56. Sūrat al-Wāqiʿa

Ninety-six verses. It takes its name from its first verse: ٱلْوَاقِعَة — "that which comes to pass", "that which falls".

This sūra is one of the most orderly built in the Qurʾān. It opens with a scene of the resurrection, divides humankind into three groups, describes each of the three in a separate table, then leaves the scene and sets out four proofs, then speaks about the revelation itself, then descends to the moment of death of a single human being, and finally closes by returning to the threefold division of the opening.

The sūra draws a circle, that is: it descends from the widest (all humankind, the Day of Resurrection) to the narrowest (one person dying in a bed), and then rises again to the threefold division.

The first task of this section is to make that circle visible; for the individual verses of al-Wāqiʿa can be read fully only when their places within the structure are known.

The sūra consists of three main blocks, and the boundaries of the blocks are drawn by the text itself.

The first thing to notice: verse 74 and verse 96 are identical word for word. The sūra closes with the same sentence twice — once at the end of the section of proofs, once at the end of the sūra. This is a verifiable repetition within the sūra and the clearest sign of the boundaries of the blocks.

The first block itself falls into two.

The opening (1-11). The resurrection comes to pass (1-3), the earth and the mountains break up (4-6), and people are divided into three classes (7-11).

The tables (12-56). Each of the three classes is described separately:

Here is the sūra's most striking formal feature. The same groups are named by three different names through the sūra, and the names change systematically:

In the closing section (88-92) the order and the names are these:

1. Al-muqarrabīn (88) — the name of the sābiqūn in verse 11 2. Aṣḥābu'l-yamīn (90) — the name of those on the right in verse 27 3. Al-mukadhdhibīna'l-ḍāllīn (92) — a new name

The third group loses its name of place at the end of the sūra. The group called throughout "the men of the left", "the men of ill omen" is named at the close by no word of direction at all: those who deny, those who have gone astray. Two verbal adjectives.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is in the text: as the sūra closes it leaves the name of the good where it stood and turns the name of the bad into an act. What is named at the end, that is, is not a direction but a behaviour.

There are three different orders in the three sections:

The order in the opening stands alone; the tables and the close use the same order: from the top down.

I propose a reading of why the opening differs, and I state that it is my own reading: the opening begins with the distinction the hearer already knows — right and left, the ready-made pair of Arabic. The third group is added only after this known pair has been set up, and it is added as a surprise. In the two later sections the surprise has already been sprung, and so the order falls into its natural arrangement, that is, by rank.

Between 57 and 73 four proofs are set out, and all four are on the same pattern.

The pattern is: أَفَرَءَيْتُم + object + ءَأَنتُمْ (is it you) + verb + أَمْ نَحْنُ (or are We) + a plural active participle.

And in all four the two verbs compared are not of the same kind. The verbs given to man are verbs of handling: to emit, to plough the soil, to drink, to strike a spark. The verbs ascribed to God are verbs of bringing into being: to create, to make grow, to send down, to raise up.

The sūra does not say "you do nothing", that is. It distinguishes what it is that you do: you carry, and carrying is not bringing into being.

Verses 75 to 96 advance in six steps:

The sūra calls its own words back. These are verifiable textual data:

The last row is especially striking and will be taken up separately in a later section: the same two words come side by side twice, and on the second occasion their order changes.

There is broad acceptance that it is Meccan. In the classical sources views are transmitted that a few verses (especially 81-82, and in some reports 39-40) are Medinan. I express no preference about these exceptions, because their grounds rest on transmitted reports and I am not in a position to speak with certainty about the state of those reports.

The stylistic data support its being Meccan: short and dense verse-endings, a scene of the resurrection, a threefold classification, a series of proofs, the absence of legal rulings, and an audience being argued into conviction on the matter of the raising of the dead.

A widely current report about the weight of the sūra. A report that the Prophet said "Sūrat Hūd and its sisters have made me old", and that he counted al-Wāqiʿa among the sisters, is often mentioned in the books of exegesis. It is stated that this report is found in the hadith collections; I issue no firm judgement about the state of its chain, and I do not quote its wording verbatim.

And there is a very widespread report about its merits, which must be addressed, because in Turkey the sūra is known largely by way of that report: a report to the effect that "whoever recites al-Wāqiʿa every night will not see poverty" is transmitted. Some scholars of hadith have counted this report weak. I issue no judgement on its soundness; but I am obliged to record the following irony, because it is in the sūra's own text:

This sūra gives affluence as the ground of the punishment. The forty-fifth verse describes the worldly condition of the people of the Fire in a single word: mutrafīn — those whom affluence has spoilt. That a sūra should be recited as a means to wealth, while that same sūra counts the spoiling effect of wealth as a ground of guilt, is, when the two are set side by side, worth thinking about.

I set this down not as a judgement but as a record: the soundness of the report is one matter; what the text says is plain to see.

The basmala was treated in earlier sections and is not taken up again here; the verse numbers are counted without it.

Idhā waqaʿati'l-wāqiʿa · Laysa li-waqʿatihā kādhiba · Khāfiḍatun rāfiʿa "When that which comes to pass comes to pass — there is nothing to give its coming the lie — abasing, exalting."

Three verses, and not even one sentence: an adverb of time, a parenthetical clause and two attributes. Before framing its main sentence the sūra says three things: the event will happen, it will not be deniable, and it will change the hierarchy.

The difference between this particle and in was treated in the sections on al-Zalzala and al-Inshiqāq, and the measure recorded there holds here too: in is used for what is possible, idhā for what is certain to happen and whose time alone is unknown. In the section on al-Inshiqāq the first verse of this sūra was already given as an example.

What is to be added here is this: an idhā with no apodosis.

In Arabic idhā calls for an apodosis ("when… then such and such happens"). Where is the apodosis in this sūra? The grammarians differ:

The first view is the most widespread and fits the text best: the clause wa kuntum in verse 7 is joined by wāw and comes in the perfect, which is a possible structure for the apodosis of idhā in Arabic.

It is worth recalling the measure recorded in the section on al-Inshiqāq for idhā clauses whose apodosis is not given: that the apodosis is not stated does not mean that there is none. Here, however, the apodosis is given — but three verses late, and with a full scene of the resurrection in between.

Root: و-ق-ع. The analysis of this root was made in the section on al-Ḥāqqa. The finding there was this, and I do not repeat it: the concrete sense of the root is falling — a thing's coming down from above and touching the ground; wāqiʿa is an active participle, "that which falls, that which comes to pass".

And the verb and its subject coming from the same root (ishtiqāq), the use of the perfect for a future event, and its conveying certainty — all of these were treated there in connection with al-Ḥāqqa 69/15.

What is proper to this place is this: the same structure, in two sūras, in two different positions.

In al-Ḥāqqa this sentence is a conclusion: the sky is split, the mountains are beaten, and then the wāqiʿa comes to pass. In al-Wāqiʿa the same sentence is a beginning: everything will be recounted after it.

The same three words, that is, are in one sūra the place arrived at and in the other the place set out from.

In the section on al-Qāriʿa al-qāriʿa was treated as repeated three times in three verses; in the section on al-Ḥāqqa al-ḥāqqa likewise three times. Now we have the third. Setting the three side by side shows how the Qurʾān names the resurrection:

All three are active participles. All three are feminine. All three are on the fāʿila metre. The three words are grammatically siblings, that is; where they part is in the picture the root holds.

And the pictures look to three different senses:

• Qāriʿa is heard — a blow has a sound.
• Ḥāqqa is verified — it is compared with a claim; a matter of judgement, not of sense.
• Wāqiʿa is seen — something comes down and touches the ground.

And there is one further difference, and the difference itself is worth recording. Al-Qāriʿa and al-Ḥāqqa repeat their names three times in the first three verses of their sūras. Al-Wāqiʿa says its name once and never mentions it again.

In the section on al-Qāriʿa this was recorded: that the word never occurs again in the rest of the sūra makes its density in the first three verses all the more marked. In the section on al-Ḥāqqa this was completed: al-Ḥāqqa's name likewise does not occur after the first three verses, but its root returns at the end (69/51).

Al-Wāqiʿa shows a third possibility: the name is said once, and its root returns at the end — mawāqiʿi'n-nujūm (75).

Three sūras, that is, use the same technique in three different measures:

I give this table as a verifiable textual datum. The interpretation I draw from the table is mine: al-Wāqiʿa is the sūra that says its name least, because the subject of this sūra is not the name of the event but its outcome — three groups. Al-Qāriʿa and al-Ḥāqqa were occupied with describing the event; al-Wāqiʿa passes over the event in a single sentence and turns to people.

وَقْعَة — a verbal noun from the same root (faʿla metre): a single falling. The metre conveys that the act occurred once. From the same root, waqʿa is used in Arabic for "a battle, an engagement" as well — the moment at which the falling-upon takes place.

The first verse gave the name of the event (wāqiʿa, an active participle); the second verse gives the moment of its occurrence (waqʿa, a verbal noun). The same root, two different tasks.

There is disagreement over كَاذِبَة, and the disagreement changes the sense:

The first is the most widely maintained in the classical sources, and the use of the fāʿila metre as a verbal noun is a known feature of Arabic. The second is legitimate too and accords with the fact that the following verses are concerned with people.

In point of sense the two come out at the same place, and this makes a choice unnecessary: on that day there will be no such possibility as denial.

And this detail matters: the verse does not say "those who deny will be punished". It says "there is no denying". The difference is great: the first is a threat, the second the declaration of an impossibility.

To give the lie to something is possible where the thing is not seen. The moment it is seen, there is no such act as denial — because the subject of the act is gone. The verse does not promise a punishment; it announces the end of the possibility of an act.

This will tie directly to the sūra's end. In the ninety-fifth verse ḥaqqu'l-yaqīn will come — as was recorded in the section on al-Takāthur, the certainty of coming into contact with the thing itself. The second verse is the negative description of that certainty: once there is contact, no category called falsehood remains.

Two words. No conjunction. No verb. No subject named.

خَافِضَة — root: خ-ف-ض. To bring down, to abase. The concrete field of the root is wide:

• خَفَضَ جَنَاحَهُ — he lowered his wing; that is, he behaved humbly. The Qurʾān uses this idiom: "Lower to them the wing of mercy" (al-Isrāʾ 17/24).
• خَفْض — as a grammatical term, the genitive: the "lowering" of a word's ending to kasra.
• خَفْضُ ٱلصَّوْت — to lower the voice.
• عَيْشٌ خَافِض — an easy, soft manner of living. (An interesting branch of the root: lowering has also been thought of as the slackening of tension.)

رَافِعَة — root: ر-ف-ع. To lift up, to raise. This root will occur once more in this sūra: wa furushin marfūʿa (34). In the section on al-Ghāshiya the root's two layers — physical height and standing — were treated; I do not repeat it.

Metre: both are active participles, feminine, on the fāʿila pattern — that is, the same metre as wāqiʿa in the first verse. Four words in three verses from the same pattern: wāqiʿa, kādhiba, khāfiḍa, rāfiʿa. The sūra builds its own opening upon a single metre.

Khāfiḍatun rāfiʿa — there is no and between them.

When two attributes come one after the other in Arabic without a conjunction, both are taken as belonging to the same noun, and they are understood to occur at the same time. Had a conjunction been placed there ("abasing and exalting"), they might have been read as two separate operations. Coming without one, they become the two faces of a single movement.

And this fits the sense of the words exactly. Think of a balance: as one pan goes down the other goes up. It is not two movements but one. By setting the two words side by side without a conjunction, the verse says this by grammar.

I record this as my own reading; the absence of the conjunction is, for its part, a datum of the text.

The verse gives no object. Three fillings are proposed in the classical sources:

The first reading accords best with what follows in the sūra, and its ground is in the text: two verses later people will be divided into three groups, and one of the groups will be drawn upward ("those who go ahead, those brought near") and another downward. The third verse is the herald of the seventh.

I state my preference; it is not binding. The second reading is not contrary to the text either and agrees with the scene of verses 4-6; the three do not exclude one another.

A reading is transmitted in which the words khāfiḍatun rāfiʿa are read in the accusative (khāfiḍatan rāfiʿatan); on that reading they become circumstantial qualifiers and the sense turns to "abasing and exalting". I do not give which reading belongs to which authority, because I do not know it with certainty. I record that no essential difference of sense arises: on the nominative reading the two words are predicates, on the accusative they are circumstantial qualifiers; in either case what is described is the same event.

The third verse is the core of the whole social criticism of the sūra, and even read on its own it says something.

Every society produces a ranking. The measure of the ranking changes — wealth, descent, power, knowledge, visibility — but the ranking itself is always there, and to those who live inside it it looks natural. That a person, when thinking of his place in society, perceives it not as a choice but as a fact is the consequence of this.

What the third verse does is not to destroy that ranking: it is to say that it is temporary. Khāfiḍa rāfiʿa is not the name of a chaos but the name of a re-ranking. What comes in place of the order is not disorder but another order.

And the practical consequence of this is: the position you hold today is the result of a ranking whose measure may change. This does not make the position worthless — but it makes it impossible to count it final.

The balance struck in the section on al-Fajr must be kept here as well: abundance is not a crime, height is not a crime. What is rejected is the counting of the present ranking as the last word.

Idhā rujjati'l-arḍu rajjā · Wa bussati'l-jibālu bassā · Fa-kānat habāʾan munbaththā "When the earth is shaken with a shaking, and the mountains are crumbled to a crumbling — and become scattered dust…"

Three verses, three stages: shaking → crumbling → dispersal. And all three move in the same direction: from the whole to the piece, from the piece to dust.

Rujjat and bussat — both passive. Who shakes, who crumbles: not stated.

This is a settled choice in the Qurʾān's descriptions of the resurrection and was treated in detail in the section on al-Takwīr (kuwwirat, inkadarat, suyyirat, sujjirat — all passive). The measure recorded there holds here too; I do not repeat it.

What is proper to this place is that both verbs take an absolute object. Rujjat rajjā, bussat bassā. The verb is reinforced, that is, by its own verbal noun.

In Arabic the absolute object can do three things: emphasis (taʾkīd), specification of kind (stating the sort of the act), specification of number (how many times). Here, since it comes indefinite and takes no attribute, the emphatic reading comes forward: "when it is shaken and shaken again".

And its coming in two verses one after the other sets up a rhythm: rajjā… bassā. Two long -ās, two doubled verbs, two absolute objects. The ear hears two blows in succession.

Root: ر-ج-ج. To shake violently, to move back and forth, to agitate.

• رَجْرَجَة (rajraja) — agitation, trembling. The reduplicated form of the word (rajraj) describes the shaking of water or of the ground.
• ٱرْتَجَّ (irtajja) — it was agitated; and figuratively: irtajja ʿalayhi'l-kalām — his speech became confused, his tongue tangled. It is used of mental agitation too.
• رَجَاج — one who is weak, without strength; some lexicographers attach this to the sense "tremulous".

The Qurʾān uses this root only here. For the shaking of the earth other roots occur elsewhere:

Four verbs, four separate movements. The difference between them should not be overstated — they all describe the same event, and in Arabic the semantic fields of these words run into one another. But it is also plain that the choices are not arbitrary: each sūra has chosen the verb that suits its own scene.

The verb al-Wāqiʿa chooses is agitation, and this accords with the two following verses: a thing that is agitated separates what is inside it. The earth is agitated, the mountains crumble, the dust separates out.

I record this as my own reading.

Root: ب-س-س. And the lexicographers differ over the sense of this root:

The first sense follows necessarily from the context, because the next verse gives the result: dust. For a thing to become dust it must be crumbled, not driven.

