Al-Muzzammil · Makki · ayah 6 of 20

Al-Muzzammil 73:6

إِنَّ نَاشِئَةَ ٱلَّيْلِ هِىَ أَشَدُّ وَطْـًٔا وَأَقْوَمُ قِيلًا

“Indeed, the hours of the night are more effective for concurrence [of heart and tongue][1780] and more suitable for words.[1781]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The hours that rise in the night give firmer footing and clearer speech: heart and tongue agree when the day's noise falls away.

A reflection

What rises in the night

Nāshiʾat al-layl. A phrase with no exact English equivalent. The root pictures a cloud lifting on the horizon, a child growing up stage by stage. Something coming into being, rising, one phase after another.

The commentators read it in several ways, all drawn from that root.

Some said it is the hours of the night themselves. Each hour arises after the one before it, a new arrival, one after another.

Others said it is the soul that rises from its bed to worship. A classical commentator connects it to the Arabic for a cloud lifting up into the sky. The sleeper lifts from the bed the way a cloud lifts from the horizon.

Others said it is the standing itself, the night prayer. And a report preserves a narrower definition. Someone asked the Mother of the Believers whether a man who prays at the start of the night has done nāshiʾa. She said no. The nāshiʾa is rising after sleep.

A later scholar agreed: it is only after a period of sleep. Whoever has not slept first, his prayer is not called by this name.

These readings fit together. The night arrives hour by hour. Somewhere in it, a person who was asleep lifts themselves up, like a cloud, and turns to their Lord. That rising, against the pull of the bed, is what the ayah names.

There is dignity in the word. It does not describe forcing yourself awake. It describes rising.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.