47. Sūrat Muḥammad

Thirty-eight verses. Medinan. It takes its name from the occurrence of the Prophet's name in the second verse: وَءَامَنُوا۟ بِمَا نُزِّلَ عَلَىٰ مُحَمَّدٍ.

It is transmitted that the sūra is also known by the name Qitāl (سُورَةُ ٱلْقِتَال — the sūra of fighting). This second name comes from the content of the sūra: the greater part of the text was spoken in a setting of conflict, to a community inside that conflict.

In this commentary the matter of naming deserves to be recorded once again: the traditional name of the sūra is taken not from its first verse but from a proper name in the middle of its second. And that proper name is not the subject of the sūra — the sūra does not recount the life of the Prophet. The name is a marker picked out from inside the text, not a summary of it.

The name مُحَمَّد occurs in four places in the Qurʾān:

A fifth, in another form: أَحْمَد — at al-Ṣaff 61/6, in the annunciation of Jesus (ʿĪsā). That word was treated in detail in the section al-Ṣaff (the root ح-م-د, the dispute over whether Aḥmad is an elative or an active participle, and the question of whether the word is a proper name or an attribute). I do not repeat it here.

Only this will be recorded here: all four occurrences are in Medinan sūras, and in all four there stands beside the name a limit or a fixing of position. Āl ʿImrān says "he is only a messenger"; al-Aḥzāb says "he is not your father"; al-Fatḥ says "he is the Messenger of God"; and here, at 47/2, what is believed in is not the name itself but "what has been sent down to him": āmanū bimā nuzzila ʿalā Muḥammad.

I record this commonality as my own reading. That all four verses carry a sentence of limitation is a fact that can be verified from the text; I do not claim that there is a deliberate design among them.

This sūra has a single key word, and that word is the skeleton of the text: عَمَل — deed, work done.

The root ع-م-ل occurs twelve times in the sūra. And in most of the places where it occurs, a verb of annulment is attached before or after it. The table:

What the table says is the sūra itself.

For thirty-two verses the one who voids the deeds is always God, and what is voided is always the deeds of others: aʿmālahum — their deeds. The pronoun is third person. The one addressed is a spectator.

And in the thirty-third verse two things change at once:

• The pronoun turns to the second person: aʿmālakum — your deeds.
• The subject of the verb becomes the one addressed himself: lā tubṭilū — "you must not annul".

That is: after saying for thirty-two verses "their deeds were voided", the sūra turns to the one it addresses and says this: you can do this to yourself too.

And when the sūra ends, the last word is again about deeds, but this time in the opposite direction: وَلَن يَتِرَكُمْ أَعْمَٰلَكُمْ — "He will not diminish anything of your deeds" (35).

The whole tension of the sūra lies between these two sentences: a God who does not diminish a deed, and a person who can annul his own.

The sūra opens with الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ (1) and closes with أَمْثَٰلَكُمْ (38). That is, it begins in the third person and ends in the second. Through the length of the sūra the direction of the warning turns slowly towards the one addressed.

There is no disagreement that the sūra is Medinan. The indications inside the text already show it: the field of battle, the captive, ransom even where there is no booty, the description of the hypocrites, the wish "if only a sūra were sent down", the call to spend — all of these are matters belonging to the Medinan period.

One exception is transmitted. It is said that the thirteenth verse — "How many a town stronger than your town which drove you out…" — came down during the emigration, on the road. This is a report widely transmitted in the classical sources; I do not present it with a claim of certainty. The wording of the verse appears to support the report (allatī akhrajatka — "which drove you out"), but the wording itself gives no time.

I give no date of revelation for the sūra as a whole. Different findings are transmitted in the sources — before Badr, after Badr, and later periods; I have no sound measure by which to prefer among them.

But this much can be read from the text: the sūra speaks at a time when the fighting is not beginning but going on. For the fourth verse regulates not how fighting is to begin but what is to be done when an encounter takes place and what is to become of captives; the twentieth verse opens with "when a sūra in which fighting is mentioned is sent down" — that is, the mention of fighting is by now a known thing; and the thirty-fifth verse says "do not grow slack" — and slackness happens only in a work that is going on.

Per the method (Method), I am obliged to draw two limits before entering this sūra. They will affect the reading from beginning to end.

One. This sūra is not a text of the law of war, and no legal ruling will be drawn from it in this commentary. The fourth verse is one of the most debated texts in the chapter on captives in classical jurisprudence; I will transmit that debate in the form of a table of disagreement and will prefer no view. The work of this commentary is to show what the text says; it is not to say what is to be done.

The second, and more important: this sūra will not be attached to any event, any side, any conflict of the present day. I write this not merely as a precaution but as a matter of truthfulness: the sūra speaks about a particular situation in which a particular community found itself at a particular time. To equate that situation with a situation of today is to make the text say something it does not say.

Three. The sūra speaks not about an identity but about an attribute. This was treated at length in the section al-Ḥashr, and the measure set there holds here too: "The criticism of the sūra is directed not at an identity but at a stance."

Indeed this sūra shows it itself. The heaviest descriptions in the sūra are not about "those who deny" but about those who say they believe: those with a disease in their hearts (20, 29), those who look as one in the swoon of death (20), those who agree in secret (26), those who turn back (25). And all the address after the thirty-third verse — miserliness, slackness, turning away — is to the believers.

The sūra turns the direction of the threat from the outside inward. A reading that forgets this has done the exact opposite of what the sūra does.

The analysis of the basmala was made in the section al-Fātiḥa.

A note particular to this sūra: a text that opens with the names al-Raḥmān and al-Raḥīm regulates the field of battle in its fourth verse. This tension was recorded in the section al-Ḥashr as well, and here, as there, it is not resolved but recorded.

This much is visible from the text: the fourth verse does not issue an order to fight; it regulates what is to happen when an encounter takes place and what is to be done when the fighting has been put down. And one of the two items of that regulation is release without payment. This will be treated in detail below.

Alladhīna kafarū wa ṣaddū ʿan sabīli'llāhi aḍalla aʿmālahum

"Those who deny and turn others away from the path of God — [God] has made their deeds go astray."

The sūra opens with a nominal sentence, and its subject is a relative pronoun: alladhīna — "those who".

This is not an opening often seen in the Qurʾān. Most sūras open with a glorification (sabbaḥa), an oath (wa'l-fajr), a call (yā ayyuhā), a command (qul) or a piece of news (atā amru'llāh). Here the opening is directly the description of a group — and no predicate comes until the description is finished.

And the description is made with two verbs:

• كَفَرُوا۟ — they denied.
• وَصَدُّوا۟ عَن سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ — and they turned others away from the path of God.

That the two stand side by side is not accidental, and the distinction has to be seen. The first concerns the person himself: he believed or he did not. The second concerns someone else: cutting off another's road.

That is, the first sentence of the sūra describes not bare denial but an obstruction added to denial. The Qurʾān often uses these two verbs together, and in this sūra it brings them together two more times: 32 (kafarū wa ṣaddū ʿan sabīli'llāh) and 34 (the same expression). That is, the two verbs of the opening sentence will be repeated word for word twice more towards the end of the sūra.

This is a frame built inside the sūra: 1 — 32 — 34.

Root: ص-د-د. The primary sense the lexicographers record: to turn away from something, to turn; and, used transitively, to turn someone else away, to hold back, to obstruct.

The root has two directions, and both are found in the Qurʾān:

From the same root صَدِيد (ṣadīd) — pus; and it is not to be confused with صَدَف. Also الصَّدَد — the front of a thing, what stands opposite it; in Turkish the expression bu sadedde, meaning "in this connection", is a borrowing from this root.

At the centre of the root there is a picture of "cutting off the way ahead": ṣadd is to get in front of the direction in which someone is going.

Root: س-ب-ل. Sabīl means path; but in Arabic there is more than one word for a road, and the difference between them matters:

In the root of sabīl there is flowing and pouring: sabala'l-māʾ — he poured out the water; سُنبُلَة (sunbula, an ear of grain) is from the same root — the place where the grains are ranged and flow; and إِسْبَال — the letting down of a covering.

That is, sabīl is the road on which moving forward is easy and fluid. This gains its meaning when read together with the verb ṣadd: something that is flowing has its way cut off.

I record this connection as my own reading; the "flowing" sense of the root is lexical data, but this picture between the two words is a connection I have made.

Root: ض-ل-ل. Its concrete sense: to lose the road, to be unable to find where a thing is. The Arabs say ḍalla'l-baʿīr: the camel was lost. And what is striking is this: the same root is used both for the one who is lost and for the thing that is lost.

أَضَلَّ — Form ifʿāl, transitive: he made it lost, he caused it to be lost.

Now let us look at the work of the word in this verse. The verse does not say:

• "He destroyed their deeds" (لم يقل: أهلك)
• "He wiped out their deeds" (لم يقل: محا)
• "He rejected their deeds" (لم يقل: ردّ)

It says: He made their deeds lost. That is, the deeds are still there — but their owner cannot find them. To lose a thing is not for that thing to cease to exist; it is for the connection with it to be cut.

The Qurʾān opens out this picture elsewhere. At al-Furqān 25/23 the same idea comes with another comparison: "And We shall turn to whatever deed they did and make it scattered dust." At Ibrāhīm 14/18: "Their deeds are like ashes which the wind scatters violently on a stormy day."

In all three verses the deeds do not cease to exist; they become unreachable.

In the sentence the subject of the verb أَضَلَّ is not stated explicitly; it is a concealed pronoun. And who the concealed pronoun is can be understood from the preceding word: سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ — the divine name in the expression "the path of God".

This is a point of word order: rather than saying "God has voided their deeds", the verse names God not as the subject of the verb but inside a construct; then it leaves the verb without stating its subject.

The result: although the sentence is a sentence of judgement, the name of the one who judges is not pronounced directly.

I do not speak with certainty about this choice. I record it as an observation: in the same sūra, at another occurrence of the same verb (47/4: fa-lan yuḍilla aʿmālahum), the subject is again concealed. The sūra keeps to this pattern.

أَضَلَّ is past tense. Yet the group described is still alive and its deeds are still going on.

The classical explanation invokes a use often seen in the Qurʾān: the perfect that announces certainty. If it is certain that a thing will come about, it is recounted in the past tense even though it has not yet happened. In the section al-Wāqiʿa this pattern was treated by way of another example.

But a second reading is possible here too, and it stands closer to the text: the loss of the deeds is not something that will happen in the future but something already done and finished. That is, the verse does not issue a threat, it makes a diagnosis: those deeds were lost long ago; their owner is not yet aware of it.

I record this second reading as my own preference, and it is not binding. The first explanation is the widespread one in the classical commentaries.

Wa'lladhīna āmanū wa ʿamilu'ṣ-ṣāliḥāti wa āmanū bimā nuzzila ʿalā Muḥammadin wa huwa'l-ḥaqqu min rabbihim kaffara ʿanhum sayyiʾātihim wa aṣlaḥa bālahum

"And those who believe and do righteous deeds and believe in what has been sent down to Muḥammad — and it is the truth from their Lord — [God] has covered over their evil deeds and set right their bāl."

The first two verses of the sūra form a pair. The same pattern is built twice, for two groups. Let us see the symmetry first:

The symmetry is not complete, and its incompleteness is the real matter of the verse.

The expected symmetry would have been this: if the deeds of the first group are voided, it should have been said that the deeds of the second group are accepted — something like wa qabbila aʿmālahum. But the verse does not say that.

The object changes. In the first verse what is acted upon is deeds. In the second verse what is acted upon is evil deeds. That is:

• The good work of the denier is touched → it is lost.
• The bad work of the believer is touched → it is covered.

This is not an accident but a choice; and it says two things.

First: the acceptance of the believer's deed is not spoken of, because that is not the matter of the verse. The matter of the verse is what happens to the minus column in the ledger of the two groups. The denier's plus column is erased; the believer's minus column is erased.

Second — and this is finer: the verse says nothing at all about the believer's good deeds, because it had already counted them at the outset: wa ʿamilu'ṣ-ṣāliḥāt. That is, the righteous deed occurs not as the subject of the reward but as a part of the description of the group. The reward is added on top of the description.

In the description of the denier, by contrast, there was no deed. The description was "they denied and they obstructed"; then the ruling was "He made their deeds lost". That is, the deed occurred not in the description but in the ruling — and there it was lost.

This reading is mine. The difference of object between the two verses is a fact standing in the text; the division of labour I draw from it is my own inference.

Āmanū occurs twice in the verse:

1. وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ — those who believe. 2. وَءَامَنُوا۟ بِمَا نُزِّلَ عَلَىٰ مُحَمَّدٍ — and who believe in what has been sent down to Muḥammad.

The repetition is not idle. Several explanations are given in the classical commentaries:

I make no preference. I record this: what the second āmanū attaches to is not a person but a text — bimā nuzzila, "in what has been sent down". What is believed in is not Muḥammad but what has been sent down to him. This is the verse's own wording, and its being in the sentence from which the sūra's name is taken is worth noting.

نُزِّلَ — root ن-ز-ل, Form tafʿīl, passive: "it was sent down".

Two points:

One — the matter of the form. The lexicographers and the exegetes record a distinction between إِنزَال (ifʿāl) and تَنزِيل (tafʿīl): ifʿāl announces a sending down all at once, tafʿīl a sending down piece by piece, gradually. The Qurʾān's coming down piecemeal over twenty-three years is named with the word tanzīl.

This distinction is recorded in the classical sources; but it has also been pointed out that it is not applied consistently everywhere in the Qurʾān. Indeed in the twentieth verse of this sūra the two forms will stand side by side in the same sentence (law lā nuzzilat sūra… fa-idhā unzilat sūratun muḥkamatun), and I shall take up this distinction separately there.

Two — the passive. It says "was sent down", not "We sent down". The subject of the verb is not stated — just as the subject of aḍalla was not stated in the preceding verse. In both of the sūra's first two verses the agent is veiled.

This is a jumla muʿtariḍa (an interposed clause): a judgement squeezed in while the description is still running.

The word order has three details:

One. A definite predicate. wa huwa'l-ḥaqqu — "it is the truth". The predicate carries the definite article. In Arabic a definite predicate announces restriction (qaṣr): "it is the truth itself", "the truth is this". Had it been said wa huwa ḥaqqun (indefinite), it would have been "it is a truth" — one among others.

Two. مِن رَّبِّهِمْ — "from their Lord". The pronoun refers back to the believers. That is, the truth is described not as an abstract correctness but as something coming from their Lord. The attribution is made to the source.

Three. And this clause's link with the third verse is direct: the third verse will repeat the same word with the same construct — ittabaʿu'l-ḥaqqa min rabbihim. That is, the interposed clause in the second verse is the preparation for the ground given in the third.

