al-Dukhān 44:25-27

Kam tarakū min jannātin wa ʿuyūn · Wa zurūʿin wa maqāmin karīm · Wa naʿmatin kānū fīhā fākihīn

"How many gardens and springs they left behind! And crops, and a noble station. And a comfort in which they took their ease."

Kam is of two kinds in Arabic: interrogative (istifhāmiyya) and declarative of multitude (khabariyya). Here it is the second: "how many", "how much".

And kam khabariyya has a feature: its specifier comes with min — as indeed here: min jannātin.

The sentence, that is, gives no number; it reports a multitude. And the withholding of the number is made up for by the length of the list: four items are enumerated.

The things enumerated form a series, and the order is worth noting:

The first three are the three legs of an agricultural civilisation: land, water, produce. The fourth is social, the fifth subjective.

I record this as my own reading: the list runs from the outside inward — land is concrete, comfort is a feeling. And in the last item the construction changes: the first four are nouns, and with the fifth a clause comes (kānū fīhā fākihīn). The list, that is, ends by passing from the things possessed to the state of possessing.

جَنَّٰت — the root ج-ن-ن. It was recorded at the fourteenth verse in the discussion of majnūn: the sense of the root is to cover; a janna is a garden whose trees cover the ground.

And now we come to the plainest internal chain of the sūra.

The fifty-second verse repeats the phrase of this verse letter for letter:

The only thing that changes is the particle.

This is a verifiable datum of the text. And what is interpretation is this, which I give as my own reading: the sūra builds its two tableaux out of the same material. The kind of favour is the same; the difference lies in the relation the person has with the favour — in the one the favour is the thing left, in the other the thing one is inside.

And the difference does not stop at the particle. The fifty-first verse names the place of the muttaqīn maqāmin amīn; the twenty-sixth names the place of the others maqāmin karīm. Two maqāms, two attributes.

Root: ق-و-م. Maqām — the place where one rises and stands; a noun of place. The root was treated in many sections.

The exegetes differ over what the phrase intends:

I do not impose a preference. What is common to all three is that maqām reports a place in the eyes of others — unlike a garden and a spring, the worth of this item depends on being seen.

I give this as my own reading, and the comparison with the fifty-first verse opens it out:

The difference between the two stations is not one of size but of kind. The first was splendid and was left; the second is safe, and the fifty-sixth verse will say what that means: there is no death there.

The word is read نَعْمَة (with fatḥa) and is not the same thing as نِعْمَة (with kasra). The difference must be recorded:

This distinction was treated in al-Muzzammil — there, in the analysis of ūli'n-naʿma (those in comfort), this verse was already cited:

"The stress shifts from what is given to the standard of life being lived."

I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it.

The root was treated in al-Wāqiʿa — by way of 56/20, 56/32 and 56/65. The record there:

"Root: ف-ك-ه. Fākiha — fruit. And the second branch of the root: فُكَاهَة (fukāha) — pleasant talk, jesting, banter. Fākih — jesting, in good spirits. […] In Arabic ṭaʿām (food) reports a necessity, fākiha a surplus."

I do not repeat it. I add what is peculiar to al-Dukhān.

In al-Wāqiʿa the root always occurred as an object: fākiha — fruit. Here it occurs as a state: fākihīn — "as those taking their ease".

And in al-Wāqiʿa at verse 65 the root reported a state once more (tafakkahūn), and there too what was described was the going of the favour. In the closing table of al-Wāqiʿa this was recorded thus: "ف-ك-ه — fākiha (20) — fākiha (32) — tafakkahūn (65) — The favour, and the going of the favour."

al-Dukhān builds the same pair and completes it within its own sūra:

The difference between the two verses is a single word: āminīn.

I present this as my own reading, and its ground is the wording of the two verses: in the first tableau there is ease and no security; in the second, security is set beside the ease. And the twenty-seventh verse says what ease without security is by means of the past tense: kānū — "they were".

A note on variant readings: it is transmitted that this word is also read fakihīn; the difference of meaning is small (to be in good spirits / to have come to fruit). I issue no ruling about the readings.