Sūrat al-Nabaʾ 78:10–11

1. The Questions These Verses Raise

The two descriptions raise questions about meaning, inference and action. We first ask what night’s covering and day’s livelihood mean, then what can properly be concluded from them.

Q1. Why is night called clothing?

Clothing covers the person who wears it. Night covers people too, but with darkness rather than cloth. The comparison in وَجَعَلْنَا اللَّيْلَ لِبَاسًا therefore begins with something familiar: as a garment conceals the body, darkness conceals people from sight. The question is how much that comparison includes. Does it concern concealment alone, or also the comfort and protection that clothing affords? These benefits also answer the claim that darkness is intrinsically evil.^[1]

How darkness can be worn

Arabic can describe entering the night as putting it on. In poetry by Dhū al-Rummah, animals enter the darkness and lift their ears as the night grows cool:

The words لَبِسْنَ اللَّيْلَ, “they clothed themselves in night,” describe their entering its darkness and becoming concealed within it. That is the point for which al-Ṭabarī cites him. Night surrounds and hides them as clothing surrounds and hides its wearer. The verse uses that familiar relation to describe a benefit to human beings.

The distinction between لِبَاس, libās, “covering,” and مُلْبِس, mulbis, “causing confusion,” is explained under Ṣarf below.

Concealment allows people to withdraw from the activity and exposure of the day. Affairs that they do not wish others to watch can be attended to in privacy. Qatādah’s explanation, سَكَنًا, “repose,” identifies a benefit of this covering: people settle after the movement of the day. The comparison thus moves naturally from what darkness does to sight to what it makes possible in human life (al-Ṭabarī, al-Rāzī).^[3]

Muqātil connects it with the description of spouses in 2:187, هُنَّ لِبَاسٌ لَكُمْ, “They are a clothing for you”: clothing can suggest the closeness in which a person finds repose, as well as concealment.^[4]

Comfort and protection

The previous verse has identified sleep. That makes the sleeper's covering a particularly close comparison: night enfolds the person who has stopped his ordinary activity, as a blanket covers someone lying down. Abū al-Suʿūd suggests, with a "perhaps", that this is the clothing night is likened to, since the likeness is then more complete and better suits a sequence that compares sleep with death, and al-Ālūsī repeats his words. Abū al-Suʿūd therefore judges concealment for escaping an enemy, for attacking one by night, or the like, out of place in this sequence.^[5]

Others keep the wider covering. Night hides people from sight when they wish to escape an enemy or attack one by night, or to keep private the many things they do not want seen (al-Zamakhsharī, al-Rāzī). Ibn ʿĀshūr finds three possible meanings under the one covering: night screens a person's private affairs from sight, it suits his rest as a garment suits its wearer, and it protects him, since the Arabs raided at dawn and not by night.^[6] The blanket explanation seems unlikely, because Allah says He made night itself the covering, not the thing a sleeper pulls over himself (al-Shawkānī).^[7]

Comfort also brings the benefit beyond concealment. Clothing protects the body, and sleep taken under night’s covering relieves the fatigue of activity. Consider the analogy through the renewal of a person’s strength and relief from bodily weariness and troubling thoughts. Imagine the immense relief a sick person finds when able to sleep at night.^[8]

The gift is the opportunity for rest, and people differ in how they experience it.^[9]

How concealment becomes protection

Protection adds a distinct point. A person escaping an enemy may survive because darkness prevents the pursuer from seeing him. Salāmah b. Jandal expresses precisely that dependence on concealment:

The untorn coat gives a concrete picture of escape unharmed. Concealment has become protection: without it, the safe return would not have occurred.

Protection need not concern a human enemy alone. A person fleeing a predatory animal may also escape under night’s cover (Muḥammad ʿAbduh).^[11]

The protective comparison is also understood through ancient Arab customs: raids took place in the morning, rather than at night. Against that customary danger, a lookout watched the approaches by day and came down when darkness fell. Labīd describes the end of the watch and then his horse:

The poetry begins with nightfall concealing the exposed approaches, then completes the scene with the rider’s descent and the height of his horse. The customary timing of raids explains why the watch can end. Other examples concern escape under darkness or a night attack. Night’s protective benefit takes different forms according to who needs concealment.

Does darkness belong to evil?

These benefits also answer a theological claim: that light is the source of good and darkness the source of evil. If darkness itself brings repose, privacy and protection, it cannot be evil by its very nature (al-Rāzī, al-Ālūsī). The person who would otherwise be exposed is covered, and the person threatened by an enemy can escape (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[13]

Al-Mutanabbī makes that objection to the Manichaeans in his poetry:

The poetry first challenges the Manichaean claim, then gives the examples. Darkness shelters someone approaching his enemies, which al-Ālūsī explains as a night attack, and allows a private visit. The poet’s case depends on concealment bringing a benefit. The Qurʾānic description places night among Allah’s gifts: light and darkness are not rival divine principles, but parts of the life the same Lord has prepared.

