Muḥammad 47:30

Wa law nashāʾu la-araynākahum fa-la-ʿaraftahum bi-sīmāhum; wa la-taʿrifannahum fī laḥni'l-qawl; wa'llāhu yaʿlamu aʿmālakum

"Had We willed, We would have shown them to you and you would have known them by their marks. But you will certainly know them by the bent of their speech. And God knows what you do."

This verse carries the densest sentence the sūra says about language and will be treated in detail.

The word order of the verse sets two sentences against one another, and the opposition lies in the moods of the sentences.

And what the table says is the verse itself:

The miraculous way of knowing — God's showing them directly — is named as a possibility and passed over. The particle law announces a condition that did not come about: "had We willed… but We did not will."

And the way that is given is the natural one: to look at how a thing is said. And this way is made certain with the lām of the oath and the nūn of emphasis — the two strongest devices of intensification in Arabic.

That is, the verse does this: it withdraws the miraculous knowledge and makes certain a means that is in everyone's hands.

I rest this comparison on the wording of the verse (the difference of mood between the two sentences is beyond dispute); the conclusion I draw from it — "the natural way in place of the miraculous" — is my reading.

سِيمَا / سِيمَاء — a sign, a mark, an outward indication. It has passed into Turkish as sima, but its sense in Arabic is not "face" but the mark on the face.

Root: س-و-م. And the primary sense of the root, according to what the lexicographers record, is: to put a mark on something, to brand (sawwama — he marked). From the same root مُسَوَّمَة (marked, branded — at Āl ʿImrān 3/14, khayl musawwama).

This root was taken up in al-Dhāriyāt and al-Raḥmān.

And the property of sīmā is this: an outward, fixed mark, seen when one looks. The Qurʾān uses it in several places: al-Baqara 2/273 (taʿrifuhum bi-sīmāhum), al-Fatḥ 48/29 (sīmāhum fī wujūhihim), al-Raḥmān 55/41 (yuʿrafu'l-mujrimūna bi-sīmāhum).

And in all these occurrences sīmā is something known by looking.

And now we come to the word at the centre of the verse.

Root: ل-ح-ن. And this root possesses one of the most interesting families of meaning in Arabic; the lexicographers record more than one sense for the word, and these are connected to one another.

The senses the lexicographers record:

And the common core of the five senses is a single verb: TO BEND.

Every case in which speech is bent in some direction away from its straight channel — that is, from its plainest, most direct state — is named with this root.

And the character of the bending separates the senses:

I build this table by arranging the senses the lexicographers record; all the senses are lexical data, this classification among them is my own arrangement.

In Turkish the words lahn and elhan have survived as musical terms, and the relation is real.

The lexicographers record alḥān as the voice's rising and falling in a particular order — that is, its departing from a flat recitation and tracing a curve.

And the logic of the connection is this: in both allusion and melody, speech departs from its plain delivery. In one the meaning bends, in the other the voice.

I transmit this connection by way of the root sense the lexicographers record. That the two senses are found in the same root is lexical data; the conceptual division of labour between them is one I am setting up, and I claim no order of derivation.

The fifth sense of the root — grasp, being able to present one's proof well — is recorded among the lexicographers and in the sources of hadith.

In a report found in the collections of sound hadith it is transmitted that the Prophet, addressing parties to a dispute, said that one of them might present his proof more effectively (alḥan) than the other, and that he himself would judge only according to what he heard.

I transmit this report without naming a source, with the note that it is found in the sound collections. And its value here is linguistic: أَلْحَن (alḥan) has been used in the sense of "one who can bend and turn his words more effectively, more nimbly, more skilfully".

That is, in this branch of the word there is a sense of skill — and the skill consists precisely in not saying a thing straight.

And a detail in the word order of the verse stands at the very centre of the matter.

The verse uses not the particle بِ but the particle فِى.

Compare:

• بِسِيمَٰهُمْ — "by their marks". The bāʾ announces means: the instrument of knowing is the mark.
• فِى لَحْنِ ٱلْقَوْلِ — "within the bent of speech". The fī announces adverbiality: the knowing takes place inside the speech.

