Ad-Dukhan · Makki · ayah 43 of 59

Ad-Dukhan 44:43

إِنَّ شَجَرَتَ ٱلزَّقُّومِ

“Indeed, the tree of zaqqūm”

Saheeh International

Essence

The surah turns from the Day of Sorting to the Fire itself, opening with a single name: the tree of zaqqūm.

A reflection

A tree that grows in fire?

Inna shajarata al-zaqqūm: indeed, the tree of zaqqūm.

The concise commentaries say it is a tree Allah causes to grow at the very root of Hell. And here the sceptic smiles. A tree growing in fire? Wood burns. Leaves shrivel. Surely the image collapses on its own terms.

The Quran anticipated exactly this objection. In Surah aṣ-Ṣāffāt, the same tree is described. We have made it a fitna, a trial, for the wrongdoers. It is a tree that comes out of the bottom of Hellfire (37:63-64). Another surah calls it the accursed tree, mentioned in the Quran as a trial for people (17:60). The very strangeness was the test. Would people accept a reality beyond their experience, or mock it?

And the Quran gives a quiet answer elsewhere. It is He who made fire for you out of the green tree, and from it you kindle (36:80).

A family camps beside a river. The children collect wood, and one of them throws on a branch freshly snapped from a living tree. It is green and wet. He expects it to put the fire out. Instead it hisses, steams, and then catches. He stares at it. Fire was hiding in the green wood all along.

If fire can come out of a green tree, the One who placed it there can make a tree come out of fire. The objection assumes that the laws we know are the laws that bind their Maker.

What remains open is the nature of that tree. We are not told how it grows, only that it does. The sceptic's question is not foolish. But the answer is not that the image breaks. It is that our experience is not the measure of His power.

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.