The Qur’anic Root B S S (Bass)
Crumbling and mixing, driving and setting in motion; two semantic branches and the mountains’ disintegration in Al-Wāqiʿah
Qur’anic and lexical forms
بُسَّتِ
(bussati)
Form I passive perfect, third-person feminine singular; Al-Wāqiʿah 56:5
بَسًّا
(bassan)
Accusative verbal noun functioning as cognate accusative; Al-Wāqiʿah 56:5
بَسَّ
(bassa)
Lexical active verb; this form is not Qur’anic
يَبُسُّ
(yabussu)
Lexical imperfect verb; this form is not Qur’anic
بَسِيسَة
(basīsah)
Lexical food name; not Qur’anic
إِبْسَاس
(ibsās)
Lexical form IV verbal noun; not Qur’anic
الْمُبِسّ
(al-mubiss)
Form IV active participle in a poetic witness; not Qur’anic
اِنْبَسَّ
(inbassa)
Lexical form VII verb; not Qur’anic
1. Introduction and Qur’anic forms
B S S has two established semantic fields in older Arabic: crumbling and mixing something, and driving or setting it in motion. The first appears in preparing flour and food, the second in driving livestock and making them move.
Both matter for understanding the Qur’an. Older lexicographers and commentators offer two main explanations of وَبُسَّتِ الْجِبَالُ بَسًّا: some connect it with the mountains being crushed into small pieces, others with their being driven and set in motion.
The difference must be examined from the language itself. The popularity of one translation does not justify removing another usage from lexical history. Conversely, two established Arabic senses need not have equally strong support in this verse.
The root occurs twice in the Qur’an, within one verse:
- بُسَّتِ (bussati): a form I passive perfect verb, third-person feminine singular.
- بَسًّا (bassan): an accusative verbal noun of the same verb.
Both occur in Al-Wāqiʿah 56:5. Other forms, including bassa, yabussu, basīsah, ibsās, and inbassa, do not occur in the Qur’an. This count agrees with the Qur’anic morphological index.
Bussati and bassan belong to one family, but have different functions. The verb states the event, and the following verbal noun emphasizes that same action taking place.
The mountains undergo the action. The final interpretation must therefore fit both older usage and the picture of Earth and mountains in the surrounding verses.
2. Two semantic cores in older Arabic
Driving and setting in motion
Ibn Fāris writes of B S S in Maqāyīs al-lughah:
«الْبَاءُ وَالسِّينُ أَصْلَانِ: أَحَدُهُمَا السَّوْقُ، وَالْآخَرُ فَتُّ الشَّيْءِ وَخَلْطُهُ»
al-bāʾu wa-al-sīnu aṣlāni aḥaduhumā al-sawqu wa-al-ākharu fattu al-shayʾi wa-khalṭuhu
Translation: “Bāʾ and sīn have two underlying senses: one is driving, the other crumbling and mixing something.”
He first presents driving, explaining bussati al-jibāl through sīqat sawqan: “they were driven.” He subsequently acknowledges that the verse is also interpreted through crumbling.
Ibn Fāris does not select one use simply to dismiss the other as invented. He records both in Arabic and presents both in explaining the verse.
In the movement branch, بَسَّ الْإِبِلَ denotes driving camels.
Lisān al-ʿArab states:
«وَالْبَسُّ: السَّوْقُ اللَّيِّنُ»
wa-al-bassu al-sawqu al-layyinu
Meaning: “Bass is gentle, unhurried driving.”
The same source explains بَسَسْتُ الْإِبِلَ through driving camels gently.
In this use, bass does not mean anything moving spontaneously. Driving normally implies an agent causing an animal or something else to move.
Gentle driving in handling camels does not, however, establish that bussati al-jibāl necessarily describes the mountains moving gently. Gentleness belongs to that particular livestock usage; transferring it to the resurrection scene requires independent evidence.
Crumbling and mixing
The second branch concerns breaking something into small pieces and mixing its parts.
Ibn Fāris illustrates it with بَسَسْتُ الْحِنْطَةَ: wheat or something else being broken into small pieces.
Al-Azharī’s Tahdhīb al-lughah also states:
«بَسَّ الشَّيْءَ إِذَا فَتَّتَهُ»
bassa al-shayʾa idhā fattatahu
Meaning: “He performed bass on something when he broke it into small pieces.”
