62. Sūrat al-Jumuʿa

Eleven verses. Belonging to the Medinan period. It takes its name from a word that occurs in the ninth verse and is found nowhere else in the Qurʾān: al-Jumuʿa.

At first sight this sūra consists of three parts that look unrelated to one another: an opening of tasbīḥ, a criticism of a community that does not carry its book, and a regulation about prayer. In the classical commentaries the bond between these three parts is usually made weakly, and sometimes not made at all.

Yet the sūra has a single idea, and the three parts are three states of that idea:

That a text has reached you does not mean that it has passed into you.

In the fifth verse this is said by way of a comparison: the donkey carrying a book on its back. The load is carried, the content is not. In the eleventh verse the same thing is said not by a comparison but by a record: while the sermon is being delivered the drum of a caravan is heard, the congregation scatters, and the man who is speaking is left standing.

The distance between the two verses is six verses, and the whole weight of the sūra rests in that distance. For the community that hears the criticism of the fifth verse finds itself, in the eleventh, inside the same description. The sūra does not point at someone else and leave it at that; it then turns what it has pointed at into a mirror.

This is the very technique treated in the section on Sūrat al-Māʿūn. There too the text first described "the one who denies the religion" and put the reader at ease, and then, saying fa-waylun li'l-muṣallīn, drew the boundary over to the reader's own side. Sūrat al-Jumuʿa performs the same manoeuvre along a longer arc: the community criticised and the community listening to the criticism are left standing side by side at the end of the sūra as two instances of the same behaviour.

The sūra takes its name from the construct يَوْمِ الْجُمُعَةِ in the ninth verse. The word occurs nowhere else in the Qurʾān.

The root ج-م-ع: to gather, to bring together. Jamʿ, jamāʿa, jamʿiyya, majmūʿ all come from here. That the day should bear this name is the name of the work done on that day: the day of gathering.

The lexicographers record three vocalisations of the word — al-jumuʿa (with a ḍamma on the mīm), al-jumʿa (with a sukūn on the mīm), al-jumaʿa (with a fatḥa on the mīm) — and these are explained as different patterns: the reading with the ḍamma is counted an adjectival pattern close to the sense "gathering much / much gathered", while the reading with the sukūn is held to be a lightened form. This difference of reading does not change the meaning; the centre of the word is in every case gathering. I ascribe none of this to particular imāms of the variant readings, because on this point I have no firm ascription to hand.

A historical note: it is transmitted in the sources that in the pre-Islamic Arab calendar the day was called by another name — al-ʿarūba. I do not dwell on the soundness of this report; but that the name of the day should have changed suits what the sūra does: a day whose name changes is a day whose function has changed.

In this sūra there is no dispute. The sūra is Medinan, and this can be seen from three separate places:

1. The regulation of collective prayer in the ninth verse requires the existence of a congregation and of city life. 2. The fifth verse addresses the people of the Torah directly; that addressee did not exist in Mecca. 3. The eleventh verse describes a mosque in which a sermon is being delivered, and a caravan passing outside.

That the sūra belongs to the group called the musabbiḥāt also agrees with this picture: the sūras that open with sabbaḥa or yusabbiḥu (al-Ḥadīd 57, al-Ḥashr 59, al-Ṣaff 61, al-Jumuʿa 62, al-Taghābun 64) are placed as a body in the Medinan period. Within this group there is a small but regular difference: al-Ḥadīd, al-Ḥashr and al-Ṣaff open with the perfect (sabbaḥa), al-Jumuʿa and al-Taghābun with the imperfect (yusabbiḥu). This distinction will be taken up below, at the first verse.

Concerning the last verse of the sūra there is a report that occurs in the classical hadith collections and that very nearly all the exegetical sources transmit.

According to what is transmitted from Jābir b. ʿAbdullāh in al-Bukhārī and Muslim: while the Prophet was delivering the sermon on Friday, a trading caravan came to Medina. The congregation scattered and turned towards the caravan; very few people were left in the mosque. In the various chains of the report the number of those who remained is given as twelve people. The verse came down upon this.

In some variants of the report a particular name is mentioned as the owner of the caravan. I do not give that name here: there is variation among the versions, and who the man was adds nothing to the meaning of the verse. The verse itself gives no name — it says "they scattered", not "so-and-so scattered".

Another point about the report that ought to be recorded: in some transmissions the reason for going out to meet the caravan is given as a famine and a rise in prices experienced in Medina at that time. If this detail is correct the picture does not change, but it becomes clearer — people did not get up in order to be entertained but out of need. Read together with this possibility, the criticism made by the sūra becomes heavier, but more realistic: what is censured is not greed but the urgent overriding the important.

For the first eight verses of the sūra there is no report of the occasion of revelation at this level. It is said that the fifth and sixth verses came down in the context of disputes entered into with the Jewish communities of Medina; this is a reasonable inference drawn from the context, not a firm transmitted report.

The word-analysis of the basmala was made in the section on Sūrat al-Fātiḥa; I do not repeat it here.

Yusabbiḥu lillāhi mā fi's-samāwāti wa mā fi'l-arḍ, al-Maliki'l-Quddūsi'l-ʿAzīzi'l-Ḥakīm

"Whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth declares God free of all imperfection — al-Malik, al-Quddūs, al-ʿAzīz, al-Ḥakīm."

The root س-ب-ح and the verb sabbaḥa in the tafʿīl form were treated in detail in the section on Sūrat al-Naṣr (110/3); I do not repeat the findings recorded there. The summary is this: the concrete sense of the root is to swim in water, that is, to move swiftly through a medium and to pass through it; when the word passes into the tafʿīl form it acquires the sense of tanzīh — to hold God far from everything unbefitting Him. The function of tasbīḥ is negative: it does not say "He is such", it says "He is far from such".

Two things need to be added here.

First: the difference of form. Within the group of the musabbiḥāt this verb comes in some places in the perfect (sabbaḥa — al-Ḥadīd, al-Ḥashr, al-Ṣaff) and in others in the imperfect (yusabbiḥu — al-Jumuʿa, al-Taghābun). In Arabic the perfect states completion, the imperfect continuity and renewal. Accordingly:

In the classical sources this distinction is seen to be voiced, but it is not laid down as a binding rule; some lexicographers say that the two forms are here of the same meaning. I record this as my own reading: Sūrat al-Jumuʿa from beginning to end describes an order that continues — a gathering repeated every week, a call reaching every generation, "others who have not yet joined them". The imperfect fits the understanding of time in this sūra. This is a preference, and it is not binding.

Second: the lām in لِلَّهِ. The verb does not take a direct object; a lām comes between. It could have said yusabbiḥullāha (and indeed this usage too occurs in the Qurʾān). When it says yusabbiḥu lillāhi, then, as the lexicographers note, the act of tasbīḥ acquires a direction: the tasbīḥ is done to God, it is done for Him. The nuance is small but it settles the direction.

Here it is not man (who) that is used but مَا (mā). In Arabic man is used of those who possess reason, mā of those that do not, or for a general scope in which no distinction is drawn.

The choice is meaningful: what performs tasbīḥ is not only conscious beings. The scope is wider than "whoever there is"; it is "whatever there is". Stone, water, tree, star — all included.

This is something the Qurʾān says openly elsewhere: "The seven heavens and the earth and all that is in them declare Him free of all imperfection. There is nothing that does not declare Him free of all imperfection together with His praise; but you do not understand their tasbīḥ" (al-Isrāʾ 17/44). This verse lays down two things at once: the tasbīḥ is universal, and man does not hear it.

The caveat "you do not understand" here is important, because it leaves open the question of what the tasbīḥ is. In the classical exegesis two interpretations part company:

I adopt no preference between the two. But this much can be recorded: the verse marks out a position rather than giving a piece of information. Man stands inside a universe that performs tasbīḥ, as the one being that is asked to perform it and may fail to. The rest of the sūra will be occupied with that gap.

The point of word order lies here.

All four names are in the genitive (with a kasra). That is, they are not the predicate of the sentence; they are the appositive substitute or the attribute of the divine name in lillāhi. In an English rendering this structure is lost; to say "He is al-Malik, He is al-Quddūs" would be wrong. The right rendering is: "they declare free of all imperfection the God who is al-Malik, who is al-Quddūs, who is al-ʿAzīz, who is al-Ḥakīm."

The difference is this: had they been the predicate, a new piece of information would have been given. Being attribute or substitute, no information is given; the one to whom the tasbīḥ is directed is being described. That is, the verse does not say "God is Malik"; it says "the one to whom tasbīḥ is offered is the one who is Malik". The attention lies not on the names themselves but on to whom the tasbīḥ is offered.

This will find its counterpart at the end of the sūra. In the third verse the same two names will return, this time in the nominative, that is as the predicate: wa huwa'l-ʿAzīzu'l-Ḥakīm. The same two words, in two grammatical positions. Once the address of the tasbīḥ, once the ruling of the sentence.

الْمَلِك (al-Malik). The root م-ل-ك: to own something and to have the power of disposal over it. Two branches part beneath the root: mulk (rule, sovereignty) and milk (ownership). Malik is closer to the first, mālik to the second — but both are from the same stem, and Arabic does not tear the two apart. To govern and to own issue from the same root.

الْقُدُّوس (al-Quddūs). The root ق-د-س: cleanness, purity, being kept far off and apart from something. From the same root comes taqdīs. The fuʿūl pattern in Arabic states an intensive form: the highest degree of the attribute.

This name occurs in two places in the Qurʾān and in both it is paired with the same name: here and at al-Ḥashr 59/23 — al-Maliku'l-Quddūs. That the two names should come side by side does not look like an accident. Malik states power and disposal; Quddūs states that this power is apart from all known uses of power. The first establishes a likeness (man too governs), the second cuts the likeness off.

It is instructive too to look at the relatives of the root: al-Arḍu'l-Muqaddasa (al-Māʾida 5/21) — "the hallowed land", that is, a place set apart from everyday use, assigned. Rūḥu'l-Qudus — the spirit that is set apart, that is pure. At the centre of the root there stands not "exalted" but "set apart". Holiness, in the logic of the word itself, is not a height but a boundary.

And in Sūrat al-Baqara these two roots had come side by side: the words of the angels, "We declare You free of all imperfection with Your praise, and we hallow You" (al-Baqara 2/30). That is, sabbaḥa and qaddasa are two verbs that the Qurʾān has itself paired; the first verse of Sūrat al-Jumuʿa builds that pairing again, as verb + name.

الْعَزِيز (al-ʿAzīz). The root ع-ز-ز: hardness, impenetrability, invincibility — and from there scarcity, rarity. In Arabic arḍun ʿazāz means "hard ground that cannot be dug". This name is the source of the notion of ʿizza that will be treated at the eighth verse, and it will sit at the centre of the argument in Sūrat al-Munāfiqūn (63/8). Two neighbouring sūras share the same root: in one a divine name, in the other an attribute over which men quarrel.

الْحَكِيم (al-Ḥakīm). The root ح-ك-م: to prevent, to bridle. Ḥakama is the bit put in a horse's mouth — the piece that keeps the animal from bolting. Arabic has given wisdom this name: wisdom is not a heap of knowledge but the thing that prevents bolting.

This is the sibling of the observation recorded for the root ʿ-q-l at al-Baqara 2/44: ʿiqāl is the rope tied to a camel's knee so that it will not run off; and ʿaql too is not a store but a bond. Now the same logic appears for ḥikma. Both words describe not knowledge but being held.

This will become important in the second verse: one of the two things the Prophet teaches is al-ḥikma. Once the root of the word is known, that verse is read differently.

The rest of the sūra concerns human behaviour: those who do not carry the book, those who flee from death, those who leave the sermon and run to the caravan. That is, from beginning to end the sūra will describe a deficiency.