The converse matters too: daylight can burden someone who needs to remain hidden. Al-Ṭībī, quoting al-Wāḥidī’s explanation of the poem, adds further poetry by al-Mutanabbī:

The comparison conveys how long the day feels to someone waiting for darkness. He watches for sunset because night will give him the concealment he needs. Together, the examples overturn the claim that good belongs exclusively to light and evil exclusively to darkness: the same light that helps one person can expose another to danger.

How darkness helps prepare the body for sleep

Night’s covering helps to prepare the body for sleep. Ibn ʿĀshūr describes darkness as a condition in which activity subsides and sleep becomes easier. At verse 11, he connects daylight with renewed energy and the ability to see one’s way while attending to work.^[16]

Modern research explains how light affects the body’s daily timing. Circadian rhythms are changes that follow a cycle of about twenty-four hours. A group of nerve cells in the brain coordinates these rhythms. Light received through the eyes helps this clock regulate melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleepiness. In the evening, the clock directs the brain to make more melatonin.

Night’s darkness therefore does more than conceal objects: it helps guide the rhythm of sleep and waking. The body itself responds to the changing conditions in which the commentators place rest and renewed activity.^[17]

Conclusion

The direct comparison is covering. Its benefits include privacy, repose and protection. The mention of sleep led Abū al-Suʿūd and al-Ālūsī to prefer the sleeper's covering, but it does not require excluding the other benefits of concealment. Night is called clothing because it performs this covering role in the life Allah has prepared for His creatures (al-Ṭabarī, al-Zamakhsharī, al-Shawkānī, Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[18]

Q2. What does maʿāsh mean, and how do night and day correspond?

Daylight does more than end the darkness. After rest, people need to move, find food and attend to their affairs. The word مَعَاش, maʿāsh, can name life itself or the means by which life continues. Both meanings help explain why day follows sleep and night in this sequence.^[19]

Life and the means of living

The root عَيْش, ʿaysh, concerns living. From it, maʿāsh can denote food, drink and other things on which life depends. Calling day maʿāsh does not identify daylight with food. It joins the provision to the conditions under which people obtain it. Daylight allows them to see other people and the paths they need to take; after the night’s rest, they can return to work with renewed strength (al-Shawkānī, Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[20]

This relation can be expressed in two ways. Day is the time in which people live and seek their livelihood (al-Māturīdī), or it is a cause through which earning becomes possible (al-Ṭabarī). The latter explanation describes day through the benefit its light enables people to obtain; its rhetorical form is developed under Balāghah below.^[21]

The time explanation distinguishes where people seek their livelihood from when they do so. The world is their dwelling and place of work; day is the recurring opportunity for that work (Abū Ḥafṣ al-Nasafī).^[22]

An early explanation from Mujāhid identifies what people seek: يَبْتَغُونَ فِيهِ مِنْ فَضْلِ اللَّهِ, “They seek Allah’s bounty in it.” Their effort and Allah’s provision belong in the same explanation. They go out and act; what they seek remains His bounty. al-Baghawī adds the provision Allah has allotted to them.^[23]

The word نُشُورًا, nushūran, in 25:47 brings this return to activity into view. Its early explanations describe people spreading out for their livelihoods, seeking provision and attending to their needs (Mujāhid, Qatādah, al-Suddī).^[24] Waking has an outward consequence: the people who were still during sleep are moving through the world again.

Maʿāsh can also be considered for more than earning. Al-Māwardī proposes that day is the time of living and enjoyment. This includes the use of life’s benefits as well as the work by which they are acquired. His proposal extends the consideration from making a living to the life made possible by that provision. Al-Kirmānī records the related interpretation of a time for companionship and pleasure under الْغَرِيب, al-gharīb, unusual explanations.^[25]

Why the grammatical alternatives matter

If maʿāsh means "living" or "livelihood", how can it describe day, which is a period of time? Two analyses answer. One takes the word itself as an اسْم زَمَان, ism zamān, a noun naming the time of an activity, so that it describes day directly: day is a time, and maʿāsh names a time (al-Muntajab al-Hamadhānī, al-Zarkashī and al-Qurṭubī, who also allow the other analysis; Ibn Kamāl, who rejects it).^[26] The other takes it as a مَصْدَر مِيمِيّ, maṣdar mīmī, a verbal noun beginning with mīm, with a noun understood: وَقْتَ مَعَاشٍ, "a time for livelihood" (al-Bayḍāwī, al-Khafājī, Maḥmūd Ṣāfī, Jabal, Darwīsh).^[27]

