Al-'Adiyat · Makki · ayah 1 of 11

Al-'Adiyat 100:1

وَٱلْعَـٰدِيَـٰتِ ضَبْحًا

“By the racers, panting,[1967]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah swears by horses running flat out, their breath rasping from the chest: a creature giving everything for the one who feeds it.

A reflection

The sound of everything being given

Stand by the rail at a racecourse as the field comes into the final furlong. Before you hear the hooves, you hear the breathing. It is not a neigh. It is a hard, rasping sound driven out of the chest with every stride. It is the sound of an animal holding nothing back.

The surah opens with exactly that sound. Wa-l-ʿādiyāti ḍabḥan: 'by the chargers, panting'. Al-ʿādiyāt comes from a root the lexicons tie to running at full stretch, legs thrown far apart, a horse or a wolf covering ground as fast as it can. The same root gives the idea of going beyond a limit, and so of aggression and enmity. Here it is pure speed.

Ḍabḥ is the breath itself. The lexicons are precise: it is the sound of a running horse's breathing, heard from its chest, neither neigh nor whinny. One Companion, Ibn ʿAbbās, is reported to have imitated it: aḥ, aḥ. That is established. A second origin is given by some lexicographers, as one view. The Arabs said fire ḍabaḥa a stick when it scorched its surface and darkened its colour. Animals make this sound, they said, when their state is changed by fear, fatigue or eagerness, as fire changes the colour of wood.

The first hearers knew this sound well. They lived with horses and camels, raids and long journeys. An oath by charging horses would have put them inside the scene at once: the heat, the dust, the effort.

But an oath in the Quran is never just a picture. It points to what comes after it. Five ayat describe the chargers; then the sixth gives the point: 'Truly, the human being is ungrateful to his Lord' (100:6). The whole scene is set up as a contrast.

So listen again to the breath at the final furlong. That is what loyalty sounds like in an animal that has been fed and cared for. The surah will soon ask what loyalty sounds like in us.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.