The Qur’anic root B Y Ḍ
Whiteness, becoming white, and birds’ eggs: from visible colour to changing faces and Qur’anic imagery
Qur’anic and lexical forms
بَيَاض
(bayāḍ)
Whiteness; not Qur’anic
أَبْيَض
(abyaḍ)
Masculine adjective: white
بَيْضَاء
(bayḍāʾ)
Feminine adjective; six Qur’anic occurrences
بِيض
(bīḍ)
Adjectival plural; Fāṭir 35:27
ابْيَضَّ
(ibyaḍḍa)
Form IX: becoming white
تَبْيَضُّ
(tabyaḍḍu)
Imperfect; Āl ʿImrān 3:106
ابْيَضَّتْ
(ibyaḍḍat)
Feminine past tense; two Qur’anic occurrences
ابْيِضَاض
(ibyiḍāḍ)
Form IX verbal noun; not Qur’anic
بَيَّضَ
(bayyaḍa)
Form II: made white; not Qur’anic
بَاضَ
(bāḍa)
Laid eggs; not Qur’anic
بَيْضَة
(bayḍah)
Unit noun: an egg; this form is not Qur’anic
بَيْض
(bayḍ)
Collective noun: eggs; Al-Ṣāffāt 37:49
بَائِضَة
(bāʾiḍah)
Egg-laying; not Qur’anic
بَيُوض
(bayūḍ)
Prolific egg-layer; not Qur’anic
Arabic B Y Ḍ fundamentally concerns whiteness, a colour recognised in opposition to blackness. Abyaḍ describes something white, bayḍāʾ is its feminine, bayāḍ denotes whiteness, and ibyaḍḍa means becoming white.
Bayḍah, a bird’s egg, is also recorded in this family. Early Arabic extended the egg’s name to things resembling it in shape or other features, including helmets and figurative expressions for people and their standing.
The root occurs twelve times in the Qur’an. Sometimes whiteness is a visible colour, as in mountain streaks. Sometimes colour changes, as with Jacob’s eyes. Moses’ hand appears white to onlookers, while faces becoming white accompany particular human outcomes in resurrection passages.
Quranic Arabic Corpus: twelve occurrences
Al-Ṣāffāt uses bayḍāʾ to describe a heavenly drink and bayḍ, eggs, within a simile.
These uses prevent restricting the root to a moral concept such as purity, virtue, or salvation. Whiteness is fundamentally colour; context establishes its role when associated with joy, grief, illness, a divine sign, or beauty.
1. The semantic core in early Arabic
Ibn Fāris identifies whiteness as the principle in Maqāyīs al-Lughah, then discusses birds’ eggs and resembling objects within the family.
Maqāyīs al-Lughah: whiteness,eggs,and resemblance
Lisān al-ʿArab likewise defines bayāḍ as colour opposed to blackness, applicable to animals, plants, and other coloured things.
The lexical definition is straightforward.
Describing something as white concerns its colour, whether cloth, stone, liquid, skin, human hair, or a bird.
The degree of whiteness nevertheless varies.
Natural language can call something white across a range of light shades, including whites tinged with yellow, red, or grey.
Abyaḍ alone does not establish the precise brightness, purity of colour, or physical surface properties.
Whiteness and brilliance also differ.
Something can be white while reflecting little light or lying in shade; a metal or stone can shine strongly without being white.
Arabic sometimes uses whiteness for a bright, visible appearance. Such uses approach luminosity without making every abyaḍ mean radiant or light-emitting.
Being white and becoming white
Abyaḍ and ibyaḍḍa should be distinguished.
Abyaḍ describes something white.
Ibyaḍḍa expresses becoming white, when whiteness arises or becomes apparent.
Al-thawbu abyaḍu describes a cloth as white.
Ibyaḍḍa al-thawbu can describe the cloth becoming white.
The first presents a colour condition.
The second foregrounds its emergence or change.
This matters in the Qur’an: Āl ʿImrān and Yūsuf use the verb of becoming white, while Moses’ story, the mountains, and the drink use descriptive forms.
2. Birds’ eggs and semantic extension
Bayḍah and bayḍ
Bayḍah names a bird’s egg.
Bayḍ denotes eggs collectively, with bayḍah as its unit noun. More precisely, it is a collective generic noun, although general explanations call it the plural of bayḍah.
