al-Wāqiʿa 56:1-3

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.