al-Qamar 54:52-53

Wa kullu shayʾin faʿalūhu fi'l-zubur — wa kullu ṣaghīrin wa kabīrin mustaṭar "Everything they have done is in the records. Every small and great thing is written down line by line."

This construction occurs twice in the sūra, and the two occurrences complete one another:

In verse forty-nine, creating; in verse fifty-two, action. The scope of both is "everything."

And the structure of the two sentences differs:

• In 49 kulla is in the accusative (on the widespread reading) — the object of the verb.
• In 52 kullu is in the nominative — the subject, with fi'l-zubur as its predicate.

I record this as my own reading: the two verses set two distinct completenesses side by side. The completeness of creating: nothing was created without measure. The completeness of the record: no act stayed outside the record. Both begin with "everything."

The root ز-ب-ر was treated under verse forty-three, and I complete here the circle I recorded there:

The question sought a document; the answer states the document's contents.

And the two verses end with exactly the same phrase: fi'l-zubur. The same two words, nine verses apart.

The root's sense of "writing by carving into stone" becomes functional here — because what is asked after is not an erasable record. Verse forty-three was looking for a document of exemption; verse fifty-two says that something else is found in that same place.

Root: س-ط-ر. This root was treated in al-Ṭūr, al-Qalam, al-Muṭaffifīn and al-Ghāshiya. Its concrete sense: a row, a series, a line.

Its derivatives:

• سَطْر — a line; and more generally an even row (a row of trees, a row of people, is also saṭr).
• سَطَرَ — he wrote in lines.
• مُسَطَّر — written. In the Qurʾān: "A Book written in lines on unrolled parchment" (al-Ṭūr 52/2-3 — kitābin masṭūr). Treated in al-Ṭūr.
• أَسَاطِير — the word rendered "tales of the ancients". The root is the same: that which has been written out in lines. In the Qurʾān it occurs as the accusation of the deniers: "This is nothing but the lines of the ancients" (al-Anfāl 8/31; al-Anʿām 6/25; al-Qalam 68/15 — treated in al-Qalam).

The form in the verse is مُسْتَطَر: the passive participle of Form X (istifʿāl).

And there are two explanations of Form X's function here:

The first is widespread and I do not impose a preference.

Two consecutive verses use two different roots for writing, and the difference between them is worth recording:

Verses fifty-two and fifty-three, that is, state the two properties of the record separately: that it is inerasable and that it is orderly.

I record this distinction as my own reading. The lexical senses of the two roots are data of the language; the division of labour between them is a reading I have set up. In al-Inshiqāq the same kind of division of labour was set up for the three roots of splitting (ش-ق-ق / ف-ط-ر / ف-ل-ق), and the same note was made there too.

This is a widespread technique in Arabic and in languages generally: to name the two opposite ends and thereby take in everything between them. In English "sooner or later", "more or less", "high and low" do the same job.

The Qurʾān uses the same technique elsewhere:

"What a Book this is — it leaves out nothing small or great but has counted it!" (al-Kahf 18/49) "Whoever does an atom's weight of good will see it; and whoever does an atom's weight of evil will see it." (al-Zilzāl 99/7-8) — treated in al-Zilzāl.

And the technical difference here is worth recording: al-Kahf 18/49 covers by negation ("has left nothing out"), al-Zilzāl covers by the smallest unit of measure ("an atom"), while al-Qamar covers by the two ends ("small and great").

Three different paths, one result: the completeness of the scope.

I record this as a comparison of techniques; the wording of the three verses can be verified.

The practical side of these two verses lies in the idea of the "record" itself, and I record it as an observation, not as a ruling.

The greater part of human life consists of things that are not recorded: words spoken and forgotten, behaviour no one saw, decisions with no witness. And whether a piece of behaviour is going to be recorded often determines how it is done.

What verse fifty-three says is that the record is not made according to size. The record does not select what is important; it takes things in without distinguishing small from great.

And this joins with the sentence of the third verse: wa kullu amrin mustaqirr — every matter comes to rest. The sūra had said this at the beginning; at verse fifty-three it adds that the record too has the same scope.