Muḥammad 47:13

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.