إِذَا زُلْزِلَتِ ٱلْأَرْضُ زِلْزَالَهَا
Arabic has two basic instruments for framing a condition about the future, and the difference between them is at work in the first word of this sūra.
إِنْ is used for what is merely possible: it may happen, it may not. إِذَا is used for what is certain to occur and whose time alone is unknown. This is why إذا is in origin an adverb of time; the conditional sense was loaded onto it later. In English we render both with "if" or with "when", and the difference disappears.
Almost every one of the Qurʾān's sūras of the resurrection opens with this particle: "When the sun is folded up" (al-Takwīr 81/1), "When the sky is split apart" (al-Infiṭār 82/1), "When the sky is rent" (al-Inshiqāq 84/1), "When the Event comes to pass" (al-Wāqiʿa 56/1). In all of them the same choice is made: the event is not opened for debate, its time is awaited.
With its first word the sūra frames no claim; it sets a date and leaves the content of the date empty.
Root: ز-ل-ز-ل. This is a root of the kind Arabic calls muḍāʿaf rubāʿī: a four-letter root built by doubling a two-letter core (zal). Most of the lexicographers attach it to the verb zalla (to slip, the slipping of the foot) from the root ز-ل-ل; the words zalla (a lapse) and zalūl belong to the same family.
In Arabic these doubled roots do a particular job: they convey a repeated, back-and-forth, oscillating movement, and the sound that movement makes. The examples show this plainly:
- صَلْصَلَ — to ring, the clattering of dry clay (ṣalṣāl, al-Raḥmān 55/14)
- قَلْقَلَ — to joggle a thing and shift it from its place
- زَعْزَعَ — to shake and toss about
- دَمْدَمَ — to come down upon, to rumble (al-Shams 91/14)
- كَبْكَبَ — to tumble headlong (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/94)
- وَسْوَسَ — to whisper over and over
This last example was treated earlier in this commentary: the doubled structure of the word waswasa in Sūrat al-Nās showed that the whispering is not a single occurrence but a continuous one. Zalzala has the same grammar: not a single blow but a movement that breaks off and starts again, that oscillates.
That is, the structure of the word carries the shape of what it describes. An earthquake is not a single tremor; it is a repeated wave. The root too is built that way: zal-zal.
I record this not as a claim of miracle but as the apt use, here, of a working rule of Arabic. The same rule operates in exactly the same way in dozens of words such as ṣalṣāl, qaʿqaʿa and hamhama.
This is a gap deliberately left in the first verse of the sūra — and the gap will be closed in the fifth verse: "because your Lord has revealed to it." That is, the agent is not named for four verses, and is then given in a single sentence. The scene is first set up without an agent; the bewilderment is undergone first; the explanation comes afterwards.
There is one further reading, and it deserves recording: the passive form announces from the outset that the event is not the earth's own doing. The earth is shaken, but it does not itself set the shaking in motion.
زِلْزَال is an absolute object: the verbal noun of the verb repeated in order to reinforce the verb or to qualify it. English has no counterpart for it; something on the order of "it was shaken with a shaking". But the verbal noun here has not been left bare, it has been annexed to a pronoun: zilzāla-hā — "its shaking", the earth's own shaking.
| Explanation | What it means |
|---|---|
| The shaking that belongs to it, that is proper to it | Every existing thing has an end of its own; this is the one that belongs to the earth |
| The shaking decreed for it, whose measure has been determined | Not a random movement but one appointed in advance |
| The shaking expected of it, the one it merits | The whole of the earth's capacity; there can be no more than this |
| That known, promised shaking | Nothing new is being announced to the one addressed; what has already been spoken of is being pointed to |
These explanations do not exclude one another. The work they do in common is this: to give the shaking an owner. Without the annexation ("when the earth is shaken") there would be merely an event. With the annexation the event becomes an occurrence belonging to the earth's own history, set apart for it, of a determined measure.
Here too is the point at which this parts company with the earthquakes of daily life. Known earthquakes happen in one piece of the earth and do nothing to the earth itself. This verse speaks not of a place on the earth's surface but of the earth itself: the shaking is no longer upon the earth but in the earth.
A difference is transmitted concerning the first vowel of the word: زِلْزَال (with kasra) and زَلْزَال (with fatḥa). In Arabic, of these two patterns the one with kasra is usually counted a verbal noun and the one with fatḥa a noun; but the lexicographers record that both may be verbal nouns. It yields no practical difference in meaning. Since I cannot state with certainty which reading belongs to which imām, I give no names.
- "O people! Fear your Lord; the shaking of the Hour is a mighty thing" (al-Ḥajj 22/1). The same root, the same event; there the greatness of the shaking is stated, here its owner is stated.
- "And they were shaken, shaken with a severe shaking…" (al-Aḥzāb 33/11). Here it is not the earth that is shaken but people — the situation during the siege of the Trench is being described. The root can slide from a physical shaking to a psychological one.
- "Or did you suppose that you would enter the Garden without there coming upon you the like of what came upon those before you? Such poverty and hardship touched them, and they were so shaken…" (al-Baqara 2/214). Again the shaking of people.
This distribution shows the following: the root conveys a thing's being torn loose from the ground it rests on. The ground may be physical or mental.