And immediately before that, the uninterrupted tasbīḥ of everything in the heavens and on the earth is laid down.

This is a framing. The verse places man's deficiency against a background: the whole universe is doing its work, and the only place where it falters is here. The picture in the last verse of the sūra — the man speaking, standing; the congregation outside — changes scale when read in the light of the first verse. The community that scatters is scattering in the middle of an order that does not scatter.

The side of the verse that works most today is the logic of the name Quddūs: holiness is not a height but a being-apart.

The practical consequence is this: that a thing should be counted holy means that it cannot be made part of any calculation. The note recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Naṣr, on tasbīḥ being commanded at the moment of victory, connects here — tasbīḥ cuts off God's being turned into a party to a human calculation. Quddūs does the same work at the level of a name.

Huwa'lladhī baʿatha fi'l-ummiyyīna rasūlan minhum yatlū ʿalayhim āyātihi wa yuzakkīhim wa yuʿallimuhumu'l-kitāba wa'l-ḥikmata wa in kānū min qablu la-fī ḍalālin mubīn

"It is He who sent among the ummiyyūn a messenger from among themselves: he recites to them His verses, purifies them, and teaches them the Book and wisdom. Yet before that they were in a manifest straying."

The skeleton of the sentence is this:

• One perfect verb: baʿatha (he sent) — a single, completed event.
• Three imperfect verbs: yatlū (he recites), yuzakkī (he purifies), yuʿallimu (he teaches) — continuing, repeated works.

The difference of form states a programme. The sending happens once; the work of the one sent is continuous. And the three imperfect verbs stand in the position of an attribute to the word rasūlan — that is, messengerhood is defined by these three works. The messenger is described not as "one who brings a piece of news" but as "one who does these three things".

This verse does not stand alone in the Qurʾān. Nearly the same expression occurs in four places, and the differences between them are instructive:

Two things appear at once.

First: al-Jumuʿa 62/2 and Āl ʿImrān 3/164 are, closing sentence included, almost word for word the same. The difference lies in two places: 3/164 says "to the believers" and qualifies the messenger as min anfusihim (from their own selves); 62/2 says "among the ummiyyūn" and qualifies him as minhum (from among them). The same sentence is built with two different descriptions of the addressee.

Second — and this is the real matter: at al-Baqara 2/129 the order is different. There teaching comes before purifying. In the other three places purifying comes before teaching.

This difference has been noticed in the classical commentaries and dwelt upon. Al-Baqara 2/129 is a prayer — it is Abraham's request. The other three are the report of what has come to pass.

The reading that follows is this: the one who asks voices the matter in the naturally expected order (first one is taught, then one is purified); the coming to pass happens in another order (first one is purified, then taught). This is an explanation voiced in the classical sources; it is not presented as a definite ruling.

But why should the order in which it came to pass be this way? It is worth thinking about, because the claim is a serious one.

To teach is to put knowledge into a vessel. The condition of the vessel determines what the thing put into it will become. A clean thing put into a dirty vessel does not stay clean — and knowledge is the same: right knowledge taken up with a corrupt intention produces a corrupt result. The fifth verse of the sūra is exactly the example of this: the Torah was given, and it was not carried. There is no defect in the thing given; the defect is in the receiver.

For this reason, when the order is purifying → teaching, a claim about priority emerges: knowledge is not carried if its carrier is not ready.

And if one looks closely, this is the whole argument of the sūra. The fifth verse shows how an unpurified carrier carries the book: on its back.

I add this as my own reading: this ordering is not an order of time but an order of priority. In the verse all three verbs are imperfect; that is, all three go on at the same time. It is not being said "let this finish first, then let that begin". What is being said is: the two run together, and one is the condition of the other.

The word أُمِّيّ was treated at al-Baqara 2/78; I do not repeat the finding recorded there: the root is أ-م-م (mother), its classical explanation "remaining in the state in which he was born of his mother", that is, a person who has not learnt to read and write; in its context in al-Baqara it means specifically one who does not know the Book.

What needs to be added here is the function of the word in this verse.

Five verses later Sūrat al-Jumuʿa will speak of "those who were laden with the Torah". That is, a contrast is being built within the sūra:

This contrast settles the meaning of the word here: ummī is used not as a belittling epithet meaning "ignorant" but in the sense "one to whom a book has not previously been given", as a technical marking of position. The verse is not counting up a deficiency; it is describing a starting point.

Indeed the end of the verse says this plainly: wa in kānū min qablu la-fī ḍalālin mubīn — "before that they were in a manifest straying." That is, the place from which the start was made is being recorded. And this record, combined with the next verse's expression "others of them who have not yet joined them", comes to mean this: the condition of this call is not to possess a prior accumulation.

There is a disagreement about the scope of the word, and it would not be right to conceal it:

In my judgement the first reading comes first in this verse, because the contrast the verse builds has to do not with literacy but with possession of a book. This preference is not binding.

A note of two words, but one of the most loaded places in the verse.

Minhum — "from among them". The messenger does not come from outside; he comes out from within the addressees. This is something the Qurʾān regularly emphasises in its account of the sending of prophets, and it has two sides:

1. It closes off excuse. It cannot be said, "someone unlike us came; he does not understand us." 2. It establishes an example. That what is asked to be done can be done is shown through someone living in the same conditions.

At Āl ʿImrān 3/164, in the same place, it says min anfusihim (from their own selves) — a still closer expression. The minhum in al-Jumuʿa is more neutral, more in the sense of "from the same community".

There is this too: rasūlan came indefinite. Not "al-Rasūl" but "a messenger". In Arabic this can be used to introduce and to magnify a word (taʿẓīm), and it is also used to state the kind. Here, because three adjectival clauses follow it, the indefiniteness is natural: it is the indefinite that is fit to take an attribute. That is, the leaving of the word indefinite is in order that it may be defined by the three verbs that follow immediately. Who the messenger is, is said not by a name but by a work.

The root ت-ل-و was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Bayyina (98/2); the finding is recalled here without being repeated, because it is particularly important in this verse:

The primary sense of the root is not to read but to come after, to follow, to go along behind. Talāhu — he followed him. Al-tālī — the one who comes after. Arabic also has qirāʾa for "reading" (root ق-ر-أ: to gather, to bring together — to gather letters and make a word). The difference between the two: qirāʾa emphasises gathering, tilāwa following.

Now put this knowledge inside the verse.

The messenger's first work is tilāwa — that is, in the logic of the word itself, "going after the verses". Not to voice the text but to walk behind it. The word carries within it the reciter's being subject to the text: the one who recites is not the one in front but the one who comes behind.

And precisely for this reason this word stands in direct conflict with the fifth verse of the sūra. The man described there carries the book — that is, he has taken it behind him and himself gone in front. The direction has been reversed. Tilāwa is to go behind the text; ḥaml is to carry the text behind.

This link is not forced; it issues from the meanings of the words themselves and stands as a contrast built between two verses of the sūra.

عَلَيْهِمْ — "to them". The verb comes with the particle ʿalā. This particle states a descent from above; what is recited is given not across to the other side but downward from above. In the Qurʾān the coming of the verb tilāwa with this particle is regular.

آيَاتِهِ — "His verses". The root أ-ي-ي: sign, mark, token. An āya is a sign that exists not for itself but for what it points to. Like a road sign: one looks at the sign but does not stop at the sign. The choosing of this word here completes what tilāwa is: to go after the signs.

The root ز-ك-و was treated in detail at al-Shams 91/9 and seen with its concrete counterpart at al-Layl 92/18; I do not repeat it here. The summary is this: beneath the root there lie two senses at once and they are inseparable — cleanness and growth. From the same root comes zakāt; property, when a portion of it is taken out, is both cleansed and increased. For this reason to render tazkiya only as "to cleanse" leaves it half done: to purify and thereby to make grow.

As was recorded in the section on al-Shams, there the verb was reflexive: man zakkāhā — "whoever purifies it (his own self)". The agent was man himself.

Here the agent changes. Yuzakkīhim — the messenger purifies them.

This change produces a real tension, and it would not be right to skip it. In the section on al-Shams too there was an objection recorded: elsewhere the Qurʾān appears to forbid purifying the self ("do not claim purity for your souls", al-Najm 53/32). Now here purification comes as the act of another.

The solution is found by looking at to whom the verb is ascribed:

That is, what is forbidden is not the effort of purification but the claim to be purified. These are two different acts: one is to work, the other is to pass a verdict about oneself.

But how does the messenger purify? The text itself gives no answer to this question, and one must not invent one. Two things, however, can be said from the context:

First, the word order of the verse itself has placed purifying between tilāwa and taʿlīm. That is, purifying is a work standing between reciting and teaching. This position shows that it is neither a pure transfer of information nor a ceremony independent of knowledge.

Second, the "growth" sense of the root must not be forgotten. Tazkiya is not a diminishing. It is done by something's being taken out, but its result is increase. At al-Layl 92/18 this was made concrete as "who gives his wealth, in order to be purified". That is, the clearest example of tazkiya within the Qurʾān is putting something out of one's hand.

When we combine this with the next item, the last verse of the sūra looks different: what was asked of the community that ran to the caravan was exactly to put something out of their hand — to let a caravan go.

يُعَلِّمُ — the root ع-ل-م. The tafʿīl form here states transitivity and gradualness: not a transfer at one stroke but teaching step by step.

الْكِتَاب — the root ك-ت-ب: its primary sense is to sew together, to join. In Arabic this root is used for sewing leather as well. Writing has taken this name because it attaches and binds letters to one another. That is, kitāb, in the logic of the word itself, is "that which has been bound together" — the gathered state of what was scattered.

الْحِكْمَة — the root recorded at the first verse is at work here: ح-ك-م, to prevent, to bridle; ḥakama, the horse's bit.

The meaning of the two objects is therefore this: that which is bound (the book) and that which binds (wisdom). One is the text itself, the other the work the text does in a person.

In the classical exegesis there is a wide disagreement about what ḥikma is: the sunna, jurisprudence, grasping the subtleties of the verses, the capacity to judge rightly, the joining of knowledge with action. I adopt no preference among these views, because the root of the word already gives their common denominator: that which binds knowledge to behaviour. Whichever view is taken, wisdom is not outside the text but the text's counterpart in the person.

And this completes the word order of the verse: the book is taught, and wisdom is taught too. That is, the giving of the text is not counted sufficient; that which holds the text must be given as well. What will be seen in the fifth verse is exactly the lack of this second thing. The donkey carries the book — the book is there, the bit is not.

إِنْ here is not a particle of negation; it is the structure called mukhaffafa min al-thaqīla — its origin is inna, it has been lightened, and the لَ (the distinguishing lām) that comes at the head of its predicate makes this plain. That is, the sentence is not negative but an emphasised affirmative: "they were indeed, before that, in a manifest straying."

ضَلَال — the root ض-ل-ل: to lose the way, to go astray. The concrete sense of the word is to lose the track in the desert. Note: ḍalāl is not "to do evil" but "not to know where one is going". At the centre of the root there stands not immorality but directionlessness.

مُبِين — the root ب-ي-ن: the space between two things, separation. In the ifʿāl form (abāna) it becomes "to distinguish, to make plain". Mubīn is an active participle that can mean both "that which is plain" and "that which makes plain".

That it should say "a manifest straying" here enters an interesting caveat: the straying was not hidden. It could be seen. Combined with the first word of the second verse, this completes the picture: the situation was evident, and the intervention came upon that evident situation.

The practical counterpart of the order. The side of the verse that works most is the placing of purifying before teaching. Its counterpart today has to do directly with education: if, before a piece of knowledge is transmitted, no question is asked about the condition of the place that knowledge is going to, the transmission is not reliable. The same knowledge yields different results in different intentions. This holds in religious education as much as in every kind of specialist training — technical competence is not a good independent of the condition of the person who will use it.