The majority of the classical exegetes prefer the first sense. Those who maintain the second mean the mountains being driven from their places, and this too is an image that occurs in the Qurʾān (wa suyyirati'l-jibāl, al-Nabaʾ 78/20). But in that case it becomes hard to connect with the "dust" of verse 6.

I state my preference — the first sense; it is not binding.

In the section on al-Humaza the root ح-ط-م was treated in detail, and the core recorded there was this: to break, to shatter, to crumble — to break something hard and whole into debris. As a name of the Fire, Ḥuṭama had been chosen as the counterpart of that man's act of "gathering": the place the gatherer comes to is the place that scatters.

Now let us set the two roots side by side — and let me first draw a boundary: ب-س-س and ح-ط-م are separate roots. I establish no derivational link between them. The comparison I make is at the level of sense.

And the real link is not here. The real link is in the sixty-fifth verse of this sūra:

"Had We willed, We would have made it chaff." (56/65) — law nashāʾu la-jaʿalnāhu ḥuṭāmā.

The root ح-ط-م is already present in this sūra, that is, and it is exactly the same root as in al-Humaza. This verse was already mentioned in the section on al-Humaza.

A pairing thus arises within the sūra:

• Verse 5: the mountains are bassed — in a scene of the resurrection.
• Verse 65: the crop becomes ḥuṭām — in a sentence of proof, with the qualifier "had We willed".

Both are "crumbling". Their difference is this: the first will happen, the second could happen but does not.

I record this as my own reading and add the following: the sūra uses the same idea twice — once as a description of the resurrection, once as a possibility that does not operate in everyday life. The crumbling at the resurrection, that is, is the generalised form of a possibility that does not come about in the field each year.

هَبَاء — root: ه-ب-و. Habāʾ is the fine dust suspended in the air; especially the motes seen in a beam of sunlight coming through a window.

This description is the common description of the classical lexicons, and it was already mentioned in the section on al-Zalzala when the word dharra was treated: one of the explanations given there for "mote" was "the dust seen in sunlight", and it was recorded that the Qurʾān calls that thing habāʾ.

The particular feature of the word is this: habāʾ can be seen only if there is light. In the dark the room may be full of dust and it is not seen. It appears when a beam of light comes in.

This is a linguistic datum. The reading I build upon it is mine and is not binding: the mountains turn into something so small that it can be noticed only under a particular light. The choice of word does not merely say "dust"; it says a dust that has come down to the threshold of visibility.

The Qurʾān uses this word once more:

"And We shall turn to whatever work they did and make it scattered dust." (al-Furqān 25/23) — fa-jaʿalnāhu habāʾan manthūrā.

The two verses must be set side by side, because the same word is used of two different objects:

A note: munbathth and manthūr are separate roots; both mean "scattered" but they are not the same word. The same note was entered for the same distinction in the section on al-Insān and is preserved here. I establish no derivational link between them.

The link I make is at the level of sense: the Qurʾān describes the heaviest thing (a mountain) and the least visible thing (the work a person does) with the same word. Both become dust.

Root: ب-ث-ث. To spread, to scatter, to disperse. In the section on al-Qāriʿa the root's occurrences in the Qurʾān were listed, and the conclusion recorded there was this: "the word is not negative in itself; it conveys scatteredness. Whether the scatteredness is good or bad depends on what is scattered."

Now we can complete that finding — because the root's third pattern is here.

And the difference is in the grammar, and it is a meaningful difference.

Mabthūth and mabthūtha are passive participles: passive. There is one who scatters, and they are what is scattered. This was particularly stressed in the section on al-Qāriʿa: "not what disperses but what is dispersed."

Munbathth, however, is an active participle of Form VII. In Arabic this form conveys muṭāwaʿa — that is, the resulting state of an act: you break a thing (kasartuhu), and it breaks (fa'nkasara). There is an agent but he is not seen; what is seen is the outcome the act has left in the body.

The verse does this, then: the mountains were crumbled (bussat — passive, there is an agent), and as a result they became scattering dust (munbathth — muṭāwaʿa).

The فَ at the head of the clause confirms this too: fa-kānat — "and so it became". Cause and effect.

A grammatical chain is thus set up between the two verses: a passive verb → a muṭāwaʿa. The act done, and the state the act leaves behind.

I record this as my own reading; the grammatical value of the patterns is, for its part, a linguistic datum.

In the section on al-Ḥāqqa this was recorded: in the Qurʾān's scenes of the resurrection the mountains generally undergo their change in place. And in the section on al-Muzzammil a table was given. Rather than repeat both, I state al-Wāqiʿa's place in that table:

Al-Wāqiʿa's description is the most extreme in the table. Being set moving (al-Ṭūr 52/10), being scattered (Ṭāhā 20/105), becoming carded wool (al-Qāriʿa 101/5), becoming a heap of running sand (al-Muzzammil 73/14) — in all of these the mountain is still a thing. In al-Wāqiʿa it comes down to the threshold of visibility: dust that can be made out in the light.

And this serves the sūra's purpose. As was recorded in the section on al-Qāriʿa, the lightening of the mountains there was preparing a balance. Here the mountains' being reduced to next to nothing prepares a classification: one verse later people will be divided into three groups.

In both sūras, that is, the mountains do the same work: changing what is to be measured. When the heaviest body in the world is removed, there remains something else whose weight is to be measured.

I record this as my own reading.

Wa kuntum azwājan thalātha "And when you become three classes."

The sūra's main sentence. The six verses up to here were the temporal frame of this clause.

Root: ز-و-ج. Zawj — one that is paired, that has a fellow; and on its own it is used in the sense of "spouse".

The fine point of the word in Arabic is this, and it is often confused: zawj means each single member of a pair, not the pair itself. One shoe of a pair is a zawj, a man who has a wife is a zawj, a woman who has a husband is a zawj. The English word "pair" indicates both together; the Arabic zawj indicates one of them.

From here the word widens to the sense "kind, sort, class": a thing's being together with its like makes it a class.

This verse was already mentioned in the section on al-Takwīr. There four views were tabulated for the word zuwwijat (81/7) and the first ("like was brought together with like") was preferred; one of the grounds was precisely this verse: azwājan thalātha — three groups, three "pairs". The preference made there is not repeated here, only recorded.

What is proper to this place is this: why is the word not aṣnāf or firaq but azwāj?

I propose a reading and state that it is my own. The word azwāj defines the group by the likeness within it: the members of a class are one another's fellows. Firqa, by contrast, brings division forward, and ṣinf brings ranking forward.

And this fits what the sūra is doing. The sūra does not divide people from outside; it says that each has come together with its own like. The separation is made not by a hand from outside but by likeness itself.

Al-Takwīr 81/7 supports this reading; but I present it as a reading, not as a claim.

Kuntum — "you became". Again the perfect, again for a future event. This usage was treated at the first verse; I do not repeat it.

But there is something more here: the address is in the second person plural. The scene, recounted in the third person up to this point, turns to "you" at the very moment of the division.

This is the iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address) treated in the sections on al-Humaza, al-Muṭaffifīn and al-Insān. Its function here is plain: the reader, who has been standing outside the scene as a spectator, is placed among those being divided in the sentence of division.

And note: which group he belongs to is not said. "You become three classes" — which of the three you are is not stated. The rest of the sūra sets the three tables before you separately and does not make the choice.

The measure recorded in the section on al-Māʿūn holds here too: "The sūra is an instrument of diagnosis, and a diagnosis is made first upon oneself."

The Qurʾān mostly divides people into two: faith/denial, abrār/fujjār, aṣḥābu'l-yamīn/aṣḥābu'sh-shimāl, the one given from the right/the one given from the left.

In the section on al-Muddaththir a finding from al-Inshiqāq was relayed: it was stated that the right/left distinction is "absolute and leaves no third category".

Al-Wāqiʿa shows the limit of that finding, and this must be recorded explicitly, since otherwise the two sections would appear to contradict one another.

There is no contradiction, and the reason is this: al-Wāqiʿa does not break the twofold distinction either. The third group is not a middle way set over against the second group (the left); it is an upper slice drawn out of the first group.

The text itself shows this:

• The eighth and ninth verses set up the pair: right and left.
• The tenth verse opens no new side; it names those who go ahead of the right side.
• After the forty-first verse there is no third table of punishment — on the side of the Fire there is a single group.

The division, that is, is this: the side of salvation is divided in two, the side of punishment is not.

And this is the same asymmetry as was identified in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn. This was recorded there: "there is extra detail on the side of good, none on the side of evil" — and it was stated that a difference of degree is established between the abrār and the muqarrabūn, while the fujjār remain a single group. There, moreover, al-Wāqiʿa was pointed to directly for that finding.

Now that pointing finds its answer and is completed in both directions:

The same name, in two sūras, at the same work. Independently of one another the two sūras set up two ranks on the side of the good and give the upper rank the same name.

This is a verifiable textual datum. I establish no relation of arrangement or of revelation between the two sūras.

Fa-aṣḥābu'l-maymanati mā aṣḥābu'l-maymana · Wa aṣḥābu'l-mashʾamati mā aṣḥābu'l-mashʾama "The men of the right — what are the men of the right! And the men of ill omen — what are the men of ill omen!"

ٱلْمَيْمَنَة (root ي-م-ن) and ٱلْمَشْـَٔمَة (root ش-ء-م) were dealt with in detail in the section on al-Balad 90/18-19. I do not repeat the analysis there. In summary, what was recorded there is this, and it is taken as the ground here:

• Both words are on the mafʿala metre: "the place where the right / good fortune lies", "the place where the left / ill fortune lies".
• In both words two senses work together: direction (right/left) and fortune (blessing/ill omen). No single English word covers both.
• The association of the names Yemen and Syria with these two directions is an explanation relayed by the lexicographers; no judgement was issued on its historical certainty in the section on al-Balad, and none is issued here.
• The pattern aṣḥāb was treated in the section on al-Fīl: "The Qurʾān names communities by attaching them to the single thing that defines them."
• A boundary was moreover drawn in the section on al-Balad: this distinction is a symbolism of direction; no ruling about the physical right or left hand can be drawn from it. That boundary holds here too.

The section on al-Balad had already mentioned these two verses in parallel. From here on I pass to what that section did not give.

Mā aṣḥābu'l-maymana — "what are the men of the right!"

This question is not a question for information. The name given for this usage in the section on al-Qāriʿa was: istifhām al-taʿẓīm or tafkhīm — the question is asked not to seek an answer but to show the greatness of what is asked about. The nearest in English is an exclamation of the sort "What a thing that is!"

And one further thing was recorded there: repeating the noun where a pronoun would have served conveys tafkhīm and tahwīl. It could have said "what are they?"; it does not, and the whole noun is repeated.

Al-Wāqiʿa uses this technique four times through the sūra:

Four times: two in the opening, two as the headings of tables.

And here there is something to notice.

In al-Qāriʿa and al-Ḥāqqa this pattern conveyed terror; what was asked about was the resurrection itself. Here the same pattern is used for both the good and the bad.

The pattern in itself, that is, carries no verdict. "What are the men of the right!" is an expression of admiration, "what are the men of ill omen!" one of horror — but both are built with the same three words.

This is another instance of the principle recorded in the section on al-Inshiqāq for the root ش-ق-ق and in the section on al-Qāriʿa for the root ب-ث-ث: form alone carries no verdict; what determines the verdict is what the form takes as its subject.

English has the same thing: the sentence "What a man!" is in itself neither praise nor blame. Context decides.

The grammarians' analysis is this:

• أَصْحَٰبُ ٱلْمَيْمَنَةِ — the subject.
• مَآ أَصْحَٰبُ ٱلْمَيْمَنَةِ — the predicate. Within it mā is subject and aṣḥābu'l-maymana predicate; this interrogative clause as a whole becomes the predicate of the first noun.

This is exactly the structure of al-Qāriʿa 101/1-2 and was tabulated there. The difference is that in al-Qāriʿa the structure covers three verses, while here it is completed in a single verse.

The eighth verse begins with فَ, the ninth with وَ.

In Arabic fāʾ conveys tafṣīl (a passing to particulars): it is used when the parts are enumerated after a whole has been stated. The seventh verse had said "three classes"; the eighth verse opens the counting of those three with fāʾ.

Wāw, on the other hand, is mere conjunction: an addition to the list.

And the tenth verse comes with wāw as well: wa'l-sābiqūna'l-sābiqūn. The three groups are thus ranged as grammatical equals: one opens, two are added.

This confirms something: the third group is not an exception cast outside the first two; it is the third item of the same list.

The double sense the two words carry — direction and fortune — is alive today too, and this side of language is used without being noticed.

In English: "a right-hand man", "a left-handed compliment", "gauche"; and from Latin, sinister (left → ill-omened), dexterity (right → skill). This tendency of language is nearly universal and is probably connected with most people being right-handed — this is an explanation recorded by historians of language, and it is plausible.

What the verse does is to take this ready-made association and change what is inside it. As was recorded in the section on al-Balad: the Qurʾān uses the settled association but loads it with a verdict.

And this is a general technique of the text: instead of demolishing a ready-made pattern, it takes the pattern and changes its measure. The right side is good fortune — but the measure of that fortune is no longer descent, wealth or luck.

Wa'l-sābiqūna'l-sābiqūn · Ulāʾika'l-muqarrabūn · Fī jannāti'n-naʿīm "And those who go ahead, those who go ahead! They are the ones brought near. In the gardens of bliss."

The third group. And note: no mā question is asked for this group.

The first two groups were named with "what are they!" and left unanswered — their answers were deferred to the tables of verses 27 and 41. The third group comes with no question at all, straight to the answer: ulāʾika'l-muqarrabūn.

Two of the three, that is, are named with a question and one with a definition.

I interpret this as my own reading: the sūra defers the two groups it asks about and does not defer the third. And this fits the order of the tables — because this is the group whose description begins at verse 12. No question was asked, because the answer comes at once.

Root: س-ب-ق. This root was treated in the section on al-Baqara 2/148, and the core recorded there was this:

"فَٱسْتَبِقُوا۟ ٱلْخَيْرَٰتِ — root س-ب-ق: to get ahead in a race. It is the word used of horse-racing; sābiq (the one in front) and musābaqa are from the same root."

And a table was given there: takāthur (the race that is censured), tanāfus (the race that is commanded), istibāq (the race that is commanded). The conclusion there was this, and it is taken as the ground here:

"The Qurʾān does not forbid racing; it changes what the race is about. The desire in man to get ahead is treated not as a defect to be torn out but as an energy whose direction is to be set."

And the measure added there will work here too: good is not a divisible thing; one person's doing much good does not lessen another's share, and therefore this race produces no conflict.

Now we come to what al-Baqara did not give.

In al-Baqara istibāq was a command: "race". Here the same root has become a noun: al-sābiqūn — "those who go ahead". The result of the commanded act, that is, has become the name of a group.

This is a striking transformation:

The last row matters. In al-Baqara what the race was about was stated: good works. In al-Wāqiʿa the object is not stated — it says only "those who go ahead".

The dropping of the object conveys generalisation in Arabic. This has been recorded several times already in this commentary (yurāʾūn at al-Māʿūn 107/6, jamaʿa at al-Maʿārij 70/18). Its effect here is this: what the going-ahead is about is not specified, because al-Baqara has already specified it. The word is now an attribute in its own right.

I record this as my own reading; the difference of pattern between the two verses is, for its part, a datum of the text.

In the section on al-Nāziʿāt the root was already listed and this verse was mentioned there; it was moreover recorded that the word sābiq is used within the classification at Fāṭir 35/32. I do not repeat it.

