Lesson 16 of 16 · The patterns behind the words
When…, then…
أُسْلُوب الشَّرْط
After this lesson: Follow a long chain of 'when' clauses to the answer that completes them.
Idhā means 'when' for something expected to happen; in means 'if' for something merely possible. Either way the clause is unfinished — it is waiting for its answer, the jawāb, which says what will then be the case.
Sūrat al-Zalzalah opens with three idhā clauses before the answer arrives: when the earth is shaken, when it throws out its burdens, when man says 'what is with it?' — on that Day it will report its news.
Getting this shape right changes how a sūrah reads. The dramatic opening lines are the setting; the point is always in the answer clause, and the delay is what gives it weight.
In the Qur'an
إِذَا زُلْزِلَتِ ٱلْأَرْضُ زِلْزَالَهَا
idhā zulzilati l-arḍu zilzālahā
When the earth is shaken with its quaking.
Notice. The clause that opens the sūrah — and does not resolve until āyah 4.
إِذَا جَآءَ نَصْرُ ٱللَّهِ وَٱلْفَتْحُ
idhā jāʾa naṣru llāhi wa-l-fatḥ
When the help of Allah comes, and the victory.
Notice. Here the answer comes quickly: glorify your Lord and seek His forgiveness.
Check yourself
Nothing is scored or saved here — answering is how the rule sticks. When you want a score, the same checks are drilled to mastery below.
What is the jawāb of a conditional?
What is the difference between idhā and in?
Word morphology, grammar and syntax trees are shown by the Quranic Arabic Corpus (corpus.quran.com), the annotated linguistic resource developed at the University of Leeds.