al-Wāqiʿa 56:41-44

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.