97. Sūrat al-Qadr

Five verses, around thirty words. One of the shortest sūras in the Qurʾān, and it speaks of a single thing: a night.

In the whole of the sūra there is no command, no prohibition, no narrative, no ruling. Not even an event is recounted — the event has already happened, and the sūra states its worth. What the text does is not to report a piece of news but to set a measure: what that night comes to.

The relation of this sūra to the one before it is a matter dwelt on in exegesis, and it is one of the most striking neighbourings the arrangement of the muṣḥaf produces.

Sūrat al-ʿAlaq recounts the first moment of revelation — the command to read, the pen, the teaching. Sūrat al-Qadr states the worth of that moment in time — which night it was and what that night comes to.

That is, one says what happened, the other when and how valuable it was. Al-ʿAlaq speaks from inside the event; al-Qadr looks at the event from outside and from above.

There is a link between the two sūras at the level of wording as well, and interestingly both build it by not saying:

Neither sūra names its central object. One leaves the object of the command empty, the other the referent of the pronoun. And in both, the thing that fills the gap is the same: the Qurʾān itself.

I record this as a reading made possible by the arrangement of the muṣḥaf. As was stated in the treatment of al-Māʿūn, links between sūras (munāsabāt al-suwar) are not proof but a possibility of reading — the arrangement of the muṣḥaf and the order of revelation are two different things, and the contribution of the exegete who makes the link is part of the matter.

al-Qadr, from the construct that occurs three times in the sūra: laylat al-qadr. The name of the sūra is the name of its subject.

I shall analyse the root of the word at the first verse; but this must be said at the outset: this root opens in three separate directions of meaning in Arabic, and all three fit this night. The name of the sūra is by itself a problem of exegesis.

The majority say it is Meccan; there is also a view that it is Medinan, and this second view is grounded on the relation of the sūra to the practice of fasting and Ramadan — the fast of Ramadan was made obligatory in Medina.

I issue no definite ruling. The style (short verse-endings, repetition, the question form, absolute expressions) fits the general character of the Meccan sūras; but since the sūra never mentions fasting, tying it to fasting is not obligatory. This distinction does not change how the sūra is understood.

The word-by-word analysis of the basmala was carried out in Sūrat al-Fātiḥa; I do not repeat it here.

Innā anzalnāhu fī laylati'l-qadr "We sent it down on the Night of Qadr."

The sentence begins with inna: a particle of emphasis. And the pronoun is plural: nā — we.

This is the Qurʾān's common usage, and it is the structure the lexicographers call the plural of majesty (taʿẓīm): a single subject speaking with a plural pronoun in order to declare its exaltedness. English has the like of it in institutional and official language.

It must be noted that this creates no contradiction with Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ — aḥad (one, without equal) was treated there. The plural pronoun does not report a number; it reports a station. Indeed the same Qurʾān uses the singular too for the same event: "The trustworthy Spirit brought it down" (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/193), "…he brought it down upon your heart by God's leave" (al-Baqara 2/97).

In the treatment of al-Fātiḥa we dealt with the plural in the expression "You alone do we serve": there the plural was the servant mingling into the congregation. The plural here works in exactly the opposite direction: exaltation.

Root ن ز ل: to come down. The Qurʾān uses both forms of this root, and the difference between them was taken up in the treatment of al-Baqara 2/23. Without repeating that finding I recall it: nazzala (Form II) reports that the act is done piece by piece, repeatedly; the Qurʾān's coming down spread over twenty-three years is registered in that form.

Here, however, anzala (Form IV) is used. This form suits better an act done at one stroke, as a whole.

This difference has been the point of departure for a great debate in classical exegesis.

The view of a descent in two stages. On this view the Qurʾān came down in two distinct ways:

1. The descent as a whole: the entire Qurʾān was sent down at one stroke to the lowest heaven on the Night of Qadr. Anzala is used for this descent. 2. The descent piece by piece: from there to the Prophet, over twenty-three years, according to events and needs. Nazzala is used for this.

This view is grounded on reports ascribed to Ibn ʿAbbās and is widely reported in the classical commentaries.

The second view: the beginning of the descent. On this view the verse reports the night on which the Qurʾān began to come down. That is, the Night of Qadr is the night on which the first verses of revelation came down; the expression "We sent it down" names the whole business by way of the moment it began. In Arabic it is common to name the beginning of an undertaking with the verb for the whole of it.

To my mind the second view stands closer to the text, because the Qurʾān separately and with a reason defends the gradualness of the descent: "Those who disbelieve said, 'Why was the Qurʾān not sent down upon him all at once?' We did it thus in order to strengthen your heart with it, and We recited it slowly and distinctly" (al-Furqān 25/32). This makes gradualness a matter to be defended.

But I do not reject the first view: the difference of form is real and has to be explained. This is a preference, and it is not binding.

Here is the most striking place in the verse: it says "We sent it down", and what "it" is, is not said.

The word "Qurʾān" does not occur anywhere in the sūra. Nor "Book". Nor "revelation". Across five verses the name of the thing sent down is not mentioned even once.

