88. Sūrat al-Ghāshiya

Twenty-six verses. Meccan. It takes its name from the word الغاشية in the first verse.

The sūra opens with a question — but with a question that expects no answer and asks for attention. Then two groups of faces are described: one collapsed, one softened. Then the gaze is suddenly turned upward and four things are asked to be looked at: the camel, the sky, the mountain, the earth. At the very end the limit of his task is announced to the Prophet, and in the last two verses the one who speaks takes the burden upon himself.

The sūra's real matter may not be visible at a first reading. What is visible is a two-group depiction of the hereafter; there are many like it in the Qurʾān. What sets al-Ghāshiya apart is the words it chooses in describing the people of the fire: a group that works, grows weary, eats, drinks is being recounted. That is, not idle but industrious. Not starving but eating. Not thirsty but given drink.

But none of it yields anything.

This is the sūra's central idea, and I say it from the outset as my own reading: al-Ghāshiya is a sūra that measures not the existence of an act but its destination. There is work, there is no gain. There is eating, there is no nourishment. I shall come back to it in a separate section.

There is a striking proportion: the tableau of hell runs to six verses, the tableau of the garden to nine. In the short Meccan sūras of the Qurʾān the opposite is mostly seen; the depiction of punishment is longer. Here the scale tips to the other side. I record this as an observation.

There is something close to unanimity that the sūra is Meccan, and the content supports it: short and dense verse-endings, a construction centred on the hereafter, proof by way of nature, and — most decisive of all — the description of the task in the last section. The sentence "You are not one who rules them by force" is the sentence of a period in which there was as yet no power of enforcement at all, in which the call proceeded by word.

I do not transmit any particular report of an occasion of revelation. For this sūra I have no information I am sure of that a definite attribution to an event is found in the sources; and to suppose a cause that does not exist narrows the text. The content of the sūra is general in any case: no person, no event, no name is mentioned.

There is a widespread practice of reciting the sūra in the festival and Friday prayers, and it is said in the tradition that this rests on a sunna. Since I cannot give the source definitely I make no attribution; I confine myself to recording that the practice exists.

The basmala was treated in earlier sections and is not taken up again here; the verse numbers have been counted without the basmala.

Hal atāka ḥadīthu'l-ghāshiya "Has the account of the one that envelops all reached you?"

The sentence is in interrogative form but is not asking for information. In Arabic the interrogative pattern has functions other than asking for information: to warn, to draw attention, to make something be accepted, to convey astonishment. Here the function is a call to attention and a formula of opening.

The occurrences of the pattern in the Qurʾān show this:

• "Has the account of Abraham's honoured guests reached you?" (al-Dhāriyāt 51/24)
• "Has the account of Moses reached you?" (Ṭāhā 20/9; al-Nāziʿāt 79/15)
• "Has the account of the disputants reached you?" (Ṣād 38/21)
• "Has there not passed over the human being a long stretch of time in which he was nothing worth mentioning?" (al-Insān 76/1)

In all these occurrences a narrative begins after the pattern. That is, the question is not a question whose answer is awaited; it is a sentence that draws back the curtain. Its nearest English counterpart is the expression "have you heard about…?" — the speaker knows that the other has not heard, and is ready to tell.

Root: أ-ت-ي. To come, to arrive, to reach.

There is a detail in the choice of word that is easily missed. The verse does not say "do you know this account?"; it says "has this account come to you?" The subject is the account, not the one addressed. The one addressed is not going anywhere, not seeking anything; something is coming towards him.

This accords with revelation's own description of itself: knowledge is constructed as something delivered, not something obtained. In the discussion of al-Humaza, in treating the pattern mā adrāka, we saw the same structure: "had you known, you would have known it from one who made it known."

Root: ح-د-ث. The root's original sense is to be new, to come about afterwards. Ḥadīth as an adjective means "new"; muḥdath is what has been brought into being afterwards. From here it passed to the sense of "speech, report, narrative" — because a report is the transmitting of what is new.

The nicety of the word in this context lies here: what is to be recounted is a day that has not yet happened. That the resurrection should be spoken of as "what is new" sets up an accord between the root sense of the word and the subject itself. I write this as an inference, not as a classical transmitted report.

And there is this too: ḥadīth is not a weighty word like "book" or "revelation". It is an everyday word belonging to the spoken language. The sūra presents humanity's weightiest scene with the most ordinary word.

Root: غ-ش-ي. The analysis of the root was done in the discussion of al-Shams (91/4); I do not repeat the findings there, I only summarise them: the concrete sense of the root is to cover over a thing, to wrap it, to come upon it and envelop it. Its derivatives ghishāwa (the veil over the eye, al-Baqara 2/7) and taghshiya (covering a thing over with a case) show the tangible side of the root. The Qurʾān uses the same verb for night's covering the day (al-Aʿrāf 7/54).

In the discussion of al-Layl (92/1) a layer was added to this, and it is of use here: the root is used also for the enveloping of fear and of loss of consciousness — "as though a swoon of death had come over them" (al-Aḥzāb 33/19; similarly in Muḥammad 47/20). That is, to cover is to close off not only the sight but the apprehension.

When these two layers are put together, the choice of the word as a name for the resurrection becomes intelligible: what comes both covers every side and brings comprehension to a stop.

Pattern: active participle, feminine. Not ghāshī but ghāshiya. The feminine either comes from a feminine noun it qualifies which is left unsaid — such as al-wāqiʿatu'l-ghāshiya, al-sāʿatu'l-ghāshiya — or conveys intensification. In Arabic the feminine ending serves an intensifying function in patterns such as rāwiya and ʿallāma.

And the real nicety lies in the definite article: al-ghāshiya — "the one that envelops". Not one that envelops a particular thing; simply the one that envelops. What it envelops is not said.

This gap is deliberate, and its effect is this: a verb whose object is not stated becomes unlimited. Had it said "that which covers such-and-such", something would have been left uncovered. Since it is not said, no place is left outside.

The exegetes differ over what the word points to:

The first view is the widespread one and sits better with the context: verse 2 begins "faces that day…", that is, a day is being described. Nor is the second view weak, and it does not exclude the first. I state my preference; it is not binding.

The link established with Ibrāhīm 14/50 is also worth recording. There it says "the fire covers their faces" (wa taghshā wujūhahumu'n-nār): the same root, and its object is faces. And in Sūrat al-Ghāshiya too, faces come in the very next verse. The sūra's first word and the subject of its second verse are found in the same sentence elsewhere in the Qurʾān. I record this as an observation.

In drawing attention to a past event the Qurʾān frequently uses the pattern ألم تر (have you not seen). In the discussion of al-Fīl this pattern was taken up and this finding was made: the verb raʾā conveys knowing, grasping and arriving at a conviction just as it conveys seeing with the eye; and the pattern compels the one addressed to accept the event — the only thing opened for debate is its detail.

Setting the two patterns side by side is instructive:

In al-Ghāshiya the second is chosen, and the choice is apt: what is being recounted is a day that has not yet happened. One does not say "have you not seen?" of something impossible to see; but its report can be given.

But it would not be right to set this up as a rule. In al-Insān 76/1 the pattern hal atā looks entirely to the past: to the time when the human being was not yet mentioned. In al-Dhāriyāt 51/24 too a past event is recounted. That is, the subject of the pattern is not necessarily the future. The place where the distinction works is the state of the addressee's knowledge, not the time of the event. In al-Ghāshiya both hold at once: the event is in the future, and the one addressed does not know it.

Wujūhun yawmaʾidhin khāshiʿa — ʿāmilatun nāṣiba "There are faces that day, brought low; having laboured, having grown weary."

The sūra does not say "people", does not say "the unbelievers", does not say "a certain sort of persons". It says "faces".

This choice is repeated in the passages of the Qurʾān that recount the day of reckoning:

• "That day some faces are radiant, looking towards their Lord; that day some faces are scowling" (al-Qiyāma 75/22-24).
• "That day some faces are bright, laughing and rejoicing; that day upon some faces there is dust" (ʿAbasa 80/38-40).
• "On the day when some faces will whiten and some faces will blacken…" (Āl ʿImrān 3/106).

Why the face? Three reasons can be given:

One. The face is the part of a person that cannot be hidden. The body is covered, the face is not. A person's state is read there first.

Two. The face is the seat of identity. What separates one human being from another is his face. To speak by way of the face is to speak without reducing the person to a number and without naming him either.

Three. This accords with the Qurʾān's method of speaking by way of attributes. The principle recorded in the discussion of al-Humaza is at work here too: the text does not give the name of a group, it describes a state. Whoever is in that state is included in it.

Its coming indefinite is meaningful too: wujūhun — "some faces". Not definite. Which faces is not said; nor is their number given.

Root: خ-ش-ع. To be lowered, to bow down, to shrink, to be made small. The concrete uses of the root open the sense:

• For the voice: "Voices are hushed before the All-Merciful" (Ṭāhā 20/108). Khushūʿ is the lowering of the voice.
• For the soil: "You see the earth with its neck bowed; and when We send down water upon it, it stirs and swells" (Fuṣṣilat 41/39). Here khāshiʿa means dried, collapsed, lifeless soil.
• For the eye: "They will come out of the graves with their eyes cast down" (al-Qamar 54/7).

That is, khushūʿ is a lowering visible from outside: the hushing of the voice, the bowing of the neck, the falling of the eye.

The real nicety here is this: the Qurʾān also uses khushūʿ as the praised quality of worship — "The believers have prospered: those who are humble in their prayers" (al-Muʾminūn 23/1-2). The same word is here the first attribute in a depiction of punishment.

The difference lies in whether or not it is voluntary. The khushūʿ of prayer is a lowering that is chosen. The khushūʿ of that day is compulsory. The person is not lowering himself; he finds himself lowered.

Beneath this lies a silent finding of the sūra, and I write it as my own reading: there is no such option as not bowing; only when to bow can be chosen. The one who does not bow in this world is found bowed on that day. The difference is that one is voluntary and the other compulsory.

Two active participles side by side, without a conjunction. It is rendered in English "having laboured, having grown weary", but one has to dwell on both words.