Root: ك-ف-ر. And there is something here that has to be said carefully.

The first word of the first verse and the verb of this verse are from the same root.

• 47/1: كَفَرُوا۟ — kafarū (they denied).
• 47/2: كَفَّرَ — kaffara (He covered over).

The same three letters. A different form, an opposite outcome.

The primary sense of the root is to cover. This root was analysed in full in al-Baqara (2/6) and taken up again in al-Kāfirūn and al-Ḥadīd; I do not repeat it here. In summary: the farmer is called kāfir because he covers the seed with earth — and the reading of the expression aʿjaba'l-kuffāra nabātuh at al-Ḥadīd 57/20 in the sense of "the farmers" was treated in detail in al-Ḥadīd. The night, too, is called kāfir, because it covers everything. Kufr is the covering of the truth.

And takfīr (Form tafʿīl) performs the same covering in the positive direction: covering over a sin.

That is, in the first two verses of the sūra the same verb works twice:

The Qurʾān appears to set up a relation of requital by using the same root: the deed of the one who covers the truth is lost; the sin of the one who does not cover the truth is covered.

I record this comparison as my own reading. That the two words are from the same root is lexical data and beyond dispute; the symmetry between them is one I am setting up, and I ascribe it to no classical exegete.

There is a particle too: عَنْ. Kaffara ʿanhum — "covered them over, [removing it] from them". When the verb is made transitive with the particle ʿan it carries, besides covering, a sense of removal. The sin is both covered and taken away from the person.

This is the least known word in the verse, and it deserves to be dwelt upon.

بَال — root ب-و-ل. The lexicographers give the word these senses:

These four senses are not disconnected from one another. The common core is this: bāl is a person's inward condition — not the state visible from outside but the inner position that produces that state.

There is no exact English equivalent. "State" is too external; "heart" too emotional; "mind" too abstract. The nearest is perhaps "inward state" or "the order of one's heart".

In the Qurʾān the word bāl occurs in four places, and all four are instructive:

Two of the occurrences are in this sūra, and both with the same verb: aṣlaḥa / yuṣliḥu.

Root: ص-ل-ح. Its primary sense: a thing's being serviceable, sound, unspoiled. Its opposite is فَسَاد (corruption).

And note: at the centre of the word lies not repair but fitness. A tool is ṣāliḥ — that is, it is in a state to do its work. Food is ṣāliḥ — it has not gone bad.

Inside the verse this root occurs twice:

1. ٱلصَّٰلِحَٰتِ — righteous deeds (in the description). 2. أَصْلَحَ — He set right (in the ruling).

That is: the bāl of those who do righteous work is set right (iṣlāḥ). The same root names first what a person does, then what is done to a person.

This may be the most striking place in the verse, and it raises this question: why was the setting right of the bāl chosen as the requital?

The answer that can be read from the text is this: the verse gives the requital not as an outward reward but as an inward condition. Neither property, nor rank, nor victory. Evil deeds are covered and the inward order is repaired.

And this gains its meaning in the context of the sūra. This is a sūra that came down to a community in a setting of war. In such a setting the expected promise is victory. The verse does not speak of victory — it speaks of the setting right of the inward state. The fifth verse will repeat the same expression for those killed in the fighting; there too the promise is the same: wa yuṣliḥu bālahum.

I record this finding as my own reading. The meaning of the word and its two occurrences are textual data; the interpretation I draw from them — that the promise lies not outside but within — is my own inference.

Dhālika bi-anna'lladhīna kafaru'ttabaʿu'l-bāṭila wa anna'lladhīna āmanu'ttabaʿu'l-ḥaqqa min rabbihim; kadhālika yaḍribu'llāhu li'n-nāsi amthālahum

"That is because those who deny followed falsehood, and those who believe followed the truth from their Lord. Thus does God set forth for people their likenesses."

This pattern is one of the most remarkable of the Qurʾān's manners of speech, and this sūra uses it like a spine.

ذَٰلِكَ — a demonstrative: "this, this here". What does it point to? The two rulings given in the two preceding verses: the making lost of the deeds of the one, the covering over of the evil deeds of the other.

بِأَنَّ — the particle bāʾ here is causal (sababiyya): "because of its being…". And anna turns the clause that follows into a verbal noun.

The skeleton of the sentence, then: "That [ruling] is because of this."

And one has to see what this does.

When a ruling is issued, two things can be done: the ruling can be issued and left, or the ground of the ruling can be stated. The second does not mean that the one who issues the ruling owes something to the one addressed; but it does mean that he aims at the addressee's understanding.

Here the Qurʾān does the second. Two verses issued a ruling, the third wrote out the ground. And the ground was not left as something to be guessed; it was put at the head of the sentence.

This pattern occurs five times in this sūra, and its distribution shows an order:

Five grounds, all five in the same pattern. And note: all five come immediately after the ruling. That is, wherever the sūra issues a heavy ruling, it writes the ground in the next verse.

This determines how the sūra is to be read. This sūra carries hard sentences; but not one of its hard sentences has been left without a ground. To take a ruling out of its context is to take it away from its ground as well — and the ground is what determines to whom the ruling applies.

In terms of the method (Method), this yields a direct consequence: the verses issue their ruling not upon a group but upon the attributes counted in the ground. The ground of the third verse is not "those who deny"; it is "their having followed falsehood". If the attribute changes the ruling changes too — and indeed the sūra will make this an explicit condition at 47/34: "then they died as deniers".

Root: ت-ب-ع. To go after, to follow. And the form here is ٱتَّبَعَ — Form VIII (iftiʿāl).

Among the senses Form VIII announces is taking on the result of an act (muṭāwaʿa), and another is effort and intent: doing the act willingly and with labour spent.

That is, ittabaʿa does not mean "he was dragged along behind"; it means "he set off after it, he attached himself to it". The verb includes choice.

And this carries the whole weight of the verse: both groups do the same act. Both have set off after something. The difference lies not in the act but in the object.

بَاطِل — root ب-ط-ل. The primary sense the lexicographers record: a thing's coming to nothing, being void, being unable to stand. Baṭala'sh-shayʾ — that thing became invalid, it fell.

At the centre of the word lie hollowness and inability to hold. Bāṭil is not merely what is false; it is what cannot bear weight. Step on it and it caves in.

And a note on the language: the lexicographers record from the same root the word بَطَل (baṭal) as well — hero, champion. At first glance this is odd. One of the explanations given is this: he is called baṭal because he renders void those who come against him, brings their work to nothing. Another explanation has to do with the blood shed beside him going unrequited.

I transmit these derivational explanations as the lexicographers record them; I make no preference among them. It should also be recorded that the word lives on in Turkish as batal and iptal.

And this detail matters: this root will occur twice in the sūra — here as ٱلْبَٰطِل (3), and in the thirty-third verse as لَا تُبْطِلُوا۟. That is, at the beginning of the sūra there are "those who follow falsehood"; towards its end the believers are told "do not annul (ibṭāl) your own deeds".

The same root names first what others follow, then what the believers can do to themselves. I shall take up this link separately at verse 33.

حَقّ — root ح-ق-ق. Its primary sense: to be fixed, to stand in place, to come about, to be one's due. Ḥaqqa'l-amr — the matter came about, became fixed.

That is, at the centre of the root lies thubūt (standing in place) — and this is the exact opposite of bāṭil. Bāṭil falls, ḥaqq stands.

The opposition of the two words is a physical opposition before it is a moral one: one stays standing, the other does not. The Qurʾān draws this picture explicitly at al-Raʿd 13/17: the torrent comes, the foam rises to the top and goes; what is of use to people stays where it is — "thus does God set forth truth and falsehood in a likeness."

In the third verse مِن رَّبِّهِمْ is again added behind the word ḥaqq — just as it was in the second verse.

And there is no such attribution for falsehood. The sentence says "they followed falsehood" and stops; it does not say where falsehood comes from.

This asymmetry is worth noting. A source is shown for the truth; none is shown for falsehood. As a reading I record this — it is my own inference: if the sense of "hollowness" in the root of bāṭil is kept in mind, the absence of a source becomes meaningful; for bāṭil is not something that comes from somewhere but the emptiness left where the truth is not.

I do not present this as a binding exegesis. The fact standing in the text is this: ḥaqq occurs with an attribution, bāṭil without one.

ضَرَبَ مَثَلًا — "to strike a likeness". The verb Arabic uses for giving an example is ضرب, and this sounds odd in English. The lexicographers explain: the verb ḍarb also carries the sense of "to set something firmly in a place, to drive in a stake" (ḍaraba'l-khayma — he pitched the tent). A likeness is "struck" because it is driven into the mind.

And in this sūra the root ض-ر-ب will occur three times, in three different senses:

Three occurrences, the same root, three different works. I record this as a textual observation; I do not claim that the sūra has set it up deliberately.

أَمْثَٰلَهُمْ — "their likenesses". Whom the pronoun refers to has been disputed: to people (that is, "He sets forth for people their own condition in a likeness"), or to the two groups ("He gives the likeness of these two groups")? Both readings are found in the classical commentaries; I make no preference.

This much is clear: the verse characterises the two verses before it as a likeness. That is, verses 1-2 are not merely a ruling about two groups; they are set down as an example.

And the root م-ث-ل will occur three times in the sūra: here (3), at 47/10 (wa li'l-kāfirīna amthāluhā), and in the last word of the sūra (47/38: thumma lā yakūnū amthālakum). The sūra is framed by a word for "likeness".

Fa-idhā laqītumu'lladhīna kafarū fa-ḍarba'r-riqāb; ḥattā idhā athkhantumūhum fa-shuddu'l-wathāq; fa-immā mannan baʿdu wa immā fidāʾan ḥattā taḍaʿa'l-ḥarbu awzārahā. Dhālika; wa law yashāʾu'llāhu la'ntaṣara minhum wa lākin li-yabluwa baʿḍakum bi-baʿḍ. Wa'lladhīna qutilū fī sabīli'llāhi fa-lan yuḍilla aʿmālahum

"So when you encounter those who deny — the striking of necks. Then, when you have subdued them, bind the bond fast. Thereafter either release without payment, or ransom — until the war lays down its burdens. So it is. Had God willed, He would [Himself] have taken retribution from them; but [it is so] that He may test some of you by means of others. And as for those killed in the path of God, [God] will never make their deeds go astray."

This verse is one of the most frequently torn from its context in the sūra and perhaps in the Qurʾān. Per the method (Method), I shall do four things here in order:

1. I shall show how the sentence is built — because the way the sentence is built determines its scope. 2. I shall analyse the roots of the words. 3. I shall show the limits the verse sets within itself. 4. I shall transmit the debate in the classical commentaries in the form of a table of disagreement — and I shall issue no legal ruling.

And I write this at the outset: this verse will not be attached to any event, any side, any group of the present day. This is not a sentence of precaution; it is a limit required by the wording of the verse. I shall show its ground below.

The first word of the verse is not a command but a condition.

فَإِذَا لَقِيتُمُ — fa-idhā laqītum: "when you encounter".

To see this changes everything. The sentence could have been built like this:

• uqtulu'lladhīna kafarū — "kill those who deny." It does not say this.
• ughzū ʿalayhim — "march against them." It does not say this.
• jāhidūhum — "struggle against them." It does not say this.

The sentence begins with إِذَا. In Arabic idhā is the adverb of time for a situation whose occurrence is expected: "when it happens". And the property of a conditional sentence is this: the answer is not in force until the condition has come about.

That is, what the verse regulates is not the starting of a war; it is what is to happen when an encounter takes place on the field of battle.

Root: ل-ق-ي. Its primary sense is to meet, to come upon, to come face to face. From the same root: لِقَاء (liqāʾ, meeting), تَلَقَّى (to meet, to receive — Adam's (Ādam) "receiving" of the words at al-Baqara 2/37), مُلَاقَاة, and أَلْقَى (to throw, to set before).

At the centre of the word lies a coming face to face — and this is not a one-sided movement. Liqāʾ requires both parties to be at that point.

The Qurʾān uses this verb in the context of war in several places, and wherever it uses it, it recounts the same thing: not the moment of attack, but the moment when the lines meet.

• "O you who believe! When you encounter a force, stand firm" (al-Anfāl 8/45).
• "O you who believe! When you encounter those who deny in a marching host, do not turn your backs to them" (al-Anfāl 8/15).

That is, the verb itself describes the scene: two ranks face to face. This is not a street, a house, a marketplace.

This part of the verse is grammatically extraordinary, and it has to be seen.

What is expected as the answer of the sentence is an imperative verb: fa'ḍribū'r-riqāb — "strike the necks". But the verse does not say this.

The verse says فَضَرْبَ ٱلرِّقَابِ: a verbal noun, in the accusative. The vowelling of the word is ḍarba (accusative), not iḍribū.

The grammarians resolve this as follows: there is an absolute object here whose verb has been elided (dropped). The implied form is: fa'ḍribū'r-riqāba ḍarban — "strike the necks with a striking". The verb has been dropped, the verbal noun has remained. This construction is called مَصْدَر نَائِب عَن فِعْلِه: the verbal noun that stands in place of its verb.

And what does this do?

The books of rhetoric record two functions of this construction:

And there is a third point, often recorded by the lexicographers: the verbal noun, unlike the verb, carries no tense and no person. The verb says "you, strike"; the verbal noun says only "striking". That is, the expression ceases to be a command directed at a person and becomes the description of a situation.

I record its fit with the scene as an observation: the sentence is as short as the moment of encounter itself. This is not a place for building long sentences.

Root: ر-ق-ب. And the family of senses in this root is interesting: raqaba — neck; raqīb — one who watches; murāqaba — watching; irtiqāb — waiting and watching.

The lexicographers make the connection thus: the one who watches cranes his neck. That is, murāqaba is a work done with the neck; the word has passed from the organ to the act.

رِقَاب — the plural of raqaba.

The Qurʾān uses this word elsewhere in a wholly different context, and this needs to be recorded:

• "…and for [the freeing of] necks" — وَفِى ٱلرِّقَابِ (al-Baqara 2/177 and al-Tawba 9/60): one of the categories of alms is the bringing of slaves to freedom, and the Qurʾān names this by saying "necks".
• "…the freeing of a neck" — فَتَحْرِيرُ رَقَبَةٍ (al-Nisāʾ 4/92, al-Māʾida 5/89, al-Mujādala 58/3 — the last treated in al-Mujādala).
• "The loosing of a neck" — فَكُّ رَقَبَةٍ (al-Balad 90/13; treated in al-Balad).

