al-Māʾida 5:3

Ḥurrimat ʿalaykumu'l-maytatu wa'd-damu wa laḥmu'l-khinzīri wa mā uhilla li-ghayri'llāhi bihī wa'l-munkhaniqatu wa'l-mawqūdhatu wa'l-mutaraddiyatu wa'n-naṭīḥatu wa mā akala's-sabuʿu illā mā dhakkaytum wa mā dhubiḥa ʿala'n-nuṣubi wa an tastaqsimū bi'l-azlām · Dhālikum fisq · Al-yawma yaʾisa'lladhīna kafarū min dīnikum fa-lā takhshawhum wa'khshawn · Al-yawma akmaltu lakum dīnakum wa atmamtu ʿalaykum niʿmatī wa raḍītu lakumu'l-Islāma dīnā · Fa-mani'ḍṭurra fī makhmaṣatin ghayra mutajānifin li-ithmin fa-inna'llāha ghafūrun raḥīm

"These are forbidden to you: carrion, blood, the flesh of swine, what has been offered up to other than God, the strangled, the beaten, the fallen, the gored and what a predator has eaten — except what you have slaughtered — and what has been slaughtered on the standing stones; and that you seek your portion by divining arrows. These are a departure from the way. Today those who disbelieve have despaired of your religion; so do not fear them, fear Me. Today I have perfected your religion for you, and completed My favour upon you, and I have approved Islam for you as a religion. But whoever is driven by hunger to necessity — without inclining to sin — God is forgiving and merciful."

This verse is a verse of law, and per the method (Method) no legal ruling will be issued here. What will be done is this: the lexical sense of every word in the list will be given, the structure of the list will be shown, and the verse's own qualifications will be brought forward. What may or may not be eaten in which circumstance, the conditions of slaughter, the detailed positions of the schools of law and contemporary applications are not the subject of this section and are not settled here.

The list is not of one kind; it consists of three layers, and the layers rest on different measures.

The four-item form of this same list was given at al-Baqara 2/173, and it was recorded there that the first three items look to the object and the fourth to intention and declaration. I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it here.

What al-Māʾida adds is this: a layer of "the manner of death" comes into the middle. In al-Baqara there was only al-mayta (carrion); here five distinct states of carrion are counted one by one.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the comparison of the two lists: the list in al-Baqara is a list of principle, the list in al-Māʾida a list of application. Once the principle has been laid down, the forms in which it is met in actual life are enumerated. This also fits the sūra's having come down in the late period.

مَيْتَة — root م-و-ت. Mayta is an animal that dies of itself, without being slaughtered. The pattern of the word is فَعْلَة: it states a single state, a single occurrence.

دَم — root د-م-ي. Blood. It was recorded in the section on al-Baqara: at al-Anʿām 6/145 the same item occurs with the qualification masfūḥan — "poured forth". I do not go into the legal consequences of that qualification.

خِنزِير. Most lexicographers count the word a noun standing on its own (jāmid); there is no agreed view on deriving it from a root. I make no claim about a root.

مُنْخَنِقَة — root خ-ن-ق: to squeeze the throat, to cut off the breath. The active participle of Form VII (infiʿāl): the one that has been strangled. The word covers an animal caught in a yoke, tangled in a rope, or throttled.

مَوْقُوذَة — root و-ق-ذ: to kill by striking with a stick, a stone, some heavy object. A passive participle: killed by being struck. The lexicographers record that the word is proper to a killing done with a non-cutting instrument.

مُتَرَدِّيَة — root ر-د-ي: to fall from a height, to tumble; and to perish. The active participle of Form V: the one that has died by falling. From the same root come tardī (tumbling) and ardā (he destroyed) — which occurs in the Qurʾān as fa-ardākum (Fuṣṣilat 41/23).

نَطِيحَة — root ن-ط-ح: to strike with the horn, to butt. The pattern is فَعِيلَة, but its sense is passive: manṭūḥa — the one that has been gored. In Arabic it is common for the pattern فَعِيل to carry a passive sense (qatīl — slain; jarīḥ — wounded).

