Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 23 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:23

كَأَمْثَـٰلِ ٱللُّؤْلُؤِ ٱلْمَكْنُونِ

“The likenesses of pearls well-protected,”

Saheeh International

Essence

The comparison is to a pearl still shut in its shell: not hidden away, but kept, with nothing having touched it.

A reflection

Not hidden. Kept.

A museum keeps a medieval textile in a dark box in a cool room, brought out for perhaps a few weeks a decade. It sounds like neglect, and it is the opposite. Light is what destroys a dye. The box is not a cupboard that nobody got round to opening. It is an act of care, and the darkness is the care.

This ayah's last word is that distinction, and English usually loses it.

Translations say well-protected, treasured, hidden. The lexicons give the root one meaning: covering and guarding. A kinn was a shelter against heat and cold. One lexicon distinguishes two forms: kanantu for what a house or a cloth keeps, and aknantu for what is kept inside the soul.

And a work on near-synonyms adds the point that settles it. Kanna means to guard, not merely to cover. The pearl is maknūn because it is kept safe.

So the word is not about concealment from view. It is about protection from harm.

The commentaries fill in what harm. One explains it as the pearl that hands have not touched and no dust has fallen on. So it stands at its utmost clarity and lustre.

The lexicons add the sharper detail. An old line praises a pearl taken from the sea's choicest, untouched by the drillers' bits. A pearl on a string has been drilled through, and the drilling is what reduces it. The pearl in this ayah has never been through that.

And there is one more layer in the construction. The ayah does not say "like pearls". It says ka-amthāl, like the likenesses of. One commentary notices the doubling and reads it as: like the likes of well-kept pearls.

A comparison held at one remove, as though a direct comparison would have claimed too much.

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.