al-Zukhruf 43:23

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.