Al-Jadwal: bayḍ,a generic noun with unit bayḍah
Early lexicons assign the name to B Y Ḍ; Ibn Fāris derives it from whiteness.
The naming connection is understandable, since many birds’ eggs are white or nearly white.
Not every bird’s egg is white, however.
Some are cream, blue, green, brown, or spotted.
Although lexicographers relate bayḍah to whiteness, its established meaning is an egg rather than any white object.
A white stone does not become bayḍah through colour alone, unless a particular usage compares its shape or another feature to an egg.
An egg remains an egg even when it is not white.
A possible naming motivation should therefore remain distinct from an established noun meaning.
Bayḍatu al-ḥadīdi: a helmet
Early Arabic calls a kind of helmet bayḍatu al-ḥadīdi.
Ibn Fāris explains the name through resemblance to an egg’s shape.
Whiteness need not be the point of comparison.
Dark iron or another metal can form a rounded covering comparable to an egg.
Not every bayḍah use can therefore be explained by colour alone.
Some transfer the egg’s name to objects resembling its shape or function.
Bayḍatu al-baladi
Lexicons record two different uses of this expression.
In praise, it describes someone prominent among people and protected by them.
In disparagement, it describes someone isolated, unsupported, or vulnerable.
The explanations connect these to two conditions of an egg.
An egg guarded by its bird is protected.
An egg abandoned in open country is vulnerable to harm.
One visible image can thus describe contrasting social situations.
Praise and blame should not become the egg’s basic meaning.
Bayḍah directly names an egg; evaluation emerges from the figurative construction and situation.
Maqāyīs and Al-Mufradāt: bayḍatu al-balad in praise and blame
3. Morphological forms and important distinctions
B Y Ḍ has several Arabic forms.
Bayāḍ names whiteness.
Abyaḍ is the masculine adjective, bayḍāʾ the feminine.
Bīḍ can be the adjectival plural of abyaḍ.
Bayḍ is the collective generic noun for eggs, with bayḍah as its unit.
The last two are especially important: they look alike without vowel marks but differ in meaning.
Bīḍ in Fāṭir 35:27 describes colour.
Bayḍ in Al-Ṣāffāt 37:49 denotes eggs.
One occurrence therefore requires “white,” the other “eggs.”
Vocalisation, grammar, and context establish the difference.
Ibyaḍḍa
Ibyaḍḍa has the ifʿalla pattern, used for colour changes and certain visible characteristics.
Its verbal noun is ibyiḍāḍ.
Qur’anic tabyaḍḍu and ibyaḍḍat derive from this verb.
It is intransitive, fundamentally describing its subject becoming white.
Bayyaḍa
Form II bayyaḍa can mean making something white.
Whitening cloth or a wall illustrates this use.
An agent causes another thing to become white.
Bayyaḍa and ibyaḍḍa therefore have different grammatical roles.
Al-Miṣbāḥ and Mukhtār: forms for whiteness and whitening
Bāḍa
Bāḍat al-dajājatu means the hen laid eggs.
The verb here concerns producing or laying eggs.
The family also includes bāʾiḍah for an egg-laying bird and bayūḍ for a prolific layer.
These forms do not occur in the Qur’an.
Extended uses
Early Arabic sometimes calls uncultivated or unvegetated ground arḍun bayḍāʾu.
Whiteness here can relate to a light ground surface or lack of vegetation.
Literary abyaḍu al-wajhi can also allude to good repute or honour.
White hair, by comparison, can relate to advancing age.
Whiteness thus has no single fixed value: it can be visible colour, beauty, a sign of age, or an image of honour.
4. Witnesses from pre-Qur’anic Arabic poetry
Imruʾ al-Qays: whiteness and physical beauty
Imruʾ al-Qays says in his Muʿallaqah:
مُهَفْهَفَةٌ بَيْضَاءُ غَيْرُ مُفَاضَةٍ
تَرَائِبُهَا مَصْقُولَةٌ كَالسَّجَنْجَلِ
muhafhafatun bayḍāʾu ghayru mufāḍatin / tarāʾibuhā maṣqūlatun ka-al-sajanjali
Translation: “Slender and white, her belly neither large nor sagging; her upper chest smooth and polished like a mirror.”
