The Third Word: Is Worship a Burden or a Gain?

“Yā ayyuha'n-nāsu'budū. O people, worship your Lord.” The Third Word opens with this single command and ends one page later. One page. In it there are two soldiers, a fork in the road, a pack, a rifle, a comet in the sky, and a calculation. It can be read in a village coffeehouse, and in a madrasa too. The shepherd understands it, and so does the professor. But this simplicity is a surface. Beneath that surface lies a library fourteen centuries old: tafsir, hadith, kalam, fiqh, logic, sīra, lexicography. Bediüzzaman is telling the people a great truth; and before he tells it, he filters it. Heavy technical terms, long chains of proof, disputed debates, he passes through a filter, and what he leaves behind is the clearest sentence that could be told to the people of his own time. In this text we will walk in the opposite direction. We will take the water the Master (Bediüzzaman Said Nursî) filtered and trace it back to the source it came from. We will show where each sentence, and at times each word, stands in the main sources of Islam. Our aim is not to produce a summary; it is to see that what is told is not a fantasy, not a sophistry, but the translation into the people's language of a truth that has passed among scholars for centuries.

Let us state our method at the outset. Imam al-Ghazālī, in the section of the Iḥyāʾ on tawḥīd and tawakkul, tells a parable: an elephant is brought to a town. A few blind men who have never seen an elephant want to know it with their hands. One touches its leg and says, "The elephant is like a column." One touches its tusk and says, "No, it is like a smooth pole." One touches its ear and says, "It is like a thick, broad hide." Al-Ghazālī's verdict is this: "Each of them spoke truly from one aspect; none of them went beyond the elephant's attributes in what he said; but all of them together fell short of grasping the elephant as a whole." Our library is like this too. The exegete looks from one aspect, the hadith scholar from one, the theologian from one, the jurist from one, the lexicographer from one. Each of them touches one limb of the truth. What the Master does is bring these touches together and turn the picture into a scene the people can see at a single glance. And we will set out from the scene and find, one by one, the touches that built that scene.

First let us look at the verse itself. The command "O people, worship your Lord" is verse 21 of Sūrat al-Baqarah, and in the order of the Muṣḥaf it is the first explicit command of worship addressed to all humanity. The verses before it divided people into three groups: the God-fearing, the disbelievers and the hypocrites. Imam al-Ṭabarī, narrating from Ibn ʿAbbās, says the command is addressed to these two groups at once, and explains "worship your Lord" in a single word: "Affirm the oneness of your Lord." That is, the essence of worship is tawḥīd. Let us note this in a corner of our minds; the most critical moment of the Third Word will come exactly here, where the worshipper says in prayer, "There is no god but God." Qāḍī al-Bayḍāwī, for his part, draws attention to the change of address in the verse: While the previous verses speak of people as "they," here suddenly they are addressed directly: "O people." Al-Bayḍāwī states the wisdom of this as follows: to awaken the listener, to give weight to worship, and to exalt its standing. It is no coincidence that the Master opens the Word with this verse. We will see shortly: seven verses after this one, in the same sūra, the whole journey of human life will be summed up in a single sentence. What the Third Word calls "the road of life" is already drawn on this first page of al-Baqarah.

“How great a trade and happiness worship is...” The Word's first sentence is built on three words: worship, trade, happiness. Each of these three words is, on its own, a library shelf. Let us begin with worship. Ibn Fāris, who compiled the root meanings of the Arabic language, says the root ʿayn-bā-dāl has two opposite origins: one is softness and submission, the other is hardness and firmness. It looks strange; the same word conveys both bending and firmness. But think of the soldier of the Third Word: the soldier who submits to his commander becomes hard against the enemy. The one who obeys the order stands firm at the front. The two opposite roots of the word worship are the two faces of this soldier. Al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī defines worship as "ghāyat al-tadhallul," that is, the utmost submission, and adds: only the One who bestows utmost favor deserves it, and that is God. The definition in al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī's al-Taʿrīfāt gives the Word's entire conflict in a single sentence: "Worship is an act the accountable person performs, contrary to the caprice of his ego, to glorify his Lord." Pay attention: worship, by its very definition, runs contrary to caprice. Shortly the Master will describe the traveler of the left road as "following caprice." That is, the two roads have already parted in the definition of two words.

The jurists have refined this word too. Ibn ʿĀbidīn, the last great glossator of Ḥanafī fiqh, distinguishes three concepts in Radd al-Muḥtār: ṭāʿa, qurba and ʿibāda. Ṭāʿa is every act that earns reward, whether or not it requires intention. Qurba is a rewarded act done knowing to whom one draws near. ʿIbāda is the act that earns reward and depends on intention. That is why the five daily prayers, fasting, zakāt and hajj are ṭāʿa, qurba and ʿibāda all at once. Al-Samarqandī, of the Māturīdī legal theorists, adds: ʿIbāda is done only for God; but ṭāʿa can be to God, to His Messenger, and to those in authority. This fine distinction will meet us at the end of the Third Word. In the closing the Master will say "Alḥamdu lillāhi ʿala'ṭ-ṭāʿati wa't-tawfīq"; he will choose the word "ṭāʿa," not "ʿibāda." Because the Word's soldier obeys his Commander's orders not only in prayer, but in his whole life. Ṭāʿa is a wider circle than ʿibāda; it covers the soldier's entire march.

The second word: trade. Al-Rāghib defines trade as "disposing of capital in pursuit of profit"; al-Jurjānī says "buying something in order to sell it at a profit." Both al-Rāghib and Ibn Fāris add an interesting note: in Arabic there is no other root in which jīm comes after tāʾ. The word for trade is a rare root that stands alone in the language. The Qur'an uses this word for worship again and again. Verse 29 of Sūrat Fāṭir says of those who recite God's Book, perform the prayer and spend: "tijāratan lan tabūr": a trade that will never suffer loss, never fall into stagnation. Ibn Kathīr explains this as "a reward that will certainly come to pass." Verse 10 of Sūrat al-Ṣaff asks: "Shall I direct you to a trade that will save you from a painful punishment?" and the answer is faith and jihad. Al-Ṭabarī notes that the following verse speaks of a "second trade," and that this is victory in this world. That is, the Qur'an's trade has profit both in the Hereafter and in this world. This is the very last sentence of the Third Word: "The happiness of this world, like that of the Hereafter, also lies in worship." And verse 111 of Sūrat al-Tawbah openly names the buyer in this trade: "God has purchased from the believers their lives and their wealth in return for Paradise." Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, counting the emphases in this verse, puts the first one like this: the buyer is God, who is free of all falsehood and betrayal. In this trade the customer never goes bankrupt.

The third word: happiness. Al-Rāghib divides happiness in two: otherworldly and worldly. And the worldly into three: of the soul, of the body, and external. That is, happiness is not just a promise postponed to Paradise; it is a state lived today in a person's inner world, body and surroundings. Al-Jurjānī defines "kīmiyā-yi saʿādat," that is, the alchemy of happiness, like this: purifying the soul of vices and adorning it with virtues. So here are the three words in the Master's first sentence: one carries submission and firmness, one capital and profit, one inner and outer peace. And all of them stand in a single sentence, "how great a trade and happiness worship is," with a simplicity a child can understand.

“...if you wish to understand how great a loss and ruin vice and dissipation are...” The second half of the sentence is the mirror image of the first half. And here the Master's choice of words, when we look at the lexicon, shows a breathtaking subtlety. First, fisq. Ibn Fāris says the root fā-sīn-qāf consists of a single word: going out of obedience. And as a witness he brings a saying of the Arabs: "Fasaqati'r-ruṭab," the date came out of its skin. Al-Munāwī also supports this: fisq is going outside an enclosure; like a fruit coming out of its skin, or a mouse out of its hole. Now remember the Word's soldier on the left road: "he gives up soldiering and does not want to submit to the order." The date that comes out of its skin is free, but unprotected. The fāsiq, in the root meaning of the word, is the one who abandons his protective shell. While telling the story, the Master does not repeat the word fisq; but the scene itself acts out the root of the word.

The second word, safāha. This is perhaps the Word's deepest play on words. Ibn Fāris gives the meaning of the root sīn-fā-hā in one word: khiffa, that is, lightness, and sakhāfa, shallowness. Al-Rāghib makes it even more concrete: the origin of safah is lightness in the body. The Arabs call a rein that swings a lot "zimām safīh," and thin, badly woven cloth "thawb safīh." Then this word came to be used for the lightness of soul born of a lack of reason. Now look at the Word: A few sentences later the Master will say of the traveler of the left road, "he sees an apparent lightness, a false ease." That is, the root meaning of safāha is lightness; the whole allure of the left road is hidden inside the word. The safīh is the light one; but that lightness is like that of a rein swinging loose. The Master uses the word once in the opening and once in the scene with its root meaning, and the reader takes a lexicon lesson without noticing.

The third word, khasāra. Ibn Fāris says the root khā-sīn-rā goes back to a single origin: deficiency, diminishing. From this root, giving short weight on the scales is called "akhsara'l-mīzān." In Sūrat al-ʿAṣr it is said: "Man is in loss." Imam al-Qurṭubī lists the meanings of the word "khusr" there: deception, ruin, punishment, evil, deficiency; and says "the meanings are close to one another." Ibn Kathīr, for his part, stresses the exception: those who believe and do righteous deeds, who counsel truth and patience, are saved from loss. In the hadith this language of trade is even more vivid. In the narration of Imam Muslim, the Prophet, peace be upon him, says: "All people go out in the morning and sell their souls; some set them free, some ruin them." Every morning we go out to a market; what is sold is our own soul. Fisq is diminishing the capital in this trade.

The fourth word, halāka. Ibn Fāris explains the root hā-lām-kāf as "breaking and falling." The dead are said to have "halaka" because they fell and stayed down. He also brings a surprising witness: the partridge that fears the falcon throws itself into dangers; the Arabs call this "ihtalakat." Throwing oneself off a cliff out of fear. Shortly we will see the soldier of the left road walking "trembling at every event." Ruin is not only a punishment that comes at the end; it is the name of letting yourself fall out of fear.

Now let us look at the filter. There are six words in the Master's first sentence: worship, trade, happiness; vice, dissipation, loss, ruin. The first three speak of gain, the last four of loss. And all four words on the side of loss sketch the Word's scene in advance, in the lexicon: coming out of the shell, lightness, diminishing, falling from fear. The people understand these even without knowing it. But for the one who knows, this sentence is as dense as a page of a lexicon.

