فَلْيَدْعُ نَادِيَهُۥ • سَنَدْعُ ٱلزَّبَانِيَةَ
Fa'l-yadʿu nādiyah • sa-nadʿu'z-zabāniya "Then let him call his council! We too shall call the zabāniya."
These two verses are the most dramatic place in the sūra, and the technique is simple: the same verb, two parties.
Yadʿu (let him call) — sa-nadʿu (We shall call). The same root (د ع و), the same verb, set against each other. One is in the imperative and mocking; the other in the future and certain.
A command built with the lām of command (lām al-amr): "let him call". But this is not a real command; in Arabic the imperative is sometimes used for challenge (taḥaddī) or for threat.
English has the same construction: "Let him do his worst", "Let him call them, then, and we shall see." In the form of a command, but nothing is being commanded; the helplessness of the other party is being displayed.
The ground for this reading is in the next verse: the call that will answer it is already at hand. That is, the one addressed is told "use every means you have", because the insufficiency of the means he will use is what is meant to be shown.
Root: ن د و / ن د ي. At the centre of the root lie calling and gathering. Nidāʾ (a call), munādī (one who calls), nadwa (an assembly) all come from here.
نادي (nādī) means "council" — but not merely a room: the company that sits together, takes counsel and makes decisions, and the place of that company. The word covers both the people and the place at once.
In Arabic today this word is still used for a sports club and for an association (al-nādī). The word's vitality comes from the continuity of its function.
The historical counterpart: Dār al-Nadwa. In Mecca, near the Kaʿba, the building in which the leading men of Quraysh gathered and took decisions bore a name from this root: Dār al-Nadwa — "the house of assembly". The decision for war, alliances, marriages, the affairs of the caravan were discussed there.
So the phrase "let him call his council" in the verse is not an abstract threat; it is a direct reference to the centre of the power structure in Mecca.
What was a man's power in Mecca? In treating the orphan in Sūrat al-Māʿūn we dealt with this in detail: there was no state, no police, no court. What protected a person was the men behind him. A person's safety depended on the existence of somebody who would call to account if he were harmed.
In this picture the nādī is a life insurance. The more crowded and the more respected a man's council, the less he is touched. And the concrete support for the transgressor's seeing himself as sufficient (istighnāʾ) is in all likelihood this too: he has men behind him.
The verse targets this support. What is meant by "let him call" is: call the thing you rely on, and let us see whether it will be of use.
The nādī in the Qurʾān. The word occurs once more: "…and you commit abominations in your assembly" (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/29) — the words of Lot to his people. There too the matter is that wickedness has ceased to be individual and is done in assembly, together. In both places the word calls to mind the courage a crowd gives.
The formation of the word is disputed. It is a plural, but the lexicographers differ over its singular: forms such as zibniyy, zabānī, zābin are proposed. There is no agreement on a definite singular form.
Its root is generally given as ز ب ن. The sense of this root is: to push violently, to repel, to drive off with a kick. The Arabs called a camel that kicked while being milked zabūn. That is, the word means "one who pushes, who thrusts away".
Here a link can be made with Sūrat al-Māʿūn. There were two verbs there: yaduʿʿu (the one who violently pushes the orphan) and yudaʿʿūna in al-Ṭūr 52/13 (they are thrust into hell). The same logic works here too: the one who pushes is pushed. Zabāniya is the name of those who do the pushing.
Who are they? In the exegetical tradition they are understood as the officers of hell, the angels of punishment. The Qurʾān describes these angels elsewhere:
Sūrat al-ʿAlaq does not explain the word; the name alone is given. This falls into the category of words left unexplained — like māʿūn in al-Māʿūn. Its not being explained preserves the terror: an unknown name is more effective than a described punishment.
| The man's call | The counter-call | |
|---|---|---|
| Mood of the verb | Imperative (fa'l-yadʿu) — mocking | Future (sa-nadʿu) — certain |
| What is called | nādī — his own council | zabāniya — unknown officers |
| Possession | nādiya-hu — his council | definite, but ascribed to no one |
| Its character | people, countable, familiar | undescribed |
And note: the man's council is ascribed to him (nādiyahu — his council), while the other party is not ascribed; it is said only al-zabāniya. Even this difference says something: the power of the one rests on a relation of ownership, that of the other does not.
The letter sīn. The sīn at the head of the verb sa-nadʿu is the particle of the future, and in Arabic it is said to convey the near future (for the distant future, sawfa). That is, the threat is not a threat cast far off.
The mechanism behind the verse does not belong to history. The confidence a crowd gives is one of the oldest of human calculations, and it persists by changing form.
The question "who is behind him" is asked today too, and its answer still determines conduct. One with no one behind him holds back; one with a crowd takes courage. This does not have to be a bad thing — solidarity is a real need, and the sūra does not target solidarity.
What is targeted is the crowd's standing in the place of the measure. When the council is crowded a person does not question what he himself does; because there are many doing the same thing, and multitude feels like rightness. The wrongness of a conduct does not decrease with the number of those who share it — but the felt wrongness does. The verse speaks exactly about this feeling: call them, then, and see how many come, and what will change when they do.