Sūrah 69 · Āyāt 1–12

The Inevitable named, and history as its proof (verses 1–12)

The Sura opens by naming the Day three times — al-Haqqa, "the Inevitable" or "the Reality" — then magnifies it through interrogation: "al-Haqqa! What is al-Haqqa? And what will make you realize what al-Haqqa is?" All the present sources converge that al-Haqqa is a name of the Resurrection. Al-Mizan and Majma' al-Bayan (Tabarsi) ground the name in haqqa = "became fixed, truly realized": it is the Day whose establishment is irreversible and whose every ruling necessarily comes to pass. Tabarsi adds the further sense that it "realizes [the truth]" against the deniers, and that the parallel name al-qari'a ("the Striking Calamity," v. 4) is so called because it strikes (taqra'u) the hearts with terror until the believers reach safety. Al-Tibyan (Tusi) lists al-Haqqa among the Day's names alongside al-tamma and al-sakhkha. Al-Mizan lays out the Sura's architecture in three movements — the destroyed deniers; the Reality and the parting of mankind into the Companions of the Right and Left; and the affirmation of the Qur'an as haqq al-yaqin — and judges the Sura Meccan. On "what will make you realize," Tabarsi and Tusi both transmit al-Thawri's (Sufyan's) rule that the Qur'an's ma adraka marks what the Prophet was made to know, ma yudrika what was withheld — al-Mizan attributing the same distinction to Ibn 'Abbas.

The historical catalogue (vv. 4–10) is read by al-Mizan not as a digression but as an answer to "What is al-Haqqa?": God's extirpation of past nations is itself a description of the Reality they denied. The four named sources agree on the philology of the punishments: Thamud (the people of Salih) destroyed bi-l-taghiya — read either as the overweening Cry/Quake/Thunderbolt (Tabarsi and al-Mizan harmonizing this with Hud 67, al-A'raf 78, Fussilat 17) or as their own "overweening transgression" (with al-Shams 11); 'Ad by a rih sarsar 'atiya, a cold, violently roaring wind that "transgressed" — Tabarsi's vivid tradition from al-Zuhri/Qabisa has every wind issue under measured keepers except this one, which burst past them, hence "overweening." Al-Burhan carries the parallel narration from al-Baqir (via al-Kulayni) of the barren wind restrained to a ring's breadth yet escaping to an ox-nostril's width before Gabriel returned it. On the "seven nights and eight days in unbroken succession," Tabarsi reports the lore of ayyam al-'ajuz with their names and a poem; al-Qummi and al-Burhan offer the astrological gloss (as-attributed) that "the moon was ill-fated by Saturn" through those days, and al-Burhan adds al-Sadiq's note that Wednesday is the recurring ill-omened day because it bounds them.

On "Pharaoh and those before him and the overturned cities" (vv. 9–10), the mainstream sources gloss al-mu'tafikat as the towns of Lot and al-khati'a as their sin, and akhdhatan rabiya as a mounting, custom-breaking punishment. Here al-Qummi and al-Burhan preserve a sharply partisan ta'wil, reported strictly as their reading and not as fact: al-mu'tafikat = al-Basra, al-khati'a = "so-and-so" (al-Humayra'/'A'isha), with al-Baqir (via Humran) glossing "Pharaoh" as "the third," "those before him" as "the first two," anchored in 'Ali's address to the people of al-Basra ("overturned three times"). The mainstream commentaries carry no such identification. With the Flood (vv. 11–12), al-Mizan, Tabarsi and Tusi read "We carried you in the running Ark" as addressing the present generation through their saved forefathers, the rescue-amid-drowning being a deliberate divine sign — al-Mizan drawing from it its signature lesson on the two modes of divine guidance (showing the way / bringing to the goal). Al-Qummi and al-Burhan, by contrast, read "the Ark" as 'Ali and his companions (as-attributed). Finally "a retaining ear retains it" (v. 12) draws a dense convergence: Tabarsi, Tusi and al-Mizan all transmit — from both Sunni (Makhul, Burayda, via al-Tabari/al-Durr al-Manthur) and Shi'i chains — the Prophet's prayer that the verse be fulfilled in 'Ali's ear; al-Burhan gathers some fifteen such narrations (of Muhammad b. al-'Abbas's thirty, "from the 'amma and the khassa"), with 'Ali declaring, "I am the retaining ear."