One of the most discussed repetitions in the Qurʾān. There are three solutions:

The logic of the first solution is this: in Arabic, repeating a word as the predicate of itself conveys either the impossibility of defining the thing or its being well known. English has its like: "Business is business." That is, "the only equivalent of this word is itself".

The second solution is the most widespread in the classical sources, and its ground is in the text: the next verse begins with ulāʾika, which in Arabic is a settled sign that the predicate has come. The same structure was present in the eighth and ninth verses (subject + a predicate clause).

I state my preference — the second solution; it is not binding. My ground is that verse 11 begins with ulāʾika and that the sūra uses this structure (a noun + ulāʾika) in a pattern seen at al-Balad 90/18 as well.

But the first solution should not be dropped altogether either, because it adds something to the sense: the repetition implies that going ahead has a single criterion. The sūra does not say "those who do good works" or "those who worship much"; it says only "those who are in front". The criterion is not stated.

There is one thing more, and it is in the text itself.

The verse consists of two words and the two are the same. Up to this point the sūra has consistently framed two-winged clauses: khāfiḍa rāfiʿa; rujjat rajjā; bussat bassā; aṣḥābu'l-maymana mā aṣḥābu'l-maymana.

The saying of the word twice, that is, fits the sūra's general rhythm. From the beginning the sūra works by doubling its words.

I record this as an observation, not as a proof.

Root: ق-ر-ب. To be near. From the same root: qurb (nearness), qarīb (near), aqribāʾ (relatives), qurbān (what brings near, an offering), taqrīb (a bringing near).

Pattern: a passive participle of Form II. Muqarrab — "brought near". Passive.

And this is the point not to be missed. The word is not "those who draw near" (al-mutaqarribūn or al-qāribūn) but "those who are brought near".

There is a change of subject, that is, between the tenth verse and the eleventh:

The act is theirs, the outcome is not. The running is man's, the being brought near is God's.

This is the same structure as was recorded for muṭahhara in the sections on al-Bayyina and ʿAbasa, and the measure recorded there applies here exactly: "The pages do not earn their own worth… All three operations are done from outside." So here too: the person races, and the bringing near comes from outside.

And the intensive value of Form II is at work as well: taqrīb is not a single act but a full and comprehensive bringing near.

This word was treated twice in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn (83/21 and 83/28), and two things were recorded there:

1. The muqarrabūn bear witness to the book of the abrār (83/21) — that is, they are separate from them and in a position above them. 2. The muqarrabūn drink of tasnīm itself; the abrār drink of it mixed into raḥīq (83/27-28). "The same water reaches two groups in two different ways: to the one as a mixture, to the other pure."

And in the section on al-Insān a third link was made:

The first three words of al-Insān 76/6 are identical with al-Muṭaffifīn 83/28 — عَيْنًا يَشْرَبُ بِهَا — only the subject changes:

Now the third sūra is in our hands and the link is completed.

Three sūras name the same group, and each looks at it from a different side:

And what al-Wāqiʿa adds is the one thing absent from the other two sūras: how these people came to that position.

Al-Muṭaffifīn described them by where they stand. Al-Insān described them by whose they are. Al-Wāqiʿa describes them by what they did: they went ahead.

Three sūras, that is, answer three questions: where are they, whose are they, what did they do.

I record this link as a verifiable datum of wording: in three sūras muqarrabūn / ʿibādu'llāh point to the same group, and in two of them the wordings coincide exactly. The division into three questions is my own reading.

In descriptions of the Garden the expected words would be reward, station, degree. The sūra chooses the word of distance.

And this fits what was set up at the sūra's beginning: the third verse said khāfiḍa rāfiʿa — abasing, exalting. From the start, that is, the sūra sets up a vertical axis. Muqarrab is the name of the place reached on that axis.

And there is this too: nearness is not a countable reward. A garden has a measure, a recompense has an amount; nearness has no amount. In describing the highest group the sūra chooses the one thing that cannot be measured.

I record this as my own reading.

The root جَنَّة was treated in the section on al-Baqara 2/25: ج-ن-ن, to cover, to conceal. The conclusion recorded there is this, and it is taken as the ground here: "the word janna carries both the sense 'a garden that covers with its greenery' and the sense 'what is hidden from sight'. What is promised is, by definition, what cannot now be seen."

It comes in the plural: jannāt. The Qurʾān uses "garden" in both the singular and the plural. One reading of the plural is a multiplicity of ranks; another is that what belongs to each person is counted separately. I make no firm preference, because the text does not explain.

ٱلنَّعِيم — root: ن-ع-م. This root was tabulated with its vowellings in the section on al-Muzzammil 73/11 (niʿma / naʿma / nuʿmā), and the main matter there was the sense of naʿma as "a state of affluence".

The word here is different: نَعِيم (naʿīm), on the faʿīl metre — abundance, a state of unbroken favour.

And the construction is not adjectival but a genitive construct: jannātu'n-naʿīm — "the gardens of bliss". The gardens are not qualified by an attribute, that is; they are made to belong to something. The gardens belong to bliss.

And this construction returns at the end of the sūra: wa jannātu naʿīm (89) — there indefinite. One of the rings within the sūra.

One further note: Sūrat al-Takāthur, a sūra of eight verses, chose ٱلنَّعِيم as its last word — and there favour was the thing for which an account will be demanded. Here the same word is the thing given.

The same word, two sides in two sūras: what is asked about and what is given. I record this as an observation about wording.

Thullatun mina'l-awwalīn · Wa qalīlun mina'l-ākhirīn "A throng of the earlier ones, and few of the later ones."

The word occurs in the Qurʾān only in this sūra — three times (13, 39, 40).

Its sense: the equivalent the lexicographers commonly give is a company, a body, a numerous group. How large a number the word conveys is disputed: some lexicographers say "a very great crowd", others "an indefinite group".

The lexicographers differ about its root, and I relay that difference as it stands:

I issue no settled etymological judgement. Both approaches are found in the lexicons. What is certain is that the word conveys a body of people; the verse already makes this plain by setting it in contrast with qalīl in verse 14.

Root: ق-ل-ل. Fewness. In the section on al-Muzzammil the three uses of this word within that sūra were tabulated; I do not repeat the analysis there.

The contrast in the word order is plain: thulla / qalīl. The one is multitude, the other fewness. And both come indefinite — no number is given, no ratio.

This is one of the most disputed places in the sūra, and the dispute will sharpen two verses later (39-40).

The first view is the most widespread, and its ground is this: in verses 49-50 the sūra will use the same two words — "Say: the earlier ones and the later ones will all be gathered to the appointment of a known day" — and there the sense is plainly all humankind. The same pair, in the same sense, within the same sūra.

This is an indication from within the sūra, and it is strong. The forty-ninth verse explains 13-14.

The second view is maintained in the classical sources too, and its ground is that being "few" would be a heavy verdict for the last community. This is a ground of sense, not a ground of wording.

I state my preference — the first view, on the strength of the indication within the sūra; it is not binding.

Now we come to the sūra's most striking asymmetry. Let us set the verses side by side:

The two pairs of verses are almost identical and differ in a single word. For the first group the later ones are qalīl, for the second thulla.

The sūra says this, that is:

• Most of those who go ahead are of the earlier ones; few of the later ones enter this group.
• The men of the right, on the other hand, are numerous from both sides.

This asymmetry is the sūra's own datum and is a datum that calls for explanation. The explanations that stand out in the classical sources are these:

And there is an explanation that follows from the text, which I offer as my own reading:

Notice — the only group that diminishes is the group whose measure is "going ahead." For the men of the right the ratio does not change.

Going ahead is by definition a relative business: you are ahead of someone. To be a man of the right is not relative; it is the crossing of a threshold. On a measure that is relative, the possibility of a latecomer's being in front narrows structurally — because the front has already been taken.

This is a reading, not the claim of the text, and I must add this too: the verse gives no reason. It only sets down two ratios.

In the classical exegeses a report is transmitted to this effect: when verses 13-14 came down they weighed heavily on the Muslims, and then verses 39-40 came down and relieved them.

I issue no judgement about the chain of this report and I do not give its source, because I do not know it with certainty. What I record is that the report is widely mentioned in the literature of exegesis in connection with these two pairs of verses.

And this must be stated: whether the report is sound or not, the order of the two pairs of verses in the text does the same work. First a narrow door is shown, then a wide one. The sūra dispels the distress within itself.

In the section on al-Qiyāma this note was entered: when the Qurʾān classifies people it generally states no ratio — it says "certain faces", and gives no number.

Al-Wāqiʿa is the exception to that general practice, and this must be written plainly. Here the language of ratio is used: thulla and qalīl.

But the exception has its limits too:

1. What is given is not a number but two indefinite quantities: "a throng" and "few". 2. There is no percentage, no fraction, no absolute figure. 3. The two quantities take their meaning relative to one another; on their own they say nothing.

Al-Wāqiʿa does not give a ratio, that is; it makes a comparison. This does not conflict with the practice recorded in al-Qiyāma: the Qurʾān still does not say how many there are.

And this distinction has a practical consequence: no reckoning such as "the percentage of the saved" can be built on these verses. The prohibition on number-reckoning has held in this commentary from the beginning and holds here too.

These two pairs of verses touch one of the most exploited areas of religious texts: the question of who will be saved.

The verses do two things, and both are striking:

One. They give a ratio but no identity. They say "few", but they do not say "these are the few". A person reading this verse does not learn which side he himself is on.

Two. By giving two different ratios they limit the fear of being "the few". Had the sūra given only 13-14, the picture would have been one-sided. Verses 39 and 40 widen that picture: the narrow door is the door of the highest group; it is not the door of salvation.

Missing this distinction leads to an error that is seen today as well: taking the conditions of the highest rank for the conditions of salvation. By counting the two groups separately the sūra prevents this.

ʿAlā sururin mawḍūna · Muttakiʾīna ʿalayhā mutaqābilīn "Upon couches interwoven; reclining upon them, face to face."

The first item in the table of the sābiqūn. And the table begins with a seating arrangement — not with food, not with drink.

Its singular is سَرِير. Root: س-ر-ر. This root was treated in the section on al-Inshiqāq, and what was recorded there was: surūr (joy, an inward ease), sirr (what is hidden), sarīr (a couch, a throne). And the explanation relayed by the lexicographers: surūr is the heart's secretly expanding within itself; joy, that is, is akin to the "hiddenness" branch of the root.

This verse was already mentioned there (al-Wāqiʿa 56/15, al-Ghāshiya 88/13). I do not repeat it.

What is to be added here: sarīr in Arabic is not merely a place to sit; it is used for a ruler's throne as well. The word carries both "divan" and "throne", and the Qurʾān does not separate the two.

Root: و-ض-ن. And the concrete sense of the root is decisive: to weave tightly, to interlock, to work ring into ring.

• وَضِين (waḍīn) — the girth of plaited leather that fastens a camel's saddle. This is the most concrete use of the root.
• وَضَنَ — he wove by laying one over another, interlocking them.

The lexicographers record that the word is used especially of the weaving of mail: a fabric made by fitting rings into one another.

The word occurs in the Qurʾān only here.

Woven with what? The verse does not say. In the classical exegeses it is transmitted that they are woven with gold and jewels. I mention this detail as a transmitted report; it has no support in the text and I do not present it as certain.

What is certain is what the word conveys: these couches are not of one piece but woven. Not cast from a mould, that is, but made by interlocking.

As a reading I record this, and state that it is not binding: a weave is made strong by the parts fitting into one another — a single ring is weak, rings fitted into one another become mail. And the next verse describes a togetherness too: mutaqābilīn, face to face. But to make such a link between the two verses is my own interpretation; it is not the claim of the text.

Root: و-ك-أ. To lean on something, to recline. Ittikāʾ — to lean. Muttakaʾ — a place to lean, a divan.

Pattern: Form VIII, a plural active participle. And it comes in the accusative: it is a circumstantial qualifier. "In the state of reclining."

The meaning of reclining in Arab culture matters and has been lost today. To sit reclining is the posture of one who is not in haste, is not under threat, has no need to rise. The one standing is ready; the one sitting waits; the one reclining has settled.

The Qurʾān uses this verb often in its descriptions of the Garden, and the same word occurs at al-Insān 76/13 (it was mentioned in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn).

Root: ق-ب-ل. The front, what is opposite. From the same root: qibla (the direction faced), qabūl (to receive), muqābala (a comparison), istiqbāl (a receiving; and "the future" — the time that lies ahead).

Pattern: تَفَاعُل (Form VI) — the form conveying reciprocity. In the section on al-Muṭaffifīn the value of this pattern was treated for yataghāmazūn: the verb requires at least two people.

And here the pattern turns into an arrangement of space: faces turned towards one another.

To see what this word says one must think of its opposite. In every order in which a throne matters, seating is ranked: the highest at the head, the others behind or beside him. In ranked seating some people are behind others, and the one behind does not see the face of the one in front.

Mutaqābilīn removes that order: no one is behind anyone.

And this joins with the subject of the next block. In the twenty-fifth verse it will be said that these people hear from one another no idle talk and no wounding word. First the sūra sets the seating right, that is, and then the speaking.

I record this as my own reading; that the pattern conveys reciprocity is, for its part, a linguistic datum.

A note: when these two states (muttakiʾīn and mutaqābilīn) come together, a picture emerges in which ease and being face to face are present at once. In this world the two usually come apart: to be at ease one must be alone, and to be together one must be on guard. The verse joins them. This is a reading.

Yaṭūfu ʿalayhim wildānun mukhalladūn · Bi-akwābin wa abārīqa wa kaʾsin min maʿīn "Immortal youths go round among them with goblets and ewers and a cup from a flowing spring."

Root: ط-و-ف. It was treated in the section on al-Insān: ṭawāf, ṭāʾifa, ṭūfān, ṭāʾif. I do not repeat it.

And there is a difference of word order, visible when compared with Sūrat al-Insān.

In Sūrat al-Insān the verb came first in the passive (yuṭāfu ʿalayhim, 76/15) and four verses later in the active (yaṭūfu ʿalayhim, 76/19); in the section on al-Insān this was recorded as a technique of description: first the look of the scene, then the persons in it.

Al-Wāqiʿa does these two steps in one: the verb comes directly in the active and the subject is given at once. There is no interval.

I record this as an observation. Two sūras build the same scene at two different speeds.

This construction was treated in detail in the section on al-Insān 76/19, and three explanations were tabulated there (made immortal / unchanging in age / wearing earrings). No preference was expressed there, and this was written plainly:

"The text says nothing further about whom this word points to or about the nature of these beings. The Qurʾān gives no detail on this; nor do I."

That note is preserved here exactly. I make no choice, I say nothing about their nature, and I do not relay the details found in the classical sources.

The one thing to be added here is a datum of wording: this construction occurs in two places in the Qurʾān — al-Wāqiʿa 56/17 and al-Insān 76/19 — and in both together with the same verb (ط-و-ف). In the section on al-Muzzammil these two places were already mentioned side by side.

And the contrast made in the section on al-Muzzammil may be recalled here as well: "There the wildān are those who do not grow old. Here the wildān are those who grow old before their time" (the reference is to yawman yajʿalu'l-wildāna shībā at al-Muzzammil 73/17). The same word, two opposite states in two sūras.

The verse names three separate vessels, and all three are for different tasks. This is one of the places where the Qurʾān's fineness in description can be seen.

أَكْوَاب — its singular is كُوب. It was treated in the sections on al-Insān and al-Ghāshiya, and the same description was given in both:

Kūb is a cup with neither handle nor spout. It has no place to be gripped, no mouth to pour from; a round vessel that can be drunk from at any point.

