al-Zukhruf 43:26-27

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.