Fatir · Makki · ayah 1 of 45

Fatir 35:1

ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ فَاطِرِ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ جَاعِلِ ٱلْمَلَـٰٓئِكَةِ رُسُلًا أُو۟لِىٓ أَجْنِحَةٍ مَّثْنَىٰ وَثُلَـٰثَ وَرُبَـٰعَ ۚ يَزِيدُ فِى ٱلْخَلْقِ مَا يَشَآءُ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍ قَدِيرٌ

“[All] praise is [due] to Allāh, Creator of the heavens and the earth, [who] made the angels messengers having wings, two or three or four. He increases in creation what He wills. Indeed, Allāh is over all things competent.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Praise belongs to the One who began the heavens and earth with no model to copy, and who gave His messengers wings.

A reflection

Nothing on the desk to copy from

An architecture student brings her final model to the review. It is a pavilion of folded timber, and she believes it is new. Her tutor says nothing at first. Then he lays photographs beside it, one by one. A Japanese temple roof. A 1960s exhibition hall. A boat hull turned upside down. Every move she made has an ancestor. He is not cruel about it. He tells her this is how all design works: you inherit, you combine, you adjust.

That is the most any human maker can honestly claim. We call people 'creators' and 'originals', and the words flatter us. Every painter learned colour from someone. Every engineer stands on drawings older than he is. Even our boldest ideas are rearrangements of what was already lying on the table.

Now hear the name in this ayah: fāṭir of the heavens and the earth. The commentators explain it as the One who brought them into being with no prior example to follow. There was no photograph to lay beside the model. There was no table, and nothing lying on it. Space itself, and the stuff that fills it, came from Him without precedent.

This is where the ego has to sit down. Our pride in being original is pride in a good arrangement of borrowed parts. Even the hand that arranged them, and the mind that chose, were given. To praise ourselves as makers while we live inside His making is like the student applauding her model in a room built by someone else.

So the ayah opens, as it must, with al-ḥamdu lillāh. Praise is simply the true label on the work. Our praise of each other has to be shared out among teachers, sources and luck. His is not shared, because nothing helped Him begin.

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.