al-Dhāriyāt 51:49

Wa min kulli shayʾin khalaqnā zawjayni laʿallakum tadhakkarūn "Of everything We created two of a pair — that you might perhaps call it to mind."

Root: ز-و-ج. And the sense of the word differs from the way the English "pair" is used, and the difference matters.

In English "pair" names two things together. In Arabic زَوْج conveys one member of the pair: one of the two.

• زَوْج — the mate of a thing, the single one that is its counterpart. That is, "one half of a pair".
• زَوْجَان / زَوْجَيْنِ — two mates, that is, both of the pair.
• أَزْوَاج — mates (plural).

And the verse uses the dual: zawjayni — "two mates". Of everything, that is, a pair has been created.

In the Qurʾān the word is used of human spouses (azwāj), of kinds of plants (azwājin min nabātin shattā, Ṭāhā 20/53), and generally.

This idea was treated in the discussion of al-Layl 92/1-3, and this verse was named there. I do not repeat it. The finding there: the sūra passes from the idea that "everything has been created in pairs" to a moral distinction, and the Qurʾān states this idea explicitly (al-Dhāriyāt 51/49; Yā Sīn 36/36).

Two things are to be added here: the work of the particle min, and the closing sentence.

Note the particle. The verse does not say kulla shayʾin (everything), it says مِن كُلِّ شَىْءٍ (of everything).

The grammarians differ over the particle's function here:

The first view is worth recording, because it softens a claim of absoluteness. The Qurʾān itself says that some things are single — the oneness of God is the subject of this sūra and of al-Ikhlāṣ.

And in the classical sources this record is regularly entered: being paired is an attribute of created things; not of the Creator.

I too take this record as my basis. I impose no preference about the exact function of min; but it must be stated that the verse lays down a ruling about created things, and that this is plain from the context.

And the close states the purpose of the three-verse series of proofs.

تَذَكَّرُ — root ذ-ك-ر: to remember, to call to mind. The tafaʿʿul form conveys the act's taking place in the person and being done with effort: "to try to remember, to bring oneself to it".

And that the verb is not knowing but remembering is decisive.

The verse does not say laʿallakum taʿlamūn (that you might know). It says tadhakkarūn — that you might remember.

To remember is to return to something known before. The verse, that is, does not claim that being paired is a new piece of information. It draws attention to something everyone sees, and asks that a conclusion be drawn from it.

And which conclusion?

The verse does not say. And this gap is filled in several ways in the classical sources:

The first explanation is the most widespread and ties directly to Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ: lam yalid wa lam yūlad wa lam yakun lahu kufuwan aḥad. There were three negations there, and the third rejected an "equal" — that is, the having of a mate.

And the sūra's next verse supports the first explanation: the fiftieth and fifty-first verses will call to tawḥīd — "do not set up another god alongside God."

The inference of the forty-ninth verse, that is, is stated openly two verses later.

I record this as an observation about the structure.

This verse too is sometimes made the subject of a modern claim: the equating of the word "pair" with matter and antimatter, or with the counterparts of subatomic particles, or with the later discovery of sexual reproduction in plants.

I do not build this. Its ground is the same as what was written in the sections on al-Ṭāriq, al-ʿAlaq and in the discussion of 51/47 above. The only thing I will add is this: the verse itself says tadhakkarūn (that you might remember). A thing to be remembered is a thing the one addressed already knows. The verse's own word, that is, says that it is not the announcement of a discovery.

This is a record that comes against the claim from within the verse itself, and it is worth recording.