al-Aʿrāf 7:10

Wa laqad makkannākum fi'l-arḍi wa jaʿalnā lakum fīhā maʿāyish, qalīlan mā tashkurūn

"We have established you on the earth and given you the means of livelihood in it. How little you give thanks!"

The concrete sense of the root: to provide a place for something, to settle it firmly. Makān is from the same root (some lexicographers count it from the root kawn; both views are transmitted, and I do not impose a preference). Tamkīn is to give someone the power to stand and to dispose in a place.

The root was treated at 12/21 and 12/56 in Yūsuf (wa kadhālika makkannā li-Yūsufa fi'l-arḍ) and at 18/84 in al-Kahf (innā makkannā lahū fi'l-arḍ). I rely on those treatments. I record the difference: there tamkīn was an authority given to one person; here it is a ground given to all mankind.

Maʿāyish, the plural of maʿīsha: the things by which life is lived, the means of livelihood. The root ع-ي-ش: to live. The same root was treated at 20/124 in Ṭāhā as maʿīshatan ḍankā (a straitened livelihood) — there the narrowing of livelihood is described, here its being given.

That the word comes in the plural must be recorded: not "a livelihood" but "livelihoods". What is stated is that there is on the earth not one path of living but many.

A point of word order and a link within the sūra must be recorded. The third verse ended with qalīlan mā tadhakkarūn; the tenth ends with qalīlan mā tashkurūn.

And the same closing was recorded at 32/9 in al-Sajda and at 23/78 in al-Muʾminūn — there it came after the giving of hearing, sight and heart. That triad will meet us again in verse 179 of al-Aʿrāf. A link can be drawn between the two places, and I give it as my own reading: the tenth verse names the ground that was given, the hundred and seventy-ninth the faculties that were given; the closing of both looks to the same place.

And two readings are transmitted of the pattern qalīlan mā:

Both readings are transmitted, and they do not change the meaning in any essential way.

The verse separates the giving of a possibility from the noticing of that possibility. Makkannā and jaʿalnā are in the past tense — the work is done. Tashkurūn is imperfect — it is a continuing state.

That is, the text says with a tense that what was given is complete and the answer to it is deficient. This is something that can be read off the word order; there is no need to add an interpretation to it.

There are seven tellings of this story in the Qurʾān: al-Baqara 2/30-38, al-Aʿrāf 7/11-25, al-Ḥijr 15/28-44, al-Isrāʾ 17/61-65, al-Kahf 18/50, Ṭāhā 20/115-123, Ṣād 38/71-85. That of al-Aʿrāf is the longest and the most detailed.

In this index the story has been treated three times, and in each a different layer was undone:

I rely on all three and do not repeat here what was treated there. The following in particular were exhausted there and will not be undone again here:

• That the prostration is not a prostration of worship, and that istikbār in Form X means "to reckon oneself great" (al-Baqara 2/34).
• The undoing of the syllogism anā khayrun minhu khalaqtanī min nārin wa khalaqtahū min ṭīn — the premises true, the conclusion not following from the premises; the comparison "fire burns and consumes, earth bears and brings forth"; the two-directional use of the root خ-ي-ر within Ṣād (Ṣād 38/76, al-Baqara 2/34).
• The question whether Iblīs was an angel (al-Baqara, al-Kahf 18/50).
• That the verbs come in the dual, and that the Qurʾān does not blame the woman separately (al-Baqara 2/35-36; as evidence Ṭāhā 20/120-121).
• The Qurʾān's silence about the kind of tree (al-Baqara 2/35). This commentary will be silent too; no entry is made into the Isrāʾīliyyāt.

Now I write what belongs to al-Aʿrāf. Al-Aʿrāf has four differences, and all four are countable:

And two verbs are peculiar to al-Aʿrāf: qāsamahumā (21) and dallāhumā (22). Both will be undone separately below.