Al-Balad · Makki · ayah 16 of 20

Al-Balad 90:16

أَوْ مِسْكِينًا ذَا مَتْرَبَةٍ

“Or a needy person in misery”

Saheeh International

Essence

The last face on the steep road has nothing between him and the dust, and the ayah makes you look down to see him.

A reflection

Nothing between him and the ground

At six in the morning, a street cleaner works her way along a row of shops. Under the cash machine of a bank, a man is asleep on flattened cardboard. She sweeps carefully round him, the way you would round a sleeping child. Then she props a paper cup of tea from her flask beside his hand.

The ayah's last figure on the steep road is miskīnan dhā matrabah: 'a poor man of the dust'. Matrabah comes from turāb, dust or earth. A man was said to tariba when he became so poor that he clung to the ground. One commentator gives the picture exactly. He is so poor that there is nothing above him to cover him, and nothing beneath him to lie on.

The early commentators give the image many faces. Some said he is the one with no shelter but the dust. Others: the one thrown down on the roadside with no home. Others again: the one who has nothing to protect him from the earth at all.

It is reported that Ibn ʿAbbās once passed a poor man clinging to the dust. He stopped and said: this is the one Allah meant in 'or a poor man of the dust'.

That detail matters. The Companion did not read the ayah as an abstraction. He saw it lying in the street, and said so.

The steep road ends, in its list, at the lowest point: the ground itself. The surah began with a man standing proudly on a hide, daring anyone to move him. It ends its list of good deeds with a man lying on the earth with nothing under him. The road between those two figures is the whole of the moral life.

The cleaner with her flask had not read any commentary. But she knew what to do when the ayah was lying in front of her. She bent down.

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.