Qur’anic Root J W S
Moving and searching among places: from roaming and inspection to penetrating another people’s territory
Qur’anic and lexical forms
فَجَاسُوا
(fa-jāsū)
The sole Qur’anic form; plural perfect with fa-
جَاسَ
(jāsa)
Hollow Form I verb with middle wāw
يَجُوسُ
(yajūsu)
Imperfect; in the poetic witness, not the Qur’an
جَوْس
(jaws)
Verbal noun; movement and searching; not Qur’anic
جَوَسَان
(jawasān)
Verbal noun; including nighttime rounds; not Qur’anic
جَائِس
(jāʾis)
Active participle; not Qur’anic
جَوَّاس
(jawwās)
Lexical descriptive form; movement and treading
اجْتَاسَ
(ijtāsa)
Form VIII verb; not Qur’anic
اجْتِيَاس
(ijtiyās)
Form VIII verbal noun; not Qur’anic
Arabic jāsa concerns moving among places, passing through their intervening spaces, and searching within an area. It may describe someone going among houses, a guard inspecting surroundings at night, or a group advancing through another people’s territory and searching among their settlements.
Early jaws and jawasān concern moving back and forth among places. The movement is not always peaceful or neutral. In some settings, including a military raid, it accompanies penetration, pursuit, searching for people, and sometimes killing.
The root occurs only once in the Qur’an, in Al-Isrāʾ 17:5. A powerful group is raised against the Children of Israel and searches among their dwellings and settlements.
Three matters should remain distinct: movement among places, searching for something or someone, and violence that may accompany the movement. They can occur together but are not lexically identical.
1. Forms and semantic core
J W S is a triliteral hollow root: its middle consonant is wāw, which becomes alif in certain inflected forms.
Its basic verb is jāsa, its imperfect yajūsu, and its recorded verbal nouns include jaws and jawasān.
Arabic sources record forms including jāsa, yajūsu, jaws, jawasān, jāʾis, jawwās, ijtāsa, and ijtiyās.
These forms concern moving back and forth, searching, traversing places, inspection, and, in some usages, treading on something.
The only Qur’anic form is fa-jāsū: a third-person masculine plural Form I perfect verb with prefixed fa-.
Quranic Arabic Corpus: the sole occurrence in Al-Isrāʾ 17:5
No verbal noun, active participle, or other derivative from this family occurs in the Qur’anic text.
Takhallul: Ibn Fāris’s account
Ibn Fāris identifies one principle for this root in Maqāyīs al-Lughah:
«وَهُوَ تَخَلُّلُ الشَّيْءِ»
wa-huwa takhallulu al-shayʾ
That is: “Going into the midst of something and passing through its intervening spaces.”
The account clarifies the basic image of movement.
Someone passing among houses, streets, or a group of people does more than go alongside them: they enter the spaces between the parts and move within the area.
Takhallul here means penetrating intervening spaces, rather than necessarily splitting a solid object or forcing a passage.
Someone can pass through a crowd without harming anyone. An attacking group can likewise enter settlements and advance among houses.
Takhallul thus describes the manner of movement through places, without itself determining its purpose, intensity, or outcome.
Moving and searching
Al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad states in Kitāb al-ʿAyn:
«الْجَوَسَانُ: التَّرَدُّدُ خِلَالَ الدُّؤُورِ وَالْبُيُوتِ فِي الْغَارَةِ وَنَحْوِهَا»
al-jawasānu: al-taraddudu khilāla al-duʾūri wa-al-buyūti fī al-ghārati wa-naḥwihā
That is: “Jawasān is moving back and forth among dwellings and houses during a raid and similar situations.”
Al-ʿAyn: movement among houses during a raid
This specifies a more particular setting than Ibn Fāris’s definition.
The person or group moves among houses, and that movement can take place during an attack.
Al-Jawharī also explains the searching aspect in Al-Ṣiḥāḥ: jāsū means they penetrated among the houses and sought what was in them, just as someone may seek out news.
