وَقَدْ خَابَ مَن دَسَّىٰهَا
Root: خ-ي-ب. Its sense is to fail to find what one hoped for, to come back empty-handed, to have one's expectation come to nothing. Khayb — disappointment, coming to nothing.
The word's difference from khusr (Sūrat al-ʿAṣr) is fine but real. Khusr is a term of accounting: the balance coming out negative. Khayb, however, is a term of expectation: something was hoped for, worked for, and it did not come out. In khusr there is a reckoning; in khayb there is a hope.
This difference adds something to the verse: the man who buries his soul is not someone who hoped for nothing. He hoped for something — comfort, perhaps, or safety, perhaps the peace of not being seen. The word says that this hope came to nothing.
The other uses in the Qurʾān confirm this flavour: "and every obstinate tyrant came to nothing" (Ibrāhīm 14/15); "He who invents a lie has lost" (Ṭāhā 20/61)
Root: د-س-س. The word was originally دَسَّسَ (dassasa); to avoid the heaviness of three sīns coming one after another, the last was turned into a yāʾ and it became دَسَّى. The lexicographers call this the avoidance of taḍʿīf. And the form that results fits the sūra's -āhā verse-ending.
The concrete sense of the root: to slip a thing secretly inside another, to hide it, to bury it. Its derivatives:
- دَسِيسَة (dasīsa) — a hidden trap, a stratagem. Turkish still uses the borrowed word. Beneath the word lies the idea of "slipping something in secretly".
- اندَسَّ (indassa) — he slipped in secretly, he stole away.
Its use in the Qurʾān is decisive. The root occurs in one further place in the Qurʾān, and there its sense is concrete enough to leave no room for debate:
"And when one of them is given the good news of a girl, his face darkens and he is filled with rage. He hides himself from the people because of the evil of the news given him: shall he keep her in humiliation, or bury her in the earth (yadussuhū fi'l-turāb)? See how evil is the judgement they make!" (al-Naḥl 16/58-59)
What is described here is the practice of burying a girl child alive, found among the Arabs of the Jāhiliyya. The Qurʾān names this practice elsewhere as well: "and when the girl buried alive is asked for what sin she was killed…" (al-Takwīr 81/8-9).
This sets a chilling picture before us when we read al-Shams 91/10. And it must be stated that this connection is not merely one I am making: the only other place the root occurs in the Qurʾān is this one:
The man who buries his soul is doing, within himself, what the father of the Jāhiliyya did to his daughter. He puts what is alive, what is living, what could have grown, under the earth and covers it over. He does not even kill it — he buries it. The difference matters: what is buried does not die at once.
I do not present this connection as the verse's definite intent. But that the only other place the root occurs in the Qurʾān should be this one suggests that there is a purpose in the choice of the word.
The opposition of the two verses comes out fully when the root senses of the two words are set side by side:
| زَكَّى | دَسَّى | |
|---|---|---|
| Sense of the root | To cleanse + to make grow | To slip in secretly, to bury |
| Direction | Up, out, to the light | Down, in, to the dark |
| Visibility | Bringing into the open | Covering over |
| Life | Growth | The stopping of growth |
| Outcome | Aflaḥa — it split through and came out | Khāba — it did not find what it hoped for |
- جَلَّاهَا — the day brought it out into the open → زَكَّاهَا — he brought his soul out, he made it grow
- يَغْشَاهَا — the night covered it → دَسَّاهَا — he covered his soul over, he buried it
The sūra is saying that what happens in the sky every day is repeated inside man as a choice. This is why the oaths were ranged: the cycle in the cosmos is the picture of the choice in the soul.
There is one difference, and this difference carries the whole seriousness of the sūra: in the sky the night is temporary. Morning comes, the covering is lifted. In the soul, however, the burying can be permanent, because the one who buries and the one buried are the same person, and no one comes to lift the earth.
The verse does not explain this, and so what I say here is my own reading. But the sense of the root gives a direction: to bury is not to destroy but to make invisible. And that means the following:
- To act as though one did not know what one knows. Not to use the distinction that has been inspired — the fujūr–taqwā distinction of the eighth verse — but to cover it over.
- To set up a noise that will drown out the voice of conscience: busyness, entertainment, the manufacture of justifications.
- To show oneself as other than one is. The secrecy in the word's derivative dasīsa is not idle.
The point to be noticed: what is described here is not an open evil. Something is not done — something is suppressed. The sūra is saying that no murder is needed for loss; a covering is enough.
qad + verb + man + verb + hā. The number of words is the same, the metre the same, the rhyme the same. The only difference is in the two pairs of verbs.
This symmetry lodges within the form itself the fact that what the sūra says consists of two options. There is no third sentence. There is no neutral position — the same conclusion was reached in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr as well, but there by way of the passage of time; here by way of the condition of the soul.
And the same twofold structure will build the whole of the next sūra (al-Layl): fa-ammā man aʿṭā… wa ammā man bakhila… Al-Shams says this pair in two verses; al-Layl spreads it over six and fills it in.