Al-Balad · Makki · ayah 11 of 20

Al-Balad 90:11

فَلَا ٱقْتَحَمَ ٱلْعَقَبَةَ

“But he has not broken through the difficult pass.[1926]”

Saheeh International

Essence

He had eyes, a tongue and two clear roads, and still he never threw himself at the steep pass.

A reflection

Throw yourself at it

A woman has thought about fostering a child for nine years. She has read the leaflets, attended an information evening, and talked it over with her husband many times. Every year there is a reason to wait. Then, one Sunday evening, she sits at the kitchen table and fills in the whole form in forty minutes. She posts it before she can change her mind.

That is the kind of movement the verb in this ayah describes. Iqtaḥama is not strolling up a hill. The lexicons describe throwing oneself into something without holding back. A rider drove his horse into a river, and it plunged in. A bolting camel pitched its rider onto his face. The hard, broken stretches of a road were its quḥam. In a year of drought, desert Arabs were said to iqtaḥama into farmland, forcing their way in to survive.

So iqtiḥām is forcing a way through the middle of something frightening. You do not drift through a steep pass. You commit to it.

One commentator admires where the word sits. It comes straight after 'We showed him the two high roads'. The roads have been shown. The good one climbs. And the verdict is: he did not charge up it. Coming right after the two roads, he says, the image reaches the very summit of eloquence.

The ʿaqaba itself is a steep road up a mountain face, and then anything hard to climb. The man in this surah had every gift for the ascent. Eyes to see the road, a tongue to ask the way, a clear map. What he lacked was the plunge.

Many of us live where he lived: on the lower slopes, looking up. We know the good road. We admire it. We intend, one day, to start. The ayah names the missing ingredient with a single verb.

The woman at the kitchen table did not become braver that Sunday. She simply stopped waiting to feel ready, and threw herself at it.

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.