabic a nominal sentence conveys continuity and fixity, a verbal sentence occurrence and renewal.

I record this as my own reading: those who defend the proof from the forefathers speak of guidance as something they possess; Abraham as something that will be done for him.

Wa jaʿalahā kalimatan bāqiyatan fī ʿaqibihi laʿallahum yarjiʿūn · Bal mattaʿtu hāʾulāʾi wa ābāʾahum ḥattā jāʾahumu'l-ḥaqqu wa rasūlun mubīn · Wa lammā jāʾahumu'l-ḥaqqu qālū hādhā siḥrun wa innā bihi kāfirūn

"He made it an abiding word among those who came after him — that they might return. But I let these and their forefathers enjoy their portion, until the truth and a plain messenger came to them. And when the truth came to them they said: 'This is sorcery, and we reject it.'"

The verb comes for the fourth time in the sūra, and the agent has changed again: this time it is God, and the object is a word.

What does the pronoun hā refer to? Here the exegetes transmit two readings:

Both come out at the same place, and I do not impose a preference.

The root ب-ق-ي: to remain, to be left over, to continue. Bāqī — that which remains.

The expression is worth recording, and the arrangement should be dwelt on:

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the three elements stand together: what remains of Abraham is not named as a building, a piece of land or a fortune. It is named as a sentence.

And this is directly related to the sūra's question of measure: the sūra will shortly be speaking of silver ceilings, golden stairways and gold bracelets. Here, what the abiding thing is, is stated — and it is not material.

There is also a reversal, and I record it: in the twenty-second verse the other side said they had inherited something from their forefathers — āthārihim (traces). In the twenty-eighth verse too there is a handing down, but what is handed down is not the shape of a footprint but the content of a word.

The last row matters: the ground the verse gives is yarjiʿūn (they may return) — that is, not to follow but to return. The word does not set them on a road, it leaves open a possibility of turning back.

The root ر-ج-ع: to turn back. And the root will come again at the end of the sūra: wa ilayhi turjaʿūn (85) — "and to Him you will be returned". The same root, in one place for a person's own returning, in another for the return that is not chosen.

The root ع-ق-ب occurred in the twenty-fifth verse as ʿāqiba; here it comes as ʿaqib. The concrete sense of the root: the heel. ʿAqib — the heel, and from there descent, the generation that comes after.

The concrete picture of the word is worth recording, and I give it as an observation: the word used for descent is the part of the foot that stays behind. A generation, that is, is named not as something that goes in front but as a trace left behind.

And in the twenty-second verse the other side too said āthār (traces). Both words come from the same picture: the foot and its print. The difference lies in what the print carries.

Something happens in the twenty-ninth verse and must be recorded: the verb shifts to the first person singular.

Mattaʿtu — "I let them enjoy". Throughout the sūra the first person plural had been used (jaʿalnā, arsalnā, ansharnā, ahlaknā, intaqamnā).

This shift is a known Qurʾānic device, and the lexicographers explain it thus: the plural pattern conveys majesty and breadth; the shift to the singular attaches the act directly.

I record this as an observation about the structure; I do not present it as a fixed rule.

The root م-ت-ع: to benefit from something, to draw profit from it; and matāʿ — a passing benefit, provision for the road, goods. The word will return in the thirty-fifth verse: matāʿu'l-ḥayāti'd-dunyā.

And the work of the sentence must be recorded: bal mattaʿtu hāʾulāʾi wa ābāʾahum — "but I let these and their forefathers enjoy their portion."

Bal here makes a correction: the word Abraham left was a possibility of return; but what happened was not return, it was the continuation of enjoyment.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the sentence is linked with ḥattā: ḥattā jāʾahumu'l-ḥaqq — "until the truth came to them". The verse, that is, sets a long period of ease and the arrival of a warning one after the other. And in the twenty-third verse the mutrafūn had already been named. The two verses say the same thing: the longer the period of enjoyment, the harsher the way the warning that comes is met.

The answer is two sentences, and the relation between them must be recorded:

This double structure was present in the twenty-fourth verse of the sūra too: there also the answer did not touch the content, and a position was announced outright (innā bimā ursiltum bihi kāfirūn). The same pattern twice.

The charge of "sorcery" is the objection the Qurʾān records most often, and it was treated in al-Aḥqāf at 46/7. The finding recorded there was this: "the other side does not say 'we do not understand'; it accepts the effect and rejects the source."

And the same stance was recorded in al-Qamar (siḥrun mustamirr).

I add here what is particular to al-Zukhruf: what is here called "sorcery" is, by the verse's own naming, al-ḥaqq. The sentence is built thus: wa lammā jāʾahumu'l-ḥaqqu qālū hādhā siḥrun.

After putting the name to what has come, that is, the verse reports the name the other side puts to it. Two names side by side: the truth and sorcery. This is an observation about the arrangement, and it can be verified.

Wa qālū law lā nuzzila hādha'l-qurʾānu ʿalā rajulin mina'l-qaryatayni ʿaẓīm

"And they said: 'Should this Qurʾān not have been sent down upon some great man of the two towns?'"

The fifth block of the sūra opens here, and this block (31-35) is its densest part. The name of the sūra will occur here too.

Law lā here is the particle of taḥḍīḍ: the pattern that asks why something was not done, conveying reproach.

The subject of the sentence is the Qurʾān, its predicate nuzzila (should it not have been sent down), and the condition is looked for in a person: rajulin … ʿaẓīm.

The point to notice, and I record it: the objection is directed not at the content of the Qurʾān but at its recipient. What the Qurʾān says is not disputed; to whom it was given is.

A dual pattern: al-qaryatayn — "the two towns".

Which towns these are is not stated in the verse. In the classical commentaries it is widely transmitted that they are Mecca and Ṭāʾif. I transmit this as it has been transmitted; since the verse gives no name, I do not present it as certain knowledge.

Likewise, various names are transmitted in the classical commentaries for who is meant by "a great man". I do not report them, because the verse gives no name and I cannot issue a ruling on the soundness of the names.

That the verse gives no name is itself a piece of information, and I record this as my own reading: had a name been given, the matter would have been confined to that person. Because no name is given, it is the measure itself that becomes the subject.

The root ع-ظ-م: bone. ʿAẓm — bone. And from there greatness: the largeness of a thing's skeleton, of its frame.