This is a problem from the side of grammar: a pronoun needs a referent, and the referent must either have gone before or be understood from the context. Here it has not gone before — it is the first word of the sūra.

The classical explanations:

1. Its being perfectly well known. The thing meant is so well known and so obvious that there is no need to name it. English does the same: we walk into a room and ask "Has he come?", and the person facing us knows whom we mean. Naming is needed where there is uncertainty.

2. Magnification. To point with a pronoun is sometimes more exalting than to mention by name. We saw one side of this while treating the pronoun huwa in the first verse of Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ: the pronoun loads on no attribute at all, it only points, and it magnifies what comes after it.

3. Shifting the sūra's attention. Had the name of the thing sent down been said, the centre of gravity of the sentence would have shifted to it. When it is not said, the weight falls on the rest of the sentence — that is, on the night. The sūra is not recounting the Qurʾān; it is recounting the night on which the Qurʾān came down. The pronoun keeps the subject in place.

To my mind the third is the one most in keeping with the structure of the sūra: indeed the expression repeated three times across the sūra is laylat al-qadr, not al-qurʾān.

Interpreting the Qurʾān by the Qurʾān. The referent of the pronoun can be determined with certainty from other verses:

• al-Dukhān 44/3: إِنَّآ أَنزَلْنَٰهُ فِى لَيْلَةٍ مُّبَٰرَكَةٍ — "We sent it down on a blessed night." This verse begins word for word the same as al-Qadr 97/1; only the attribute of the night changes. And the verse immediately before it in Sūrat al-Dukhān names the thing sent down: "By the clear Book" (44/2).
• al-Baqara 2/185: "The month of Ramadan — the Qurʾān was sent down in it as guidance for people."

Three verses give three separate pieces of information about time, and they complete one another:

This trio draws the conclusion "the Night of Qadr is in Ramadan" from within the Qurʾān itself. This is what the classical commentaries rely on in this matter.

The root ليل (layl) reports darkness, covering. Night is the part that covers over the day.

Why night? The question is worth asking, because the choice is meaningful.

Night is a recurring frame in the Qurʾān. The Prophet's rising by night (al-Muzzammil 73/1-6), the night journey's taking place by night (al-Isrāʾ 17/1), the appointment by night given to Moses (Mūsā) (al-Aʿrāf 7/142). The Qurʾān places great events in the night.

There are concrete reasons for this, and Sūrat al-Muzzammil states one of them plainly: "The rising by night is stronger in its tread and more upright in speech" (al-Muzzammil 73/6). Night is the time when the distractions withdraw; the crowd disperses, work stops, sound lessens.

And then night itself is a covering. The first moment of revelation — one of the most extraordinary events in human life — takes place at a time no one saw, in a cave where no one was present. The event is without a witness.

The key word of the sūra, and the centre of its exegesis.

Root: ق د ر. In Arabic this root carries three senses that are connected to one another but open in separate directions. All three have to be seen one by one, because all three fit this night and all three have been defended in the classical commentaries.

1. Measure, determining, apportioning

The most basic sense of the root. Qadara — he measured, he cut to size, he determined its amount. Its derivatives: qadar (a determined measure), miqdār (amount), taqdīr (measuring and apportioning), qudra (the power to do a thing to its measure).

Evidence from the Qurʾān:

• "We created everything according to a measure (bi-qadar)" (al-Qamar 54/49).
• "With Him everything is by an amount (bi-miqdār)" (al-Raʿd 13/8).

How does this sense fit the night? The night is the night on which affairs are measured out and determined. The strongest evidence for this is in Sūrat al-Dukhān, mentioned just above:

"We sent it down on a blessed night… In it every wise affair is distinguished." (al-Dukhān 44/3-4)

The verb used is yufraqu — it is separated, distinguished, sorted out from one another (from the same root, furqān, farq). That is, that night is the night on which affairs pass from a mingled state to a separated one.

On this reading the name of the night comes from the work done on that night: the night of apportioning.

2. Worth, honour, elevation

The same root also carries the sense of "knowing the value of a thing, giving it the place it deserves". To speak of knowing a thing's worth, of giving a thing its due, is exactly this sense.

Evidence from the Qurʾān:

• "They did not give God His due measure (mā qadarū'llāha ḥaqqa qadrih)" (al-Anʿām 6/91; al-Ḥajj 22/74; al-Zumar 39/67). The "measuring" here is not measurement; it is knowing the worth.

How does this sense fit the night? Directly: that night is a night of high worth. Honoured, precious, elevated. The third verse will say just this: "better than a thousand months."

On this reading the name of the night comes from its own quality: the precious night.

3. Narrowness, constriction

The third direction of the root. Qadara ʿalayhi — he narrowed it upon him, he stinted him, he pressed him.

Evidence from the Qurʾān:

• "He whose provision has been straitened for him (qudira ʿalayhi rizquh)…" (al-Ṭalāq 65/7).
• "But when He tests him and straitens his provision (fa-qadara ʿalayhi rizqah)…" (al-Fajr 89/16).

