al-Taḥrīm 66:3

Wa idh asarra'n-nabiyyu ilā baʿḍi azwājihī ḥadīthā, fa-lammā nabbaʾat bihī wa aẓharahu'llāhu ʿalayhi ʿarrafa baʿḍahū wa aʿraḍa ʿan baʿḍ, fa-lammā nabbaʾahā bihī qālat man anbaʾaka hādhā, qāla nabbaʾaniya'l-ʿalīmu'l-khabīr

"And when the Prophet confided a word in secret to one of his wives. When she gave news of it and God disclosed it to him, he made a part of it known and turned away from a part. When he gave her news of it she said, 'Who told you this?' He said, 'The Knowing, the All-Aware told me.'"

First let us see how little the verse says. For this is its most conspicuous feature.

• To whom the word was said is not stated: baʿḍi azwājih — "to one of his wives". Indefinite.
• What the word was is not stated: ḥadīthan — "a word". Indefinite, without the article.
• Which part was made known and which part was left is not stated: baʿḍahū / ʿan baʿḍ — "a part of it" / "from a part". Both indefinite.
• In the exchange, who is speaking is known only from the conjugation of the verb; no name occurs.

This much indefiniteness in a single verse cannot be accidental. There is indefiniteness in four separate places, and each of them gives the minimum information needed to build the sentence and cuts off the rest.

And exactly in the middle, the verse's own sentence names this attitude: عَرَّفَ بَعْضَهُ وَأَعْرَضَ عَن بَعْضٍ.

I repeat here the observation I recorded in the introductory section, because this is its place: the verse applies the behaviour it describes to the reader as well. It makes a part known and turns away from a part. I present this as my own reading; it is not a classical transmission. But this coincidence between the text's behaviour and its content is the most useful key to hold in hand while reading the verse.

Its practical consequence is this: to look at this verse and try to reconstruct the incident is to spoil the work the verse does. The verse is not recounting the incident; it is recounting an attitude towards the incident.

Root س ر ر (s-r-r). This root divides in Arabic into two branches, and at first sight the two do not resemble one another at all.

The first branch: secrecy.

• سِرّ (sirr) — a secret, what is hidden.
• أَسَرَّ (asarra) — he hid; and he said in secret. Here is the interesting side of the word: the same verb means both "he concealed" and "he whispered". Some of the lexicographers count this under the heading of aḍdād (words carrying opposite meanings together). But in truth there is no contradiction: to whisper a thing to one person is to hide it from everyone else. The verb answers to both faces of the same act at once.
• سَرِيرَة (sarīra) — what a person keeps within.

The second branch: joy.

• سُرُور (surūr) — joy, ease within.
• مَسْرُور (masrūr) — joyful. In al-Inshiqāq this word occurred in recounting the return to his people of the one who takes his record from the right.

How do the two branches come from one root? The link the lexicographers give is this: joy is something within a person; what is hidden is also what is within. Both have to do with the "inside". Moreover one branch of the word sirr carries the sense "the best, the core of a thing" — sirru'l-wādī, the most fertile place in the valley. That is, what is hidden is hidden because it is valuable.

I relay this link not as a certainty but as an explanation the lexicographers record.

The sense in the verse. Asarra ilā — "he said in secret to …". That the preposition is إِلَى is important: the act is done towards a direction. That is, the word is not hidden; it is entrusted to an address.

And this establishes the whole matter of the verse: a secret word is said not in order to be hidden but in order to be shared while staying within a limited circle. This is the definition of a secret — information shared not with zero persons but with a counted number.

حَدِيثًا — root ح د ث (ḥ-d-th): to be new, to come about afterwards, to appear. Ḥāditha (an event), ḥadīth (a word; and what is new), iḥdāth (bringing about), muḥdath (what came about later) are from the same root.

That the word means "speech" comes from this root: a word is something that comes into being at that moment. Speaking is an event brought into being out of nothing.

And its coming indefinite (ḥadīthan, "a word") is here not indefiniteness but a leaving indefinite. The verse does not define the word.

A note: this root will meet us again in the first verse of the next sūra, al-Ṭalāq: laʿalla'llāha yuḥdithu baʿda dhālika amrā — "perhaps God will bring about some matter after that". The same root, in two neighbouring sūras, with two different subjects: here a human being brings about a word, there God brings about a state of affairs.

