Thafseer Lafzi 5 — Sūrat al-Fajr (89) — introduction and āyāt 1–15 سُورَة الْفَجْر

1 · The sūrah at a glance

Order in the muṣḥaf vs order of revelation. These two are not the same and must be kept apart. In the muṣḥaf, Sūrat aḍ-Ḍuḥā stands after Sūrat al-Layl; but in the order in which the sūrahs were actually sent down, al-Fajr came in between. In the Qurʾān's arrangement, al-Fajr is the 89th sūrah.

Why it is called al-Fajr: because of its opening words —

"By the dawn" — by the fajr I swear. That is the usual way sūrahs are named, and we have seen the same thing with many sūrahs.

The sūrah in three parts

2 · Āyah 1 — the oath by the dawn

وَٱلْفَجْرِ

Wal-fajr

"By the dawn I swear."

3 · Āyah 2 — and by ten nights

وَلَيَالٍ عَشْرٍ

Wa layālin ʿashr

The wāw is one thing and layāl is another — take them separately.

"By the nights I swear" — and with ʿashr: "by ten nights I swear."

Which ten nights?

The first ten [days and nights] of the month of Dhū al-Ḥijjah. It is those nights that are being singled out here.

4 · Āyah 3 — the even and the odd

وَٱلشَّفْعِ وَٱلْوَتْرِ

Wash-shafʿi wal-watr

"By the even, I swear; and by the odd, I swear." So: by the even and by the odd.

5 · Āyah 4 — by the night when it passes

وَٱلَّيْلِ إِذَا يَسْرِ

Wal-layli idhā yasr

"And by the night when it passes away." The meaning carried by yasr here is that of going, moving on — the night travels on and departs.

6 · Āyah 5 — hal, fī, dhālika, and dhī ḥijr

هَلْ فِى ذَٰلِكَ قَسَمٌ لِّذِى حِجْرٍ

Hal fī dhālika qasamun li-dhī ḥijr

All three of the first words together give hal fī dhālika: "Is there not in that…?"

So the āyah: "Is there not in that a full and sufficient oath for one who has understanding?" — an oath that gives certainty to a person of intellect.

7 · Āyah 6 — the interrogative hamzah, and lam tara

أَلَمْ تَرَ كَيْفَ فَعَلَ رَبُّكَ بِعَادٍ

A-lam tara kayfa faʿala rabbuka bi-ʿĀd

"Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with the people of ʿĀd?"

Ṣarf of رَأَىٰ

8 · The first digression — jazm on a defective (nāqiṣ) verb

But with a verb like raʾā, whose last letter is a weak letter, something more happens: the final weak letter drops away altogether rather than merely taking a sukūn.

That is how the paradigm runs, and the form in our āyah is lam tara. With the interrogative hamzah in front: a-lam tara — "have you not seen?"

9 · Āyah 7 — Iram of the lofty pillars

إِرَمَ ذَاتِ ٱلْعِمَادِ

Irama dhāti-l-ʿimād

So a-lam tara is a verb — a muḍāriʿ verb — and then comes إِرَم Iram: the mighty people Iram, possessors of the lofty pillars (dhāt al-ʿimād) — a people of great strength.

10 · Āyah 8 — the like of which was never created

ٱلَّتِى لَمْ يُخْلَقْ مِثْلُهَا فِى ٱلْبِلَٰدِ

Allatī lam yukhlaq mithluhā fī-l-bilād

Connect this with the āyah before it — "Did you not see how your Lord dealt with them?"

"The like of that people was never created in [any of] the lands" — no people of such strength were ever created.

Ṣarf of خَلَقَ, and the passive (majhūl)

We know makhlūq well: al-Khāliq and al-makhlūq — and al-Khāliq is one of the attributes (ṣifāt) of Allah.

But in our āyah the verb has been put into the majhūl — the passive. The muḍāriʿ passive is يُخْلَقُ yukhlaqu.

Then, because lam comes before that verb, it becomes لَمْ يُخْلَقْ lam yukhlaq. That is how this verb has been arrived at.

11 · Āyah 9 — Thamūd, who hewed the rock

وَثَمُودَ ٱلَّذِينَ جَابُوا۟ ٱلصَّخْرَ بِٱلْوَادِ

Wa Thamūda-lladhīna jābū-ṣ-ṣakhra bil-wād

"And Thamūd, those who hewed out the rock in the valley."

What the wāw is doing: it joins this onto the earlier question. He had said "Have you not seen what your Lord did to the people of ʿĀd?" — and to that is now joined the people of Thamūd, the three [peoples] being taken together.

Ṣarf of جَابَ

Why the forms shift: the ʿayn of the verb — the middle radical — is a weak letter. In jāba that middle radical is a wāw, and a sukūn has fallen on it, so you must not take the form as it stands. Compare قَالَ — يَقُولُ qāla — yaqūlu, which we have already seen.