How does this sense fit the night? In the classical commentaries this explanation is transmitted: on that night the earth fills with angels and grows narrow. That is, the night is "narrow" on account of its crowding. This explanation is ascribed to certain lexicographers; it suits the context, since the fourth verse will recount the descent of the angels.

On this reading the name of the night comes from the fullness lived on that night: the crowded night.

These three senses can be presented as alternatives to one another; but to my mind the sounder course is to see the three as three faces of the same night:

The three senses find their counterparts in three separate verses of the sūra. This shows that the word's multiplicity of meaning is not a vagueness but a density.

And one further link: the relation between apportioning and worth is built into the language itself. To know the qadr of a thing is to give it the right measure. Measuring and valuing come from the same root in Arabic — because worth is the result of measuring rightly. One who measures wrongly cannot give worth either.

This is directly connected with the second verse of the sūra. There it will be said "you cannot know what this is" — that is, the limit of the human capacity to measure will be marked. The worth of a thing whose worth you cannot know is made known to you.

Wa mā adrāka mā laylatu'l-qadr "And what made you know what the Night of Qadr is?"

This is one of the Qurʾān's recurring patterns, and wherever it is used it does the same work: it announces that what follows is unreachable by human knowledge.

The other instances of the pattern in the Qurʾān: "What is the Inevitable? And what made you know what the Inevitable is?" (al-Ḥāqqa 69/2-3); "And what will make you know what Saqar is?" (al-Muddaththir 74/27); "What is the Striking Blow? And what made you know what the Striking Blow is?" (al-Qāriʿa 101/2-3); "And what made you know what the steep ascent is?" (al-Balad 90/12); "And what made you know what the Crusher is?" (al-Humaza 104/5).

The detailed analysis of the pattern was carried out in the treatment of Sūrat al-Humaza (al-Humaza); the difference between the perfect and imperfect usages was also treated there. Below I take that distinction up again within the sūra's own context.

Root: د ر ي. To know — but a particular kind of knowing. The lexicographers draw this distinction between dirāya and ʿilm: dirāya is knowledge reached by investigating, by following a trail, by inference. In the concrete field of the root there is the association of tracking game.

This distinction sharpens what the verse says. The question is not "do you know this?"; it is "could you have found this by investigating?" The answer: no. What the Night of Qadr is, is not something that can be found by observation, by inference, by reasoning. The worth of a night is not visible from outside; that night too darkens and whitens like the other nights.

The verb is in the past tense: أدراك. This looks like a detail but it is not. The Qurʾān uses this pattern in two different tenses, and the usage is consistent:

Instances of the second pattern: "What will make you know? Perhaps the Hour is near" (al-Aḥzāb 33/63; similarly al-Shūrā 42/17). There the time of the Hour is asked about and is not said.

In Sūrat al-Qadr the perfect pattern is used — and indeed an explanation comes in the third verse. That is, the verse says: you could not have known this; but now you will learn it.

This makes a direct link with Sūrat al-ʿAlaq. There we had: "He taught man what he did not know" (al-ʿAlaq 96/5). The same logic works here: a piece of knowledge man could not reach on his own is made known to him. Al-ʿAlaq said this as a principle; al-Qadr applies it to a single instance.

Mā occurs twice in the verse, in two different functions:

1. Wa mā adrāka — the first mā is interrogative: "what made you know?" 2. …mā laylatu'l-qadr — the second mā is again interrogative, but it builds an embedded question clause: "what is the Night of Qadr?"

The second question does not mean "which night is it?" but "what kind of thing is it?" In Arabic mā is used for non-rational things and for the nature of a thing, man for those possessed of reason. That is, the question is not looking for the night in the calendar; it is asking after its nature.

This distinction matters: across the whole sūra it is never said which night it is. The only thing said is what that night is.

The verse uses the construct laylat al-qadr for the second time. A pronoun would have sufficed: "What made you know what it is?" But the whole noun is repeated.

We saw the same technique in Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ: the second verse, instead of saying "huwa'l-Ṣamad", repeated the name and said "Allāhu'l-Ṣamad". The finding there holds here too: where a pronoun would do the work, the repetition of the noun reports magnification and fixing in Arabic.

And the repetition will come once more here: the third verse too opens with the same construct. In a sūra of five verses, the same two-word construct three times. This is close to a fifth of the total word count of the sūra.

The function of the repetition is also rhythmic: the ear hears the same sound three times and the construct becomes a beat.

Laylatu'l-qadri khayrun min alfi shahr "The Night of Qadr is better than a thousand months."

The second verse had asked the question; this verse gives the answer. And attention must be paid to how the answer is built.

The answer is not a description but a comparison. What the night is, is not recounted; what it comes to, is stated. That is, the sūra does not explain the nature; it reports the worth.

This choice is consistent with the logic of the second verse. There it had been said "you cannot know this". A thing whose nature cannot be known can be conveyed only by comparison — not by quality but by measure.

Root: خ ي ر. Goodness, superiority, being preferable. Khayr, ikhtiyār (choosing — taking what is good), mukhtār, khiyār (the right of option) are from the same root.

