Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 93 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:93

حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَا بَلَغَ بَيْنَ ٱلسَّدَّيْنِ وَجَدَ مِن دُونِهِمَا قَوْمًا لَّا يَكَادُونَ يَفْقَهُونَ قَوْلًا

“Until, when he reached [a pass] between two mountains, he found beside them a people who could hardly understand [his] speech.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The people whose request was granted are the only ones in the chapter described as unable to make themselves understood.

A reflection

They could barely be understood, and they were heard

The description is one clause long and the readers divide over which way it runs.

On the common reading they could barely understand what was said to them. On another, recorded by a legal commentary, they could barely make anyone else understand them.

That commentary then says something better than choosing. Both readings are sound. So they neither understood others nor made themselves understood.

A long commentary adds the detail that makes it human. They managed only with effort and hardship, through gestures and the like, the way a mute man is understood.

And these are the people whose request gets granted.

Two salvage crews on the same wreck share no language. By the second day they are working from chalk marks on the hull and a system of three hand signals. Nothing is explained. The plate comes off.

Anybody who has worked like that knows the particular exhaustion of it. Not the physical work. The constant effort of being approximately understood.

Now put that beside the rest of the account.

The people at the western shore were addressed by Allah about their fate. The people at the eastern limit had Allah describe their condition in the first person. These people get a sentence about their speech, and then they get to speak.

The passage has given us three peoples, and it gives direct quoted words to only one of them. The one who could barely talk.

The root of the word for understanding is worth having here. The lexicons give it as turning a sentence over until it opens and you see what is behind it. Reaching a hidden thing by way of what is in front of you.

They could not do that. And the man who could do everything stopped, and worked out what they wanted anyway.

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.