The direction of tilāwa. The sense of "going after" the text puts in question, today more than anything, the relation established with a text. When a text is read, two things can happen: the reader goes after the text, or he drags the text after himself. The word itself says the first. The second can be done too — but then what is being done is not called tilāwa.

Wa ākharīna minhum lammā yalḥaqū bihim, wa huwa'l-ʿAzīzu'l-Ḥakīm

"And to others of them who have not yet joined them… He is al-ʿAzīz, al-Ḥakīm."

This verse is short and easily passed over. Yet it is here that the addressee of the sūra is settled.

The preceding verse told of a concrete event: to a particular community, a messenger was sent from among them. This verse makes an addition to that sentence, and with the addition the time of the sentence breaks open. The messenger turns out to have been sent not only to those present there but also to "others who have not yet joined".

That is, the four verbs of the second verse — he sent, he recites, he purifies, he teaches — cease to be a closed event.

There is a real grammatical matter here, and it would not be right to pass over it.

Ākharīna is in the accusative. Yet the nearest candidate for it to be joined to, al-ummiyyīna, is in the genitive (on account of the particle fī). In Arabic, conjunction requires agreement of case. Direct conjunction therefore looks problematic.

The solutions mentioned in the classical sources of grammar are these:

All three are mentioned in the classical sources. I adopt no preference among them; in terms of meaning all three come out at the same place. But this must be recorded: the first solution makes ākharīn directly the object of the three verbs — that is, the addressee of the works of reciting, purifying and teaching. This is the reading that best overlaps with what the verse says.

This is the most loaded word of the verse. And its load lies in the difference between it and lam.

In Arabic there are two particles that negate the past, and they do not say the same thing:

The lexicographers note that lammā contains within it tawaqquʿ: expectation. What is negated with lammā is something hoped for and awaited. The English words "yet" and "still" carry this difference well: "he did not come" and "he has not come yet" are not the same thing. The second says that his coming is expected.

Now return to the verse. Lammā yalḥaqū bihim — "they have not yet joined them." That is:

• Their not having joined is not a deficiency but a matter of time.
• Their joining is awaited.
• And this awaiting has been recorded by the verse itself.

A single particle turns the sentence from a closed historical report into an open-ended invitation.

يَلْحَقُوا — the root ل-ح-ق: to catch up with someone, to come up from behind and reach him. From the same root come lāḥiq (the one who comes later, the one attached) and ilḥāq (attaching). The concrete picture of the verb is this: a caravan going ahead and those trying to catch up from behind.

This picture is of the same family as the word tilāwa in the second verse. There too there was "going after". In two verses in a row the sūra uses the same movement: coming from behind. Going after the text, catching up behind the caravan. Both are verbs of following, not of getting in front.

In the classical exegesis three answers are given to this question:

Whichever of these views is preferred, the result stays the same, because all three say one thing: the set of addressees has not been closed.

Concerning this verse it is transmitted in the hadith collections that, when the Prophet was asked whom the expression "others" covered, he pointed to Salmān al-Fārisī. The report comes through chains found in al-Bukhārī and Muslim. I do not quote its wording in full here, because there are differences among the variants; but it can be recorded that reports to this effect exist. What the report does is not to narrow the scope of the verse but to show that the geographical and ethnic boundary has been lifted.

The caveat مِنْهُمْ works in the same direction. "Of them" — that is, those who join later are counted as belonging to the first caravan too; they do not form a separate class. To come later is not to stand lower.

In the first verse these two names occurred in the genitive, in the position of attributes describing the address of the tasbīḥ. Here they come in the nominative, in the position of the predicate of the sentence.

The difference is this: there no information was being given, an address was being described. Here a ruling is given directly: "He is al-ʿAzīz; He is al-Ḥakīm."

And the place of the ruling is meaningful. The sentence comes immediately after it has been said that the set of addressees will widen in time. The two names put that widening under guarantee:

• al-ʿAzīz — He has the power for this; He cannot be prevented.
• al-Ḥakīm — this is not an accident but an order.

The placing of pairs of names at the ends of verses in the Qurʾān generally works in this way: the names are not ornament but the support of the sentence.

The side of this verse that works most today is the position of those who come later.

Every community tends to produce a difference of degree between those close to the founding moment and those who join later. The early comers are counted "original", those who come after "an addition". The verse does not set up this distinction: those who will join later are minhum, that is, "of them". Inside the same set.

The second side is the particle lammā itself. If the judgement passed on someone who has not yet joined a community is not "he did not join" but "he has not yet joined", then the file on that person is not closed. This is a stance the verse establishes with a single word, and it can be generalised: to choose the form of a judgement passed on a person is to settle the space left to that person.

Dhālika faḍlullāhi yuʾtīhi man yashāʾ, wallāhu dhu'l-faḍli'l-ʿaẓīm

"This is God's bounty; He gives it to whom He wills. God is the possessor of great bounty."

This verse forestalls an objection rather than giving a piece of information.

The second verse had said that a messenger was sent to a community to whom no book had been given. The third added that this reaches those who come later as well. The question these two sentences naturally awaken is this: why them?

Once the question is asked, two answers can be produced. The first: "because they deserved it." The second: "because God so willed."

The verse chooses the second. And this choice closes the door on the first answer — and does so exactly where it needs to be closed. For had the first answer been accepted, the chosen community would have begun to see its chosenness as a right. And two verses later the sūra will pass to the description of a community that has done precisely this: those who say "we are God's friends".

That is, the fourth verse stands like a measure taken in advance against the disease of the fifth and sixth verses. So that the same error should not be repeated in the sūra's first addressees.

The root ف-ض-ل: a thing's exceeding what is necessary, excess, what is left over. From the same root come faḍla (a remainder), fuḍūl (superfluities, things not needed) and tafḍīl (to make superior).

The idea at the centre of the word is important: faḍl is what falls outside the calculated share. Not the return for what is deserved, but what is added on top of it. For this reason in Arabic faḍl and ʿadl are named as two matching notions: ʿadl gives what is deserved, faḍl gives more.

Accordingly what the verse says is this: messengerhood, and being its addressee, is not the payment of a debt. It does not rest on a reckoning.

And this finding pairs in an interesting way with the economic scene at the end of the sūra. In the tenth verse people will be told "seek of God's bounty" — the same word. Provision too is not the output of a reckoning but a surplus that is given. The sūra qualifies both revelation and provision with the same word: neither comes by being deserved, but by being given.

يُؤْتِي — the root أ-ت-ي: to come. In the ifʿāl form (ātā) it becomes "to bring, to give". That is, the verb "to give" in Arabic is derived from "to cause to come": the giver brings something to the other party.

مَنْ يَشَاءُ — this expression occurs often in the Qurʾān and is very often misread. There are two misreadings:

The first error: arbitrariness. The expression "He gives it to whom He wills" does not mean that the choice is haphazard. It is not the name at the end of this verse that closes this off — but الْحَكِيم at the end of the third verse does. The willing of one who possesses wisdom is, in the logic of the word itself, a bridled willing. The Qurʾān regularly places these two caveats side by side.

The second error: the lifting of responsibility. The sentence "God gives to whom He wills" does not mean that there is nothing for man to do. The Qurʾān uses the same structure both for giving and for a person's own choice; indeed at al-Shams 91/9-10 salvation and loss were tied directly to the person's own act (zakkāhā / dassāhā). These two kinds of sentence stand side by side in the Qurʾān, and the Qurʾān does not call for taking a side between them. As was recorded in the section on al-Muddaththir 74/54-56: the text places man shāʾa (whoever wills) and illā an yashāʾallāh (unless God wills) side by side, one verse apart, and counts both true.

Here too the same balance is kept. The verse says that the choice does not issue from man's reckoning — which is to say not that man's reckoning is unimportant but that the reckoning cannot buy the choice.

The sentence does not say "God is the possessor of bounty"; it says "God is the possessor of great bounty". The attribute الْعَظِيم qualifies al-faḍl (that it is in the genitive shows this), not God.

The nuance is this: what is qualified is not the greatness of the giver but the greatness of what is given. The verse is not describing God's majesty; it is describing the scale of the bounty.

And this suits the function of the verse. The sentence is not a boast but a statement of scale: what is in hand is great. The next verse will show how a great thing can be turned into a small load.

The fourth verse closes the first section of the sūra. The structure is this:

1. 62/1 — The state of the universe: tasbīḥ. 2. 62/2 — The intervention: the messenger and four works. 3. 62/3 — The scope: an addressee widening in time. 4. 62/4 — The caveat: this is a bounty, not something deserved.

And the fifth verse opens with a picture set directly opposite these four verses: a community to whom a book was given, and who did not carry it. That is, the sūra first establishes what the bounty is, and then shows what can be done with that bounty.

Mathalu'lladhīna ḥummilu't-Tawrāta thumma lam yaḥmilūhā ka-mathali'l-ḥimāri yaḥmilu asfārā. Biʾsa mathalu'l-qawmi'lladhīna kadhdhabū bi-āyātillāh. Wallāhu lā yahdi'l-qawma'ẓ-ẓālimīn

"The likeness of those who were laden with the Torah and then did not carry it is the likeness of the donkey that carries volumes. How evil is the likeness of the people who denied God's verses! God does not guide the wrongdoing people."

The whole force of this verse is gathered in the use of a single root in two different patterns.

The root ح-م-ل: to take up a load, to carry. From the same root come ḥaml (a load, and also pregnancy), ḥamūla (a load) and ḥammāl (one who carries loads).

Now look at the two usages in the verse:

In Arabic ḥamala (the first form) is "to carry", while ḥammala (the second form) is "to lay a load on someone". The second form increases transitivity: it requires a carrier and a loader.

Accordingly what the verse says is: the load was placed, but it was not carried.

This is, logically, a strange sentence. A creature on whose back a load has been placed must carry it — if it does not carry it the load falls to the ground. The verse seems to be saying something impossible.

And the comparison comes in exactly to resolve this strangeness. For there really is something being carried: the weight. What is not carried is what is inside that weight.

ثُمَّ (thumma) differs in Arabic from wāw and from fāʾ: it states sequence with an interval. Fāʾ joins without a break, thumma says that time has passed in between.

That is, the sentence does not say "they were laden and did not carry"; it says "they were laden, then they did not carry". There is a stretch of time in between.

This changes the picture. What is at issue is not a trust refused from the outset. It was carried for a while, then ceased to be carried. That is, what is being described is not a rejection but a wearing away. It was recorded at al-Baqara 2/10, where the metaphors of "sickness" are used of the hypocrites: a sickness does not stay fixed, it either heals or advances. Here too there is a similar process — the relation was established at some point, and afterwards was hollowed out.

The word is not derived from an Arabic root; it is the Arabicised form of the Hebrew tôrāh, and it means "teaching, instruction, guidance". The Qurʾān uses this word as the name of the book given to Moses (Mūsā).

That the word preferred here should be a particular book is meaningful. The verse does not say "those who were given a book", it says "those who were laden with the Torah". That is, the addressee is determinate and is a historical community.

But the continuation of the verse at once widens this determinacy: "How evil is the likeness of the people who denied God's verses." In the second sentence the Torah does not occur; a general attribute is laid down. That is, the comparison is set up for a particular community, but the ruling is given by way of an attribute.

This means that the basic caveat of the method (Method) is found in the text itself: the Qurʾān here names a community but ties the ruling to a behaviour. Whoever performs that behaviour, the description fits him too — and the eleventh verse of the sūra will show exactly this.

There is a point that must be attended to: the sentence does not say "they are like a donkey".

It says: mathalu'lladhīna… ka-mathali'l-ḥimār — "their likeness is like the likeness of the donkey." What is compared is not persons but states.

