Al-Hashr · Madani · ayah 6 of 24

Al-Hashr 59:6

وَمَآ أَفَآءَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَىٰ رَسُولِهِۦ مِنْهُمْ فَمَآ أَوْجَفْتُمْ عَلَيْهِ مِنْ خَيْلٍ وَلَا رِكَابٍ وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُسَلِّطُ رُسُلَهُۥ عَلَىٰ مَن يَشَآءُ ۚ وَٱللَّهُ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍ قَدِيرٌ

“And what Allāh restored [of property] to His Messenger from them - you did not spur for it [in an expedition] any horses or camels,[1653] but Allāh gives His messengers power over whom He wills, and Allāh is over all things competent.”

Saheeh International

Essence

What came to the Messenger without a single horse ever spurred into a charge was never the army's to take credit for.

A reflection

Power over everything, including the outcome itself

A retired craftsman still insists on fitting every shelf himself. He refuses the cordless drill his son bought him, as though needing no help were the whole point of the job. Somewhere in that refusal sits a quiet pride: competence measured by how little assistance a person required.

This ayah removes that measure entirely from the Naḍīr's defeat. No cavalry charged. No camel carried a rider into danger. The siege ended through terror, abandonment and surrender, not through the kind of costly effort that usually earns a victor the right to boast. Qadīr, the lexicons explain, describes measure: everything given its exact amount, by One with the power to give it, for a reason. The outcome here was measured out entire, with nothing left for human effort to supply.

There is a real humbling in this for anyone who has ever measured their own worth by how hard they fought for something. The believers besieged the fortresses for six days, and still this ayah insists that nothing they did was what actually won it. Their walking, their patience, their presence, mattered. But the outcome itself belonged to a different account altogether. It never ran short of what it needed, and it never depended on a human hand to supply the missing piece.

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.