عَمِلَ — root: ع-م-ل. To do work, to labour, to expend effort. One of the verbs the Qurʾān uses most often; the word ʿamal comes from here. There is nothing negative in the word — the construction ʿamilū'ṣ-ṣāliḥāt (those who do righteous works) occurs dozens of times in the Qurʾān.

نَصِبَ — root: ن-ص-ب. To grow weary, to be worn out, to undergo hardship. But the concrete and original sense of the root is "to set up, to plant upright". Its derivatives show this:

• نُصُب (nuṣub) — a stone set up, an idol planted upright; its plural is anṣāb (al-Māʾida 5/90).
• مَنْصِب (manṣib) — the place where something is set up; hence "office, post". English does the same with post: an upright timber driven into the ground, and also the office a man holds.
• نَصَب (naṣab) — weariness. "No weariness will touch us there" (Fāṭir 35/35); "Satan has touched me with weariness and torment" (Ṣād 38/41).

That weariness should be derived from "being set upright" gives the picture of the word: the weary one is the one who stands as though planted, who cannot sit, who cannot rest. Weariness here is not a feeling but a stance.

And now the link that comes from within the sūra: the same root will occur again sixteen verses later — "do they not look at the mountains, how they were set up?" (88/19, nuṣibat). The same verb, one for faces and one for mountains.

The mountains were set up and stood; those faces were set up and grew weary. The one a firm standing, the other an unending remaining on one's feet. That the word returns in this way within the sūra is a fact standing in the text; the sense I draw from it is my own reading.

This is the verse's most disputed side. ʿĀmila nāṣiba — labouring, growing weary. But when?

My preference is the first view, and its ground is this: in the sūra's opposing tableau (88/9) it says "well pleased with its own striving", and the striving there (saʿy) is beyond dispute the striving in this world. If the two tableaux mirror one another, the ʿamal here must look to this world too. But this is not binding; the second view too has its ground in the text and has a strong place in the classical sources.

This has to be added: whichever view is taken, the sense the sentence produces does not change. Whether in this world or in the hereafter, what is described is labour that yields nothing.

This is the road to the heart of the sūra.

The verse does not describe an idle person. On the contrary: it describes someone who works, who grows weary, who gives his effort. And it places him at the edge of the fire.

This runs against the accustomed logic of religious texts. What is expected is that the penalty should come from not doing. Here the penalty comes from the doing being done in the wrong place.

The concept of khusr treated in the discussion of al-ʿAṣr fits exactly here. There this finding was made: khusr is not an emotional word but an entry in an account — the balance coming out negative when the reckoning is closed. And there the Qurʾān's sharpest expression was used:

"Say: shall we tell you who are the greatest losers in respect of their works? They are those whose every effort in the life of this world has gone astray, while they supposed they were doing fine work" (al-Kahf 18/103-104).

The conclusion drawn from this verse in the discussion of al-ʿAṣr was this: the most dangerous loss is the loss that is not noticed. The person is working, producing, busy, even content — and the balance sheet is negative.

al-Ghāshiya takes one step further. The verse of al-Kahf states the effort's going for nothing. al-Ghāshiya states having worked and grown weary — that is, it records not only the outcome of the labour but its cost as well. The person has not merely failed to gain; he has grown weary in addition, in order not to gain.

The Qurʾān sets this idea up elsewhere too:

"We shall turn to every work they did and make it scattered dust" (al-Furqān 25/23). The image here is very concrete: habāʾan manthūrā — dust dispersing in the air, impossible to hold. The work has been done, nothing has remained.

"The works of those who disbelieve are like a mirage on a plain; the thirsty man supposes it to be water, and when he comes to it he finds nothing" (al-Nūr 24/39). The nicety of the mirage simile lies here: the person walking towards the mirage really walks. The road is covered, he sweats, he grows weary. What is false is not the road but the destination.

These three verses surround al-Ghāshiya 88/3 and all say the same thing: the Qurʾān does not count labour a value in itself. The question it asks is not "did you work?" but "what did you work towards?"

The finding in the discussion of al-Layl connects here as well: inna saʿyakum la-shattā — "your strivings are scattered." As was recorded there, the verse does not say "people do different works"; it says "they are not going to the same place." al-Ghāshiya shows one end of that scattering.

Taṣlā nāran ḥāmiya "It enters a blazing fire."

Root: ص-ل-ي. To be thrown into fire, to be roasted in fire, to remain within the flame. From the same root ṣilā (entering the fire), taṣliya, and muṣlā (a place of roasting).

The concrete side of the root matters: ṣala'l-laḥma — he roasted the meat over the fire. That is, the verb recounts not an approaching to the fire but the fire's working upon a thing.

Its uses in the Qurʾān confirm this: "He will soon enter a flaming fire" (al-Masad 111/3); "I shall cast him into Saqar" (al-Muddaththir 74/26).

A variant reading. The verb has been read both taṣlā (active: it enters) and tuṣlā (passive: it is made to enter). The difference is meaningful but small: in the first the subject is the faces, in the second there is an agent and it is not stated. I do not give the names of the imams of the variant readings; the existence of the difference is certain, its distribution I cannot give with certainty.

One observation: the active reading accords with the general logic of the sūra. Those faces have been described from the beginning as possessing agency — they work, they grow weary. They enter the fire themselves too. The chain of acts is not broken; only none of it is of any use.

Root: ح-م-ي. To grow hot, to become heated, to be made red-hot. Ḥamiya'l-ḥadīd — the iron grew red-hot.

The root has two branches in Arabic and they must not be confused:

• The heat branch: ḥamy, ḥāmī (blazing), ḥummā (high fever, the illness of fever).
• The protection branch: ḥimā (a protected pasture, an inviolable ground), ḥimāya, ḥāmī (one who protects).

The two branches come from the same three letters and the lexicographers look for a unity of original sense between them; but I do not force this link. The word in the verse belongs beyond dispute to the first branch: a fire made red-hot.

The function of the attribute. Fire is hot in any case; to say "blazing fire" may look like a repetition. But the pattern ḥāmiya conveys the last degree of heat — the state turned red, arrived at its peak. The same logic will be repeated one verse later for water: the spring too will not be ordinary but arrived at boiling point.

The sūra is setting up a pattern: every object at the furthest point of its own property.

Tusqā min ʿaynin āniya — laysa lahum ṭaʿāmun illā min ḍarīʿ — lā yusminu wa lā yughnī min jūʿ "It is given to drink from a boiling spring. They have no food but dry thorn; it neither nourishes nor avails against hunger."

The verb is passive: it is given to drink. Not one who drinks, but one who is given to drink.

The taṣlā of the preceding verse was active (it enters); the tusqā of this verse is passive (it is given to drink). This shift in the voice of the verb is meaningful: the person enters the fire himself, but does not choose the water himself. I record this as an observation.

The root itself (س-ق-ي) means to water, to give to drink. From the same root siqāya (the office of distributing water), siqāʾ (a water-skin), and in agriculture saqiy (irrigated land).

Root: أ-ن-ي. The root's original sense is to reach its time, to come to its proper state, to ripen.

There is a clean proof of this from within the Qurʾān:

"…do not enter for a meal without waiting for it to be ready" (al-Aḥzāb 33/53). The word there is ināh: the time of the food's being ready.

From the same root anā — the moment at which a thing ripens; and taʾannī — not to hurry but to wait for its time.

Now let us look at the state of the word in the verse. Āniya, when used of water, means "arrived at boiling point". That is, the point at which the heat has ripened.

This is an interesting working of language and is worth dwelling on: the word is not negative in itself, indeed it carries a positive core — coming to one's proper state. The evil is not in the word but in the thing that comes to its proper state. The water's "ripening" is its becoming undrinkable.

The Qurʾān sets up the same idea with another word too: "They will be circulated between it and boiling water" (al-Raḥmān 55/44). The ānin there is from the same root.

The sūra's most visible symmetry is set up here, and it stands in the verse-ending.

The two words rhyme and are on the same pattern. Both are on the fāʿila measure, both qualify a spring, both stand in the position of the verse-ending. The ear notices the bond between the two verses before it works out the sense.

And the contrast is not only hot/cool: one boils, the other flows. Boiling water stays where it is and churns within itself; flowing water goes from one place to another. The idea the sūra has been building from the beginning — there is movement, there is no arrival — turns here into an image of water. I record this as my own reading.

The sūra's most discussed word.

According to what the lexicographers record, ḍarīʿ is the dried state of a thorny plant called shibriq in the region of the Ḥijāz. The description transmitted is this: while the plant is green the animals graze on it; when it dries its thorns harden and no animal comes near.

I transmit this information as the lexicographers have transmitted it, and I draw a limit: I do not give a modern botanical equivalent. The matching of plant names in the classical dictionaries with present-day species is most often conjectural; for this word I am in no position to make a definite match.

The sense of the root, however, opens a separate door.

Root: ض-ر-ع. To be lowered, to fall weak, to bow the neck, to be made small. Its derivatives:

• تَضَرُّع (taḍarruʿ) — to entreat, to ask with a bowed neck. Repeatedly in the Qurʾān: "Call upon your Lord in entreaty and in secret" (al-Aʿrāf 7/55); "If only they had entreated!" (al-Anʿām 6/43).
• ضارع (ḍāriʿ) — abject, with bowed neck.
• ضَرْع (ḍarʿ) — the udder, the part hanging beneath an animal.

That the food's name should come from the root of abasement is an observation worth noting, and I present it as my own reading: the name of what is eaten states the state of the one who eats it. The word is at once the name of a plant and the name of a state of being brought low. And the sūra had already described the faces as khāshiʿa — brought low. The two words look in the same direction.

And there is this too: taḍarruʿ is the word used in the Qurʾān for entreating God. The name of what is set before the one who did not entreat in this world comes from the same root. I record this as an echo; I do not ascribe it to any classical exegete.

All three views come out at the same place in the text and there is no need to choose among them: what is described is a substance counted as food but which is not food.

The verse sets up a sharp restriction: laysa lahum ṭaʿāmun illā min ḍarīʿ — "they have no food but this."