A point of grammar: Khayr is in fact an elative (ism al-tafḍīl, the comparative form) and its original is akhyar. In Arabic this word and its opposite sharr (originally asharr) have been shortened from much use, and the hamza has dropped. The same wearing away was seen in the spelling of bismi in the basmala (the treatment of al-Fātiḥa).

That is, the expression "khayrun min" means exactly "better than…"; by the very form of the word it already carries a comparison.

The reckoning. A thousand months comes, in the lunar calendar, to about 83 years and 4 months. This is a long human lifetime — far longer than the average lifespan of that period.

The conclusion the classical commentaries draw from this is: one night comes to more than a lifetime. And note: the comparison is made not with nights but with months. Had it been said "better than a thousand nights", the comparison would have been between things of the same kind. When "a thousand months" is said, a single night is set against a lifetime.

Here one must be honest: both readings are possible and both can be defended.

The first reading — the number is real. A thousand months is exactly a thousand months. This reading has support from within the Qurʾān: at al-ʿAnkabūt 29/14 it is said that Noah (Nūḥ) remained among his people "a thousand years less fifty". The number there is exact — because a subtraction has been performed. That is, the Qurʾān does use "a thousand" as an exact number as well.

The second reading — "a thousand" reports multitude. In Arabic large round numbers (seventy, a thousand) are most often used not as exact numbers but in the sense of too many to be counted. Instances from the Qurʾān:

• "Even if you ask forgiveness for them seventy times, God will not forgive them" (al-Tawba 9/80). The "seventy" here is not a limit; the classical interpretation understands it as "ask as much as you like".
• "Every one of them would wish to be given a life of a thousand years" (al-Baqara 2/96).

Assessment. I adopt no preference between the two readings, because the outcome does not change. If the number is exact: one night comes to more than 83 years. If it reports multitude: one night comes to more than a stretch of time too long to be counted. What is said in both is the same — worth is not proportional to duration.

This is the sūra's real claim, and I shall take it up separately below.

A caution. Building calculations on this number — dividing it into years, deriving ratios, tying it to letters — falls outside this commentary per the method (Method). The verse sets a measure; it does not give an equation.

For this verse a few occasions are transmitted in the sources of exegesis. The prominent ones:

• It is recounted to the Prophet that one of the earlier communities was long-lived and performed much worship; the Companions grieve at the shortness of their own lifespans, and this verse comes down.
• It is recounted that a man from the Children of Israel strove in the way of God for a thousand months without laying down his weapon; the Muslims marvel at this, and the verse comes down.

On these reports. They are found in the books of exegesis, but their chains are weak or mursal (with the Companion link omitted). Their different versions do not fully agree with one another. They are not sound enough to allow one to say "the sūra came down definitely upon such-and-such an event".

Against this, the anxiety the reports voice is realistic and explains the logic of the verse: one whose life is short fears that his worship will remain little. The verse's answer comes to that anxiety at exactly the right point — length of time is not the sole measure.

This verse is easily passed over when it is not thought about. Yet it says something very fundamental: not all units of time are equal to one another.

The modern understanding of time assumes exactly the opposite. The clock divides time into equal and interchangeable units: every second is equal to every second, every hour is of the same length, time is a measurable and calculable resource. The sentence "time is money" is the summary of this understanding — time is thought of as a currency whose value per unit is fixed.

The verse breaks this assumption. One night comes to more than twenty-nine thousand-odd nights. This is mathematically meaningless — and it is said precisely for that reason. The source of the worth is not in the duration.

Then where? The rest of the sūra will say: in what happened on that night. The Qurʾān came down that night (verse 1), the angels come down that night (verse 4). That is, the worth of the night comes from what enters into it.

This gives rise to a general principle about time: the worth of a stretch of time is measured not by its length but by its content.

Tanazzalu'l-malāʾikatu wa'r-rūḥu fīhā bi-idhni rabbihim min kulli amr "On that night the angels and the Spirit come down, by the leave of their Lord, for every affair."

The same root, a third form. In the first verse there was anzalnā (Form IV). Here there is tanazzalu — Form V, and its original is tatanazzalu; one of the two tāʾs has been dropped so that they do not stand side by side.

This form reports gradualness and repetition: a descent one after another, in waves, at intervals.

That is, within five verses the sūra deliberately sets two different forms of the same root against each other:

The Qurʾān once, as a whole; the angels again and again, in waves. The difference of form says that the two descents are of different kinds. The distinction between anzala and nazzala that we set up in the treatment of al-Baqara 2/23 is here completed by a third form.

The verb is in the imperfect. This is a very important detail: tanazzalu is present/habitual, not past.

The first verse used the perfect: anzalnā — we sent down. A completed event. The fourth verse uses the imperfect: tanazzalu — they come down. A repeated, ongoing event.

That is, the sūra says: the descent of the Qurʾān happened once and was finished; but the night itself continues. That night is not a historical moment but a recurring stretch of time. This is the grammatical choice that makes the sūra a text of summons rather than a text of commemoration.