This difference is worked on with particular care in the classical books of rhetoric, and it is important. Had a man been likened to a donkey, this would have been an insult. When a state is likened to a state it becomes a finding: a structural commonality is established between two situations. The commonality is this — in both situations there is a carrier, what he carries has value, and the carrier cannot reach that value.

الْحِمَار — the root ح-م-ر. The relation between the root of the word and "red" (aḥmar) is disputed among the lexicographers; I say nothing definite about it.

The choice of animal needs to be dwelt upon. Why a donkey?

In the classical commentaries the donkey's lack of understanding is generally pointed to. This may be right, but the real force of the comparison lies, in my view, elsewhere: the donkey is a beast of burden. What describes it is that it carries. And for a beast of burden, what the thing it carries may be is by definition immaterial — it may be wheat, it may be stone, it may be a book. The weight is the same.

That is, the animal chosen is not "a stupid animal" but "a carrier indifferent to content". What the comparison touches is not intelligence but the form of the relationship.

The Qurʾān uses this animal in another place too: "The ugliest of voices is surely the voice of donkeys" (Luqmān 31/19). There the measure is voice, here it is load. What emerges when the two verses are read together is interesting: in the Qurʾān the donkey is mentioned both as the creature that makes much noise and as the creature that does not know what it carries. The disconnection between sound and content is the same in both verses.

يَحْمِلُ أَسْفَارًا — this expression is the circumstantial qualifier of al-ḥimār, that is, a clause describing its state: "a donkey in the state of carrying volumes". The verb is imperfect; it states continuity. It is not a load carried once and set down.

The root س-ف-ر was treated in the section on Sūrat ʿAbasa (80/15 safara, 80/38 musfira) as the backbone of that sūra; I do not repeat that web here, but the branch of it at work here needs opening out.

At the centre of the root there is bringing to light, lifting the cover. The words that issue from this centre:

• سَفَر (safar) — a journey. The explanation the lexicographers give for its bearing this name is that a journey brings to light people's characters. What is not evident at home becomes visible on the road.
• سَفَرَة (safara) — the word occurring at ʿAbasa 80/15: those who bring the text to light, the scribes.
• مُسْفِرَة (musfira) — ʿAbasa 80/38: a face uncovered, lit up.
• سَافِرَة / سُفُور — the uncovering of the face.
• سِفْر (sifr) — a large book, a volume. Its plural is أَسْفَار.

That the book should take its name from this root is precisely the crux of the matter: sifr means "that which brings to light." A book, in the logic of the word itself, is an instrument for lifting a cover.

Now read the comparison with this knowledge.

What is on the donkey's back? Things that bring to light. And for the donkey nothing comes to light. The word itself says what the load carried is good for; the comparison shows that this work does not take place. This is an irony built into the choice of word.

And the link with Sūrat ʿAbasa is completed here. There the text comes to light in the hand of the safara, and the face of the one who receives it becomes musfira — the same root, on two levels, two uncoverings. Here the same root stands in a third position: an uncoverer that does not uncover. The name of the load states its function; the function does not take place.

Its indefiniteness. Asfāran is indefinite: "certain volumes". Not particular books. This preserves the generality of the comparison — for the donkey it makes no difference which book it is. The indefiniteness is the grammatical counterpart of indifference.

Read together with two pictures treated in Sūrat al-Baqara, this verse completes a set of three. All three catch the same fault, through three different organs:

In all three pictures the instrument works and produces no result. And the shared diagnosis of the three is this: the fault is not in the transmission but in the reception.

But there is a fine difference among them, and it must be seen:

• At 2/171 only sound reaches the animal. That is, what reaches it is the carrier of the content; the content itself has not reached it at all.
• At 62/5 the book itself reaches the donkey. Physically it possesses it. The content is there, it is on its back, it is being carried.
• At 2/44 the text has both reached and been read and is moreover being transmitted to others.

That is, the three pictures form an ordering of intensity: to hear, to carry, to transmit. And if one looks closely, as contact increases the situation grows heavier. The heaviest diagnosis is for the one nearest the text. As was recorded at al-Baqara 2/44: "Telling takes the place of doing. Indeed, the better the work of telling is done, the stronger the substituting effect becomes."

Al-Jumuʿa 62/5 is the middle link of this set of three, and the most visible one — because in a single comparison both possession and deprivation are pictured at once.

بِئْسَ — the verb of blame in Arabic, the opposite of niʿma: "how evil it is". Niʿma and biʾsa are the frozen verbs used for praise and for blame.

This pattern had occurred at al-Baqara 2/90 as well: biʾsamā'shtaraw bihi anfusahum — "how evil is that for which they sold themselves!" There what was sold was the person himself; here what is blamed is a state.

The point to attend to in the sentence is that the ruling is given not for "those laden with the Torah" but for "the people who denied God's verses". That is, the verse draws back one step from the concrete community for which it built the comparison and ties the ruling to a behaviour.

كَذَّبُوا — the root ك-ذ-ب, in the tafʿīl form. This pattern was treated in detail at the first verse of Sūrat al-Māʿūn: kadhaba is "he lied" (the agent is a liar), while kadhdhaba is "he called another's true word a lie" (the agent may not be a liar; what he does is to reject what is true). Takdhīb is an active stance, a taking up of a position.

The choosing of this pattern here says something interesting. The people the verse describes do not deny the book — they carry it, they hold it in their hands, they count it as their own. Yet the verse counts them mukadhdhib.

That is, takdhīb is here defined not as a word but as a manner of treatment. It is possible to have called a text a lie without saying "this is a lie": when you leave its content without function, you have in fact called it a lie. This was the argument of Sūrat al-Māʿūn as well — there the proof of denying the religion was not a word but the treatment given to the orphan.

The root ظ-ل-م: to put a thing somewhere other than its place, to set it where it has no right to be. From the same root comes ẓulma (darkness) — light's not being where it ought to be.

This sense of the root fits the verse exactly. The people described have displaced something: the book, where it was to be read, was a thing to be carried; it was placed on the back and not in the heart. Wrongdoing, in the logic of the word itself, is exactly this — putting something in the wrong place.

لَا يَهْدِي — guidance not being given. Here the balance recorded for the seal at al-Baqara 2/7 holds: this is not an arbitrary obstruction but the consequence of a choice. Indeed the sentence says "He does not guide the wrongdoers" — the absence of guidance has been placed after the wrongdoing.

To understand the force of this comparison fully, one has to know what a book was in that period.

In the seventh century a book was not a cheap object. It was written by hand on leather or papyrus; the production of a single volume could take months and required a serious outlay. For this reason carrying a book was in fact a matter of status: the man who had a book was set apart from the man who did not.

And precisely for this reason the relationship formed with a book was open to a two-sided corruption. A book was both a text to be read and an object to be possessed. The second could take the place of the first.

That the comparison should choose the donkey is well judged at this point: the donkey is the extreme example of possessing the object side of the book while being wholly deprived of its text side. And the more valuable the load on its back, the sharper the picture becomes.

One. Access is not possession. The counterpart of the verse today works most here. To reach a text is easier now than it has ever been in history; carrying is almost costless. A person carrying thousands of volumes on his telephone is closer to the state the comparison describes than anyone in history — because, since the load exerts no weight, it is not even noticed that it is being carried. The volumes on the donkey's back were at least heavy; today's load exerts no weight at all.

Two. Carrying indifferent to content. At the centre of the comparison lies not a lack of intelligence but a lack of interest. This is a warning valid for everyone who carries knowledge as a matter of profession: the person who teaches, transmits, spreads or defends a text is also a carrier. When the work of carrying becomes professionalised, breaking away from the content becomes easy — because the work of carrying forms criteria of its own, and the content falls outside those criteria.

Three. The limit of the comparison. The verse speaks by way of the Torah; but if you stay within the sūra and come to the eleventh verse, you see the same description recorded about another community. This is a limit the sūra sets up within itself: the comparison cannot be stuck onto one community and left there. Whoever carries the book without carrying it, the description is his. Per the method (Method) I record this plainly here: this verse cannot be used to establish a wholesale ruling about a religious community. The verse itself has tied the ruling to the attribute "those who deny God's verses", and six verses later the same sūra has seated its own first addressees before the same mirror.

Qul yā ayyuha'lladhīna hādū in zaʿamtum annakum awliyāʾu lillāhi min dūni'n-nāsi fa-tamannawu'l-mawta in kuntum ṣādiqīn

"Say: O you who are Jews! If you claim that you alone, and no other people, are God's friends, then wish for death — if you are truthful."

This test is set up twice in the Qurʾān. The first is al-Baqara 2/94-96, and it was treated in detail there; I do not repeat it here. The summary of the finding recorded there was this: a claim put forward in words is tested by behaviour. The claim was "the abode of the hereafter belongs to us"; on that footing death would be not a loss but a gain, and so it ought to be wished for. The answer: "they will never wish for it."

Now the same test is set up here again. But the claim has changed. To see the difference the two must be set side by side:

Two differences matter.

The first difference: the subject of the claim. In al-Baqara the claim is a claim of ownership: the abode of the hereafter is ours. In al-Jumuʿa it is a claim of nearness: God's friends are we. The first takes an outcome as its subject, the second a relationship.

This changes the logic of the test a little. The test in al-Baqara worked thus: if the destination belongs to you, you must want to go there. The test in al-Jumuʿa is more inward: if a friendship has been formed, you must want to meet that friend. In the first, death is a door; in the second, a meeting.

The second difference: the verb. In al-Baqara kānat (was / if it is) is used — a neutral verb of condition. In al-Jumuʿa زَعَمْتُمْ is used, and this is not neutral.

The root ز-ع-م: to say a thing without proof, to put it forward without ground.

The place of the word in Arabic is a special one. Qāla (he said) is neutral; zaʿama carries within it that what is said is unverified. The difference in English between "he claimed" and "he said" comes close to this, but the Arabic zaʿm is heavier: it registers in advance that the speaker has no proof in hand.

It is instructive to look at the places where the Qurʾān uses this word, because there is a pattern:

• Not "…those persons whom you would not wish to be partners in your property…" — a direct example instead: Sabaʾ 34/22: "Say: call upon those whom you have alleged (zaʿamtum) besides God."
• Al-Kahf 18/48: "…you were claiming (zaʿamtum) that We would not appoint for you a time of meeting."
• Al-Taghābun 64/7: "Those who disbelieve have alleged (zaʿama) that they will never be raised."
• Al-Anʿām 6/94: "…we do not see with you the partners you alleged (zaʿamtum)."

In all four places the word is used for a claim the Qurʾān rejects. That is, zaʿm has become almost a technical term in the Qurʾān's vocabulary: the name of a claim without ground.

And if one looks closely, the third here is al-Taghābun — the sūra immediately after al-Munāfiqūn. Three neighbouring sūras share the same family of words.

In the Arabic language there is a widespread saying that states the unreliability of the word zaʿm; and in the hadith collections too a report to this effect is transmitted. I do not give its wording and its source here with any certainty, because I am not sure of them. But that this is the word's place in the language is the common record of the dictionaries.

The word order of the verse does something with this word: it qualifies the claim before it is even uttered. It does not say "if it is so" but "if you so claim". That is, even while setting up a condition, the sentence records that the condition is without ground.

The root و-ل-ي: nearness, adjacency. To be immediately beside something. The breadth of the words that issue from this root shows the centre of the root:

• walā — to come one after another, to follow one another
• walī — the one who is near; a friend; a protector; the one who takes a matter in charge
• wālī — the one who takes a matter in charge, a governor
• mawlā — both master and freed slave (because both sides are the near side of the bond)
• tawallī — to turn towards; and to turn one's back (the two directions of a change of direction)
• awlā — nearer, more fitting

At the centre of the word there stands not love but the absence of distance. A walī is the person with whom the gap in between has been removed; for this reason it can mean "friend" and "protector" and "the one in charge" alike — all three are different faces of nearness.