The conclusion added in the section on al-Ghāshiya was this: "the kūb is a vessel made for drinking, not for carrying. A handle serves for carrying."

أَبَارِيق — its singular is إِبْرِيق. The word occurs in the Qurʾān only here.

And it is the exact opposite of the kūb: a vessel with handle and spout. Made, that is, for pouring and carrying.

The lexicographers differ over the word's origin:

Both explanations are found in the classical lexicons. I issue no firm judgement. Those who maintain the second tie the word to an Arabic origin; the first accepts that the word is of foreign origin. Whether there are words of foreign origin in the Qurʾān is a separate and old debate; I do not enter it here.

What is certain is the difference of function: the kūb is for drinking, the ibrīq for filling.

كَأْس — a cup. And there is a detail recorded by the lexicographers which is instructive:

In Arabic, كَأْس is used only when there is drink in it. An empty cup is called qadaḥ, not kaʾs.

The word is not the name of a vessel, that is, but the name of a full vessel. There is no English equivalent.

When the three vessels are set side by side an order of service emerges:

I record this as an observation; the descriptions of the words are the lexicographers' data, the order I set among them is mine.

There are two views about the word's root:

Both are maintained in the classical sources and no practical difference of sense arises: in either case what is meant is flowing water that comes from a source.

In the section on al-Muṭaffifīn the polysemy of the word عَيْن in Arabic (eye, spring, the very substance of a thing, a spy) was recorded, along with their all meeting in the idea of a source. If the second derivation is correct, that note extends to here as well.

And what the word conveys matters: this drink is not stored but flowing.

A drink standing in a vessel runs out. Water coming from a source does not. At al-Ghāshiya 88/12 the same idea was given with another word: fīhā ʿaynun jāriya — "in it is a flowing spring".

And the sūra will say this once more a few verses later: in verse 33 the fruits will be "neither cut off nor forbidden". The shared emphasis of the tables, that is, is unbrokenness.

Lā yuṣaddaʿūna ʿanhā wa lā yunzifūn "They get no headache from it, nor do their wits leave them."

The preceding verse gave the cup; this verse removes the cup's two side-effects. Two negations.

Root: ص-د-ع. And the concrete sense of the root is to split, to crack.

• صَدْع — a crack, a fissure.
• تَصَدَّعَ — it cracked, split, broke apart.
• ٱنصَدَعَ — it was split.
• صُدَاع (ṣudāʿ) — a headache.

And the last derivative is the most instructive side of the root: Arabic names a headache "the splitting of the head".

This is a way of naming found in most languages — the sensation of pain described by a movement. English does the same: we say "my head is splitting". The word is not a medical term, that is, but a description of a sensation.

The Qurʾān uses this root elsewhere in a very different task:

"So proclaim openly what you are commanded." (al-Ḥijr 15/94) — fa'ṣdaʿ bimā tuʾmar.

There the verb means "to split open and bring forth", that is, to stop concealing the word and say it openly. The same root: in one place the splitting of a head, in another the coming out into the open of a word. The shared idea: the splitting of what is closed.

I record this as a linguistic datum; I make no link of meaning between the two verses.

The verb is passive: yuṣaddaʿūn — "they are not given headaches". The drink, that is, does nothing to them. Had it been framed in the active ("their heads do not ache") the ache would have been a state of theirs; framed in the passive, the source of the ache is put out of action.

عَنْهَا — "from it". The pronoun refers to the kaʾs. The cup is thus named explicitly as the cause of the ache, and that cause is annulled.

Root: ن-ز-ف. And its concrete sense is again the movement of a liquid: to draw a well's water out until it is finished.

• نَزَفَ ٱلْبِئْرَ — he drew the well dry.
• نَزِيف (nazīf) — one whose water has been drawn off; and drunk — one whose wits have been drawn out of him.
• نَزْف — loss of blood. (The Turkish medical term nezif, used for haemorrhage, is from this root.)

Arabic names drunkenness "the emptying of the mind", that is — just as it names a headache "the splitting of the head".

When the two words are set side by side a symmetry emerges, and this symmetry is a datum of the text:

Two separate harms, two separate organs, and both named by a movement of liquid or matter.

There is a variant reading in this word, and it changes the sense:

I do not give which reading belongs to which authority, because I do not know it with certainty. But the difference itself is worth recording, because it conveys two separate favours: the one the absence of drunkenness, the other the inexhaustibility of the drink.

And it is striking that the second reading accords with the maʿīn (a flowing spring) of the preceding verse: the source flows, and therefore does not run out.

I express no preference. Both readings are present in the classical sources and both fit the movement of the sūra. That variant readings in the Qurʾān often give both senses at once has been recorded earlier in this commentary.

This verse was already mentioned in the section on al-Nabaʾ. There, while the difference between the drink of the Garden and that of this world was being treated, these two verses were given:

"In it there is no ill effect, nor are they made drunk by it" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/47) "They get no headache from it, nor do their wits leave them" (al-Wāqiʿa 56/19)

And the finding added in the section on al-Nabaʾ was this: immediately after naming the drink, that sūra spoke of the absence of idle talk — that is, it put out of action the drink's worldly consequence (a loosened tongue, foolish speech).

Al-Wāqiʿa does exactly this too, and does it more plainly:

• 18: the cup
• 19: the bodily and mental side-effects are removed
• 25: the verbal side-effect is removed (lā yasmaʿūna fīhā laghwan wa lā taʾthīmā)

The sūra names the drink, that is, and then annuls three separate consequences of it: the head, the mind, the tongue.

I record this as my own reading; the order of the three verses is, for its part, a datum of the text.

This verse is one of the clearest examples of how the descriptions of the Garden are built, and the measure recorded at al-Baqara 2/25 is exactly at work here:

"The telling must be done by way of what the hearer knows — because language can find no material other than human experience. That the descriptions are sensory follows not from what is described being sensory but from there being no other way to tell it."

And this verse is that measure applied within the text.

See how it works: the verse does not say what the drink of the Garden is. It says what the drink of this world is not. The description is not positive but negative.

In the section on al-Insān the same technique was recorded for qawārīra min fiḍḍa ("crystal of silver"): "the text describes something not found in this world by laying the names of two things found in this world one upon the other", and it was stated there that this is one of the internal indications that the descriptions are not to be read literally.

Al-Wāqiʿa 56/19 does the same work from the opposite direction: instead of combining two known things, it subtracts two properties from a known thing.

Both techniques arrive at the same conclusion: what is described is not equal to the material used to describe it.

Wa fākihatin mimmā yatakhayyarūn · Wa laḥmi ṭayrin mimmā yashtahūn "And fruit of what they choose, and the flesh of birds of what they desire."

These two verses resemble one another exactly and part at a single point. Let us set them side by side:

The two verbs do not say the same thing, and the difference lies in the pattern of the words.

يَتَخَيَّرُون — root: خ-ي-ر. Khayr — what is good, what is superior. Ikhtiyār — to choose; and note: in Arabic the root of the verb "to choose" is directly "good". To choose is to pick out what is good.

The pattern is تَفَعُّل (Form V): this form mostly conveys takalluf (doing with effort) or tadrīj (doing step by step). Takhayyur — to take by picking and picking, to sift, to approve after looking over.

The verb describes a work of the mind, that is: one looks, compares, chooses.

يَشْتَهُون — root: ش-ه-و. Shahwa — strong wanting, appetite. The usual English rendering, lust, has narrowed to a single field; in Arabic the word is used of every kind of intense desire: the wanting of food, the wanting of wealth, an attraction felt towards anything at all.

The pattern is ٱفْتِعَال (Form VIII): here it conveys the act's taking place in the person. Ishtihāʾ — to have an appetite for.

This verb describes a work of the body, that is: nothing is chosen, something is wanted.

This is the difference between the two verses and it is no accident:

Why this distinction? I propose a reading and state that it is my own: fruit stands before you in its varieties and you choose among them — the nature of fruit suits choosing. Meat requires preparing; you ask for it on desire, without seeing it.

But there is something more basic too. The two verbs together cover two separate kinds of human wanting: what a person wants after thinking and what he wants without thinking. The sūra answers both.

Root: ف-ك-ه. Fākiha — fruit. And the root's second branch: فُكَاهَة (fukāha) — pleasant conversation, jest, banter. Fākih — jesting, in good spirits.

The link the lexicographers make is this: fruit is eaten not to fill the belly but for enjoyment; and so it is with the sweetness of conversation. The shared idea: what is not necessary but gives pleasure.

I relay this explanation as the lexicographers record it; I do not present it as a settled etymological judgement.

And this distinction matters: in Arabic ṭaʿām (food) conveys necessity, fākiha superfluity. Fruit is not eaten to stay alive.

The root occurs three times in this sūra, and the third is in an entirely different place:

The sixty-fifth verse uses the root in an exactly contrary scene: the words that come out of the mouths of people whose crop has been ruined. That verse will be taken up in detail when it comes.

What is to be recorded for now is this: the sūra uses the root of "fruit" twice in a table of the Garden and once where the field has been ruined. I record this as a verifiable textual datum.

The word occurs in the Qurʾān only here, and in the descriptions of the Garden meat is named only in this sūra. This is an observation.

طَيْر — root: ط-ي-ر. To fly. Ṭāʾir — flying; ṭayr is a collective noun.

Why birds in particular? The text gives no reason. A historical note may be entered, and I give it as background information, not as a claim of the verse: in that region and in that period the flesh of birds was not everyday food but something whose obtaining took labour and means. It is hard to hunt and it is small in quantity.

The three things enumerated, then — interwoven couches, chosen fruit, the flesh of birds — are what was hard to come by in the hearer's world. The description is built from things known but rarely had.

The measure recorded at al-Baqara 2/25 holds here as well: the material is taken from the hearer's experience; that the description is sensory does not show that what is described is sensory.

Wa ḥūrun ʿīn · ka-amthāli'l-luʾluʾi'l-maknūn

"And wide-eyed ḥūr — like hidden pearls."

These two verses are among the most abused places in the Qurʾān's descriptions. They are abused from two directions: on the one hand they are spoken of in a reductive idiom that lowers the seriousness of the text, and on the other, in a defensive reflex, the words are cut loose from their meanings.

The way followed in this commentary is this: the root sense of the words is given, the readings the grammar permits are enumerated, what is widespread in the classical exegeses is relayed, and where there is no certainty nothing is said with certainty. What the verse does not say is not made to be said by it, either in a positive or in a negative direction.

The word is the plural of ḥawrāʾ (feminine) or of aḥwar (masculine). The pattern is open to both genders: in Arabic this plural on the fuʿl pattern is the plural of both the masculine and the feminine singular, as in the example aḥmar/ḥamrāʾ → ḥumr.

The root has three branches in Arabic, and all three should be recorded:

The first branch has already occurred in this commentary. Al-Inshiqāq 84/14: innahu ẓanna an lan yaḥūr — "he supposed that he would never return". The same root.

The second branch has occurred too. In the analysis of al-ḥawāriyyūn at al-Ṣaff 61/14 (al-Ṣaff) the word's relation to whiteness and purity was recorded.

The third branch is the direct subject of this verse. The description the lexicographers give for ḥawar is this: the white and the black of the eye being sharply distinct. The word conveys not a colour, that is, but a contrast.

And it is a word concerning the eye — not the body. This is what the word says on its own, and descriptions going beyond it are not in the wording of the verse.

The plural of ʿaynāʾ (feminine) or of aʿyan (masculine). Sense: wide-eyed.

The root ع-ي-ن is one of the widest roots in Arabic: ʿayn means eye, spring, and also the very substance of a thing (ʿaynu'sh-shayʾ). What joins the three senses, according to the lexicographers, is the idea of a source: the eye is where seeing comes out, the spring where water comes out, and ʿayn where the thing itself comes out.

Together the two words describe a single thing: the eye. Not stature, not figure, not anything else. The one organ the verse describes is the eye, and this is a boundary that must be recorded.

A reading of this can be made, and I state that it is my own: the eye is the part of the body concerned with looking. To describe a being by its eye is to name it not as an object but as one who looks.

There is a variant reading in this verse that changes the sense, and per the method (Method) it must be recorded. Two readings are transmitted:

The sense arising from the second reading has been dwelt upon: the objects of the verb yaṭūfu ʿalayhim were the goblets, the ewers and the cup; if the apposition is made, the ḥūr too become part of that series.

It is widely transmitted that the classical exegeses prefer the first reading, the ground given being that to be the object of a verb of carrying round does not suit these beings. I relay this preference; I issue no binding judgement of my own.

I ascribe nothing by name to any authority of the variant readings. I content myself with recording that the two readings are transmitted and what the difference of sense is.

The particle of comparison is doubled: ka (like) + amthāl (the likes of). "Like the likes of a hidden pearl." In Arabic this doubling does not weaken the comparison; it marks the distance between the terms — it does not say "like a pearl" outright, it says "like the likes of a pearl".

The root ك-ن-ن. The concrete sense: to cover, to conceal, to put inside a container. Kinān — a case; maknūn — kept within its case.

And here is one of the clearest rings in the sūra:

The same attribute, twice in the same sūra. In the seventy-eighth verse it will be used of the place where the Qurʾān is. This is a verifiable repetition within the sūra.

What is the attribute's function? The lexicographers record that a maknūn pearl is one never taken out of its shell. Untouched, that is, unexposed to air, its colour unspoiled.

This may be the real idea the comparison carries, and I give it as my own reading: the comparison is not about brightness but about untouchedness. The worth comes not from the appearance but from having been kept.

And this accords with the preceding section: mukhalladūn (made lasting) in verse 17 was likewise a word of not-spoiling. What is repeated throughout the section is not changing.

The limits of these two verses must be written plainly:

• The verse does not say who these beings are. The dominant reading in the classical exegeses is that they are the spouses of the people of the Garden; this reading is supported by other verses of the sūra (especially 56/35-37) and by the Qurʾān's other descriptions of the Garden. I relay this reading.
• The verse gives no number. The figures transmitted on this matter are not found in the Qurʾān; no number will be mentioned in this commentary.
• The verse specifies no gender. The pattern of the words is, as recorded above, open to both genders. The dominant reading of the classical exegeses is in the feminine direction. I record the openness of the pattern as a linguistic datum and the preference of the exegetes as a transmitted report, separately.
• The verse does not say what kind of reality this description is. The measure recorded in the section on al-Baqara 2/25 holds here too and has been repeated several times in this sūra: the material is taken from the hearer's experience; that the description is sensory does not show that what is described is sensory.

Jazāʾan bimā kānū yaʿmalūn

"As a recompense for what they used to do."

Everything set out from the twelfth verse to here — the gardens, the couches, the vessels, the fruit, the flesh of birds, the wide-eyed ḥūr — is bound by a single word: jazāʾan.

Word order: jazāʾan is in the accusative, and the grammarians generally count it either a causal complement (mafʿūl lahu) or the absolute object of an omitted verb. Both parsings give the same result: it states why what has been enumerated is given.

And its place is meaningful: at the end of the table. First the scene is built, then its ground is stated. The reverse order was possible; the text chose this one.

Root: ج-ز-ي. The description the lexicographers give: a return that is the equal of a thing. In the root there is an idea of sufficiency: jazāʾ is what closes a debt, what makes it equal. From the same root ajzaʾa (to suffice for something) and jizya.

The narrowing in the usual English rendering must be noticed: "punishment" conveys only the negative return. In Arabic the word is neutral — the return for good is jazāʾ and so is the return for evil. And indeed in this verse it is used of the Garden.

