وَأَنَّهُۥ هُوَ رَبُّ ٱلشِّعْرَىٰ
Root: ش-ع-ر. This root occurred in the sections al-Ṭūr and al-Ḥāqqa (there in the context of shāʿir and shiʿr). The concrete sense of the root: to notice something fine, to sense it. Shaʿr — hair (the finest thing); shuʿūr — sensing; shāʿir — one who notices what is fine, and from there a poet.
| Name | Its counterpart |
|---|---|
| ٱلشِّعْرَى ٱلْعَبُور (al-Shiʿrā al-ʿAbūr) | Sirius — in the constellation Canis Major |
| ٱلشِّعْرَى ٱلْغُمَيْصَاء (al-Shiʿrā al-Ghumayṣāʾ) | Procyon — in the constellation Canis Minor |
Which of the two the verse means is not said. In the classical sources the first (Sirius) has generally been understood, because it is the one reported to have been worshipped.
It is transmitted in the sources that a section of the Arab tribes worshipped this star, and the name is given of a person who began the practice. I do not enter into the details of these reports and I give no name, because I am not certain of the soundness of the transmissions.
The Qurʾān's own record, on the other hand, is this, and it suffices by itself: the name of a star is mentioned and it is said "its Lord". The building of such a sentence shows that the star had a particular position in the eyes of those addressed. The Qurʾān does not say "its Lord is He" of an object no one has made a god.
The existence of the verse, that is, is evidence of the existence of a practice — even if we do not know its details.
The reason Sirius drew attention in that region is simple and can be verified by observation: it is the brightest star of the night sky. This is no modern piece of knowledge; it is a fact seen with the naked eye and noticed in every society.
This can be recorded as a historical note: the date on which Sirius first appears before dawn was associated in ancient Egypt with the beginning of the Nile flood and was used in the regulation of the calendar. Counting a star the herald of a particular season is a practice known in the surrounding cultures as well.
Per the method (Method) no hunting for scientific miracles is done in this commentary. This verse is one of those often used in claims about modern astronomy: various claims are advanced about Sirius being a double star, its orbital motion, its mass and so on.
1. The verse says nothing whatever about the star. Neither its size, nor its motion, nor its structure. The one thing it says: its Lord is He. 2. The function of the sentence is not to give information but to record an ownership. It comes inside the eleven anna clauses, and all of them do the same work: to say to whom a thing belongs. 3. In the section al-Takwīr the same stance was adopted for al-khunnas / al-kunnas: "The attraction of the planetary interpretation was recorded, but the claim that 'the verse announces orbital motion' was explicitly rejected and the grounds written out." I keep the same stance here.
This word was analysed in the section on al-Fātiḥa; I do not repeat it. The summary: Rabb joins ownership and nurture in a single word — the one who owns by nurturing.
And the verse does not say "do not worship Sirius". It does not say "Sirius does not exist". It says "the Lord of Sirius is He."
This is the last instance of the method the sūra has used from the beginning. At verse 23 it was said of the idols that they are "nothing but names"; at verse 26 it was said of the angels that "they exist but their intercession avails nothing". Here too it is said of the star that "it exists, and it has an owner".
The sūra does not, that is, treat the object of worship as non-existent; it places it in a position. The star is real, it is bright, it stands in the sky — and it has a Lord. It is taken out of divinity and set among the created.
I record this as an observation, and its ground is the sūra's stance in three separate verses (23, 26, 49).
Verse 1: wa'l-najmi idhā hawā — "by the star when it falls." Verse 49: wa annahu huwa rabbu'l-Shiʿrā — "the Lord of Sirius is He."
And the difference between the two verses carries the sūra's whole argument: in the first verse the star is the object of an oath, in the forty-ninth a possession.
I record this as my own reading; the existence of the two verses is data of the text, and that both najm and Shiʿrā are heavenly bodies is a countable fact. I do not claim that the najm of the first verse must be Sirius — that possibility was entered in a table above and no preference was imposed.