وَأَنتَ حِلٌّۢ بِهَٰذَا ٱلْبَلَدِ
First a grammatical matter: is this sentence a part of the oath, or a parenthesis coming inside the oath?
There are two views. The first attaches the sentence to the oath: that is, a second thing is also being sworn by. The second — and the more widespread — counts the sentence a circumstantial clause: "I swear by this land, you being in it." On this reading the sentence states the quality of the thing sworn by; the city has become worth swearing by because the Prophet is there.
The second reading sits better in the flow of the sūra and agrees with the new oath in the third verse coming (with a wāw) as a separate element.
Root: ح-ل-ل. The concrete sense of this root is to untie, to open a bond. To untie a knot, to set down a load, to release what has been tied.
- ḥalāl — untied, released; that whose prohibition has been lifted. Its opposite is ḥarām — bound, made inviolable.
- ḥulūl — to come down at a place, to halt there. When a traveller arrives at a place he unties his load; from there comes the sense "to halt, to lodge".
- maḥalla — the place where one halts.
- ḥall — the resolving of a difficulty; also dissolving, a solution.
- iḥlāl — to break a bond.
The same root, that is, carries both "the lifting of a prohibition" and "settling in a place", and both come from "untying". And the disagreement in the verse arises exactly from these two branches.
| Reading | The meaning of the sentence | Ground | Its weak side |
|---|---|---|---|
| It will be made lawful | "You will be made lawful (to fight) in this land" — that is, in time to come permission to fight will be given you in this city | Sound reports that on the day of the conquest of Mecca the city was made lawful for a while; "lawful", the most widespread sense of the word | The sūra is Meccan; a thing that will happen in the future being related in the present tense requires an explanation |
| You are being treated without respect | "In this land you are deprived of inviolability" — the city is inviolable for everyone, while against you everything is counted permitted | The context of the sūra: the treatment given to the Prophet in Mecca. The contrast between the sanctity of the city and the actual state of affairs there | The linguistic indication that the word conveys a wrong passively suffered is weak |
| You are dwelling here | "You are lodging in this land" — the sense of ḥulūl | The "halting" branch of the root; agreement with the circumstantial-clause reading | The form ḥill is not the expected pattern for this sense; ḥāll would have been expected |
| It is lawful for you | "In this city it is lawful for you to do as you wish" — as a mark of honour | A reading of a privilege granted to the Prophet | It does not agree with the tone of the sūra; besides, this reading carries a claim to a ruling and its ground is weak |
The second reading is the one that agrees best with the sūra as a whole, and its ground has to be opened out.
Mecca, in that world, was a sanctuary. Within the bounds of the Ḥaram blood was not shed, game was not hunted, trees were not cut. When a man pursued in a blood feud entered the Ḥaram he was not touched; even the killer of a killer had to wait outside. This was one of the oldest and firmest institutions of Arabia, and Mecca's commercial standing rested directly upon it — this is the substructure of the question of safety treated in Sūrat Quraysh.
Now see the picture: in the city where everyone was inviolable, one person had been made touchable. The Prophet and those who followed him had been taken off the list of persons the Ḥaram protected. The verse says this in a single word: here you are ḥill — untied, released, the protection over you lifted.
On this reading the verse is a sentence of reproach, and it prepares the rest of the sūra: imagine a city in which it is forbidden to cut a tree, but there is nothing that is not done to the human being inside it. The sūra will speak after this of man's hardship, of the supposition that no one can call him to account, and of mercy. The opening sentence lays the ground of all of it.
It is transmitted that in the address the Prophet gave on the day of the conquest of Mecca he spoke of the inviolability of the city and said: this land is a land God made inviolable on the day He created the heavens and the earth; it was not made lawful to anyone before me, and to me it was made lawful only for an hour of the day, and that hour has passed — it is inviolable now until the Day of Resurrection. The report is found in al-Bukhārī and Muslim.
This hadith records the single moment at which a "being made lawful" took place, and it has been connected directly with the second verse of Sūrat al-Balad. For those who defend that connection the verse is an announcement: the Prophet, under pressure in Mecca, is being told in advance that one day he will hold this city.
My assessment — it is not binding: the two readings do not exclude one another, and the text can carry both. But in point of the sūra's own flow the second reading is stronger; for the sūra is not a text of promise but a text of diagnosis and of call. The first reading is built with a piece of historical knowledge from outside the text; the second comes out of the text's own context.
This too should be added: the word's having been left this wide may not be a defect. The same root relates two different times in the same city: today you are unprotected, tomorrow this place will be opened to you. The two ends of the word hold two periods. I record this not as a preference but as a possibility the text carries.
Notice: the expression bi-hādhā'l-baladi occurs twice in two verses. In the first verse as the place sworn by, in the second as the place where the Prophet is.
In Arabic the repetition of the noun where a pronoun would have sufficed conveys magnification and fixing. What it does here is this: the place sworn by and the place where the wrong is done are the same place. The sentence repeats the word in order to establish that equation. Had a pronoun been used ("there"), the contrast would not have stood so sharply.