The concrete sense of the root is meaningful here, and I give it as an observation: ʿaẓīm, in the picture of the root, means large of frame. The word conveys, that is, a greatness that is measurable and visible from outside.

And this is exactly the measure the objection uses: visible greatness.

The objection is recorded in many places in the Qurʾān and has been cited earlier in the corpus:

• This verse was cited directly in al-Muṭaffifīn and al-Humaza.
• In al-Qamar it was given under the heading "the objection about selection", together with Ṣād 38/8: a-unzila ʿalayhi'dh-dhikru min bayninā — "has the reminder been sent down on him, out of all of us?"

And in al-Aḥqāf at 46/11 the same logic was recorded in another sentence — bringing it over here for comparison is called for, and the comparison is fruitful:

The finding recorded in al-Aḥqāf was this: "the objection is not an argument but an assumption about ranking." In al-Zukhruf the same assumption is built from the opposite direction.

I record the difference as my own reading: the objection in al-Aḥqāf draws a conclusion (if these people have received it, it is not good); the objection in al-Zukhruf frames a demand (then it should have been given to so-and-so). The first looks backward, the second forward. But the scale both rest on is the same.

And this too must be recorded: neither objection contains any information about a prophet or a message. Both are assumptions about social ranking.

A-hum yaqsimūna raḥmata rabbik · Naḥnu qasamnā baynahum maʿīshatahum fi'l-ḥayāti'd-dunyā · Wa rafaʿnā baʿḍahum fawqa baʿḍin darajātin li-yattakhidha baʿḍuhum baʿḍan sukhriyyā · Wa raḥmatu rabbika khayrun mimmā yajmaʿūn

"Is it they who divide out your Lord's mercy? It is We who divided out among them their livelihood in the life of this world, and raised some of them above others in degrees — that some of them might put others to work. And your Lord's mercy is better than what they gather."

This is the densest verse in the sūra, and it consists of four separate sentences. I treat them one by one.

The question is one of denial, and its arrangement must be recorded: the subject (hum) comes before the verb.

In an ordinary Arabic verbal sentence the order is verb then agent. Fronting the agent conveys restriction (qaṣr).

The question, then, is not "do they divide out?" but, exactly: "is it they who divide out?"

I record this as a point of word order, and the next sentence confirms it: naḥnu qasamnā — there too the subject is fronted. The two sentences stand facing each other:

The same pattern, one after the other, with opposite subjects. This is a verifiable datum of arrangement.

This verse was cited in al-Ṭūr: "Is it they who divide out your Lord's mercy?" (al-Zukhruf 43/32). I complete that link here.

And here something happens that needs to be treated in detail.

The question was "is it they who distribute prophethood?" The answer speaks not of prophethood but of livelihood.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the two sentences have different subjects: the verse makes its evidence out of something the other side already sees in its own life. Nobody arranges the distribution of provision for himself. Who is born where, and with what means, is not a choice.

The answer, then, is this: "your hand does not even touch the distribution nearest to you; how is it that you are deciding about the greater one?"

This is the same as the principle of "the distance of the proof" recorded in al-Aḥqāf.

مَعِيشَة — root ع-ي-ش: to live, to make a living. Maʿīsha — the means of living, what makes living possible. The word differs from ḥayāt: ḥayāt is being alive, maʿīsha is the means of getting a living.

The choice of word is worth recording: the verse does not say "your provision" or "your property"; it says "your livelihood" — that is, the means by which life is kept going.

And this sentence must be read carefully, because it is easily misunderstood.

The verse does not deny the fact of difference among human beings. On the contrary, it records it: there are degrees, and it is He who raises.

But the continuation of the sentence says what this difference is for — and what it says is diametrically opposed to the measure the other side uses.

The root د-ر-ج: to advance step by step. Daraja — a step. Tadrīj — by stages. The word comes in the plural and indefinite, darajāt: neither number nor kind is stated.

And note: the sentence comes immediately after the qualification fi'l-ḥayāti'd-dunyā. What is ranked, that is, is livelihood in the life of this world. In al-Aḥqāf 46/19 another darajāt occurred, and that was a different thing: wa li-kullin darajātun mimmā ʿamilū — degrees according to what was done. It was treated in al-Aḥqāf.

I set the two darajāt out in a table, because confusing them destroys the main question of the sūra:

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the two verses' own statements: there are two distinct rankings in the Qurʾān, and neither stands in for the other. The sūra's whole objection is to the first being used in place of the second.

The exegetes differ over this expression, and the disagreement must be set out in a table.

The word is from the root س-خ-ر, and the two branches of the root were treated in al-Ḥāqqa and al-Ḥujurāt: making subservient / pressing into service, and mocking. The shared core was given there as: "to put someone into a position outside his own will."

A variant reading is also bound up with this disagreement and must be transmitted:

Some of the lexicographers connect the reading with ḍamma to the sense "pressing into service" and the reading with kasra to the sense "mockery"; others record that either reading can carry either sense. I give this distinction as it has been transmitted; I do not present it as a fixed rule.

I do not impose a preference. But I record this, and I mark it as my own reading:

On the first reading the verse states a function — difference produces mutual need; no one can do everything himself. On this reading the degrees are not an order of superiority but the ground of a division of labour.

On the second reading the verse states a result — the one who is raised makes light of the one below.

And the two readings do not exclude one another: the same fact (difference) can give rise both to a division of labour and to mockery. In the seventh verse of the sūra yastahziʾūn occurs, and in the fifty-fourth fa'stakhaffa — the sūra, that is, already works the second possibility with other words.

And finally, I record once more the link with the thirteenth verse: there, sakhkhara lanā hādhā — God had made the mount subservient to the human being, and the human being glorified Him in the face of it. Here the human being becomes the subject of the same root towards another human being. The same root on two levels: vertical (God–human–animal) and horizontal (human–human).

And the verse binds the whole picture it has built with a single sentence.

A comparative pattern (khayrun min) is used, and two sides are set out:

The root ج-م-ع: to collect, to bring together. And that the verb comes in the imperfect conveys continuity: "what they keep gathering".

The choice of word is worth recording and connects with al-Humaza. There jamaʿa mālan wa ʿaddadah (he gathered wealth and counted it over) was treated, and the finding recorded was this: that value is read off the position of the one who carries it.

