74. Sūrat al-Muddaththir

Fifty-six verses. There is a view close to unanimity that it is Meccan.

The name of the sūra comes from its first word: al-Muddaththir — "the one wrapped in his heavy covering". The word occurs in the text in this form, and in this one place only.

This sūra requires to be read together with al-Muzzammil, which stands before it. In al-Muzzammil the concrete linguistic data of the link were listed; here the whole of it will be taken up in a separate section at the end of the sūra.

And this must be said at the outset: the two sūras are not a repetition of one another but a completion of one another. al-Muzzammil lifts him out of the covering and sends him to the night; al-Muddaththir lifts him out of the covering and sends him to people. One is the sūra of preparation, the other the sūra of going out.

The verse-ending of al-Muzzammil was a single sound throughout nineteen verses. The verse-ending of al-Muddaththir, by contrast, divides into five separate blocks — and the blocks coincide with the divisions of the content.

And the third block is especially striking. From the eighteenth verse to the thirtieth the verse-ending shortens: qaddar, naẓar, basar, adbara, istakbar. The verses shorten as well — some of them are two words (thumma naẓar).

That is, at the place where denial is recounted step by step, the text itself proceeds step by step. Every verse short, every sound hard, every step separate.

I record this as an observation about sound; but it is an order that can be observed and that coincides with the content.

As was recorded in al-Ḍuḥā, more than one period is spoken of in the sīra literature under the heading fatrat al-waḥy, and the first of these is the pause after the first revelation — it is transmitted that revelation began again with Sūrat al-Muddaththir. In al-ʿAlaq the same frame was recorded and presented as a harmonisation: al-ʿAlaq is absolutely the first, al-Muddaththir the first to come down after the fatra.

And the caveat entered there holds here as well: "Attempts at harmonisation are made in the classical sources and they are reasonable; but the harmonisation itself is an inference, not a transmitted report." The figures that circulate about the length of the fatra (three days, twelve days, forty days and the like) contradict one another and none of them is certain — this too was recorded in al-Ḍuḥā.

For this reason I make no new claim here about dating.

A preliminary note on the occasion of revelation. For verses 11-25 of the sūra a widespread report of the occasion of revelation is transmitted in the exegetical sources; this will be taken up separately, with the necessary caveats, in the section on the eleventh verse.

The basmala, having been treated in earlier sūras, is not taken up again here; the verse numbers have been counted without the basmala.

Yā ayyuha'l-muddaththir "O you wrapped in your covering!"

Root: د-ث-ر. This root, like the ز-م-ل root of al-Muzzammil, divides into two branches; and the second branch opens onto an unexpected place.

The first branch — the heavy covering.

دِثَار (dithār) — the heavy covering put on over the rest, not touching the skin. And this word forms a pair in Arabic:

This pair shows the centre of the root: dithār is not an under-layer but the upper layer. What comes from outside, what is drawn over afterwards, what can be taken off.

And when it is compared with the ز-م-ل root treated in al-Muzzammil, a difference appears:

• تَزَمَّلَ — to wrap oneself, to wind round. A movement of winding.
• تَدَثَّرَ — to draw a covering over oneself. A movement of overlaying.

The first winds round the body; the second is drawn over the body. Both are a covering, but the one wraps and the other overlays.

I rest this distinction on the definitions the dictionaries give; I do not claim that the two words are deliberately kept apart in the Qurʾān.

The second branch — the effacing of a trace.

And this is the striking part:

• دَثَرَ (dathara) — a thing's trace was effaced, it grew old, it became indistinct. It is used especially of the traces of an abandoned dwelling, a road, the site of a tent being covered over by the wind.
• دَاثِر (dāthir) — whose trace has been effaced, become indistinct, no longer visible.
• دَثَرَ الرَّسْمُ — the remains were effaced, they disappeared.

The link between the two branches is direct: when a thing is covered over, its trace is lost. Dithār covers the body; sand covers the traces of an abandoned dwelling. In both, the root recounts the covering over of something.

And a third use is recorded in the dictionaries as well: دَثْر (dathr) — abundant property, plenty. Its link is the same: a thing heaped and piled up on itself.

I record this as my own reading.

The same root carries both "the one wrapped in a covering" and "whose trace is effaced". And the sūra says to someone wrapped in his covering, "rise and warn" — that is, it makes visible someone who is invisible.

To cover oneself is to make oneself invisible. The first command of the sūra asks for exactly the opposite of that.

The verse does not say that it is using this second sense, and most of the classical commentaries proceed by way of the first. The second branch of the root is recorded in the dictionaries; the link I set up is an interpretation.

As in al-Muzzammil, here too there is assimilation (idghām):

The active participle of the tafaʿʿul form is mutadaththir; the ت (tāʾ) at its head turns into the د (dāl) that follows it and merges with it.

As was recorded in al-Muzzammil: two sūras open with two words that have undergone the same phonetic event. And the tafaʿʿul form does the same work in both — covering oneself is a work the addressee does to himself.

In the section on al-Muzzammil 73/1 the Qurʾān's patterns of address to the Prophet were set out in a table, and this was recorded: there are two places in the Qurʾān where the Prophet is addressed not by the name of an office but by his bodily state at that moment — and both are the first verse of these two sūras. I do not repeat it here.

What is to be added here is the difference between the two addresses:

The second senses of the two roots also look in different directions, and each coincides with the subject of its own sūra: al-Muzzammil will give a load, al-Muddaththir will give a command to be visible.

I record this coincidence as an observation, not as a claim.

Qum fa-andhir / Wa rabbaka fa-kabbir / Wa thiyābaka fa-ṭahhir / Wa'l-rujza fa'hjur / Wa lā tamnun tastakthir / Wa li-rabbika fa'ṣbir

"Rise and warn. Magnify your Lord. Purify your garments. Forsake the filth. Do not cast up a favour, counting it much. And be patient for your Lord."

The densest sequence of commands in the Qurʾān. Seven commands in six verses; all of them short, all of them sharp, all of them bound with a fāʾ.

Before taking the commands one by one, one must look at the sequence itself.

And the frame of the sequence is striking: the third verse begins with rabbaka, the seventh verse ends with li-rabbika. Both are turned towards the Lord; the three commands in between (garments, filth, casting up a favour) stand between these two.

That is, the sequence sets up a frame: turning to God — personal and social order — turning to God again.

I record this classification as my own reading.

In four verses (3, 4, 5, 7) the same word order is repeated, and in Arabic this is a meaningful choice:

• Wa rabbaka fa-kabbir — "your Lord, magnify Him" (the normal order would be fa-kabbir rabbaka)
• Wa thiyābaka fa-ṭahhir — "your garments, purify them"
• Wa al-rujza fa'hjur — "the filth, forsake it"
• Wa li-rabbika fa'ṣbir — "for your Lord, be patient"

The object (or the prepositional phrase) has been drawn in front of the verb — and, as was treated in al-Ikhlāṣ and al-Inshirāḥ, in Arabic an element brought forward from its normal place gains emphasis and most often ḥaṣr (restriction).

The sense becomes this: magnify only your Lord. Be patient only for your Lord.

And the فَ that comes between marks this fronting: the fāʾ that follows a fronted element shows that the sentence has entered a structure resembling a conditional — "as for your Lord: magnify Him."

This is the single grammatical move repeated in four of the sequence. In the second verse no element is brought forward (qum fa-anḏir); and in the sixth verse (wa lā tamnun tastakthir) there is a prohibition, and the structure changes.

The choice itself is beyond dispute; the conclusion to be drawn from it (ḥaṣr) is widely treated in the classical sources.

Qum fa-andhir "Rise and warn."

One of the shortest two-command sentences in the Qurʾān: two words.

As recorded in al-Muzzammil 73/2: the ق-و-م root conveys both levelness and upright standing; the main place of the root is al-Fātiḥa and al-Baqara.

And that the two sūras begin with the same command is the most concrete datum of the link between them:

The same verb, two opposite directions. The one to solitude, the other to the crowd.

And an observation — as my own reading: an order can be set up between the two commands. The rising at night was preparation (73/5: "We shall soon cast upon you a heavy word"); here there is the going out. But because the order of revelation of the two sūras is not certain, I do not present this ordering as a claim about chronology. The logical order of texts does not have to be the same as their historical order.

Root: ن-ذ-ر. Its concrete sense: to give notice of a danger beforehand.

And the most important property of the root in Arabic is this: inzār is not to frighten; it is to give notice. That what is given notice of should be frightening is a separate matter.

Derivatives:

• نَذِير (nadhīr) — warner. One of the most frequently used attributes of the Prophet in the Qurʾān.
• إِنذَار (indhār) — warning.
• نَذْر (nadhr) — a vow. The Turkish word nezir / adak ("votive offering") comes from this root; the link is "to promise beforehand, to give notice beforehand".
• نُذُر (nudhur) — warners; or warnings.

And there is a distinction the lexicographers record:

The two are most often mentioned together in the Qurʾān: bashīran wa nadhīrā (al-Baqara 2/119; al-Aʿrāf 7/188; Sabaʾ 34/28; Fuṣṣilat 41/4).

Here there is only inzār. This agrees with the period the sūra belongs to, and with its tone.

This is the most striking side of the verse.

Fa-andhir — "warn". Whom? It is not said. With what? It is not said. About what? It is not said.

And the same structure was treated in al-ʿAlaq: in the first revelation the command iqraʾ was given no object either, and there it was discussed together with the two readings of the expression mā anā bi-qāriʾ.

That is, in the texts of the Qurʾān's earliest period both commands come without an object: read and warn.

The effect of this is that the command remains without limit. Had an object been put in, the command would have been defined and completable — had it said "warn these people", the business would have been over once they were warned.

I record this reading as my own inference; the text does not say why it withholds the object.

One further record: in the later portions of the Qurʾān the addressee of the inzār is determined by degrees — "Warn your nearest kinsfolk" (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/214); "that you may warn the mother of cities and those around it" (al-Anʿām 6/92; al-Shūrā 42/7); "to all mankind" (Sabaʾ 34/28). But here, in the first command, there is no limit at all.

The فَ between qum and andhir conveys sequence and cause: rise, and so warn.

That is, the work of warning requires standing up. It cannot be done lying down.

And this must be read together with the first verse. The addressee was someone wrapped in his covering. Now two things are asked of him, and both are the opposite of covering oneself: to rise (horizontal → vertical) and to warn (silence → sound).

The first three words of the sūra draw a movement: covered → upright → sounding.

Wa rabbaka fa-kabbir "Magnify your Lord."

Root: ك-ب-ر. To be great, to grow.

كَبَّرَ is in the tafʿīl form, and its sense here is to count great, to declare the greatness of — not to make great. In Arabic this form sometimes gives the sense "to reckon a thing so, to describe it so" (ṣaghgharahu — he counted it small; kadhdhabahu — he counted it a lie).

That is, the command is not "make your Lord great" but "acknowledge and declare your Lord's greatness". The greatness is already there; what falls to the servant is to accept it and to state it.

Derivatives and relatives:

• أَكْبَر (akbar) — greater / greatest. The word in the expression Allāhu akbar.
• كِبْر (kibr) — self-magnifying, seeing oneself as great. The Turkish word kibir ("pride") is from this.
• ٱسْتَكْبَرَ (istakbara) — the istifʿāl form: to give oneself airs of greatness, to ascribe greatness to oneself.
• كَبِيرَة (kabīra) — a grave sin.

And this breadth of the root sets up a weave within the sūra.

In the third verse the addressee is told kabbir (magnify your Lord). In the twenty-third verse, of the denier, it will be said wa'stakbara (he grew proud).

The same root, two opposite directions:

This weave stands within the sūra and can be observed. I do not claim that it is a deliberate design, but it needs to be recorded.

It is often said in the classical sources that this verse is counted the ground of the opening takbīr of the ritual prayer (takbīrat al-iḥrām). This is a juristic inference; the wording of the verse says nothing about the prayer, and I issue no ruling here.

What can be recorded is this: the command asks for an act that can be declared. Kabbir is a work done with the tongue.

An observation — as my own reading.

The first command was turned outward: warn. The second command is turned upward: magnify.

And the order could have been reversed. But as it stands it says something: the work of warning is bound immediately afterwards to a declaration of source. The one who warns declares from whom the warning comes.

If the source of the warning is not declared, the one who warns is speaking on his own account — and then the weight of the warning is only as great as his own weight.

I do not rest this inference on the text; it is an interpretation I draw from the order of the two commands.

Wa thiyābaka fa-ṭahhir "Purify your garments."

The most disputed verse of the sūra, and a place that requires a table of views.

Root: ث-و-ب. And the concrete sense of the root is not "garment": to turn, to come back, to revert to one's origin.

• ثَابَ (thāba) — he turned back, he came back.
• مَثَابَة (mathāba) — a place one comes back to. In the Qurʾān: "We made the House a place of return (mathābatan) for people, and a security" (al-Baqara 2/125).
• ثَوَاب (thawāb) — requital, reward. That is, "reward" is what comes back to the person. This word, alive in Turkish as sevap, carries the centre of the root.
• مَثُوبَة (mathūba) — requital. al-Baqara 2/103.
• ثَوْب (thawb), plural ثِيَاب — garment.

Why, then, is "garment" from this root? The explanation the lexicographers give is this: thread is what has been returned to the state designed for it — raw fibre attains, by being woven, the form expected of it. Thawb is what has been "returned to its origin".

I ascribe this explanation to the lexicographers; I do not present it as a definite etymological ruling. But it needs recording, because that the words thawāb (requital) and thiyāb (garments) should be from the same root is striking in itself.

