al-Dhāriyāt 51:15-16

Inna'l-muttaqīna fī jannātin wa ʿuyūn · Ākhidhīna mā ātāhum rabbuhum; innahum kānū qabla dhālika muḥsinīn "The God-fearing are in gardens and springs — taking what their Lord has given them. Before this they were doers of good."

The preceding verse was saying "taste" to those in the fire. This verse opens with gardens. Between them there is no transitional sentence at all.

This is a technique the Qurʾān uses often and one recorded in many places in this commentary. What is peculiar here is that the two pictures are built with the same family of verb:

• Verse 14: dhūqū — taste (an imperative, a rebuke).
• Verse 16: ākhidhīna mā ātāhum — taking what they have been given.

Both are verbs of taking. One is made to taste by force, the other takes what is given.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

Root: و-ق-ي. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/2-3; I do not repeat it. The summary of the finding there: the concrete sense of the root is to protect oneself by putting something in between; wiqāya (a protective covering), taqwā (guarding oneself). And it was recorded that taqwā is not "to fear" but "to guard oneself", and that guarding requires a barrier.

And there is something worth noticing: the same root also occurred in the second verse of this sūra — wiqrā (a heavy load). No: wiqr is from the root و-ق-ر, while muttaqī is from the root و-ق-ي. They are two different roots and must not be confused. I enter this record because the closeness of the two words in transliteration is misleading.

The root جَنَّة (ج-ن-ن: to cover) was treated in the discussions of al-Qalam 68/2 and al-Baqara 2/25; I do not repeat it. In summary: a janna is a garden that covers the ground with its trees; the centre of the word is being covered over.

عُيُون — the plural of ʿayn: a spring, a well-head. The same word means "eye"; that a source of water should be called an "eye" in Arabic is built on the eye's also letting liquid flow. The same is said in Turkish, where a spring is a su gözesi, an "eye of water".

Their standing side by side builds a scene: shade and water. In a desert climate these two are the minimum condition of habitability.

And this must be recorded: in its descriptions of the garden the Qurʾān uses the things whose absence those addressed feel most. This is not a provincialism but a choice of address; a text can describe what is unknown only by way of what is known.

Root: أ-خ-ذ. To take, to hold, to grasp.

The word is a circumstantial accusative (it conveys a state): "…they are within, taking." Being in the garden and taking what is given happen at the same moment, that is.

And the choice of verb is interesting. The verse does not say "it is given" or "they attain"; it says "they take". Taking is a movement of the one who takes. The picture is thus not wholly passive: there is something given and there is a party taking.

A point about roots: ākhidhīna mā ātāhum — the two verbs are very close in sound (akhadha / ātā) but their roots differ (أ-خ-ذ / أ-ت-ي). One is to take, the other to bring, to give. The verse names the two sides of the same scene with almost the same sound.

I record this as an observation about sound; it is not a claim of shared root.

Root: ح-س-ن. To be beautiful, to be good. Iḥsān (the ifʿāl form) — to do beautifully, to do good.

And the word has two directions, and both are at work in the Qurʾān:

Muḥsin, that is, is both one who does his work well and one who does good to others. The two senses are inseparable in Arabic.

And these two words build the logic of the section.

The verse does not say "they are doers of good"; it says "before this they were doers of good". A record of time is entered: kānū (they were) + qabla dhālika (before this).

What is said, that is, is this: the state in the garden is the requital of the state before the garden. And the three verses that come immediately after (17, 18, 19) will itemise what they did "before this".

The structure is this:

Verse 16: They were doers of good — the heading. Verse 17: They slept little of the night — the first item. Verse 18: In the last hours before dawn they asked forgiveness — the second item. Verse 19: In their wealth there was a right — the third item.

Three items, and all three the unfolding of iḥsān. The sūra, that is, does not leave the word muḥsin abstract; it fills it in.

And note the distribution of the itemising: two concern God, one concerns people. The nine-item list treated in the section on al-Maʿārij showed the same mixture. The finding recorded in the section on al-Muddaththir looks the same way: the pair of prayer + feeding the poor occurs together in six separate places in the Qurʾān.

This sūra adds one more place to that list — and the pair here is built not on prayer but on the night.