Al-Buruj · Makki · ayah 5 of 22

Al-Buruj 85:5

ٱلنَّارِ ذَاتِ ٱلْوَقُودِ

“[Containing] the fire full of fuel,”

Saheeh International

Essence

It was no small fire: it owned its fuel, and cruelty on that scale always needs many hands to bring the wood.

A reflection

A fire that owned its fuel

Waqūd, with an open first vowel, is firewood: what a fire is fed with. Wuqūd, with a rounded one, is the burning itself. The ayah uses the first. It does not say 'a lit fire'. It says dhāt al-waqūd: a fire that possessed its fuel.

One classical commentator explains the force of that phrasing. The fire is described as owning all the wood that could feed it, which means its flames rose without limit. Another adds a plain observation. A fire is only great when there is a great deal to burn. The early explanations speak of thick, dry logs stacked high.

Fires like that do not light themselves. Someone felled the trees, someone split the logs, someone carried them to the mouths of the streets and stacked them in the trench. Cruelty on a large scale always has a supply chain.

Think of a village the week before its bonfire night. Children drag old doors, broken chairs and pallets up the hill. Each one adds a little. No child builds the fire alone, and no child thinks of himself as the one who made it so high. On the night, it is visible for miles.

Most of us will never stand by a trench. We still feed smaller fires. The joke about the colleague who has just left the room. The forwarded rumour. The silence when a friend is torn apart in front of us. The extra detail added to a story before passing it on. Each is a log carried up the hill. None feels like the fire.

So the ayah's question is not only who lit it. It is who kept bringing the wood. Before you pass something on today, weigh it in your hands. Is this a log?

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.