al-Ḥāqqa 69:48-50

Wa innahu la-tadhkiratun li'l-muttaqīn · Wa innā la-naʿlamu anna minkum mukadhdhibīn · Wa innahu la-ḥasratun ʿala'l-kāfirīn "And it is surely a reminder for those who guard themselves. And We know full well that among you there are deniers. And it is surely a cause of anguish for those who cover the truth."

All three verses are on the same pattern: وَإِنَّ + لَـ — emphasis upon emphasis. And all three begin with the same pronoun or return to the same subject.

But the second verse cuts in and breaks the structure:

Verses 48 and 50 are about the text, that is, and 49 about the one addressed. The three verses build a sandwich: two effects of the text, and between them the dividedness of the audience.

And this is a chain of reasoning:

The same text yields two different outcomes (48, 50) — because the audience stands divided in two (49).

I record this as an observation about word order; the structure of the three verses is in the text.

In the twelfth verse the flood was a tadhkira. Here the text itself is a tadhkira. The link between the two occurrences was recorded above; I do not repeat it.

As was recorded in the section on ʿAbasa, the Qurʾān calls itself by this name in many places: al-Muzzammil 73/19, al-Muddaththir 74/54, and here.

لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ — Root: و-ق-ي. Waqā — to protect, to shield. ٱتَّقَىٰ (Form VIII) — he protected himself, he took shelter. Muttaqī — one who guards himself.

This root was treated in the section on al-Shams 91/8, and there taqwā was compared with taghwā:

And this table gives the key to reading Sūrat al-Ḥāqqa from beginning to end.

Everywhere the sūra recounted destruction, ط-غ-ي and its cognate roots were present: ṭāghiya (5), ʿātiya (6), ṭagha'l-māʾ (11). The sūra's word for destruction, that is, is overflowing.

And now, in the forty-eighth verse, it is said for whom the text is a reminder: al-muttaqīn — those who stand inside the limit.

Two words conveying exactly opposite movements. And the sūra has put the one at its beginning and the other at its end.

I record this as my own reading. The table from the section on al-Shams is taken from there; the distribution within the sūra can be counted in the text.

Why "for those who guard themselves"? The text comes down to everyone; but its being a tadhkira requires a condition. And the condition had already been stated in the twelfth verse: "that a retaining ear might retain it." There too the record was singular and conditional.

The sūra says the same thing twice, that is: the reminder is given; the remembering may not happen.

One of the calmest and hardest verses in the sūra.

مُكَذِّبِين — Root: ك-ذ-ب. Form II: to declare another's true word a lie. This distinction was treated in the sections on al-Māʿūn 107/1 and al-Shams 91/11; I do not repeat it.

And this root occurred in the fourth verse of the sūra: كَذَّبَتْ ثَمُودُ وَعَادٌۢ — "Thamūd and ʿĀd denied."

The sūra uses the root at its beginning and at its end, and changes the subject. In the fourth verse the deniers were peoples that had been destroyed; in the forty-ninth they are within the audience itself.

The sūra places the subject of the story it told in the first part, that is, among the audience in the last part.

This is the same method as was recorded in the section on al-Fajr: "A historical narrative is not a history lesson; it is the operation of enlarging the scale of a diagnosis and then bringing it down upon the one addressed." Al-Fajr did this with the word al-insān; al-Ḥāqqa does it with the pronoun minkum.

I record this as a method common to the two sūras; the findings in the two sections can be verified.

The weight of the verse lies in this single word.

The verse does not say "you deny" — that would be to charge the whole audience. Nor does it say "they deny" — that would leave the audience outside.

It says "some among you". Min here is partitive (tabʿīḍ).

The effect is this: the crowd addressed is divided, but who is on which side is not said.

And this accords with a principle recorded several times in this commentary. In the section on al-Qāriʿa: "the sūra does not say who is on which side. It gives the criterion, not the list." And, as is recorded in Method: what the verses describe are attributes.

And there is one thing more. The verse says "We know". There is knowledge, that is, but it is not announced.

This is what was said in the eighteenth verse: "On that day you are brought forward; nothing hidden of you stays hidden." On that day. Not today.

The sūra separates two times, that is: the knowledge exists now, the announcement will come later. And the span between them is the span in which a person can change his side.

I record this as my own reading. Its ground is that verses 18 and 49 of the same sūra stand in different times.

حَسْرَة — Root: ح-س-ر. And the concrete sense of the root needs pausing over, because the Turkish word hasret, borrowed from this root, is misleading.

In Turkish hasret means longing. In Arabic, however, the root means to uncover, to strip off, to lift the covering:

• حَسَرَ ٱلثَّوْبَ — he stripped off the garment, he laid it bare.
• حَاسِر — bare-headed, unarmoured. It is said of a soldier without helmet or mail in battle.
• حَسِير — weary, spent; whose strength has been stripped away. It occurs in the Qurʾān: "The gaze returns to you spent, having found nothing it hoped for." (al-Mulk 67/4)
• حَسْرَة — regret, deep grief.

The link the lexicographers make is this: ḥasra is the lifting of the veil that lay over a thing and the seeing of what has been lost in its naked state. Regret is born of the removal of a lack of knowledge: the person sees what he let slip.

I transmit this explanation; I do not present it as a settled etymological judgement. But the Qurʾān's own usage supports it:

• "Warn them of the day of anguish, when the matter will have been decided. They are now in heedlessness and do not believe." (Maryam 19/39)
• "Before a soul says: 'Alas for me for the failings I committed towards God!'" (al-Zumar 39/56)

In the second verse the regret concerns what was not done; the person looks back and sees a lack.

And now we can make the link within the sūra.

The eighteenth verse: "lā takhfā minkum khāfiya" — nothing hidden stays hidden. The veil lifts, that is.

The fiftieth verse: "la-ḥasratun" — an anguish. And ḥasra, by its root, is the lifting of the veil.

The same idea, in two words: the one is the name of the event, the other the name of its result. The veil lifts (18), and what its lifting comes to in the person is anguish (50).

I record this as my own reading. The root's sense of "stripping" is recorded in the lexicons; the link I make between the two verses is mine.

And the forty-eighth and fiftieth verses together frame one of the most striking things the Qurʾān says about itself:

One object, two outcomes. The text does not change; the audience changes.

And the Qurʾān frames this idea plainly elsewhere:

• "We send down of the Qurʾān what is a healing and a mercy for the believers; and it increases the wrongdoers only in loss." (al-Isrāʾ 17/82)
• "Say: for those who believe it is a guidance and a healing. But those who do not believe have a heaviness in their ears, and it is a blindness upon them." (Fuṣṣilat 41/44)

Fuṣṣilat 41/44 is especially important, because "a heaviness in their ears" is said there. And at al-Ḥāqqa 69/12 "a retaining ear" was asked for.

Three places complete one another, that is: the reminder is given (69/12), some ears hold it and some do not (41/44), and the outcome divides in two (69/48, 50).

A note. This does not mean that the text itself does harm. Ḥasra is not something the text produces; it is something born of seeing what was let slip. The text only shows what was let slip.

I record this as an explanation; explanations of this kind are widespread in the classical sources.

ٱلْكَٰفِرِين — Root: ك-ف-ر. To cover. The concrete sense of the root — the farmer who covers the seed with earth, the night being called kāfir — was treated earlier in this commentary; I do not repeat it.

But what the word does here is worth recording: the one who covers meets the lifting of the cover. The root is covering, the outcome uncovering. And ḥasra too is a name for uncovering.