Qur’anic Root Q SH ʿ R — Iqshiʿrār: Shivering and Contraction of the Skin, Awe, and Deep Responsiveness
Qur’anic and lexical forms
تَقْشَعِرُّ
(taqshaʿirru)
Al-Zumar 39:23; the sole Qur’anic form
اِقْشَعَرَّ
(iqshaʿarra)
Augmented quadriliteral perfect verb
اِقْشِعْرَار
(iqshiʿrār)
Verbal noun; not used in the Qur’an
قُشَعْرِيرَة
(qushaʿrīrah)
State noun; not used in the Qur’an
مُقْشَعِرّ
(muqshaʿirr)
Participle; not used in the Qur’an
مُتَقَشْعِر
(mutaqashʿir)
Lexical description; not used in the Qur’an
قَشَاعِر
(qashāʿir)
Plural of muqshaʿirr; not used in the Qur’an
قُشَاعِر
(qushāʿir)
Rough to the touch; not used in the Qur’an
قُشْعُر
(qushʿur)
Yemeni dialect plant name; not used in the Qur’an
قُشْعُرَة
(qushʿurah)
Unit plant name; not used in the Qur’an
1. Root Meaning and Word Structure
Arabic iqshaʿarra describes skin shivering, contracting, or changing its condition, possibly through fear, awe, intense cold, or deep feeling. The state is called qushaʿrīrah, expressed in Persian as tingling of the body or shivering skin.
The family occurs only once in the Qur’an, as taqshaʿirru. The skins of those who fear their Lord shiver in response to divine discourse; their skins and hearts then soften toward the remembrance of The God.
Al-ʿAyn, among the earliest comprehensive Arabic lexicons, explains qushaʿrīrah as the skin’s iqshiʿrār through fright and similar causes.
Lisān al-ʿArab gives al-qushaʿrīratu: al-riʿdatu wa-iqshiʿrāru al-jildi (القُشَعْرِيرَةُ: الرِّعْدَةُ وَاقْشِعْرَارُ الْجِلْدِ): trembling and the skin’s shuddering state.
Al-ʿAyn and Lisān al-ʿArab: skin shivering and qushaʿrīrah
The family is not restricted to fear-induced shivering. Early sources also record skin becoming dry and contracted, a roughened surface, withering plants, and land changed by drought.
The range connects iqshiʿrār with a perceptible change in a surface or body. This may appear as shivering or tingling skin; for land and plants, it can involve dryness, contraction, and loss of their usual condition.
The uses should nevertheless not be reduced to the excessively general meaning “changing.” Not every change is iqshiʿrār.
In bodily usage, it generally concerns a change involving shivering, contraction, drawing together, or surface roughness.
Morphologically, Q SH ʿ R is quadriliteral.
The familiar verb iqshaʿarra is an augmented quadriliteral form. Its verbal noun is iqshiʿrār and its imperfect yaqshaʿirru.
Qur’anic taqshaʿirru is an imperfect of that verb.
It should therefore not be conflated with a basic triliteral verb or similar words such as qashara and shaʿara.
Nor can a new historical meaning be established by merely dividing its letters into hypothetical combinations. Study should begin with the family’s attested uses.
2. Linguistic Forms and Semantic Branches
Iqshaʿarra: Shivering and Changing Skin
The most familiar use is iqshaʿarra jilduhu, his skin shivered or entered the state described in Persian as the body tingling.
The person may feel a perceptible skin change. Sometimes body hair rises and the skin develops small bumps.
The state may accompany fear, awe, or intense cold.
The verb itself nevertheless does not always specify the cause.
For example, iqshaʿarra jilduhu mina al-khawfi explicitly identifies fear as the cause.
The verb can still be used when cold produces the state.
Iqshiʿrār names the response; its cause requires context.
This distinction matters in Al-Zumar 39:23: the Qur’an describes both the skin response and the people experiencing it, who fear their Lord.
Fearful awe provides the response’s context there; taqshaʿirru itself does not directly mean “to fear.”
