al-Ḥujurāt 49:13

Yā ayyuha'n-nāsu innā khalaqnākum min dhakarin wa unthā wa jaʿalnākum shuʿūban wa qabāʾila li-taʿārafū, inna akramakum ʿinda'llāhi atqākum, inna'llāha ʿalīmun khabīr

"O people! We created you from a male and a female, and made you peoples and tribes so that you might come to know one another. The most honoured of you with God is the one among you who guards himself most. God is Knowing, Aware."

This is the sūra's most marked break, and it must be seen.

Throughout the sūra the address has been to alladhīna āmanū (those who believe). Five times:

49/1 yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū 49/2 yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū 49/6 yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū 49/11 yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū 49/12 yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū

And in the thirteenth verse the address changes:

49/13 yā ayyuha'n-nās — "O people!"

Once in the sūra, and exactly here.

To see what this change does, one must look at when it is made.

The eleventh and twelfth verses regulated the narrowest matters inside a community: mockery, nicknames, conjecture, backbiting. The one addressed was a particular community, and the subject was that community's own inner relations.

The thirteenth verse, standing in the same place, addresses all mankind.

And the subject widens too: what is now spoken of is no longer conduct within a community but the separateness of people from one another — peoples, tribes, lineage.

The meaning of this transition, which I record as my own reading, is this: the narrowing circle of the sūra has here reached its floor, and what is met at the floor is man's narrowest claim to identity: lineage. And at exactly that point the text opens the address to its widest form.

The reason can be understood: a claim of superiority by lineage is not an internal matter of a community. It is impossible to resolve it from within a group, because the claim itself rests on the group's boundary. The verse resolves it by carrying the measure outside the group — and in order to do so it takes the address outside the group as well.

And one further observation: after the thirteenth verse the address will change once more. The fourteenth verse no longer addresses anyone; it begins with a sentence of narrative: qālati'l-aʿrāb — "The bedouin said". The sūra's sequence of address, that is, is this:

The scope first widens, then narrows. And the thirteenth verse stands exactly at the summit.

What this sentence means has been debated in the classical exegesis:

All three views are recorded in the sources and they do not exclude one another. I impose no preference.

But all three arrive at the same place, and that is the logic of the verse: what a claim of superiority rests on — lineage — leads back to a common source. Between people there is no difference in respect of birth.

And a detail in the word order: dhakarin wa unthā comes indefinite. "A male and a female" — not a particular male and female. This supports the second and third views but does not exclude the first.

شُعُوب — the plural of شَعْب. Root: ش-ع-ب.

This root was treated in the section on al-Mursalāt and this verse was named there as well. What was recorded there was this:

• The root is among those the lexicographers count as aḍdād (a word stating its own opposite as well): شَعَبَ is recorded both as it separated, it divided and as it joined, it gathered.
• شُعْبَة — a branch, an arm, a parting end.
• شِعْب — a mountain pass, the cleft road between two slopes.
• That the root is counted among the aḍdād is a view the lexicographers record; it was not claimed that all the lexicographers agree on it.
• And the idea common to the two senses was recorded thus: branches that part from one trunk have both parted and are attached to the same trunk. In branching, parting and joining are present at the same time.

And this common idea is exactly what this verse says.

The verse divides people into shuʿūb — and the word itself carries the fact that the parting is at the same time an attachment. Peoples are separate; but the trunk from which they are separate is one. The preceding clause had named that trunk: min dhakarin wa unthā.

I record this intersection as my own reading. The root's contrariety of sense was recorded independently in the section on al-Mursalāt, without any connection being made with this verse; the fitness here was seen afterwards.

قَبَائِل — the plural of قَبِيلَة. Root: ق-ب-ل. Its root sense is facing, front, turning towards. Qibla — the side one turns to. Qabūl — to receive, to meet. Muqābala — to come face to face.

Qabīla, according to what the lexicographers record, comes from the idea of "a group turned towards one another, standing face to face".

And the order of the two words runs from larger to smaller: shaʿb is wide, qabīla narrow. A more detailed sequence is also transmitted in the classical sources (shaʿb → qabīla → ʿimāra → baṭn → fakhdh → faṣīla and the like), but there is disagreement over the details of the sequence; I give no definite series.