Al-Jawharī, Al-Ṣiḥāḥ: seeking news and ijtiyās
The lexical evidence thus reveals two closely related features: moving within an area and searching for something there.
Not every jaws necessarily seeks confidential information. Some usages emphasize movement, while others concern finding people or things.
A defensible semantic core is moving and penetrating among places or groups of people, often accompanied by inspection and searching. Brief root meaning: Moving back and forth among places or groups of people; sometimes accompanied by searching and inspection.
2. Jaws in early Arabic
Moving among houses
One clear usage concerns movement among houses and settlements.
Jāsa khilāla al-diyār describes someone or a group passing among houses and moving within their area.
This differs from simply passing alongside a settlement.
A traveler might pass outside a town without entering its neighborhoods or houses. Saying that a group jāsū among the dwellings places their movement in the spaces among residences.
It does not necessarily mean they entered every single house.
Passing along streets and between houses, entering some houses, and inspecting every house are distinct actions.
The general sense, especially with khilāla al-diyār, is penetration and movement within a settled area. The verb alone does not specify the extent of entry into particular houses.
Nighttime patrolling
Lexical sources also record jawasān for moving about at night.
A guard going among houses and streets at night might inspect the area and look for possible danger.
Repeated movement and inspection are prominent in this example.
Nighttime is not necessary to every usage of the root.
Although some explanations associate jawasān with nighttime patrolling, they do not establish that fa-jāsū in Al-Isrāʾ 17:5 necessarily happened at night.
The time requires independent evidence.
Seeking news
Jāsa al-akhbāra is recorded for seeking news and obtaining information.
The object is not necessarily a physical place here; the person seeks a report or information.
Such a search might involve visiting different people and places, but the expression does not specify how the information is gathered.
Ijtiyās is likewise recorded in the field of searching and inspection.
These usages extend moving within an area into an effort to find something.
Jaws can therefore concern careful, persistent searching.
Not every search for news amounts to covert spying or military activity. Someone might seek publicly available information among people.
Secrecy and a particular intelligence objective require independent evidence.
Persistent searching
Lisān al-ʿArab also explains jaws as seeking something thoroughly and comprehensively.
Lisān al-ʿArab: thorough searching and treading
This emphasizes purposeful movement.
Rather than wandering aimlessly, the person seeks something and may inspect different parts of the area to find it.
In this sense, jaws goes beyond simple movement and approaches inspection and searching.
A comprehensive search does not guarantee that its object is found.
Someone may inspect an entire place and find nothing.
The verb alone therefore establishes neither success nor finding the target.
Treading and trampling
Arabic sources also compare jaws with daws.
In physical usage, daws concerns treading on or trampling something.
Jāsa al-shayʾa can accordingly approach traversing or treading on something.
Jāʾa yajūsu al-nāsa is also recorded for someone passing among people and making a way through them.
Bodily movement within a crowd is prominent here.
The overlap between jaws and daws does not make every instance of jāsū the trampling and destruction of something.
A person can pass through a crowd without trampling its members.
In war, by contrast, such movement may accompany force and violence.
The context must establish the distinction.
3. Poetic witnesses and movement among enemies
Arabic poetry uses this root in settings of confrontation and movement among groups.
The witness attributed to Ḥassān ibn Thābit
Explaining Al-Isrāʾ 17:5, Al-Ṭabarī quotes a verse attributed to Ḥassān ibn Thābit:
«وَمِنَّا الَّذِي لَاقَى بِسَيْفِ مُحَمَّدٍ
فَجَاسَ بِهِ الْأَعْدَاءَ عُرْضَ الْعَسَاكِرِ»
wa-minnā alladhī lāqā bi-sayfi Muḥammadin / fa-jāsa bihi al-aʿdāʾa ʿurḍa al-ʿasākir
That is: “Among us was one who met the foe with Muḥammad’s sword and with it advanced among the enemy ranks and assailed them.”
