Al-Anbya · Makki · ayah 50 of 112

Al-Anbya 21:50

وَهَـٰذَا ذِكْرٌ مُّبَارَكٌ أَنزَلْنَـٰهُ ۚ أَفَأَنتُمْ لَهُۥ مُنكِرُونَ

“And this [Qur’ān] is a blessed message which We have sent down. Then are you with it unacquainted?[890]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The Quran is a reminder in which good has knelt down to stay, close at hand: how can anyone fail to recognise it?

A reflection

Good that kneels down and stays

Dhikrun mubārak: a blessed reminder. To modern ears "blessed" can sound vague, a pious word with no edges. To the first hearers, the root was a picture they saw every day. A camel baraka when it lowered its chest to the ground, folded its legs and stayed put. Its chest, the part it pressed down with, was its birk. A fighter who knelt and refused to leave the field was said to ibtaraka. A tank dug into the ground to hold water in one place was a birka.

One lexicon makes this the root's single origin: a thing settling and holding firm. From it comes baraka: divine good made fast in something, as water stays in the tank. The lexicons add a detail worth savouring. Camels will not kneel on rough ground. They test the earth with their feet and settle only where it is soft.

So a mubārak reminder is one in which good has knelt down and will not leave. The commentaries say its blessing is the abundance of its benefits and the richness of its good. One adds, almost in passing, that he and his readers have received of its blessing what they have received, and praises Allah for it.

Picture a retired man thirty years ago. He sat three children on a carpet in a small mosque and began teaching them to read the Quran. He is long gone now. The circle still meets every Saturday. Two of the teachers are grandchildren of those first three. Nobody planned an institution. A little good knelt down in that room, on soft ground, and stayed.

That is the promise of this word. The good in the Quran does not visit and leave. It settles in the life, the home, the family that makes room for it, and keeps giving long after the first reading.

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.