al-Muṭaffifīn 83:1

Waylun li'l-muṭaffifīn "Woe to those who give a little short in measure and in weight!"

The analysis of the word was made in the sections on al-Māʿūn and al-Humaza. In brief: the root is و-ي-ل; it is a word conveying destruction, torment, violent ruin; rendering it "alas" is too weak, because wayl conveys not pity but a verdict. Its opposite is ṭūbā. The widespread saying that it is a valley in Hell was met with caution, because the soundness of the report it rests on is disputed.

An observation was also recorded there, and it is exactly confirmed here:

"If you see wayl at the head of a verse, what stands before you is most often either denial or the diminishing of another's right."

When that observation was made in the section on al-Māʿūn, this very verse was given as the example. Now it is in its own place: wayl, to those who shave off the measure.

And the grammatical point was given there too: waylun is indefinite, it is the subject at the head of the sentence, and the reason a sentence is permitted to begin with an indefinite is that the sentence carries the sense of a prayer or an imprecation. The indefiniteness is for magnification (tafkhīm): "a wayl beyond describing."

The only thing to be added here is that wayl occurs twice in this sūra: in verse 1 for the muṭaffifīn, in verse 10 for the mukadhdhibīn (the deniers). The sūra gives the same verdict to two separate groups, and in verse 12 it will say that the two are the same people.

Root: ط-ف-ف. And the concrete sense of this root carries the whole sūra.

الطَّفّ (ṭaff) — the edge of a thing, its brink, its boundary. The edge of a valley, the bank of a river, is called ṭaff.

طُفَافَة / طَفَف — the empty space left at the rim of a vessel not filled to the brim; or, conversely, the small quantity that spills over the rim. Ināʾun ṭaffān — a vessel not filled to the top.

الطَّفِيف — a small, trivial quantity, not worth registering.

أَطَفَّ / طَفَّ — it drew near, it came to the edge.

The idea at the centre of the word is this: the immediate neighbourhood of a thing's exact boundary. Not quite full, not quite empty either — that small difference left at the edge.

And تَطْفِيف (taṭfīf) is the turning of that difference to one's own advantage.

Muṭaffif is the active participle of the تفعيل (tafʿīl) form: ṭaffafa → muṭaffif.

This form is doing two jobs here:

One — deriving a verb from a noun. Ṭaffafa means "to do the work of ṭafīf (a small quantity)". The pattern produces a verb from a noun. This is common in Arabic: khayyama (he pitched a tent, from khayma), qawwasa (he made a bow, from qaws).

Two — intensification. As was recorded in the sections on al-Humaza and al-Infiṭār, the tafʿīl form conveys the repetition and the intensity of the verb.

The two together give the full sense of the word: one who does the diminishing by a little, over and over.

This is the force of the first sentence of the sūra. A muṭaffif is not a person who cheats once. He is a person who has made a trade of shaving off the edge of the measure. What was recorded in the section on al-Humaza for the fuʿala pattern holds here too: the pattern conveys that the behaviour has settled into the character.

Now we come to the sūra's real idea, and it has to be built step by step.

First step: the word carries the size of the crime inside itself.

There were words the Qurʾān could have used in naming these people, and all of them would have been heavier: sāriq (thief), khāʾin (traitor), ẓālim, ākil amwāli'n-nās (one who devours people's property). All of these are used in the Qurʾān.

The verse chooses none of them. It chooses a word that puts the smallness of the amount inside the name.

That is, the verse is not claiming that the crime is large. It grants that the crime is small, and says wayl all the same.

Second step: the smallness does not lighten the crime; it makes the crime possible.

To take half a kilo out of a kilo of flour is impossible — it is noticed. To take twenty grams is possible, because it is not noticed.

Taṭfīf, then, works below the threshold of notice of the measure. That is the technical condition of the crime. The smallness of the amount is not a mitigating circumstance; it is the condition of the act's existing at all.

This produces a logic different from ordinary theft:

Third step: the victim of a crime that is not noticed cannot object.

This is a silent side of the sūra. The person shaved off the measure does not know he has been shaved. If he knew he would object, would go to law, would break off the trade. Because he does not know, the relationship continues — and as long as it continues, the shaving continues too.

Taṭfīf, then, is a wrong sustained with the victim's consent; but that consent rests on ignorance.

In the section on al-Māʿūn the reason for the choosing of the orphan was taken up: the orphan was the person with no one behind him to call to account. Here the property of the chosen victim is different but the result is the same: a person who does not know what is being done to him cannot call anyone to account.

And the two sūras arrive at the same conclusion: in such a case the only thing that holds a person back is a belief in an unseen reckoning. The sūra will say this plainly in the fourth and fifth verses.

Fourth step: this is why the wayl is not disproportionate.