The root of the word is disputed. The lexicographers generally attach the word malak to the root أ ل ك: alūka means "the carrying of a message, the message sent". On this the angel is "envoy, messenger". It is said that the word comes from an original malʾak, and that the hamza dropped to give malak; that the plural comes with the hamza, as malāʾika, is taken as a sign of that original.

Another view attaches it to the root م ل ك (mulk, power); but the first derivation is more widely accepted.

The first derivation is meaningful: the angel's name comes from its work. The angel is named not as "a being of such a kind" but as "one who is sent". A definition by task in place of a definition by nature.

The definite article. Al-malāʾika — definite. That is, not "some angels" but the kind, angels. In the classical commentaries the multitude of the angels descending on this night is stressed; the explanation resting on the "narrowness" sense of the root qadr also comes from here.

The most disputed word of the sūra.

Root: ر و ح. This root carries a wide field of meaning, and all of it turns around one centre: rūḥ (spirit, life), rīḥ (wind), rawḥ (relief, ease), rāḥa (rest), rayḥān. The common point is something that moves unseen and carries life or ease. Wind and spirit come from the same root; both are invisible, both show their effect by blowing.

A point of word order in the verse. The Spirit is mentioned after the angels and separately: al-malāʾikatu wa'r-rūḥ. If the Spirit is one of the angels, it is already inside the expression "the angels"; mentioning it separately would be superfluous.

Arabic has a name for this: ʿaṭf al-khāṣṣ ʿalā'l-ʿāmm — the coupling of the particular to the general. Its function is to exalt and bring forward that particular. There is a known instance of it in the Qurʾān: "Whoever is an enemy to God, His angels, His messengers, Gabriel and Michael…" (al-Baqara 2/98) — Gabriel (Jibrīl) and Michael (Mīkāl) are already among the angels, but they are mentioned separately.

That is, the word order suggests not that the Spirit is a kind apart from the angels, but that it has a special position among them. But this is not a certain conclusion; some of the views below count the Spirit as entirely separate.

The views:

I adopt no preference. The first view is the one with the strongest evidence from within the Qurʾān and it is the choice of the majority; but the usages at al-Nabaʾ 78/38 and al-Maʿārij 70/4 do not close the matter entirely. It is clear that the word is used in more than one sense in the Qurʾān (rūḥun minhu of Jesus (ʿĪsā) — al-Nisāʾ 4/171; the rūḥ breathed into Adam — al-Ḥijr 15/29). This multiplicity makes reduction to a single definition difficult.

This too must be added: "They ask you about the spirit. Say: the spirit is of my Lord's affair; and you have been given only a little of knowledge" (al-Isrāʾ 17/85). The Qurʾān gives a closed answer to the question about this word. This is a further reason not to speak with certainty on the matter.

Root: أ ذ ن. Leave, permission. The same root also gives the words udhun (ear) and adhān (announcement). The common core: hearing and announcing. Leave is "an announced consent".

This is the most easily passed over but most important qualification in the verse. The descent of the angels is not of itself; it is by leave.

Why is this said? Because the angels are doing something extraordinary here: they are coming down to the earth, they are establishing the worth of a night. In such a scene there arises the possibility that the descending beings be understood as powers acting on their own. The verse closes that possibility.

The Qurʾān says this from the mouths of the angels themselves too: "We come down only by the command of your Lord" (Maryam 19/64).

"Their Lord" — the word Lord again. This is the only divine name that occurs in the sūra: rabbihim. The name "Allāh" does not occur in the sūra at all.

This is the reverse of Sūrat al-ʿAlaq: there Lord occurred nine times and Allāh once. In al-Qadr there is only Lord.

And the pronoun is striking: rabbi-him — their Lord, that is, the Lord of the angels. Even the angels are referred to a Lord. In the treatment of al-Fātiḥa we dealt with this root's sense of "owning and nurturing"; here the ownership side of the word comes to the fore: even the highest of beings are under someone's command.

The most disputed expression in the sūra from the side of grammar. There are three readings:

The third reading depends on a choice about the pause (waqf) at the end of the verse and is mentioned in the classical sources; but the division of the verses in the muṣḥaf supports the first two readings.

The word أمر (amr). Root أ م ر: to command. The word means both "command" and "affair, matter". The two are not cut off from one another: an "affair" is in fact the coming to pass of a command that has been given.

This double sense completes the picture when joined with the parallel verse in Sūrat al-Dukhān: "In it every wise affair (amr) is distinguished" (al-Dukhān 44/4). The same word, the same context.

And here the first sense of the root qadr (measure/apportioning) comes into play: if the angels come down "with every command", then that night is the night on which the commands are determined. At this point the name of the sūra and its fourth verse lock into one another.

"Kulli" — every. The scope has been left without limit. Which affairs they are is not said. This is in keeping with the sūra's general bearing: across the whole sūra nothing is set out in detail — the Qurʾān is not named, the date of the night is not given, the Spirit is not defined, the affairs are not enumerated.

Salāmun hiya ḥattā maṭlaʿi'l-fajr "Peace it is, until the rising of the dawn."

The structure of the sentence: salāmun (predicate) — hiya (subject). That is, the normal order has been reversed; the ordinary word order would have been hiya salāmun.

