Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 41 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:41

وَأَصْحَـٰبُ ٱلشِّمَالِ مَآ أَصْحَـٰبُ ٱلشِّمَالِ

“And the companions of the left - what are the companions of the left?”

Saheeh International

Essence

A question with no answer in it, asked in exactly the words used of the saved, and the name means wrapped round from every side.

A reflection

A question instead of a description

A seismograph is a pen on a slowly turning drum. For most of its life the line is almost flat. In a large earthquake the pen does something the record cannot hold. It swings past the edge of the paper and comes back. The station's own trace of the event has a gap in the middle of it. The instrument was not broken. The event was larger than the instrument.

That is this ayah's grammar. The companions of the left, and then no predicate. What are the companions of the left? The commentaries fill in what the Arabic implies: what thing are they, what is their state, what has been prepared for them. One says plainly that the question is put to make the Prophet marvel.

So before a single detail arrives, a gap is left in the record.

Now notice something most readers miss. The identical construction was used of the saved, fourteen ayat earlier. And the companions of the right, what are the companions of the right (56:27). One commentary says that repetition in that place was for magnifying the delight they are in. Here the same device magnifies the opposite.

The form is not sentimental in either direction. It is a refusal to pretend the thing can be summed up.

And there is something to learn from that about how we handle both ends of human experience. We flatten them. The worst thing that happened to a family becomes a sentence at a dinner table. The best day of someone's life becomes a photograph. Language is a drum of a certain width, and some events go off the edge of it.

The Quran, at exactly these two moments, declines to write across the gap. It asks instead. Then, having admitted the question is bigger than any answer, it gives you four ayat of answer anyway.

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.