I record this as my own reading: the sentence compares mercy with wealth — that is, it puts them on the same scale. And this is speaking in the objection's own language: the objection had set up the measure of "a great man"; the answer likewise sets up a comparison, but changes what is placed on the scale.

Wa law lā an yakūna'n-nāsu ummatan wāḥidatan la-jaʿalnā li-man yakfuru bi'r-Raḥmāni li-buyūtihim suqufan min fiḍḍatin wa maʿārija ʿalayhā yaẓharūn · Wa li-buyūtihim abwāban wa sururan ʿalayhā yattakiʾūn · Wa zukhrufā · Wa in kullu dhālika lammā matāʿu'l-ḥayāti'd-dunyā · Wa'l-ākhiratu ʿinda rabbika li'l-muttaqīn

"Were it not that people would become a single community, We would have made, for the houses of those who reject al-Raḥmān, ceilings of silver and stairways by which they might climb; and doors to their houses, and couches on which to recline — and gold ornament. All of this is nothing but the passing enjoyment of the life of this world. The hereafter, with your Lord, is for those who guard themselves."

The name of the sūra occurs in this verse, and the whole block is the summit of the question of measure.

The sentence opens with a law lā condition — this time not in the sense "why was it not so" but in the sense "were it not so" (the law lā of prevention, imtināʿ): the presence of one thing has caused another not to happen.

What does the expression ummatan wāḥidatan describe? Here the exegetes differ:

The first reading is the reading of the majority; I give it as it has been transmitted.

And this must be recorded: the word umma occurs for the third time in the sūra, and this time in its primary sense: a community. In the twenty-second and twenty-third verses it was in the sense "the line followed".

The verse says this: were there no objection to it, houses with silver ceilings would be given to those who reject.

Wealth, that is, is named not as a sign of nearness but in exactly the opposite context.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the conditional structure of the sentence: the verse does not merely say that the distribution of wealth is not an indicator of value; it says that it is withheld because giving it would carry an objection.

And this is the final answer to the objection in the thirty-first verse: the objection said that the message ought to have been given to "a great man". This verse shows how cheap the thing counted as the measure of greatness is: something that could have been handed out wholesale, were there no objection to it.

The root س-ق-ف: to cover, to close over. Saqf — a ceiling, a roof. The Qurʾān names the sky saqf as well: wa jaʿalna's-samāʾa saqfan maḥfūẓā (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/32).

This link is worth recording, and I give it as an observation: the same word indicates in one place the sky and in another the ceiling of a house. What the verse describes is a house that puts a silver ceiling between itself and the sky.

فِضَّة — root ف-ض-ض: to scatter, to separate, to break up. Infaḍḍa — it dispersed. The use of this word for silver is explained by the lexicographers by the metal's being workable and divisible into parts. Fiḍḍa, the metal that can be poured out and scattered.

The root ع-ر-ج: to rise, to climb; and aʿraj — lame (one who rises to one side as he walks).

This verse was already cited in al-Maʿārij, and this was recorded there:

"مَعَارِج — it occurs once more in the Qurʾān, and there in its concrete sense: '…[We would have made] ceilings of silver for their houses, and stairways by which they might climb' (al-Zukhruf 43/33). Al-Zukhruf 43/33 gives the concrete form of the word: the stairway by which a house is climbed."

I rely on that treatment and add here the link within the sūra.

Yaẓharūn — from the root ظ-ه-ر: to come out on top, to become visible. The same root occurred in the thirteenth verse as ẓuhūrihi (their backs).

I record this as a datum of the text: in the thirteenth verse a human being climbed onto the back of a mount and glorified God. In the thirty-third he climbs by a stairway onto the top of his house. The same root, two ascents — one named with thanks, the other with display.

سُرُر — the plural of sarīr. The root س-ر-ر: the lexicographers reckon this word to be from the same root as surūr (joy) and make the link thus: a sarīr is a place of joy and ease.

The word occurred in al-Wāqiʿa in a description of the Garden (ʿalā sururin mawḍūna). And this leads to the most striking aspect of the block.

Yattakiʾūn — Form VIII from the root و-ك-أ: to recline, to lean. The same verb occurs again and again in the Qurʾān's descriptions of the Garden (al-Kahf 18/31, Yā-Sīn 36/56, al-Raḥmān 55/54, al-Wāqiʿa 56/16).

What is enumerated in the thirty-fourth verse, then — couches, reclining — are the words of the descriptions of the Garden.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the words are shared: in describing what could be given in this world, the verse speaks with the words of what will be given in the hereafter. And immediately afterwards it sets down the difference: wa in kullu dhālika lammā matāʿu'l-ḥayāti'd-dunyā.

The difference is not in the object; it is in how long the object lasts.

The root ز-خ-ر-ف is analysed here for the first time in the corpus.

The root is quadriliteral, and the senses the lexicographers give are these:

• زُخْرُف — gold; and from there ornament, decoration, gilding.
• زَخْرَفَ البَيْت — he adorned the house, decked it out.
• زُخْرُف القَوْل — the ornamented kind of speech, polished speech. The Qurʾān uses this construct in al-Anʿām 6/112: yūḥī baʿḍuhum ilā baʿḍin zukhrufa'l-qawli ghurūrā — "they whisper to one another gilded speech, to deceive."
• أَخَذَتِ الأَرْضُ زُخْرُفَهَا — the earth took on its ornament; the Qurʾān uses this in Yūnus 10/24: ḥattā idhā akhadhati'l-arḍu zukhrufahā wa'zzayyanat — and there too what immediately follows is the account of everything being mown down and gone.

The word's relation to the verb zakhara (ز-خ-ر) is recorded by the lexicographers, and the relation is worth dwelling on.

Zakhara'l-baḥr — the sea swelled, its water rose, it brimmed over. Zakhara'n-nabt — the plant grew rank, shot up.

Some of the lexicographers attach the word zukhruf to this root and explain it thus: ornament is a thing's swelling, its appearing fuller than it is. I transmit this derivational relation as the lexicographers record it; I do not present it as a settled etymological ruling.

But once the relation is made, the picture of the word becomes this, and I give it as my own reading:

Swollen water is not as deep as it looks. When the sea swells its volume grows, but the swelling does not come from the water itself — it comes from the motion beneath it. Ornament likewise enlarges a thing's volume, not the thing.

