al-Nabaʾ 78:17

Inna yawma'l-faṣli kāna mīqātā "The day of separation is an appointed time."

The eleven-verse tableau has ended and the sūra moves to the last day without using any connective. There is no وَ, no فَ, no ثُمَّ. The sentence begins with إِنَّ.

In Arabic the dropping of a connective between two sentences is called فَصْل (faṣl) and it was treated in the section on al-Ikhlāṣ: the dropping of the connective shows that the second sentence is the explanation or the consequence of the first.

What this means here is plain: the seventeenth verse is the answer to the eleven-verse tableau. The tableau caused a question to be asked; this verse answers it.

And it is no coincidence: the name given to the dropping of the connective is itself faṣl, and the subject of the verse is yawm al-faṣl. This is not a claim of wordplay — only a coincidence worth recording.

Root: ف-ص-ل. The concrete sense of the root is to separate two things, to cut between them.

Its derivatives show the breadth of the root:

• فَصْل — separation; and the chapter of a book (parts separated from one another).
• فَاصِلَة — a separator; and the stop at the end of a verse. This is what is called the fāṣila in every sūra of this commentary.
• فِصَال — weaning. "His weaning is within two years" (Luqmān 31/14).
• تَفْصِيل — setting out in detail; separating a whole into parts and explaining it. "A book whose verses have been set out in detail" (Fuṣṣilat 41/3).
• فَيْصَل — one who gives a decisive judgement.

The root has two directions and both come out of the same idea:

1. Physical separation — dividing a thing in two. 2. Giving judgement — deciding definitively between two parties.

The connection is plain: to give judgement is to separate the true from the false. English does the same thing: to decide a matter is, by the Latin behind the word, to cut it off; and a clear-cut decision carries exactly this idea — cut, separated.

The Qurʾān makes this link plainly:

"It is surely a decisive word (قَوْلٌ فَصْلٌ); it is no jest." (al-Ṭāriq 86/13-14)

"He is the one who judges (فَصَلَ) between them." (similarly al-Zumar 39/3, 46; al-Ḥajj 22/17)

Now go back to the third verse: ٱلَّذِى هُمْ فِيهِ مُخْتَلِفُونَ — "that over which they are in disagreement."

Ikhtilāf — to part from one another, to turn onto different roads. Faṣl — to separate, to give a decisive judgement.

People have parted over a matter; that matter will be decided on a "day of separation".

The two words come from different roots (خ-ل-ف and ف-ص-ل) and I claim no etymological kinship between them. What I record is that the two words do the same work in opposite directions: the one names the dispersal, the other the decision.

And the practical meaning of this is: the resolution of a disagreement is not debate. From the beginning the sūra did not enter the debate; now it becomes clear why it did not. The matter under dispute has an arbiter, and that arbiter will come one day.

What does the "day of separation" separate? The exegetes count several directions and all are supported from the text:

The structure of the sūra supports the second in particular: from the twenty-first verse on, the text divides in two.

مِيقَات — Root: و-ق-ت. Time. مِيقَات is on the mifʿāl pattern.

This pattern was treated in the section on al-Qāriʿa: for the word مِيزَان it was recorded that mifʿāl is a noun of instrument (its original form miwzān, the wāw having turned into yāʾ). The same phonetic change is present here: the original of mīqāt is مِوْقَات.

The mifʿāl pattern forms nouns of instrument, but it can also form nouns of time and place. Mīqāt is of the second kind: an appointed time — and, in the context of the pilgrimage, an appointed place (the mīqāt stations).

What the word relates is that the time has been fixed. For an ordinary time one says waqt; a mīqāt is like an appointment: a meeting point determined not by the parties but by the one who appoints.

The function of كَانَ. The sentence does not say "it will be"; it says "it has been/was" — the perfect.

This is a recognised usage in Arabic and it is explained in two ways:

Both have been defended and they do not exclude one another.

An observation: the distribution of كان in the sūra. This verb comes several times in the sūra and always doing the same work:

• 17: kāna mīqātā — the day of separation was an appointed time.
• 21: kānat mirṣādā — Hell was a place of watch.
• 27: kānū lā yarjūna ḥisābā — they were not expecting a reckoning.

In all three the verb conveys the standingness of a condition. The first two relate God's appointing, the third the settled attitude of human beings. The sūra, that is, says with the same verb that neither the verdict nor the denial is new.

I record this as an observation.