The Pardoner

Meaning

From ʻ-f-w. Ibn Fāris: two origins, leaving a thing and seeking it; Allah’s pardon of His creation is His leaving them, not punishing them, as a bounty from Him, and a trace is said to ʻafā when it is left untended until the days hide it. Aṭ-Ṭabarī at 4:149: He has never ceased to pardon His servants while able to punish them. ʻAfuww, the Name’s form, stands 5 times, all of Allah, 4 with ghafūr and once with qadīr. Of the root’s 35 words, 19 are said of Allah, 13 of people, and 3 mean surplus or increase. The supplication for Laylat al-Qadr: O Allah, You are Pardoning and love to pardon, so pardon me (Ibn Mājah 3850).

Root ʻ-f-w — leaving a thing

Counted on the Tanzil text, every word read in its verse: ʻ-f-w 35 words, 66 look-alikes excluded (ḍ-ʻ-f, ʻ-r-f, ʻ-k-f, ʻ-ṣ-f). ʻAfuww 5, all of Allah: with ghafūr at 4:43, 4:99, 22:60 and 58:2; with qadīr at 4:149. The verb with Allah as doer 13 (2:52, 2:187, 3:152, 3:155, 4:99, 4:153, 5:95, 5:101, 9:43, 9:66, 42:25, 42:30, 42:34), and asked of Him at 2:286. Of people 13 (2:109, 2:178, 2:237 three times, 3:134, 3:159, 4:149, 5:13, 5:15, 24:22, 42:40, 64:14), the Prophet ﷺ at 3:159, 5:13 and 5:15; with ṣafḥ at 2:109, 5:13, 24:22 and 64:14. Surplus or increase 3 (2:219, 7:95, 7:199). Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs (Hārūn 4/56–58): leaving and seeking; al-ʻāfiyah, Allah’s defending of the servant, in the same bāb; ʻafā of a trace worn away and of hair grown long are not opposites, both being leaving. Aṭ-Ṭabarī: at 4:43 and 4:99 ʻafuww is leaving the punishment, ghafūr covering the sins; at 4:149 qadīr is power to take retribution; at 22:60 the pardon is for the wronged man who retaliates; at 2:219 al-ʻafw is the surplus; at 7:95 ʻafaw is they grew many. The six ḥadīth editions: al-ʻafuww only in the lists at at-Tirmidhī 3507 and Ibn Mājah 3861; ʻafuwwun of Allah only in the Laylat al-Qadr supplication (Ibn Mājah 3850; at-Tirmidhī 3513, with karīm); bi-ʻafwika at an-Nasāʼī 5534 and 1346; al-ʻafw asked with al-ʻāfiyah at at-Tirmidhī 3558, Abū Dāwūd 5074 and Ibn Mājah 3871, and in two ḍaʻīf records of Ibn Mājah. Duʻāʼ: Ibn Mājah 3850; an-Nasāʼī 5534. Reports: al-Bukhārī 6927; al-Bukhārī 4750; Muslim 2588; at-Tirmidhī 3558.

Story

Every debt in the district was written in Zuhayr’s ledgers, and he was known to be fair and utterly exact. So when he announced, in the year the crops failed twice, that he was canceling the small debts, nobody was surprised by the mercy. Everyone was baffled by the method.

He did not write paid. He did not rule a line through the entries and initial the margin, the debt still legible beneath the ink, the record preserved and available to anyone who turned back a page. He carried the pages into the yard and burned them in front of the men who owed, and had new books made in which those men had never owed anything at all.

It cost him more than the debts had. A ledger is a form of security. Burning those pages meant he could never afterward prove what he had been owed, which mattered a great deal in the spring, when his own creditors came to look through his books. He did it anyway, and did not explain himself to them.

One of the debtors — a man who had been kept small by what he owed, for two years, in a district where everyone knew — watched a page curl and asked why the fire was necessary.

“Because if I cross it out,” Zuhayr said, “you are still a man whose debt I forgave. Every time we meet, for the rest of our lives, that is who you will be. I would rather have a neighbor.”

The man began to say something about Allah rewarding him for it. Zuhayr did not take it. “I am not being generous,” he said. “I am hoping. There is a page somewhere with my name at the top of it, and I would like it burned rather than crossed out. It seemed unreasonable to want that and then hand you the ink.”

In the autumn, the same man argued with him for an hour over the price of barley, and won, and neither of them thought about it afterward. That was the whole of what the fire had been for.

Poem

She asked the practical question.
If I come to know which night it is —
the night better than a thousand months,
better than eighty-three years of every other night —
what do I say in it?
Not what should I ask for. What do I say.
As though she already understood
that the night would be too large to improvise in.

He could have taught her anything.
Whatever is said in that night is said into all of it.
He might have given her a petition for the Garden,
or for her household, or for the sick of the city,
or for the Muslims east and west of her, named one by one
until the sun came up on the last of them.

