وَٱلسَّمَآءِ وَٱلطَّارِقِ
The وَ at the head is the particle of oath; its function was treated in the section on Sūrat al-ʿAṣr, and it was recorded in al-Shams that it is there extended into a long sequence. I do not repeat it here. Briefly: an oath does not give information, it reinforces; and between what is sworn by and what is said a relation of proof is most often set up.
In this verse two things are sworn by, and the two are joined by the same wāw: the sky and the ṭāriq. The second wāw is the wāw of conjunction, not a second oath. That is, the oath is sworn by a single scene: the sky, and what appears in that sky.
The order too is worth noting: first the vessel, then what is inside it. The sky is already there, continuous and fixed; the ṭāriq, by contrast, comes. The verse states what is fixed and then places within it what moves.
- مِطْرَقَة (miṭraqa) — hammer. The tool for striking. In Arabic today too this is the name of the hammer.
- طَرَقَ ٱلْحَدِيدَ — he beat the iron. The blacksmith's work.
- طَرَقَ ٱلْبَابَ — he knocked at the door. In Arabic, to knock at a door is to strike the door.
- طَرِيق (ṭarīq) — road. The track that feet open by beating and treading on it over and over.
- طَارِق (ṭāriq) — the one who comes by night. We shall open this up below.
How the word reached the sense "the one who comes by night" comes from a concrete fact of Arab life.
A guest who comes by day finds the door, is seen, calls out. One who comes by night cannot: the doors are shut, the houses are dark, the household has gone to bed. Therefore the one who comes by night has to knock. This is why in Arabic the traveller who arrives at night was called ṭāriq; the word itself does not state a time, it states a behaviour — and because that behaviour belongs to the night, the word has taken the time on as well.
The classical lexicons and works of exegesis agree at this point: the verb ṭarq is used of the night; one who comes by day is not called ṭāriq. The word is the name of the one who is obliged to announce his arrival.
From this comes the first image of the sūra: in the middle of the night, someone striking a closed door. The sleeping house is being woken.
In the section on Sūrat al-Qāriʿa we treated the root ق-ر-ع, and what was recorded there was this: the original sense of the root is to strike with something hard; qaraʿa'l-bāba means he knocked at the door; miqraʿa is a rod, qāriʿatu'l-ṭarīq the trodden middle of the road.
| ق-ر-ع (al-qāriʿa) | ط-ر-ق (al-ṭāriq) | |
|---|---|---|
| Original sense | To strike with something hard | To strike with something hard, to beat |
| Door | qaraʿa'l-bāb — he knocked at the door | ṭaraqa'l-bāb — he knocked at the door |
| Tool | miqraʿa — a rod | miṭraqa — a hammer |
| Road | qāriʿatu'l-ṭarīq — the trodden part of the road | ṭarīq — the road opened by being trodden |
| Its use in the Qurʾān | A name of the resurrection | The name of the one who comes by night |
| Its emphasis | The blow itself | The comer who is obliged to strike |
The first and third letters of the two roots are different, and these are separate roots; I set up no relation of derivation between them. But that their fields of meaning should overlap this far shows where Arabic produces its notion of "road" from: a road is what comes into being by being struck over and over. Both roots set out from the same place and arrive at the same place.
Their difference, in turn, settles the difference between the two sūras. Al-Qāriʿa is an active participle and names the blow itself: not the one who comes, but the impact of the coming. This is why in Sūrat al-Qāriʿa the word is repeated three times as the name of the sūra and then never occurs again — the blow falls once and is done.
Al-Ṭāriq, by contrast, names not the one who strikes but the person who comes by striking. To knock at a door is not a destruction; it is a notification. Al-Qāriʿa breaks the door; al-ṭāriq knocks at it. This is why Sūrat al-Qāriʿa is a sūra of the resurrection, while Sūrat al-Ṭāriq is a sūra of waking.
In the section on al-Fātiḥa the road-words of Arabic were distinguished: sabīl a particular route of going, ṭarīq a path and a track that is followed, ṣirāṭ a broad and busy highway. It was also recorded there that the origin of the word ṣirāṭ is disputed, and that some lexicographers attach it to a foreign word meaning "a paved road". And in the discussion of ʿibāda the expression ṭarīq muʿabbad occurred: a road levelled by much walking, its roughness worn away.
- ṣirāṭ — that which has been paved. What makes the road is a hand from outside.
- ṭarīq — that which has been beaten. What makes the road is the feet of those who pass over it.
- qāriʿatu'l-ṭarīq — the struck part of the road. The same idea, with a second root.
So Arabic names the road by two different routes: either someone has paved it, or those who walk have opened it by wearing it away. What is asked for in al-Fātiḥa is the ṣirāṭ — paved, prepared, open to everyone. Not the ṭarīq that a man opens with his own feet.
I record this link as an inference; the root senses of the words are given in the lexicons in this form, but it is I who set up the contrast between them. It is not a binding reading.
The first verse says the word but does not define it. The definition will come two verses later. This delay is itself a technique, and it will be taken up in the next verse.