“...look at this short allegorical story, and listen.” After making a great claim the Master does not bring a proof; he tells a story. Is this taking the easy way? No. This is the Qur'an's own method. In Sūrat al-Ḥashr, after it is described how a mountain would crumble to pieces in awe of God if the Qur'an were sent down upon it, it is said: "These are the parables We set forth for people so that they may reflect." And in Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt: "These parables We set forth for people; but none understand them except the knowing." Ibn Kathīr relates this saying of one of the early scholars: "When I come across a parable in the Book that I do not understand, I grieve; because God says that only the knowing understand them."

In al-Itqān, the great encyclopedia of the Qur'anic sciences, Imam al-Suyūṭī relates a passage on the wisdom of parables that seems to describe the Third Word's method in advance: "Giving parables has a place that is not hidden in bringing out fine subtleties and lifting the veils from truths. It shows the imagined in its real form, the supposed in a certain form, and the unseen as if it were seen. It leaves in hearts a trace that describing the thing itself does not leave." Showing the unseen as if it were seen. The Third Word's matter is a matter of the unseen: the reward of worship in the Hereafter, the road after death, a city man has not seen. The Master turns this into a soldier's march and makes the invisible visible.

Logicians, for their part, study allegory as a type of proof. Al-Jurjānī's definition: "Tamthīl is establishing, for one particular, the ruling fixed for another particular, because of a meaning shared between them; the jurists call this qiyās." That is, allegory is not ornament; it is inference. In the Third Word the base case is the soldier's road; the derived case is man's road of life; the shared meaning is a traveler on duty carrying his load and reaching his goal safely. The ruling, "the one who carries his load finds ease," is carried from the base case to the derived one.

Notice also the form of the word: "little story." The Master uses the diminutive suffix. This is humility, but at the same time it is a filter. A great truth has been fitted into a small story, so that the listener is not alarmed and can enter it easily. And the invitation is made with two verbs: "look, listen." To both the eye and the ear. The allegory addresses the eye; the telling, the ear. Elsewhere, in the Letters, comparing the method of the kalam scholars with that of the Qur'an, the Master gives a fine allegory: the theologians try to bring water through pipes from beneath distant mountains; they follow the chain of causes to the end of the universe, cut it there, and prove God's existence that way. It is a long road; the pipe gets clogged, it gets cut. The Qur'an, however, digs a well everywhere; each verse, like the staff of Moses, brings out water wherever it strikes. The Third Word is a well. It does not go to the end of the universe; it draws water from the pack on a soldier's back, from a single sentence inside a prayer, from a comet in the sky.

“Once, two soldiers receive orders to go to a distant city. They go together. Until the road forks.” The story's first three sentences are a map of the human condition. Two soldiers; that is, two people. They receive orders; that is, this journey is not their choice but a duty. A distant city; that is, the goal is not visible to the eye. They go together; that is, at the start there is no difference between them. And the road forks.

First let us look at the words "asker" and "nefer." Shortly the Master will call these soldiers "nefer." The root of the word nefer is nūn-fā-rā. Al-Rāghib gives the meaning of this root as "to set off swiftly from something or toward something," and adds: "nafara ila'l-ḥarb," he set out for war. In the Qur'an this root occurs in Sūrat al-Tawbah, in the general call to mobilize for the Tabūk campaign: "Infirū khifāfan wa thiqālan," go forth, light and heavy. We will return to this verse at length shortly, because the Third Word's pairing of lightness and heaviness is here word for word.

Now let us come to the fork in the road. In Sūrat al-Balad, while listing the blessings given to man, the Qur'an says: "Did We not give him two eyes, a tongue and two lips? And did We not show him the two roads?" "Wa hadaynāhu'n-najdayn." Al-Ṭabarī relates from Ibn ʿAbbās that these two roads are "the road of good and the road of evil," and in another narration, "guidance and misguidance." And from al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī he relates that the Prophet, peace be upon him, said: "O people, these are two roads: the road of good and the road of evil. What makes the road of evil dearer to you than the road of good?" So the Third Word's fork in the road is the Qur'an's najdayn.

In the hadith books there is also a drawing of this fork in the road. Imam Aḥmad and Ibn Mājah narrate this from ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd and Jābir: The Prophet, peace be upon him, drew a straight line on the ground and said, "This is the path of God." Then he drew other lines to the right and left of that line and said, "These too are paths; at the head of each is a devil calling to it." Then he recited verse 153 of Sūrat al-Anʿām: "This is My straight path, so follow it; do not follow other paths, lest they separate you from His path." Al-Ṭabarī also records the same hadith in his tafsir of this verse. The Prophet explains by drawing paths on the ground; the Master draws the paths with words.

Then there is the matter of right and left. In the Third Word the profitable road is on the right, the harmful road on the left. This matches exactly the Qur'an's distinction in its depiction of the Hereafter between "aṣḥāb al-yamīn" and "aṣḥāb al-shimāl," those on the right and those on the left. Sūrat al-Wāqiʿa divides people into three groups: those on the right, those on the left, and the foremost. Al-Ṭabarī, explaining the verse in Sūrat al-Muddaththir, "Every soul is held in pledge for what it has earned, except those on the right," says that those on the right are freed from being held in pledge. And when they are asked, "What led you into Hell?", the first answer of those on the left is this: "We were not of those who prayed." The left road of the Third Word is the road without prayer; and this is also the first confession of those on the left in the Qur'an.

Pay attention to the Master's filter. The najdayn verse, the hadith of the paths drawn on the ground, the distinction of right and left, all are within these three short sentences. But the Master mentions none of them. He only says, "the road forks." The one who knows the sources hears all these verses and hadiths in those two words; and the one who does not still feels he is standing at a fork in the road.

“A man is there, and he tells them...” At the fork there is someone who describes the roads to the soldiers. A few sentences later the Master gives him a name: "the muʿarrif man." Muʿarrif means one who describes, who makes known. Not one who commands, not one who compels; one who informs. Its root is ʿayn-rā-fā. Al-Rāghib defines maʿrifa as "perceiving a thing from its traces through reflection and contemplation," and counts it as a more specific kind of knowledge. Ibn Fāris, for his part, says this root has two origins: one is a thing following another in succession, connected; the other is stillness and tranquility, that is, the settling of the heart. The muʿarrif, by the root of the word, is the person who brings knowledge that settles one's heart. The soldiers were hesitating at the fork; the muʿarrif brings them to calm.

Who is this muʿarrif? The Master does not say. But the hadith literature does. Imam Bukhārī and Imam Muslim narrate this hadith from Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī. The Prophet, peace be upon him, says: "The likeness of me and of what God has sent me with is that of a man who came to his people and said: 'O my people, I have seen the army with my own eyes. I am the naked warner. Save yourselves, save yourselves!' A group of his people obeyed him, set out by night, and were saved. Another group belied him and stayed where they were until morning; the army fell on them in the morning and destroyed them. This is the likeness of the one who obeys me and follows what I brought, and of the one who disobeys me and belies the truth I brought." In Arabic this warner is called "al-nadhīr al-ʿuryān," the naked warner; because among the ancient Arabs, the one who saw the enemy would take off his garment and wave it so that he could be noticed from afar. Now look at the Third Word: At a fork in the road, a man gives news of where the two roads lead. One group listens and is saved; one group does not listen and is ruined. Just as the Prophet describes himself, so the Master draws the muʿarrif man. The muʿarrif man is the shadow of prophethood in the allegory; and behind that shadow are the scholars, the spiritual guides, those who carry this news from generation to generation.

And what does the muʿarrif say? "This road on the right, while having no harm at all, of the travelers who go on it, nine out of ten see great profit and ease. The road on the left, while having no benefit, nine out of ten of its travelers suffer harm." Notice, he gives a figure: nine out of ten. Why doesn't he say one hundred percent? Because the Master is telling the matter in a world of allegory, with people's everyday reckoning. In this world nothing is one hundred percent; but the majority has the ruling of the whole. And this is a known principle in fiqh. In al-Hidāya, the basic text of Ḥanafī fiqh, al-Marghīnānī uses this principle again and again: "Li'l-akthari ḥukmu'l-kull," the majority is given the ruling of the whole. Another principle: "Al-ʿibratu li'l-ghālib," what counts is what prevails. When the Master says nine out of ten, he is whispering a principle of fiqh into the reader's mind: whoever is on the side of the nine is, in ruling, on the side of the whole. And there is one more thing: The road on the right "has no harm at all," the one on the left "has no benefit at all." That is, the muʿarrif is not only giving probabilities; he is describing the nature of the two roads. One, even in the worst case, does not make you lose; the other, even in the best case, does not make you gain. Let us keep this sentence in mind; the logical calculation at the end of the Word will be built on it.

“Also, both are one in shortness and length. Only there is one difference: the traveler of the left road, which is without order and without government, goes without pack and without rifle. He sees an apparent lightness, a false ease. Whereas the traveler of the right road, under military order, is obliged to carry a pack of four okka full of nourishing essences and a perfect state-issue rifle of two kıyye that will defeat and overcome every enemy.” The two roads are the same length. This is a very important detail: the road of servanthood does not shorten life, and the road of vice does not lengthen it. The difference is not in the distance, but in the load. And now we come to one of the Qur'an's most striking parallels.

The ninth year of the Hijra. The Prophet, peace be upon him, declares a general mobilization for the Tabūk campaign against Byzantium. The season is summer, the heat is scorching, the dates have ripened, the shade is cool. According to Mujāhid's account, people long for the shade and the fruit, and setting out weighs heavily on them. And the verse is revealed, verse 38 of Sūrat al-Tawbah: "O you who believe, what is the matter with you that, when you are told to go forth in the way of God, you cling heavily to the earth? Are you content with the life of this world instead of the Hereafter?" "Ithāqaltum ila'l-arḍ," you grew heavy toward the earth. Al-Qurṭubī says the verse is a rebuke, revealed about those who stayed behind from Tabūk, and that there is no disagreement about this. Three verses later comes the command: "Infirū khifāfan wa thiqālan," go forth, light and heavy. In explaining this "light and heavy," the exegetes offer a spectrum. Al-Ṭabarī lists: the young and the old; the rich and the poor; the willing and the unwilling; the mounted and those on foot. Ibn Kathīr adds: God commanded them to go forth in every case, whether cheerful or unwilling, whether in hardship or in ease.

And now the most striking verse, verse 81 of al-Tawbah. The hypocrites said to one another: "Lā tanfirū fi'l-ḥarr," do not go forth in this heat. And God had His Prophet give this answer: "Say: the fire of Hell is hotter, if only they understood." Al-Ṭabarī describes the state of the hypocrites like this: "They inclined toward ease and slackness; they preferred ease to fatigue and hardship." They preferred ease. Now read the Third Word's sentence again: "He sees an apparent lightness, a false ease." The Master has turned the psychology of those who chose to stay in the shade in the heat of Tabūk into a soldier's march without a pack. There is lightness, but it is apparent; there is ease, but it is false. Because the fire of Hell is hotter.