And this explains why the sūra's name is this word — I record it as an observation: from beginning to end the sūra works the difference between the volume a thing appears to have and its own weight.

The arrangement must be recorded too: wa zukhrufā comes as a separate verse, as a one-word addition.

After the enumeration is finished — ceiling, stairway, door, couch — "and gold ornament" is said, as a verse standing on its own.

I record this as an observation about the arrangement: what is added when the list is done is not a thing that does any work. A ceiling covers, a stairway raises, a door admits, a couch supports. Zukhruf does no work at all. And that is the name of the sūra.

The construction of the sentence carries a question of variant readings, and it must be transmitted:

Both readings have been transmitted, and the sense comes out at the same place. The difference is at the level of structure: in the first the sentence is negation plus exception, in the second affirmation plus emphasis.

I give this as a note on the readings; since it produces no change in meaning I do not set up a question of preference.

The root م-ت-ع occurred in the twenty-ninth verse as mattaʿtu. The core of the word: to draw a passing benefit from something. Matāʿ — provision for the road, portable goods, a temporary advantage.

And the lexicographers record one more branch of the root: amtaʿa'l-ḥabl — the rope stretched, drew out. In the root, that is, there is an idea of lengthening and then ending.

And the block closes with a single sentence.

The arrangement must be recorded:

The interposed ʿinda rabbika is worth recording. The sentence could have been built as "the hereafter is for those who guard themselves". "With your Lord" comes in between.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the seemingly unnecessary position of the expression: the things enumerated throughout the block were in houses — ceiling, stairway, door, couch. The closing sentence gives the name of another place: "with your Lord". Two locations are set side by side.

The root و-ق-ي: to protect, to set a shield in front of something. Taqwā, in the picture of the root, is to protect oneself with something. The root has been treated in many places in the corpus.

And the choice of word closes the question of measure: throughout the block the measures that separate people were enumerated — wealth, rank, lineage, appearance. The measure enumerated at the close is an act: guarding oneself. Not something given, but something done.

And this completes the distinction between the two darajāt in the thirty-second verse: the ranking in this world is given (qasamnā, rafaʿnā); the recompense in the hereafter is attached to an attribute (li'l-muttaqīn).

The fifth block (31-35) makes a complete turn in five verses:

I record this as an observation about the structure: the block opens with an objection and closes with a measure, and in between the thing itself on which the objection rests is taken up — not by rejecting it, but by stating its price.

Wa man yaʿshu ʿan dhikri'r-Raḥmāni nuqayyiḍ lahu shayṭānan fa-huwa lahu qarīn · Wa innahum la-yaṣuddūnahum ʿani's-sabīli wa yaḥsabūna annahum muhtadūn

"Whoever narrows his eyes against the reminder of al-Raḥmān, We fit a satan to him, and he becomes his inseparable companion. They turn these away from the road, while these suppose themselves to be on the right way."

The root occurred in al-Nāziʿāt as ʿashiyya (evening); I rely on that treatment. Here I open the branch of the root that has to do with the eye, because that is what is at work in this verse.

The concrete sense of the root: the weakening of the eye, not being able to see well in twilight.

• عَشَا / عَشِيَ — his eye grew weak; especially not being able to see at night or in twilight.
• الأَعْشَى — night-blind; one who sees by day and cannot see at dusk. (The by-name of the famous Arab poet al-Aʿshā comes from this; it is an example the lexicographers cite often.)
• عِشَاء — the night prayer; the hour when the light has withdrawn altogether.
• عَشَاء — the evening meal.

And the root has a second branch, and it matters in this verse: ʿashā ila'n-nār — he went towards the fire, narrowing his eyes. That is, the turning of one who sees poorly towards a light.

Now the construction of the verb in this verse:

Yaʿshu ʿan dhikri'r-Raḥmān — it comes with the preposition ʿan.

This gives rise to two readings, and the exegetes differ:

The first reading takes it as equivalent to aʿraḍa ʿan (he turned away). The second preserves the eye-sense of the root.

I do not impose a preference. But the concrete core of the root supports the second reading, and I record that as my own reading:

The verse does not say "the one who is blind". The word aʿmā (blind) will come separately in the fortieth verse: aw tahdi'l-ʿumy. The word chosen here is the word used for an eye that sees but cannot make out.

The difference is this, and it matters: the blind man sees nothing. The aʿshā sees — but sees blurred, and misidentifies what he sees.

And the continuation of the verse says exactly this: wa yaḥsabūna annahum muhtadūn — "they suppose themselves to be on the right way."

Between the defect of the eye in the thirty-sixth verse and the supposition in the thirty-seventh, that is, there is a direct link: the one who sees blurred does not know that he is not seeing; he supposes that he does see.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the two verses come one after the other.

The concrete sense of the root comes in the lexicographers from the egg: qayḍ — the shell of an egg. Taqayyaḍa'l-bayḍu — the egg broke, its shell came away.

And the second branch of the root: to put one thing in the place of another, to exchange, to match. Qāyaḍahu — he made an exchange with him. Qayyaḍa lahu — he matched something to him, set it upon him, fastened it on him.

The lexicographers make the link between the two branches thus: the eggshell fits exactly what is inside it; and muqāyaḍa is likewise one thing's coming exactly level with another. I transmit this explanation as it has been transmitted.

The sense of the word in this verse: to prepare one thing to fit another exactly, to match it to it.

I record this as an observation, and its ground is the root's core of "matching": the verse is not speaking of a random affliction. The word conveys a measured pairing.

And this is related to the sūra's question of measure — and comes from the same field as muqrinīn (to be a match) in the thirteenth verse. The two words are from different roots (ق-ي-ض / ق-ر-ن) and I make no derivational link between them; what I record is that both carry the sense of "coming level with".

The root was treated in detail in Qāf at 50/23 and 50/27; I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it. What was recorded there: "Concrete sense: to bind two things to one another, to pair them. Qarn — horn; and generation."

In Qāf qarīn occurred twice, and there too there was a scene of dispute (qāla qarīnuhu rabbanā mā aṭghaytuhu, 50/27).

What is particular to al-Zukhruf is this, and it must be recorded: here it is told how the companion comes.

