Saba · Makki · ayah 1 of 54

Saba 34:1

ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ ٱلَّذِى لَهُۥ مَا فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَمَا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَلَهُ ٱلْحَمْدُ فِى ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ ۚ وَهُوَ ٱلْحَكِيمُ ٱلْخَبِيرُ

“[All] praise is [due] to Allāh, to whom belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth, and to Him belongs [all] praise in the Hereafter. And He is the Wise, the Aware.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Everything in the heavens and the earth is His, and so is the praise, here and hereafter; we are guests using what He owns.

A reflection

A guest book in a borrowed cottage

Picture a cottage lent to you by a friend for a fortnight. You sleep in his beds, cook on his stove and walk his dog down his lane. On the kitchen table sits a guest book. Page after page, people who stayed there have thanked the owner. Nobody has written 'what a lovely house I have'.

The ayah opens like that guest book. Al-ḥamdu lillāhi alladhī lahu mā fī al-samāwāti wa-mā fī al-arḍ: praise belongs to Allah, to whom belongs whatever is in the heavens and the earth. One classical commentator noticed something sharp here. Elsewhere Allah says He created what is on earth for you (2:29). Here He says it all belongs to Him. The commentator argued that the second calls for even more thanks. If a thing is His, and we are the ones who use it, then every use is a kindness.

Now the ego. We do not live like guests. We say 'my house', 'my body', 'my time', and we mean ownership. And our ownership always wants an audience. The new kitchen is shown to visitors. The promotion goes on the profile. For us, owning and being praised arrive as a pair, because we need the praise to feel the ownership is real.

He owns everything there is and needs no one to notice. The praise is His whether anyone writes in the book or not. That is humbling. The chair I sit on and the breath I am using were never mine to boast about.

Someone may ask whether a God who opens a surah by praising Himself is seeking applause. Look at how the ayah is built. His kingship sits between two praises, and He needs neither. Self-praise is ugly in us because we lack what we claim and want something from the listener. He lacks nothing and wants nothing. He tells us the praise is His so we stop handing it to things that cannot hold it, ourselves first.

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.