The root will not occur a second time in the sūra; but the same idea will return at 56/93 with another word: fa-nuzulun min ḥamīm — there too what has been enumerated will be sealed with a word of "hospitality", but its content will have been turned over.

كَانَ + an imperfect verb. In Arabic this combination conveys an act that was repeated in the past and became habitual. Not "what they did" but "what they used to do".

The verse is not speaking of a single deed. It speaks of a working that ran through a lifetime. And this is meaningful when one looks at the table: the things enumerated are lasting (mukhalladūn, maknūn), and the act that answers to them is continuous.

The function of the بِ at the head has been dwelt upon, and two views are transmitted:

This distinction directly affects the outcome. On the first reading a deed opens a door; on the second it pays a price.

It is widely transmitted that the classical theological literature prefers the first reading, the ground given being that a limited deed cannot be the price of an unlimited return. Moreover, in the sound hadith collections there is a report stating that no one enters the Garden by his deed; in that report God's mercy is put in the place of the deed.

I record the existence of the report; I do not quote its wording and I give no source by name.

And this tension must be allowed to stand plainly: the verse says jazāʾan bimā kānū yaʿmalūn — it establishes a link, that is, between deed and return. The report says that the deed alone does not suffice. The two do not cancel one another; the two answer two separate questions — the one the question "on what does the return depend?", the other the question "by what is the return measured?"

This joining is my own reading and is not binding.

Lā yasmaʿūna fīhā laghwan wa lā taʾthīmā · Illā qīlan salāman salāmā

"There they hear no idle talk, nor any word that brings sin. Only a saying: peace, peace."

These two verses are the last two of the table of the sābiqūn, and the way they end the table is striking.

Let us look at the table as a whole:

The table closes with hearing. And what is enumerated in the last two verses is not an object: it is a sound-environment.

I record this as an observation and add the following as my own reading: all the objects enumerated fill a place; but what makes living in a place bearable or unbearable is most often not the objects but the speech that is spoken there. The table has put this last.

The description the lexicographers give: speech or action that is not counted, that goes for nothing. Laghwa'sh-shayʾu — it became worthless, it was not counted.

Its use with regard to birds is recorded: laghā'ṭ-ṭayru — the bird chirped. An utterance, that is, that carries no meaning and is only sound.

And this detail is worth recording: from the same root comes lugha (language). The lexicographers record this relation and explain it thus: to one who does not know a language, speech in that language is only sound. I relay this explanation as the lexicographers give it, not as a settled etymological judgement.

The word's place within the Qurʾān: at al-Muʾminūn 23/3 an attribute of the believers is wa'lladhīna hum ʿani'l-laghwi muʿriḍūn (those who turn away from idle talk), and at al-Furqān 25/72 wa idhā marrū bi'l-laghwi marrū kirāmā (those who pass by idle talk with dignity).

Laghw, that is, is what is avoided in this world; its being named as what is absent in the Garden is therefore a recompense. In this world one had to turn away; there, there is nothing to turn away from.

The pattern matters: a verbal noun of Form II (aththama → taʾthīm). This form adds transitivity. The word does not mean "sin", that is, but "to make sinful" or "to charge with sin".

Two readings are transmitted:

I make no choice between the two; the pattern is open to both and both are mentioned in the classical exegeses.

The root أ-ث-م. The root sense the lexicographers record: to slow, to lag behind. Athima — he fell behind; al-āthim — a slow camel.

From this comes the description of ithm: what holds a person back from good. The word carries not a list of prohibitions but a description of being slowed down.

لَغْو and تَأْثِيم are not two words chosen at random; they set up an order:

The verse removes two thresholds at once, that is: neither speech that serves no purpose, nor speech that does harm.

And the order runs from below upward: first the lighter, then the heavier. In Arabic this arrangement is called taraqqī and it strengthens the negation — if not even the light one is there, the heavy one certainly is not.

قِيل — one of the verbal nouns of the verb qāla. This verb has several verbal nouns in Arabic (qawl, qīl, maqāla), and qīl is rarely used.

The exception: the grammarians generally count this an istithnāʾ munqaṭiʿ — that is, what is excepted is not of the same kind as that from which it is excepted. Laghw and taʾthīm are one kind, salām another. In that case illā means "only, but", and it makes not a limitation but a substitution.

سَلَٰمًا سَلَٰمًا — the repetition. The word comes twice with no conjunction between.

In Arabic this repetition has several functions: pervasiveness, continuity, or reciprocity. All three are possible here and I make no choice. Only this may be recorded: the repetition removes the impression that the word is said once and done with.

The root was dealt with in the preceding sūra in this commentary. At al-Ḥashr 59/23 al-Salām occurred as a name of God, and the root sense recorded there was: to be free of defect and of corruption, to be sound and whole.

This sense sits directly in the context of the verse. Before salām is a word of well-wishing it is a word for a state: the condition of a thing that has taken no harm.

The one word the people of the Garden hear, read by its root sense, is therefore not a wish but a declaration: nothing here is spoiling.

I give this reading as my own; the word's common use (greeting) holds in this verse too, and the classical exegeses understand it predominantly in that direction.

The link with Maryam 19/62: lā yasmaʿūna fīhā laghwan illā salāmā. Almost the same sentence. The difference in al-Wāqiʿa is the addition of taʾthīm and the repetition of salām.

And the word will return once more within the sūra: at 56/91, fa-salāmun laka min aṣḥābi'l-yamīn — for those on the right. Salām, that is, is the shared word of two groups in this sūra.

The table running from the twelfth verse to the twenty-sixth ends here. It is worth drawing together, because the two tables that follow will be read in comparison with it.

There is something absent from the table, and it must be recorded for the comparison ahead: there is no description of a place. No river, no shade, no tree is enumerated — these will come in the table of those on the right (27-34).

For now I only record this difference; its interpretation will be made after the second table is complete, by setting the two tables side by side.

There are two negations in the table, and both do the same thing:

Both enumerate not what is present but what is absent. And both are of the same structure: lā + verb + wa lā + a second object.

I give this as an observation: half of the description is built upon the absence of something. And the things absent are the defects the hearer finds in this world beside those same objects — drunkenness beside drink, idle talk beside the gathering.

The table takes known objects, that is, and subtracts their known defects. This is worth recording as part of the sūra's method of description and accords with the measure recorded in the section Meccan or Medinan.

Wa aṣḥābu'l-yamīni mā aṣḥābu'l-yamīn

"The men of the right — what are the men of the right!"

This verse repeats the pattern of the eighth verse exactly: a noun + mā + the same noun. The function of the pattern was dealt with at the eighth verse and will not be repeated here.

But something has changed, and the matter pointed to in the section The structure of the sūra meets us here:

The same group is named by two different words from the same root (ي-م-ن).

What is the difference? Maymana is on the mafʿala pattern, and in Arabic this pattern conveys place or time: the right side, the right flank. Yamīn, on the other hand, is directly the name of a hand or of a direction.

I give the distinction that may be drawn from this as my own reading and do not count it certain: in the opening section (7-11) people were being divided into sides — there was an act of division there, and so a word conveying place was suitable. In the section of tables it is no longer sides but identity that is being described.

What is certain is that the name has changed, and this can be verified from the text.

The root has two branches in Arabic and both are alive:

1. The right side — al-yamīn, the right hand. 2. Blessing, good fortune — yumn (blessing), maymūn (fortunate).

The joining of the two senses is a cultural datum: the right hand is the hand with which most work is done, and from this the sense "fortunate, good" arose. Mashʾama (the left) is from the same root as shuʾm (ill omen).

And this calls for a caution: the verses issue no ruling about a hand or a direction. The words are taken from a pair ready to hand in the hearer's language. The measure recorded in several places earlier in this commentary holds here too: the Qurʾān uses the hearer's vocabulary; it is not obliged to endorse that vocabulary.

Fī sidrin makhḍūd · wa ṭalḥin manḍūd · wa ẓillin mamdūd · wa māʾin maskūb

"They are among thornless lote-trees, banana trees ranged in tiers, a spreading shade, and water poured out."

All of the six elements enumerated from the twenty-eighth verse to the thirty-fourth are qualified by the same grammatical pattern — by seven passive participles in all:

A passive participle conveys the thing upon which an act is done. None of the seven elements is so of itself, that is; all of them have been made so.

Stripped of thorns. Ranged. Spread out. Poured. Not cut off, not withheld. Raised.

This is a verifiable textual datum, and the conclusion I draw from it is my own reading: the table does not describe a garden, it describes an ordered place. Behind every element there is an orderer, and the grammar keeps recalling it.

And this will turn into an open verb in the thirty-fifth verse: innā anshaʾnāhunna inshāʾā — "We brought them into being". The agent that has stood hidden for seven verses comes into the open there.

سِدْر — a tree widespread in the lands of the Arabs. In English it is called the lote-tree, the Christ's-thorn jujube, or the sidr. I do not speak with certainty about the tree's botanical identification; the features described in the sources are these: its shade is abundant, its fruit is eaten, and its branches are thorny.

The root خ-ض-د. The sense the lexicographers give: to strip a thing of its thorns, or to bend a green branch without breaking it.

Both senses come out at the same place: the removal of the harmful side of the tree.

And here the method the sūra has been applying from the beginning shows once more: a tree the hearer knows is taken up and its known defect is subtracted. In the nineteenth verse drink was taken and its drunkenness subtracted; in the twenty-fifth the gathering was taken and its idle talk subtracted. Here the tree is taken and its thorn subtracted.

I record this regular method as an observation. The sūra does not proclaim it as a rule; but the number of examples is too great to be counted a coincidence.

The lexicographers and the exegetes have differed over what the word طَلْح is, and the disagreement must not be concealed.

I make no choice between the two. I record that the first view is widely transmitted in the classical exegeses; and that the second is closer to the known lexical sense of the word.

The root ن-ض-د. Sense: to range one upon another, in order. Naḍada'l-matāʿa — he stacked the goods one upon another.

The picture the attribute describes is this: the fruit is ranged on the tree in tiers from the top down — no bare trunk is left.

And this makes a pair with the preceding attribute:

Two directions: subtraction and addition. I give this as my own reading.

The root ظ-ل-ل. Shade. The distinction the lexicographers record matters: ẓill is the wider word, covering also the coolness before the sun rises and after it sets; fayʾ is specifically the shade that turns after noon (its root carries "to turn" — the same root as fayʾ at al-Ḥashr 59/6-7).

The root م-د-د. To stretch, to draw out, to make continuous. Madd — to extend a thing in time or in space.

The defect the attribute removes is this: in this world the definition of shade is transience. Shade turns with the sun, shortens, disappears. Mamdūd adds continuity to shade.

A comparison within the Qurʾān — and this is an important link for this commentary:

At al-Mursalāt 77/30-31 it is said of the deniers: inṭaliqū ilā ẓillin dhī thalāthi shuʿab · lā ẓalīlin wa lā yughnī mina'l-lahab — "go to a shadow of three columns; it gives no shade and does not avail against the flame."

There there is a shade and it does not shade. Here there is a shade and it has been stretched out.

Two verses use the same word in two contrary functions, and this should be added to the analysis made in the file al-Mursalāt. It is not claimed that there is a deliberate reference between the two sūras; the sharing of the word is a verifiable datum.

The root س-ك-ب. Sense: to pour, to make flow — especially without interruption and from above downward.

The defect the attribute removes is the most concrete one in the hearer's world. In the desert water is not something found but something brought out: it is drawn from a well, carried in a skin, used by measure.

Maskūb removes that whole labour: the water flows, is poured, comes of itself.

And the voice of the verb is again passive: poured. Even the flowing of the water, that is, is named as the result of an ordering.

A link within the sūra — and this link will be made later: in the sixty-eighth verse the same subject will return as a proof: a-fa-raʾaytumu'l-māʾa'lladhī tashrabūn · a-antum anzaltumūhu mina'l-muzni am naḥnu'l-munzilūn — "have you seen the water you drink? Did you send it down from the rain-cloud, or are We the senders?"

The sūra brings back in the sixty-eighth verse, as a proof, what it presented in the thirty-first as a favour. I record this as a verifiable textual datum; it will be taken up separately when we come to that verse.

Wa fākihatin kathīra · lā maqṭūʿatin wa lā mamnūʿa

"And abundant fruit — neither cut off nor withheld."

The root was analysed at the twentieth verse, and the distinction recorded there was: ṭaʿām conveys necessity, fākiha superfluity.

This is the root's second occurrence in the sūra. The third will come in the sixty-fifth verse, from the mouths of farmers whose crop has become chaff (tafakkahūn).

The difference between the two tables is worth recording:

In the first table the measure is choice, in the second quantity. I record this as an observation; all the differences between the two tables will be taken up together once the second table is complete.

لَّا مَقْطُوعَةٍ — the root ق-ط-ع. To cut, to sever, to bring to an end.

وَلَا مَمْنُوعَةٍ — the root م-ن-ع. To prevent, to withhold, to deny.

The two attributes are not chosen at random. In the hearer's world two things stand between him and a fruit, and the verse removes both one by one:

The first obstacle comes from nature, the second from man. And the verse sets them side by side.

I give this distinction as my own reading. It is widely transmitted that in the classical exegeses maqṭūʿa is explained in terms of season and mamnūʿa in terms of being kept back; the classification of the two obstacles as one from nature and one from man is mine.

Wa furushin marfūʿa

"And couches raised high."

Root: ف-ر-ش. The concrete sense: to spread, to lay out. Firāsh — what is spread: a bed, a rug.

The root has been dealt with in two places earlier in this commentary:

Three occurrences, three separate tasks of the same root: the ground that is spread, the creature that is scattered, the couch that is raised.

There are two readings in the classical exegeses of what this verse describes, and the disagreement must not be concealed:

The main ground of the second reading is not lexical but syntactic. The thirty-fifth verse begins: innā anshaʾnāhunna — "We brought them into being". Hunna is a feminine plural pronoun, and its nearest referent is furush.

The answer of those who maintain the first reading is transmitted too: the referent of the pronoun may be the ḥūrun ʿīn mentioned earlier (verse 22), or a group understood from the context and not named in the wording.

I make no choice in this disagreement. Both readings are found in the classical exegeses and both are within the bounds the grammar allows.

This much I can record: the attribute marfūʿa sits more easily with the first reading (a raised couch, heaped up or spread on high divans), whereas on the second reading the attribute must be explained figuratively as "high in worth". This is an observation, not a preference.

To raise, to lift. The concrete sense is to take a thing up from the ground; from this arises the sense of raising in rank.

A link within the sūra: in the third verse khāfiḍatun rāfiʿa occurred — "abasing, exalting". As the work of the resurrection. The root now returns as an attribute of couches.

This is a verifiable repetition. I give the meaning that may be drawn from it as my own reading: in the third verse raising was a work of judgement; here what has been raised is an object in the place arrived at as a result of that judgement. The sūra thus uses the same root both for the operation and for its outcome.

Innā anshaʾnāhunna inshāʾā · Fa-jaʿalnāhunna abkārā · ʿUruban atrābā · Li-aṣḥābi'l-yamīn

"We brought them into being with a new bringing-into-being; We made them untouched — loving, of equal age. For the men of the right."

These four verses are not separate sentences. A verbal clause (anshaʾnā), a second verbal clause joined to it (fa-jaʿalnā), two attributes (ʿuruban atrābā) and a prepositional phrase with lām (li-aṣḥābi'l-yamīn). A single structure, that is, divided across four verses.

