وَإِنَّكَ لَعَلَىٰ خُلُقٍ عَظِيمٍ
One of the most concentrated sentences the Qurʾān speaks about the Prophet. And it rests on a single word.
- خَلْق (khalq) — to create, creation, the form of the thing created. Outward appearance.
- خُلُق (khuluq) — disposition, character, moral make-up. Inward structure.
The concrete sense of the root is to give form according to a measure. The lexicographers say khalaqa'l-adīm: he cut the leather to shape — a cobbler cutting leather to a pattern. So khalq is not bringing into being at random; it is cutting and shaping to a measure.
| خَلْق | خُلُق | |
|---|---|---|
| Belongs to | The body | The self |
| Its visibility | Seen with the eye | Seen in behaviour |
| What they share | Both are form; both have been cut to shape |
The idea this kinship yields is the following, and it is an explanation the lexicographers transmit: Arabic counts a person's character a structure, as his body is. As the face has a definite form, so does the disposition. Both have been "cut to shape".
One. Character is not a list of behaviours but a form. A person's khulq is not the sum of the good deeds he does; it is the mould they came out of. This is why the verse does not say "you do a great deal of good"; it says "you are upon a great character".
Two. There is a continuity between creation and character. The human body is a given form; the disposition is a form both given and acquired. The shared root does not tear the two apart.
A caution is needed: I do not draw from this kinship a conclusion of the kind "character is innate and unchangeable". The Qurʾān speaks of moral change, and the whole of its commanding presupposes change. What the root says is that character is a structure; not that the structure is fixed.
The verse does not say "innaka la-dhū khuluqin ʿaẓīm" (you are the possessor of a great character). It uses the preposition عَلَىٰ: "you are upon a great character."
The difference is this: "you possess" conveys ownership — character is a thing in the person's hand. "You are upon" conveys position — the person stands upon his character.
And this attaches to a finding recorded in the discussion of al-Fātiḥa: there the expression "ʿalā hudan min rabbihim" (upon a guidance from their Lord) was compared with "fī ḍalālin" (in error) — the one a ground stood upon, the other a place fallen into.
The same preposition does the same work here: character is set up as a ground stood upon. The ground is underneath, and it bears.
One more observation: the twenty-second verse of Sūrat al-Mulk had "ʿalā ṣirāṭin mustaqīm" (upon a straight path). The same structure: a person walking upon a ground. Here the ground is named khulq.
Root: ع-ظ-م. And the concrete sense of the root is bone: ʿaẓm — bone. ʿAẓīm originally means "big-boned"; from there it passed to "great, exalted".
This concrete root of the word says something: greatness here is not bulk but skeleton. That is, the soundness of the load-bearing structure.
Joined to the sense of khulq as "form", this gives a coherent picture: a form, and a sound skeleton bearing that form.
And note to whom the attribute is ascribed: the Qurʾān mostly uses ʿaẓīm of such things as its own verses, the Throne, the punishment, the reward. Its use of the word for a human being's character shows the weight of the attribute.
Two verses earlier an accusation was rejected: "you are not possessed." Here the move is from the negative to the positive.
And the logic of the move is this, as my own reading: rejecting an accusation is not enough; something must be put in its place. To say "I am not mad" is a defence; to say "his character is sound" is a statement of position.
The other side was speaking in terms of the mind. The verse does not answer in terms of the mind — it does not say "he is very intelligent". It answers in terms of character.
The ground for this choice may be measurability: whether a person's mind is sound is disputable; his character, on the other hand, can be observed. This finding was made in the discussion of al-Takwīr: "you know him. He has been among you for forty years. […] Understanding whether a man is possessed requires no knowledge; nearness is enough."
Sūrat al-Qalam uses the same ground but with a different word: it says he is not possessed, then says what kind of man he is.
And the rest of the sūra confirms the choice: in verses 10-13 the other side too will be described in terms of character. Nine attributes will be counted and none of them will have to do with the mind.
| The Prophet (68/4) | The other side (68/10-13) | |
|---|---|---|
| Measure | Character | Character |
| Number | One quality: khuluqun ʿaẓīm | Nine qualities |
| Structure | Whole — a form | In pieces — a list |
I record this contrast as my own reading and add the following: that one side is described in a single word and the other in nine does not look like coincidence. A sound form can be stated in one word; the defects of a corrupted form have to be counted one by one.
"By a mercy from God you were gentle with them. Had you been harsh and hard-hearted, they would have scattered from around you." (Āl ʿImrān 3/159)
And the verse in Āl ʿImrān repeats the note of al-Qalam 68/2 as well: "by a mercy from God" — that is, again it is not presented as the man's own accomplishment.
One further link: in the next section of Sūrat al-Qalam it will be said "do not obey those who deny" (8) and "they want you to smear on the oil" (9). The "gentleness" of Āl ʿImrān 3/159 and the "smoothing over" of al-Qalam 68/9 are different things and must not be confused — I shall take that up when I come to it.
Setting character up as a "form" stands against an understanding of morality built on lists of behaviours.
The attraction of a list morality is plain: it can be measured, taught, audited. Do this, do not do that. And it is necessary — there is no morality without rules.
But the list has a weakness: it falls silent in situations outside the list. And most of life is outside the list.
What the word khulq points to is the structure that produces the list. What a person will do in a situation he has not met before is known not from his list but from his form.
This has a practical consequence: the best way to learn about a person's character is to look at how he behaves where there is no rule. Where there is a rule, everyone can behave alike; where there is none, the form comes out.
Since khulq and khalq are from one root, character too is a kind of creation — that is, part of it is given. A person's patience is partly a matter of temperament; so is his quickness to anger.
This does not remove responsibility — but it makes comparison difficult. To set two people's characters side by side and declare one superior requires knowing where each of them started. And that is not known.
And the measure of aḥsan treated in the discussion of al-Mulk fits exactly here: the measure is what you did with what you had.