Al-Insan · Madani · ayah 17 of 31

Al-Insan 76:17

وَيُسْقَوْنَ فِيهَا كَأْسًا كَانَ مِزَاجُهَا زَنجَبِيلًا

“And they will be given to drink a cup [of wine] whose mixture is of ginger”

Saheeh International

Essence

First they drank; now they are given to drink, from a cup warmed with the spice the Arabs loved most, and the honour keeps rising.

A reflection

The spice of the poets

To a reader today, ginger is a jar in the spice rack. To the first hearers it was a small luxury from far away.

A classical botanist, quoted in the commentaries, describes it as a plant of roots that run through the ground, not a tree. Some grew in Oman, he says, but the best was carried from the lands of the Zanj and from China. The commentaries add why the Arabs prized it in their drinks. It gives a kind of bite on the tongue, a warmth they found delicious.

They prized it so much that it entered their love poetry. A famous poet before Islam said of his beloved that clove and ginger seemed to have spent the night in her mouth. He added honey, just gathered from the hive. Another compared the taste of a beloved's mouth to ginger and the first pressing of wine. Ginger was the flavour of what is most desired.

One commentary draws the conclusion directly. They were drawn towards the bliss of the next world through what they themselves held to be the height of delight and fragrance. The Quran spoke to them in their own pleasures.

In winter, a grandmother in Lahore grates fresh ginger into the morning tea. Her grandson in Manchester buys the same tea and the same ginger, and it never tastes right. He tells his wife it is the water. It is not the water. It is that the cup was made for him.

That is the quiet force of this ayah for its first audience. It did not describe a drink in the abstract. It reached for the taste they would have chosen for themselves, and promised it.

And it does not stop there. An early authority, quoted by the commentators, says ginger was named because it is what they used to drink in this world. So it is made dear to them, the familiar delight returned, and perfected.

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.