The places where the word occurs help in the reading of the verse:

• "…and they wrapped themselves in their garments" (Nūḥ 71/7) — wa'staghshaw thiyābahum. The people of Noah put their fingers in their ears so as not to hear, and wrap themselves in their garments.
• "For those who disbelieve, garments of fire have been cut out" (al-Ḥajj 22/19).
• "Upon them are garments of fine green silk and of heavy brocade" (al-Insān 76/21).
• "There is no fault in them if they lay aside their garments…" (al-Nūr 24/60) — concerning elderly women.

And the first example is worth dwelling on.

At Nūḥ 71/7 a community wraps itself in its garments so as not to hear. At al-Muddaththir 74/1 a person is called while wrapped in his covering, and is commanded to rise.

The same family of verbs, two opposite outcomes: the one keeps the closing up going, the other is brought out of the closing up.

I record this link as my own reading; I do not claim that there is a reference between the two verses.

Root: ط-ه-ر. The concrete sense of this root, its pattern and its use in the Qurʾān were treated in detail in al-Bayyina (ṣuḥufan muṭahhara); ʿAbasa refers to that place as well. I do not repeat it.

The core recorded there was this: the root conveys cleanness, being far from filth; the tafʿīl form (ṭahhara) conveys intensification and repetition — "to clean thoroughly, from beginning to end"; and muṭahhara is a passive participle — "not clean, but cleaned".

And a note entered there looks directly at this place: "Ṭahāra is in Islam primarily a bodily and legal category — ablution, the major washing, purification from impurity. The use of this word for a text is a transfer of category."

In al-Bayyina the category was transferred to a text. Could the reverse be the case here — is the category being transferred from the body to character? That is exactly the discussion.

All of these occur in the classical sources. I impose no preference, and this is what the method (Method) requires — because the text does not make the distinction.

What can be said from the text itself. Three observations:

1. The verse gives no indication of metaphor. That is, the literal sense is not closed off. 2. But the context does not close off the metaphor either. The scale of the commands around it (warn, magnify, be patient) is large; a command about the cleanness of clothing stands narrow among them. This is the support the metaphorical reading takes from the context. 3. And the third, perhaps the most important: the two do not exclude one another. A command may work in both the literal and the metaphorical sense; and the idiomatic use of Arabic already unites the two.

The third observation is my own reading.

One further record: most of the classical commentaries do not settle on a single sense in this verse, and set several explanations side by side. That is, the disagreement itself is a state of affairs accepted in the tradition.

An observation — as my own reading.

In the sequence of commands this is the first command turned towards the addressee himself. Before it there were commands turned outward (warn) and upward (magnify).

And its position seems meaningful: the person going out to the work of warning is told to look at his own state. The order is: you called outwards, you declared the source, now look at what is on you.

I do not rest this reading on the text; it is an interpretation I draw from the ordering.

Wa'l-rujza fa'hjur "Forsake the filth."

Root: ر-ج-ز. Two fields of meaning are recorded in the dictionaries:

1. Trembling, shaking, irregular movement. Rajaz is a weakness and trembling in a camel's hind legs; the animal walks unevenly.

2. Punishment, filth, uncleanness.

The link the lexicographers set up: punishment is what shakes a person and disorders him. I do not present this link as a definite ruling.

Also from the same root, رَجَز (rajaz) — the name of a metre in Arabic poetry; it is said to take its name from the short, repeated movement of its rhythm. I record this as a piece of information; I set up no connection with the verse.

The word generally occurs in the Qurʾān in the sense of punishment:

• "We sent down upon the wrongdoers a punishment (rijz) from the sky" (al-Baqara 2/59; similarly al-Aʿrāf 7/162).
• "When the punishment (al-rijz) fell upon them…" (al-Aʿrāf 7/134-135).
• "…and to remove from you the filth of Satan (rijza'l-shayṭān)" (al-Anfāl 8/11).

In the last example the sense shifts towards "filth".

And there is a near word that must not be confused with it: رِجْس (rijs) — filth, uncleanness. In the Qurʾān it is used of wine, gambling, sacrificial stones and divining arrows (al-Māʾida 5/90).

The two words are separated in writing by a single letter (ز / س) and their fields of meaning overlap. Some of the lexicographers count the two related; I record this as a possibility.

There is a variant reading in this word, and it must be transmitted:

In the widespread printed muṣḥaf (the transmission of Ḥafṣ) it is read with ḍamma: ٱلرُّجْز.

It is said in the classical sources that the two readings largely unite the meaning: what is asked to be forsaken, whether it be "filth" or "what leads to punishment", points to the same thing.

I give no definite list as to which reading belongs to which imām.

The verse gives its object as definite (al-rujz) but does not describe it. The classical explanations:

I impose no preference. All four occur in the classical sources and they do not exclude one another.

Root: ه-ج-ر. The concrete sense of this root and its derivatives (hijra, muhājir, hujr) were treated in al-Muzzammil 73/10; I do not repeat them.

As was recorded there, the use of the root in the Qurʾān runs in two directions: the leaving of a place and the leaving of a relationship.

Here there is a third object: an attitude.

Three separate leavings. And that the two sūras should use the same root with two different objects is one of the most concrete data of the link between them.

And there is a difference that must be recorded: in al-Muzzammil the leaving was qualified as jamīl (beautiful) — because what was left was persons. Here there is no qualification — because what is left is an attitude. There is no such thing as parting "beautifully" from an attitude.

I record this distinction as my own reading.

Wa lā tamnun tastakthir "Do not cast up a favour, counting it much."

The shortest and the most disputed verse of the sūra. Two words, and the relation between them left indefinite.

Root: م-ن-ن. And this root carries in Arabic two senses that come close to being each other's opposite:

1. To do good, to bestow, to grant a favour.

• مَنَّ عَلَيْهِ — he showed him kindness.
• مِنَّة (minna) — favour, bounty.
• ٱلْمَنَّان (al-Mannān) — the one who bestows abundantly.
• ٱلْمَنّ (al-mann) — the food sent down to the Children of Israel. "We sent down upon you the manna (al-manna) and the quails" (al-Baqara 2/57; al-Aʿrāf 7/160; Ṭāhā 20/80). This too is a bestowal.

2. To cast up a kindness, to throw what one has given in another's face.

• مَنَّ عَلَيْهِ بِعَطَائِهِ — he cast up in his face what he had given.

And the Qurʾān openly forbids this second sense and sets a measure:

• "Those who spend their wealth in the way of God and then do not follow what they have spent with reproach (mannan) and hurt…" (al-Baqara 2/262).
• "O you who believe! Do not cancel your acts of charity with reproach and hurt" (al-Baqara 2/264).

The last verse is important: casting up a favour cancels the charity. That is, the act is not counted as done. What was given is not taken back, but the record is erased.

From the same root مَمْنُون (passive participle) occurs in the Qurʾān in the negative: ajrun ghayru mamnūn — "an uninterrupted / unreproached reward."

Its places: al-Tīn 95/6, al-Inshiqāq 84/25, Fuṣṣilat 41/8.

And the expression has two readings, and both come out of the root:

This expression was treated in al-Tīn and al-Inshiqāq; I do not repeat it.

But this link needs to be made: the requital God gives is ghayru mamnūn — not cast up in one's face. And what is commanded of the addressee here is the same: lā tamnun — do not cast up a favour.

That is, the measure is shared. I record this link as my own reading; I do not claim that there is a reference between the verses.

Root: ك-ث-ر. Abundance. And in al-Takāthur the takāthur (boasting in abundance) form of this root was treated.

ٱسْتَكْثَرَ — in the istifʿāl form. This form has two basic functions, and both are possible here:

1. Request: to ask for a thing. Istaghfara — to ask forgiveness. 2. Counting / finding: to reckon a thing so. Istaḥsana — to find beautiful.

That is, tastakthir means either "you ask for more of it" or "you find it much".

And the position of this word in the sentence is left indefinite as well: is it the circumstantial qualifier of the verb lā tamnun (stating a state), or is it its ground?

The first three of these are seriously defended in the classical sources. I impose no preference.

But I wish to record this: all three readings come out at the same place. What is forbidden is the turning of a kindness done into a debt owed to the one who did it — whether before the one who receives it (1 and 2) or before God (3).

This joining is my own reading.

In the sequence of commands this is the single prohibition. The other six are commands.

And its position is striking: after the commands to warn, to magnify, to purify and to forsake; before the command to be patient.

An observation, as my own reading: when all the commands in the sequence have been carried out, an accumulation appears — works done, hardships borne, labour spent. And the natural risk of that accumulation is that it should become, in the eyes of the one who owns it, a debt owed to him.

The prohibition seems to be placed at exactly this point: do not turn the sum of the works you have done into a ledger of accounts.

I do not rest this on the text; it is an interpretation I draw from its position in the sequence.

Wa li-rabbika fa'ṣbir "And be patient for your Lord."

The last command of the sequence.

Root: ص-ب-ر. Its concrete sense — to hold, to hold back, to confine — and the point that patience is not a passive enduring but an active work of holding, were treated in al-Baqara 2/45. I do not repeat them.

And the real point here lies in the particle.

Let us set the commands to patience of the two sūras side by side:

The same verb, two different particles, two different questions.

• ʿAlā says what is to be borne patiently: what they say.
• Li says why it is to be borne patiently: for your Lord.

And when the two are joined a complete description appears: what, and why.

I record this comparison as my own reading; I do not claim that the two verses were built to complete one another, but that the verb is the same and the particle different is an observable datum.

The letter لِ carries several senses in Arabic: possession, cause, purpose, specification.

The explanations given here in the classical commentaries:

1. Purpose: be patient for your Lord's good pleasure. 2. Cause: be patient because your Lord has commanded it. 3. Specification (ḥaṣr): be patient for your Lord alone — not for any other cause.

The third reading rests on the fronted prepositional phrase conveying ḥaṣr, and was recorded above (in the section on the structure of the sequence).

And what the third reading opens up is important. Patience can be exercised for other causes too: for reputation, for the sake of having shown endurance, to establish superiority over the other side, to prove something to oneself.

The verse makes the address of patience single — just as the address of taking a guardian was made single in al-Muzzammil 73/9.

I record this as my own reading.

Seven commands are done. And the last command regulates the consequence of the first.

Qum fa-andhir — rise and warn. This command will have a consequence: there will be opposition, there will be mockery, friction will arise. The rest of the sūra recounts exactly this.

And the last command of the sequence is a preparation for that consequence: fa'ṣbir.

That is, the sequence commands a work, and closes by setting an attitude against the difficulty that work will produce.

This reading is my own inference; the text does not set up this link openly.

A general assessment.

The order is this: coming out of the covering (1) → rising (2) → warning (2) → magnifying (3) → purifying (4) → forsaking (5) → not casting up a favour (6) → patience (7).

And there is an observable order in the sequence:

And note: there is no command in the sequence to "teach", to "explain" or to "bring proof". Everything listed after the command to warn has to do with the warner himself.

This observation is my own inference. But it can be observed: six of the seven commands regulate not the addressees of the work but the one who does the work.

Fa-idhā nuqira fi'l-nāqūr / Fa-dhālika yawmaʾidhin yawmun ʿasīr / ʿAla'l-kāfirīna ghayru yasīr

"When the nāqūr is struck — that day is a hard day; for those who disbelieve it is not easy."

As recorded in al-Inshirāḥ: إِنْ conveys possibility, إِذَا certainty. Here there is idhā — "when", not "if".

Root: ن-ق-ر. Its concrete sense: to peck, to pierce by striking, to gouge, to hollow out.

Derivatives:

• مِنقَار (minqār) — a beak. The bird's instrument for striking and piercing.
• نَقِير (naqīr) — the small hollow on the top of a date stone. It is used in the Qurʾān as a measure of smallness: "and they will not be wronged by so much as a speck" (al-Nisāʾ 4/124); "They would not give people so much as the hollow of a date stone" (al-Nisāʾ 4/53).
• نَاقُور (nāqūr) — a noun of instrument on the pattern fāʿūl: an instrument resembling a horn, blown into or struck.

And there is a striking point.

For the summons of the resurrection the Qurʾān generally uses this expression: نُفِخَ فِى ٱلصُّورِ — "the trumpet was blown" (al-Kahf 18/99; Ṭāhā 20/102; al-Muʾminūn 23/101; Yāsīn 36/51; al-Zumar 39/68; Qāf 50/20; al-Ḥāqqa 69/13; al-Nabaʾ 78/18).

Here, however, another word is used: نُقِرَ فِى ٱلنَّاقُورِ. And this expression occurs in the Qurʾān only here.

What is the difference?

• نَفْخ (nafkh) — to blow. The giving of air.
• نَقْر (naqr) — to pierce by striking, to strike. A blow.

That is, the same event is recounted with two different verbs: the one a blowing, the other a striking.

And naqr is a sharper sound. The word itself is so: nūn, qāf and rāʾ — all three hard-released letters.

I record this as an observation about sound. I do not claim that the two expressions point to different events; most of the classical commentaries count the two as the same event.

The verb is passive: who strikes is not said.

The observation recorded in al-Inshiqāq holds here as well: the passive voice conceals the doer of the act and brings the event itself to the fore.

The ع-س-ر and ي-س-ر roots were fully analysed in al-Inshirāḥ. There:

• the opposition of the two roots,
• the function of the particle maʿa,
• and the comparison with al-Ṭalāq 65/7 ("the Qurʾān knows how to say 'afterwards', and in al-Inshirāḥ it does not say it")

were taken up. I do not repeat them. In al-Aʿlā the root was treated as well, in the pattern nuyassiruka li'l-yusrā.

What is to be added here is the word order.

The ninth verse: yawmun ʿasīr — "a hard day". The tenth verse: ghayru yasīr — "not easy".

The two look as though they were saying the same thing. The one by affirming the hardness, the other by denying the ease.

In Arabic this is a known technique of emphasis: to say a thing and to deny its opposite. English has it too: "it was hard — it was not easy at all."

But here there is an additional element, and that is the real point.

