At-Tariq · Makki · ayah 7 of 17

At-Tariq 86:7

يَخْرُجُ مِنۢ بَيْنِ ٱلصُّلْبِ وَٱلتَّرَآئِبِ

“Emerging from between the backbone and the ribs.”

Saheeh International

Essence

You began between the body's hardest column and the bones where a necklace rests, and the ayah asks for wonder, not a lab report.

A reflection

Is the biology wrong?

The objection at its strongest runs like this. The fluid in question is not made between the backbone and the ribs. So isn't this simply a pre-modern mistake?

Start with the language. Min bayni, 'from between', is an Arabic idiom. A classical commentator compares the saying 'much good will come from between these two', meaning from the two of them together. It names sources, not a route on an anatomy chart.

Then the word tarāʾib. The early readings range widely. The place where a necklace lies on a woman's chest. The chest between the breasts. From the shoulders to the chest. Just below the collarbones. Four ribs on each side. Even the hands, feet and eyes. They also differ on whose backbone and whose chest. Most say the man's backbone and the woman's chest. Others say both belong to the man, and another view gives both to each parent. One later reading takes the pair as a way of naming the whole body, which houses the heart.

Most striking of all, the objection is old. A classical commentary records it, argued from the medicine of its own day. The fluid, it claimed, came from a 'fourth digestion' of the whole body, mostly from the brain. The commentator answered from the same medicine. Then he added that such theories were largely guesswork, and the word of Allah more deserving of acceptance.

Picture a school science textbook from the 1950s, found in a charity shop. Its chapter on the body is confident, well illustrated and partly wrong. No one blames the pupils who learned from it. But no one would build their faith on it either.

That is the lesson of this old debate. Neither the attack nor the defence should hang the ayah on one century's textbook. Some modern translations add biological footnotes of their own. Those are readings brought to the text, and this entry does not rest on them either way. The ayah asks you to look (86:5), and to wonder at a beginning you did not make.

What remains open is the exact reference of tarāʾib. The commentators never settled it, and it would be dishonest to pretend they did.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.