al-Nabaʾ 78:31-34

Inna li'l-muttaqīna mafāzā · Ḥadāʾiqa wa aʿnābā · Wa kawāʿiba atrābā · Wa kaʾsan dihāqā "For those who guard themselves there is a triumph: walled gardens and vines, young companions of equal age, and a brimming cup."

The twenty-first verse had begun with إِنَّ جَهَنَّمَ كَانَتْ مِرْصَادًا. This verse begins with إِنَّ لِلْمُتَّقِينَ مَفَازًا.

The two sections open with the same particle and are of the same length: ten verses from 21 to 30, six verses from 31 to 36. The symmetry is not exact but the pattern is the same.

And one difference shows at once: the section on the transgressors began with "Hell" — that is, with a place. The section on those who guard themselves begins with "for those who guard themselves" — that is, with persons.

I record this as an observation.

Root: و-ق-ي. This word was treated in detail at al-Baqara 2/2 and what was recorded there is not repeated.

In summary: the sense of the root is to protect oneself, to be on guard, to put something between oneself and a thing. Wiqāya — a protector. اِتَّقَىٰ (Form VIII) — he guarded himself, he was on his guard.

What is to be added here is the word's position in this sūra.

The sūra had named the transgressors طَاغِين (78/22) — those who cross their limit. Those who guard themselves it names the protected.

The two words are exact opposites and the opposition stands in the logic of the roots:

The two groups are named not "believing/unbelieving" but "guarding their limit / crossing it". This is an instance in the text of the principle recorded in Method: the verses describe attributes.

Root: ف-و-ز. To be saved, to attain what one sought, to win. فَازَ — he was saved, he won. فَوْز — salvation.

Its use in the Qurʾān:

"Whoever is drawn away from the Fire and admitted to the Garden, he has triumphed." (Āl ʿImrān 3/185)

"That is the great triumph." (ٱلْفَوْزُ ٱلْعَظِيم — al-Tawba 9/72, 111; al-Ṣāffāt 37/60 and in many other places)

مَفَاز may be a verbal noun with mīm or a noun of place: triumph, or the place of triumph.

A note on the word's second sense. In Arabic مَفَازَة also means a desert — waterless, dangerous, hard country. The lexicographers explain this odd overlap in two ways:

1. Taking a good omen: the Arabs named the dangerous thing with a good name; hoping to be saved from the desert, they called it "the place of salvation". 2. The word comes from another root meaning "place of destruction" and the resemblance is coincidental.

I draw no meaning from this overlap; I only record it. The use in the verse is beyond dispute "triumph".

A structural observation. In the section on the transgressors Hell was named مَـَٔاب (a place of return). Here for those who guard themselves it says مَفَاز (triumph).

Maʾāb is a place; mafāz is an outcome. On the side of punishment, that is, the place arrived at is named; on the side of reward, the state arrived at.

I record this as an observation. And since the word maʾāb will be used on the believers' side too in the thirty-ninth verse, it must be added that this distinction is not a fixed rule.

Root: ح-د-ق. To encompass, to surround. حَدِيقَة — a garden with a wall round it; its plural is ḥadāʾiq.

From the same root comes حَدَقَة (ḥadaqa) — the pupil of the eye. The pupil too is what is encompassed: it is surrounded by the iris.

The lexicographers describe a ḥadīqa thus: not every garden is called a ḥadīqa; the name is given to a garden enclosed by a wall or a fence.

Now let us compare this word with the sixteenth verse:

Two gardens, named with two different words. The garden of this world is described by its density, the garden there by its enclosure.

I record this as my own reading. But the root senses of the two words are beyond dispute and the comparison can be made directly.

أَعْنَاب — vines. The plural of عِنَب. Grapes occur often in the Qurʾān's descriptions of the Garden, and are counted among the favours of this world as well: "From the fruits of the date palms and the vines…" (al-Naḥl 16/67).

The naming of the vine in particular has to do with the agriculture of the Arabian peninsula: dates and grapes are the two most valuable crops of that country.

This verse requires careful and measured handling.

كَوَاعِب — Root: ك-ع-ب. The concrete sense of the root is to rise, to protrude.

