al-Muzzammil 73:10

Wa'ṣbir ʿalā mā yaqūlūna wa'hjurhum hajran jamīlā "Be patient with what they say; and part from them with a beautiful parting."

Third persons appear in the sūra for the first time: yaqūlūna — "they say." Who they are is not said; they will be qualified in the next verse.

Root: ص-ب-ر. The concrete sense of this root was treated in al-Baqara at 2/45, and the core recorded there was this: the root's primary sense is to hold, to restrain, to confine; patience is not a passive enduring but an active holding. I do not repeat it here.

What is to be added here is the object of the patience: ʿalā mā yaqūlūn — "with what they say".

And this is a striking narrowing.

The verse does not say "be patient with them". Nor does it say "be patient with what they do". It says "be patient with what they say".

That is, the subject of the patience is speech. And this fits the period in which the sūra stands: in the early Meccan period the main instrument of opposition was speech far more than physical pressure — the labels majnūn, shāʿir, sāḥir, kāhin. These attributes and their functions were treated in al-Inshirāḥ: "classifying the speaker instead of discussing what is said."

And there is a link between the weight of the word and the object of the patience. In the fifth verse the addressee was told that a "heavy word" would be laid upon him. In the tenth verse he is asked to be patient with the words spoken to him. There are two kinds of speech in the sūra: the carried and the endured.

I record this as an observation.

Root: ه-ج-ر. Its concrete sense: to part, to leave, to move away from a place or a person.

Derivatives:

• هِجْرَة (hijra) — migration from one place to another. The historical sense comes from here.
• مُهَاجِر (muhājir) — one who migrates.
• هَجْر (hajr) — leaving, parting, cutting off relations with a person.
• هُجْر (hujr) — ugly, foul speech. In the Qurʾān: "…in arrogance towards it, talking nonsense by night" (al-Muʾminūn 23/67) — sāmiran tahjurūn.

The last derivative is striking: the same root carries both "to leave" and "to speak foully". The explanation the lexicographers give: foul speech is speech in which reason and decency have been left behind.

The use of the root in the Qurʾān runs in two separate directions, and the distinction needs to be seen:

• Leaving a place — migrating from somewhere. The name of the event of the Hijra.
• Leaving a relation — moving away from a person or a stance.

This verse is in the second sense. And in the next sūra the same root will be used once more, with a third object: wa'l-rujza fa'hjur (74/5) — "leave the filth." There what is left is neither a place nor a person.

So three separate hajrs: a place, a person, a stance. The two sūras use this root with two different objects, and this is one of the most concrete linguistic data for the link between them. It will be taken up again in the comparison section at the end of the sūra.

Root: ج-م-ل. Beauty, pleasingness, fittingness.

And the distribution of this word in the Qurʾān shows an order worth pausing over.

جَمِيل, as the adjective of a verbal noun, occurs in the Qurʾān in the following places:

And the common point is striking: in the Qurʾān the attribute jamīl almost without exception qualifies a stance taken in the face of a harm or a parting. Patience, pardon, divorce, leaving.

That is, the word "beautiful" here is not an aesthetic quality; it is a measure for how a relation is to be ended.

I record this distribution as an observation. I have given the list from memory; I make no claim to a complete survey, but the places listed are correct.

The explanations given in the classical commentaries are close to one another:

• To part without reproach, without retaliating. The parting itself is not turned into an instrument of punishment.
• To part without holding a grudge. The relation is cut, enmity is not set up.
• To part quietly. The parting makes no noise.

What can be drawn from the text itself. Two observations:

1. The command has two parts and the two parts run in opposite directions: be patient (stay, hold) and part (go). Their being given together shows that the parting is not a flight — the person parts because he can endure, not because he cannot. 2. The adjective is placed not on the parting but on the manner of the parting. Hajran is the verbal noun, jamīlā its adjective. That is, the matter is not whether to part or not, but how the parting is to be done.

The second observation is my inference.

A note has to be set down.

This verse does not give a command to struggle, to resist, to retaliate. Both verbs are inward-turned: to hold and to move away.

And the continuation of the sūra confirms this: in the eleventh verse the work of settling accounts will openly be taken from the addressee and handed over to another — wa dharnī ("leave me alone with them").

That is, the stance the sūra sets up is this: be patient with the speech, withdraw from the relation, leave the reckoning to Me. The three together make up a single attitude.

In what period this stance held, and to what extent it was qualified by which verses, is among the disputed subjects of the literature of law and of the Prophet's life. I do not enter that discussion here and I draw no ruling from it; I confine myself to recording what the wording of the verse says.