The second analysis has the stronger case. Arabic usage does not show maʿāsh as a time noun (al-Khafājī, Ṣāfī), and the regular time noun of يَعِيشُ would follow مَفْعِل, not مَفْعَل (Jabal). That is why al-Bayḍāwī supplies "time", as al-Khafājī explains, and with it the verse still calls day a time for livelihood.^[28]

Another expansion describes the activity itself: مُبْتَغَى مَعَاشٍ or طَلَبَ مَعَاشٍ, “seeking a livelihood.” Al-Wāḥidī relates Sufyān’s explanation مُبْتَغًى, “something sought,” and explains that day enables people to pursue what they live on. This makes explicit the activity connecting the time with its benefit; it does not require taking maʿāsh itself as a time noun.^[29]

Activity after rest, and waking after sleep

The correspondence with night becomes clear. Night covers people as their activity subsides; day gives them light by which to resume it. The same alternation answers two needs: relief from work and the opportunity to return to it. The explanation of subāt as cessation therefore corresponds naturally with maʿāsh as activity in pursuit of a livelihood (al-Ṭabarī, Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[30]

There is also a correspondence between sleep and waking. If sleep is considered through its likeness to death, waking is the return of the activity of life. Abū al-Suʿūd takes maʿāsh here as this renewed life and sets aside the time for livelihood as unrelated to the sequence, because the sleep of verse 9 answers the waking life of verse 11.^[31]

That correspondence does not require excluding livelihood. Waking restores the ability to act, and that activity enables a person to seek food and attend to other needs. Life and livelihood describe successive parts of the same benefit. Both meanings therefore fit: day answers night explicitly and waking answers sleep implicitly (Ibn ʿĀshūr). The full sleep–death analogy is developed under verse 9.^[32]

For al-Ṭībī’s two arrangements of the clauses and the reply quoted from al-Kashf, see 78:9, Balāghah.^[33]

Conclusion

Maʿāsh most directly describes the day as the time and means of seeking a livelihood (al-Ṭabarī, al-Rāzī).^[34] Its meaning of life also fits the return to wakefulness. Night and day meet different, connected needs: people rest, wake and return to the activity by which life continues. The two meanings can therefore explain the sequence together, without excluding either life or livelihood (al-Bayḍāwī, al-Khafājī, Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[35]

Q3. What legal conclusions can be drawn from these descriptions?

The verses describe Allah’s ordering of human life. Ibn ʿAṭiyyah states that this sūrah contains no legal ruling or abrogation.^[36] A legal inference must therefore respect what this description actually establishes. Calling night clothing establishes a covering likeness; it does not give darkness every property or legal function of a garment.

Can darkness replace clothing in prayer?

Al-Suyūṭī records an inference made by unnamed persons: a person praying naked at night, or in a dark place, would have a valid prayer because darkness covers him. Its initial appeal comes from taking the word libās as though it conferred the legal effect of clothes upon darkness.^[37]

The comparison does not establish that effect. Darkness prevents the eye from seeing the body; clothes cover the body itself. The distinction can be tested outside prayer: night’s concealment does not perform the work of clothing against heat and cold. Al-Māturīdī therefore rejects the prayer inference: a shared covering image does not make the two things interchangeable.^[38]

Ibn al-ʿArabī calls the proposed prayer ruling certainly false and says that no Muslim holds it. Jurists may discuss covering the ⁧عَوْرَة⁩, ʿawrah, as a general Islamic obligation, or as a condition of prayer. Those are different accounts of the legal requirement and its relation to validity. Neither makes darkness a replacement for clothes. Whatever consequence follows from the position taken on covering, it applies consistently in light and darkness. The proposed inference introduces an exemption that does not follow from either account.^[39]

The purpose of the passage confirms this limit. Night is being presented as a sign of divine power and a benefit in creation. Its description explains the covering that Allah has made for human life; it does not announce a new rule about what counts as clothing in ṣalāh (Ibn ʿArafah, recorded by al-Basīlī).^[40]

Night and the division of conjugal time

A different inference concerns ⁧قَسْم⁩, qasm, the allocation of time between wives. Al-Iklīl records the inference that night is its ordinary basis, without naming its holder. Night is the usual time of covering and repose, in contrast with daytime activity; that contrast explains its place in this allocation.^[41]

Conclusion

Night’s description as clothing explains its covering benefit. It does not remove the requirement of bodily covering in prayer. Its relation to rest also helps explain the ordinary place of nighttime in qasm, without replacing the separate fiqh of that obligation.

