al-Taghābun 64:5

A lam yaʾtikum nabaʾu'lladhīna kafarū min qabl, fa-dhāqū wabāla amrihim wa lahum ʿadhābun alīm

"Has the report of those who denied before not come to you? They tasted the ill consequence of their own affair; and for them there is a painful punishment."

The sentence opens with a question: a lam yaʾtikum — "has it not come to you?"

In Arabic the interrogative hamza coming at the head of a negative sentence generally conveys taqrīr: making the one addressed affirm something he already knows. This technique was treated in al-Inshirāḥ (a lam nashraḥ laka ṣadrak) and its reverse was recorded in al-Muzzammil (the question that makes one realise he can give no answer).

The use here is close to the one in al-Inshirāḥ: the one addressed is obliged to say "yes, it has come." For the report really has come — narratives about ʿĀd, Thamūd and the people of Lot were in circulation in the Arabian peninsula; their ruins lay along the trade routes.

And the real function of the question comes out here. The question is not asking for information. It is making one grant that the information has arrived. And at the next step the matter is opened of why information that has arrived produced no result.

The analysis of this root was done in detail in al-Nabaʾ. I do not repeat the findings there; I only recall three items, because in this verse all three are at work:

1. Under the root ن ب أ lies the idea of "coming from one place to another, being carried"; a report is what is carried. 2. According to the definition recorded in al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī's al-Mufradāt and widely transmitted in the exegetical tradition, a nabaʾ is a report that carries great benefit, by which knowledge or a strong conviction is produced; whereas khabar requires none of these. 3. But the Qurʾān itself also uses the word nabaʾ for a report that is commanded to be verified (al-Ḥujurāt 49/6) — so the definition makes it a condition not that the report be true but that it be of the kind that carries weight. The sentence recorded in the section on al-Nabaʾ was this: "A nabaʾ is a report on hearing which something ought to change."

And this verse is the clearest example of that sentence.

The verse asks "has the report not come to you" and names the report a nabaʾ — that is, a report on hearing which something ought to change. Then it says what happened. And the continuation of the sūra (verse 6) will say what those who received the report did: nothing changed.

That is, the verse brings the definition of the word face to face with the fact. The nabaʾ came, and did not work as a nabaʾ.

This root will return once more in the sūra, in the seventh verse: thumma la-tunabbaʾunna bimā ʿamiltum — "then you will surely be informed of what you did". I shall treat the relation between the two verses there.

A note on grammar. The construct nabaʾu'lladhīna kafarū can be read in two ways: "the report of those who denied" (belonging to them, the report about them) or "the report coming from those who denied". The context requires the first; I record the second possibility only to show the breadth of the Arabic construct.

One of the verbs the Qurʾān uses most in its accounts of punishment, and its choice is no accident.

Root: ذ و ق. Dhawq is tasting — the tongue's taking the taste of a thing.

Why "they tasted"? Because tasting is the most immediate form of knowing. You can see a thing, hear it, have it described to you — in all of these a distance comes in between. In tasting there is no distance: what is tasted is inside the mouth.

And the logic of the verse works exactly from here. At the head of the sentence there is a report (nabaʾ), at the end there is a tasting (dhāqū). The difference between the two is the whole claim of the verse:

A report comes from far off; a taste is taken on the spot.

That is, the verse sets two forms of knowing side by side and says this to the one addressed: you have received the report. Whoever will not be content with the report, tastes.

I write this as my own reading. This contrast of the words stands in the text; I am not transmitting it from a classical commentary.

The voice of the verb is meaningful too: dhāqū — active. Not "they were made to taste", but "they tasted". The verb is ascribed to them. And what they tasted is stated: the ill consequence of their own affair.

Root: و ب ل. The concrete sense of the root is heavy rain in large drops: wābil. This concrete sense occurs openly in the Qurʾān — "When a wābil (a heavy rain) strikes it…" (al-Baqara 2/264-265).

Two branches come out from here:

• وَبَال (wabāl) — the heavy and harmful consequence of an affair. Turkish has taken the word over in exactly this sense: vebali boynuna, "let its wabāl be on his neck."
• وَبِيل (wabīl) — heavy, severe, hard to digest. In the Qurʾān it is used of Pharaoh's being seized: akhadhnāhu akhdhan wabīlā (al-Muzzammil 73/16) — that verse was treated in al-Muzzammil.

The root's passage from "heavy rain" to "heavy consequence", so far as the lexicographers record it, goes by way of the idea of weight and of pressing down: rain in large drops strikes the soil, covers it over, presses it down with its weight. There is also the sense of "what is hard to digest" — a pasture is called wabīl when it is heavy and harmful, when it makes one ill on being eaten. This second branch, joined with the verb dhāqū (they tasted), sets up a consistency in the verse: what is tasted is something that cannot be digested.

I record this link as an observation; I do not claim that the choice of words was deliberate, but it is a fact that the two words meet in the same field of meaning.

أَمْرِهِمْ — "of their own affair". And this possession sets up the verse's logic of justice: what is tasted is not a disaster coming from outside but the consequence of their own affair. The ill consequence has come out of the affair itself.

This construct will find an echo within the sūra: in Sūrat al-Ṭalāq almost the same sentence occurs — fa-dhāqat wabāla amrihā (al-Ṭalāq 65/9). That two neighbouring sūras use the same expression is striking; I shall make a note of it in the relevant place.

The sentence sets two different times side by side, and this is the finest point of the verse:

• fa-dhāqū — perfect: it happened, it is over. A consequence realised in this world.
• wa lahum ʿadhābun alīm — a nominal sentence, future: for them there is a punishment besides.

That is, the verse does not count the consequence in this world as the whole of the reckoning. A collapse seen within history is not a closure; it is a sign.

This is the determining feature of the Qurʾān's reading of history, and it requires a reservation: it does not follow from this that every society that collapses has been punished, or that every society that stands is approved. The sūra itself will block this in the fifteenth verse — there it will be said that abundance is a fitna. Standing is not a certificate.