قُتِلَ ٱلْإِنسَٰنُ مَآ أَكْفَرَهُۥ
How this pattern works was treated in the section on Tabbat 111/1; I do not repeat it here. The finding there was this: in form an imprecation, in content a verdict. The sentence looks as though it frames a wish, but in fact it states something that has happened.
The word itself. Qutila — the passive of qatala: "he was killed". In Arabic this is a settled pattern of imprecation, answering to English expressions such as "damn him" or "may he drop dead". The lexicographers' explanation is this: since death is the last thing that can befall a man, it has been used as the furthest point of imprecation.
In all three places the same pattern, and in all three an extremely heavy accusation. Here the one addressed is not a group; it is al-insān — man as a species.
Why is this so harsh? The context gives the answer. The four preceding verses related from what heights the text comes: honoured pages, raised high, purified, noble bearers. And now it turns to the one that text is addressed to. What creates the harshness is distance: the distance between the array above and the response below.
The definite article denotes the class: not a particular person but man as a species. Here the sūra comes out of the single incident of the first ten verses and passes over to the general.
And this transition needs to be seen: the criticism is over. The one addressed has changed. In the rest of the sūra that incident will not be returned to. This is the last step of the architecture of courtesy recorded in the first section — the one addressed is released.
| Reading | How it is understood | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| The pattern of wonder (taʿajjub) | The mā afʿalahu pattern: "how ungrateful he is!" In Arabic wonder is framed with this pattern (mā aḥsanahu — how beautiful he is!) | The view of the majority. The pattern is directly this one |
| A question (istifhām) | "What made him a denier?" — what cause brought him to this state | Possible; there is a harmony of sound with the question min ayyi shayʾin khalaqah that follows |
| Negation (nafy) | Mā as the particle of negation: "it did not make him a denier" | Weak; it does not agree with the context and it strains the pattern |
The first reading is the strongest. But the second has a beauty of its own: read as a question, it forms a series of questions with the "out of what did He create him?" that comes immediately after, and an answer is given: out of a drop. That is, the cause of the ingratitude is asked for, and the material man came out of is shown as the answer.
Root: ك-ف-ر. This root was treated in the section on al-Kāfirūn 109; I do not repeat it here. In summary: the concrete sense of the root is to cover, to close over. Kufrān al-niʿma — to cover over the favour that has been given.
The pattern here is Form IV (afʿala), and read as the pattern of wonder it means "how much he covers".
And in the weave of the sūra this root stands at the two ends: mā akfarah in the seventeenth verse, al-kafaratu in the forty-second. The twenty-four verses that pass in between lay out for man an inventory of the things he covers over: his creation, his measure, his path, his death, his grave, his resurrection, his water, his soil, his grain, his grapes, his olive, his dates.
So the sūra opens an accusation, sets out the evidence, then delivers the verdict. The seventeenth verse is the indictment, 18-32 the evidence, the forty-second verse the decision. I shall gather this structure together again under the sūra as a whole.