Q4. Does reliance on Allah mean abandoning the effort to earn?

Allah provides, and the day is one of the means He has provided for seeking a livelihood. A question follows: if provision has already been decreed, what difference does effort make? The answer depends on whether decree is understood to include the means by which an outcome occurs.

The claim that effort makes no difference

In his discussion of تَوَكُّل, tawakkul, reliance on Allah, Rashīd Riḍā quotes poetry expressing the position he rejects, which he says had found favour with al-Ghazālī:

The poem’s first claim starts from decree and concludes that acting cannot matter. But decree encompasses the order through which events occur. Sowing and leaving a field unsown do not ordinarily have the same result. Eating and refusing food do not have the same result. Their different effects are themselves part of the order Allah has created. Al-Ghazālī uses these examples in the passage Riḍā quotes with approval. Belief that Allah decrees what happens therefore gives no basis for treating different causes as though they were the same.^[43]

Its second claim compares an adult with an unborn child. Both depend on Allah, but they receive provision under different conditions. The unborn child cannot walk, work or plan. The adult has feet with which to go out, hands with which to act, senses through which to learn and a mind with which to consider what to do. Those capacities are themselves gifts. The fact that Allah provides for one creature through dependence does not imply that another should refuse the capacities through which its needs are met. Riḍā cites this very verse, 78:11, among the Qurʾānic descriptions of the means of livelihood.^[44]

Al-Ghazālī’s eating example makes the consequence especially clear. Imagine a hungry person with food in front of him who refuses to reach for it, chew or swallow because all three involve movement. Calling that refusal reliance would make eating itself incompatible with tawakkul. Riḍā quotes this reasoning from al-Ghazālī, and it answers the very poetry that had found favour with him. Riḍā faults him, though, for counting the leaving of travel provisions, which reliance does not require, as permitted and among the highest reliance, and he faults his writing on reliance, as on asceticism and poverty, for leaning too far toward withdrawal from the world. Riḍā lists the Qurʾān's rebuke of those who went on the Ḥajj without provisions as proof.^[45]

Reliance and the use of means

The remaining claim concerns precautions: does taking them reveal a heart that trusts its preparations rather than Allah? The distinction is between using a means and depending on it as though it controlled the result. The hadiths below join action with reliance; the heart's trust does not require the hands to remain idle.

The Prophet ﷺ explained reliance through creatures that seek their food. ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb رضي الله عنه narrated:

The birds’ provision is joined to their going out. They leave hungry and return fed. The inference recorded by Riḍā is that the example of reliance includes movement in pursuit of food. Allah’s provision reaches them through an activity He has enabled them to perform.^[47]

The same relationship appears in the hadith of Anas b. Mālik رضي الله عنه. A man asked the Prophet ﷺ:

The instruction joins the precaution and the reliance. Tying the camel is within the owner’s capacity; complete control of what happens is not. Using the means does not turn them into an independent provider or guarantee the outcome. Reliance also matters when effort fails. Someone who depends entirely on his preparations may despair when they do not bring the result he expected. Trust in Allah helps him remain patient, consider what went wrong and act again. The heart’s dependence and the person’s work therefore have different, complementary roles (Rashīd Riḍā).^[49]

There is, however, a hadith that might seem to favour abandoning means. In describing the seventy thousand who enter Paradise without an account, the Prophet ﷺ said:

Does their praise make using practical means a defect in reliance? Riḍā answers by distinguishing effective means from imagined or doubtful ones. He places the practices named in the hadith in the latter category, whereas food, preparation and work have evident uses. His answer therefore rejects a general inference that all means should be abandoned.^[51]

His treatment of ruqyā needs a further distinction. The Prophet ﷺ also said:

The praise of those who do not request it does not therefore make all ruqyā forbidden or superstitious. The first hadith names particular practices and a particular excellence of reliance; the second expressly permits ruqyā free of shirk. Neither supports abandoning every permissible means of obtaining food or protecting property.

Conclusion

The day being made maʿāsh gives effort its proper place among Allah’s gifts. Earning does not make the worker independent of Him, and reliance does not make the means of earning useless. The person who can act uses lawful means while depending on Allah for provision and the result.

And Allah knows best.

2. How the Commentators Read These Verses

Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 283 AH): what nourishes the heart

Bodily livelihood is not the only nourishment a person needs. Just as daily activity needs light and the body needs food, the spirit and intellect need the illumination of remembering Allah. Al-Tustarī calls remembrance their maʿāsh, what they live by, contrasting this inward nourishment with the bodily livelihood of ordinary people.^[1]

This is an ⁧إِشَارَة⁩, ishārah, a spiritual reflection prompted by the verse, rather than a lexical explanation of al-nahār. It directs attention to a need beyond earning and eating: a person may have the means of bodily life while neglecting what nourishes the heart. The verse’s direct explanation of daylight as a provision for livelihood remains the one developed in Q2.

ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Khaṭīb (d. 1391 AH): rest for the senses, room for the inward life

The inward need highlighted by al-Tustarī also appears in al-Khaṭīb’s reflection on night’s covering. During the day, the senses attend to the world outside us. Darkness reduces that outward activity and gives them rest. Perceptions, emotions and feelings which receive less attention amid outward activity then have room to become active. This is an explanation of how night’s covering benefits the person, rather than a separate lexical meaning of libās.^[2]

He develops this as a balance between different needs within one person: body and spirit, material and inward concerns, movement and stillness, waking and sleep. Rest is therefore more than an interruption of useful activity. In his explanation, the alternation allows human faculties to take their different places instead of outward activity occupying the whole of life.

3. Iʿrāb: Grammatical Analysis

Both verses have the same construction: a verb of making, the thing made, and the role Allah has given it. Night is the first object and clothing the second; day is the first object and maʿāsh the second. The following analysis follows Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, published by Dār al-Ṣaḥābah.^[1]

Word / Grammar / What it does

Clause / Position

The two complete clauses thus remain part of the acknowledgment sought from verse 6 onward. Their grammar does not make day a subordinate benefit of night: each provision receives its own verb and two objects (Dār al-Ṣaḥābah; Maḥmūd Ṣāfī).^[2]

Where the grammar changes the meaning

“Made night clothing”: two objects, one relationship. The two objects do not name two independent things created. “Clothing” says what night serves as. This is ⁧تَصْيِير⁩, taṣyīr, making something have a particular condition or function (Makkī). “Made night a covering” preserves the relationship; “created night and clothing” would break it.^[3]

Why “made” rather than simply “created”? The surrounding verses show the difference between naming a created being and describing a condition arranged for it:

The distinction is between the beings themselves and their arranged conditions: creating suits the first, making suits the second (Ibn ʿĀshūr). It explains why the descriptions in verses 9–11 say more than that sleep, night and day exist.^[4]

Al-Maghāmisī states a categorical grammatical rule: jaʿala with one object means creating, and with two objects means making something serve a function. His example of night as clothing fits the relationship just explained. The rule’s reach nevertheless needs qualification: al-Zarkashī reports an analysis by unnamed scholars elsewhere which allows creation with two objects. The number of objects alone therefore cannot settle every occurrence. Here the second object and the surrounding descriptions establish the function being expressed.^[5]

“A time for livelihood.” Maʿāsh is the second object; Q2 explains why the preferred analysis takes it as a maṣdar mīmī with “time” understood.^[6]

A related expansion describes day as possessing the benefit sought within it: ⁧وَجَعَلْنَا النَّهَارَ ذَا مَعَاشٍ⁩, “We made day possessed of livelihood” (Makkī). The understood word is ⁧ذَا⁩, dhā, “possessing,” rather than waqt, “time.” This changes the explanatory expansion, but not the two-object construction.^[7]

“A means of livelihood” expresses the causal explanation: daylight enables the activity by which people obtain their provision (al-Ṭabarī). It too retains the same two objects. The alternatives explain how day and livelihood are related. Balāghah develops the causal explanation.^[8]

4. Ṣarf: Roots and Morphology

The two verses contain six root-bearing occurrences from five roots: جَعَلْنَا appears twice, while night, clothing, day and livelihood each have their own root. Their forms explain how the verses move from Allah’s act to the provision that people experience.

The basic forms and meanings follow the lexical entries; the consequential alternative in maʿāsh is considered below.^[1]

Where the morphology changes the meaning

جَعَلَ: the construction determines the sense. Here the two-object construction connects night with covering and day with livelihood, so “made” expresses both the act and its resulting function; for the verb’s wider uses, see 78:6–7, Ṣarf.^[2]

لَيْل and نَهَار: two periods, not two actions. These are nouns naming the alternating periods. Layl contrasts with nahār; adding the definite article does not identify one particular night or day. The provision concerns the recurring order. The word لَيْلَة, laylah, distinguishes an individual night, and its familiar plural is لَيَالٍ, layālin. Those related forms help identify the root without changing the form actually used in the verse.^[3]

Jabal relates layl to a fine but dense veil wrapping things. He connects this with the Qurʾān’s description of night as clothing and with 28:71, where unending night would withhold light. He also places the beginning of night at sunset. This explains the covering associated with the noun without turning layl into a verb.^[4]

A related form makes the darkness emphatic: لَيْلَةٌ لَيْلَاءُ, laylah laylāʾ, a very dark night. Ibn Barrī quotes an unnamed poet:

The witness establishes the descriptive form laylāʾ. Its image also joins night and clothing, but its lexical purpose is the intensified description of darkness.

