Al-Ahqaf · Makki · ayah 14 of 35

Al-Ahqaf 46:14

أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ أَصْحَـٰبُ ٱلْجَنَّةِ خَـٰلِدِينَ فِيهَا جَزَآءًۢ بِمَا كَانُوا۟ يَعْمَلُونَ

“Those are the companions of Paradise, abiding eternally therein as reward for what they used to do.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Those who stood firm become the Garden's own companions, staying there with nothing to wear the stay away, a return matched to their lives.

A reflection

A stay that nothing wears away

Khālidīn, abiding, comes from a root of firmness and clinging. The lexicons say khalada is to stay in a place. The Arabs called the stones of a desert hearth khawālid. The tents are struck, the traces of the camp wear away, and those blackened stones remain. A man was mukhallad when grey hair was slow to reach him, as if youth clung to him. Even the heart was called khalad, because it settles firmly in the chest. The image is established: a staying that nothing wears away. A narration-based commentary explains the word here plainly: remaining there for ever.

Everything we know in this world wears away. Picture a family selling the house they have lived in for fifty years. On the last day, the youngest daughter, now forty, stands in the empty kitchen. On the door frame are pencil marks of every child's height, with dates, from 1979 onward. She knows the new owners will paint over them within a month. She photographs them, touches the top mark, and leaves the key on the counter.

Much of our grief comes from this: every good place is temporary. The best holiday ends. The happiest house is sold. The people we love leave or die.

The ayah's single word answers that grief at its root. The Garden is not a better house that will also be sold. It is a staying that nothing wears away, no painting over, no last day, no key left on the counter.

That changes how we hold the temporary. The pencil marks still matter. But we can love them without clutching. We are walking towards a home where nothing will ever need to be photographed before it is lost.

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.