Sūrat al-Nabaʾ, Verses 1–5

1. The Questions These Verses Raise

These Questions begin with the opening’s place between al-Mursalāt and the signs of creation. They then follow the five verses closely: who asks, what the news is, how its hearers differ, and what the warning means.

Q1. How does the opening connect with the surrounding passages?

Al-Mursalāt closes with a challenge to those who refuse the Qurʾān; al-Nabaʾ opens by confronting their questioning. It then moves from warning to the earth, human creation and the conditions of daily life, before announcing the appointed Day. Why is that the order? The hearers are first confronted with what they reject, then with what they already know. This Question follows that movement: the connection between the two sūrahs, the turn to creation, and the way its signs lead toward judgment. Q3 develops the arguments those signs give for identifying “the great news.”

1. How does it continue al-Mursalāt?

The preceding sūrah closes:

﴿فَبِأَيِّ حَدِيثِۭ بَعۡدَهُۥ يُؤۡمِنُونَ ٥٠﴾

“Then in what statement after the Qur'an will they believe?” (77:50, Saheeh International.)^[1]

Al-Nabaʾ then opens:

﴿عَمَّ يَتَسَآءَلُونَ﴾

“About what are they asking one another?”

﴿عَنِ ٱلنَّبَإِ ٱلْعَظِيمِ﴾

“About the great news -” (78:1–2, Saheeh International.)

On the interpretation that the news is the Qurʾān, the connection is direct: the message they refuse at the end of al-Mursalāt is the message they question at the beginning of al-Nabaʾ. On the resurrection interpretation, the connection runs through what the Qurʾān announces: the deniers are confronted with the Day they refuse to acknowledge. Al-Ālūsī records the first explanation but prefers resurrection because the signs that follow demonstrate the power to raise the dead.^[2]

That connection extends beyond the two opening questions. Al-Mursalāt repeatedly warns those who deny; al-Nabaʾ confronts the same refusal with “they will know.” The warning is not left without evidence. Both sūrahs ask their hearers to consider human creation and the earth: compare 77:20 and 77:25 with 78:6–8. Al-Suyūṭī draws attention to these corresponding questions.^[3] What people can recognize in their present life answers their resistance to what has been announced about the next. Abū Jaʿfar ibn al-Zubayr al-Gharnāṭī follows that movement from warning through creation’s wisdom to the appointed Day.^[4]

The later sūrah also develops what the earlier one announces briefly. Al-Mursalāt names and magnifies يَوْمِ الْفَصْلِ, “the Day of Decision,” in 77:12–14. Al-Nabaʾ names that same Day as an appointed time in 78:17, then describes the gathering. “The Day of Judgement” in the translation of these passages and “the Day of Decision” name the same Day. The connection is therefore not simply that both sūrahs mention resurrection: a warning already heard is followed by further evidence and a fuller account of its fulfilment.^[5] The comparison below follows these connections through the two sūrahs; the Introduction, section 5, treats their place in the whole sūrah.

2. Why turn from warning to the earth?

These correspondences help explain why the opening itself moves from warning to creation. Before calling its hearers to acknowledge the earth, it warns them:

﴿كَلَّا سَيَعْلَمُونَ ٤﴾

“No! They are going to know.” (78:4, Saheeh International.)

After its repetition in verse 5, the sūrah asks:

﴿أَلَمۡ نَجۡعَلِ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ مِهَٰدٗا ٦﴾

“Have We not made the earth a resting place?” (78:6, Saheeh International.)^[12]

This is not a change of subject. The people question an event they have not witnessed, so they are asked to consider creation they cannot deny. The question calls for acknowledgment: the earth has indeed been made a place where they can live.

The turn from speaking about the questioners to addressing them, and the fresh question that supplies the proof, are explained in 78:8, Balāghah.^[13]

Why begin with the earth? It is both their present home and the place from which the dead will emerge. Its preparation for sitting, resting and walking shows more than the existence of a powerful Maker: it shows care for those who inhabit it. The question therefore gives them two reasons to reconsider. The evidence answers their denial of resurrection; the reminder of Allah’s favor calls them to listen to His Messenger (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[14]

The signs give the warning its answer: the One who made this life has the power and knowledge to restore it, while revelation announces that the return will occur.^[15] Their joined provision also calls the hearers to acknowledge one Lord, thank Him and respond to His guidance; the full argument, including the distinction between divine wisdom and an obligation imposed upon Allah, is developed in 78:6–7, Q2.^[16] Sleep gives a familiar likeness of interruption and return without ceasing to be a gift of rest; 78:9, Q1 examines how those two aspects fit together.^[17]

3. Where does the sequence lead?

After the signs, the sūrah states:

﴿إِنَّ يَوۡمَ ٱلۡفَصۡلِ كَانَ مِيقَٰتٗا ١٧﴾

“Indeed, the Day of Judgement is an appointed time -” (78:17, Saheeh International.)^[18]

The Day questioned at the beginning is now named as an appointment. The intervening signs have answered the objection to Allah’s power and directed attention to His knowledge, wisdom and gifts. The appointment also answers impatience with the warning: resurrection and recompense will occur at their fixed time. Because the context concerns that restoration and recompense, Abū al-Suʿūd rejects explaining the appointment merely as the time at which worldly life ends.^[19]

The turn to creation answers the questioning; it does not interrupt the warning. The appointed Day is the destination toward which that answer leads, while the reminder of gifts calls the hearers to respond before they meet it. And Allah knows best.

Q2. Who is asking, and why open with a question?

﴿عَمَّ يَتَسَآءَلُونَ ١﴾

“About what are they asking one another?” (78:1, Saheeh International).^[1]

There are two questions here: the people ask about the news, and Allah asks about their questioning. The first reveals how they receive the announcement. The second draws our attention to its importance and to their response. We first need to understand how Allah’s question prepares for the answer in verse 2. We can then ask who the people are, whom they ask, and what their questions intend.

1. Why does Allah ask?

The next verse names the subject: the great news. The question and its answer come from the same speaker. Allah is therefore not asking someone else to complete His knowledge. First raising the question helps the hearer grasp the answer. Al-Rāzī illustrates this teaching method through the question and answer within 40:16:

﴿لِّمَنِ ٱلْمُلْكُ ٱلْيَوْمَ﴾

“To whom belongs [all] sovereignty this Day?”

﴿لِلَّهِ ٱلْوَٰحِدِ ٱلْقَهَّارِ﴾

“To Allah, the One, the Prevailing.” (Excerpt, Saheeh International.)

The question directs attention to who possesses sovereignty; the answer then declares Allah’s sole sovereignty. It teaches through question and answer, rather than seeking information from another speaker.^[2]

A question can make the truth known to its hearers rather than obtain information for its speaker.^[3] Allah asks Jesus:

﴿ءَأَنتَ قُلْتَ لِلنَّاسِ ٱتَّخِذُونِي وَأُمِّيَ إِلَٰهَيْنِ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ﴾

“did you say to the people, ‘Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah?’”

Jesus’s reply includes:

﴿إِن كُنتُ قُلْتُهُۥ فَقَدْ عَلِمْتَهُۥ﴾

“If I had said it, You would have known it.” (Excerpts from 5:116, Saheeh International.)

The reply itself excludes ignorance in Allah. The question confronts the people with the claim made about Jesus; it is not asked because Allah lacks knowledge of what he said. Al-Rāghib uses this example to distinguish knowledge produced in the people hearing a question from knowledge supposedly acquired by the One asking it.^[4]

Once we distinguish the hearer’s knowledge from Allah’s knowledge, we can see why the answer is delayed. Asking first makes the hearer wait; calling the subject “the great news” then directs that attention toward a matter of immense consequence. Ibn ʿĀshūr explains how this progression fixes the meaning more firmly in the mind.^[5]

The same speaker can ask and then answer without waiting for anyone else to reply. Ibn ʿĀshūr illustrates this with poetry by Ḥassān b. Thābit:

لِمَنِ الدَّارُ أَقْفَرَتْ بِمَعَانِ ... بَيْنَ أَعْلَى الْيَرْمُوكِ وَالصَّمَّانِ

ذَاكَ مَغْنَى لِآلِ جَفْنَة فِي الده ... ر وَحَقٌّ تَقَلُّبُ الْأَزْمَانِ

“Whose dwelling lies deserted at Maʿān, between upper Yarmūk and al-Ṣammān? That was the abode of the house of Jafnah in former time; the turning of ages is a truth.”

The poetry first asks whose dwelling it is, then names its people. The poet already knows the answer. His question draws attention to what he is about to identify. This is the feature Ibn ʿĀshūr compares with the opening of al-Nabaʾ: a question prepares the hearer for the answer given by the same speaker.^[6]

The question can do more than prepare for an identification. Although we normally ask what something is because we do not understand it, a known matter can also exceed our understanding because of its greatness. In both cases, the mind has not fully comprehended it. That likeness explains how a question can magnify something already known (al-Rāzī).^[7]

A related comparison begins with something that has no equal. We usually recognize a thing by placing it beside familiar examples. If it is without a peer, that comparison fails, and we may speak as though we must ask what kind of thing it is. Al-Zamakhsharī illustrates this with “Zayd, what is Zayd!” The words are not a request to identify a man whose name has just been given. They express how far he exceeds an ordinary estimate. Applied to the opening, this explains how an interrogative can magnify its subject even in the speech of the One from whom nothing is hidden.^[8]

This magnifying effect also appears when a question makes the hearer wonder at an event before naming it. The preceding sūrah asks:

﴿لِأَيِّ يَوْمٍ أُجِّلَتْ ١٢﴾

“For what Day was it postponed?” (77:12)

﴿لِيَوْمِ ٱلْفَصْلِ ١٣﴾

“For the Day of Judgement.” (77:13, Saheeh International.)

The question draws attention to the appointed Day before the answer names it. Al-Farrāʾ compares this with al-Nabaʾ’s question followed by “the great news,” describing the question as an expression of wonder. Ibn Qutaybah makes the same comparison under taʿajjub, wonder. He treats this separately from questions of confirmation and questions of rebuke. Abū Ḥayyān brings these purposes together: the question magnifies the news, makes its gravity felt, establishes the matter before the hearer and expresses wonder.^[9]

A question may seek information, lead someone to acknowledge a truth, reject a claim, or rebuke an action. These purposes must be distinguished, as ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ḥabannakah al-Maydānī explains. Here the answer magnifies the news, while the later warning confronts the people’s response to it.^[10] Wonder draws attention to the extraordinary matter; rebuke challenges the questioners’ treatment of it. Ibn Qutaybah places the passage under wonder, whereas al-Nasafī’s al-Taysīr explains rebuke.^[11]

2. Does verse 2 answer the question?

Question followed by answer gives the opening its clearest progression: “About what are they asking? About the great news.” The first verse asks for the subject; the second identifies it. Ibn Juzayy prefers this construction as more eloquent and skilful, and connects it with pausing at the end of verse 1.^[12]

The alternatives ask why the people question the news, renew the question, or treat the second phrase as a substitution. They remain possible constructions, but defending a substitution does not remove the advantage of an answer: each verse has a distinct task, and the news is named after the hearer has been made to wait. This is the progression preferred by Abū al-Suʿūd and al-Ālūsī.^[13] The full constructions, objections and replies are in Iʿrāb, §2; their effect on attention is explained under “Expectation followed by clarification”.

3. Who are “they”?

Having identified what they ask about, we still need to identify the “they” in يَتَسَاءَلُونَ. No named group precedes that pronoun within this sūrah. Yet the hearer can recognize the polytheists already familiar from the Qurʾān’s address; they need not be named again. Ibn ʿĀshūr also considers a turn from addressing those people in the preceding sūrah to speaking about them here.^[14]

The warning helps identify the group more precisely. The people who ask, those described as differing, and those who will come to know are naturally understood as the same people. Taking the last statement as a threat therefore points back to the opponents of the announcement.^[15] This is al-Rāzī’s argument for the unbelieving audience. A broader interpretation includes believers asking to deepen certainty as well as opponents asking in ridicule or raising objections. Al-Maẓharī distinguishes greater certainty from mockery; al-Nīsābūrī includes believers seeking greater fear and readiness.^[16] On that broader interpretation, the questioning includes both groups, but the threat addresses the deniers.^[17]

Through a broken route from al-Ḍaḥḥāk from Ibn ʿAbbās, al-Qurṭubī reports another identification: Jews who asked the Prophet ﷺ about many things, whose disagreement is then confronted by the warning.^[18] Al-Ḍaḥḥāk did not meet Ibn ʿAbbās, so this report does not establish a particular occasion of revelation. The contextual argument for the Meccan opponents rests instead on the continuity between the people questioning, differing and receiving the threat.^[19]

4. Whom do they ask?

Identifying the questioners does not yet tell us whom they question. The ordinary reciprocal sense of yatasāʾalūn describes one asking another. It can describe a conversation without requiring every participant to ask and answer in turn. Consider the people of Paradise:

﴿وَأَقْبَلَ بَعْضُهُمْ عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍ يَتَسَاءَلُونَ ٢٥﴾

“And they will approach one another, inquiring of each other.” (52:25, Saheeh International.)

A separate passage shows how such conversation develops:

﴿قَالَ قَائِلٌ مِنْهُمْ إِنِّي كَانَ لِي قَرِينٌ ٥١﴾

“A speaker among them will say, ‘Indeed, I had a companion [on earth]” (37:51)

﴿يَقُولُ أَءِنَّكَ لَمِنَ ٱلْمُصَدِّقِينَ ٥٢﴾

“Who would say, ‘Are you indeed of those who believe” (37:52)

﴿أَءِذَا مِتْنَا وَكُنَّا تُرَابًا وَعِظَامًا أَءِنَّا لَمَدِينُونَ ٥٣﴾

“That when we have died and become dust and bones, we will indeed be recompensed?’” (37:53, Saheeh International.)

