Al-Buruj · Makki · ayah 3 of 22

Al-Buruj 85:3

وَشَاهِدٍ وَمَشْهُودٍ

“And [by] the witness and what is witnessed,”

Saheeh International

Essence

He swears by every witness and everything witnessed, in a surah where men sat watching cruelty: nothing done anywhere goes unseen.

A reflection

Why the frame is left open

Who is the witness, and what is witnessed? One classical commentator counted nearly thirty answers from the early scholars. Friday and the Day of ʿArafa. The Prophet ﷺ and the Day of Resurrection. Allah and His creation. Each human being and the Day. The recording angels and the people they record. The limbs that will testify, and their owners. The pilgrims and the Black Stone. Even, one suggests, the infant at the trench who told his mother to be patient, and the mother he spoke for.

A sceptic may see a problem here. If the scholars could not agree, was the ayah unclear? Isn't vagueness a weakness in a book that claims to guide?

The early scholars saw it the other way. One great commentator refused to narrow it down. Allah swore by a witness and a witnessed, he said, and did not tell us which. So everything the scholars named deserves the name. Another put it in a single line: the perceiver and the perceived, the one who sees and what is seen. The rest are examples, not limits.

The grammar supports him. Both words come without al-, 'the'. The grammarians hear that as vastness: witnesses beyond counting, or a witness beyond describing.

Picture a grandmother on her last evening, surrounded by her family. She gives no list of instructions. She says only, 'Be good to one another.' Her children spend the next twenty years discovering what that sentence included. It covered the brother who needed a loan, the sister who needed silence, the grandchild who needed a lift. A list would have been shorter, and smaller.

The open oath works the same way. It does not point at one witness and let the rest of us off. It sweeps across the whole of existence and divides it into two: those who see, and what is seen. Every day you are both.

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.