That is, the overwhelming majority of this word's occurrences in the Qurʾān are in the context of a neck's being loosed. The word occurs in seven places in the Qurʾān; six of them have to do with the loosing of a bond. The only use in the context of war is this verse.

I record this distribution as a textual fact. I draw no ruling from it; but seeing where the weight of the word lies within the Qurʾān corrects the picture in the hands of one who reads the verse.

Why not "kill them" but "the striking of necks"? Two explanations are given in the classical commentaries: (a) metonymy (kināya) — killing named in its most explicit form; (b) that this is the place of the blow which in battle is most effective and gives the quickest result, so that the expression also includes not prolonging the suffering. I transmit this second explanation; I do not present it as a firm report.

This is the turning point of the verse, and the concrete sense of the root carries everything.

Root: ث-خ-ن. Its primary sense is to thicken, to grow dense, to grow heavy.

• ثَخِين (thakhīn) — thick, dense. Of a liquid: viscous, having lost its fluidity. Of a cloth: thick.
• ثَخُنَ ٱلشَّىْءُ — the thing thickened, grew heavy.
• أَثْخَنَ (Form ifʿāl) — to thicken something, to make it heavy; and from here: to bring someone to a state where he cannot move, to land a heavy blow and break his resistance.

The Arabs say athkhanahu'l-jurḥ: the wound weighed him down, left him motionless. And athkhana fi'l-arḍ — to press down heavily in the land, to establish dominance.

That is, the picture of the word is this: something that has been flowing thickens and stops. Conflict is a flow; ithkhān is the change in the consistency of that flow to the point of stopping.

An exact English equivalent is hard to find. "To subdue" is close; but "to thicken / to weigh down" gives the root better. I use "subdue" and write the real picture of the root beside it.

The word occurs in two places in the Qurʾān:

The two verses use the same word and both describe the same threshold: taking captives only after ithkhān. The relation between the two is one of the most disputed matters in the classical commentaries, and I shall take it up below in the table of disagreement.

The particle حَتَّىٰ here announces a limit (ghāya): "until…". And this is the most important structural element of the verse.

There are two ḥattās in the verse:

1. حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَآ أَثْخَنتُمُوهُمْ — "until you have subdued them". 2. حَتَّىٰ تَضَعَ ٱلْحَرْبُ أَوْزَارَهَا — "until the war lays down its burdens".

That is, nothing in the sentence has been left without a limit. The striking has an upper bound (ithkhān), and the regulation as a whole has an upper bound (the end of the war).

This is a fact read from the wording of the verse and it needs to be put on record: the text sets two separate end points for itself.

شَدَّ — root ش-د-د: to tighten, to make firm, to strengthen. From the same root shadīd (severe), ashadd (stronger).

وَثَاق — root و-ث-ق: to be firm, to be trustworthy. From the same root مِيثَاق (mīthāq — a firm covenant), وَثِيقَة (wathīqa — a document), ثِقَة (thiqa — trust).

وَثَاق, for its part, names the thing that is tied, the bond, the rope.

And there is a point of language here: from the same root come both "the covenant that gives assurance" (mīthāq) and "the captive's bond" (wathāq). The common core is firmness and not coming loose. Mīthāq is the word that will not be undone; wathāq is the bond that will not be undone.

I transmit this relation by way of the root sense the lexicographers record; the picture drawn between the two words is my own inference.

And what the sentence says here is a change of status. Where the striking ends is where the binding begins. The one who is bound is no longer a combatant — he is a captive. The verse makes this transition with a single fāʾ: fa-shuddū.

This is the most frequently skipped place in the verse, and it is the place this commentary will dwell on most.

What is to happen after the captive is bound? The verse gives two options:

إِمَّا … وَإِمَّا — in Arabic this is the pattern of leaving a choice (takhyīr): "either… or…". It announces that one of two alternatives is to be chosen.

And no third option is mentioned.

I write this plainly because this part of the verse often stays invisible: all the possibilities the verse counts regarding captives are two forms of setting free. Both end with the captive's release; the difference between them is whether the release is with or without a price.

This is not an exegetical interpretation; it is the wording of the verse itself. The pattern immā… wa immā enumerates the alternatives counted. In this verse the two alternatives enumerated are these.

And the order too is worth noting: mann comes first. Release without price is mentioned before release for a price. In Arabic, priority in order does not always announce superiority; but I record it as an observation.

The root م-ن-ن has been treated in several places in this commentary: al-Baqara (2/262-264 — lā tubṭilū ṣadaqātikum bi'l-manni wa'l-adhā), al-Tīn, al-Qalam, al-Ḥujurāt (49/17 — yamunnūna ʿalayka an aslamū), al-Muddaththir. I do not repeat it here.

The two directions the root carries were recorded earlier in this commentary, and here they are decisive:

And the measure recorded in al-Ḥujurāt: the difference lies not in what is given but in what is done after the giving.

In this verse the word is in the first sense: release without payment. Mannan — an absolute object whose verb has been dropped (the implied form: fa-immā an tamunnū mannan).

And the primary sense of the root matters here. The lexicographers also connect mann with "cutting": manna'l-ḥabl — he cut the rope. From here: to bestow is to cut a bond and give without return; the one who receives is cut off from the debt of return.

What the word carries in this verse is exactly that: the bond is undone and no return is asked for it. In the preceding clause the bond had been tightened (shuddu'l-wathāq); here the same bond can be undone with no price taken at all.

I record this reversal of direction between the two clauses as my own reading.

Root: ف-د-ي. Its primary sense: to save one thing by giving another; to get back by paying a price.

• فِدْيَة (fidya) — the price paid in place of an obligation. At al-Baqara 2/184, the fidya of one who cannot fast.
• فِدَاء (fidāʾ) — the price of ransom.
• إِفْتِدَاء — to ransom oneself. This root was taken up in al-Maʿārij (al-Maʿārij 70/11-14: yawaddu'l-mujrimu law yaftadī min ʿadhābi yawmi-idhin bi-banīh) and in al-Ḥadīd.

The basic idea the root carries is an exchange: something is given, something is taken.

And in the context of war two forms of fidāʾ are recorded in the classical sources: release for property, and the exchange of captives (a trade against the Muslim captives on the other side). The second form is closer to the root sense of the word — for there the exchange is, in the full sense of the word, a life for a life.

This is one of the most striking expressions in the Qurʾān, and its word order deserves particular examination.

Who is the subject of the sentence? The subject of the verb taḍaʿa is ٱلْحَرْب — the war itself.

That is, the sentence does not say: "until you lay down your weapons", or "until those who fight set down their burdens". It says: until the war lays down its own burdens.

This is an istiʿāra makniyya (an implicit metaphor): the war is imagined as a being carrying a load on its back. And that being sets its load on the ground at the end of the road.

This root has been treated in three places in this commentary: al-Inshirāḥ (وِزْر — a heavy load, and from there sin), al-Qiyāma (وَزَر — a refuge, a rock on a mountain), and al-Najm (53/38: allā taziru wāziratun wizra ukhrā — and there the word وَزِير, "the one who shares the load"). I do not repeat it here.

What was recorded there and is decisive here is this:

"At the centre of the root lies the idea of weight and mass. Wazar is the steep and heavy mass of rock on a mountain. Wizr is the weight carried. Wazīr is the one who shares the weight."

What I shall add here is the particular use of the root in this verse.

أَوْزَار — the plural of wizr: loads, weights. And there are two views on what the word means in this verse:

Both explanations are found in the classical commentaries, and I make no preference.

I record this much: both explanations arrive at the same result — the expression describes the ending of the war. The difference between them lies not in what brings it to an end but in what the "load" points to.

And an observation about the expression itself — it is my own reading: the Qurʾān does not describe the end of the war as "until victory is won" or "until the enemy is destroyed". It describes it as the setting down of a load. That choice positions war not as a gain but as a weight. A value judgement is hidden inside the expression: what is carried is something to be put down.

I do not present this as a binding exegesis; but the choice of the word stands in the text, and the "weight" sense of the root is beyond dispute.

In the middle of the sentence, a demonstrative standing alone: ذَٰلِكَ.

The grammarians resolve this in several ways: the predicate of an elided subject (al-amru dhālika — "the matter is this"), or the subject of an elided predicate (dhālika ḥukmuhum — "this is the ruling concerning them").

Its function is clear: it seals a section. What has been said up to here was a regulation; it says dhālika and the regulation closes. What follows is another subject.

And now comes the most striking sentence of the verse.

لَوْ — in Arabic this is the particle of the counterfactual condition (imtināʿiyya): it announces a condition that has not come about and is not expected to. "Had it been so, it would have been thus — but it was not."

The sentence says this: "Had God willed, He would Himself have taken retribution from them."

ٱنتَصَرَ — root ن-ص-ر, Form VIII. This root has been treated in many places in this commentary (al-Ḥashr, al-Ṣaff, al-Qamar, al-Mulk, Nūḥ, al-Jinn, al-Ṭāriq); and the intiṣār pattern in particular was taken up in al-Dhāriyāt and al-Raḥmān: to help oneself, to take one's own due, to take one's revenge. I do not repeat it here.

This sentence of the verse binds everything regulated before it to a qualification.

It says: this is not a matter God could not have handled otherwise. It is not a question of power. Had it been a question of power, la'ntaṣara minhum — He would have handled it Himself.

Why, then, is it so?

لَٰكِن — the particle of correction (istidrāk): "but".

لِيَبْلُوَ — the lām of purpose (taʿlīl) + the root ب-ل-و: to try, to test.

Root: ب-ل-و. The primary sense the lexicographers record is interesting: to wear a thing out, to make it threadbare. Baliya'th-thawb — the garment wore out. From the same root بَالٍ (worn out).

The connection between testing and wearing out is this: to try a thing is to use it; and use wears it out. The trial wears down the one tried.

This root has been touched on in other places in this commentary; what is to be added here is the object of the word in this verse.

بَعْضَكُم بِبَعْضٍ — "some of you by means of others".

Note: the object is not "them". The sentence does not say "We shall test you by means of them". It says "some of you by means of others". The word baʿḍ occurs twice, both times indefinite.

The meaning of this needs to be dwelt on. The sentence takes both sides inside the same pronoun. The trial is not one-directional; it is mutual. For one side to be a test for the other means that the other is a test for that side too.

And this is the second qualification set upon the verse's regulation of war: the conflict is positioned not as an end but as a ground of testing. Not a result, but a process.

This reading rests on the wording of the text (li-yabluwa — the ground of testing is given explicitly); but the conclusion I draw from it, that conflict is not an end, is my own inference and is not binding.

There is a variant reading and it affects the meaning:

Both readings are transmitted. The difference is not trivial: the first makes having been killed a condition; the second holds having fought to be sufficient.

I make no preference. I record this: the two readings do not cancel each other, they complete each other. One puts the outcome first, the other the act.

The qualification فِى سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ must not be passed over either. This qualification was the object of the verb ṣadd in the first verse (ṣaddū ʿan sabīli'llāh — they turned others away from the path of God). Now the same construct becomes the place to which the death is attributed.

And the measure recorded on 61/4 in al-Ṣaff holds here too:

"The qualification فِى سَبِيلِهِۦ must not be passed over either: 'in His path'. Not every war."

And the verse closes by returning to the first sentence of the sūra.

The same verb, the same object, the opposite ruling. And the negation is made with لَن — the strongest negation of the future in Arabic.

This says something about the structure of the verse. The verse began with the regulation of the field of battle; it continued with the qualification about power; it went on with the ground of testing; and it ended with the promise that the deeds will not be lost. That is, it began with a regulation and closed with deed — with the key word of the sūra.

The debate the classical commentaries conduct around this verse is essentially the relation of the following three texts to one another:

• Muḥammad 47/4 — after subduing, bind; then either mann or fidāʾ.
• al-Anfāl 8/67-70 — "It is not for a prophet to take captives until he has subdued in the land…" and then verse 70, which addresses the captives.
• al-Tawba 9/5 — the verses regulating the rulings of war and peace.

The views transmitted, in a table:

In this commentary I make no preference and issue no legal ruling. Per the method (Method), the views of the schools of law are transmitted and no ruling is issued; and I have no sound measure by which to prefer among the reports concerning the order of revelation.

What is to be recorded is this: the debate itself shows that the verse has not been read as a general ruling standing alone and settled. The classical exegetical tradition has always taken this verse up together with other verses. To take the verse by itself and present it as a general ruling is the exact opposite of what that tradition does.

The limits that can be read directly from the wording of the text:

All eight of these items are in the verse's own wording. Not one of them is a qualification brought in from outside.

And to "tear a verse from its context" means exactly this: to drop the first and third of the eight items above and take the second clause on its own. In that state the verse says something else — but what it says is no longer what the verse says.

I have to be careful here, because the most dangerous thing that could be written under the heading "what this says to the present" for this verse is to attach it to a conflict of today. I shall not do that.

There are two observations that can be drawn from the verse and that are attached to no side:

One. The hardest sentence of a text is read together with the qualifications the text itself sets. This verse carries eight separate qualifications, and all of them are inside the text. To take the hard sentence and leave the qualifications while reading a text is not reading but selecting. This is a measure valid not only for this verse but for every text.

Two. Both of the alternatives the verse counts regarding captives are release — and this is a regulation worth noting within the text's own historical context. From the moment the fighting is subdued the verse changes the status of the captive: he ceases to be a combatant and becomes one who has been bound, and finally one who is to be released.

I record one further inference from here — it is my own reading: the structure of the verse is built upon violence setting a limit to itself. Two ḥattās, one fa-shuddū, one immā… wa immā. The text says where what it permits will end, in the very place where it permits it.

Sa-yahdīhim wa yuṣliḥu bālahum · Wa yudkhiluhumu'l-jannata ʿarrafahā lahum

"He will guide them and set right their bāl · And He will bring them into the garden He has made known to them."

The sentence that began at the end of the fourth verse continues here. The same subject (concealed, God), the same object (those killed in the path of God), and four verbs:

The order needs to be examined. The expected order is this: the one who dies receives his reward. But the verse puts guidance first.

Guiding is something done for a person who is walking. Here, though, the one addressed is a person who has been killed. In the classical commentaries this is explained as "his being guided on his way in the hereafter"; some say it is "the continuation of their being guided while they were in this world". Both explanations are transmitted; I make no preference.

This much is visible from the text: the verb presupposes a walking even after death. The reward is not a state of standing still.

In the second verse this expression came in the perfect: أَصْلَحَ بَالَهُمْ. Here it comes in the imperfect: يُصْلِحُ بَالَهُمْ.

The same expression, in the same sūra, in two different tenses.

