The Magic of Surah 55

In all literature there is nothing that touches or resembles the Prologue [to the Canterbury Tales]. It is the concise portrait of an entire nation, high and low, old and young, male and female, lay and clerical, learned and ignorant, rogue and righteous, land and sea, town and country, but without extremes...."

(from the introduction to The Canterbury Tales in Chaucer’s Works, translated by Neville Coghill)

While the prologue to the Canterbury Tales is indeed a great wonder of literature, Mr. Coghill was, I think, forgetting the Koran when he wrote that. The simple truth is that in all of literature there is nothing that touches or resembles the fifty-fifth chapter of the Koran. Surah 55 is about outer space and travel through it. Surah 55 is about the whole universe and the way it bespeaks the splendor of its Creator as it runs its course in its many ways, all ending in the shattering climax of Judgment Day.

Surah 55 is everywhere at once. Surah 55 has love and wrath and horror and wonder and above all, the simply majesty of it all, the vastness of space and the grand drama we call life--that feeling that we are part of a neverending story, to steal a phrase from an old movie. All that's under the sun is in the space of this seventy-eight-line thimble, just a little over eight hundred words in all.

Part of the Koran's miracle is that it contains what I call “everything under the sun crammed into a thimble”. Well, there is no chapter which better demonstrates that principle than this one. All the splendor and vastness and intricacy of the universe is spoken for; the entire span of time from the creation of the universe to its destruction and rebuilding, plunging all jinni and humans into either the unfathomable bliss of Paradise or the unfathomable pain of hell, is chronicled in perfect detail and described perfectly. At the same time, we have the most beautiful imagery, and the most eloquent poetic expression, that I, at least, have ever seen.

All of this might be more understandable and obvious if I show you the entire surah, minus the “Which of your Lord’s bounties etc.” refrain, which about cuts it in half:

The All-merciful has taught the Koran. He created man and He has taught him the Explanation. Te sun and the moon to a reckoning, and the stars and the trees bow themselves; and heaven—He raised it up, and set the Balance. (Transgress not in the Balance, and weight with justice, and skimp not in the Balance.) And earth—He set it down for all beings, therein fruits, and palm-trees with sheaths, and grain in the blade, and scented herbs.

He created man of a clay like the potter’s, and He created the jinn of a smokeless fire. Lord of the Two Easts, Lord of the Two Wests. He let forth the two seas that meet together, between them a barrier they do not overpass. From them come forth the pearl and the coral. His too are the ships that run, raised up in the sea like landmarks. All that dwells on the earth is perishing, yet still abides the Face of thy Lord, majestic, splendid. Whatsoever is in the heavens and the earth implore Him; every day He is upon some labour. We shall surely attend to you at leisure, you weight and you weight!

O tribe of jinn and men, if you are able to pass through the confines of heaven and earth, pass through them! You shall not pass through except with an authority. Against you shall be loosed a flame of fire, and molten brass; and you shall not be helped. And when heaven is split asunder, and turns crimson like red leather, on that day none shall be questioned about his sin, neither man nor jinn. The sinners shall be known by their mark, and they shall be seized by their forelocks and their feet. This is Gehenna, that sinners cried lies to; they shall go round between it and between hot, boiling water.

But such as fears the Station of his Lord, for them shall be two gardens abounding in branches, therein two fountains of running water, therein of every fruit two kinds. Reclining upon couches lined with brocade, the fruits of the gardens nigh to gather, therein maidens restraining their glances, untouched before them by any man or jinn, lovely as rubies, beautiful as coral. Shall the recompense of goodness be other than goodness?

And besides these shall be two gardens. Green, green pastures, therein two fountains of gushing water, therein fruits, and palm-trees, and pomegranates, therein maidens good and comely, houris, cloistered in cool pavilions, untouched before them by any man or jinn, reclining upon green cushions and lovely druggets. Blessed be the Name of thy Lord, majestic, splendid!

(- Surah 55 -)
Noble Quran

There you have it: five paragraphs that go everywhere and do everything. Here is found the whole gamut of life. Here is pleasure and pain and creation and destruction. Here is sex and death and matter and energy, heat and cold, indoor and outdoor scenes. Here is the far reaches of the heavens and the bottom of the ocean, the sun, the moon the earth and the stars, the beginning of the world and the end of the world.

Here are fruits from trees and plants that grow in the ground and plants that rise far above the ground. Here is chaos and order, tiring, violent marches and peaceful repose in the shade. And like the Prologue, Surah 55 is a concise portrait of an entire nation and its peoples, high and low, old and young, male and female, lay and clerical, learned and ignorant, rogue and righteous, land and sea, town and country, but also about the entire universe and the entire span of eternity from the beginning of the universe till its end. Additionally, all of this takes place in a poem that has the same extraordinary qualities that the rest of the Koran has. First, the scientific accuracy that is one of the hallmarks of the Koran is here:

Lord of the Two Easts, Lord of the Two Wests. He let forth the two seas that meet together, between them a barrier they do not overpass.

(- **:** -)
Noble Quran

Two easts and two wests are an absurdity on a flat earth, but not on a round one. And the physical barrier between seas that is spoken of here is not a visible one to the naked eye. I am not going to jump to the conclusion that many of my brothers and sisters jump to on this sort of issue, that only a miracle could have allowed the blessed Muhammad to know about these things, but the fact remains that the Koran is unique among the world’s scriptures in its always accurate depiction of a number of scientific phenomena, including the Big Bang itself. And in any case things like the shape of the earth and the pycnocline were not provable back when the Koran was written.

Consider also the literary qualities which hint at the Koran’s inspiration. For example, consider how this statement sounds uncannily like what someone in seventh century might say to describe a kind of pure energy as opposed to ordinary flesh:

He created the jinn of a smokeless fire.

(- **:** -)
Noble Quran

Or consider how a depiction of agony just as brutal as the longer and less subtle ones elsewhere in the Koran can be found in the divine simplicity of these mere four lines:

The sinners shall be known by their mark, and they shall be seized by their forelocks and their feet. This is Gehenna, that sinners cried lies to; they shall go round between it and between hot, boiling water.

(- **:** -)
Noble Quran

The same goes for the description of the lower heaven:

And besides these shall be two gardens. Green, green pastures, therein two fountains of gushing water, therein fruits, and palm-trees, and pomegranates, therein maidens good and comely, houris, cloistered in cool pavilions, untouched before them by any man or jinn, reclining upon green cushions and lovely druggets.

(- **:** -)
Noble Quran

So if you think you can write something as brief as this surah which has all the transcendence, scientific accuracy about controversial or as yet unproved things, and all the literary magnificence, as well as the entrancing sounds of the Arabic text for surah 55, go right ahead and try. The same goes for finding something like this that has already been written. But if you can’t do either one (and you won’t), then you should give serious consideration to the idea of the Koran’s inspiration.