Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 141 of 165

Al-An'am 6:141

۞ وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِىٓ أَنشَأَ جَنَّـٰتٍ مَّعْرُوشَـٰتٍ وَغَيْرَ مَعْرُوشَـٰتٍ وَٱلنَّخْلَ وَٱلزَّرْعَ مُخْتَلِفًا أُكُلُهُۥ وَٱلزَّيْتُونَ وَٱلرُّمَّانَ مُتَشَـٰبِهًا وَغَيْرَ مُتَشَـٰبِهٍ ۚ كُلُوا۟ مِن ثَمَرِهِۦٓ إِذَآ أَثْمَرَ وَءَاتُوا۟ حَقَّهُۥ يَوْمَ حَصَادِهِۦ ۖ وَلَا تُسْرِفُوٓا۟ ۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلْمُسْرِفِينَ

“And He it is who causes gardens to grow, [both] trellised and untrellised, and palm trees and crops of different [kinds of] food and olives and pomegranates, similar and dissimilar. Eat of [each of] its fruit when it yields and give its due [zakāh] on the day of its harvest. And be not excessive.[355] Indeed, He does not like those who commit excess.”

Saheeh International

Essence

He raised every garden, tended or wild: eat freely, hand the poor their share on harvest day, and let nothing run past its use.

A reflection

The fig tree in the railway bridge

The ayah opens with a pointed pronoun: wa-huwa, and He is the one. The passage before it has been full of people claiming parts of the harvest, carving it up, naming shares for their idols. Now the real Owner speaks.

He produced gardens maʿrūshāt, trellised, and ghayra maʿrūshāt, not trellised. One early explanation reads these as two kinds. Trellised are the vines people have planted and propped up. Untrellised are the fruits that grow by themselves in the wild and on the mountains. Another reading takes both as vines: some lifted on frames, some left to sprawl on the ground.

Either way, the ayah sets the tended garden beside the untended one, and claims both. Picture a man on a city rooftop proudly showing friends his drip irrigation and his tomato frames. Across the road, a fig tree has rooted itself in a crack of a railway bridge. Nobody planted it, nobody waters it, and it fruits every summer.

The rooftop gardener did real work, and the ayah does not mock it. But the fig tree quietly corrects his pride. His trellis held the plant up. It did not make it grow. The same hand that raised the wild fig raised his tomatoes, through his frames.

The verb is anshaʾa, from a root whose picture is rising: cloud lifting on the horizon, a child growing tall. Nothing in the garden rises by its own command. That is enough to shrink the ego of any grower, and to send his thanks to the right address.

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.