Al-Ṭabarī: the witness attributed to Ḥassān
Jaws appears here in a battlefield setting.
The sword, enemies, and armies show that the movement is more than an ordinary stroll.
Al-Ṭabarī quotes the verse when reporting an interpretation explaining jāsū through killing enemies.
That interpretation is intelligible in a military context. Someone advancing with a sword among enemy ranks may strike and kill people.
Even here, movement among the ranks should remain distinct from the possible result of combat.
Jāsa expresses movement and penetration among enemies, while the sword and military confrontation identify the scene’s violent character.
The verse supports military usage, but does not establish killing as the sole basic and independent meaning of every instance of jaws.
Ḥassān ibn Thābit was a poet of the early Islamic period, and the verse refers directly to Muḥammad. It belongs to the field of Islamic-era language and poetry rather than proving pre-Islamic usage. The editor of Al-Basīṭ reports not finding it in Ḥassān’s printed collection, so its attribution remains explicitly qualified.
Al-Basīṭ: the editor’s note about the printed poetry collection
Jarīr’s witness for movement among groups
A verse attributed to Jarīr reads:
«يَجُوسُ عِمَارَةً وَيَكُفُّ أُخْرَىٰ
لَنَا، حَتَّىٰ يُجَاوِزَهَا دَلِيلُ»
yajūsu ʿimāratan wa-yakuffu ukhrā / lanā ḥattā yujāwizahā dalīl
That is: “He moves among one group and, for us, passes along the side of another and leaves it alone, until a guide passes through it.”
Yajūsu here concerns movement among a group of people.
ʿImārah in this usage can denote a human group or community.
Al-Azharī, Tahdhīb: ʿimārah and the Jarīr attribution
Kaff in this witness should not simply become “restraining.” Explaining the transmitted variant nakuffu ukhrā, Al-Jawharī says that we take the side of another group and leave it alone despite having power over it. Yujāwizahā concerns passing through or beyond the area.
Al-Jawharī, Al-Ṣiḥāḥ: nakuffu and the other group’s side
Their combination shows that jaws, kaff, and mujāwazah express different concepts.
Jaws concerns movement and penetration among a group; kaff in this explanation, taking the side and leaving the other group alone; and mujāwazah, passing beyond the area.
Jarīr was an Umayyad-period poet. The witness shows a recognized classical Arabic usage, rather than independently establishing language before the Qur’an’s revelation.
The witnesses examined did not provide a verse with a securely established pre-Islamic attribution and date for this root. Anonymous verses and later transmissions should not be assigned a certain pre-Qur’anic date.
4. Fa-jāsū khilāla al-diyār in the Qur’an
Al-Isrāʾ 17:5
فَإِذَا جَاءَ وَعْدُ أُولَاهُمَا بَعَثْنَا عَلَيْكُمْ عِبَادًا لَنَا أُولِي بَأْسٍ شَدِيدٍ فَجَاسُوا خِلَالَ الدِّيَارِ وَكَانَ وَعْدًا مَفْعُولًا
fa-idhā jāʾa waʿdu ūlāhumā baʿathnā ʿalaykum ʿibādan lanā ūlī baʾsin shadīdin fa-jāsū khilāla al-diyāri wa-kāna waʿdan mafʿūlā
“When the promise of the first of the two came, We raised against you servants of Ours possessing great might, who searched through the dwellings. It was a promise fulfilled.”
The verse continues a passage about the Children of Israel.
Al-Isrāʾ 17:4 speaks of twice spreading corruption in the land and rising in great arrogance. Al-Isrāʾ 17:5 then announces the first promise arriving and a powerful group being raised against them.
The group is described as ūlī baʾsin shadīdin: possessors of formidable strength.
Fa-jāsū follows their introduction.
The sequence makes movement among the dwellings part of that powerful group’s action.
