Qur’anic Root ʿ S ʿ S — ʿAsʿasa: Night Drawing On and Withdrawing
Qur’anic and lexical forms
عَسْعَسَ
(ʿasʿasa)
Al-Takwīr 81:17; unaugmented quadriliteral verb
عَسْعَسَة
(ʿasʿasah)
Verbal noun; not used in the Qur’an
مُعَسْعِس
(muʿasʿis)
Description of night in Al-Zibriqān’s witness
عَسْعَاس
(ʿasʿās)
A wolf description; not used in the Qur’an
تَعَسْعَسَ
(taʿasʿasa)
Nighttime searching; not used in the Qur’an
عَسَّ
(ʿassa)
Related ʿ S S family; patrolling at night
سَعْسَعَ
(saʿsaʿa)
Separate S ʿ S ʿ family; not used in the Qur’an
تَسَعْسَعَ
(tasaʿsaʿa)
From S ʿ S ʿ; Ruʾbah’s witness, not used in the Qur’an
1. Root Meaning and Word Structure
Arabic ʿasʿasa (عَسْعَسَ) describes both night drawing on with spreading darkness and night withdrawing toward its end. Early dictionaries record both uses, leading some lexicographers to classify the word among those with opposite meanings.
Lisān al-ʿArab gives ʿasʿasa al-laylu ʿasʿasatan: aqbala bi-ẓalāmihi (عَسْعَسَ اللَّيْلُ عَسْعَسَةً: أَقْبَلَ بِظَلَامِهِ): night’s darkness drew on. The same source also records night’s withdrawal and ending.
Al-Jawharī records the onset of darkness in Al-Ṣiḥāḥ, then cites Al-Farrāʾ’s explanation of the Qur’anic use as night turning away.
Al-Ṣiḥāḥ and Lisān al-ʿArab: both night-related meanings
The word therefore cannot be represented by one unchanging equivalent in every context.
One use concerns darkness arriving at the beginning of night; the other concerns darkness ending as night gives way to morning light.
The two conditions differ in time and direction: darkness spreads at nightfall and retreats toward night’s end.
Both nevertheless present night in transition, with darkness entering or leaving the scene.
Some lexicographers explain the two senses through this shared feature: darkness at the beginning or end of its presence.
An intelligible semantic explanation does not itself establish that the word originally had just one meaning from which the other developed.
Qur’anic morphology records ʿ S ʿ S as quadriliteral, with a repeated ʿ s structure. That structural description alone does not establish the word’s history.
ʿAsʿasa follows the faʿlala pattern; its verbal noun is ʿasʿasah.
Repeated quadriliteral structures can relate to motion, duration, repetition, or sound quality. The structure alone, however, does not require a back-and-forth or repeatedly occurring action here.
The Qur’anic verb concerns night. Night is not literally a walking creature; its approach and withdrawal are expressed through verbs also used for motion and changes of condition.
Meaning should therefore follow attested Arabic usage with night, rather than being extracted solely from repeated letters.
2. Connections with ʿAssa and Other Uses
ʿAssa: Searching and Patrolling at Night
Arabic ʿassa concerns moving or patrolling at night, especially to search or keep watch.
Kitāb al-ʿAyn connects al-ʿass with nighttime searching and investigating suspicious activity.
Kitāb al-ʿAyn: ʿass and nighttime searching
ʿAsas also names guards who patrolled towns at night.
The use is established in Arabic, and ʿasas remains recognizable as night guards.
In Maqāyīs al-Lughah, Ibn Fāris identifies approaching and seeking something as one branch of the entry ʿ s.
He relates ʿassa to searching at night and treats ʿasʿasa al-laylu, night drawing on, within that group.
Maqāyīs al-Lughah: approaching and seeking
One can imagine a linguistic resemblance between night approaching and someone approaching while searching in darkness.
That resemblance does not establish that ʿasʿasa originally meant guards patrolling and was only later applied to night.
ʿAssa and ʿasʿasa also differ morphologically: the former is a doubled triliteral verb; the latter a repeated quadriliteral.