Root ظ ه ر (ẓ-h-r). The concrete sense of the root is the back: ẓahr, the rear face of the body. And all the derivatives that come out of it carry this picture:

• ظَاهِر (ẓāhir) — the outer face, the visible side. The opposite of bāṭin (the inner).
• أَظْهَرَ (aẓhara) — he brought out, he made manifest. That is, he brought what was inside to the outer face.
• ظَهِير (ẓahīr) — one who backs, who supports. One who stands behind another, who gives him his back.
• تَظَاهَرَ (taẓāhara) — to back one another. (It will come in the fourth verse.)
• ظُهْر (ẓuhr) — noon; the "back" of the day, its highest point.
• مُظَاهَرَة — a public showing; English covers the same ground with demonstration, from another root but with the same idea of bringing something out into the open.

The usage in the verse: aẓhara … ʿalayhi — "He brought it out upon him". That is, what was hidden has been brought to the person's outer face; it is now among the things he knows.

And the point to notice: the agent of the verb is God. The Prophet does not learn this by investigating, by asking, by following a trail. The knowledge was given to him.

This is needed in order to understand the behaviour that follows in the verse: he has in hand a piece of knowledge he did not obtain by investigation. And what he will do is how he will use that knowledge.

And note the root's journey through the sūra. The root ظ ه ر occurs three times in this sūra, in three different forms:

The same root, in one verse "the coming out of knowledge", in the next "giving one's back to one another". What joins the two is the concrete sense of the root: the back. Knowledge passes from the other side of the back to the front; support comes about by giving back to back.

I record this link as an observation; I do not present it as a link established in this way in the classical commentaries.

This is the most striking verbal feature of the verse and it is generally lost entirely in translation.

The root ن ب أ occurs four times in this single verse:

1. نَبَّأَتْ بِهِ (nabbaʾat bihī) — "she gave news of it" (the woman) 2. نَبَّأَهَا بِهِ (nabbaʾahā bihī) — "he gave her news of it" (the Prophet) 3. أَنبَأَكَ (anbaʾaka) — "who told you?" (the question) 4. نَبَّأَنِيَ (nabbaʾaniya) — "He told me" (the answer)

And one of the last two words of the verse is الْخَبِير — that is, from the root of khabar. So the verse uses both of Arabic's words for "news": four times the root nabaʾ, once the root khabar.

In al-Nabaʾ the difference between these two words was taken up and I do not repeat it. I recall the finding there in a single sentence: khabar — information; nabaʾ — a tiding to be delivered. One is relayed, the other conveyed; and what determines a nabaʾ is the consequence of the news — a nabaʾ is news upon hearing which something must change.

What the verse does is this: it follows the passage of a piece of news through four hands, with the same word.

And the subject of each of the four is different:

The chain has four links and at the very end the source is reached. The verse follows a circulation of speech and comes out at last at a point outside that circulation.

And note the form of the last sentence: "The Knowing, the All-Aware told me." The answer does not say "God"; it gives two names. And both names have to do with knowledge:

• الْعَلِيم — the knowing. Root ع ل م.
• الْخَبِير — the one who is aware; who has news of the inner side of a thing. Root خ ب ر.

The concrete sense of the root خ ب ر is striking: khabara'l-arḍa — he ploughed the earth deeply, he turned it over. A khabīr is one who knows a thing not from its surface but from within. From the same root come khubr (inward knowledge of a thing) and ikhtibār (learning by trial).

That is, the answer says this: this knowledge did not come from a piece of gossip; it came from the party who knows what is under the soil.

This is the most fitting answer to the question ("who told you this?"). For the question was investigating the source — from whom did the information leak? The answer does not follow the chain of leakage; it steps outside the chain.

This is the finest sentence of the sūra and it is worth pausing over.

The situation is this: a person has told someone else a word entrusted to her. The owner of the word has learned of it. And the other party does not know that he has learned it.

This is one of the most asymmetrical positions that can arise in human relations. You have in hand a piece of information the person facing you does not know you have. And that information is against her.

Three behaviours are possible in this position:

The verse records the third.

And one must see what the third does. To say none of it looks at first sight like the most delicate option, but it is not: information not said continues to stand within the relationship as an asymmetry and can be used at any moment. To say all of it, on the other hand, looks at first sight like the most honest option, but it does more than is needed: it leaves the other party defenceless.

To say a part of it does this: it removes the asymmetry but does not expose. The other party now knows that it is known — so the relationship is levelled. But what is known and how much is not opened — so no one is driven into a corner.

أَعْرَضَ — root ع ر ض. This root was treated at al-Jinn 72/17: the concrete sense of the root is the breadth, the width, the side of a thing; aʿraḍa ʿan — to turn one's side to someone. There the word recounted a negative attitude: turning away from the remembrance of one's Lord.