That is, in the second sentence the knowing comes about not by looking at a sign from outside but by entering into the speech.

And this completes the difference between the two ways of knowing:

I rest this table on the wording of the verse; the difference of the two particles is textual data, the extension in the table is my reading.

And now we come to what the verse actually says.

The verse does not speak of the content of what is said.

This needs to be seen. The sentence could have been:

• la-taʿrifannahum bi-mā yaqūlūn — "you will know them by what they say". It does not say this.
• la-taʿrifannahum bi-qawlihim — "you will know them by their words". It does not say this.

فِى لَحْنِ ٱلْقَوْلِ — in the laḥn of the speech. That is, not in the speech itself but in its bent.

And the meaning of this is: the content may be correct.

A person may put together entirely correct sentences. Everything he says may be apt. And even so, where his speech bends may give him away: what he emphasises, what he passes over, which word he chooses, where he falls silent, which question he does not ask.

These are not visible in the content. They are visible in the laḥn.

And this is a very fine instrument of diagnosis — because it cannot be defended against. If a sentence is wrong it can be corrected; but the bent of speech cannot be corrected, because the person did not construct it. The laḥn is what comes out unintended.

I rest this reading on the root sense of the word (to bend, and to convey by allusion); the conclusion I draw from it — "it gives one away because it was not deliberately constructed" — is my own inference and I ascribe it to no classical exegete.

The senses given to this expression in the classical commentaries are transmitted as follows:

All three views look in the same direction and I make no preference.

And now we come to the most important note on this verse. Per the method (Method), I have to write this out separately and plainly.

This verse does not tell people to "read one another's intentions". And the verse itself closes this off in three ways.

One. The address is singular and is to the Prophet.

وَلَتَعْرِفَنَّهُمْ — la-taʿrifannahum: a singular addressee. And in the preceding clause la-araynākahum — singular again. This part of the verse is spoken to the Prophet.

Two. The verse closes by turning to the second person plural — but by attributing the knowledge to God.

وَٱللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ أَعْمَٰلَكُمْ — "God knows your deeds."

Note: the pronoun has turned to the plural, but the subject of the verb is God. That is, the sentence does not say "you know their deeds". It says: "God knows your deeds."

That is, having opened the matter of knowing, the verse turns the knowledge to God and the object to the addressee himself.

This is iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address) and at the same time a limit: the matter of knowing another closes with the sentence "your deeds are known".

Three. The Qurʾān regulates this field explicitly elsewhere.

In the section al-Ḥujurāt, 49/12 was treated in full:

"O you who believe! Avoid much suspicion; for some suspicion is sin. And do not spy on one another (lā tajassasū), and let none of you backbite another." (al-Ḥujurāt 49/12)

And the logic recorded there holds here too:

"Some suspicion is sin. But which part it is cannot be known while the suspicion is being formed — had it been known it would not have been suspicion at all. A person cannot tell in advance whether the conjecture he forms is of the sinful kind."

This is a necessary qualification in reading the verse before us.

In conclusion — and I write this plainly: this verse records that the bent of speech gives something away. This is a statement of fact. But from the statement no "authority to judge others" follows — because the verse does not give that authority, it keeps the address singular, and it closes the sentence by turning it back upon the addressee's own deeds.

The fact the verse records is a fact recognised in modern fields that work on language as well, and there is no need to force it.

In a text or in a speech there is something carried beyond the content that is said: the choice of words, what is brought to the front, what is put in the passive, which subject is never opened. Different names are given to these; the name the verse gives is laḥnu'l-qawl.

And the measure the verse gives reminds us that this fact runs in two directions:

The first direction — for the listener: to hear not only what is said but also where the speech bends.

The second direction — for the speaker, and this is the main one: the laḥn of our own speech is not our own choice. A person constructs his sentences; but he cannot construct their bent. That comes out of the person himself.

And the last sentence of the verse looks exactly here: wa'llāhu yaʿlamu aʿmālakum.

I record this second direction as my own reading; the verse builds no sentence about the speaker's side, but the shift of pronoun in the last clause appears to support this direction.