al-Raḥmān 55:19-20

Maraja'l-baḥrayni yaltaqiyān · Baynahumā barzakhun lā yabghiyān

"He let the two seas loose, and they meet · between them is a barrier, and they do not overstep against one another."

These two verses stand at the centre of one of the claims most often advanced about the Qurʾān in the last half-century. For that reason two pieces of work will be done here and kept apart: first what the words say, then why the claim is rejected.

This will be the order, because without knowing what the verse says one cannot even discuss whether a claim about it is true.

Root: م-ر-ج. This root occurred four verses earlier, in the fifteenth verse, in the form مَارِج, and was analysed there. I do not repeat it; the summary:

The idea beneath the root is to mingle and to let loose; the two go together, because things let loose become mingled. Marj — pasture, the place where an animal is turned loose. Marīj — mingled (Qāf 50/5).

And here is one of the tightest internal links in the sūra:

The same root, four verses apart, for fire and for water. The jinn were created from the let-loose state of fire; the two seas were let loose. I record this as an observation about the weave of words; that the two words are from the same root and where they stand in the sūra is data of the text.

On the sense of the verb in this verse there are two readings:

Both are defensible and they do not conflict. The rest of the verse meets both: the seas meet (there is contact), but they do not overflow into one another (the mingling is not complete).

The inclination in this commentary is towards the first reading, and it is not binding. The ground is the word order: had the verse said "He mingled", it would then have said "they do not mingle", which produces a tension. The reading "He let loose" agrees with the sentence that follows: they have been set free, but freedom is not limitlessness.

And this is the most important question about the verse. The Qurʾān itself gives the answer.

The Qurʾān uses the same expression elsewhere too — and in one place it says explicitly what it means:

وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِى مَرَجَ ٱلْبَحْرَيْنِ هَٰذَا عَذْبٌ فُرَاتٌ وَهَٰذَا مِلْحٌ أُجَاجٌ وَجَعَلَ بَيْنَهُمَا بَرْزَخًا وَحِجْرًا مَّحْجُورًا "It is He who let the two seas loose: this one sweet and quenching, that one salt and bitter. And between the two He set a barrier and an impassable partition." (al-Furqān 25/53)

This verse is decisive. The same verb (maraja), the same object (al-baḥrayn), the same word (barzakh) — and in addition what the two seas are is stated: one sweet, one salt.

The same distinction is drawn in one further place:

"The two seas are not alike: this one sweet, thirst-quenching, easy to drink; that one salt and bitter. Yet from each of them you eat fresh meat and bring out ornaments to wear." (Fāṭir 35/12)

And a third:

"…and who set a partition (ḥājiz) between the two seas…" (al-Naml 27/61)

The Qurʾān's "two seas", then, are not two salt seas; they are fresh water and salt water.

And this is what the majority of the classical exegetes understood from this verse. The explanations recorded:

The first explanation is the one with the strongest evidence from within the Qurʾān, and it is the one adopted in this commentary. It is not binding, but in the face of al-Furqān 25/53 and Fāṭir 35/12 the second explanation has no separate ground.

Root: ل-ق-ي. This root was treated in the section on al-Mursalāt in the form alqā (Form IV — to leave, to cast). Here it is in ٱفْتِعَال (Form VIII): إِلْتَقَى — to meet one another, to come together.

Form VIII conveys reciprocity here: it is not that one comes to the other; the two come to each other.

And the verb is imperfect: yaltaqiyān — "they are meeting", a state that continues. Not a single meeting; an unbroken contact.

There is a nicety in the word order. The clause yaltaqiyān comes without a connective — maraja'l-baḥrayni yaltaqiyān. In grammar this counts as a circumstantial clause (ḥāl): "He let them loose — while they meet." The meeting is thus not a consequence of the letting loose but a condition present within it.

The origin of the word is disputed. Some of the lexicographers count it a foreign entrant into Arabic and attach it to a Persian word; others accept it as Arabic. I do not speak with certainty.

Its meaning, on the other hand, is beyond dispute: the barrier, the screen, the intervening zone between two things.

The word occurs in three places in the Qurʾān, and seeing the three together shows the field of the word:

The third is decisive. The same word is used for the barrier between two waters and for the interval between death and resurrection.

The shared idea is this: a barzakh is the between that prevents two things from passing into one another. In the water it is spatial, in death temporal — but its function is the same: to prevent crossing.

And in English the word has been borrowed only in its second sense (barzakh, the state between death and resurrection). The first sense — an ordinary "interval, barrier" — is missing from the borrowed use, and this makes the verse harder to read.

And here is the most important word of the verse.

Root: ب-غ-ي. This root was treated in al-Baqara at 2/90, and what was recorded there was this:

بَغْيًا — the root b-gh-y: to pass the limit, transgression; and envy. The verse names the cause of the refusal explicitly: "begrudging that God should bestow of His bounty on whichever of His servants He wills." … Like pride, envy too is born of a comparison.

Now note this: the word is a moral word.

In al-Baqara the reason a people rejected the revelation was named baghy. The Qurʾān regularly uses the same root for injustice, wrongdoing and aggression.

And in this verse the same word is used of two seas.

The verse does not say "they do not mingle", nor "they do not pass into one another". It says "they do not commit baghy against one another" — that is, "they do not encroach on each other's right", "they do not pass their bounds".

This is the sūra's most consistent choice, and it is not accidental. As recorded above, the sūra is built from beginning to end on words of limit: in the eighth verse man is told lā taṭghaw (do not transgress), in the twentieth the seas are said lā yabghiyān (they do not transgress). Both are words of limit, and both belong to the field of morals.

The difference is in the mood:

The seas are given no command; what they do is reported. Man is given a command.

And the meaning of this difference was recorded above: man is the only being that can overflow. By describing the sea with a moral word the verse sets a measure before man — even water stands at its limit.

I record this reading as my own. That the two words belong to the field of morals and that the moods differ are verifiable data of the text.