Al-Muddaththir · Makki · ayah 27 of 56

Al-Muddaththir 74:27

وَمَآ أَدْرَىٰكَ مَا سَقَرُ

“And what can make you know what is Saqar?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Before naming what it is, the question admits that ordinary understanding cannot reach this one alone.

A reflection

Knowledge that cannot be stalked, only told

This root pictures a hunter creeping behind a camel used as cover, working his way gradually within range of game he cannot yet see directly. Dirāya is knowledge won exactly this way: stalked, approached slowly, pieced together through skill and patient closing of distance. Most of what a person comes to know, they know by some version of this hunter's patient approach, working things out from clues and gradual proximity.

The form used in this ayah, adrāka, is causative: to bring someone to know, to be the one who tells rather than the one who stalks. And this exact construction, wa ma adraka, and what has brought you to know, is used elsewhere in the Quran specifically to mark the realities no hunter's patience could ever reach on its own, truths too large or too far beyond ordinary experience to be approached gradually at all. Some things, as this root's own range makes clear, cannot be stalked. They can only be told.

This is precisely what the question is doing here. It is not denying that knowledge is normally possible through effort and approach. It is marking Saqar as one of the rare realities that sits entirely outside that normal process, a truth that arrives only because it is told, never because anyone could have crept close enough on their own to work it out.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.