And two of the four occurrences of the word bāl in the Qurʾān are these two. The word is used twice in the sūra, both times together with a single verb.

What this does needs to be recorded — and this is my own reading:

The second verse gave a promise to living believers and used the perfect: the setting right of the inward state is something already done. The fifth verse gives it to those who have died and uses the imperfect: the setting right is something that will continue.

That is, the sūra puts the same promise at both ends of life: to the living, "it has happened"; to the dead, "it will happen".

I do not present this distinction as a binding exegesis; the difference of tense stands in the text, the meaning I draw from it is mine. It is also possible that the difference of tense arises from the context in which the sentences stand (one where past rulings are being listed, the other where future promises are).

This two-word expression is one of the places where the classical commentaries differ most.

عَرَّفَ — root ع-ر-ف, Form tafʿīl. The family of primary senses in the root is wide:

• عَرَفَ — he knew, he recognised.
• مَعْرِفَة — the knowledge of recognition.
• عُرْف — 1) custom, what is known and accepted; 2) the mane of a horse, the comb of a cock — that is, a rising edge; 3) sweet scent.
• عَرَفَة / عَرَفَات — a place name.
• تَعْرِيف — to make known; and also to delimit, to determine (in grammar taʿrīf is the making of a noun definite).

And the three separate branches of this root give the verse three separate readings:

All three readings are found in the classical commentaries. I make no preference.

I record this observation — it is my own reading: all three readings look in the same direction. Recognition, scent, and the drawing of a boundary — all of them describe the lifting of strangeness. To know a place the first time you enter it, to know its scent, and to know that your own place there has been set apart: all three say "this belongs to you".

I present this as an attempt at a synthesis, not as a preference.

The parsing of the clause عَرَّفَهَا لَهُمْ has also been disputed: is it an adjective qualifying ٱلْجَنَّةَ ("the garden He has made known to them"), or a circumstantial ("having made the garden known to them"), or an independent sentence ("He has made it known to them")?

The difference of meaning is not great; I content myself with recording it.

One detail: the verb is in the perfect (ʿarrafa), whereas the verbs around it are in the imperfect (sa-yahdī, yuṣliḥu, yudkhilu). That is, a past verb has come in among three future ones.

This shows that the making known is before the entry — I record it as an observation. The bringing into the garden is in the future; the making known is done and finished.

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū in tanṣuru'llāha yanṣurkum wa yuthabbit aqdāmakum

"O you who believe! If you help God, He will help you and make your feet firm."

For six verses the sūra spoke in the third person. "Those who deny", "those who believe", "they". There is no one addressed; there is a situation recounted.

And in the seventh verse direct address comes for the first time: yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū.

This will happen twice in the sūra: 7 and 33. Both come with a command, and both are points where the sūra changes direction.

The first call brings an offer, the second a warning. And the twenty-six verses between them recount why the warning is needed.

The sentence is a conditional and it has three parts:

إِن (the particle of condition) + تَنصُرُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ (the verb of the condition, jussive) + يَنصُرْكُمْ وَيُثَبِّتْ (the answer, jussive)

All three verbs are jussive (ending in sukūn): tanṣurū (the nūn dropped), yanṣur (the vowel of the rāʾ dropped), yuthabbit (the vowel of the tāʾ dropped).

This shows the grammatical tightness of the sentence: three verbs locked to one another by the same grammatical bond. If the condition is broken the answer is broken too; the two are a single structure.

And note the choice of particle: إِنْ, not إِذَا.

• إِذَا — for conditions whose occurrence is expected, close to certain (in the preceding verse there was fa-idhā laqītum).
• إِنْ — for conditions whose occurrence is not certain, conditions of possibility.

That is, "helping God" is not, in the verse's own language, a certain thing; it is a possible thing. The one addressed is a community that has believed, and even so the condition is built with in.

This is an observation about word order. In Arabic this distinction is not applied rigidly everywhere; but when two verses in succession use two different particles it is worth noticing.

On a first reading the expression raises a question: does God need help?

And the verse itself had already closed this question in the preceding verse. The fourth verse had said: "Had God willed, He would Himself have taken retribution from them." That is, that it is not a question of power was written explicitly three verses earlier.

In the classical commentaries the explanation of this expression is given thus: "helping God" is helping His religion, His messenger and His command — the governed term has been elided (in tanṣurū dīna'llāh). This explanation is widespread and reasonable.

I add an observation to it — it is my own reading: the verse chooses to elide the governed term and say directly "if you help God". This does a piece of work: it says where the work done goes. When a person does a work as "service to religion", what he serves may be an institution, a community or an opinion. By naming the recipient of the service directly, the verse closes off that drift.

This is a reading and it is not binding.

Root: ن-ص-ر. This root has been treated in many places in this commentary: al-Ḥashr, al-Ṣaff, al-Qamar, al-Mulk, Nūḥ, al-Jinn, al-Ṭāriq, and al-Naṣr. I do not repeat it here.

Two of the things recorded there are decisive here:

al-Mulk: "Nuṣra is standing by someone in the face of an enemy. The English word 'help' is broader; naṣr is narrower and carries the smell of war." al-Ḥashr and al-Ṣaff: "The root has another sense as well: naṣara'l-ghaythu'l-arḍ — the rain helped the earth, that is, it brought it to life."

What is to be added here is that the word occurs twice in this verse — the same root, the same form, one in the second person and one in the third:

The same verb, in two directions. And note: the verse does not give the requital with a different word. It does not say "if you help you will receive a reward"; it says "if you help you will be helped".

This is the plainest form of the figure of reciprocity (muqābala): the subject and the object of the same verb change places.

And the second part of the requital is far more concrete than the first.

ثَبَّتَ — root ث-ب-ت, Form tafʿīl. The primary sense of the root: to stand in place, to remain fixed, not to be dislodged. Thabata'sh-shayʾ — the thing stood in place.

And the root has a concrete use for plants too: a tree's root holding in the soil. The Qurʾān uses this picture at Ibrāhīm 14/24: "a good tree whose root is firm (thābit) and whose branch is in the sky."

أَقْدَام — the plural of qadam: feet. The root is ق-د-م, and from the same root taqdīm (to put forward), qadīm (that which comes before), muqaddima. The foot is what is put forward — what goes first in walking.

Now let us look at the picture itself.

What is the physical form of defeat on a battlefield? The slipping of the feet. A rank breaks when it leaves its place; and leaving its place is the feet going backwards. In Arabic the idiom zallat qadamuh — "his foot slipped" — describes both a physical and a moral fall.

The verse takes an abstract promise of "help" and brings it down under the feet.

• yanṣurkum — abstract, wide, hard to measure.
• yuthabbit aqdāmakum — concrete, narrow, seen at once.

The second says how the first comes about. Help is described not as something coming down from the sky but as the foot's holding on the ground.

And this must be read together with the next verse of the sūra — because the eighth verse will give exactly the opposite of this picture.

This pair occurs together in several places in the Qurʾān, and all of them are in the context of war:

• al-Baqara 2/250 — "Our Lord! Pour patience upon us, make our feet firm and help us against the denying people" (wa thabbit aqdāmanā wa'nṣurnā). Note: in this prayer too thabāt and nuṣra stand side by side.
• Āl ʿImrān 3/147 — "…and make our feet firm" (the same expression, again inside a prayer).
• al-Anfāl 8/11 — "…to strengthen your hearts and with it to make the feet firm" (wa yuthabbita bihi'l-aqdām).

al-Anfāl 8/11 is particularly striking: there what makes the feet firm is the rain — the water that came down hardened the sand beneath the foot.

And when this comes side by side with the rain-related sense of the root ن-ص-ر (naṣara'l-ghaythu'l-arḍ), an interesting weave is formed: help too is rain, and what makes the foot firm is also rain.

I record this weave as my own reading; both data have their counterpart in the lexicon and in the text, but the connection between them is one I am making, and it carries no claim of a play on words.

The concrete picture of the verse works outside the field of battle as well.

The real difficulty in sustaining something is not beginning but staying in place. To set out on a work is a decision made once; to stay in that work is a decision made anew every day. And most of the time people do not abandon the work — they withdraw slowly. The foot slips.

The promise of the verse looks exactly here: the form of the help is not a miracle but being able to keep a footing on the ground.

I record this as an application drawn from the verse; the wording of the verse is in the context of war, and the extension here is my own reading.

Wa'lladhīna kafarū fa-taʿsan lahum wa aḍalla aʿmālahum

"And as for those who deny: a fall on the face for them! [God] has made their deeds go astray."

Root: ت-ع-س. The concrete sense the lexicographers record is this: to fall on one's face, to stumble and go headlong. Taʿisa'r-rajul — the man stumbled and fell on his face. As its opposite they record إِنْتِعَاش (to straighten up and rise).

The word is also used as a pattern of imprecation: taʿsan lak — "may your face come to the ground".

And now look at the preceding verse.

Two verses in succession give the two ends of the same physical picture.

This is an opposition standing in the text, and it is invisible unless the concrete senses of the words are known. Set "He makes your feet firm" beside "may they perish" and no link appears; but set "the foot holds on the ground" beside "to go headlong on the face" and the link comes out of itself.

And this is a good example of what root analysis is for: the concrete sense of words makes the link between verses visible.

تَعْسًا is in the accusative and has no verb. The grammarians count it an absolute object; the implied form: atʿasahumu'llāhu taʿsan — "may God make them fall on their faces".

That is, the verb has been dropped and the verbal noun has remained — just like the fa-ḍarba'r-riqāb of the fourth verse. The sūra uses this construction twice.

And in Arabic this construction is the standard form of sentences of imprecation and prayer: saqyan lahu, tabban lahu. Indeed the opening of Sūrat al-Masad (tabbat yadā Abī Lahab) was treated in al-Masad; the construction there and this verse are of the same family.

This clause is the last two words of the first verse of the sūra. Letter for letter.

The only difference is a wāw placed at its head.

This repetition turns the first eight verses of the sūra into a ring:

Eight verses, opening with the same sentence and closing with the same sentence. And in between there is a regulation of war. That is, the regulation has been placed between the descriptions of the two groups.

I record this framing as an observation about word order.

Dhālika bi-annahum karihū mā anzala'llāhu fa-aḥbaṭa aʿmālahum

"That is because they disliked what God sent down; so He voided their deeds."

The second occurrence of the sūra's dhālika bi-anna pattern. In the third verse the ground of verses 1-2 was given; here the ground of verse 8 is given.

And the ground is not an act but a feeling.

In the third verse the ground was إِتِّبَاع — following, setting off after; a behaviour. Here the ground is كَرِهُوا۟ — disliking; an inward state.

This opens the door to the later sections of the sūra. The sūra will move gradually from outside inward: from behaviour to feeling, from feeling to the heart (20, 24, 29), and finally to the hidden rancour inside the heart (29, 37).

Root: ك-ر-ه. The lexicographers give two nuances to two readings:

The common core: a thing's weighing heavily on the soul. Its opposites are رِضَا (riḍā) and مَحَبَّة (love).

The root occurs three times in this sūra and its distribution is instructive:

In the three occurrences there are two objects: what is sent down, and good pleasure. And verse 28 builds an expression that looks odd on a first reading — "to dislike good pleasure" — which I shall take up there.

There is also a difference of form: in verse 9 أَنزَلَ (ifʿāl), in verse 26 نَزَّلَ (tafʿīl). The same verb, two forms. I shall take this difference up as a whole at verse 20, because there the two forms will stand side by side in the same sentence.

The sūra speaks for the third time of deeds coming to nothing — and for the third time it uses a different verb.

The root ح-ب-ط was analysed in full in the section al-Ḥujurāt (49/2 — an taḥbaṭa aʿmālukum). What was recorded there is decisive here and I do not repeat it; the summary is this:

"The concrete use the lexicographers record is this: حَبِطَتِ ٱلدَّابَّةُ — the animal ate its fill of a harmful plant in the pasture; its belly swelled; and the swelling killed it. […] That is, ḥabṭ carries this picture in its root: growth from without, rot from within. […] The deeds do not disappear; they swell and burst. The appearance stays, the content goes."

What is to be added here is that the three verbs stand side by side in the same sūra — and that the three give three separate pictures:

• إِضْلَال: the deed is in place, the connection has been broken.
• إِحْبَاط: the deed has swollen, its inside has emptied out.
• إِبْطَال: the deed has been counted invalid.

All three give the same result but by three different roads. And the sūra keeps the third — the one thing that lies in a person's own hands — for the end.

I record this classification as my own reading. The senses of the three roots are lexical data; the division of labour among them is a frame I am setting up.

A-fa-lam yasīrū fi'l-arḍi fa-yanẓurū kayfa kāna ʿāqibatu'lladhīna min qablihim; dammara'llāhu ʿalayhim, wa li'l-kāfirīna amthāluhā

"Have they not travelled the earth and looked at how the end of those before them was? God brought ruin down upon them. And for the deniers there are the likes of it."

The verse describes a method of acquiring knowledge, and it divides the method into two verbs:

1. يَسِيرُوا۟ — root س-ي-ر: to walk, to make one's way, to travel. From the same root sayr, sīra (a person's course, the way he lives), sayyāra (a caravan; in today's Arabic, a motor car). 2. يَنظُرُوا۟ — root ن-ظ-ر: to look. And the use of this root in the Qurʾān is not the same as "to see" (ر-أ-ي): naẓar is a deliberate and attentive looking; a look turned in a direction. From the same root naẓariyya (theory), intiẓār (waiting), munāẓara.

And the two verbs are joined with a fāʾ: يَسِيرُوا۟ فَيَنظُرُوا۟.

The fāʾ here announces causation and sequence: that they should walk and so look. That is, the looking is the result of the walking; without walking there is no looking.

This is a sentence about method: there is something that cannot be seen without getting up from where you are. Knowledge is taken with the foot.

And note: the second verb is jussive as well (yanẓurū, its nūn dropped) — that is, the effect of lam reaches the second verb too. Neither has happened: they have neither walked nor looked.

The أَ (hamza) at the head is the particle of interrogation, and here it is an interrogative of denial (istifhām inkārī): a question that expects no answer and conveys reproach.

فَلَمْ — the fāʾ links to the preceding context, lam negates the past.

That is, the sentence says not "do they not look?" but "have they not looked?" Past tense. The possibility was there; it was not used.

Root: ع-ق-ب. Its concrete sense is heel — ʿaqib. From the same root: ʿaqaba (to come after), taʿqīb (following up), ʿiqāb (punishment — what comes after), ʿuqbā (outcome), and the idiom عَقِب: inqalaba ʿalā ʿaqibayh — "he turned upon his heels", that is, he went back.

