al-Qalam 68:21-27

Fa-tanādaw muṣbiḥīn — ani'ghdū ʿalā ḥarthikum in kuntum ṣārimīn — fa'nṭalaqū wa hum yatakhāfatūn — an lā yadkhulannahā'l-yawma ʿalaykum miskīn — wa ghadaw ʿalā ḥardin qādirīn — fa-lammā raʾawhā qālū innā la-ḍāllūn — bal naḥnu maḥrūmūn "In the morning they called out to one another: 'Go out early to your field, if you mean to harvest!' They set off, whispering together: 'Let no poor man enter it today upon you!' They went out early, judging themselves able to withhold. But when they saw it they said: 'We must have lost our way.' Then: 'No — we have been deprived.'"

The middle section of the narrative. And the step-by-step account of one morning.

Root: ن-د-و / ن-د-ي. To call out, to summon. Nidāʾ — a call; nādī — an assembly, a gathering place.

In Form VI (tanādaw): calling to one another.

And the word sets up a contrast with the next verb:

Between the two verses the voice drops. And the moment it drops is the moment the intention is spoken.

This is one of the finest details in the narrative and I offer it as my own reading: the call to go to the harvest is made by shouting — there is nothing to be ashamed of. The decision to keep the poor man out is spoken in a whisper.

The dropping of the voice shows that the intention is conscious. The men know that what they are doing is wrong; otherwise they would not whisper.

Root: غ-د-و. And the sense of the word is to set out on a task at the first hour of the day. Ghadāt — the morning hour; ghuduww — the going out in the morning. Its opposite is rawāḥ — the return in the evening. Arabic names these two movements with separate words.

And the verb occurs twice in the narrative: 22 (ighdū — imperative) and 25 (ghadaw — they went out). The command was given and it was carried out.

حَرْث — root ح-ر-ث. And the sense of the root is to plough the soil, to sow. Ḥarth — crop, field, what is sown.

The fine point of the word is here: in the seventeenth verse the garden was named janna (garden); here it is called ḥarth (tilled field).

Janna is what covers, what shades, what is beautiful. Ḥarth is what is laboured over — ploughed, sown, worked.

The change of word shows the men's way of seeing, as my own reading: the word out of their own mouths is ḥarth — "the product of our labour". The word the text uses is janna — "a garden given".

And the word ḥarth is named in the Qurʾān together with a warning: crop and produce become a matter of trial when they are counted a man's "own work". The question asked about the sown seed in Sūrat al-Wāqiʿa belongs to this frame.

إِن كُنتُمْ صَٰرِمِينَ — "if you mean to harvest".

Again the root صرم. The third time in the narrative. And in the conditional: "if you are harvesters."

This conditional clause completes, with irony, what was missing in the eighteenth verse: the men did not say "if God wills", but they did say "if you are harvesters". So they laid down a condition — but they attached the condition to their own resolve, not to God's willing.

I record this as my own reading; but that the two expressions stand in the same narrative, one a condition and the other an exception, is a datum of the text.

Root: ط-ل-ق. To release, to let loose. Ṭalāq — the dissolving of the marriage tie; ṭilq — free.

In Form VII (inṭalaqa): to go as though released, to set off swiftly.

There is a freedom and a speed in the word — a going that recognises no obstacle. And this gives the men's state of mind: sure of themselves, quick, resolved.

Root: خ-ف-ت. To lower the voice, to drop it. Khafata — his voice fell; and the lexicographers relate this root to death as well: khāfit — one whose voice has been cut off, who has died.

In Form VI: whispering to one another.

The Qurʾān uses this word in another place in an interesting way: the same root occurs where it is commanded that the voice in prayer be neither loud nor too hushed (in the frame of al-Isrāʾ 17/110). So the word describes a voice too low to be heard.

And the description of whispering is this, as my own inference: a whisper is the form given to a word that is not meant to be heard. But hidden from whom?

There is no one in the garden. The poor have not yet come. There is no one about to hear.

The men are hiding it not from one another, and not from anyone at all — and still they whisper.

This connects directly with al-Mulk 67/13: "Whether you hide your word or speak it aloud, He knows what is in the breasts."

The two texts say the same thing from two directions: the one announces that hiding will be of no use, the other shows people trying to hide.

This is what they say in their whispering. And the real offence of the narrative is here.

Note the grammar of the sentence, for the violence is there:

• لَا يَدْخُلَنَّ — prohibition + the heavy nūn. A reinforced prohibition: "let him on no account enter!"
• ٱلْيَوْمَ — "today". The stress falls on today.
• عَلَيْكُم — "upon you". The preposition ʿalā here carries a tone of imposition and unwelcomeness.
• مِّسْكِين — indefinite: "a poor man". Not even a single one.

So the sentence is: let not even one poor man, today, come in upon you.

And see where the emphasis is used: in the seventeenth verse, la-yaṣrimunnahā — "we shall certainly harvest it". Here, lā yadkhulanna — "let him on no account enter". The same grammatical instrument, in two places: to guarantee the harvest and to keep the poor man out.

