وَٱلضُّحَىٰ
The وَ at the head is the particle of oath; its function was treated in detail in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr. In brief: an oath does not convey information, it reinforces; and between the thing sworn by and the thing said a relation of evidence is most often established. In this sūra that relation is especially tight, and it does not become visible unless the two verses are read together.
The concrete sense of the root ض-ح-و/ي is the sun's rising above the horizon and the spreading of its light over the earth. The root describes not the sun itself but the work the sun does: the opening out of light, the withdrawing of shadows, the coming into view of what was covered.
- ضُحَى (ḍuḥā) — the forenoon. The stretch of time when the sun has climbed some way after rising and the light has spread fully, but the heat of noon has not yet pressed down.
- ضَحْوَة (ḍaḥwa) — the earlier part of the same time.
- أَضْحَى (aḍḥā) — to enter upon the forenoon. In Arabic this verb came in time to be used also as a defective verb in the sense "to become, to come into that state" — the same development as aṣbaḥa (to enter upon the morning → to become).
- ٱلْأَضْحَى / أُضْحِيَّة — the Feast of Sacrifice and the sacrificial animal. The naming comes from the time: the sacrifice is slaughtered in the forenoon.
- ضَاحِيَة (ḍāḥiya) — the outward-facing, sun-catching edge of a settlement. The modern use of the word for a suburb comes from here.
- ضَحِيَ (ḍaḥiya) — to be exposed to the sun, to be left without shade. It occurs in the Qurʾān: "There you will not thirst, nor be scorched by the sun" (Ṭāhā 20/119).
The last item matters, because it shows the root's dimension of "being out in the open, being left uncovered". Ḍuḥā is not only a slot of hours; it is the state in which everything is seen and no shadow is left to hide in.
The word occurs in several places in the Qurʾān, and each time it is a moment of openness and visibility:
- "Have the people of the towns felt secure that Our punishment might come upon them in the forenoon, while they are at play?" (al-Aʿrāf 7/98). The forenoon is the time when a person is most heedless — the day has begun, the danger is supposed to be past.
- "and let the people be gathered in the forenoon" (Ṭāhā 20/59). The time Moses (Mūsā) chose for the meeting with the magicians. The reason is plain: the hour when everything is best seen and trickery is hardest.
- "On the day they see it, it will be as though they had tarried only an evening, or its forenoon" (al-Nāziʿāt 79/46). The shortness of a lifetime is measured by the two ends of a day.
- "By the sun and its forenoon" (al-Shams 91/1). Here the sun and the ḍuḥā are named separately — that is, ḍuḥā is not the sun itself but the state the sun produces.
The oath could have been sworn by the sun directly; the Qurʾān does so elsewhere (al-Shams 91/1). What is chosen here is not the name of the body but the name of the time.
The consequence is this: the oath is sworn not by an object but by a condition. And the condition chosen is the most balanced moment of the day. The half-light of morning is past and the light is full; but the burning of noon is not yet there. There is neither indistinctness nor violence. Light, in a settled state.