Al-Mutaffifin · Makki · ayah 18 of 36

Al-Mutaffifin 83:18

كَلَّآ إِنَّ كِتَـٰبَ ٱلْأَبْرَارِ لَفِى عِلِّيِّينَ

“No! Indeed, the record of the righteous is in ʿilliyyūn.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The same kallā that sank the cheat's record now lifts another: the honest are written into a height with no ceiling.

A reflection

Goodness with room in it

Abrār is the plural of barr, and the root holds a physical picture. The barr is open land. Imagine a traveller stepping off a boat after a rough crossing onto wide, firm ground. One classical derivation takes birr, goodness, from that picture: goodness that is spacious and spreads into every kind of good. Another lexicon puts truthfulness first. The Arabs said an oath was barra when it was kept. A racehorse was mubirr when it ran as it promised.

Notice what the surah does with this word. One classical reader points out that the same kallā returns here, before the record of the righteous, to show something. Short measure is fujūr, and full measure is birr. The opposite of the man who skims is not a saint in a cave. It is the person whose word holds and whose scale is level.

An early ascetic was asked who the abrār are. He said: those who do not harm anything, not even an ant.

Picture a woman who runs a small market stall. She rounds every price down, never up. When a customer overpays by mistake, she runs after him down the street. When she cannot answer a question about a product, she says so. Nobody would call her remarkable. Yet she stands on firm ground in a way the clever trader never does.

That is birr: truth that keeps its word, and goodness wide enough to reach everyone it touches. It has no narrow edges. The surah has spent seventeen ayat on the cramped life of the cheat. Now it opens a door onto open land.

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.