al-Qamar 54:47-48

Inna'l-mujrimīna fī ḍalālin wa suʿur — yawma yusḥabūna fi'l-nāri ʿalā wujūhihim dhūqū massa saqar "The guilty are in error and blazing fires. On the day they are dragged on their faces into the Fire: 'Taste the touch of Saqar!'"

I treated this matter in detail under verse twenty-four and do not repeat it. I record here only this: verse forty-seven repeats the two words of verse twenty-four exactly.

The word إِذًا (in that case) of Thamūd's sentence falls away; when the condition falls away, the judgement remains.

Root: ج-ر-م. Its concrete sense: to cut, to pluck off. Jarama'l-nakhla — he harvested the palm, plucked the fruit. Jirm — the body of a thing, its mass.

And from this jurm: a crime. The lexicographers' explanation: a crime is the act that cuts a person off from what he belongs to.

The word's position in the sūra is worth recording. The sūra named four peoples one by one: the people of Noah, ʿĀd, Thamūd, the people of Lot, the house of Pharaoh. At verse forty-seven the names end and a single quality remains: al-mujrimūn.

The principle recorded in Method here appears in the text's own working: "No blanket judgement is issued about an ethnic or religious group; what the verse describes are qualities, and whoever bears that quality is included in it." The sūra itself makes the same transition: from the names of peoples to a quality.

I record this as an observation.

Root: س-ح-ب. Its concrete sense: to drag by pulling, to draw along the ground. Saḥaba — he dragged.

And from the same root سَحَاب — a cloud. The lexicographers' explanation: a cloud is what is dragged across the sky; the wind pulls it along.

This root was treated in al-Ṭūr.

The picture the word gives is decisive: saḥb is not making something walk but pulling it. What is dragged has no motion of its own; it is carried.

And this sets up a contrast with the muhṭiʿīn of verse eight:

The sūra shows a descent between the two scenes: first a compelled running, then a dragging.

I record this as my own reading.

The Qurʾān uses this expression in several places: "On the Day of Resurrection We shall gather them on their faces" (al-Isrāʾ 17/97), "Those who will be gathered on their faces to Hell…" (al-Furqān 25/34).

The face is the organ by which a person is recognised — the bearer of identity. And that the dragging is upon the face brings this organ to the ground.

And this makes a link with verse thirty-seven: there the eyes of Lot's people were wiped out; here the faces are scraped along the ground. The sūra places both punishments in the region of the face.

I record this as an observation; the wording of the two verses can be verified.

مَسّ — Root: م-س-س. Its concrete sense: to touch — and especially to make light contact with the hand.

And the word's use here is a technique of style.

The word that could be used for the lightest contact of fire has been chosen. It does not say "taste the burning of the fire" or "taste the fire"; it says "taste the touch of the fire."

In rhetoric this counts as understatement in the wording, or a kind of elliptical expression: to say little and convey much. The English "just a taste of it" does a similar job.

The Qurʾān uses the same technique elsewhere: "If a breath (nafḥa) of your Lord's punishment were to touch them…" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/46). There too the smallest measure is chosen.

I record this as my own reading; that mass means "light contact" is lexical data.

سَقَر — Root: س-ق-ر. This word was treated in full in al-Muddaththir and this verse was cited there. The notes there:

"Its concrete sense: the scorching of the sun, its burning and altering. Saqarat-hu'l-shams — the sun scorched him, his skin changed. In the Qurʾān the word is used almost as a proper name and occurs in four places: al-Muddaththir 74/26, 74/27, 74/42 and al-Qamar 54/48. And a grammatical point: the word is diptote (it takes no tanwīn) — which shows that it is treated as a proper name."

I do not repeat these.

The only thing I add here is the meeting of the two words, and it is my own reading: mass is Arabic's lightest word for contact, while saqar is a name whose root is scorching. The sentence sets the two side by side. The lightest verb comes before the heaviest noun.