Root · 3 in the Quran · 4 in 3 texts of the library
لففWrapping, folding, or gathering things together, often things of disparate origin. (root lff)
English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ل ف ف that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
4 words1 verb1 participle1 intensive or elative1 other noun
- اِلْتَفَّ—
- لَفِيف—
- أَلْفَاف—
- مَلْفُوفwrapped; twisted
The whole family4 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs1اِلْتَفَّ
The root as an action: the bare Form I, and the Forms made by adding letters before, inside or after the root.grammar →
- اِلْتَفَّForm VIIIQurʾān ×1
Participles1مَلْفُوف
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
- مَلْفُوفwrapped; twistedautopassive, Form Ilibrary ×1
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 4 patterns does
What each pattern does. The pattern gives a tendency, not a rule: many words have drifted into meanings of their own.
The pattern machinePour the root into a pattern; see whether the word exists
Choose a pattern; the root's letters pour into it. Then see whether the word exists in our sources. The machine makes shapes; only usage makes words.
Not in our sources. A possible shape, not a word we can show: the Quran, the library and Lane do not have it for this root.
Place noun with -a. The place noun with the feminine -a. Sometimes it is only a variant of mafʿal; often it names the place where a thing is found in abundance (maʾsada, 'a place full of lions'). So maktab is the place of writing, and maktaba, where writings are gathered: a library, a bookshop. Our summary AI
But: maktaba is not in our classical dictionaries for k-t-b: Lane and al-Jawharī give maktab ('a school'), none gives maktaba. Its sense of 'library, bookshop' fits the pattern of abundance, but that is our reading of the pattern, not a classical entry. Many mafʿala words are single items of usage (maqbara 'cemetery'), which the grammarians call heard, not formed by rule.
The grammarians on this pattern (4)
ما يكون مفعلة لازمة لها الهاء والفتحة … وذلك إذا أردت أن تكثر الشيء بالمكان، وذلك قولك: أرض مسبعة، ومأسدة
Chapter on what is mafʿala, with the -a and the a-vowel always: that is when you mean that a thing abounds in a place, as you say 'a land of many beasts of prey (masbaʿa), of many lions (maʾsada)' AI
Sībawayh (d. c. 180/796), al-Kitāb, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn, 3rd ed. (Cairo: al-Khānjī, 1988), 4:94 · OpenITI line 21027–21028 ↗ · on this site · OpenITI RELEASE v2025.1.9, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
و نحو المظنة و المقبرة فتحا و ضما ليس بقياس
and words like maẓinna and maqbara (with a or u) are not by rule AI
Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249), al-Shāfiya fī ʿilm al-taṣrīf, ed. Ḥasan Aḥmad al-ʿUthmān (Mecca: al-Maktaba al-Makkiyya, 1995), 1:30 · OpenITI line 223 ↗ · on this site · OpenITI RELEASE v2025.1.9, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- “designate the place where the object signified by the noun from which they are formed, is found in large numbers or quantities” Wright, Grammar I, §247, p. 148 ↗ · on nouns of abundance, maf'ala · 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1896) · public domain
- “Nouns of time and place not unfrequently take the feminine form” Wright, Grammar I, §225, p. 128 ↗ · on maf'ala as a variant of maf'al · 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1896) · public domain
This root has a weak or doubled letter, so real words change shape (qāla → qāʾil, not qāwil); the machine pours the letters in as they are, and matches attested words by their regular pattern.
About thisWhat “attested” means here; the sources
Attested means found in our data: the Quranic Arabic Corpus (lemmas, verb Forms, participles, verbal nouns, plurals), the library's words (automatic analysis), Lane's Lexicon (his headwords, the Forms he numbers, the verbal nouns and plurals he names) and Ibn Fāris's entry. Nothing is generated for this list. Meanings are Lane's first gloss in his entry, or else the analyser's gloss (“auto”). Vowelling follows the corpus, then Lane, then the analyser; verbs are given in the regular perfect. Lane's Lexicon thins out after qāf, and a few of his entries cover several roots at once: those roots show no Lane. The patterns, written with ف ع ل, are computed by us.
