Al-Mutaffifin · Makki · ayah 27 of 36

Al-Mutaffifin 83:27

وَمِزَاجُهُۥ مِن تَسْنِيمٍ

“And its mixture is of Tasneem,[1885]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The cheat stopped the measure below the brim; the drink of the righteous is mixed from a spring whose very name means heaped above it.

A reflection

Heaped above the rim

Tasnīm is built on the root s-n-m, height. Sanām is a camel's hump, its highest and choicest part. And the lexicons record a striking use of the verb. When a vessel was heaped until the food rose above its rim like a hump, they said the server sannamahu: he heaped it high.

Set that beside the first ayat of this surah. The muṭaffif stopped the measure just below the brim, at the ṭufāf, keeping back the last handful. Now, twenty-six ayat later, the drink of the righteous is mixed from a spring named for heaping above the rim. The surah began with the measure withheld. It ends with the measure overflowing.

The commentators add more pictures. One said the spring comes down to them from above, from their high rooms and dwellings. An early authority described it flowing through the air and pouring into their vessels to exactly the measure of each. When the cup is full, the flow stops. Not a drop falls to the ground, and no one needs to draw water for himself.

Think about that picture in a surah about measures. Every cup is filled precisely. Nothing is skimmed, nothing is spilled, nothing is wasted.

Picture a man at a street-food stall who heaps the rice on each plate until it rises in a mound above the rim. A customer laughs and says it is too much. 'That's how my father served,' he says.

The ayah suggests that the generosity of Paradise is the answer to every short measure of this world. It is worth practising the heaped plate here.

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.