al-Ḥadīd 57:13

Yawma yaqūlu'l-munāfiqūna wa'l-munāfiqātu lilladhīna āmanū: unẓurūnā naqtabis min nūrikum. Qīla: irjiʿū warāʾakum fa'ltamisū nūrā. Fa-ḍuriba baynahum bi-sūrin lahu bāb: bāṭinuhu fīhi'r-raḥmatu wa ẓāhiruhu min qibalihi'l-ʿadhāb "On the day when the hypocrite men and the hypocrite women will say to those who believed: 'Look at us, that we may take a portion of your light.' It will be said: 'Turn back behind you and seek a light there.' Then a wall with a gate will be raised between them. Within it there is mercy; on its outer side, before it, punishment."

One of the densest verses of the sūra. It contains three separate movements: a request, a refusal, and a separation.

The word has two readings, and both are found in the classical sources:

The second sense is well established in Arabic: intiẓār (waiting) is from the same root. Moreover a variant reading anẓirūnā (grant us a respite, wait for us) is also transmitted. Since I cannot state with certainty which reciter this reading belongs to, I write no name.

Both senses fit the same scene and complete one another: wait, so that we may catch up; look, so that your light may fall on us too.

The finest word of the verse.

Root: ق-ب-س. Its concrete sense: to take a live coal from a fire. A qabas is a small piece of fire taken from a large one — an ember carried on the end of a branch, a torch.

The practice of life behind the word is plain: lighting a fire was laborious. If there was fire in one house, a neighbour would come and take a coal from it and kindle his own hearth. Fire was borrowed.

The Qurʾān uses this concrete sense in another place:

"When he saw a fire and said to his family: 'Stay here; I have seen a fire. Perhaps I shall bring you a brand from it, or find guidance at the fire.'" (Ṭāhā 20/10)

It is Moses' scene in the valley. The same root, the same verb: ātīkum minhā bi-qabas. And there too what is taken from the fire is for finding the way.

اقتباس (iqtibās) — the word used today in Turkish and in Arabic for a "quotation" is from this same root. To take a piece of someone's words has been thought of like taking a coal from a fire. This shows how living a metaphor the word carries.

The verb in the verse is in the افتعال (iftiʿāl) form: naqtabis. This form mostly adds the sense that the act is done by the person for himself. That is, "let us take a portion of your light for ourselves."

This is one of the most important links in the commentary and deserves a heading of its own.

At al-Baqara 2/17 there was this similitude:

"Their likeness is that of one who kindles a fire: when it lights up what is around him, God takes away their light and leaves them in darknesses, unable to see."

The finest detail recorded there was this: the man kindled a fire, but God took away their light. The text does not say nārihim (their fire), it says nūrihim (their light). The illuminating side of the fire was taken, the burning side left.

Now look at al-Ḥadīd 57/13. The same elements are there, but the scene has moved on:

The two verses are two stages of the same story. In al-Baqara the light goes in this world; in al-Ḥadīd it is sought in the hereafter and not found.

And the difference between them shows the heart of the matter:

At al-Baqara 2/17 the person had a light, and it was taken. That is, for a time it was bright — the expression "when it lights up what is around him" said as much. The belonging was real, then it was emptied out.

At al-Ḥadīd 57/13 the person has no light at all and asks for someone else's. And this request is the diagnosis of the matter: the hypocrite's relation is always built on borrowing. In this world he stood inside the community, benefited from its returns, lived in its safety — but did not kindle his own light. In the hereafter he tries the same thing.

And the answer is one of the harshest sentences in the sūra.

By whom the answer is given is not said. The verb is passive: qīla — "it was said." Is it the believers who speak, the angels, someone else? The text is silent.

This silence is meaningful. The answer ceases to be a personal refusal and becomes a verdict.

ورائكم — "behind you." That is, where you came from: this world. And the command is plain: that is where light was kindled.

التمسوا — root ل-م-س: to touch with the hand, to search by groping. Lams is to touch; iltimās is to search by groping — the Turkish word iltimas in use today comes from this root as well, though its sense has drifted.

The choice of the word is merciless. The verb used for someone seeking light is to search by touch — that is, it says in advance that he is in darkness. One who can see searches by seeing; one who is blind searches by groping.