But the Qurʾān mentions other things elsewhere:

• The tree of zaqqūm: "It is a tree that comes out in the bottom of hell… they eat from it and fill their bellies with it" (al-Ṣāffāt 37/62-66); "The tree of zaqqūm is the food of the sinner" (al-Dukhān 44/43-44).
• Ghislīn: "Today he has no friend here; nor any food but ghislīn" (al-Ḥāqqa 69/35-36).

The verse of al-Ḥāqqa and the verse of al-Ghāshiya are on the same pattern: in both, "there is no food but…". But what is stated is different. This is a well-known matter of classical exegesis. The solutions put forward:

The third solution seems to me the most consistent, and its ground is the rest of the verse itself: verse 7 stresses the food's uselessness, not its kind. But I write this as a preference; it is not binding, and I have no proof in hand for counting the other two solutions weak.

One of the sūra's finest sentences, and it may be counted the summary of the whole sūra.

Food has two distinct functions:

1. To nourish — long-term; it keeps the body standing, gives strength, repairs. Its result is seen over days. 2. To satisfy — short-term; it cuts off the sensation of hunger. Its result is seen at once.

The verse cuts off both at once. Lā yusminu — it does not nourish. Lā yughnī min jūʿ — it does not avail against hunger.

This is a heavier sentence than saying "there is no food." Because:

There is food. The act of eating goes on. There is no result.

The person bends, takes, chews, swallows — and nothing happens. Neither at the moment nor afterwards.

And now the sūra's pattern becomes visible. The same structure had been set up three verses earlier:

The sūra is built from beginning to end on "the act that is done but yields no result." I propose this as the sūra's central idea and I state that it is my own reading — I do not ascribe it to any classical exegete. But the pattern stands in the text and is registered by the choices of words.

Another form of the same structure was treated in the discussion of al-Humaza: ʿaddada — to keep counting one's wealth. What was recorded there was this: "the repetition lies not in the nature of the act but in the act's being of no use. If a procedure yields a result there is no need to repeat it." al-Ghāshiya carries the same logic into the hereafter: the counterpart of an act that yields no result in this world is an act that yields no result there either.

Root: غ-ن-ي. To be rich, to have no need left, to suffice.

This root was treated in the discussions of al-Layl (92/8) and al-ʿAlaq (96/6-7) in the form istighnāʾ, and the finding there was this: Form X (istifʿāl) here has the sense of "counting / seeing as" — istaghnā is to count oneself free of need, to think one has no need. And in the discussion of al-ʿAlaq this note was made: being ghanī is God's attribute; when the human being ascribes it to himself a displacement occurs.

In al-Ghāshiya the same root returns in its real sense and in the negative: lā yughnī — it does not suffice, it does not meet the need.

The link is this, and I write it as my own reading: in this world there was supposing oneself sufficient (istighnāʾ); there, there is nothing at all sufficing (lā yughnī). The sufficiency that was supposed is met by a real insufficiency.

The word has one further use, and it is meaningful for this sūra: "His wealth and what he earned did not avail him" (al-Masad 111/2). The same root, the same negation, the same coming to nothing.

Wujūhun yawmaʾidhin nāʿima — li-saʿyihā rāḍiya "There are faces that day, softened; well pleased with their own striving."

The second tableau opens in exactly the same pattern as the first, word for word:

• Wujūhun yawmaʾidhin khāshiʿa (2)
• Wujūhun yawmaʾidhin nāʿima (8)

The same subject, the same adverb of time, a single word different in the same place. In Arabic this is called muqābala (setting in correspondence) and is a structure the Qurʾān often uses when recounting two groups.

The effect the symmetry produces is this: the difference between the two groups is presented not as a difference in treatment coming from outside but as two different fillings of the same sentence. The place is the same, the day is the same, the sentence is the same; the only thing that changes is the state of the face.

Root: ن-ع-م. The root's concrete sense is softness and smoothness. A cloth's, a skin's, a surface's feeling soft to the hand.

Its derivatives show how widely the root opens:

• نِعْمَة (niʿma) — a good thing given. What "softens" life.
• نَعِيم (naʿīm) — abundance, ease; one of the names of the garden (jannātu'n-naʿīm).
• أَنْعَام (anʿām) — livestock, herd animals. The name of a sūra.
• نَعَم (naʿam) — "yes".

The connection with anʿām will be at work within the sūra: nine verses later al-ibil (the camel) will come, and the camel is the greatest of the anʿām. That the same root should name in one place the state of a face and in another the wealth of the one addressed is an observation about the sūra's verbal texture.

The choice of the attribute. The verse does not say "joyful", "laughing", "happy". It says "soft" — an attribute of touch.

Read together with its opposite the sense becomes clear. Khāshiʿa meant collapsed and dried up — the word used in Fuṣṣilat 41/39 for dried soil. Nāʿima, on the other hand, is soft, fresh, not drawn tight. The two attributes are speaking about the same surface: one cracked, one smoothed out.

And the rest of the verse of Fuṣṣilat carries an interesting echo: "…and when We send down water upon it, it stirs and swells." The smoothing out of the dried soil comes about with water. I record this as an echo, not as a proof set up between verses.

The sūra's two densest words.

سَعْي — root: س-ع-ي. This word was taken up in detail in the discussion of al-Layl (92/4); I summarise the findings there: its concrete sense is to walk quickly, to go at a pace close to running — the state between walking and running. From there it widened to the sense of "to strive, to run after some business".

The conclusion recorded in the discussion of al-Layl was this: the human being is not a standing being but a running one. Everyone is going towards somewhere; the question is not "are you going?" but "where?"

al-Ghāshiya gives the answer to that question — and sets two different answers side by side.

In al-Layl the strivings were shattā: scattered, separate from one another, not going to the same place. In al-Ghāshiya one striving comes back to its owner. The same word, in two sūras, with two different outcomes.

The Qurʾān's two basic sentences about saʿy surround this verse:

"The human being shall have only what he strives for" (al-Najm 53/39).

"Whoever desires the hereafter and strives for it with the striving it deserves, being a believer — the striving of such is met with a return" (al-Isrāʾ 17/19).

The second verse is particularly important because it sets a condition on the striving: "the striving it deserves" — that is, striving alone is not enough, it must suit its goal. The two tableaux of al-Ghāshiya are exactly the two sides of this distinction.

The word order is this: li-saʿyihā — rāḍiya.

The expected order would be rāḍiyatun li-saʿyihā: "pleased with its striving". Li-saʿyihā has been drawn in front of the predicate.

In Arabic an element brought forward from its normal position gains particularisation and emphasis. This is the same rule treated in al-Fātiḥa 1/4 (iyyāka naʿbudu), in al-Qadr 97/5 (salāmun hiya) and in al-Humaza 104/8 (ʿalayhim muʾṣada).

Its sense here becomes: what it is pleased with is its own striving, not another's.

This is a fine point. The sentence does not say "it is pleased with what it has been given", does not say "it is pleased with what it has found". It says "it is pleased with its own striving". That is, the person looks back and approves the work he did.

The silence of the opposing tableau is heard here. The first group had also worked (ʿāmila) and grown weary (nāṣiba) — but it is not said that they are pleased with their striving. Both groups ran; one arrived where it was running to.

To draw from this verse a conclusion such as "the garden is the wage of works, they are deeds that close the account" goes beyond the text and conflicts with other places in the Qurʾān. The Qurʾān counts works a condition but not a price; it stresses in many places that entry depends on mercy.

What the verse says is narrower and finer: the person is pleased with his own striving. That is, his striving has not gone for nothing. This is not to say "my striving was enough"; it is to say "my striving did not go for nothing."

The difference between the two is seen when compared with al-Ghāshiya's first tableau: there too there was striving, but it had gone for nothing. The contrast the verse sets up is not sufficiency/insufficiency but hitting/missing the mark.

A sentence recorded in the discussion of al-Bayyina is of use here too: the measure that keeps piety from turning into a claim on a creditor's part is that good pleasure be the goal; "the party that holds a claim does not seek good pleasure, it seeks its due."

Root: ر-ض-و / ر-ض-ي. To be pleased, to approve, to accept.

This root was treated in detail in the discussion of al-Bayyina (98/8), and the definition there holds here too: riḍā is not merely "to approve"; within it there is finding sufficient — the one who is pleased seeks nothing else. For this reason good pleasure is less a feeling than a stance: the ceasing of the search.

Now three sūras must be set side by side, because the Qurʾān uses the same root in three distinct structures and the three form a chain:

The reading of the chain is this, and I present it as my own reading:

al-Ghāshiya is the narrowest link: the person looks at his own past and is pleased. The object is a work.

al-Bayyina is the widest link: two parties are pleased with each other, and this is a reward set on top of the depiction of the garden. The object is a person.

al-Fajr gathers the two into a pair of attributes: rāḍiya (the one pleased) and marḍiyya (the one with whom there is pleasure). What is set up in al-Bayyina with two verbs is set up in al-Fajr with two attributes — and this finding was already recorded in the discussion of al-Bayyina.

Read together, the three sūras show a sequence: to be pleased with what one has done → to be one with whom there is pleasure → reciprocal good pleasure. al-Ghāshiya is the first link of the chain and the most concrete.

Fī jannatin ʿāliya — lā tasmaʿu fīhā lāghiya "It is in a lofty garden. It hears no idle talk there."

Root: ع-ل-و. To rise, to be superior. ʿAlī, aʿlā, istiʿlāʾ, ʿālam (on one view).

The attribute has two layers, and both are at work in the text:

One. Physical height. The garden's position is high; the one who looks, looks downward.

Two. Height of rank. ʿĀlī means superior in degree.

The Qurʾān uses the same attribute in one other place in the same construction: "…in a lofty garden" (al-Ḥāqqa 69/22).

Its contrast within the sūra must also be noted: the attribute of the first group was khāshiʿa — collapsed, brought low. The place of the second group is ʿāliya — lofty. The two ends of the same vertical axis.

Now comes one of the sūra's most striking choices, and it is generally passed over.

The depiction of the garden begins. The expected order: food, drink, place, furnishings. The verse first states the place (a lofty garden), and then what does it say?