The tenth verse contains a restriction: "for those who disbelieve it is not easy."

In the ninth verse there was no such qualification — the day was called "hard" absolutely.

And the following inference is widely made in the classical commentaries: if it says "not easy for those who disbelieve", then it is implying that for others it is easy. In Arabic the assigning of a quality to a particular group suggests that the quality does not hold for those outside that group (mafhūm al-mukhālafa).

One must be honest about the standing of this inference in point of language: mafhūm al-mukhālafa is a disputed proof among the legal theorists and does not work everywhere. I therefore do not present it as a definite conclusion.

But there is support within the text: the Qurʾān uses the same root, in the same context, in a positive direction: "He who is given his book in his right hand will be called to an easy reckoning" (al-Inshiqāq 84/8) — ḥisāban yasīrā. This expression was treated in al-Inshiqāq.

That is, there is such a thing as an "easy reckoning". The same day carries two different degrees of hardness for two different sides.

I record this joining as my own reading.

That these three verses should come immediately after the sequence of commands is explanatory in point of context.

In the seventh verse it was said fa'ṣbir — be patient. And patience is meaningful when it is known that what is being borne has an end.

The eighth verse shows that end. The command to be patient is not left hanging in the air.

I record this link as an inference.

Dharnī wa man khalaqtu waḥīdā "Leave Me alone with the one I created alone."

The second section of the sūra begins: the detailed description of a single person.

In al-Muzzammil 73/11 this verb and the مفعول معه (object of accompaniment) pattern were treated: the sense is not "leave me, and leave him too" but "leave me alone with him".

And the eleventh verse of both sūras opens with this pattern. As was recorded there: I draw no conclusion from the coinciding of the verse numbers.

The difference lies in number:

al-Muzzammil recounts a group, al-Muddaththir a single person. And al-Muddaththir spends seven verses on describing the person.

This is the most disputed place in the verse, and it requires a table of the disagreement.

Root: و-ح-د. Unity, oneness. Wāḥid, aḥad, waḥda, tawḥīd are from the same root; the difference between aḥad and wāḥid was treated in al-Ikhlāṣ.

وَحِيدًا is on the pattern faʿīl and stands in the sentence as a circumstantial qualifier (ḥāl). The problem is: whose state is it?

The first view is the most widespread in the classical sources and appears to fit the context best — because verses 12-14 enumerate exactly what was "given afterwards". I state this as a preference; it is not binding.

If waḥīdā is the state of the one created, the verse says this: this man began with nothing.

And this lays the ground for the four verses that follow. Everything that will be enumerated — wealth, sons, a smoothed path — was not there at the beginning.

What the verse does is to put a zero in front of a list of possessions.

The great majority of the exegetical sources transmit verses 11-25 concerning al-Walīd b. al-Mughīra, one of the leading men of Quraysh. According to the report he was asked to give a judgement about the Qurʾān, and after thinking for a while he said, "This is sorcery."

I must enter several caveats about this report:

First — attribution. The report is widespread in the books of exegesis; but its details differ in different lines of transmission, and the state of its chain varies from one line to another. I issue no definite ruling on its soundness and attribute it to no particular source.

Second — the text gives no name. The sūra recounts this person over fifteen verses and does not mention his name even once. The same finding was made in ʿAbasa: "the sūra itself gives no name at all." And the note added there holds here as well: the possibility that the names are answers supplied afterwards must not be lost sight of.

Third — and most important of all: the withholding of the name is part of how the verse works. As recorded in the method (Method): what the verse describes are attributes; whoever carries that attribute is included in it. The text does not condemn a person; it describes a sequence of behaviour. And that the sequence is — as will be seen in verses 18-25 — too general to be confined to any one person is plain from the sūra's own language.

I therefore do not reject the report, but I do not tie the exegesis to it.

Wa jaʿaltu lahū mālan mamdūdā / Wa banīna shuhūdā / Wa mahhadtu lahū tamhīdā

"And I gave him wealth stretching on and on; and sons present with him; and I smoothed the ground for him thoroughly."

Root: م-د-د. Its concrete sense: to stretch, to draw out, to extend, to spread.

Derivatives: madd (extension; the Turkish med, and the lengthening in Qurʾānic recitation), midād (ink — what flows and stretches), imdād (aid — the extending of something), madīd (long).

مَّمْدُود, a passive participle: extended, stretching on.

The choice of word sets up a picture: the wealth is described not as a quantity but as a length. It is not counted, not measured — it is stretched out.

And it is recorded in the classical commentaries that this word is read in two directions:

1. Much in quantity — spreading as far as the eye can see. 2. Continuous in time — unbroken, flowing in. Inexhaustible sources such as land, trade, income.

Both are possible and they do not exclude one another. The second reading is closer to the "stretching" sense of the word.

And a comparison can be made with al-Humaza. There the wealth was recounted with the verbs jamaʿa (he gathered) and ʿaddada (he kept counting it), and this finding was made: "Wealth does not appear at all as an economic instrument. Only two things happen: it accumulates and it is counted."

Here the verbs are different: jaʿala (he gave, he made) — and the agent is God. That is, in al-Humaza what was recounted was the state of the wealth in the man's hand; here where it came from is said.

I record this difference as an observation.

شُهُود — from the ش-ه-د root, the plural of شَاهِد: present, visible, there.

In al-Muzzammil 73/15 this root was treated in the context of shāhidan ʿalaykum, and there the aspect of "bearing witness" came to the fore. Here it is the aspect of "being present" that comes to the fore.

The second sense of the root is settled in Arabic: shahida'l-majlisa — he was present at the assembly. Mashhūd — seen, present.

And the choice of the qualification is striking.

The verse does not say "he had sons". It does not say "he had many sons". It says "sons present with him".

The explanation in the classical commentaries is this: the sons are at his side; they do not have to go to distant lands for a living. That is, he has both children and the means to keep them beside him.

In the conditions of that period this is a concrete indication of wealth. A poor man's sons scatter — to herding, to hired work, to distant caravans. A rich man's sons stay beside him.

And the two qualifications complete one another:

The qualification of the wealth is length, the qualification of the sons is nearness. The one secures the future, the other the surroundings.

I record this classification as my own reading.

The most concrete and the gentlest image of the sūra.

Root: م-ه-د. And its concrete sense: to level a place, to soften it, to make it fit to lie down on.

• مَهْد (mahd) — a cradle. And more generally: a levelled, softened place for lying.
• مِهَاد (mihād) — a bed, a spread-out couch.

Its uses in the Qurʾān light up the root:

• "It is He who made the earth a cradle (mahdan) for you" (Ṭāhā 20/53; al-Zukhruf 43/10).
• "Did We not make the earth a bed (mihādan)?" (al-Nabaʾ 78/6) — treated in al-Nabaʾ.
• "How shall we speak to a child in the cradle (fi'l-mahd)?" (Maryam 19/29; also Āl ʿImrān 3/46; al-Māʾida 5/110).
• "…so they prepare (a place) for themselves" (al-Rūm 30/44) — fa-li-anfusihim yamhadūn.

And the last example is important: there a person makes the preparation for himself. Here the one who makes it is another.

At the centre of the root there is the cradle. And the cradle says three things at once:

1. Comfort. The place to lie in has been levelled, the stones taken out, softened. 2. Labour. A cradle does not come about of itself; someone prepares it. 3. And most important of all: the baby does not prepare its own cradle. The one in the cradle does not know that the preparing was done.

The third item carries the whole weight of the verse.

And تَمْهِيدًا is an absolute object — an intensifier. That is, the preparation was not half done but complete.

I record this reading as my own inference; the verse does not set up the cradle image openly — it is set up by way of the concrete sense of the root.

A point of word order.

There are three verbs in three verses, and all three are in the first person singular:

• خَلَقْتُ — I created (11)
• جَعَلْتُ — I gave, I made (12)
• مَهَّدتُّ — I prepared (14)

And note: the speaker is not the plural (nūn al-ʿaẓama) but the singular.

The Qurʾān generally uses the plural for the acts of revelation, of creating and of destroying: innā, khalaqnā, jaʿalnā. Here there is a singular.

It is said in the classical commentaries that this carries the function of setting oneness against oneness: against a man called waḥīdā (alone) there comes a subject who speaks alone.

I find this explanation reasonable but do not present it as a definite ruling. The transitions between singular and plural usage in the Qurʾān are a separate and wide subject; to draw a meaning from every transition would be forcing.

What can be observed is this: all three verbs are singular, and this continues throughout the whole section (sa-urhiquhū, 17; sa-uṣlīhi, 26).

Thumma yaṭmaʿu an azīd "And then he still hopes that I will give him more."

One of the sharpest sentences of the sūra. And its force lies in a single word: ثُمَّ.

In Arabic three conjunctions convey sequence, and there are differences between them:

Here there is thumma. And its function is twofold:

1. An interval of time: what was enumerated was given, time passed, and then this happened. 2. Unexpectedness: after what was enumerated, this is not what one expects to follow.

The English "and then, on top of that" answers exactly to the second function: "and then, on top of that, he hopes that I will give him more."

Root: ط-م-ع. Its concrete sense: to want a thing intensely, to set one's eye on it, to await it in hope.

And the word has a neutral side in Arabic — it does not always carry blame:

• "They used to call upon Us in hope and in fear" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/90) — raghaban wa rahabā; and similarly khawfan wa ṭamaʿā (al-Aʿrāf 7/56; al-Raʿd 13/12; al-Rūm 30/24; al-Sajda 32/16). Here ṭamaʿ is positive: hope.
• "I hope that He will forgive me my faults on the Day of Reckoning" (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/82) — the words of Abraham (Ibrāhīm).

That is, ṭamaʿ means hope; its becoming a thing blamed arises from the context.

The Turkish words tamah and tamahkâr ("greed", "greedy") have taken up only the negative face of the word.

And here one has to be careful.

The verse does not say "to want more is bad". The Qurʾān does not in general blame a person's wanting; indeed asking for provision, asking for good, asking for forgiveness are commanded.

What is blamed is the sentence as a whole: to take what has been enumerated and then, while stubbornly rejecting the signs (verse 16), to hope for an increase on top of it.

That is, the matter is not the wanting; it is cutting off the relation with the giver and expecting him to go on giving.

I record this as an inference. But that the next verse should begin with kallā and say innahū kāna li-āyātinā ʿanīdā supports this reading: what is rejected is not the hope itself but the attitude after which the hope comes.

The verb is again in the first person singular: azīda — "that I should increase".

And this is the fourth singular verb of the sequence: I created, I gave, I prepared, let Me increase.

The man does not acknowledge the source of what has been given him; but he expects the giving to continue. This is the picture the sentence sets up.

The finding recorded in al-Humaza looks directly at this place:

There, the difference between what the man who accumulates wealth says and what his behaviour assumes was treated: "The verse looks not at what a person says but at what his behaviour assumes."

Here there is the same method. The man does not say "give me more" — the verse states what he hopes (yaṭmaʿu). This is not a demand put into words; it is an assumption at work inside the behaviour.

And the assumption is this: this flow will continue.

In al-Humaza the name of that assumption was "the illusion of permanence". Here it is not named, but its structure is the same: to take the continuance of what is given for something independent of the giver.

I set up this link as my own reading.

Kallā innahū kāna li-āyātinā ʿanīdā / Sa-urhiquhū ṣuʿūdā "No! He was stubborn against Our signs. I shall drive him up a steep ascent."

كَلَّا is in Arabic a particle of rejection and deterrence. In al-Fajr the function of this particle was treated, and an important finding was recorded there: kallā sometimes cuts off not a single sentence but a whole chain of thought.

It looks so here as well: kallā cuts off the hope in the fifteenth verse — and thereby the whole assumption on which that hope rested.

Root: ع-ن-د. Its concrete sense: to swerve from the road, to draw off to one side; and to do so by resisting.

• عَنَدَ (ʿanada) — he swerved from the road, he was obstinate.
• عَنِيد / عَانِد — one who stands against knowingly, who persists.

And its use in the Qurʾān shows a pattern: the word occurs in three other places, and in all three it stands beside another epithet:

• "…and they followed the command of every obstinate tyrant (jabbārin ʿanīd)" (Hūd 11/59). Concerning the people of ʿĀd.
• "…and every obstinate tyrant (jabbārin ʿanīd) came to ruin" (Ibrāhīm 14/15).
• "Cast into Hell every obstinate ingrate (kaffārin ʿanīd)!" (Qāf 50/24).

In all three ʿanīd is the second epithet — together with tyranny or with ingratitude. That is, the word states not a fault by itself but the settled form of a fault.

Innahū kāna li-āyātinā ʿanīdā — "he was stubborn".

The structure kāna + noun conveys in Arabic continuity and settledness. Not an attitude taken once; an attitude that has become a trait.

A similar distinction was made in al-Baqara 2/6: "the ruling is for a particular group … who have made unbelief their trait; it is not a general decree of destiny for every denier."

The same record holds here as well.

Root: ر-ه-ق. Its concrete sense: to cover over a thing, to overspread it; and to load someone with more than he can bear.

Its uses in the Qurʾān:

• "Do not load me with hardship in my affair" (al-Kahf 18/73) — lā turhiqnī min amrī ʿusrā. The words of Moses (Mūsā).
• "…we feared that he would load them with rebellion and unbelief" (al-Kahf 18/80).
• "A darkness will overspread them" (ʿAbasa 80/41) — tarhaquhā qatara. Treated in ʿAbasa.
• "No darkness will overspread their faces" (Yūnus 10/26).

At the centre of the root there are two things: covering over, and loading with what cannot be carried.

And when the two senses come together this appears: something is put upon the person that will cover him over and crush him beneath it.

Root: ص-ع-د. To go up, to rise. Ṣuʿūd, ṣaʿīd (high ground, the surface of the soil); miʿrāj is from another root but carries the same idea.

