ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Mercy of Qur'an and the Advent of Zaman - Commentary On Four Suras Supplement 3 43 This is the hell which the guilty call a lie. 44 Round about they will go, between it and hot, boiling water. 45 Which then of the bounties of your Lord will you deny? Jahannam is the final abode of those who are in the fire. It is jahnim the bottomless pit. Those who are in the fire have tasted a bit of it in this life but denied its reality.

Everyone in this life has tasted it. If man had not tasted it, it would be meaningless to him. Sayyidna Adam, alayhi-s-salam, had not experienced a lie, so when shaytan told him to taste the fruit, to wish for something else, to be discontent, he did not know better and believed him. But this is not the case with us. We have tasted the fire and the garden. If we did not know these things there would be incongruity in the balance.

Everyone knows the meaning of uncertainty, disturbance, agitation, fear, anxiety, hatred and anger - all of these are fire. If man leaves them in himself long enough, they can create a stomach ulcer, which is an internal fire. It has been found that having a burning stomach is far more disturbing than having burnt skin, because it is internal, and therefore more potent. The fire is the lot of the criminal who has committed crimes against himself and yet denies them.

Yatufuna is from tafa, to walk about, to wander around. Tawwaf is derived from it and means going around in circles, circumambulating. The inhabitants of the fire move from burning hot to boiling water. Tawf is a wall encompassing a garden. A word which echoes tafa, that is, which has a different root while sounding very similar, is tayf, which means shadow, dream or fantasy.

In the Arabic language, certain words sound very similar to others, a phenom­enon which evokes a subliminal association in meaning. If one hears tawwaf one might, quite naturally, recall tawf and tayf, though they are known to have specifically different meanings. It is like going into a multi-screen circular theater which screens many films simultaneously: you are forced to glance at the screens closest to the film you are viewing.

The root system of the Arabic language is a vast receptacle of meanings. All the words of a similar sound have the potential to lead one to a single root, as the example of tawf and tayf illustrates.