مَا أَكَلَ ٱلسَّبُعُ — "what a predator has eaten". سَبُع — root س-ب-ع: a beast of prey. Note: the same letters also give the word sabʿ (seven); I make no claim of a derivational link between the two words, and the lexicographers have no agreed view on the matter.

إِلَّا مَا ذَكَّيْتُمْ — the exception. The root ذ-ك-و/ذ-ك-ي: the kindling of a flame, sharpening, being brought to completion. Dhakāʾ (keenness of mind) is from the same root. Tadhkiya — here, slaughter.

A confusion needs correcting: ذ-ك-و and ز-ك-و are separate roots.

Because the two roots are pronounced alike in Turkish (both "tezkiye"), they are confused. The one that has to do with slaughter is the first. Between zakāt and the tadhkiya of slaughter there is no link of root.

The scope of the exception — that is, which items "catching it alive and slaughtering it" returns to — is a classical disagreement. I know the disagreement and record it, but I do not settle it; that is the subject of the literature of law.

نُصُب — root ن-ص-ب: to set up, to make stand upright. The root was treated in Ṣād, al-Ghāshiya and al-Shūrā. Nuṣub — a standing stone: the stones around which sacrifice was made. The word describes not an idol's statue but a marker stone that has been set up.

There is a distinction to be noticed, and the verse makes it in its own words: the fourth item is mā uhilla li-ghayri'llāhi bihī — slaughtered in the name of other than God; this item is mā dhubiḥa ʿala'n-nuṣub — slaughtered on/beside the standing stones. The one looks to the utterance, the other to the place.

أَزْلَٰم — root ز-ل-م: to whittle, to trim. Zalam — an arrow or rod with writing on it and its ends whittled; plural azlām.

تَسْتَقْسِمُوا۟ — root ق-س-م, Form X (istifʿāl). Qism — a portion; qisma — apportioning; qasam — an oath (which in origin has to do with dividing into portions). Form X conveys "seeking": istiqsām — to seek a portion, to ask after one's share.

That is, the expression is not "to practise divination" but, on the logic of the word itself, "to ask after one's portion". In a matter before him, a person is asking these rods what falls to him. That the verb comes in Form X shows that the business is set up as a procedure of question and answer.

And this item is separated in kind from the rest of the list: the earlier ones are about food, while this one is about a method of deciding. The reason it enters the list is that it was used in the same setting — in dividing up sacrificial meat.

ذَٰلِكُمْ فِسْقٌ — the closing. The root ف-س-ق was treated in al-Baqara, al-Ḥujurāt and al-Nūr: a date's coming out of its skin, bursting out. I rely on that treatment. The word describes a "going out of the way", an overflowing beyond the skin.

And the demonstrative dhālikum is addressed to a plural; whether it returns to the nearest item or to the whole list is a classical disagreement. No preference is adopted.

In the middle of the list the language of ruling breaks off and a wholly different sentence comes. This is the most striking side of the verse:

That is, the sentence cuts the list in two, and then the list carries on from where it left off. The classical commentaries dwell on this placement and give various explanations; I present none of them as certain knowledge.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the verse's own arrangement: that "I have perfected your religion for you" is said in the middle of a list of the lawful and the forbidden gives a clue about the sense in which "religion" is being used here. Had dīn covered only the articles of belief, the placement of the sentence would be strange. The sentence's being set inside a list of rulings shows that the word dīn takes in the order that is lived as well.

يَئِسَ — root ي-أ-س: to lose hope. The word marks the moment expectation ends.

The structure of the sentence matters: the despair is written down as theirs, the fear as yours. Fa-lā takhshawhum wa'khshawn — "do not fear them, fear Me."

The root خ-ش-ي was treated in al-Mulk and Fāṭir: a fear grounded in knowledge and mixed with awe — the wariness that arises from knowing how great its object is. I rely on that treatment.

A point of word order: in the sentence the direction of fear is changed; fear itself is not removed. This is a structure the Qurʾān uses often: a feeling is not forbidden, its address is changed. It was recorded at al-Baqara 2/148 that the same operation is applied to the feeling of competition — racing is not forbidden, its object is changed. I rely on that treatment.

In the classical commentaries the phrase min dīnikum has two readings:

I do not impose a preference; both readings follow from the language of the sentence.