Now let us look at the pack and the rifle. The Master uses historical units of measure: a pack of four okka, a rifle of two kıyye. An okka is about one kilogram and three hundred grams; kıyye is another name for the okka, that is, the same unit. About five kilos of provisions, two and a half kilos of rifle. Realistic military equipment. What is inside the pack? "Nourishing essences." Mughaddī means nutritious, nourishing. According to al-Tahānawī's definition, food is what replaces what is lost from the body. And khulāṣa, according to Ibn Fāris, is "the purifying and filtering of a thing"; the Arabs called the dates and parched grain thrown into butter to purify it "khulāṣat al-samn." That is, the pack is full of the most filtered, most purified food. Is this a coincidence? The Master's own text is also a filtered essence. What do the provisions in the pack represent? A few sentences later the Master will say: worship and taqwā.

In the sīra books this pack has historical counterparts. The Tabūk army is called "Jaysh al-ʿUsra," the army of hardship, because finding provisions and mounts was very hard. It is told in Ibn Kathīr's al-Bidāya, in Ḥilyat al-Awliyāʾ and in al-Dhahabī's Siyar: The Prophet, peace be upon him, urged people to equip the army; ʿUthmān gave a hundred camels, then a hundred more, then a hundred more, and brought a thousand gold coins and poured them into the Prophet's lap. The Prophet said, "O God, be pleased with ʿUthmān, for I am pleased with him." There is also the expedition where the provisions ran out: Jābir tells of it in Bukhārī and Muslim. A detachment of three hundred under the command of Abū ʿUbayda; the provisions run out, they are forced to eat tree leaves, and so it is named "Jaysh al-Khabaṭ," the army of leaves. Then the sea casts a giant fish onto the shore and they feed on it for half a month. Provisions are the soldier's life. And the one who provides the provisions is not the soldier himself, but the command.

Here the word "mīrī" comes into play. Mīrī means state-owned, belonging to the state; it comes from the Arabic "amīr." The rifle is not the soldier's property but a trust from the state. Classical Islamic books of governance describe how this was organized. In the works titled al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭāniyya by al-Māwardī and Abū Yaʿlā, the "dīwān al-jaysh," the army register, and the soldier's pay, rations and equipment are regulated in detail. One sentence of al-Māwardī's is this: "The army's rations are assessed according to the measure of sufficiency." Even if the soldier dies, his due is paid to his heirs from the treasury. That is, the soldier within the order is not alone; the state's whole guarantee stands behind him. The deserter outside the order is deprived of this guarantee. In al-Mathnawī al-Nūrī the Master explains this allegory himself: "Yes, man is a soldier. The duty of soldiering is one thing, the duty of the government is another. The duty of soldiering is training and fighting. The duty of the government is to give his rations, his clothing, his weapon." And he adds: Man's duty is servanthood; giving his sustenance is God's duty. If man abandons the easy duty of servanthood and takes on the heavy duty of lordship, he is crushed beneath it. This is the secret of the "state-issue rifle": the load you carry is not yours; it is the trust of an order that carries you.

“After those two soldiers listen to that muʿarrif man's words, this fortunate private goes right. He loads a batman of weight onto his shoulder and waist. But his heart and spirit are freed from thousands of batmans of indebtedness and fears. The other, unfortunate private gives up soldiering, does not want to submit to the order, and goes left. His body is freed from a batman of weight; but his heart is crushed under thousands of batmans of indebtedness and his spirit under countless fears.” These two sentences are the heart of the Third Word. And pay attention to their structure: the same words are used in crossed order. In the first, the body is loaded and the heart is freed. In the second, the body is freed and the heart is crushed. A batman is an old measure of about seven and a half kilos. The load placed on the body is single and measured: one batman. The load placed on the spirit is countless and measureless: thousands of batmans, countless fears. The unit of measure is the same; the amount divides between finite and infinite.

Now look at the word "minnet," indebtedness. Why does he say "thousands of batmans of minnet"? Why doesn't he say debt, hardship, trouble? Because the word minnet carries weight in its root. Al-Rāghib and al-Munāwī describe minna in the same words: "al-niʿmat al-thaqīla," a heavy favor. And al-Rāghib adds: "Manna fulānun ʿalā fulān," that is, he weighed him down with a favor. Being indebted to another is, in the origin of the word, growing heavy under his kindness. That is, "thousands of batmans of minnet" is not an exaggeration but a lexical finding. The soldier on the left road carries no provisions; when he is hungry, to whom will he go? He carries no rifle; in danger, in whom will he take refuge? Every help will put one more minnet on his shoulder. He thought himself light; but with every step he grows a little heavier.

The Prophet, peace be upon him, taught his community to be freed from this weight of indebtedness. In Imam Mālik's Muwaṭṭaʾ, describing charity from the pulpit, he says: "The giving hand is better than the receiving hand." Again in the Muwaṭṭaʾ: "By Him in whose hand is my soul, for one of you to take his rope and carry firewood on his back is better than going to someone to whom God has given of His bounty and asking him, whether he gives or not." Carrying firewood on one's back. That is, taking a load on the body is better than coming under indebtedness. This is the choice of the Third Word's fortunate private. In al-Ḥākim's al-Mustadrak it is narrated from Thawbān: the Prophet, peace be upon him, said, "Whoever promises me that he will ask nothing of people, I will guarantee him Paradise." Thawbān said, "I will," and for the rest of his life he asked no one for anything. Al-Ḥākim says of this hadith, "It is authentic according to Muslim's condition."

The traveler of the left road is not only under indebtedness; "he goes as a beggar to everyone, trembling at everything and every event." The Qur'an, in Sūrat al-Munāfiqūn, gives the exact depiction of this trembling: "When you see them, their bodies please you... They think every shout is against them." "Yaḥsabūna kulla ṣayḥatin ʿalayhim." Al-Qurṭubī explains this in two ways: either, thinking their hypocrisy has been noticed, they fear every sound, because "doubt has its fear"; or they think every sound they hear in the mosque is the Prophet's order to kill them. And he relates a poet's couplet that describes seeing everything as an enemy out of fear. The state the Master calls "trembling at every event" is the state the Qur'an calls "thinking every shout is against them."

And the end of the left road: "Until he reaches the intended place; there he receives the punishment of a rebel and deserter." A deserter, a runaway soldier. In Islamic law this has a name: "al-tawallī yawm al-zaḥf," turning one's back and fleeing on the day of meeting the enemy. Verse 16 of Sūrat al-Anfāl declares that whoever turns his back on the day of battle incurs God's wrath. In the hadith, when the seven ruinous major sins are listed, this is listed among them. Imam al-Nawawī says in his commentary on Muslim: "The Prophet counting flight from battle among the major sins is a clear proof for the view of all the scholars." Only from al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī is it related that this was specific to Badr; but al-Nawawī says, "The correct view is that of the majority; the ruling remains." Al-Ṭabarī also records this disagreement with its narrations; the grandfather of the Mālikī jurist Ibn Rushd, in al-Muqaddimāt, citing the general wording of the Prophet's hadith "fleeing from battle is among the major sins," says the ruling is not specific to Badr. When the Master says "the punishment of a rebel and deserter," he carries this discussion of fiqh into the reader's mind: deserting the order is not an ordinary choice but a grave breach of duty.

In the sīra, the most touching story of this desertion is the story of Kaʿb ibn Mālik. Kaʿb is one of the three Companions who did not join the Tabūk campaign. In this story, narrated at length by Bukhārī, Muslim, al-Nasāʾī and Aḥmad, Kaʿb says: "I never stayed behind from any campaign the Prophet joined, except Tabūk." In a narration related by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Kaʿb says to the Prophet: "My mount and my provisions were ready; but I stayed behind because of my sin." Mount ready, provisions ready, pack ready. But he did not carry it. And the result: For fifty days no one spoke to them. Verse 118 of Sūrat al-Tawbah describes that state like this: "The earth, for all its breadth, became narrow for them; their own souls became narrow for them; and they understood that there is no refuge from God except in Him." Al-Rāzī relates that the wife of Hilāl ibn Umayya came to the Prophet and said, "Hilāl has wept so much that I fear for his eyes." The earth is wide, but the heart is narrow. The body is free, but the spirit is crushed. This is the state of the soldier on the Third Word's left road: "His body is freed from a batman of weight; but his heart is crushed under thousands of batmans of indebtedness." And the end of the story is glad tidings: after fifty days their repentance is accepted; the Prophet announces it joyfully, saying "Allāhu akbar." Even for the deserter, the door of return is open.

“Whereas the private who loves the military order, who keeps his pack and rifle and goes right, accepting indebtedness from no one, fearing no one, goes with ease of heart and conscience. Until he reaches that desired city; there he finds a reward fitting for an honorable soldier who has performed his duty well.” Three states of the soldier on the right are listed: freedom from indebtedness, fearlessness, and ease of heart and conscience. Their name in the Qur'an is "amn," security.

In Sūrat al-Anʿām, Abraham asks his idolatrous people: "Which of the two parties is more deserving of security, if you know?" And the answer comes with a verse: "Those who believe and do not mix their faith with wrongdoing; theirs is security, and they are rightly guided." "Ulāʾika lahumu'l-amn." Al-Ṭabarī, narrating from Ibn Isḥāq, explains this verse like this: those who, like Abraham, are sincere in worship and tawḥīd; who do not mix their faith with shirk; for them there is security from punishment and guidance in proof. Ibn Kathīr relates a hadith connected with this verse: the Prophet, peace be upon him, tells of a bedouin who left his homeland and wealth and came to him only for guidance, and says, "He did little and received much reward; this one is among those who believe and do not mix their faith with wrongdoing."

Al-Rāghib's definition of amn is this: "The soul's being at peace and fear's being removed." Al-Jurjānī gives a more technical definition: "Not expecting anything disliked in the future." And according to al-Rāghib, khawf, that is, fear, is "expecting something disliked because of a sign," and it is the opposite of amn. Now look at the Master's sentence: "fearing no one." This is the definition of amn. And amn and īmān come from the same root: hamza-mīm-nūn. Ibn Fāris says this root has two close origins: one is trustworthiness, that is, the stillness of the heart; the other is affirmation. That is, īmān, at the root of the word, is both affirmation and stillness of the heart. The ease of the soldier on the right is the literal meaning of his faith.

Then there is the word "vicdan," conscience: "with ease of heart and conscience." Al-Munāwī describes wijdān like this: "The inner self sensing what is within it." That is, conscience is the faculty by which a person notices his own inner state. The conscience of the soldier on the right is at ease, because he does not carry inside him the weight of a desertion, of a betrayal. Remember Kaʿb ibn Mālik: the earth had become narrow for him, because his conscience was narrow.