The division itself carries information: the verse-ends (inshāʾā · abkārā · atrābā · yamīn) build the rhyme of this part of the sūra. Up to the thirty-fourth verse the attributes came with the sound -ūd / -ūʿa (makhḍūd, manḍūd, mamdūd, maskūb, marfūʿa); here the sound changes. The change of sound marks the place where the subject of the table changes: from objects to living beings.

At the thirty-fourth verse (furushin marfūʿa) I recorded that there are two readings and that I make no choice. The thirty-fifth verse falls exactly upon that question, because the sentence begins with a pronoun: anshaʾnāhunna — "We brought them into being".

All three have their defenders in the classical exegeses. I impose no preference. This much can be read from the text itself: the verb is anshaʾnā — not "We created" but "We built up". And whatever the object of the verb may be, the verse conveys a rebuilding. The real weight lies in the word itself; the disagreement about the referent of the pronoun does not change that weight.

The concrete sense of the root: to rise, to come forth, to appear and grow. Nashaʾa'sh-shayʾu — a thing came forth and grew. Nashaʾa'l-saḥābu — the cloud rose.

The root has been analysed in three places in this series; I rely on those:

The common denominator of these three uses is this, and it can be carried here: the root describes not a bringing into being out of nothing but a building upward from an existing ground. The night is already there, and nāshiʾa is what rises out of it. The tree is already there, and munshaʾāt is the ship built from it. The Turkish word inşaat (building works), borrowed from this root, carries the same picture: the material stays, what is built rises.

A link within the sūra — and this link matters: the same root will return in the sixty-second verse: wa laqad ʿalimtumu'n-nashʾata'l-ūlā fa-lawlā tadhakkarūn — "you have known the first bringing-into-being; will you not then reflect?" The verb the sūra uses in the thirty-fifth verse for the Garden, that is, it will use twenty-seven verses later for birth in this world. The same root, two nashʾas: al-ūlā and — as it is named at al-Najm 53/47 — al-ukhrā.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sūra itself: the verse describes existence in the hereafter with a familiar verb. It does not say "something you know nothing of will happen"; it says "what has already been done to you once will be done once more."

The coming of its own verbal noun after the verb is in Arabic an absolute object, and its work is emphasis. There is no exact English equivalent; one would have to say "We built them with a building", which is odd in English. The approximate rendering: "We truly, fully built them."

But there is more than emphasis here. When the absolute object comes indefinite, the lexicographers mostly count it as conveying kind: that is, "a building of a certain sort" — a building of another order, particular to itself.

This is a stance that will meet us elsewhere in the sūra as well: while the thing is being described, a note is entered at the same time that it "is not of the sort you know".

The concrete sense of the root concerns time: the early hour, the first part of the day. Bukra — the early hour of the morning. Ibkār — to do early. Bakkara — he was early.

This root has been analysed at one place in the series: al-Insān, al-Insān 76/25 — bukratan wa aṣīlā (morning and late afternoon). I do not repeat the analysis there.

The question here is this: how does a root conveying time become an attribute of a person?

The link the lexicographers give is direct: bikr means the first of a thing. A she-camel that gives birth for the first time is called bikr, the first fruit of a tree is called bākūra (the English "first-fruits"). At the core of the word, that is, "first" comes before "untouched". The morning too is the first of the day.

And there is a point to notice here: the verse frames the word abkār not to state a condition but as the result of an act: fa-jaʿalnāhunna abkārā — "We made them abkār". The attribute is an attribute conferred, that is; it was not so from the start.

In the classical exegeses a sense of "renewal" is drawn from this verse and it is put thus: to be bikr is to be as though it were the first time on every occasion. I relay this explanation as a reading widespread in the tradition; it is not a sense that follows necessarily from the wording, but it accords with the "first" core of the root.

The word occurs in the Qurʾān only here. Its singular is ʿarūb.

The root is analysed here for the first time in the series. The core sense the lexicographers give for the root ع-ر-ب: to express clearly and plainly, to set out one's meaning without concealing it. Aʿraba ʿani'sh-shayʾ — he made a thing plain. Iʿrāb — a bringing into the open (the grammatical term iʿrāb comes from here too: a word's bringing into the open its function in the sentence by the vowel at its end). The ʿarabī in the expression lisānun ʿarabiyyun mubīn is also related to this sense of clarity.

From this comes the description of ʿarūb: the equivalent the lexicographers give is a woman who does not hide her love for her husband, who shows her state openly. The word is not an attribute of beauty, that is, but an attribute of communication.

I find this worth recording and give it as an observation: everything enumerated throughout the table was an object seen, tasted or touched. In the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth verses I recorded that the table closed with sound, and that what was enumerated was not an object but an environment of speech (lā yasmaʿūna fīhā laghwan). The same thing happens here: the attribute looks not at outward appearance but at the openness of the relation formed. The root's core of "not hiding one's meaning" supports this.

The concrete sense of the root: soil. Turāb — earth. And tirb, by the description the lexicographers give, means of the same age.

How is the link made? The lexicographers record this: children born at the same time who play together in the same soil are one another's tirb. Being of an age, that is, is described by shared earth.

The root has been analysed in three places in this series:

Three uses, three separate tasks of a single root: to cling to the ground, the bones of the breast, to be of an age. The distance between matraba in al-Balad and atrāb here is worth recording: the same root describes in one place the lowest poverty and in another equality. What they share is that both rest on the picture of being level with the earth — the one by having fallen, the other by being equal.

What is the word's work here? Two readings are transmitted and both are possible:

At Ṣād 38/52 the same word occurs again in a description of the Garden (wa ʿindahum qāṣirātu'l-ṭarfi atrāb), and so it does at al-Nabaʾ 78/33. The word is settled in this context, that is.

The four-verse structure leaves the ones addressed to the very end. The table opened in the twenty-seventh verse with wa aṣḥābu'l-yamīni mā aṣḥābu'l-yamīn and is sealed in the thirty-eighth with the same name.

This was not present in the sūra's first table. The table of the sābiqūn (12-26) ended without taking a closing sentence such as hādhā, and passed straight to the name of the new group. Here, by contrast, the table is framed with the name of its owner: the name at the start, the name at the end.

I record this as an observation about word order. The framing shows that the second table is kept separate from the first — the difference between them will be put into figures two verses later (39-40).

Per the method (Method) I must write something plainly here, because when it is not said the text is misunderstood.

First — the matter of the audience. These verses came down to a community living in the desert, for whom thirst and want were part of daily life. Shade, running water, fruit that is not cut off, a raised couch: all of them are things really lacking in that life. That the description is built from this material is a speaking in a language the hearer can understand. To say this does not diminish the description; to take into account to whom something is said is the work of exegesis.

Second — literal or figurative. How much of these descriptions is literal and how much representative has been debated in the classical exegeses:

I make no choice. I record this: the sūra speaks in the thirty-fifth verse of a new bringing-into-being. This expression makes it hard, by the text's own doing, to equate the description exactly with its counterparts in this world.

Third — who is addressed. In this table the address appears directed to men, and this has to do with the order of address in the society into which the verse came down. Across the whole of the Qurʾān it is stated plainly that the recompense is not divided by gender — al-Naḥl 16/97: "Whoever does righteous work, male or female, while a believer, We shall give a good life." There are places, too, where spouses are named together in the descriptions of the Garden: Yā-Sīn 36/56 (hum wa azwājuhum fī ẓilālin ʿala'l-arāʾiki muttakiʾūn), al-Zukhruf 43/70 (udkhulu'l-jannata antum wa azwājukum tuḥbarūn), Ghāfir 40/8.

To read this table as though it were the whole of the Qurʾān's understanding of recompense, that is, runs against the text's own coherence. This is not a preference but the result given by the sum of the verses.

Thullatun mina'l-awwalīn · Wa thullatun mina'l-ākhirīn

"A throng of the earlier ones, and a throng of the later ones."

The analysis of the words thulla and awwalīn/ākhirīn was made in the section on verses 13-14; I do not repeat it. What is to be treated here is not the words but the difference.

The number-verses of the two tables side by side:

There is only one word that changes: qalīl → thulla. The first column stayed the same, the second changed.

This is one of the quietest but most loaded differences in the sūra and is entirely verifiable: the two pairs of verses can be compared word by word, and the difference is in a single word.

Let us first separate out what the text says: among those who go ahead there are few from the later generations; among the men of the right there is a throng from the later generations too. No number has been given, no ratio; only two words of quantity have been set against one another.

What is said beyond this is interpretation and must be marked as such. In the classical exegeses this reading is widely made: the first rank — the rank of those who go ahead — thins with time; the second rank stays open.

As my own reading I add this, and give its ground from the text as well: the sūra is here separating a door from a summit. The summit is narrow and grows narrower with time. The door, on the other hand, is of the same width in both generations. The support for this reading in the text is that one word changes while the other stays fixed — what narrows, that is, is not the aṣḥābu'l-yamīn but the sābiqūn.

I enter one further note: no verdict such as "the later generations are bad" can be drawn from these verses. The text places the qalīl of the later generations in the rank of the sābiqūn, and puts the rest not in the Fire but in the rank of the right. What the verse does is not a reproach but a classification.

Both tables are sealed in the same way: the name of the group → the description → the number-verse.

In the third table (41-56) this arrangement will be broken — and the breaking will itself carry meaning: the left side has no number-verse. How many of them there are is not said. I shall take this up separately in its place.

Wa aṣḥābu'sh-shimāli mā aṣḥābu'sh-shimāl · Fī samūmin wa ḥamīm · Wa ẓillin min yaḥmūm · Lā bāridin wa lā karīm

"The men of the left — what are the men of the left! In a searing wind and boiling water, and a shade of pitch-black smoke — neither cool nor kindly."

The pattern is the same as in the twenty-seventh verse: a name + mā + the name. The work of this interrogative pattern (tafkhīm — magnifying, instilling dread) was treated in the section on verses 8 and 9; I do not repeat it.

The change of name, however, should be recorded again here: in the opening this group was named aṣḥābu'l-mashʾama (9); now it is called aṣḥābu'sh-shimāl. The table in the section The structure of the sūra may be consulted; the systematic change of names was resolved there.

The root was analysed in al-Ḥāqqa (al-Ḥāqqa 69/25, bi-shimālihi): shimāl means both the left side and the north and the north wind; for one facing east, the left is the north. The root's sense of "to comprise, to encompass" (shamila) was also recorded in the analysis there. I do not repeat it.

What belongs here is this: in al-Ḥāqqa the word belonged to a hand — the book given from the left hand. Here it has become the name of a group. The same root: in one place the description of a single moment, in another the name of a class. The same operation we have seen throughout the sūra: a word comes out of an individual scene and turns into the name of a class.

The root was analysed in al-Ṭūr (al-Ṭūr 52/27, ʿadhāba'l-samūm): the root s-m-m carries together the senses of pore/opening and of poison; samūm is a scorching wind that works into the pores. I rely on the analysis there.

What is to be added here is this: the fineness in the word's description is that the heat does not wrap from outside but enters within. Masāmm — the pores of the body. Samūm, that is, is heat that passes through the skin. And since samm (poison) is from the same root, the lexicographers make the link thus: both of them seep into the body from some point.

I relay this explanation as a relation established by the lexicographers, not as a settled etymological judgement.

The root was analysed in detail in al-Ḥāqqa (al-Ḥāqqa 69/35): the root's two branches of meaning — boiling water and an intimate friend — and the lexicographers' joining of them by way of "heat" were treated there. The same pair was recorded in al-Maʿārij too (al-Maʿārij 70/10). I do not repeat it.

A link within the sūra: ḥamīm will occur twice more in this sūra — in verse 54 (fa-shāribūna ʿalayhi mina'l-ḥamīm) and in verse 93 (fa-nuzulun min ḥamīm). All three occurrences belong to the same group.

The word occurs in the Qurʾān only here.

Its root is the same as that of ḥamīm: ح-م-م. But the branch of meaning differs: from this branch comes the sense of coal-black, soot, black smoke. Ḥumma — blackness. The lexicographers describe yaḥmūm as dense black smoke.

And the word order does a work of sound here. Three words in three verses, two of them from the same root:

The three words are not on the same metre, but all three are tied to the same sound: -ūm. And two of them come letter for letter from the same root.

I record this as an observation: the three things enumerated in the table — heat, boiling water, smoke — are framed not as three separate punishments but as three states of a single environment. The repetition of sound fixes that unity in the ear. In the table of the men of the right the words were distinct from one another (makhḍūd, manḍūd, mamdūd — different roots, the same sound); here, by contrast, the same root comes round twice. The difference is small but measurable.

The choice of the word is striking. Ẓill (shade) is in the Arabic language, and especially in desert life, a word of mercy; it is what one takes refuge in. In the thirtieth verse of the sūra ẓillin mamdūd (a spreading shade) was said of the men of the right.

Here the same word returns — and is turned over by its qualifier: ẓillin min yaḥmūm — what casts the shade is not a tree but smoke.

This is a verifiable contrast within the sūra. And I add this as my own reading: shade protects from the thing one flees. But the shade of smoke is the very thing one flees. The verse describes a refuge, that is, by making it unfit for refuge — it does not look for a new word to describe the punishment; it takes the word of mercy and empties it out.

The shade is denied two things: bārid (cool) and karīm.

The first is expected: what is wanted from shade is coolness, and that is what is denied.

The second is unexpected. Karīm — generous, noble, of worth. To say of a shade that it is "not karīm" does not carry easily into English. The lexicographers explain this use thus: in Arabic karīm is also used for a thing's being the good and useful specimen of its own kind. Nakhlun karīm — a fruitful palm. On this account lā karīm means: useless, not giving the benefit expected of it.

The denial of the two attributes together builds a step:

First the expected benefit, then all benefits are struck out. The step built for laghw and taʾthīm in the twenty-fifth verse (from light to heavy) works here in reverse: first the particular, then the general.

And one further detail is worth recording: the word karīm is used in the Qurʾān of the Qurʾān itself (la-qurʾānun karīm — the seventy-seventh verse of this sūra), as an attribute of the Throne, and of the honour accorded to man. The sūra will give the same attribute to the Qurʾān ten verses later. Here it passes by being denied. That the same attribute is negated in one place and affirmed in another within the same sūra is a verifiable repetition and shows that the tables are built relative to one another.

Innahum kānū qabla dhālika mutrafīn · Wa kānū yuṣirrūna ʿala'l-ḥinthi'l-ʿaẓīm · Wa kānū yaqūlūna a-idhā mitnā wa kunnā turāban wa ʿiẓāman a-innā la-mabʿūthūn · Aw ābāʾuna'l-awwalūn

"Before this they had been spoilt by abundance. They persisted in the great breaking of faith. And they used to say: 'When we are dead and have become dust and bones, shall we really be raised? And our forefathers of old?'"

Let us compare the three tables in respect of the ground given:

This is an entirely verifiable observation and is too regular to be counted a coincidence.

As my own reading I record this: in the good tables the description is long and the ground short or absent; in the bad table the description is short and the ground long. The text does not look for a cause for what is given, that is; but when it comes to punishment it states the cause in detail. In the thirty-eighth verse what was enumerated for the men of the right was not tied to "because they did such and such"; here, across four verses, a "because" is at work.

Three verses one after another open with the same verb:

The pattern kāna + imperfect conveys continuity and habit in Arabic. None of the three is a one-off event, that is: they are settled conditions.

And the order is striking: state → stance → word. First the situation they are in, then the resistance that situation produces, then the denial that comes to speech.

I give this as my own reading, and its ground is the order: the verses describe denial not as an idea but as the consequence of a position. The word has been put last; what is said has been counted not a cause but a symptom.

