Tafseer of The Resurrection · Al-Qiyaama · 75:11
No! There is no refuge.
Important: The Arabic source text is always authoritative. This translation is a study aid and has not been verified by scholars — do not use it as a basis for religious proof or for deriving rulings (ahkam). When in doubt, always consult the Arabic text and a qualified scholar.
His statement: يَقُولُ الإنْسَانُ يَوْمَئِذٍ أَيْنَ الْمَفَرُّ ("Man will say on that Day: Where is the place of flight?") (75:10) — with a fatḥa on the fāʾ. Thus the reciters of the great cities read it, because the ʿayn in its verb carries a kasra. And when the ʿayn of the imperfect (yafʿilu) carries a kasra, the Arabs place a fatḥa in its verbal noun (maṣdar) when they pronounce it according to the pattern mafʿal; thus they say: farra — yafirru — mafarran, which means the same as farran ("to flee"), as the poet said:
O Bakr, bring Kulayb back to life for me! O Bakr, where, where is the flight (al-firār)? (10)
When one intends this meaning by mafʿal, one says: ayna l-mafarru, with a fatḥa on the fāʾ. The same applies to al-madabb, derived from dabba — yadibbu, as someone said:
It is as though the remnants of the track over his back are the crawling-trail (madabb) of the locusts over the sand-dune, while he grazes. (11)
It is sometimes also recited with a kasra on the dāl, but the fatḥa therein is more frequent. The Arabs sometimes pronounce it thus, and then it is a maṣdar with a kasra on the ʿayn. Al-Farrāʾ claimed that they are two linguistic variants (lughatān), and that one has heard: "he came over the madabb of the stream" and "the madibb of the stream," and "in his shirt there is a maṣaḥḥ and a maṣiḥḥ." As for the Basran grammarians: they place in the verbal noun a fatḥa on the ʿayn of mafʿal when the verb follows the pattern yafʿil, and they permit a kasra therein only when by mafʿal one intends the place to which one flees. The same applies to al-maḍrab: the place where one strikes, when the rāʾ takes a kasra. It is transmitted from Ibn ʿAbbās that he used to read this with a kasra on the fāʾ, and that he said: al-mafirr means only: the mafirr of the mount, namely the place to which it flees.
The reading beside which I permit no other is the fatḥa on the fāʾ of al-mafarr, on account of the consensus of the authoritative proof of the reciters regarding it, and because that is the well-known expression among the Arabs when one intends thereby flight — and here it is precisely flight that is intended. The explanation of the words is: man says, on the day he beholds the terrors of the Day of Resurrection: where is there to flee from the terror of what has now descended — while there is no escape.