Jaws here is therefore not a peaceful search unrelated to confrontation. A powerful group is raised against the addressees and then moves and searches among their dwellings.
Nevertheless, the verb’s own meaning must remain distinct from what the confrontation’s context supplies.
The construction fa-jāsū
Jāsū is a third-person masculine plural perfect verb.
The plural wāw in jāsū marks the subject, referring to the previously introduced group; the alif following it is the written distinguishing alif, or alif al-fāriqah.
Prefixed fa- relates and orders the event with respect to baʿathnā ʿalaykum.
The raising of the group is mentioned first, followed by its movement among the dwellings.
Jāsū alone does not name the invaders, count them, identify their equipment, or specify the objective of each search.
Such information, if established, must come from independent sources and evidence.
The role of khilāla al-diyār
Study of KH L L (Not yet published); Study of D W R
Khilāl belongs to KH L L and here expresses the spaces among places.
Al-diyār is the plural of dār and concerns houses, residences, and, in some usages, settlements collectively.
Khilāla al-diyār thus specifies where jaws occurs: among houses and residences.
Grammatically, it functions as an adverbial of place.
Khilāl itself supplies “among” or “through the intervening spaces.”
The entire meaning of going among houses must not therefore be assigned to J W S alone.
The verb conveys movement and searching; the spatial phrase identifies where it happens.
This distinction also matters for translation.
Jāsū can take a different object or area elsewhere. Here the movement concerns houses and settlements.
Does this mean inspecting every house?
Lexical sources explain jāsū khilāla al-diyār through searching and inspection among houses.
That does not establish that the invaders necessarily entered every house and searched every room and possession.
Khilāla al-diyār can cover movement through streets, between buildings, among neighborhoods, and within settlements.
Entering particular houses and seeking people or property may be instances of the action, but the verse itself does not specify their extent or method.
“They searched among the dwellings” therefore conveys a defensible general sense without adding the details of a particular operation.
5. Does jāsū mean they killed and destroyed?
This is a central lexical question for the root.
Early commentaries offer two principal explanations.
One emphasizes moving back and forth, penetrating among houses, and searching.
The other understands the action within raiding and killing.
Al-Ṭabarī’s explanation
Al-Ṭabarī first explains jāsū as moving among houses and residences.
He then reports a view relating it to killing and quotes the verse attributed to Ḥassān ibn Thābit.
He goes on to suggest combining the explanations: the invaders moved among the dwellings and killed during that movement.
Al-Ṭabarī: combining movement and killing
The combination merits consideration in understanding a military scene.
Two claims should nevertheless remain distinct.
First, jāsū concerns movement and penetration among places in Arabic.
Second, that movement in war can accompany killing.
The second possibility does not erase the first meaning.
Al-Farrāʾ and Al-Zajjāj
Explaining the verse, Al-Farrāʾ emphasizes killing among the houses.
Al-Zajjāj also places movement among the dwellings within a search for anyone not yet killed.
Al-Basīṭ: Al-Farrāʾ, Al-Zajjāj, and differing accounts
These explanations concern a military raid and seek to identify the movement’s purpose and outcome.
Translating jāsū simply as “they killed everyone” would diminish its attested movement and searching meanings, while adding an assertion that everyone was killed.
“They walked,” alone, would conversely overlook searching and the confrontation’s military setting.
A translation should avoid both extremes.
Is jaws inherently violent?
Some Arabic usages belong to warfare and raiding.
The same family also concerns seeking news, a guard’s movement among houses, and passing through a crowd.
Violence is therefore not necessary to every usage.
In Al-Isrāʾ 17:5, violence and military power are understood from the context and the description ūlī baʾsin shadīdin.
Jāsū itself emphasizes the manner of movement and searching.
“They searched among the dwellings” fits the direct sense, while contextual analysis can explain that the search occurred within a severe confrontation.
Does the verse name a particular ruler or army?
Historical and exegetical reports give different identities for the group.
