al-Muddaththir 74:12-14

Wa jaʿaltu lahū mālan mamdūdā / Wa banīna shuhūdā / Wa mahhadtu lahū tamhīdā

"And I gave him wealth stretching on and on; and sons present with him; and I smoothed the ground for him thoroughly."

Root: م-د-د. Its concrete sense: to stretch, to draw out, to extend, to spread.

Derivatives: madd (extension; the Turkish med, and the lengthening in Qurʾānic recitation), midād (ink — what flows and stretches), imdād (aid — the extending of something), madīd (long).

مَّمْدُود, a passive participle: extended, stretching on.

The choice of word sets up a picture: the wealth is described not as a quantity but as a length. It is not counted, not measured — it is stretched out.

And it is recorded in the classical commentaries that this word is read in two directions:

1. Much in quantity — spreading as far as the eye can see. 2. Continuous in time — unbroken, flowing in. Inexhaustible sources such as land, trade, income.

Both are possible and they do not exclude one another. The second reading is closer to the "stretching" sense of the word.

And a comparison can be made with al-Humaza. There the wealth was recounted with the verbs jamaʿa (he gathered) and ʿaddada (he kept counting it), and this finding was made: "Wealth does not appear at all as an economic instrument. Only two things happen: it accumulates and it is counted."

Here the verbs are different: jaʿala (he gave, he made) — and the agent is God. That is, in al-Humaza what was recounted was the state of the wealth in the man's hand; here where it came from is said.

I record this difference as an observation.

شُهُود — from the ش-ه-د root, the plural of شَاهِد: present, visible, there.

In al-Muzzammil 73/15 this root was treated in the context of shāhidan ʿalaykum, and there the aspect of "bearing witness" came to the fore. Here it is the aspect of "being present" that comes to the fore.

The second sense of the root is settled in Arabic: shahida'l-majlisa — he was present at the assembly. Mashhūd — seen, present.

And the choice of the qualification is striking.

The verse does not say "he had sons". It does not say "he had many sons". It says "sons present with him".

The explanation in the classical commentaries is this: the sons are at his side; they do not have to go to distant lands for a living. That is, he has both children and the means to keep them beside him.

In the conditions of that period this is a concrete indication of wealth. A poor man's sons scatter — to herding, to hired work, to distant caravans. A rich man's sons stay beside him.

And the two qualifications complete one another:

The qualification of the wealth is length, the qualification of the sons is nearness. The one secures the future, the other the surroundings.

I record this classification as my own reading.

The most concrete and the gentlest image of the sūra.

Root: م-ه-د. And its concrete sense: to level a place, to soften it, to make it fit to lie down on.

• مَهْد (mahd) — a cradle. And more generally: a levelled, softened place for lying.
• مِهَاد (mihād) — a bed, a spread-out couch.

Its uses in the Qurʾān light up the root:

• "It is He who made the earth a cradle (mahdan) for you" (Ṭāhā 20/53; al-Zukhruf 43/10).
• "Did We not make the earth a bed (mihādan)?" (al-Nabaʾ 78/6) — treated in al-Nabaʾ.
• "How shall we speak to a child in the cradle (fi'l-mahd)?" (Maryam 19/29; also Āl ʿImrān 3/46; al-Māʾida 5/110).
• "…so they prepare (a place) for themselves" (al-Rūm 30/44) — fa-li-anfusihim yamhadūn.

And the last example is important: there a person makes the preparation for himself. Here the one who makes it is another.

At the centre of the root there is the cradle. And the cradle says three things at once:

1. Comfort. The place to lie in has been levelled, the stones taken out, softened. 2. Labour. A cradle does not come about of itself; someone prepares it. 3. And most important of all: the baby does not prepare its own cradle. The one in the cradle does not know that the preparing was done.

The third item carries the whole weight of the verse.

And تَمْهِيدًا is an absolute object — an intensifier. That is, the preparation was not half done but complete.

I record this reading as my own inference; the verse does not set up the cradle image openly — it is set up by way of the concrete sense of the root.

A point of word order.

There are three verbs in three verses, and all three are in the first person singular:

• خَلَقْتُ — I created (11)
• جَعَلْتُ — I gave, I made (12)
• مَهَّدتُّ — I prepared (14)

And note: the speaker is not the plural (nūn al-ʿaẓama) but the singular.

The Qurʾān generally uses the plural for the acts of revelation, of creating and of destroying: innā, khalaqnā, jaʿalnā. Here there is a singular.

It is said in the classical commentaries that this carries the function of setting oneness against oneness: against a man called waḥīdā (alone) there comes a subject who speaks alone.

I find this explanation reasonable but do not present it as a definite ruling. The transitions between singular and plural usage in the Qurʾān are a separate and wide subject; to draw a meaning from every transition would be forcing.

What can be observed is this: all three verbs are singular, and this continues throughout the whole section (sa-urhiquhū, 17; sa-uṣlīhi, 26).