al-Ḥashr 59:9

Wa'lladhīna tabawwaʾu'l-dāra wa'l-īmāna min qablihim yuḥibbūna man hājara ilayhim wa lā yajidūna fī ṣudūrihim ḥājatan mimmā ūtū wa yuʾthirūna ʿalā anfusihim wa law kāna bihim khaṣāṣa, wa man yūqa shuḥḥa nafsihī fa-ulāʾika humu'l-mufliḥūn

"Those who had made that abode and faith their dwelling before them love those who emigrate to them; they find in their breasts no want on account of what has been given to those others. They prefer them to themselves, even when they are themselves in need. And whoever is guarded against the shuḥḥ of his own soul — it is they who attain deliverance."

The first sentence of the verse raises a grammatical problem, and the problem comes out somewhere fine.

تَبَوَّأَ — Root: ب-و-أ. To take a place as a dwelling, to settle in it, to take it as one's abode. Mabāʾa: the place settled in. Bawʾ: settling.

From the Qurʾān: "when We made ready / settled for Abraham (Ibrāhīm) the place of the House" (al-Ḥajj 22/26); "We settled them in a goodly place" (Yūnus 10/93).

The problem is this: tabawwaʾa is a verb of place. One settles into a house, a homeland, a place. Faith is not a place. The sentence "they made faith their dwelling" is, grammatically, odd.

The classical explanations:

The third is worth dwelling on, because it agrees with the sūra as a whole.

This sūra is a sūra of places. Throughout the sūra words of place and of shelter are circulating:

Throughout the sūra every place collapses: houses are demolished, fortresses are of no use, homelands empty, walls become the sign of a fear.

And in this verse a dwelling that does not collapse is named: faith.

This reading takes the oddity of the sentence out of being a defect and makes it a choice. I record it as a possibility; the majority of the classical exegetes prefer the explanation by ellipsis or by taḍmīn.

Another problem: the Anṣār (the helpers of Medina) did not believe before the Muhājirūn. Chronologically the faith in Mecca comes first.

The classical explanations:

The majority incline towards the first explanation: the qualification "before" is attached to the dār. I content myself with transmitting this.

The context of the verse becomes critical here.

According to the reports the property of the fayʾ was distributed essentially to the Muhājirūn; it was not given to the Anṣār, or very little of it was. And the ground is in these verses: the Muhājirūn had lost their property, while the Anṣār were in their own homeland.

That is, this verse praises those who were given no share.

This changes the weight of the verse entirely. What is praised is not an everyday generosity such as sharing one's table; it is meeting exclusion from a public distribution with gladness of heart.

And this is a far harder thing. To give of one's own property is a choice; but to consent to what has not been given to one is not even a choice — it is only the holding back of a reaction.

حَاجَة — in what sense?

Root: ح-و-ج. Need. But here there are two readings:

Most of the classical exegetes stand close to the second sense: ḥāja here is a discomfort that stays in the breast.

The qualification فِى صُدُورِهِمْ supports this: the matter is not in the hand but in the breast. That is, at the level of behaviour there is no objection at all; the verse goes deeper and says that nothing was left inside either.

This distinction is important. A person may not object and yet may keep it inside. The measure of the verse covers the part that is not visible from outside as well.

The most quoted expression of the sūra.

Root: أ-ث-ر. And at the centre of the root there is the trace: athar (the mark a thing leaves behind), āthār, maʾthūr (a saying transmitted, a saying that leaves a trace).

Īthār (the ifʿāl form): to put someone in front, to prefer him, to choose him.

How do the two senses come together? The lexicographers set up different connections. One explanation: at the centre of the root there is "to put a thing in front / on top"; athar is the mark left by the one who passed, īthār is putting someone in front. Another explanation attaches īthār to "picking out and setting apart".

On how this connection is made the lexicographers differ; I give no definite line. But the meaning of the verb is beyond dispute: to put someone ahead of oneself.

The Qurʾān does not treat giving as a single category. In different verses different thresholds are set, and these form a stairway:

The first step — giving of what is left over (infāq).