One person recounts what an earlier companion used to ask. The exchange includes a remembered question within a story; it is not a fixed sequence in which each person must ask the next a new question. This is the conversational use al-Farrāʾ explains and al-Rāzī illustrates with these passages.^[20]

The verb can also describe people directing questions to the Messenger ﷺ or the believers. Reciprocal action is not compulsory in every use of this form, and the person questioned may be left unexpressed. Abū al-Suʿūd and al-Qāsimī explain that linguistic possibility; al-Nīsābūrī includes mocking questions to the Messenger ﷺ and believers.^[21] Nor must we choose between two incompatible events: people can question one another and mock those who affirm the news. Al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn Kamāl join the two actions.^[22]

Al-Tustarī gives a particular paraphrase in which the Prophet ﷺ is the person questioned: “For what reason do you ask Muḥammad ﷺ?” He places it within a discussion of how Qurʾānic address reaches its intended people. His comparison is the opening of 65:1:

﴿يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّبِيُّ إِذَا طَلَّقْتُمُ ٱلنِّسَاءَ﴾

“O Prophet, when you [Muslims] divorce women” (excerpt, Saheeh International).

“O Prophet” addresses one person; طَلَّقْتُمُ (ṭallaqtum), “you divorce,” addresses more than one. The command reaches the community through its Prophet. Al-Tustarī also considers descendants addressed concerning their ancestors’ conduct. His al-Nabaʾ paraphrase, لأي علة تسألون محمدا, turns the question directly upon the questioners themselves, adding that the Prophet ﷺ knows the matter best.^[23]

Mutual questioning remains the primary explanation in Abū al-Suʿūd and al-Ālūsī: it is what the reciprocal verb most directly describes.^[24]

5. Are all their questions mockery?

Whether the question is put to a neighbour or to a believer, its outward form does not settle its purpose. A person may seek an unfamiliar detail, confirmation, or another person’s view. Another may ridicule something he has already rejected. Ibn ʿĀshūr illustrates the latter with a staged exchange about whether someone has heard the resurrection news or what the Messenger has said. Questions are really being exchanged, but obtaining information is not their purpose.

Genuine inquiry and mocking inquiry express different states of mind. Some hearers could still be uncertain; others could already be convinced that the announced event would never occur. Because their denial had different degrees, Ibn ʿĀshūr prefers to understand the verse as including both genuine inquiry and performed inquiry, rather than choosing only one of the two explanations. The distinction explains why the same visible act can have different intentions.^[25]

There is also a fuller possibility in which inquiry leads out of doubt. A difficulty may prompt people to ask because they want it explained. The signs of Allah’s blessings, power and governance that follow can then answer the difficulty: careful consideration directs them toward resurrection. On this interpretation, coming to know is the promised outcome of reflection. Al-Māturīdī proposes this conditionally, then sets beside it the person who refuses careful thought, neglects the signs and does not deal fairly with himself. That person faces the threatened consequence. The decisive difference is the response to the evidence: reflection can lead to faith, while deliberate neglect leaves the person facing the warning.^[26]

Other commentators explain the rebuke more directly as a rejection of the inquiry before them. Al-Zamakhsharī and Abū al-Suʿūd describe questions asked in mockery or denial. On al-Maẓharī’s second explanation, the truth is so clear that belief, not further questioning, is called for. Quṭb and Muftī Muḥammad Shafīʿ likewise describe this opening as rejecting the questioners and their inquiry. They are explaining this encounter with the great news, rather than offering a general rule against every question about faith.^[27]

Rejecting this inquiry does not make every question about faith blameworthy. The more consequential a matter is, the more seriously it deserves investigation: al-Biqāʿī reasons from the greatness of the news in precisely that direction. The varied proofs that follow give people grounds on which to consider resurrection (al-Qushayrī). By contrast, a question aimed at pushing truth away and supporting falsehood serves resistance rather than understanding (Ibn Fūrak). The fault is not that the news matters enough to ask about, but that questioning becomes a way of refusing to face its answer.^[28]

The distinction is therefore between questioning that resists a clear truth and questioning that seeks to understand it. The first explanation stresses that such great news demands belief rather than mockery; the second asks what the questioner is trying to do. Al-Māturīdī allows inquiry that leads through reflection to faith, while Ibn Fūrak identifies the blameworthy aim as repelling truth and supporting falsehood. These are not rival judgments about whether understanding matters. They distinguish a serious search for truth from using a question to evade it. That also explains why the passage answers the questioners with evidence instead of leaving them with a rebuke alone.^[29]

Conclusion

Allah’s question directs attention to the great news; the warning confronts the Meccan opponents’ response to it. The same people question, differ and receive the threat, which is why al-Rāzī identifies the opponents and Abū al-Suʿūd, Ibn Kamāl and al-Shawkānī reject including believers within that rebuked audience. And Allah knows best.^[30]

Q3. What is “the great news”?

﴿عَنِ ٱلنَّبَإِ ٱلْعَظِيمِ ٢﴾

“About the great news -” (78:2, Saheeh International).^[1]

What does that description name: the resurrection, the Qurʾān announcing it, or the Messenger’s mission through which it reaches the hearers? These are connected, but identifying the announcement is not the same as identifying the event announced. The prophetic mission names the momentous development through which the news comes to them.^[2] We begin with the expression itself, then examine the contextual argument for resurrection and the reasons for the other explanations. Finally, we distinguish an inclusive explanation from an identification or spiritual comparison that goes beyond these alternatives.

1. What makes this news “great”?

This is news that demands attention. Al-Rāghib distinguishes nabaʾ from the broader khabar, “report”: it is important, useful news that brings knowledge or a strong likelihood of truth. Common speech may use the two words interchangeably, but careful expression can retain that distinction. Ibn ʿĀshūr follows it here: nabaʾ draws attention to news of consequence.^[3]

Al-Rāghib names reports free of falsehood as the proper examples of nabaʾ: وحق الخبر الذي يقال فيه نبأ أن يتعرى عن الكذب، كالتواتر، وخبر الله تعالى، وخبر النبي, “A report called nabaʾ should be free of falsehood, as in mass-transmitted reports, Allah’s report and the Prophet’s report.” His discussion of verification concerns a different case: in 49:6, a fāsiq, an unreliable wrongdoer, brings a weighty report. Its importance requires pausing to investigate, even when it seems likely to be true. This is not a call to doubt Allah’s news. Al-Samīn preserves both the simpler definition, “news,” and al-Rāghib’s qualified account.^[4]

That narrower definition is not the only account of the word. Al-Zamakhsharī includes news, arrival and sound among its uses; Ibn Manẓūr gives “news” and includes the Qurʾān, resurrection and the Prophet’s affair as explanations of this passage. Al-Ṣābūnī, discussing 49:6, contrasts the general meaning with al-Rāghib’s more restricted definition.^[5] The distinction raises two questions about the news described here: must it be important, and must it tell its hearer something previously unknown?

Importance is central to al-Rāghib’s definition, but an account of the root can begin with the arrival of information instead. Ibn Fāris connects it with coming from one place to another: news reaches a person from elsewhere, as a person or a sound does. His account does not require every use of the word to describe beneficial, truthful information. Muḥammad Ḥasan Jabal instead emphasizes something appearing after hiddenness: news brings into view what was not previously apparent. These explanations distinguish the arrival of news from its disclosure of something hidden.^[6]

Two poetic witnesses make Ibn Fāris’s connection concrete. Dhū al-Rummah uses نَبْأَة (nabʾah) for a sound reaching a sensitive listener:

وقد توحَّس رِكزاً مُقْفِرٌ نَدُسٌ … بنبْأةِ الصوتِ ما في سمعِهِ كذبُ

“A keen listener in a deserted place sensed a faint sound; in hearing that sound, his ear did not deceive him.”

The sound comes from elsewhere. In the next witness, نَابِئ (nābiʾ) describes someone arriving from elsewhere:

ولكن قَذَاها كلُّ أشعَثَ نابئٍ … أتَتْنا به الأقدار من حيث لا ندرِي

“But what troubles it is every dishevelled newcomer whom fate has brought us from where we do not know.”

Ibn Fāris places these uses beside nabaʾ, “news”: a person, a sound and a report can all come to someone from another place. The poems illustrate his account of the root; the importance of this particular news comes from its description as “great” and from what the sūrah says about it.^[7]

The arrival of a report does not always mean its contents are new to the recipient. Jabal tests Abū Hilāl’s distinction that nabaʾ tells the recipient what the recipient does not know. Jesus tells people what they eat and store in their houses in 3:49. They already know those things; ordinarily, it is the speaker who would not know them. Jabal therefore modifies the condition: the matter was originally unknown to one of the two parties, not necessarily to its recipient.

How, then, does this explain Allah telling people about their own deeds? They performed those deeds and know what they did. Jabal points to 41:22: they supposed that Allah did not know much of their conduct. Alternatively, they behaved as people unaware of its reality. The announcement confronts that mistaken estimate of their deeds and of Allah’s knowledge; it does not imply any prior ignorance in Allah. The objection and its answer show why “news” cannot simply be defined as information always unknown to the person hearing it.^[8]

These qualifications concern nabaʾ, the news. Its description as “great” makes its importance explicit, whichever definition of the noun is adopted. Greatness can describe bodily size or a matter’s importance: a great matter occupies the mind as a large body fills the view. Here the news concerns unseen realities and the terrors announced in revelation, not the physical size of a report.^[9]

This extension from size to importance helps explain the relationship between عَظِيم (ʿaẓīm), “great,” and عَظْم (ʿaẓm), “bone,” which share the root ع ظ م. One explanation begins with enlarged bone and extends greatness to what can be sensed or understood: this is al-Rāghib’s account. Another begins with greatness and strength and explains bone by its hardness: this is Ibn Fāris’s account. Jabal allows bulk and solidity, leaving more than one explanation for the naming of bone. The starting points differ, but none confines greatness to physical dimensions. Ibn Manẓūr also includes describing news as momentous. Thus the adjective can express the importance of what is announced.^[10]

A poetic witness shows the root describing a grave predicament rather than a large object:

إن تنجُ منها تنجُ من ذِى عظيمةٍ … وإلاّ فإنِّى لا إخالَك ناجيا

“If you escape it, you escape a grave ordeal; otherwise, I do not think you will escape.”

The witness turns on عَظِيمَة (ʿaẓīmah), which Ibn Fāris explains as a severe calamity. It supports understanding greatness as seriousness and consequence, not only physical size.^[11]

Yet importance alone does not decide which of the principal explanations is intended. The opening calls its subject great and disputed without immediately naming the event. That description deepens attention before the subject is fully disclosed. The repeated “they will know” also leaves its object unspoken. For Quṭb, that implicit threat is more fearsome than an immediate account of everything awaiting them. Description and warning prepare the hearer for the proof and scenes that follow.^[12] Those following verses are therefore the next place to look for the identity of the news.

2. Why is resurrection the strongest explanation?

The sequence of the sūrah. The opening does not leave the news unexplained. First comes the warning that its opponents will know. Then come the signs of Allah’s creation and provision. After these, the Day of Decision is announced and its scenes begin to unfold. The question, warning, proof and description belong to one movement. Resurrection connects them naturally: the people question whether it will happen; the warning declares that they will encounter it; creation demonstrates the power to bring it about; and the later verses describe the Day itself. Verse 17 is especially clear evidence for this connection, which al-Qurṭubī considers the more apparent explanation.^[13]

Al-Biqāʿī makes the identification explicit at verse 17: إِنَّ يَوْمَ الْفَصْلِ, “Indeed, the Day of Judgement,” names the Day “which is the great news.” The Day announced in al-Mursalāt 77:13 and the Day described here are the same appointed judgment, not two different Days.^[14]

In the explanation al-Ṭabarī records from Ibn Zayd, the deniers do not dispute death; they reject coming to life again with their ancestors. The great news concerns an event still before them, which their present experience of death leads them to dismiss. Qatādah’s explanation of resurrection after death addresses that same question.^[15]

Verse 3 gives another reason. Ibn Kathīr understands its disagreement as affirmation and denial, and uses that contrast to prefer resurrection. Al-Wāḥidī’s al-Wasīṭ takes a different route from the same verse: the conflicting accusations of magic, poetry and divination favour identifying the news as the Qurʾān. The disagreement is therefore not merely over a name. Each interpretation explains a different kind of disagreement and uses it as evidence for the subject of the passage.^[16]

The disagreement alone has not settled the choice between resurrection and the Qurʾān. The signs that follow give a further reason: they answer the deniers’ objection to restoration. ʿAṭiyyah Sālim identifies four proofs of resurrection in them, then observes that verse 17 explicitly names the Day of Decision. This is why he prefers resurrection even after explaining how mission, Qurʾān and resurrection imply one another.^[17]

He also argues from the intensity of the dispute: recognition of the Qurʾān’s eloquence and of the Messenger’s truthfulness could coexist with an especially strong refusal to believe that decayed bodies would be restored. The objection voiced in 50:2–3 turns from astonishment at a human warner to the supposed remoteness of returning after death and becoming dust. ʿAṭiyyah Sālim’s comparison explains why the coming signs answer the objection to resurrection so directly.^[18]

His fourth proof appeals to instances of life restored in this world. In the first event, a man had been killed and the Israelites disputed the crime. Allah commanded them to strike him with part of the slaughtered cow:

﴿كَذَٰلِكَ يُحْيِ ٱللَّهُ ٱلْمَوْتَىٰ﴾

“Thus does Allāh bring the dead to life” (2:73).^[19]

In the second, Ibrāhīm asked to see how Allah gives life to the dead. He was instructed to take four birds, distribute portions of them upon the hills and call them:

﴿ثُمَّ ٱدْعُهُنَّ يَأْتِينَكَ سَعْيًا﴾

“then call them - they will come [flying] to you in haste” (2:260).^[20]

These are instances of restoration after actual death. Sleep and waking provide a resemblance rather than another instance of actual death, a distinction developed in 78:9, Q2.

