al-Zukhruf 43:89

Fa'ṣfaḥ ʿanhum wa qul salām · Fa-sawfa yaʿlamūn

"So turn away from them and say 'peace'. They will know before long."

And the sūra ends with the word it refused in the fifth verse.

This is the clearest and most verifiable ring in the sūra. The same root (ص-ف-ح), in the same sūra, twice — and under two verdicts.

I set the difference out in a table:

And the difference lies in the fourth row of this table — I record it as my own reading, and its ground is the objects in the two verses:

In the fifth verse what was to be turned away from was the reminder: naḍribu ʿankumu'dh-dhikra. What was at issue was the cutting off of the message, and that was refused.

In the eighty-ninth verse what is to be turned away from is people: fa'ṣfaḥ ʿanhum. The message is not cut off; the contention is.

Looking at what happens across the sūra makes the distinction still clearer:

• The message was given (1-4).
• The other side's grounds were taken up one by one (15-25, 31-35, 57-65).
• Answers were given, comparisons were made, examples were shown (26-30, 46-56).
• And in the eighty-eighth verse a finding was stated: inna hāʾulāʾi qawmun lā yuʾminūn.

The command of ṣafḥ, that is, comes not at the beginning of the message but at its end. After everything that was to be said has been said.

I mark this as my own reading, and its ground is the sūra's own order: what was refused in the fifth verse was giving up at the outset. What is commanded in the eighty-ninth is not carrying on the argument once the work is done.

And the command ends not with silence but with a word: wa qul salām.

The root س-ل-م: to be sound, whole, free of harm. Salāma — being healthy and entire. Silm — peace. Islām — surrender.

The core of the root has been treated in the corpus.

And the exegetes differ over the sense of the word here:

The majority stand around the first and second readings. I do not impose a preference.

But the choice of the word itself must be recorded, and I give this as my own reading:

Across eighty-nine verses the sūra has recounted an argument. Mockery (7), laughter (47), insult (52), clamour (57), contention (58), whispering (80) — all of it was put on record.

And the word commanded at the close answers none of it.

Salām, at its root, means not doing harm and not taking harm. The verse, that is, ends the argument not by establishing a superiority but by leaving no injury behind.

And fa-sawfa yaʿlamūn — "they will know before long" — leaves the verdict to time.

The root ع-ل-م stands at a key place in the sūra, and it is the sūra's last word:

The sūra's last word is a verb of knowing, and it is thrown forward into the future. This is a verifiable datum of the text.

I record this as my own reading: the sūra began by diagnosing a lack of knowledge (mā lahum bi-dhālika min ʿilm, 20) and ends by saying that the knowledge will come. The whole argument in between was an argument about measure; and in its last sentence the sūra says when the measure will be seen.

The command the verse gives is not a giving up but an ordering — I record this as my own reading.

The fifth verse refused leaving off at the outset. The eighty-ninth commands not carrying on once the work is done.

Together the two set up a measure:

And this is consistent with the sūra's main question: what was criticised throughout the sūra was turning an argument into a contest of superiority — jadalā (58), qawmun khaṣimūn (58). The closing command shows where the argument ends.