Al-Qamar · Makki · ayah 20 of 55

Al-Qamar 54:20

تَنزِعُ ٱلنَّاسَ كَأَنَّهُمْ أَعْجَازُ نَخْلٍ مُّنقَعِرٍ

“Extracting the people[1581] as if they were trunks of palm trees uprooted.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The tallest, strongest people of their age were pulled out like palm trunks torn up from the very bottom of their roots.

A reflection

Torn up from the very bottom

After a great storm, people gather in a city park around a fallen oak. It stood for two hundred years. Now it lies on its side, and the most shocking thing is not the trunk but the roots. A disc of earth and roots stands upright, taller than a man, and beneath it is a crater. The tree did not snap. It came up from the bottom.

That is the picture in munqaʿir. The root names the bottom of things: qaʿr is the bottom of a well, the bottom of a bowl. To drink a vessel until you reach its qaʿr is to finish it. To qaʿara a palm is to pull it out from that bottom, roots and all, so that it comes up and falls flat. The lexicons record this, and it is established.

The commentators read the simile with care. One explains it as palms uprooted from where they were planted and fallen on the ground. Another notes that ʿĀd were known for great stature, so the comparison with palm trunks fits their size. The aʿjāz are the trunks, the lower ends, without their crowns.

Hold that image beside another one in the Quran. A good word is like a good tree, its root firm and its branches in the sky (14:24). A bad word is like a bad tree, uprooted from the surface of the earth, with no stability (14:26). The difference between the two trees is not height. ʿĀd were tall. It is what the roots are holding on to.

Every person is putting down roots in something. Money, reputation, a career, a family name, a body that has always been strong. Those roots can go very deep and still come up whole, crater and all, when the wind comes.

The only root that holds is the one that reaches Allah. Faith, prayer, sincere dependence on Him. Check your roots this week. What exactly are they gripping?

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.