And the structure of the conditional sentence must be recorded:

The condition: man yaʿshu ʿan dhikri'r-Raḥmān — the human act The apodosis: nuqayyiḍ lahu shayṭānan — the consequence

The order, then, is settled: first the narrowing of the eye, then the coming of the companion. I record this as an observation about the arrangement; this is the order the verse establishes.

The root ح-س-ب: to count, to reckon; and from there to suppose (to make a reckoning in the mind).

The link between the two branches of the root is worth recording: reckoning and supposing are from the same root. The lexicographers explain it thus: to suppose is to make a reckoning with the data in hand — but with incomplete data.

And the word muhtadūn comes for the third time in the sūra. The three-stage pattern set out above (in the discussion of 43/22) is completed here:

Four occurrences, one root. This is a verifiable datum of the text.

Ḥattā idhā jāʾanā qāla yā layta baynī wa baynaka buʿda'l-mashriqayni fa-biʾsa'l-qarīn · Wa lan yanfaʿakumu'l-yawma idh ẓalamtum annakum fi'l-ʿadhābi mushtarikūn

"Until, when he comes to Us, he says: 'Would that between me and you were the distance of the two easts!' What an evil companion! Since you did wrong, it is of no use to you today that you share in the punishment."

The expression is an idiom, and the lexicographers explain it separately.

The word is dual: al-mashriqayn — "the two easts". And here there is a well-known usage of Arabic: when two opposites are put in the dual, the name of one of them often stands for both.

The familiar examples the lexicographers give:

The lexicographers call this usage taghlīb (bringing one forward and including the other in it).

Accordingly two readings are transmitted for al-mashriqayn:

The first reading is the reading of the majority and is supported within the Qurʾān itself: in al-Raḥmān 55/17 there occurs rabbu'l-mashriqayni wa rabbu'l-maghribayn (treated in al-Raḥmān) — there the four extremes are enumerated separately.

The second reading is recorded by the lexicographers as well and has an observational ground: the point at which the sun rises swings along the horizon between two extremes over the course of the year; this is a fact that can be followed with the naked eye and is familiar to a people that finds its way in the desert.

I do not impose a preference.

But the work of the idiom is the same on either reading, and I record it as my own reading: the distance chosen as the measure is the greatest distance the person can know. The sentence does not say "were it very far"; it says "as far as the furthest known".

And this connects with the sūra's question of measure: distances and magnitudes have been argued about throughout the sūra — a great man, high degrees, silver ceilings. Here a person uses, for the first time, the limit of his own scale.

Layta in Arabic is used for a wish whose fulfilment is not possible. (Laʿalla, by contrast, conveys what is possible — as in the third and tenth verses.)

This distinction is worth recording and can be verified within the sūra:

Two particles in the same sūra, two times. Laʿalla in this world, layta afterwards.

The exegetes differ over whose words this sentence is:

Both are possible, and I do not impose a preference. Biʾsa in Arabic is a verb of dispraise (a frozen verb conveying blame) and is generally used where the text delivers its own verdict.

The thirty-ninth verse makes an addition to the thirty-eighth, and the addition is striking.

What is said is this: the sharing is of no use.

The root ش-ر-ك: to be a partner, to have a share in something. The root has been treated in the corpus (al-Jinn, al-Muzzammil, al-Qalam).

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the sentence is built with lan yanfaʿakum: in this world, sharing a burden lightens it. The verse says that this will not work there.

And the interposed idh ẓalamtum gives the ground: "since you did wrong". The sharing does not divide the punishment, because the act was not divided either — each did his own act.

A-fa-anta tusmiʿu'ṣ-ṣumma aw tahdi'l-ʿumya wa man kāna fī ḍalālin mubīn · Fa-immā nadhhabanna bika fa-innā minhum muntaqimūn · Aw nuriyannaka'lladhī waʿadnāhum fa-innā ʿalayhim muqtadirūn · Fa'stamsik bi'lladhī ūḥiya ilayk · Innaka ʿalā ṣirāṭin mustaqīm · Wa innahu la-dhikrun laka wa li-qawmik · Wa sawfa tusʾalūn · Wa'sʾal man arsalnā min qablika min rusulinā a-jaʿalnā min dūni'r-Raḥmāni ālihatan yuʿbadūn

"Is it you who will make the deaf hear, or guide the blind and one who is in plain error? Even if We take you away, We shall take retribution from them. Or We shall show you what We promised them; We have power over them. So hold fast to what has been revealed to you. You are on a straight path. It is a reminder for you and for your people; you will be questioned before long. Ask those of Our messengers whom We sent before you: did We ever appoint gods to be served besides al-Raḥmān?"

Once again the subject stands before the verb: a-fa-anta tusmiʿu. The same structure was in the thirty-second verse (a-hum yaqsimūn).

The fronted subject sets the direction of the question: the issue is not whether making them hear is possible but whether you can do it.

I record this as an observation about the arrangement, and I link it with the finding recorded in al-Aḥqāf at 46/35: there the sūra confined its own task to a single word — balāgh (conveying). Here the same limit is drawn by a question.

And the two defects chosen must be recorded: deafness and blindness.

Both attach to what the sūra has already set up: in the thirty-sixth verse there was yaʿshu (blurred sight) — a partial defect of vision. Here there is ʿumy (blindness) — the complete one. Two degrees in the same field.

And the finding recorded in al-Aḥqāf at 46/26 attaches here: there it was recounted that the people of ʿĀd were given hearing, sight and heart, but that these were of no use, and this was recorded: "the verse is not speaking of an impossibility; it is speaking of a possibility left unused."

I keep the same distinction here: the Qurʾān uses these words not for physical impairment but for an unused sense. Per the method (Method) I write this out plainly: the verse issues no ruling about people with impaired hearing or sight; it uses a figure, and the subject of the figure is the person whose senses work but who does not use them.

Two verses enumerate two possibilities, and both are tied to the same outcome:

The structure is worth recording, and I give it as my own reading: both possibilities concern whether the Prophet sees it or not. The outcome does not change in either.

The verse, that is, says this: the coming to pass of the outcome does not depend on your witnessing it.

Muqtadirūn — an active participle of Form VIII from the root ق-د-ر. And the root occurred in the eleventh verse as bi-qadarin (by a measure). The same root: in one place the measure of water, in another having power.

And the word of the twenty-first verse returns: istamsaka (Form X — to hold on tightly).

