Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 9 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:9

وَأَصْحَـٰبُ ٱلْمَشْـَٔمَةِ مَآ أَصْحَـٰبُ ٱلْمَشْـَٔمَةِ

“And the companions of the left - what are companions of the left?[1610]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The second rank is named with a word that means ill luck, and then the same sentence refuses to describe them too.

A reflection

A direction that became a word for ruin

In heraldry, the left side of a shield is called sinister. The word did nothing but mean left. It had no verdict in it. Over centuries the verdict arrived anyway. "Sinister" in English stopped meaning a side and started meaning menace, and nobody can say when the slide happened.

Arabic got there first, and this ayah is built on the result.

The root here means the left side. The left hand is al-shuʾmā. The left side is al-ashʾam. And from the same letters comes shuʾm, ill luck, the opposite of yumn, blessing. The lexicons record why. The Arabs read omens from birds and gazelles crossing their path, and took the right as blessing and the left as shuʾm.

The geography followed, exactly as it did on the other side. Syria is al-Shām because it lies on the Ka'ba's left, as Yemen lies on its right.

So the word in this ayah is not neutral and was never neutral. English can only give us "the companions of the left", which sounds like a seating allocation. The Arabic says: the people of the unlucky side, the ill-omened quarter, the place things go wrong.

The commentaries hold two readings together without strain. These are the ones taken off to the left, towards the Fire. And these are the ones given their records in their left hands.

But the word is doing something a direction cannot do. It is naming an atmosphere. One early authority glosses them as the people of evil deeds. Another as those who were mashāʾīm, ill-omened, upon their own souls.

That last reading is the one worth carrying. The ill luck in the word is not something that fell on them from outside. It is a quality they acquired and were then named by. In that language the left hand was the weaker one, and the thing you did not shake on.

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.