al-Insān 76:5-6

Inna'l-abrāra yashrabūna min kaʾsin kāna mizājuhā kāfūrā · ʿAynan yashrabu bihā ʿibādu'llāhi yufajjirūnahā tafjīrā "The good drink from a cup whose admixture is kāfūr; a spring it is, from which the servants of God drink, making it gush forth in gushing."

Root: ب-ر-ر. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/44 and applied to this word at al-Infiṭār 82/13. I summarise the findings there: the original sense of the root is breadth — from the same root comes barr, the wide land facing the sea; accordingly the abrār are "the broad ones", and goodness is named not as a list of behaviours but as a breadth of space. Miserliness narrows, goodness widens.

In the section on al-Infiṭār it was also recorded that abrār and fujjār are plurals not of nouns but of adjectives; they state not an identity but an attribute, and whoever bears that attribute is included in it.

In the section on al-Muṭaffifīn a note about rank was entered: in that sūra a difference of degree is set up between the abrār and the muqarrabūn, and the same water reaches the two groups in two different ways (to one as an admixture, to the other pure). In this sūra there is no such second category. Here the abrār are a single group and the whole description of reward in the sūra belongs to them.

And now comes one of the most concrete comparisons in this commentary.

Three sūras open about the abrār with the same formula:

In the section on al-Infiṭār this was recorded: the particle la-fī states "being inside", and a nominal sentence states fixity — the abrār do not attain the bliss, they are inside the bliss.

al-Insān takes the same sentence and turns its predicate into a verb. Two sūras state a state; this sūra states an act. And the act chosen is the most ordinary thing the abrār do: drinking.

This is no coincidence, because the whole description of reward in the sūra will be built out of verbs: they drink (5), they make gush forth (6), they are reclining (13), it is passed round among them (15), they are given to drink (17), they are adorned (21). The other two sūras show a tableau; this sūra recounts a day.

I record this as my own reading; the difference of structure among the three verses is the data of the text.

Root: ك-أ-س. The distinction the lexicographers transmit is this: kaʾs is the cup with drink in it; an empty cup is not called kaʾs, and other names are given to it (such as qadaḥ).

This distinction agrees with the usage in the Qurʾān: the word always occurs full in the text and is always mentioned together with a drink. That is, the word "cup" itself states what is inside it too.

In the verse there is the particle مِن: min kaʾsin — "from a cup". It states tabʿīḍ (from a part of it). What is drunk is not the cup itself but some quantity from it; and this makes one sense that the drinking is not a single occasion.

Root: م-ز-ج. This word was treated in the discussion of al-Muṭaffifīn 83/27, and the finding there was this: mizāj is an addition that increases, not one that diminishes; it is the adding of something valuable, not the clearing away of a sediment. The word occurs in three places in the Qurʾān and all three are the admixture of a drink of the garden — two are in this sūra (76/5 kāfūr, 76/17 ginger), one in al-Muṭaffifīn (tasnīm).

The English word temperament carries the same idea by another road: it too comes from the notion of a mixture of the elements in the body. That link was recorded there; I do not repeat it.

What is peculiar to this passage is this: this sūra houses two of the three verses that use the word mizāj. That is, the sūra sets up the same structure twice: a cup + an admixture (5), then again a cup + an admixture (17). And the two admixtures are opposites of one another. This will be returned to at verse 17.

The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

Kāfūr — camphor — was a substance known in that world: a white, volatile, sharp-smelling, cooling resin. It was an article of trade originating in India and South-East Asia and was imported into the Arabian peninsula.

There are two views on the meaning of the word:

The strongest side of the second view is that the sixth verse speaks of a spring immediately afterwards. The strongest side of the first view is that the eighteenth verse uses the verb tusammā: when the sūra gives something a name it says so, and it does not say so here.

Weighing these two grounds I prefer the first — it is not binding.

The third verse ended with كَفُورًا. The fifth verse ends with كَافُورًا. Between the two words there is a single visible letter of difference.