The name nahār directs attention to light opening and spreading. Darkness opens onto brightness (Ibn Fāris); the light spreads until it reveals the horizon and the ground (Jabal). Both explanations concern what becomes visible, but they do not by themselves fix a single boundary for every use of “day.” The lexicons give both dawn and sunrise. Al-Rāghib distinguishes the word’s original reckoning from sunrise from its legal reckoning from dawn. Here the contrast with night concerns daylight and human activity; the boundary of a particular legal day needs its own context.^[6]

A poetic example shows how association with daytime can itself become a description of a person:

The contrast explains the description. نَهِر, nahir, here means a person of the day, just as لَيْلِيّ, laylī, means a person of the night. Sībawayh uses that correspondence to explain nahir as a relational description equivalent in meaning to نَهَارِيّ, nahārī. The second half of the verse then makes the activity concrete: departure early in the day. The poem demonstrates this use of the word through the traveller’s own habits.

لِبَاس: a covering that is close to what it covers. The basic verb لَبِسَ, labisa, concerns wearing clothing. From it, libās names the clothing or covering itself. Ibn Fāris relates the root to close involvement and intermingling; al-Rāghib begins from covering and explains its extension to matters that become obscured. Thus wearing clothing and making an issue unclear are connected uses of the root, but they are not interchangeable meanings of لِبَاسًا here. Night is a covering, as the sentence and its context establish.^[8]

Lisān al-ʿArab also records الْمِلْبَسُ, al-milbas, as a name for night itself. The clothing image therefore has a lexical counterpart, not merely a resemblance introduced for this verse.^[9]

Covering must be distinguished from confusing what the eye sees. One explanation connected libās with night making objects difficult to distinguish. Ibn ʿAṭiyyah objects that this would require مُلْبِس, mulbis, “causing confusion.” The word actually used, لِبَاس, libās, is, in Ibn ʿAṭiyyah’s analysis, a مَصْدَر, maṣdar, a verbal noun belonging to wearing clothes. Darkness does make things harder to distinguish, but the word directs the explanation to covering, rather than to confusion as its derivation.^[10]

Al-Nābighah al-Jaʿdī uses libās for the close contact of a woman and her bedfellow:

The woman has not become a piece of cloth. The word describes her position close against and over him. This establishes a use of libās beyond material garments through a recognizable relation of covering and contact. In 78:10, darkness provides the corresponding covering. Q1 develops its benefits; Balāghah below explains the force of stating the comparison directly.

مَعَاش: life, livelihood and the shape of the word. The root concerns life and its continuance. عَيْش, ʿaysh, is narrower than the broad word حَيَاة, ḥayāh: al-Rāghib uses it for the life of living creatures, while ḥayāh is also said of Allah. Food and drink can therefore be called ʿaysh or maʿāsh because they sustain that creaturely life. This is why translating maʿāsh merely as “employment” would be too narrow. Work seeks a livelihood, but livelihood includes what people live on (Ibn Fāris; al-Rāghib; Ibn Manẓūr).^[12]

Ruʾbah complains of the hardship of obtaining and maintaining that life:

The word مَعِيش, maʿīsh, names living or livelihood. The rest of the passage pictures its hardship through the loss of feathers: the years have depleted him. It is the complaint of hard living that establishes the lexical point. Lisān explains رَهِيش, “lean,” under descriptions of camels, including one with little flesh on its back. The comparison borrows that bodily wasting for the poet’s hardship; it does not reduce maʿāsh to a job or a payment.

The verse uses مَعَاش, with a long ā, rather than maʿīsh. Ṣāfī identifies its underlying form as مَعْيَش, maʿyash, on مَفْعَل, mafʿal. The change involving the weak root letter is إِعْلَال, iʿlāl. It explains why the root yāʾ is not visible in the resulting spelling. The opening mīm is added by the pattern; it is not a fourth root letter.^[14]

Q2 develops Jabal’s objection to the time-noun pattern and the preference for the maṣdar analysis.^[15]

Arabic also preserves a dialectal form مَعُوشَة, maʿūshah, for مَعِيشَة, maʿīshah, “livelihood.” Al-Muʾarrij, quoted in Lisān al-ʿArab, attributes it to the Azd and gives this witness:

The poetry describes a woman whose upbringing has been free of those hardships. Its value here is linguistic: the less familiar maʿūshah still denotes livelihood. It is a dialectal example concerning a related noun, not an alternative Qurʾānic reading of مَعَاشًا.

