وَيُطَافُ عَلَيْهِم بِـَٔانِيَةٍ مِّن فِضَّةٍ وَأَكْوَابٍ كَانَتْ قَوَارِيرَا۟ · قَوَارِيرَا۟ مِن فِضَّةٍ قَدَّرُوهَا تَقْدِيرًا
Wa yuṭāfu ʿalayhim bi-āniyatin min fiḍḍatin wa akwābin kānat qawārīrā · Qawārīra min fiḍḍatin qaddarūhā taqdīrā "Round them are passed vessels of silver and cups of crystal — crystals of silver; they have measured them to their measure."
Root: ط-و-ف. To go round a thing. Its derivatives: ṭawāf (going round the Kaʿba), ṭāʾifa (a group — those who go about), ṭūfān (encompassing water), ṭāʾif (one who goes about).
The verb is passive and comes with ʿalayhim: "it is passed round over/about them". Who does the passing is not said — not until the nineteenth verse. There the subject will be given (wildānun mukhalladūn) and the verb will this time be active (yaṭūfu).
That is, the sūra uses the same verb twice: first without an agent (15), then with one (19). Four verses lie between. This is a technique of description: first the look of the scene, then the persons in the scene.
أَكْوَاب — its singular is كُوب. And the description the lexicographers transmit is striking: a kūb is a cup without handle and without spout. That is, it has no place to grip and no mouth to pour from; a round vessel that can be drunk from at any point.
The Qurʾān prefers this word in its descriptions of the garden. That there is no handle and no spout means that the vessel imposes no direction as to how it is to be held.
Singular: قَارُورَة. Root: ق-ر-ر. And the sense of the root is to settle, to grow still, to remain fixed:
- قَرَار (qarār) — a place to settle, a fixed state.
- مُسْتَقَرّ (mustaqarr) — the place where one settles. And this word occurs in the sister sūra: "That day the place of settling (mustaqarr) is before your Lord" (al-Qiyāma 75/12).
- قُرَّة عَيْن — "the coolness of the eye"; according to the lexicographers' explanation, the eye's coming to rest upon something.
- قَارُورَة — a glass vessel. Its name comes from the liquid inside it settling in it; and besides, the transparency of glass shows what is inside.
This is the word's function in the description of the garden: a vessel that shows what is inside it. Glass was a valuable and rare material in that world; it was imported.
To all appearance the sentence says something impossible. Glass is transparent; silver is not. The expression "glass of silver" describes neither of the two known materials.
The explanation of the classical exegetes is this: a material carrying together the whiteness of silver and the transparency of glass. That is, the verse recounts a thing not found in this world by setting one upon the other the names of two things found in this world.
This is the principle recorded above, applied by the text itself. In the discussion of al-Baqara 2/25 it was recorded: language can find no material other than human experience. This verse turns that constraint into a technique — it joins two known materials and names the unknown.
And for exactly this reason the verse is one of the clearest internal proofs that the descriptions of the garden are not to be read literally. The text shows the insufficiency of the very material it is using.
I record this as my own reading; the classical explanation about the joining of the two materials is transmitted.
A note on variant readings: as was recorded at the fourth verse, in the writing of the muṣḥaf there is an alif at the end of the word قَوَارِيرَا۟ and there is a difference of variant reading in its pronunciation. I do not give which imam holds which reading.
And there is the matter of the silver. The whole description of vessel and ornament in the sūra is of silver: āniya min fiḍḍa (15), qawārīra min fiḍḍa (16), asāwira min fiḍḍa (21). Three times, a single metal.
In other descriptions of the garden the Qurʾān mentions gold as well: "There they are adorned with bracelets of gold" (al-Kahf 18/31). That is, silver is not a necessity but a choice peculiar to this sūra.
There may or may not be a ground for this. The requirement of the verse-ending is not at work here, since fiḍḍa does not stand at the end of a verse. I record the following as a reading and state that it is not binding: the abrār of this sūra were described by their giving away what they had; that the description does not choose the most ostentatious metal agrees with that tone. But this is an inference, not the claim of the text.
Root: ق-د-ر. This root was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Qadr; there the root's three senses, connected but opening in different directions, were taken up. The branch needed here is this: to measure, to determine the amount of, to apportion. Qadr — measure, amount; miqdār — a measured amount; taqdīr — the determining of the measure.
| View | Meaning | Ground | Weak point |
|---|---|---|---|
| Those who pass them round | The servers have filled the vessels exactly to the right measure | The subject of the preceding clause is the work of passing round | The name of those who pass them round comes only at verse 19 |
| The abrār themselves | The vessels are to the measure the drinkers want; neither more nor less | The verb is plural and active and the nearest plural subject is the abrār | The abrār would not have measured the vessels themselves; but it can be understood as "measured according to their wish" |
Both have been defended in the classical sources. The common point in meaning is preserved: the measure has been hit exactly.
And this word carries a particular echo in this sūra. Taqdīr is the opposite both of diminishing and of adding — it is what is exact. Sūrat al-Muṭaffifīn took as its subject the diminishing of the measure (taṭfīf), and in that sūra the abrār were on the side that did not hold the measure in its own hands. Here the measure comes already hit exactly.
It is on the same line as yūfūna (they pay in full) in the seventh verse: these people paid without shortfall in this world, and here they receive vessels measured without shortfall.