And in the end, the reward. Al-Jurjānī and al-Munāwī describe mukāfaʾa in the same words: "Returning a kindness with its like or with more." A reward is not just a prize; it is a return equal to the good done, or greater than it. And the Qur'an says that God's return is always with more: in verse 30 of Sūrat Fāṭir, for the owners of that trade that suffers no loss, it is said, "He will pay them their wages in full and give them more of His bounty." In the Master's sentence too there is "a fitting reward," but this reward is given "to an honorable soldier who has performed his duty well." Doing well is iḥsān in Arabic. The Prophet, peace be upon him, defines iḥsān as "worshipping God as if you see Him." And in a narration of Imam Aḥmad this saying comes in the same sentence as the advice, "be in this world like a stranger or a traveler." Worshipping as if seeing, and living like a traveler. These are the two qualities of the soldier on the right.

“So, O rebellious soul! Know that those two travelers are people: one obedient to the Divine law, the other rebellious and following caprice.” The story is over; now the truth begins. And as the Master moves to the truth, he turns not to the reader, but to his own soul. "O rebellious soul!" Serkeş is a Persian word: ser, head; keş, pulling. One who pulls his head, unbridled, stubborn. This is the signature method of the Words: the advice is first directed at the narrator himself. In this way the listener does not feel accused; he witnesses an inner conversation and finds himself in that conversation. In the Qur'an, the finest example of this attitude is the saying of Joseph. In verse 53 of Sūrat Yūsuf, even at the moment he is cleared of slander, he says: "I do not absolve my soul; for the soul, except for those on whom my Lord has mercy, greatly commands evil." Al-Ṭabarī, in his tafsir of this verse, narrates that Joseph said this to accuse his own soul instead of absolving it, and that he said it upon a reminder from Gabriel. Not even a prophet absolves his own soul. And the Master declares not the reader, but his own soul "rebellious."

The two travelers are named: "obedient to the Divine law" and "rebellious and following caprice." Muṭīʿ is from the root of ṭāʿa. Ibn Fāris describes this root like this: "Companionship and submission; going along with him and walking according to his command." At the root of ṭāʿa there is "walking together." The obedient soldier is the one who walks the same road as his Commander's command. Al-Rāghib adds: the opposite of ṭāʿa is karh, compulsion. That is, ṭāʿa is a willing walking together. Al-Jurjānī defines ṭāʿa as "following the command willingly" and notes a dispute in kalam: according to Ahl al-Sunna, ṭāʿa is following the command; according to the Muʿtazila, following the will.

The word "kanun," law, is interesting. It is a word that passed into Arabic from Greek. Al-Jurjānī gives its definition: "A qānūn is a universal rule that fits all its particulars and from which their rulings are learned; like the grammarians saying, 'the subject is nominative, the object is accusative.'" That is, the Divine law is a universal rule that fits each individual separately. The Qur'an mentions this as "sunnat Allāh": "You will never find any change in the way of God." Al-Qurṭubī explains sunnat Allāh as "God's path and His custom that has continued from before." The soldier's order is a part of the order of the universe.

On the other side there is "hawā," caprice. The root of this word also draws a scene. Ibn Fāris says the root hā-wāw-yā means "emptiness and falling": the space between earth and sky is called "hawāʾ," because it is empty. Al-Rāghib says: "Hawā is the soul's inclination to appetite. It is given this name because it makes its owner fall into every calamity in this world and into hāwiya in the Hereafter, that is, into the abyss." The one who follows caprice, at the root of the word, follows emptiness and falling. This is the "orderless, governmentless" state of the left road: no ground beneath it, no order above it.

“And that road is the road of life, which comes from the world of spirits, passes through the grave, and goes to the Hereafter.” This single sentence draws man's entire journey with three stops. And now let us keep the promise we made in the introduction: the Third Word's verse was verse 21 of al-Baqarah. Seven verses later, in verse 28, the Qur'an tells the whole of this journey in a single sentence: "How can you disbelieve in God? You were dead, and He gave you life; then He will cause you to die, then give you life, then to Him you will be returned." Al-Ṭabarī explains this verse from Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibn Masʿūd and a group of Companions like this: "You were nothing, and He created you; then He will cause you to die, then give you life." Mujāhid says the same. Ibn Kathīr combines this with the verse in Sūrat al-Muʾmin: "Our Lord, You caused us to die twice and gave us life twice." Here are the Master's three stops: the world of spirits, the life of this world and the grave, then the Hereafter. Right after giving the command to worship, Sūrat al-Baqarah draws the road on which that worship is to be done.

The beginning of the road is the world of spirits. In Sūrat al-Aʿrāf the Qur'an tells how their offspring were drawn from the loins of the children of Adam and made to witness about themselves: "Am I not your Lord?" They said, "Yes, we bear witness." Al-Ṭabarī relates from Ibn ʿAbbās that this was in the valley of Naʿmān near ʿArafāt, where all the offspring were drawn from Adam's back and the covenant was taken. Al-Zamakhsharī reads the verse as an allegory as well: God gave people reason and proofs and so made them witnesses. In the hadith there is another secret of the world of spirits: "Spirits are assembled troops; those that knew one another there are close here, those that did not know one another there part ways here." In this hadith, found in Abū Dāwūd and Muslim, the expression "junūdun mujannada," assembled armies, is used. Imam al-Nawawī explains this as "gathered congregations or different kinds." Even spirits are within an army's order. Al-Rāghib's note on the word jund also fits this: soldiers are called jund because of hardness; its origin is hard, stony ground, then it came to be used for every group, and as a witness he brings exactly this hadith.

The intermediate stop on the road is the grave. Ibn Fāris gives the meaning of the root of qabr as "concealment and settling in something." Al-Munāwī adds a striking note: "The disbeliever or the ignorant is in the grave while in this world; when he dies he is brought out of his grave, that is, out of his ignorance. This is the meaning of the saying, people are asleep, and when they die they wake up." In al-Ḥākim's al-Mustadrak it is told that ʿUthmān wept at the head of a grave until his beard was wet. He was asked, "You do not weep when Paradise and Hell are mentioned, yet you weep at this?" He answered, "I heard from the Prophet: the grave is the first of the stations of the Hereafter. For whoever is saved from it, what comes after is easier; for whoever is not saved from it, what comes after is harder." The Qur'an calls the period between the grave and the Resurrection "barzakh": "Behind them is a barzakh until the day they are raised." Mujāhid explains barzakh as "between death and resurrection"; Ibn Zayd says "a barrier that prevents return to the world."

And while walking this road, how should one walk? The Prophet, peace be upon him, taking Ibn ʿUmar by the shoulder, says: "Be in this world like a stranger or a traveler; count yourself among the people of the graves." Imam Aḥmad and Ibn Mājah narrate it. And in another hadith, to a Companion grieving as he looked at the Prophet's body bearing the marks of his reed mat, he says: "What have I to do with this world? My state in this world is like that of a traveler who takes shade under a tree and then continues on his way." This is what the Master calls "the road of life": shade under a tree, then the road again.

“As for that pack and rifle, they are worship and taqwā.” Here is the key to the allegory. And both sides of this pairing are in the Qur'an word for word.

First, the pack. Verse 197 of Sūrat al-Baqarah says, in the section on hajj: "Wa tazawwadū, fa inna khayra'z-zādi't-taqwā." Take provisions; surely the best provision is taqwā. Al-Ṭabarī and Ibn Kathīr relate the occasion of this verse from Ibn ʿAbbās: the Yemenis would come to hajj without provisions, saying "we rely on God," and then beg from people on the road. The verse first commanded them to take provisions, then declared that the best of provisions is taqwā. Pay attention: setting out without provisions and then begging. This is the exact portrait of the Third Word's soldier on the left road, the soldier who is "a beggar to everyone." And this verse comes down on those who misunderstand reliance on God: tawakkul is not leaving the provisions behind; it is carrying the provisions and leaning on God.

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī explains this verse as if setting up the Third Word's logic in advance: "Man has two journeys: a journey in this world and a journey from this world. The provision for the journey in this world is food, drink, mount and wealth. The provision for the journey from this world is knowing God, loving Him, and turning away from all besides Him. This provision is better than the first, in several respects: worldly provision saves you from an imagined torment; the provision of the Hereafter saves you from a certain torment. Worldly provision saves from a passing torment; the provision of the Hereafter, from an endless torment." Here there is a comparison, a calculation of probability and a calculation of eternity. At the end of the Word the Master will make the "nine chances" calculation; al-Rāzī's comparison of imagined with certain, passing with eternal, is the classical forerunner of this calculation.

Now, the rifle. The root of the word taqwā is wāw-qāf-yā. Ibn Fāris defines this root like this: "Warding off one thing from another by means of something." Wiqāya is that which protects. "Ittaqi'llāh" means put a protector between yourself and God's punishment. Al-Jurjānī too describes taqwā lexically as "taking a protection," and according to the people of reality as "protecting oneself from God's punishment through obedience to Him." That is, taqwā, by its root, is a shield, an armor. It is no coincidence that the Master sets "taqwā" against the word "rifle": taqwā is the protector placed in between.

And the Qur'an joins prayer and weapons in the same verse. Verse 102 of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ describes the prayer to be performed in a state of war: "When you are among them and lead them in prayer, let a group of them stand with you in prayer and take their weapons." "Wa'l-yaʾkhudhū asliḥatahum." Al-Ṭabarī, al-Qurṭubī and al-Zamakhsharī go into detail in their tafsir of this verse: while one group prays, the other watches the enemy; then they change places. Al-Qurṭubī says, "a weapon is that with which a person defends himself in battle," and recalls the rest of the verse: "The disbelievers wish that you would neglect your weapons and your baggage so that they could fall upon you all at once." The books of fiqh call this "ṣalāt al-khawf," the prayer of fear. Imam al-Shāfiʿī, in al-Umm, explains with proofs that this prayer is permissible for both the traveler and the resident. Al-Māwardī, in al-Ḥāwī, divides war into four: obligatory, obedience, permissible and sinful; and says the prayer of fear can be performed only in a legitimate war. Al-Nasāʾī relates a scene: in Ṭabaristān, the army under the command of Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ asks, "Is there anyone among you who prayed the prayer of fear with the Prophet?" Ḥudhayfa ibn al-Yamān says, "I did," and describes how it was performed. An army in enemy territory learns from a Companion how to pray; one group in prayer, one group at the weapons. Here the Third Word's soldier stands alive within the Qur'an and fiqh: the soldier who prays and does not lay down his weapon.

