al-Aʿlā 87:14

Qad aflaḥa man tazakkā "He who purified himself has attained deliverance."

The sūra comes out of the darkness here. And as it comes out it uses one of the Qurʾān's most familiar patterns.

قَدْ, when it comes with a perfect verb, states taḥqīq (certainty). This was recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Shams.

And the pattern itself is repeated in the Qurʾān:

• "He who purified his soul has attained deliverance" (al-Shams 91/9)
• "The believers have truly attained deliverance" (al-Muʾminūn 23/1)
• "He who purified himself has attained deliverance" (al-Aʿlā 87/14)

Root: ف-ل-ح. This root was treated at al-Baqara 2/5 in connection with al-mufliḥūn, taken up again at al-Shams 91/9, and in the section on al-Falaq it was recorded that it must not be confused with ف-ل-ق.

The image set up in al-Baqara was this: the root means to split, to cleave; fallāḥ — the farmer takes this name because he splits the soil; falāḥ — to split an obstacle and come out, to break the husk, to come into a state of bearing fruit. And this had been added: "The seed is buried under the soil, stays in darkness, looks as though it is rotting. Its deliverance is its splitting the layer above it and coming to the surface."

In al-Shams this image had been completed with the verb دَسَّى (to bury).

In al-Aʿlā the image is completed a third time — and this time within the sūra itself.

Recall the fourth and fifth verses of the sūra: a plant was brought out and turned into scum. Now the fourteenth verse states deliverance with a verb whose sense is "splitting and coming out".

Two agricultural images, in the same sūra, with opposite results. One at the beginning of the sūra, one at the end.

I record this as my own reading. The root senses of the words were given above and in the earlier sections; it is I who set these two images side by side. It is not binding.

Root: ز-ك-و. This root was taken up at al-Shams 91/9 and occurred once more at al-Layl 92/18. What was recorded in the two sections:

Beneath the root there are two senses at once, and the two are inseparable: cleanness/purification and growth/increase/blessing. The dictionaries do not divide these into separate entries. Zakāt comes from the same root and shows how the two senses of the word join: wealth, when a portion of it is taken out, is cleansed and increases.

In the section on al-Shams this tension was also taken up: elsewhere the Qurʾān appears to forbid purifying the soul ("So do not claim purity for yourselves" — al-Najm 53/32). The solution lies in the verb's describing two different works: actually purifying is praised, claiming purity (making a claim to cleanness) is forbidden. And in that table al-Aʿlā 87/14 stood in the first column.

Now we can put the three verses together. The same root, in three different patterns and with three different works:

The three verses answer three separate questions: What is he to purify? (al-Shams: his soul.) How is he to purify it? (al-Layl: by giving his wealth.) What happened? (al-Aʿlā: he was purified.)

In the section on al-Layl this was recorded: "al-Shams's zakkāhā becomes yuʾtī mālahu yatazakkā in al-Layl. The Qurʾān makes its own abstract concept concrete in the next sūra."

al-Aʿlā takes the third step: it gives the verb as completed, without object and without means. The not stating of the object and the means does the same work as the principle recorded at al-Ḍuḥā 93/5: what is named is limited.

Different views are transmitted in the classical commentaries about the content of the word in this verse:

The difficulty the fourth view carries must be stated plainly; it is transmitted in the sources from the early period but it harbours a historical problem. I am also cautious about ascribing this view to particular persons; there are differences among the reports, and I give no name.

I do not impose a preference. But the word's coming absolute shows that the first view covers the others: purification is a genus, the alms are a species of it.