An-Naba · Makki · ayah 2 of 40

An-Naba 78:2

عَنِ ٱلنَّبَإِ ٱلْعَظِيمِ

“About the great news[1821] -”

Saheeh International

Essence

The answer comes at once: they are asking about weighty, true news from beyond their sight, the frame on which every life hangs.

A reflection

News from beyond the horizon

On a cloudless morning in a riverside town, the water begins to rise. There has been no rain here for a week. People stand on the bridge in shirtsleeves, watching the river climb the steps of the pub garden. The storm broke overnight, sixty miles upstream, over hills none of them can see. The water is the news.

That is almost exactly the picture inside nabaʾ. The lexicons say the root is about arriving from one place into another. A nābiʾ was a stranger who turned up from another land. A sayl nābiʾ was a flood that came down from another country, from rain no one there had seen. A wild bull that crossed from one pasture into the next was a nābiʾ too. And the nabʾa was a faint sound, the far-off noise a hunter's ear catches before anyone else hears it. News is nabaʾ because it travels from somewhere else to reach you. This is the established sense of the root, not a later reading.

The lexicons add a second layer. Any report at all is a khabar. But a report is called nabaʾ, one scholarly view explains, only when it carries weight. It must bring knowledge or strong likelihood, and it must be rightly free of falsehood. On that view, 'the great nabaʾ' describes what the word already is. The adjective turns up the volume on a word that was never quiet.

So the first hearers heard something more than 'the news'. They heard of a report arriving from beyond their horizon, from a place they had never seen, heavy with consequence. The same root gives nabiyy, prophet: the one who brings news from beyond sight, from Allah.

English 'news' has grown light. It can mean a rumour, a trend or a piece of gossip that will be forgotten by Friday. The Arabic word will not let that happen. The river is rising. Something has happened in the hills. The only real question is what you will do before the water reaches your door.

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.