Al-Aʿlam al-Shantamarī: muhafhafah and ghayr mufāḍah
Bayḍāʾ describes the woman’s colour and appearance.
Muhafhafah and the polished image establish the depiction of physical beauty.
This does not make bayḍāʾ itself mean beauty in Arabic.
Its direct meaning is white; context gives the colour its place in the image of beauty.
The description reflects the poet’s taste and cultural setting, rather than a universal judgment making skin colour a measure of moral worth or inherent superiority.
Imruʾ al-Qays: bayḍatu khidrin
The same Muʿallaqah says:
وَبَيْضَةِ خِدْرٍ لَا يُرَامُ خِبَاؤُهَا
تَمَتَّعْتُ مِنْ لَهْوٍ بِهَا غَيْرَ مُعْجَلِ
wa-bayḍati khidrin lā yurāmu khibāʾuhā / tamattaʿtu min lahwin bihā ghayra muʿjali
Translation: “With a woman like a protected egg in her private enclosure, whose tent was not easily approached, I enjoyed diversion without being hurried.”
Al-Aʿlam al-Shantamarī: bayḍatu khidr
Bayḍah describes a woman here rather than directly naming an ordinary egg.
Early commentaries give several comparisons: light colour, delicacy, and an egg protected beneath its bird or in its nesting place.
Khidr and khibāʾ likewise emphasise seclusion and difficulty of access.
The comparison should therefore not be reduced to skin colour.
Nor should bayḍah become an independent technical term for chastity. That is a cultural interpretation of the simile rather than the noun’s direct meaning.
These pre-Islamic lines attest colour description and comparison to a protected egg within the same family.
5. White and black in identifying fasting’s beginning: Al-Baqarah 2:187
Verse text:
أُحِلَّ لَكُمْ لَيْلَةَ الصِّيَامِ الرَّفَثُ إِلَىٰ نِسَائِكُمْ ۚ هُنَّ لِبَاسٌ لَكُمْ وَأَنْتُمْ لِبَاسٌ لَهُنَّ ۗ عَلِمَ اللَّهُ أَنَّكُمْ كُنْتُمْ تَخْتَانُونَ أَنْفُسَكُمْ فَتَابَ عَلَيْكُمْ وَعَفَا عَنْكُمْ ۖ فَالْآنَ بَاشِرُوهُنَّ وَابْتَغُوا مَا كَتَبَ اللَّهُ لَكُمْ ۚ وَكُلُوا وَاشْرَبُوا حَتَّىٰ يَتَبَيَّنَ لَكُمُ الْخَيْطُ الْأَبْيَضُ مِنَ الْخَيْطِ الْأَسْوَدِ مِنَ الْفَجْرِ ۖ ثُمَّ أَتِمُّوا الصِّيَامَ إِلَى اللَّيْلِ ۚ وَلَا تُبَاشِرُوهُنَّ وَأَنْتُمْ عَاكِفُونَ فِي الْمَسَاجِدِ ۗ تِلْكَ حُدُودُ اللَّهِ فَلَا تَقْرَبُوهَا ۗ كَذَٰلِكَ يُبَيِّنُ اللَّهُ آيَاتِهِ لِلنَّاسِ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَتَّقُونَ
uḥilla lakum laylata al-ṣiyāmi al-rafathu ilā nisāʾikum hunna libāsun lakum wa-antum libāsun lahunna ʿalima Allāhu annakum kuntum takhtānūna anfusakum fa-tāba ʿalaykum wa-ʿafā ʿankum fa-al-āna bāshirūhunna wa-ibtaghū mā kataba Allāhu lakum wa-kulū wa-ishrabū ḥattā yatabayyana lakumu al-khayṭu al-abyaḍu mina al-khayṭi al-aswadi mina al-fajri thumma atimmū al-ṣiyāma ilā al-layli wa-lā tubāshirūhunna wa-antum ʿākifūna fī al-masājidi tilka ḥudūdu Allāhi fa-lā taqrabūhā kadhālika yubayyinu Allāhu āyātihi li-al-nāsi laʿallahum yattaqūna
Translation:
“Intimacy with your wives has been permitted to you on the night of fasting. They are a covering for you, and you a covering for them. The God knew that you were betraying yourselves, so He turned toward you and pardoned you. Now have intimacy with them and seek what The God has prescribed for you. Eat and drink until the white thread becomes distinct to you from the black thread at dawn. Then complete the fast until night. Do not have intimacy with them while remaining in devotion in the mosques. These are The God’s bounds; do not approach them. Thus The God explains His signs to people, so that they may be mindful.”
