Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 39 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:39

ثُلَّةٌ مِّنَ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ

“A company of the former peoples”

Saheeh International

Essence

The word for this crowd is a shepherd's word: a flock bunched close, or a hank of wool gathered in one hand.

A reflection

A crowd named for being bunched together

At shearing, the fleece comes off in one piece if the shearer is good. It is then thrown onto a table, the dirty edges picked off, and rolled from the outside in. The last act is the neatest: a length of the fleece's own neck wool is twisted into a cord and tied round the roll. Nothing from outside holds it. The wool holds the wool.

That is where this word comes from. One lexicon gives the root two separate origins, and the first is gathering. A thulla is a flock of sheep. A woollen rope is a ḥabl thulla. A gathered hank of wool is itself a thulla, and from that the word came to mean a company of people.

So the Quran does not say a number here. It says a bunch.

The commentaries read it exactly that way. They gloss thulla as a company, a nation, a body of people. One states that the companions of the right are two such bunches, one from each era.

That is a different image from the one most of us carry. We tend to imagine the saved as a statistic, a percentage of a total, individuals counted into a column. The Arabic pictures them held together, like wool bound with its own wool.

And that matters practically, because it names something about how people are saved. Nobody in a flock is self-moving. Sheep go where the flock goes and stop where the flock stops, and the good shepherd works with that fact instead of against it. You will mostly end up in the company you spend your weeks inside, at the pace they set, in the direction they are already drifting.

So look at your flock. Not your opinions about faith. Your flock.

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.