Al-'Adiyat · Makki · ayah 5 of 11

Al-'Adiyat 100:5

فَوَسَطْنَ بِهِۦ جَمْعًا

“Arriving thereby in the center[1970] collectively,”

Saheeh International

Essence

The chargers do not stop at the edge: wrapped in their own dust, they go straight into the heart of the gathered host.

A reflection

Into the thick of it

On a school trip to a big city, a teacher loses sight of one eleven-year-old in a packed Christmas market. The other staff start circling the edges, calling his name. She does something different. She walks straight into the densest part of the crowd, where the stalls are closest together, because that is where a small boy would be swept along. She finds him by the carousel.

The ayah ends the charge with the same movement. Fa-wasaṭna bihi jamʿan: 'and so they reached, with it, the very middle of a host'. The verb wasaṭa means to come into the midst of something: the middle of a river, a desert, a crowd. The chargers do not skirt the gathering or pick off stragglers at the edge. They go to its centre.

Wasaṭ carries an established picture in the lexicons. The middle of a riding beast's back is the best and safest seat. The middle of a pasture is the best grazing. From this, the middle came to mean the best and the most just. The Quran calls the believers ummatan wasaṭan, 'a middle community' (2:143), and Sahih al-Bukhari records the Prophet ﷺ explaining wasaṭ there as 'just'.

Jamʿ is a gathering, things pressed close together. Most sources say it is a host of the enemy. The sources also record another reading of the verb, wassaṭna, which some explain as 'they split the host into two halves'. And those who read the chargers as pilgrims' camels take Jamʿ as a place name: Muzdalifa, called 'the Gathering' because the pilgrims gather there.

The little phrase bihi, 'with it', probably refers back to the dust of the previous ayah. They arrive wrapped in it. Or it means 'at that time', the dawn.

The whole oath now stands complete. Running, striking fire, raiding at dawn, raising dust, reaching the centre. Five ayat, one unbroken charge. Next comes the verdict it was building to.

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