The root is analysed here for the first time in the series.

The root sense the lexicographers give: abundance of favour and the softening and slackening that abundance produces. Tarifa — he lived in abundance. Atrafahu — he steeped him in favour, he spoilt him.

The pattern matters: mutraf is a passive participle of Form IV. The word means "one who has been spoilt", not "one who has grown spoilt", that is. The act has worked upon them from outside.

This detail is worth recording: the verse does not name them as "they were rich". It is not wealth that is named but what wealth did. Wealth itself is not set down in the verse as the offence; what is set down as the offence is the state wealth brought the person to.

The word's place in the Qurʾān supports this reading: almost every time the word mutraf occurs in the Qurʾān it is in a context of destruction or of opposition. At al-Isrāʾ 17/16 the mutrafūn are named while the destruction of a town is described; at Sabaʾ 34/34 it is stated that the first to oppose every warner are the mutrafūn.

A link within the sūra: what is enumerated in the table up to the forty-first verse of this sūra is favour too — couches, fruits, beds. The sūra puts things of the same kind in two separate places, that is: in one place a recompense, in another a trap. What makes the difference is not the object but the relation formed with the object. This is the continuation of the line treated in al-Humaza in the analysis of the hoarding of wealth; I rely on that.

The concrete sense of the root: to tie, to knot, to hold fast. Ṣurra — a purse tied at the mouth. Aṣarra ʿala'l-amr — he knotted himself upon a matter, he did not turn from it.

The Turkish word ısrar (insistence), borrowed from this root, carries the same picture: tying a knot upon something.

The lexicographers record one further branch of the root: ṣarra — the continuous, monotonous sound made by a cricket or by a door. What the two branches share: continuing without a break. I relay this link as the lexicographers make it, not as a settled etymological judgement.

Pattern: yuṣirrūn, an imperfect of Form IV. And kānū stands before it. It means, that is, not "they resisted once" but "they went on resisting". The root's core of "continuing without a break" and the pattern's conveying of continuity are laid one upon the other.

There is disagreement over the sense of the word and it must not be concealed.

The primary sense the lexicographers give for the root: to break an oath. Ḥanitha fī yamīnihi — he did not keep his oath. Its opposite is the verb barra (he kept his oath).

A second use of the root is recorded too: balagha'l-ḥinth — a child's coming of age, that is, reaching the age of responsibility. The lexicographers make the link thus: coming of age is the threshold at which sin begins to be recorded.

From this two readings follow:

The first reading is the more widespread. The second is closer to the primary sense of the root and is connected with the places in the Qurʾān where the oaths of the deniers are spoken of.

I impose no preference. I record this: both readings point to something "knotted upon", and the verb (yuṣirrūn) accords with both.

Here denial comes not as a thesis but as a question — and the structure of the question is worth examining.

Two interrogative particles come one upon the other in the sentence: a-idhā mitnā … a-innā la-mabʿūthūn. In Arabic this repetition conveys the intensity of the disbelief: the question is asked not to seek information but to declare an impossibility.

And the word order sets up this sequence: to die → to become dust → to become bones. The sequence is biologically correct as well: the soft tissue dissolves and the bone remains. The verse relays without omission the observation on which the objection rests: this is what they see, and what they see is true.

The forty-eighth verse takes it one step further: aw ābāʾuna'l-awwalūn — "and our forefathers of old?" Not someone newly dead, that is, but those of whom no trace at all remains. The objection is coherent in itself: it chooses the hardest example.

A link within the sūra — and this link is measurable: the word turāb occurs here for the second time in this sūra. In the thirty-seventh verse there was atrāb (of equal age) from the same root; here there is turāb (dust).

The same root ten verses apart, in two contrary scenes. On the right side the earth is "having grown up together"; on the left side the earth is "dissolving and dispersing". I record this as my own reading; that the root's two senses come face to face within the same sūra is, for its part, a fact verifiable from the text.

And the sūra does not leave this objection unanswered: verses 49-50, which come immediately after, are a direct answer to this question, and verses 57-62 will meet the same objection with proof. The objection is taken inside the text, and then dealt with.

Qul inna'l-awwalīna wa'l-ākhirīn · La-majmūʿūna ilā mīqāti yawmin maʿlūm

"Say: the earlier ones and the later ones will surely be gathered to the appointed time of a known day."

For the first time in the sūra the command qul (say) comes.

In the forty-seventh and forty-eighth verses the objection was relayed: wa kānū yaqūlūn — "they used to say". Now the other side speaks, and the speaker is the Prophet, under command.

This reciprocity in the word order is worth recording:

And the content of the answer is not an argument but a declaration. The verse does not enter into the mechanism of the question "how is one who has become dust raised?"; it says that the time is appointed. The proof about the mechanism will come eight verses later (57-62). The sūra sets down the verdict first, that is, and then sets out the proof.

This is the pair's third and last occurrence in the sūra. In verses 13 and 14 it was thullatun mina'l-awwalīn / qalīlun mina'l-ākhirīn, and in verses 39 and 40 thulla / thulla.

In the section on verses 13 and 14 I recorded that this verse is an indication bearing on the disagreement there. The reason is visible here: in this verse awwalīn and ākhirīn cover the whole of humankind with no distinction of class at all — because the gathering covers everyone. The sense the same pair has here, within the same sūra, weighs that earlier debate in favour of the "communities" reading.

I give this again as an indication, not as a firm judgement.

The root was analysed in detail in al-Jumuʿa on the occasion of that sūra's name: to gather, to bring together; jamʿ, jamāʿa, majmūʿ. I do not repeat it.

Two things belong here.

First, the pattern: majmūʿūn — a passive participle. Not "they will gather", that is, but exactly "those who are gathered", "those who have been gathered". The act is done to them; they do not gather, they are gathered. In the command fa'sʿaw ilā dhikri'llāh (hasten) in Sūrat al-Jumuʿa man is the subject; here man is the object.

Second, the particle lām: la-majmūʿūn — together with the inna at the head of the sentence, a double emphasis. In Arabic this means closing what is said to debate. And the place of the emphasis is meaningful: the objection had been asked with two emphases — "shall we really be raised?" (a-innā la-mabʿūthūn); the answer comes with two emphases too. Question and answer at the same weight of stress.

The word was analysed in al-Nabaʾ (al-Nabaʾ 78/17, inna yawma'l-faṣli kāna mīqātā): the mifʿāl metre and the appointedness of the time were treated there. I do not repeat it.

The difference here is in the word order: in al-Nabaʾ mīqāt was the predicate — "the day of separation was an appointed time". Here, with the preposition ilā, it is the point arrived at: la-majmūʿūna ilā mīqāti yawmin maʿlūm.

People are gathered not to a place, that is, but to a time. The goal of the gathering is given as time, not as place.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the preposition: ilā in Arabic marks where a limit ends. On this account the resurrection is not a place to be gone to but a moment to be arrived at. The objection in the forty-seventh verse was thinking in terms of place — dust, bones, dispersal. The answer thinks in terms of time.

Maʿlūm — a passive participle: known. But its agent is not stated: who knows it is not specified.

In Arabic the omission of the agent is mostly deliberate. The explanation the lexicographers give here is this: the day is known with God; it has not been made known to man. And indeed it is stated in many places in the Qurʾān that knowledge of the time of the resurrection is closed to man.

And the choice of word and the work of the verse coincide exactly: by saying maʿlūm (known) indefiniteness is rejected, yet by not saying whose knowledge it is, it is kept closed to man. It says, that is, "it is not indefinite, but it is outside your knowledge". Two tasks in a single word.

Thumma innakum ayyuha'l-ḍāllūna'l-mukadhdhibūn · La-ākilūna min shajarin min zaqqūm · Fa-māliʾūna minha'l-buṭūn · Fa-shāribūna ʿalayhi mina'l-ḥamīm · Fa-shāribūna shurba'l-hīm · Hādhā nuzuluhum yawma'd-dīn

"Then you, O you who have gone astray, you who deny! You will surely eat of a tree of zaqqūm, and fill your bellies with it, and drink boiling water on top of it — drinking as thirst-stricken camels drink. This is the welcome prepared for them on the Day of Judgement."

From the forty-first verse the men of the left have been recounted in the third person: aṣḥābu'sh-shimāl, innahum kānū, wa kānū. In the fifty-first verse this is broken all at once: innakum — "you".

In Arabic this transition is called iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address).

And note: in the fifty-sixth verse the address returns to the third person (nuzuluhum — "their welcome"). The second-person address lasts only five verses, that is, exactly across the scene of eating and drinking.

I record this as my own reading: the narration turns to the one addressed at the point where it becomes most concrete. The classification is done in the third person, the scene is made to be lived through in the second. Then it draws back again, and the seal is again struck from outside.

Two attributes: ḍāllūn (those who go astray) and mukadhdhibūn (those who deny).

This pair will return in the ninety-second verse of the sūra — but with its order reversed:

This is a verifiable repetition within the sūra, and the change of order cannot be counted a coincidence.

As my own reading I give this: in the fifty-first verse the address is made to them, and the order is the order they lived — first one strays from the road, then one denies (the chain mutraf → persistence → speech in verses forty-five to forty-seven set up the same order). In the ninety-second verse, by contrast, a verdict is being given, and in a verdict the act is named first: having denied. The one is the order of occurrence, the other the order of judgement.

In the section on the structure of the sūra I recorded that at the end the third group loses its name of place and is named by verbal attributes. This is the place where that transformation first shows: in the fifty-first verse the group is no longer called aṣḥābu'sh-shimāl, it is called by two verbal attributes.

There is an oddity in the word order and the lexicographers record it: min shajarin min zaqqūm — two mins one upon the other, and both nouns indefinite.

The expected expression would be mina'sh-shajari'l-zaqqūm (from the zaqqūm tree). Its coming indefinite is explained by the lexicographers thus: a tree of unknown kind, unrecognised. The word does not introduce, that is; it estranges.

Comparison with the table of the men of the right makes this clear:

The word occurs in three places in the Qurʾān: al-Ṣāffāt 37/62, al-Dukhān 44/43 and here.

The lexicographers differ over its root and the disagreement must not be concealed:

I issue no settled etymological judgement. This much can be read from the verse itself: the tree is described not as something wanted for eating but as something with which the belly is filled.

The root م-ل-ء: to fill. Malaʾa — he filled. Malʾān — full.

The choice of word carries the whole scene here. The verse does not say "they will be satisfied", it says "they will fill their bellies".

The difference is plain and worth recording: to be satisfied is a matter of satiety, to fill is a matter of volume. In the table of the men of the right, when food was spoken of, choice was stressed — fākihatin mimmā yatakhayyarūn (fruit of what they approve), laḥmi ṭayrin mimmā yashtahūn (the flesh of birds of what they desire). There there is will: they choose, they have appetite. Here there is no will: they fill.

I give this as my own reading, and its ground is the verbs of the two tables: the one eats with appetite, the other under compulsion.

Four verses are joined one after another by fāʾ: la-ākilūn → fa-māliʾūn → fa-shāribūn → fa-shāribūn.

Fāʾ in Arabic conveys succession without interval (fāʾ al-taʿqīb). The scene flows in four steps without a pause, that is: eating → filling → drinking → drinking like an animal.

In the table of the men of the right there is no such chain; there the objects are ranged with wāw (wa fākihatin, wa laḥmi ṭayrin, wa ḥūrun ʿīn) — they stand side by side, that is, and do not chase one another.

This is a measurable difference separating the rhythm of the two tables.

ʿAlayhi — "on top of it". Like drinking water after a meal, that is. A familiar gesture at table, at a table turned upside down.

The word occurs in the Qurʾān only here.

The sense the lexicographers give: hīm is the plural of ahyam/haymāʾ and means a camel afflicted with a disease that leaves it unable to slake its thirst. Huyām is described as a condition seen in camels which makes the animal drink constantly and whose thirst is not relieved by drinking.

A second branch of the root is recorded too: haymān — to wander about bewildered and without direction. The lexicographers join the two under the shared idea of "not being able to hold oneself in". I relay this link as the lexicographers make it, not as a firm judgement.

A note of distinction: there is a separate disagreement over the root of the word al-muhaymin that occurs in Sūrat al-Ḥashr, and it has been discussed in al-Ḥashr; that question should not be confused with this one.

The work of the comparison: shurba'l-hīm — "to drink as the hīm drink". No measure, number or duration is given, that is; a state is given: a thirst that does not pass however much is drunk.

And that the comparison is chosen with the hearer in view should be recorded: the camel is the animal that community knows best, and its relation to water is at the centre of their lives. That the animal most enduring of thirst should not be slaked — for someone living in the desert this image is the extreme case.

A link within the sūra: in the eighteenth verse it was said of the sābiqūn bi-akwābin wa abārīqa wa kaʾsin min maʿīn (goblets, ewers, a cup from a flowing spring). There the water flows and is drunk from a cup; here the water boils and is drunk like an animal. The two tables take the same verb (to drink) and put it into two separate scenes.

This verse closes the first block of the sūra (see the section on the structure of the sūra).

Nuzul — root ن-ز-ل. The description of the word is worth recording: the lexicographers explain nuzul as the first hospitality brought out to a guest on his arrival. Not the banquet itself, that is, but what is offered while receiving him at the door.

This definition turns the verse at once into something else, and I recorded this earlier in this file (in the section on verse 24): the same word will return in the ninety-third verse — fa-nuzulun min ḥamīm.

The sharpness in the choice of word is this: punishment is described with a word of hospitality. And to say "the first hospitality" implies that more will follow.

I give this as my own reading, and its ground is the lexical sense of the word: nuzul conveys not an end but a reception.

Yawma'd-dīn — the Day of Judgement. The branches of the root د-ي-ن ("debt / recompense / submission") were analysed in the section on al-Fātiḥa (māliki yawmi'd-dīn); I do not repeat them.

And the first block closes by tying itself to where it began: the sūra opened with idhā waqaʿati'l-wāqiʿa — with the coming to pass of an event. The fifty-sixth verse gives that event's day a name: yawma'd-dīn. The scene recounted across fifty-six verses is at last set in its place in the calendar.

Naḥnu khalaqnākum fa-lawlā tuṣaddiqūn · A-fa-raʾaytum mā tumnūn · A-antum takhluqūnahu am naḥnu'l-khāliqūn · Naḥnu qaddarnā baynakumu'l-mawta wa mā naḥnu bi-masbūqīn · ʿAlā an nubaddila amthālakum wa nunshiʾakum fī mā lā taʿlamūn · Wa laqad ʿalimtumu'n-nashʾata'l-ūlā fa-lawlā tadhakkarūn

"We created you; will you not then confirm it? Have you seen what you emit? Do you create it, or are We the creators? We have decreed death among you, and We are not to be outrun — in replacing you with your likes and bringing you into being in a form you do not know. And you have known the first bringing-into-being; will you not then reflect?"

The first block was sealed in the fifty-sixth verse. With the fifty-seventh the sūra passes to an altogether different task: description is over, proof begins.

The structure of the block is regular, and the four proofs are built on the same pattern:

The opening of all four is the same: a-fa-raʾaytum — "have you seen, what do you say?" And in all four the same question is asked: is it you who do this?

This is a verifiable repetition of pattern within the sūra, and the choice of proofs is not arbitrary either: man himself, what he eats, what he drinks, what he kindles. The four basic supports of life, that is, are ranged not from the nearest to the farthest but from the innermost outward.

As my own reading I add this: none of the proofs has been chosen from the sky or from some distant natural event. All four are things man puts his hand to every day. The objection in the forty-seventh verse said "after we have become dust"; the answer takes man back to his state before he was dust.