Here the same verb recounts a positive attitude. And this shows that the word is neutral: turning away takes its value from what is turned away from. To turn away from remembrance is a loss; to turn away from the detail of a fault is a virtue.

Setting the two verses side by side makes this neutrality of the root visible:

عَرَّفَ — root ع ر ف (ʿ-r-f): to know, to recognise. But it differs from ʿilm: maʿrifa is recognition — knowing again what has been met with before. From the same root comes maʿrūf (known, recognised; and from there "good" — because what is good is what everyone recognises).

ʿArrafa is of the tafʿīl form: he made known, he acquainted. That is, the Prophet does not give the information; he makes known that he knows.

The difference is fine but real: to say "you did such and such" is to pour out the information; to say "I know this" is only to state the position. The verb in the verse is closer to the second.

1. Beginning with وَإِذْ. The verse begins with idh — an adverb pointing to a past time. In the Qurʾān this particle is generally used to recall a scene, and an implied verb "remember" is most often assumed before it (udhkur idh).

Its effect is this: the verse does not recount an incident, it points to an incident. To recount is to set the incident before the reader; to point is to turn back to something already known. And for the first addressees the incident was known.

This partly explains why the detail is not given: for the first addressees the detail was already unnecessary. But the Qurʾān, in putting on record a known incident, chose not to record the detail — and what we have today is the result of that choice.

2. The changes of agent made without names. There are four different subjects of verbs in the verse (the Prophet, one of the wives, God, and again the Prophet) and none of them is mentioned by a name. The subjects are followed only by the conjugation of the verb.

The richness of Arabic conjugation makes this possible: between nabbaʾat (she gave news) and nabbaʾa (he gave news) there is a difference of one letter, and this suffices to state without a name whom the sentence is speaking of. English has no such resource; in translation we are forced to write the subjects out explicitly and the cover the verse provides is partly removed.

3. The question relayed directly. Qālat man anbaʾaka hādhā — the question is given not in indirect speech but as a direct quotation. This is common in the Qurʾān's technique of narration and its effect is to bring the scene to life.

But here there is an interesting balance: the scene is brought to life while the identities are concealed. That is, the verse gives the texture of the incident and does not give its identity.

One. The definition of a secret and the speed of its dispersal.

The verse shows in three words how a secret disperses: asarra (he said in secret) → nabbaʾat bihī (she gave news of it). There is nothing in between.

What this says to the present is direct: a secret, from the moment it is shared, is no longer a thing that can be controlled. In giving his word a person thinks he is giving it to one person; but what he gives is a piece of information, and information has a logic of spreading of its own.

This does not amount to blaming the other party — nor does the verse blame; it merely records. What is said is plainer: the sharing of a secret is an operation with a risk, and the one who bears the risk is the one who shares.

Two. The ethics of the party who holds the information.

This is the most transferable part of the verse.

Today it is far easier to know something about someone that he does not know. Messages are forwarded, screenshots circulate, mutual acquaintances relay. And the person who has this information is in exactly the position the verse describes: he has in hand something the other party does not know he has.

The measure the verse shows is this: make known that it is known, do not open the detail.

It is not hard to see why this works. Opening the detail does two things: it puts the other party into a defensive position (and a person on the defensive does not think about the matter, he saves himself), and it opens up how you obtained the information for discussion as well (so that the subject changes). Merely making known that it is known, by contrast, leaves the other party the possibility of making his own reckoning himself.

This verse is of the same family as the architecture of criticism recorded in ʿAbasa: there too the criticism was said and left, and it was not pressed.

Three. When information is held as a power.

One of the two options the verse leaves out was "to say none of it". This deserves separate attention, because it is often taken for delicacy.

To know a fault of the other party and never to say it makes the relationship permanently unequal. Information is a power even while it goes unused: the uncertainty of when it will be used enters the texture of the relationship. And most often it is used one day.

The road the verse chooses restores equality by spending the information: the person who says what he knows has also ended that information's character as a power.

Four. Asking after the source.

The question in the verse — "who told you this?" — is a thoroughly familiar reaction. The first reflex of a person whose fault has been learned is most often not to discuss the fault but to find the source of the leak.

One must see what this reflex does: it shifts the subject from what was done to how it was heard of. And this shift is most often made unawares.

The answer in the verse does not accept this shift. Instead of following the chain of the source it steps outside the chain. The measure lying beneath this is: how a thing was heard of does not change the fact that it was done.