Nuh · Makki · ayah 20 of 28

Nuh 71:20

لِّتَسْلُكُوا۟ مِنْهَا سُبُلًا فِجَاجًا

“That you may follow therein roads of passage.'"”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah did not just spread the earth flat; He cut wide roads through its mountains so that nobody would ever be truly stuck with nowhere left to walk.

A reflection

A gap cut through what looked impassable

Fijāj is the plural of fajj, a specific word for a wide, open pass cut between two mountains — not a road laid across flat, cooperative ground, but a way forced through terrain that offers every reason to stay closed. The lexicons and commentators are clear that the image is of valleys, gaps and passes: exactly the kind of route a traveller would otherwise assume did not exist until they stood at the mouth of one.

Paired with subulan, plural 'paths' or 'ways', the ayah is doubly emphatic: not one route through the mountains, but many, scattered wherever a traveller might need one, in every direction a person might reasonably want to go. Mountains are, by nature, the earth's most stubborn refusal of easy movement. This ayah names precisely the places where the earth seems most determined to block you, and says: even there, more than one way through has already been cut.

The same consonantal root behind tasluku, 'to travel' or 'to follow a path', resurfaces later in the Quran for a very different kind of entry: 'What put you into the Blaze?' (74:42, using the same root verb). The word for being led along a wide, merciful mountain pass and the word for being delivered into punishment share one root. Paths, in this vocabulary, are never neutral facts; they are always leading somewhere, and the same verb can describe the widest mercy or the narrowest ruin, depending entirely on which path a person actually chooses to walk.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.