وَمَآ أَدْرَىٰكَ مَا سِجِّينٌ • كِتَٰبٌ مَّرْقُومٌ
Wa mā adrāka mā sijjīn • Kitābun marqūm "And what will make you know what sijjīn is? A marked writing."
The mā adrāka pattern was taken up in the sections on al-Humaza, al-Qadr and al-Infiṭār, and the rule recorded there was this: when the pattern comes in the perfect an explanation follows it, when it comes in the imperfect it does not.
The question was about sijjīn: "what is sijjīn?" The answer, however, describes not sijjīn but the book: "a marked writing."
| View | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Sijjīn is the book itself | Then question and answer overlap: sijjīn is the name not of a place but of that book |
| The answer returns to the kitāb of verse 7 | Kitābun marqūm means "their book is a marked writing"; what sijjīn is is left unexplained |
| The answer describes what is inside sijjīn | Sijjīn is a place; what is in it is being told |
The second view is the one best suited to the wording of the text, and it yields an important result: the sūra asks the question, then leaves the question unanswered and says something else.
This is consonant with the finding recorded in the section on al-Humaza: the mā adrāka pattern declares, before giving the knowledge, that knowledge will not suffice. It was said there that "the sūra describes the thing after saying that the thing it describes cannot be described."
Here a further step is taken: it does not even describe it. The name of the place is given, the question about it is asked, and in place of an answer the character of the record is given.
And this will be repeated twice in the same sūra: in verse 19 the same question will be asked of ʿilliyyūn and the same answer given — kitābun marqūm. In both places the word is left unexplained.
The conclusion to be drawn from this is the following, and I offer it as my own reading: the sūra is saying that we do not need to know what the two places are. The knowledge that is needed is the character of the record. Not where it is kept, but how it is kept.
Root: ر-ق-م. And one has to be careful about the sense of this word, because there is a difference between its sense in modern Arabic and its classical sense.
- raqama'th-thawba — he embroidered the cloth, worked a pattern into it. Raqm — the lined pattern in a cloth.
- al-arqam — a kind of snake with speckles and stripes on it.
- raqama'l-kitāba — he pointed the writing, marked the letters, made it proof against confusion.
Its only other use in the Qurʾān: "Or did you suppose that the People of the Cave and of al-Raqīm were among Our wonders?" (al-Kahf 18/9). What al-Raqīm is is disputed; the most widespread view is that it is a tablet or inscription with writing incised on it.
A pattern worked into a cloth is not a dye smeared on the cloth; it has gone into the thread. Writing incised on a tablet is not written on it but cut into it. Marqūm is a record of that kind.
And a second layer of sense: pointed, marked, prevented from being confused. In Arabic script the dots were added later, and their purpose is to keep the letters from being confused with one another. A writing that is marqūm is a writing that leaves no hesitation in its reading.
This makes a link with the first three verses of the sūra. What the muṭaffif did was to use the measure in the field of hesitation: right beside the exact boundary, a difference too indeterminate to be objected to.
A record that is marqūm is exactly the opposite of this: a writing with no edge, that cannot be rounded, that admits of no interpretation.
I offer this reading as my own inference. The sense of the word is the lexicographers' datum; the contrast I set up with the first verses of the sūra is an interpretation.
The expected expression would have been al-kitābu'l-marqūm; in verse 7 kitāb had already occurred within a definite construct (kitāba'l-fujjār).
The indefiniteness can do two things here: magnification (tafkhīm — "such a writing that") or the stating of a kind ("something of the marked-writing sort"). Both are mentioned in the classical sources.