I set out this ring above (in the discussion of 43/21); here I complete it:

The difference is not only in content but in mood: one is the statement of a state (inside a question), the other a command. I record this as a datum of the text.

إِنَّكَ عَلَىٰ صِرَٰطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ — and the expression will occur three times in the sūra: 43, 61, 64. Two of them are in the block about Jesus.

The root ص-ر-ط: the core the lexicographers give is a wide, open road; the word's relation to sariṭa (to swallow) is recorded — the road's taking into itself the one who travels on it. The root was treated in al-Fātiḥa.

The root ق-و-م and istiqāma were treated in al-Aḥqāf at 46/13: to continue without swerving.

This verse needs to be dwelt on, because it is open to two different readings.

In what sense is the word dhikr used here?

Both are transmitted in the classical commentaries, and I do not impose a preference.

But if the second reading is taken, the verse's place in the sūra is striking, and I record this as my own reading: in the thirty-first verse a measure of honour was put forward — "the great man of the two towns". The forty-fourth verse can be read as saying where honour lies: in what is carried.

And the note that follows the sentence balances this: wa sawfa tusʾalūn — "you will be questioned before long."

What is given, that is, is not left as a privilege; it is tied to a responsibility. I record this as an observation about the arrangement: between the two sentences there is only a wāw, and the second qualifies the first.

The root س-ء-ل occurs three times in the sūra, and this is a pattern:

The same root in three positions: the one questioned, the one who will be questioned, and the one who asks.

How this verse is to be understood has been debated in the classical commentaries, because its wording commands the asking of a question and those addressed are not alive.

The chief readings transmitted are these:

I do not report in detail the account named in the fourth row, because it is recorded as disputed even in its sources and I cannot give it as certain knowledge.

The reading of the majority is the third: the question is framed as a question whose answer is already settled. I transmit this as it has been transmitted.

And the content of the question must be recorded: a-jaʿalnā min dūni'r-Raḥmāni ālihatan yuʿbadūn — "did We ever appoint gods to be served besides al-Raḥmān?"

The verb is again jaʿala, and it comes for the fifth time in the sūra. This time in the interrogative, and expecting a negative answer.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the repetition of the verb within the sūra: the sūra uses the verb jaʿala like a register. Who made what? The text: the Qurʾān Arabic, the earth a cradle, the animal a mount. The other side: the angels female, a part assigned to God. And now the question: did We ever make a god?

ٱلرَّحْمَٰن — and this name occurs densely in the sūra: 17, 19, 20, 33, 36, 45, 81. Seven occurrences.

I record this as a datum of the text and add this as an observation: most of the places where the name occurs are places where something is ascribed to Him (17, 19, 20, 81) or where He is turned away from (36). The sūra, that is, uses the name that most conveys mercy in the sentences that most recount refusal.

The root ر-ح-م has been treated in the corpus (al-Mumtaḥana, al-Balad, al-Ḥujurāt and others); its core is bound up with raḥim (the womb): what encloses and grows something within itself.

Wa laqad arsalnā Mūsā bi-āyātinā ilā Firʿawna wa malaʾihi fa-qāla innī rasūlu rabbi'l-ʿālamīn · Fa-lammā jāʾahum bi-āyātinā idhā hum minhā yaḍḥakūn · Wa mā nurīhim min āyatin illā hiya akbaru min ukhtihā · Wa akhadhnāhum bi'l-ʿadhābi laʿallahum yarjiʿūn · Wa qālū yā ayyuha's-sāḥiru'dʿu lanā rabbaka bimā ʿahida ʿindaka innanā la-muhtadūn · Fa-lammā kashafnā ʿanhumu'l-ʿadhāba idhā hum yankuthūn

"We sent Moses (Mūsā) with Our signs to Pharaoh and his chiefs. He said: 'I am a messenger of the Lord of all the worlds.' And when he came to them with Our signs, there they were laughing at them. Every sign We showed them was greater than the one before it. And We seized them with punishment, that they might return. They said: 'Sorcerer! Call upon your Lord for us by the covenant He has made with you; we shall certainly be guided.' But when We lifted the punishment from them, there they were breaking their word."

The seventh block begins here, and a selected section is recounted.

The Qurʾān tells the story of Moses in many places, and in each sūra a different section is brought forward. The section al-Zukhruf chooses is this, and the choice does not look accidental:

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is what these five scenes have in common: the sūra has cut out of the story of Moses exactly its own subject. What is recounted is not a series of miracles; it is a question of the scale.

Idhā here is not the particle of condition but the particle of suddenness (fujāʾiyya): "and there they were".

This particle occurs twice in this block of the sūra:

The same particle, the same structure, twice. This is a verifiable datum of arrangement, and I record it as a pattern: the block is built upon two scenes of suddenness.

The root ض-ح-ك: to laugh. The lexicographers record one further branch of the root: ḍaḥika'r-rāʾiʿ — the crop blossomed, the bud split open. And ḍaḥk — opening, coming out. I transmit this relation as it has been transmitted.

The word's work here must be recorded, and it is bound up with the seventh verse of the sūra: there was yastahziʾūn (they were mocking). Here it is yaḍḥakūn (they are laughing). Both belong to the same family: lowering the weight of the one in front of them.

The expression is striking: the signs are named as one another's sisters.

In Arabic this is a known usage and the lexicographers record it: like things are counted one another's akh / ukht.

That the word comes in the feminine (ukht, sister) is because the word āya is feminine — it is a requirement of grammar, not an emphasis on gender. I record this plainly.

And what the expression describes is a series: each sign greater than the one before. The evidence, that is, comes not diminishing but increasing.

I record this as an observation and link it with the fifty-third verse: despite this whole increasing series, the proof Pharaoh will ask for is a gold bracelet. The verse says first that the signs were increasing, in order to show that a shortage of evidence was not the problem.

The sentence is a request for help, but the address is "sorcerer".

The exegetes have noticed this oddity, and two readings are transmitted:

I transmit the second reading as it has been transmitted; I do not present it as certain knowledge.

If the first reading is taken, what the verse shows is plain, and I record it as my own reading: the one asking for help calls the one he asks by a name that still belittles him. Need, that is, does not change the verdict.

