﴿ وَمَآ أَدْرَىٰكَ مَا ٱلطَّارِقُ ﴾

“And what could make thee conceive what it is that comes in the night?”

And what will tell you what the night-visitor is? mā’l-tāriq is a subject and predicate standing as the second object of the verb adrā ‘tell’; and what comes after the first mā ‘what’ is the predicate thereof of this first mā — this statement emphasises the magnificence of the ‘night-visitor’ which is explained in what follows. It is