5. Balāghah: Rhetorical Analysis

Night is named as clothing (⁧التَّشْبِيه الْبَلِيغ⁩, al-tashbīh al-balīgh)

Where it is. ⁧وَجَعَلْنَا اللَّيْلَ لِبَاسًا⁩, the description of night as clothing in verse 10.

The plain way. “We made night cover you as clothing covers you.” This states both the comparison and the feature shared by its two sides.

What it does. Night and clothing are both named, but the verse does not say “like clothing” or spell out their shared covering function. It gives the listener the two things to compare while leaving the resemblance to be recognized. That is ⁧تَشْبِيه بَلِيغ⁩, tashbīh balīgh, an emphatic comparison (Ṣāfī, Ibn ʿĀshūr).

Al-Samīn instead calls the expression a fine ⁧اسْتِعَارَة⁩, istiʿārah, or metaphor. The comparison analysis is more precise here because both night and clothing remain named. The alternative label does not change the covering benefit being explained; the difference is how to classify the expression.^[1]

The effect. The wording makes night’s benefit tangible. Darkness is experienced as a covering around people, with the concealment and comfort that Q1 explains. “Night is dark” would name a quality; “night is clothing” shows what that quality does for those within it.

Day is named by the livelihood it enables (⁧الْمَجَاز⁩, al-majāz)

Where it is. ⁧وَجَعَلْنَا النَّهَارَ مَعَاشًا⁩, where day is called maʿāsh in verse 11.

The plain way. “We made day a time in which you can go out and seek your livelihood.”

What it does. On the causal explanation, the verse names the enabling condition by the benefit obtained through it. Daylight permits movement and work, and work is a means of obtaining livelihood (al-Biqāʿī, Ibn ʿĀshūr). Al-Ṭabarī illustrates the wider way Arabic can give a description to something closely connected with the person or action meant:^[2]

The sleepless person is the pillow’s owner. By saying that the pillow does not sleep, the poet places the hearer beside that restless bed. This poetry is attributed to al-Ṭirimmāḥ. A comparable explanation concerns ⁧مُبْصِرَةً⁩ in 17:12: day is described as giving sight because people see by its light (al-Kisāʾī). Al-Shinqīṭī compares that explanation with ⁧نَهَارُهُ صَائِمٌ⁩, “his day is fasting”: the person fasts during that day. In each example, the connection makes the intended meaning clear.^[4]

The same contrast appears in 40:61, ⁧اللَّهُ الَّذِي جَعَلَ لَكُمُ اللَّيْلَ لِتَسْكُنُوا فِيهِ وَالنَّهَارَ مُبْصِرًا⁩: “It is Allah who made for you the night that you may rest therein and the day giving sight.” Naming day itself as giving sight is more emphatic than merely saying that people see during it. Night’s benefit, however, is stated directly as your rest. Calling night “resting” would describe a stillness without necessarily identifying its benefit to people. The differing constructions therefore serve the same purpose of showing Allah’s favour (al-Ṭībī, al-Sāmarrāʾī).^[5]

The day’s relation to livelihood is different in detail, but the examples explain why a description need not remain attached to its most literal bearer. Day is not food or wages; it makes the activity that obtains them possible. On the alternative grammatical analysis of maʿāsh as a time noun, “a time for livelihood” is already contained in the noun itself.

The effect. The purpose of daylight becomes inseparable from its description. The listener is directed from the visible day to the life its light helps make possible: the time of earning is named by the livelihood sought within it.

Each period appears beside its benefit (⁧الْمُقَابَلَة⁩, al-muqābalah)

Where it is. The sequence ⁧اللَّيْلَ لِبَاسًا⁩ followed by ⁧النَّهَارَ مَعَاشًا⁩: night with covering, then day with livelihood.

The plain way. “We made night and day, giving you a covering in the first and an opportunity for livelihood in the second.”

What it does. Each period is immediately followed by the benefit associated with it. Al-Zarkashī records a classification by unnamed scholars which distinguishes this arrangement from first naming both things and then giving their corresponding purposes. Here the listener completes the relation between night and covering before moving to day and livelihood. Muqābalah is therefore more than the presence of the opposite words “night” and “day”: the two periods are paired with their different provisions.^[6]

The effect. The matching construction makes the contrast easy to follow without making the benefits identical. Night covers; day opens the opportunity for activity. Each answers a need that the other does not meet in the same way.

Each statement helps complete the other (⁧الِاحْتِبَاك⁩, al-iḥtibāk)

Where it is. Night is described through covering, while day is described through livelihood.

The plain way. “We made night conceal you so that you could rest from seeking a livelihood, and day reveal what night concealed so that you could go about seeking it.”

