al-Ḥāqqa 69:13-15

Fa-idhā nufikha fi'ṣ-ṣūri nafkhatun wāḥida · Wa ḥumilati'l-arḍu wa'l-jibālu fa-dukkatā dakkatan wāḥida · Fa-yawmaʾidhin waqaʿati'l-wāqiʿa "So when the ṣūr is blown with a single blast, and the earth and the mountains are lifted and beaten flat at a single stroke — on that day the befalling befalls."

The particle فَ here is critical. The twelfth verse ended with a purpose: "that it be remembered." The thirteenth verse begins with fāʾ: "So then…"

The sūra passes, that is, from the historical part to the part on the resurrection by a connective, not by a break. What happened in the past is framed as the entry to what will happen in the future.

And the particle إِذَا: as was recorded in the sections on al-Zalzala and ʿAbasa, idhā conveys a time whose coming is certain, while in (the conditional) conveys a possibility. The sūra sets the resurrection not as a condition but as a time.

Root: ص-و-ر. There are two readings of what the word is:

The first reading is the reading of the majority and accords better with the structure of the verb: nufikha fī'ṣ-ṣūr — "it was blown into the ṣūr". Blowing into a form would call for a different construction.

The Qurʾān moreover associates the ṣūr with a sound and speaks of that sound's being heard. I content myself with recording this; the disagreement makes no great difference to the sense, because on either reading what is described is the same: the dead and the whole order set in motion by a signal.

I do not speak about the nature of the thing. What the ṣūr is, what sort of thing it is, who blows it, are not detailed in the Qurʾān. There are details in the literature of transmitted reports; since I cannot judge their soundness, I do not relay them.

نَفْخَة — the coming of nafkha on the faʿla metre conveys in Arabic a single occurrence (ḍarba — one blow, akla — one eating). The word itself, that is, already means "once".

And on top of that the attribute وَٰحِدَة (a single one) is added. The pattern already conveys singleness, and it is further reinforced by the attribute.

Why this emphasis?

Elsewhere the Qurʾān speaks of two blasts: "And the ṣūr is blown, and whoever is in the heavens and the earth falls dead, except whom God wills. Then it is blown again, and there they are, standing and looking on" (al-Zumar 39/68).

Is there a tension between that verse and al-Ḥāqqa 69/13? The classical explanation is this: the subject of al-Ḥāqqa is the moment of destruction, not the raising. The sūra is describing that moment, and that moment happens with a single blast. The question of two blasts is the subject of another verse.

This explanation fits the text. But the real question is why singleness is emphasised, and the answer to that is in the next verse:

Root: د-ك-ك. This root was treated in detail in the section on al-Fajr 89/21: to beat, to crush flat, to level a rise to the ground; dakka — a flat hilltop; the occurrences at al-Aʿrāf 7/143 and al-Kahf 18/98. I do not repeat it.

In the section on al-Fajr a tension involving this verse was also recorded, and no firm judgement was issued there:

In the section on al-Fajr three solutions were proposed and left open: (a) the two verses may describe different phases of the event; (b) al-Ḥāqqa may be emphasising the decisiveness of the blow and al-Fajr its intensity; (c) if the repetition in al-Fajr is read as circumstantial, the tension disappears of itself.

I do not reopen that discussion here, and I preserve the suspension of judgement given there. The one thing I need to add here is the function of singleness within al-Ḥāqqa — because that was not taken up in the section on al-Fajr.

The word وَٰحِدَة occurs in this sūra in two consecutive verses:

• Verse 13: nafkhatun wāḥida — a single blast.
• Verse 14: dakkatan wāḥida — a single stroke.

And both words stand in the same place: at the verse-ending. The sūra pairs the two verses both by word and by sound.

I read the work of this repetition as follows — and I record it as my own reading:

Until now the sūra has recounted destructions as processes. ʿĀd was destroyed over seven nights and eight days. For the people of Noah the water rose, the ark was built, it overflowed. For Pharaoh and those before him a mechanism was described. In the historical part everything had a duration.