The punishment is not set as the price of a single transaction. It is set as the price of a way of living. The tafʿīl pattern of the word had already said as much: a behaviour that repeats, that has become a habit.

And there is something deeper: taṭfīf requires a person to deceive himself. The one who takes twenty grams must be able to form the sentence "I am not a thief." And to form it he must break the link between the amount and the act: the name of the act must change with the amount.

The sūra refuses exactly this breaking. It puts the amount inside the name — muṭaffif, one who diminishes by a little — and then issues the heaviest verdict. That is: the amount does not change the name of the act.

The Qurʾān takes up the matter of measure in several places, and in all of them the same two words recur: kayl (measure of volume) and wazn (measure of weight).

The story of Shuʿayb. One community in the Qurʾān is named as a people destroyed directly on account of cheating in the measure: the people of Midian. What Shuʿayb said to them is related in three separate sūras:

• "Give full measure, and be not of those who cause loss. And weigh with a true balance. And do not give people their things short, and do not go about the earth spreading corruption." (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/181-183)
• "Do not give short in measure and weight. I see you in prosperity, and I fear for you the punishment of an encompassing day." (Hūd 11/84)
• "Give full measure and weight in justice; and do not give people their things short." (al-Aʿrāf 7/85)

The detail in Hūd 11/84 is worth dwelling on: "I see you in prosperity." That is, those who shaved off the measure were not poor. They were not doing it out of need. This accords with the sūra's diagnosis — the matter is not livelihood but habit.

The verb that occurs in al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/183 and Hūd 11/85 is a separate word: بخس — lā tabkhasū. Root ب-خ-س: to take a thing by lowering its value, to give someone less than his due. Its best-known use in the Qurʾān is in the story of Joseph (Yūsuf): "And they sold him for a paltry price, a few counted dirhams." (Yūsuf 12/20). Thamanin bakhsin — a price driven down.

The difference between bakhs and taṭfīf is this: bakhs is a diminishing made in the price, taṭfīf one made in the amount. Both arrive at the same place, but they enter from different sides.

The balance in Sūrat al-Raḥmān. This is where the Qurʾān attaches the matter of measure to the highest point:

"And the heaven He raised, and He set down the balance. So do not overreach in the balance. And establish the weighing in justice, and do not give the balance short." (al-Raḥmān 55/7-9)

These three verses are the background of Sūrat al-Muṭaffifīn, and they need to be dwelt on.

The verses name the balance in the same sentence as the raising of the heaven. That is, the mīzān is set down not as an instrument of trade but as a part of the order of the cosmos. And the cheating done in the balance is named ṭughyān (overreaching) — the word the Qurʾān uses of Pharaoh, of Thamūd, of insolence.

And the verb in the last verse: لَا تُخْسِرُوا — the same root, the same form, as yukhsirūn in al-Muṭaffifīn 83/3.

This root was taken up in the section on al-ʿAṣr, and there these two verses exactly — al-Muṭaffifīn 83/3 and al-Raḥmān 55/9 — were shown as evidence for how settled the root is in the commercial and the balance field.

The commands in al-Isrāʾ and al-Anʿām:

• "And give full measure when you measure, and weigh with a straight balance. That is better and fairer in outcome." (al-Isrāʾ 17/35)
• "And give full measure and weight in justice. We do not burden any soul beyond its capacity." (al-Anʿām 6/152)

The clause at the end of al-Anʿām 6/152 is important: "We do not burden any soul beyond its capacity." That is, absolute flawlessness in the balance is not demanded; what a person is capable of is demanded. This clause makes the sūra's target clear: the target is not error in measuring but deliberate diminishing.

A fraction left over on a scale, the limited sensitivity of an instrument, a rounding made in a calculation — these are not taṭfīf. Taṭfīf is the choosing of which side the difference falls on. This distinction will be set up plainly in verses 2 and 3.

To understand the weight of this verse, one has to know how buying and selling worked in that period.

In seventh-century Arabia there was no standard system of measures and no institution to supervise one. Measures were produced locally; each merchant had his own vessel, his own balance, his own weights. The measure of one city might not be the same as that of another.

The consequence is this: the buyer had to trust the seller's measure. There was no independent reference to check against. Trade rested not on the measure but on the trust felt towards the person measuring.

For this reason cheating in the measure is not a technical offence but a violation of a relationship of trust. And this is one of the reasons why Islamic law in the following centuries developed the institution of ḥisba — the supervision of the market; but the history of that institution is not the subject of this section.

One further point: Mecca was a trading city, and as was treated in the section on Quraysh its economy rested on the caravan trade. For trade to work, the parties had to trust one another, because a caravan journey lasted for months and the goods changed hands many times over. To shave off the measure is to shave from inside that web of trust.

That the first sentence of the sūra should have come down in a trading city is meaningful for this reason: the text takes up the instrument that city knows best and turns it into a measure of morals.