al-Muddaththir 74:1

Yā ayyuha'l-muddaththir "O you wrapped in your covering!"

Root: د-ث-ر. This root, like the ز-م-ل root of al-Muzzammil, divides into two branches; and the second branch opens onto an unexpected place.

The first branch — the heavy covering.

دِثَار (dithār) — the heavy covering put on over the rest, not touching the skin. And this word forms a pair in Arabic:

This pair shows the centre of the root: dithār is not an under-layer but the upper layer. What comes from outside, what is drawn over afterwards, what can be taken off.

And when it is compared with the ز-م-ل root treated in al-Muzzammil, a difference appears:

• تَزَمَّلَ — to wrap oneself, to wind round. A movement of winding.
• تَدَثَّرَ — to draw a covering over oneself. A movement of overlaying.

The first winds round the body; the second is drawn over the body. Both are a covering, but the one wraps and the other overlays.

I rest this distinction on the definitions the dictionaries give; I do not claim that the two words are deliberately kept apart in the Qurʾān.

The second branch — the effacing of a trace.

And this is the striking part:

• دَثَرَ (dathara) — a thing's trace was effaced, it grew old, it became indistinct. It is used especially of the traces of an abandoned dwelling, a road, the site of a tent being covered over by the wind.
• دَاثِر (dāthir) — whose trace has been effaced, become indistinct, no longer visible.
• دَثَرَ الرَّسْمُ — the remains were effaced, they disappeared.

The link between the two branches is direct: when a thing is covered over, its trace is lost. Dithār covers the body; sand covers the traces of an abandoned dwelling. In both, the root recounts the covering over of something.

And a third use is recorded in the dictionaries as well: دَثْر (dathr) — abundant property, plenty. Its link is the same: a thing heaped and piled up on itself.

I record this as my own reading.

The same root carries both "the one wrapped in a covering" and "whose trace is effaced". And the sūra says to someone wrapped in his covering, "rise and warn" — that is, it makes visible someone who is invisible.

To cover oneself is to make oneself invisible. The first command of the sūra asks for exactly the opposite of that.

The verse does not say that it is using this second sense, and most of the classical commentaries proceed by way of the first. The second branch of the root is recorded in the dictionaries; the link I set up is an interpretation.

As in al-Muzzammil, here too there is assimilation (idghām):

The active participle of the tafaʿʿul form is mutadaththir; the ت (tāʾ) at its head turns into the د (dāl) that follows it and merges with it.

As was recorded in al-Muzzammil: two sūras open with two words that have undergone the same phonetic event. And the tafaʿʿul form does the same work in both — covering oneself is a work the addressee does to himself.

In the section on al-Muzzammil 73/1 the Qurʾān's patterns of address to the Prophet were set out in a table, and this was recorded: there are two places in the Qurʾān where the Prophet is addressed not by the name of an office but by his bodily state at that moment — and both are the first verse of these two sūras. I do not repeat it here.

What is to be added here is the difference between the two addresses:

The second senses of the two roots also look in different directions, and each coincides with the subject of its own sūra: al-Muzzammil will give a load, al-Muddaththir will give a command to be visible.

I record this coincidence as an observation, not as a claim.