al-Balad 90:17

Thumma kāna mina'lladhīna āmanū wa tawāṣaw bi'l-ṣabri wa tawāṣaw bi'l-marḥama "Then to be of those who believe, and who enjoin patience on one another, and who enjoin mercy on one another."

In Sūrat al-Tīn we distinguished two functions of this particle: an interval of time and an interval of rank.

Here the second sense must be preferred, and the ground is this: faith does not come after the acts counted. If the order is read chronologically, a result follows such as "first he freed a slave, then he believed", which is something neither the text nor the general logic of the Qurʾān would accept.

The use of thumma to convey rank solves this problem: "and moreover / and what is more". That is, the works counted must have been done, and besides this the person must be of this community.

The classical exegetes stop at this point and generally give this explanation: the good deeds counted carry a value only together with faith; thumma here conveys not time but the weight of the condition. This explanation is reasonable.

A striking word order. The verse does not say "he believed" (āmana); it says "he was of those who believe".

The difference is not unimportant. The first is an individual act. The second conveys entering into a community.

And this is necessarily bound to the rest of the verse: the other two things counted (tawāṣaw) are already in a pattern of reciprocity and cannot be done alone. A single person cannot be one "of those who enjoin on one another".

The verse, that is, draws faith too into the same frame: to believe is to enter into a community. This agrees with the observation in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr — there too the ruling was singular (al-insān) and the exception plural (alladhīna āmanū).

The detailed analysis of this word was made in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr: the root و-ص-ي, the difference of weight between bequest and advice, and the tafāʿul pattern's conveying reciprocity (mushāraka). I do not repeat it here.

The main measure recorded there was this: the pattern places inside the grammar the fact that the one who gives counsel is himself in need of counsel; an order of admonition that flows one way becomes impossible to correct.

The two verses are almost the same in structure, and their differences are meaningful:

There are two differences.

The first: the order has changed. In al-ʿAṣr patience is last, in al-Balad it is in the middle. In al-ʿAṣr patience was the bill for enjoining the truth — one who speaks the truth meets resistance, and they hold to one another in order not to break up. In al-Balad patience comes first and mercy after it.

The second, and the real one: mercy in place of the truth.

The reason for this change lies in the subjects of the two sūras.

Sūrat al-ʿAṣr is the sūra of time and of loss. There the matter is that man's balance is in deficit, and what is set against it is the speaking of the truth. Ḥaqq — what is fixed, what is in its right place, what is real.

Sūrat al-Balad, on the other hand, is the sūra of hardship and of the ascent. There the matter is that man was created in hardship and does not see the hardship of the one beside him. What is set against that is mercy.

In both sūras, that is, the fourth element is the answer given to that sūra's diagnosis:

• Loss → the enjoining of the truth (correction by right knowledge)
• Hardship → the enjoining of mercy (the sharing of the burden)

I offer this distinction as my own reading; but the contexts of the two sūras support it openly.

Root: ر-ح-م. The analysis of this root was made in al-Fātiḥa on the occasion of the names al-Raḥmān and al-Raḥīm: the root's bond with raḥim (the womb), and mercy's being set up in Arabic not as a "feeling" but as a relation of protection and nourishment.

What belongs to this place is the pattern.

The verse does not say raḥma, it says marḥama. The word is on the مَفْعَلَة (mafʿala) pattern — the same pattern that has occurred three more times in this sūra: masghaba, maqraba, matraba.

This is a consistency worth noticing. The sūra used this pattern three times in counting the content of the ascent; now it gives the counsel at the end of the ascent in the same pattern too. The state of hunger, the state of kinship, the state of dust — and the state of mercy. Four words in the same form.

The mafʿala pattern conveys the place, the time or the concentrated state of a thing. Marḥama, that is, is not a feeling of mercy; it is the condition in which mercy holds sway.

This distinction produces a practical consequence: what is enjoined is not a sentiment but a climate. Mercy's becoming, within a community, normal, expected and reciprocal. And precisely for this reason it comes with the tawāṣaw pattern — the pattern of reciprocity.

A question arises: mercy is an emotional state; does it come about by being enjoined?

The move the sūra makes is this: it treats mercy not as a feeling but as a norm. What is counted normal within a community is determined independently of the feelings of individual persons, and that norm in turn affects what those persons will feel.

The same logic was present in Sūrat al-Māʿūn: the expression "he does not urge the feeding of the needy" was a criticism not of a single act of help but of the establishing of a norm. As was recorded there — the alms one person gives feed one person, while a widespread conviction that they ought to be given changes the system.

Sūrat al-Balad sets up the positive form of this: a community that enjoins mercy on one another.