A point of word order: why not awliyāʾullāh but awliyāʾu lillāh?

In Arabic the structure expected for "God's friends" is the construct: awliyāʾullāh. The verse does not use this; it puts a lām in between: awliyāʾu lillāh.

There is more than one explanation of this difference in the classical sources. As my own reading — and recording plainly that this is a reading — I can say this: the construct states a settled and established belonging, while the lām states an orientation. Like the difference between "God's friends" and "those who are friends to God". The second expression pictures the bond not as an established fact but as a position put forward.

This reading may be strained; I do not count it binding. But that the verse is built together with the verb zaʿamtum suggests that there is a caveat of this kind present.

مِنْ دُونِ النَّاسِ — "apart from all other people", that is, "excluding other people, only us". This is the really problematic part of the claim, and the same caveat was present at al-Baqara 2/94 too.

For the claim consists of two parts:

1. "We are God's friends." — This claim by itself is not problematic. The Qurʾān counts walāya (the bond of mutual protection) possible and desirable; it says "God is the protecting friend of those who believe" (al-Baqara 2/257). 2. "Not others." — The problem is here. The claim ceases to be a claim of nearness and turns into a claim of exclusion.

That is, what the verse opposes is not the claim of friendship but the monopolising of friendship. And this distinction is critical, because the fourth verse of the sūra had cut off exactly this monopoly in advance: "This is God's bounty; He gives it to whom He wills." What is a bounty cannot be monopolised — because a monopoly requires a claim of right.

As was recorded at al-Baqara 2/62: a label does not save. The same measure works here from the other side: a label is not enough to keep others outside either.

The root م-ن-ي: to measure out, to assess — and from there tamannī: to set a thing up in the mind wanting it to be.

At al-Baqara 2/78 another derivative of this root had occurred: أَمَانِيّ (amāniyy) — "a conviction resting not on reality but on wish", fancy. Recalling the picture recorded there throws light here: the text is recited but not known; what fills the gap is what the person wants to be the case.

Now the same root is used here as an instrument of testing. And this does not look like an accident: a mind that lives by fancy is invited to measure its own wish. By asking what the person really wants, the verse measures what he believes.

The logic of the test. As was recorded in the section on al-Baqara, the logic works faultlessly: if the state beyond death is in your favour, death is not an obstacle but a passage; and for one who waits, waiting is wearying. Then the holder of the claim ought to want the natural consequence of his claim.

The force of the test lies in its requiring no answer. No one has to say "no, we do not want death". The seventh verse already gives the answer: they will not want it. The test does not open a debate, it records an outcome.

A caveat. This verse does not mean that wishing for death is praised in general, and it must not be so read. The verse tests, in the face of a particular claim, the consistency of that claim. On the subject of wishing for death in Islam there are reports in the hadith collections in the contrary direction — there are transmissions that do not look kindly on wishing for death because of hardship. I do not give the wording of these reports, but I record their existence, because they prevent the verse from being wrongly generalised. The wishing in the verse is not a proposal of worship but a test of logic.

The root ص-د-ق: firmness, reality. From the same root come ṣadaqa (the thing given — the act that verifies the giver's word), ṣadāq (the marriage gift) and ṣiddīq (one who has made truthfulness his character).

The "firmness" sense of the root is important: ṣidq in Arabic is not merely "not to lie" but the word's sitting upon reality. That a spear is ṣadq comes from its hardness and from its going straight.

This enters a meaningful caveat at the end of the verse. What is being tested is not sincerity but whether the word sits upon reality. A person may believe his own word; that is not what the test measures.

And this distinction will sit at the very centre in the first verse of Sūrat al-Munāfiqūn: a group counted liars although what they said was true. Two neighbouring sūras work on two different fractures of the notion of truthfulness.

Wa lā yatamannawnahū abadan bimā qaddamat aydīhim, wallāhu ʿalīmun bi'ẓ-ẓālimīn

"They will never wish for it, because of what their hands have sent on ahead. God knows the wrongdoers."

At al-Baqara 2/95 the answer was لَنْ يَتَمَنَّوْهُ (lan yatamannawhu). Here it is وَلَا يَتَمَنَّوْنَهُ (wa lā yatamannawnahū).

The difference looks small, but grammatically it says something:

Lan looks to the future and shuts a door definitively. Lā states the present situation: they do not want it, they are not going on wanting it. When أَبَدًا (abadan — never, at no time) is added to this, the joint work of the two particles is completed: they do not want it now, and they will never want it.

Whether a difference of form at this level between two sūras is deliberate I cannot say for certain. I record it, but I issue no ruling upon it.

This is the densest place in the sentence, and there are three separate ideas in three words.

قَدَّمَتْ — the root ق-د-م: to be in front, to go ahead. Qadam (foot) is from the same root: the part of the body that goes forward. In the tafʿīl form (qaddama) it becomes "to send in front, to dispatch ahead".

The Qurʾān regularly uses this verb in describing deeds: mā qaddamat — "what it has sent on ahead". The picture is this: a person stands here, and what he has done goes before him. That is, a deed is not a trace left behind but a thing sent on ahead. The person comes after it.

This conception explains directly the attitude taken towards death: if what you have sent on ahead is waiting for you, whether or not you want to arrive there depends on what you have sent. This is why the verse shows the cause precisely here — the reason they do not want death is not the fear of death but what waits ahead.

أَيْدِيهِمْ — "their hands". The hand is shown as the agent of the verb: qaddamat aydīhim, "their hands sent on ahead".

This is a repeated preference of the Qurʾān. As the agent of the deed it is not the person but the hand that is named. At al-Baqara 2/79 the same emphasis was present: bi-aydīhim — "writing with their hands". As was recorded there: "A detail that looks unnecessary; everyone knows that writing is done by hand. It has been put there for emphasis: the source is clear, the agent is clear."

It does the same work here: the outcome is not a misfortune that came from outside but a product that issued from one's own hand.

بِ (bāʾ) — it states cause: "because of…". A causal relation is established between their not wanting death and what they have sent on ahead.

The fifth verse had ended "God does not guide the wrongdoing people". The seventh verse ends "God knows the wrongdoers". The same word returns two verses later and the verb changes: lā yahdī → ʿalīm.

This order says something. First it was said that guidance is not given, then that being known goes on. That is, the cutting off of guidance is not the cutting off of attention.

عَلِيمٌ بِ — here too there is a bāʾ. The structure ʿalīmun bi- states in Arabic that the knowledge touches its object, that it goes down into its detail. Not a general "He knows"; He knows in detail, from within.

And this is connected with the test itself. The test produces a result for someone looking on from outside: they do not want it, so the claim is empty. But this is an inference needed by man. For God no such test is needed — the verse records this with its last sentence. For whom was the test set up? For those who put forward the claim. In order to show them their own condition.

The finding recorded at al-Baqara 2/9 for the hypocrites connects here: "the only real effect of the attempt to deceive is the person's hiding his own condition from himself." The test is set up in order to lift that hiding.

Qul inna'l-mawta'lladhī tafirrūna minhu fa-innahū mulāqīkum, thumma turaddūna ilā ʿālimi'l-ghaybi wa'sh-shahādati fa-yunabbiʾukum bimā kuntum taʿmalūn

"Say: the death from which you flee — it will certainly find you. Then you will be returned to the Knower of the unseen and the seen; and He will inform you of what you used to do."

The sixth verse had proposed wishing for death; the seventh recorded that they do not wish for it. The eighth verse takes a further step and changes the verb: tafirrūna minhu — you flee from it.

The sequence is an ascent:

1. They do not wish for it (62/7) — a passive negation. 2. They flee (62/8) — an active movement.

The verse establishes a behaviour beyond mere unwillingness. And to flee says something different from not wishing: the one who flees knows that what he flees from is coming. One flees from a danger; one does not flee from what will not happen.

That is, the picture the verse sets out is this: had there been a friendship such as is claimed, death would have been wished for; that it is not wished for is not enough, it is also fled from. The two behaviours together show exactly where the word sits.

The root ف-ر-ر: to flee, to run away. From the same root come firār and mafarr (a place of escape).

The root has another interesting usage recorded by the lexicographers: farra'd-dābba — to open an animal's mouth and look at its teeth in order to tell its age. From this, sayings such as "al-firāru yudallu ʿala'l-firāri" have been derived. The bond between the two senses is established by way of the idea of "bringing to light": looking at the teeth brings to light the real condition of the animal. This account of the derivation is the lexicographers' interpretation; I do not count it certain. But it is worth recording, because the verse does exactly this: the flight brings to light the condition of the one fleeing.

The same root in the Qurʾān: at al-Qiyāma 75/10-12, in the description of man's state on the Day of Resurrection: "That day man says: where is the place of escape? No — there is no refuge. That day the place of arrival is your Lord alone." The same root (al-mafarr), the same outcome. Sūrat al-Qiyāma was treated in this commentary; the picture there can be read as the continuation of this verse.

There is something noteworthy in the structure of the sentence: inna is used twice.

Inna'l-mawta'lladhī tafirrūna minhu — here the noun of inna (al-mawta) is present and its predicate is awaited. But the predicate does not come directly; a فَ enters in between and inna is repeated: fa-innahū mulāqīkum.

In the classical sources of grammar two explanations of this structure are given:

Both explanations produce the same effect, and the effect is this: the sentence is cut. The subject is set out, there is a pause, and then the ruling comes. It is what we do in English when we say, "That death you are fleeing from — yes, it will find you."

This cut carries the most important word of the sentence into an emphasis of its own.

مُلَاقِيكُمْ — the root ل-ق-ي: to encounter, to meet. The active participle of the mufāʿala form (mulāqī).

And here lies the real point: the mufāʿala form states reciprocity. As was recorded for yurāʾūn at al-Māʿūn 107/6, this form requires two parties: qātala (he fought against), sābaqa (he raced against).

That is, the verse does not say "death will come to you"; it says "death will meet with you". A meeting is an event in which both parties take part.

When this is read together with the verb of fleeing, a sharp image emerges: the one who flees is, even as he flees, going towards the meeting. The flight is a part of the meeting. Whatever the direction, the destination is the same.

And mulāqī is an active participle, not a verb. In Arabic the active participle states a fixed state. Not "it will meet" but "it is a meeter" — this is its definition, not an action in the future.

ثُمَّ again states an interval: there is a distance between death and the coming into the presence. The verse does not say what that distance is.

تُرَدُّونَ — the root ر-د-د: to turn back, to give back. The verb is passive: "you will be returned". The agent is not named.

The choice of word is meaningful. Not "you will go" but "you will be returned". Radd is the giving back of a thing to the place it came from. That is, the arrival is described not as going to a new place but as returning to the place one set out from.

At al-Baqara 2/28 the same idea had been set up as a proof in four stages: you were dead, He gave you life, He will cause you to die, He will give you life, then you will be returned to Him. The Qurʾān's language on this subject is regularly a language of return.

And the passive pattern says one thing more here: the flight was active (tafirrūna — you are fleeing), the return is passive. The only verb in man's hand was fleeing; and that does not change the outcome.

The root غ-ي-ب: to disappear from sight, to be covered. Ghāba — it set, it was hidden. From the same root come ghayba (absence) and ghība (speaking behind someone's back — in the person's absence).

The root ش-ه-د: to be present, to bear witness. Shāhid — the one who is there. Shahāda — the report of one who was present. From the same root come mashhad (a place that is seen) and shahīd.

The opposition of the two words lies in the roots of the words themselves: that which is hidden and that which is present. That is, not the known and the unknown; the unseen and the seen.

The function of this construct here is very marked. In describing the reckoning after death, the verse qualifies the one who holds the reckoning as "the Knower of both domains". Why both at once?