It says that something is not there.

Springs (12), couches (13), goblets (14), cushions (15), carpets (16) — before all of these, the first quality of the garden to be described is this: no idle talk is heard there.

This means that the garden's first quality is an absence. And the absence chosen is not a physical discomfort; it is a discomfort to do with speech.

The Qurʾān repeats this choice elsewhere too:

• "They hear there neither idle talk nor any word that leads to sin" (al-Wāqiʿa 56/25).
• "They hear there neither idle talk nor lying" (al-Nabaʾ 78/35).
• "They hear no idle talk there, only peace" (Maryam 19/62).

In four separate sūras, in the describing of the garden, the cleanness of speech is mentioned in its own right. This repetition shows that the matter is not a secondary detail.

Root: ل-غ-و. Laghw: null speech, speech that is not taken into account, talk that produces no result.

The word's core is best shown by its legal use:

"God will not hold you to account for the laghw in your oaths" (al-Baqara 2/225; similarly al-Māʾida 5/89).

Laghw al-yamīn is an oath that leaves the mouth without being intended — "by God, it is so", "by God, it is not". And its ruling is this: it does not count. It has been said, but in law it does not exist.

Here is the centre of the word: laghw is speech that has been said but not counted. A sound has come out, no consequence has arisen.

Its other uses in the Qurʾān confirm this core:

• "They turn away from idle talk" (al-Muʾminūn 23/3). One of the first qualities counted of the believer.
• "When they meet with idle talk they pass by with dignity" (al-Furqān 25/72).
• "When they hear idle talk they turn away from it and say, 'our work is ours and your work is yours'" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/55).

In all three verses what is recommended is the same: not to argue, but to withdraw. The answer to idle talk is not an answer given to it; it is a drawing back from it. This is an interesting measure, and I shall come back to it in what the sūra says to the present.

Both words are rendered "idle" in English, and this erases the difference between them.

لهو (lahw) was treated in the discussion of al-Takāthur (102/1), and the definition there was this: lahw is not "amusement"; it is the occupation that holds a person back from his real business, that takes his attention from there and binds it elsewhere. At the centre of the word there is not cheerfulness but displacement — attention is taken from one place and set in another.

The comparison:

The two words complete each other. Lahw steals attention; laghw empties out speech. The one has to do with "where you are", the other with "what you say".

And in al-Ghāshiya's garden the second has been removed. The sūra sets down as the first condition of peace not silence but meaningful speech.

لاغية is an active participle, feminine. It is understood in two ways: (a) kalimatan lāghiyatan — "an idle word"; (b) "a person who speaks idly". The second reading comes from the word's qualifying a person as well. Both senses come out at the same place: neither idle talk nor the one who speaks it.

A variant reading. The verb has been read in three forms:

I do not give the names of the imams of the variant readings; the existence of the differences is recorded in the sources, their distribution I cannot give with certainty. The sense does not change in essentials: on every reading the idle talk does not reach the ear.

But that the verb should be "to hear" is worth recording in its own right. The verse does not say "there is no idle talk there"; it says "no idle talk is heard there". That is, what is cut off is not the existence of the speech but its reaching the ear.

The difference looks small but is real: what disturbs a person's peace is not the existence of bad speech but its reaching him. This reading comes out of the verse's choice of verb and is my own reading.

Fīhā ʿaynun jāriya — fīhā sururun marfūʿa — wa akwābun mawḍūʿa — wa namāriqu maṣfūfa — wa zarābiyyu mabthūtha "In it is a flowing spring. In it are couches raised high, goblets set out, cushions ranged in rows, and carpets spread out."

Five verses set up a single scene. Let us first work out each word separately, then look at the scene as a whole.

عين — the eye; and the same word means a spring. In Arabic these two senses are given under the same entry: a spring is the eye of the ground.

جارية — root ج-ر-ي: to flow, to run, to course. From the same root jārī (flowing, in force), majrā (a course of flow), and jāriya (a ship — al-Ḥāqqa 69/11: al-jāriya, the ship that runs along).

The word's coming indefinite: ʿaynun — "a spring". Its number, its size, its source are not stated.

And the contrast set up with verse 5: ʿaynin āniya / ʿaynun jāriya. Both are springs, both on the fāʿila pattern, both at the verse-ending. I gave this contrast in a table above; here one addition is enough: boiling water stays where it is, flowing water goes. The distinction between movement and arrival that the sūra has been building from the beginning has here turned into water.

سُرُر — the plural of the word sarīr: a throne, a divan, a high seat one sits and reclines upon.

A detail about the root is recorded by the lexicographers: sarīr is from the root س-ر-ر, and the same root also gives the word surūr (joy). The connection is explained by its being the seat one sits on in moments of joy. I transmit this as an explanation the lexicographers have transmitted; it carries no claim of certainty.

مرفوعة — root ر-ف-ع: to lift, to raise. Passive participle: raised.

The attribute has two layers:

One. Physical height. A seat raised above the ground. In al-Wāqiʿa 56/34 the same attribute is used of bedding: wa furushin marfūʿa.

Two. Standing. In Arabic rafʿ also conveys the raising of rank: "God raises in degrees those of you who believe and those who have been given knowledge" (al-Mujādala 58/11). The same root.

The cultural background makes this detail concrete. To sit high in an assembly was, in that society, a sign conveying position. That the couch is high is not a detail of comfort but an expression of status. And it had its counterpart in the sūra's first tableau: there the faces were khāshiʿa — brought low.

أكواب — the plural of the word kūb.

The detail the lexicographers record is important: a kūb is a cup without a handle and without a spout or lip. One with a handle is called ibrīq, and other names are given to what resembles a jug. The word occurs in several places in the Qurʾān: al-Zukhruf 43/71, al-Insān 76/15, al-Wāqiʿa 56/18.

The sense of this detail is this: a kūb is a vessel made not for carrying but for drinking. A handle serves for carrying; without one, the vessel stands where it is and you take it up with your hand.

موضوعة — root و-ض-ع: to put, to set down, to place. Passive participle: set out, put in place.

The nicety of the attribute: the goblets are not described as "full", "clean", "of gold". They are described as "set out". That is, ready. Under your hand, without any need to ask.

I read this as "the invisibility of the service", and I state that this is my own reading: there is a difference between a thing's being given to you and its being ready. To be given requires a request and a response; to be ready removes even the request. The verse describes an order in which the need is met without being put into words.

نمارق — the plural of the word numruqa: a small cushion, a bolster, a thing to lean on. The support placed in assemblies for leaning back or leaning to the side.

The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

مصفوفة — root ص-ف-ف: to form a rank, to set in a row. From the same root ṣaff (a row, a rank; the name of a sūra), maṣfūf (set in rows).

The sense of the attribute: not scattered but ordered. The cushions have not been thrown down at random; they are arranged in a row.

And now a link to the neighbouring sūra: the same root will occur in Sūrat al-Fajr — "when your Lord comes, and the angels, rank upon rank" (al-Fajr 89/22, ṣaffan ṣaffā).

In two neighbouring sūras the same root: one qualifies the cushions of the garden, the other the ranks of the angels. The word conveys an order in itself; when the object of the order changes, the scene changes completely. I record this as an observation. (The same link is made in the section on al-Fajr too.)

زرابي — carpets, rugs, precious coverings laid on the ground. The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

There is disagreement over its singular: the lexicographers record the forms zirbiyya, zarbiyya and zurbiyya. That it is a plural is beyond dispute; with which vowel its singular is to be read is not certain. I record this and adopt no preference — it does not change the sense.

This word was treated in the discussion of al-Qāriʿa (101/4), and the finding there is of direct use here. In al-Qāriʿa people were described as ka'l-farāshi'l-mabthūth — "like scattered moths", and this note was made:

The same word qualifies in one sūra the cushions of the garden and in another the people at the resurrection. The word is not negative in itself; it conveys being dispersed. Whether being dispersed is good or bad depends on what is dispersed.

Now we set that finding up from the other end and can extend it:

The same verb, two objects, two opposite senses. The note added in the discussion of al-Qāriʿa — that the dispersal is passive, that is, "not what disperses but what is dispersed" — holds here too: the carpets have not spread themselves out, they have been spread out.

One further branch of the root was recorded in al-Qāriʿa and connects here in a sentence: بَثّ (bathth) — grief that cannot be held within and pours out; "I complain of my sorrow and my grief only to God" (Yūsuf 12/86). The root also recounts the spreading outward of something that has gathered within. Three uses — grief poured out, people flung about, carpets laid down — are three distinct objects of the same movement.

Now let us read the five verses together. Four objects, four attributes:

All four are passive. For all four the agent is left unstated.

The sense of this is: nothing in the garden is there of itself. Every object is the result of a preparation. The scene has not come about; it has been set up.

And this establishes a silent contrast with the sūra's first tableau. There the verbs were active and their subjects were those faces: ʿāmila (working), nāṣiba (growing weary). Here the verbs are passive and the subject is not stated. On one side, subjects working ceaselessly and obtaining nothing; on the other, guests who do not work and find everything ready.

I present this as my own reading, but the pattern stands in the text.

And now we come to the sūra's most striking structural feature.

The sūra uses four passive forms in each of two places:

Four passive participles, four passive verbs. The first series describes a room, the second the cosmos. And in neither is the agent stated.

Moreover, the two series share a root: رفع. In the garden the couches are marfūʿa — raised; in the cosmos the sky is rufiʿat — raised. The same verb, one lifting a seat and one lifting the sky.

I set up this link as my own reading and draw this conclusion: the sūra recounts the readiness of the garden and the readiness of the cosmos with the same grammar. Both have been set up; for neither is the one who set it up stated. What is asked of the one addressed is that, when he asks by whom the sky was raised, he should see by whom the couches will be raised too.

There are two errors made in reading this depiction, and both must be avoided.

The first error: reading it as an inventory. Reading the verses like a list of goods; debating the kind, the texture, the number of the furniture in the garden. This reading narrows the text.

The second error: turning everything into a symbol. Reducing the depiction wholly to metaphor by saying "the couch is really this, the carpet is really that". This reading too erases the text's concreteness and produces something like a distaste for the language the Qurʾān has chosen.

