al-Dhāriyāt 51:1-4 — Four oaths

Wa'l-dhāriyāti dharwā · fa'l-ḥāmilāti wiqrā · fa'l-jāriyāti yusrā · fa'l-muqassimāti amrā

"By those that scatter, scattering · by those that bear a heavy load · by those that run on with ease · by those that apportion a matter…"

Four verses, four attributes, and the thing sworn by is never named.

The general logic of this was treated in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt, and the analysis of the patterns was made in the section on al-Mursalāt. I repeat neither. The work here is to compare this series with those two and to show what belongs to this series alone.

Three of the oaths in the Qurʾān that are built on a series of active participles have now been dealt with in this commentary. Set side by side, the picture is this:

The arrangement of particles is the same as al-ʿĀdiyāt's — one wāw, then all fāʾ. The conclusion recorded in the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt holds here as well: this arrangement makes the four verses a single oath. The oath is sworn not by four separate objects but by four moments of a single thing. The second wāw of al-Mursalāt is absent here; and so the possibility of "two separate oaths" that arose there does not arise here.

The arrangement of patterns, on the other hand, is close to al-Mursalāt's, but more regular than it. In al-Mursalāt the two ends of the series differed from its middle (1 and 5 from the ifʿāl form). Here the break comes only at the end: the first three triliteral, the fourth from the tafʿīl form (qassama). The series runs straight, that is, and changes pattern in the last verse.

The same break appears in the accusative words:

In al-Mursalāt the absolute object stood in three places and marked the middle of the series. Here the absolute object is in the first verse only, and marks the beginning of the series. The first verse strengthens "scattering" with its own verbal noun; the remaining three verses convey an object or a manner.

I record this as a reading drawn from the patterns themselves; the patterns are beyond dispute and were given one by one above.

And now the point at which this series really parts from the other two.

al-ʿĀdiyāt's series was a line of time: sound → spark → dawn → dust → contact. al-Mursalāt's series was a description of duty: to be sent, to blow, to spread, to separate, to deliver. al-Dhāriyāt's series is the four stages of a single operation, and the stages are each the product of the one before:

1. Scattering — something is lifted from its place and dispersed. 2. Carrying — what has been lifted is now a load; it is being carried. 3. Running — the load goes easily towards a place. 4. Apportioning — at the place reached, the load is divided out.

The four verses recount a thing's being taken up, carried off and distributed. And note: the use of the particle fāʾ in the series makes this necessary — the fāʾ of sequence establishes an unbroken succession. Without scattering there is no carrying, without carrying no arrival, without arrival no apportioning.

This is the most "resultative" of the three series. al-ʿĀdiyāt's series ended in contact; al-Mursalāt's in the delivery of a reminder; al-Dhāriyāt's ends in a distribution. The four verses, that is, close with a thing's being brought to its owners.

And this prepares the sūra's later logic: in the twenty-second verse it will be said "your provision is in the sky", and in the fifty-eighth God will be named al-Razzāq. The idea of "apportioning" at the sūra's opening, that is, will come back at its end in the form of a name.

I record this as my own reading. But the root senses of the four words will be given one by one below, and none of them is disputed.

Root: ذ-ر-و. Its concrete sense: to lift a thing into the air and disperse it, to toss, to strew.

• ذَرَا / أَذْرَىٰ — it scattered, it made fly.
• ذَرْو — the act of scattering.
• مِذْرَاة / مِذْرًى — the winnowing fork used on the threshing floor; the tool for tossing grain in order to separate it from the chaff.
• ذُرَة — millet. A small grain that scatters.

And the root's home is the threshing floor. After the wheat has been threshed and grain and chaff are mixed together, the heap is tossed up into the air with a fork against the wind: what is light flies off, what is heavy falls to the ground. The name of this operation is tadhriya.

In the section on al-ʿĀdiyāt, in treating the word ḥuṣṣila (to winnow the threshing floor and pick out the grain), this very operation was spoken of. The two words come from the same threshing floor, and there is a division of labour between them: dharw is the tossing, taḥṣīl is the name of what is left after the tossing.

The Qurʾān uses this root elsewhere too, and there the sense is plain:

"It becomes chaff that the winds scatter." (al-Kahf 18/45) — tadhrūhu'l-riyāḥ. The agent here is plainly the wind.

