Sūrah 85 · Āyāt 10–11

The passage (85:10-11). The two verses set the recompenses face to face: for those who persecuted believing men and women and did not repent, "the punishment of Hell and the punishment of the Burning"; for those who believed and did righteousness, "gardens beneath which rivers flow — that is the great triumph."

The breadth of "those who persecuted." Al-Mizan reads fatanu as general — covering both the People of the Ditch and the Meccan Quraysh who tortured the early Muslims — and glosses fitna as "affliction and torment." The Enlightening Commentary notes that fatn originally means to assay gold in fire, fitting both the literal burning and "examination/persecution." Majma' al-Bayan and al-Tusi gloss fatanu plainly as "they burned them with fire" (Ibn 'Abbas, Qatada, al-Dahhak).

Why two punishments. A shared exegetical question is why "Hell" and "the Burning" are named if they are one. Majma' al-Bayan gives two answers, and al-Mizan quotes the first verbatim: either Hell holds many torments besides burning (al-zaqqum, al-ghislin, the iron maces) and the burning is an added portion; or "the punishment of Hell" is in the Hereafter while "the punishment of the Burning" is in this world — the fire that, in al-Rabi' b. Anas's and al-Kalbi's report, leapt from the trench and consumed the persecutors. al-Tusi adds al-Zajjaj's neat division: a punishment for their disbelief and a punishment for their burning of the believers. The Enlightening Commentary draws out the mercy latent in "did not repent": the door of repentance stays open, and the Meccan persecutors are implicitly warned to desist before it is too late.

The believers' reward. al-Tusi dwells on al-fawz al-kabir: fawz is "salvation by pure benefit," called "great" because the bliss of those who worked exceeds the bliss of those admitted to the Garden without such works, for the honour and magnification it carries; Majma' al-Bayan says the same. The narration-sources personalize it: Tafsir al-Qummi and al-Burhan carry the Ibn 'Abbas gloss that the gardens are "what no eye has seen and no ear has heard" and that the believers "won Paradise and were secured from punishment," while al-Burhan adds the Imami identification (from al-Sadiq) that "those who believed and did righteous deeds" are "the Commander of the Faithful and his Shi'a." Al-Burhan also preserves here the narrations of the Abyssinian prophet and the infant who urged his mother into the flames — binding the reward-verse back to the martyrs of the Ditch. The Enlightening Commentary frames the pair as the sura's pivot: after the persecutors of the past, "the grievous punishment of Allah for them, in contrast with the great rewards for the believers."