Both tendencies exist in the classical tradition — some scholars have said that the depictions are real and that their modality cannot be known, some have brought the representational side forward. I do not impose a preference between them.

What can be said is this: the objects chosen are the highest objects of comfort known to the one addressed. A high divan, a goblet ready at hand, cushions set in a row, a carpet laid down — these are, in a culture of tents and assemblies, the concrete signs of wealth and of hospitality. The depiction points to the unknown in the language of the known.

And the Qurʾān sets this limit itself:

"No soul knows what comfort of the eyes has been kept hidden for them, as a reward for what they used to do" (al-Sajda 32/17).

This verse is the Qurʾān's own note on how the depictions are to be read: what is given is incomplete, and its incompleteness has been declared in advance. The measure recorded in the discussion of al-Humaza for the pattern mā adrāka holds here too: the description does not take the place of what is described; it points to it.

A-fa-lā yanẓurūna ila'l-ibili kayfa khuliqat — wa ila's-samāʾi kayfa rufiʿat — wa ila'l-jibāli kayfa nuṣibat — wa ila'l-arḍi kayfa suṭiḥat "Do they not look at the camel, how it was created? And at the sky, how it was raised? And at the mountains, how they were set up? And at the earth, how it was spread out?"

The sūra's most unexpected turn is here. Through twenty verses the hereafter has been recounted; now there is a sudden return here, to the world before one's eyes.

Structure: hamza (interrogative) + fāʾ (connective) + lā (negation) + verb.

The letter fāʾ matters: it binds the sentence to what precedes. That is, the question is not hanging in the air; it is asked after all that has been recounted. "All this has been recounted, and do they still not look?"

The interrogative mood here too is not asking for information. Its function is astonishment and encouragement — not reproach. The difference between them matters: reproach closes the one addressed, astonishment calls him to think.

نظر — root: ن-ظ-ر. To look. And when it comes with the particle ilā: to look while turning towards something.

The choice of verb is meaningful: not raʾā (to see) but naẓara (to look).

English has the same difference: seeing happens, looking is done. Seeing is involuntary; if your eyes are open you see. Looking is an act; it requires turning, stopping, giving attention.

In the discussion of al-Fīl the verb raʾā was treated, and what was recorded there was this: this verb conveys knowing, grasping and arriving at a conviction just as it conveys seeing with the eye — when someone says "you see that this will not work", no one is speaking of the eye.

A comparison:

And the diagnosis here is finer. In al-Fīl the one addressed has forgotten an event. In al-Ghāshiya there is something standing before the one addressed every day and he is not looking at it. Not failing to see — he sees the camel of course, he sees it every day. He does not look.

This distinction will meet us again in what the sūra says to the present.

This is the most discussed question about the four, and it has a good answer.

The camel was the nearest thing in the life of the one addressed, the most often seen, the least looked at.

The place of the camel in the Arabian peninsula is far more central than would be guessed from today. The camel was this:

• A mount — the only real means of carrying over long distances.
• A beast of burden — the backbone of trade; to say caravan is to say camel.
• Milk — a basic food.
• Meat — for festivals and banquets.
• Wool and hide — tent, clothing, vessel.
• A measure of capital — wealth was expressed in numbers of camels.
• A legal unit — blood-money and compensation were calculated in camels.

That is, in that society the camel was the economy itself. The question "how many camels does he have" was the counterpart of today's "how much property does he have".

Its sense within the sūra is this: in enumerating the proofs of the cosmos, what is put first on the list is the wealth of the one addressed. The sky, the mountain and the earth are far off, huge, outside human intervention. The camel is under one's hand; it is bought and sold, milked, ridden, owned.

The sūra makes him look at what is owned and ask "how was it created?" The property itself becomes a proof.

This ground is also widely voiced in classical exegesis: that a beginning is made from the most familiar thing in the addressee's surroundings. I record this as a general tendency; I do not ascribe it to any particular exegete.

The Qurʾān mentions the same family of animals as a sign in other places too:

"And the livestock He created; in them there is warmth for you and many benefits, and of them you eat… And in them there is a beauty for you, when you bring them home in the evening and when you drive them out in the morning" (al-Naḥl 16/5-6).

"Have they not seen that of what Our hands have made We created for them livestock, and they own them? And We made them subservient to them; some they ride and some they eat" (Yāsīn 36/71-72).

The note in the verse of Yāsīn, "and they own them", is especially meaningful for al-Ghāshiya: the matter of ownership is brought up by the Qurʾān itself.

It is a widespread tendency to go by way of this verse into the biological features of the camel — its retention of water, its hump, the structure of its feet, its eyelids — and to count these "scientific miracles announced by the Qurʾān". I do not do this, and I write the ground for it openly: the verse does not speak of the camel's physiology. Kayfa khuliqat — "how it was created" — is not a question of biology but a question of createdness.

What is legitimate, and can be said with the note that "this is one point of view", is only this much: the camel is a creature whose fittedness to the environment it lives in is extraordinarily marked, and this fittedness is something anyone who looks at it can notice — even without knowing any biology. The verse's question "how was it created" is asking about just this fittedness that lies before one's eyes. More than this goes beyond the text.

A view is transmitted that the word is read al-ibill (cloud) instead of al-ibil (camel).

The reading of the majority is "camel" and that is my preference. My ground is this: the "breaking" of the series is not a fault but the very thing the sūra is doing. To insert an everyday animal among the cosmic proofs brings the chain of proofs down into the addressee's own yard. The reading "cloud" tidies the series but erases the sūra's most original move.

This preference is not binding. Nor have we any decisive proof for counting the second view weak; it is a reading recorded in the sources. I do not give the name of any imam of the variant readings.

The order is this: camel → sky → mountain → earth.

Several readings can be proposed for this order. I present them all as my own readings; I do not present them as classical transmitted material.

First reading: from near to far, then the return.

• The camel — under his hand, what he can touch.
• The sky — the furthest, what he can never reach.
• The mountain — on the horizon, what he can see but is far off.
• The earth — under his feet, what he stands on.

The gaze traces a circle: it begins at the nearest, goes to the furthest, comes back, and ends on the ground where the person is standing. That is, the one called to look at the sky ends by having looked beneath his own feet.

Second reading: a movement of the head.

Try to carry out the four verses in order:

• To look at the camel you turn your head to the side.
• To look at the sky you raise it upward.
• To look at the mountain you bring it down to the horizon.
• To look at the earth you bend it downward.

The four verses, when completed, describe a complete look. Up, ahead, down. The sūra is not making an abstract call to think; it is describing a physical movement.

Third reading: from ownership to non-ownership.

The camel can be owned. The sky, the mountain and the earth cannot. The order starts from what is owned and goes to what cannot be owned — and the one addressed sees that what he holds came from the same hand.

Fourth reading: the widening and narrowing of scale.

Camel (one living creature) → sky (the largest) → mountain (large) → earth (the ground). The scale first leaps, then descends by degrees. The order of scale is not a straight increase or decrease; this too supports the reading of the circle of gaze.

In all four verses the verb is passive and the agent is not stated:

khuliqat (it was created) — rufiʿat (it was raised) — nuṣibat (they were set up) — suṭiḥat (it was spread out).

This choice is not accidental and connects with the rest of the sūra.

Two verses later it will be said to the Prophet: "you are not one who rules them by force" (88/22). That is, by not stating the agent of the four verbs, the sūra leaves the one addressed alone with the question itself. The doer is not stated; the one addressed is expected to see it himself.

This also establishes a principle in the method of the call: the answer is not imposed, the question is asked. So long as the verbs remain passive, the one addressed has to find out for himself who the agent is. And a thing one is made to find by force is not counted as found in the first place — the sūra's twenty-second verse will say exactly this.

Two of the four verbs come from roots that occurred in the sūra's earlier sections:

The first pairing: the same verb, one lifting a seat and one lifting the sky. I treated this above.

The second pairing is the more striking. We had seen in verse 3 that the root naṣb means "to set upright"; the sense of weariness comes from there — to stand as though planted, to be unable to sit.

Now the same root is used of the mountains. And this reading comes out, which I present as my own reading:

The mountains were set up and stood. Those faces were set up and grew weary.

The same verb, two different outcomes. One produces a firm standing, the other an unending remaining on one's feet. The difference lies in who did the setting up: another set up the mountain; the one who set himself up is himself.

I record this not as a ruling but as an echo arising from the word's occurring twice within the sūra.

The word of the sūra requiring the greatest care.

Root: س-ط-ح. To spread, to flatten, to lay out. Its derivatives:

• سَطْح (saṭḥ) — a surface, a flat roof. English carries the same pair in surface and superficial: the face laid over a thing, and what stays on that face.
• مِسْطَح (misṭaḥ) — a tool for levelling; the place where dates are laid out.

Now let us come to the matter itself. This verse is one of those most used in the claim that "the Qurʾān says the earth is flat". From the other side there are defences of the form "no, it actually implies its roundness". Both are making the same mistake: they are making the verse answer a question the verse does not set up.

The note made for the word firāsh (bedding) in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/22 holds here word for word, and I rely on that treatment. What was written there was this:

This expression does not say that the earth is flat. Bedding is not flat either — it is spread, it folds, it follows the ground beneath it. What the word states is not shape but function: the earth has been made such that one can stand on it, live on it, rest on it.

I set up the same measure for suṭiḥat:

One. The word conveys a function; it does not set up a proposition of geometry. Saṭḥ is a surface; a sphere has a surface too. To be "spread out" is to be walkable upon, settleable, cultivable.

Two. All the sūra's verbs are set up according to the human being's gaze. This is seen when the four are looked at as a whole: the sky raised, the mountain set up, the earth spread out. These are the states as seen from an observer's horizon. The verse says "look" in any case — the description given is the description the one who looks sees.

Three. The Qurʾān uses other words for the same ground and none of them carries a claim of geometry:

• daḥāhā — "He spread it out and laid it down" (al-Nāziʿāt 79/30).
• mihād — "a cradle" (al-Nabaʾ 78/6).
• dhalūl — "docile, made submissive" (al-Mulk 67/15): "It is He who made the earth submissive to you; so walk upon its shoulders."