صَعُود — on the pattern faʿūl: a mountain road hard to climb, steep and exhausting.

A near use in the Qurʾān: "Whoever turns away from the remembrance of his Lord, He will drive him into a grievous punishment (ʿadhāban ṣaʿadā)" (al-Jinn 72/17). The same root, the same context.

This is one of the strongest links that can be set up between the two sūras, and it was not set up in al-Balad — ṣaʿūd is not mentioned there at all. I make the comparison here.

In Sūrat al-Balad there is a steep ascent: ٱلْعَقَبَة (al-ʿaqaba). And as recorded in al-Balad:

"The ʿaqaba is the place that is climbed and that requires step after step… In the geography of Arabia the ʿaqaba is the narrow, steep pass between two mountains. It is the point at which caravans have the hardest time and are in the greatest danger."

And the climbing of that ascent is asked for: fa-la'qtaḥama'l-ʿaqaba — "Would that he had flung himself at the steep ascent!" The content of the ascent is enumerated too: to free a neck, to feed on a day of hunger.

In al-Muddaththir, on the other hand, the ascent is given as a punishment: sa-urhiquhū ṣuʿūdā — "I shall drive him up a steep ascent."

And the observation that joins the two verses is this:

The same terrain, in two different directions.

In al-Balad the ascent is a place that is asked to be climbed, and reproach is made because it was not climbed. In al-Muddaththir the ascent is the place to which the one who does not climb will be driven.

That is, when the verses are read together this appears: the ascent is there in any case. Either a person climbs it by his own will, or he is driven up it.

I record this as my own inference. I do not claim that there is a reference between the two sūras; the roots are different (ع-ق-ب / ص-ع-د) and the link set up is conceptual.

And it agrees with the finding at the close of al-Balad: there a contrast was set up with al-Tīn and it was said, "in al-Tīn man is turned downward; in al-Balad a road upward is set before him." The ṣaʿūd of al-Muddaththir is a third position on the same vertical axis: upward, but by force.

Another weave, within the sūra itself.

The same person, two opposite grounds. First a place levelled like a cradle; then a steep ascent.

And the difference of tense is meaningful too: mahhadtu is past (done and finished), sa-urhiquhū is future (with the sīn).

That is, the level ground has been given, the ascent has been promised.

I record this weave as my own reading; but that the two words state opposite grounds is beyond dispute at the level of the dictionary.

Innahū fakkara wa qaddara / Fa-qutila kayfa qaddara / Thumma qutila kayfa qaddara / Thumma naẓara / Thumma ʿabasa wa basara / Thumma adbara wa'stakbara / Fa-qāla in hādhā illā siḥrun yuʾthar / In hādhā illā qawlu'l-bashar

"He thought and he measured. Confound him, how he measured! Again, confound him, how he measured! Then he looked. Then he scowled and glowered. Then he turned his back and grew proud. And he said: 'This is nothing but sorcery handed down. This is nothing but the word of a human being.'"

The strongest place in the sūra, and a section with few parallels in the Qurʾān: the record, one by one, of the steps a mind passes through until it reaches a decision.

The section must first be seen as a whole.

And now the real matter.

There are eight steps. And the verdict is the eighth.

The man first thinks, measures, looks, scowls, turns his back, grows proud — and then he says "this is sorcery".

That is, the decision comes before the ground.

Look at the order: the scowling (4-5), the turning of the back (6) and the growing proud (7) take place before the verdict. These are not the expression of a conclusion; they are states that exist before the conclusion is reached.

If a person examined a claim and came to a conclusion, the order would be this:

1. He thought 2. He measured 3. He looked 4. He gave his verdict 5. (He took the attitude the verdict required: he scowled, he turned his back)

The order in the verses is not this. The scowling, the turning of the back and the growing proud come before the verdict.

And the meaning of this is: the attitude was taken first and the verdict produced afterwards. Before the man said "this is sorcery" he had already scowled, already turned his back, already grown proud. The sentence "it is sorcery" is not the result of an examination; it is the ground found afterwards for an attitude already taken.

I record this as my own reading. The verses do not make this interpretation openly; but the order of the verbs stands in the text, and that they are sequential is stated openly by the thumma conjunctions.

Another point, no less important than this.

The first verb of the list is to think. And thinking is not a verb the Qurʾān blames — on the contrary, it is commanded many times over (a-fa-lā tatafakkarūn, laʿallakum tatafakkarūn).

That is, the verse does not disparage thinking. What it disparages is not where the thinking arrives but what the thinking is used for.

The man thought — but not in order to understand something; in order to find an answer to something. And this is understood from the second verb.

Root: ف-ك-ر. The lexicographers do not fully agree on its concrete sense; the widespread explanation is that the word means "to turn a thing over and over in the mind, to go round and round it".

Some lexicographers count the root related to ف-ر-ك (fark — to rub, to crumble), and say that with the transposition of letters (qalb) it carries the same idea: a likeness is set up between rubbing a thing to crumbs and breaking it up and examining it in the mind.

I record this explanation as a possibility; I do not present it as a definite etymological ruling.

And the pattern is important: فَكَّرَ — the tafʿīl form, with doubling. This form conveys intensity and repetition.

That is, the man did not think casually; he thought long and hard, over and over. He spent labour.

This detail sets the tone of the section. The verse does not describe the person opposite as a fool or as thoughtless. On the contrary: it describes him as someone who thinks a great deal.

Root: ق-د-ر. The three branches of meaning of this root (measure / determining, worth / honour, straitness) were treated in detail in al-Qadr; in ʿAbasa it was taken up as well, in the context of fa-qaddarahū. I do not repeat them.

The core recorded there: qadara — he measured, he cut to size, he determined its amount; taqdīr — determining by a measure.

And there is a weave here that needs recording.

In the last verse of the preceding sūra this occurred: وَٱللَّهُ يُقَدِّرُ ٱلَّيْلَ وَٱلنَّهَارَ — "and it is God who measures the night and the day" (al-Muzzammil 73/20).

And here: إِنَّهُۥ فَكَّرَ وَقَدَّرَ — "he thought and he measured."

The same root, the same form (tafʿīl), two different subjects.

Two sūras use the same verb in two separate places. I record this as an observation; I do not claim that there is a deliberate reference between the two verses. But it is an observable coincidence and can be added to the data that show the link between the two sūras.

Several explanations are given in the classical commentaries:

1. He prepared, framed and shaped the words he was going to say. He designed an answer. 2. He weighed the Qurʾān and tried to place it in a category. Is it poetry, is it soothsaying, is it sorcery? 3. He calculated his own position. He measured what would follow if he said what.

All three are possible and they do not exclude one another. I impose no preference.

But the second explanation is worth dwelling on, because it is directly connected with what follows in the sūra: the man ends by proposing two categories — "sorcery" and "the word of a human being". That is, the work of measuring can be read as an effort to put the text that has come onto a known shelf.

And the finding recorded in al-Inshirāḥ looks at this place: the epithets fastened on the Prophet in that period (majnūn, shāʿir, sāḥir, kāhin) were "not random insults; they are the standard ways in that culture of making a man's word void — of classifying the speaker instead of discussing what is said."

Here the same operation is shown step by step. The very effort of classification has been named with the verb "he measured".

قُتِلَ — the passive perfect of the verb qatala (to kill): "he was killed".

But here it is not a statement but the pattern of an imprecation (duʿāʾ): "confound him", "may he perish". In Arabic the passive perfect can perform this function.

This pattern occurs in several places in the Qurʾān:

• "Confound man, how ungrateful he is!" (ʿAbasa 80/17) — qutila'l-insānu mā akfarah. Treated in ʿAbasa.
• "Confounded were the men of the trench!" (al-Burūj 85/4) — treated in al-Burūj.
• "Confounded be the liars!" (al-Dhāriyāt 51/10).

كَيْفَ normally asks "how". Here no question is being asked; wonder (taʿajjub) is being conveyed.

Its equivalent in English: "how he measured!" — an exclamation.

And the tone of the exclamation is worth dwelling on. This is not a contemptuous tone; it is a tone of astonishment. The sentence looks as though it were wondering at how careful the work the man did was.

And this agrees with the general manner of the section: the man is described not as a fool but as someone who spends labour.

I record this reading as my own inference.

The nineteenth and twentieth verses are exactly the same — the only difference is the conjunction at the head:

• فَقُتِلَ كَيْفَ قَدَّرَ (19) — with the fāʾ
• ثُمَّ قُتِلَ كَيْفَ قَدَّرَ (20) — with thumma

In al-Inshirāḥ the similar repetition at al-Inshirāḥ 94/5-6 (again with a single letter as the only difference) was treated, and this was recorded: "the first is a statement of fact, the second is a ruling"; and also the emphatic function of the repetition, and that the place of the repetition is meaningful.

Here the structure is similar but the conjunctions differ.

• فَ — immediately afterwards, without a break. That is, "he measured — and at once: confound him."
• ثُمَّ — after an interval of time, or rising by a degree.

In the classical commentaries it is said that thumma here states not time but degree: the second imprecation is more severe than the first. In Arabic thumma can be used with this function.

An observation, as my own reading: nothing at all comes between the two imprecations. That is, the verses stand still upon the work the man did — twice at the same point, without advancing the narrative.

And the narrative goes on only at the twenty-first verse: thumma naẓar. That is, there are four thumma (20, 21, 22, 23) and one of them does not advance the narrative.

The verse is two words. One of the shortest verses of the sūra.

Root: ن-ظ-ر. To look; and from this: to examine, to think, to wait.

Derivatives: naẓar (a look), manẓar (an appearance), naẓīr (an equal — what appears in the same measure), intiẓār (waiting), munāẓara (looking at one another → debate).

The verse does not say. The classical explanations:

I impose no preference.

But the second explanation is worth dwelling on, because it fits well the picture the section sets up: if the man looked about him, then there is an accounting for the audience in the verdict he gives. That is, the verdict has to do not only with the text but also with those who will hear it.

This is not something the verse says; it is a reading opened up by one of the possibilities.

An observation — at the level of sound.

This verse is two words, and it stands in the middle of the section. Before it, two long repetitions (19-20); after it, pairs of verbs (22-23).

And the shortness itself produces the effect of a pause. The text halts for a moment.

I record this as an observation about sound; it is not a theological claim.

Root: ع-ب-س. This root was treated in detail in ʿAbasa as the first word of that sūra. The description recorded there:

"Its meaning: to knot the face, to draw the brows together, the hardening of the countenance. عَبُوس (ʿabūs) — sour-faced, frowning."

And what was stressed there was the concreteness of the word:

"The word describes something concrete and narrow: the movement of the muscles of the face. Not a word, not an attitude, not a decision — a movement of muscle."

Moreover ʿAbasa has already mentioned this verse (74/22) and made this finding: "the root is not a light word in the Qurʾān's own vocabulary. It is used once of the face of a denier, and once of the day of resurrection itself" (the yawman ʿabūsan qamṭarīrā of al-Insān 76/10).

Now we can complete the comparison.

And reading the two sūras together shows exactly what the word is.

The same movement of muscle, in two separate sūras. In the one it is corrected, in the other it is recorded as a link in a chain of denial.

The difference is not in the movement itself; it is in to whom and why it is made. And the principle recorded in ʿAbasa looks directly at this place: there it was said "what is not seen goes on the record" — the blind man had not even seen the scowl made at him.

Here there is something similar: the scowl is not a message directed at the one opposite; it is the man's own reaction. But it is recorded.

I record this joining as my own reading.

And one further inference: "The Qurʾān corrects the facial muscles of its own prophet and records the facial muscles of an opponent." That is, the measure is applied to both sides. This agrees with the finding made in the section ## The text criticising its own prophet of ʿAbasa; there too it was recorded that this was presented "not as a proof" but as an observation. The same record holds here as well.

Root: ب-س-ر. Several uses gather under this root, and the link the lexicographers set up is an interesting one:

• بُسْر (busr) — the unripe date. The stage at which it has reddened but is not yet sweet, and is still hard.
• بَسَرَ (basara) — to do a thing before its time, to be in haste.
• بَاسِر (bāsir) — a face extremely sour, hardened, darkened.

The link the lexicographers set up: busr is fruit that has hardened before ripening; and the bāsir face is a face that has hardened before its cause has ripened. The giving of a reaction before its time.

I ascribe this explanation to the lexicographers; I do not present it as a definite ruling. But if it is right, it explains exactly the place of the word in this section: the man draws his face down before he has yet given his verdict. The reaction comes before its ground.

The word occurs once more in the Qurʾān: "That day some faces will be scowling (bāsira)" (al-Qiyāma 75/24).

Do ʿabasa and basara say the same thing?

The classical explanation: ʿabasa is the knotting of the face, basara the intensifying of that knotting and the darkening of the face. That is, the second verb is a degree of the first.

And the word order supports this: the two verbs are joined by wa, with no thumma coming between them. That is, two faces of the same moment.

An observation: the paired verbs in this section all work in this way.

All three pairs have the same structure: an outward movement + its inner or intensified state. This classification is my own reading.

Root: د-ب-ر. Its concrete sense: the back, the rear, the hinder part of a thing.

Derivatives:

• دُبُر (dubur) — the hinder part.
• أَدْبَرَ (adbara) — he turned his back, he turned away, he withdrew.
• تَدْبِير (tadbīr) — to think of the back, the end, of a matter. The Turkish tedbir ("provision, forethought").
• مُدَبِّر (mudabbir) — the one who manages a matter, who looks to its end.

And this breadth of the root is striking: the same root means both "to turn one's back" and "to think of the end". The lexicographers' link: in both there is the hinder part of a thing — the one physical, the other temporal.

And there is a weave here, easy to miss.

The same verb will occur once more, eleven verses later:

• 74/23: thumma adbara wa'stakbara — the man turned his back.
• 74/33: wa'l-layli idh adbara — "and by the night when it retreats."