Because man's life is divided into two domains. Part of it is visible — the words spoken, the prayer performed, the alms given. Part of it is invisible — the intention, the reason, the real reason. Men's knowledge of one another comes only from the first domain. The verse says that the reckoning will cover both domains at once.

And this is a sentence standing at the very middle of the sūra. Three verses later the sūra will regulate a visible act of worship (the Friday prayer), and four verses later it will record that this act of worship was visibly abandoned. The distinction between the seen and the unseen is the background of that regulation.

The neighbouring Sūrat al-Munāfiqūn, for its part, will pass from beginning to end within this distinction: the gap between what is said and what is believed. The common ground of the two sūras is established in this construct.

A detail in the word order: ghayb comes first, shahāda after. In the Qurʾān this construct regularly comes in this order. The order looks meaningful: what is accessible to man is shahāda, yet it is mentioned second in the list. That is, the ordering is not made according to man's access.

The root ن-ب-أ: news. But not ordinary news. The lexicographers make this distinction between nabaʾ and khabar: every nabaʾ is news, but not every piece of news is a nabaʾ. A nabaʾ is news that is important, useful and carrying a large measure of certainty. From the same root comes nabī — the one who brings the great news.

This root was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Nabaʾ (78/2); the finding recorded there is at work here.

In the tafʿīl form (nabbaʾa) the verb becomes transitive and acquires the sense "to make known in detail".

Now attend to the last sentence of the verse. In describing the day of reckoning, the verbs to be expected might have been: He will punish, He will call to account, He will give the recompense. The verse says none of these. It says: He will inform.

This preference changes what the reckoning is. What is described is not a courtroom scene but a notification. And a notification is the telling to a person of something he does not know.

But does a man not know his own deeds?

The verse implies exactly this. Bimā kuntum taʿmalūn — "what you used to do". The doer does in fact know what he does. But he does not know what he has done: where a behaviour arrived, to what chain it was attached, what its real reason was.

This comes out at the same place as the finding recorded at al-Baqara 2/9 and 2/12: "the matter is not the telling of lies but the inability to see one's own condition." The verse describes the moment at which that inability will come to an end.

كُنْتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ — the structure kāna + imperfect states a habit continuing in the past. Not single events; what has come to be done.

The eighth verse closes the second section of the sūra. The structure of the section is this:

1. 62/5 — Those who carry the book and do not carry it: the comparison. 2. 62/6 — A claim and the test set up for it. 3. 62/7 — The result of the test. 4. 62/8 — The inescapability of what is fled from, and the character of the reckoning.

And the inner logic of the section is this: the fifth verse described a fault of carrying; the sixth to eighth verses describe a state of flight that the fault produces in the person. The person who does not carry the content of the text is compelled to flee from the consequence of that content as well. The two states require one another.

The ninth verse will open with a direct command, and the addressee will change: "O you who believe!"

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū idhā nūdiya li'ṣ-ṣalāti min yawmi'l-jumuʿati fa's-ʿaw ilā dhikrillāhi wa dharu'l-bayʿ. Dhālikum khayrun lakum in kuntum taʿlamūn

"O you who believe! When the call is made for the prayer on the day of jumuʿa, hasten to the remembrance of God and leave off trading. If you know, this is better for you."

For eight verses the speech was in the third person: they, that community, those who do not carry the book. In the ninth verse the address becomes directly "O you who believe".

This is the very manoeuvre of the fourth verse of Sūrat al-Māʿūn. There too the text had first set up a "they", put the reader at ease, and then drawn the boundary over to the reader's own side. The difference is this: in al-Māʿūn the transition is made in a single verse and in a shocking way (fa-waylun li'l-muṣallīn). In al-Jumuʿa the transition is made with a command, calmly — but the sūra reaches the same result by recording, two verses later, that the command was broken.

That is, Sūrat al-Jumuʿa spreads over three verses what al-Māʿūn does in one: first it turns the address, then it lays down an obligation, then it shows how that obligation fails.

The root ن-د-ي: to call out, to summon. Nidāʾ — a calling out. From the same root comes nādī (an assembly, a place of gathering); an interesting link, because an assembly is "the place that is called to".

The verb is passive: nūdiya — "when the call is made". Who calls? It is not said.

This is a striking preference. The verse does not describe the one who calls the adhān, the one who summons, or the form of the call. Only that the call takes place is entered on the record. What gives rise to the obligation is not from whom the call comes but that it has been made.

لِلصَّلَاةِ — "for the prayer". The lām here states purpose.

مِنْ يَوْمِ الْجُمُعَةِ — here there is a grammatical matter. What is the function of the particle min?

In the classical sources of grammar two explanations are given:

The second explanation says something finer: the obligation covers not the whole of the day but a part of the day. This agrees exactly with the content of the tenth verse — when the prayer is over, disperse, seek your provision. That is, the particle min states from the very outset that the regulation is limited.

As my own reading I find the second explanation more fitting, because the next verse of the sūra confirms it. It is not binding.

The root س-ع-ي was treated in detail at al-Layl 92/4 and in summary at al-Ghāshiya 88/9; I do not repeat it here. The summary: its concrete sense is to walk fast, to go at a pace close to running — the state between walking and running. From there it has widened to "to strive, to run after a piece of business".

The finding in the section on al-Layl works directly here: inna saʿyakum la-shattā — "your strivings are scattered", that is, "they do not go to the same place". At al-Ghāshiya 88/9, for its part: li-saʿyihā rāḍiya — faces content with their own striving.

Now this verse gives the word saʿy a direction: fa's-ʿaw ilā dhikrillāh — let your striving be towards the remembrance of God. The striving said in al-Layl to be scattered is here bound to a target.

This is a chain established among three sūras:

There is a disagreement about the meaning of the word here, and it is important:

Is saʿy here "to run", or "to turn towards it in earnest, leaving off one's business"?

In the classical exegesis the second sense predominates, and this has two grounds:

1. The breadth of the word itself. Saʿy is used regularly in the Qurʾān in the sense of "to make an effort"; the sense of physical running is not obligatory. Indeed in other verses of the Qurʾān saʿy is used for evil as well ("he strives on earth to spread corruption") — and there too what is meant is not physical running.

2. A reading of one of the Companions. It is transmitted in the sources that some of the Companions read this word as فَامْضُوا (famḍū — walk, go). Because this reading is contrary to the script of the muṣḥaf it is not counted an official variant reading; in the exegetical sources it is transmitted as an explanation of meaning. I do not ascribe the transmission with certainty to a particular person, because there are variants. But that such a record exists, and that it has been used in the exegetical tradition to show that saʿy does not mean "to run", is correct.

There is something else that supports this reading: in the hadith collections there are reports to the effect that one should not hurry on the way to prayer but walk with gravity. In a report found in al-Bukhārī it is stated that when the iqāma is called for the prayer one should go to it not running but walking, with calm and dignity. I do not quote its wording exactly, but it can be recorded that a report to this effect is found in the sound collections.

That is, the saʿy in the verse asks not for a change in the speed of the body but for a change of priority. Not to run, but to leave off and go.

إِلَىٰ ذِكْرِ اللَّهِ — "to the remembrance of God". What is dhikr here?

The third looks the most comprehensive, and it fits the sūra's own flow: in the eleventh verse the scattering occurs during the sermon, but what is criticised is the abandonment of the whole observance.

A point about the words: that it should say nūdiya li'ṣ-ṣalāti and then ilā dhikrillāh may be saying something by the change of word. The call is made to the prayer, the thing to be hastened to is the remembrance. That is, the name of the act of worship and its function are named separately. I record this as my own reading.

ذَرُوا — the root و-ذ-ر. This verb has an interesting feature: its perfect is not used in Arabic. Only the imperfect (yadharu) and the imperative (dhar, dharū) forms exist; for the past tense a verb is borrowed from another root (taraka).

The same holds for yadaʿu (he leaves, root ودع). The lexicographers call verbs of this kind "defective in conjugation".

This is a note of morphology not directly bearing on meaning; but it is worth recording, because the word itself states a "leaving off" while carrying a deficiency in its own conjugation.

In meaning, wadhara is "to abandon, to leave, to set aside". The lexicographers dwell on its difference from taraka: in wadhara, the sense of indifference to the thing left, or of leaving it behind, is more marked. I do not present this as a definite distinction.

الْبَيْع — the root ب-ي-ع: to sell. But the word has an interesting feature in Arabic: bayʿ can mean both "to sell" and "to buy". It is one of the words with contrary senses (aḍdād). The reason lies in the structure of the business: a transaction is a single act, it has two sides, and the word names the act itself.

Accordingly the verse does not say "leave off selling" but "leave off trading" — the whole of the transaction.

And here is the real matter: what the verse forbids is a lawful activity.

This point must not be passed over. The verse does not say "leave off drinking wine", "leave off gambling", "leave off wrongdoing". What it makes them leave is a business that the Qurʾān elsewhere plainly counts legitimate, and that in the very next verse it encourages.

That is, the regulation is not a moral prohibition but a regulation of priority. And regulations of priority are harder than moral prohibitions, because there is nothing evil in view. For leaving off what is evil the ground is ready to hand; for leaving off temporarily what is good, the only ground is priority itself.

This explains why the last verse of the sūra is so sharp. Those who ran to the caravan were not committing a sin. They were running after provision — after something the Qurʾān itself commands. The fault the sūra records is not immorality but the breaking of the order of precedence.

ذَٰلِكُمْ — a far demonstrative directed at a plural addressee. English has no counterpart for it: "this here, for you" — where the "you" is plural and the demonstrative marks it.

خَيْرٌ لَكُمْ — "better for you". Khayr here has the sense of the comparative: two things are being compared.

What are the two sides of the comparison? On one side going to the prayer, on the other going on with trade. The verse counts the first better than the second.

Note: it is not said that "trade is evil". Two good things are being compared and one of them is put first. This is why the word chosen is khayr, and not ḥalāl or wājib.

إِنْ كُنْتُمْ تَعْلَمُونَ — "if you know". The conditional clause makes not the ruling but the acceptance of it conditional. That is, not "it will be better if you know"; rather "it is better — but you will see this only if you know."

This caveat explains why the verse offers no justification. The verse does not explain why leaving off trade is better. It ties the seeing of this to a level of knowledge. And that knowledge is the product of the three verbs in the second verse (reciting, purifying, teaching).

Here the sūra closes in upon itself: the work of teaching set up in the second verse is asked for as a result in the ninth.

That the Friday prayer became institutionalised in Medina is clear both from the content of the sūra and from the transmitted reports. In the sources there are reports about the first collective Friday prayer performed in Medina before the emigration; there are differences in their details, and I avoid giving names.

There is a point about the institution itself worth dwelling on: a weekly, fixed gathering attended by everyone at the same time was no ordinary thing for that period.

In tribal society gatherings are tied to events: a war, a treaty, a season of pilgrimage, a market day. That is, the reason for gathering comes from outside. A fixed weekly gathering, on the other hand, carries its reason in itself: people gather because it is the day of gathering.

The social consequence of this is serious. A fixed calendar places a community inside a common time. An order in which everyone cuts his week at the same point produces a belonging above tribal belonging — because people standing at the same time in the same place, though they come from different lineages, have entered a common rhythm.

That the verse should name the day "the day of gathering" is meaningful for this reason: the day is named by the work done on it.

The function of the interruption. The most concrete counterpart of the verse today is the regular stopping of economic activity. In modern life the moments of stopping are gradually vanishing: markets are always open, communication is not cut off, the boundary between work and non-work is being erased. What the verse brings is not a prohibition but a cut — and the function of the cut is not rest either; it is to make room for something else.

Where the measure is placed. That what the verse makes them leave off is lawful changes the measure. The real matter in a person's life is most often not bad things; it is the order of good things. Nobody does evil five hours a day; but a great many people lose the important to the urgent. This is the place the verse touches.

