'Abasa · Makki · ayah 16 of 42

'Abasa 80:16

كِرَامٍۭ بَرَرَةٍ

“Noble and dutiful.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The Quran's carriers are noble and keep faith; whoever recites it, fluent or stumbling, is drawn into their company and their character.

A reflection

Two rewards for the one who stumbles

These two words describe the angels who carry the Quran: noble, and faithful. And the Prophet ﷺ used this very phrase to describe something astonishing about us.

'The one who is skilled in the Quran is with the envoys, the noble, the virtuous,' he said. 'And the one who recites it and stumbles over it, finding it hard, has two rewards' (Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim).

Allah needs none of this recitation. 'Whoever is grateful is grateful only for his own good' (31:12). The reward is not a payment for services He required. It is a door opened for us: to be counted, even now, in the company of the noblest carriers of His word.

Notice who is promised the most. Not only the fluent. The one who stumbles is given two rewards, one for the reading and one for the struggle.

Our age is hard on beginners. We watch experts online and feel that if we cannot do a thing well, we should not do it at all. Many adults never open the Quran for exactly this reason. They are embarrassed by how slowly they read, or how badly they pronounce.

Picture a lorry driver in his fifties who never learned to read Arabic well as a boy. He has a laminated card on his dashboard with one short surah on it. At every red light he reads a line, moving his lips, stumbling over the same word he stumbled over yesterday. It has taken him a month to get through six ayat. No one would call it skilled. But the Prophet ﷺ promised that every one of those stumbling lines carries a double reward.

That is the mercy inside this phrase. The company of the noble envoys is not closed to the clumsy. It is open to the one who keeps trying, and it is weighted in their favour.

The blind man of this surah could not read at all. He came asking to be taught. Whatever your level, you are not too late and not too slow. Open the page. Stumble, if you must. You are in good company.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.