al-Muddaththir 74:49-51

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.