All three say the same thing: this ground has been set so that life may be lived on it.

Four, and most important: this is neither a claim of roundness nor a claim of flatness. The verse was not set up to answer this question. To load onto a text the answer to a question it does not ask — in either direction — is not to read the text.

I write this calmly and plainly because the measure laid down by the method (Method) is here: no hunting for scientific miracles is done, and a modern piece of knowledge is not forced onto a verse. This holds when it is done for the purpose of defence as well.

Fa-dhakkir innamā anta mudhakkir — lasta ʿalayhim bi-muṣayṭir "So remind; you are only a reminder. You are not one who rules them by force."

The sūra's mode of address changes here. Through twenty verses there was third-person narration; now the Prophet is addressed directly.

Root: ذ-ك-ر. To mention, to remember, to make remembrance. In Form II (dhakkara) it becomes transitive: to remind.

The choice of verb is one of the sūra's most important decisions.

The verse could have said any of the following, and all would have been reasonable:

• fa-ʿallim — teach.
• fa-akhbir — inform.
• fa-dʿu — call.
• fa-nadhir — warn.

It says none of them. It says "remind".

The difference is fundamental. To teach is to give the other something he does not have. To remind is to make visible something the other already has.

This choice accords with the Qurʾān's conception of itself. The Qurʾān calls itself dhikr: "We sent down the reminder, and We are its guardian" (al-Ḥijr 15/9). Dhikr here means "reminding".

And beneath this there is an anthropology: the human being is described not as a being that does not know but as a being that forgets. In the discussion of al-ʿAṣr it was recorded that the word insān, on one view, comes from the root n-s-y (to forget). The two findings support one another.

The verb's coming in the imperative and with a fāʾ: fa-dhakkir — "so remind". The fāʾ conveys consequence. That is, the command is the consequence of the four preceding verses: since the camel, the sky, the mountain and the earth stand before them and they do not look — remind.

A link to the neighbouring sūra: the same root will return in al-Fajr — "That day the human being will remember; but what use is the remembering to him?" (al-Fajr 89/23, yatadhakkaru'l-insānu wa annā lahu'dh-dhikrā).

Two neighbouring sūras use the same root: in al-Ghāshiya the command to remind, in al-Fajr a remembering of no use. al-Ghāshiya says "remind"; al-Fajr shows a moment at which the time for remembering has passed. The urgency of the command is understood from the scene in the facing sūra. I record this as an observation; the same link is made in the section on al-Fajr too.

إنما (innamā) is a particle of restriction (ḥaṣr). To say "you are only…" does two things at once: it affirms one thing and leaves the rest outside.

That is, the sentence at the same time:

• Gives a task: you are a reminder.
• Sets a limit: you are only a reminder.

This double function sets up the sentence's balance. The task is not belittled — to remind is the work that carries the whole weight of the sūra. But neither is it widened.

مُذَكِّر is an active participle, from Form II: one who reminds. That it is from the same root as the command closes the sentence in on itself: dhakkir — mudhakkir. "Remind; you are one who reminds." The work he does becomes the name of his identity.

The spelling and reading of the word. In the orthography of the codex it is written with ص (muṣayṭir); it has also been read with س (musayṭir). This arises from a known phenomenon in Arabic whereby a sīn followed by the letter ṭāʾ turns into a ṣād. The existence of the variant reading is certain; I do not give the name of an imam and I state that it does not change the sense.

Root: س-ط-ر. And the concrete sense of the root is interesting: a line, a stroke, a row.

• سَطْر (saṭr) — a line of writing; its plurals asṭār, suṭūr.
• مِسْطَرَة (misṭara) — a ruler, an instrument for drawing lines.
• أساطير (asāṭīr) — "things that have been written down"; in the Qurʾān the name the mushrikūn gave to the revelation: asāṭīru'l-awwalīn (al-Anfāl 8/31 and elsewhere).

The pattern مُسَيْطِر comes from here, and its sense opens in several directions:

1. One who records, who keeps a register — who writes line by line. 2. One who watches, who inspects — who stands over a thing and controls it. 3. One who rules by force, who holds the matter in his hand — who imposes his will.

All three senses stand within the word, and the lexicographers differ over which is original. In the context the third sense comes forward, but the second is at work too: you are not an inspector set over them.

The word's other occurrence in the Qurʾān:

"Or do they have the treasures of your Lord? Or are they the ones who hold everything in their hands?" (al-Ṭūr 52/37).

There the word is plural (al-muṣayṭirūn) and stands inside a question put to the mushrikūn: is it you who rule? In al-Ghāshiya the same word is negated of the Prophet.

This comparison says something, and I record it as my own reading: to be muṣayṭir is a position the Qurʾān grants to no one. Neither are the addressees in that position (al-Ṭūr), nor is the messenger (al-Ghāshiya).

The finding made in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/6 is of use again here and I rely on it openly. There, for the verse "whether you warn them or do not warn them, they will not believe", this was recorded:

Look at whom the verse is addressed to: the verse is said to the person who does the warning. Its function is not to pass a judgment but to set the warner at ease: your task is to deliver, not to produce the result. The Qurʾān says this openly elsewhere: "You cannot guide whom you love" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/56).

al-Ghāshiya 88/22 takes the same principle one step further. In al-Baqara the principle was set up as a finding (they will not believe). Here it is set up as the negation of an attribute: you are not a muṣayṭir.

The difference is this: a finding states a situation, the negation of an attribute states an authority. al-Ghāshiya says not that the result cannot be produced but that the authority to produce the result has not been given.

The Qurʾān carries this line on in many places:

• "There is no compulsion in religion" (al-Baqara 2/256).
• "You are not a tyrant over them; so remind by the Qurʾān whoever fears My warning" (Qāf 50/45).
• "Had your Lord willed, all those on earth would have believed together. Will you then compel people so that they may become believers?" (Yūnus 10/99).

The verse of Yūnus is the clearest of this group, and its logic is this: if faith were sought by way of compulsion, that could have been done directly in the first place. If it was not done, then what is sought is not the kind of thing that can be obtained by compulsion.

And this says something about the definition of faith: what can be obtained by force is not faith. Compulsion can produce conduct; it cannot produce conviction.

Illā man tawallā wa kafar — fa-yuʿadhdhibuhu'llāhu'l-ʿadhāba'l-akbar "But whoever turns away and covers over, God will punish him with the greatest punishment."

Where these two verses attach grammatically is one of the old debates of exegesis. Because illā is a particle of exception, and an exception requires a "whole" before it. But what is the whole?

The first view is the widespread one and is my preference. My ground is this: the subject of verse 24 is plainly God (fa-yuʿadhdhibuhu'llāh). That is, the sentence does not give the Prophet an authority; it gives a piece of news. This makes the second and third readings difficult; the first reading works directly.

This preference is not binding. All three views are found in the classical sources and are possible grammatically.

And this must be added: whichever reading is taken, the function of the two verses is the same. The sūra, having said "you are not one who compels", does not leave a gap. The absence of compulsion does not mean the absence of a consequence. The messenger has no sanction in his hand; but it is not that there is no sanction.

Root: و-ل-ي. And the root's original sense is nearness: to be adjacent to a thing, to come after it, to be in its vicinity.

Its derivatives show this:

• وَلِيّ (walī) — near one, friend, protector. One of the names of God.
• مَوْلَى (mawlā) — master, friend, near one.
• وِلَايَة (walāya) — nearness, friendship; and governance.
• تَالِي / يَلِي — that which comes after.

Now let us look at the state of the word in the verse. Tawallā is in Form V, and in this form the root turns in the opposite direction: to come out of nearness, to turn one's back and go off.

That the same root should carry both "to be a friend" and "to turn one's back" gives the picture of the word: both are a matter of direction. The near one has turned his face; the one going off has turned his back.

The Qurʾān uses this verb often: "He turned away and grew proud" (al-Muddaththir 74/23); "Then he turned his back" (al-Najm 53/33).

The verb has one further nicety: tawallā conveys a physical movement — to turn one's back and go. That is, rejection is described here not as a debate but as a withdrawal. The person is not opposing; he is leaving.

Root: ك-ف-ر. This root was treated in detail in the discussion of al-Baqara 2/6; I do not repeat the analysis there, I recall its conclusion:

The sense of the root is to cover, to close over. The farmer is called kāfir in Arabic because he covers the seed with soil (al-Ḥadīd 57/20); the night is called kāfir because it covers everything; kaffāra is the amends that covers over an offence.

And the critical conclusion there: unbelief is not a failure to know; it is the covering over of what one knows. Moreover, in the Qurʾān what is most often set against kufr is not īmān but thankfulness (shukr) — that is, unbelief is basically a notion of ingratitude.

This definition is particularly at work in al-Ghāshiya. Because two verses earlier four things were asked to be looked at: the camel, the sky, the mountain, the earth. Kafara is to cover those four over — not to look, or to look and disregard.

The order of the two verbs is meaningful too: first tawallā (he turned his back), then kafara (he covered over). One who turns his back has already come to a state of not seeing; the covering comes after it. I record this as an observation.

أكبر is an elative: "greater / greatest". And it has taken the definite article: al-akbar.

In Arabic, when the elative comes definite it requires a comparison. The question is: greater than what?

The classical answers:

And the Qurʾān sets up this comparison openly within itself — this verse settles the matter:

"Truly, before the greatest punishment We shall make them taste of the nearer punishment; perhaps they will return" (al-Sajda 32/21).

The two words there form an exact pair:

• العذاب الأدنى (al-ʿadhābu'l-adnā) — "the nearest / the lowest punishment". Adnā means both "near" and "low".
• العذاب الأكبر (al-ʿadhābu'l-akbar) — "the greatest punishment".

The contrast is set up on two axes at once: near/great and low/great. That is, the hardships of this world are both nearer and smaller.

And the verse of al-Sajda has one further note that must not be passed over: "perhaps they will return" — laʿallahum yarjiʿūn. That is, the function of the smaller punishment is not to penalise but to turn them back. This will connect with the last two verses of al-Ghāshiya: there too a return (iyāb) will be mentioned.