There is also a spiritual weapon. In al-Ḥākim's al-Mustadrak there is a hadith narrated from ʿAlī: "Supplication is the weapon of the believer, the pillar of religion, the light of the heavens and the earth." Al-Ḥākim calls this hadith authentic; but some hadith scholars found one narrator in its chain disputed, so it is more accurate to cite it not as a definite hadith, but as a narration whose meaning is sound. ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, in al-Ghunya, uses a military simile when describing the word of tawḥīd: "When the servant says that word and clothes himself in what it requires, Satan, seeing him in this state, moves away from him; and the servant is saved from his mischief as one is saved from the enemy's weapon by a battle shield." A battle shield. Al-Jīlānī's shield and the Master's rifle are the equipment of the same front.

“Although worship has an apparent heaviness, in its meaning there is such an ease and lightness that it cannot be described.” Çendan is a Persian word; it means "although." Here the Master makes an admission: the heaviness of worship is not denied. This honesty is the Qur'an's own honesty. Verse 45 of Sūrat al-Baqarah: "Seek help through patience and prayer. Indeed, it is heavy except for those who are humble." "Wa innahā la-kabīratun illā ʿala'l-khāshiʿīn." The Qur'an says prayer is heavy; but it makes an exception: those who have khushūʿ. That is, the heaviness is apparent; for the one who enters into it, it is lifted. So the two halves of the Master's sentence are the two halves of this verse.

Al-Ṭabarī relates the context of this verse from Ibn Zayd: the idolaters said to the Prophet, "By God, O Muhammad, you are calling us to a great thing!" That great thing was prayer and faith in God. And al-Ṭabarī and Ibn Kathīr relate a scene: while Ibn ʿAbbās is on a journey, news comes of the death of his brother Qutham. He says "Innā lillāh," pulls aside from the road, makes his camel kneel, prays two rakʿas, prolongs the sitting; then, as he gets up and walks toward his camel, he recites this verse: "Seek help through patience and prayer; it is heavy except for those who are humble." The weight of painful news grows light within the prayer. Those two rakʿas of Ibn ʿAbbās are a living example of what the Master calls "an indescribable ease."

In the life of the Prophet, peace be upon him, this inverse proportion appears again and again. In the narration of Abū Dāwūd, the Prophet says to Bilāl: "O Bilāl, call to prayer; give us rest through it." "Ariḥnā bihā." Prayer is not a burden, but release from burden. And in the same narration there is an interesting detail: a man said, "I wish I had prayed so that I could find rest," those around him found fault with this, and he cited this hadith as proof. In the narration of al-Nasāʾī and Aḥmad, the Prophet says: "The coolness of my eyes has been placed in prayer." The coolness of the eye, qurrat al-ʿayn, is the Arabs' name for the greatest joy.

So why does worship have an apparent heaviness? Why did God not make it entirely easy? The hadith answers. Imam Muslim and Imam Aḥmad narrate from Anas ibn Mālik: "Paradise is surrounded by things that are disliked; Hell is surrounded by appetites." Al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī explains this hadith like this: "The veil surrounding Paradise is the deed that is heavy on the soul. Whoever loads his soul with that heaviness and fulfills the rights of God enters Paradise." He also adds the saying of ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd: "Whoever crosses the veil reaches what is behind it." The door of Paradise is a load; whoever carries that load enters. The pack of the soldier on the right is the veil of Paradise.

And the heaviness has a return. In Muslim's narration, ʿĀʾisha has to make a separate journey for ʿumra during hajj, and she is saddened. The Prophet says to her: "Your reward is in proportion to your fatigue or your expense." "ʿAlā qadri naṣabik." Imam al-Nawawī explains this like this: "This is a clear proof that reward and merit in worship increase with the amount of fatigue and expense." That is, the heaviness is not in vain; every batman comes back as reward.

But fiqh sets a balance here. One of the great principles of fiqh is this: "Al-mashaqqatu tajlibu't-taysīr," hardship brings ease. Ibn ʿĀbidīn applies this principle again and again. That is, the heaviness of worship cannot be more than a person can bear; when it becomes unbearable, the dispensation comes into play. The traveler's prayer is shortened, the sick person's fast is postponed, in a state of fear the prayer is halved. Remember the Master's figures: a pack of four okka, a rifle of two kıyye. A load a soldier can carry comfortably. Heavy, but not crushing. The fiqh principle "hardship brings ease" and the Master's measured figures say the same truth: the Divine load is a bearable load.

Now let us look at the filter. Al-Baqarah's verse "it is not heavy for the humble," the hadith "give us rest through prayer," the hadith "Paradise is surrounded by things disliked," the hadith "reward is in proportion to fatigue," and the principle "hardship brings ease." Five separate sources, five separate sciences. The Master filters all of them into a single sentence: "Although worship has an apparent heaviness, in its meaning there is such an ease and lightness that it cannot be described."

“Because the worshipper says in his prayer: 'Ashhadu an lā ilāha illa'llāh.' That is, 'There is no Creator and Provider other than Him. Harm and benefit are in His hand. He is both All-Wise, He does nothing in vain; and All-Compassionate, His kindness and mercy are abundant'; because he believes this, in everything he finds a door to a treasury of mercy, and he knocks on it with supplication. And he sees everything subjugated to the command of his own Lord. He takes refuge in his Lord, relies on Him with tawakkul, and fortifies himself against every calamity. His faith gives him complete security.” This is the densest sentence of the Third Word. An entire chapter of a kalam book has been fitted into a single sentence within a prayer. Remember: in the introduction we said that Ibn ʿAbbās explained the command "worship your Lord" as "affirm the oneness of your Lord." Here that tawḥīd is now speaking inside the prayer.

The Master explains the testimony of faith with two attributes: Creator and Provider. This is one of the most basic principles of kalam: "Lā khāliqa illa'llāh," there is no creator but God. Imam al-Ashʿarī, listing the creed of Ahl al-Sunna in al-Ibāna, says: "There is no creator but God; the deeds of servants too are created and decreed by God." And Imam al-Māturīdī, in Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, says that all the sects agree on the statement "there is no creator but God." Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī gives the subtlety of tawḥīd like this: "Tawḥīd lies between taʿṭīl and shirk." That is, neither denying God, nor associating partners with Him; the straight line between the two. Remember, the Prophet had drawn a straight line on the ground; tawḥīd is that line.

“He is All-Wise, He does nothing in vain.” Al-Jurjānī defines ʿabath like this: "Undertaking a deed whose benefit is not known." Al-Rāghib says, "mixing play into one's work." In Sūrat al-Muʾminūn the Qur'an asks: "Did you think that We created you in vain, aimlessly, and that you would not be returned to Us?" Ibn Jurayj says, "ʿabath means falsehood." And Ibn Kathīr relates a very touching narration: ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd comes across a sick man on the road and recites into his ear this verse, starting with "Did you think that We created you in vain?" up to the end of the sūra; the man recovers. The Prophet asks, "What did you recite into his ear?"; Ibn Masʿūd tells him. The Prophet says: "By Him in whose hand is my soul, if a man of faith recited it to a mountain, the mountain would move from its place." Knowing that life is not in vain raises a person to his feet.

“In everything he finds a door to a treasury of mercy, and knocks on it with supplication.” In Sūrat al-Ḥijr the Qur'an says: "There is nothing whose treasuries are not with Us; and We send it down only in a known measure." Ibn Masʿūd recited this verse and said: "No year is rainier than another; but God distributes it wherever He wills." The treasury is one, the doors are countless. And a hadith tells how the door is to be knocked. The narration of al-Tirmidhī: "Whoever has the door of supplication opened for him, the doors of mercy have been opened for him." Al-Tirmidhī himself notes that there is a weak narrator in the chain of this hadith; but its meaning is supported by countless authentic hadiths on supplication. The Master's expression "he knocks on the door of the treasury of mercy with supplication" is like a translation of this hadith.

“And he sees everything subjugated to the command of his own Lord.” Taskhīr is making something submit, putting it into service. Verse 13 of Sūrat al-Jāthiya: "He has subjected to you whatever is in the heavens and on the earth, all of it, as a favor from Him." Al-Ṭabarī lists them: in the heavens the sun, the moon and the stars; on the earth the animals, the trees, the mountains and the ships. And in the preceding verse he states the wisdom of this subjection: "So that you may give thanks, worship and obey Him." That is, subjection is an invitation to worship. The universe is an army headquarters serving the soldier; seeing this, the soldier thanks his Commander.

“He takes refuge in his Lord, relies on Him with tawakkul...” Now let us look at the word tawakkul; because the root of this word gives the secret of the Master's sequence. Ibn Fāris describes the root wāw-kāf-lām like this: "Relying on another in one's affairs." And he adds: "Tawakkul comes from this: it is showing one's helplessness and leaning on another." Showing one's helplessness. A few sentences later the Master will describe man as "so helpless and weak." The lexicon confirms the sequence: first helplessness, then tawakkul. Tawakkul is not the denial of helplessness, but its confession. Al-Jurjānī and al-Munāwī define tawakkul like this: "Trusting in what is with God and giving up hope in what is in people's hands." Giving up hope in what is in people's hands; this is the state of the soldier who walks "accepting indebtedness from no one."

The classics of Sufism treat tawakkul at length. Al-Kalābādhī, in al-Taʿarruf, gathers the Sufis' definitions. Abū Ayyūb's definition practically describes the Third Word's scene: "Tawakkul is casting the body into servanthood, binding the heart to lordship, and finding peace in sufficiency." Casting the body into servanthood: shouldering the pack and the rifle. Binding the heart to lordship: trusting the Commander. But tawakkul is not abandoning the means. Ibn al-Qayyim says in Madārij al-Sālikīn: "The people are agreed that tawakkul is not contrary to holding on to the means; tawakkul is not valid without holding on to the means, otherwise it is laziness and corrupt tawakkul." And he relates the saying of Sahl al-Tustarī: "Tawakkul is the Prophet's state, and earning is his sunna." He also adds this: the Prophet and his Companions carried provisions and water skins on the journey of ʿumra; and they were the truest people of tawakkul. Those who carried the provisions were the greatest of those who rely on God. Here is the Third Word's soldier on the right: he both carries the pack and leans on the Commander.

Ibn Taymiyya sets this balance on a theological footing: "In existence there is no cause that produces a result on its own. Every cause needs other things, and there are things that hinder it. Apart from God's will, there is no cause that creates anything on its own. That is why tawakkul can only be in Him." And the glad tidings of the Prophet, peace be upon him: in the narration of Ibn Mājah and al-Ḥākim, from ʿUmar: "If you relied on God as He truly deserves, He would provide for you as He provides for the birds; they go out hungry in the morning and return full in the evening." Pay attention: the birds do not wait in the nest; in the morning they go out, fly, search. Tawakkul is the tawakkul of the bird that beats its wings.