Qushaʿrīrah: Shivering and Tingling
Qushaʿrīrah names a state affecting skin or body.
Akhadhat-hu qushaʿrīratun means that shivering or tingling seized the person.
Arabic uses the word for a recognizable state that can be brief, ending when its cause subsides.
It is not always a sign of illness: cold air, sudden fright, excitement, or emotional feeling can occasion it.
Certain illnesses also involve chills and skin changes, but the word alone does not provide a medical diagnosis.
Qushaʿrīrah should therefore not be defined as illness, fever, or pathological fear.
Its general meaning is a perceptible bodily response that can be temporary; transience should not be made necessary to every use.
Muqshaʿirr and Mutaqashʿir
Muqshaʿirr describes someone or something experiencing iqshiʿrār.
Applied to a person, it may concern skin or a body that shivers or changes condition.
Lexicons also record mutaqashʿir with a close meaning.
Some Arabic uses give qashāʿir as the plural of muqshaʿirr.
Differently vocalized qushāʿir is also recorded for something rough or harsh to the touch.
Al-Ṣiḥāḥ, Lisān al-ʿArab, and Al-Qāmūs: participles and plurals
Contraction, dryness, and surface roughness are understandably connected here, but roughness and shivering differ.
Skin can tingle temporarily without becoming permanently rough. A surface can likewise be rough and dry without trembling.
Each use requires its own object and context.
Iqshiʿrār of Land and Plants
Tahdhīb al-Lughah records iqshaʿarrati al-arḍu for land changed by drought.
The land becomes dry, drawn together, and contracted from insufficient rain.
Iqshaʿarra al-nabātu likewise describes a plant receiving insufficient water and losing its freshness.
This differs from human skin shivering.
Land and plants in these expressions need not suddenly tremble like a person. The expressions concern their changed appearance, dryness, and contraction.
Contracted skin and dried land can be semantically connected: both exhibit changed surfaces with a drawn or rough condition.
That connection does not establish whether the word originally described drought and later human skin, or the reverse.
The evidence does not securely determine their historical sequence.
Al-ʿAyn and Lisān al-ʿArab: land, plants, and drought
Iqshaʿarrati al-Sanah: A Dry, Difficult Year
Another use describes a year afflicted by drought and famine.
A year is not itself a body possessing skin or trembling.
The word describes the period’s harsh, dry condition.
The semantic extension is understandable: a perceptible state’s name can describe a wider situation.
It does not make Qur’anic taqshaʿirru mean famine, drought, or deprivation of blessings.
The Qur’anic verb has julūd, skins, as its subject, foregrounding shivering and contraction of skin.
Qushʿur: A Dialect Plant Name
Al-ʿAyn and Lisān al-ʿArab record differently vocalized qushʿur for qiththāʾ, a cucumber-type edible plant, in a Yemeni dialect.
Its unit form is qushʿurah.
This plainly differs from skin shivering.
Recording the name in the same lexical entry does not itself derive the plant name from trembling, dryness, or tingling.
One should therefore not invent a story about the plant’s skin shape or roughness to connect it with Qur’anic usage.
Neither plant name occurs in the Qur’an.
3. Early Arabic Evidence: Shivering, Awe, and Surface Change
A Witness Attributed to Imruʾ al-Qays
An important poetic witness occurs in verse attributed to Imruʾ al-Qays:
فَبِتُّ أُكَابِدُ لَيْلَ التِّمَامِ
وَالْقَلْبُ مِنْ خَشْيَةٍ مُقْشَعِرْ
fa-bittu ukābidu layla al-timāmi / wa-l-qalbu min khashyatin muqshaʿir
“I spent the long night struggling in distress, my heart shuddering with fear and apprehension.”
Al-Qurṭubī: witness attributed to Imruʾ al-Qays
Muqshaʿirr describes the heart here.
The poetic family can therefore extend beyond a perceptible skin response to an inward human state.
The image describes the heart like a shivering body.
It does not establish a purely psychological state without bodily manifestation as the word’s necessary original meaning.
