al-Ḥāqqa 69:40

Innahu la-qawlu rasūlin karīm "It is surely the speech of a noble messenger."

This sentence was treated in detail in the section on al-Takwīr 81/19 and was compared there with this verse. I do not repeat what was recorded in al-Takwīr; in summary it was this:

• A threefold emphasis: inna + lām + a nominal sentence. And its ground: "there is a threefold denial on the other side."
• The sense of the construction قَوْلُ رَسُول: "the speech the messenger carries", not the speech the messenger composed. The ground lies in the logic of the word itself: "The definition of a messenger is that he carries a speech that is not his own. Were the speech his, he would not be a messenger."
• A table of the same expression, two different messengers: what is meant in al-Takwīr is an angel, in al-Ḥāqqa the Prophet. And what makes the distinction is not the sentence itself but what comes after it.
• The rule drawn in al-Takwīr: "the meaning of an expression lies not inside the expression but in the place where it stands."
• The argument from a chain of transmission with six qualities (karīm, dhū quwwa, makīn, muṭāʿ, amīn, ghayru ḍanīn) and the likeness drawn with the conditions for a transmitter in the science of hadith (exactness, probity, continuity) — recorded as an inference.

What is to be added here is how the arguments of the two sūras complete one another. This comparison was not made in the section on al-Takwīr.

Al-Takwīr and al-Ḥāqqa frame the same sentence and then go in opposite directions. Thus:

Two sūras defend two different links of the same chain.

There are two places at which a piece of news may be false: the source and the carrier.

• The source may be false: the speech may come not from God but from somewhere else. Al-Takwīr closes this off: "it is not the speech of a satan", and it describes the carrier's position in the presence of the Throne.
• The carrier may be false: the speech may come from no one at all, and the one carrying it may be inventing it. Al-Ḥāqqa closes this off: "it is not the speech of a poet, not the speech of a soothsayer", and in the forty-fourth verse it sets out the possibility of invention explicitly as a scenario.

Al-Takwīr closes from above, that is, and al-Ḥāqqa from below. Read together, both ends of the chain are made fast.

I record this as my own reading. The findings in al-Takwīr are recorded in that section; the interpretation of the division of labour between the two sūras is mine.

The accusation rejected in al-Takwīr was that of being the speech of a satan — that is, a source above the human but evil.

The accusations rejected in al-Ḥāqqa are poet and soothsayer — that is, human sources.

And this is the subject of the verses that follow.

Root: ك-ر-م. This root was treated in the sections on ʿAbasa 80/13 and 80/16 and on al-Fajr 89/15-17 (ikrām, akramani). I do not repeat it.

The link recorded in the section on al-Takwīr is important: at ʿAbasa 80/13-16 the pages of the revelation are mukarrama and their carriers kirām; at al-Takwīr 81/19 the messenger is karīm. The conclusion: "Two sūras describe the carrier of the revelation with the same root."

Al-Ḥāqqa adds a third link. And note: in al-Ḥāqqa the one who is karīm is the human messenger. The same root is now used, that is, at the lowest link of the chain as well.

And the finding recorded in the section on al-Fajr should be recalled: ikrām is "the whole behaviour of according worth"; and there a man, saying "my Lord has honoured me", took wealth for a certificate of worth.

Here there is a person who is karīm, and what makes him karīm is not his wealth but the trust he carries.

I record this as an observation about the language.