Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 64 of 78

Ar-Rahman 55:64

مُدْهَآمَّتَانِ

“Dark green [in color].”

Saheeh International

Essence

A single word stands as a whole ayah: a green so deep with water that it reads as black, the desert's colour for life.

A reflection

Black smudges seen from a plane window

Most translations give this ayah as 'dark green', and most readers pass over it as a detail of colour. A nice touch of scenery between more important things.

To the first hearers it was not scenery. It was the most valuable colour on earth.

The word is mudhāmmatān, and its root is duhma, blackness. The lexicons list a black horse, a blackened cooking pot, the darkness of the twenty-ninth night. Then they add a use that every farmer knew. A crop was said to turn duhma when abundant watering spread black over its green.

The early authorities say the same thing again and again. Green from abundant water, so green it has turned almost black. One commentary adds that the Arabs called any deep green black. The farmed villages of Iraq were called al-Sawād, the Black, for the density of their greenery. Another commentary says that land without crops was called white, and cultivated land was called black.

Now look out of a plane window over a desert. Mile after mile of pale sand and rock. Then, far below, dark circles and patches, almost black against the beige. They are not shadows. They are fields, so thick with water and growth that from the air they read as night.

That is what mudhāmmatān meant to its first hearers. Not a shade of paint. The colour of water winning against the desert. The colour of being alive.

So the ayah is not decoration. In a single word it tells you that these gardens will never be thirsty. They are so saturated, so fed, so deep in life, that their green has gone past green.

The refrain after it asks which favour you would deny. For a desert people, this one word was the answer to a prayer.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.