The signs also explain why the disputed news concerns a future life. Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī takes their evidence of power, knowledge and wisdom, together with the analogies of waking and renewed vegetation, as reasons to favour resurrection over the Qurʾān and the mission. Al-Shawkānī likewise identifies resurrection as their immediate subject, while recognizing that they also teach tawḥīd and support the Messenger.^[21]

Both the proof from power and the argument from wisdom thus connect creation to resurrection, though their premises must be distinguished. That connection gives the preceding warning particular force: the people will discover what they now deny, when knowing will no longer benefit them as acceptance now would. Al-Rāzī joins this threatened disclosure to the purpose of the following proof and to the adjective “great.” The Day on which humanity stands before the Lord of the worlds (83:4–6) deserves that description; the great news from which people turn away in 38:67–68 gives a further parallel. His preference rests on these three reasons together: the disclosure threatened, the restoration proved possible, and the greatness of the Day.^[22]

The case for resurrection thus depends on the relation between the passages, not on the number of commentators who adopt it. The warning promises an encounter, creation answers the objection to restoration, and verse 17 names the Day. Al-Qurṭubī prefers this explanation while also reporting the Qurʾān and the Prophet’s affair as alternatives; recognizing those alternatives does not undo his contextual judgment.^[23]

Power and purpose strengthen that connection in different ways. First creation answers the claim that restoration cannot happen; wise creation directs attention toward accountability. This is why explanations centred on resurrection and recompense can develop different features of the same sequence without assigning different subjects to “the great news.”^[24]

3. Could the news be the Qurʾān?

The strength of that contextual explanation does not remove the alternative named at the outset: perhaps “the news” means the revelation announcing the event. Its greatness would then begin with its divine source. Questioning that revelation while opposing it and refusing belief exposes the contradiction in their response. This is how Muqātil understands the opening, with 38:67 as a parallel. The Qurʾān is the great announcement placed before them, and their acceptance or rejection explains the division.^[25]

The early explanations.

The early evidence does not yield only one interpretation. Mujāhid’s Qurʾān explanation appears in the collected Tafsīr Mujāhid and in al-Bukhārī without its chain; al-Ṭabarī reports Qatādah for resurrection and Ibn Zayd for the coming Day, while ʿAbd al-Razzāq reports Qatādah through Maʿmar for the Qurʾān. These routes must be kept distinct. So must their assessments: the ḥasan judgment concerns Qatādah’s fuller affirmation-and-denial explanation, whereas the Ibn Kathīr editorial notes call his shorter resurrection explanation ṣaḥīḥ in isnad. Ibn Mardawayh’s two Ibn ʿAbbās routes both pass through the abandoned transmitter Ḥuṣayn ibn Mukhāriq; they cannot be added as sound support.^[26]

The later accounts preserve several meanings. Comparing those meanings helps separate the interpretive question from the further question of whether a particular attribution has a sound route.

The interpretation of the news as the Qurʾān has early transmitted support, including Mujāhid’s explanation. Two different explanations are transmitted from Qatādah: the Qurʾān through Maʿmar, and resurrection through Saʿīd. The alternatives therefore arise within the early evidence itself, not simply from later efforts to explain the word.^[28]

Al-Shawkānī likewise describes the Qurʾān explanation as مَرْوِيٌّ عَنْ جَمَاعَةٍ مِنَ التَّابِعِينَ, “transmitted from a group of the early scholars who followed the Companions.” He preserves that early interpretation even though his contextual argument favours resurrection.^[29]

Al-Zarkashī and al-Suyūṭī also include “the great news” among the Qurʾān’s names, following the list associated with Shaydhala and citing these verses. The expression was therefore recognized as a name for the Qurʾān.^[30]

Al-Rāzī examines two arguments for identifying the news as the Qurʾān and the replies to them. The first concerns the next verse’s description of disagreement. The opponents offered different accounts of the revelation: magic, poetry, or stories of earlier peoples. These competing descriptions seem to fit “that over which they are in disagreement” particularly well. If their rejection of resurrection and of the mission were uniform, the variety of their accusations against the Qurʾān would distinguish it as the object of this disagreement.^[31]

Al-Rāzī answers that this premise is not secure: confident denial and uncertainty are different responses to resurrection. Even two people who deny it may have different ideas about what they are rejecting and why. Disagreement can therefore exist over resurrection as well as revelation. This answers the proposed contrast: the word “disagreement” fits the Qurʾān explanation, but it does not select that explanation by eliminating resurrection. Al-Rāzī rejects this first argument for that reason.^[32]

The second argument he examines turns on the difference between a report and its subject: news is the report, whereas resurrection is the event reported. The Qurʾān consists of speech conveying news, whereas resurrection and prophethood are things about which that speech informs us. Its other designations, including remembrance, reminder, guidance and discourse, strengthen the connection between “the news” and the revelation itself.^[33]

Al-Rāzī answers by considering what makes an announcement great: its importance can lie in the reality it describes, rather than in the words as sounds or expressions. Resurrection and prophethood are momentous realities. If the noun seems especially suitable for the report, the adjective seems especially suitable for what is reported.^[34]

A defender of the Qurʾān explanation can reply, in al-Rāzī’s discussion, that its language is not an insignificant container for important information. Its eloquence and the many kinds of knowledge it encompasses are themselves grounds for calling it great. Nor does the adjective settle a strict literal contrast between language and events: greatness in the original sense of bodily size applies to neither. In both cases, it has been extended to importance. Thus neither side can settle the question simply by claiming the only possible literal fit for “great.”^[35]

The lexical argument brings us back to the passage as a whole. Both uses can be explained, so the question becomes which gives the more direct account of the warning and proof. Here the resurrection explanation retains its strength. The vocabulary permits the Qurʾān interpretation; the context gives a reason to prefer resurrection. That is the conclusion of al-Rāzī’s examination of these arguments.^[36]

Can the following proof also support the Qurʾān explanation? Perhaps the opponents rejected the revelation precisely because it announced resurrection. Proving resurrection would then address the reason for their rejection of the Qurʾān. The following proof would still fit, even if “the news” named the revelation rather than the event. This connects the alternative to the actual movement of the sūrah. Al-Ālūsī records this defence but finds it remote.^[37]

What of the report that most commentators took it to be the Qurʾān? Several commentators report it directly: most took the great news to be the Qurʾān (al-Baghawī, al-Khāzin, al-Maẓharī), and al-Wāḥidī says "all the commentators."^[38]

Those who prefer resurrection draw their answer from the passage itself. Resurrection is the more evident meaning, because the warning, the proof from creation and the Day of Decision that follow all concern the raising of the dead (al-Rāzī, Abū al-Suʿūd, al-Ālūsī, al-Shawkānī, ʿAṭiyyah Sālim). Verse 3 reinforces this interpretation, since people divided over it into believers and deniers (Ibn Kathīr). Al-Qurṭubī also prefers it, and reports the argument from verse 17 from others.^[39]

The inclusive interpretation, in which the Qurʾān and the truths it announces belong together, is examined in section 5 below.^[40]

The Qurʾān explanation therefore has three connected grounds: the announcement is divine speech, its contents are momentous, and the opponents give conflicting accounts of it. It can also include resurrection within what the Prophet ﷺ brought, as al-Darrah explains. Its strength is not confined to the reported majority; it offers a reasoned account of both “news” and “disagreement,” even where the wider sequence gives resurrection the more direct contextual support.^[41]

4. Could it mean the Messenger’s mission?

The two explanations considered so far name the event or its announcement. A third names the mission through which the announcement reached its hearers. A man from among them declared himself Allah’s messenger and called them to tawḥīd. The Qurʾān records their astonishment at a human warner in 50:2 and at the proclamation of tawḥīd in 38:5. On the prophetic-mission explanation, that startling development provokes the questioning: the great news is that Muḥammad ﷺ has come to them as a messenger from Allah.^[42]

Which part of the message are they questioning? Is Muḥammad ﷺ a prophet? Is this Qurʾān from Allah? Can its opponents produce anything like it? Will the dead be raised? Is worship due to one God alone? To question the Qurʾān’s origin is not the same as to question whether its challenge can be met, although both concern the same revelation. Al-Māturīdī preserves these distinctions and declines to confine the opening categorically to one subject without adequate knowledge.^[43]

The following gifts also explain why the mission is a possible subject: their recipients need guidance about how to thank their Lord, and the signs answer objections to what His messenger announces. Al-Māturīdī therefore relates them to the mission as well as to resurrection and tawḥīd; their relevance to all three does not establish that the opening concerns the mission alone. The full argument from power, wisdom, gratitude and joined provision is developed in 78:6–7, Q2.^[44]

5. Could the expression include all these truths?

Since the signs answer several connected claims of the mission, must we choose only one of them? A broader interpretation understands “the great news” as the whole class of momentous announcements brought by the Messenger ﷺ: the Qurʾān is Allah’s speech, worship of other gods is false, and the dead will be raised. A particular explanation such as “resurrection” could then identify one member of that class without excluding the others.

Ibn ʿĀshūr adopts this construction. It also affects how he understands the following proof. He reads the signs of verses 6–16 as showing clearly that the news includes the announcement that Allah is One, and also as proving that bodies can be raised. The broader interpretation thus treats the passage as confronting the hearers with connected truths of the prophetic message.^[45]

That inclusive explanation can encompass the whole revealed law, including tawḥīd, resurrection and recompense, as Ibn Juzayy explains. It can also place particular emphasis within that whole: al-Biqāʿī gathers the mission, Book and Day together while foregrounding resurrection, and Ibn ʿUthaymīn includes all the clear proofs and guidance, especially the Hereafter. In each case, identifying one central announcement need not exclude the others.

But inclusion and non-selection are different judgments. To say that the expression embraces the whole message is an affirmative explanation. Al-Māturīdī instead leaves its exact subject undecided because the alternatives fit and adequate knowledge for an exclusive judgment is lacking. A third judgment accepts that the truths imply one another while still asking which is most directly intended. ʿAṭiyyah Sālim reports al-Ṭabarī as preferring to include all the explanations and agrees that their subjects are connected. He then asks: ولكن السياق في النبأ وهو مفرد. فما المراد به هنا بالذات؟, “But the context concerns the news, which is singular. What, specifically, is meant by it here?” His answer is resurrection, for the contextual reasons already developed.^[46] The broader explanation is therefore intelligible, but the connection among the truths does not erase the reason for preferring resurrection as this passage’s immediate subject.

Comparison of positions.

6. Other interpretations and spiritual comparisons

These alternatives all concern truths announced by the Messenger ﷺ. An identification outside that group must still answer to the warning, signs and appointed Day. A spiritual comparison raises a different question: does it replace the bodily resurrection explained by the passage, or illustrate a related inward experience?

An identification with ʿAlī. Al-Nīsābūrī reports that "the Shīʿah" took the great news to be ʿAlī رضي الله عنه. The surrounding verses refuse the idea. The opening moves immediately into a severe warning, the vast signs of creation, and the Day of Decision, realities that clearly concern the raising of the dead, not a portrait of a man. Al-Nīsābūrī himself explains the news as the resurrection.^[49]

A spiritual comparison. Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī offers a different kind of extension. After explaining bodily resurrection, he signals a spiritual analogy: the heart revives after the ego’s death, and an experience unknown to the ego is denied while the spirit acknowledges it. The comparison rests on the fundamental distinction between hearing of a reality and directly tasting it. He associates it with poetry attributed to Kamāl Khujandī. A corresponding text in the poet’s collected poetry reads:

زاهد چه عجب گر کند از عشق تو پرهیز کس لذت این باده چه داند که نخوردست

“What wonder if the ascetic avoids love of you? How can anyone know the delight of this wine without having drunk it?”

The wine represents an experience that cannot be known from outside. Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī uses the poem to illustrate his spiritual comparison, while explaining the verse itself as bodily resurrection.^[50]

The distinction is between identifying the subject of the verse and drawing an analogy from its meaning. The personal identification competes with the passage’s account of resurrection and must answer its contextual evidence. Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī’s spiritual comparison, by contrast, leaves bodily resurrection as his literal explanation; it illustrates inward revival without replacing the announced event.^[51]

Conclusion

“The great news” most directly means resurrection and the coming Judgment. The warning, proof and appointed Day give the contextual reason for that preference, adopted by al-Rāzī, Abū al-Suʿūd, al-Ālūsī and others.

Several commentators report that most took the "news" to be the Qurʾān. This remains a possible meaning, and a complementary one for scholars who held both: the Qurʾān is the "announcement" itself, and Resurrection is the part of it proven most directly by the verses that follow.

And Allah knows best.

Q4. What does their disagreement consist of?

﴿ٱلَّذِى هُمْ فِيهِ مُخْتَلِفُونَ ٣﴾

“That over which they are in disagreement.” (78:3, Saheeh International).^[1]

If the opening concerns people who reject resurrection, why does it describe them as differing? Shared rejection need not mean complete agreement. We will first distinguish affirmation, denial and doubt, then examine differences among the opponents themselves, including their conflicting accusations. The warning will help us decide whether believers also belong to this group. Finally, we will examine the proposal that “differing” means opposition to the Prophet ﷺ, and what the sentence emphasizes about the dispute.

1. What different responses does the verse describe?

The simplest contrast is between affirmation and denial. Death is before their eyes; resurrection is announced to them. Acknowledging what they witness does not settle whether they accept what they are told will follow it.^[2] Qatādah explains their disagreement in these terms: all acknowledge death, but some affirm resurrection and others deny it.^[3]

On this explanation, the two sides differ over the further claim that the dead will be raised. Al-Ṭabarī likewise explains the verse through people who affirm the news and people who reject it.^[4] This gives a clear account of disagreement across the wider audience. Whether that wider audience is intended throughout these five verses depends upon the rebuke that follows.

Before examining that rebuke, we need to distinguish a third response: doubt. The person who is unsure has reached neither settled faith nor a settled assertion that resurrection is impossible.^[5] Disagreement can therefore concern certainty as well as affirmation and denial. Ibn ʿUthaymīn explicitly distinguishes all three responses.^[6]

2. How can opponents differ among themselves?

That third response matters even if the people in view are all opponents. Uncertainty leaves the question unsettled; a firm denial claims to have settled it negatively. The hesitation described in 41:50, where a person doubts that the Hour will occur but still imagines returning to his Lord, differs from the categorical denial of being raised in 23:37. Both people resist the announcement, but they do not express the same conviction (al-Rāzī).^[7] Al-Ālūsī prefers this contrast between deniers and doubters.^[8]

Nor does every partial affirmation amount to accepting the announced resurrection. A person may affirm a spiritual return while denying that bodies will be raised. Another may accept an afterlife but reject Muḥammad ﷺ as its truthful announcer. “Opponents” can thus describe people who refuse different parts of the message, not only people who refuse every part alike. Al-Rāzī includes these distinctions in his answer.^[9]

Even saying “there will be a return” leaves a further question: what does the person expect to happen there? Trusting idols to intercede is different from accepting the Messenger’s warning. So is the expectation in 41:50 of receiving good if returned to one’s Lord, despite doubting the Hour. Such confidence preserves an expectation of safety while resisting the judgment being announced.^[10] The disagreement may concern accountability and imagined protection from it, not only whether a future life exists (al-Nasafī in al-Taysīr, Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī).^[11]

What if they all deny resurrection? Their reasons can still differ:

• Someone who denies a Creator acting by choice rejects the agent who would restore the dead.
• Someone else may allow divine agency but claim that bringing back what has ceased to exist is intrinsically impossible.