“...he fortifies himself against every calamity.” Taḥaṣṣun is from the word ḥiṣn: fortress, refuge. Entering the fortress. In the hadith books a ḥadīth qudsī is narrated that is its exact counterpart. It occurs in al-Suyūṭī's al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr: "God says: I am God, there is no god but Me. Whoever affirms Me with tawḥīd has entered My fortress; whoever enters My fortress is safe from My punishment." Imam al-Ghazālī, explaining God's name "al-Muʾmin," brings this ḥadīth qudsī: "Man's greatest fear is ruin in the Hereafter; only the word of tawḥīd protects him from it. However much security there is in the universe, it is obtained through the causes He created and through His guidance; for in the absolute sense the Muʾmin, that is, the giver of security, is He." The chain of this narration is disputed among hadith scholars; but great figures like al-Ghazālī and al-Jīlānī accepted it for its meaning. And pay attention: fortress, taḥaṣṣun, security, the name Muʾmin; all in the same sentence. The Master's sentence "he fortifies himself against every calamity; his faith gives him complete security" is like a summary of this page of al-Ghazālī.

“Complete security” : full safety. We saw it earlier: īmān and amn come from the same root. Now the Master closes that root: faith, in the word's own meaning, is a security. So here is this section's filter: the kalam of al-Ashʿarī and al-Māturīdī, the Sufism of al-Kalābādhī and Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn Taymiyya's analysis of causes, al-Ghazālī's commentary on the Names, the hadiths of al-Tirmidhī and al-Suyūṭī. And the Master ties all of them to a single sentence a soldier says in his prayer. This is the well he describes in the Letters: while the theologian lays pipes to the end of the universe to prove God, the Master draws water from inside a prayer.

“Yes, like every true good deed, the source of courage too is faith and servanthood. Like every evil, the source of cowardice too is misguidance.” Here the Master enters a debate of the science of ethics. The classical books of Islamic ethics had carried a framework coming from Aristotle onto Islamic ground: every virtue is a midpoint between two vices. Ibn Miskawayh says in Tahdhīb al-Akhlāq: "Courage is a mean between two vices: one is jubn, that is, cowardice, the other is tahawwur, that is, recklessness. Cowardice is fearing what should not be feared; recklessness is rushing into what should not be undertaken." Imam al-Ghazālī, in Mīzān al-ʿAmal, takes this a step further: "Courage is a virtue of the power of anger; while that power is strong, it submits to reason trained by the sharīʿa." Al-Jurjānī also fixes the definition: "Courage is a disposition of the power of anger, between recklessness and cowardice, by which a person undertakes what ought to be undertaken." Al-Munāwī adds a beautiful description: "Courage is plunging into beneficial fears, by choice and without hesitation."

Now pay attention to the Master's contribution. The scholars of ethics say what courage is; the Master says where it comes from. Its source is faith. Why? Because according to Ibn Miskawayh's definition, cowardice is "fearing what should not be feared." So what should be feared, and what should not be feared? What makes this distinction is tawḥīd. If harm and benefit are in God's hand alone, fearing the means has no meaning left. Tawḥīd corrects the address of fear; when the address is corrected, courage is born on its own. Ibn al-Qayyim, in Miftāḥ Dār al-Saʿāda, draws another subtle connection: "Stinginess and cowardice are close to each other. One who is stingy with his wealth is even stingier with his life. Courage requires generosity; the one who gives his life gives his wealth more easily." That is, both courage and generosity are fed from the same source: entrusting oneself to God.

The hadith makes this ethic concrete. In the narration of Ibn Mājah and Imam Aḥmad, the Prophet says: "The strong believer is better and more beloved to God than the weak believer; and in both there is good. Hold fast to what benefits you, seek help from God, and do not give up. If something befalls you, do not say, 'If I had done this, it would have been that'; say, 'God decreed it, and He did what He willed.' For 'if only' opens the door to Satan's work." This hadith establishes in one breath the balance of tawakkul and effort, of courage and submission. And the Prophet would seek refuge in God from cowardice. In the narration of al-Nasāʾī and Abū Dāwūd, it is told that the Prophet sought refuge in God from five things: from cowardice, from stinginess, from the worst of old age, from the trial of the heart, and from the punishment of the grave.

The sīra tells of the Prophet's own courage. In the narration of Imam Aḥmad and al-Ḥākim, ʿAlī says: "On the day of Badr, when the battle grew fierce, we would take shelter behind the Messenger of God. He was closer to the enemy than any of us." A hero like ʿAlī, when afraid, goes behind the Prophet. And in Ibn Mājah's narration there is a night scene: one night the people of Medina are frightened by a sound. People run toward the sound. And they see that the Prophet has gone there before all of them, riding Abū Ṭalḥa's unsaddled horse, his sword around his neck, coming back and saying: "Do not be afraid, do not be afraid." "Lan turāʿū." The first to run toward the source of the sound that frightened the people is the one at the highest rank of faith. This is the living commentary of the Master's sentence: the source of courage is faith.

In the Qur'an there is a scene of this in Sūrat Āl ʿImrān. After Uḥud, the wounded believers were told, "The people have gathered against you, so fear them." This only increased their faith, and they said: "Ḥasbuna'llāhu wa niʿma'l-wakīl," God is enough for us, and what an excellent Guardian He is. Al-Ṭabarī and Ibn Kathīr tell this scene with the expedition of Ḥamrāʾ al-Asad: Abū Sufyān's threat arrives; instead of being afraid, the Prophet and his Companions say these words and march on. The news of fear increased their faith. This is the exact opposite of cowardice. And verse 62 of Sūrat Yūnus: "Know that for the friends of God there is no fear, nor will they grieve." Al-Ṭabarī explains the expression "the friends of God" as "the helpers of God"; because one meaning of the word walī is also helper.

“Yes, a worshipper whose heart is fully illuminated, if the globe of the earth became a bomb and exploded, it is likely it would not frighten him. Perhaps he would watch a wondrous Eternally Besought power with a pleasurable amazement.” First let us pay attention to three words. "Fully illuminated of heart": one whose heart is fully lit. So the illumination of the heart has degrees; the Master is describing the highest degree. And right after that he says, "it is likely." Even in the brightest light he speaks with caution; he promises nothing definite. This is scholarly honesty.

The globe of the earth exploding like a bomb recalls the Qur'an's scenes of the Last Day. And in the Qur'an there are glad tidings for exactly this scene. Verse 103 of Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ: "The greatest terror will not grieve them; the angels will meet them: this is your day that you were promised." "Lā yaḥzunuhumu'l-fazaʿu'l-akbar." The exegetes differ on what "the greatest terror" is. Al-Ṭabarī lists them: according to Ibn ʿAbbās, the last blowing of the Trumpet; according to some, Hell closing over its people; according to al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, the moment the servant is sent to the Fire. Whichever it is, even the whole terror of the Last Day will not grieve them. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī draws a subtlety from the implied meaning of the verse: saying "the greatest terror will not grieve them" perhaps implies that lesser terrors may touch them. Again a matter of degree. The Master's saying "it is likely" is in harmony with this subtlety of al-Rāzī's.

“Eternally Besought power.” Ṣamad is one of God's names. Al-Rāghib and Ibn Fāris give two meanings of this word: one is "the master to whom one turns and on whom one relies in needs"; the other is "that which is not hollow, solid." That is, al-Ṣamad is the One to whom people turn in every need and who has no void at all, who is complete. In the previous section we saw tawakkul as knowing one's helplessness and leaning on another. Al-Ṣamad is the One leaned upon. While seeing the world explode, the worshipper sees in that explosion the power he leans on. And he watches it "with a pleasurable amazement." The root of the word ḥayra, amazement, is ḥā-yā-rā. Ibn Fāris explains it as "hesitation in something"; water that keeps circling in one place is called "ḥāʾir." Al-Munāwī says, "the state of a person who cannot find the right way." Normally, amazement is bewilderment, indecision. But in Sufism amazement has a station. Ibn ʿArabī says in al-Futūḥāt: "The people of God made amazement the goal; and that is helplessness." The Master adds an attribute to amazement: pleasurable. Not a fearful amazement, but an amazement one never tires of tasting. The amazement one feels before a work of art.

“But, a heartless, dissolute philosopher who is called famously enlightened of mind, if he sees a comet in the sky, trembles on the earth, and says, 'I wonder, won't this vagrant star hit our earth?' and falls into anxieties.” Now look at the second use of the word "münevver," illuminated. The first was "illuminated of heart"; this one is "called enlightened of mind." The place of the light has changed: from the heart to the mind. And with the qualifier "called," the Master does not fully accept this attribute for him. Al-Rāghib defines the word nūr like this: "Light is the diffused brightness that helps one see. It is of two kinds: worldly and otherworldly. And worldly light is of two kinds: one is perceived by the eye of insight, the light that spreads from Divine matters, like the light of reason and the light of the Qur'an; the other is the light sensed by the eye of the head." The light of reason and the light of the Qur'an are both light. But when one is left alone, the whole picture cannot be seen.

And the word "philosopher." Here the lexicon hides an ironic surprise. Al-Jurjānī and al-Munāwī define philosophy like this: "Philosophy is, in order to attain eternal happiness, resembling God to the measure of human capacity." Al-Tahānawī also says the word is Greek and means "resembling the Necessarily Existent." That is, in its classical definition, the goal of philosophy is eternal happiness. The Third Word's philosopher, however, has not reached the goal in the very definition of his word: never mind eternal happiness, he trembles when he sees a light in the sky.

Why does he tremble? Because his fear comes not from reason but from wahm. The Master says, "he falls into anxieties." Al-Jurjānī defines wahm like this: "It is a bodily faculty located at the end of the middle cavity of the brain; it perceives particular meanings related to the senses. It is the faculty that judges that the sheep must flee from the wolf." That is, wahm is an animal sense of danger. The philosopher's mind is enlightened, but his fear is like a sheep's. His reason calculates, his wahm trembles. Because his heart is empty, there is no center to govern his wahm with his reason.

So what did the scholars of Islam think about comets? The theologian al-Ījī, in al-Mawāqif, and the astronomer al-Bīrūnī, in al-Qānūn al-Masʿūdī, explain "comets," "dhawāt al-adhnāb," as smoky vapors igniting in the upper layer of the atmosphere. That is, the Islamic scholarly tradition saw the comet not as an omen of ill fortune but as a natural phenomenon. And the Prophet, peace be upon him, had himself taught the right attitude toward events in the sky. It is told in a hadith narrated by Bukhārī, Muslim, al-Nasāʾī and Ibn Mājah: the sun is eclipsed. That day the Prophet's son Ibrāhīm had died, and people begin to say, "the sun was eclipsed for Ibrāhīm's death." The Prophet says: "The sun and the moon are two of God's signs; they are not eclipsed for anyone's death or life. When you see them so, pray and supplicate until it clears." Here there are two things at once. The first, the rejection of superstition: an event in the sky is not tied to a person's death. The second, correcting the direction of fear. In al-Nasāʾī's narration, Abū Mūsā says: "The sun was eclipsed; the Prophet got up in alarm, fearing that the Hour had come, came to the mosque and prayed with a standing, bowing and prostration longer than I had ever seen until that day. Then he said: God does not send these signs for anyone's death or life; He warns His servants with them. When you see one of these, hasten to remember Him, to supplicate Him and to seek His forgiveness.'" The Prophet too felt awe; but that awe did not drive him out of his house, it made him run to the mosque. Fear turned not to wahm, but to worship. So the difference between the worshipper illuminated of heart and the philosopher enlightened of mind becomes concrete in this hadith.

