Al-Qiyamah · Makki · ayah 29 of 40

Al-Qiyamah 75:29

وَٱلْتَفَّتِ ٱلسَّاقُ بِٱلسَّاقِ

“And the leg is wound about the leg,[1807]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The legs that carried him everywhere wind together and fail, as the hardest day of this world is wound into the next.

A reflection

Legs, and something larger than legs

Read quickly, this ayah sounds like a grim physical detail. Shank wraps round shank: a dying man's legs, twisting. Many readers take it that way and move on, a little uneasy.

The commentaries record that reading, in several forms. Some early voices saw the legs striking one against the other in the throes of death. Others saw them stiffening and drawing together. Others saw them wound side by side in the shroud.

But the commentaries record another reading too, and many prefer it. In Arabic, sāq, the shank, was also a word for a crisis. The Arabs said a war 'stood on its shank' when it grew fierce. So the ayah can mean: hardship wound round hardship. The last day of this world is wound into the first day of the next. The pain of dying meets the terror of what comes after.

One great commentator chooses this second sense, and gives his reason: the very next ayah speaks of the masāq, the driving, from the same root. Another early scholar judges the literal reading best. The commentaries let both stand.

English has a phrase that works the same way. A shopkeeper says his business is on its last legs. Nobody imagines a shop with legs. Yet the phrase keeps a picture of a body giving way, and lends it to a crisis.

The ayah does both at once. The body is failing, and so is everything the body was holding up. Two endings, physical and total, are wrapped into one image.

So the line is not merely grim. It is dense. In five words it shows the moment where everything a person stood on gives way, legs and life alike, while something else begins.

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.