Now the duration falls to zero: one blast, one stroke.

The difference between the two parts of the sūra, that is, is not scale but speed. The destructions of the past were small and slow; this one is great and sudden. And the twofold repetition of the word "a single" carries that suddenness into the rhythm of the text.

Its ground is the contrast between the counted duration of the seventh verse (seven nights, eight days) and the singleness of these two verses; both are in the text.

This expression needs pausing over, because it is unusual.

In the Qurʾān's scenes of the resurrection the mountains generally undergo their change in place: they are set moving (al-Ṭūr 52/10), they are scattered (Ṭāhā 20/105), they become like carded wool (al-Qāriʿa 101/5), they turn to dust (al-Wāqiʿa 56/6).

Here, though, the mountains are lifted — and not the mountains alone but the earth as well. The two rise into the air together, and are then beaten.

The choice of verb builds this image. Ḥumilat — "it was carried, it was lifted." And then dukkatā — "the two were beaten." The verb is in the dual: the earth and the mountains, as two subjects, are beaten together.

The image is this: to crush a thing you first lift it, then strike. Or, to beat with a hammer, you first set the thing on an anvil. The verse gives the two movements one after the other: lifting, striking.

And note: the earth is the ground one stands on. At al-Baqara 2/22 it was called firāsh (a bed); at al-Ghāshiya 88/20 suṭiḥat (it was spread out). As was recorded in the section on al-Qāriʿa, those words convey not the shape of the earth but its function: that it can be stood upon.

Here that function is removed. The thing that is stood upon is lifted away.

I record this as my own reading. Its ground is the sense of the verb and the order of the two verbs.

And the third occurrence of the root ح-م-ل is here. In the eleventh verse God carried human beings; here the earth and the mountains are carried. The same verb: the one to save, the other to beat.

One of the densest sentences in the sūra, and it is three words.

Root: و-ق-ع. Waqaʿa — it fell, it occurred, it came to pass. The concrete sense of the root is falling: a thing's coming down from above and touching the ground. Wāqiʿa is an active participle: that which falls, that which comes to pass.

ٱلْوَاقِعَة is one of the names of the resurrection in the Qurʾān and is the name of sūra 56. The aspect recorded for it in the table of the names of the resurrection in the section on al-Qāriʿa was this: "the inevitability of its coming to pass."

The structure of the sentence: the verb and its subject are from the same root. Waqaʿati'l-wāqiʿa — "the falling fell", "what happens happened". In Arabic this is called ishtiqāq (the use together of derivatives of a single root), and it conveys reinforcement.

It is hard to carry into English. The nearest: "The befalling befell."

And note: the verb is in the perfect. Waqaʿat — "it happened", past tense. Yet the event lies in the future.

Recounting in the perfect something that will certainly happen in the future is a settled device in Arabic and conveys certainty: the event is so certain that it is told as though it had happened. In the section on al-Humaza the same phenomenon was recorded for the verb akhlada — but there the certainty was in the mind not of the speaker but of the one who supposes. Here the certainty is the speaker's.

The link with the name of the sūra. Now read the sentence together with the sūra's title:

• 69/1: ٱلْحَآقَّة — that which will come true.
• 69/15: وَقَعَتِ ٱلْوَاقِعَةُ — that which was to come to pass came to pass.

The fifteenth verse is the answer to the first. The sūra reports that the thing it named "that which comes true" has come true. Two different roots (ح-ق-ق and و-ق-ع) but one idea: a claim's finding its place.

And the name al-Qāriʿa had occurred in the fourth verse. The sūra names the resurrection by three names, then, and uses all three in three separate tasks: itself (1-3), the thing denied (4), the thing that comes to pass (15).

I record this as my own reading. The distribution of the three names within the sūra is, for its part, a datum that can be verified.