al-Balad 90:15-16

Yatīman dhā maqraba • aw miskīnan dhā matraba "An orphan who is kin, or a poor man cleaving to the dust."

The description of those who are to be fed. Two persons, two qualities.

Let us look at the structure first. In three verses three dhū constructs come one after another:

• yawmin dhī masghabatin — a day possessed of hunger
• yatīman dhā maqrabatin — an orphan possessed of kinship
• miskīnan dhā matrabatin — a poor man possessed of dust

All three are on the same pattern (mafʿala), all three end on the same sound (-raba / -ghaba), all three are joined by the same structure. This is a series in which the sound carries the sense: the three constructs, locked into one another, build a single scene.

The detailed analysis of this word was made in Sūrat al-Māʿūn: that the original sense of the root is infirād (being left alone, solitude), that at the centre of the word there is not helplessness but having no one behind one, and what it meant to be an orphan in the Mecca of the seventh century were treated there.

What has to be added here is that the word comes indefinite: yatīman — "an orphan". In al-Māʿūn it came with the definite article (al-yatīm — conveying the kind). The indefiniteness here points to individual persons: an orphan who comes before you.

The difference is small but meaningful: al-Māʿūn was criticising the treatment given to a category, al-Balad is describing the act to be done to a person.

Root: ق-ر-ب. To be near. Qurb (nearness), qarīb (near), aqribāʾ, qurba, taqarrub (drawing near) are from the same root. In the Qurʾān the expression dhi'l-qurbā (possessed of nearness) occurs often in the sense of a relative.

Maqraba is again on the mafʿala pattern: the condition in which nearness is found.

There are two readings:

1. Kinship. The orphan is a relative of the one who feeds him. 2. Neighbourhood / nearness. The orphan is one living near the person — near in distance.

The majority adopt the first reading, and the Qurʾān's use of the word qurbā for kinship supports it.

But why is it harder to feed an orphan who is kin?

At first sight the opposite would be thought: giving to a relative ought to be easier, because there is a belonging. But the logic of the sūra works from another place, and two grounds can be thought of:

The first — the absence of visibility. Help given to a poor person far off can be related, becomes known, brings standing. Help given to a relative is counted ordinary; no one records it as a good deed. To feed an orphan who is kin, that is, is a spending that brings no social return whatever.

The second — the weight of the relationship. A relative is the party with a claim on property. An orphan relative is most often the person who has, or is thought to have, a right in an inheritance. In the Mecca of the seventh century the devouring of an orphan's property was a widespread problem, and the Qurʾān speaks on this matter with unusual severity (al-Nisāʾ 4/10). An orphan who is kin, that is, is the person who can stand directly against one's own interest.

This second ground agrees very well with the verse's description of the "ascent". The sūra chooses the person to whom it is hardest to give: one who both brings no standing at all and with whom one may be in a conflict of interest.

I offer these readings as my own inference; in the classical sources the preference for the orphan who is kin is generally explained by way of the weight of the claim of kinship.

The analysis of this word too was made in Sūrat al-Māʿūn: the root س-ك-ن (sukūn, immobility), and that the miskīn is not "one who has nothing" but one who cannot stand up with what he has, one who is fragile, were treated there.

The sense of "immobility" in the root of the word, joined with the next qualification, gives a complete image.

Root: ت-ر-ب. Turāb — earth, dust. From the same root come tarība, turba (the place buried in earth), and the expressions in the Qurʾān relating man's creation from earth.

Matraba is again on the mafʿala pattern: the state in which the dust is found.

The concrete image of the word: a person stuck to the ground, covered in dust, with nothing left between himself and the earth. One who has no mat to lie on, nothing to cover himself with, no means of keeping the dirt off him.

The nearest English equivalents: "down in the dirt", "covered in dust", "grovelling". But none of them is as concrete as the Arabic — because the Arabic word derives directly from the word for earth.

This is not an abstract description of poverty but a physical one. The verse does not speak of income level, of lack of means, of deprivation; it speaks of the dust on the man. It shows the place where poverty is seen.

And joined with the immobility in the root of the word miskīn the image is complete: someone who cannot stir and who is stuck to the ground.

One further observation: the sūra does not mention man as "created from earth", but it meets earth once — and that meeting is on the back of a poor man. I record this not as an interpretation but as the word's single occurrence within the sūra.