And the word ʿāqiba means exactly "what comes after": what follows on the heels of a thing, its end.

This gives the picture the root has chosen: an outcome stands behind the event. To see it one has to get behind the event — and this is the same idea as the تَدَبُّر we shall take up in the twenty-fourth verse (د-ب-ر: behind).

Two roots, two different words, the same picture: to see the end of a thing, look behind it.

I record this connection as my own reading; that both roots carry the sense of "behind" is lexical data, the parallel between them is a connection I am making.

دَمَّرَ — root د-م-ر, Form tafʿīl: to destroy, to demolish, to lay waste. From the same root tadmīr, damār.

And a grammatical detail: the verb has been made transitive with the particle عَلَىٰ — dammara ʿalayhim. Yet the verb is normally transitive directly: dammarahum (He destroyed them).

The grammarians explain this usage thus: the particle ʿalā announces that the ruin came down upon them. That is, the verb takes on the sense not of "He destroyed them" but of "He brought ruin down upon them" — as though a building had collapsed on top of them.

And this is a picture the Qurʾān uses elsewhere. al-Naḥl 16/26: "…God tore out their buildings from the foundations, and the roof fell down upon them from above" (fa-kharra ʿalayhimu's-saqfu min fawqihim).

The two expressions point in the same direction: the ruin comes not from the side but from above.

There is a problem of the pronoun, and the exegetes have dwelt on it: amthāluhā — "the likes of it". The pronoun هَا is feminine; what does it refer to?

The difference is not great; I content myself with recording it.

And this is the second occurrence of the root م-ث-ل in the sūra (3, 10, 38). In the third verse God was giving people "their likenesses"; here for the deniers there are "the likes of it"; and the last word of the sūra will again be from this root.

The verse proposes looking at history as a source of knowledge — and it proposes it not as a reading but as a walking.

The distinction is worth noting. The verse does not say "have they not read the accounts of them?" It says "have they not travelled the earth and looked?" That is, what is proposed is that the ruin be seen in its place.

Why this makes a difference can be dwelt on — and this is my own reading: a ruin recounted leaves the hearer with a piece of information; a ruin seen leaves him with a measure. To stand before the remains of a city shows at one and the same time that the city once stood and that those who stood in it did not think of this.

What this verse says to the present is here, and there is no need to force it: archaeological sites, abandoned cities, museums — all of them are today's counterpart of the act the verse describes. And the verse does not command "take a lesson"; it asks "have they not looked?" That is, the act is already possible; what is not done is simply looking.

Dhālika bi-anna'llāha mawla'lladhīna āmanū wa anna'l-kāfirīna lā mawlā lahum

"That is because God is the mawlā of those who believe; and the deniers have no mawlā."

The third occurrence of the sūra's dhālika bi-anna pattern. And this is the most striking use of the pattern.

The two previous grounds showed something the addressee had done: they followed falsehood (3), they disliked (9). Here the ground is not something the addressee has done; it is who God is.

That is, the sentence finds the cause of a destruction not in a human act but in the presence or absence of a relationship.

Root: و-ل-ي. And this root possesses one of the widest families of meaning in Arabic. Its primary sense: nearness, adjacency, standing side by side with nothing else in between. Waliya'sh-shayʾ — he adjoined that thing, he came right after it.

The derivatives that come out of this core:

The two opposite senses of the verb تَوَلَّى are interesting, and both will occur in this sūra: in verse 22 in tawallaytum, in verse 38 wa in tatawallaw. How the word carries the senses of "to turn towards" and "to turn away" together I shall take up at verse 22.

And the word mawlā is one of the most discussed words in Arabic; because it stands close to the class of aḍdād (words that carry opposite meanings together).

Mawlā is used for all of the following:

• The master — the one who frees his slave.
• The freedman — the one who is freed.
• A helper, a friend, a supporter.
• A cousin, a kinsman.
• The one who takes charge of a matter, the one responsible.

That is, the word can name both parties to a relationship. The common core is the relationship itself: a bond established between two people with no one in between.

In this verse the word is in the sense of "helper, the one who takes a person's part, the one who takes charge" and the context determines this: over against it stands lā mawlā lahum.

The two clauses are not symmetrical, and the difference is meaningful.

The first side: ٱللَّهَ مَوْلَى ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ The structure: noun + construct. "God is the mawlā of those who believe."

The second side: ٱلْكَٰفِرِينَ لَا مَوْلَىٰ لَهُمْ The structure: لَا + indefinite noun + adverbial. "As for the deniers: there is no mawlā at all for them."

And the لَا here is called in grammar lā al-nāfiya li'l-jins (the lā that negates the genus). This particle announces that not one individual of a thing is present — not "there is not one" but "there is none of the kind".

That is, the sentence does not say: "the mawlā of the deniers is not God". It says: "the deniers have no mawlā at all."

The difference is large. The first sentence would have rejected a relationship; the second says that the position is empty.

In the tenth verse a destruction was recounted: dammara'llāhu ʿalayhim. And the eleventh verse gives the cause of that destruction.

The cause is not a crime but a solitude.

This joins with the following verse as well: in verse 13 it will be said fa-lā nāṣira lahum — "and they had no helper". The same pattern, two verses apart, with two different words:

Both are built with the lā al-nāfiya li'l-jins. The sūra marks the same emptiness twice, with two different words.

And this connects directly with the central question of the section al-Ḥashr: that sūra asked from beginning to end "what are you relying on?" and counted off the collapsing securities one by one. These two verses ask the same question from the other side: who is behind you?

Inna'llāha yudkhilu'lladhīna āmanū wa ʿamilu'ṣ-ṣāliḥāti jannātin tajrī min taḥtiha'l-anhār; wa'lladhīna kafarū yatamattaʿūna wa yaʾkulūna kamā taʾkulu'l-anʿāmu wa'n-nāru mathwan lahum

"God will surely bring those who believe and do righteous deeds into gardens beneath which rivers flow. As for those who deny, they take their enjoyment and they eat as the grazing animals eat; and the fire is their lodging."

The comparison in the middle of this verse is a place that has to be treated in careful and unwounding language. Let us set up the structure of the verse first; I shall come to the comparison after.

The most striking feature of the verse is that in speaking about two groups it uses two different planes of time.

That is, the verse does not situate the two groups in the same time.

The place where the believers are has not yet come; the verb is imperfect and in the sense of the future. What those who deny do is happening right now: they eat, they take their enjoyment.

And then the sentence closes with a nominal clause: وَٱلنَّارُ مَثْوًى لَّهُمْ. In Arabic the nominal sentence announces fixity (thubūt, permanence); the verbal sentence announces coming-to-be (ḥudūth, renewal).

The result: their present state is given with a verbal sentence (temporary, flowing), their place of arrival with a nominal one (fixed).

Root: م-ت-ع. Its primary sense: to derive benefit from something, to enjoy; and the concrete sense the lexicographers record: a thing's stretching out and continuing — mataʿa'n-nahār — the day grew long.

From the same root مَتَاع (matāʿ) — the thing enjoyed, a means of living, goods. And an expression the Qurʾān uses often: مَتَاعُ ٱلْغُرُور — the enjoyment of delusion (Āl ʿImrān 3/185, al-Ḥadīd 57/20; the latter treated in al-Ḥadīd).

And at the centre of the word lies an idea of duration: matāʿ is an enjoyment that has an end. The Qurʾān uses the expression matāʿun ilā ḥīn (enjoyment until a term) in several places.

تَمَتَّعَ — Form V (tafaʿʿul). This form announces intent and taking pains (takalluf): doing a thing willingly, applying oneself to it. That is, tamattuʿ is not ordinary enjoyment; it is turning towards enjoyment.

I have to be careful here, because this comparison can easily be turned into a sentence of contempt — and that is not what the verse does.

First I have to write this: the verse does not condemn the animal's eating.

This can be seen from the text itself. The Qurʾān counts the anʿām (that is, the grazing livestock) elsewhere as a favour, and there is a sūra named for them (al-Anʿām, 6). At al-Naḥl 16/5-8 the creation of these animals is recounted as a bounty, together with the warmth, food and transport they provide for people.

That is, the verse does not say "eating like an animal is bad". An animal's eating is exactly the right thing for an animal.

What, then, does the verse say?

Root: ن-ع-م. And there is a subtlety here in the choice of the word.

This root has been treated in many places in this commentary (al-Wāqiʿa, al-Takāthur, al-Ḍuḥā, al-Ghāshiya, ʿAbasa, al-Maʿārij and others). The family of meanings in the root:

• نِعْمَة (niʿma) — a gift, a kindness.
• نَعِيم (naʿīm) — a state of abundance.
• نَاعِم (nāʿim) — soft, fine. Nuʿūma — softness.
• أَنْعَام (anʿām) — grazing animals.

The lexicographers explain the anʿām taking this name in two ways: either because they are a favour, or because of the softness of their gait. Both explanations are transmitted; I make no preference.

And this detail is worth noting: in the same verse the place where the believers will go is named جَنَّات (gardens); and the frequent epithet of the garden in the Qurʾān is نَعِيم (jannātu'n-naʿīm). That is, the same root carries the animal on one side of the verse and the name of the garden on the other.

I record this as a lexical observation; I do not claim that these two uses have been deliberately set side by side in this verse.

Now let us come to what the comparison does.

The clause is this: يَأْكُلُونَ كَمَا تَأْكُلُ ٱلْأَنْعَٰمُ — "they eat as the grazing animals eat".

The particle of comparison كَمَا attaches to the verb, not to the agent. That is, the sentence does not say "they are like animals"; it says "their eating is like the animal's eating".

This difference is everything.

What does an animal's eating comprise? Hunger, searching, satiety. And when it is over it is over. There is nothing missing in the animal's eating — it is doing exactly what is expected of it.

What the verse records is that a person's eating stays at just that much.

A person eats too; the verse does not forbid this and does not condemn it. The Qurʾān makes eating a subject in its own right and commands eating what is lawful and good (al-Baqara 2/168). The matter is not eating; it is whether there is anything beyond the eating.

And the verse says this by way of a subtraction: in the sentence nothing is added to the person's eating. Not thanks, not thought, not the question of where it came from, not with whom it is shared. There is only the act.

That is, the comparison is not a contempt but a measurement: the space a person's life occupies is measured, and the result comes out the same as the space an animal's life occupies.

And the verse says explicitly to whom this measurement is to be applied: alladhīna kafarū. Per the method (Method): this is not an identity but an attribute. Whoever carries that attribute is included in it — and the attribute is "being content with just this much".

I rest this reading on the wording of the text (kamā taʾkulu — the particle of comparison attached to the verb); the "measurement" interpretation I draw from it is my own inference.

The Qurʾān sets up this comparison in one other place, at greater length — and there it writes out explicitly what the measure is:

"We have created for hell many of the jinn and of mankind: they have hearts with which they do not understand, eyes with which they do not see, ears with which they do not hear. Those are like the grazing animals; indeed they are further astray. Those are the heedless ones." (al-Aʿrāf 7/179)

Note: the verse in al-Aʿrāf counts three organs before setting up the comparison — heart, eye, ear. That is, the measure of the comparison is not the absence of the organs but their not being used.

And al-Aʿrāf enters one further qualification: أُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ كَٱلْأَنْعَٰمِ بَلْ هُمْ أَضَلُّ — "indeed further astray". This addition matters: the animal is not "astray" because it lives according to its own measure. The straying arises from not using what has been given.

That is, when the two verses are read together the direction of the comparison becomes clear: the comparison is not against the animal but in favour of the capacity given.

Root: م-ث-و. Its meaning: to stay in a place, to reside, to lodge. Mathawā bi'l-makān — he stayed there.

مَثْوًى — a noun of place: the place where one stays, a lodging, a dwelling.

And there is something in the word: mathwā can also carry the sense of a temporary lodging place (a traveller's lodging), but in the Qurʾān it is generally used in the sense of the final place of arrival.

The word occurs twice in this sūra:

And this is a turn worth recording. In the twelfth verse mathwā is the place of arrival of a group. In the nineteenth verse the same word comes back as one of the two states of the addressee's own life: mutaqallab (where you move about) and mathwā (where you come to rest).

The sūra turns a word it used about a group back upon the one it addresses, seven verses later. This is an example of the sūra's general method; we shall see the same movement in the word aḍghān (rancours) in verses 29 and 37.

I record this observation as textual data; the two occurrences of the word are fixed, this reading of a "turning back" is mine.

Wa ka-ayyin min qaryatin hiya ashaddu quwwatan min qaryatika'llatī akhrajatka; ahlaknāhum fa-lā nāṣira lahum

"And how many a town stronger than your town which drove you out — We destroyed them, and they had no helper."

كَأَيِّن — an expression in Arabic conveying many or few (taqlīl / takthīr): "how many, how very many". It does the same work as kam.

Structurally it is said to be formed from the combination of كَ (the kāf of comparison) + أَىّ (which) + nunation, and its spelling preserves that combination.

Then مِّن comes and brings a specification (tamyīz): min qaryatin — "of the kind town". This is the standard structure that follows expressions of number in Arabic.

Root: ق-ر-ي. Its primary sense: to gather, to bring together. Qarā'l-māʾa fi'l-ḥawḍ — he gathered the water in the basin. From the same root قِرَى (qirā) — hospitality to a guest, the entertaining of a visitor.

That is, qarya is not "village"; it is the place where people gather. The usual English rendering "village" carries a suggestion of a small settlement, and that suggestion is misleading: the Qurʾān uses the word qarya for large cities too.

And the work of the word in this verse is that it brings forward not the people but the place. The verse does not say "how many a community stronger than you"; it says "how many a town stronger than your town".

The first detail: "your town".

The Prophet is being addressed and the town is still attributed to him: qaryatika — your town. That is, his having been driven out has not ended the belonging.

This is a fact standing in the choice of words. It could have been said "that town" or "the town that drove you out"; it says "your town".

The second detail: the subject of the verb is the town.

أَخْرَجَتْكَ — "it drove you out". The subject of the verb is قَرْيَة — the town itself. Not the people of the town, but the town.

The grammarians call this majāz ʿaqlī: the attribution of a verb not to its real agent but to the place where the act occurred or to its cause. Like "the road wore me out", "the city stifled me".

And this choice adds a weight to the sentence — I record it as an observation: had it been said "its people drove you out", particular persons would have been blamed. When it is said "the town drove you out", what does the driving out is not a person but the whole of a place.

It is transmitted in the classical sources that this verse came down during the emigration, on the road out of Mecca. The report is widespread and agrees with the wording of the verse.

I do not present this with a claim of certainty. The wording of the verse gives no time; akhrajatka (it drove you out) is a perfect verb and shows that the departure has taken place, but it does not say when.