12 · Āyah 10 — Pharaoh of the stakes

وَفِرْعَوْنَ ذِى ٱلْأَوْتَادِ

Wa Firʿawna dhī-l-awtād

"And Pharaoh, possessor of the stakes (al-awtād)" — Pharaoh, master of the tent-pegs, of great hosts. And here too the question still stands: "Did you not see what your Lord did to him?"

13 · Āyah 11 — those who transgressed in the lands

ٱلَّذِينَ طَغَوْا۟ فِى ٱلْبِلَٰدِ

Alladhīna ṭaghaw fī-l-bilād

"Those who transgressed all bounds in the lands."

Ṣarf of طَغَىٰ

14 · A short digression — the defective noun and its cases

Sometimes with a word like ṭāghin the ending changes according to case. Take a noun: if I say زَيْدٌ Zaydun, that is a name, and there are three cases — rafʿ, naṣb and jarr. It is the same here:

The example given at this point: ذُو مَالٍ dhū māl — "one who possesses wealth", a man of means.

15 · Āyah 12 — and multiplied corruption there

فَأَكْثَرُوا۟ فِيهَا ٱلْفَسَادَ

Fa-aktharū fīhā-l-fasād

"And they spread much corruption in them."

Ṣarf of أَكْثَرَ

16 · Āyah 13 — the scourge of punishment

فَصَبَّ عَلَيْهِمْ رَبُّكَ سَوْطَ عَذَابٍ

Fa-ṣabba ʿalayhim rabbuka sawṭa ʿadhāb

"Your Lord poured upon them the scourge of punishment."

Why the word "pouring". Ṣabb is used here deliberately. Because of their sins the whip of punishment was laid on them: their misdeeds went beyond all limit — the corruption grew and grew — and it was on account of that that Allah poured out on them the lash of punishment.

17 · The second digression — how verbs are classified

The word ṣabba is what prompts this. Start from the root.

Every verb has three root letters, and we name them by position:

So in the model فَعَلَ you have fāʾ, ʿayn, lām — and that is how the positions are named.

The types

Mahmūz falls into three categories, according to where the hamzah stands (mahmūz al-fāʾ, al-ʿayn, al-lām).

What weakness does to the ṣarf

You can still carry the ṣarf through such verbs, but small differences will show up:

1. one letter changes into another;
2. the vowel (ḥarakah) on a letter is not given as you would expect;
3. in some cases a letter is dropped altogether.

And where the letter at the beginning is removed, the next letter still has to be given a vowel so that the word can be pronounced. The same care applies when applying jazm — and there are places where two sukūns would come together, which is not allowed; a vowel is given instead.

18 · Āyah 14 — your Lord is ever watchful

إِنَّ رَبَّكَ لَبِٱلْمِرْصَادِ

Inna rabbaka la-bil-mirṣād

"And indeed your Lord is ever on the watch." Truly, your Lord is observing every single deed of His servants.

19 · Āyah 15 — as for man, when his Lord tests him

فَأَمَّا ٱلْإِنسَٰنُ إِذَا مَا ٱبْتَلَىٰهُ رَبُّهُۥ فَأَكْرَمَهُۥ وَنَعَّمَهُۥ فَيَقُولُ رَبِّىٓ أَكْرَمَنِ

Fa-ammā-l-insānu idhā mā-btalāhu rabbuhu fa-akramahu wa naʿʿamahu fa-yaqūlu rabbī akraman

Take it word by word — the fā is one thing, ammā another, and al-insān another:

Who tests, and who is tested? — his Lord tests; man is tested. And the ‑hu in rabbuhu refers back to man.

The form أَكْرَمَنِ

That final ‑ni is the yāʾ of the speaker in its shortened form. So what we have is أَكْرَمَنِ akramani — "He has honoured me" — and the man says: "My Lord has honoured me."

The whole āyah: "And as for man, when his Lord tests him and then honours him and bestows blessings upon him, he says: My Lord has honoured me."

What this class did NOT cover

• Āyah 16 onward. The class closes with salāms straight after āyah 15. Sūrat al-Fajr is left unfinished — the rest of part 2 (the man forgetting his Lord) and the whole of part 3 (the conditions of Qiyāmah, from āyah 21) are for a later class and are not on this page.
• The recap of the previous sūrah (al-Balad) at the start of the class: one line only, and its remainder is garbled in the recording — nothing is reconstructed from it here.
• The bāb of رَأَىٰ and of طَغَىٰ, and several of the recited conjugation runs (the derived forms of ṭaghā, part of the jāba run, the example verb for mahmūz) were garbled in the recording — only the forms stated plainly above are recorded, and nothing beyond them is asserted.
• The āyah-total of the sūrah was not stated in this class, and no other name for it was given; only the word and letter counts above were given.