Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 8 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:8

فَأَصْحَـٰبُ ٱلْمَيْمَنَةِ مَآ أَصْحَـٰبُ ٱلْمَيْمَنَةِ

“Then the companions of the right - what are the companions of the right?[1609]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The first rank is named and then not described: the companions of the right, and what are the companions of the right.

A reflection

The hand you shake on a bargain

"Companions of the right" reads, in English, like a seating plan. People on that side of the room. A direction, and nothing more.

Every branch of the Arabic root grows from the right hand, and none of the branches is about seating.

It is the stronger hand, so yamīn also means strength. A poet's hero caught the banner of glory "with the right". An oath is a yamīn because each party struck his right hand on the other's to seal it. Yumn is blessing, the opposite of ill omen. And the geography followed the hand: Yemen is the land lying to the right of the qibla.

So three things are in the word at once. Strength. A pledge sealed hand to hand. Blessing.

The form here adds a fourth. Maymana is not simply yamīn. One commentary explains it as a place-noun. It is built like the word for a lamp-stand from the word for fire, or a brazier from embers. So it means either the place where the right hand is, or the place where blessing is. Either way the ayah does not name a group of people. It names a location they are in.

The commentaries then give the readings of who they are. Those taken off to the right, towards the Garden. Those given their records in their right hands. The people of good deeds. And one reading that catches a reader off guard: the mayāmīn, those who were a blessing upon themselves.

Notice that nothing in that list is a seat.

And there is a reason the oath matters most. In that world you did not sign. You put your right hand into another man's right hand, and that contact was the contract. To be called a companion of the right is to be named by the hand that holds a promise.

Which is a question before it is a comfort. Whose hand are you actually holding, and what did you agree to.

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.