And this qualification is required per the method (Method): the expression "the town that drove you out" is not a blanket ruling about a town or a community. The ruling the verse gives is not even about that town — the sentence says that other towns were destroyed, and makes a comparison.

Indeed the Qurʾān speaks about the same town in an entirely different language elsewhere: Sūrat al-Balad opens "I swear by this town" (90/1), and the word order of that oath was treated in al-Balad. The same place is named in two different sūras with two different faces.

There is a striking movement of language: while the sentence is speaking about a qarya (feminine, singular), the verb أَهْلَكْنَٰهُمْ — "We destroyed them" — comes with a masculine plural pronoun.

In grammar this is called ḥaml ʿala'l-maʿnā: agreement according to the meaning intended rather than the wording. Qarya is verbally feminine singular, but what is meant is its people; and so the pronoun refers to them.

And this shift does a piece of work: had it been said "We destroyed the town", the demolition of a building would have been understood. It says "We destroyed them".

There is a change of person too: at the head of the sentence the speaker was in the third person (akhrajatka); with ahlaknā it moves to the first person plural (the nūn of majesty). That is, the act of destruction is spoken as something directly taken upon oneself.

A repetition of the pattern in the eleventh verse.

Both are built with the lā al-nāfiya li'l-jins: not one of the kind.

And the difference is in the words: mawlā, the one who takes a person's part; nāṣir, the one who helps. One is belonging, the other support. The sūra marks two separate emptinesses with two separate words.

And the distribution of the root ن-ص-ر in the sūra is as follows:

Three occurrences, three situations: where help is not needed, where it is mutual, where there is none at all.

A-fa-man kāna ʿalā bayyinatin min rabbihī ka-man zuyyina lahu sūʾu ʿamalihī wa'ttabaʿū ahwāʾahum

"Is one who stands upon a clear proof from his Lord like those to whom their evil deed has been made to look fair and who have followed their own desires?"

A pattern of comparison the Qurʾān uses often: a-fa-man… ka-man — "is one who is…, like one who is…?"

The question is one of denial: it expects no answer, it announces a negation. "Of course they are not the same."

And the work of the pattern is to make the addressee say the answer. No ruling is issued; the addressee is asked to draw the ruling himself.

بَيِّنَة — root ب-ي-ن: to separate, to come out into the open, for a gap to open between two things. From the same root bayān (explanation), tabyīn, mubīn (manifest), bayn (the space between).

At the centre of the root lies separation: a thing becomes visible when it is separated from other things.

بَيِّنَة is an intensive on the faʿīla pattern: that which is utterly clear, the proof that distinguishes.

And the particle matters: عَلَىٰ. "Upon a proof". In Arabic ʿalā announces standing on top of something, treading on it. That is, the proof is not a piece of knowledge the person possesses; it is a ground he stands on.

This gains its meaning when compared with the description of the other side: there is no ground beneath them; something has been made to look fair to them.

زَيَّنَ — root ز-ي-ن, Form tafʿīl: to adorn, to make look fair.

This root was treated in al-Ḥadīd (57/20 — zīna). What was recorded there is decisive here:

"The Qurʾān uses this root in an interesting way: mostly in the sense of a thing's 'being made to look fair'. […] The adornment is not the thing itself; it is what is placed upon the thing. And what is adorned looks as good as its adornment."

What is to be added here is that the verb is passive: زُيِّنَ — "it was made to look fair".

Who made it so? The verse does not say.

And this is the Qurʾān's habit with this construction: the same verb is used in some places of Satan (al-Anʿām 6/43, al-Naml 27/24), in some places left passive (this verse, Fāṭir 35/8); and in one place God's name occurs as the agent (at al-Anʿām 6/108 the making fair of deeds is named as a custom).

This distribution enters into the classical debates of theology, and I do not enter that debate here. What is to be recorded is this: the verse chooses not to name the agent, and this is a choice.

An observation — it is my own reading: the passive has an effect. When the agent is not named, the person cannot see the one who adorns. And to notice that something has been made to look fair requires noticing the one who made it so. That is, the verb form itself carries the mechanism of the deception.

One of the occurrences of the root عَمَل in the sūra is here — and this is the only place where the root is attributed not to the collective deeds of the believers or of those who deny but to the deed of a single person: ʿamalihī — his deed.

سُوء — root س-و-أ: to be bad, to become ugly. From the same root sayyiʾa (an evil deed — it occurred at 47/2: kaffara ʿanhum sayyiʾātihim), aswaʾ, sūʾ.

And a link appears between two verses:

Both verbs cover something over. But one makes it invisible (takfīr), the other makes it look good (tazyīn).

The difference is this — it is my own reading: what is covered is still bad for the one who knows it has been covered; what is adorned is done again, because it is not known to be bad.

There is a marked slippage in the word order:

• مَن زُيِّنَ لَهُۥ — singular ("the one to whom it has been made to look fair"), and the pronouns singular: lahu, ʿamalihī.
• وَٱتَّبَعُوٓا۟ أَهْوَآءَهُم — plural ("they followed their desires").

In grammar this is again called ḥaml ʿala'l-maʿnā: man (who) is verbally singular but plural in meaning; at the head of the sentence the wording is followed, at the end the meaning.

And this slippage does a piece of work — I record it as an observation: the deception is recounted in the singular (each person is deceived alone), the following is recounted in the plural (following desire takes on a collective form).

I do not present this as a settled rhetorical explanation; ḥaml ʿala'l-maʿnā is a usage frequently seen in the Qurʾān and in most places it carries no particular meaning.

Root: ه-و-ي. This root has been treated in this commentary (al-Najm — 53/1, wa'n-najmi idhā hawā; al-Qāriʿa, al-Nāziʿāt, al-Qamar). I do not repeat it here.

The main point recorded there is decisive here: the primary sense of the root is to fall from above downward. Hawā — it fell. هَاوِيَة — an abyss, a bottomless pit (al-Qāriʿa 101/9).

And from the same root هَوًى (hawā) — the appetite of the soul, its inclination.

The connection the lexicographers make is this: hawā is the inclination that pulls a person downward. The word carries in its name the direction it goes in.

And the word occurs twice in this sūra: 14 (wa'ttabaʿū ahwāʾahum) and 16 (wa'ttabaʿū ahwāʾahum). The same expression, the same words, two verses apart.

This repetition binds the two groups together and is to be kept in mind in passing to the sixteenth verse.

And a reminder: in the third verse the verb ittabaʿū occurred twice — once for those who follow falsehood, once for those who follow the truth. That is, the root ت-ب-ع occurs four times in the sūra and in all four the same form (Form VIII) is used: 3 (twice), 14, 16. And once more at 28: ittabaʿū mā askhaṭa'llāh.

Five occurrences, one verb. This is the sūra's way of describing the human being: a human being is a creature that sets off after something. The difference lies in what he sets off after.

I record this finding as my own reading.

Mathalu'l-jannati'llatī wuʿida'l-muttaqūn; fīhā anhārun min māʾin ghayri āsin, wa anhārun min labanin lam yataghayyar ṭaʿmuh, wa anhārun min khamrin ladhdhatin li'sh-shāribīn, wa anhārun min ʿasalin muṣaffā; wa lahum fīhā min kulli'th-thamarāti wa maghfiratun min rabbihim — ka-man huwa khālidun fi'n-nāri wa suqū māʾan ḥamīman fa-qaṭṭaʿa amʿāʾahum

"The likeness of the garden promised to those who guard themselves is this: in it are rivers of water that does not go stale, rivers of milk whose taste does not change, rivers of wine, a delight to those who drink, and rivers of strained honey. There they have every kind of fruit, and a forgiveness from their Lord. [Is such a one] like one who abides for ever in the fire and is given boiling water to drink, so that it tears his bowels apart?"

A note on method, at the very start: the debate over whether the descriptions of the garden are literal or figurative was treated in full in the section al-Wāqiʿa — including the question of the addressee, the table of the two views, and the making of no preference. In the same section the word حَمِيم was also analysed (together with its references to al-Ḥāqqa and al-Maʿārij).

I do not repeat that debate here and I rely on that treatment. What is to be done here is to take up what is particular to this verse: the order among the four rivers, and the opposition at the end of the verse.

The verse is disputed grammatically, and the reason for the dispute must be seen.

Word for word: "The likeness of the garden… is it like one who abides for ever in the fire?"

As it stands this is inconsistent: a likeness cannot be compared to a person. The two sides of the comparison are not of the same kind.

The grammarians and the exegetes resolve this in several ways:

The first resolution is the most widely transmitted, and there is a reason for it: the preceding verse (14) was built with exactly this pattern — a-fa-man kāna ʿalā bayyinatin min rabbihī ka-man zuyyina lahu sūʾu ʿamalihī.

That is, verse 14 set up the a-fa-man… ka-man pattern; verse 15 repeats the same pattern and lengthens its first half by inserting the description of the garden.

This shows that the two verses are a pair:

And note: the first side of both verses ends with the construct مِّن رَّبِّهِ. In 14, bayyinatin min rabbihī; in 15, maghfiratun min rabbihim.

I record this repetition as an observation about word order. The two verses are sealed with the same construct.

And a reminder: the same construct was present in verses 2 and 3 of the sūra as well (wa huwa'l-ḥaqqu min rabbihim; ittabaʿu'l-ḥaqqa min rabbihim). That is, the sūra uses this construct four times: 2, 3, 14, 15.

Four rivers are counted, and all four come in the same pattern: أَنْهَٰرٌ مِّن + [drink] + [quality].

And what the table shows is this: all four qualities remove that drink's defect in this world.

• Water goes foul when it stands still; its colour and taste spoil. → This water does not go stale.
• Milk turns sour when it is kept. → The taste of this milk does not change.
• Wine in this world means drunkenness and a headache. → This is delight only.
• Honey, when it comes out of the comb, is mixed with wax, bee residue and sediment; it has to be strained. → This honey is already strained.

That is, the description is not an enrichment resting on imagination; it is the removal of four known defects from four known things.

And this method was recorded in the section al-Wāqiʿa as well — there 56/32-33 (lā maqṭūʿatin wa lā mamnūʿa — fruit neither cut off nor forbidden) and 56/19 (lā yuṣaddaʿūna ʿanhā wa lā yunzifūn) were analysed in the same way: the description works by removing subtractions.

The observation to be added here is this — and it is my own reading: this method is perhaps the only honest way of recounting something the addressee does not know. The picture of an unknown thing cannot be drawn; but the defect of a known thing can be removed. The text does not describe a new substance to the addressee; it takes a known defect out of a known substance.

How far this method is literal and how far figurative was — as recorded above — debated in al-Wāqiʿa, and there too no preference was made.

Root: أ-س-ن. And this word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

The sense the lexicographers record: water's standing for a long time and its colour, taste or smell spoiling. Asina'l-māʾ / asana'l-māʾ — the water spoiled, went foul.

Two readings are transmitted: ءَاسِن (āsin — an active participle, on the fāʿil pattern) and أَسِن (asin — an adjective on the faʿil pattern). There is no difference of meaning; I content myself with recording it.

And the concrete picture of the root matters: water spoils because it does not flow. The cause of the spoiling is not contamination but stillness.

This makes the word's place in this sentence meaningful. The sentence says أَنْهَٰر (rivers) — that is, it is already speaking of flowing water. And to flowing water it adds the quality "not gone stale".

An observation — it is my own reading: in this world flowing water can spoil too; a river stops, becomes a pond, goes foul. The quality guarantees the continuity of the flow.

I present this as an inference; the verse does not speak of the continuity of the flow, it speaks of the absence of spoiling.

The root غ-ي-ر: to alter, to change. تَغَيَّرَ — Form V: to change of itself, to pass into another state.

And the quality is placed on the taste of the milk: طَعْمُهُ.

This is a choice. When milk spoils many things about it change: its colour, its smell, its consistency. The verse selects taste from among these — that is, the property the drinker meets directly.

And the distribution of the qualities of the four rivers across the senses is worth noting:

All four are qualities measured by the senses. None of them is abstract.

خَمْر — root خ-م-ر: to cover, to conceal. From the same root خِمَار (khimār) — a covering. And wine bears this name because it covers the mind.

That is, the word itself carries in its name the defect of wine in this world.

And after using this word the verse adds a quality to it: لَّذَّةٍ لِّلشَّٰرِبِينَ.

لَذَّة is a verbal noun ("delight"), not an adjective. To bring a verbal noun in the position of an adjective announces intensification in Arabic: not "giving delight" but "delight itself".

And the qualification li'sh-shāribīn must not be passed over either: "for those who drink". That is, the delight is described not as something in the drink itself but as something that is for the one who drinks.

A note on method is required here. This verse uses in a description of the garden the name of a drink forbidden in this world, and this is not a new question; the Qurʾān itself makes the distinction explicitly elsewhere:

"…from which they get neither headache nor loss of their wits" (al-Wāqiʿa 56/19 — treated in al-Wāqiʿa). "White, a delight to those who drink… in it there is no stupefying, nor do they become drunk on it" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/46-47).

That is, in using the word the Qurʾān removes the word's this-worldly defects separately each time. What is shared is the name; what is not shared is the effect the name points to.

No legal conclusion is drawn from this in this commentary, and nothing is said about the ruling in this world.

مُّصَفًّى — root ص-ف-و, the passive participle of Form tafʿīl: strained, purified, separated from its sediment.

From the same root: صَفَا — it became clear; صَفْوَة — the essence, the choicest part of a thing; ٱصْطَفَى — he chose, he sifted out (in the Qurʾān it is used of the choosing of the prophets); and ٱلصَّفَا — the hill of al-Ṣafā.

And the lexicographers record the word ṣafwān too: a smooth, polished stone. In al-Baqara this word was treated in the exegesis of 2/264 (the slippery rock with a fine layer of soil on it).

The work of the word in this verse is concrete: in this world honey is not pure as it comes out of the comb. Straining is a work done by a person. The verse says that the work has been done.

An observation — it is my own reading: three of the four qualities are the absence of a spoiling (water, milk, wine); the fourth is a process having been carried out (honey). That is, in three of them a subtraction is removed, and in the fourth something is presented as already worked upon.

After the four rivers two more things are counted:

1. مِن كُلِّ ٱلثَّمَرَٰتِ — of every kind of fruit. 2. وَمَغْفِرَةٌ مِّن رَّبِّهِمْ — and a forgiveness from their Lord.

And this second is the only abstract item on the list.

Everything counted is drunk or eaten: water, milk, wine, honey, fruit. And the last is forgiveness — which is neither drunk nor eaten.