A poet may transfer bodily shivering and contraction to the heart to convey intense anxiety and fearful awe.
The witness also connects iqshiʿrār and khashyah in poetic language.
Shared words nevertheless do not make the poet’s condition and that of believers in Al-Zumar 39:23 identical in value and cause.
The poem concerns personal fear or anxiety in a human situation. The Qur’an presents shivering in response to divine discourse, connected with fearful awe of the Lord.
The shared image is shivering and deep feeling.
A Witness from Abū Zubayd al-Ṭāʾī
Al-ʿAyn, Tahdhīb al-Lughah, and Lisān al-ʿArab quote Abū Zubayd al-Ṭāʾī:
أَصْبَحَ الْبَيْتُ بَيْتُ آلِ إِيَاسٍ
مُقْشَعِرًّا وَالْحَيُّ حَيٌّ خُلُوفُ
aṣbaḥa al-baytu baytu āli iyāsin / muqshaʿirran wa-l-ḥayyu ḥayyun khulūfu
“The house of the family of Iyās has become desolate and forlorn; the people’s dwelling stands empty of its inhabitants.”
Some lexical versions have Āl Bayān instead of Āl Iyās.
Ibn Barrī corrects the reading to Āl Iyās, because the poem mourns a member of that family.
Lisān al-ʿArab, KH L F: Ibn Barrī’s correction to Āl Iyās
The textual difference matters, although both versions preserve the meaning under discussion.
Muqshaʿirran describes the house.
The house does not physically shiver like human skin. Its forlorn, abandoned condition is described by a word elsewhere concerning contraction and surface change.
Literary iqshiʿrār can thus describe an unpleasant or altered condition.
This does not make “an abandoned house” the constant meaning of muqshaʿirr.
The particular sense comes from the house as subject and the verse’s continuation.
Abū Zubayd al-Ṭāʾī lived around the emergence of Islam. Independently dating this particular verse requires further evidence.
It can therefore serve as early usage evidence without claiming more about its composition date than is known.
Comparing the Two Witnesses
The Imruʾ al-Qays verse applies muqshaʿirr to a heart experiencing fearful awe.
Abū Zubayd applies the same description to a house that has lost its inhabited, flourishing condition.
The difference shows the word’s capacity for semantic extension.
Neither witness eliminates the direct skin-shivering sense.
Since julūd is explicitly the Qur’anic verb’s subject, bodily shivering and contraction provide the clearest starting point for understanding the verse.
4. Qur’anic Use in Al-Zumar 39:23
Q SH ʿ R occurs only once in the Qur’an.
Quranic Arabic Corpus: sole occurrence in Al-Zumar 39:23
Al-Zumar 39:23
اللَّهُ نَزَّلَ أَحْسَنَ الْحَدِيثِ كِتَابًا مُتَشَابِهًا مَثَانِيَ تَقْشَعِرُّ مِنْهُ جُلُودُ الَّذِينَ يَخْشَوْنَ رَبَّهُمْ ثُمَّ تَلِينُ جُلُودُهُمْ وَقُلُوبُهُمْ إِلَىٰ ذِكْرِ اللَّهِ ذَٰلِكَ هُدَى اللَّهِ يَهْدِي بِهِ مَنْ يَشَاءُ وَمَنْ يُضْلِلِ اللَّهُ فَمَا لَهُ مِنْ هَادٍ
allāhu nazzala aḥsana al-ḥadīthi kitāban mutashābihan mathāniya taqshaʿirru minhu julūdu alladhīna yakhshawna rabbahum thumma talīnu julūduhum wa-qulūbuhum ilā dhikri allāhi dhālika hudā allāhi yahdī bihi man yashāʾu wa-man yuḍlili allāhu fa-mā lahu min hādin
Forqan’s existing Persian translation, rendered here in English:
“The God sent down the best discourse, a consistent, recurring Book, at which the skins of those who fear their Lord shiver. Then their skins and hearts soften toward the remembrance of The God. That is the guidance of The God, by which He guides whom He wills. Whoever The God leads astray has no guide.”