Al-Azharī then transmits other explanations connecting bussati al-jibāl with mountains becoming earth, being mixed, being leveled, or being fragmented.
In this branch, bass can destroy something’s coherent structure.
Dry bread, for example, may be pounded and crumbled, or flour and ground food mixed with another substance.
Crumbling and mixing are nevertheless not identical operations. Something may be crumbled without being mixed with another substance; two substances may be mixed without both first being crushed.
The distinction matters here. Are the mountains merely moved, crumbled, mixed with earth, or described through a combination of changes?
The verse and the result stated immediately afterward must guide the answer.
Do the branches have one origin?
One can imagine a resemblance between breaking up and dispersing material, and moving or driving something. In each, a previous condition changes and something loses its place or coherence.
The resemblance alone does not establish a shared historical origin.
Ibn Fāris identifies two underlying senses. It would therefore be inappropriate to invent an image such as “dispersing anything by pressure” and force every derivative into it.
Lexical study can recognize the two semantic fields through their respective witnesses. Context, rather than a speculative derivation, determines which is more suitable in the Qur’an.
3. Older uses: food, livestock, and movement
Basīsah: food prepared from crumbled and mixed ingredients
An important everyday Arabic use concerns preparing a food called basīsah.
Lisān al-ʿArab records بَسَّ السَّوِيقَ وَالدَّقِيقَ concerning the preparation of flour or sawīq. Sawīq is made from roasted, ground grain and can be prepared with water or other ingredients.
Some lexical explanations connect bass with mixing sawīq or flour with oil or fat. Others describe moistening it with a small quantity of water.
Al-Aṣmaʿī describes basīsah as food prepared by mixing ingredients such as sawīq, dried curds, grain, and date stones. Some varieties were for people, others for livestock.
The differences in ingredients and preparation matter. Bass here is not confined to breaking a hard substance: crumbling, mixing, and preparing finely divided material also fall within its field.
A food’s name does not, however, make bass always mean adding water, oil, or fat.
When the Qur’an says bussati al-jibāl, mountains undergo the action. The verse names no substance such as water or oil to be mixed with them.
Basīsah can therefore illustrate fragmentation or mingled material, while the details of cooking should not be imported into the Qur’anic image.
A witness from Arabic rajaz
An older rajaz verse transmitted by Abū ʿUbaydah and al-Farrāʾ reads:
لَا تَخْبِزَا خُبْزًا وَبُسَّا بَسًّا
lā takhbizā khubzan wa-bussā bassan
One transmitted continuation reads:
وَلَا تُطِيلَا بِمُنَاخٍ حَبْسًا
wa-lā tuṭīlā bi-munākhin ḥabsan
Translation: “Do not occupy yourselves baking bread; quickly prepare the food by mixing, and do not linger at the halting place.”
Abū ʿUbaydah attributes the rajaz to a robber from Ghaṭafān who did not want to spend time baking and preferred simpler food preparation. The editorial notes to Tāj al-ʿarūs, citing Maqāyīs al-lughah and Muʿjam al-shuʿarāʾ, also name al-Hafawān al-ʿUqaylī as its speaker.
Here bussā is an imperative addressing two people, and bassan is a verbal noun.
The verb followed by its verbal noun emphasizes the requested action.
The construction is grammatically comparable to Al-Wāqiʿah 56:5, since both use a verb of the family followed by its verbal noun.
The sentences should nevertheless not be given identical meanings. In this reading, the rajaz concerns preparing food; the Qur’an concerns mountains.
The continuation has variant readings, and sources do not uniformly identify its speaker. Its date is insufficiently clear to classify it as securely pre-Islamic. There is also a difference of interpretation: some sources explain the same rajaz through a contrast between harsh and gentle driving. The food translation above follows the reading transmitted from Abū ʿUbaydah; it is not the only recorded reading.
The example’s principal value here is its recording of practical bass in food preparation.
Bassa al-ibil: driving camels
In the other branch, bass concerns camels and other livestock.
Arabic records calls such as bas bas and bis bis for driving animals.
In this usage, بَسَّ الدَّابَّةَ and أَبَسَّ بِهَا concern driving or calling an animal. Their connection with such calls does not alone establish whether the call or the verb developed first historically.