This is worth noting in respect of its being placed at the end of the list. In the classical commentaries it is pointed out that this addition shifts the centre of gravity of the description: on top of all the favours counted, something of another kind is added.

مَغْفِرَة — root غ-ف-ر: to cover, to cover over. And as was recorded in al-Ṣaff, the concrete source of the root is the mighfar — the war helmet that covers the head:

"That is, forgiveness is not the treating of a sin as non-existent but the covering of it."

And here three roots stand side by side, all three having to do with "covering":

Two roots of covering in the same verse, three in the same sūra. I record this as a lexical observation; it carries no claim of deliberateness.

And after the four rivers the verse passes to a single drink.

How the opposition is built needs to be seen in a table:

And two details of word order sharpen this table:

One. On the side of the garden there is no verb, there is existence. Fīhā anhārun — "in it are rivers". A nominal sentence; it announces fixity. No one is giving anything to anyone; it is there.

Two. On the side of the fire there is a verb, and it is passive: سُقُوا۟ — "they were given to drink". That is, they do not drink; they are made to drink. Will is not present in the sentence.

I record this opposition as my own reading; the structural difference between the two clauses is textual data, the "will" reading I draw from it is my own inference.

Root: ح-م-م. This root was analysed in full in al-Ḥāqqa (69/35); it was recorded again in al-Maʿārij and al-Wāqiʿa. I do not repeat it here.

The summary recorded there: the root has two branches of meaning — boiling water and close friend — and the lexicographers join them by way of "heat".

The only thing to be added here is the object of the word in this verse. The verse does not say ḥamīm alone; it says مَآءً حَمِيمًا — "boiling water".

And this comes into direct confrontation with the first of the four rivers:

The same word (māʾ), with two qualities, at the two ends of the same verse.

This is the sharpest opposition in the word order of the verse and it is hard to think it accidental: the verse counts four drinks, and on the other side it places the same substance as the first of those four.

I record this as an observation about word order.

قَطَّعَ — root ق-ط-ع: to cut. And the form here is Form tafʿīl.

Form tafʿīl, besides transitivity, announces multiplicity (takthīr: abundance, repetition, extension). That is, qaṭṭaʿa does not mean "he cut"; it means "he cut to pieces, he cut again and again".

The difference lies in the pattern itself: qaṭaʿa is a single cutting, qaṭṭaʿa a plural one.

أَمْعَآء — the plural of miʿā: bowels. The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

And the work of the choice is this: the verse does not speak of an outward punishment. What is spoken of is something that goes inside. The drink does its work where it has gone.

And this sets up an exact symmetry with the first half of the verse — it is my own reading:

The four rivers are also things to be drunk; that is, they too go inside. The verse counts, on both sides, things that go inside. The difference lies in what they do once they have gone in: one nourishes, one tears apart.

I present this symmetry as a reading; the verse does not build such a sentence of comparison, but that both sides are described by way of drinks stands in the text.

What was written on this subject in the section al-Wāqiʿa holds here too and I do not repeat it. It was taken up there under three headings: the question of the addressee (what water, shade and fruit meant to a community living in the desert), the debate between literal and figurative (in a table, with no preference made), and the scope of the address.

I make only one addition here, and it is particular to this verse: this verse places the word مَّثَل at the head of the description — mathalu'l-jannati.

And there is disagreement over the meaning of the word mathal:

I make no preference. I record this much: the root م-ث-ل occurs three times in this sūra (3, 10, 38), and its occurrence in the third verse was explicitly in the sense of "giving a likeness": kadhālika yaḍribu'llāhu li'n-nāsi amthālahum.

This appears to support the second view; but a root is not obliged to be used in the same sense throughout a sūra, and I make no preference.

Wa minhum man yastamiʿu ilayka ḥattā idhā kharajū min ʿindika qālū li'lladhīna ūtu'l-ʿilma mādhā qāla ānifā; ulāʾika'lladhīna ṭabaʿa'llāhu ʿalā qulūbihim wa'ttabaʿū ahwāʾahum

"And among them are those who listen to you; then, when they go out from your presence, they say to those who have been given knowledge: 'What did he say just now?' Those are the ones on whose hearts God has set a seal, and who have followed their own desires."

The verse sets up a scene, and the details of the scene matter:

• There is a place: min ʿindika — "from your presence". That is, a gathering.
• There is an act: yastamiʿu — to listen.
• There is a departure: kharajū — they went out.
• There is a question: mādhā qāla ānifā — "what did he say just now?"
• And the question has an addressee: alladhīna ūtu'l-ʿilma — those who have been given knowledge.

That is: two groups seated in the same gathering. Having heard the same voice. When the gathering ends one asks the other.

And here is the most striking detail of the verse.

Root: س-م-ع — to hear. But the form used in the verse is يَسْتَمِعُ — Form X (istifʿāl).

The difference in Arabic between samiʿa and istamaʿa is one the lexicographers record particularly:

The Qurʾān uses all three together and preserves the distinction: "When the Qurʾān is recited, listen to it (fa'stamiʿū) and be silent (wa anṣitū)" (al-Aʿrāf 7/204).

That is, the verb in this verse recounts not an absent-minded hearing but a deliberate listening.

And this carries the whole weight of the verse.

Had the verb been yasmaʿu, the outcome would be intelligible: they were not paying attention, they missed it. But the verb is yastamiʿu. They listened. They lent their ears. They came and sat in the gathering.

And when they went out they had nothing in their hands.

This is where the verse makes its diagnosis: the emptiness does not come from inattention. The act was done, the outcome did not form.

The verb is made transitive with the particle إِلَىٰ: yastamiʿu ilayka.

In Arabic this verb can take either ilā or a direct object. When it comes with ilā the sense of turning towards is strengthened: "he lends his ear in your direction".

And note: what is listened to is not the words but the person. The verse does not say "they listen to what you say"; it says "they listen to you".

An observation — it is my own reading: listening to a person and listening to what is said are different things. One who listens to the person is present at the gathering, turns his face, even shows interest. One who listens to the words follows what the words say. The scene of the verse shows that the first is possible without the second.

I do not present this as a binding exegesis; the use of the particle ilā is standard in Arabic and it is not necessary to draw a meaning from it.

A detail of word order: the sentence begins in the singular (man yastamiʿu — the one who listens) and moves to the plural (kharajū, qālū, ahwāʾahum).

Again ḥaml ʿala'l-maʿnā: man is verbally singular, plural in meaning. The same shift was present in the fourteenth verse.

And the ḥattā idhā pattern: the same pattern was present in the fourth verse (ḥattā idhā athkhantumūhum). This pattern marks the threshold of a process: something continues, and at a certain point something else happens.

The threshold marked here is the door of the gathering. Inside, the listening goes on; on stepping out of the door, the question comes out.

ءَانِفًا — root أ-ن-ف. And the concrete sense of the root: the nose.

أَنْف (anf) — nose. And the family of meanings that comes out of it:

That is, ānifan means "the near past", and the picture of the word is this: the nose of the past — its outermost, nearest part.

The word occurs in this form only here in the Qurʾān.

And the choice of the word stresses how short a time ago the question refers to. The question is not "what did he say the other day?"; it is "what did he say just now?"

They have stepped out of the door. The voice is still in the air.

With what intention this question is asked has been debated in the classical commentaries:

In the classical commentaries the first two views are widely transmitted. I make no preference.

But I record this: the continuation of the verse makes a diagnosis — ṭabaʿa'llāhu ʿalā qulūbihim — and this diagnosis agrees with all three readings. The mocker, the one who does not understand and the one who is indifferent have all arrived at the same outcome: the word did not enter.

And this expression is the sharpest detail in the verse.

Whom do they ask? Those who have been given knowledge.

أُوتُوا۟ — passive: "they were given". That is, knowledge is named not as something acquired but as something given.

And this completes the scene:

That is, the verse records the difference between two groups who were in the same room.

And this is the subject of the next verse (17). The sixteenth verse recounts those who were emptied, the seventeenth those in whom there was increase.

طَبَعَ — root ط-ب-ع: to seal, to press a stamp upon something. From the same root طَابِع (a seal), طَبِيعَة (nature — the unchanging make of a thing, stamped upon it), طِبَاعَة (printing, the press).

The concrete picture of the root: pressing a stamp into a soft material (wax, clay) so that the material now takes that form.

And the particle is striking: عَلَىٰ. Ṭabaʿa ʿalā qulūbihim — "He set a seal upon their hearts". The seal is placed not inside the heart but on top of it.

This will come back in the twenty-fourth verse — there the locks too will be upon the heart: am ʿalā qulūbin aqfāluhā.

The same particle, the same organ, two different means of closing. And there is an important difference: in verse 16 the agent is stated (God); in verse 24 it is not. I shall take this up separately at verse 24.

And on the matter of the heart: this concept was treated in full in al-Baqara (2/7 — khatama'llāhu ʿalā qulūbihim) and the root ق-ل-ب was taken up in al-Mulk, al-Muṭaffifīn, al-Inshiqāq, al-Humaza and al-Nāziʿāt. I do not repeat it here. The one note to be carried over from there is this:

"قَلْب is in the Qurʾān not the organ of feeling but the centre of understanding, deciding and turning towards. Its root is ق-ل-ب, meaning 'to turn, to turn over' — the heart's bearing this name is explained by its turning from state to state."

And this sharpens the picture of the seal — it is my own reading: the heart is the thing that turns; the seal is the thing that stops the turning. The root of the word and the operation performed upon it are each other's opposite.

This clause is letter for letter the same as the last clause of verse 14.

47/14: … wa'ttabaʿū ahwāʾahum 47/16: … wa'ttabaʿū ahwāʾahum

The same sentence, two verses apart. And the subjects of the two verses appear to be different groups: in 14 those whose deed has been made to look fair, in 16 those who listen and take nothing.

The sūra seals two different scenes with the same sentence.

An observation — it is my own reading: in both cases there is a filling. The person whose deed is made to look fair fills the empty place with an adornment; the person who listens and takes nothing fills the empty place with his own desire. That the sentence is the same in both places says that the emptiness is filled with the same thing.

I present this as a reading, not as a transmitted report.

Wa'lladhīna'htadaw zādahum hudan wa ātāhum taqwāhum

"And as for those who have found the way, [God] has increased them in guidance and has given them their guarding of themselves."

These two verses — 16 and 17 — form a pair and must be read together.

And note: both verbs are in forms that involve effort.

• ٱسْتَمَعَ (Form X) — to lend one's ear; a deliberate act.
• ٱهْتَدَىٰ (Form VIII) — to seek guidance, to try to find the way; deliberate again.

That is, the place where the two groups part is not "one made an effort and the other did not". Both of them did something.

The distinction enters an area connected with the analysis of ز-ي-غ recorded at 61/5 in the section al-Ṣaff — what was recorded there about how an inclination becomes fixed works here too. It may be consulted; I do not repeat it here.

Root: ه-د-ي. This root was treated in detail in the section al-Fātiḥa (ihdina'ṣ-ṣirāṭa'l-mustaqīm) and taken up again in al-Balad, al-Ḍuḥā, al-Aʿlā, al-Mulk and al-Nāziʿāt. I do not repeat it here. In summary: the concrete sense of the root is to show the way, to go in front; and hadiyya (a gift) is from the same root — something directed towards someone.

What is to be added here is the work of Form VIII.

ٱهْتَدَىٰ — "he found guidance, he entered the right way". This form here announces acceptance of the result of an act (muṭāwaʿa).

That is: hadāhu fa'htadā — "He guided him, and he took the way". The verb is the meeting of a guidance that comes from outside.

This explains the structure of the verse: ihtidāʾ is already an act of receiving. And more is given to the one who receives.

The subject of the verb is not stated and the exegetes have dwelt on this:

In the classical commentaries the first and second views are widely transmitted. The ground of the second is the context: in the preceding verse a word was being listened to.

I make no preference. But I record this: if the second view is accepted, the opposition between the two verses is complete — the same words leave no trace at all in one and produce increase in the other.

The Qurʾān sets this idea up explicitly in several places, and in all of them it uses the same verb (ز-ي-د):

"When a sūra is sent down, some of them say: 'Which of you has this increased in faith?' As for those who believe, it has increased them in faith and they rejoice. As for those in whose hearts is a disease, it has added defilement to their defilement." (al-Tawba 9/124-125)

These two verses are almost an exact counterpart of our verses 16-17 — and there too the matter is the sending down of a sūra. Indeed verse 20 of this sūra will take up exactly this: "When a sūra is sent down it is said…"

"And We send down of the Qurʾān that which is a healing and a mercy for the believers; and it increases the wrongdoers in nothing but loss." (al-Isrāʾ 17/82)

All three texts build the same structure: a single input, two separate outputs.

And this is the most remarkable feature of the verse — I record it as my own reading: the text describes itself as a separator. The work of the word is not only to give information; it is to divide those addressed. The same words, spoken to two people, move the two apart from one another.

The last two words of the verse carry an expression that deserves to be dwelt on.

تَقْوَىٰهُمْ — "their guarding of themselves". A pronoun has been attached.

And the verb: ءَاتَىٰ — to give. That is, taqwā is something given.

These two together look strange: is taqwā not a state a person earns for himself? If it is something given, why is it called "theirs"?

The explanations transmitted in the classical commentaries run as follows:

I make no preference.

But I record an observation — it is my own reading: the double structure of the expression (its being both given and belonging to them) may be not a tension but a description. What is most a person's own may at the same time have been given to him. The wording holds both directions at once: ātāhum (given) and taqwāhum (theirs).

And the word taqwā: the root is و-ق-ي — to guard, to guard oneself. The word has been treated in many places in this commentary (al-Baqara, al-Ḥujurāt and others) and I do not repeat it here. In summary: taqwā is, before fear, guarding; it is putting a shield between oneself and something.

Verses sixteen and seventeen together say something about knowledge, and what they say looks to the present without any need to force it.

Two people who listen to the same lesson do not take away the same thing. This is a fact everyone knows, and it is generally explained by "attention", "intelligence" or "prior knowledge".

The distinction the verse sets is none of these. In both verses there is an act of listening, and in both there is intent. The distinction shows itself in what the listener means to do: in one, a question is asked on the way out; in the other, there is increase.

And the scene of the sixteenth verse is more than familiar today: a talk is listened to, one sits through it from beginning to end, one even takes notes; and when it is over not a single sentence remains. The act has been performed in full; the result has not formed.

The verse does not explain the cause of this as "inattention". The diagnosis it gives is far heavier and has two parts: the heart's having been sealed, and desire's being followed. Whether the second is the cause or the consequence of the first — the verse does not say, and neither do I.