Uses of ʿ S S help examine possible relationships, but their entire semantic range should not be transferred to Qur’anic ʿ S ʿ S.
ʿAsʿās: A Wolf Prowling at Night
Lexicons record ʿasʿās and ʿasūs among names or descriptions of the wolf.
They concern a wolf moving at night in search of prey.
Taʿasʿasa al-dhiʾbu likewise describes a wolf moving at night or approaching in its search for prey.
Al-Ṣiḥāḥ and Lisān al-ʿArab: wolf names and nighttime searching
Some accounts describe ʿasʿās as a restless, much-moving wolf.
These uses place nocturnal motion and searching within the neighboring lexical field.
They do not establish that wa-al-layli idhā ʿasʿasa necessarily compares night to a hunting wolf.
The verse supplies no such image.
The lexical point is that ʿasʿasa and neighboring forms can concern movement, approach, and nocturnal conditions.
A Cloud’s ʿAsʿasah
Kitāb al-ʿAyn records ʿasʿasati al-saḥābatu.
It describes a cloud approaching the ground in nighttime darkness.
Some transmissions also include lightning within the cloud.
The use concerns drawing on or approaching.
A moving cloud can appear close to the horizon or ground; in such a setting ʿasʿasah can describe its movement and approach.
The poetic witness cited for this meaning is disputed. Al-Farrāʾ reports that some language authorities regarded the cloud-approach verse as fabricated.
That verse alone therefore cannot securely establish the historical priority of an approach meaning.
Its recording in Al-ʿAyn matters lexically, but the poetic witness’s date and reliability require separate assessment.
Al-Ṭabarī reporting Al-Farrāʾ: the cloud witness’s disputed authenticity
Obscuring a Matter
Lisān al-ʿArab also records ʿasʿasa fulānun al-amra.
It describes someone concealing or confusing a matter.
The explanation relates this use to night’s darkness, which can conceal things from sight.
Lisān al-ʿArab: obscuring a matter
It should not become the direct meaning of the Qur’anic verb.
In Al-Takwīr the verb concerns night, rather than human speech or behavior intended to conceal truth.
“Concealment,” “lying,” or “obfuscation” are therefore unsuitable equivalents for this Qur’anic occurrence.
3. Opposite Meanings and Early Arabic Evidence
Night Withdrawing
A familiar witness for night’s ending is attributed to ʿAlqamah ibn Qurṭ:
حَتَّى إِذَا الصُّبْحُ لَهَا تَنَفَّسَا
وَانْجَابَ عَنْهَا لَيْلُهَا وَعَسْعَسَا
ḥattā idhā al-ṣubḥu lahā tanaffasā / wa-injāba ʿanhā layluhā wa-ʿasʿasā
“Until morning breathed for it, and its night cleared away and withdrew.”
ʿAsʿasā follows injāba ʿanhā layluhā in this verse.
Injāba here concerns darkness clearing or opening away; its combination with ʿasʿasa supports night’s withdrawal.
Al-Ṭabarī also cites the verse to explain adbara.
Al-Ṭabarī: the witness attributed to ʿAlqamah ibn Qurṭ and withdrawal
A historical qualification nevertheless matters.
The witness is preserved in dictionaries and commentaries after the Qur’an; its precise date is not established. Al-ṣubḥu … tanaffasā also closely resembles the Qur’anic wa-al-ṣubḥi idhā tanaffasa.
Without independent investigation, this does not prove composition before revelation or independence from Qur’anic expression.
Its value is recording and explaining an Arabic use, rather than securely establishing priority over the Qur’an.
Al-Zibriqān’s Witness to Night’s End
Lisān al-ʿArab and Tahdhīb al-Lughah quote Al-Zibriqān:
وَرَدْتُ بِأَفْرَاسٍ عِتَاقٍ وَفِتْيَةٍ
فَوَارِطَ فِي أَعْجَازِ لَيْلٍ مُعَسْعِسِ
waradtu bi-afrāsin ʿitāqin wa-fityatin / fawāriṭa fī aʿjāzi laylin muʿasʿisi
“I arrived with noble horses and young men going ahead, in the last parts of a night drawing to its end.”
