al-Ḥashr 59:24

Huwallāhu'l-Khāliqu'l-Bāriʾu'l-Muṣawwir, lahu'l-asmāʾu'l-ḥusnā, yusabbiḥu lahū mā fi'l-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ, wa huwa'l-ʿAzīzu'l-Ḥakīm

"He is God — the Creator, the Maker, the Fashioner. To Him belong the most beautiful names. Whatever is in the heavens and the earth declares Him free of all imperfection. He is al-ʿAzīz, al-Ḥakīm."

The three names in this verse have a different texture from the eight names of the preceding verse: all of them name a work. And the three set up a sequence.

The reading of this sequence as an order of production is widespread in the classical commentaries: determining, then bringing into existence, then shaping. I give this explanation in the form in which it is transmitted; the verse sets up no claim of such an order.

The root خ-ل-ق. The concrete sense recorded by the lexicographers: to measure and cut a thing to size. Khalaqa'l-adīma — he measured and cut the hide (before cutting it out).

For this reason the root carries less the sense of bringing into being out of nothing than that of determining by a measure. From the same root khulq (character — a person's cut measure) and khilqa.

And the root has a second use: to fabricate. Khalaqa'l-ifka — he made up a lie (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/17). The two senses come together at one point: in both there is the setting up of something that did not exist before.

The root ب-ر-أ. The sense of the root the lexicographers give: a thing's separating, slipping free, from another thing.

Three words come out of this root, and all three carry the same image:

And now let us go back to the sixteenth verse of this sūra. The word Satan spoke in the parable was this:

إِنِّى بَرِىٓءٌ مِّنكَ — "I am quit of you."

The same root. Satan claimed a separation by using the root ب-ر-أ — and the seventeenth verse showed that the claim was of no use: fa-kāna ʿāqibatahumā annahumā fi'n-nāri khālidayni fīhā. Both in the same place.

In the twenty-fourth verse the root returns, and this time it comes as a name of God: ٱلْبَارِئ.

The difference between the two occurrences is this:

I record this return of the root as a datum of the text that can be verified: the two words are from the same root and both are in this sūra.

The meaning I draw from it, however, is my own reading and is not binding: throughout the sūra the separations that were attempted by word all collapsed — the hypocrites could not separate themselves from their words (11-12), Satan could not slip out of his outcome (16-17). At the end of the text the same root comes as the name of the one who really can separate. The difference between claiming a separation and separating.

It is not claimed that this was set up deliberately by the sūra. That the root is found in two places can be verified; the interpretation of the relation between them is mine.

The root ص-و-ر. The sense recorded by the lexicographers: to give a thing shape and appearance. Ṣūra — the outward appearance of a thing; the visible state that distinguishes it from the rest.

It is also transmitted that the root has been connected with the verb ṣāra (to incline, to bend in a direction). I do not count this second explanation certain.

The pattern: the active participle of Form II (ṣawwara → muṣawwir). This form conveys intensiveness and repetition: giving form one by one, separately.

The link with al-Taghābun 64/3: wa ṣawwarakum fa-aḥsana ṣuwarakum. In the analysis of that verse (al-Taghābun) a distinction was recorded between taqwīm and taṣwīr: the one structure, the other appearance. The same distinction holds here — al-Khāliq names the measure, al-Muṣawwir the appearance.

And the relation of the three names to the context of the sūra deserves to be recorded: throughout the sūra people were demolishing — they demolished their houses with their own hands (2), trees were cut down (5), fortresses came apart. At the close come three verbs of making.

I give this contrast as an observation; the text does not say it.

Word order: lahū has been brought forward. In Arabic the predicate's coming first conveys ḥaṣr (restriction): "the most beautiful names belong to Him alone."

حُسْنَىٰ — the feminine elative of aḥsan. That is, not "beautiful names" but "the most beautiful names".

This construct occurs in four places in the Qurʾān (al-Aʿrāf 7/180, al-Isrāʾ 17/110, Ṭāhā 20/8 and here). It is a record that can be verified from the text.

Concerning the number of the names: a report stating that the names of God are ninety-nine is found in the collections of sound hadith. This much I am able to say. The case of the lists in which the names are counted one by one is different: it is known that these lists come in different forms in different sources and have been assessed differently by the scholars. For this reason no list is given here and no ruling is set up on the basis of a number.

Moreover the verse itself gives no number. Al-asmāʾu'l-ḥusnā reports not a closed set but a quality.

The sūra closes and returns to its opening. The first verse: sabbaḥa lillāhi mā fi'l-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ. The twenty-fourth verse: yusabbiḥu lahū mā fi'l-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ.

Almost the same sentence — but there are two differences:

The first difference was recorded in the section on the structure of the sūra and is now completed: the sūra opens in the past tense and closes in the present. The tasbīḥ is both a fact over and done with and an act still going on.

The second difference is finer: at the opening the explicit name (lillāhi), at the close a pronoun (lahū). A pronoun can be used only after its referent is known. That is, what was named at the beginning of the sūra is, by its end, enough to be merely pointed at.

This observation is mine; in Arabic the shift to a pronoun is in most places an ordinary avoidance of repetition, and no necessary meaning follows from it. Even so, considering that the sūra has put twenty-two verses of introduction in between, I find it worth recording.

The last two words of the first verse of the sūra and the last two words of the last verse are exactly the same. The frame closes.

The root ح-ك-م. The concrete sense recorded by the lexicographers: to hold back, to rein in. Ḥakama — the bit put in a horse's mouth; iḥkām — to make firm, to bring to a state in which a thing will not shift.

From this come ḥukm (the decision that settles a matter in its place) and ḥikma (the knowledge of putting a thing where it belongs).

That is, ḥakīm is not "a sage"; he is the one who settles a thing in such a way that it will not shift from its place.

And the two names together set up a balance:

• al-ʿAzīz — power. Being able to do.
• al-Ḥakīm — measure. Doing in the right place.

Had the power come alone it would have been deficient; had the measure come alone it would have been ineffective. That the two should stand together at the two ends of this sūra sets a frame around everything the sūra recounts: what has happened is neither arbitrary nor without measure.

And one last note: in the nineteenth verse fāsiqūn had occurred — the concrete sense of the root being "to come out of one's skin", that is, to come out of one's place. The sūra ends with ḥakīm — the one who puts in place.

I give the contrast of the two roots as my own reading; there is no verbal link between the verses, the link is in the senses of the roots.