And the Master adds a historical note in parentheses: "Once, because of such a star, the whole of America trembled. Many left their homes at night." This points to the time in 1910 when Halley's Comet approached the earth. That year it had been calculated that the earth would pass through the comet's tail. News spread that there was poisonous gas in the tail. In some places people panicked, medicines were sold as "comet pills," some left their homes. What is ironic is this: a century earlier, the French mathematician Laplace had written proudly in his essay on probability: "Comets were once regarded as signs of Divine wrath; when Halley calculated the return of this comet, the fears born of ignorance were dispelled." Laplace thought knowledge had ended fear. But exactly when Halley's Comet came, in one of the countries where science was most advanced, people left their homes in fear. The telescopes worked flawlessly; the calculations were correct. But the hearts were dark. This is the Master's observation: knowledge alone does not dispel fear; what dispels fear is the light of tawḥīd burning above knowledge. Science is the lantern in our hand; what it shows is real. But the lantern is not enough to light up the darkness of the heart.

“Yes, although man is in need of endless things, his capital is something as good as nothing... and although he is exposed to endless calamities, his power is something as good as nothing... It is as if the circle of his capital and power extends only as far as his hand can reach. But the circle of his hopes, desires, pains and afflictions is as wide as his eye and imagination can reach and go.” Here the Master draws a portrait of man. Two circles: a small circle of power and a gigantic circle of hope. And the abyss between these two circles is man's whole drama.

The Qur'an gives the foundation of this portrait. Verse 15 of Sūrat Fāṭir: "O people! You are the ones in need of God; and God is the Self-Sufficient, the Praiseworthy." Pay attention: this verse's address too is "yā ayyuha'n-nās," the same as the Third Word's opening verse. Al-Ṭabarī explains this verse like this: "O people, you are in need of your Lord. So worship Him alone, hasten to His pleasure; He will free you from poverty and see to your needs." Al-Ṭabarī passes directly from poverty to worship. The Master will do the same: "So for the human spirit, which is this helpless and weak, poor and needy, worship, tawakkul, tawḥīd and submission, what an immense profit..." Al-Rāghib lists four aspects of faqr, poverty, and the first is this: "The existence of necessary need; this is common to man, and even to all beings, as long as they are in this world." And as proof he again brings this verse of Fāṭir. That is, poverty is not a flaw but the reality of existence.

In Sūrat al-Nisāʾ it is said, "Man was created weak." In Sūrat al-Maʿārij there is an even sharper portrait: "Man was created halūʿ. When evil touches him, he laments; when good touches him, he becomes stingy." Al-Ṭabarī explains "halūʿ" like this: "The combination of intense greed and intense impatience." Greed is the breadth of the circle of hope; impatience is the narrowness of the circle of power. The tension between the two circles fits into a single word. And now pay attention: what does the rest of the verse say? "Illa'l-muṣallīn," except those who pray; "those who are constant in their prayer." Right after this, the Qur'an names the remedy for this innate halūʿ state of man: prayer. The Third Word's thesis is in these three verses of Sūrat al-Maʿārij.

And the hadith draws these two circles itself. Imam Aḥmad and Ibn Mājah narrate from ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd: the Prophet drew a square on the ground. He drew a line in its middle; he drew small lines beside that line; and he extended one line outside the square. Then he asked: "Do you know what this is?" They said, "God and His Messenger know best." He said, "The line in the middle is man. These small lines beside it are the misfortunes that bite at him from every side; if one misses, another hits. The square is his appointed term surrounding him. And the line that extends outside is his hope." Here are the Master's two circles: the circle of the appointed term is man's real limit; hope extends beyond that limit. And the side lines are the "endless calamities." The Prophet drew this paragraph of the Third Word on the sand fourteen centuries ago.

Another narration in Muslim describes this breadth of hope: "If the son of Adam had two valleys full of wealth, he would want a third. Nothing fills the inside of the son of Adam but dust. And God accepts the repentance of whoever repents." Al-Munāwī defines amal, hope, like this: "Expecting something to come about; mostly used for things whose coming about is far off. For what is near, ṭamaʿ is used, and for what is between the two, rajāʾ." Hope, in the definition of the word, is what reaches far; as far as the eye and imagination can reach. But Ibn al-Qayyim is fair and also states a wisdom of hope: "If there were no hope, the world would be ruined; the world is built up by hopes." That is, hope is not bad; what is bad is trying to answer the greatness of hope with the smallness of capital. This is al-Muḥāsibī's diagnosis: "Long hope makes a person fall into false cravings. One is saved from it only by knowing that the provision written for him will surely reach him, and what is not his will never reach him."

Let us also look at the word power. Al-Rāghib explains qudra like this: "When man is described with power, it is the name of a disposition that makes it possible to do something. When God is described with power, it is the negation of helplessness from Him. For anyone other than God to be described with absolute power is impossible in meaning." That is, man's power is limited by definition; absolute power belongs to God alone. The Master's saying "his power is as good as nothing" is this kalam definition translated into the people's language. And the word ʿajz, helplessness: al-Munāwī, narrating from al-Rāghib, gives the origin of ʿajz as "falling behind something"; the ʿajuz of something is its back part. The helpless one is the one who falls behind the task, who cannot catch up. Man, whose hand cannot reach his hope.

And after this portrait, the Master lists four words: "worship, tawakkul, tawḥīd, submission." For taslīm, al-Jurjānī's definition is this: "Submitting to God's command and not objecting to things that are disliked." Another definition: "Meeting the decree with contentment." Four words, four steps: begin with worship, lean with tawakkul, see with tawḥīd, find peace with submission. And the Master ties all of them together with this sentence: "...whoever is not completely blind sees and perceives what an immense profit, a happiness, a blessing it is." The root of the word derk is dāl-rā-kāf. Ibn Fāris explains it as "one thing catching up with another, reaching it." Al-Jurjānī defines idrāk as "encompassing a thing entirely." Whoever is not completely blind, that is, every eye that can see even a little, reaches this truth.

“It is well known that a harmless road is preferred to a harmful road, even if by one chance in ten. Whereas the road of servanthood, which is our matter, while being harmless, has a treasury of eternal happiness with nine chances. The road of vice and dissipation, however, even by the admission of the dissolute himself, while being without benefit, holds the ruin of eternal wretchedness with nine chances...” Now the Master ties the story and the truth to a calculation. And even the word of this calculation is meaningful: "iḥtimāl," probability. Ibn Fāris says the root ḥā-mīm-lām has a single origin: "Taking up a thing and lifting it." Ḥaml is carrying a load. And al-Jurjānī gives one meaning of iḥtimāl like this: "Wearying the soul for the sake of good deeds." That is, the load described throughout the Word has now seeped into the very word of the calculation. Iḥtimāl, at the root of the word, is carrying a load.

The first step of the calculation is a principle: the harmless road is preferred to the harmful road, even if the chance of harm is only one in ten. This principle has many counterparts in the Islamic sciences. The theologians call it "dafʿ al-ḍarar al-maẓnūn": warding off a supposed harm is obligatory. The theologian al-Ījī uses this principle as proof in al-Mawāqif. The legal theorist al-Shawkānī, in Irshād al-Fuḥūl, relates the reasoning of those who count a consensus transmitted by a single person as proof like this: "Through it, a supposition has arisen that acting on it is required; acting on it is obligatory in order to ward off the supposed harm." And one of the great principles of legal theory is this: "Darʾu'l-mafāsid muqaddamun ʿalā jalbi'l-maṣāliḥ," warding off harms comes before bringing benefits. Imam al-Shāṭibī treats this principle again and again in al-Muwāfaqāt.

And the hadith turns this principle into an ethic. In the narration of al-Tirmidhī and al-Dārimī, al-Ḥasan says he memorized this from the Prophet: "Leave what makes you doubt for what does not make you doubt." Al-Suyūṭī gathers the different narrations of this hadith; in one there is this addition: "Truthfulness is tranquility, and falsehood is doubt." In another: "You will never feel the absence of something you left for God's sake." And in Bukhārī's narration, from al-Nuʿmān ibn Bashīr: "The lawful is clear and the unlawful is clear; between the two are doubtful matters that most people do not know. Whoever guards against the doubtful has protected his religion and his honor." Here is the ethical counterpart of the Master's qualifier "even if by one chance in ten": leaving what is doubtful protects a person.

In the literature of kalam and creed there is a famous example of this calculation. ʿAlī al-Qārī, in his commentary on al-Fiqh al-Akbar, explaining that "caution lies in faith" on the matter of belief in the Hereafter, relates this couplet and attributes it to ʿAlī: "The astrologer and the physician, both of them, claimed that the dead will not be raised. And I said to them: if your word is true, I do not lose; if my word is true, the loss is yours." This couplet is a complete summary of the Third Word's calculation. And pay attention to the word choice: "khāsir" and "khasār," the loser and the loss. The same root as the word "khasāra" in the Master's first sentence. Rashīd Riḍā, too, in Tafsīr al-Manār, reminds a young man who did not fast of this couplet. Ibn al-Qayyim relates the same couplet in Madārij al-Sālikīn, but makes a subtle distinction: the Companions built their deeds not on doubt and hesitation but on certainty; the path of caution in this couplet is a bridge for someone in doubt. This distinction is very important, and the Master's calculation observes exactly this distinction. We will see it shortly.

In Western thought there is also a famous counterpart of this calculation: the "wager" argument of the French mathematician and thinker Pascal. In his work called the Pensées, Pascal says: reason cannot decide on the existence of God; it is as if a coin were being tossed. But you must play. And when there is an infinitely happy life to be won, it is foolish to hesitate to stake something finite. At first glance the Third Word's calculation resembles Pascal's wager. But there are three great differences. The first: in Pascal the chances are equal, heads or tails. In the Master, the chance is nine to one. The second: in Pascal the chance is an unknowable uncertainty; in the Master the chance rests on evidence, as we will see shortly. The third: in Pascal the wager is only for the Hereafter; in the Master the road of worship also brings gain in this world. He says "without benefit, even by the admission of the dissolute himself"; that is, the road of vice, even by the admission of the one who walks it, gains nothing in this world. The result: in the Master's calculation, even if the wager is lost, nothing is lost.

