Al-Basit

The root. Al-Basit comes from b-s-t, the root behind basṭ, spreading or laying something out flat and wide, and the verb basaṭa, to extend or expand. Where the root behind Al-Qabid closes the hand around something, this root opens it — the same physical contrast, hand closed against hand open, that carries every abstract meaning built on these two roots.

What it means here. Al-Basit is understood as the one who extends and expands — provision, ease, sustenance, and, as several readings add, the heart itself, opened to contentment or narrowed to distress. Like Al-Qabid, it is almost never discussed alone; the two are read as a single, complete control expressed in two directions rather than as opposing forces, since the same hand that withholds is the one that gives.

Where it is met. The exact word Al-Basit does not itself appear as a name in the Quran. Its verb form does, in the same verse of Surah al-Baqarah that carries the verb behind Al-Qabid — one verse stating, in a single breath, that Allah withholds and extends, which is the clearest ground the Quran itself gives for reading the two together.