Note the form of the verb: fa-yuʿadhdhibuhu — imperfect (present/future) and in Form II (ʿadhdhaba). Form II here conveys intensity. In the discussion of al-Humaza the takthīr function of this form was treated; the same rule holds here.

Inna ilaynā iyābahum — thumma inna ʿalaynā ḥisābahum "Truly their return is to us. Then truly their reckoning is ours."

The sūra's last two verses. And the sūra's quietest, least discussed move is here.

Root: أ-و-ب. To return, to come back, to make a return.

Its derivatives:

• أَوَّاب (awwāb) — one who turns back often, who returns continually. The Qurʾān uses this attribute for the prophets again and again in Sūrat Ṣād (Ṣād 38/17, 30, 44) and in one place mentions it as a general quality: "This is what is promised to everyone who turns back often and keeps guard" (Qāf 50/32).
• مَآب (maʾāb) — the place to which one returns, the destination. "To Him the return is beautiful" (al-Raʿd 13/29).
• إِيَاب (iyāb) — return, the act of returning. It occurs in the Qurʾān only here.

The choice of the word is meaningful. For "return" the Qurʾān more often uses the root rujūʿ (ر-ج-ع): "Then your return is to me" (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/8). Here iyāb has been chosen.

The difference the lexicographers record is this: awb conveys returning to the place one came from — it presupposes a point of departure. Rujūʿ is more general. I transmit this difference as the lexicographers have transmitted it; I do not claim that the distinction works sharply everywhere.

But if the difference is correct, its sense is this: the return is not an arrival at a place one has not been; it is a coming back to the place one set out from.

Sūrat al-Fajr will end with this sentence:

"O soul at peace! Return to your Lord, well pleased and well pleasing" (al-Fajr 89/27-28).

The verb there is irjiʿī — return.

Two neighbouring sūras, the same movement, two different moods:

The same movement, set up in two different ways. al-Ghāshiya announces the return as a fact: they will return, whether they wish it or not. al-Fajr sets the same return up as a call: return.

And the difference between them is the difference between the sūras' addressees. The "they" in the last verses of al-Ghāshiya are those who turn away and cover over; their return is a piece of news. The addressee of al-Fajr is the nafs muṭmaʾinna, the soul at peace; its return is an invitation.

The return is there in both cases. What changes is how the return is met. I record this link as an observation; the same link is made in the section on al-Fajr too.

The word order is the same in both verses: inna + preposition with its noun (brought forward) + noun.

• inna ilaynā iyābahum
• inna ʿalaynā ḥisābahum

The expected order would be inna iyābahum ilaynā. The prepositional phrase has been drawn forward — and in Arabic a fronted element conveys particularisation. This rule has been treated in several places in this commentary (al-Fātiḥa 1/4, al-Humaza 104/8, al-Qadr 97/5). Here the sense becomes: the return is not to any other place, but to us.

But the real nicety is in the change of the particles.

Ilā conveys a direction; it shows the point the movement will reach. ʿAlā, on the other hand, conveys obligation and debt in Arabic: ʿalayhi daynun means "there is a debt upon him".

That is, the second verse says this: the taking of the reckoning is a work written upon us.

One has to see how out of the ordinary this sentence is. The expected construction would be: "then we shall call them to account" — a verbal sentence, subject we, object them. The verse does not say this. It takes the reckoning upon itself as an obligation.

This has two consequences:

One. The reckoning is written upon the one who takes it, not upon the one punished. That is, the reckoning is presented not as an element of threat but as an undertaking. A thing's being "taken upon oneself" means that it will certainly be done.

Two. This means the setting up of justice as a promise. The reckoning will be taken, because a word has been given. The Qurʾān uses this language elsewhere too: "Your Lord has written mercy upon Himself" (al-Anʿām 6/54); "To help the believers is a duty upon us" (al-Rūm 30/47).

The same pattern — ʿalā + "we" — is used for both mercy and reckoning. Both are set down as an obligation undertaken.

ثم (thumma) conveys in Arabic sequence and delay: order and interval. The letter fāʾ conveys immediate sequence (right after); thumma places a distance between.

That is, a gap has been placed between the two verses: return — [interval] — reckoning.

What this interval is, is not stated. But its existence is stated. The Qurʾān has passages in its scenes of the resurrection that recount waiting, gathering, standing; thumma here leaves a width of time.

I add as an observation: the interval also conveys that the reckoning is not being hurried. Judgment is not passed at the moment of the return.

Now we come to the sūra's last move, and I present this as my own reading.

Let us look at the addressees of the last six verses:

The sūra ends with "we" a section that began with "you".

And what is said is this: you will remind, but producing the result is not your work. The return is ours, the reckoning is ours.

That is, the sūra ends by taking the burden off the Prophet's shoulder and taking it upon itself.

To see what this means one has to think of the Prophet's position. In the Meccan period the call was not advancing, the addressees were turning away, and the messenger had no sanction at all in his hand. In this situation the most natural feeling is to take the result upon oneself: "I could not explain it well enough."

The sūra's last two verses answer exactly this feeling. And they give the answer not with a sentence of consolation but with an announcement of a division of labour: the reminding is yours, the rest is ours.

This reading is completed when it is joined with the sūra's twenty-second verse. Not to be a muṣayṭir is not a deficiency but an exemption. The messenger is not held responsible for a result he cannot produce.

And this is a pattern within the Qurʾān itself. As was treated in the discussions of al-Ḍuḥā and al-Inshirāḥ, the verses directed to the Prophet most often carry the same structure: a task is given, then the limit of that task is drawn, then the burden is taken upon God.

al-Ghāshiya's arrangement of verse-endings is striking even among the short Meccan sūras. The twenty-six verses divide into three distinct sound regions, and each region does a different work.

The change of sound coincides with the change of subject. In the first region the same sound is repeated through sixteen verses; in the seventeenth verse it breaks; in the twenty-first it breaks again.

I record this not as a claim of miracle but as form and content moving together. The same measure was set down in the discussion of al-Humaza: in the short Meccan sūras the moving together of sound and content is frequently seen and is a consistent choice.

One further detail: thirteen of the sixteen verse-endings in the first region are in the pattern of the active participle or the passive participle. That is, the sūra's first half is built almost entirely of adjectives; there is very little verb. An adjective conveys a state; a verb an event. In the sūra's first half it is not an event but a state that is recounted.

The sūra sets up the two tableaux word for word in correspondence:

Two gaps are striking, and both are meaningful:

In the first tableau what is heard is not mentioned. In the second tableau food is not mentioned.

I interpret this as my own reading: the contrasts are not perfectly symmetrical, because the sūra is not making a list. Each tableau has its own emphasis — in the first, labour and food; in the second, speech and hospitality.

The sūra's tightest structural feature is its calling back its own words:

I have treated these repetitions as my own reading; they occurred separately above.

We return to the question I noted at the beginning of the sūra.

al-Ghāshiya's tableau of hell parts company at one point with the Qurʾān's accustomed depictions of hell. The people recounted are not motionless. On the contrary:

• They work — ʿāmila.
• They grow weary — nāṣiba.
• They are given drink — tusqā.
• They have food — ṭaʿām.

That is, there is act. There is labour. There is consumption.

But none of it yields a result:

And in the opposing tableau a single sentence reverses this structure: li-saʿyihā rāḍiya — pleased with its own striving. There too there is a striving; but the striving comes back to its owner.

The sūra measures not the existence of an act but its destination. I propose this as the sūra's central idea and state again that it is my own reading.

This idea joins with two findings in the neighbouring sūras:

The balance in al-ʿAṣr. There khusr was defined as an entry in an account: the balance coming out negative when the reckoning is closed. And with al-Kahf 18/103-104 this conclusion was reached: the most dangerous loss is the loss that is not noticed — the person is working, producing, busy, even content, and the balance sheet is negative.

The scattering in al-Layl. There, for inna saʿyakum la-shattā, this was recorded: the verse does not say "people do different works"; it says "they are not going to the same place."

Read together, the three sūras yield a chain of thought:

• al-Layl: everyone is running, but not to the same place.
• al-ʿAṣr: at the end of the running there is a balance, and the default state is negative.
• al-Ghāshiya: it shows how the negative balance looks — worked, grown weary, and no return.

I record this not as an observation about the arrangement of the codex but as the same concept being treated in three sūras.

There is an oddity in the structure of the sūra and it is worth dwelling on.

The accustomed order is this: first the proof, then the conclusion. First "look, the sky has been raised, the mountain set up — so there is a creator"; then "therefore there is a day of reckoning too."

al-Ghāshiya does the reverse. It first recounts the day of reckoning (2-16), then gives the proof (17-20).

What can the function of this reversed order be? I can propose several readings — as my own readings:

One. The sūra does not persuade, it shows. Had the proof been part of a debate it would have come first. Its coming at the end takes it out of being a proof and makes it a confirmation: "I have recounted these things; now look around you."

Two. The position of the one addressed changes. In the first sixteen verses the one addressed is a spectator; the scene is recounted to him. In the seventeenth verse he is suddenly given a task: look. The narrative turns into an act.

Three. The order prepares the command in verse 21. Fa-dhakkir — remind. What is to be reminded of? Not the two tableaux; the things standing about him and not being looked at. Because the section of proof is at the end, it stands adjacent to the command.

Four. An order of nearness. The sūra begins at the furthest (the resurrection) and comes to the nearest (the camel, the ground under his feet). The gaze descends from the hereafter to this world. And the place it descends to is the place the one addressed sees every day.

This is the place in the sūra that looks most directly to the present.

ʿĀmila nāṣiba — having laboured, having grown weary. And these two attributes are part not of a list of praise but of a depiction of punishment.

Today "industriousness" is largely counted an undisputed value. Busyness has become a ground of justification in itself: when a person says "I work very hard", it is generally assumed that the question is closed. Weariness is used like a moral proof.

The measure the sūra sets cuts this off. Labour is not a measure of value; it is an item of cost. What determines the value is where the labour is spent.