The same verb, two subjects: a man and a night.

In al-Ḍuḥā this second use (74/33) was recorded in a table of oaths by the night: "idh adbara — when it turns its back — withdrawal."

And when the two uses are set side by side a contrast appears:

The night's turning of its back opens onto a lightening; the man's turning of his back onto a darkening.

I record this weave as my own reading. That the same verb is found in two places is beyond dispute; the contrast set up is an interpretation.

Root: ك-ب-ر. It was treated above (74/3), and this weave was recorded there:

The istifʿāl form is especially important here. This form, as was recorded in al-Muzzammil, conveys request or reckoning a thing to be so.

ٱسْتَكْبَرَ — to count oneself great, to appropriate greatness to oneself.

And the difference between tafʿīl and istifʿāl becomes visible exactly here:

• كَبَّرَ — to ascribe greatness to another.
• ٱسْتَكْبَرَ — to ascribe greatness to oneself.

The same root, the same idea, two opposite addresses. And the sūra contains both: the one as a command, the other as a record.

An observation — as my own reading.

The verse says first adbara (he turned his back), then istakbara (he grew proud).

And the order looks like the reverse of what one would expect: usually one grows proud first and turns one's back afterwards.

As it stands, the order may be saying this: pride is not the ground of the turning of the back but its consequence. That is, the man first withdraws, and then constructs his withdrawal as a superiority.

I offer this as an inference; the text does not make this justification, and the conjunction wa does not state a definite order in time.

After four thumma comes a فَ.

All the steps had been joined with thumma (with time passing in between). The last step is joined with the fāʾ (immediately afterwards, without a break).

That is, the verdict comes immediately after the growing proud — there is no distance between them.

This observation is beyond dispute at the level of grammar; the conclusion to be drawn from it is interpretation. My reading is this: the verdict and the pride are parts of the same movement.

إِنْ here is a particle of negation (in place of mā), إِلَّا an exception.

In hādhā illā… — "this is nothing but…"

This is one of the strongest patterns of restriction (ḥaṣr) in Arabic. And it belongs to the same family as the structure treated in al-Ikhlāṣ, "first deny, then make an exception".

And the man uses this pattern twice. That is, he draws a boundary twice: only sorcery, only the word of a human being.

An observation, as my own reading: the rigidity of the sentence and the length of the eight steps before it stand in inverse proportion. A long process of hesitation ends in an absolute verdict. And this is something that can be observed: the most categorical sentences most often come after the longest hesitations.

سِحْر — from the س-ح-ر root: sorcery, magic. It is said that the root carries the idea of "deceiving, turning the eye". From the same root comes saḥar (the hour before dawn); the link is set up by way of the hour at which light and darkness are mixed and the eye can be deceived — I ascribe this explanation to the lexicographers.

يُؤْثَرُ — from the أ-ث-ر root, a passive imperfect.

Root: أ-ث-ر. Its concrete sense: a trace, a remnant, a mark left behind.

• أَثَر (athar) — trace, remnant. In Turkish eser, âsâr ("work", "works, remains").
• مَأْثُور (maʾthūr) — transmitted, handed down. The expression "maʾthūr prayers" comes from this branch.
• تَأْثِير (taʾthīr) — a thing's leaving a trace in another. The Turkish tesir ("effect").
• آثَرَ (āthara) — to prefer, to put in front. Īthār (preferring another to oneself) comes from this branch.

And yuʾthar has been read in two ways — not a variant reading but a disagreement over the sense:

The first reading is the more widespread in the classical sources. I impose no preference; both come out of the root.

And the first reading says something: the man does not count the text new. He places it inside a known tradition. This is the natural consequence of the effort at classification — the easiest way to reject what is new is to declare it the continuation of something old.

I record this reading as my own inference.

The first word of the sūra was ٱلْمُدَّثِّر, its root د-ث-ر — and it was recorded above that the second branch of that root is "whose trace has been effaced".

And here there is the root أ-ث-ر: "a trace".

The two roots are entirely separate and I claim no kinship between them. What I record is that the idea of "trace" should come round at the two ends of the sūra by way of two separate roots — as an observation, not as a claim.

The finest verbal weave of the sūra begins here.

Root: ب-ش-ر. And the original sense of this root was treated in al-Baqara 2/25. The passage recorded there was this:

"The root b-sh-r, and the original sense of this root is the skin: bashara is the outer skin of the face. Good news was given this name because good news shows in the skin of the face — when a person receives good news his face opens, its colour changes. From the same root comes bashar (a human being): the being whose skin is visible, not covered with fur."

The same finding was repeated in al-Inshiqāq as well: "بِشَارَة (bishāra, good news) comes from here too: the skin of the face of the one who receives good news changes — the blood runs, the expression opens. That is, good news is something seen first in the skin."

This is the key needed for reading the rest of the sūra.

Here ٱلْبَشَر plainly means a human being (human beings): qawlu'l-bashar — "the word of a human being".

And what the man says is clear: this text is not divine but human.

This is a settled objection that the Qurʾān records:

• "This is nothing but a human being like yourselves (basharun mithlukum)" (al-Muʾminūn 23/24; similarly 23/33-34; al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/154, 26/186).
• "Has God sent a human being as a messenger?" (al-Isrāʾ 17/94).
• "This is nothing but manifest sorcery" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/15; al-Aḥqāf 46/7).

That is, the two accusations — "sorcery" and "the word of a human being" — are two standard objections that the Qurʾān records in other places as well.

And there is something that must be noticed: the two accusations contradict one another.

Sorcery is extraordinary; the word of a human being is ordinary. A thing cannot be at one and the same time extraordinary and commonplace.

In order to classify the text, the man puts it at once on two separate and mutually incompatible shelves.

I record this observation as my own reading. And it completes the picture the section has been setting up from the beginning: the verdict was given first, the grounds produced afterwards — and the grounds produced do not hold together.

The word ٱلْبَشَر occurs in this sūra four times:

And the twenty-ninth verse is the place at which the two senses of the word coincide. It will be taken up when we reach it.

For now what must be recorded is this: the man said "this is the word of the bashar"; and four verses later an attribute of Hell will be given with the very same word.

Sa-uṣlīhi saqar / Wa mā adrāka mā saqar / Lā tubqī wa lā tadhar / Lawwāḥatun li'l-bashar / ʿAlayhā tisʿata ʿashar

"I shall cast him into saqar. And what will make you know what saqar is? It leaves nothing and it spares nothing. It scorches the skin. Over it are nineteen."

Root: س-ق-ر. Its concrete sense: the scorching of the sun, its burning and altering of a thing.

Saqarat-hu'l-shams — the sun scorched him, his skin was altered.

The word is used in the Qurʾān like a proper name and occurs in four places: al-Muddaththir 74/26, 74/27, 74/42 and al-Qamar 54/48 ("…taste the touch of saqar").

And a point of grammar: the word is diptote (ghayr munṣarif, it takes no tanwīn) — which shows that it is treated as a proper name.

The concrete sense of the root is worth dwelling on. Scorching is an effect that comes from the sun; and the place where the effect shows is the skin. This will be a preparation for the twenty-ninth verse.

The pattern مَا أَدْرَىٰكَ was treated in al-Humaza, and a distinction was recorded in al-Balad:

"A consistent distinction in the Qurʾān: mā adrāka … is used in the places where an explanation follows. Mā yudrīka … in the places where … no explanation follows."

And here the pattern does the work expected of it: an explanation follows at once (verses 28-30).

But a caveat entered in al-Balad holds here as well: there it was pointed out that the word ʿaqaba was one everybody knew, so that what was being asked was not the dictionary sense of the word but what it corresponded to.

Here the case is a little different: saqar is a name belonging to the Qurʾān's own vocabulary. That is, the question is really directed at something unknown.

The densest two-word verse of the sūra.

أَبْقَى — from the ب-ق-ي root, in the ifʿāl form: to leave something behind, to leave a remnant. Bāqī (remaining), baqāʾ (permanence) are from the same root.

وَذَرَ — from the و-ذ-ر root: to leave, to abandon, to let be.

And the second verb occurs in the sūra for the third time.

The same root, three positions. Twice the addressee is told "leave"; in the third a thing is described that does not leave.

I record this weave as my own reading. That the same root is found in three places is beyond dispute; the link set up is an interpretation.

Do the two verbs say the same thing? Several explanations are given in the classical commentaries:

The fourth is not a view but an observation, and it is important: neither verb has an object. The answer to the question "what does it not leave?" has not been given.

And the absence of an object is the very same technique seen in the second verse of al-Muddaththir (fa-andhir): when no object is put in, the verb remains unlimited.

I impose no preference; the first explanation is the most widespread in the classical sources.

An observation — as my own reading.

The بقي root generally names something positive in the Qurʾān:

• "The face of your Lord remains (bāqī)" (al-Raḥmān 55/27).
• "The abiding good works (al-bāqiyātu'l-ṣāliḥāt) are better with your Lord" (al-Kahf 18/46; Maryam 19/76).
• "What God leaves (of lawful earning) is better for you" (Hūd 11/86).

Here the root is negated: lā tubqī — it leaves nothing.

That is, the root that is the name of permanence is used in describing the place where permanence is impossible.

And a link can be set up with the "illusion of permanence" treated in al-Humaza: there the assumption of the man who accumulates wealth, "it will make me last for ever", was recorded (yaḥsabu anna mālahū akhladah). Here, against the claim of permanence, a place is set that leaves nothing behind.

I set up this link as my own inference.

The knot of the finest verbal weave of the sūra.

Root: ل-و-ح. And this root carries two separate fields of meaning:

1. To appear, to shine, to become visible.

• لَاحَ (lāḥa) — it appeared, it shone, it showed itself.
• لَوْح (lawḥ) — a flat tablet or board written upon. In the Qurʾān: "…in a preserved tablet" (al-Burūj 85/22) — treated in al-Burūj; "We carried him upon (a vessel) made of planks and nails" (al-Qamar 54/13); the alwāḥ given to Moses (al-Aʿrāf 7/145, 7/150, 7/154).

2. To burn, to scorch, to change the colour of.

• لَوَّحَ (lawwaḥa) — the sun or the fire scorched a thing and changed its colour, blackened it.
• مُلَوَّح (mulawwaḥ) — blackened by the sun.

The link between the two senses: the colour of what is scorched changes visibly. That is, both have to do with a becoming visible.

لَوَّاحَة — on the pattern faʿʿāla, an intensive form: scorching much, blackening without pause. It is feminine, because saqar is treated as feminine.

Here is the most striking place in the sūra.

The word can be read in two ways, and both are legitimate in point of language:

Both readings occur in the classical commentaries, and I impose no preference.

But the two readings are not independent of one another — and this is understood from the root itself.

As recorded in al-Baqara 2/25:

"The root b-sh-r, and the original sense of this root is the skin: bashara is the outer skin of the face… From the same root comes bashar (a human being): the being whose skin is visible, not covered with fur."

That is, the two readings are in fact the two ends of a single root. "Human being" already means "the being whose skin is exposed".

And this brings the verse into the plainest form in which it can be read: whichever way you read it, what is scorched is the skin. For what makes a human being a bashar is that his skin is uncovered.

I record this joining as my own reading. But the linguistic datum on which it rests is beyond dispute: the centre of the root is the skin, and this has been recorded in three separate sections (al-Baqara, ʿAbasa, al-Inshiqāq).

Now let us look at the real weave.

Four verses earlier the man had said:

إِنْ هَـٰذَآ إِلَّا قَوْلُ ٱلْبَشَرِ — "This is nothing but the word of al-bashar." (74/25)

And now:

لَوَّاحَةٌ لِّلْبَشَرِ — "It scorches al-bashar." (74/29)

The same word, with the same definiteness (al-), four verses apart.

The man described the text as "the word of the bashar"; the text describes Hell as "what scorches the bashar".

And the root-analysis in al-Baqara completes this weave: the same word names the place both of good news (bushrā) and of scorching — because both show in the skin.

This means that a piece of good news and a punishment are named with the same root. Good news shows in the skin (bishāra); scorching too shows in the skin (lawwāḥa li'l-bashar).

I record this as my own reading. That the centre of the root is the skin is a datum of the dictionary; the link set up is an interpretation. And I make no claim of tahakkum (mockery) — the technique recorded in al-Muṭaffifīn, of "using the root bashīr / bushrā when a punishment is announced", does not hold here, because what occurs in the verse is not a derivative of the root of good news but the word itself.

ʿAlayhā tisʿata ʿashar "Over it are nineteen."

The verse is three words. And the only thing it says is a number.

ʿAlayhā — "over it", that is, over saqar.

Tisʿata ʿashar — nineteen.

And the verse does not say what the nineteen are the number of. What they are will be explained in the next verse: angels.

Claims resting on numerical and letter reckoning have been advanced about this number throughout history, and especially in the recent period.

By the plain rule of the method (Method) I enter into none of these claims: "Number and letter reckoning, and claims of the abjad kind, are not used."

The ground for this is particularly strong here, and it comes out of the verse itself. For the next verse says by itself what this number is for — and what it says does not present the number as a riddle to be solved.

The only thing to be done here, therefore, is to follow the verse's own explanation.

The next verse says "angels". But exactly what the nineteen count has been discussed in the classical sources:

The second and third views are rested on the sentence at the end of that same verse: "None knows the hosts of your Lord but He" (74/31). That is, the number may not be a total muster.

I impose no preference. What the text says with certainty is this: the appointed ones are angels, and their number has been stated as nineteen.

In al-ʿAlaq, when al-zabāniya (al-ʿAlaq 96/18) was treated, these verses (74/30-31) were already mentioned. I do not repeat that discussion.

