Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 95 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:95

إِنَّ هَـٰذَا لَهُوَ حَقُّ ٱلْيَقِينِ

“Indeed, this is the true certainty,”

Saheeh International

Essence

The ayah joins a word to its own meaning, and one early authority says everybody reaches this certainty: the only question is when.

A reflection

Water at the edge, which another man calls mud

The phrase is odd in any language. The truth of certainty. Both words mean nearly the same thing, and the grammarians will not let the oddity pass.

They offer three accounts. One school calls it adding a thing to itself, as in similar phrases: the very eye of certainty, the pure essence of certainty. Another supplies a missing word: the truth of the matter is certain. A third reads it as a kind of emphasis. This is of the truth of truth: its furthest point, beyond which there is nowhere to go.

And one commentary gives an illustration for that third reading that is worth having in full.

A man looking for water comes to a great pool. He takes something from the edge of it and says: this is water. Another man says: that is not water, that is mud. The water is what you take from the middle.

So what is at the edge is water, compared with other substances. Set beside the clear water, it gets called something else. And when a man says this is water truly, he is emphasising. He may say the truth of water: water such that nobody can say anything against it.

That is what the phrase in this ayah is doing. Not certainty in the sense in which people use the word loosely. Certainty from the middle of the pool.

And the commentaries then disagree about what this refers to. Some say the Qur'an. Some say what was mentioned in the surah. Some say the recompense of the three ranks.

On any of those, the claim is the same. Whatever else a man is certain about is water from the edge.

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.