Some connect it with Goliath and his army, others with Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, and others propose different peoples and rulers.
Al-Ṭabarī: differing historical identifications
The disagreement shows that precise historical identification is distinct from the root’s meaning.
The verse itself does not name the commander or people, date the event, or specify the exact location of the operation.
An army’s identity cannot therefore be extracted from jāsū alone.
Nor does ʿibādan lanā alone establish that the group was righteous or divinely approved in its beliefs and behavior.
The verse announces their being raised in fulfillment of a promise. Assessing their religious beliefs, intentions, and individual conduct requires further evidence.
The clear point for a root study is their role as the subject of jāsū and their movement among the dwellings.
Relation to the following verses
Al-Isrāʾ 17:6 describes the Children of Israel regaining ascendancy, receiving support through wealth and children, and increasing in number.
Al-Isrāʾ 17:7 links doing good and evil with their consequences, and mentions entering the place of worship and destroying what is overcome.
Al-Isrāʾ 17:5 is thus part of a wider account of corruption, power, defeat, recovery, and the consequences of conduct.
Yutabbirū in Al-Isrāʾ 17:7, however, belongs to T B R and concerns destruction.
Its meaning must not be transferred into jāsū in Al-Isrāʾ 17:5.
Jāsū expresses the group’s movement and searching, while tatbīr in the other verse expresses destruction.
These actions may be historically connected, but the text’s use of different verbs must remain visible in analysis.
7. Translation proposal for Forqan
For Arabic jāsa, “moving among places,” “going back and forth,” “inspecting,” and “searching” fit the lexical evidence.
The appropriate rendering must come from the complete construction.
In Al-Isrāʾ 17:5, the verb accompanies khilāla al-diyār and describes a powerful group within a confrontation.
The proposed Persian “they searched among the dwellings” is therefore suitable.
It conveys movement among places while preserving inspection and searching.
“They killed everyone” instead substitutes a possible consequence of the raid for the verb, omitting movement and searching.
“They merely strolled” makes the contextual sense excessively neutral and narrow.
“They searched house by house” might describe one way the action occurred, but can suggest more operational detail than the verse supplies.
Modern Persian “they spied” commonly concerns covert intelligence gathering, which is not identical to a powerful group’s overt movement among settlements.
The existing Forqan translation is therefore suitable:
“When the promise of the first of the two came, We raised against you servants of Ours possessing great might, who searched through the dwellings. It was a promise fulfilled.”
For the brief root meaning:
“J W S: Moving back and forth among places or groups of people; sometimes accompanied by searching and inspection.”
For the particular Qur’anic form:
“Fa-jāsū: then they moved and searched among places; here, a powerful group’s movement among the Children of Israel’s houses and settlements.”
The explanation should distinguish lexical movement and searching from the verse’s military context.
Conclusion
Arabic J W S concerns moving back and forth, passing through places, and searching among them.
Ibn Fāris places takhallul at its center, while Al-Khalīl explains jawasān as moving among houses, especially during a raid.
Lexical sources also record nighttime patrolling, seeking news, moving through crowds, and treading on places.
Jaws can thus occur in peaceful or hostile circumstances. Pursuit and killing accompany movement and searching in some usages, but are not necessary meanings of every form.
The Qur’an contains only fa-jāsū in Al-Isrāʾ 17:5. A powerful group is raised against the Children of Israel and searches among their dwellings.
The context connects this usage with penetration and military confrontation. The verb itself does not determine the invaders’ historical identity, the number killed, the precise search method, or details of entering houses.
The direct, defensible Qur’anic sense is moving and searching among houses and settlements. Military penetration and possible violence come from the context and evidence about the situation, rather than killing and destruction being necessary meanings of every usage of the root.
Movement, searching, killing, and destruction can thus remain related but independent concepts. The Qur’an has particular words and constructions for them, and they should not be merged into one verb’s meaning without evidence.