Al-abyaḍu qualifies al-khayṭu.
An actual piece of thread is not intended.
Mina al-fajri identifies the image with dawn’s light and nighttime darkness.
The emerging dawn makes light and darkness distinguishable on the horizon.
Whiteness here relates to morning light, blackness to nighttime darkness.
Why khayṭ, thread?
Khayṭ ordinarily names a thin thread.
The verse uses its image to distinguish light from darkness.
Thinness and extension can inform the image, like a bright stretch of horizon at dawn.
Abyaḍ itself nevertheless does not mean dawn.
Abyaḍ supplies colour; khayṭ supplies the image’s form.
Mina al-fajri identifies the natural phenomenon.
Al-Ṭabarī: dawn’s thread and nighttime darkness
The basic translation should not directly replace al-khayṭu al-abyaḍu with a scheduled dawn call or a fixed calendar time.
Practical fasting times relate to dawn’s signs, but such calculations are not B Y Ḍ’s lexical meaning.
The white–black contrast
White and black are visible characteristics here.
Whiteness is not declared moral virtue, nor blackness sin.
Nighttime darkness belongs to the natural day–night cycle; morning light marks another stage.
The colour contrast should not become an evaluation of people or social groups.
6. Faces becoming white: Āl ʿImrān 3:106 and Āl ʿImrān 3:107
Āl ʿImrān 3:106
Verse text:
يَوْمَ تَبْيَضُّ وُجُوهٌ وَتَسْوَدُّ وُجُوهٌ ۚ فَأَمَّا الَّذِينَ اسْوَدَّتْ وُجُوهُهُمْ أَكَفَرْتُمْ بَعْدَ إِيمَانِكُمْ فَذُوقُوا الْعَذَابَ بِمَا كُنْتُمْ تَكْفُرُونَ
yawma tabyaḍḍu wujūhun wa-taswaddu wujūhun fa-ammā alladhīna iswaddat wujūhuhum a-kafartum baʿda īmānikum fa-dhūqū al-ʿadhāba bi-mā kuntum takfurūna
Translation:
“On a day when faces become white and faces become black. Those whose faces have become black are asked: Did you disbelieve after your belief? Then taste punishment for the disbelief you practised.”
Āl ʿImrān 3:107
Verse text:
وَأَمَّا الَّذِينَ ابْيَضَّتْ وُجُوهُهُمْ فَفِي رَحْمَةِ اللَّهِ هُمْ فِيهَا خَالِدُونَ
wa-ammā alladhīna ibyaḍḍat wujūhuhum fa-fī raḥmati Allāhi hum fīhā khālidūna
Translation:
“Those whose faces have become white are in The God’s mercy, abiding there.”
Becoming white contrasts with becoming black in these verses.
Tabyaḍḍu is imperfect; ibyaḍḍat is past tense.
Both share a morphological pattern and concern whiteness arising.
Natural human skin colour during earthly life is not the subject.
The verses concern the day of reckoning and the outcome of human deeds.
One group is associated with punishment, another with The God’s mercy.
Are the changed faces literal or figurative?
Early commentaries present two important readings.
One understands an actual change in faces’ appearance on that day.
Another understands expressions of joy, honour, grief, and shame.
Al-Rāghib connects a white face with happiness and a favourable outcome.
Al-Rāghib’s Al-Mufradāt: white faces and joy
Other commentators emphasise the possibility of actual colour change.
Al-Qurṭubī: changed faces on the day of reckoning
Both approaches deserve linguistic attention.
Ibyaḍḍa fundamentally means becoming white.
Arabic literary imagery can nevertheless connect a bright or white face with happiness and honour.
Here the connection of white faces with mercy, and black faces with punishment, is clear.
The event’s bodily manner is a separate question from the root’s meaning.
Do the verses establish superiority by skin colour?
No such conclusion follows.
They concern changed faces on the day of reckoning, rather than comparing natural skin colours in worldly life.
They do not say a person with lighter earthly skin has greater faith or moral worth.