The Grammar of Taqshaʿirru
Taqshaʿirru is a third-person feminine singular imperfect verb in the indicative.
It comes from iqshaʿarra and is intransitive here, describing a state affecting its subject.
Its subject is julūdu.
Julūd is the plural of jild, skin. In Arabic, a verb preceding a nonhuman plural can be feminine singular.
The verb’s feminine singular therefore does not restrict it to one woman’s or one person’s skin.
The verse concerns the skins of people who fear their Lord.
The preposition min also matters in taqshaʿirru minhu.
The -hu pronoun refers to the Book or divine discourse mentioned at the beginning.
The skin’s shivering thus responds to that discourse.
Hearing or receiving the Book’s content affects these people so deeply that their response also becomes bodily visible.
The phrase concerns more than inward feelings or thoughts: it specifically makes the skin the verb’s subject.
Taqshaʿirru julūduhum should therefore not become “their hearts fear” without contextual evidence.
Heart, awe, and inner response are present within the verse, but taqshaʿirru itself concerns a perceptible skin change.
Why Julūd, Skins?
Iqshiʿrār is an Arabic name for a state that can manifest on skin.
Fear or intense feeling may make someone sense their skin contracting, their body tingling, or their hair rising.
Julūd therefore directly fits the verb’s established meaning.
The bodily response nevertheless does not establish one precisely identical medical state for everyone.
People experience fear, awe, and emotional feeling differently.
One person may feel skin tingling, another shivering or a different bodily response.
The verse uses perceptible language to convey divine discourse’s profound effect.
It gives no magnitude, duration, or neurological details of the response.
The word should consequently not be restricted to one scientific process or made the basis of a nervous-system theory.
Alladhīna Yakhshawna Rabbahum: The Context of Awe
The Qur’an describes the response in those who yakhshawna rabbahum.
Khashyah involves fear, awe, and serious regard for something’s greatness or consequences.
The Lord is its object here.
Khashyah and iqshiʿrār nevertheless differ.
Khashyah concerns a person’s inward disposition; iqshiʿrār is the response manifesting on skin.
Fearful awe may occasion shivering, but taqshaʿirru itself does not mean “to have khashyah.”
The distinction matters for understanding the verse.
The Qur’an characterizes these people by fearful awe of their Lord and describes their bodily response to divine discourse.
The resulting response should not replace the inward state itself.
Nor does the verse establish that someone without perceptible skin tingling during Qur’an recitation lacks genuine awe.
It describes a group’s responsiveness without prescribing a numerical criterion or bodily test of people’s faith.
Does Shivering Occur Only at Verses of Punishment?
Al-Farrāʾ explains that believers’ skins shiver at punishment verses, then soften at mercy verses.
The explanation is understandable through the relationship between fear and hope.
Warnings about wrongdoing’s consequences can arouse fearful awe and anxiety; promises of mercy and guidance can bring calm and hope.
Al-Zumar 39:23 itself nevertheless does not explicitly say a punishment verse is read first and a mercy verse afterward.
It says their skins shiver at the divine Book, then their skins and hearts soften toward remembrance of The God.
Al-Farrāʾ’s explanation is consequently one contextual interpretation, rather than part of taqshaʿirru’s lexical meaning.
Lisān al-ʿArab: Al-Farrāʾ on punishment and mercy verses
Arabic iqshiʿrār can arise through awe, fear, or deep feeling even when the object is more than a warning of punishment.
The root should therefore not be restricted to “shivering when hearing threats.”
Thumma Talīnu Julūduhum wa-Qulūbuhum: From Shivering to Softness
The verse notably does not end its description with shivering alone.
It continues: thumma talīnu julūduhum wa-qulūbuhum ilā dhikri allāhi.
Both skins and hearts are named.
Talīnu belongs to L Y N and means becoming soft.
For skin, softness can indicate the contraction or drawn state subsiding.