Some accounts also use ibsās for calming a she-camel for milking. A familiar sound or gentle treatment soothes the animal to let down its milk.
In livestock handling, the family therefore extends beyond making animals move. Particular sounds or behavior used in driving and calming can also be expressed through it.
Milking usage should not be transferred into the Qur’anic meaning. The verse does not describe mountains being called for milking or moved through a sound resembling a camel call.
If the driving branch is accepted here, what can be carried over is driving or setting in motion, rather than every feature of handling livestock.
A witness from Abū Zubayd al-Ṭāʾī
Abū ʿAlī al-Qālī’s al-Amālī records a verse attributed to Abū Zubayd al-Ṭāʾī:
فَلَحَا اللَّهُ صَاحِبَ الصُّلْحِ مِنَّا
fa-laḥā Allāhu ṣāḥiba al-ṣulḥi minnā
مَا أَطَافَ الْمُبِسُّ بِالدَّهْمَاءِ
mā aṭāfa al-mubissu bi-al-dahmāʾi
Translation: “May The God condemn the advocate of peace among us, as long as the camel-caller goes around the black she-camel.”
Al-mubiss here denotes someone using a familiar method or sound to soothe a she-camel or call it for milking.
Ibn al-Aʿrābī likewise explains the usage through a person’s gentle treatment of a she-camel.
Abū Zubayd was a mukhaḍram: he lived across the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. The verse’s date is not independently clear, so it cannot be treated without qualification as securely predating the Qur’an’s revelation.
Semantically, the witness connects ibsās with practical handling and a familiar sound in livestock care.
This use is independent of crumbling flour or food and supports the other branch recorded by Ibn Fāris.
Inbassat al-ḥayyāt: snakes moving over the ground
Lexicons record اِنْبَسَّتِ الْحَيَّاتُ for snakes moving and gliding along the ground.
Ibn Fāris quotes this line from Abū al-Najm al-ʿIjlī:
وَانْبَسَّ حَيَّاتُ الْكَثِيبِ الْأَهْيَلِ
wa-inbassa ḥayyātu al-kathībi al-ahyali
Translation: “And the snakes of the soft, crumbling sandhill moved out, gliding over its surface.”
Inbassa here concerns moving and gliding.
Its precise explanation nevertheless varies. Ibn Fāris places it close to moving or being driven, whereas al-Jāḥiẓ, as the editor of Maqāyīs al-lughah notes, also speaks of snakes dispersing and becoming numerous. Abū al-Najm belongs to the Umayyad period; this line is therefore not securely pre-Qur’anic evidence either.
The witness shows that the movement branch is not confined to camels or movement caused by a human driver.
Snakes moving over sand do not themselves establish the meaning “mountains crumbling.” The example chiefly demonstrates the possibility of a movement or gliding reading.
Together, the older witnesses establish both semantic fields in Arabic: crumbling and mixing, and moving and being driven.
4. Al-Wāqiʿah 56:5: what happens to the mountains?
Three consecutive verses should be read together.
Al-Wāqiʿah 56:4
إِذَا رُجَّتِ الْأَرْضُ رَجًّا
idhā rujjati al-arḍu rajjan
Translation: “When Earth is shaken violently.”
Al-Wāqiʿah 56:5
وَبُسَّتِ الْجِبَالُ بَسًّا
wa-bussati al-jibālu bassan
Translation: “And the mountains are thoroughly crushed to pieces.”
Al-Wāqiʿah 56:6
فَكَانَتْ هَبَاءً مُنْبَثًّا
fa-kānat habāʾan munbaththan
Translation: “Then they become scattered dust.”
The verses separately describe Earth, the mountains, and the result of the mountains’ transformation.
In the order of presentation, Earth’s shaking comes first, then the mountains’ transformation, followed by their condition as scattered dust. The wāw joining the first two events does not itself establish their exact temporal order; the following fāʾ connects the resulting condition with the transformation.
This connection provides the strongest contextual indication for understanding bussati.
The construction bussati al-jibālu bassan
Bussati is a form I passive perfect verb. The final kasrah on tāʾ in connection with al-jibāl avoids two adjacent vowelless consonants; it does not signal another verb form or belong to the root.