The practical counterpart of this is a simple distinction between two questions:

• "Am I busy?" — this question almost always gets the answer "yes" and measures nothing.
• "Am I going anywhere?" — this question asks for a direction and a distance.

The difference between them is the difference between movement and progress. Running on the spot is movement too.

And here is the disquiet the sūra produces: it is easy to notice idleness, because the person feels himself unoccupied. It is hard to notice labour spent in the wrong place, because the person feels himself weary and counts his weariness a proof.

The garden's first quality was an absence: lā tasmaʿu fīhā lāghiya — no idle talk is heard there.

This verse says something unaccustomed about the description of peace: what disturbs is not noise but meaningless speech. The sūra is not speaking of silence; it is speaking of null speech not reaching the ear.

Its present-day counterpart is worth dwelling on. The quantity of speech spoken has never in any period of human history been what it is today. And a great part of this increase is speech that produces no consequence: a debate that is not tied to a decision, an opinion that does not turn into an act, an answer that does not reach an addressee, a claim that is not entered into anyone's account.

The legal sense of the word is of use here: laghw al-yamīn is an oath that has been said but not counted. A great part of the speech produced today is exactly this — said, but not counted.

And the two words must be kept apart:

• Laghw empties out speech: what is spoken has no counterpart.
• Lahw steals attention: the person is taken from his real business and bound elsewhere.

The two generally work together but are not the same thing. A person can lose his attention without uttering any idle talk at all; or he can produce idle talk while his attention is where it should be.

The attitude the Qurʾān proposes is striking and out of the ordinary. In all three verses (al-Muʾminūn 23/3, al-Furqān 25/72, al-Qaṣaṣ 28/55) what is proposed against idle talk is not to answer but to turn away. In the verse of al-Qaṣaṣ this is said openly: "our work is ours and your work is yours."

This is a particularly difficult attitude today, because the settings of idle talk are built so as to reward participation. Not answering looks like a loss. By the verse's measure, what is a loss is answering: an answer given to idle talk makes the idle talk count.

Lā yusminu wa lā yughnī min jūʿ — it neither nourishes nor avails against hunger.

The verse separated two distinct functions of a food: to nourish (long-term) and to satisfy (short-term). And it cut off both.

This distinction has a side that looks to the present, and it can be said without forcing the word.

A thing's being consumed and a benefit's being had from that thing are two separate events. Consumption can be measured: how much was eaten, how much read, how much watched, how much followed. Benefit is not measured; and because it is not measured, it is generally not asked about.

This has concrete fields. In food, the existence of products that satisfy but do not nourish is a known fact — giving a sense of fullness while being low in nutritional value. In the consumption of information a similar structure can be observed: a person may read news all day and by evening have learned nothing. Time has passed, attention has been spent, nothing has remained.

The measure the verse sets is this, and it can be drawn out from food and generalised: a thing's "having been consumed" does not mean that it has done its work. The question should be not "did I take it in" but "did it leave anything in me".

I write this not as something the verse says directly but as an application, reaching to the present, of the distinction the verse sets up.

Lasta ʿalayhim bi-muṣayṭir — you are not one who rules them by force.

This verse was said to the Prophet. Its having been said to the Prophet means that it holds a fortiori for those below him: an authority not granted to the most authorised person is granted to no one else at all.

The distinction the verse sets up is the distinction between persuasion and compulsion. And this distinction is not confined to the religious field.

Its concrete counterparts:

In the family. A parent's wish to pass on a conviction to a child and the power to impose that conviction are separate things. Power produces conduct; it does not produce conviction. And conduct produced by compulsion falls away the moment the compulsion is lifted.

In an institution. A manager's getting a principle accepted and his checking that the principle is complied with are separate things. The second is necessary but does not take the place of the first.

In a community. The difference between defending a view and putting the one who does not conform to it under surveillance is exactly the difference between mudhakkir and muṣayṭir.

And the verse's finest side is this: not being a muṣayṭir is not a deficiency but an exemption. The person is not held responsible for a result he cannot produce.

This is at once relieving and limiting. It is relieving: the non-acceptance of what you recount is not your failure. It is limiting: you have no right to use the means in your hand to make it be accepted.

The sūra gives these two faces in the same sentence.

A-fa-lā yanẓurūna — do they not look?

The verb is not raʾā (to see) but naẓara (to look). And this distinction takes on a particular sense today.

The fault the sūra diagnoses is not failing to see but failing to look. The person asked to look at the camel sees the camel every day. He sees the sky every night. He walks upon the earth. There is nothing he does not see. There is also nothing he does: he does not look.

Habit is the greatest enemy of attention. The more often a thing is seen, the less it is looked at. The mind stops processing what is familiar and puts it on automatic. This is not a fault but an economy — the mind cannot give the same attention to everything.

But the economy has a price: the most-seen thing becomes the least-looked-at thing. This is exactly why the sūra begins with the camel. The sky and the mountain stop a person in any case; the camel does not, because it is too familiar.

Its present-day counterpart is the widening of the list of things not looked at. In the course of a day a person looks at dozens of screens and "looks at" none of them; he passes along the same road every day and cannot describe it; he speaks with the same people every day and does not remember their faces.

The sūra's call is not to acquire new knowledge but to return to what is already there. And this joins with the command fa-dhakkir (remind) in verse 21: what is to be reminded of is not far off but in front of him.

The sūra's last verse is this: inna ʿalaynā ḥisābahum — their reckoning is ours.

And this sentence draws a limit for the person who reads the sūra as a whole.

The sister of the warning recorded in the discussion of al-Humaza holds here. There this was written: to take up the text and place other people in its description and pass judgment on them is to commit the very act the sūra describes.

In al-Ghāshiya the same trap is set up in another form. The sūra describes two groups: collapsed faces and softened faces. The most natural tendency of the person reading the text is to distribute those he knows between the two lists.

The sūra's last two verses cut this off directly.

"Their return is to us, their reckoning is ours." The sentence was said to the Prophet — that is, the authority to take the reckoning has been taken away even from the messenger. The messenger's work is tadhkīr, not ḥisāb.

And the distinction that follows from this is: the idea of giving a reckoning and the appetite for calling to account are separate things.

The first turns a person back upon himself: one day I shall be questioned. The second turns him outward: these people ought to be called to account.

The feeling the sūra produces should be the first, because the sūra gives a description, and a description is applied first to oneself. The description "having laboured, having grown weary" is a description everyone can test in his own life; it cannot be tested in another's life, because it is not possible to see from outside where a person's striving is going.

And the sūra says this in any case: faces are recounted, not names. The faces will be visible on that day. They are not visible today.

At several points throughout the text a definite language was deliberately not used; the reader needs to know these:

• No occasion of revelation was given. Since I am not sure that a definite attribution to an event exists for this sūra, no report was transmitted.
• The practice of reciting it in the prayers was recorded, but no attribution to a hadith source was made; it was passed over in the language of "it is widespread in the tradition".
• What ٱلْغَٰشِيَة refers to (the resurrection / the fire of hell / the enveloping crowd) is disputed; three views were given in a table, one preference was stated with its ground, and it was written that it is not binding.
• The distinction between هل أتاك and ألم تر was presented as a tendency, not as a rule; it was stated openly that al-Insān 76/1 constitutes a counter-example.
• The time of عاملة ناصبة (in this world / in the hereafter / both) is disputed; three views were given with their grounds and objections, a preference was stated and it was recorded that it is not binding.
• No botanical equivalent of ضريع was given. The description the lexicographers record ("a dry thorny plant known in the Ḥijāz") was conveyed; it was not matched with a modern species name, because most such matchings are conjectural.
• For the apparent conflict between al-Ghāshiya 88/6 and al-Ḥāqqa 69/36 three solutions were given in a table; while a preference was stated, it was written that it is not binding and that there is no proof for counting the others weak.
• The link established between the root sense of "abasement" in ضريع and its being a food was presented as my own reading; it was not ascribed to any classical exegete.
• The variant readings (taṣlā/tuṣlā — verse 4; lā tasmaʿu / lā yusmaʿu / lā tusmaʿu — verse 11; muṣayṭir/musayṭir — verse 22; al-ibil/al-ibill — verse 17) were recorded, but it was not written which reading belongs to which imam, because I cannot give the distribution with certainty.
• The reading of الإبل as "cloud" was recorded; it was stated that the reading of the majority is "camel" and this was written with its ground, with the addition that it is not binding.
• No claim of a scientific miracle was set up concerning the camel. The camel's fittedness to its environment was left with the note that "this is one point of view" and within a single paragraph; no physiological details were gone into.
• On سطحت no claim in any direction was set up concerning the shape of the earth. It was written openly that the verse was not set up to answer this question; the note on firāsh in al-Baqara 2/22 was relied on.
• What إلا attaches to (verse 23) is disputed; three views were given with their grounds and objections, a preference was stated and it was recorded that it is not binding.
• The disagreement over the singular of زرابي was recorded; no preference was adopted, and it was stated that it does not change the sense.
• The root link between سرير and سرور was conveyed as an explanation the lexicographers have transmitted; it was stated that it carries no claim of certainty.
• The difference between إياب and رجوع was conveyed as the lexicographers have transmitted it; it was not claimed that the distinction works sharply everywhere in the Qurʾān.
• On how the depiction of the garden is to be read (material / representational) the two tendencies in the classical tradition were recorded, and no preference was imposed between them.
• It was stated openly that the following readings are my own reading: "the act that is done but yields no result" as the sūra's central idea; the echo between the two uses of the root naṣb; the root rafʿ being shared by the two series; the correspondence between the four passive participles and the four passive verbs; the circle and head-movement readings of the fourfold gaze; the four grounds for why the section of proof stands at the end; the changing of hands of the burden in the last two verses; the movement/arrival reading between boiling water and flowing water; the reading of the verb lā tasmaʿu as "not reaching"; the link between istighnāʾ and lā yughnī; the difference in the voice of the verbs in the two tableaux.
• The observations about sound and structure (the three regions of verse-endings, the weight of adjectives, the table of inner symmetry) were recorded not as a claim of miracle but as the accord of form with content.