al-Zukhruf 43:12

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.