At-Tariq · Makki · ayah 14 of 17

At-Tariq 86:14

وَمَا هُوَ بِٱلْهَزْلِ

“And it is not amusement.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Not one lean or idle word is in it: this speech has weight all the way through, and asks to be heard in earnest.

A reflection

All wool and no meat

The root of hazl holds two kinds of thinness. Hazl is jest, the opposite of earnest. Huzāl is leanness, the opposite of fatness. One classical lexicon joins them: hazl is any speech with no yield and no increase, likened to a starved animal.

The desert filled in the picture. A man was said to hazala when his livestock died in a hard year and he became poor. The drought years themselves were called mahāzil. A lean herd could not be milked, sheared or sold. It looked like wealth and fed no one.

Picture a livestock auction on a cold morning. A young farmer likes the look of a pen of sheep: big, woolly, standing well. An older buyer climbs in beside them and runs his hand along one back. Under the fleece he can feel every knob of the spine. 'All wool,' he says, and climbs out.

Much of what we hear in a day is like that pen. It looks full. It has volume, colour and movement. Put a hand on it and there is nothing underneath: clips we cannot remember, arguments that change nothing, laughter that leaves us hungrier. Not all of it is wicked. Most of it is simply thin.

Against all that, the ayah says of the Quran: wa mā huwa bi-l-hazl. It is not that. One commentary says there is not a trace of jest anywhere in it; all of it is pure earnest. It adds what such a word deserves: that the strays find guidance in it, and the necks of the arrogant bow to it.

Earnest speech is like a well-fed flock. It can be returned to, drawn from, lived on. A single ayah can feed a week of thinking.

This is not a call to give up every light word. It is a question about diet. If most of what enters your mind is lean, you will feel hungry however much you take in. Give the earnest word a share of your best hours, not only your leftover minutes. Then notice how differently full you feel.

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.