إِذْ يَغْشَى ٱلسِّدْرَةَ مَا يَغْشَىٰ
- غِشَاوَة (ghishāwa) — the film that comes over the eye. The Qurʾān uses it: "and over their eyes is a covering" (al-Baqara 2/7).
- غَاشِيَة (ghāshiya) — what covers, what envelops. The name of a sūra; it was treated in the section al-Ghāshiya.
- تَغْشِيَة — to cover over a thing.
- غَشَيَان — a swoon; the covering over of consciousness.
At the centre of the root stands this: to come from above and cover. Not to wrap from below but to close over the top.
And this time the indeterminacy is more striking still, because two things at once are indeterminate in the sentence:
1. What is the covering? It is not said. 2. Who is the agent? The verb is active but its subject is mā (a thing) — that is, unnamed.
Various explanations of what it is are transmitted in the classical commentaries (light, angels, a colour). I do not put any of them forward as transmitted, because the verse has explicitly chosen not to name it, and to fill the place a text deliberately leaves blank is to add to the text.
| View | What idh attaches to | Result |
|---|---|---|
| To raʾāhu in verse 13 | "He saw him at the time when there covered the Lote Tree what covered it" | The seeing and the covering belong to the same moment |
| An independent reminder | "Recall that time when…" | The record of a separate scene |
The first reading appears the stronger and its ground is the word order: verses 13-16 flow as a single sentence (he saw — where — what is beside it — when). This is a preference and is not binding.
Verse 16: idh yaghsha'l-sidrata mā yaghshā — "when there covered the Lote Tree what covered it" Verse 54: fa-ghashshāhā mā ghashshā — "so there covered it what covered"
| Verse 16 | Verse 54 | |
|---|---|---|
| Form | Form I — yaghshā | Form II — ghashshā (doubled, transitive-intensive) |
| Tense | Imperfect — ongoing | Perfect — completed |
| What is covered | The Lote Tree | The overturned city (al-muʾtafika) |
| What covers | Not named | Not named |
The sense of the doubled pattern was dwelt on in the section al-Takwīr: the doubling of Form II conveys in Arabic repetition, multiplicity and comprehensiveness. The covering in verse 54 is thus a denser, more complete covering.
And I record the relation between the two verses as my own reading: the sūra uses the same verb once over a tree and once over a destroyed city. In both there is something that comes from above, and in both it is left unnamed.
The common point is this: in both, something coming from above covers what is below completely — one in a scene of drawing near, the other in a scene of destruction. In the sūra's lexicon, coming from above is not a one-directional thing.
I present this connection not as data of the text but as a relation of my own making. The sharing of the word and the pattern, on the other hand, is a countable datum.