al-ʿAlaq 96:5

ʿAllama'l-insāna mā lam yaʿlam "He taught the human being what he did not know."

The verse uses the same verb (ʿallama) once more, but this time not with a bāʾ, and instead with two direct objects: al-insān (to whom) and mā lam yaʿlam (what).

And the second object is a negative clause: "the thing he did not know." That is, the content of what is taught is not stated; only that the human being did not previously know it.

This is the same technique as the leaving of the verb "created" without an object in the first verse. When the object is left indefinite the scope becomes unlimited: whatever the human being knows, all of it. Language, name, number, art, agriculture, law, writing — all are inside this sentence.

That the verb comes in the perfect is meaningful too: the teaching is presented as a finished, completed work. But because its content is left open, the scope keeps widening.

This verse is the conceptual centre of the sūra, and it claims this: the human being's knowledge is not from himself.

At first sight this claim may seem odd. The human being learns; he works, researches, tries, errs, corrects. Knowledge looks like the return on effort spent.

The verse does not deny this. What it says stands at a more basic level: the capacity for learning is itself given. For a person to be able to learn he must first have memory, attention, language, curiosity, the faculty of inference. He acquired none of these himself. If knowledge is a building, the human being raises the storeys; but he did not pour the foundation.

The Qurʾān sets this up elsewhere too:

• al-Naḥl 16/78: "God brought you out of your mothers' wombs knowing nothing; and He gave you hearing, sight and hearts." The ordering is plain: first the not-knowing, then the giving of the instruments.
• al-Raḥmān 55/1-4: "al-Raḥmān. He taught the Qurʾān. He created the human being. He taught him clear speech." The order here is striking: teaching is mentioned before creating. In Sūrat al-ʿAlaq the order is the reverse — first creation (1-2), then teaching (4-5). The two sūras give the same two verbs in different orders; both are apt in their own context.

The nearest relative of this verse is the story of Adam in Sūrat al-Baqara, and that discussion was treated in al-Baqara. Here I establish the link and rely on that treatment.

What was there is this: God taught Adam all the names; the angels could not know them and said: "Glory be to You, we have no knowledge except what You have taught us" (al-Baqara 2/32).

This sentence says two things at once:

1. Knowledge is something given. The angels say it by way of confession. And note that the confession comes not as a declaration of deficiency but inside a sentence of tasbīḥ (declaring God free of imperfection). That is, to say "our knowledge is given" is for them no humiliation; it is a correct finding.

2. The human being's distinction too lies in knowledge. Adam's standing over against the angels was established not by worship but by knowing the names.

Now set the two texts side by side:

The same verb, the same structure. The Qurʾān describes the human being's place in two separate places with the same word.

But here there is a critical point, and the rest of the sūra is built on it: knowledge is a privilege, and like every privilege it is open to being misunderstood. The angels said "we have no knowledge except what we have been taught" — that is, they kept the source of their knowledge in the right place. The human being may not do this. He may count knowledge his own property, count it his own achievement, and once he does, he begins to see himself as self-sufficient.

The sixth verse of the sūra begins exactly here.

Let us gather what the five verses say:

1. Read — in the name of your Lord; He is the one who created. 2. He created you from something that hangs on and clings. 3. Read — your Lord is the highest degree of generosity. 4. He taught by the pen. 5. He taught the human being what he did not know.

That is, everything the human being has in hand has been enumerated: his existence (he was created), his material (ʿalaq), his knowledge (it was taught), his instruments (the pen). All four came from outside. The first revelation shows the human being nothing at all that belongs to him.

And in spite of this the tone is soft: there is a command, but no threat; there is a lowering (ʿalaq), but no humiliation; the Lord is named al-Akram. In five verses there is not one mention of hell, of punishment, or of the reckoning.

This picture will change all at once in the sixth verse.