Some of the lexicographers count kāfūr as from the root ك-ف-ر and give as their ground that the fruit of the camphor tree is covered by a husk. I transmit this explanation, but I do not present it as firm derivational data; it is also possible that the word entered Arabic from outside, and in that case the resemblance of root remains only apparent.

Accordingly I draw no link of meaning between the two words. What I record is only the sound itself: the third verse of the sūra ends with "one who covers", the fifth with "kāfūr", and the ear hears the two as close to one another. The same note was entered in a similar case in the section on al-Aʿlā: no meaning is to be drawn from a resemblance of sound.

The first four words of the sixth verse are exactly the same as the twenty-eighth verse of al-Muṭaffifīn. Only the subject changes:

In the section on al-Muṭaffifīn two grammatical questions about this expression were treated in detail and I do not repeat them:

• The reason for عَيْنًا being in the accusative (appositive substitute, accusative of commendation, specification or circumstantial — all four are defended, and the difference in meaning is small).
• Why in يَشْرَبُ بِهَا the particle بِ comes in place of min (particles being used one for another; or the verb taking on the sense of "to slake one's thirst" and taking that verb's particle).

There it was also recorded that the word عَيْن has several senses in Arabic (eye, spring, the essence of a thing, a spy) and that all of them come together in the idea of a "source".

There are two things peculiar to this passage.

The fifth verse said ٱلْأَبْرَار. The sixth verse calls the same people عِبَادُ ٱللَّهِ. Two names, one verse apart.

Root: ع-ب-د. Servanthood, service. The analysis of the word was made in the section on al-Fātiḥa; I do not repeat it.

I read the work this change of name does as follows — I present it as my own inference:

Abrār is a name of attribute: the broad ones, those who do good. It looks at what the person does. ʿIbādu'llāh is a name of belonging: it looks at whose he is.

And by putting these two names one upon the other the sūra sets up an equation: those who do good are the servants of God. The two are not two separate groups but two sides of the same group.

This agrees with what will be set up later in the sūra: in the ninth verse these people will say, as they give, li-wajhi'llāh (for the face of God). That is, they bind the work they do not to themselves but to whom they belong. The name in the sixth verse prepares the speech in the ninth.

The most striking word of the sūra is here, and it is usually passed over.

Root: ف-ج-ر. This root has been treated several times in this commentary — in the sections on al-Shams, al-Fajr and al-Infiṭār. I summarise the findings there: the concrete sense of the root is to split, to split open and make flow, to burst forth; fajr (the moment when the night is split and the light bursts through) and fujūr are from the same root; and fujūr is not a deficiency but an overflowing — the tearing of the boundary that holds a person, the bursting of a dam by water that will not stay in its vessel.

Now look at this verse.

The same root comes here as a reward. The abrār split the spring open and make it gush.

That is, the very movement the Qurʾān condemns as fujūr — splitting something and making it overflow — is recounted here as the work the good do in the garden.

Where is the difference? In what is split.

The fājir splits the boundary that holds him; the abrār split the spring in front of them. In the first case what is split is the person's own boundary, in the second a source outside him. The movement is the same, its object opposite.

This is exactly the principle recorded for the root ش-ق-ق in the section on al-Inshiqāq: "the root by itself states no destruction; what a splitting is depends on what the splitting leaves behind." There the same verb named both the tearing apart of the sky and the splitting of the earth for provision.

I record this as my own reading; the shared root and the description of fujūr are transmitted.

تَفْجِيرًا — the absolute object (mafʿūl muṭlaq). As was recorded for kadḥan at al-Inshiqāq 84/6, this structure emphasises the verb or states its kind. In English it is answered by a doubling: "making it gush and gush".

In the sūra's description of the garden the active verbs belonging to the abrār are found only at the beginning:

There is a movement in the table: the abrār first open and drink for themselves; then everything is done to them; and at the very end the one who gives to drink becomes the only subject that is named — their Lord.

In the section on al-Muṭaffifīn this was recorded about the verb yusqawna being passive: "they do not take for themselves, it is given to them." That finding holds here too; but this sūra adds two ends to the table: at the very beginning the hand of the abrār, at the very end the hand of the Lord.

I record this as my own reading; the moods of the verbs are a datum that can be counted.