What it does. Al-Biqāʿī identifies ⁧احْتِبَاك⁩, iḥtibāk: something stated on each side indicates a corresponding element left unstated on the other. The night’s covering points to the day’s revealing light. The day’s activity points to the night’s respite from that activity. The explanation is recoverable from the two descriptions together; the verse need not repeat all four elements.^[7]

The effect. “Covering” and “livelihood” are not dictionary opposites, yet their placement lets the reader understand the contrast: concealment and visibility, rest and activity. Each description helps explain the other, so the two gifts are understood together.

Al-Zarkashī also identifies comparison ⁧فِي الْمَعْنَى دُونَ اللَّفْظِ⁩, “in meaning rather than wording”: expressions may correspond through what they signify without being dictionary opposites. That distinction explains the relationship between covering and livelihood here.^[8]

Night comes before day

Where it is. Night’s covering in verse 10 precedes day’s livelihood in verse 11.

The plain way. The two benefits could be named without choosing this order: “We made day for livelihood and night as clothing.”

What it does. Al-Sāmarrāʾī records night before day among examples explained by precedence in existence: darkness preceded the creation of the heavenly lights. This is an explanation of the order, alongside the immediate sequence from sleep to night and then daytime activity.

The effect. The sequence lets rest precede renewed effort. The historical explanation concerns why night can take first place; it does not change the meaning of either benefit.^[9]

The explicit night–day contrast and implicit sleep–waking contrast are developed together in Q2.^[10]

6. Qirāʾāt: The Readings

The adjoining lām sounds in ⁧اللَّيْلَ لِبَاسًا⁩ admit a transmitted assimilation under ⁧إِدْغَام كَبِير⁩, idghām kabīr. This is an ⁧أَصْل⁩, aṣl, a general rule of performance, rather than a different word in the verse. The local entries in al-Sabʿah and al-Nashr record no separate word variation, ⁧فَرْش⁩ (farsh), for verses 10–11.^[1]

The joining of the two lām sounds

Idghām kabīr is assimilation in which the first consonant is originally vowelled: the final lām of ⁧اللَّيْلَ⁩ has fatḥah. In assimilation, that vowel is removed and the two adjoining lām sounds are pronounced as one doubled consonant, carrying the second lām’s kasrah. This applies when the words are joined. Stopping on ⁧اللَّيْلَ⁩ separates them and does not perform this two-word assimilation.^[2]

A ⁧طَرِيق⁩, ṭarīq, is a specified chain of transmission below a narrator. The table gives al-Sūsī’s performance through al-Shāṭibiyyah; the wider evidence must be distinguished from that particular assignment.

The distinction is between the particular assignment and the wider transmission. Al-Qāḍī’s unqualified examples, including ⁧اللَّيْلَ لِبَاسًا⁩, belong to al-Sūsī through al-Shāṭibiyyah and its source. Ibn al-Jazarī confirms the received performance through al-Shāṭibiyyah and al-Taysīr and includes this exact phrase among Abū ʿAmr’s examples. His wider account also records it through both al-Dūrī and al-Sūsī in the works devoted to assimilation. The broader attribution therefore cannot be confined to al-Sūsī, while each performance remains tied to its received ṭarīq.^[3]

The preceding yāʾ and the permitted lengths

The yāʾ in ⁧لَيْل⁩ is ⁧حَرْف لِين⁩, ḥarf līn: an unvowelled yāʾ after fatḥah. It comes immediately before the lām which is assimilated. Al-Qāḍī’s rule for this position permits ⁧قَصْر⁩, qaṣr, ⁧تَوَسُّط⁩, tawassuṭ, and ⁧مَدّ⁩, madd: the short, intermediate and extended performances of the preceding sound. Ibn al-Jazarī records qaṣr as the majority practice. Intermediate and extended performance are also transmitted, but the three do not have equal prevalence. Ibn al-Jazarī limits these choices by the reciter’s treatment of the long vowels in this category: one who uses only qaṣr there uses only qaṣr here; one who uses tawassuṭ there may use tawassuṭ or qaṣr here, but not full madd.^[4]

The first lām originally has fatḥah, so ⁧رَوْم⁩, rawm, retaining part of a vowel, and ⁧إِشْمَام⁩, ishmām, the relevant lip indication, do not add further options here. Al-Qāḍī limits those treatments to other vowel conditions. These distinctions change the received performance of the phrase; they do not change its words, grammatical objects or meaning.^[5]

Al-Nasafī’s discussion of stopping treats verses 6–16 as connected and allows a stop at ⁧مَعَاشًا⁩ only when necessary, rather than presenting it as his preferred stop.^[6]