al-Wāqiʿa 56:45-48

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.