Nor do they identify naturally dark skin with sin or punishment.
Human colour differences themselves appear among creation’s signs, including Al-Rūm 30:22.
Expressions about deeds’ outcomes should not become judgments about inherited appearance or skin colour.
The basic translation should retain faces becoming white, with symbolism and the event’s manner discussed separately.
7. Jacob’s eyes becoming white: Yūsuf 12:84
Verse text:
وَتَوَلَّىٰ عَنْهُمْ وَقَالَ يَا أَسَفَىٰ عَلَىٰ يُوسُفَ وَابْيَضَّتْ عَيْنَاهُ مِنَ الْحُزْنِ فَهُوَ كَظِيمٌ
wa-tawallā ʿanhum wa-qāla yā asafā ʿalā Yūsufa wa-ibyaḍḍat ʿaynāhu mina al-ḥuzni fa-huwa kaẓīmun
Translation:
“He turned away from them and said: O my grief for Joseph! His eyes became white from sorrow, while he held his grief within.”
Ibyaḍḍat is the same verb used for faces becoming white in Āl ʿImrān.
The subject differs.
Here Jacob’s eyes become white, with mina al-ḥuzni connecting this to sorrow.
The colour change is associated with profound grief.
Does the verse concern blindness?
Early explanations commonly connect Jacob’s eyes becoming white with impaired sight or blindness.
Al-Ṭabarī: Jacob’s eyes and grief
The story’s continuation supports that connection.
Yūsuf 12:96 describes his sight returning after Joseph’s shirt arrives.
The story therefore establishes impaired sight followed by restoration.
Ibyaḍḍat in Yūsuf 12:84 is nevertheless not a particular medical diagnosis.
It should not become cataract, corneal opacity, or another named eye disease without evidence.
Such diagnoses require medical evidence; the verse supplies no details of eye anatomy or a particular condition.
“From sorrow” should likewise not become a definitive medical mechanism without examination.
The verse connects the eyes’ whitening to intense grief without explaining its bodily mechanism.
Is ibyaḍḍat always favourable?
This verse clearly shows otherwise.
In Āl ʿImrān, white faces accompany The God’s mercy.
In Yūsuf, white eyes accompany grief and impaired vision.
The lexical colour meaning remains, while value and outcome vary with context.
One favourable use does not make every whiteness in the Qur’an signify virtue or salvation.
8. Moses’ white hand: five occurrences in five surahs
Bayḍāʾ describes Moses’ hand five times.
They are Al-Aʿrāf 7:108, Ṭā Hā 20:22, Al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:33, Al-Naml 27:12, and Al-Qaṣaṣ 28:32.
Al-Aʿrāf 7:108
Verse text:
وَنَزَعَ يَدَهُ فَإِذَا هِيَ بَيْضَاءُ لِلنَّاظِرِينَ
wa-nazaʿa yadahu fa-idhā hiya bayḍāʾu li-al-nāẓirīna
Translation:
“He drew out his hand, and suddenly it was white and apparent to the onlookers.”
Ṭā Hā 20:22
Verse text:
وَاضْمُمْ يَدَكَ إِلَىٰ جَنَاحِكَ تَخْرُجْ بَيْضَاءَ مِنْ غَيْرِ سُوءٍ آيَةً أُخْرَىٰ
wa-uḍmum yadaka ilā janāḥika takhruj bayḍāʾa min ghayri sūʾin āyatan ukhrā
Translation:
“Draw your hand close to your side; it will emerge white, without harm, as another sign.”
Al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:33
Verse text:
وَنَزَعَ يَدَهُ فَإِذَا هِيَ بَيْضَاءُ لِلنَّاظِرِينَ
wa-nazaʿa yadahu fa-idhā hiya bayḍāʾu li-al-nāẓirīna
Translation:
“He drew out his hand, and suddenly it was white and apparent to the onlookers.”
Al-Naml 27:12
Verse text:
وَأَدْخِلْ يَدَكَ فِي جَيْبِكَ تَخْرُجْ بَيْضَاءَ مِنْ غَيْرِ سُوءٍ فِي تِسْعِ آيَاتٍ إِلَىٰ فِرْعَوْنَ وَقَوْمِهِ ۚ إِنَّهُمْ كَانُوا قَوْمًا فَاسِقِينَ
wa-adkhil yadaka fī jaybika takhruj bayḍāʾa min ghayri sūʾin fī tisʿi āyātin ilā Firʿawna wa-qawmihi innahum kānū qawman fāsiqīna
Translation:
“Put your hand into your garment’s opening; it will emerge white without harm, among nine signs to Pharaoh and his people. They were a defiant people.”
