Al-Balad

I swear (lā is extra) by this land, of Mecca,

and you, O Muhammad (s), have free disposal of, sanction for, this land, in that you will be given permission to fight in it — and indeed God fulfilled this promise to him on the day of the Conquest [of Mecca] (thus this is a parenthetical statement intervening between that by which the oath has been sworn and that which is a supplement thereto).

And [by] the begetter, that is, Adam, and that which he begat, that is, his descendants (mā, ‘that which’, [actually] means man, ‘whom’).

We certainly created man (al-insān: the generic noun) in travail, in [a state of] toil and hardship, struggling with the tribulations of this world and the calamities of the Hereafter.

Does he suppose, does the strong man of Quraysh, namely, Abū’l-Ashadd b. Kalada, presume, on account of his strength, that (an: softened in place of the hardened form, its subject omitted, that is to say, annahu) no one will have power over him? Yet God has power over him.

He says, ‘I have exhausted, in enmity of Muhammad (s), vast wealth!’, great [wealth], piles and piles of it.

Does he suppose that (an, in other words, annahu) no one has seen him?, with regard to what he has expended to know the quantity thereof; God knows the quantity thereof; but it is not [in reality that much so as] to be considered a great amount, and [in any case] He will requite him for his evil conduct.

Have We not given (an interrogative meant as an affirmative, in other words, ‘We have [certainly] given’) him two eyes,

and a tongue, and two lips,

and guided him to the two paths?, [did We not] point out to him the path of good and that of evil?

Yet why does he not assault the obstacle?, [why] does he [not] surmount it?

And what will show you, [what will] make known to you, what the obstacle is?, that he is to surmount — intended to emphasise its enormity (this statement is a parenthetical one). He explains the way to surmount it by saying:

the freeing of a slave, from bondage,

or to give food on a day of hunger,

to an orphan near of kin (maqraba means qarāba),

or a needy person in misery (matraba: [literally means] ‘clinging to the dust [turāb]’ because of his poverty; a variant reading has two verbal nouns in place of the two verbs [fakka, ‘he freed’, and at‘ama, ‘he fed’], the first being in a genitive construction, fakku raqabatin, ‘the freeing of a slave’, and the second with nunation, it‘āmun, ‘to give food’, in which case there is an implied iqtihāmu before al-‘aqaba, of which the said reading becomes the explication);

while being (thumma kāna is a supplement to iqtahama, ‘he assaulted’; thumma is for the ordering of things to be mentioned) in other words, [what is meant is that] at the point of the assault he was: one of those who believe and enjoin one another to steadfastness, in [pursuing] obedience and in refraining from disobedience, and enjoin one another to compassion (marhama means rahma), towards creatures.

Those, the ones described by the said attributes, are the ones of the right [side] (al-maymana means al-yamīn).

But those who disbelieve in Our signs, they are the ones of the left [side] (al-mash’ama means al-shimāl).

Over them will be an enclosing Fire (read mu’sada or mūsada), closed on top [of them].