For the heart, softening involves receptiveness, flexibility, and inward responsiveness.
The verse consequently places two responses together: shivering and contraction of skin, followed by softening of skins and hearts.
The sequence matters without becoming a fixed, mandatory timetable.
Thumma can indicate sequence without specifying the interval or precise manner of change.
Nor should a softening heart mean that all fearful awe has disappeared.
The verse describes the same people fearing their Lord and then softening toward His remembrance.
Awe and a soft heart need not be incompatible.
A person can take seriously the greatness and responsibility of standing before The God while remaining inwardly receptive to guidance and remembrance.
Shivering and softness are two aspects of responsiveness here, rather than one marking faith and the other departure from it.
Al-Ṭabarī: hearing the Book and softening toward acceptance and action
Why Skin First, Then Skin and Heart?
The first clause pairs taqshaʿirru with julūd.
The lexical combination is natural: iqshiʿrār primarily concerns a perceptible skin response.
The second pairs talīnu with both skins and hearts.
Softening can be physical and inward.
The structure thus distinguishes a perceptible skin response from the wider responsiveness of body and heart.
The distinction does not make the heart wholly unaffected initially.
Alladhīna yakhshawna rabbahum itself shows an inward disposition already present.
The first part simply makes the bodily manifestation explicit.
The order of mentioning skin and heart therefore does not establish that the body responds without any inner feeling before awareness or emotion is transmitted to the heart.
That claim exceeds the verse’s information.
7. Conclusions and Translation Proposal
Arabic Q SH ʿ R is a quadriliteral family principally concerning shivering, contraction, and perceptible skin change.
Its familiar verbal noun is iqshiʿrār; the shivering state is called qushaʿrīrah.
Fear, fearful awe, majesty, cold, or other stimuli can occasion the state.
Lexicons record other uses too: dry, contracted land; withered plants; a harsh drought year; and rough surfaces.
Some are connected through changed condition, contraction, and dryness, without evidence deriving every use from one certain historical image.
Yemeni dialect qushʿur names a cucumber-type plant, but its historical connection with skin shivering is unclear.
The Qur’an uses the root only once, as taqshaʿirru in Al-Zumar 39:23.
The skins of people fearing their Lord shiver in response to divine discourse.
Their skins and hearts then soften toward remembrance of The God.
The two parts describe perceptible response and inward receptiveness.
Iqshiʿrār itself should nevertheless not be defined as fearful awe, faith, guidance, or heart softening.
Context connects those concepts, while each retains its own word and role.
Nor can shivering be restricted to fear of punishment. Some early explanations offer that reading, but the verse does not identify it as the only cause.
Brief root meaning: Shivering, contraction, and perceptible skin change; the body tingling. Other attested uses include dryness, a drawn condition, and surface roughness.
Meaning of Qur’anic taqshaʿirru: the skins shiver and tingle in response to divine discourse; context connects the response with fearful awe of the Lord.
Translation proposal:
تَقْشَعِرُّ مِنْهُ جُلُودُ الَّذِينَ يَخْشَوْنَ رَبَّهُمْ
taqshaʿirru minhu julūdu alladhīna yakhshawna rabbahum
“The skins of those who fear their Lord shiver at it.”
This rendering agrees with Forqan’s existing phrase and conveys the verb’s direct meaning.
A more detailed lexical explanation could be: “Their skins shiver and tingle on hearing it.”
That explanation should not replace the approved translation without authorization.
The principal finding is that Qur’anic iqshiʿrār names a perceptible skin response connected with fearful awe and responsiveness to divine discourse.
It may indicate deep feeling, but the bodily response alone is no definitive test of faith or truth-seeking.
Al-Zumar places shivering alongside skin and heart softening toward remembrance of The God.
The verse should consequently not be reduced entirely to bodily shivering, nor should its explicit skin response become purely mental or symbolic.
It portrays a connection between receiving discourse, inward awe, bodily response, and a softened heart.
Each element has its place; preserving their differences allows taqshaʿirru to be understood accurately without added interpretation.