The other information the Qurʾān gives about the keepers of the Fire: "Over it are angels, stern and severe" (al-Taḥrīm 66/6); and a call: "O Mālik!" (al-Zukhruf 43/77).

"We have made the keepers of the Fire none but angels. And We have made their number nothing but a test for those who disbelieve — so that those who were given the Book may know with certainty, and those who believe may increase in faith, and those who were given the Book and the believers may not fall into doubt, and those in whose hearts is a sickness, and the disbelievers, may say, 'What did God mean by this as a likeness?' Thus God leads astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills. And none knows the hosts of your Lord but He. And it is nothing but a reminder to human beings."

One of the most striking self-interpreting verses of the Qurʾān: the text itself explains what its own preceding verse is for.

Root: ع-د-د. To count, a number. ʿAdad, ʿidda, taʿdād.

And in al-Humaza the ʿaddada (he kept counting) form of this root was treated, and this was recorded: "a number makes what is indefinite measurable… A number brings out of an uncontrollable field a controllable figure."

And here the same mechanism works in reverse. When a number is given, the number given becomes something graspable — and for that very reason it becomes open to dispute.

Root: ف-ت-ن. Its concrete sense is unexpectedly technical: to melt a metal in fire and test its purity.

Fatana'l-dhahaba — he put the gold into the fire, to learn whether it was pure.

From this:

• فِتْنَة (fitna) — testing, trial; and the confusion to which the testing leads.
• مَفْتُون (maftūn) — tested; and from this, "one whose mind has been turned".

There is a verse in the Qurʾān that refers directly to this concrete sense of the word: "On the day when they are punished in the Fire — 'Taste your fitna!'" (al-Dhāriyāt 51/13-14) — yawma hum ʿala'l-nāri yuftanūn.

The centre of the root is testing by fire. And that the word fitna should be used in this verse about the number of the keepers of the Fire is striking.

I record this as an observation.

The verse says this: the number was not set down in order to give information. It was set down in order to test.

That is, the figure nineteen is not a piece of information; it is an instrument of measurement. And what it measures is the reaction given to it.

This is an extraordinary move. The text describes the function of the information it has itself given — and it does not say "I said it so that you might learn it", it says "I said it in order to see how you would react to it".

The verse enumerates four separate outcomes produced by the same piece of information in four separate groups:

And the arrangement is striking: four groups are exposed to a single piece of information.

The information does not change; the receiver changes. The same sentence produces confirmation in one and objection in another.

This is exactly the same as the mechanism treated in al-Baqara 2/26. There, when the example of the gnat was given, this was recorded: the same example "leads many astray, and guides many aright."

And the sentence in the two verses is almost word for word the same:

• al-Baqara 2/26: "…mādhā arādallāhu bi-hādhā mathalā?"
• al-Muddaththir 74/31: "…mādhā arādallāhu bi-hādhā mathalā?"

The same question, in the same wording, in two separate sūras. And in both, those who ask the question are people who have stumbled at the smallness or the strangeness of a "likeness" (mathal).

This overlap is beyond dispute.

A question arises: why is it said that those who were given the Book will "know with certainty" when they hear this number?

The explanation given in the classical commentaries is this: that there is information resembling this in their own books, and that the coincidence would count for them as a confirmation.

I transmit this explanation, but I must enter a caveat: as to in what text, and in what form, such information is to be found, I cannot make any definite determination, and I advance no claim on the matter. There are explanations in this direction in the classical sources; I do not go into their details.

What can be said from the text itself is this: the verse states that the number will have the effect of a confirmation upon the People of the Book; it does not explain why.

The verse mentions the first and the second group once more: "…so that they may not fall into doubt."

رَيْب — from the ر-ي-ب root: doubt, hesitation. Treated in al-Baqara 2/2 (lā rayba fīh).

And the repetition is made from the negative side. First it was said positively (let them know with certainty, let their faith increase), then negatively (let them not fall into doubt).

This is the very same technique seen in al-Muddaththir 74/9-10: yawmun ʿasīr / ghayru yasīr — to say a thing and to deny its opposite.

The sūra uses this technique twice. I record this observation.

Root: م-ر-ض. Sickness.

In al-Baqara 2/10 this expression (fī qulūbihim maraḍun fa-zādahumullāhu maraḍā) was treated, and the finding recorded there was this: "The increase here too, like the seal in the preceding verse, is the consequence of a choice."

And here there is a symmetry:

The same information produces an increase in two directions. I set up this link by resting it on al-Baqara.

And here the question of the will opens.

In al-Baqara 2/7 the frame of this discussion was set up, and it was applied in al-Takwīr 81/29. The stance and the caveat recorded there hold here too, and I do not repeat them:

"In this commentary I take no side… none of the parties has maintained that man is without responsibility; the dispute is about how responsibility is established."

But one thing needs recording, because the verse's own word order gives a direction.

The sentence begins with كَذَٰلِكَ ("thus"). That is, the "leading astray" and the "guiding" point to the mechanism just described.

And that mechanism had been openly enumerated: the same information was given; some were confirmed, some objected.

That is, the verse presents leading astray and guiding not as an abstract decree but as the name of the process just described.

I record this reading as my own inference and do not put it forward as a doctrinal position. It agrees with the frame recorded in al-Baqara 2/7: there too the sealing was described as "not a barrier placed in front of a person's choice, but a locking that comes as the consequence of the choice."

"None knows the hosts of your Lord but He."

And this sentence sets a limit before every kind of reckoning that might be built upon the number nineteen.

A number was given; and immediately afterwards it is stated that knowledge in this field is closed to man.

That is, the verse itself takes the number it has given out of being a source of information. The number has been given, but it has not been given as a ground on which to build.

This is the place where the limit set by the method (Method) is supported by the verse itself.

"And it is nothing but a reminder to human beings."

To what does the pronoun (hiya) refer? The classical explanations: to saqar, to the Fire, or to the verses as a whole.

ذِكْرَىٰ — on the pattern fuʿlā. In al-ʿAlaq it was noted that this pattern was recorded together with bushrā, ḥusnā, ʿuqbā.

And the choice of word is important: all that description of punishment is in the end called a "reminder".

In al-Muzzammil 73/19 the same naming was treated: "Heavy things were said throughout the sūra… And at the end of them all the text gives itself a name: a reminder."

The same move, in two sūras. And here the word is completed once again with li'l-bashar — the third occurrence of the word in the sūra.

Kallā wa'l-qamar / Wa'l-layli idh adbara / Wa'l-ṣubḥi idhā asfara / Innahā la-iḥda'l-kubar / Nadhīran li'l-bashar / Li-man shāʾa minkum an yataqaddama aw yataʾakhkhar

"No! By the moon, by the night as it retreats, by the morning as it whitens: it is one of the great things — a warner to human beings; for those among you who wish to go forward or to hold back."

That a series of oaths should open with kallā is striking.

Two explanations are given in the classical commentaries:

I impose no preference. The first explanation agrees with the function of kallā recorded in al-Fajr.

And the series has a direction: the moon (the middle of the night) → the withdrawal of the night → the opening of the morning. A movement from darkness towards light.

A point of word order, easy to miss.

• For the night: إِذْ — an adverb of past time, pointing to a moment that has happened.
• For the morning: إِذَا — future or repeated time, conveying certainty.

That is, the night is mentioned as having "retreated", the morning as "about to open".

Whether this difference carries a meaning is disputed, and a variant reading is transmitted in this word too (idh adbara / idhā adbara). I give no definite list as to which reading belongs to which imām; in the widespread printed muṣḥaf (the transmission of Ḥafṣ) it is read إِذْ أَدْبَرَ.

I therefore draw no conclusion from the difference of particle. What I record is the existence of the difference.

As recorded above (74/23), this verb occurs in the sūra for the second time: once of a man, once of the night. And the contrast set up there is completed here:

After the man's turning of his back comes denial; after the night's turning of its back comes the morning.

I state again that I record this reading as my own inference.

Moreover: in al-Ḍuḥā the oaths by the night were gathered in a table, and this verse (74/33) was recorded as "idh adbara — when it turns its back — withdrawal". I do not contradict the table there; what I add is that the same verb occurs once more within the sūra.

Root: س-ف-ر. This root was treated in detail in ʿAbasa as the backbone of that sūra. The core recorded there:

"Under this root there is a single idea: to lift the covering, to bring into the open."

And the distribution of the derivatives was given there: safara (he opened, he lifted the covering), safar (a journey — "a journey was given this name because it brings people's characters into the open"), sifr (a large book), safīr (an envoy), sufra (a table), misfara (a broom).

And one of the examples given there is exactly this verse: asfara'l-ṣubḥu — the morning whitened, its covering was lifted.

ʿAbasa also recorded a turn within that sūra: safara (80/15, the scribes) → musfira (80/38, faces made bright), and this finding was made: "The same root, the same work, on two storeys." And of musfira: "That is, the face is likened to the morning. The moment at which the darkness withdraws, the covering is lifted, the light appears."

Here the original of the likeness stands: the morning itself.

Now a weave can be set up, and this is one of the most striking structures of the sūra.

The sūra opened with ٱلْمُدَّثِّر — its root د-ث-ر, its sense to cover oneself; and its second branch, to have one's trace effaced.

In the thirty-fourth verse there is أَسْفَرَ — its root س-ف-ر, its sense to lift the covering, to bring into the open.

Two roots naming exactly opposite works:

The sūra opens by calling out to a man who has covered himself, and reaches its height by swearing by a morning that opens.

I record this as my own reading. I claim no kinship between the two roots — the roots are entirely separate; the link set up is conceptual and rests on the opposition of the concrete senses of the two roots.

"It is one of the great things."

To what does the pronoun (hā) refer? The classical explanations: to saqar (the most widespread), or to the events recounted in general.

ٱلْكُبَر — the plural of al-kubrā (fuʿlā → fuʿal): "the greatest things".

And the ك-ب-ر root occurs in the sūra for the third time. The table set up above for 74/3 and 74/23 is now completed:

Three positions: a greatness commanded, a greatness usurped, and a greatness that comes as requital.

I record this weave as an observation; I do not claim that it is a deliberate design of the sūra. But all three occurrences stand in the text.

A detail: the verse does not say "it is the greatest", it says "it is one of the greatest".

That is, no ranking is being made; a placing in a category is being made.

And this agrees with the principle recorded in al-Balad: "what is named is limited" (that expression occurred in al-Aʿlā). Here too no complete ranking is given.

"A warner to human beings."

And the second verse of the sūra returns here.

74/2: qum fa-andhir — "rise and warn." 74/36: nadhīran li'l-bashar — "a warner to human beings."

The same root (ن-ذ-ر), in two separate places in the sūra. In the first a command to the addressee, in the second an attribute.

And whose attribute is nadhīr? Two explanations in the classical commentaries:

The first explanation fits the context better — the pronouns refer to saqar. But the second is also defended in the classical sources and sets up a link with 74/2.

I state no preference; but I record this: when the two explanations are joined, the work of warning becomes the work both of the text and of the one who carries it.

And the word ٱلْبَشَر occurs in the sūra for the fourth and last time. The table given above (74/25) is now complete.

"For those among you who wish to go forward or to hold back."

The plainest sentence of release in the sūra.

• تَقَدَّمَ — from the ق-د-م root, the tafaʿʿul form: to go forward, to advance.
• تَأَخَّرَ — from the أ-خ-ر root, the tafaʿʿul form: to fall behind, to hold back.

Both verbs are in the same form. And the tafaʿʿul form, as has been recorded many times in this commentary, states that the act is done by the person himself, to himself.

That is, both going forward and holding back are the person's own work.

This pair occurs once more in the Qurʾān, exactly in the context of the reckoning:

• "Every soul knows what it has sent ahead and what it has left behind" (al-Infiṭār 82/5) — mā qaddamat wa akhkharat. Treated in al-Infiṭār.
• "That day man will be told of what he has sent ahead and what he has left behind" (al-Qiyāma 75/13).

And the same root occurred in al-Muzzammil 73/20 as well: wa mā tuqaddimū li-anfusikum min khayr — "whatever good you send ahead for yourselves".

That is, both sūras use the ق-د-م root to name the work a person does for his own benefit.

Li-man shāʾa minkum — "for whoever among you wills".

And here two things happen at once:

1. Iltifāt (a shift in the direction of address): the address turns to the plural again (minkum — "of you"). Throughout the sūra a third-person narrative had been running; here it turns directly to the addressee. 2. Release: man shāʾa — "whoever wills".

The same pattern was treated in al-Muzzammil 73/19, and what was recorded there holds here as well: after the sequence of commands a door is shown, and no compulsion is laid down.

And note: both options are enumerated. The verse does not say "for those who wish to go forward"; it says "for those who wish to go forward or to hold back".

That is, the warning is presented as a door open to both. The warning itself does not force a choice; it sets up the ground on which a choice can be made.

I record this reading as my own inference.

Kullu nafsin bimā kasabat rahīna / Illā aṣḥāba'l-yamīn "Every soul is held in pledge for what it has earned — except the companions of the right hand."

Root: ر-ه-ن. Its concrete sense: a security left against a debt; a pledge, a mortgage.

• رَهْن (rahn) — the leaving of a pledge; and the thing left in pledge.
• رَهِين / رَهِينَة — held as a pledge.
• رِهَان (rihān) — a mutual wager; both parties putting something down.

The concrete legal sense of the root occurs in the Qurʾān: "If you are on a journey and cannot find anyone to write, then pledges taken in hand (rihānun maqbūḍa) will do" (al-Baqara 2/283).

And one has to see how a pledge works, because the whole force of the verse is there:

A pledge is what is left as security for a debt. What is left in pledge does not return to its owner until the debt is paid. It is held in the creditor's hand; it is closed to its owner's use.

The verse puts man in this position.

And the word order is interesting: kullu nafsin bimā kasabat rahīna — "every soul is a pledge on account of what it has earned".