The dictionaries
English: AI translation AIal-Khalīl · 170Al-lafaf (اللفف): abundance of flesh of the two thighs;
al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad (d. c. 170/786), Kitāb al-ʿAyn. The first Arabic dictionary, arranged by permutations of the root letters.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Jawharī · 393I wrapped/rolled up the thing (لففت الشيء): lafaftu ...
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Rāghib · 502He, the Exalted, said: "fa-idhā jāʾa waʿdu al-ākhirati jiʾnā bikum..." — "But when the promise of the Hereafter came, We brought you [together]..." [entry continues]
al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī (d. c. 502/1108), al-Mufradāt. Quranic vocabulary, from core sense to Quranic usage.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowLisān · 711Al-lafaf (اللفف): abundance of flesh of the two thighs;
Ibn Manẓūr (d. 711/1311), Lisān al-ʿArab. The great compendium of the earlier dictionaries (entry shortened).
AI AI translation of the Arabic below
Technical definitions5 · Ibn ʿArabī’s Iṣṭilāḥ, al-Jurjānī’s Taʿrīfāt
جودة الفهم
صحة الانتقال من الملزومات إلى اللوازم.
Excellence of comprehension (jūdat al-fahm): the correctness of the transition from the necessitating things (malzūmāt) to their necessary consequences (lawāzim). AI
الفهم
تصور المعنى من لفظ المخاطب.
Comprehension (al-fahm): the conception of the meaning from the utterance of the speaker. AI
اللفيف المقرون
ما اعتل عينه ولامه، كقوى.
Al-lafīf al-maqrūn (the conjoined doubly-weak root): that whose middle radical (ʿayn) and final radical (lām) are [both] weak, like qawā (قوى). AI
اللفيف المفروق
ما اعتل فاؤه ولامه، كوقى.
Al-lafīf al-mafrūq (the separated doubly-weak root): that whose first radical (fāʾ) and final radical (lām) are [both] weak, like waqā (وقى). AI
اللف والنشر
هو أن تلف شيئين ثم تأتي بتفسيرهما جملة؛ ثقة بأن السامع يرد إلى كل واحد منهما ما له، كقوله تعالى: {ومن رحمته جعل لكم الليل والنهار لتسكنوا فيه ولتبتغوا من فضله} ، ومن النظم قول الشاعر: ألست أنت الذي من ورد نعمته وورد حشمته أجني وأغترف وقد يسمى الترتيب أيضا.
Al-laff wa-al-nashr (folding and unfolding): it is that you fold together [mention] two things, then bring their explanation altogether [afterward], trusting that the listener will restore to each one what belongs to it — as in His saying, the Exalted: "And of His mercy He has made for you the night and the day, that you may rest therein and that you may seek of His bounty" [Q. 28:73]. And among poetic verse is the poet's saying: "Are you not the one from whose roses of blessing and roses of retinue I gather and draw?" It is also sometimes called al-tartīb (ordering/sequencing). AI
The same letters, turned
The same three letters in all their orders. Choose one.
an entry in Ibn Fārislater sources onlyin none of them
Do these six share one core meaning?
Reference
About thisal-Khalīl, Ibn Jinnī, Ibn Fāris; the counts across the dictionary
al-Khalīl (d. c. 170/786), Kitāb al-ʿAyn, as transmitted by al-Layth: a two-letter word “turns in two ways”, a three-letter word “in six ways” (masdūsa), four letters in 24, five in 120; “its used forms are written down and its unused ones dropped” (line 975 ↗). The dictionary is built on this: each chapter takes a set of letters and names which orders are used (mustaʿmal) and which unused (muhmal). The ring shows that verdict, from the chapter heading as edited (documented in the text; how much of the book is al-Khalīl's own is disputed).
A reported total. al-Suyūṭī transmits, from Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī, that al-Khalīl put the possible forms, used and unused, of two to five letters at 12,305,412 (al-Muzhir, line 1347 ↗). It is reported, not found in the ʿAyn. It equals exactly the arrangements of 2 to 5 different letters out of 28 (756 + 19,656 + 491,400 + 11,793,600); the breakdown printed beside it is corrupt, and al-Zubaydī's count, given next, differs (6,659,400).
Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002), al-Khaṣāʾiṣ, names the greater derivation (al-ishtiqāq al-akbar): bind a three-letter root and its six orders to one meaning, and bring stray members back “by the subtlety of the craft and interpretation” (line 7536 ↗). He says himself that it does not hold for every root (line 167 ↗; line 7603 ↗).
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004) gives each root its own aṣl and treats a rearranged word as maqlūb, “turned round”, and so not a root of its own: “j-b-dh is not a root, because it is a single word, turned round” (Maqāyīs, line 6147 ↗). The ring sets his aṣl for each order side by side; whether they meet is the question.
Neighbours on the ring differ by one swap of two letters.
The critique. A source quoted by al-Suyūṭī calls the greater derivation Ibn Jinnī's innovation, “not relied on in the language” (al-Muzhir, line 6159 ↗).
The other axis. The root's letters also go into patterns that keep their order and change the frame: the patterns (awzān) and the verb Forms I–X.
Across Ibn Fāris's dictionary. Of the 2,300 possible sets of three different sound letters (no hamza, w or y), 1,021 have at least one order as an entry. How many of their six orders are entries:
- 1 of 6319
- 2 of 6218
- 3 of 6164
- 4 of 6155
- 5 of 6107
- 6 of 658
- 1 of 6148
- 2 of 6108
- 3 of 6157
- 4 of 6179
- 5 of 6111
- 6 of 643
Of the orders al-Khalīl calls used, 2,097 are entries in Ibn Fāris and 267 are not; 17 that he calls unused are entries in Ibn Fāris.
Attested here means found in our digital texts (Ibn Fāris, Lisān al-ʿArab, Lane, the Quranic Arabic Corpus), with w and y kept apart and hamza spellings merged; it is our data, not a classical verdict. English beside the Arabic is AI translation. Sources and grades: docs/research/root-permutations.md.
Letters & sound
- لlāmedge of the tongue · voiced, in betweenI. Jinnī
- فfāʾlower lip and upper teeth · voiceless, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
- فfāʾlower lip and upper teeth · voiceless, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
How each letter is made, in brief, from Sībawayh's and Ibn Jinnī's own sentences (linked); their words are under Reference.
Sharing two of its three letters (computed; kinship of form, not of meaning)
Reference
How it is madeSībawayh and Ibn Jinnī · phonetics
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
ل
ومن حافة اللسان من أدناها إلى منتهى طرف اللسان، من بينها وبين ما يليها من الحنك الأعلى، مما فويق الضاحك والناب والرباعية والثنية، مخرج اللام
From the edge of the tongue, from its nearest part to the end of its tip, between it and the upper palate next to it, just above the premolar, the canine, the lateral and the central incisor, is the place of the lām. Ibn Jinnī, lines 977–978 ↗
ف
ومن باطن الشفة السفلى وأطراف الثنايا العلى مخرج الفاء
From the inside of the lower lip and the edges of the upper front teeth is the place of the fāʾ. Sībawayh, line 26562 ↗
ومن باطن الشفة السفلى وأطراف الثنايا العلى، مخرج الفاء
From the inside of the lower lip and the edges of the upper front teeth is the place of the fāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 985 ↗
ف
ومن باطن الشفة السفلى وأطراف الثنايا العلى مخرج الفاء
From the inside of the lower lip and the edges of the upper front teeth is the place of the fāʾ. Sībawayh, line 26562 ↗
ومن باطن الشفة السفلى وأطراف الثنايا العلى، مخرج الفاء
From the inside of the lower lip and the edges of the upper front teeth is the place of the fāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 985 ↗
Sībawayh, al-Kitāb (ed. Hārūn) and Ibn Jinnī, Sirr ṣināʿat al-iʿrāb; OpenITI digital texts (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Full credits on each letter's page.
