al-Zukhruf 43:71-73

Yuṭāfu ʿalayhim bi-ṣiḥāfin min dhahabin wa akwāb · Wa fīhā mā tashtahīhi'l-anfusu wa taladhdhu'l-aʿyun · Wa antum fīhā khālidūn · Wa tilka'l-jannatu'llatī ūrithtumūhā bimā kuntum taʿmalūn · Lakum fīhā fākihatun kathīratun minhā taʾkulūn

"Platters of gold and cups are passed round among them. In it is all that souls desire and eyes delight in. And you are to abide in it. This is the Garden given to you in inheritance for what you used to do. In it you have abundant fruit; of it you eat."

And here the sūra's most striking reversal takes place.

In the thirty-third verse silver was named as a humiliation; in the fifty-third gold was demanded as a proof. In the seventy-first gold is given as a reward.

I complete here the table I set out above (in the discussion of 43/53), and from here I tie up the question that bears the sūra's name.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the comparison of the four occurrences:

The sūra does not speak ill of gold. The sūra's objection is to gold's being used as an instrument of measure.

• In the thirty-fifth verse gold is a matāʿ — a passing benefit; and what is said there is not "it is evil" but "it does not last".
• In the fifty-third verse gold is put in the place of a proof, and the sūra rejects this.
• In the seventy-first verse gold is given as a reward — that is, as part of an outcome, not as a measure.

The difference is not in the object; it is in the work the object is put to.

صِحَاف — root ص-ح-ف. Ṣaḥfa — a broad, flat dish. Ṣaḥīfa — a leaf, a page of writing. The shared core: a broad, flat surface.

And this root is different from the root ص-ف-ح in the fifth verse of the sūra, though very close to it — both rest on the picture of a "flat surface", with the letters transposed. The lexicographers record such affinities (qalb, the transposition of letters); but I do not reckon the two roots one. I give this as a note of resemblance, not as a claim of derivation.

أَكْوَاب — the plural of kūb. It was treated in al-Ghāshiya at 88/14, and this verse was cited there:

"The detail the lexicographers record is important: a kūb is a cup with no handle and no spout. One with a handle is called an ibrīq, and other names are given to what resembles a jug. The word occurs in several places in the Qurʾān: al-Zukhruf 43/71, al-Insān 76/15, al-Wāqiʿa 56/18."

I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it.

The expression removes the limits of the description: what is given is not an enumerated list but a scope.

Two channels are named, and they differ:

The root ش-ه-و: intense desire, appetite. The root ل-ذ-ذ: to please, to taste.

I record this as an observation about the arrangement: the first describes the one who wants, the second the one who receives. Both the demand and its answer, that is, are in the same sentence.

And a variant reading is transmitted: tashtahīhi (with the pronoun) and tashtahī (without). Since it produces no difference in meaning I do not dwell on it.

The root has been treated in the corpus (al-Ḥadīd, al-Fajr). Its sense: to come into an inheritance, to receive what is left by another.

And the word's use in this verse needs dwelling on, because it carries a tension.

Ūrithtumūhā — passive: "it was given to you in inheritance". An inheritance is normally what comes without being worked for.

But the sentence continues: bimā kuntum taʿmalūn — "for what you used to do".

In the same sentence, then, there is both inheritance and deed.

The exegetes explain this tension thus, and I transmit it as it has been transmitted: the word says at one and the same time that the Garden is not something bought against a desert, and that it is not given for nothing either. The deed is a cause, not a price.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the two expressions stand in the same sentence: the verse ties the recompense to an act (consistently with the sūra's question of measure: not to lineage, wealth or rank), but names the manner of its giving an inheritance.

And this completes the distinction of the thirty-second verse:

Two distributions, two distinct measures. The sūra's whole objection was to the first being put in the place of the second. The seventy-second verse states the second outright.

The root ف-ك-ه: the lexicographers record two branches of the root — fruit and pleasant talk, jesting (fukāha). As the shared core they give "what pleases, what is not a basic need but gives enjoyment".

This distinction is worth recording and was treated in al-Wāqiʿa in connection with the descriptions of the Garden: fākiha is not a staple food. It is not bread but fruit — that is, not a need but a surplus.

And this attaches to the sūra's question of measure — I record it as my own reading: most of the things enumerated in the description of the Garden are surplus: golden platters, ornament, fruit. The sūra had named such surpluses in this world a matāʿ (35). Here things of the same kind are given, with no term stated: wa antum fīhā khālidūn.

Again the difference is not in the object but in the duration.