Al-Qiyamah · Makki · ayah 11 of 40

Al-Qiyamah 75:11

كَلَّا لَا وَزَرَ

“No! There is no refuge.”

Saheeh International

Essence

On the Day, the mountain every person runs to is gone; so run now, while you can, to the only refuge left, Allah Himself.

A reflection

The mountain, the mountain

Most of us hear this ayah as a line about other people. A crowd somewhere, on a day far off, running about in panic. We nod and turn the page.

The word chosen for 'refuge' will not allow that distance. Wazar is not an abstract shelter. The lexicons say its first meaning was a mountain, steep and hard to reach, the kind you run to. Only then did it come to mean any refuge you put between yourself and danger.

The first hearers did not need a lexicon. An early report describes two men grazing their herds in open country. They hear nothing until the raiders' horses are upon them. Then one shouts to the other: the wazar, the wazar, the mountain, the mountain. Another early voice says that people in flight told each other, 'Make for the wazar'. Others record that when the Arabs were frightened, they fortified themselves in the hills.

So when this ayah was first recited in Makkah, ringed by bare rock, it named the oldest safety plan they had. Run uphill. Find the crag the horses cannot climb. Every listener had done it, or knew someone who had.

The word appears only here in the whole Quran. It is used once, to take away the one place everyone was sure of.

Now carry it into our own lives. Few of us run to mountains. But nearly everyone has a wazar. 'Worst case, I'll move back in with my parents'. The savings that would cover six months. The cousin who is a lawyer. The quiet belief that we can always start again somewhere new.

These are not sins. They are how sensible people live. The ayah is not mocking them. It is telling you that there is one day on which none of them exists. The herdsman looks up, and the mountain is not there.

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.