al-Dhāriyāt 51:41-42

Wa fī ʿĀdin idh arsalnā ʿalayhimu'l-rīḥa'l-ʿaqīm · Mā tadharu min shayʾin atat ʿalayhi illā jaʿalathu ka'l-ramīm "And in ʿĀd too — when We sent against them the barren wind. It left nothing it came upon without making it like crumbled bone."

The people of ʿĀd were treated in the discussion of al-Fajr 89/6-8, and what the Qurʾān gives and what report adds were given separately; I do not repeat it. A summary of what was recorded there: their land is al-Aḥqāf (the sand dunes); they were destroyed by a violent wind (al-Ḥāqqa 69/6-7); the disagreement over the expression Iram dhāti'l-ʿimād was given in table form; and it was stated that ʿĀd is an example of destruction lodged in Arab memory, which the Qurʾān names without any introduction.

What is to be added here is the wind's attribute.

The rule recorded in the section on al-Ḥāqqa is at work here: in the Qurʾān the singular rīḥ generally occurs in a context of punishment, and the plural riyāḥ in a context of mercy. And this verse was already named there.

What is to be added here is the attribute itself. I treated this word above in the discussion of 51/29 and built the link within the sūra; I do not repeat it. In summary: ʿaqīm means yielding no produce; the word occurs twice in the sūra (of the woman and of the wind) and the two occurrences run in opposite directions — in one the barrenness is lifted, in the other barrenness becomes a weapon.

One last record to be added here: the wind's being "barren" is the reverse of the usual attribute the Qurʾān uses of the wind. Normally the wind carries — so it was named in the second verse of this sūra too (al-ḥāmilāti wiqrā).

And a comparison with the sūra's first four verses is unavoidable:

The wind of the forty-first verse, that is, is the operation of the sūra's first four verses with two of its links missing. It scatters but does not carry; it comes but leaves nothing.

I record this as my own reading. The root senses of the words were given one by one above and are not disputed; what I claim is that the presence of the two passages within the same sūra is worth recording. I do not claim that it is a deliberate arrangement.

The sentence is built with a pattern of exception: "it leaves nothing without making it …".

Two negations one upon the other, and the result an absolute affirmation: mā … illā. In Arabic this pattern gives the strongest inclusiveness — it leaves no exception.

تَذَرُ — root و-ذ-ر: to leave, to abandon. And this verb has an interesting peculiarity: in Arabic the perfect (past) conjugation is not used; only the imperfect and the imperative forms are in use.

A command from the same root will come in Sūrat al-Ṭūr: fa-dharhum (52/45) — "leave them". The fa-tawalla ʿanhum of the sūra's fifty-fourth verse is from a different root.

Root: ر-م-م. Its concrete sense: to decay, to crumble, to fall apart.

• رَمَّ ٱلْعَظْمُ — the bone decayed, it grew old.
• رَمِيم — a decayed, crumbled thing; especially a decayed bone.
• رِمَّة — rotten bone.

The Qurʾān uses this word in one other place, and there the sense is certain: "Who will give life to bones when they are decayed?" (Yā Sīn 36/78) — man yuḥyi'l-ʿiẓāma wa hiya ramīm.

In the Qurʾān's own usage, that is, the word marks the furthest stage of death: not a corpse but a bone; not a bone but a decayed bone.

And note how the comparison works. The wind does not destroy what it comes upon — it turns it into decayed bone. Something is left, that is; but that thing is no longer what it was.

This agrees with the description reported in the section on al-Ḥāqqa: "You would have seen that people laid low there, as though they were hollow trunks of palm trees" (69/7). In both descriptions a form remains behind, and the content has gone.

And a point about time. Decay requires a long process: the crumbling of bone takes years. The wind, meanwhile, passes by.

The comparison conveys a speed, that is: doing in a moment what years would do.

I record this as my own reading; the verse says nothing of duration, but at al-Ḥāqqa 69/7 the qualification "seven nights and eight days" is entered for the same event — the duration is short, that is, but not instantaneous.