What is worth recording is this: the verse counts group names at two different scales. The division of people into groups, that is, is not of a single layer but of layers set inside one another. And the verse does not negate this.

This is the most misread side of the verse and it must be written plainly.

The verse does not abolish groups. It establishes them.

The verb is this: wa jaʿalnākum shuʿūban wa qabāʾila — "We made you peoples and tribes". The subject of the verb is God. The distinction of groups, that is, is not presented as a fault, a malfunction or an obstacle to be overcome; it is recorded as an act of creation.

What the verse does is not to abolish groups but to change their function.

• The existence of the distinction: accepted (jaʿalnākum).
• The purpose of the distinction: changed (li-taʿārafū).
• The distinction's producing value: refused (inna akramakum… atqākum).

Seeing this threefold distinction is important, because the verse says neither "we are all the same, there are no differences" nor "differences produce a ranking". It says a third thing: differences exist, but they do not produce a ranking; they exist for another work.

Root: ع-ر-ف. Maʿrifa — to know, to recognise. ʿUrf — a known, recognised custom. ʿĀrif — one who knows.

Form: Form VI (tafāʿul) — taʿārafa. This form states reciprocity. This pattern was named in the section on al-ʿAṣr: ʿārafa (he came to know) → taʿārafū (they came to know one another).

And the work of the form is decisive here.

Form VI states that the two sides do the same thing to one another. In taʿāruf, that is, there is no situation in which one side is the knower and the other the known. Both sides both know and are known.

This is a pattern in which a relation of superiority is grammatically impossible.

The comparison is this:

The verse, that is, makes the purpose not the groups' "examining", "studying" or "getting to know" one another — but their coming to know one another reciprocally. One group's making the other an object of knowledge falls outside the form.

And what the purpose is not is worth recording too. The verse does not say:

• …li-tafāḍalū (that you might compete in superiority)
• …li-taghālabū (that you might overcome one another)
• …li-tattaḥidū (that you might become one)

It says: that you might come to know one another.

Coming to know one another requires the preservation of difference. Two things that are the same do not come to know one another; coming to know presupposes that the two sides are distinct. The verse, that is, makes difference the condition of the purpose: had the differences been removed, the purpose would have been removed with them.

I record this as my own reading; but that the form states reciprocity and that the purpose is set down as taʿāruf is the text's own wording.

This is the sūra's measure-sentence and one of the most often quoted sentences of the Qurʾān. It has been named as a measure earlier in this commentary in the sections on al-Baqara, al-Infiṭār and elsewhere.

أَكْرَم — root ك-ر-م. This root was treated in the sections on ʿAbasa and al-Fajr. The sense recorded: karam — generosity, worth, nobility, hospitality. Karīm is both generous and of worth. Ikrām is conduct showing that someone is held in worth.

And the choice of the word is worth noticing.

The verse does not say afḍalakum (the most excellent of you), does not say aʿlākum (the highest of you). It says akramakum.

The reason is the life of the word in the Arabic of the age of ignorance. Karam was the most central word of value in that period and was directly connected with lineage: karam meant nobility; karīm meant nobly born. A tribe's boast was the karam of its ancestors.

The verse, that is, fights the argument with the other side's own word. It does not change the word of value — it changes its measure. "What you call karam is a true thing; but its measure is not lineage, it is taqwā."

I record this as an observation about language and history; the central place of the word in the poetry of the age of ignorance is a known fact.

عِندَ ٱللَّهِ — "with God"

These two words are the most critical qualification in the sentence, and they are generally passed over quickly.

The verse does not say "the most honoured of you is the one who guards himself most". It says "the most honoured of you with God".

The work of the qualification is this: the verse does not claim that people do not rank one another. Societies always rank — by profession, wealth, achievement, standing, lineage. The verse does not dispute this fact.

What it does is to say where the binding ranking is made. ʿInda'llāh — there. And there is where man cannot reach.

