al-Zukhruf 43:66-67

Hal yanẓurūna illa's-sāʿata an taʾtiyahum baghtatan wa hum lā yashʿurūn · Al-akhillāʾu yawmaʾidhin baʿḍuhum li-baʿḍin ʿaduwwun illa'l-muttaqīn

"Are they waiting for anything but the Hour, that it should come upon them suddenly while they do not notice? On that day friends will be enemies to one another — except those who guard themselves."

The sense of the root: to come suddenly, to catch unprepared. Baghatahu — it came upon him without warning.

And the arrangement must be recorded: baghtatan wa hum lā yashʿurūn — two qualifications, one upon the other.

The two do not say the same thing: a thing can come suddenly and yet a person be on the alert. The verse closes off both.

The root ش-ع-ر: to become aware of something fine; shaʿr — hair. The lexicographers make the link thus: shuʿūr is to sense a thing as fine as a hair. Shāʿir (poet) is from the same root — one who notices what is fine.

The concrete sense of the root: a gap, a space, a hole. Khalal — an interval, a gap, a flaw (the Turkish idiom halel gelmek, "to suffer impairment", uses this word). Khilāl — the space between two things.

And the word khalīl (friend) comes from here. The lexicographers record two explanations:

I transmit both explanations as they have been transmitted.

And the picture of the word is worth recording: khalīl, in the picture of the root, is the one who gets into the gaps. Friendship, that is, has been named as the closing of distance.

And the verse chooses this word and says the opposite of it: baʿḍuhum li-baʿḍin ʿaduww.

Something similar was treated in al-Aḥqāf at 46/6: wa idhā ḥushira'n-nāsu kānū lahum aʿdāʾan wa kānū bi-ʿibādatihim kāfirīn — "and when people are gathered, they will be enemies to them and will disown their having been served."

The finding recorded there was this: "and in the end the relation is not merely broken, it is turned about… what is to be recorded here is that the sūra begins working the idea of 'the thing you took for a support' on its very first page."

I compare the two verses:

Two differences are worth recording, and I give this as my own reading:

First, the kind of relation. What was broken in al-Aḥqāf was a relation of worship — and that it was unreciprocated was said in the verse itself (wa hum ʿan duʿāʾihim ghāfilūn). What is broken in al-Zukhruf is a mutual relation. Friendship has two sides.

Second, the exception. There was no exception in the sentence in al-Aḥqāf. In al-Zukhruf there is: illa'l-muttaqīn.

And the setting of the exception changes what the sentence says: the verse does not say "friendship is empty". It says "one kind of friendship will not stand on that day" — and it says which kind will.

And this verse attaches to the sūra's main question — I record it as my own reading.

Friendship too is a measure. Who is with whom marks a position in this world. The objection in the thirty-first verse was also an objection about position, and Pharaoh in the fifty-second was counting a position too.

The sixty-seventh verse says what these positions will be when that day comes: the relations reverse direction.

And the only measure that stands is the same as the measure named in the thirty-fifth verse: al-muttaqīn.

The same word, in two separate exceptions. This is a verifiable datum of the text.