Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 30 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:30

وَظِلٍّ مَّمْدُودٍ

“And shade extended”

Saheeh International

Essence

Shade is one thing screening another, and the word for extended is the word for a river swelled by a second river.

A reflection

Shade is a screening, and extending is a feeding

A shepherd at noon does not move a flock to grass. He moves it to shade, and the animals go willingly, because in real heat shade is not a comfort but the condition for staying alive.

Both words of this ayah are more exact than English allows.

One lexicon gives the first root a single sense: one thing screening another. A man's ẓill is his shade, and any place the sun has not reached is ẓill. The lexicons note that this is wider than fayʾ, which belongs only to the afternoon. Night itself is called a ẓill. A ẓulla is the first cloud that shades, or anything standing over you like a canopy. The mountain was raised over a people like a ẓulla.

So shade is not darkness and not coolness. It is something interposed.

The second word is stranger. Madd is drawing a thing out lengthwise, like a rope pulled long. And it is also feeding a thing with more of its own kind: a river is madd when another stream pours in and swells it. Whatever supplies a thing with more of itself is its mādda. Ink is midād, drawn out with water, and the pen keeps drawing from it.

So mamdūd is not merely long. It is kept supplied.

Put the two together and the ayah says something that no single English word reaches. A screening that is continuously fed, like a river that has another river running into it.

The commentaries read it exactly so. Lasting, remaining, not removed, and the sun does not cancel it. One early authority says simply: it does not end. Another, that there is no sun in it and no heat, like the time before dawn rises. And a grammarian notes that the Arabs called a long age, a long life, and anything that does not break off mamdūd.

Which is why the ayah does not say "cool shade". It says shade with a supply.

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.