"And out of what We have provided them they spend" (al-Baqara 2/3)

It was treated there: the letter min conveys partitiveness — "of what We have provided", that is, a portion of it. It is not asked that a man distribute everything he has. And the balance "Do not keep your hand chained to your neck, nor open it altogether" (al-Isrāʾ 17/29) completes this.

The second step — giving what one loves.

"And who gives his property, though he loves it, to relatives, orphans, the poor …" — عَلَىٰ حُبِّهِۦ (al-Baqara 2/177)

The finding set up in the section on al-Baqara was this: "the measure is not in the quantity given but in what is felt while giving. To give what is left over, to distribute the surplus beyond one's need, to donate what is in any case easy to part with — these do not enter the definition. What enters the definition is the man who gives the thing he wants to keep."

And the same qualification was there in Sūrat al-Insān as well: "Though they love it, they feed the poor, the orphan and the captive" (al-Insān 76/8).

The third step — giving although one has need oneself (īthār).

"They prefer them to themselves, even when they are themselves in need" (al-Ḥashr 59/9)

The whole stairway:

Three steps: three progressively harder states of the same act (giving). And note: the Qurʾān records all three, and counts none of them sufficient, nor makes any of them obligatory. Īthār is not laid down as something asked of everyone; it is praised as something that was done.

This distinction is important. The verse does not use an imperative, it uses an indicative: "they prefer." That is, no obligation is laid down; a behaviour is recorded.

The verb in the sentence has no object: "they prefer" — whom? It is not said.

From the context the Muhājirūn are understood. But the dropping of the object leaves the scope open.

This technique is used deliberately in the Qurʾān and has been treated in two earlier places: at al-Māʿūn 107/6 with yurāʾūna (they make a display — to whom?) and at al-Maʿārij 70/18 with the dropping of the object. In both, the gap widens the scope.

عَلَىٰ أَنفُسِهِمْ — "against their own souls", "upon themselves". The particle ʿalā here conveys being to one's own detriment: the preference is made to their own harm.

One of the finest words of the sūra.

Root: خ-ص-ص. And the concrete sense of the root is surprising: a gap, a chink, a crack.

• ٱلْخَصَاص (khaṣāṣ) — the holes and gaps in a thing; the chinks of a tent or of a wall.
• خُصّ (khuṣṣ) — a hut made of brushwood, with light leaking through its gaps. It takes its name from the empty spaces in its weave.
• خَصَاصَة (khaṣāṣa) — from this: poverty, need.

That is, khaṣāṣa does not mean "little property". It means "a hole in the fabric of life".

The image is very clear: there is a covering and it does not cover everywhere. One place is left exposed. The wind comes in there.

This is an extremely accurate description of poverty. Poverty is, most of the time, not having nothing at all; it is having one place left exposed. There is a house, there is no work. There is food, there is no medicine. There is today, tomorrow is uncertain. The covering covers most places, but a chink remains, and all the risk comes from there.

Three words for poverty have been treated in this commentary so far, and the three look from different places:

All three name the same phenomenon, but from three different directions: movement, endurance, wholeness.

This variety suggests that the Qurʾān does not see poverty as a one-dimensional matter of income. A person's poverty has to do not with how much money he has but with how much he can move, how much he can endure, and which of his parts are left exposed.

A note on the root: from the same root come khāṣṣ (particular), khuṣūṣiyya (particularity), takhṣīṣ (to set apart). The common core is explained as "separating, opening apart": a thing's being separated out from the general. It is interesting that both "particular" and "chink" come out of the same place. I record this as an observation about the language.

And the verse closes with a general rule.

Root: و-ق-ي. To protect, to take under protection. And this is the same root as taqwā.

The verb is passive: يُوقَ — "whoever is guarded". Who guards him? It is not said.

This choice is important. The verse says "whoever is guarded against the shuḥḥ of his own soul", not "whoever overcomes the shuḥḥ of his own soul".

That is, this is not a declaration of achievement. The person is not described as overcoming this trait by his own strength; he is guarded. The verb's being passive takes the business out of the person's own capacity.