In the muṣḥaf this word is written without the final alif: أَيُّهَ. This was recorded in al-Raḥmān:

"In the muṣḥaf this word is written in the form أَيُّهَ, without the final alif (normally ayyuhā). The same spelling is found in two other places in the Qurʾān: al-Nūr 24/31 and al-Zukhruf 43/49."

I complete that link here. This is a fact of orthography (the rasm of the muṣḥaf); it produces no difference in meaning and I draw no conclusion from it.

And the word muhtadūn comes for the fourth time. It completes the table above.

Here the mood of the word must be recorded: a nominal sentence plus two emphases (inna + lām). The promise, that is, is given in the strongest possible pattern.

And one verse later it is broken.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the two verses come one after the other: the sūra shows, within the space of two verses, that there is no relation between the force of a promise and the keeping of it.

The concrete sense of the root: to untwist a twisted rope or unpick spun wool, to undo it. Nakatha'l-ḥabl — he untwisted the rope, unpicked its plaiting.

And from there: to go back on one's word, to break an agreement.

The Qurʾān uses this picture explicitly in al-Naḥl 16/92: wa lā takūnū ka'llatī naqaḍat ghazlahā min baʿdi quwwatin ankāthā — "do not be like the woman who unravelled her yarn after spinning it strong." There the root is ن-ق-ض, here ن-ك-ث; both carry the same picture.

I record this as an observation about the word: giving one's word is, in the picture of the root, spinning; going back on it is unpicking. The work done is taken back.

Wa nādā Firʿawnu fī qawmihi qāla yā qawmi a-laysa lī mulku Miṣra wa hādhihi'l-anhāru tajrī min taḥtī · A-fa-lā tubṣirūn · Am anā khayrun min hādha'lladhī huwa mahīnun wa lā yakādu yubīn

"And Pharaoh proclaimed among his people: 'My people! Is the kingdom of Egypt not mine, and these rivers flowing beneath me? Do you not see? Or am I not better than this contemptible man who can scarcely make his meaning plain?'"

Pharaoh's speech consists of three steps, and all three are operations of weighing:

And the other side's weight is also enumerated under two heads: mahīn and lā yakādu yubīn.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the structure of the speech itself: Pharaoh is not answering a claim. He does not touch on anything Moses said. The only thing he does is to put two men on the scale.

And its link with the thirty-first verse of the sūra is direct:

The same measure, in two different ages, in two different mouths. I record this as a datum of the text.

The expression should be dwelt on, because it sets up an interesting relation with the Qurʾān's own language.

Tajrī min taḥtī — "flowing beneath me".

And the expression that occurs most often in the Qurʾān's descriptions of the Garden is this: tajrī min taḥtiha'l-anhār — "beneath which rivers flow".

The difference between the two expressions is one letter: taḥtihā / taḥtī.

I record this as an observation and leave it there, without forcing a link: Pharaoh's sentence is the expression used of the Garden turned into the first person singular. I do not claim that the text makes such a link; what I record is the closeness of wording between the two expressions.

The exegetes transmit two readings for the expression min taḥtī:

The first is closer to the wording; the second is a figure. I do not impose a preference.

The sense of the root: held in contempt, counted worthless; and menial service. Mahna — service, heavy work. Māhin — a servant.

The word occurs elsewhere in the Qurʾān in a very different position, and the comparison is fruitful:

"Did We not create you from a contemptible fluid (min māʾin mahīn)?" (al-Mursalāt 77/20 — treated in al-Mursalāt) "Then He made his progeny from the essence of a fluid of no account." (The same word occurs in al-Sajda 32/8 as well.)

The same word, then, is used in one place for the beginning of every human being, and in another to make a prophet small.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the two uses of the word in the Qurʾān: the word Pharaoh uses as an insult is the word the Qurʾān uses of everyone. The difference lies not in whom the word is stuck on, but in who counts himself outside it.

The verb kāda conveys approaching: "almost". Its negative (lā yakādu) gives, in Arabic, a strong negation: "he almost cannot do it" — that is, he does it only with great difficulty, or not at all.

And the root ب-ي-ن comes for the sixth time in the sūra. I complete here the table I set out above (in the discussion of 43/18):

The root occurs seven times in the sūra. This is a datum of the text.

And what the two occurrences (18 and 52) have in common must be recorded, and it is one of the most striking findings of the sūra:

In both places the same measure is used to make a human being small. In the eighteenth verse, "one who cannot bring her meaning to light in a dispute"; in the fifty-second, "one who can scarcely make his meaning plain".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the two expressions are from the same root and in the same function: the sūra shows in two separate scenes how the capacity to express is used as a measure of value — one in a society's verdict about a daughter, the other in a king's verdict about a prophet.

And the sūra uses this measure itself — but elsewhere: of the Book (2), of the messenger (29). The issue, that is, is not the existence of the measure but to whom it is applied.

One further note: the difficulty in Moses's speech is mentioned elsewhere in the Qurʾān — it occurs in his own prayer in Ṭāhā 20/27: wa'ḥlul ʿuqdatan min lisānī · yafqahū qawlī ("and loosen the knot in my tongue, that they may understand my speech"). What Pharaoh says, then, is not an entirely baseless slander; the detail of it is recorded elsewhere in the Qurʾān.

This needs recording, because it makes the verse's work still clearer: Pharaoh is not lying. He is using a correct observation on a wrong measure.

Fa-law lā ulqiya ʿalayhi aswiratun min dhahabin aw jāʾa maʿahu'l-malāʾikatu muqtarinīn

"Should bracelets of gold not have been cast upon him? Or angels have come with him in a train?"

This verse is the clearest expression of the sūra's main question, and it needs to be treated in detail.

Pharaoh asks for a proof. The proof he asks for is this: a gold bracelet.

And this must be read together with the forty-eighth verse of the sūra: there it was said that the signs came each greater than the last. The proofs, that is, had already come, and had been increasing.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the two verses stand in the same block: in order to show that a shortage of proof was not the issue, the verse says first that the proofs had come, and then reports the "proof" that is demanded.

And what is demanded is not a proof but an insignia.

The sense of the root: to encircle, to surround, to form a ring.

• سُور — a city wall; the wall that encircles.
• سِوَار — a bracelet; the ring that encircles the wrist. Its plural is aswira / asāwir.
• سُورَة — a section, a tier; and the name of the sections of the Qurʾān. The lexicographers attach this word too to the same root and explain it as "an enclosed section with settled bounds" or "a rising tier"; I transmit this derivation as it has been transmitted.