The second objection does not begin by denying power; it claims that the proposed act falls outside what is possible, and therefore outside what power can bring about. The first argument concerns the agent, the second the nature of the act. Their shared negative conclusion does not make the two arguments identical. Thus disagreement remains possible even on the assumption that all deny resurrection: they may disagree about why they deny it. Al-Rāzī gives this as a second answer, distinct from differences in what they affirm or deny.^[12]

3. What do their competing accusations tell us?

Different reasons for denial are not the only differences among the opponents. Their accusations also disagree. Calling revelation magic, poetry, divination, madness or tales of earlier peoples gives conflicting explanations of what has confronted them. The labels serve a common rejection, but their accounts of the revelation are not identical. Ibn ʿAṭiyyah includes these accusations in his Quraysh-focused explanation; Ibn ʿĀshūr joins them to differing degrees of denial.^[13]

This explains why the accounts of their disagreement differ with the proposed meaning of “the news.” Al-Wāḥidī’s al-Wasīṭ connects it with accusations against the Qurʾān; Ibn Kathīr connects it with affirmation and denial of resurrection. Al-Wāḥidī’s al-Wajīz also explains the news as resurrection.^[14] Q3 examines those arguments about the news itself. Here their contribution is narrower: disagreement may appear in conflicting accusations as well as in opposing answers.

The explanation must consequently keep the news and the kind of disagreement connected. If the news is the Qurʾān, competing claims of poetry, magic and divination give different accounts of the same revelation. If it is resurrection, affirmation, doubt and denial divide the responses to a future event. Al-Wāḥidī’s al-Wasīṭ uses the conflicting accusations to support the Qurʾān interpretation; his al-Wajīz instead explains the news as resurrection and the disagreement through their failure to believe. The accounts should not be merged merely because they share an author.^[15]

4. Does the verse include believers too?

We can now return to the wider contrast considered first: believers affirming against unbelievers denying. That explanation makes disagreement straightforward, but does it fit the whole passage? On the wider account, the exchange includes believers, deniers and people who introduce misleading suggestions.^[16] On the narrower Quraysh account, uncertainty, denial and conflicting accusations explain the disagreement within the opponents themselves. Ibn ʿAṭiyyah distinguishes these alternatives.^[17]

A wider audience is also possible if the people asking are distinguished from the people answering. The questioners may be opponents, while “they” in verse 3 includes both sides of their exchange. Affirming respondents and denying questioners can disagree without every questioner being a believer. Al-Māturīdī allows this explanation; al-Ālūsī records it among the weaker alternatives and prefers deniers contrasted with doubters.^[18]

The objection concerns the warning. If believers and deniers are both included in “they ask” and “they differ,” the later “they will know” must narrow the audience to deniers: believers do not deserve this rebuke for affirming resurrection. The wider account therefore changes whom “they” includes as the passage proceeds.

Keeping the opponents in view throughout avoids that change. Their questioning, disagreement and rejection lead directly to the warning addressed to them. This is the continuity objection raised by Abū al-Suʿūd against including believers.^[19]

The objection also explains why an initially possible account may ultimately be rejected. Al-Shawkānī first considers believers and deniers as an answer to the difficulty about disagreement. At kallā, however, he rejects including believers: the rebuke and threat concern unbelievers. Ibn Kamāl likewise objects that exempting believers from the warning requires a distinction not established by the wider construction. The account must explain the rebuke, not only make “disagreement” easy to understand.^[20]

The reply distinguishes an exchange from the conduct condemned within it. Believers may ask for clarity and increased certainty, while deniers ask mockingly. On that explanation, the same exchange contains different intentions; kallā rebukes its denial, and the threatened knowledge concerns the deniers. Al-Maẓharī develops this answer. Al-Kūrānī includes believers and unbelievers under the pronoun, describes the disagreement through denial and doubt, and directs the rebuke at the mocking questioners.^[21]

Quṭb similarly distinguishes a disagreement involving believers and deniers from the opening’s challenge to the deniers.^[22] These wider explanations can account for both sides without blaming believers for belief. Nevertheless, the narrower explanation gives the more direct sequence here: the people who question the news are described as differing and then warned. Differences among deniers and doubters already explain verse 3, so including believers is not necessary to resolve the difficulty. This is why we favour keeping the opponents in view throughout.^[23]

5. Could “differing” mean opposition to the Prophet ﷺ?

Keeping the opponents in view still leaves one further proposal to examine: perhaps “differing” describes their common opposition to the Prophet ﷺ rather than their disagreement with one another. Several people can perform an action without exchanging it among themselves. If that is the sense here, the verse describes their departure from what the Messenger tells them, not divisions within their own group.

Abū al-Suʿūd’s argument has two steps:

1. The questioning need not be reciprocal. As explained in Q2, يَتَسَاءَلُونَ can describe several people asking the Prophet ﷺ, rather than asking one another. Abū al-Suʿūd explicitly refers back to that explanation here.
2. The related word formation can allow the same possibility. “Differing” is formed on the Arabic pattern called iftiʿāl, whereas “questioning” uses the related pattern called tafāʿul. He compares الاستباق والتسابق (istibāq and tasābuq), competing in a race, and الانتضال والتناضل (intiḍāl and tanāḍul), competing in archery. His point is that related formations can share a use. If the questioning can be directed by several people toward the Prophet ﷺ, he argues, the differing can likewise mean their opposition to him.

The grammatical argument thus permits him to explain “differing” as several people opposing the Messenger ﷺ. It does not depend on making believers one side of the disagreement (Abū al-Suʿūd).^[24]

His second reason concerns the ground of blame. Suppose two camps both hold false positions. Neither deserves punishment merely for rejecting the other camp’s falsehood. What deserves rebuke is their opposition to the truth brought by the Prophet ﷺ. He therefore takes that opposition as the intended difference and connects kallā with their questioning and rejection of the Messenger’s announcement.^[25]

The moral reason is clear, but it does not require “differing” itself to mean opposition to the Messenger. Deniers and doubters can disagree with one another while both reject his announcement; the warning can condemn that rejection without condemning each merely for disagreeing with the other. The ordinary sense of disagreement within the group therefore remains intelligible. Al-Ālūsī objects that Abū al-Suʿūd’s explanation departs from the apparent wording and finds its reasoning problematic; he prefers deniers contrasted with doubters.^[26] We retain that more immediate sense here.

The alternative therefore turns on whom their opposition concerns. Abū al-Suʿūd takes it as opposition to the Prophet ﷺ, drawing on forms that do not require an action exchanged within a group. Al-Ālūsī’s objection brings the inquiry back to this sentence: a grammatically possible use does not by itself make it the apparent meaning here. That is why the ordinary sense of disagreement among the opponents remains important to the choice.^[27]

6. What does the wording emphasize?

Once disagreement within the group is understood, the sentence’s emphasis becomes clearer. The clause هُمْ فِيهِ مُخْتَلِفُونَ names the people first, هُمْ, “they”, and then describes them as مُخْتَلِفُونَ, “differing.” It presents disagreement as their established condition, not merely one argument that occurred. Their different responses persist around the same great news (Abū al-Suʿūd, al-Ālūsī, Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[28]

Emphasizing “they” strengthens the description; it need not mean that no other people have ever differed. Al-Nīsābūrī makes that distinction explicitly. The explanation reported by al-Ṭībī singles out Quraysh’s persistence in this dispute, rather than claiming that disagreement has never existed elsewhere. Placing فِيهِ, “concerning it,” before مُخْتَلِفُونَ also draws attention to the subject that occupies them and preserves the verse ending (Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī).^[29] The wording therefore presents continuing disagreement over this announcement, which the following warning confronts.

Conclusion

Shared opposition does not require identical conviction. Deniers and doubters can disagree among themselves while remaining the people whom the passage questions and warns; this explains verse 3 without changing the audience or the ordinary sense of “differing.” And Allah knows best.

Q5. What does kallā reject or affirm?

﴿كَلَّا سَيَعْلَمُونَ ٤﴾

“No! They are going to know.” (78:4, Saheeh International).^[1]

The difficulty is that kallā can be explained as a rebuke, “No!”, or as an affirmation, “Truly.” The first rejects their denial; the second affirms the declaration that they will know. Rejecting a denial also affirms the truth denied, but it does so by answering their false claim. This is the movement Ibn ʿĀshūr finds here: their denial is rejected, the event’s occurrence is affirmed, and the warning adds that they will know it and face the consequence of rejection.^[2]

We will first identify what the rebuke rejects, then compare the affirmative alternative. Finally, we will compare the two warnings and explain why the scholars differ about pausing at kallā.

1. What is being rebuked?

What, then, is rejected? If the news is resurrection, kallā rejects their denial of resurrection. If it is the Qurʾān, it rejects their denial of revelation. Al-Qurṭubī distinguishes these constructions.^[3] The act of questioning can itself be rebuked when it is used for mockery, as al-Zamakhsharī explains.^[4]

Both explanations give the word something definite to answer. Al-Qaffāl describes its more apparent function in Arabic as لِرَدِّ شَيْءٍ قَدْ تَقَدَّمَ, “to reject something that has preceded.” Here the rejected claim is that the great news is false or that the announced event will not happen. The declaration “they will know” then answers that denial with a warning (quoted by al-Rāzī).^[5]

Rejecting their claim must be distinguished from denying that people actually disagree. Al-Wāḥidī calls kallā a negation of their disagreement: the matter admits no disagreement. In al-Wasīṭ, “the matter is not as they said” makes the rejection of their claim clear. A different explanation, reported by Makkī from Nuṣayr, takes it as “no disagreement in the Qurʾān”; Abū Ḥātim does not allow that explanation.^[6] The first answers the opponents’ false judgment. The second makes an assertion about the revelation’s freedom from disagreement. They are different explanations of what the negation concerns.

The backward connection raises a further question: does kallā rebuke only their questioning, or also their disagreement? On Abū al-Suʿūd’s account in Q4, “differing” means their opposition to the Prophet ﷺ. Both the questioning and that opposition resist the truth, so he makes both the object of rebuke.^[7]

The objection concerns how the sentence is built. الَّذِي هُمْ فِيهِ مُخْتَلِفُونَ, “concerning which they differ,” describes the news; it does not introduce a separate statement about their conduct. Treating the disagreement as a second, independently stated act to rebuke is therefore less direct than answering the questioning itself. Al-Ālūsī records this objection to the wider explanation and takes kallā directly as a rebuke of the questioning.^[8] This gives the word a clear connection to the passage without requiring the relative clause to make a separate assertion.

2. Could it introduce an affirmation instead?

Answering the denial is not the only proposed connection. Kallā can instead introduce what follows: ḥaqqan, “truly,” affirms the declaration, while introductory alā calls attention to it.^[9] In explanatory English, the contrast is between “No! They will know,” “Truly, they will know,” and a call to attend to the declaration. The first looks back to reject the questioners’ claim; the other two look forward to the warning. Al-Qurṭubī records these alternatives; al-Suyūṭī attributes “truly” to al-Kisāʾī and introductory alā to Abū Ḥātim.^[10]

Pausing makes that distinction audible. On the rebuking explanation, “No!” can complete the rejection of what precedes. On the affirmative or introductory explanation, kallā needs the declaration that follows to complete its function. Al-Qurṭubī therefore permits a stop upon it when it rebukes, and permits beginning with it when it means ḥaqqan or alā.^[11] These are the results of his interpretation of the connection; the other stopping authorities’ judgments will be compared below.

The repetition can therefore renew a rebuke or move from rebuke to affirmation. Treating both occurrences as rebuking renews the rejection (Dār al-Ṣaḥābah).^[12] Treating the first as rebuke and the second as ḥaqqan, “truly,” introduces the renewed warning as an affirmation (Aysar al-tafāsīr, explanatory notes).^[13] Maʿāriful Qurʾān illustrates the affirmative and negative explanations differently: its English verses use “Truly,” while the commentary explains “never” or “by no means.” A translation and its commentary cannot therefore be treated as making an identical grammatical claim.^[14] Both explanations affirm the announced truth, but one does so directly and the other by rejecting its denial.

3. Must kallā always have the same meaning?

Ibn Hishām objects to making rebuke the meaning of kallā everywhere: some passages state no denial to reject, and assuming one merely to preserve a universal rule can be strained. That objection does not prevent rebuke here. The opponents’ questioning and denial give the word a stated target, so its meaning in al-Nabaʾ does not depend on proving that it has only one function throughout the Qurʾān.^[15]

4. Why do stopping rules differ between the two verses?

A stopping judgment considers which words belong together. In verse 4, kallā precedes “they will know.” In verse 5 it has thumma, “then,” before it as well. Beginning at the second kallā would leave “then” behind, while stopping upon it would separate it from “they will know.”

Makkī’s fourfold classification, transmitted by al-Suyūṭī, follows these connections. It distinguishes places where one may stop and begin at kallā; stop but not begin; neither stop nor begin; or begin but not stop. He places verse 4 in the last group: one may begin at kallā, but stopping upon it is “not good.” He places verse 5 in the third group: neither beginning nor stopping at the word is “good,” because it connects with what precedes and what follows.

Al-Qurṭubī’s different judgment on verse 4 follows his rebuking explanation: “No!” can complete the rejection, so he permits stopping upon it. Al-Zarkashī does not permit that stop; Thaʿlab permits no stop on kallā anywhere in the Qurʾān. Thus the answer to “May one stop here?” depends on which authority’s judgment is being stated. The rebuking meaning permits the stop in al-Qurṭubī’s account; it does not establish agreement among the stopping authorities.^[16]

These rules concern starting or stopping at the word kallā, not whether one may pause at a verse ending. They follow Makkī’s particular explanation of the connections, rather than imposing one rule wherever the same word occurs.

Conclusion

Here kallā answers denial with rebuke. The opponents’ questioning provides its target, and “they will know” makes the rejection a warning rather than a bare correction; this gives the clearest connection between the dispute and its answer. And Allah knows best.

Q6. What will they come to know?

﴿كَلَّا سَيَعْلَمُونَ ٤﴾

“No! They are going to know.” (78:4, Saheeh International).