“...it is established by the testimony of countless experts and eyewitnesses at the level of consensus and tawātur, and it is certain by the reports of the people of spiritual taste and unveiling.” This is the point where we part from Pascal. The Master's "nine chances" is not a guess; it rests on testimony. And he brings this testimony from two sources: "the people of expertise and observation" and "the people of spiritual taste and unveiling."

First, the word tawātur. Al-Rāghib defines tawātur as "things coming one by one, one after another," and brings the verse in Sūrat al-Muʾminūn: "Then We sent Our messengers in succession." "Tatrā." Al-Jurjānī gives the technical definition: "Tawātur is a report established on the tongues of a group whose agreeing on a lie is inconceivable." The legal theorist al-Juwaynī, in al-Burhān, stresses a condition of tawātur: the report must be transmitted by the same multitude not only at the first source but in every generation; "the one end, the middle and the other end must be equal." Logicians too count mass-transmitted reports among the premises that yield certainty. Al-Ghazālī, in Miḥakk al-Naẓar, says it is a mistake to limit tawātur to a specific number. Ibn Taymiyya, in al-Radd ʿala'l-Manṭiqiyyīn, adds a subtle point: mass-transmitted reports rest on something heard or seen being known through the senses.

The word ijmāʿ, consensus, is also one of the basic concepts of legal theory. The Māturīdī legal theorist al-Samarqandī, in Mīzān al-Uṣūl, discusses at length consensus being a proof; he also relates the objection of al-Naẓẓām of the Muʿtazila and the view of the Imāmiyya. When the Master says "at the level of consensus and tawātur," he uses these two concepts as a measure of degree: the testimony is at the level that legal theory accepts as certain knowledge.

So who are these witnesses? "The people of expertise and observation." Al-Munāwī defines the word ikhtiṣāṣ like this: "A favor that appoints a person to a rank in which he alone is found." That is, the specialists of a field. And the Qur'an commands those who do not know to ask the specialist: "If you do not know, ask the people of remembrance." Al-Ṭabarī explains this as asking those who have read the previous scriptures. And the word mushāhada, according to al-Rāghib, is "seeing together with presence, either with the eye or with insight." That is, the people of observation are those who tell what they have seen.

Here a known principle of legal theory comes into play: "Al-muthbitu muqaddamun ʿala'n-nāfī," the one who affirms takes precedence over the one who denies. The Mālikī jurist al-Dasūqī applies this principle. Why? Because the one who says "I saw" reports a piece of knowledge; the one who says "I did not see" reports only his own lack of knowledge. If a hundred people say "there is a city there, I saw it," a thousand people saying "I did not see it" does not make that city disappear. The Master's expression "the testimony of countless experts and eyewitnesses" rests on this principle. And elsewhere, in the Words, the Master openly mentions a principle of kalam too: "A possibility that does not arise from evidence has no weight." That is, saying "perhaps they are mistaken," if it does not rest on evidence, is not a possibility; it adds no doubt to certain knowledge.

Now let us return to the elephant parable we told in the introduction. Al-Ghazālī's blind men were describing the elephant differently: one as a column, one as a pole, one as a thick hide. But al-Ghazālī had a sentence: "None of them went beyond the elephant's attributes in what he said." They all agreed that it was an elephant. This is how the testimony of the experts is. Prophets, Companions, exegetes, hadith scholars, jurists, saints; each has touched one aspect of the truth. Their descriptions differ; but none of them has said, "there is nothing there." The point on which they all agree is the point the Master calls "consensus and tawātur." And if someone comes out saying "there is no elephant in the room," he is not one who partly sees, but one who has never touched it. The one who affirms takes precedence over the one who denies.

The second group of witnesses: "the people of spiritual taste and unveiling." Al-Rāghib explains the word dhawq like this: "It is finding a taste with the mouth; originally it is for something tasted a little; for much, eating is used." Al-Jurjānī describes the dhawq of gnosis as "a light of knowing cast into the heart." Kashf, according to al-Munāwī, is lexically "lifting the veil," and technically "becoming acquainted with the unseen meanings behind the veil." Al-Kalābādhī relates that Sahl al-Tustarī defined certainty as "mukāshafa," and recalls the famous saying: "If the veil were lifted, my certainty would not increase." ʿAlī al-Qārī, interpreting this saying, makes a subtle distinction: this saying expresses that the essence of certainty would not increase; but it is also true that seeing is stronger than knowing. Like Abraham wanting to see how the dead are brought to life, "so that my heart may be at rest." That is, the people of taste and unveiling know by tasting and seeing what others know as reports. The Master brings the testimony from two sources: the observation of those who look from outside and the taste of those who taste from within. One the testimony of the eye, one of the heart. Lantern and light together.

In this sentence of the Master's there is a summary of the kalam method he describes in the Letters and in the Emirdağ Addendum. In the Emirdağ Addendum he says: accepting the unproven words of great figures gives, logically, not certainty but a strong supposition. Decisive proof, however, looks not to persons but to irrefutable evidence. The Risale-i Nur has opened a way, within knowledge and with logical proofs, to the truths of faith that the saints saw through worship and spiritual discipline. The Third Word's final calculation is a small example of this: a calculation of probability, but with tawātur, consensus and unveiling behind it; a wager, but with witnesses behind it.

“In short, the happiness of this world, like that of the Hereafter, also lies in worship and in being a soldier of God. So we should always say 'Alḥamdu lillāhi ʿala'ṭ-ṭāʿati wa't-tawfīq' and give thanks that we are Muslims.” Elhāsıl: what results, the conclusion. And the conclusion is two words: worship and being a soldier of God.

“Being a soldier of God.” The Qur'an gives the counterpart of this expression. The last verse of Sūrat al-Mujādila describes believers who do not hold affection even for their relatives against God, and ends like this: "They are the party of God. Know that the party of God are the very ones who succeed." Qāḍī al-Bayḍāwī explains the word "ḥizb Allāh" like this: "His soldiers and the helpers of His religion." Ibn Kathīr says "God's servants and the people of His honor," and recalls the verse opposite to it: "Know that the party of Satan are the very ones who are losers." The losers, al-khāsirūn. We have returned to the word "khasāra" in the Third Word's first sentence. The Word closes with the word it began with: God's soldiers succeed, Satan's soldiers suffer loss. And in Sūrat al-Ṣāffāt: "And Our soldiers, they will surely be the victors." Al-Zamakhsharī explains this as "their overcoming their enemies on the fields of proof and on the fields of battle."

“Alḥamdu lillāhi ʿala'ṭ-ṭāʿati wa't-tawfīq.” Praise be to God for obedience and for success granted. Why is God praised for obedience? Isn't obedience our own doing? Here is the subtlety of kalam. The root of the word tawfīq is wāw-fā-qāf. Ibn Fāris explains it as "two things fitting each other." Al-Jurjānī gives the technical definition: "Tawfīq is God's making His servant's act conform to what He loves and is pleased with." That is, if obedience is our march, tawfīq is that march coinciding with God's pleasure. And the One who brings about that coincidence is God. The scholars of kalam have debated this at length. Imam al-Ashʿarī lists the views in Maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn: according to some, tawfīq is a reward God creates together with the servant's faith. According to al-Jubbāʾī of the Muʿtazila, tawfīq is a grace that God knows will be a means to the servant's faith. Whichever view one takes, the result is the same: the servant owes even his obedience to God's tawfīq. In Sūrat Hūd, Shuʿayb says: "My success is only through God; in Him alone I have put my trust, and to Him alone I turn." Ibn Kathīr relates that ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz wrote this verse at the end of his letters.

And gratitude. The Qur'an tells us the first words of those who enter Paradise: "Praise be to God, who guided us to this. Had God not guided us, we would not have found the right way." Al-Ṭabarī explains this verse of Sūrat al-Aʿrāf: the people of Paradise say these words when they see what God has honored them with and the punishment He has kept away from them. The first words in Paradise are thanks for guidance. The Master too closes the Word with thanks for guidance: "we should give thanks that we are Muslims." Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, in his tafsir of the verse in Sūrat al-Māʾida, "This day I have perfected your religion for you and completed My favor upon you," says: "Islam is a blessing. One proof of this is the famous saying that passes on the tongue of the community: Alḥamdu lillāhi ʿalā niʿmati'l-Islām, praise be to God for the blessing of Islam." And in Sūrat Ibrāhīm: "If you give thanks, I will surely give you more." Al-Ṭabarī relates this interpretation from Ibn al-Mubārak: "That is, I will give you more of obedience to Me." Gratitude brings more obedience. Al-Kalābādhī also relates the saying of al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī: "To the one who gives thanks, God increases tawfīq; and he increases his thanks." Obedience, tawfīq, gratitude and obedience again. A circle. The Master's closing prayer is the name of this circle.

Now let us walk the whole road backward. We read a one-page Word. In it were verses of al-Baqarah, Fāṭir, al-Ṣaff, al-Tawbah, al-ʿAṣr, al-Balad, al-Anʿām, al-Nisāʾ, al-Maʿārij, al-Anbiyāʾ and al-Mujādila. There were hadiths of Bukhārī, Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, al-Tirmidhī, al-Nasāʾī, Ibn Mājah, Imam Aḥmad and Imam Mālik. There were the tafsirs of al-Ṭabarī, al-Rāzī, al-Qurṭubī, Ibn Kathīr, al-Zamakhsharī and al-Bayḍāwī. The kalam of al-Ashʿarī, al-Māturīdī and al-Ījī; the fiqh of Ibn ʿĀbidīn, al-Marghīnānī, al-Shāfiʿī and al-Māwardī; the legal theory of al-Shāṭibī, al-Juwaynī and al-Samarqandī; the ethics of al-Ghazālī, Ibn Miskawayh, Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Kalābādhī and al-Muḥāsibī; the lexicography of al-Rāghib, Ibn Fāris, al-Jurjānī and al-Munāwī; the sīra of Tabūk, Badr and Ḥamrāʾ al-Asad. And the Master mentioned none of them. He only told of two soldiers, a fork in the road, a pack, a rifle, a comet and a calculation.

This is the secret of the filter. A great truth was filtered to be told to the people. Its heaviness was taken away, its essence was left. Like an essence, like a nourishing essence. Remember, the pack of the soldier on the right was full of nourishing essences, of nutritious and filtered extracts. The Third Word itself is such a pack. It weighs four okka, but inside it is the essence of a library. And the one who carries that pack, according to the Master's promise, walks with his heart freed from thousands of batmans of indebtedness and fear. What we have done was to open that pack and show its contents one by one. Now we can close it again and take it on our backs. Is it heavy? Outwardly, a little. But in its meaning, there is an indescribable lightness.

Alḥamdu lillāhi ʿala'ṭ-ṭāʿati wa't-tawfīq.