100
Muhammad Asad
AL-ADIYAT (THE CHARGERS)
THE HUNDREDTH SURAH
Total Verses: 11
Introduction
REVEALED
after surah 103. For an explanation of the symbolism of "the
chargers", see note 2 below.
IN THE NAME OF
GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE:
1) Oh, 1 the chargers that run panting,
(2) sparks of fire striking,
(3) rushing to assault at morn,
(4) thereby raising clouds of dust,
(5) thereby storming [blindly] into
any host! 2
(6) VERILY, towards his Sustainer man is
most ungrateful 3 –
(7) and to this, behold, he
[himself] bears witness indeed:
(8) for, verily, to the love of
wealth is he most ardently devoted.
(9) But does he not know that [on the Last Day,] when all
that is in the graves is raised and brought out,
(10) and all that is [hidden] in
men's hearts is bared –
(11) that on that Day their
Sustainer [will show that He] has always been fully aware of them?
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1 Since the subsequent clauses
refer to a parabolic, imaginary situation, the adjurative
particle wa is more suitably
rendered here as "Oh", instead of the rendering "Consider'
usually adopted by me, or the adjuration "By" appearing in most other
translations.
2 I.e., blinded
by clouds of dust and not knowing whether their assault aims at friend or foe. The metaphoric image developed in the above five verses is
closely connected with the sequence, although this connection has never been
brought out by the classical commentators. The term al-adiyat
undoubtedly denotes the war-horses, or chargers, employed by the Arabs from
time immemorial down to the Middle Ages (the feminine gender of this term being
due to the fact that, as a rule, they preferred mares to stallions). But
whereas the conventional explanation is based on the assumption that "the
chargers" symbolize here the believers' fight in God's cause (jihad) and,
therefore, represent something highly commendable, it takes no account whatever
of the discrepancy between so positive an imagery and the condemnation
expressed in verses 6 ff., not to speak of the fact that such a conventional
interpretation does not provide any logical link between the two parts of the
surah. But since such a link must exist, and since verses 6-11 are undoubtedly
condemnatory, we must conclude that the first five verses, too, have the same –
or at least, a similar - character. This character becomes at once obvious if
we dissociate ourselves from the preconceived notion that the imagery of
"the chargers" is used here in a laudatory sense. In fact, the opposite
is the case. Beyond any doubt, "the chargers" symbolize the erring
human soul or self - a soul devoid of all spiritual direction, obsessed and
ridden by all manner of wrong, selfish desires, madly, unseeingly rushing
onwards, unchecked by conscience or reason, blinded by the dust-clouds of
confused and confusing appetites, storming into insoluble situations and, thus,
into its own spiritual destruction.
3 I.e., whenever he surrenders to
his appetites, symbolized by the madly storming chargers, he forgets God and his
own responsibility to Him.