The sentence does not finish with “the answer,” “resurrection,” or “their punishment.” It stops at “they will know.” What they now dispute will become something they encounter. That is why these words warn them: the announced Day will not remain a subject they can dismiss in conversation.^[1]

Three questions help us follow the explanation: What will they know? Why leave it unstated? How does that future knowledge differ from the evidence already available to them?

1. What will they know?

Knowing that the news is true and experiencing its consequences are related, but not identical. A person may discover that a warning was true: what was mocked becomes a witnessed event, and the Messenger’s announcement is vindicated.^[2] He may also suffer the harm of which he was warned. The second experience includes a consequence that the first description, taken by itself, does not express.

The rebuke makes this distinction important. If the explanation were only “they will discover that resurrection happens,” it would state a future discovery but leave its fearful consequence unexpressed. A threat concerns what will happen to the people being warned, not simply the solution to their question.^[3] Abū al-Suʿūd therefore understands what awaits them as فنون الدواهي والعقوبات, “the calamities and punishments.” Their experience of those consequences will answer the questioning they now treat dismissively.^[4]

Al-Ālūsī adopts the same explanation: they will encounter calamities and punishments.^[5] He also accepts “the recompense of their questioning” as an equivalent expression. He then reports another explanation without adopting it: they will discover that the event is real and feel shame before their Lord for having mocked it. On that view, the discovery becomes a threat because of the shame it brings, not simply because an unanswered question is settled.^[6]

The punishment account explains the threat, but truth and punishment need not be separated. The event will prove their denial false, and its judgment will bring them to account. Leaving the object of “know” unstated allows both to belong to what they discover. This is Ibn ʿĀshūr’s interpretation.^[7] Al-Ṭabarī likewise joins what Allah does with them to their recognition of their former error: they learn the truth through what happens to them.^[8]

Al-Qāsimī, drawing on al-ʿInāyah, instead offers truth or punishment as alternative objects of knowledge; this is not the same judgment as Ibn ʿĀshūr’s explicit combination of the two.^[9]

The warning has so far been explained through resistance to the truth. What if a person asks because he has a real difficulty, rather than because he has decided to reject the answer? Reflection on Allah’s blessings, governance and power may answer his difficulty and lead him to understand resurrection. On al-Māturīdī’s interpretation, “they will know” can promise that understanding.

He then contrasts the person who neglects those signs and refuses to consider them fairly. That person learns through the consequence of denial. The difference is therefore not between asking and never asking. It is between inquiry that attends to the evidence and resistance that refuses it.^[10]

Al-Ālūsī records a different proposal: the questioners will know their reward if they desist. He objects that a threat is what these words immediately convey here. His objection concerns that reward proposal; it is not a reply to al-Māturīdī’s separate argument about sincere inquiry. Al-Darrah also sees an implied good promise to believers alongside the threat to deniers. The immediate warning remains directed at rejection, while these explanations ask what may be understood about those who turn toward the truth.^[11]

2. Why does the verse leave the object of knowledge unstated?

The explanation should not narrow what the verse leaves open. “They will know the truth of resurrection” names the discovery; “they will experience their punishment” names the consequence. Saheeh International’s “They are going to know” leaves both unexpressed, as the Arabic does. The interpretation developed above can therefore include truth and consequence without inserting either into the translation. The possible constructions are explained in Iʿrāb, §5, and the force of withholding the outcome under “The discussion is interrupted”.

3. If evidence already exists, why say that they will know later?

The warning leaves its outcome unexpressed, but places knowledge of it in the future. That raises a further question: the people already have reasons to believe, so what will they know later? Evidence and direct experience are different ways of knowing. Allah’s creation demonstrates the possibility of resurrection, and His announcement promises its occurrence. Seeing it happen is a further experience.

ʿAṭiyyah Sālim develops this distinction from the sūrah’s sequence. The signs that follow show creative power and make resurrection intelligible. Yet سَيَعْلَمُونَ, “they will know,” still points ahead. The knowledge that remains future is direct witnessing.

The difference becomes explicit in al-Takāthur 102:1–7: its warning leads from knowledge of certainty to seeing Hell with عَيْنَ الْيَقِينِ, “the eye of certainty.” In al-Nabaʾ, the signs lead to the announced Day of Decision in verse 17. The event demonstrated by the signs will then be encountered. This is ʿAṭiyyah Sālim’s argument, quoted by Ḥikmat Bashīr Yāsīn; Ibn ʿUthaymīn likewise explains the certainty of witnessing on Judgment.^[12]

This changes the denier’s position. An argument can be resisted; the event itself cannot be dismissed once it is witnessed. Al-Biqāʿī contrasts willing submission now with being brought low by that encounter. The same distinction explains how someone can have sufficient evidence for belief and still face a future disclosure: the wonders of creation already demonstrate the Creator’s power to revive the dead (Ibn Juzayy), while death brings a person into the reality he disputed (Muftī Muḥammad Shafīʿ). Muḥammad ʿAbduh understands the announced encounter as the Hour.^[13]

Al-Māturīdī offers a related interpretation of the two verses: verse 4 refers to علم دلالة, “knowledge through evidence,” and verse 5 to علم المشاهدة والعيان, “knowledge through witnessing and direct sight.” That is one proposed explanation of the repetition. ʿAṭiyyah Sālim’s argument establishes the broader difference between present evidence and future witnessing without dividing the two verses in that way. Q7 examines the proposed allocation.^[14]

If knowing means direct experience, must it wait for the final rising? A deceased person can be shown what awaits him before the gathering begins. Ibn ʿĀshūr supports this account with the report that a person’s future place is shown after death. It explains how recognition of the truth and of punishment can begin before the final Resurrection.

The report from Ibn ʿUmar in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī includes:

إِنَّ أَحَدَكُمْ إِذَا مَاتَ عُرِضَ عَلَيْهِ مَقْعَدُهُ بِالْغَدَاةِ وَالْعَشِيِّ

“When one of you dies, his place is shown to him morning and evening.”

It then distinguishes the place of a person destined for Paradise from that of a person destined for the Fire, and concludes:

هَذَا مَقْعَدُكَ حَتَّى يَبْعَثَكَ اللَّهُ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ

“This is your place until Allah raises you on the Day of Resurrection.”^[15]

Ibn ʿĀshūr quotes an abbreviated formulation about the unbeliever and calls that report authentic. He also cites a different report, which al-Albānī grades very weak:

الْقَبْرُ رَوْضَةٌ مِنْ رِيَاضِ الْجَنَّةِ أَوْ حُفْرَةٌ مِنْ حُفَرِ النَّارِ

“The grave is a garden from the gardens of Paradise, or a pit from the pits of Hell.”^[16]

The soul’s experience after burial connects the two kinds of knowing. The person who refused the announcement now encounters what he denied. Ibn ʿĀshūr relates this to the seeing described in al-Takāthur 102:6–7: the discovery is through sight, not merely through hearing a report. His argument explains knowledge after death; it does not divide the two reports between verses 4 and 5.^[17]

Whether the discussion concerns witnessing, punishment or the recognition reached through reflection, the verb looks ahead. Its prefix سَـ (sa-) makes the knowing future. In this warning it also conveys nearness and certainty: the deniers must not treat what awaits them as safely remote (Abū al-Suʿūd, al-Ālūsī, Ibn ʿĀshūr).

That does not yield a number of days or years. The Arabic authorities dispute whether سَـ necessarily indicates a nearer future than سَوْفَ (sawfa). Ibn Mālik objects to making that a fixed distinction; al-Zarkashī answers partly from the special force of threatening speech. A warning does more than locate an event in the future: it brings the encounter before the hearer as something to fear now. The secure conclusion here is certainty of the encounter, not a timetable derived from the prefix.^[18]

Conclusion

Their discovery of the truth will also confront them with the consequence of denying it (Ibn ʿĀshūr). This is what makes “they will know” a warning: the answer will concern their own fate, not merely the correctness of an opinion. The next Question examines why that warning is spoken twice. And Allah knows best.

Q7. Why is the warning repeated, and what does thumma add?

﴿كَلَّا سَيَعْلَمُونَ ٤﴾

“No! They are going to know.” (78:4)

﴿ثُمَّ كَلَّا سَيَعْلَمُونَ ٥﴾

“Then, no! They are going to know.” (78:5, Saheeh International).^[1]

The warning returns in the same words, with one addition: ثُمَّ (thumma), “then.” Repetition can make a warning firmer; “then” can raise its force or place a second experience after the first. The question is whether these verses renew one warning or announce two different encounters.^[2]

That difference matters at several levels. Are the same people warned twice, or does the audience change? Do they discover different things, learn in different ways, or know at different times? The grammatical connection, the repeated كَلَّا, “No!”, and the parallel in al-Takāthur help distinguish these explanations. Each must account for the whole warning, not merely for “then.”

1. What does a renewed warning accomplish?

The deniers’ confidence rests on the belief that the announced encounter will never happen. The first warning confronts that confidence: they will know. The second does not give their denial room to stand. When they meet Allah and face their deeds, what they denied will be before them. Both statements address the same deniers, and the renewed threat confirms the first.^[3] Al-Ṭabarī develops this explanation, and al-Wāḥidī prefers it over the two-audience account.^[4]

The repeated sentence already makes the warning firm. Thumma adds a rise in degree: the second warning is more severe than the first.^[5] The event is not only certain; it is graver than the hearers imagine. Al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn ʿĀshūr draw out this force. Certainty that something will occur and recognition of how momentous it will be are related, but they are not the same thought.^[6]

Why say the warning again rather than add a new fact? Human inclinations recur; a warning heard once can be forgotten when desire returns. Admonition may therefore need to return too. Al-Zarkashī explicitly includes these verses among his examples: renewed warning gives the meaning a firmer place in the mind. Repetition is not empty merely because it does not name another event. He also allows different kinds of knowing in other contexts, especially al-Takāthur; that comparison is examined below.^[7]

The warning’s force also depends on what remains unsaid. “They will know” does not yet describe everything they will face. Their present questioning will receive an answer through encounter, not further dispute. Quṭb develops the gravity of this unspecified answer; Mawdūdī, Muftī Muḥammad Shafīʿ and Muḥammad ʿAbduh explain the movement from present disagreement to unavoidable knowledge. The withheld object allows the warning to encompass the encounter and its consequences without dividing them between the two verses.^[8]

2. Is this emphasis in meaning or in grammatical construction?

Calling the second warning a conjoined sentence does not make it less emphatic in meaning. Ibn ʿUthaymīn affirms that it strengthens the first while denying the technical label of grammatical emphasis; he illustrates the promised knowing through direct witnessing on Judgment in 7:53.^[9] The distinction is explained in Iʿrāb, §6, and the increase in force under “A stronger repeated warning”.

The remaining interpretive question is whether the second sentence warns the same people more strongly or concerns another audience or experience. Al-Maydānī distinguishes renewed warning from repeated wording whose object, time, place or recipients have changed. His examples of Qurʾānic refrains show that context can give unchanged words a fresh application. Grammar permits both explanations but does not choose between them; the following sections test whether this passage indicates such a change.^[10]

3. Could the warnings address different audiences?

A change of audience would make the two statements concern contrasting outcomes. Al-Ṭabarī records an interpretation ascribed to al-Ḍaḥḥāk through a disputed route.^[11] In this account, verse 4 concerns unbelievers discovering the punishment for denial; verse 5 concerns believers discovering the reward for faith.^[12] The second statement would then be a promise to believers rather than another threat to the same deniers.

The reverse order places believers first and unbelievers second. It gives thumma an increase in severity: the threat to deniers follows the promise to believers. For either allocation to work, the preceding discussion must be broad enough to include both groups. Al-Qurṭubī records the reverse order without naming its proponent; al-Ālūsī explains how it could fit that broader audience, but questions it.^[13]

The difficulty is continuity. The passage has been rebuking those who question in rejection. If the second warning turns to believers, the explanation must account for a change that the sentence does not explicitly announce. Keeping both warnings directed to the deniers avoids that change. Al-Samʿānī likewise describes the same-unbeliever audience as the apparent meaning. Al-Wāḥidī prefers the repeated threat because repetition confirms the warning.^[14]

The repeated كَلَّا makes this difficulty sharper: the second statement also begins with rebuke. That is why al-Shawkānī, after recording both allocations, rejects including believers under the rebuke and threat.^[15]

The pronouns provide a further test. سَيَعْلَمُونَ means “they will know”; سَتَعْلَمُونَ means “you will know.” The ten readings retain “they” in both verses, continuing the third-person reference in verse 3. Direct address in both verses need not create a new audience either: Ibn ʿAṭiyyah understands the Prophet ﷺ as instructed to repeat the warning to those present, and regards other explanations of that form as strained.

A mixed third-person-then-address form has been interpreted as threat to deniers followed by promise to believers. Ibn ʿAṭiyyah reports that explanation anonymously. It is a different sequence from the address-then-third-person form that Abū Ḥayyān attributes to al-Ḍaḥḥāk:

That third-person-then-address sequence must not be confused with the address-then-third-person sequence that Abū Ḥayyān records from al-Ḍaḥḥāk.^[16]

These tāʾ forms are not adopted in the ten; al-Nashr records no difference among its routes here, as explained in the Qirāʾāt section. They help explain how particular commentators understood an audience change, but do not require one in the established yāʾ wording. The continuity of the pronouns and of the rebuke favours keeping both warnings directed to the deniers.

The two-audience proposal must pass two tests at once: a change of recipients must fit the pronouns, and a promise to believers must fit the repeated rebuke. Keeping both warnings directed at deniers avoids both difficulties. The historical attributions also differ: al-Nasafī assigns the reverse order to al-Ḍaḥḥāk, but Māhir Adīb Ḥabbūsh and Jamāl ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Fāris correct it from al-Ṭabarī’s deniers-then-believers report. Neither the reversed attribution nor the different reported pronoun sequences should be collapsed into a single account.^[17]

4. Could the same people come to know different things?

The second warning could add a further discovery without changing the people warned. Gathering for reckoning would make them face their deeds; punishment would bring the consequence of that reckoning.^[18] Discovering that punishment is real could be followed by discovering that it will never end, removing the hope of eventual relief.^[19] Other explanations distinguish what Allah does with them on Judgment from their recognition that their former belief was false, or move from resurrection to punishment in Hell; one account distinguishes torment at resurrection from torment in Hell.^[20] A further discovery need not even require another date: learning the believers’ condition after their own could compound bodily suffering with humiliation (alternatives discussed by al-Rāzī, al-Nasafī, al-Māwardī, Ibn Fūrak and al-Ālūsī).^[21]

Because the object of “know” is unexpressed, these consequences can belong to the renewed warning without the wording selecting one pair and assigning a discovery to each verse.

