Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 26 of 78

Ar-Rahman 55:26

كُلُّ مَنْ عَلَيْهَا فَانٍ

“Everyone upon it [i.e., the earth] will perish,”

Saheeh International

Essence

Everyone on the earth is already running out like arrows from a quiver, and the surah counts even this a favour.

A reflection

A ring drawn round everyone

A town hall has a brass plaque beside its door. It names the mayor who laid the foundation stone, with all his titles. Sixty years later the building is coming down. A workman prises the plaque off with a crowbar and reads the name aloud. He asks the foreman who the man was. Nobody on the site knows.

The ayah begins with kull, all. The lexicons picture this word as a ring drawn around every part of a thing. The iklīl, from the same letters, is a band worn round the head. So the sentence draws one circle round everyone upon the earth. The mayor is inside it. So is the workman, and so is the reader.

Pride rarely says out loud that it will last forever. It simply builds as if it will. The Quran records the prophet Hūd asking his people why they raised great works, as though they would live forever (26:128–129). Self-importance quietly assumes it will be the exception to the circle.

One commentator lists what the word 'perishing' is meant to do. It urges a person to spend the short time in obedience. It forbids trusting what one holds, as though a favour could never leave. It warns against relying on nearness to kings, because their affair too will soon pass. And it removes every hidden partner, because what perishes is not fit to be worshipped.

Yet the praise is not in the perishing itself. An early scholar advised that whoever recites this ayah should not stop until reciting the next. And there remains the Face of your Lord, full of majesty and honour (55:27). The perishing of creation, one commentary explains, is no praise on its own. The praise is that He remains after everything else.

The plaque goes into a skip. The ring holds everyone. Only One stands outside it.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.