Carrying out the command is impossible. There is no going back. So this is not a proposed solution; it is the declaration of an impossibility. In Arabic such commands are called commands of taʿjīz (of reducing to incapacity): what cannot be done is commanded, and by this the finality of the situation is shown.

This is the central idea of the scene and deserves to be said plainly.

Light is treated here like an object — something that can be asked for as a loan, of which a portion can be taken. And it is refused.

Why is it refused? The verse gives no ground. But the elements within the sūra itself give an answer:

In verse 12 the light "ran" — that is, it was something that moved along with the person, not a lantern held in the hand. In verse 9 the light had to do with being brought out of darkness — a state, a position. In verse 28 the light will be something that is "walked in" — nūran tamshūna bih.

That is, in the sūra's understanding of light, light is not an object that is carried but the person's condition itself. And a person's condition cannot be transferred to another.

The general counterpart of this is: some things cannot be transferred. A person's knowledge, his habits, his character, the bond he has built — none of these can be handed over to another. What can be borrowed are the things outside these: property, status, standing, belonging.

And this part of the sūra is built precisely on that distinction. The hypocrite had taken everything that can be borrowed — membership of the community, safety, standing. What could not be borrowed he had not taken.

ضرب — root ض-ر-ب: to strike. But in Arabic this verb has an extremely wide range of uses: ḍaraba mathalan (he gave a parable), ḍaraba fi'l-arḍ (he travelled in the earth), ḍaraba khayma (he pitched a tent).

Here it means to raise a wall, and the concrete tone of the verb is preserved: the wall is not gently set in place, it is struck up. A sudden and decisive movement.

The verb is again passive: who raises it is not said.

سُور (sūr) — root س-و-ر: a wall that surrounds a thing; a city wall. The word has passed into Turkish as sur. From the same root comes siwār (a bracelet — what encircles the arm); and some lexicographers connect the word sūra with this root too (a piece of text with a boundary drawn round it, with definite limits) — but this connection is disputed and not certain.

The choice of the word is meaningful: not jidār (wall) or ḥāʾiṭ (wall) but sūr. A sūr is the wall that surrounds a city — that is, the structure that defines inside and outside. Whoever is inside it belongs to the city; whoever is outside does not.

The wall has a gate. This detail may look superfluous, but it is not.

A wall with no gate is an absolute division. A wall with a gate implies that at one time it could be passed through. The gate is there; but it is no longer passed.

In the classical commentaries there are different explanations of this gate's function: the place where mercy enters, the place where the believers pass, or the place the hypocrites could once have passed but did not. The text does not say, and I impose no preference.

But there is something to record: the gate shows that the separation came later. The two sides were once on the same side — in verse 14 the hypocrites will say so themselves: "Were we not with you?"

"Within it there is mercy; on its outer side, before it, punishment."

Here the link within the sūra closes. The two names used of God in the third verse — aẓ-Ẓāhir and al-Bāṭin — are used here of the two faces of a wall.

At the level of verbal repetition this is too marked to be a coincidence. In the same sūra, the same pair of words, ten verses apart, in two entirely different contexts.

What I recorded above (57/3) as my own reading I complete here:

In the third verse two opposites were united in a single being: huwa'ẓ-Ẓāhiru wa'l-Bāṭin. There the uniting of opposites was the expression of tawḥīd.

In the thirteenth verse a single object is divided into two opposite faces: the same wall, on one side mercy and on the other punishment. And the difference is where the one who looks is standing.

This gives a description of what separation is: the two sides are not looking at different things. They are looking at the same thing, from different places. Mercy and punishment are not two separate objects; they are two faces of a single reality.

I offer this not as a ruling but as a reading to which the text's choice of words points.

مِن قِبَلِهِ — "from its side, from that quarter." Qibal conveys direction and side; from the same root comes qibla. That is, the punishment meets those on the outer side of the wall from that quarter.

There is a similar screen elsewhere in the Qurʾān:

"Between the two there is a screen. And upon the heights (al-aʿrāf) are men who know both sides by their marks." (al-Aʿrāf 7/46)

There the word is ḥijāb (screen), here sūr (wall). And there is a group standing upon the screen; here there is none. The two scenes are not the same and must not be reduced to one another; but it is a common method of the Qurʾān to tell of the separation of two sides through an architectural image.