5. What changes when knowledge becomes direct experience?

There is a further distinction: a person may know a truth through evidence, then witness it directly. Here the object need not change at all. Al-Māturīdī allows verse 4 to promise علم دلالة, knowledge through evidence, and verse 5 علم المشاهدة والعيان, knowledge through witnessing and direct sight. The later encounter would confirm by experience what the evidence had demonstrated.^[22]

The distinction is between what is known and how it becomes known. Abū al-Suʿūd emphasizes the punishment they encounter; al-Ālūsī also considers their shame at recognizing the truth they mocked. Those explanations identify the object of knowledge. Al-Māturīdī’s proposal instead identifies two ways of knowing that object: demonstration, then sight.^[23]

The sūrah does move from evidence to future encounter: the signs demonstrate resurrection, while its witnessing lies ahead on the Day of Decision. But that movement need not divide these two warnings. In ʿAṭiyyah Sālim’s explanation, both point toward future experience; the demonstrations follow them. Q6 develops his distinction between knowing through proof and knowing through sight.^[24]

Nor does a change from denial to sincere inquiry, by itself, explain the repetition. Al-Māturīdī conditionally allows a promise of understanding for genuine inquiry, and al-Ālūsī records a reward proposal. Those possibilities concern whether knowing is promised or threatened, as Q6, section 5 explains. They do not assign a distinct function to each of the two statements.^[25]

Because neither verse names a method of knowing and both point to the future, the distinction between evidence and sight does not require dividing the two warnings.^[26]

6. Do the warnings refer to two different times?

If thumma marks a temporal interval, the later encounter may also be more severe: the distress and disclosure at death can be followed by the punishment encountered at Resurrection.^[27] Worldly punishment, with Badr as one example, followed by punishment in the Hereafter gives a different sequence.^[28] Knowing in the grave and knowing after resurrection are also distinct occasions; the latter need not be merely a repetition of the former.^[29] Another proposal distinguishes resurrection from recompense.^[30] Knowledge before death followed by knowledge after it joins a change of time to a change in submission: a person who resisted the evidence can no longer resist direct encounter (alternatives discussed by al-Ālūsī, al-Rāzī, al-Jazāʾirī, al-Maẓharī, Ibn Kamāl and al-Biqāʿī).^[31]

“Then” permits succession but does not name its events, so none of these particular pairings is a timetable established by the repeated warning alone.^[32]

7. What does repeating kallā add?

The temporal explanation must also account for the repeated كَلَّا, not only the promised knowing. Each verse contains a complete rebuke-and-warning: كَلَّا, “No!”, followed by سَيَعْلَمُونَ, “they are going to know.” The straightforward construction joins these whole warnings. Al-Ālūsī takes that as the apparent sense, whether the second follows the first in severity or in time.

Joining only the two knowing clauses creates a further difficulty: the second kallā stands between the words being connected. A proposed answer distinguishes time from severity. Both rebuke and warning can become more forceful, allowing the second kallā to share in the increase. A temporal interval, however, belongs to the future knowing rather than to the particle of rebuke. The discussion then proposes that the first rebuke rejects questioning and the second rejects explicit denial. Al-Ālūsī questions this more elaborate account. Joining the complete warnings already explains the placement of both particles, without requiring two separate targets of rebuke.^[33]

Distinguishing the rebukes would give the second verse a further target: first restraint from disagreement, then restraint from disbelief, as al-Nīsābūrī reports. But disagreement and disbelief already belong to the response being rebuked. The renewed-warning explanation does not leave either unanswered. Al-Nīsābūrī also transmits the explanation of the scholars of meanings: repeating rebuke together with warning expresses the utmost severity. This accounts for the whole repeated sentence, not just its verb.^[34]

8. What can the comparison with al-Takāthur establish?

The complete-warning construction leaves both heightened force and successive fulfilments possible. Could another sūrah help decide between them? Al-Takāthur has a closely related rebuke-and-warning, addressed directly to its hearers:

﴿كَلَّا سَوْفَ تَعْلَمُونَ ٣﴾

“No! You are going to know.” (102:3)

﴿ثُمَّ كَلَّا سَوْفَ تَعْلَمُونَ ٤﴾

“Then no! You are going to know.” (102:4, Saheeh International).

The repetition raises the same question: does it reinforce one warning, or distinguish two experiences? Ibn al-Qayyim records the reinforcement explanation, with al-Nabaʾ as a parallel. For al-Takāthur, however, he prefers knowledge at death followed by knowledge in the grave.^[35]

The reasons for that preference explain why the context matters. A coherent new meaning is preferable, he reasons, when the language permits it without loss of eloquence. The intervening thumma points to distance in time and gravity. The experiences themselves then make that distance intelligible: at death, a person recognizes the truth of the condition in which he lived; in the grave and afterward, further disclosure brings a certainty beyond that first recognition. The second warning can therefore refer to more than the repetition of what was already known.

He also invokes a weak athar attributed to ʿAlī رضي الله عنه:

مَا زِلْنَا نَشُكُّ فِي عَذَابِ الْقَبْرِ حَتَّى نَزَلَتْ: أَلْهَاكُمُ التَّكَاثُرُ

“We continued to doubt punishment in the grave until Sūrat al-Takāthur was revealed.”^[36]

The athar connects al-Takāthur with punishment in the grave, but its chain is weak. Al-Tirmidhī calls it gharīb, and al-Albānī grades its chain weak. Al-Ḥajjāj b. Arṭāt narrates it without explicitly confirming that he heard it from his teacher. It therefore does not establish this explanation as an authenticated statement of ʿAlī.

The final reason comes from the later words of al-Takāthur:

﴿لَتَرَوُنَّ الْجَحِيمَ ٦﴾

“You will surely see the Hellfire.” (102:6)

﴿ثُمَّ لَتَرَوُنَّهَا عَيْنَ الْيَقِينِ ٧﴾

“Then you will surely see it with the eye of certainty.” (102:7, Saheeh International).

Verse 6 says that they will see Hell. Verse 7 repeats the seeing, joins it with “then,” and adds عَيْنَ الْيَقِينِ, “the eye of certainty.” Ibn al-Qayyim reasons from both additions: the later seeing follows the earlier and is described with a further degree of certainty. This supports his argument for successive experiences in al-Takāthur.^[37]

The comparison makes successive disclosures possible, but its weak athar and the later descriptions in al-Takāthur do not establish death and the grave as the two encounters intended in al-Nabaʾ.^[38]

Conclusion

The most connected explanation is a renewed, more forceful warning to the same deniers. It preserves the pronouns and the rebuke, while giving thumma the rise in severity explained above. Different experiences may fulfil that warning, but its repetition does not require a different audience, object or way of knowing for the second statement. And Allah knows best.

2. Iʿrāb: Grammatical Analysis

The opening moves from a question to its answer, then from the people’s disagreement to a warning. The word and clause tables use Dār al-Ṣaḥābah’s Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Karīm as their baseline, with wording also informed by al-Ṣāfī. The labels explain the analysis; they are not verbatim quotations from a single work. The alternatives below explain where other constructions change that movement.^[1]

Word / Grammar / What it does

Clause / Position

In verse 2, the brackets below identify the verb understood in the grammatical explanation; they are not additional Qurʾānic words.^[2]

Where the grammar changes the meaning

1. How does “about what?” become ʿamma?

Two different changes produce عَمَّ (ʿamma) from عَنْ مَا (ʿan mā).

1. The interrogative loses its alif. When a preposition governs interrogative مَا, “what?”, its final alif is normally deleted. The fatḥah remains as a sign of that vowel. This distinguishes the interrogative from relative mā, “that which,” which retains its alif. Makkī emphasizes the distinction; Abū al-Suʿūd also records lightness and frequent use as an explanation.
2. The nūn merges into the mīm. This is إدغام (idghām), assimilation. Al-Zajjāj explains it through the nasal resonance, غُنَّة (ghunnah), shared by the two consonants. The doubled mīm and the deleted alif therefore have different explanations.^[3]

Why does this phrase come first? Interrogative mā takes the beginning of its question, and its preposition cannot be separated from it. They move together to the front. Ibn ʿĀshūr also explains the written joining: once the alif is removed, only the mīm of mā remains; the spelling joins it to the preceding preposition and reflects the assimilated pronunciation.^[4]

Arabic poetry makes the deletion rule visible. Al-Ṣāfī cites al-Kumayt b. Zayd:

فتلك ولاة السوء قد طال مكثهم … فحتام حتام العناء المطوّل

“Those evil rulers have stayed so long. Until when, until when, will this prolonged suffering last?”

The important word is حَتَّامَ (ḥattāma), “until when?” The preposition حَتَّى is followed by interrogative mā, whose alif has been removed.^[5]

A contrasting witness retains the alif:

على ما قامَ يَشْتِمُني لَئيمٌ … كخِنْزيرٍ تَمَرَّغَ في رَمادِ

“For what reason has a vile man begun insulting me, like a pig rolling in ashes?”

Here عَلَى مَا (ʿalā mā), “for what?”, keeps the long vowel. Al-Ṣāfī treats this as poetic necessity, not a model for ordinary usage. Al-Samīn allows poetic necessity or rare prose usage. Their explanations qualify the rule without changing the familiar form عَمَّ in this passage.^[6]

Not all linguistic authorities restrict retaining the alif to poetic necessity. Al-Farrāʾ says وَإِنْ أَتْمَمْتَهَا فَصَوَابٌ, “If you give it its full form, that too is correct.” He gives the following witness, recited to him by al-Mufaḍḍal:

إنا قتلنا بقتلانا سَراتكم … أهلَ اللِّوَاءِ ففِيما يكثر الْقِيلُ

“We killed your chiefs, your standard-bearers, for our slain; so about what is all this talk?”

The interrogative فَفِيمَا (fa-fīmā), “so about what?”, keeps the alif after فِي, “about.” Al-Harawī, quoted by al-Zarkashī, likewise identifies retention as a dialectal usage. Alif deletion remains the form in عَمَّ here; the disagreement concerns how broadly the retained form is allowed in Arabic.^[7]

The restriction matters: it concerns interrogative mā governed by a preposition. It does not remove every alif from every use of mā. Nor does it apply to the internal alif of مَاذَا (mādhā), as in لِمَاذَا (limādhā), “why?”^[8]

2. How does “about the great news” join the question?

The two phrases begin with the same preposition: عَمَّ, “about what?”, and عَنِ النَّبَإِ, “about the news.” The grammatical question is which verb governs each phrase.^[9]

The first and second constructions can leave the ordinary English wording much the same while explaining its connection differently. The “why” construction changes the question itself.^[10]

The construction also affects where the thought can be paused. In Makkī’s explanation, the answering construction allows a stop at the end of verse 1: the question is complete before its answer. On the linked “why” construction, “about the great news” completes the same question, so he does not allow that stop. This is a consequence of his grammatical analysis.^[11]

Al-Farrāʾ also gives this answering construction, explaining the opening as a question put to the Prophet ﷺ: عَمَّ يَتَسَاءَلُونَ يَا مُحَمَّدُ؟, “About what are they asking, O Muḥammad?” The answer then identifies their subject: “[They ask] about the great news.” He compares the question and answer in al-Mursalāt 77:12–13: the question directs attention to the appointed Day, then the answer names it.^[12]

On the renewed-question construction, the second verse in effect asks, “Are they asking about the great news?” Al-Maẓharī explains two possible forces of that renewal: further magnification, or disapproval of asking about the great news at all, because its truth is clear and calls for belief. An answer names the subject; a renewed question challenges their response to it. The English therefore changes with the construction.^[13]

Substitution raises another difficulty. The two expressions are عَمَّ, “about what?”, and عَنِ النَّبَإِ الْعَظِيمِ, “about the great news.” If the second replaces the first, why does it not repeat the first phrase’s interrogative force? Al-Bāqūlī raises this objection. Understanding an answering verb avoids it: the second phrase then answers the question instead of replacing it.

There is also an objection about what is replaced. “About what?” opens the possibilities: is the subject the great news or something else? “About the great news” names only one of them. The author of al-Kashf, quoted by al-Ālūsī, therefore objects to treating that identification as a substitute for the whole question. Al-Khafājī defends substitution: this is not a literal request for information whose interrogative force must be reproduced, and substitution may concern part of an expression rather than all of it.

Abū al-Suʿūd places the understood answering verb after “about the great news,” so that the identifying words come first; al-Ālūsī reports his reason.^[14] Q2, §2 weighs these constructions, and “Expectation followed by clarification” explains their effect.

3. Does الَّذِي (alladhī, “which”) continue the description or begin a new statement?

The baseline takes الَّذِي (alladhī), “which,” as a second description of النَّبَإِ, “the news,” after “great.” Dār al-Ṣaḥābah also gives two ways of making the description more independent.^[15]

These are alternative grammatical positions for the same fixed form alladhī, not three different pronunciations. The news remains the referent on all three. English may bring out the difference through punctuation or an explanatory phrase, but a natural translation can retain “concerning which they differ” throughout.

Within the relative clause, هُمْ (hum), “they,” is the subject; مُخْتَلِفُونَ (mukhtalifūn), “differing,” is its predicate. The intervening فِيهِ (fīhi), “about it,” attaches to that predicate. Its early position keeps the news in view before their response is named. The interpretations of that emphasis are examined in Q4.

