Ālāʾ al-Raḥmān fī Tafsīr al-Qurʾān
آلاء الرحمن في تفسير القرآن
Volume One
A Shīʿī Imāmī commentary, left unfinished at the author’s death. The author (c. 1282–1352 AH / 1865–1933 CE) began the work in Dhū al-Ḥijja 1349 [1931] and died before completing it; the whole reaches Sūrat al-Fātiḥa, al-Baqara, Āl ʿImrān, and a small part of al-Nisāʾ. This volume runs from al-Fātiḥa through Āl ʿImrān.
Translated from the Arabic original, which is in the public domain. The base text is the published Arabic edition (Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī); the page numbers set in the margin follow that edition. Qurʾānic quotations follow the rendering of ʿAlī Qulī Qarāʾī (2004). Transliteration follows the Brill / Encyclopaedia Islamica system.
In the Name of God, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful. To Him belongs all praise, and He is the One whose help is sought; and may blessing and peace be upon the choicest of His creation, Muḥammad — God bless him and his Household — the lord of the messengers, and upon his pure and infallible Household, God’s blessings be upon them all.
To proceed: at the dawn of humankind’s felicity, when the morning of guidance and its message broke bright, the light of the Noble Qurʾān shone upon the world from the horizon of revelation, upon the trustworthy Messenger who proclaimed aloud the command of his Lord. By its dazzling miraculousness it was a proof of its being a revelation; by its surpassing excellences, an evidence of His grace; and by its radiant splendour, a guide to its own following. In every gate among the gates of its exalted teachings it makes known to you that it is a sending-down from the Lord of all the worlds.
Yet the confounding of tongues, the changing of times, the branching of caprices, and the clashing of opinions raised up a dust before its lights and laid a film of ignorance upon [people’s] insight. Now God has made it binding upon His servants that they aid the truth by clear exposition, clear away the dust of doubts by [sound] argument, and lift the film of ignorance with the hand of healing knowledge. A number [of scholars] have risen to expound it and to point the way to the method of understanding it.
So I have preferred — I, the least of them, Muḥammad Jawād al-Balāghī — to venture, unbidden, into this matter and to plunge into this arena: proceeding according to what the principles of scholarship require, turning aside from that in which there is no proof — the mere reporting of [others’] opinions — aiming at brevity wherever possible, seeking the help of God and drawing upon His grace; and my success is only through God: upon Him I rely, and to Him I turn.
I have named the book Ālāʾ al-Raḥmān fī Tafsīr al-Qurʾān [“The Bounties of the All-Merciful in the Exegesis of the Qurʾān”], and I have set before the main matter an Introduction, containing chapters, together with a Conclusion.
The evidentiary miracle (al-muʿjiz)1 is that which one who claims prophethood brings — by God’s special care — breaking the customary order of things and lying beyond the bounds of human power and the laws of learning and instruction, so that it may thereby be an evidence of the prophet’s truthfulness and his warrant in his claim to prophethood and in his summons.
Its indication of the prophet’s truthfulness in his claim and his summons is simply this: when one who claims prophethood is outwardly upright, marked by trustworthiness, and known for truthful speech and rectitude, and does not contradict reason in his summons or its fundamentals, it is not rationally admissible that a miracle be manifested at his hand unless he is truthful in his claim to prophethood and in what he summons to. Do you not see that, if — together with the qualities just mentioned — he were lying in his claim, then the manifestation of a miracle at his hand, and God’s singling him out with [such] care, would be an enticement of people into ignorance and an entangling of them in the mazes of error? And that is a foul thing, impossible for the majesty and holiness of God.
It is this: people, by their innate nature — so long as it is undefiled by the vices of caprice and partisan zeal — when a person’s uprightness, truthfulness, trustworthiness, and rectitude become plain to them in what they know of his states and ways, discern good in his inner self and judge that his inner self accords with his outward in uprightness. The more their acquaintance with the uprightness of his outward grows, the more their trust in the uprightness of his inner self increases. Yet, whatever be the case, this does not raise them to the rank of [certain] knowledge and settled assurance of his immunity from falsehood in his claim and in the deliverances of his summons; so their assent to him is not firmly ordered, nor does their submission to the deliverances of his summons endure. Rather, the throbbing of doubts keeps swaying them right and left.