Muʿasʿis describes night here.
Aʿjāzi laylin identifies night’s latter portions, leading lexicographers to explain muʿasʿis here as withdrawing.
Lisān al-ʿArab and Tāj al-ʿArūs: Al-Zibriqān’s witness
The witness matters because the sentence itself supplies the end-of-night clue.
Attribution and composition date nevertheless remain distinct from lexical meaning. The dictionaries show a recognized expression in the linguistic tradition; precise dating requires separate investigation of the poetry and its transmission.
Darkness Drawing On
There are also witnesses and lexical reports for night arriving.
The early philologist Abū ʿUbaydah records both approach and withdrawal.
One quoted witness reads:
مُدَّرِعَاتِ اللَّيْلِ لَمَّا عَسْعَسَا
muddariʿāti al-layli lammā ʿasʿasā
Explanatory rendering: “Clad in night when it drew on.” Lexicographers relate the expression to night arriving and darkness covering the surroundings.
Darkness is pictured as a covering.
Lisān al-ʿArab quotes this fragment anonymously. The examined Al-Basīṭ edition’s notes, however, attribute it to ʿAlqamah or ʿAlqah ibn Qurṭ and report two transmissions. That attribution and variation do not establish the precise date or independence from the Qur’an.
Al-Basīṭ and its editorial notes: attribution and variants of muddariʿāt
It should consequently not be presented as securely dated pre-Islamic evidence.
The onset meaning does not rest on this witness alone: Al-ʿAyn, Al-Ṣiḥāḥ, and other early dictionaries expressly record it.
Is This an Aḍdād Word?
Traditional Arabic linguistics calls words used with opposite meanings aḍdād.
Abū Ḥātim al-Sijistānī and Quṭrub place ʿasʿasa in that category.
For them, one verb describing both night’s approach and withdrawal exemplifies opposite meanings within a single form.
Alongside recording both uses, Al-Zajjāj explains that they can relate to one broader situation: darkness begins at night’s onset and withdraws at its end. That explanation does not necessarily reject the aḍdād classification.
The explanation relates the word to one of the two boundaries of darkness’s presence.
Ibn al-Aʿrābī likewise connects ʿasʿasah with nighttime darkness and records both approach and withdrawal.
Lisān al-ʿArab: aḍdād, Al-Zajjāj, and Ibn al-Aʿrābī
These accounts are semantically informative: apparent opposites can center on one phenomenon, night’s changing condition.
A shared explanation does not prove that an initially vague meaning later split into opposites.
Dating each use requires securely dated evidence.
Both attested meanings should remain in the lexical account, while context determines the preferred Qur’anic rendering.
4. Is ʿAsʿasa Related to Saʿsaʿa?
Arabic also has the repeated form saʿsaʿa.
Lexicons connect it with departure, decrease, and approaching an end.
Tasaʿsaʿa al-shahru, for example, describes a month drawing to its end.
Related forms also describe someone whose youthful strength and vigor have diminished with age.
Explaining Al-Takwīr 81:17, Al-Ṭabarī uses this family to support withdrawal and quotes Ruʾbah ibn al-ʿAjjāj:
يَا هِنْدُ مَا أَسْرَعَ مَا تَسَعْسَعَا
وَلَوْ رَجَا تَبْعَ الصِّبَا تَتَبَّعَا
yā hindu mā asraʿa mā tasaʿsaʿā / wa-law rajā tabʿa al-ṣibā tatabbaʿā
Explanatory rendering: “O Hind, how quickly he has aged and declined; had he hoped to follow youth, he would have pursued it.” Tasaʿsaʿa here concerns declining strength and youth passing. It belongs to S ʿ S ʿ, rather than being the Qur’anic ʿ S ʿ S form.
Al-Ṭabarī: Ruʾbah’s witness from S ʿ S ʿ
In Maqāyīs al-Lughah, Ibn Fāris analyzes ʿasʿasa meaning night’s withdrawal as a reordered form of saʿsaʿa.
Maqāyīs al-Lughah: the metathesis analysis from saʿsaʿa
Lexicographers call such rearrangement qalb: letters appear in a different order.