What he gave her was one sentence,
and the sentence asks for nothing to be given.
O Allah, You are Pardoning
and love to pardon,
so pardon me.
The best night of the year, and the whole of the request
is to be let go.

Because the root is leaving.
Ground no foot has walked on is ʻafw.
A camp is said to ʻafā when it is left
and no one tends it, and the days close over it.
And His pardon of the ones He made
is His leaving them, and not punishing —
a bounty, and nothing He owed.

And see where the Book sets it, so no one mistakes it for weakness:
ʻAfuwwan Qadīrā — Pardoning, and Able.
Not the mercy of a man forgiving a debt
he was never going to collect.
Every power kept. None of it spent on you.

And do not hurry past the middle clause,
the one we recite and do not hear:
You love to pardon.
Not: You permit it. Not: You allow it, under conditions, on application.
You love it.
The night is one night.
The loving is not.

Reflection

The Erasure

The root is leaving. Ibn Fāris gives ʻ-f-w two origins, leaving a thing and seeking it, and puts Allah’s pardon under the first: His ʻafw of His creation is His leaving them, not punishing them, as a bounty from Him. The rest of the word hangs on the same thread. Ground no foot has trodden is ʻafw; a camp is said to ʻafā when it is left and no one tends it, until the passing days hide it; hair left uncut ʻafā, it grew — which is how the Qurʼan can say of a people, until they increased, ʻafaw. And when the Qurʼan is asked what should be spent, the answer is the same word: the surplus, what is left over. Aṭ-Ṭabarī reads the Name and its partner the same way. At 4:43 ʻafuww is His leaving the punishment for many sins, and ghafūr His covering them by not hastening the punishment. The Qurʼan sets pardon beside overlooking four times, and each time it is asked of people. In the commentator the three verbs do not compete; each is said by way of the others, and all of them leave the punishment.

This is not a Name known only from the enumerated list. It stands in the Qurʼan five times in its exact form, and all five are His. Four times He is ʻAfuww, Ghafūr. And once, in a verse telling people to pardon, He is ʻAfuwwan Qadīrā: Pardoning, and Able. Aṭ-Ṭabarī reads the pairing plainly: He has never ceased to pardon His servants while able to punish them for disobeying Him — so pardon, you too, whoever wronged you, even when you are able to harm him, as your Lord pardons you with His power to punish you. That is the guard on the whole Name. Much human pardon is incapacity in good clothing: we release what we could never have collected. His is pardon with the power to take retribution intact. Mercy from One who could not do otherwise would be no mercy at all. It would only be a limit.

And there is a night attached to this Name, and it tells you what He considers worth asking for. ʻĀʼishah asked the Messenger ﷺ a practical question: if she came to know which night was Laylat al-Qadr, what should she say in it? A night the Qurʼan values above a thousand months — above eighty-three years of ordinary nights. Anything said in it is said into that. He taught her one sentence: O Allah, You are Pardoning and love to pardon, so pardon me. Notice what the best night of the year was not spent on. Not wealth, not health, not even, in that sentence, the Garden. The request is to be pardoned: to be let go, and not punished. And notice the middle clause, which in the poem at this Name is the one we recite and do not hear — not You permit pardon, not You allow it under conditions and on application. You love it. The Name is joined to a stated divine love, and that is a different thing from a divine tolerance.

Be exact about what is pardoned, because devotion goes wrong here in two directions. It is not that He forgets; His knowledge is perfect and is diminished by nothing. What is left is the punishment, which is what the lexicon and the commentator both say the word means. And He does more than remove. Of one who repents, believes, and does righteous work, the Qurʼan says something larger than being let go: for those, Allah will replace their evil deeds with good ones. Not a cleared account — a reversed one. But the second direction of error is the one that flatters us more, so guard it harder: this is not an amnesty. What is owed to another servant remains that servant’s to release. The report at the previous Name, of the bankrupt one, settles what was taken from a man out of the good deeds of the man who took it. Everything the previous Name established still stands. There are two doors here, and only one of them is His alone.

Which leaves the mechanism, and it was demonstrated once in a way nobody has improved on. Abū Bakr had been supporting a relative, Misṭaḥ, who then took part in spreading the slander against Abū Bakr’s own daughter. He swore he would never spend on the man again — and no one has ever had a better case. Then came the verse: let them pardon and overlook. Do you not love that Allah should forgive you? And Abū Bakr said: Yes, by Allah, I love that Allah should forgive me — and restored the spending, and swore he would never withhold it. That is the entire logic, and it is not a technique for feeling lighter. It is a trade offered by One who is under no obligation to offer it. You are asking, tonight, for a page burned rather than crossed out — which is what the man in the story wanted for himself. Go and burn one. Not ruled through with the debt still legible underneath, and not filed where you can reach for it the next time you argue — burned, so that the person is a neighbor again and not a debtor, and so that what you are asking for is something you have shown you actually understand.

He does not merely permit pardon; He loves it. Ask Him tonight to pardon you — and pardon one debt of your own before you ask.

Qurʼan

Dua

Hadith

Study Notes