al-Muddaththir 74:26-30

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).