Its derivatives:

• كَعْب — the ankle bone, the protruding bone. It occurs in the Qurʾān in the verse on ablution: "your feet up to the ankles (ٱلْكَعْبَيْن)" (al-Māʾida 5/6).
• ٱلْكَعْبَة — the Kaʿba. It takes its name from its raised, cube-shaped structure.
• كَاعِب — a young girl whose breast has budded; the beginning of the passage out of childhood.

The word, that is, names a stage of life: the moment when youth begins.

أَتْرَاب — Root: ت-ر-ب. And the original sense of this root is تُرَاب — dust, earth.

تِرْب — of the same age, a coeval. Its plural is atrāb.

How is the connection made? The explanation the lexicographers give is this: children of the same age play together in the dust; or they touched the earth at the same time. The word names those who grew up together.

And here is one of the sūra's most striking repetitions of a word.

The last word of the sūra is تُرَابًا (78/40) — "dust". And the أَتْرَابًا of the thirty-third verse is from the same root.

The same root, in the two pans of the scale. On one side "those who grew up together in the dust", on the other "one who wishes to be dust".

I record this as an observation. The shared root is a verifiable datum of the language; I do not claim that there is a deliberate link between the two verses.

This verse is among the most disputed and most abused of the Qurʾān's descriptions of the Garden. Both false exaltation and false criticism are produced from it.

First let us see what the verse says. There are two words: kawāʿib (companions at the age of youth) and atrāb (coevals). The verse says nothing else.

The exegetes' readings:

The second view has a ground from the Qurʾān:

"Whenever they are given a fruit as provision they say, 'this is what we were provided with before'. And it is given to them in resemblance." (al-Baqara 2/25)

This verse says that the favours of the Garden are like those of this world but not the same. The descriptions, that is, are made with recognisable words, but their counterparts are not identical.

And there is a saying widely transmitted in the literature of reports: that in the Garden there are things "which no eye has seen, which no ear has heard, and which have never crossed the mind of any human being". This expression accords with the Qurʾān's verse at al-Sajda 32/17 as well: "No soul knows what comfort of the eyes has been hidden away for them, as a recompense for what they used to do."

I do not impose a preference between the two views. What has to be recorded is this: the Qurʾān itself says that its descriptions are not exact counterparts.

Three points must also be stated:

One. The Qurʾān's promise of the Garden does not belong to one sex. The Qurʾān says this plainly: "Whoever does righteous work, male or female, being a believer, We shall give him a good life" (al-Naḥl 16/97); "Whoever does an evil is recompensed only with its like; and whoever does righteous work, male or female, being a believer — those enter the Garden and are provided for in it without reckoning" (Ghāfir 40/40).

Two. This is one of the shortest strokes of the description in this sūra: one verse, two words. In the same section garden, vine, cup and speech are counted. To tear the verse out of the whole and place it in the foreground disturbs the sūra's own balance.

Three. The real weight in this section falls on the thirty-fifth verse, and what is given there is not material: the quality of the speech that is spoken. It will be seen below.

كَأْس — Root: ك-أ-س. A cup.

There is a fine point the lexicographers record: in Arabic kaʾs is used only when the vessel is full. An empty vessel is called a qadaḥ (قَدَح); for it to be a kaʾs there must be drink in it.

The word, that is, is the name of a vessel already full in itself. And to this the verse adds the adjective دِهَاق.

دِهَاق — Root: د-ه-ق. Three views are transmitted about the sense of the word:

The first is the most widespread. The second is meaningful too: the fullness is not momentary but continuous.

Joined with the fine point above, what emerges is this: the word itself conveys fullness, and its adjective conveys fullness. The expression, that is, carries a double fullness.

This is like the two-stage structure recorded for "carded wool" in the section on al-Qāriʿa: the word says one thing, the adjective takes it one stage further.

A note: the drink of the Garden. The Qurʾān states elsewhere how the drink there differs from that of this world: "There is no corruption in it, nor do they become intoxicated by it" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/47); "From it they get neither headache nor loss of reason" (al-Wāqiʿa 56/19).

And this sūra makes its own note in the next verse: what comes after the cup is the absence of idle speech. The sūra, that is, immediately after naming the drink, rules out that drink's effect in this world (a loosened tongue, foolish talk).

I record this as my own reading; it rests on the two verses' coming one after the other.