Fa-idhā quḍiyati'ṣ-ṣalātu fa'ntashirū fi'l-arḍi wa'btaghū min faḍlillāhi wa'dhkurullāha kathīran laʿallakum tufliḥūn

"When the prayer is finished, disperse in the land and seek of God's bounty. Remember God much, that you may attain salvation."

The preceding verse had said "leave off trading". This verse says "disperse and seek".

Two verses one after the other give two commands that are the reverse of each other. And this reversal is one of the most striking decisions of design in the sūra.

For had the ninth verse been left on its own, a view of life could have been drawn from it: leave off worldly business, turn to worship. The tenth verse closes off that inference at once. Once the prayer is over, in the same imperative mood, with the same definiteness, there is a return.

The structure is this:

Between the two there is no ordering of value; there is an ordering of time. And the second command defines the first by showing what it is not: the leaving off is temporary, because what is left is not evil.

The root ق-ض-ي: to complete a piece of business, to cut it off and finish it, to settle it by a ruling. From the same root come qaḍāʾ (a ruling; and completion) and qāḍī (the one who gives the ruling).

At the centre of the root there is completion. The verb is passive: "when the prayer has been finished".

The root ن-ش-ر: to spread, to open out, to scatter. The concrete sense of the root is to open something that has been folded — to spread out a cloth, to unroll a scroll. From the same root come nashr (spreading), muntashir (spread out) and نُشُور (nushūr — the resurrection; the spreading out of the dead).

At al-Muddaththir 74/52 another derivative of this root had occurred: ṣuḥufan munashshara — unrolled pages.

Here the verb is in the iftiʿāl form (intashara): reflexive, "to spread of oneself".

And the choice of the word establishes a complete contrast with the name of the sūra. The name of the sūra is al-Jumuʿa, root ج-م-ع: to gather. The command in the tenth verse is ن-ش-ر: to scatter.

Two movements, between two verses:

The sūra places the opposite of its own name immediately after the verse from which it takes that name. This describes the whole of the regulation: gathering is not a permanent state but a rhythm. Gather, disperse, gather again.

And in the eleventh verse a third root will come: ف-ض-ض (infaḍḍa — to break up, to fall apart). That is, the sūra uses three verbs of dispersing and gathering in three verses, and the third is the corrupted state of the second. This is the backbone of the last section of the sūra, and it will be treated separately below.

فِي الْأَرْضِ — "in the land". The direction of the dispersal is stated. The earth had occurred in the first verse of the sūra too: mā fi's-samāwāti wa mā fi'l-arḍ. The same word, once the place of those who perform tasbīḥ, once the field in which provision is to be sought.

The root ب-غ-ي: to want, to seek, to demand. In the iftiʿāl form (ibtaghā) it adds the sense of effort and insistence: not merely to want, but to go after.

Another branch of this root had occurred at al-Baqara 2/90: بَغْيًا — transgression, insolence, envy. The same root gives both "to seek" and "to transgress". The link may lie here: in both there is a wanting; the difference lies in the limit of what is wanted. I record this link as an observation about the language, not as a definite claim about derivation.

مِنْ فَضْلِ اللَّهِ — the word from the fourth verse returns. There revelation and messengerhood were qualified as faḍlullāh; here it is provision.

This repetition binds the two halves of the sūra to one another. When the same word is used for two different things, a commonality is established between them: both come not by being deserved but by being given.

And the particle min here states the partitive: "of a part of His bounty". What is sought is not the whole of the bounty but a portion of it. This small particle sets a measure on the search — a caveat standing exactly over against the boundless race described in Sūrat al-Takāthur ("why is there no point of 'enough'").

The root ذ-ك-ر: to remember, to call to mind; and to keep in mind. The opposite of the word is nisyān (forgetting).

In the ninth verse dhikrullāh was a place: a target to be hastened towards. Here it is an act: a work to be done continuously.

That is, remembrance is laid down in two different forms:

This distinction makes the whole regulation intelligible. Collective worship is tied to a slice of time; remembrance is not. One is once a week, the other continuous. And the second is what makes the first go on after the dispersal too.

كَثِيرًا — "much". No measure is given; an intensity is asked for. And if one looks closely, this is said immediately after the dispersal. That is: disperse, but remember in the place you have dispersed to as well.

This is one of the crucial sentences of the sūra. For the real matter is not what happens at the moment of gathering but what happens after the dispersal. At the gathering everyone remembers; the measure is what happens in the market.

The root ف-ل-ح was treated at al-Shams 91/9; the finding recorded there is at work here. The concrete sense of the root is to split: a fallāḥ is a farmer, the one who splits the soil. Falāḥ is the seed's splitting the soil and coming out, growing, bearing produce.

That is, the word "salvation" in Arabic comes not from an escape but from an emergence: splitting the covering and reaching the surface.

And that the word should come in this verse immediately after the command to seek provision is meaningful. The metaphor of farming and economic activity meet in the same sentence. The man who splits the soil and the man who seeks provision in the market are, within the word, making the same movement.

لَعَلَّ — "that perhaps". This particle is used regularly in the Qurʾān in places where the outcome is not guaranteed. Dispersing and seeking do not of themselves bring salvation; the condition lies in the caveat kathīran: to remember much.

Reading the two commands together. The ninth and tenth verses are understood rightly only when read together. Taken separately they produce two different and two mistaken views of life: the ninth verse alone seems to justify withdrawal from the world, the tenth alone an attitude that counts worship an interlude. By placing the two side by side the sūra closes off both.

"Remembering in the place you have dispersed to." The hardest part of the verse is the last command. To remember in the place of gathering is easy — the setting itself produces it. The difficulty is to keep the same thing going in the market, at work, in the crowd. The verse puts the command exactly there: after the dispersal.

Wa idhā raʾaw tijāratan aw lahwan infaḍḍū ilayhā wa tarakūka qāʾimā. Qul mā ʿindallāhi khayrun mina'l-lahwi wa mina't-tijārati, wallāhu khayru'r-rāziqīn

"When they saw a trade or an amusement they turned towards it and left you standing. Say: what is with God is better than amusement and than trade. God is the best of providers."

This verse takes on the whole weight of the sūra. And the work it does is to turn the picture set up in the fifth verse upon its own first addressees.

Let us set them side by side:

Six verses earlier a community had been criticised for the relation it formed with the text given to it. Now the same sūra records the weakness of the community that listens to that criticism.

And the difference lies precisely in the form of the criticism. In the fifth verse a comparison is set up — there is distance, there is the third person, the ruling is harsh. In the eleventh verse there is no comparison; only what happened is told, and moreover the sentence of ruling is not a censure but a comparison of value (khayrun min — it is better).

This asymmetry needs to be seen. The sūra appears to treat its own community more gently. But what it does is heavier: it places them inside the picture they criticised. There is no need to set up a comparison, because the comparison was set up six verses earlier.

This is the sūra's real idea, and it is completed here: not carrying the book is the business not of those who have no book but of those who have one. The nearer the text, the more silent the breaking away from it.

There is something noteworthy in the word order. In the ninth and tenth verses the address was in the second person plural: fa's-ʿaw, dharū, intashirū, ibtaghū, udhkurū — "hasten, leave off, disperse, seek, remember."

In the eleventh verse there is a sudden shift to the third person plural: raʾaw (they saw), infaḍḍū (they broke away), tarakūka (they left you).

This is what is called iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address) in Arabic rhetoric. And the function of the change of direction here is worth dwelling on.

Two readings are possible:

The second fits the historical picture: the reports state that a group remained in the mosque. That is, in saying "they" it may be that not the whole congregation that received the command but those who dispersed at that moment are meant.

As my own reading I do not disregard the first either. That the Qurʾān should shift to the third person while recording the fault of its own community may be a form of avoiding exposure — indeed, as was recorded at al-Baqara 2/8, in cases of this kind the Qurʾān describes; it does not expose.

تِجَارَة — the root ت-ج-ر: buying and selling, trade. In the Qurʾān the word is used both in its literal sense (buying and selling) and in a metaphorical sense (deeds and their return).

In Sūrat al-Baqara the track of this metaphor was followed: at 2/16 "those who buy straying at the price of guidance", at 2/86 "those who buy the life of this world at the price of the hereafter", at 2/90 "how evil is that for which they sold themselves". As was recorded there: the Qurʾān passes into Mecca's own language; measure, the reckoning of profit, capital were notions belonging to daily speech.

And a finding recorded there falls exactly into place here: "The evil of the transaction lies not in the intention but in the price: what is near has been exchanged for what abides."

The same thing happens in this verse. Nobody is buying anything evil. A trading caravan arrives and people turn towards it. The problem is not in the transaction but in when the transaction is made.

Indeed the answering sentence of the verse is likewise in the language of trade: mā ʿindallāhi khayrun min… — "it is better", that is, it is a better price. The Qurʾān does not tell those who run to the caravan that trade is evil; it offers a better bargain. The argument is built in the addressee's own language.

لَهْو — the root ل-ه-و. This root was treated in detail at al-Takāthur 102/1 (alhākum); I do not repeat it here. The summary: its primary sense in the dictionary is to turn away from something, to move off from it, to occupy oneself with something else. The English rendering "amusement" is misleading; lahw is an occupation that holds a person back from his real business, that takes his attention from there and binds it elsewhere. At the centre of the word there stands not gaiety but displacement.

In the section on al-Takāthur it was further recorded: "lahw is the work of the heart. The body may be elsewhere; the question is where the attention is" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/3).

This finding works directly in this verse. For what the verse describes is exactly the displacement of attention: the sermon is going on, people hear the sound outside, the attention slips, and then the body slips too.

There is a disagreement about what the word refers to. The reports transmit that the coming of the caravan was announced with the sound of a drum or a tambourine; on this footing lahw is that sound. According to another view lahw is any attention-catching amusement in general. I make no definite choice; the root of the word already covers both.

أَوْ — "or". Two things are counted separately, not the two together. This increases the generality of the verse: the cause may be trade, it may be amusement. What is common is the pull.

The root ف-ض-ض. Its concrete sense: to break a thing and scatter its pieces, to separate what is joined, to open what is sealed. Faḍḍa'l-khātama — he broke the seal. In the infiʿāl form (infaḍḍa) it becomes reflexive: to come apart of itself, to break in pieces, to empty out.

The picture in the word matters: this is not an orderly departure. It is the breaking and scattering of something that was standing together. The joining is undone.

Some of the lexicographers connect the word fiḍḍa (silver) to this root as well; the ground given is the metal's being separated and divided into pieces. This derivation is not certain; I record it but build nothing upon it.

In the Qurʾān this root occurs in three places, and all three concern the same circle:

Three verses use the same verb about the same community and give three different moods: it could have happened, it happened, it is wished to happen.

This is the most concrete verbal link between al-Jumuʿa and al-Munāfiqūn. In one sūra the congregation disperses of its own will; in the next sūra the same dispersal is set up as a plan from outside. That is, the weakness in al-Jumuʿa becomes a strategic target in al-Munāfiqūn.

And Āl ʿImrān 3/159 completes this picture: there the cause of the dispersal would have been harshness; here the cause is a caravan. The difference between the two shows with how small a thing a dispersal can occur.

Here there is a matter of word order much worked on in the classical commentaries.

Two nouns occur in the sentence: tijāratan (feminine) and lahwan (masculine). But the pronoun is singular and feminine: إِلَيْهَا — "towards it".

Why was a pronoun referring to both not used? The explanations mentioned in the sources of grammar:

The first explanation is the most widespread and agrees with the report.

But the answering sentence at the end of the verse reverses the order, and this is striking:

• In the first sentence the order is: tijāratan then lahwan.
• In the answering sentence the order is: mina'l-lahwi then mina't-tijārati.