But when the divine care singles him out with the honour of the miracle and the breach of custom, then firm knowledge is attained, and sound souls are set at rest concerning his truthfulness and his immunity in his claim and in what he brings in his summons; certainty is established and his affair is set in order — in view of the fact that, at so perilous a juncture, it is impossible for the majesty and holiness of God that He manifest the miracle and His special care at the hand of a liar who counterfeits by an outward show of uprightness. For the manifestation of a miracle in that case would be an aiding of the counterfeiter in his counterfeit, a partnership with him in his seduction [of others], and an enticement of people into harmful, ruinous ignorance — and that on account of what we have mentioned of the requirement of people’s sound innate nature. The miracle, then, that bears witness to the prophet’s truthfulness in his claim and his summons is that which fulfils the benefit we have mentioned, in the manner and aspect we have described.
It is not hidden that the realization of the aforementioned benefit from the diversity of the miracle differs greatly on account of the difference among peoples in their conditions, their bodies of knowledge, and the things familiar to them. For many a breach of custom is one that some peoples recognize as a breach of custom that can come to pass only by a special divine will, while among other peoples it is exposed to doubt, or to denial of its miraculousness and of its breaking of custom.
In the age of Moses the Prophet (peace be upon him), there was current among the Egyptians the craft of sorcery, built upon customary laws that are handed on by teaching and learning. They therefore knew what ran according to the norms of this craft and what lay outside it and beyond the bounds of human power. For this reason wisdom required that the proof be brought against them by the miracle of the staff, which Moses (peace be upon him) cast down before their eyes, whereupon it became a serpent that swallowed up the ropes and staffs with which they were deceiving and bewitching the people; then it returned thereafter to a staff as it had been at first, and there remained of their ropes and staffs neither trace nor sign. For, by reason of their knowledge of the bounds of sorcery, they recognized that the affair of the staff lay outside the craft of sorcery and beyond the bounds of human power; and therefore the sorcerers came to believe that its affair was from God, exalted is He.
Palestine and Syria, in the age of the Messiah, were a colony of the Greeks, with many of them resident there, and medicine had among them a manifest currency. In the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of the Book of Leviticus, in the current Torah, there is a long instruction on the purification of ringworm, leprosy, and tetter in a manner peculiar to the spirituality of the priesthood, giving the impression that it belongs to the blessings of the priests and to spiritual effects — even though it is of the nature of a sanitary quarantine. For this reason the miracles of the Messiah — the healing of the leper, the blind, and the man born blind — were of a kind they knew to lie outside the bounds of medicine, the pretensions of the priests, and human power, and to be a breach of custom that can come to pass only by the power of God, exalted is He.
As for the Arabs — with whom the summons of Islam began, in the wisdom of its course toward reform — their knowledge was, of its kind, confined to Arabic letters, and they were devoid of the other sciences and crafts that are subject to teaching and learning. So they could not distinguish the customary bounds of those [sciences] by the measures of learning and instruction, nor the secrets of the natural world, whose laws yield to the researcher, the practitioner, the learner, the experimenter, and the discoverer, and which fall under the dominion of teaching and learning. Hence they did not recognize, among [wondrous] deeds, which of them lay outside these bounds and broke the customary order — [something that] comes to pass only
by a divine [act of] incapacitating miracle. So any miraculous deed outside [the domain of] Arabic letters — the moment they beheld it or heard of it — there would leap to their minds and take firm hold in their reckoning [the thought] that it was of sorcery, or of the skill of foreign peoples in the crafts and their advancement in the sciences and the secrets and laws of nature. They would not concede that it was a divine miracle; rather the doubt of ignorance would drive them to denial — especially when the prophet was using it as a proof for a claim and a summons that weighed heavily upon their misguidance and pressed hard upon their savage customs and the caprices of ignorance.
Indeed, they excelled in Arabic letters and in the eloquence of speech, in which they had advanced a dazzling advance — until, by the age of the [Prophet’s] mission, its lush garden bloomed, its orchards ripened, and its glory surpassed all else; they appointed seasons for it and held assemblies to vie in mounting to its heights. Its craft rose among them to the zenith of its glory and flowered in its fairest guise; they encompassed its farthest reaches and marked out the utmost of its measure. So each man among them became most expert as to what falls within the bounds of human power and what falls beyond them — [knowing] that such speech does not issue, unprompted, upon a human tongue save by a special divine care that breaks the human custom, for a noble divine wisdom.