Active bassa can concern crumbling or driving. The passive foregrounds what undergoes the action without naming its agent within the verb.
Al-jibālu is the nominative passive subject, or nāʾib fāʿil. Although jibāl is plural, the verb is feminine singular, an established Arabic construction with a nonhuman plural.
Bassan is the same verb’s accusative verbal noun, functioning as a cognate accusative, or mafʿūl muṭlaq. Here it emphasizes the action taking place.
The construction thus presents the mountains as undergoing a transformation and emphasizes the verb through its own verbal noun.
The cognate accusative alone does not determine the exact force, duration, or number of stages of fragmentation.
Bassan repeats the verb’s meaning for emphasis; it is not the name of a separate substance made from the mountains.
The first reading: the mountains crumble into small pieces
Al-Ṭabarī explains the mountains as being fragmented into fine material resembling flour.
He transmits فُتِّتَتْ فَتًّا, “they were crumbled into small pieces,” from Ibn ʿAbbās, Mujāhid, ʿIkrimah, and others.
Another explanation transmitted from Mujāhid is كَمَا يُبَسُّ السَّوِيقُ: like ground food being prepared through bass.
The reading has support in two respects.
First, Arabic does use bass for crumbling and preparing finely divided materials.
Second, the next verse says that the mountains become habāʾan munbaththan: scattered dust.
That result directly connects with the mountains being broken into small pieces.
A mountain is a large, coherent structure; dust consists of tiny particles. Its becoming dust is therefore strong evidence for a reading involving disintegration and fragmentation.
Not every detail of the food image should be transferred. Mountains crumbling does not necessarily mean their being mixed with water.
What the usage and context support is the loss of the mountain’s coherent structure and its fragmentation.
The second reading: the mountains are driven and set in motion
As noted above, Ibn Fāris also places bussati al-jibāl within the driving branch.
Al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī’s al-Mufradāt proposes that the verse could concern mountains being driven swiftly, comparing it with inbassat al-ḥayyāt.
He also cites verses about mountains moving to explain this reading.
The possibility is not without Arabic linguistic support.
Elsewhere in the Qur’an, the mountains’ transformation also involves movement and displacement.
For example:
Al-Nabaʾ 78:20
وَسُيِّرَتِ الْجِبَالُ فَكَانَتْ سَرَابًا
wa-suyyirati al-jibālu fa-kānat sarāban
Translation: “And the mountains are set in motion, then become like a mirage.”
The verb suyyirati explicitly expresses the mountains moving here.
Understanding bussati in Al-Wāqiʿah 56:5 as being driven would therefore not conflict with mountain movement elsewhere in the Qur’an.
The same meaning occurring in another verse, however, does not make it the preferred sense of bussati here.
Al-Wāqiʿah 56:6 directly gives the result as scattered dust. Crumbling consequently has a closer connection with the immediately stated result.
Driving can form part of the wider picture of the mountains’ transformation, but alone does not explain their becoming dust.
Can both senses be present in the event?
Across the Qur’anic passages, mountains in the resurrection scene leave their familiar, stable condition, move, and, in other images, are crushed or scattered.
Movement and disintegration can thus be connected within a general description.
Several features of one event must nevertheless be distinguished from several possible meanings of one word.
Both movement and fragmentation may occur in the mountains’ transformation without bussati having to convey both meanings equally at once.
In light of Al-Wāqiʿah 56:6, crumbling and fragmentation have stronger support for the main translation.
Driving and setting in motion should remain recorded as an established reading in lexical and interpretive history, rather than being removed without reason.
5. Fa-kānat habāʾan munbaththan: the result of the mountains’ transformation
In Al-Wāqiʿah 56:6, fa-kānat concerns the mountains’ condition following the preceding event.
Habāʾ denotes fine, dust-like particles that can become visible in the air.
Munbathth belongs to B TH TH and concerns being dispersed.
Study of H B W (Not yet published); Study of B TH TH
The next verse thus completes the picture: the mountains become scattered dust.
This matters lexically, since bass and bathth belong to distinct roots.
They may be connected in the result of an event, but phonetic similarity alone does not make them one root.
Al-Wāqiʿah 56:5 gives the action transforming the mountains; Al-Wāqiʿah 56:6 describes their resulting condition as scattered dust.