That is, in the first sentence trade is named first, in the answer amusement is named first. This inverted symmetry may be looked at within the structure called laff wa nashr mushawwash (jumbled ordering) in Arabic rhetoric.

What is it good for? One reading is this: the first sentence gives the order of the event (the thing that really drew them was the trade), while the answering sentence gives the order of value (it begins with the lightest and rises to the heaviest). The answer begins "better than amusement" and ends "better than trade" — that is, the comparison begins with the weak rival and ends with the strong one.

I record this as my own reading; in the classical sources this reversal has been noticed and various explanations given.

The most visual sentence of the sūra. And its whole weight is in the last word.

قَائِمًا — the root ق-و-م: to stand upright, to be set up. The word is here a circumstantial qualifier: it states the situation at the moment the verb took place. "They left you in the state of standing."

The family of this root was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Bayyina: iqāma (to keep the prayer standing), qayyima (that which is upright), mustaqīm (the straight road). At the centre of the root there stand "being set upright" and "keeping upright".

And now the same root describes the posture of a man who has been abandoned.

Where is the force of the sentence? In three places:

One. The object of the verb is "you". The verse does not say "they left the prayer" or "they left the sermon". "They left you." What was abandoned is not an act of worship but a person. This takes the event out of being an abstract breach of a rule and makes it a concrete abandonment.

Two. The direction of the address. The sentence is said to the Prophet: tarakūka. That is, in telling the event the verse turns to the one wronged by the event. This shows what the text is recording: a rule was not broken; someone was left alone.

Three. The visuality of the word "standing". Picture a man who is speaking. Those in front of him get up and go. He remains standing — he does not sit down, he does not fall silent, but there is no one left to speak to.

This image forms a silent link with the donkey of the fifth verse. There a text was being carried but there was no receiver; here a text is being spoken but no listener remains. In both pictures the transmission is not completed.

A legal note. This expression is counted one of the proofs that the sermon is delivered standing. In the classical books of jurisprudence the ruling on standing during the sermon (whether it is a pillar or a sunna) is disputed among the schools of law. I take no side in this dispute; what the verse records is not a ruling but a state. The support of those who draw a legal conclusion is this word, but the word itself is not in an imperative mood.

مَا عِنْدَ اللَّهِ — "what is with God". Left indefinite: what it is, is not said.

This indefiniteness is the very technique of the last word of Sūrat al-Māʿūn. There māʿūn was left undefined, and it was recorded there: "Had the Qurʾān wished to define a word it would have defined it. The indefiniteness may be deliberate."

The same work is done here. One side of the comparison is very concrete (a caravan, the sound of a drum), the other side entirely indefinite. And the comparison is set up all the same.

عِنْدَ — "beside, with". An adverb stating place, but here it states ownership and presence. What was recorded for the expression jazāʾuhum ʿinda rabbihim at al-Bayyina 98/8 holds here too.

خَيْرٌ مِنَ — a comparison of superiority.

And the most striking side of the sentence is this: it lays down no prohibition. The verse does not say "trade is forbidden", does not say "amusement is forbidden". It puts two things in the balance and says that one weighs heavier.

This is the same structure as "dhālikum khayrun lakum" in the ninth verse. From beginning to end the sūra builds the regulation of the jumuʿa as a comparison, not as a list of prohibitions.

This has a practical consequence: a comparison requires the addressee to make his own choice. A prohibition is a thing to be obeyed; a comparison is a thing one must be persuaded of. The verse chooses the second road.

The root ر-ز-ق: the giving to a living thing of what it needs in order to live. Rizq is not what is earned but what is given; in the logic of the word itself there is a passivity.

خَيْرُ الرَّازِقِينَ — "the best of those who give provision". The construct states superiority within a plurality.

And here there is a question: does the verse say "there are others who give provision too"?

In the classical exegesis this question is asked and answered thus: the expression borrows the assumption present in people's daily speech, that they give one another provision (an employer, the head of a family, the person one trades with), and speaks from inside that assumption. That is, among all the intermediaries counted as "givers of provision", it is being said who the real one is.

And where the sentence is placed explains everything.

What produces the behaviour of people running to a caravan? Anxiety about provision. If the information about a famine recorded in the reports on the occasion of revelation is correct, the anxiety is real and justified. The verse does not disregard this anxiety, does not shame it, and does not make a promise such as "you will not go hungry".

The only thing it does is to recall the source. It makes a correction about where provision comes from: the caravan is a channel, not the source.

This is exactly the same logic as the answer of al-Munāfiqūn 63/7: there too the answer given to the plan of cutting off spending will be "to God belong the treasuries of the heavens and the earth". Two sūras answer two different anxieties about provision from the same place.

The sūra consists of four sections, and the transitions between the sections are plain:

And between the sections there is a chain of logic:

1. There is an order (tasbīḥ). 2. A bounty was given to man (the messenger and the teaching). 3. It was shown how such a bounty can be squandered (those who do not carry the book). 4. It was recorded how the same risk appears in the present addressee (the congregation that scatters).

The bond between the third and fourth steps is the whole idea of the sūra.

One: carrying and load — ح-م-ل. Twice in the fifth verse, in two different patterns. The central comparison of the sūra issues from here.

Two: gathering and dispersing. Three roots in three verses, and the three form a series:

The order is meaningful: gather, then disperse in order. And the failure is the breaking of the order — the dispersal happened before the time of dispersal.

This is the summary of the whole regulation of the sūra: the matter is not that you disperse but when you disperse.

Three: khayr — خ-ي-ر. The word occurs three times in the last three verses: dhālikum khayrun lakum (9), mā ʿindallāhi khayrun (11), khayru'r-rāziqīn (11). All three state a comparison. The last section of the sūra is from beginning to end an operation of weighing.

This is the most important internal bond of the sūra, and it deserves to be recorded separately.

In both pictures there is the same fault: there is contact, there is no transmission.

And what joins the two verses is the verb in the second verse of the sūra: يَتْلُو — "to go after". In the fifth verse the book is carried (taken behind); in the eleventh the speaker is left and people go (the direction is changed). In both the direction of tilāwa has been reversed.

The verse-ending of the sūra is not in a single pattern, but there are distinct clusters:

What is striking is that the fifth and the seventh verses end with the same word: al-ẓālimīn. There is a single verse between them (6). That is, the sūra takes these three verses into the frame of one word: those who do not carry the book and those who put forward the claim are sealed with the same attribute.

And that the last verse should end with al-rāziqīn may be counted a return to the -īn cluster of verses 5-7 — but this time it is not a censure but a name.

One: the evil of trade. The tenth verse closes this off plainly. The sūra regulates not economic activity but its order of precedence.

Two: the wholesale condemnation of a particular religious community. The fifth verse addresses the people of the Torah but ties the ruling to the attribute "the people who deny God's verses". And the eleventh verse records that the same fault was seen in its own first addressees too. Per the method (Method) I write it plainly: these verses cannot be used to establish a wholesale ruling about an ethnic or a religious group. The structure of the sūra itself prevents this — because six verses after setting up the comparison it turns the mirror round.

Three: that wishing for death is desirable in general. The test in the sixth verse measures the consistency of a particular claim; it is not a general recommendation.

These two sūras stand side by side in the muṣḥaf, and it is transmitted in the reports that they were recited together in the Friday prayer. That this practice occurs in the sources is correct; I do not give the wording of a particular report.

The textual bonds between the two, however, can be seen directly:

The most striking is the first: the dispersal recorded in al-Jumuʿa as a weakness appears in al-Munāfiqūn as a target. That is, one sūra shows a fragility, the other shows how that fragility is meant to be used.

One. Carrying and taking in. The central comparison of the sūra works today over a wider field than ever. The distance between possessing a text, a piece of knowledge, a teaching, and acquiring it grows as access grows easier. The volumes on the donkey's back were at least heavy; it is harder to notice that a weightless load is not being carried.

Two. Priority is harder than morality. The most practical lesson of the sūra is here. What the ninth verse makes them leave off is a lawful activity. For leaving off what is evil the ground is ready to hand; for leaving off what is good at the right time there is no ground — there is only the ordering itself. And the great majority of daily life is passed not between evil and good but between good and good. This is exactly the field the sūra touches.

Three. The value of the interruption. The regulation of the jumuʿa asks that economic activity be cut at regular intervals, and it sets up the cut not as a rest but as a place opening onto something else. This is the scarcest thing today as well: in an attention economy flowing without interruption, a regular and obligatory point of stopping has almost ceased to exist. The structure the verse brings does not leave stopping to personal choice — it ties it to the calendar. What personal will cannot do on its own, an institutionalised rhythm does.

Four. Remembering in the place you have dispersed to. The last command of the tenth verse is the hardest part of the sūra. To remember in the place of gathering is produced by the setting itself; the measure is what is left after the dispersal. This is a question valid for every kind of shared ritual: when the ceremony is over, what remains of the ceremony?

Five. The power of a small sound. The most disquieting side of the eleventh verse is that the dispersal has no great cause. The sound of a caravan. A slip of attention. The sūra records with how small a thing the attachment of a community can be tested — and it does this not by censuring but by recording. For its counterpart today no special effort is needed: the things that scatter attention no longer need to be as large as a caravan.

Six. The man left standing. The last image of the sūra is a person who is speaking and who has no listener left. This image says nothing about the value of what was being said — it says only that listening is a choice. And once the choice has been made, the only thing left is the speaker's remaining on his feet.

As the rule of accuracy requires, I record separately the points in this commentary at which no preference is adopted or which are passed with caution:

• The difference of form at 62/1 (sabbaḥa / yusabbiḥu): the meaning loaded onto the perfect–imperfect distinction is a reading; some of the classical sources count the two forms equivalent here.
• The character of the tasbīḥ at 62/1: no preference was adopted between "tasbīḥ in the language of state" and "a real tasbīḥ closed to us".
• The scope of the word ummī at 62/2: the reading "those to whom no book was given" was preferred but not counted binding.
• The ground for the order of the verbs at 62/2: the explanation "the order of the prayer / the order of the realisation" occurs in the classical sources; the extension of it here is my own reading.
• The syntactic analysis of ākharīn at 62/3: three grammatical solutions were transmitted, no preference was adopted.
• The report about 62/3: the existence of transmissions stating that Salmān al-Fārisī was pointed to was recorded; the wording was not quoted.
• The link between asfār and sifr at 62/5: that the centre of the root is "bringing to light" is the common record of the dictionaries; the irony in the comparison is a reading I have set up.
• The difference between awliyāʾu lillāh and awliyāʾullāh at 62/6: recorded as my own reading, not counted binding.
• The hadith about zaʿm in connection with 62/6: its wording and its source were not given, because I am not sure of them.
• The difference between lan and lā at 62/7: it was recorded, but it was not claimed to be a deliberate choice.
• The function of the particle min at 62/9: the partitive reading was preferred, not counted binding.
• The famḍū reading at 62/9: it was not ascribed to a particular person; it was stated that it is not an official variant reading.
• The hadith about walking to prayer at 62/9: its sense was given, its wording was not quoted.
• The scope of dhikrullāh at 62/9: sermon / prayer / both at once — no preference was adopted.
• What lahw is at 62/11: the report of the sound of the drum was transmitted, it was not settled.
• The name of the owner of the caravan in the report on the occasion of revelation at 62/11: it was not given; there is variation among the versions.
• The reversal of the order at 62/11: a structure that has been noticed; the explanation here is my own reading.
• The legal ruling on standing during the sermon: no side was taken among the views of the schools of law.
• The reciting of the two sūras together in the Friday prayer: it was stated that the practice occurs in the sources; the wording of a particular report was not given.
• The link between ف-ض-ض and fiḍḍa (silver): recorded as a derivation belonging to some of the lexicographers, not counted certain.
• The link of the root ف-ر-ر with the sense "to look at the teeth": transmitted as the lexicographers' interpretation.