This verse will be decisive in the disagreement set out below.

The difference between مَنثُور and ذَرْو. The Qurʾān uses other words for dispersal as well (nashr, bathth, nasf). What separates dharw from the rest is that it is upward: to scatter, one must first lift. The fork throws the heap into the air, not onto the ground.

Root: و-ق-ر. Its concrete sense: weight, a load carried on the back.

• وِقْر (with kasra) — the load carried; especially the weight an animal or a cloud can bear.
• وَقْر (with fatḥa) — a heaviness in the ear, deafness. The Qurʾān uses it: "in their ears is a heaviness" (al-Anʿām 6/25; al-Isrāʾ 17/46).
• وَقَار — gravity of bearing, dignity. In Turkish the borrowed word vakur ("grave, dignified") comes from this root.
• تَوْقِير — to accord weight to someone, to show respect. In the Qurʾān: "that you may honour Him" (al-Fatḥ 48/9).

What is striking is this: the same root gives the weight carried, the ear that does not hear, and respect. The shared core is "weight"; and the weight has branched in three directions — as a load, as an obstruction, as worth.

The pattern in the verse is ḥāmilāt — an active participle, "those that carry". And the accusative word wiqran is the thing carried: the direct object.

The second verse is thus the continuation of the first: what was scattered is now a load, and it is being carried. That a thing lifted into the air should be called a "load" is worth noticing — because something in the air looks as though it had lost its weight. The verse denies this: what is carried is heavy.

Root: ج-ر-ي. Its concrete sense: to flow, to run, to move without interruption.

• جَرَىٰ — it flowed, it ran.
• جَارِيَة — both that which flows (feminine) and a ship. The Qurʾān uses this word for ships: "the ships that run on the sea like mountains" (al-Shūrā 42/32; al-Raḥmān 55/24).
• مَجْرَىٰ — the place of flowing, a channel. The Turkish mecra ("watercourse") comes from this.
• جِرَاء — a current.

One of the patterns the Qurʾān uses most often comes from this root: jannātun tajrī min taḥtiha'l-anhār — "gardens beneath which rivers run". And of the sun: "The sun runs to a resting place of its own" (Yā Sīn 36/38).

يُسْرًا — ease. The root ي-س-ر: to be easy, to be done without strain. From the same root come yusr (ease), taysīr (making easy), maysūr (made easy). This root was treated in the section on al-Inshirāḥ.

The grammarians differ over the case-role of yusran: a circumstantial accusative ("running easily"), an object of purpose ("running for ease"), or the adjective of an elided verbal noun ("running with an easy running"). There is no practical difference in the sense.

But that the word was chosen is meaningful. The second verse had spoken of a weight (wiqr); the third says that the weight is carried with ease. There is a tension between the two verses, and the tension looks deliberate: the load is heavy, but carrying it is not hard.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

Root: ق-س-م. Its concrete sense: to divide, to allot, to separate out shares.

• قِسْم / قِسْمَة — a share, a division. The Turkish kısım, kısmet and taksim come from here.
• قَاسَمَ — to share with someone.
• مُقَسِّم — one who apportions (the tafʿīl form: the act done repeatedly and widely).
• قَسَم — an oath. From the same root; the lexicographers make the connection by way of "to mark a thing off decisively, to fix it".

And the last detail is interesting: the sūra opens with an oath (qasam) and in the fourth verse uses a word from the same root as the oath (muqassimāt). I record this as an observation about the words; that the two senses come from the same root is beyond dispute in Arabic, but I do not claim that the sūra did this deliberately.

The pattern: the tafʿīl form. The first three of the series were from bare triliteral verbs; the fourth is from the faʿʿala form. In Arabic this form conveys multiplicity and repetition: not to divide once, but to divide out again and again, one by one.

The fourth verse, that is, parts from the first three not only in sense but in pattern as well: at the end of the series the work intensifies.

أَمْرًا — "a matter". Root أ-م-ر. In the Qurʾān the word occurs both in the sense of "command" and in the sense of "matter, affair, situation", and which it is here is disputed:

The two readings do not exclude one another, and both are transmitted in the classical sources. The common point: what is divided is one before it is divided. A command or a matter is broken up in order to be distributed.