The sentence could have begun with khalaqnākum (We created you). It does not: the detached pronoun comes first — naḥnu khalaqnākum.

In Arabic, mentioning the subject separately and first in a verbal sentence conveys qaṣr (restriction): "it is We who created you, no one else."

And this pattern will be repeated three times through the block:

Through the block the subject is insistently brought forward. And the other side is met with the same pronoun: a-antum takhluqūnahu — "is it you who create?"

The whole block works, that is, by setting two pronouns against one another: antum / naḥnu.

Lawlā here conveys urging and reproach (taḥḍīḍ): "why do you not…?"

The verb is striking: tuṣaddiqūn — root ص-د-ق. The verse does not say "will you not believe", it says "will you not confirm".

The difference is worth recording: taṣdīq is to accept as true a piece of knowledge set before one. The verse asks of the hearer not a leap but a drawing of a conclusion, that is: "you know that We created you; then accept what follows from it."

And the objection that is the target of this verb was named in the fifty-first verse: al-mukadhdhibūn (those who deny) — root ك-ذ-ب. Taṣdīq and takdhīb are an exact pair of opposites in Arabic. The sūra turns into a verb the name it gave six verses earlier.

The senses this root carries are striking, and the lexicographers record them together:

The lexicographers join these branches in the core of "decreeing/measure". That maniyya (death) and maniyy (seed) come from the same root is a fact worth recording.

I relay this as a relation established by the lexicographers, not as a settled etymological judgement. But the word order of the verse makes this relation itself: in the fifty-eighth verse tumnūn (the seed), in the sixtieth al-mawt (death). Two verses apart, the two ends of the same root.

Tumnūn is an imperfect of Form IV, and the lexicographers give it here the sense "to emit, to bring out". The verse gives the act to man: it is you who emit. Then it asks: a-antum takhluqūnahu — "is it you who create it?"

The whole force of the proof lies in this distinction, and I record it as my own reading: the verse does not deny man's share — it leaves the act of emitting to him. What it asks is to whom what happens after that act belongs. It draws a line between what man does and what happens in man.

Looked at with the knowledge of today, the line the verse draws finds a concrete counterpart: the difference between what man does by his will and the dividing, implanting and developing of the cell is known today in far greater detail.

But I do not present this as a claim of "miracle", and per the method (Method) I draw its limit plainly: the verse gives no description of embryology, it asks a question about responsibility. The seventh-century person addressed by it needed no knowledge of cells to understand this question either — he already knew that he could not interfere in the forming of his own child.

The proof of the verse, that is, rests not on some unknown piece of knowledge but on a helplessness everyone knows. Today's knowledge multiplies the detail of that helplessness; it does not change the proof itself.

The root ق-د-ر was analysed in al-Qadr: the core of the root is measure/amount. I do not repeat it.

What belongs here is this: the verb is qaddara — Form II. This form carries here the sense "to set the measure, to appoint". The verse describes death, that is, not as a cutting off but as a work of setting a measure.

Baynakum — "among you". This word is striking too: death is named not as apportioned to the individual but as distributed among a community. Not who will die when, but that death has been shared out among you.

Root: س-ب-ق. And this root has occurred earlier in this sūra: in the tenth verse, wa'l-sābiqūna'l-sābiqūn — those who go ahead. The analysis of the root was made there, resting on al-Baqara 2/148 (fa'stabiqu'l-khayrāt).

The same root, fifty verses apart, in the active and passive patterns. This is a verifiable repetition within the sūra, and as my own reading I add this: the word of racing is framed at the start of the sūra for human beings, and at the end it is denied of God. People may get ahead of one another; the decree cannot be outrun.

The lexicographers differ over how the clause attaches, and this disagreement must not be concealed:

Both readings are found in the classical exegeses and the grammar permits both. I impose no preference.

Nubaddila — root ب-د-ل: to put another thing in the place of a thing. Amthālakum — "your likes". What comes, that is, is not a kind other than you; it is like you.

I record this as my own reading: the verse describes death not as an annihilation but as an order of replacement. Generations take one another's place, and the one who takes the place is called "a like".

Wa nunshiʾakum fī mā lā taʿlamūn — "and We shall build you up in a form you do not know". The verb is again ن-ش-أ: the root analysed in the thirty-fifth verse (innā anshaʾnāhunna inshāʾā). I do not repeat it, but I complete the note made there here: inshāʾ is to build up by raising from an existing ground.

Fī mā lā taʿlamūn — "in what you do not know". Here the verse refuses to give a description. In the thirty-fifth verse the note "it is not of the sort you know" was entered by the emphasis inshāʾā; here the same note is written outright: you do not know.

And the sixty-second verse frames the exact opposite of the sixty-first:

Two verses stand side by side with the negative and the positive of the same verb. This is a contrast verifiable from the text.

The logic of the proof is this, and it is entirely plain: for something you do not know, take as evidence something you do know. You have seen the first bringing-into-being; you have not seen the second. But you have no ground for saying that the one who did the first cannot do the second.

The place of the word nashʾa within the sūra: at the thirty-fifth verse (anshaʾnāhunna) I recorded that this root would return. Here it has returned. And at al-Najm 53/47 the same pair occurs as al-ūlā / al-ukhrā.

Fa-lawlā tadhakkarūn — "will you not then reflect and remember?" The root is ذ-ك-ر. And together with fa-lawlā tuṣaddiqūn in the fifty-seventh verse it binds the two ends of the block:

The same pattern, two different verbs. And the order is meaningful: first confirmation is asked for, then remembering. Tadhakkur is not the learning of a new piece of knowledge but the calling back of what is already in hand. Everything enumerated throughout the proof was already known; by its own verb the verse says that it is giving no new knowledge.

A-fa-raʾaytum mā taḥruthūn · A-antum tazraʿūnahu am naḥnu'l-zāriʿūn · Law nashāʾu la-jaʿalnāhu ḥuṭāman fa-ẓaltum tafakkahūn · Innā la-mughramūn · Bal naḥnu maḥrūmūn

"Have you seen the seed you sow? Do you make it grow, or are We the growers? Had We willed, We would have turned it into dry chaff, and you would have gone on exclaiming: 'We are laden with debt! No — we are utterly deprived!'"

The verse uses two verbs and gives them to two different parties:

Ḥarth — root ح-ر-ث: to plough the soil, to cast seed, to sow. The root occurred in al-Qalam in the context of the story of the owners of the garden.

Zarʿ — root ز-ر-ع: the splitting and springing of the seed, the coming up of the crop from the ground. The root is analysed here for the first time in the series.

The distinction is this, and it is fixed by the lexicographers' descriptions: ḥarth is what man does — to plough, to cast, to water. Zarʿ is what goes on inside the seed: the splitting, the striking of roots, the greening.

The verse hands over man's share in full — mā taḥruthūn, "what you sow". It makes it no matter of dispute. Then it draws the line: the sowing is yours, the growing is not.

This is the same as the proof in the fifty-eighth verse and cuts at the same place: there too the act of emitting was left to man and the creating was questioned.

I record as my own reading: both proofs stand in the same place — where man's hand ends and the outcome begins. And both proofs are chosen from the two works into which man puts the most labour.

Ḥuṭām — a plant broken and crumbled, turned into dry chaff. The root ح-ط-م: to break, to shatter, to crumble.

The root was analysed in al-Humaza — al-Ḥuṭama, as a name of the Fire — and occurred in al-Ḥadīd (the life of this world turning to ḥuṭām). I do not repeat it.

What belongs here is this: the same root is in one place the name of the Fire and in another the end of a crop. The shared picture: a wholeness broken and dispersed.

Law nashāʾu — "had We willed". This pattern conveys an unfulfilled condition. The verse is not speaking of a disaster that happened, that is; it speaks of what could have happened and did not.

This is the finest point of the proof, and I give it as my own reading: man takes the crop's growing to be his own work because it grows every year. By recalling that its not growing is also possible, the verse shows that what is ordinary is not guaranteed. The proof is built not against a miracle but against the taking of an order for a permanence.

The verb is striking: tafakkahūn, root ف-ك-ه — the same root as the word fākiha (fruit), which occurs twice in this sūra.

There is disagreement over the word's sense here and it must not be concealed:

I impose no preference. But this is worth recording and is verifiable from the text: after using the root of "fruit" as a favour in two tables, the sūra uses the same root here in the scene of the favour's departing. Whichever sense the disagreement settles on, this tension among the root's three occurrences is in the text itself.

Ẓaltum — originally ẓaliltum, lightened by the dropping of the middle letter. The verb ẓalla in Arabic carries the sense of lasting through the daytime. "You went on exclaiming from morning to evening", that is.

The verse relays two sentences from the mouth of the farmer whose crop has dried. Both are short, both emphatic.

Mughramūn — root غ-ر-م: debt, loss, a price that must be paid. The Turkish words garâmet/gramet and cereme (a fine, a penalty one is made to bear) are attached to this root. The root occurred in al-Ṭūr and al-Qalam.

The first cry is financial, that is: "our outlay has gone for nothing, we are left in debt."

Maḥrūmūn — root ح-ر-م: to be deprived of something. And the second branch of this root is ḥarām: what is forbidden, what one is barred from touching. The lexicographers give the shared core as "being barred".

And this link is a measurable fact: the sentence bal naḥnu maḥrūmūn occurs in one other place in the Qurʾān, letter for letter the same: al-Qalam 68/27 — from the mouths of the owners of the garden whose gardens were ruined in a night. That story was treated in al-Qalam; I rely on that.

The same sentence in two places, the same scene: the same words from the mouth of a man whose crop has gone.

Bal — "no, rather". This particle corrects what precedes it. The second sentence cancels the first, that is: not "we have fallen into debt" but "we have been deprived".

I record as my own reading: the first reaction is a reckoning — how much have I lost. The second reaction is deeper: the matter is not the loss but that what was given was not given. The verse relays a man correcting himself within two seconds. And the corrected form is exactly what the proof wants to show: a thing could be taken because it had been given.

A-fa-raʾaytumu'l-māʾa'lladhī tashrabūn · A-antum anzaltumūhu mina'l-muzni am naḥnu'l-munzilūn · Law nashāʾu jaʿalnāhu ujājan fa-lawlā tashkurūn

"Have you seen the water you drink? Did you send it down from the rain-cloud, or are We the senders? Had We willed, We would have made it bitter. Will you not then give thanks?"

In the first two proofs man had a share — emitting, sowing. In this proof he has none.

The one verb left to man is "to drink"; that is, to consume. The question is built directly upon the verb of sending down: a-antum anzaltumūh.

This is an ascent, and I record it as my own reading: the proofs are ranged in the order of man's diminishing share — from a shared act (the seed), to labour (the crop), to what he does not touch at all (water).

Muzn occurs in the Qurʾān only here. The sense the lexicographers give: a white cloud laden with rain.

In Arabic there is more than one word for cloud — saḥāb (general), ghamām (one that gives shade), muzn (laden with rain). That the verse says muzn and not saḥāb shows that it is looking not at the cloud but at the load it carries.

Ujāj: water too salt and bitter to be drunk.

The Qurʾān uses this word over against sweet water: at Fāṭir 35/12, speaking of two seas, it says hādhā ʿadhbun furātun wa hādhā milḥun ujāj (this one sweet and quenching, this one salt and bitter); the same pair occurs at al-Furqān 25/53 too.

The working of the proof is the same as in the proof of the crop: what could have been and was not. And the "could have been" state here is no distant hypothesis, since most of the planet's water is in fact in that state. I record this as an observation; I am not dressing the verse in a modern piece of knowledge — a person living in the desert needs no measurement to know that salt water cannot be drunk.

The root ش-ك-ر was analysed in al-Mulk and al-Insān. I do not repeat it.

There are three lawlā calls through the block, and the three come with three different verbs:

The order is worth recording: first acceptance, then remembering, then return. And at the end of the fourth proof it will not be a call but a direct command: fa-sabbiḥ (74).

A-fa-raʾaytumu'n-nāra'llatī tūrūn · A-antum anshaʾtum shajaratahā am naḥnu'l-munshiʾūn · Naḥnu jaʿalnāhā tadhkiratan wa matāʿan li'l-muqwīn · Fa-sabbiḥ bi'smi rabbika'l-ʿaẓīm

"Have you seen the fire you strike? Did you bring its tree into being, or are We the bringers? We made it a reminder and a provision for those who camp in the waste. So glorify the name of your Lord, the Mighty."

Warā al-zandu — the fire-stick gave fire. The root describes the striking of fire by rubbing and impact.

The root was analysed in al-ʿĀdiyāt — al-ʿĀdiyāt 100/2, fa'l-mūriyāti qadḥā (those that strike out sparks): the sparks struck when horses' hooves hit stone. I do not repeat it.

What belongs here is this: in both places the verb depends on the movement of man or of an animal. The spark is the result of friction. Here again the verse concedes this share: it is you who strike. Then it steps back one pace.

The question is not "did you create the fire" — shajaratahā: "its tree".

The background is concrete: in the desert fire was struck by rubbing two dry branches together; there were trees known to be suitable for this work, and the lexicographers name them. The verse looks, that is, at a technique in the hearer's daily life.

And the distance the question draws back is worth recording: man strikes the fire; the branch gives the fire, the tree gives the branch, and who makes the tree grow was settled in the preceding proof (63-64: naḥnu'l-zāriʿūn). The proofs are tied to one another.

Anshaʾtum / al-munshiʾūn — root ن-ش-أ. The root's third and fourth occurrences in the sūra (after 35, 61, 62). The same root four times through the sūra: the building of spouses in the Garden, the rebuilding of man, the first building, and the building of the tree. This is a verifiable repetition.

Four times through the sūra a tree is spoken of, and the four are at four separate tasks:

I record as my own reading: three trees were in the hereafter and belonged to the two sides. The fourth tree is in this world and belongs to everyone. This is exactly the work of the section of proofs: to come out of the table of the hereafter and turn to what is in everyone's hand.

Two attributes are given to the fire, and the two are of different kinds:

Tadhkira — a reminder. Root ذ-ك-ر. And this is the same root as the call fa-lawlā tadhakkarūn in the sixty-second verse. The section of proofs opened with a call to remember and closes with the attribute of reminding.

What it reminds of is not stated. In the classical exegeses it is widely said that it reminds of the fire of the hereafter; the table of samūm and ḥamīm in the forty-second verse of the sūra supports this reading. I relay this as an explanation widespread in the tradition; the wording of the verse does not name what is recalled.

Matāʿ — what is made use of, a passing benefit. The second attribute is thus wholly of this world: warming, cooking, giving light.

That the two attributes come side by side is worth recording: the same object is both a sign and a use. The verse does not separate them; it joins them with wāw.

There is disagreement over the sense of the word:

All three are transmitted by the lexicographers; I impose no preference. The common point is plain: the one who benefits most from fire is the one most deprived.

The root's relation to the sense "strength" (quwwa) occurred in al-Dhāriyāt (dhu'l-quwwati'l-matīn); the branch here is separate from that, and the lexicographers record the two separately.

This verse is identical word for word with the ninety-sixth verse of the sūra. As was recorded in the section on the structure of the sūra, this repetition is the clearest sign of the boundaries of the blocks.

Sabbiḥ — root س-ب-ح. The root has been analysed in many places in the series (al-Aʿlā, al-Ḥashr, al-Ṣaff and others): the core sense is to swim in water or in space, moving away, and from there tanzīh, that is, to hold God apart from everything unbefitting Him. I do not repeat it.