In the Breath of the All-MercifulIbn ʿArabī · metaphysics
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
ل
Level of existence: السماء الثالثة · the third heaven
Divine Name: القاهر · the Subduer (al-Qāhir)
Lunar mansion: العوا · al-ʿAwwā
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64654Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 7 line 2576 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
منها دون الألف فطبعها الحرارة واليبوسة
[Zāy and lām] of it, excluding alif: their nature is heat and dryness.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2577ف
Level of existence: الملائكة · the angels
Divine Name: القوى · the Strong (al-Qawī)
Lunar mansion: سعد الأخبية · Saʿd al-Akhbiya
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 65823Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 10 line 2573 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
المرتبة العشرية فحروفها حارة يابسة
The tenfold rank: its letters are hot and dry.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2582ف
Level of existence: الملائكة · the angels
Divine Name: القوى · the Strong (al-Qawī)
Lunar mansion: سعد الأخبية · Saʿd al-Akhbiya
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 65823Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 10 line 2573 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
المرتبة العشرية فحروفها حارة يابسة
The tenfold rank: its letters are hot and dry.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2582Meaning by vowelal-Dabbāgh · a visionary claim about a primordial “Syriac”, not historical Syriac
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
ل
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي حصول المتكلم على شيء عظيم، وتكون إشارة إلى شيء عظيم.
It is the speaker's attaining of something great, and it serves as an indication of something great.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء الذي لا نهاية له.
It is an indication of the thing that has no end.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة من المتكلم إلى وجود ذاته أو إلى ذاته.
It is an indication by the speaker of the existence of his self, or of his self.
ف
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي لنفي الخبث بعد ما كان جنسه معلوما بالخبث، فهي إشارة إلى أنه طاهر وجنسه خبيث، والخبث مثل المعاصي وما أشبهها.
It is for negating foulness in something whose genus is known for foulness. It thus indicates that the thing is pure while its genus is foul; foulness being like sins and the like.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي لتزويل الخبث.
It is for removing foulness.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى الذات وما احتوت عليه، وفي بعض الأحيان قد يكون معها التقليل.
It is an indication of the self and what it contains; at times it may carry a sense of diminution.
ف
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي لنفي الخبث بعد ما كان جنسه معلوما بالخبث، فهي إشارة إلى أنه طاهر وجنسه خبيث، والخبث مثل المعاصي وما أشبهها.
It is for negating foulness in something whose genus is known for foulness. It thus indicates that the thing is pure while its genus is foul; foulness being like sins and the like.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي لتزويل الخبث.
It is for removing foulness.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى الذات وما احتوت عليه، وفي بعض الأحيان قد يكون معها التقليل.
It is an indication of the self and what it contains; at times it may carry a sense of diminution.
Two-letter nucleus8 roots in Ibn Fāris’s chapterل ف
Ibn Fāris groups his roots under two-letter chapters (“the X and the Y and what makes them three”). These are the roots of this root's chapter with the core sense he gives each. Setting them side by side is our juxtaposition; he does not himself draw a shared meaning. His chapter heading, line 29113 ↗
- لفكاللام والفاء والكاف يقولون الألفك الأحمقL29118
- لفماللام والفاء والميم كلمة يقولون اللفام ما بلغ طرف الأنف من اللثام وتلفمت المرأة ردت قناعها على فمهاL29120
- لفااللام والفاء والحرف المعتل أصل صحيح يدل على انكشاف شيء وكشفه ويكون مهموزا وغير مهموزL29123
- لفتاللام والفاء والتاء كلمة واحدة تدل على اللي وصرف الشيء عن جهته المستقيمة منه لفت الشيء لويته ولفت فلانا عن رأيه صرفته والألفت الرجل الأعسر وهو قياس الQ 3 · L29129
- لفجاللام والفاء والجيم كلمة واحدة يقولون الملفج بفتح الفاء الفقير وماضي فعله ألفج وهو من نادر الكلام وأنشد — جارية شبت شبابا عسلجا … في حجر من لم يك عنهاL29135
- لفحاللام والفاء والحاء كلمة واحدةQ 1 · L29140
- لفظاللام والفاء والظاء كلمة صحيحة تدل على طرح الشيء وغالب ذلك أن يكون من الفم تقول لفظ بالكلام يلفظ لفظا ولفظت الشيء من فمي واللافظة الديك ويقال الرحى واQ 1 · L29144
- لفعاللام والفاء والعين أصيل صحيح يدل على اشتمال شيء وتلفعت المرأة بمرطها اشتملت عليه ولفع الشيب رأسه شمله وتلفع الشجر تجلل بالخضرة والتفعت الأرض بالنبات L29150
In the sister scriptsHebrew ל פ פSyriac ܠ ܦ ܦ
| Arabic | ل ف ف |
| Hebrew | ל פ פ |
| Syriac | ܠ ܦ ܦ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩡 𐩰 𐩰 |
| Phoenician | 𐤋 𐤐 𐤐 |
Letter for letter, by the regular sound correspondences of the Semitic languages (Arabic keeps several sounds the others merged). This shows how the root would be spelled; whether a related word exists is a separate question, answered in the Semitic lens. Where an Arabic sibilant (s, sh) continues two older sounds, both spellings are shown.
