al-Zukhruf 43:10-11

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.