The concrete picture of the word: a ring, an encircling.

The root ذ-ه-ب: to go; and dhahab — gold. The lexicographers make the link thus: gold is the thing that keeps going out of one's hand, that keeps changing hands. I give this explanation as it has been transmitted.

In the classical commentaries this explanation is transmitted for this verse: that in ancient Egypt and the surrounding cultures, when someone was given authority, gold bracelets and a collar were put on him; that this was an insignia of rank.

I transmit this explanation as it has been transmitted.

And I can add this, because it is a verifiable field: that jewellery and collars were used as indicators of rank in ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern cultures is a matter known from archaeological finds and from the visual sources of the period. I record this as general historical knowledge, not in order to force a scientific confirmation onto the verse.

And a comparison can be made within the Qurʾān itself: Yūsuf 12/72 speaks of a king's drinking-cup in Egypt (ṣuwāʿa'l-malik); Yūsuf 12/31 recounts the women cutting their hands. The Qurʾān knows and uses the objects of this culture.

Now the verse must be read together with the name of the sūra.

In the thirty-fifth verse zukhruf (gold ornament) was named and tied to this verdict: wa in kullu dhālika lammā matāʿu'l-ḥayāti'd-dunyā.

In the fifty-third verse, the proof demanded for the truth of a prophet is gold.

I set this out in a table, because the backbone of the sūra becomes visible here:

Four occurrences, one material, four different positions.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is these four occurrences: the sūra neither forbids gold nor speaks ill of it. The only thing it does is to expose the use of gold as proof. In the thirty-fifth verse gold is a matāʿ; in the fifty-third it is put in the place of evidence. This is what the sūra objects to.

And I add this: Pharaoh's logic is this — one who comes from God must be marked with the most valuable thing here. The proof of divine approval, that is, is taken to be a local badge of status.

This logic is the very same as the objection in the thirty-first verse: there too the revelation was expected to be given to the man of highest rank in that society. The sūra, that is, shows the same error in two cultures, in two ages.

The root occurred in the thirteenth verse (muqrinīn) and in the thirty-sixth (qarīn). Here it comes for the third time, this time in Form VIII: muqtarinīn.

Form VIII (iftiʿāl) here conveys reciprocity or accompaniment: accompanying one another, in a train, rank upon rank.

I set the three occurrences out in a table, because a single root coming in three different patterns within one sūra is worth recording:

And the opposition between the thirteenth and the fifty-third verse is worth recording as my own reading:

The same root, two opposite stances. The one accepts his own measure before a possibility that has been given; the other makes a proof conditional on his own measure of splendour.

I record this as a pattern, and I do not claim that the sūra is constructing a deliberate play on words. What I record is that the root has been used in this sūra in three different patterns and in positions opposed to one another.

Fa'stakhaffa qawmahu fa-aṭāʿūh · Innahum kānū qawman fāsiqīn · Fa-lammā āsafūna'ntaqamnā minhum fa-aghraqnāhum ajmaʿīn · Fa-jaʿalnāhum salafan wa mathalan li'l-ākhirīn

"He made light of his people, and they obeyed him. They were a people who had broken bounds. And when they angered Us, We took retribution from them and drowned them all. We made them a past and an example for those who come after."

The root was treated in al-Qāriʿa at 101/8, and this verse was already cited there; it was cited in al-Nāziʿāt as well. What was recorded in the discussion of al-Qāriʿa was this:

"Root: خ-ف-ف. To be light. اِسْتَخَفَّ — to reckon light, to belittle, to make light of. 'He made light of his people, and they obeyed him' (al-Zukhruf 43/54). This last derivative is worth dwelling on. In Arabic the same root carries both lightness on the scale and not taking seriously. English has the same relation: we say 'to make light of'."

I rely on that treatment and add here what is particular to al-Zukhruf.

The pattern is Form X (istifʿāl), and the finding I recorded above for yastahziʾūn (7) holds here too: this form conveys "to reckon a thing so, to find it so".

But the verb istakhaffa has a second sense in the lexicographers as well, and the exegetes are divided between the two in this verse:

Both are recorded by the lexicographers. I do not impose a preference.

But it must be recorded that both readings are tied to the same outcome: fa-aṭāʿūh — "and they obeyed him".

Between the two verbs there is a fāʾ: fa'stakhaffa … fa-aṭāʿūh.

Fāʾ in Arabic conveys both sequence and cause: immediately after, and on account of it.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the connector itself: the verse does not set two events side by side; it makes the one the cause of the other. Making light becomes the cause of obedience.

And at first sight this seems inverted — ordinarily one who is made light of does not obey.

What the verse shows is this, and it is directly connected with the sūra's main question: Pharaoh offered his people no proof. He showed them three things: dominion (51), a vista (51), and the smallness of the other side (52-53). None of these was a ground. The people obeyed all the same.

The verse, that is, describes how a want of measure meets with a response: a people made light of follows the one who makes light of it. And that this is possible means that the making light of them has been borne out.

I mark this as my own reading; the wording of the verse does not yield this conclusion, the linking of the two verbs with fāʾ does.

And the end of the verse sets the verdict: innahum kānū qawman fāsiqīn.

The root ف-س-ق: the concrete sense the lexicographers give is the date's coming out of its skin (fasaqa'r-ruṭabu min qishrihi). That is, splitting one's husk and coming out. From there: to go outside the bound.

In al-Aḥqāf at 46/35 the same word occurred at the close of that sūra, and this was recorded there: "the close ties the measure of destruction to an act: fāsiqūn — those who go outside the bound. No lineage, no people, no community is named; an attribute is named."

I keep the same line here: the verdict is tied not to who the obedient were, but to what they did.

The sense of the root: severe grief; and anger. The lexicographers record both branches of the root and explain them thus: asaf is the state one is in before a loss that has no recompense — a state which, looked at from below, is grief, and from above, anger.

The Qurʾān uses the word of Jacob: yā asafā ʿalā Yūsuf (Yūsuf 12/84) — there it is in the sense of grief. And of Moses: ghaḍbāna asifā (al-Aʿrāf 7/150; Ṭāhā 20/86) — there it comes together with anger.