This shows that the two resolves in the narrative are of the same intensity. The men are as determined to prevent as they are to gather.

مِسْكِين — root س-ك-ن. Stillness, immobility. Miskīn, at the root of the word, is one left so helpless that he cannot move — poverty has made him unable to stir from where he is.

This word was treated in the discussion of al-Māʿūn and its difference from faqīr was dwelt on. There too the phrase "the food of the poor man" was taken up and this finding was made: the food is named as belonging to the poor man — although it has not yet been given.

And now three sūras come together:

What the three have in common: the relation established with the poor is counted a sign of belief.

Their differences are meaningful too, as my own reading:

• In al-Māʿūn the poor man comes and is repelled.
• In al-Fajr no urging is done on behalf of the poor — that is, inaction.
• In al-Qalam the poor man is prevented before he even arrives.

The third is the furthest stage. The man in al-Māʿūn turns down a request; the men in al-Qalam take measures to prevent the request from arising.

And the finding recorded in the discussion of al-Māʿūn operates here once more: "manʿ is the withholding of something that has been asked for. That is, there is a request." The men in al-Qalam fall outside even that definition: they prevent before a request has formed.

And now the link with the portrait is made: in the twelfth verse it was said مَنَّاعٍ لِّلْخَيْرِ (the withholder of good). The narrative is that attribute brought to life.

A historical note: the poor coming to the fields at harvest time to gather what was left was an established practice in the agricultural societies of that period. The Qurʾān commands that the due be given on the day of harvest (at al-Anʿām 6/141 it is commanded, "give its due on the day of its harvest"). What the men wish to prevent may be an established right. I record this as a possibility; the verse does not speak explicitly of a legal right.

حَرْد — root ح-ر-د. And on the sense of the word the lexicographers give several descriptions:

The translation of the sentence changes with this choice:

• "They went out judging themselves able to withhold."
• "They went out in anger, resolved."
• "They went out set upon a purpose, in strength."

My preference is toward the first sense and the ground is the preceding verse: the decision to withhold was taken there. The sense "withholding" for the word ḥard attaches the sentence to the verse before it.

It is not binding; the other senses too are defended in the classical sources.

قَادِرِين — "as those with the power". Root q-d-r; treated in the discussion of al-Mulk 67/1: at the centre of the root stands measure.

And the place of the word here is the sharpest irony in the narrative:

The men go out "as those with the power" — and where they are going there is nothing at all.

That is, they lay claim to power over a thing that is no longer in their hands. The garden is already gone; they are still planning how to portion it out.

I record this picture as my own reading: this is the comic side of the narrative — and its being comic increases its seriousness. A person can make plans about something that is not in his hands and never notice.

And they see the garden.

Their first sentence: "We must have lost our way."

ضَلَّ — root ض-ل-ل. And the original sense of the root is to lose the way; the moral sense of "going astray" comes from there. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Fātiḥa.

So the first reaction is not to accept that the garden is gone but to think they have come to the wrong place.

This catches the way the human mind works, and I write it as my own reading: when expectation and reality conflict, the first thing the mind does is to question not reality but its own position — because that is cheaper. To say "I have come to the wrong place" is easier than to say "I have lost everything".

And the double sense of the word adds one more layer here: ḍāllūn means both "those who have lost the way" and "those who have gone astray". The men mean it in the first sense; but the second sense stands inside the sentence.

So without knowing it the men pass a true judgement on themselves. I record this as an observation about the word; some of the classical exegetes too draw attention to the double sense.

The particle بَلْ in Arabic conveys iḍrāb: turning back from what was just said and putting something else in its place. It was treated in the discussions of al-Infiṭār and al-Muṭaffifīn.

So the men correct their own words: "no, we have not lost our way — we have been deprived."

مَحْرُوم — root ح-ر-م. To forbid, to prevent, to deprive. Ḥarām — forbidden; ḥaram — a protected area forbidden to enter; ḥurma — inviolability.

And now the sharpest verbal stroke of the narrative, as my own reading:

Those who prevent turn out to be the prevented.

And the choice of word says this openly: maḥrūm is a passive participle — "one who has been deprived". So there is an agent; the men accept that they have been prevented.

The same structure was identified in the discussion of al-Humaza: "The one who counts others worthless and throws them away is counted worthless and thrown away." The symmetry built there for the verb nabz is built here for ḥirmān.

One further note: the Qurʾān uses the word maḥrūm in another place in a very different context — among those who have a right in wealth the expression "the one who asks and the one who has been deprived" (al-sāʾili wa'l-maḥrūm) occurs (al-Dhāriyāt 51/19; al-Maʿārij 70/25).

So maḥrūm is normally, in the Qurʾān, a name for the poor man.

And in the narrative the owners of the garden give themselves that name. The men who would not let the poor man in end up being called by the poor man's name.

I record this overlap as my own reading; but the word's use in the two places is a datum of the text.