Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 34 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:34

وَكَانَ لَهُۥ ثَمَرٌ فَقَالَ لِصَـٰحِبِهِۦ وَهُوَ يُحَاوِرُهُۥٓ أَنَا۠ أَكْثَرُ مِنكَ مَالًا وَأَعَزُّ نَفَرًا

“And he had fruit, so he said to his companion while he was conversing with him, "I am greater than you in wealth and mightier in [numbers of] men."”

Saheeh International

Essence

He answers a man talking about God by reading out an inventory, in a word whose root means a turban unwound.

A reflection

The word for conversing also means undone

The verse does not say he spoke. It says he spoke while conversing, and the word for conversing is doing a great deal of work.

One of the long commentaries sets it out. The root means to return. Speech going back and forth is conversation because each person returns something. Then it quotes another verse against this man without comment: indeed, he thought that he would never return. Same root.

The lexicons add more. From these letters comes the image of a turban unwound after it has been wound. And a phrase the Arabs used for a reversal: undoing after gain. The axle a pulley turns on is from here too, and so is the whitening of cloth.

So one word holds the back and forth of talk, the thought that there is nothing to go back to, and a wound thing unwinding.

Now look at what he actually returns. The commentaries say the believing man was conversing by way of exhortation. He was calling him to faith in Allah and in the raising of the dead. The reply is: I have more money than you, and stronger men.

There is a letter-cutter who was once asked, gently, to look again at one serif on a memorial stone. He answered by saying how many stones he had cut that year. Nobody in the room thought he had misheard. Everybody understood that the question had been declined.

That is what is happening here, and it is not rare. When somebody raises something that reaches you, the easiest escape is not an argument. It is a statement of your own weight.

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.