That is, the person is held in pledge against his own earning. The one who leaves the pledge and the one left in pledge are the same person.

In the classical commentaries this is explained thus: man is held on account of his deed; he cannot go free until his deed frees him.

And this is an out-of-the-ordinary legal picture: the debtor has pledged himself against his debt.

Root: ك-س-ب. Its concrete sense: to obtain, to earn, to gather and bring in.

In the Qurʾān the root is used both for good and for evil, and it is neutral:

• "For it is what it has earned, and against it what it has committed" (al-Baqara 2/286) — lahā mā kasabat wa ʿalayhā mā ktasabat.
• "His wealth and what he earned did not avail him" (al-Masad 111/2) — treated in al-Masad.

And a point of word order: the verse does not say "what it did" (ʿamila), it says "what it earned" (kasabat). The language of earning sets up a relation of debt and credit — and it joins with the word rahīna.

Two words from the same field: the one an economic gain, the other an economic security.

I record this observation.

A point of grammar. The same sentence occurs almost word for word in another place in the Qurʾān:

"Every man is a pledge for what he has earned" (al-Ṭūr 52/21) — kullu'mriʾin bimā kasaba رَهِينٌ.

There رَهِين (masculine), here رَهِينَة (with the tāʾ).

The classical explanations:

The second explanation is widespread among the lexicographers. I impose no preference; neither explanation changes the sense.

أَصْحَـٰبُ ٱلْيَمِينِ — "the companions of the right hand".

The ي-م-ن root and the distinction of right and left were treated in al-Inshiqāq. The core recorded there:

"The root ي-م-ن is related to yumn (blessing)… The Qurʾān uses this settled association but loads a weight of judgement upon it as well: aṣḥāb al-yamīn / aṣḥāb al-shimāl (al-Wāqiʿa 56/27, 41)."

And it was stated there that the distinction "is definite and leaves no third category".

What is to be added here is the exception itself.

The verse first lays down an absolute ruling: kullu nafsin — every soul. Then the exception comes.

And this order, read the other way round, says something: the rule is to be held in pledge; deliverance is the exception.

I record this as an observation about word order.

Several explanations are given in the classical commentaries: the believers in general; or a particular group. I impose no preference, because the verse does not define, and in al-Inshiqāq the same stance was kept.

And the next verse will show what those excepted do — which opens the door to the most striking scene of the sūra.

Fī jannātin yatasāʾalūn / ʿAni'l-mujrimīn / Mā salakakum fī saqar "They are in gardens, asking one another — about the guilty: 'What put you into saqar?'"

Root: س-أ-ل. To ask. In the تَفَاعُل form (tasāʾala): to ask one another, mutually.

This form conveys reciprocity (mushāraka): taqātala (they fought one another), takhāṣama (they went to law with one another).

al-Nabaʾ opens with this verb (ʿamma yatasāʾalūn), and it was treated there.

And there is a transition in the word order, and it is striking.

The verse first says yatasāʾalūn — they ask one another; and the subject they ask about is ʿani'l-mujrimīn — about the guilty.

Then in the forty-second verse the question is directed straight at the guilty: mā salakakum — "what put you in?"

That is, the question passes from speaking about to asking directly. From the third person to the second.

I record this transition as an observation about word order.

Root: س-ل-ك. Its concrete sense: to pass a thing into another thing, to thread it through like a thread.

Salaka'l-khayṭa fi'l-ibra — he threaded the thread through the needle. It has nothing to do with the Turkish "silk" and "meslekî"; but "sülûk" (entering upon a path) and "meslek" (the path entered upon) do come from this root.

The uses in the Qurʾān light up the root:

• "Thus do We thread it into the hearts of the guilty" (al-Ḥijr 15/12).
• "Put into it two of every kind" (al-Muʾminūn 23/27) — into the ship.
• "And He made broad ways in it for you, that you might walk in them" (Nūḥ 71/20).
• "Whoever turns away from the remembrance of his Lord, He will put him into a grievous punishment" (al-Jinn 72/17) — yasluk-hu ʿadhāban ṣaʿadā.

And the last example is worth dwelling on.

At al-Jinn 72/17 the same verb (salaka) and the same root (ص-ع-د, ṣaʿadā) occur side by side. And in this sūra too both are present: sa-urhiquhū ṣuʿūdā (74/17) and mā salakakum fī saqar (74/42).

Two words, in two sūras, in the same context. I record this as an observation; I make no claim of a reference.

And the question itself needs dwelling on.

The question begins with مَا: "what?" — the cause is being asked.

And the verb is transitive: salakakum — "put you in". That is, the agent is being asked: what was the thing that put you in there?

The one who is asked is compelled to recount his own action.

The verse does not describe the state of the people of the Fire from outside; it makes them recount it in their own words. And this is one of the most effective techniques of the sūra.

Qālū lam naku mina'l-muṣallīn / Wa lam naku nuṭʿimu'l-miskīn / Wa kunnā nakhūḍu maʿa'l-khāʾiḍīn / Wa kunnā nukadhdhibu bi-yawmi'l-dīn / Ḥattā atāna'l-yaqīn

"They will say: 'We were not among those who pray. We did not feed the destitute. We plunged in along with those who plunged. And we used to call the Day of Reckoning a lie — until certainty came to us.'"

One of the most striking narrative moves of the Qurʾān: the accusation comes from the mouth of the accused.

The verse does not recount why the people of the Fire are there; it makes them recount it.

And this has two consequences:

1. No ground for objection is left. An accusation from outside can be disputed; a person's own statement cannot. 2. The list is their own assessment. That is, these four items are not a classification made from outside; they are what these people saw when they looked back over their own lives.

I record this reading as an inference.

A point of word order.

The first two grounds begin with لَمْ نَكُ. Its original is lam nakun; the final ن has dropped.

This is a permissible lightening in Arabic. And its effect is this: the sentence shortens, it becomes clipped.

The last two grounds come with the full form: وَكُنَّا — "and we used to be".

Four grounds, two pairs: two of omission, two of act.

The first two are things not done. The last two are things done.

This symmetry can be observed and stands in the text.

This pair is one of the measures the Qurʾān repeats most insistently.

In al-Māʿūn this measure was treated in detail, and this verse (74/43-44) was already recorded there as the chief example: "The three main elements of Sūrat al-Māʿūn — the prayer, feeding the destitute, and calling the truth a lie — stand together in al-Muddaththir in the same order." I do not repeat it.

And the most important finding recorded there was this: "The sūra does not set worship against morality; it says that worship cannot remain without morality."

But one thing must be done: to show in how many places in the Qurʾān this pair is repeated.

For the repetition is itself a proof — the more a measure is repeated, the more central it is.

Six separate places. And four of them are sūras counted as belonging to the early Meccan period.

And the order the series shows is this: the measure is set up both in the positive direction (who is delivered) and in the negative (who goes under); and the two sides are always mentioned together.

al-Māʿūn had already given this list; my reason for repeating it here is that the ground that comes out of the mouths of the people of the Fire stands by the same measure. That is, the measure is not only a criterion applied from outside; in the end it is presented as a criterion its own addressees themselves accept.

This inference is my own.

The verse does not say "we did not pray". It says "we were not among those who pray".

The difference is important. The first states the absence of an act, the second not belonging to a group.

In al-Māʿūn the same word order was treated (fa-waylun li'l-muṣallīn — "woe to those who pray"), and it was recorded there that the plural of the active participle conveys a continuity and belonging.

It is so here too: the person describes himself as outside a community.

In the second ground the verb is imperfect: nuṭʿimu — "we did not use to feed" (continuous, habitual).

That is, not a single lapse; a way of life is being described.

Root: ط-ع-م. To feed, to give to eat. Ṭaʿām (food), iṭʿām (feeding).

And the same root had occurred in al-Muzzammil 73/13: ṭaʿāman dhā ghuṣṣa — "a food that sticks in the throat".

Two sūras use the same root at two extremes: the one food not given, the other food that cannot be swallowed.

I record this weave as my own reading.

The subtlest of the grounds in the sūra, and the least talked about.

Root: خ-و-ض. And its concrete sense lights the word up completely:

خَاضَ (khāḍa) — to go into water, to walk about in it, to push on through muddy water, churning it up.

Khāḍa'l-māʾa — he went into the water, he walked in it. It is used especially of turbid water whose bottom cannot be seen.

From here the metaphorical sense comes out: to plunge into a subject, into a talk — especially into a talk that is empty, without foundation, of uncertain end.

The uses in the Qurʾān:

• "When you see those who plunge into Our signs, turn away from them until they plunge into some other talk" (al-Anʿām 6/68).
• "…and you plunged in as they plunged" (al-Tawba 9/69).
• "Those who are at play in a plunging" (al-Ṭūr 52/12).

The likeness of plunging into water says three things at once:

1. There is no ground. One who goes into water does not tread on anything. 2. There is no seeing. The bottom of turbid water is not visible; one does not know where one is going. 3. And most important: it arrives nowhere. To churn about in water is not to advance.

And there is a link with al-Muzzammil 73/7: there the daytime was described as sabḥan ṭawīlā — "a long swim", and what was recorded there was this: "one who stands still in water sinks… the medium carries the person and sweeps him along… there is no ground."

The two sūras use two separate images of water:

And here is the difference: swimming can be done alone; plunging is here done together.

I record this comparison as my own reading.

The real point of the verse is in this construction.

The verse does not say "we plunged into empty things". It says "we plunged along with those who plunged".

That is, the act is described as an act done jointly with others. And inside the construction the active participle of the same root is repeated: nakhūḍu maʿa'l-khāʾiḍīn.

This repetition stresses the social character of the act.

And an observation, as my own reading: among the four grounds this is the only "group" ground.

• Not praying — an individual omission.
• Not feeding the destitute — an individual omission.
• Calling the reckoning a lie — an individual belief.
• Plunging along with those who plunge — a thing done together with a crowd.

And this is an interesting ground, because it does not look like something the person chose on his own. It stands somewhere between "everyone was doing it" and "I did it".

The verse counts it a ground even so. That is, its having been done together with a crowd does not take the act off the one who did it.

I record this inference as my own reading.

The ك-ذ-ب root and the difference made by the tafʿīl form were treated in al-Muzzammil 73/11: kadhaba is to tell a lie, kadhdhaba is to count a thing a lie — to reject what another says.

يَوْمِ ٱلدِّينِ — "the day of religion", the day of account. The د-ي-ن root was treated in al-Fātiḥa (māliki yawmi'l-dīn), and the link of the root with dayn (debt) was recorded there: the day of account is the day on which debts are settled.

And the order of the grounds seems meaningful.

Among the four grounds this is the most basic — because it explains the other three. For someone who counts the day of account a lie, not praying, not feeding the destitute and plunging into empty talk are consistent pieces of behaviour.

But the verse has put it last.

I draw no conclusion from this ordering; but it is an observable order: the root cause comes at the end of the list — just as the verdict comes last at 74/18-25.

I record this coincidence as an observation.

"Until certainty came to us."

The ي-ق-ن root — certainty, the lifting of doubt.

And here yaqīn means "death". This use occurs once more in the Qurʾān:

"And serve your Lord until the certainty (al-yaqīn) comes to you" (al-Ḥijr 15/99).

The choice of the word is striking.

Death is named "certainty". And this gains a particular weight in the place where the sentence stands: those who called the reckoning a lie went on calling it a lie until certainty came.

That is, calling a lie and certainty stand face to face in the same sentence. The state of doubt ends with the lifting of doubt — but too late.

I record this as an observation.

The particle حَتَّىٰ ("until, up to") covers all four grounds at once.

That is, all four items lasted until the same moment. Not one was abandoned, not one was corrected.

And this turns the list into a "summary of a life". The four items cover a whole lifetime.

Fa-mā tanfaʿuhum shafāʿatu'l-shāfiʿīn "So the intercession of the intercessors will not avail them."

Root: ش-ف-ع. Its concrete sense: to make a pair, to add a second beside a single one.

• شَفْع (shafʿ) — even, a pair. And وَتْر (watr) — odd, single. In the Qurʾān: "By the even and the odd…" (al-Fajr 89/3) — treated in al-Fajr.
• شَفِيع (shafīʿ) — an intercessor; a second person added beside another.
• شَفَاعَة (shafāʿa) — intercession.

The centre of the root lights the verse up completely: intercession is the adding of a second beside someone who is not sufficient by himself. That is, intercession is the completing of an insufficiency.

This is one of the subjects of the Qurʾān that must be handled with the greatest care, and it was treated in a balanced way in al-Baqara 2/48.

The balance set up there was this, and it is kept exactly here: the Qurʾān does not reject intercession absolutely; it binds it to permission. Two groups of verses must be read together:

• Verses that appear to reject: "Guard yourselves against a day on which no one will pay anything on another's behalf, and no intercession will be accepted from anyone…" (al-Baqara 2/48); and this verse (74/48).
• The verse that binds it to permission: "Who is there that can intercede with Him except by His permission?" (al-Baqara 2/255 — the Verse of the Throne).

And the solution recorded in al-Baqara holds here as well: the second verse, in the form of a question, states not that intercession is impossible but that it is bound to permission. That is, what is rejected is not intercession itself but the notion of a mediation independent of permission, guaranteed and purchasable.

I do not repeat this balance; its detail is at al-Baqara 2/48.

But this verse adds something, and it must be recorded: the verse describes a situation in which intercession does not work — and it has just enumerated that situation.

The word order is this: four grounds were enumerated (43-47), then this sentence comes with a fāʾ.

فَ conveys cause and effect: because these things are so, intercession does not avail.

That is, the verse does not reject intercession in general; it says that it does not work in a particular situation. And that situation has been described in four items.

I record this reading as my own inference, and I state that it does not upset the balance set up by al-Baqara: there too it was recorded that the question "for whom, and on what condition" was left open.