Al-Qaṣaṣ 28:32
Verse text:
اسْلُكْ يَدَكَ فِي جَيْبِكَ تَخْرُجْ بَيْضَاءَ مِنْ غَيْرِ سُوءٍ وَاضْمُمْ إِلَيْكَ جَنَاحَكَ مِنَ الرَّهْبِ ۖ فَذَانِكَ بُرْهَانَانِ مِنْ رَبِّكَ إِلَىٰ فِرْعَوْنَ وَمَلَئِهِ ۚ إِنَّهُمْ كَانُوا قَوْمًا فَاسِقِينَ
usluk yadaka fī jaybika takhruj bayḍāʾa min ghayri sūʾin wa-uḍmum ilayka janāḥaka mina al-rahbi fa-dhānika burhānāni min rabbika ilā Firʿawna wa-malaʾihi innahum kānū qawman fāsiqīna
Translation:
“Put your hand into your garment’s opening; it will emerge white without harm. Draw your arm close to yourself against fear. These are two proofs from your Lord to Pharaoh and his chiefs. They were a defiant people.”
The meaning of bayḍāʾ
Bayḍāʾ describes Moses’ hand in all five places.
It is abyaḍ’s feminine, agreeing with feminine yad, hand.
Its direct meaning is white.
Al-Aʿrāf and Al-Shuʿarāʾ add li-al-nāẓirīna: the characteristic was apparent to observers.
The sign is therefore shown to onlookers rather than remaining Moses’ inward experience alone.
Min ghayri sūʾin
Ṭā Hā, Al-Naml, and Al-Qaṣaṣ accompany the hand’s whiteness with min ghayri sūʾin.
Early explanations commonly relate sūʾ here to illness or a skin affliction, particularly one involving changed pigmentation.
Sūʾ itself is broader than any particular disease.
“Without harm” or “without an affliction” may therefore serve the basic translation better than introducing a named disease.
The early explanation concerning absence of illness remains part of the analysis.
Al-Ṭabarī: the early explanation of min ghayri sūʾ
Did Moses’ hand emit light?
Some transmitted accounts and commentaries describe intense brilliance.
Bayḍāʾ itself does not mean emitting light.
Whiteness, visibility to observers, and freedom from harm occur together in the Qur’an.
Together they establish a perceptible, extraordinary sign.
The verses do not specify brightness, radiation intensity, the precise colour before and after, or a physical mechanism.
A translation should retain the white hand rather than replace it without evidence with a hand shining like the sun.
Does this concern Moses’ natural skin colour?
The verses describe a particular sign appearing after a specified action.
They do not merely describe his ordinary skin colour.
His white hand is a sign and proof before Pharaoh and his people.
The passages do not establish Moses’ ethnicity, ordinary skin colour, or one human colour’s superiority over another.
The hand’s value follows from its role as a divine sign, rather than whiteness possessing greater moral value in every circumstance.
9. White mountain streaks: Fāṭir 35:27
Verse text:
أَلَمْ تَرَ أَنَّ اللَّهَ أَنْزَلَ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ مَاءً فَأَخْرَجْنَا بِهِ ثَمَرَاتٍ مُخْتَلِفًا أَلْوَانُهَا ۚ وَمِنَ الْجِبَالِ جُدَدٌ بِيضٌ وَحُمْرٌ مُخْتَلِفٌ أَلْوَانُهَا وَغَرَابِيبُ سُودٌ
a-lam tara anna Allāha anzala mina al-samāʾi māʾan fa-akhrajnā bihi thamarātin mukhtalifan alwānuhā wa-mina al-jibāli judadun bīḍun wa-ḥumrun mukhtalifun alwānuhā wa-gharābību sūdun
Translation:
“Have you not seen that The God sent water from the sky, through which We brought forth fruits of differing colours? Among the mountains are streaks and paths, white and red, of differing colours, and intensely black portions.”
Bīḍ here is the adjectival plural of abyaḍ.
