al-Muṭaffifīn 83:22-24

Inna'l-abrāra la-fī naʿīm • ʿAla'l-arāʾiki yanẓurūn • Taʿrifu fī wujūhihim naḍrata'n-naʿīm "The good are in bliss. On couches they look. You will know in their faces the freshness of bliss."

The sentence إِنَّ ٱلْأَبْرَارَ لَفِى نَعِيمٍ is word for word the same as al-Infiṭār 82/13.

This sentence was taken up in the section on al-Infiṭār: the exact symmetry of the two verses (82/13-14), the sense of "being inside" carried by the particle la-fī (established in the section on al-ʿAṣr), the nominal sentence's conveying of fixity.

This is the clearest evidence of the link between the two sūras. Two sūras standing side by side in the arrangement of the muṣḥaf carry the same sentence.

But there is a difference, and it is important:

In al-Infiṭār the sentence is laid down as a verdict and passed by. In al-Muṭaffifīn the same sentence becomes the heading of a description.

And this shows the difference between the two sūras: al-Infiṭār relates in nineteen verses the setting up of the reckoning; al-Muṭaffifīn sets up in thirty-six verses the scene of the reckoning.

Its singular: أَرِيكَة. Root: أ-ر-ك.

On the concrete sense of the word the lexicographers record this: an arīka is a couch with a canopy or an awning — with a curtain or covering drawn over it, set up inside a tent or a room. Not an ordinary bed or cushion, then, but a sheltered and ornamented seat.

(It is also recorded that the word has been connected with the أَرَاك tree — the tree from which tooth-sticks are made. I transmit this derivation as a possibility; it is not certain.)

In the Qurʾān the word occurs only in descriptions of the garden:

• "Reclining there upon couches." (al-Kahf 18/31)
• "They and their spouses, in shade, reclining upon couches." (Yā Sīn 36/56)
• "Reclining there upon couches; they see there neither scorching sun nor bitter cold." (al-Insān 76/13)

And there is a difference here that has to be dwelt on.

In all three verses above the verb used with the word is the same: مُتَّكِئِين — reclining, leaning.

In al-Muṭaffifīn 83/23 that verb is absent. In its place: يَنظُرُون — they look.

That is, the Qurʾān names the same object elsewhere together with reclining, and here together with looking.

This choice can be explained by the sūra as a whole, and I offer it as my own reading: in this sūra the matter is seeing. In the preceding group of verses the fujjār were veiled from their Lord (15). For the contrast here to be set up, a verb of gazing was needed in the description of the abrār. The sūra altered the usual description and put gazing in its place.

A contrast is also set up with the picture in verse 6: there people were standing; here the abrār are seated.

To stand is to wait; to sit is for the work to be finished.

Root: ن-ظ-ر. To look, to watch, to turn towards. Naẓar — a look. Manẓar — what is looked at. Intiẓār — to wait (to wait watching for something). Naẓīr — a match, an equal (two things that look at one another).

The object of the verb is not stated. The question "what do they look at?" is left unanswered.

This is a technique the Qurʾān uses often, and it was taken up several times in earlier sections: the object of iqraʾ in Sūrat al-ʿAlaq, the referent of anzalnāhu in Sūrat al-Qadr, the object of takāthur in al-Takāthur were all left unstated. In the section on al-Takāthur it was given a name: leaving indeterminate — leaving the scope open.

The views on the object:

I prefer the fourth view, and its ground is the text itself: the sentence occurs twice in the sūra (23 and 35) and its two contexts differ. In verse 23 the context is bliss, in verse 35 the reversal of the roles. That the same sentence should be used in two different contexts shows that the object is deliberately left open.

This is a preference, and it is not binding.

But this much can be said from the text with certainty: the verb has to do with seeing; and in verse 15 the same sūra said that for the other party seeing is blocked. The contrast between the two verses holds whatever the object may be.

Here a weave that explains the whole sūra has to be recorded.

Al-Muṭaffifīn is full of words having to do with the eye:

Seven separate places, seven separate roots, a single subject: who is looking at whom.

And the story the sūra tells can be read off this table:

In this world the criminals looked at the believers and made signs with eye and brow (30, 32), and counted themselves keepers over them (33). In the hereafter the turn to look changes: they are veiled from their Lord (15), while the believers sit on couches and look (35).

I offer this weave as my own reading; that the words are found in the sūra is a datum of the text, the sequence I set up among them is an interpretation. But the tightness of the weave is striking: the sūra says that mockery is a way of looking, and that its punishment too has to do with looking.

There is a sudden change of address in the verse: تَعْرِفُ — second person singular, active. "You will know, you will recognise."

An instance of the shift of address taken up in the section on al-Humaza: the narration is cut and the reader is drawn into the scene.

Its function here is particular: the verse places the reader in the position of a witness. It is not describing the scene; it is asking you to look at the scene. And what is described is a thing hard to describe — an expression on a face.

A variant reading. The word has been read in two ways:

Both readings are transmitted. Since I cannot give with certainty which reading belongs to which imam, I give no names.

The difference in sense is small but real: in the first reading there is someone looking; in the second the state is known of itself. The first reading accords better with the sūra's theme of the eye.

The root عَرَفَ is also worth recording: ع-ر-ف, to know — but a particular kind of knowing. Maʿrifa is to recognise again something seen before; this is what distinguishes it from ʿilm. From the same root ʿārif, and maʿrūf — the good that everyone knows, recognises, counts as ordinary.

That is, the verse does not say "you will understand" but "you will recognise". The expression on the face is not something that needs explaining; it is something known when it is seen.

Root: ن-ض-ر. Its concrete sense: freshness, brightness, vitality.

The word's proper field is the plant: naḍira'sh-shajaru — the tree freshened, greened, came alive. Naḍīr — fresh, green, bright. Nuḍār — pure gold (on account of its brightness).

That is, the word carries the look of a plant that has taken water onto a human face. Whatever the difference is between a dry leaf and a fresh one, that is it.

And this is the most concrete side of the verse: the inner state striking through to the outward look. In relating the state in the garden the sūra gives no name of an emotion — it does not say happiness, peace, joy. It says something seen in the face.

The uses in the Qurʾān:

• "On that day faces will be radiant; looking towards their Lord." (al-Qiyāma 75/22-23). وُجُوهٌ يَوْمَئِذٍ نَّاضِرَةٌ • إِلَىٰ رَبِّهَا نَاظِرَةٌ
• "And He gave them freshness and joy." (al-Insān 76/11). Wa laqqāhum naḍratan wa surūrā.

Al-Qiyāma 75/22-23 has to be dwelt on separately, because its overlap with al-Muṭaffifīn is striking.

Two roots, in two verses:

Both sūras use the same two roots one after the other; only the order is reversed.

And the two roots are very close in sound: the only difference between them is the letters ض and ظ. In Arabic these two letters are distinct sounds, but they are close to one another.

I record this as an observation and set up no claim. That the two roots are separate is certain; the nearness of their sounds and their occurring together in two sūras are data of the text. The warning made for falaq and falāḥ in the section on al-Falaq holds here too: nearness of sound is not unity of root.

But this can be said: the Qurʾān draws a link between "looking" and "shining." The face that looks shines. And for the one whose looking is blocked in verse 15 there is no brightness in question.

In verse 22, naʿīm; in verse 24, al-naʿīm. The same word two verses apart, once indefinite and once definite.

The indefinite states the kind and the greatness of the bliss: "such a bliss that". The definite returns to what was just named: "the freshness of that bliss."

This is an ordinary usage in Arabic: a thing is first named as indefinite, then repeated as definite.