Ad-Dukhan · Makki · ayah 25 of 59

Ad-Dukhan 44:25

كَمْ تَرَكُوا۟ مِن جَنَّـٰتٍ وَعُيُونٍ

“How much they left behind of gardens and springs”

Saheeh International

Essence

The Qur'an pauses over the drowned and counts what they left: so many gardens, so many springs, abandoned like an egg in the sand.

A reflection

Left like an ostrich egg in the open

The verb tarakū, they left, comes from a root one lexicon describes as letting a thing go. Its picture is striking. An egg left bare in the open desert was called tarīka: the ostrich lays it, turns away from it, and never comes back. The same word named a meadow that people overlook, so nobody grazes it.

Another lexicon adds a careful distinction. Leaving can be chosen, or it can be forced. In the previous ayah, Musa leaves the sea behind by command. In this one, the gardens and springs are left because death has taken their owners away from them.

Pharaoh's people did not choose to leave Egypt's gardens. They rode out of them to catch a fleeing people. They never returned. The gardens were left like the ostrich's egg: still there, still whole, and abandoned for ever.

Picture an estate agent photographing a riverside mansion. Its owner left the country overnight and will not be coming back. The fountains in the courtyard are still running. Fresh flowers stand in vases. A newspaper lies folded on a breakfast table. Everything is in place except the person it was all for.

The word kam, how many, opens the ayah as an exclamation. One commentator says it marks abundance: a great deal they left. The Qur'an does not count what the drowned took with them. It counts what they left, because that was everything.

Every person will one day taraka, leave, the things they have gathered. The only question is whether, like the ostrich, they walk away without looking back at what mattered.

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.