al-Inshiqāq 84:7-9

Fa-ammā man ūtiya kitābahū bi-yamīnih · Fa-sawfa yuḥāsabu ḥisāban yasīrā · Wa yanqalibu ilā ahlihī masrūrā "As for him who is given his book in his right hand, he will be called to a light reckoning and will return to his people rejoicing."

This construction was treated in the section on al-Qāriʿa: ammā is the particle of tafṣīl, used in breaking a whole into its parts; a fāʾ is obligatory in its answer; the division is absolute and leaves no third category.

In al-Qāriʿa the division was made by way of the scale: whose weights come out heavy / light. Here the division is made by way of the manner in which the book is given. The same structure, a different criterion.

The verb is passive: ūtiya. Who gave it is not said.

This is the continuation of the mood the sūra has used from the beginning: ḥuqqat, muddat, ūtiya. The only thing in the sūra that man does with his own hand is kadḥ; everything else is done to him.

The verb is moreover of the إِيتَاء (ītāʾ) form — the fine difference between it and aʿṭā (to give) is debated by the lexicographers; ītāʾ is said to be more formal, to convey the handing over of a right or a share. I do not present this as a settled distinction.

The pronoun returns to the person: his book. That is, what is here is not a general ledger but a record belonging to the person.

The Qurʾān describes this record elsewhere:

"And every man's deed We have fastened to his neck. On the Day of Resurrection We shall bring out for him a book that he will find spread open. 'Read your book! This day your own self suffices as a reckoner against you.'" (al-Isrāʾ 17/13-14)

This verse completes the reckoning-scene of al-Inshiqāq: the one who reads the book is the person himself.

Root: ي-م-ن. The right side. From the same root come yumn (blessing, good fortune) and maymana (the right side; treated in the section on al-Balad).

In Arabic — and in a great many languages — the right side carries a positive association and the left a negative one. The Qurʾān uses this settled association but also loads a ruling upon it: aṣḥāb al-yamīn / aṣḥāb al-shimāl (al-Wāqiʿa 56/27, 41).

The particle بِ here conveys ilṣāq (attachment): the book is given into the right hand, it is held by the right hand.

يَسِير — Root: ي-س-ر. To be easy, to become easy. From the same root come yusr (ease — the ʿusr / yusr opposition at al-Inshirāḥ 94/5-6), taysīr (making easy), maysara (breadth, means).

What does "a light reckoning" mean? The Qurʾān does not explain it, but in the hadith sources an explanation is transmitted, and it is on this verse.

According to a report found in al-Bukhārī and Muslim the Prophet said "Whoever is called to reckoning is punished"; when ʿĀʾisha asked, "Does God not say 'he will be called to a light reckoning'?", he said, "That is the presentation; whoever is picked over in the reckoning is destroyed."

The distinction the report sets up is this: ʿarḍ (a person's deeds being shown to him) is different from munāqasha (every item being disputed one by one). A light reckoning is the records being shown and passed over.

I do not present this report as the only explanation of the verse; but it is the earliest explanation closing a gap in the verse's language — the question of what "light" is light in relation to.

A note on the language: ḥisāban yasīrā is again an absolute object (yuḥāsabu … ḥisāban), like kadḥan in the sixth verse. The sūra uses the same structure twice: once for man's toiling, once for man's reckoning. The toiling is complete, and so is the reckoning.

Root: ق-ل-ب. To turn a thing over, to turn it upside down. And from the same root قَلْب (qalb) — the heart. The lexicographers' explanation: the heart takes this name because it is the thing that turns most from state to state.

اِنْقَلَبَ (Form VII) — he turned, he turned back, he was turned. The Qurʾān uses this verb both for "to turn back" (Āl ʿImrān 3/144 inqalabtum ʿalā aʿqābikum — to turn back on your heels) and for "to come to an outcome" (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/227 munqalabin yanqalibūn).

In the use here there is a picture: the person is turning from one place to another. From the place of reckoning to his people. That is, the reckoning is a stopping-place, the arrival is somewhere else.

Root: أ-ه-ل. This root was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Bayyina. The observation recorded there was this: at the centre of the root are belonging and familiarity; ahl is a person's household; an ahlī animal is an animal grown used to living with man; taʾahhul is to marry; ahliyya is to be the man for a task. And the expression "the People of the Book" therefore says more than "those who have a book": the household of the Book.

The analysis of this root was made there and I do not repeat it; what belongs to this place is to whom the word belongs in this verse.

Who are "his people"? The explanations the exegetes give:

The distinction makes no practical difference. What matters is that there is a place to return to.

And the choice of word here is striking. The verse does not say "he enters the Garden"; it says "he returns to his people". The reward is given not as a place but as a belonging. The idea of "the place one is familiar with" in the root of the word is working exactly here: the person is not going somewhere strange, he is returning to his own home.

Root: س-ر-ر. And this root has two branches, both of them striking:

• سُرُور (surūr) — joy, an inward ease.
• سِرّ (sirr) — what is hidden, what is kept within.
• سَرِير (sarīr) — a throne, a couch. It occurs often in the Qurʾān's descriptions of the Garden (in the plural surur: al-Wāqiʿa 56/15, al-Ghāshiya 88/13).

The explanation the lexicographers transmit: surūr is the heart's expanding secretly within itself. Joy, that is, is kin to the "hiddenness" branch of the root — it is what is inside before it shows outside. I transmit this explanation; I pass no definite judgement on the historical development of the root.

The word is a passive participle: masrūr — "made to rejoice". Not sārr (rejoicing). That is, the joy is not a state the person produces himself but something done to him.

Keep this detail in mind. The same word will come once more in the thirteenth verse — and this time in a wholly different place.