al-Balad 90:4

Laqad khalaqna'l-insāna fī kabad "We have surely created man in hardship."

The central sentence of the sūra, and one of the densest diagnoses of man in the Qurʾān.

This sentence is word for word the same structure as al-Tīn 95/4:

• لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ فِىٓ أَحْسَنِ تَقْوِيمٍ (al-Tīn 95/4)
• لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ فِى كَبَدٍ (al-Balad 90/4)

The same emphasis (laqad), the same verb and the same plural of majesty (khalaqnā), the same object and the same article of comprehensiveness (al-insāna), the same particle of containment (fī). The only thing that changes is the last element.

The analysis of the laqad pattern, of the plural in khalaqnā, of the generic article in al-insān and of the containing function of fī was made in the section on al-Tīn; I do not repeat it here. What belongs to this place is what that pattern is filled with.

Set the two verses side by side and the Qurʾān's description of man is completed:

• In point of capacity: in the finest stature.
• In point of condition: in hardship.

These do not contradict one another. A being may be both furnished without defect and set into a hard environment; indeed the meaning of the furnishing comes to light only in a hard environment. For an easy life "the finest stature" would not have been needed.

Root: ك-ب-د. This root has three distinct usages, and all three stand in the same dictionary entry. Seeing all three at once is required in order to understand what the verse says.

1. The liver. Kabid / kabd — the largest internal organ of the body. The connection sometimes made between this root and the word kebab is disputed and I do not go into it; but that the name of the organ in Arabic is from this root is beyond dispute.

2. The middle of a thing, its centre. Kabid al-samāʾ — the middle of the sky, that is, the point at which the sun stands highest. Kabid al-arḍ — the navel of the earth. This usage is widespread and shows that the root carries the idea of a centre.

3. Hardship, distress, toil. Kābada — he set his breast against a hardship, he struggled with distress. Mukābada — grappling with difficulty.

How do the three senses join? The explanation the lexicographers give is this: the liver stands in the middle and at the centre of the body; and the middle of a thing is also its hardest to reach, its most concentrated place; from there the sense "hardship" arose. The severity of the pain given by disease of the liver is also mentioned in this passage of sense.

All these explanations are transmitted in the classical dictionaries; as to which is historically correct I issue no firm ruling. But the important thing is this: at the centre of the word there is the idea of "centre". Hardship is not a fault at the edge; it is a thing standing in the middle.

To see what this does in the verse a comparison has to be made.

The verse could have said three things, and all three would have been reasonable:

• "Hardships come upon man." — Hardship would then be an event coming from outside.
• "Man was created for hardship." — Hardship would then be a purpose.
• "Man was created with hardship." — Hardship would then be a quality of the act of creating.

It says none of these. What it says is: "We created man inside hardship."

The particle fī conveys containment. As loss is an element in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr (la-fī khusr), so hardship is an element here. Man does not enter hardship; he begins inside it.

The meaning of this is: that life is toilsome is not a fault but a structure. Not a malfunction, not a misfortune, not an error to be corrected; the set-up itself.

This diagnosis has two distinct consequences, and both matter:

The first — a consolation. A person undergoing hardship may not be in difficulty because he has done something wrong. The sūra does not fasten life's being hard onto man's fault.

The second — a warning. To wait for a point at which hardship ends is in vain. The sentence "let this job be finished and I shall be at ease" runs contrary to the structure the verse describes — because being at ease means getting outside hardship, and there is no outside.

The Qurʾān repeats this description elsewhere with other words:

• "O man! You are toiling towards your Lord (kādiḥun), and you will meet Him at the last" (al-Inshiqāq 84/6). The root kadḥ: to work and be worn down, to make one's way by scraping. The same diagnosis, with another word.
• "His mother bore him with hardship and gave birth to him with hardship" (al-Aḥqāf 46/15).
• The content of the warning given to Adam in the garden is also striking: "Let him not drive you out of the garden, and then you would fall into distress" (Ṭāhā 20/117). The verb here is from the root shaqā and conveys toil. That is, the description of going outside the garden is directly to enter toil.

This last verse can be read as a kind of background to al-Balad 90/4: the place where man stands is by definition a place of toil.

Kabad has tanwīn, that is, it is indefinite: "a hardship". Like khusrin in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr, the indefiniteness here conveys magnification — a hardship whose kind and bounds are not drawn.

And this indefiniteness does one thing more: the kind of the hardship is not stated. Bodily, economic, moral, relational? The text does not distinguish. Everyone's own hardship is the hardship the verse describes.

From this verse the conclusion "then it is futile to try to lessen hardship" cannot be drawn — and the sūra itself does not permit it. For a few verses later the sūra will command exactly the lessening of someone else's hardship: to loose the slave, to feed the hungry.

The verse, that is, does not set up a fatalist resignation. What it sets up is this: hardship does not go away, but it can be shared. The second half of the sūra is the name of that sharing. The fourth verse lays down the diagnosis; the thirteenth says what is to be done.