What does “yahsabu anna maalahu akhladah” mean (Qur’an 104:3)?
“Yahsabu anna maalahu akhladah” is the third verse of Surah Al-Humazah, and it reads: “thinking his wealth will make him live forever.” [Qur’an 104:3]. In Arabic it is written يَحْسَبُ أَنَّ مَالَهُۥٓ أَخْلَدَهُۥ. Word by word: “yaḥsabu” is a present-tense verb from the root ḥ-s-b, to reckon or to work a sum out; “anna” introduces the thing reckoned; “mālahu” is his wealth; and “akhladah” comes from the root kh-l-d, permanence, in the form that means to make something last without end. Arabic puts “akhladah” in the perfect, the tense of a thing already settled, for an outcome that has not happened at all. The grammar is carrying the man’s own certainty.
The verse sits third in a surah of nine. It opens “Woe to every slanderer and backbiter,” (104:1) and names him at once as one “who amasses wealth and counts it over and over,” (104:2), so the tally of 104:2 and the reckoning of 104:3 are one habit applied to two different objects. The correction follows immediately: “No! He will surely be flung into hutama.” (104:4), then “And what will make you know what hutama is?” (104:5) and its answer, “the fire of God, kindled,” (104:6), “rising over the hearts.” (104:7). The last two verses close it: “It will close in upon them,” (104:8) “in outstretched columns.” (104:9). A chapter that opened on a man counting ends with a door shut.
“Akhlada” in this exact form occurs once more in the Qur’an, in Al-A‘raf, about a man who was given signs and let them go: “he clung to the earth and followed his lower self's desire” (7:176). The rest of the root builds the vocabulary of lasting life. Al-Anbiya answers the wish for it directly: “And we granted no human before you everlasting life.” (21:34). It is the word Satan reached for with Adam, offering “the tree of immortality and to a kingdom that never fades” (20:120), and the word Al-Furqan restores to its proper object, “the garden of eternity promised to the God-conscious” (25:15). Permanence is real in the Qur’an, and it is given rather than accumulated.
The verb “yaḥsabu” returns wherever the Qur’an describes someone reading his own prosperity as a verdict already delivered. Al-Mu’minun puts the question to a whole people: “Do they think that in the wealth and sons we provide them” (23:55) “that we are rushing to give them every good thing? No — they have no perception.” (23:56). At-Takathur names the absorption itself: “The race for more has distracted you,” (102:1) “until you visit the graves.” (102:2). Three verses run the accounting forward to the point where it settles: “and his wealth will not avail him when he plunges down.” (92:11), “Neither his wealth nor what he earned will avail him.” (111:2), and the words of a man left holding his own record, “My wealth has been of no use to me,” (69:28). Al-‘Alaq states where the posture starts: “the human being truly transgresses” (96:6) “when he sees himself as self-sufficient.” (96:7).
Who the surah describes is answered in more than one way by the commentators. Some early reports attach the verses to a named man in Mecca, and several different names are transmitted. Others read the opening “every” as deliberately open, a description built to fit whoever it fits, on which reading naming one person narrows what the surah left wide. Both positions are held, and the text itself names nobody. The pair “humaza” and “lumaza” is read in more than one way as well, sometimes as two distinct injuries, one by gesture and one by tongue, and sometimes as a single habit said twice for weight. What the verse corrects is the reckoning; wealth keeps the place Al-Kahf gives it, “Wealth and children are the adornment of this worldly life, but the enduring good deeds are better in your Lord's sight” (18:46), with the comparison stated plainly in Al-A‘la, “yet the hereafter is better and more lasting.” (87:17).
📖 Source: Qur’an 104:1–9; 7:176; 21:34; 20:120; 25:15; 23:55–56; 102:1–2; 92:11; 111:2; 69:28; 96:6–7; 18:46; 87:17
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