Ash-Shams · Makki · ayah 7 of 15

Ash-Shams 91:7

وَنَفْسٍ وَمَا سَوَّىٰهَا

“And [by] the soul and He who proportioned it[1932]”

Saheeh International

Essence

After sun, sky and earth, the last witness is the closest: a soul, and the One who shaped it in balance, ready to grow.

A reflection

The camera comes down to you

Watch the direction of the oaths. They began with the sun at the height of its reign. Then the moon, the day, the night. Then the whole sky and the whole earth. Now, at the seventh, the view drops to a single soul.

A classical writer explains the order. We can reason about what we cannot see only through what we can. What we can see is either simple or composed. The simple is above us, the sky, and below us, the earth. Of the composed, the noblest is the living soul. So the oaths pass through every level of the visible world and arrive at you.

The same writer adds a line that stops the ego in its tracks. Who can grasp, he asks, even a few of the properties of the soul of a gnat or a mosquito? How then could anyone plunge into the oceans of Allah's secrets?

Picture yourself at midnight, swatting at a mosquito in a dark bedroom. You miss. The light goes off, and within a minute it has found you again, in the dark, by some sense you cannot name. You are the larger creature, with the university degree and the phone. You still cannot explain the smallest soul in the room.

We speak of knowing ourselves, of reinventing ourselves, of being in control of who we are. The ayah sets that pride beside the sun and the sky, and then beside a gnat. The soul was proportioned by Another, in ways we will never fully map.

Does Allah swear by the soul to flatter us, or to be admired as its Maker? He says of His servants: 'I want no provision from them, nor that they should feed Me' (51:57). The oath is for our sake. It asks one question, in the words of another surah. What has deceived you about your Lord, the Generous, 'who created you, proportioned you and balanced you' (82:6–7)?

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.