As-Saffat · Makki · ayah 51 of 182

As-Saffat 37:51

قَالَ قَآئِلٌ مِّنْهُمْ إِنِّى كَانَ لِى قَرِينٌ

“A speaker among them will say, "Indeed, I had a companion [on earth].”

Saheeh International

Essence

In the middle of Paradise's easiest conversation, one man brings up the person he was once roped to, and whose path he almost shared.

A reflection

Roped neck to neck

On a school sports day, two children run the three-legged race. Their ankles are tied with a scarf. For ten metres they fly. Then one stumbles, and there is nothing the other can do. They go down together, laughing, in a heap.

The first hearers of qarīn would have pictured something heavier than a scarf. The lexicons give the root two origins, and the first is joining one thing to another. The qaran was the plaited rope that coupled two ploughing bulls so that neither could go its own way. Two camels roped neck to neck were joined by it. This is established in the lexicons, not a later reading.

So when the man in the Garden says innī kāna lī qarīnun, he is not saying 'I had an acquaintance'. The commentaries gloss it as a close companion who stuck to him, a constant presence. He is saying: there was someone I was tied to. Where he pulled, I felt it.

That is the uncomfortable truth about companionship. The people you are roped to do not only keep you company. They set your pace and your direction. You can resist a pull for a while, the way one bull can dig in its hooves. But the rope does not go slack because you disagree with it.

The man in this ayah resisted. The next ayat show how close it was: you almost ruined me (37:56). He did not escape the rope by being stronger. He escaped it, he says, by the favour of his Lord (37:57).

It is worth asking who you are roped to now, and which way the rope is pulling.

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.