In Arabic the element brought forward reports restriction (ḥaṣr) and magnification. We treated the bringing forward of lahu at al-Ikhlāṣ 112/4, and of ilā rabbika at al-ʿAlaq 96/8, within this frame.

Here the meaning becomes: it is nothing other than peace. Not merely "it is a peaceable night"; it is peace from beginning to end, so much so that no other quality of it will be mentioned.

Two grammatical choices have come one on top of the other, and both work in the same direction.

The first: the sentence is a nominal sentence. There is no verb. As we treated in al-Fātiḥa and al-Ikhlāṣ, a nominal sentence in Arabic reports fixity and continuity. The night is not becoming peace, nor is it giving peace; it simply is peace.

The second — and this is the real point: "peace" is not an adjective but a noun.

The verse could have said "sālimatun hiya" (it is a sound, safe night). It does not. It says "salāmun hiya" — that is, the night is not given the attribute "peaceable"; the night is declared to be peace itself.

In Arabic this is a known way of expressing intensity: to exaggerate the quality of a thing, the verbal noun itself is predicated of it in place of an adjective. English does the same: instead of "that man is a model of kindness" one says "that man is kindness itself". An adjective reports a quality; a noun establishes an identity.

That is, the last verse of the sūra says: there is no peace inside the night; the night itself is peace.

Root: س ل م. This root produces the most central family of concepts in Islam: salām, salāma, silm (peace), taslīm, muslim, islām, sālim.

The root's original sense: flawlessness, completeness, being free of harm. Sālim is what has in it no defect and no break; salāma is a person's remaining unharmed.

Two directions open from here:

• Being free of harm — safety, security.
• Submitting — giving oneself over as a whole, bringing a dispute to an end.

The two are bound to one another: peace is the ending of conflict; and conflict ends by the submission of one or both of the parties.

To whom the peace is, is not said. The verse does not say "it is peace for the believers" or "it is peace from the angels". It has been left absolute. This is the bearing the sūra has kept from the start: objects and limits are not stated, the scope is left open.

Peace in the Qurʾān. The word recurs in the descriptions of the Garden: "Their greeting there is peace" (Yūnus 10/10); "They hear there no idle talk, only peace" (Maryam 19/62); "Peace — a word from a Lord who is Merciful" (Yā Sīn 36/58). And it is one of the names of God: al-Salām (al-Ḥashr 59/23).

That is, "peace" is in the Qurʾān the name of the state of the hereafter and of final rest. Giving this name to the Night of Qadr sets the night in the position of an exception within this world: on that night the world passes out of its ordinary state into another.

حتى (ḥattā) — reports a limit of ending. The peace of the night lasts up to a point and ends there.

مَطْلَع (maṭlaʿ) — Root: ط ل ع. To rise, to ascend, to come out. Ṭulūʿ (rising), ṭalīʿa (advance guard), iṭṭilāʿ (climbing on top of a thing and seeing it).

Maṭlaʿ is a noun of place/time form: the place of rising or the time of rising.

A variant reading. The readings maṭlaʿ (with fatḥa) and maṭliʿ (with kasra) are transmitted for the word; the second is ascribed to al-Kisāʾī, one of the imams of the readings. The difference concerns whether the form is a noun of time or a noun of place — "the time of rising" or "the place of rising". It does not change the meaning in any essential way; in this context both point to the same moment.

فجر (fajr) — Root: ف ج ر. The original sense of the root is to split, to crack, to open. Infijār (explosion, bursting), fajjara (he made a spring gush), tafjīr.

Dawn is the splitting of the darkness. Light does not come; the darkness splits and light comes out of it. The word describes a movement.

An interesting kinship: from the same root comes fujūr — going beyond the limit in sin, tearing the covering and doing evil openly. A fājir is one who does not hide his evil.

The link between the two words is this: both are the splitting of a covering. In dawn the covering of the night is split; in fujūr the covering of decency, of shame, of the limit is split.

And here a link is made with Sūrat al-ʿAlaq: the ṭughyān we treated there was water's overflowing its bed — the driving of a limit over. Fujūr too is a concept of the same family: the tearing of the limit. The last words of the two sūras come, conceptually, from kindred roots: one recounts the man who oversteps the limit, the other the light that splits the darkness. This is an observation; it is not a proof established between the two sūras.

The verse ties the limit of the night not to the rising of the sun but to the dawn. Between the two there is about an hour and a half.

Dawn is the moment not at which the night ends but at which it begins to end. The darkness has not yet fully lifted; the first splitting has occurred. In law too the time of the morning prayer and the beginning of the fast are tied to this moment.

That is, the sūra's last word is not a full closing but a handing over. The peace of the night lasts until the first sign of the day and lets go there.

One further observation: the sūra begins with a descent (anzalnā — from above downwards) and ends with a rising (maṭlaʿ — from below upwards). The first movement is downward, the last upward. I record this as an observation about the sound and the structure.

The most marked feature of the sūra is a hardness built at the level of sound.