أَتْقَىٰكُم — root و-ق-ي. The fifth and last occurrence of taqwā in the sūra; and its only occurrence in the form of an elative (a form of superiority): atqā — the one who guards himself most.

And now the whole logic of the sentence becomes visible.

What is laid down as the measure — taqwā — is something invisible. How far a person guards himself cannot be measured from outside. It can neither be counted, nor compared, nor ranked.

The verse, that is, does two things at once:

1. It cancels a visible measure (lineage). 2. In its place it puts a measure no human being can use.

The second move is more important than the first. For if the verse had put another visible measure in the place of lineage — the quantity of one's worship, say, or knowledge — the operation of ranking would have gone on, only its measure changed. And people would have begun to rank one another by the new measure.

The verse does not do this. The measure it lays down is a measure taken out of man's hands.

And this closes the ring with the eleventh verse:

49/11: ʿasā an yakūnū khayran minhum — "it may be that they are better" (you cannot know). 49/13: inna akramakum ʿinda'llāhi atqākum — there is a measure, but it is with God and it is taqwā.

The eleventh verse suspended the ranking; the thirteenth says why it was suspended. Ranking cannot be done, because the measure is invisible.

I record this link as my own reading; that the two verses stand in the same sūra, two verses apart, is the text's word order.

عَلِيم — the Knowing. خَبِير — root خ-ب-ر. The concrete sense the lexicographers record is interesting: الخَبَار (khabār) is soft, loose soil; khabara'l-arḍa — he ploughed the land and brought up what was under it. From this khubr — to know the inner side of a thing; khabīr — one who is aware of the inner side.

The difference between the two names: ʿalīm states knowledge; khabīr states knowledge of the inner side. Not the surface of the soil but what is beneath it.

And the placing of this verse-ending here seals the logic of the verse. The measure is taqwā; taqwā is invisible; and the verse ends with the name of the one who knows the invisible.

A note between ن-ب-أ and خ-ب-ر: in the section on al-Nabaʾ the difference between nabaʾ and khabar was treated. Here the word occurs as a divine name and means the knowing of the inner side.

In writing what this verse says to the present a note is needed, and I write it at the outset: no wholesale ruling is issued in this text about any ethnic, national or religious group, and no side is taken in any current political controversy. This is the plain rule of the method (Method), and it coincides with the verse's own logic — because the verse lays down precisely a measure that makes it impossible to pass judgment on the whole of a group.

What can be recorded is the structure of the verse:

One. Keeping clear of both extremes.

In the matter of lineage and origin there are two widespread attitudes: the first, to maintain that one lineage is superior to another; the second, to present the differences as though they did not exist.

The verse does neither. It records the difference (jaʿalnākum), gives it a function (li-taʿārafū), and cuts off its producing value (ʿinda'llāh… atqākum).

This threefold structure is the verse's most practical side. For denying differences does not work — people know where they come from and care about it. The verse does not suppress this; it changes its direction.

Two. The measure's being unmeasurable.

Within a community the antidote to a claim of superiority is not a counter-claim of superiority — that is the continuation of the same operation. The antidote the verse lays down is the taking of the authority to measure out of human hands.

The concrete counterpart of this is: in order to be able to say that one person is "more worthy" than another, we should have had to measure a side of that person we cannot see. The verse says this cannot be done. And this holds for everyone — including those who pass a favourable judgment on their own group.

Three. Coming to know one another as a purpose.

The form li-taʿārafū says that difference exists for encounter. A person's coming to know someone from outside his own group is, in the verse's sequence, not an act of tolerance; it is the reason difference exists.

And this has a consequence: a life that never meets anything outside its own group is not realising the purpose the verse points to. This is a judgment about no one; it is a measure that follows from the verse's sentence, and I record it as my own reading.

Four. And the verse's own address.

Yā ayyuha'n-nās. Everyone who reads this verse must know that he himself is the one it addresses. The verse does not defend one group against another; it addresses all of them together. To turn it into a proof in the hand of one side would be to narrow the scope of the address.

The block closes off three ways of diminishing a person: by speech (11), in secret (12), and by birth (13). And each time the manner of closing is the same: to show that the authority to pass judgment is not in your hands.