On that analysis, night ending in ʿasʿasa may relate to saʿsaʿa expressing passage toward an end.
This remains a derivational analysis.
Shared letters and neighboring meanings alone do not prove that one form necessarily developed from the other.
Saʿsaʿa and ʿasʿasa remain distinct forms and should not replace one another in Qur’anic indexing.
Only ʿasʿasa occurs in the Qur’an.
The Qur’anic entry therefore should not absorb every derivative meaning of S ʿ S ʿ or ʿ S S without evidence.
Both approach and withdrawal already have support in witnesses for ʿasʿasa itself; their Qur’anic study need not depend on proving the qalb theory.
5. Qur’anic Use in Al-Takwīr 81:17
ʿ S ʿ S occurs only once in the Qur’an.
Al-Takwīr 81:17
وَاللَّيْلِ إِذَا عَسْعَسَ
wa-al-layli idhā ʿasʿasa
Forqan’s existing Persian translation, rendered here in English:
“And by the night, when it turns away,”
Grammatical Structure
ʿAsʿasa is an unaugmented quadriliteral perfect verb, third-person masculine singular.
Its grammatical subject is an implicit huwa, referring to al-layl. Al-layli itself is genitive after the oath wāw in wa-al-layli. Night is the verb’s semantic topic and the pronoun’s referent, rather than an overt nominative subject in that phrase.
Dictionary of Qur’anic Word Parsing: implicit subject and the genitive oath noun
Idhā is a temporal adverb, specifying night’s condition when the action occurs.
The verse begins with the oath wāw: night is sworn by in a specified condition, its ʿasʿasah.
The perfect form need not restrict the verse to one night already past.
A perfect verb with idhā can describe a familiar or recurring condition.
The verse therefore presents night in a condition recognizable to its audience.
Two Principal Interpretations
There are two lexical interpretations of the verse.
First: night when its darkness draws on.
This concerns night’s beginning, when daylight diminishes and darkness spreads.
Al-ʿAyn and other Arabic dictionaries record it, consistent with approaching darkness.
Second: night when it withdraws.
This concerns night’s end, when darkness diminishes and morning light appears.
It also has lexical and poetic support; Al-Ṭabarī prefers it here.
Al-Ṭabarī: preferring withdrawal through the morning context
Neither meaning can be rejected lexically merely because the other exists.
The more important question is which the context supports.
Connection with Wa-al-Ṣubḥi Idhā Tanaffasa
The oath by night is immediately followed by:
Al-Takwīr 81:18
وَالصُّبْحِ إِذَا تَنَفَّسَ
wa-al-ṣubḥi idhā tanaffasa
Forqan’s existing Persian translation, rendered here in English:
“And by the morning, when it breathes,”
This supplies the nearest major contextual clue to ʿasʿasa.
Tanaffasa belongs to N F S. Here morning is pictured dawning, with light gradually becoming visible.
As breathing is a living, gradual movement, the appearance of morning light is experienced as darkness gradually opening.
The image is intelligible in context, but should not become a claim that morning physically breathes.
There are two possible relationships between Al-Takwīr 81:17 and Al-Takwīr 81:18.
With withdrawal, the verses describe a continuous transition: night retreats and morning appears.
That interpretation follows a clear natural sequence.
With approach, they describe two important transitions in the daily cycle: first darkness arriving, then morning light dawning.
That interpretation is also possible in the language and arrangement of the oaths.
Morning following night therefore does not by itself make the approach interpretation impossible.
The direct continuity of withdrawing night and dawning morning nevertheless provides strong support for the end-of-night meaning.
The preference follows contextual coherence, rather than denying the other Arabic meaning.
Al-Qurṭubī: both meanings and morning’s breathing
A Parallel in Al-Muddaththir
Al-Muddaththir contains two similarly structured oaths:
Al-Muddaththir 74:33
وَاللَّيْلِ إِذْ أَدْبَرَ
wa-al-layli idh adbara
Translation:
“And the night when it turns away,”
Al-Muddaththir 74:34
وَالصُّبْحِ إِذَا أَسْفَرَ
wa-al-ṣubḥi idhā asfara
Translation:
“And the morning when it brightens,”
These verses explicitly express night withdrawing through adbara, followed by morning light appearing.
