al-Dukhān 44:57

Faḍlan min rabbika, dhālika huwa'l-fawzu'l-ʿaẓīm

"As a bounty from your Lord. That is the great triumph."

The word is in the accusative and the lexicographers transmit several readings as to what it attaches to:

I do not impose a preference. In all three the result arrives at the same place.

And the shared pattern with the sixth verse was recorded above:

Both sentences are in the same pattern and stand at the two ends of the sūra.

Its concrete sense: a thing's being more than is required, its increasing. Faḍl — what is left over, what remains. Fuḍūl — surpluses. Fāḍil — one who is superior: who goes beyond what is expected of him.

And the logic of the root is worth recording: faḍl is the part above what is deserved. The word, that is, carries within itself a gratuitousness — what is deserved would not be faḍl but ajr (a wage) or jazāʾ (a requital).

Now let us look at how the verse is placed — I give this as my own reading.

Since the fifty-first verse the persons described have been named al-muttaqīn — that is, ones who have done something. They guarded themselves, they took care, they held themselves back.

And in the fifty-sixth verse it was said that God guarded them.

The fifty-seventh verse renames that guarding: faḍl.

The sentence, that is, comes to the end of a chain of deserving built over two verses, and takes the outcome outside deserving.

This reading is mine; the order of the three verses and the definition of the word faḍl are verifiable.

And this agrees with the general stance of the sūra: in the sixth verse the coming of the Book too was named a raḥma — that is, not by way of deserving.

The pattern repeated in four places in the sūra is completed here (6, 42, 49, 57).

And in the last occurrence the subject of the pattern is not a person but a thing: dhālika — "this".

I record this as a verifiable datum within the sūra.

ٱلْفَوْز — the root ف-و-ز. On its concrete sense the lexicographers record two branches:

• فَازَ — to be delivered, to attain one's desire, to win.
• مَفَازَة — a desert, a wide waterless land.

The link between the two senses is made by the lexicographers thus, and it is striking: the desert's being called mafāza is either an optimistic naming (since it is a place of destruction, the opposite is said), or it is because deliverance from it is hoped for. I issue no firm ruling; I transmit it as a relation established by the lexicographers.

And the idea the word carries is not winning but being delivered. To come out of a danger.

I record this as my own reading, and it connects with the next verse: the sentence does not say "this is the gain". The deliverance is the thing said in the preceding verse: being guarded from the punishment of the blaze. The content of the fawz, that is, is given by the text itself.

ٱلْعَظِيم — the root ع-ظ-م. Its concrete sense: bone (ʿaẓm). ʿAẓīm — big-boned, great. The concrete core of the root is an idea of a skeleton: the load-bearing, hard part of a thing.

And the attribute forms one of the last verse-endings of the sūra.