4. Rebuke, affirmation and the verb that follows

On the baseline analysis, كَلَّا (kallā) rebukes and restrains. It does not change the grammatical mood of يَعْلَمُونَ (yaʿlamūn): the nūn remains, and the verb is marfūʿ. The prefixed سَـ (sa-) directs the knowing toward the future.^[16]

The alternative explanations of kallā change the opening force of the sentence. As rebuke, it means “No indeed!”; as أَلَا (alā), it draws attention, “Indeed!” or “Take notice!”; as حَقًّا (ḥaqqan), it affirms, “Truly.” Q5 explains the choice in this passage; the note below gives the wider usage evidence.^[17]

5. What is left unexpressed after سَيَعْلَمُونَ (sayaʿlamūn, “they will know”)?

Arabic distinguishes knowing an object from knowing a judgment about it. Al-Rāghib gives the first construction one مفعول به (mafʿūl bihi), an object, and the second two. A simple grammatical illustration shows the difference:^[18]

The verse leaves what they will know unexpressed. Al-Darwīsh understands “what will befall them” as its object. Ibn ʿAṭiyyah instead explains the verb through recognition itself, without positing a particular object. The difference is between completing “they will know…” with an understood outcome and taking it as “they will come to recognize.”^[19]

Thus neither one object nor two should be inserted into a translation as though Arabic grammar had settled the interpretation. “They will know” preserves the warning’s open expression. A fuller explanation must identify whose interpretation it follows.^[20] Q6 weighs truth and punishment; “The discussion is interrupted” explains the force of leaving the outcome unnamed.

6. Is the repeated warning verbal emphasis or a coordinated clause?

The first warning is كَلَّا سَيَعْلَمُونَ, “No! They are going to know” (78:4). The second is ثُمَّ كَلَّا سَيَعْلَمُونَ, “Then, no! They are going to know” (78:5).

Emphasis describes the effect of repeating the warning; coordination describes how the two sentences are joined. A جملة معطوفة (jumlah maʿṭūfah), a coordinated clause, is joined to another clause by a conjunction. Here ثُمَّ (thumma, “then”) joins the second warning to the first. Dār al-Ṣaḥābah and al-Ṣāfī describe this relationship as coordination.^[21]

Can it also be called التوكيد اللفظي (tawkīd lafẓī), formal verbal repetition for emphasis? The objection is the intervening conjunction: grammarians quoted by al-Samīn call the construction coordination while acknowledging its emphatic effect. Jamāl al-Dīn Ibn Mālik allows the technical label despite that conjunction.^[22]

The two identical sentences can nevertheless differ in force. Al-Darwīsh explains that the second warning is more severe, so the conjunction joins statements with different degrees of threat. He calls the second clause تأكيد لفظي, verbal emphasis, without treating “then” as pointless. Ibn ʿĀshūr also uses the emphatic classification; Ibn ʿUthaymīn instead denies technical tawkīd while affirming reinforcement in meaning. Ibn ʿĀdil preserves the grammatical disagreement.^[23]

Badr al-Dīn b. Mālik allows an emphatic sentence to be joined by a conjunction; al-Zarkashī rejects limiting that allowance to thumma on the basis of wording used by Badr al-Dīn’s father, Jamāl al-Dīn Ibn Mālik.

An intervening expression does not by itself settle which earlier clause a conjunction joins. Al-Zarkashī’s examples and his answer to the objection are given in the note.^[24]

The technical labels need not change the translated wording, “Then, no! They are going to know.” Q7, §2 distinguishes this grammatical question from the interpretation of the repeated warning; “A stronger repeated warning” explains its increasing force.

3. Ṣarf: Roots and Morphology

The forms below describe questioning, news, greatness, disagreement and future knowledge. سَيَعْلَمُونَ, “they will know,” occurs twice, with the same form in each warning.^[1]

The six occurrences

What the forms and roots contribute

1. Asking one another, asking someone else, and asking repeatedly

The ordinary Form VI sense involves participation: one person asks another, who can in turn ask the first. Ibn Manẓūr records this reciprocal use. Al-Rāghib’s distinction between requests for knowledge and requests for property clarifies the kind of asking here: the preposition عَنْ (ʿan), “about,” introduces the subject of an information question.^[2]

But does Form VI require the questioners to ask only one another? The linguistic argument has several steps.

Several people may act toward someone outside their group. Compare تَرَاءَى الْقَوْمُ, “the people saw one another,” with تَرَاءَوُا الْهِلَالَ, “they looked for the crescent.” The second expression still has several people acting, but the crescent does not look back at them. Abū al-Suʿūd uses this distinction to explain how the people may ask the Messenger ﷺ or believers, with the person questioned left understood. Mutual participation is an ordinary use of the form, not a requirement imposed on every occurrence.^[3]

Even a reciprocal action may have a further object. In تَفَاوَضَا الْحَدِيثَ, “the two exchanged conversation,” the participants act with one another, while الْحَدِيثَ, “conversation,” names what they exchange. Al-Ālūsī reports this explanation from “some verifying scholars,” who illustrate it with poetry of Imruʾ al-Qays:

فلما تنازعنا الحديث وأسمحت … هصرت بغصن ذي شماريخ ميال

“When we exchanged conversation and she yielded willingly, I drew toward me a branch with swaying clusters.”

The branch is the poet’s image for the woman. The grammatical evidence is الْحَدِيثَ, the expressed object, distinct from the two participants. Reciprocity and an object can coexist. This answers the claim that Form VI must always be intransitive.^[4]

The form need not always have several agents. The examples تَوَانَى زَيْدٌ, “Zayd was slack,” and تَدَانَى الْأَمْرُ, “the matter drew near,” each have a single subject. Al-Qāsimī and the Academy’s al-Tafsīr al-wasīṭ use them against a universal plurality rule.

Abū al-Suʿūd also explains that one person may question several things. He cites al-Najm 53:55:

﴿فَبِأَيِّ ءَالَآءِ رَبِّكَ تَتَمَارَىٰ﴾

“Then which of the favors of your Lord do you doubt?” (Saheeh International)

تَتَمَارَىٰ (tatamārā), “you doubt,” addresses one person; ءَالَآءِ (ālāʾ), “favors,” is plural. The multiplicity lies in the matters questioned, not in several people questioning each other. In 78:1 the people are plainly plural, but Form VI alone does not settle whom they ask.^[5]

Repeated or forceful asking is another possibility. Ibn ʿĀshūr allows mutual questioning, repetition and force in the act. In explaining the range of related questioning forms, he quotes al-Nābighah:

أُسَائِلُ عَنْ سُعْدَى وَقَدْ مَرَّ بَعْدَنَا … عَلَى عَرَصَاتِ الدَّارِ سَبْعٌ كَوَامِلُ

“I keep asking about Suʿdā, though since our departure seven full years have passed over the dwelling’s grounds.”

He also quotes Ruwayshid b. Kathīr al-Ṭāʾī:

يَا أَيُّهَا الرَّاكِبُ الْمُزْجِي مَطِيَّتَهُ … سَائِلْ بَنِي أَسَدٍ مَا هَذِهِ الصَّوْتُ

“O rider urging on his mount, ask Banū Asad what this cry is.”

The expressions أُسَائِلُ and سَائِلْ are Form III, not the Form VI word in the verse. Ibn ʿĀshūr brings these related questioning usages into his explanation of repeated asking. In the first, he understands أُسَائِلُ as continued inquiry. In the second, سَائِلْ is a command to one rider to ask Banū Asad; the poetry itself does not tell us how often he asks. The witnesses show the usages on which Ibn ʿĀshūr draws, rather than establishing that every Form VI verb expresses repetition.

For intensity, he gives the related Form III expression عَافَاكَ اللَّهُ, “May Allah grant you well-being,” describing its force as قُوَّةُ صُدُورِ الْفِعْلِ, strength in the act’s expression. He offers it as a comparison, not as an instance of two parties acting upon each other.^[6]

Ibn ʿĀshūr then allows the literal sense and an accompanying implied or figurative sense together. People may genuinely exchange questions while the manner of their questions expresses repeated insistence or mockery. Others may still be asking from uncertainty. His conclusion therefore does not force every questioner into one inward state. The form describes the asking; context establishes its purpose.^[7]

2. News and greatness

نَبَأ (nabaʾ) is a noun on faʿal, while عَظِيم (ʿaẓīm) is an adjective on faʿīl. The patterns do not, by themselves, identify the news as resurrection, the Qurʾān or prophethood. That decision requires the contextual arguments developed in Q3.

The two words also do different work. The noun names the announcement; the adjective directs attention to its gravity. Even where nabaʾ is understood as consequential news, “great” is not empty repetition. Ibn ʿĀshūr explains the transfer from bodily magnitude to importance: a powerful meaning occupies the mind as a large visible thing fills the view. The adjective heightens the news’s importance.^[8]

The linguistic authorities explain the root connection with عَظْم (ʿaẓm), “bone,” in different directions. Q3 compares al-Rāghib’s bone-first account with Ibn Fāris’s account from strength. Jabal gives two possibilities: the bone supports the flesh and so produces bulk, or its hardness resists reduction under pressure. Both lead to nonphysical greatness in rank or effect; neither requires imagining the news as a large body.^[9]

For the different explanations of nabaʾ as weighty information, news arriving from elsewhere, or something disclosed after being hidden, see Q3 §1.

3. How does “differing” relate to its root?

The participle مُخْتَلِفُونَ describes people whose responses do not agree. The linguistic authorities explain that relationship through different images, not one compulsory root derivation.^[10]

These accounts explain why ikhtilāf can describe unlike judgments. They do not identify the people or decide how far apart their judgments are. Denial versus doubt, different accusations, and belief versus denial require the evidence examined in Q4. Nor does the active participle alone establish that their disagreement is permanent.

4. Knowing: from a distinguishing sign to recognition

The root ع ل م joins knowledge with signs by which something becomes recognizable. Ibn Fāris describes a distinguishing mark and includes a flag or a mountain used as a landmark. His witness from al-Khansāʾ makes the image concrete:

وإنَّ صخراً لتَأتمُّ الهُداةُ به … كأنَّه علمٌ فى رأسه نارُ

“The guides themselves follow Ṣakhr, as though he were a landmark with fire on its summit.”

A prominent landmark gives direction even to guides. Ibn Fāris relates knowledge, the opposite of ignorance, to this family of distinguishing signs.^[11]

Jabal develops the relationship further. A desert landmark is not merely a pile of stones. In his explanation, it has several connected features:

• Strong material: accumulated stones make a substantial structure.
• A recognizable purpose: its height, arrangement and position show that it was erected to indicate a road, direction or boundary.
• Durability: a traveller needs the sign to remain; rebuilding it continually in the wilderness would defeat its purpose.
• Accurate indication: a strong, lasting sign is useful only when it directs the traveller correctly.

He connects these features with the definition of knowledge as a firm, stable judgment corresponding to reality. Evidence forms a judgment in the heart; its strength supports firmness, its stability supports settled knowledge, and its accurate indication supports correspondence with what is real. This is Jabal’s explanation of the root relationship, rather than a claim that every firmly held belief is knowledge.^[12]

The distinction between recognition and judgment then becomes important. Al-Rāghib and Ibn Manẓūr distinguish recognizing something from knowing a proposition about it, as the grammar discussion above explains. Jabal approvingly quotes Abū Ḥayyān’s further distinction: مَعْرِفَة (maʿrifah) concerns individual objects and follows ignorance, whereas عِلْم (ʿilm) concerns relationships and need not follow ignorance. On this distinction, maʿrifah means coming to recognize what was previously unknown. Allah’s knowledge is not preceded by ignorance; hence, as Abū Ḥayyān explains, Allah is described with ʿilm, not maʿrifah.^[13]

For the people addressed here, the future verb declares that knowledge will succeed their present disagreement. Both occurrences use the same Form I verb. The second warning’s greater force comes from its repetition and connection with thumma, not from a new root, a different pattern or a stronger conjugation.

4. Balāghah: Rhetorical Analysis

The opening first draws attention to the news, then confronts the response to it. Its movement is deliberate: a question awakens expectation; the answer names a momentous subject; the description exposes disagreement; and a repeated warning declares that disagreement will give way to knowledge. The following discussions explain how the wording produces that movement. The “plain way” comparisons are explanatory English, not alternative Qurʾānic wording.

An opening that anticipates the sūrah (براعة الاستهلال, barāʿat al-istihlāl)

Where it is: عَمَّ يَتَسَاءَلُونَ, “About what are they asking one another?”

The plain way: A statement such as “They are asking about resurrection” would immediately identify both the questioners’ activity and its subject.

What it does: The question withholds the subject long enough to make the listener attend to it. Allah is not seeking information. The people’s questioning is itself brought before the hearer as something that needs examining: what matter has occupied them, and how are they responding to it? Ibn ʿĀshūr describes the movement as تشويق ثم تهويل (tashwīq thumma tahwīl): arousing interest, then making the gravity of the matter felt. Once the answer identifies “the great news,” the listener cannot treat the opening as an incidental report of a conversation.^[1]

The effect: The opening prepares the reader for the sūrah’s subject before explaining it. Ibn ʿĀshūr therefore identifies barāʿat al-istihlāl, an opening that anticipates what the discourse will develop. The coming judgment is not first presented as a distant item of information. The hearer is made attentive to its magnitude and to the human response it demands. Q2 develops the distinct explanations of the question: magnification, wonder and rebuke.^[2]

Expectation followed by clarification

Where it is: عَمَّ يَتَسَاءَلُونَ ۝ عَنِ النَّبَإِ الْعَظِيمِ: the question is followed by “About the great news.”

The plain way: The subject could be named within a single statement, without an interval of questioning.

What it does: On the question-and-answer construction, the same speaker asks and answers. Why create a question only to answer it at once? The first sentence creates an expectation that the second satisfies: the answer reaches a mind already seeking it and therefore settles more firmly. This is the firmer understanding Ibn ʿĀshūr explains, and the eloquence for which Ibn Juzayy prefers the construction. Al-Rāzī’s answer to the same objection is أقرب إلى التفهيم والإيضاح, “nearer to making it understood and clear.” The sequence has taught the hearer how to attend, not merely conveyed a fact. The complete poetic witness from Ḥassān b. Thābit, with its question and answer, appears in Q2.^[3]

The effect: The listener first encounters something important enough to be asked about, then learns what it is. A renewed question instead magnifies the news further or challenges the hearers’ response to it. These are different ways of directing attention, not interchangeable labels; Iʿrāb, §2 gives the constructions, and Q2, §2 explains the preference for an answer.

Greatness set against disagreement

Where it is: النَّبَإِ الْعَظِيمِ ۝ الَّذِي هُمْ فِيهِ مُخْتَلِفُونَ, “the great news … That over which they are in disagreement.”

The plain way: “The news about which they disagree” would identify the subject without explicitly describing its greatness.

