Question:
Assalamu alaykum. Thank you for your time and effort, may Allah reward you with the best reward.
I wanted to know the meaning of “meeting of the two seas” from The Qur’an (e.g. Qur’an 18:60). I don’t have a shaykh so I’m asking here. Also if possible to explain, what is meant with “water” and “winds that bring good tidings” in The Qur’an? I hope you can answer this insha’Allah. May He bring you closer to Him. Thank you.
Answer:
wa `alaykum salam,
And you also.
The basic explanation of the geo-physical barzakh you are asking about is that it consists of (i) inland estuaries or (ii) offshore boundaries between freshwater currents and saline surroundings.
The great Andalusian exegete of Qur’an Ibn `Atiyya (d. 546/ca. 1151) said in his commentary on the verse 25:53 {And it is He who has let loose the two seas}:
<<People have given discrepant explanations of this verse. Ibn `Abbas said, “He means the sea of clouds and the sea that is on the earth, and the wording of the verse was arranged accordingly.” Mujahid said: “The freshwater sea is the water of the rivers that pour into the salt sea. Its pouring into it is its being let loose. The barrier and the partition are a wall of which Allah [alone] knows, invisible to human beings.” Al-Zajjaj said the same. According to another group, the meaning of let loose is ‘He made one perdure inside the other,’ while according to Ibn `Abbas it means, ‘He left one on top of the other.’ There are other such views that are more or less connected to part of the wording of the verse. My own view of the verse is that its purport is to warn us of the power of Allah and how consummately He creates things, in that He has let forth sweet waters in abundance in the earth in the form of rivers, springs, and wells, putting bitter waters next to them and vice-versa. Thus you can see the sea with sweet waters embracing it on both its shores, and you can see sweet water inside islands and the like with bitter salt waters embracing them. . . and by the two seas He means all [bodies of] sweet water and all [those of] salt water.>>
In addition to the geo-physical understanding of the barzakh phenomenon, the arch-imam of exegetes Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (543-606/1148-1209) in his great commentary Mafatih al-Ghayb saw the water barzakh as a symbol for the dam between a human being’s higher and lower selves that leads—if unbroken—to the extraction of pearls and coral, in terms somewhat similar to Plato’s allegory of the charioteer of the soul (Phaedrus 253c-254e) endeavoring to steer the white horse of the spirit yoked to the black horse of animality in the direction of safety:
<<The believer, also, [has] two seas in his heart: the sea of faith and wisdom, and the sea of tyranny and lust. He [Allah], with the success that He [alone] grants, has placed between the two of them a barrier so that one will not ruin the other. One of the wise said, commenting on His saying {He let loose the two seas that meet with a barrier between them they do not break} (55:19-20): “When the barrier is not broken, {From them emerge pearl and coral} (55:22).” Thus, when there is no transgression in the heart, religion and faith emerge with gratitude.>>
The contemporary Tunisian master al-Tahir b. `Ashur (d. 1339/1973) in his commentary al-Tahrir wal-Tanwir gave another figurative exegesis (tafsir ishari) of the water barzakh as
<<an allegory (tamthil) of the state of the call to Islam in Makka at the time [i.e. when Surat al-Furqan was revealed], with the intermixing of the believers with the pagans, . . . faith being represented by the sweet and thirst-quenching and paganism by the saltish and bitter (25:53). Just as Allah Most High has set a barrier between the two seas, preserving the sweet one from being tainted by the bitter one, similarly, He has put a block between the Muslims and the pagans so that the latter cannot spread their unbelief among the Muslims. There is in this a boost for the Muslims, telling them that Allah shall bar the harm of the pagans from coming their way just as He said {They will not harm you save a trifling hurt} (3:111); there is also an oblique reference (ta`rid kina’i) to the fact that Allah helps this Religion lest paganism taint it.>>
Hajj Gibril Haddad