Every verse ends with the sound rāʾ:

qadr — qadr — shahr — amr — fajr

Five verses, five words, all of them one- or two-syllable words closing with a vowelless rāʾ. And note: not one of them ends in a long vowel. In al-Māʿūn the verse-endings closed with a long vowel plus a nasal sound (dīn, yatīm, miskīn…) and were flowing. Here it is exactly the reverse: every verse is cut off with a hard consonant.

The density of the qāf. The word qadr occurs three times and each time begins with qāf. Qāf is a hard sound produced in Arabic at the back of the throat, by the root of the tongue meeting the uvula.

That the trio qāf–dāl–rāʾ should be repeated three times in a text of five verses gives the sūra a percussive rhythm.

What is this sound doing? Two observations:

1. Sound and meaning overlap. The first sense of the root qadr was "to measure, to cut to size, to set an exact limit". The work of measuring is discontinuous; it begins somewhere and ends somewhere. The sound of the sūra is discontinuous too: every verse stops on a consonant, it does not flow.

2. The sūra is short and can be memorised. Five verses, a single rhyme, a repeated construct. This is a structure designed for oral transmission and is a shared feature of the short Meccan sūras.

I give these observations as findings about the texture of the text; not as evidence of meaning.

Note the sequence of the verb forms: perfect → question → comparison → imperfect → nominal sentence. The text begins in the past, comes to the present, and closes with a timeless judgement. The grammar carries the sūra's understanding of time.

The sūra does not answer this question. The answer has been drawn from the reports of hadith and from the exegetes' own judgements — and there is no agreement.

The only limit the Qurʾān gives, when joined with al-Baqara 2/185, is the month of Ramadan. Which night it is has been left to transmission.

Hadith data accepted as sound:

• In al-Bukhārī and Muslim it is transmitted that the Prophet commanded the Night of Qadr to be sought in the last ten days of Ramadan; in one report it is asked that it be sought particularly on the odd nights.
• In a report transmitted in al-Bukhārī the Prophet says that he came out to announce the Night of Qadr, but that on account of two men's quarrelling this knowledge was taken from him (lifted away), and he asks them to seek it in the last ten days.

This second report is important: the night's remaining hidden is not a lack of knowledge; it is the result of an event that took place. And this loads the hiddenness with a meaning of its own.

The views put forward:

I adopt no preference. The sūra does not give the date of the night, and this looks like a deliberate silence of the text. The clearest thing the hadith data says is "seek it on the odd nights of the last ten days"; every determination beyond that is a judgement. Per the method (Method), I do not manufacture a preference on a matter where no preference is settled.

This is a more fruitful question than making a choice.

The classical scholars dwelt on the wisdom of the night's being left hidden, and this explanation is widespread: had the night been determined, the nights other than it would have lost their worth. A person would have piled everything onto a single night and left the rest empty.

Hiddenness produces the opposite: when the thing sought is not known, the whole field of the search comes alive. One who stays awake for ten nights builds not a one-night performance but a ten-night habit.

This logic is mentioned in the tradition together with other hiddennesses: the leaving hidden of the hour of answered prayer within the day of Friday, of the time of one's death, of which prayer will be granted. The shared structure is this: uncertainty makes continuity necessary.

I record this not as a claim about wisdom but as the result that the hiddenness in fact produces. Indeed this is what happens in practice: the last ten days have become, in Muslim societies, a far more intensive period of worship than a single night.

Two reports are widely transmitted about this night:

• "Whoever spends the Night of Qadr in worship, in faith and seeking the reward from God, his past sins are forgiven." It is found in al-Bukhārī and Muslim.
• It is transmitted that ʿĀʾisha asked what she should say if she met with the Night of Qadr, and that she was taught this prayer: "Allāhumma innaka ʿafuwwun tuḥibbu'l-ʿafwa fa-ʿfu ʿannī" — "O God, You are forgiving, You love forgiveness; forgive me." This report is transmitted in al-Tirmidhī and Ibn Māja.

A note on the second report: the prayer taught is not a list of requests. When a night is declared "better than a thousand months", the demand one would expect is to ask for something in return for that worth. But the prayer taught asks for pardon — that is, the request closest to asking for nothing. This detail shows how the night was understood.

Since we have treated the two sūras one after the other in this commentary, it is in place to draw the relation between them together.

The last two rows are striking.

Man does not occur in Sūrat al-Qadr. In the five verses there is no insān, no nās, no ʿabd, no muʾmin — none of them. The sūra is the sūra of the angels and of the descent; man is only the one addressed, not the subject. Al-ʿAlaq, by contrast, is from beginning to end about man.

Al-ʿAlaq ends with a command, al-Qadr with a report. Al-ʿAlaq asks something of the reader (prostrate, draw near); al-Qadr reports a state of affairs (peace it is). One is a demand, the other a finding.

What emerges when the two are read together is this: al-ʿAlaq recounts what revelation does to man; al-Qadr, what the moment of revelation's coming was. One looks at the receiver, the other at the event.