What it does: الْعَظِيمِ, “great,” establishes the importance of the news before the people’s disagreement is mentioned. Ibn ʿĀshūr explains the familiar transfer from bodily magnitude to magnitude of consequence: something need not be physically large to be momentous. The relative clause then brings their response into view. Abū al-Suʿūd and al-Ālūsī explain that this further description increases the weight given to the subject. The news is not made great by their agreement, nor made small by their denial.^[4]

The effect: Two unequal things stand together: the magnitude of what is announced and the unsettled responses of its hearers. The warning that follows resolves the tension. They may dispute it now, but they will come to know. This contrast does not settle which groups are included in “they”; Q4 develops the competing explanations and the reasons for preferring denial and doubt among the opponents.

A settled pattern of disagreement: the nominal clause and fronting (التقديم, taqdīm)

Where it is: هُمْ فِيهِ مُخْتَلِفُونَ, literally, “they, concerning it, are differing.”

The plain way: “They differ about it” would state the action directly, placing the subject of the disagreement after the verb in ordinary English.

What it does: The Arabic uses a nominal clause: هُمْ, “they,” followed by its predicate مُخْتَلِفُونَ, “differing.” Abū al-Suʿūd and al-Ālūsī explain this as presenting disagreement as an established condition. The phrase فِيهِ, “concerning it,” is placed before the predicate, drawing attention to the very news at issue while also preserving the verse-ending pattern. The force lies in the combination: this momentous news is the object around which their disagreement persists.^[5]

The effect: The verse portrays more than an isolated question that happened once. It exposes a continuing response to the announcement. Fronting gives prominence to the subject of dispute; it does not require the claim that these people disagree about nothing else. Nor does the nominal form by itself identify their beliefs. Those conclusions still depend on the context and the explanations examined in Q4.

The discussion is interrupted, but the consequence is not yet named

Where it is: كَلَّا سَيَعْلَمُونَ, “No! They are going to know.”

The plain way: A longer explanatory statement could reject their denial and immediately name everything they will discover or suffer.

What it does: On the rebuke interpretation, كَلَّا stops the preceding attitude sharply. The passage no longer describes people questioning one another; it answers their dismissal. Because the new statement responds directly to what precedes, it needs no joining word: this is Ibn ʿĀshūr’s explanation of the break.^[6]

The object of “know” then remains unstated. Naming one consequence would narrow the hearer’s attention to it. Instead, the short declaration directs attention toward the proof and scenes of Judgment that follow, before the full seriousness of the encounter is unfolded. Its brevity leaves room for truth and its consequences; leaving the outcome undescribed also gives the threat greater gravity.^[7]

The effect: The warning gives certainty before giving detail. The hearer knows that present disagreement will not prevent future knowledge, while the unexplained consequence makes the warning more arresting. Q5 examines the alternatives to rebuke; Iʿrāb, §5 gives the constructions, and Q6 explains what the warning includes.

The force of كَلَّا also belongs to its Qurʾānic setting. Al-Zarkashī observes that its occurrences are confined to the second half of the muṣḥaf, much of which was revealed in Makkah. He connects its recurring threat and rebuke with confronting Makkah’s arrogant opponents. Poetry he quotes from ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dīrīnī expresses that distribution:

وَمَا نَزَلَتْ كَلَّا بِيَثْرِبَ فَاعْلَمَنْ وَلَمْ تَأْتِ فِي الْقُرْآنِ فِي نِصْفِهِ الْأَعْلَى

“Know that kallā was not revealed in Yathrib, nor does it occur in the Qurʾān’s first half.”

Within this opening, the rebuke accordingly confronts resistance to the great news, before the warning declares that its opponents will know.^[8]

The future made urgent: سَـ and سَوْفَ

Where it is: Both occurrences of سَيَعْلَمُونَ, “they will know.”

The plain way: “At some future time they will know” could state futurity while leaving the event comfortably remote from the hearer’s present concerns.

What it does: The prefix سَـ (sa-) places the knowing in the future. Within this warning, Abū al-Suʿūd, al-Ālūsī and Ibn ʿĀshūr also explain nearness and certainty. The event is not offered as a possibility to be weighed against their denial. It is announced as what awaits them.^[9]

Does سَـ always mean a nearer future than سَوْفَ (sawfa)? Al-Zarkashī holds that it does, agreeing here with al-Zamakhsharī, Ibn al-Khashshāb, Ibn Yaʿīsh and Ibn Bābashādh. Ibn Mālik objects that future time, like past time, need not be divided into near and distant by its grammatical marker. He compares the warnings with sa- in al-Nabaʾ and sawfa in al-Takāthur, and the two promises below: different markers can concern the same future. Al-Zarkashī answers that the promised benefits have not first been shown to be one event. Allah promises good in this life and the next, so the statements could concern different benefits. He also excludes the warnings from the comparison: threatening speech is not a neutral prediction, such as saying that someone will stand. In a threat, sa- intensifies the warning and brings its fulfilment near. This explains the warning’s force without deriving a numerical timetable from the prefix.^[10]

Certainty also needs explaining. Al-Ṭībī explains سَـ in affirmation as the counterpart of لَنْ (lan) in negation: each strengthens its statement about what will or will not happen. Al-Zarkashī’s objection is clearer: that explanation would confirm the thing promised, not the promise itself. Saying that a benefit will certainly occur is a statement about the future event. Promising that benefit also gives its recipient an assurance. Al-Zarkashī distinguishes these two claims when explaining what al-Zamakhsharī means by strengthening a promise.

The distinction between promise and threat is also not absolute. Ibn Bābashādh says that sawfa occurs frequently in threats and sa- frequently in promises, but allows both markers in either use. One announcement may promise good to believers while threatening those who turn away. The surrounding statement, not the particle alone, determines whom it reassures and whom it warns.^[11]

Context can also make delay meaningful, as al-Sāmarrāʾī explains through the different responses of Yūsuf and his father; the comparison is developed in the note.^[12]

The effect: The encounter must not be dismissed as safely distant. Yet urgency and a specified date are different things. The warning makes future knowledge certain and pressing; it does not tell us how many days or years remain.

A stronger repeated warning (التكرار والترتيب الرتبي, takrār and al-tartīb al-rutbī)

Where it is: كَلَّا سَيَعْلَمُونَ ۝ ثُمَّ كَلَّا سَيَعْلَمُونَ, “No! They are going to know. Then, no! They are going to know.” (78:4–5, Saheeh International).

The plain way: A single “They will know” would announce the coming knowledge once. Repeating it without thumma would confirm the statement but leave the conjunction’s additional force unexpressed.

What it does: The repeated words establish the warning; ثُمَّ raises its force. Ibn ʿĀshūr reasons that repetition already confirms the warning, so the conjunction must add something. He explains الترتيب الرتبي (al-tartīb al-rutbī), succession in rank: the second warning confronts the hearer with a gravity beyond the first impression. Al-Zamakhsharī likewise explains a second warning stronger than the first. Al-Zarkashī adds a reason why admonition returns: desires and heedlessness recur, so a warning may need to be renewed to remain effective.^[13]

The greater severity gives the second warning a distinct force even though its words are unchanged (al-Qāsimī, drawing upon al-ʿInāyah). Distance in time and distance in rank share the idea of separation, which explains how thumma can move from a temporal interval to a rise in severity. Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī develops this explanation and prefers the rise in severity here while also recording temporal alternatives.^[14]

The effect: The listener cannot hear the second warning as a dispensable echo. It renews the rebuke and increases its weight. Iʿrāb, §6 explains why reinforcement need not determine the grammatical label; Q7 weighs the alternatives of two audiences, two experiences or successive times. Here the wording’s most immediate movement is from warning to stronger warning: what they presently dispute will be known, and its gravity exceeds their present estimate.

5. Qirāʾāt

The readings raise two different kinds of question. Some concern pronunciation: what happens to a hamzah, vowel or final consonant when recitation continues or stops? Others concern address: does the sentence say “they” or “you”? The first kind generally leaves the English meaning unchanged; the second changes whom the wording directly addresses.

The rules from the ten readings are presented first. Other reported forms follow separately. A reading’s attribution, its linguistic explanation and its status are distinct matters: a grammarian’s approval does not establish a transmitted reading, and criticism of its grammar does not by itself refute its transmission.

Pronunciation in the ten readings

In the table, وَقْف (waqf) means stopping, وَصْل (waṣl) means continuing, and خُلْف (khulf) means that more than one form is transmitted through the specified reader’s routes.

Why are two ways of stopping on al-nabaʾ accepted? Most grammarians and most reciters reasoned that stopping makes the final hamzah still. After the preceding fatḥah, substitution by an alif therefore follows the ordinary rule. They rejected rawm with a softened hamzah because that procedure retains part of the vowel they regarded as removed by the stop.

Ibn al-Jazarī answers from transmission as well as phonetic analysis. When part of the kasrah is retained through rawm, the hamzah can be treated as partially vocalized and softened accordingly. He cites al-Dānī’s transmission through Khalaf, Sulaym and Ḥamzah, together with other early reports of the slight indication of a vowel at pause. He accepts both forms: the ordinary substitution is valid, but the transmitted softening cannot be rejected merely because another grammatical account prefers substitution. He also declines to enlist Sībawayh as a decisive witness: Sībawayh’s general wording does not explicitly settle this particular pause/join distinction.^[6]

Why can lengthening remain after a hamzah is softened? The longer form takes account of the hamzah as originally pronounced; the shorter form takes account of the sound after alteration. Ibn al-Jazarī accepts both transmitted approaches. His own analysis favours shortening where the hamzah has disappeared completely, and lengthening where a trace remains. This rule does not authorize an invented intermediate length: transmission, rather than an average between two forms, determines the performance.^[7]

Pausing on mukhtalifūn. Some routes from Yaʿqūb add a pause hāʾ after certain words ending in a nūn with fatḥah. On the noun-only account, مُخْتَلِفُونَ belongs to the relevant class of sound masculine plurals. Ibn al-Jazarī, however, records differences over the rule’s extent and says that the majority omit the hāʾ, وعليه العمل, “and this is the practice followed.” The addition is limited to the routes that transmit it. Where reported, the hāʾ marks the pause; it does not mean “his” or introduce another participant.^[8]

The pause hāʾ is also attested in Arabic outside recitation. Al-Akhfash gives رَجُلَانِهْ, “two men,” and مُسْلِمُونَهْ, “Muslims,” as examples of adding it after the dual or plural nūn. For expressions such as عَمَّ and فِيمَ, he permits either adding the hāʾ at a stop or omitting it. His linguistic account explains the sound; the transmitted routes determine where it is recited.^[9]

Abū Wajzah’s poetry illustrates a further development of that pause sound:

العاطِفُونَتَ، حِينَ مَا مِنْ عاطِفٍ، … والمُفْضِلونَ يَداً، إِذَا مَا أَنْعَمُوا

“Those who come to others’ aid when no one else does, and whose hands give generously when they bestow.”

Ibn Manẓūr explains العاطِفُونَتَ through العاطِفُونَهْ: the poet first adds a pause hāʾ after the plural nūn, then treats it like a feminine ending that can be pronounced with tāʾ at a stop. The witness supports the existence of a pause hāʾ after a plural nūn, not a tāʾ reading of مُخْتَلِفُونَ.^[10]

Abū al-Najm illustrates the related use of mā:

اللهُ نَجَّاكَ بِكَفَّيْ مَسْلَمَتْ، … مِنْ بَعْدِ ما وبَعْدِ ما وبَعْدِ مَتْ صارَتْ نُفُوسُ القَومِ عِنْد الغَلْصَمَتْ، … وكادتِ الحُرَّةُ أَن تُدْعَى أَمَتْ

“Allah saved you by Maslamah’s two hands, after this and after that and after this: the people’s lives had reached their throats, and the free woman almost came to be called a slave.”

The unusual مَتْ is explained through مَهْ: mā takes a final hāʾ, which the poet then treats like a feminine ending and pronounces with tāʾ to match the rhyme. It shows the formation of a pause hāʾ on mā, the linguistic feature involved in عَمَّهْ. The poet’s additional change to tāʾ belongs to this witness, not to the recited form.^[11]

Other reported forms in the opening question

Retaining the alif has a linguistic witness as well as a reported reading. Ibn Jinnī regards retention as the weaker of the two Arabic usages; the ordinary interrogative construction deletes the alif after the preposition. The complete poetic witness attributed through Quṭrub to Ḥassān, its translation and its variants appear in Iʿrāb §1; Iʿrāb: Grammatical Analysis, note 6 gives the competing attributions. The poem establishes a use of retained مَا after a preposition. It does not establish the status of a Qurʾānic reading merely by showing that the wording is possible Arabic.^[16]

Al-Farrāʾ accepts retention as correct Arabic, and al-Harawī identifies it as a dialect. Their fuller qualification and al-Farrāʾ’s additional poetic witness appear in Iʿrāb §1.^[17]

“They will know” and “you will know”

The familiar wording in both verses is سَيَعْلَمُونَ, “they will know.” Reports with سَتَعْلَمُونَ, “you will know,” require care because the authorities do not give one uniform attribution.

These reported readings change the wording’s person from “they” to “you.” The ten readings use yāʾ in both verses. These tāʾ forms are not adopted in the ten; al-Nashr records no difference among its routes here.^[22]

How does direct address change the force? There are two grammatical explanations:

“They will know” exposes the deniers before the listener; “you will know” turns the warning upon its addressees. Abū al-Suʿūd and al-Ālūsī prefer iltifāt, a direct change of address, over understanding an unspoken “Say”: the sudden address itself intensifies the rebuke. Q7 examines the proposed changes of audience, experience and time.

Pausing on kallā

The two occurrences need not receive identical stopping treatment because the second is preceded by ثُمَّ. Makkī’s classification, transmitted by al-Suyūṭī, permits beginning at كَلَّا in verse 4 but judges stopping on it “not good.” In verse 5 he judges neither beginning at that word nor stopping on it good: the word is connected both to the preceding thumma and to the following “they will know.” The complete comparison appears in Q5. These judgments concern stopping on the particle, not a ban on stopping at either verse ending.^[24]

Thaʿlab gives a wider rule: do not stop on kallā anywhere in the Qurʾān, because the point of its answer is completed by what follows. Ibn al-Anbārī reports hearing this judgment from him. Al-Qurṭubī’s permission to stop on the rebuking sense remains a different judgment, explained with its reasoning in Q5.^[25]