al-Insān 76:21

ʿĀliyahum thiyābu sundusin khuḍrun wa istabraq, wa ḥullū asāwira min fiḍḍah, wa saqāhum Rabbuhum sharāban ṭahūrā "Upon them are garments of fine green silk and of thick brocade; they have been adorned with bracelets of silver. And their Lord has given them a pure drink to drink."

There is a difference among the imams of the variant readings in the pronunciation of the word: in one reading ʿāliyahum (accusative, an adverbial or circumstantial in the sense of "upon them"), in another ʿāliyuhum (nominative, as subject or predicate).

I do not give which imam holds which reading, because I am not sure.

The consequence for meaning is small: on either reading the garments are upon them. The difference lies in how the sentence is built.

Root: ع-ل-و — height. It was treated in the discussion of al-Layl 92/20 (al-aʿlā).

The verse counts two separate names of cloth, and both are words that entered Arabic from outside. This is widely accepted among the lexicographers; I issue no firm ruling about which language the words came from or by what route.

• سُندُس (sundus) — fine, soft silk.
• إِسْتَبْرَق (istabraq) — thick, glossy, figured silk; brocade.

That the two are counted together is an elaboration: there is the fine as well as the thick. What was said in a single word in the twelfth verse (ḥarīr — silk) is here divided into two kinds.

Some of the words used in this sūra's description of luxury entered Arabic from outside: zanjabīl, sundus, istabraq; and for kāfūr the possibility exists as well.

The reason for this is not linguistic but commercial. All of these substances were imported goods — they came from India, from China, by way of Iran. In a language the name of an object most often arrives together with the object.

This is an observation and carries no verdict about the text. It shows only this: the picture of wealth the sūra draws is built out of things the addressee really knew but did not possess. This is the social side of the principle recorded at al-Baqara 2/25 — language is taken from the experience of the addressee, and that experience is the experience of the market.

أَسَاوِر — its singular is سِوَار or أُسْوِرَة: a bracelet. Root: س-و-ر.

حُلُّوا۟ — passive: "they were adorned". Root: ح-ل-ي — ornament, jewellery. Ḥuliyy — an ornament.

Silver again. As was recorded at the fifteenth verse, the Qurʾān speaks elsewhere of bracelets of gold as well (al-Kahf 18/31); this sūra stays with silver from beginning to end.

An observation, with its note entered: the أَسِير (captive) mentioned in the eighth verse was, by his root, "the one who has been bound" — a person whose wrist is tied. In the twenty-first verse an ornament is put on the wrists of the abrār.

The roots of the two words are different (أ-س-ر / س-و-ر) and I draw no derivational link between them. What I record is at the level of the image: the bound wrist and the adorned wrist. This is a reading; the text sets up no such link.

The most important sentence in the sūra's description of the garden is here, and it is generally taken for a last-place detail and passed over.

Throughout the description the verbs were either passive or without a stated subject: yuṭāfu ʿalayhim (15), dhullilat (14), yusqawna (17), tusammā (18), ḥullū (21). A world without an agent.

And the only subject given, in the nineteenth verse, was the servers.

Now, in the last sentence of the description, for the first and only time the subject of the verb is stated openly: رَبُّهُمْ — their Lord.

Saqāhum Rabbuhum — "their Lord gave them to drink." The verb is active, the subject explicit.

That is, the sūra leaves all the bounty unsigned and signs the last of it.

In the section on al-Takwīr a similar structure was recorded: in that sūra none of the twelve conditional clauses had an agent, and the name of the agent was given only in the last verse. The same technique is applied here inside the description.

And the finding recorded for yusqawna in the section on al-Muṭaffifīn — "they do not take for themselves, it is given to them" — here takes its last step: the giver becomes known.

Root: ط-ه-ر. This root was treated in detail in the discussion of al-Bayyina 98/2 (ṣuḥufan muṭahhara) and compared with ʿAbasa 80/13-16. I summarise the finding there: the root means cleanness, being far from filth; ṭahāra, ṭahūr, muṭahhar, taṭhīr are from the same root. And this distinction was recorded: مُطَهَّرَة is a passive participle — not "clean" but "made clean".

What is peculiar to this passage is the pattern. Here the word is not muṭahhar but طَهُور (ṭahūr) — the faʿūl pattern.

In Arabic this pattern states agency and intensity. That is, ṭahūr is not "that which is clean" but "that which cleans". It takes this name not because it is itself clean but because it cleans what it touches.

The Qurʾān uses the same word of rainwater: "And We sent down from the sky a pure (ṭahūr) water" (al-Furqān 25/48). Rainwater is ṭahūr because cleaning is done with it.

And now the work of the verse becomes visible.

The whole description of the garden in the sūra was in the language of pleasure: coolness, warmth, shade, fruit, silk, ornament. The last drink, however, is defined not by a pleasure but by a function: it cleanses.

That is, the last item of the reward is not an enjoyment but a purification. And the one who gives it is the only subject whose name is stated openly.

What it cleanses is not said. In the classical sources there are various explanations on this point — such as the removal of something left within. The text does not say it and I add no elaboration either. What is said is this much: the drink cleanses.

I record this as my own reading: the sūra closes its description not with a pleasure but with a cleansing, and it gives the subject of that close by name for the first time.