Shafāʿatu'l-shāfiʿīn — "the intercession of the intercessors."

The same root twice, a verbal noun + the plural of the active participle. In Arabic this is a pattern of widening the scope: "whoever may intercede."

That is, the verse does not exclude one intercessor; it covers everyone who might intercede.

And this widening of scope agrees with the frame recorded in al-Baqara: what is rejected is not a particular mediator but an idea of security built upon mediation.

Fa-mā lahum ʿani'l-tadhkirati muʿriḍīn / Ka-annahum ḥumurun mustanfira / Farrat min qaswara

"What is the matter with them, that they turn away from the reminder — as though they were startled wild asses fleeing from a lion?"

One of the most vivid likenesses in the Qurʾān.

"What is the matter with them?" — a question of astonishment and of rebuke.

The sūra turns suddenly from the scene of the Fire (40-48) to the present time. The future scene that was recounted is finished; now the people who are living are looked at.

This transition carries the whole weight of the scene into the present moment: what will be there has been recounted; now what is here is asked about.

Root: ع-ر-ض. Its concrete sense: breadth, width; the side of a thing.

• عَرْض (ʿarḍ) — breadth. The opposite of ṭūl (length).
• أَعْرَضَ (aʿraḍa) — the ifʿāl form: to turn one's face away and turn one's side, that is, to show the one opposite not one's face but one's flank.
• عَرَضَ (ʿaraḍa) — to present, to offer. The Turkish arz, arıza, muâraza.

The concrete sense of the root lights up the verb: iʿrāḍ is to turn one's side to someone. The bodily description of turning away.

And the word order is striking: عَنِ ٱلتَّذْكِرَةِ — from the reminder. The particle ʿan conveys moving away.

The text gives itself this name again. And this name will occur twice in the sūra — 74/49, 74/54 — and it has a counterpart in al-Muzzammil 73/19.

حُمُر — from the ح-م-ر root, the plural of the word حِمَار (ḥimār, ass).

And what is meant here is not the domestic ass. In the classical commentaries it is stated that these are wild asses (ḥumur al-waḥsh) — an animal living in the desert, untamed, extremely skittish and fast.

مُّسْتَنفِرَة — from the ن-ف-ر root, the active participle of the istifʿāl form.

Root: ن-ف-ر. Its concrete sense: to take fright, to bolt away; and to go out from a place in a body.

• نَفَرَ (nafara) — it took fright, it fled.
• نَفِير / نَفَر — a company; a band going out to fight.
• ٱسْتَنفَرَ — to take fright; or to be startled.
• تَنفِير (tanfīr) — startling, driving off.

In the Qurʾān the root occurs in the sense of going out to fight as well: "Go forth, light and heavy" (al-Tawba 9/41) — infirū.

And now let us look at what the likeness does.

The verse likens those who turn away from the reminder to a herd of wild asses fleeing from a lion. And the likeness says four things at once:

1. The flight is not thought out; it is a reflex. A startled animal makes no calculation; it runs.

2. The flight is collective. The plural: ḥumurun. In a herd. And in a herd fright is contagious: when one bolts they all bolt — most of them without having seen the danger at all.

3. What is fled from has been wrongly identified. And this is the sharpest point of the likeness: what is fled from is a tadhkira — a reminder. Not a lion.

4. And the wild ass is an animal known for its skittishness. That is, the likeness shows not a brave man fleeing from a strong enemy, but an animal that starts at a small sound.

The third item carries the whole weight of the likeness. To flee from a reminder as one flees from a lion — the gulf between the measure of the reaction and the measure of the cause.

I record this reading as my own inference; the verse does not explain the ground of the likeness.

The word occurs in the Qurʾān only here, and there is disagreement about its meaning:

Root: ق-س-ر. Its concrete sense: to compel, to make a thing be done by force, to overpower. A field close to the Turkish "kasır" (constraining, limiting) and to ikrāh.

And the root gives the common ground of both explanations: whether it be a lion or a hunter, qaswara is what cannot be withstood.

I impose no preference; the first explanation is the most widespread in the classical sources.

Earlier in the sūra it had been said of saqar, lā tubqī wa lā tadhar — "it leaves nothing and it spares nothing".

And here it is said that people flee not from a real danger but from a reminder.

When the two verses are read together an irony appears: what ought to be fled from is not fled from; what ought not to be fled from is.

I record this as my own reading; the verses do not set up this link.

Bal yurīdu kullu'mriʾin minhum an yuʾtā ṣuḥufan munashshara / Kallā bal lā yakhāfūna'l-ākhira

"Indeed, every one of them wants to be given unrolled scrolls. No! Indeed, they do not fear the hereafter."

بَلْ is in Arabic a particle of iḍrāb: leaving what has been said and passing on to something truer.

And the verse uses this particle twice, and makes two separate corrections:

1. Bal yurīdu… — it had been said "they are turning away"; the real matter is this: they want a book of their own. 2. Kallā bal lā yakhāfūn — no, that is not the real matter either: they do not fear the hereafter.

That is, the verse deepens the ground twice:

And this structure is the same as the picture the sūra set up in verses 18-25: there too the ground put forward ("this is sorcery") and the real cause (the scowling, the turning of the back, the growing proud) were shown separately.

The sūra makes this move twice: it lifts away the ground put forward and shows what lies beneath it.

I record this coincidence as an observation; it stands as the most consistent method of the sūra.

The form of the demand needs dwelling on.

The verse does not say "they want a book". It says "every one of them" (kullu'mriʾin minhum).

That is, the demand is this: a separate book for each, particular to the person.

And this demand is recorded in other places in the Qurʾān as well:

• "Or until you send down upon us a book that we can read…" (al-Isrāʾ 17/93).
• "…we will not believe you until we see God plainly" (al-Baqara 2/55).
• "Indeed, we shall never believe until we are given the like of what was given to those before" (a pattern close to al-Anʿām 6/124: lan nuʾmina ḥattā nuʾtā mithla mā ūtiya rusulullāh).

The common structure: not a lack of information, but the putting forward of a condition about the manner of verification.

And the verse, in the third layer, counts this demand void: kallā.

That is, the demand is not a real demand. Had it been met the result would not have changed — because the problem is not a lack of information.

This is another form of the finding the sūra has been setting up from the beginning: the ground is produced not before but afterwards.

صُحُف — from the ص-ح-ف root, the plural of صَحِيفَة (ṣaḥīfa): a leaf written upon, a page.

مُّنَشَّرَة — from the ن-ش-ر root, the passive participle of the tafʿīl form: thoroughly unrolled, spread open (the opening of what was rolled up).

In al-Takwīr this root and this construction were treated: وَإِذَا ٱلصُّحُفُ نُشِرَتْ (al-Takwīr 81/10) — "when the scrolls are unrolled".

And a link was set up there with ʿAbasa: "the ن-ش-ر root (inshiraḥ / nushirat)."

And there is a contrast here that needs recording:

That is, the scrolls will be unrolled in any case. What is demanded is that that unrolling should be done before its time and for the individual person.

I record this comparison as my own reading. That the two verses use the same root is beyond dispute; the contrast set up is an interpretation.

And the tafʿīl form is important: it conveys intensification. That is, not "unrolled" but "thoroughly unrolled, spread wide open" scrolls. The demand is not for a text to be interpreted; it is for a document closed to dispute.

In al-Takwīr the kitāban yalqāhu manshūrā of al-Isrāʾ 17/13 was also recorded — there too the book is given as "unrolled". But what is given there is a person's own record of deeds; what is demanded here is a document of revelation.

And the sūra states the one thing that lies beneath all the grounds.

"They do not fear the hereafter."

And what this sentence does is this: it sets all the objections aside and shows the source of the objections.

The accusation of sorcery, the accusation of a human word, the demand for a book of one's own — all set aside. The one thing underneath: that the reckoning is not taken seriously.

And note: it does not say "they do not believe", it says "they do not fear".

The difference is important, and it is recorded in the classical commentaries as well: believing is a cognitive state, fearing an affective one. It is possible to say that one believes a thing and not to act accordingly.

That is, the measure is sought not in the declaration but in the behaviour.

And this is the same method as the one recorded in al-Humaza: "The verse looks not at what a person says but at what his behaviour assumes."

I set up this link, and I state that it agrees with the frame set up by al-Māʿūn as well.

Kallā innahū tadhkira / Fa-man shāʾa dhakarah / Wa mā yadhkurūna illā an yashāʾallāh. Huwa ahlu'l-taqwā wa ahlu'l-maghfira

"No! It is a reminder. So whoever wills, remembers it. And they will not remember unless God wills. He is worthy to be guarded against; and He is worthy to forgive."

In the last three verses the root occurs three times: tadhkira, dhakarah, yadhkurūn; together with al-tadhkira in verse 49, four in the closing section.

The sūra closes with the word that names it. And the same move was treated in al-Muzzammil 73/19; I do not repeat it.

This is one of the strongest data of the link between the two sūras.

The same skeleton, in two sūras. And the difference is here: al-Muzzammil leaves the door open and leaves it at that; al-Muddaththir adds a caveat.

And the question of the will comes here.

This pattern is repeated in several places in the Qurʾān:

• "And you will not, unless God wills" (al-Takwīr 81/29) — wa mā tashāʾūna illā an yashāʾallāh. Treated in al-Takwīr.
• "And you will not, unless God wills" (al-Insān 76/30).
• al-Muddaththir 74/56 — wa mā yadhkurūna illā an yashāʾallāh.

And note: here the verb is different.

In al-Takwīr and al-Insān the verb is tashāʾūn (to will); here it is يَذْكُرُونَ (to remember).

That is, the caveat has been placed not on willing but on remembering. I record this difference as an observation; I draw no doctrinal conclusion from it.

This verse is one of the places most often cited in the dispute over compulsion and free choice.

In al-Baqara 2/7 the frame of this dispute was set up, and it was applied in al-Takwīr 81/29. I keep the same stance here, and I repeat the caveat recorded there:

"In this commentary I take no side… none of the parties has maintained that man is without responsibility; the dispute is about how responsibility is established."

What can be said from the text itself. Two things:

First — the two sentences stand side by side, and both are in the text.

• Fa-man shāʾa dhakarah — "whoever wills, remembers it." (55)
• Wa mā yadhkurūna illā an yashāʾallāh — "and they will not remember unless God wills." (56)

One verse apart. That is, the text does not set the two sentences against one another; it says them one after the other.

And the observation recorded in al-Takwīr holds here too: that the two sentences should come one after the other shows that the text counts both of them true. It does not choose one side and cancel the other.

Second — the ordering. The release comes first, the caveat afterwards.

This order can be recorded as an observation: the text first shows the addressee the door, then says in whose hand the door is. The reverse order (first the caveat, then the door) was possible, and would have had a different effect.

I draw no doctrinal conclusion from this observation.

One of the most out-of-the-ordinary closings in the Qurʾān.

أَهْل (ahl) — one who is worthy of a thing, the owner of a thing and the one who belongs to it. Ahl al-bayt, ahl al-kitāb.

And two constructions:

أَهْلُ ٱلتَّقْوَىٰ is clear: taqwā is a work the servant does; God is worthy of it. (The و-ق-ي root was treated in al-Muzzammil 73/17: at the centre of the root there is not fear but protection.)

But the second is not symmetrical: maghfira is not a work the servant does; it is a work God does. What, then, does "worthy of forgiveness" mean?

The third explanation reads the asymmetry between the two constructions not as a defect but as a choice, and it is defended in the classical sources.

I impose no preference. But I record this: all three explanations arrive at the same result — the sentence binds guarding oneself and being forgiven to the same address.

And one must look at where the sūra ends.

What was recounted throughout the sūra: saqar, a place like a set of shackles, scorched skins, nineteen keepers, souls held in pledge, startled asses.

And the sūra ends with the word "forgiveness".

The last word: ٱلْمَغْفِرَة.

And the last command of al-Muzzammil came from the same root: wa'staghfirullāh (73/20) — and there the concrete sense of the غ-ف-ر root (to cover, to close over, to overlay; mighfar — the iron helmet) was treated.

Both sūras close with the same root.

The one names the request, the other the source.

I record this coincidence as an observation; I do not claim that the two sūras were deliberately closed with the same root.

The reading recorded at the end of al-Muzzammil holds here as well, and is completed.

al-Muddaththir began by calling out to a man wrapped in his covering (al-muddaththir) — and it was built upon the sense of the د-ث-ر root, "to cover a thing over".

And it ends with another root that means covering: غ-ف-ر.

The sūra takes him out of covering himself and leads him to being covered.

I record this as my own inference. I claim no kinship between the two roots — the roots are entirely separate (د-ث-ر / غ-ف-ر); the link set up is conceptual and rests on the overlap of the concrete senses of the two roots.

And I state that the same reading was set up for al-Muzzammil as well (ز-م-ل → غ-ف-ر): both sūras make the same movement.

This section makes the comparison of the two sūras as a whole. In al-Muzzammil the concrete linguistic data of the link were listed; here it is completed.

There are other pairs of sūras in the Qurʾān that stand as close to one another as this — al-Ḍuḥā with al-Inshirāḥ (treated in al-Inshirāḥ), al-Fīl with Quraysh (treated in Quraysh).

But the case of al-Muzzammil and al-Muddaththir is different, and the difference must be seen.

al-Ḍuḥā and al-Inshirāḥ are like the continuation of a single conversation: one asks, the other tells; one lays the ground, the other builds upon it. As was recorded in al-Inshirāḥ, some scholars have even proposed counting them a single sūra.

al-Muzzammil and al-Muddaththir are not like that. Both begin from the beginning. Both call out to the same man, in the same state, with the same pattern. Both open with the same command.

That is, one is not the continuation of the other; the two are the same move opened out in two different directions.

This is the soundest datum, because it is not open to interpretation.