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li-najʿalahā lakum tadhkiratan wa-taʿiyahā ʾudhunun wāʿiyatun
that We might make it a reminder for you, and that receptive ears might remember it.
— Ali Quli Qarai
69Al-ḤāqqahالحاقةVerse 12 of 52
The Reality69. Al-Ḥāqqahالحاقة
al-Ḥāqqah
The Reality
MeccanVerse 12 of 52
Surah al-Haqqa – Verses 11-12
11. When the water rose beyond its limits, We carried you on the floating Ark.
12. That We might make it an admonition for you and that it might be retained by the retaining ears.
The blessed Verses allude to the fate of the people of Noah (as) and their excruciating torment, saying:
"When the water overflew its banks, we embarked you on the Ark."
The water burst such that leaden clouds enwrapped the sky and heavy showers of rain were sent such that torrents were seemingly pouring down from the sky. Fountains appeared on the earth as well. Thus, everything was drowned, the gardens, farms, palaces, and the mansions of the disobedient people. The believers were only saved by embarking upon the Ark with Prophet Noah (as). The verbal form
alludes to our ancestors, since had they not been saved, we would not have come into being. The blessed Verse 12 makes a reference to the main goal behind such chastisements, saying:
In other words, God Almighty never willed to take vengeance, but the goal behind their being inflicted with torments is to lead people on the path of spiritual growth such that they tread the path of development and perfection and attainment to union with the desired object. The Arabic verbal form
derives from w-‘-a originally denoting preserving something in the heart, but owing to semantic generalization, any vessel was termed as wa‘a, since it contains something. The verbal form is herein used in the sense of the ears listening to the truths and preserving them. In other words, one may at times hears something undesirable by one ear and the undesirable utterance instantly goes out of the other. The idiomatic expression "it goes into one ear and out the other" implies the same sense in colloquial expressions. However, one may at times reflect upon something and preserve it in his heart and make use of it as the lamp shedding light on his life. The latter sense is intended herein.
Finally, it is narrated in many authoritative tradition and exegetic sources from the Noble Prophet (S) as saying that he invoked God Almighty to make ‘Ali’s (as) ears listen to the truths and preserve them. Imam ‘Ali (as) is reported as saying:
"Thereafter I never consigned to oblivion whatever I heard from Allah’s Messenger (S), but I remembered his words at all times." 5
Footnotes
(Islamiyya edition, p. 265)
In this vein, 16 traditions are to be found in Ghayat al-Maram on the authority of Sunni and Shi‘i transmitters. In his Tafsir al-Burhan, Muhaddith Bahrani, on the authority of Muhammad ibn ‘Abbas, reports that 30 traditions have been narrated in this vein through Sunni and Shi‘i transmission sources.
It is the great merit of the great leader of the Islamic faith, Imam ‘Ali (as), that he was the treasury of the Noble Prophet’s (S) secrets and the inheritor of his knowledge in its entirety.
Consequently, following the sad demise of Allah’s Messenger (S), his proponents and opponents found in him a safe haven upon encountering scholarly issues in the Muslim community and asked him to provide them with solutions whose accounts are reported in details in historical sources.