The subject is coloured streaks and paths in mountains.
Judad belongs to an independent root; early explanations identify visible mountain paths or lines.
Whiteness describes a visible part of the mountains’ structure.
This is a direct, perceptible use.
Bīḍ itself means neither streak, path, nor stone; it supplies colour.
Alongside red and black
White occurs with red and black.
The verse draws attention to natural colour differences.
None of these colours directly signifies moral virtue or sin.
White, red, and black mountains all belong to creation’s diversity.
Fāṭir 35:28 next mentions colour differences among people, moving creatures, and livestock.
This connection presents colour diversity as observable in nature and its beings.
Bīḍ nevertheless cannot identify a particular rock or mineral.
Different stones can be light-coloured; identifying them requires geological evidence.
The verse should not be restricted without evidence to a named mineral or particular geological process.
10. The white drink: Al-Ṣāffāt 37:46
Verse text:
بَيْضَاءَ لَذَّةٍ لِلشَّارِبِينَ
bayḍāʾa ladhdhatin li-al-shāribīna
Translation:
“White and delicious for those drinking.”
The verse continues describing the heavenly drink.
Al-Ṣāffāt 37:45 describes a cup of flowing drink circulated among those enjoying blessings.
Al-Ṣāffāt 37:46 then gives two qualities: whiteness and pleasantness for drinkers.
The qualities are distinct.
Bayḍāʾ describes the cup and its drink as white. Grammatically it qualifies feminine kaʾs in the preceding verse.
Al-Jadwal: bayḍāʾ qualifies kaʾs
Ladhdhah concerns its pleasurable quality for those drinking.
Bayḍāʾ should therefore not automatically become tasty, pure, or pleasant to drink.
Such qualities occur in context but are expressed through other words.
What kind of whiteness is intended?
Commentaries offer differing explanations of the drink’s appearance.
Some associate whiteness with visible clarity and clearness.
The verse itself supplies the description bayḍāʾ.
It does not establish the drink’s chemical composition, thickness, exact transparency, or complete resemblance to familiar earthly liquids.
Nor does a white heavenly drink make whiteness a universal sign of purity or health in food.
A liquid’s colour and its hygienic qualities are separate matters.
Whiteness describes the heavenly drink; a separate word conveys its pleasantness.
11. Bayḍun maknūnun: comparison to protected eggs
Al-Ṣāffāt 37:49
Verse text:
كَأَنَّهُنَّ بَيْضٌ مَكْنُونٌ
ka-annahunna bayḍun maknūnun
Translation:
“As though they were protected, covered eggs.”
The verse continues describing heavenly companions.
Bayḍ is the collective generic noun for eggs, with unit bayḍah, rather than bīḍ, white ones.
Maknūn belongs to K N N and concerns being covered and protected.
The verse uses a simile: people are likened to protected eggs.
What is the point of comparison?
Early explanations offer several readings.
Some understand eggs protected beneath a bird’s wings and feathers, safe from damage and dirt.
Others emphasise the whiteness and delicacy inside the egg beneath its outer shell.
Another interpretation relates the image to protected pearls.
Al-Ṭabarī records these views and favours the whiteness and delicacy of the protected interior; his explanation also emphasises its untouched inner membrane.
Al-Ṭabarī: protected-eggs interpretations and preferred reading
Pre-Islamic poetry already compared women to protected eggs, as Imruʾ al-Qays illustrates.
The egg image therefore has a clear linguistic basis.
Is whiteness alone intended?
Taking whiteness as the whole meaning understates maknūn.
Protection and freedom from damage or contact also belong to the image.
Conversely, an egg’s protection should not make every feature of the comparison concern social or moral status alone.
Several related features may coexist: whiteness or clearness of appearance, delicacy, and protection.
Which is primary requires linguistic and contextual evidence.
The basic translation should retain protected eggs, with the comparison explained separately.
That avoids importing a particular cultural understanding of beauty, chastity, or skin colour into the verse’s direct meaning without evidence.
13. Translation proposals for Forqan
Translate bayāḍ as “whiteness.”
Both masculine abyaḍ and feminine bayḍāʾ become “white” in English.
Adjectival bīḍ likewise becomes “white” or “white-coloured.”
For collective bayḍ, with unit bayḍah, use “eggs.”