All three verbs are in the first person singular, and all three are in the perfect. This is the most striking side of the sentence: the matter is announced as finished.

The difference between كَمَال and تَمَام is a distinction the lexicographers record, and I transmit it noting that there is no complete agreement:

And the verse gives the two verbs different objects; this is no coincidence:

• Ikmāl → dīnakum (your religion) — quality
• Itmām → niʿmatī (My favour) — quantity

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the objects of the verbs. For religion the verb of "wholeness" is chosen; for favour, the verb of "nothing lacking".

The prepositions differ too: religion comes with lakum (for you), favour with ʿalaykum (upon you). The one is in your favour, the other upon you. Favour is like something laid upon a person; religion is for the person, to the person's benefit.

رَضِيتُ لَكُمُ ٱلْإِسْلَٰمَ دِينًا. The root ر-ض-و was treated in al-Fatḥ (riḍwān); I rely on that treatment. The word conveys a wholehearted approval.

The case structure of the sentence: al-Islām is the object, dīnan a specifier/circumstantial — "I have approved Islam for you, as a religion". The root س-ل-م was treated in al-Baqara at 2/131 (aslim / aslamtu): the primary sense of the root is soundness, freedom from flaw, a thing's being handed over whole. I rely on that treatment.

There is more than one explanation of this sentence in the classical commentaries. I transmit them all as reports; I make no historical claim and impose no preference.

Each of these explanations holds one side of the verse, and they do not exclude one another.

This needs recording plainly: I draw no historical conclusion from the sentence such as "no verse came down after this" or "this is the last verse of the Qurʾān". There are reports in the sources about the time of the verse's revelation — it is widely reported that it came down in a pilgrimage season, at ʿArafa, and on a Friday — but these are transmitted reports, and no historical claim has been built on them in this section. Moreover, the question of "the last verse to come down" is in itself a whole field of disagreement in the classical sources. I do not settle it.

And this too should be recorded: the sentence does not say "the religion is finished", it says "I have perfected it". The two are not the same. A thing's being completed does not mean that understanding it, applying it and reflecting on it are finished. What is completed is the text itself; the reading goes on. I record this as my own reading.

This pattern was treated in detail in al-Baqara at 2/173, and what was recorded there was this:

ٱضْطُرَّ — root ض-ر-ر, Form VIII and passive: uḍṭurra — "he was compelled". The passive matters: the person does not put himself into the state of compulsion; the compulsion comes upon him. And in the phrase fa-lā ithma ʿalayh the ruling is not lifted, the culpability is lifted.

I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it here. What belongs here is al-Māʾida's two alterations:

مَخْمَصَة — root خ-م-ص: the belly's sinking in, growing thin. Akhmaṣ / khamīṣu'l-baṭn — hollow-bellied, hungry. That is, in Arabic the word for hunger is derived from the mark hunger leaves on the body: the caving in of the belly.

The consequence of this observation: the subject of the dispensation is not a passing wish but a hunger that has become visible in the body. The word itself sets a threshold.

مُتَجَانِف — root ج-ن-ف: to lean to one side, to incline; and from there to swerve from what is right. Janaf — crookedness. The Qurʾān uses the root in the context of bequests as well: fa-man khāfa min mūṣin janafan (al-Baqara 2/182) — "one who fears a swerving from what is right on the part of a testator".

The pattern is Form VI (tafāʿul), and this should be recorded. Form VI, as we saw at 5/2 in taʿāwun, mostly conveys reciprocity; but it has a second function as well: making a show of a state in oneself, letting oneself go towards it (tanāwama — to feign sleep; tajāhala — to feign ignorance). Here this second sense is at work: mutajānif — one who lets himself go towards crookedness.

So the qualification is this: the dispensation is open to one who is genuinely without recourse; not to one who takes the dispensation as a pretext and lets himself go that way.

And the qualifications of the two verses complete one another: in al-Baqara the measure of the dispensation (quantity and duration) was limited; in al-Māʾida its intention is limited. I record this as my own reading.

The closing attributes are the same as well: ghafūr and raḥīm. The observation recorded in the section on al-Baqara holds here too: that the sentence following a prohibition ends with the attributes of pardon rather than of punishment says what the dispensation is.