On the crumbling reading, the relationship is: the mountains are broken into small pieces and become scattered dust.
This does not mean that B S S itself necessarily expresses dispersion in every direction. Dispersion is explicit in munbathth.
The brief root definition should therefore retain crumbling and fragmentation, while identifying scattered dust as the contextual result.
Does the image identify a known geological process?
The verses describe an event belonging to the resurrection.
They specify neither particle size, the duration of disintegration, temperature, the mechanism of movement, nor the physical force involved.
Bussati alone cannot support a theory of nuclear explosion, mountains becoming subatomic particles, or a particular mechanism of Earth’s crust breaking down.
Nor should the absence of such details turn the clear image solely into the disappearance of social status or the collapse of political powers.
The direct subjects are Earth and mountains, and the result concerns scattered dust.
An allegorical reading, if proposed, requires independent evidence and should not replace the word’s direct, clear meaning.
7. Translation proposal for Forqan
For the crumbling branch, suitable equivalents include “crushing,” “crumbling,” and, in some contexts, “pounding and breaking apart.”
For the movement branch, “driving” and “setting in motion” are usable.
They should not be interchanged without considering what undergoes the action.
Three main possibilities can be assessed for Al-Wāqiʿah 56:5.
“And the mountains are driven” is defensible within one lexical branch, but alone lacks a sufficiently direct connection with the scattered dust of the following verse.
“And the mountains are mixed together” also has support in some lexical reports. In English, as in Persian, however, it may suggest mixing with a particular substance that the verse does not name.
“And the mountains are crushed to pieces” fits both the established bass usage of fragmenting material and the result stated in Al-Wāqiʿah 56:6.
Forqan’s preferred proposal is therefore:
“And the mountains are thoroughly crushed to pieces.”
“Thoroughly” conveys the verbal noun bassan’s emphasis in English, corresponding to be-tamāmī in the Persian proposal. For a shorter rendering, “and the mountains are severely crushed” is also defensible.
The verbal noun itself does not determine a precise degree of fragmentation; becoming dust is understood from the next verse.
“The mountains become dust” is therefore unsuitable as the translation of Al-Wāqiʿah 56:5 alone, since it substitutes part of verse 6’s meaning for verse 5’s verb.
Likewise, mountains exploding, their atoms separating, or their becoming molten material are details the word itself does not state.
Translation should convey the transformation naturally without adding an unestablished physical mechanism.
8. Conclusion
B S S has two established branches in older Arabic: crumbling and mixing, and driving or setting in motion.
The first includes fragmenting grain and preparing basīsah. The other includes driving livestock, calling a she-camel, and snakes moving over the ground.
Ibn Fāris presents both in explaining bussati al-jibāl. Al-Rāghib also gives the crumbling sense without excluding swift mountain movement.
The Qur’an uses this root only in Al-Wāqiʿah 56:5. There, the passive bussati describes the mountains, and bassan emphasizes the action.
The preceding verse describes Earth being shaken; the next gives the mountains’ transformed condition as scattered dust.
That continuity strengthens the fragmentation reading, since a large, coherent mountain becoming dust directly connects with crumbling.
Driving and setting the mountains in motion is an established Arabic reading and relates to other verses on mountain movement. In the immediate context of Al-Wāqiʿah 56:4, Al-Wāqiʿah 56:5, and Al-Wāqiʿah 56:6, however, fragmentation has stronger support.
This assessment does not rule out the mountains moving in the event, just as possible movement should not remove crumbling from the meaning.
Nor should all the details of food preparation, driving camels, or snakes gliding be transferred to the Qur’anic sense. They establish the root’s semantic field, rather than supplying compulsory features of the resurrection image.
Final definition for Forqan:
B S S has two established Arabic semantic fields: crumbling something into small pieces and mixing it, and driving or setting it in motion. The Qur’an uses the root only in Al-Wāqiʿah 56:5, with the verb بُسَّتِ and verbal noun بَسًّا, concerning the mountains’ transformation. Both branches occur in older explanations, but since the following verse describes the mountains becoming scattered dust, crumbling and fragmentation are preferable here. The root itself does not specify the physical mechanism or exact stages of that transformation, and those details should not be added to translation.