لِتَسْتَوُۥا۟ عَلَىٰ ظُهُورِهِۦ ثُمَّ تَذْكُرُوا۟ نِعْمَةَ رَبِّكُمْ إِذَا ٱسْتَوَيْتُمْ عَلَيْهِ وَتَقُولُوا۟ سُبْحَٰنَ ٱلَّذِى سَخَّرَ لَنَا هَٰذَا وَمَا كُنَّا لَهُۥ مُقْرِنِينَ · وَإِنَّآ إِلَىٰ رَبِّنَا لَمُنقَلِبُونَ
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:
| Order | Verb | Connector | What |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | li-tastawū | li- | That you settle — work of the body |
| 2 | tadhkurū | thumma | That you name — work of the mind |
| 3 | taqūlū | wa | That you say — work of the tongue |
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.
| Verse | Word | Who to whom |
|---|---|---|
| 13 | sakhkhara lanā hādhā | God, the mount to the human being |
| 32 | li-yattakhidha baʿḍuhum baʿḍan sukhriyyā | The human being, to the human being |
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."
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".
| Rendering | Emphasis |
|---|---|
| "We could not have been capable of it" | Power |
| "We could not have matched it" | Measure |
| "We could not have held it down" | Mastery |
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).
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.
| Verse | What the glorification stands against |
|---|---|
| 13 | Against a favour — while mounting a beast |
| 82 | Against an ascription — against what is imputed |
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.
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:
| Sentence | Subject |
|---|---|
| Subḥāna'lladhī sakhkhara lanā hādhā wa mā kunnā lahu muqrinīn | This journey |
| Wa innā ilā rabbinā la-munqalibūn | The real journey |
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.
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.