al-Takwīr 81:11

Wa idhā's-samāʾu kushiṭat "When the sky is stripped away."

Root: ك-ش-ط. And its concrete sense shows how local the images the Qurʾān chooses can be:

كَشَطَ ٱلْجِلْدَ عَنِ ٱلْجَزُور — to flay the hide from a slaughtered camel, to strip it off.

The general sense of the word: to pull away the covering on top, to strip it off, to lift it.

The sky, then, is stripped away like the hide of an animal. The image is taken from the language of the herdsman and the butcher; an operation the hearer saw every day.

The harshness of this must not be missed. An animal whose hide is flayed is no longer alive; flaying is the separating off of what will not be used again.

The verb of the verse says something about what the sky is: the sky is a covering.

The Qurʾān says this plainly:

"And We made the sky a guarded roof; yet they turn away from its signs." (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/32)

Saqfan maḥfūẓā — a guarded roof. The sky, then, is the roof above us.

And all the Resurrection verbs the Qurʾān uses of the sky recount the lifting of a covering:

Five different verbs, one idea: the lid on top comes off.

The Qurʾān explains this idea exactly in one place, and that verse changes how this sūra is read:

لَّقَدْ كُنتَ فِى غَفْلَةٍ مِّنْ هَٰذَا فَكَشَفْنَا عَنكَ غِطَآءَكَ فَبَصَرُكَ ٱلْيَوْمَ حَدِيدٌ "You were heedless of this; now We have lifted your veil from you — so your sight today is sharp." (Qāf 50/22)

Kashafnā ʿanka ghiṭāʾaka — "We have lifted your covering from you". And the result: the sight grows sharp.

So all the covering-lifting verbs used in the recounting of the Resurrection look to a single result: what could not be seen becomes visible.

And this explains the sūra as a whole:

• The sun is rolled up — the source of the light is taken away.
• The sky is stripped away — the lid on top is removed.
• The pages are spread open — the record becomes visible.
• And the fourteenth verse: "a soul will know."

The single product of thirteen verses of dismantling is knowledge. The sūra is not recounting a destruction; it is recounting a coming to light.

This looks to the same place as Sūrat ʿAbasa's turning about the root س-ف-ر (to bring to light). The two sūras think the Resurrection under the same category: the lifting of the covering.