Lenses
AIClassical lexiconAl-Khalīl begins with an anatomical sense, laff as abundance of flesh on the thighs — a praised trait in women, a defect in men, whence alaff for a heavy, sluggish man — and moves to the social sense lafīf, a gathering of people drawn from scattered tribes with no single common origin, as in 'jāʾū bi-laffihim wa-lafīfihim';well attested
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Al-Khalīl begins with an anatomical sense, laff as abundance of flesh on the thighs — a praised trait in women, a defect in men, whence alaff for a heavy, sluggish man — and moves to the social sense lafīf, a gathering of people drawn from scattered tribes with no single common origin, as in 'jāʾū bi-laffihim wa-lafīfihim'; he also gives ḥadīqa laffa/liff, plural alfāf, for a garden whose trees are densely intertwined, and alfa raʾsahu for tucking one's head under a garment or, of a bird, under its wing. Al-Jawharī keeps the physical wrapping sense (talaffafa fī thawbihi, iltaffa bi-thawbihi) and iltifāf al-nabt for the thickness of dense plant growth, adds lifāfa as a wrapping-cloth or bandage, and preserves lafīf in the sense of a mixed multitude, citing the Qurʾanic 'jiʾnā bikum lafīfā' as meaning gathered together and intermixed. Al-Rāghib's excerpt is fragmentary but ties laff directly to this same verse, the promise of the Hereafter at which all are brought together. Ibn Manẓūr repeats the thigh-flesh sense and the collective sense — lafīf as a crowd gathered and entwined from every quarter, citing verses of Sāʿida b. Juʾayya and Abū Qilāba — and adds that alaff can also describe a man whose eyebrows are joined, and laffāʾ a woman with plump, entwined thighs. Read in sequence, the root moves from a bodily image of flesh pressed together, to cloth wrapped around a body, to plants entangled with each other, to people of different origins pressed into one indiscriminate mass.
Draws on: al-Khalīl (al-ʿAyn) · al-Jawharī (al-Ṣiḥāḥ) · al-Rāghib (al-Mufradāt) · Ibn Manẓūr (Lisān al-ʿArab)
- al-Khalīl, al-ʿAyn, s.v. l-f-f
- al-Jawharī, al-Ṣiḥāḥ, s.v. l-f-f
- al-Rāghib, al-Mufradāt, s.v. l-f-f
- Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, s.v. l-f-f
Letters & soundIn the akbari198 correspondences, lām is assigned to the third heaven and fāʾ to the angels;speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
In the akbari198 correspondences, lām is assigned to the third heaven and fāʾ to the angels; a root built from lām and doubled fāʾ would, on this reading, sit entirely among heavenly and angelic loci, though the sources give no indication that this was applied to lafafa in particular. Al-Dabbāgh's fatḥa-values describe lām as the speaker's attainment of something great and an indication of greatness, and fāʾ as negating foulness in a thing whose genus is known for foulness — so that the thing is pure while its kind is not, as with sins. Neither association obviously motivates 'to wrap' or 'to gather a mixed crowd,' and no claim is made here that the theorists themselves drew such a line to this word. As with all such sound-symbolism, mainstream linguistics regards this as suggestive at best, not evidence of etymology.
