Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 77 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:77

فَٱنطَلَقَا حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَآ أَتَيَآ أَهْلَ قَرْيَةٍ ٱسْتَطْعَمَآ أَهْلَهَا فَأَبَوْا۟ أَن يُضَيِّفُوهُمَا فَوَجَدَا فِيهَا جِدَارًا يُرِيدُ أَن يَنقَضَّ فَأَقَامَهُۥ ۖ قَالَ لَوْ شِئْتَ لَتَّخَذْتَ عَلَيْهِ أَجْرًا

“So they set out, until when they came to the people of a town, they asked its people for food, but they refused to offer them hospitality. And they found therein a wall about to collapse, so he [i.e., al-Khiḍr] restored it. [Moses] said, "If you wished, you could have taken for it a payment."”

Saheeh International

Essence

The only time the Qur'an uses the verb for taking a guest in, it is being refused, by one town, to two travellers.

A reflection

The one place the Qur'an uses the verb for hosting

The refusal is usually read as scene-setting. Two travellers are turned away, which explains why Musa objects to free labour later.

It is more than that, and a count makes the point.

The Arabic verb for taking somebody in as a guest occurs once in the whole Qur'an. Here. In a refusal.

So the only time the Book uses the word for hosting, somebody is declining to do it.

And look at who was asking. The verb for their request is the form that means asking to be fed. Two men, on foot, after a long road, asking a settlement for food.

There is nothing in the text about what the town had or did not have. No famine is mentioned, no shortage, no reason.

In one village a man knocking at eleven doors was given directions at every one of them. Nobody was rude. Each person told him where the shop was, in detail, and shut the door.

That is the texture of it. A refusal does not usually announce itself as cruelty. It presents as help with a different question.

And the word for the town matters too. Its root is gathering. A place is called this because people collected there, and the same root gives the bowl a guest is fed from.

So in Arabic, the word for a settlement and the word for hospitality come from one root.

Which makes this town's answer a contradiction in its own name. A gathering-place that will not gather anybody in.

The wall comes next. It is worth noticing that the man rebuilt it anyway.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.