Their meaning closely parallels Al-Takwīr 81:17 and Al-Takwīr 81:18.
Both groups place oaths by night and morning together.
In Al-Muddaththir, withdrawing night and brightening morning have a clear, direct relationship.
They accordingly supply Qur’anic support for preferring withdrawal in Al-Takwīr.
Similar structures nevertheless do not prove complete lexical equivalence between their different words.
Adbara directly expresses turning away and departing; ʿasʿasa has two opposite attested uses.
Comparison clarifies the preferred contextual sense without reducing the word’s lexical range to one meaning.
The Oaths and the Surah’s Continuation
Al-Takwīr 81:15 mentions al-khunnas; Al-Takwīr 81:16 mentions al-jawāri al-kunnas.
Al-Takwīr 81:17 and Al-Takwīr 81:18 then name night and morning.
Al-Takwīr 81:19 gives innahu la-qawlu rasūlin karīmin (إِنَّهُ لَقَوْلُ رَسُولٍ كَرِيمٍ).
These oaths belong to the surah’s emphatic structure, followed by statements about the message and its bearer’s standing.
Night and morning occur as familiar phenomena within the world’s order.
The connection does not make ʿasʿasa mean revelation, ignorance, faith, or unbelief.
Literary darkness and light can illustrate cognitive or ethical conditions, but this verse does not turn the verb’s lexical meaning into one of them.
Root study can describe night’s transition and the oath’s structural role without importing the entire discussion of prophecy and revelation into the verb’s meaning.
7. Conclusion and Translation Proposals
Arabic ʿ S ʿ S is a quadriliteral entry with a repeated structure.
Its basic form is ʿasʿasa, its verbal noun ʿasʿasah; its established night-related senses are darkness approaching and night withdrawing.
Early dictionaries record both.
Some lexicographers classify it among words with opposite meanings; others explain the senses through darkness at night’s beginning and end.
Sources also record wolves moving at night, clouds approaching in darkness, and obscuring a matter. These uses should not all be transferred into the Qur’anic verb without evidence.
Possible relationships with triliteral ʿ S S and saʿsaʿa have also been proposed, without a securely established historical path of derivation.
The family occurs only once in the Qur’an, as ʿasʿasa in Al-Takwīr 81:17.
Two lexical interpretations are possible:
First, night when its darkness draws on.
Second, night when its darkness withdraws.
Both have Arabic support. The immediate context, especially wa-al-ṣubḥi idhā tanaffasa, favors withdrawal.
On that reading, the verses present successive stages in night giving way to day: darkness ends and morning light appears.
Comparison with Al-Muddaththir 74:33 and Al-Muddaththir 74:34, which place withdrawing night beside brightening morning, reinforces that preference.
The approach meaning should nevertheless remain in the lexical definition because early sources expressly attest it.
Brief root meaning: Night’s darkness drawing on or withdrawing; two attested uses for its changing condition at the beginning and end of darkness’s presence.
Meaning of Qur’anic ʿasʿasa (عَسْعَسَ): In Al-Takwīr 81:17, it withdrew and approached its end, supported by morning dawning in the next verse.
Proposed verse translation:
وَاللَّيْلِ إِذَا عَسْعَسَ
wa-al-layli idhā ʿasʿasa
“And by the night, when it turns away,”
This follows Forqan’s existing Persian rendering and has defensible contextual support.
A smoother explanatory paraphrase is: “By the night as it draws to its end.”
That contextual preference should not deny the other Arabic meaning.
The central conclusion is that Arabic ʿasʿasa has two opposite night-related uses, while withdrawal is preferred in Al-Takwīr 81:17 in light of the following verse.
Here the verb concerns darkness changing condition, rather than night physically breathing, a living creature moving, or an ethical concept such as misguidance or concealing truth.
Through successive images of night and morning, the Qur’an describes darkness giving way to light.
This familiar, observable natural transition supplies the concrete basis for understanding the word here.