Draws on: Ibn ʿArabī, letters of the Breath (akbari198) · al-Dabbāgh, letter-meanings by vowel
- Ibn ʿArabī, letters of the Breath (as transmitted, akbari198)
- al-Dabbāgh, letter meanings by vowel
Root structureAmong Ibn Fāris's lām-fāʾ neighbors several cluster around the mouth or around covering: lafama concerns the veil drawn across a woman's mouth and chin (lithām), lafaẕa concerns casting something, usually speech, out of the mouth, and lafata concerns twisting a thing away from its straight course (whence alfat, left-handed).plausible
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
Among Ibn Fāris's lām-fāʾ neighbors several cluster around the mouth or around covering: lafama concerns the veil drawn across a woman's mouth and chin (lithām), lafaẕa concerns casting something, usually speech, out of the mouth, and lafata concerns twisting a thing away from its straight course (whence alfat, left-handed). Closest of all is lafaʿa, 'to envelop or wrap oneself' — talaffaʿat bi-mirṭihā, 'she wrapped herself in her mantle,' lafaʿa l-shayb raʾsahu, 'gray hair enveloped his head,' talaffaʿa l-shajar, 'the tree clothed itself in green' — a near-synonym to lafafa differing only in the final radical (fāʾ against ʿayn). It is only a juxtaposition of neighboring chapters, not an asserted derivation, but it suggests that for Ibn Fāris the lām-fāʾ nucleus tends toward covering, twisting, or emitting something at or near an opening, with lafafa and lafaʿa marking two adjacent ways of saying 'to wrap.' The permutations fa-lam-fa and fa-fa-lam are both unattested, so no reversal network can be drawn for this particular root.
Draws on: Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha, nucleus siblings
Semitic kin & loanwordsBiblical Hebrew has a rare verb לפף, lāphaph, 'to wind around, clasp, embrace,' matching Arabic lafafa consonant for consonant and sense for sense, and this is the one confident cognate available.plausible
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
Biblical Hebrew has a rare verb לפף, lāphaph, 'to wind around, clasp, embrace,' matching Arabic lafafa consonant for consonant and sense for sense, and this is the one confident cognate available. No confident Aramaic/Syriac, Akkadian, Geʿez, or South Arabian cognate for this root is evident from the material at hand, and the word should not be treated as attested there without further checking. There is no reason from this evidence to treat Arabic lafafa as a loanword; the Hebrew match instead points to a shared inherited Semitic root.
Draws on: Hebrew לפף (BDB)
- BDB, s.v. לפף
Quranic exegesisAt 17:104, 'jiʾnā bikum lafīfā,' al-Ṭabarī and al-Zamakhsharī gloss lafīf as everyone brought together indiscriminately mixed, without regard to tribe or lineage — the promised gathering of the Children of Israel (and, by extension, of all humankind) at the resurrection, in contrast to their worldly divisions;well attested
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
At 17:104, 'jiʾnā bikum lafīfā,' al-Ṭabarī and al-Zamakhsharī gloss lafīf as everyone brought together indiscriminately mixed, without regard to tribe or lineage — the promised gathering of the Children of Israel (and, by extension, of all humankind) at the resurrection, in contrast to their worldly divisions; al-Rāghib's remarks tie the term to this same eschatological 'promise of the Hereafter.' At 75:29, 'wa-ltaffati l-sāqu bi-l-sāq,' al-Rāzī records more than one reading current among the exegetes: some take it as the physical entwining of the legs in death's agony or in the shroud, others as a figure for one calamity joining another — the hardship of dying compounding with the hardship of what follows it; al-Ṭabarī and al-Zamakhsharī lean toward the concrete reading of the legs pressing together as death seizes the body. At 78:16, 'wa-jannātin alfāfā,' al-Ṭabarī and al-Rāghib take alfāf as gardens whose trees and foliage are densely intertwined with one another, part of the Qurʾan's description of Paradise's abundant, thickly grown vegetation. Across the three verses the exegetes consistently read the root's core image — things or persons pressed and entangled together — whether applied to a resurrected crowd, dying limbs, or overgrown gardens.
Draws on: al-Ṭabarī · al-Zamakhsharī · al-Rāzī · al-Rāghib
- Quran 17:104 ↗
- Quran 75:29 ↗
- Quran 78:16 ↗
- al-Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ad loc.
- al-Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf, ad loc.
- al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, ad loc.
Reference