Fa-hal yanẓurūna illa's-sāʿata an taʾtiyahum baghtatan; fa-qad jāʾa ashrāṭuhā; fa-annā lahum idhā jāʾat-hum dhikrāhum

"Are they waiting for anything but the Hour, that it should come upon them suddenly? Its signs have already come. And when it has come to them, what use will their remembering be?"

Root: ن-ظ-ر. In the tenth verse this verb was in the sense of "to look": fa-yanẓurū kayfa kāna ʿāqibatu…

Here it is in the sense of "to wait".

And these two senses are joined to one another in the root: naẓar is a look turned in a direction; and to wait for something is likewise to turn one's eye in that direction. From the same root come إِنْتِظَار (intiẓār — waiting) and مُنْتَظِر.

The sūra uses the same root in two senses, eight verses apart:

And this sets up a noteworthy opposition — it is my own reading: the tenth verse proposed looking back; the eighteenth says that those who do not look back are looking forward. The same verb, two directions. And what they are waiting for is the very thing they do not look at: a destruction.

The sentence looks like a question but announces a ruling.

The combination of هَلْ (the particle of interrogation) + إِلَّا (the particle of exception) announces restriction (qaṣr) in Arabic: "anything other than…?" = "only …".

That is, the sentence says: the only thing they are waiting for is the Hour. They have no other expectation.

And this is a hard sentence — because no one says he is waiting for the Hour. The verse names what they are in fact waiting for: the end of what they are doing, and that alone.

Root: ب-غ-ت. Its meaning: suddenly, all at once, to be caught unprepared. Baghatahu'l-amr — the matter caught him suddenly.

بَغْتَةً is in the accusative, and the grammarians count it either a circumstantial or an absolute object; the difference of meaning is not great.

And what the word carries is not the lack of time but the lack of preparation. A thing does not come "suddenly"; it comes suddenly to the one who is unprepared.

أَشْرَاط — the plural of شَرَط. Root: ش-ر-ط.

The family of meanings in the root is interesting:

The common core: a distinguishing mark placed upon a thing.

And that sharṭ and ʿalāma are from the same root is meaningful — I record it as an observation: both show that one thing is tied to another. A condition is the qualification to which a result is tied; a sign is the mark to which what is coming is tied.

The tense of the sentence is perfect: فَقَدْ جَآءَ — "they have already come". And at its head is قَدْ; with the perfect it announces certification (taḥqīq).

That is, the verse states in a language of certainty that the signs have come.

And a note on method is needed here: the verse does not say what the signs are. It gives no number, no list, no description.

In the classical commentaries there is a wide literature on these signs, and I do not enter that literature in this commentary. The reason is the method (Method): I do not transmit reports of which I am not certain, and the subject of the signs of the Hour contains more disputed transmission than the method of this commentary can carry.

The only thing I shall record is an explanation widely transmitted in the classical commentaries: that the Prophet's having been sent is itself counted among the signs. I transmit this as a view; there is no such determination in the wording of the verse.

And a warning — I write it plainly: no event of the present day will be marked as a "sign" on the strength of this verse. The verse already uses the perfect: the signs have come. To draw a reckoning for today comes not from the language of the verse but from outside it.

أَنَّىٰ — an interrogative particle: "how, from where, in what way". It is an interrogative of denial: "from where should it come?"

The word order of the sentence is inverted and requires attention:

• ذِكْرَىٰهُمْ — the subject (at the end).
• أَنَّىٰ لَهُمْ — the predicate (at the head).
• إِذَا جَآءَتْهُمْ — the condition interposed.

Turned into a straight order: dhikrāhum annā lahum idhā jāʾat-hum — "their remembering, when it comes upon them, from where [should it profit] them?"

ذِكْرَىٰ — root ذ-ك-ر: to remember, to call to mind. Dhikrā is a verbal noun in the sense of "remembering, taking heed".

And the pronoun is striking again: ذِكْرَىٰهُمْ — "their taking heed". That is, taking heed is named not as something that comes from outside but as an act they will perform.

What the sentence says is simple, and its hardness lies here: taking heed has a time, and that time is before the event happens. To "understand" after the event has happened is no longer taking heed.

The Qurʾān sets this idea up elsewhere too — al-Fajr 89/23: "On that Day man will remember; but what use will the remembering be to him?" (treated in al-Fajr).

Fa'lam annahū lā ilāha illa'llāhu wa'staghfir li-dhanbika wa li'l-muʾminīna wa'l-muʾmināt; wa'llāhu yaʿlamu mutaqallabakum wa mathwākum

"Know, then, that there is no god but God, and ask forgiveness for your sin and for the believing men and the believing women. God knows the place where you move about and the place where you come to rest."

This verse is the turning point of the sūra, and its first word deserves to be dwelt on separately.

The word is an imperative: ٱعْلَمْ — "know".

And this is a remarkable choice. The word of tawḥīd occurs many times in the Qurʾān; but here it is set out with an imperative verb, and the verb chosen is not to believe but to know.

The sentence could have been:

• fa-āmin annahū lā ilāha illa'llāh — "believe that…". It does not say this.
• fa-qul lā ilāha illa'llāh — "say that…". It does not say this.
• fa'shhad — "bear witness". It does not say this.

فَٱعْلَمْ — know.

Root: ع-ل-م. This root has been treated in many places in this commentary (al-Ḥujurāt — its distribution in that sūra; al-Raḥmān — the weave of ʿallama and aʿlām; al-Jumuʿa — yuʿallimu and gradualness; al-Najm). I do not repeat it here.

One note to be carried over from there: as was stated in al-Raḥmān, the lexicographers connect this root with عَلَامَة (ʿalāma — a mark); on that account knowledge is what is obtained by setting out from the mark of a thing.

And this sharpens the verse's command — because in the preceding verse exactly أَشْرَاط (signs) had occurred.

Two verses in succession: the signs have come → know.

I record this connection as my own reading. The relation in root between ʿilm and ʿalāma is a view the lexicographers record and is not certain; to rest this sequence between the two verses upon it is my own inference.

The word order of the verse sets up a sequence:

1. فَٱعْلَمْ — know. 2. وَٱسْتَغْفِرْ — ask forgiveness.

Knowledge first, act after. And the two commands are joined with a wāw; the wāw announces mere conjunction, not sequence — but the order in the wording stands in the text all the same.

In the classical sources this verse has been cited as a proof for the principle that "knowledge comes before deed". It is transmitted that in al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ, in the Book of Knowledge, there is a chapter heading to this effect, and that this verse is cited there.

I transmit this as it is transmitted; I do not speak with certainty about the exact wording of the source.

And an observation on the principle itself — it is my own reading:

The work a person does can be done independently of his knowing why he does it. The sequence of the verse ties the second command (istighfār) to the first (knowledge). Asking forgiveness is a behaviour that can be performed without knowing from whom it is asked; the verse closes this off first.

فَٱعْلَمْ أَنَّهُۥ لَآ إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّهُ — the هُ pronoun in annahū is the pronoun of the matter (ḍamīru'sh-shaʾn): a pronoun that stands for the whole of the sentence following it and refers back to nothing before it.

The work of this pronoun is to make what follows it important. The grammarians record: ḍamīru'sh-shaʾn adds a weight and a drawing of attention to the sentence — "the matter is this, that…".

The word of tawḥīd is one of the densest sentences in Arabic, and its structure should be recorded briefly:

لَآ — lā al-nāfiya li'l-jins: the lā that negates the genus. In the eleventh verse the same particle was present in lā mawlā lahum.

This particle does not say "there is not a god"; it says "there is nothing of the genus of god".

إِلَٰهَ — its noun, indeclinable on fatḥa.

And its predicate is elided. The grammarians dispute what this predicate is: mawjūd (existing) or ḥaqqun (true)? The second implied form is the widespread one, because if the first is accepted the sentence would deny the existence of other objects of worship — whereas what is denied is not their existence but their being gods.

I content myself with recording this debate and I make no preference.

إِلَّا ٱللَّهُ — the exception; and the divine name comes in the nominative (because it is a badal).

ٱسْتَغْفِرْ — root غ-ف-ر, Form X: to ask for forgiveness. The form announces a request.

ذَنۢب — root ذ-ن-ب. And the concrete sense of the root matters: ذَنَب (dhanab) — tail.

The connection the lexicographers make is this: dhanb is what comes behind a deed — its result, its outcome. That is, sin is named in the root of the word as "the thing that trails after".

And this shares the same picture with the sūra's roots ع-ق-ب (outcome, 10) and د-ب-ر (tadabbur / adbār, 24-25-27): what comes from behind.

The real question in this verse is the addressee of the command: the Prophet is told "ask forgiveness for your sin".

The classical commentaries have dwelt on this and given several explanations:

These views are transmitted in the classical commentaries. I make no preference and I do not enter the theological debate on the impeccability of the prophets.

The only thing I shall record is what stands in the text: the verse opens istighfār to two addressees — first to himself, then to the believers. And the order runs in that direction.

And the verse does not content itself with naming the believers by a single word (li'l-muʾminīn); it counts men and women separately.

In Arabic the masculine plural covers mixed groups as well. That is, had li'l-muʾminīn been said, women would have been included. Even so the verse mentions the two separately.

This is a usage seen in several places in the Qurʾān and the best known is al-Aḥzāb 33/35 — where ten pairs of attributes are listed separately for men and for women.

What is to be recorded is this: a distinction not grammatically necessary has been made in the text. And the place where this distinction is made is a sentence of prayer.

I record this as a textual observation; I do not attempt to draw a general conclusion from it, but it needs to be stated that the distinction stands in the text.

The verse closes by repeating at its end the root of its first word:

• فَٱعْلَمْ — know (imperative, addressee: you).
• وَٱللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ — God knows (a statement, subject: God).

The same root at its two ends. And in between something changes: who it is that knows.

I record this as an observation about word order.

مُتَقَلَّب — root ق-ل-ب, the noun of place / verbal noun of Form V: the place where one turns about, or the state of turning about.

مَثْوَى — root م-ث-و: the place where one stops, where one stays. This word occurred in verse 12 (wa'n-nāru mathwan lahum).

The two words form a pair and are opposites:

That is, the sentence divides a person's life into two states: the time he moves and the time he is still. And it says that it knows both.

And there is disagreement over what the two are:

All of these views are transmitted in the classical commentaries. I make no preference.

I record this much: what the four views have in common is that the two words have been chosen so as to cover the whole of a human life. Whichever division is taken, there is no time left outside.

And the pronoun is in the second person plural: كُمْ. The first two commands of the verse were singular (fa'lam, wa'staghfir — to the Prophet); the last sentence moves to the plural. This is iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address).

This shift agrees with the general tendency of the sūra: the text opens out a word spoken to one person upon everyone. We shall see the same movement in verse 30 as well — there too the clause wa taʿrifannahum (singular) will close with wa'llāhu yaʿlamu aʿmālakum (plural).

Wa yaqūlu'lladhīna āmanū law lā nuzzilat sūra; fa-idhā unzilat sūratun muḥkamatun wa dhukira fīha'l-qitālu raʾayta'lladhīna fī qulūbihim maraḍun yanẓurūna ilayka naẓara'l-maghshiyyi ʿalayhi mina'l-mawt; fa-awlā lahum

"Those who believe say: 'If only a sūra were sent down!' Then, when a firmly fixed sūra is sent down and fighting is mentioned in it, you see those in whose hearts is a disease looking at you with the look of one in a swoon at death. And that is what befits them."

This verse is one of the rare places that shows the difference of form I touched on at the second verse within a single sentence.

The distinction recorded in the classical sources is this: tanzīl (tafʿīl) announces a sending down piece by piece, gradually; inzāl (ifʿāl) a sending down all at once.

When this distinction is applied to this verse a reading like this comes out: what is wished for is a revelation continually coming down ("if only it kept being sent down"); what happens is a sūra that comes down as a whole.

I transmit this reading as an explanation found in the classical commentaries.

And I am obliged to enter a caveat: that this distinction is not applied consistently everywhere in the Qurʾān is stated in the sources themselves. Indeed this same sūra uses anzala in verse 9 and nazzala in verse 26, and no marked difference of meaning appears there.

For this reason I record the distinction as a possibility, not as a certainty.

لَوْلَا here announces urging (taḥḍīḍ, encouragement, insistent asking): "if only it were sent down!". It is said that with the imperfect it announces encouragement and with the perfect reproach (tawbīkh).

And note: who makes this wish? alladhīna āmanū — those who believe.

That is, this section of the sūra opens with a request from the believers. The request is legitimate: to want revelation to come down.

And then the request is granted. And exactly when it is granted, something becomes visible.

Root: ح-ك-م. And the primary sense of the root is not, as is often supposed, "to rule".

The primary sense the lexicographers record: مَنْع — to hold back, to restrain, to make firm.

And its concrete source is interesting: حَكَمَة — the bit put in a horse's mouth. The bit keeps the horse from going where it wants.

The family of meanings that comes out of this:

And a muḥkam sūra, by this root, is: a sūra with no slack in it, that cannot be shifted, that cannot be slid about.

The exegetes give two senses to the word muḥkama in this verse:

Both views are transmitted; I make no preference.

But I record an observation — it is my own reading: both senses look in the same direction, and both agree with the root's sense of "not taking slack". And this does a piece of work in the scene of the verse: a text that cannot be shifted brings out the one who wants to shift it. An ambiguous word allows everyone to interpret it as he pleases; a firmly fixed word does not. That is why the reaction becomes visible.

ٱلْقِتَال — root ق-ت-ل, the verbal noun of Form III (mufāʿala).

And the form matters. Form III announces reciprocity (mushāraka): the act being done mutually between two parties.

• قَتْل (qatl) — to kill. One-directional.
• قِتَال (qitāl) — mutual killing, fighting. Two-directional.

That is, the word carries in its own structure the fact that the other side is doing the same thing. Qitāl cannot be done alone.

And the second name of the sūra — as is transmitted — is exactly this word: Sūrat al-Qitāl. The word occurs only here in the sūra.

A detail of word order: the verb is passive — ذُكِرَ ("was mentioned"). Who mentioned it is not said. And there is the qualification fīhā (in it, in the sūra): fighting occurs as a subject mentioned inside the sūra, not as the subject of the sūra.

This is the picture at the centre of the verse, and it is built with a single word.

مَغْشِىّ عَلَيْهِ — root غ-ش-و/غ-ش-ي: to cover, to overlay, to envelop. From the same root غِشَاوَة (ghishāwa — a film, a covering; at al-Baqara 2/7 the film over the eyes), غَاشِيَة (ghāshiya — that which covers, that which envelops; the name of sūra 88, treated in al-Ghāshiya).