al-Naḥl 16:80

Wa'llāhu jaʿala lakum min buyūtikum sakanan wa jaʿala lakum min julūdi'l-anʿāmi buyūtan tastakhiffūnahā yawma ẓaʿnikum wa yawma iqāmatikum, wa min aṣwāfihā wa awbārihā wa ashʿārihā athāthan wa matāʿan ilā ḥīn

"God made your houses a place of rest for you; and out of the hides of the livestock He made you houses light to carry on the day you strike camp and on the day you settle. And from their wool, their fur and their hair, furnishing and equipment for a time."

The verse enumerates two shelters, and the two are of different kinds:

سَكَن — root س-ك-ن: to come to a stand, to find stillness, to settle. The root was treated in detail at al-Rūm, 30/21 (li-taskunū ilayhā); I rely on that treatment. And what was recorded there was this: the word conveys not "the stopping of motion" but "finding a place to go and come to rest in".

And I give this as an observation: in al-Rūm the object of the verb sakana was a person (the spouses); in al-Naḥl it is a place. The same root, once in a human being, once in a place.

تَسْتَخِفُّونَهَا — root خ-ف-ف: lightness. In Form X (istakhaffa): to find light, to carry easily. The root was treated at al-Rūm, 30/60 (wa lā yastakhiffannak) — there in the sense "to make light of, to unsettle". Here the same form stands in its concrete sense: to carry easily.

I record this as an observation about the language: the same form yields two different senses in two sūras — the one moral (to make light of), the other physical (to find light). And both senses come out of the root's idea of "lightness".

The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān. Its sense: to migrate, to move from one place to another. Ẓaʿīna — a woman travelling in a litter; the word is the name for migration in the desert.

And the verse sets two days against each other: yawma ẓaʿnikum wa yawma iqāmatikum — the day of striking camp and the day of settling.

I give this as an observation: in two words the verse sums up the addressee's whole order of life. And the favour given fits both orders at once — the tent is both carried and pitched.

Three words, three different animal fibres, and the lexicographers record the distinction:

That the three are enumerated separately is worth recording. The verse does not say "from the hair of the animals"; it names all three apart.

I give this as my own reading, its ground being this threefold naming: the enumeration divides its items instead of gathering them. And this is the practical counterpart of the ruling lā tuḥṣūhā in the eighteenth verse: if one item can be divided into three, counting is not a task that ends.

أَثَاثًا وَمَتَاعًا إِلَىٰ حِينٍ — athāth: household goods, bedding; root أ-ث-ث: a thing's being abundant and closely entangled. Matāʿ: what is made use of.

And a qualification must be recorded: ilā ḥīn — "for a time". A limit of time is thus set upon this item of the enumeration. And it belongs to the same family as ajalin musammā in the sūra's sixty-first verse.