ٱلشَّمْسُ وَٱلْقَمَرُ بِحُسْبَانٍ وَٱلنَّجْمُ وَٱلشَّجَرُ يَسْجُدَانِ
These two are regularly named together in the Qurʾān, and almost every time in a context of measure and time. As recorded in the section on al-Shams:
In the Qurʾān's description of nature the sun is not an element of warmth or beauty; it is first of all a clock.
Root: ح-س-ب. To count, to reckon. Its derivatives: ḥisāb (the Turkish hesap is this same word), muḥāsaba, ḥasīb, iḥtisāb.
| View | What it says |
|---|---|
| A verbal noun | It is a verbal noun on the fuʿlān pattern (like ghufrān, shukrān, rujḥān). Its sense is "reckoning, being subject to reckoning" |
| A plural | It is the plural of ḥisāb. Its sense is "reckonings" |
In meaning the two come out at the same place: the sun and the moon are bound to a reckoning; they do not move at random.
And the word has a second use that must be recorded: the same word occurs once more in the Qurʾān, and there it names a disaster sent down from the sky:
"…He may send upon it a ḥusbān from the sky, so that it becomes slippery ground." (al-Kahf 18/40)
The same word names in one place the order of the sky, in another a punishment descending from the sky. This is no contradiction; it is the direct consequence of the idea beneath the root. Beneath ḥusbān lies "having been reckoned". An orbit that has been reckoned is reckoned; so is a blow that has been reckoned.
The particle bāʾ. The bāʾ in bi-ḥusbān is read either as one of accompaniment (muṣāḥaba) or as adverbial (ẓarfiyya): "together with a reckoning" or "within a reckoning". Both give the same result. The sentence is a nominal one and has no verb — again thubūt: the sun and the moon do not "move by a reckoning" but "are by a reckoning." The quality is part of their being, not of their behaviour.
And here comes the first dual verb of the sūra. Yasjudān — "the two prostrate". The sound of the sūra is established in this verse.
A note is needed on this use of prostration. The Qurʾān speaks in several places of the prostration of beings other than man, and presents it not as a movement but as a state of being subject. On what is meant there are two classical explanations: the first, that the prostration is a visible submission such as the turning of a shadow or the bending of a plant; the second, that prostration is used in the sense of "being subject to the law of creation". The two do not exclude each other.
Root: ن-ج-م. This root was analysed in al-Ṭāriq, and what was recorded there is decisive here:
Its proper sense is to appear, to become visible. The najm (star) took this name not because it flickers in the sky but because it appears out of the darkness. The same root is used for a plant coming up from the soil: najama — it grew, it came up, it appeared. And nujūm/tanjīm — an instalment; each instalment appears when its time comes.
The root itself thus covers both fields: what appears in the sky and what appears from the earth are alike najm. The disagreement arises from this.
| The "star" reading | The "stemless plant" reading | |
|---|---|---|
| Sense | The star in the sky | A plant without a stem, spreading on the ground (grass, creeper) |
| Evidence from context | The preceding verse speaks of the sun and the moon; the sequence continues in the sky | The word beside it is ٱلشَّجَر (a tree with a trunk). The two form a pair: stemless plant / stemmed plant |
| Evidence from within the Qurʾān | "The sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees and the animals prostrate to Him" (al-Ḥajj 22/18) — there nujūm and shajar are counted together | The Qurʾān generally uses najm for a star in the plural (nujūm); here it is singular and definite |
| Evidence from word order | — | The next verse describes the sky and the one after it the earth; if verse 5 is read as sky and verse 6 as earth, the sequence becomes orderly |
| Its weak side | Its pairing with shajar is left unanswered | It creates a break from verse 5 |
The majority of the classical commentaries adopted the second reading, and this was recorded in the section on al-Ṭāriq as well. The ground is the shajar beside the word: in Arabic najm and shajar are a settled pair dividing the plant world in two — what has no stem and what has one.
And there is a further ground for this sūra, which I record as my own reading: the sūra is built on pairs from beginning to end. The fifth verse gives a pair from the sky (sun and moon); if the sixth gives a pair from the earth (grass and tree), the sequence is complete in point of structure and of content alike. On the "star" reading the sixth verse would have paired an earthly object with a heavenly one, which runs against the logic of pairing in the rest of the sūra — all the pairs in the sūra are two things of the same kind (two seas, two easts, two gardens, two springs).
The inclination in this commentary is towards the second reading, and it is not binding. al-Ḥajj 22/18 is a serious ground for the first reading and cannot be struck out; but in that verse nujūm is plural and is counted as an item distinct from shajar, whereas here it is singular and attached to the same verb as shajar.
The fifth verse states the reckoning, the sixth the prostration. The two are two names for one thing: being bound to an order.
- Verse 5 is a nominal sentence: bi-ḥusbān. A fixed quality.
- Verse 6 is a verbal sentence: yasjudān. An act that continues.
For the heavenly bodies a state is used, then, and for the plants an act. I record this as an observation about the word order.