ʿAbasa 80:3-4

Wa mā yudrīka laʿallahu yazzakkā ۝ Aw yadhdhakkaru fa-tanfaʿahu'dh-dhikrā "What do you know — perhaps he will purify himself; or he will take the reminder, and the reminder will profit him."

The whole force of this verse lies in its answer not being given.

In the section on al-Humaza the difference between two patterns in the Qurʾān was treated, and it comes before us here:

• مَآ أَدْرَىٰكَ (mā adrāka — "what has made you know") — an explanation follows it. "And what has made you know what the Night of Decree is?" and a three-verse answer.
• مَا يُدْرِيكَ (mā yudrīka — "what makes you know") — an explanation does not follow it. "What makes you know, perhaps the Hour is near" (al-Shūrā 42/17).

ʿAbasa 80/3 is the second. And this choice is not chance; it is the sūra's argument itself.

Because the answer to the question cannot be given. The question is: how do you know whether this man will purify himself or not? The answer: you cannot know. No one can know. This knowledge is not knowledge that lies in human hands.

And precisely for this reason the ranking in the gathering collapses. The Prophet had made a reasonable calculation: if the leading men are won, much will change; this man is a Muslim already, he can wait. The hidden assumption of the calculation was this: we can predict who will bring what.

The verse takes aim at exactly this assumption. You cannot predict. And if you cannot predict, your ranking, which rests on prediction, is invalid.

The tense says this too. yudrī is imperfect (muḍāriʿ): "it does not make known, it cannot make known". Not a thing that went unknown in the past; a thing that cannot be known.

Root: د-ر-ي. The lexicographers make a distinction between dirāya and ʿilm: dirāya is knowledge arrived at by setting out from marks, traces and signs — a kind of inference. ʿilm is more general.

The verse's choice of this root is meaningful: the person addressed had drawn a judgement from signs visible from outside. The man's clothing, his standing, the number of men behind him, his contribution to the gathering. These are real signs; they can be read. The verse says that the signs are not enough — dirāya has a limit.

Its original form is yatazakkā; by the assimilation (idghām) of the tāʾ into the zāy it has become yazzakkā. Form V: to do a thing of oneself, by one's own effort.

Root: ز-ك-و. This root was treated in detail at al-Shams 91/9 (qad aflaḥa man zakkāhā); the finding there holds here too, I do not repeat it here. In summary: two senses stand together beneath the root — purification and growth. tazkiya is to make grow by taking away.

The real point here is this: Sūrat al-Shams had described deliverance with exactly this word. "He who purified it has prospered." And now ʿAbasa says of the man who came to the door: perhaps he will purify himself.

So the man who came, came in pursuit of the very thing al-Shams described as deliverance. Those in the gathering, on the other hand — as will be seen in the next verse — counted themselves self-sufficient; the state that al-Layl 92/8 binds to miserliness and to denial.

The two men of the two sūras stand in the same room in this sūra. This is a real link established between sūras; it is not forced — it arises from the repetition of the same words in the same positions.

And this fine point: the word laʿalla (perhaps) states a possibility, not a certainty. The verse does not say "he will purify himself"; it says "perhaps he will purify himself". So the verse does not claim either that the blind man will certainly gain. What is claimed is the unknowability of the outcome. And unknowability is enough to make the ranking invalid.

If this distinction is missed the sūra is read wrongly. The sūra does not say "prefer the poor man, leave the rich one" — that would be a repetition of the same mistake in the opposite direction. The sūra says not to appraise anyone in advance.

Root: ذ-ك-ر. To remember, to mention, to call to mind. dhikr — mention, reminder; one of the Qurʾān's own names. dhikrā — a reminding, a lesson. tadhkira — a thing that reminds.

This root is the sūra's second backbone. It occurs four times between verses 4 and 12: yadhdhakkaru, al-dhikrā, tadhkira, dhakara-hu. At the centre of the sūra stands a verb of reminding.

A note on the concrete sense of the root: some of the lexicographers establish a link between ذَكَر (male) and ذِكْر (mention), and also with uses carrying the sense of "sharpness" (sayfun dhakar — a sharp sword). This derivation is disputed; I transmit it with a note of caution.

The difference between "he will take the reminder" and "he will purify himself." The two verbs come one after the other, and they are not the same thing:

The verse states the high one first, then lowers the threshold with aw (or): even if there is no full transformation, there may be a remembering. And that remembering may profit.

This is the same technique as Sūrat al-Māʿūn's — lowering the threshold step by step. There not even "feeding" was asked for, but "urging". Here "purifying oneself" is not laid down as a condition; even "remembering" is counted as enough. And even after the return the man who came might bring has been reduced to a possibility this small, the preference still comes out on his side.

A grammatical nicety: فَتَنفَعَهُ. The verb is read in the subjunctive (manṣūb). The reason is that the fāʾ at its head is causal (sababiyya): it states a result depending on the hope built with laʿalla. That is, "he remembers and thereby profits". The fāʾ does not simply put the two verbs in sequence; it makes the second the product of the first.

النَّفْع — profit. Root n-f-ʿ. The verse's ascribing the profit to the blind man is itself a displacement. The calculation in the gathering was the calculation "who brings us profit". The verse turns the verb round: "it profits him". The measure ceases to be the gain of the cause and becomes the man's own gain.

This is the sūra's quietest but most radical intervention: a human being is counted not as a means but as a gain in himself.