I'rab of Surah At-Takwir Ayah 5: word by word Arabic grammar
Surah At-Takwir (التكوير) · Meccan · Ayah 5
وَإِذَا ٱلْوُحُوشُ حُشِرَتْ TransliterationWa idha al-wuhushu hushirat
Meaningand when the wild beasts are gathered together,
Joined again by wa, this verse repeats the established pattern. Idha is a future conditional time adverb, al-wuhush (the wild beasts) is the nominative subject of an implied verb interpreted by the passive verb hushirat (were gathered together). The single answer for the whole sequence still waits in verse 14.
Word by word i'rab
conjunction (harf 'atf)
The conjunction wa connects this condition to the previous ones.
indeclinablefuture time adverb (zarf) of condition
A conditional time adverb in the accusative place, tied to the same delayed answer.
indeclinablesubject (fa'il) of an implied verb
It is the doer of an omitted verb that the following verb explains.
nominativepassive past-tense verb with the tied feminine ta
A passive past verb meaning the wild animals were gathered and herded together; the ta agrees with the feminine subject.
indeclinableDetailed i'rab
The verse is joined by wa to the accumulating conditions. Idha again acts as a future-oriented time adverb with conditional force, held in an accusative position linked to the answer delayed until verse 14. Al-wuhush, the wild beasts, is nominative and, by the rule that idha is followed by a verb, is read as the subject of an omitted verb interpreted by what comes next. Hushirat is a passive past-tense verb on the fu'ila pattern, meaning the wild animals are mustered and driven together, an extraordinary scene since such creatures normally scatter from one another. The tied feminine ta agrees with the broken-plural noun treated as a single feminine subject. The interpreting sentence, like the others in this passage, carries no grammatical position of its own.
Frequently asked
Why is hushirat parsed as passive?
Its vowel pattern (hushirat, not hasharat) is the passive of the verb hashara; the beasts are gathered by an unnamed agent rather than gathering themselves.
Why does the noun precede the explanatory verb here?
Idha grammatically requires a verb after it, so the noun is taken as the subject of a hidden verb, and the visible passive verb then interprets that hidden verb.