لَا يَصْلَىٰهَآ إِلَّا ٱلْأَشْقَى ٱلَّذِى كَذَّبَ وَتَوَلَّىٰ
Lā yaṣlāhā illā'l-ashqā Alladhī kadhdhaba wa tawallā "None will enter it but the most wretched — he who gave the lie and turned away."
Root: ص-ل-ي. Its meaning is to enter the fire, to be roasted in the fire, to be exposed to the fire. Ṣalā — roasting on the fire; in Arabic the holding of meat to the fire and cooking it is expressed with this root.
It is often used in the Qurʾān: "He will soon enter a flaming fire" (Tabbat 111/3 — sayaṣlā); "Enter hell" (similar uses at al-Inshiqāq 84/12).
| Verse | Verb | Voice | Who does it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 92/15 | lā yaṣlāhā | Active | The person enters it himself |
| 92/17 | wa sayujannabuhā | Passive | The person is kept away |
Entering the fire is the person's own act; being protected from the fire is a work done to him. Deliverance is set up not as the person's achievement but as something done to him. This agrees with the general line of the Qurʾān — at al-Baqara 2/5 too guidance was qualified as something coming "from their Lord".
The word is an elative on the afʿal pattern: "more / most wretched". It occurred at al-Shams 91/12 as ashqāhā.
The problem is this: the sentence "None will enter the fire but the most wretched" looks as though it implied that the moderately wretched will not enter. This does not agree with the Qurʾān's statements in other places.
| Answer | Explanation |
|---|---|
| The elative here conveys no superiority | In Arabic the afʿal pattern is sometimes used without comparison, merely to state the attribute. It means not "the most wretched" but "the wretched one". This is a usage the lexicographers accept |
| The comparison is within the kind | What is meant is those who have gone furthest among the wretched; the type the sūra describes (the one who gives the lie and turns away) is the extreme instance of that class |
| A particular person is meant | It is based on the reports about the occasion of revelation; treated below |
The first answer is the soundest from the side of the language. The second fits the text as well. I state no definite preference.
And there is a symmetry: in the seventeenth verse ٱلْأَتْقَى will come — in the same measure, in the same pattern. Two elatives face to face. The sūra builds the two extreme types with one and the same grammatical pattern.
كَذَّبَ — he counted it false. What happens inside. تَوَلَّىٰ — he turned his face away, he turned his back. What happens outside.
Root: و-ل-ي. This root is rich: walī (friend, near one), walāya, mawlā, awlā — all convey nearness. In Form V (tawallā), however, it carries two opposite senses: both "to take charge of, to take as one's own" and "to turn away and go". The second sense is the one that holds here.
The two verbs coming together repeats the structure the sūra has kept up from the beginning: the accord of the inside with the outside. In the fifth verse the one who gave was at the same time confirming; here the one who gives the lie is at the same time turning away.
And note: the same verb was there in the ninth verse too — "wa kadhdhaba bi'l-ḥusnā". In the fifteenth verse the sūra comes back to that person. The sixteenth verse is the summary of the type described in verses eight to ten.