And one point in common: neither of them names its central object. Al-ʿAlaq says "read" but does not say what he is to read; al-Qadr says "We sent it down" but does not say what He sent down. Both sūras pass over the thing that is their subject by pointing at it. There may be a further reason for this beyond magnification and its being perfectly well known: naming sets limits, pointing does not.

One. Time is not made up of equal units. This is the sūra's most fundamental claim and it conflicts directly with the modern understanding of time. The clock, the calendar, planning, the measurement of productivity — all assume that time is homogeneous and interchangeable. An hour is an hour; which hour it is makes no difference.

The verse rejects this. One night comes to more than eighty-three years. This says that time is a vessel and that its worth depends on what goes into it.

The practical counterpart of this is harshly concrete: the length of a life is not the measure of the worth of that life. There is no direct proportion between the quantity of a person's work and its value. A short conversation can change a relationship; a ten-year effort may leave nothing behind. The sūra sets down this asymmetry not as an exception but as a principle.

Two. The measure of a night is what happened on that night. What makes the Night of Qadr valuable is not a property found in the night itself; it is the event that took place on that night. The Qurʾān came down, the angels came down. That is, the worth comes from what enters into the time.

This gives rise to a measure valid for personal time too, and the measure must not be turned round: declaring a stretch of time "special" does not make it special. New Year's night, a birthday, every date that is celebrated — these mark time but do not fill it. The logic of the verse is: content first, worth after. To reverse the order is to decorate an empty vessel.

Three. Hiddenness compels continuity. The night's not being known spreads the search over a wide field. This is not merely a religious arrangement; it is an instance of a general mechanism.

Uncertainty has two kinds of effect: it can paralyse, or it can keep one alert. Which result it produces depends on what the uncertainty is about. If the reward is certain to come but its time is uncertain — the result is continuity. If it is uncertain whether the reward will come at all — the result is discouragement. The uncertainty of the Night of Qadr is of the first kind: the existence of the night is certain, its date hidden.

Four. The night, as peace. The sūra declares the night itself to be peace. This is the reverse of the association commonly attached to night.

For the greater part of human history the night was the time of danger: unseen, unprotected, the hour when predators roam. The Qurʾān knows this and records it — in Sūrat al-Falaq refuge is sought "from the evil of the darkness when it settles" (al-Falaq 113/3); that passage was treated in this commentary.

Sūrat al-Qadr issues exactly the opposite judgement about the same stretch of time: it is peace. The same darkness, two different things on two different nights. This is not a contradiction; it shows that the night has no judgement in itself. The darkness is neutral, its content decisive.

The night of today is a separate matter. Electricity removed the biological limit of the night; the screen removed its silence. The result has been that the night's own particular quality — stillness, withdrawal, the gathering of attention — has largely worn away. The night the sūra describes is a night that is not a continuation of the day. To build a night of that kind today takes more labour than it once did.

Five. The place of the sentence "you cannot know". The second verse tells the one addressed that there is something he cannot know — and it does this not as a scolding but as the opening of an act of informing.

Recall the diagnosis we treated in Sūrat al-ʿAlaq: the source of transgression was seeing oneself as self-sufficient. The second verse of Sūrat al-Qadr sets up exactly the opposite position: you could not have found this by investigating. The acceptance of the limit opens the door of knowledge.

The two sūras meet at this point. One says "man transgresses when he sees himself as self-sufficient"; the other says "it is made known to the one who accepts that he is not sufficient". Two faces of the same principle.

• Whether the sūra is Meccan or Medinan is disputed; no preference was stated.
• The view of "a descent in two stages" drawn from the difference between the forms anzala / nazzala was transmitted; the chains of the reports ascribed to Ibn ʿAbbās are disputed. My own judgement was stated and it was written that it is not binding.
• All three senses of the root qadr have been defended in the classical sources; none was presented as certainly correct. The ascription of the "filling with angels and growing narrow" explanation to particular lexicographers was given with a note of caution.
• No preference was adopted as to whether the expression "a thousand months" reports an exact number or a multitude; both readings can be defended and neither changes the outcome.
• The chains of the reports transmitted as the occasion of revelation for the verse are weak or mursal; it was not said that "the sūra came down upon this".
• The views on who or what the Spirit is were given in a table; no preference was adopted. Al-Isrāʾ 17/85 was cited as a further reason not to speak with certainty on the matter.
• The three readings of the expression min kulli amr were transmitted; none was counted as certainly correct.
• No preference was adopted as to which night the Night of Qadr is. The hadith data (the last ten days, the odd nights) and the judgements of the exegetes were shown separately.
• What is said about the wisdom of the hiddenness consists of explanations widespread in the tradition and was transmitted by way of the result in fact produced; it was not presented as a transmitted report.
• The ascription of the maṭlaʿ / maṭliʿ variant reading to al-Kisāʾī was given in that language because it is so recorded in the sources.
• The observations about sound and verse-endings (the rāʾ rhyme, the density of qāf) are findings about the texture of the text; they were not presented as evidence of meaning.
• The kinship of root between fajr and fujūr, and its relation to the ṭughyān of al-ʿAlaq, were given as an observation; it is not a proof established between the two sūras.