al-Ṭūr 52:37

Am ʿindahum khazāʾinu rabbika am humu'l-muṣayṭirūn "Or are the treasuries of your Lord with them? Or are they the ones who hold everything in hand?"

This verse was cited in the section on al-Ghāshiya. I do not repeat it here.

Root: خ-ز-ن. To hide, to store up, to lay in. Khizāna — a store, a treasury. Khāzin — a treasurer. In Turkish the borrowed words hazine and hazne are from this root.

And the centre of the root is "to hide" — that is, a treasury is what has been stored up and kept under control.

The Qurʾān ascribes this word regularly to God: "The treasuries of everything are with Us alone" (al-Ḥijr 15/21).

And the subject of the question: the distribution of provision and of favour. That is, the question implies: is it you who decide to whom the revelation shall be given?

This is the counterpart of an objection the Qurʾān states plainly elsewhere: "Is it they who apportion the mercy of your Lord?" (al-Zukhruf 43/32).

Root: س-ط-ر. And this is an interesting point: the word is from the same root as the masṭūr of the sūra's second verse.

I recorded it above in the discussion of 52/2: س-ط-ر — line, row, series.

And the link of the word muṣayṭir with this root is made by the lexicographers thus: one who orders a thing line by line, who records it, who keeps it under control. That is, mastery is associated with the keeping of records.

I attribute this explanation to the lexicographers; I do not present it as a settled etymology.

And the word occurs in one more place in the Qurʾān: "You are not a tyrant (muṣayṭir) over them" (al-Ghāshiya 88/22) — and it was treated in the section on al-Ghāshiya.

Setting the two usages side by side is instructive:

When the two verses are read together: the mastery is neither with the prophet nor with the deniers.

I record this as a comparison.

And the repetition of the root within the sūra:

52/2: kitābin masṭūr — a book written line by line. 52/37: humu'l-muṣayṭirūn — those who keep the record and rule.

The same root, at the two ends of the sūra. In one, what has been written; in the other, the authority of the one who writes.

I record this as my own reading. That the two words come from the same root is what the lexicographers record; it is I who set up the relation between them, and it is no claim of a deliberate arrangement.

A note on the spelling: the word is of a form that could be written in the codex with either a sīn or a ṣād, and different readings are transmitted on this. Because I cannot give the differences of reading with certainty I write no name and no attribution; it makes no difference to the meaning.