And this also balances the praise that follows in the verse: those who attain deliverance are not people who have won a victory; they are people who have been guarded.

The link with taqwā: the same root will come twice in the imperative in the eighteenth verse of the sūra — ittaqullāh. That is, there is an effort at protection asked of the person (taqwā), and there is a protection that takes place (yūqa). Both are from the same root.

This distinction is the key to the verse.

بُخْل (bukhl) — miserliness. Not giving what one has in hand. At the level of an act: the person could have given in a given situation, and did not.

شُحّ (shuḥḥ) — the definition the lexicographers give: "al-bukhlu maʿa ḥirṣ" — miserliness combined with greed.

Let us gather the differences between the two words:

The most important difference is in the second row, and it is generally skipped: shuḥḥ is not merely not giving; it is resenting what another has received.

The miser is a party to the dispute over whether he gives what he has in hand. The man of shuḥḥ also looks at the share of the other.

And the context of the verse sits exactly here. What was the preceding sentence? "They find in their breasts no want on account of what has been given to those others." That is, it was not given to the Anṣār, it was given to the Muhājirūn. This is precisely where shuḥḥ would come into play: seeing in another's hand a thing that has not been given to you.

The verse first describes that situation, and then gives it a name.

And the verse annexes the word to the soul: شُحَّ نَفْسِهِ — "the shuḥḥ of his soul". It could have said shuḥḥuhu (his shuḥḥ). When it says shuḥḥa nafsihī, the trait is ascribed not to the person himself but to his soul. A distance is put between the person and his soul: shuḥḥ is not the person himself but an inclination within him.

Support from within the Qurʾān:

"Souls have been made ready for shuḥḥ" — وَأُحْضِرَتِ ٱلْأَنفُسُ ٱلشُّحَّ (al-Nisāʾ 4/128)

This verse says a great deal: uḥḍirat — passive, "was made present". That is, shuḥḥ is the default state of the soul; not a corruption added later but an inclination present from the start.

And this explains why the verb yūqa is passive. If the default state is shuḥḥ, then coming out of it is not an achievement but an exception — and the exception comes about by way of being guarded.

Root: ف-ل-ح. It was treated at al-Baqara 2/5: to split, to crack. Fallāḥ — the farmer; because he splits the soil.

And now put the two halves of the verse side by side:

Two opposite movements, in one sentence. Shuḥḥ closes the soul up; falāḥ is splitting and coming out. The verse recounts the splitting open of a soul that has closed.

And this connects directly with the axis set up in Sūrat al-Baqara. There were two poles there:

• al-Baqara 2/5 — mufliḥūn: those who split and come out.
• al-Baqara 2/74 — the hardened heart: "like stone, or even harder" — not splitting, not opening, with nothing coming out of it.

The finding in the section on al-Baqara was this: "the words the Qurʾān chooses for fertility come insistently from the root of splitting — falaq, falāḥ, fajr, shaqq, faṭr. The hardening of the heart is exactly the reverse of this."

al-Ḥashr 59/9 adds a third position to this axis: shuḥḥ is the counterpart, in the field of property, of the hardening of the heart. And the person guarded against it becomes a mufliḥ — one who is split open.

And one sūra earlier the same word had split a different shell: at al-Mujādala 58/22 the mufliḥūn were those who went beyond the bond of lineage. Here, those who go beyond the closedness of the soul.

Two neighbouring sūras name two different shells with the same word: the ring outside (lineage) and the ring inside (the soul).

The sentence وَمَن يُوقَ شُحَّ نَفْسِهِۦ فَأُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْمُفْلِحُونَ occurs once more in the Qurʾān, in exactly the same wording: al-Taghābun 64/16.

There the context is different: it comes after it has been said that property and children are a trial.

The exact repetition of a sentence in two separate sūras is a striking thing in the Qurʾān. And when the two contexts are read together the rule widens: shuḥḥ shows itself both in being troubled by what is given to another (al-Ḥashr) and in clutching at one's own property and children (al-Taghābun).