al-Shams 91:9

Qad aflaḥa man zakkāhā "He who purified it has been delivered."

The answer to the oath. The series of seven verses is fastened here.

A small note of grammar is needed. In Arabic, if the answer to an oath comes with an affirmative perfect verb, لَقَدْ is expected at its head. Here there is only قَدْ, without the lām.

There are three explanations of this:

1. The lām has been elided — so that the sentence should not grow heavy after a long series of oaths. This is the explanation of the majority of the lexicographers, and the eliding of the lām after long oaths is a known usage. 2. The answer is understood; "qad aflaḥa" is not the answer but a new sentence. On this view the real answer is supplied. It is a minority view and has nothing corresponding to it in the text. 3. قَدْ alone is sufficient; when it comes with a perfect verb it conveys certainty (taḥqīq).

In point of meaning the result is the same in all three. I record it but do not dwell on it.

This word was treated at al-Baqara 2/5 by way of al-mufliḥūn; the observation made there holds here as well and sits at the centre of the sūra.

To recall it briefly: the root ف-ل-ح means to split, to cleave. Fallāḥ — the ploughman; he takes this name because he splits the soil. Falāḥ — to break through an obstacle and come out, to crack the husk, to reach the state of yielding a crop. The call in the adhān, "ḥayya ʿala'l-falāḥ", is made with this word.

In the section on al-Baqara this picture was set up: "The seed is buried under the soil, stays in the dark, seems to be rotting. Its deliverance is to split the layer above it and come to the surface."

Sūrat al-Shams completes this picture — and it completes it by the opposing word in the next verse. For what will come in the tenth verse, دَسَّى, means exactly to bury. The sūra, that is, sets side by side the two halves of the agricultural picture built up in al-Baqara:

• Aflaḥa / zakkā — the seed split the soil and came out, grew, gave a crop.
• Khāba / dassā — the seed was left under the soil, it did not come out.

The observation in al-Baqara was at the level of inference; here, because the two verbs stand side by side, the picture stands in the text itself.

Root: ز-ك-و. Under this root lie two senses at once, and the two are inseparable:

1. Cleanness, purification. To be rid of what is mixed in. 2. Growth, increase, blessing. Zakā'l-zarʿu — the crop grew, it developed.

The lexicons do not divide these two into separate entries. From the same root comes zakāt — and that the alms-due should carry this name shows how the word's two senses join: wealth, when a portion of it is taken out, is cleansed and increases. The Qurʾān says this plainly: "Take from their wealth an alms by which you may cleanse them and purify them" (al-Tawba 9/103) — both verbs there belong to a field of meaning close to this root.

The joining of the two senses is seen in agriculture. A plant's growing depends on its being weeded of the wild growth that chokes it. Weeding is a subtraction, but its result is increase. Cleanness and growth are two sides of one operation.

For this reason, to render the expression "he purified his soul" merely as "he cleaned his soul" leaves it half said. The sentence is saying: he purified his soul and thereby made it grow. Purification is not a loss; it is the condition of growth.

There is a real tension here and it would not be right to skip it. Elsewhere the Qurʾān appears to forbid purifying the soul:

"So do not claim purity for yourselves (fa-lā tuzakkū anfusakum); He knows best who guards himself" (al-Najm 53/32).

"Have you not seen those who claim purity for themselves? No — God purifies whom He wills" (al-Nisāʾ 4/49).

The same root, the same form, opposite rulings. The resolution lies in the verb's describing two distinct works:

The difference is between doing and saying. The first is a work, the second a claim. And the second is forbidden generally because it tries to take the place of the first.

The side of this distinction that looks to the present is plain: to talk about one's own moral condition and to put it right are two different works, and the first can obstruct the second by giving the feeling that it has been done.

A disagreement is transmitted about the agent of the verb as well:

The second view is a minority one and stands weak, because in the tenth verse دَسَّاهَا comes in the same structure; it is not possible to make God the agent of the verb "to bury". Since the two verses are in the same pattern, their agents must be the same as well. The text's own symmetry supports the first view.