For ibyaḍḍa use “became white”; for tabyaḍḍu, “becomes white.”
For bayyaḍa use “made white” or “whitened.”
For a bird’s bāḍa use “laid eggs.”
Rendering the twelve Qur’anic occurrences
Al-Baqarah 2:187
«الْخَيْطُ الْأَبْيَضُ»
al-khayṭu al-abyaḍu
“The white thread.”
Explanation identifies the image of dawn’s light against nighttime darkness.
Āl ʿImrān 3:106
«تَبْيَضُّ وُجُوهٌ»
tabyaḍḍu wujūhun
“Faces become white.”
Āl ʿImrān 3:107
«ابْيَضَّتْ وُجُوهُهُمْ»
ibyaḍḍat wujūhuhum
“Their faces became white.”
Al-Aʿrāf 7:108
«فَإِذَا هِيَ بَيْضَاءُ»
fa-idhā hiya bayḍāʾu
“Suddenly the hand was white.”
Yūsuf 12:84
«وَابْيَضَّتْ عَيْنَاهُ»
wa-ibyaḍḍat ʿaynāhu
“His eyes became white.”
Ṭā Hā 20:22
«تَخْرُجْ بَيْضَاءَ»
takhruj bayḍāʾa
“It emerges white.”
Al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:33
«فَإِذَا هِيَ بَيْضَاءُ»
fa-idhā hiya bayḍāʾu
“Suddenly the hand was white.”
Al-Naml 27:12
«تَخْرُجْ بَيْضَاءَ»
takhruj bayḍāʾa
“It emerges white.”
Al-Qaṣaṣ 28:32
«تَخْرُجْ بَيْضَاءَ»
takhruj bayḍāʾa
“It emerges white.”
Fāṭir 35:27
«جُدَدٌ بِيضٌ»
judadun bīḍun
“White streaks and paths.”
Al-Ṣāffāt 37:46
«بَيْضَاءَ»
bayḍāʾa
“White.”
Al-Ṣāffāt 37:49
«بَيْضٌ مَكْنُونٌ»
bayḍun maknūnun
“Protected eggs.”
These occurrences should not automatically turn whiteness into purity, brilliance, health, mercy, superiority, beauty, or blindness.
Such concepts may connect with whiteness in particular contexts without being every form’s direct meaning.
14. Conclusion
Arabic B Y Ḍ is founded on whiteness.
Abyaḍ and bayḍāʾ describe colour; ibyaḍḍa expresses becoming white. Bayḍah names an egg and extends to resembling objects and figurative images.
Early Arabic poetry attests bodily whiteness and comparing a person to a protected egg.
The Qur’an has twelve occurrences in different uses.
Al-Baqarah 2:187 relates whiteness to dawn’s light against nighttime blackness.
Āl ʿImrān 3:106 and Āl ʿImrān 3:107 place white faces within reckoning and divine mercy.
Yūsuf 12:84 connects Jacob’s white eyes with intense sorrow and impaired vision.
Five passages describe Moses’ white hand as an evident sign; three explicitly add freedom from harm.
Bīḍ in Fāṭir 35:27 colours mountain streaks, displaying natural colour diversity alongside red and black.
Al-Ṣāffāt 37:46 describes the heavenly drink as white.
Bayḍ in Al-Ṣāffāt 37:49 denotes eggs in a comparison qualified by protection.
Whiteness thus has no independent, invariable moral value throughout the Qur’an. It appears in nature, extraordinary events, afterlife imagery, and descriptions of human grief.
Whiteness should not be equated with brilliance, cleanliness, human superiority, or bodily health.
Final root definition: B Y Ḍ fundamentally denotes whiteness as a colour characteristic, from which descriptions of being white and verbs of becoming white derive. Bayḍah names a bird’s egg, assigned to this family in early Arabic and extended to similes and resembling objects.
The family distinctively concerns whiteness and its emergence, and in the nominal branch, eggs, rather than a fixed moral or spiritual state.
“White” and “becoming white” should therefore remain basic Qur’anic equivalents, apart from an independent noun use such as bayḍun maknūnun, where the word denotes eggs.
Each verse’s subject, accompanying verbs, and context establish the colour’s favourable, adverse, natural, or figurative role; no fixed meaning beyond language should be imposed on every occurrence.