For this reason the divine wisdom required — “and to God belongs the far-reaching wisdom”2 — that the Noble Qurʾān should be the designated miracle, the one upon which the argument turns for the mission of the Seal of the Prophets and the choicest of the messengers (God’s blessings be upon them all). For it stands as a proof against the Arabs through its miraculousness in its eloquence, and through their incapacity to bring the like of it, or a single sūra of its like. And by their submission to its miraculousness — they being the experts in this — it is likewise a proof against others therein. It is this that enters into the wisdom of the miracle and of miraculousness in the summons’ embracing of the Arabs and its beginning with them, according to its natural course upon wisdom; and by it the benefit of the miracle is fulfilled in its [proper] aspect.
In addition, it is distinguished above other miracles and surpasses them in the greatest of the essential matters bearing on prophethood, messengership, and its summons. Thus, for one: it abides down the years, present in its form and its substance to everyone who wishes to acquaint himself with it, to handle its affair, to look into it, and to know its inmost reality and truth. It is manifest at every moment and in every place to everyone who seeks the proof for prophethood and messengership and wishes to examine the reality of the miracle that testifies to its truthfulness; standing present before everyone who wishes to look into realities. Knowledge of its reality and of the aspect of its miraculousness has no need of the legends of transmission or the wrangling of “he said” and “it was said.” Its case admits no [suspicion] that its claim was contrived under cover of night, nor is its affair to be doubted through any supposition of dissimulation.
Rather it proclaims itself, in every age and place: “This is my harvest — and the choicest of it is in it”3 — and all of it is choice, surpassing and pre-eminent. And for another: by itself, by its own tongue and the plain declaration of its speech, it has taken upon itself to establish all the premises out of which the proof for [Muḥammad’s] particular messengership is composed, together with its miraculousness’s testimony to it. It has not consigned this affair to anything else — anything in which misgiving might stir, into which specious doubts might enter, over which the distance of argumentation would grow long and its difficulties multiply. So attend, and recognize this from [the following] matters:
First: it has taken upon itself the declaration of the prophet’s claim to prophethood and messengership, as [is the case] in the other prophethoods.
Second: it has taken upon itself, in the plainness of its declaration, the testimony to [his] prophethood and messengership, so that no need remains for reason’s [independent] demonstration [of it] or for warding off specious doubts from it.
Third: it has taken upon itself, in its repeated plainness, the declaration of the perfections of the one who claims its messengership, and it has extolled his uprightness and his surpassing character — as is well known. Thus it has laid down the premises requisite in the exposition and the form of the argument: that, were he a liar, the appearance of the miracle for him would be [an instance] of enticement into ignorance — foul, and impossible by reason of its foulness for the majesty and holiness of God, exalted be His station.
Here, then: listen to some of what has come in the Qurʾān in declaration of these three matters. In Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (7:158):4 “Say, ‘O mankind! I am the Apostle of God to you all …’” And in Sūrat al-Najm (Meccan), verses 2–4: “your companion has neither gone astray, nor gone amiss … Nor does he speak out of [his own] desire: it is just a revelation that is revealed [to him].” And in Sūrat al-Fatḥ (48:29): “Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, and those who are with him are hard against the faithless …” And in Sūrat al-Aḥzāb (33:40): “Muhammad is not the father of any man among you, but he is the Apostle of God and the Seal of the Prophets …” And in the opening of Sūrat al-Qalam (Meccan) (68:2–4): “you are not, by your Lord’s blessing, crazy, and yours indeed will be an everlasting reward, and indeed you possess a great character,” down to His words (68:7): “Indeed your Lord knows best those who stray from His way, and He knows best those who are guided,” and His words (68:9): “who are eager that you should be pliable, so that they may be pliable [towards you].” And in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (7:157): “who bids them to do what is right and forbids them from what is wrong.” And in Sūrat al-Aḥzāb (33:45–46): “O Prophet! Indeed We have sent you as a witness, as a bearer of good news and as a warner, and as a summoner to God by His permission, and as a radiant lamp.”
The fourth matter: it has itself taken upon itself the removal of the impediments to messengership and prophethood; for it has set forth the materials of the summons, its fundamentals, its teachings, and its laws — all of them running upon what accords with reason, whether in its doctrine, its ethics, its social order, or its politics — so that there is found in them nothing contrary to reason such as might be an impediment to prophethood. In Sūrat al-Isrāʾ (Meccan) (17:9): “Indeed this Qurʾān guides to what is most upright.” Here is the Noble Qurʾān before you: verify, discern, and be enlightened as to the noble materials it contains — “Indeed this Qurʾān guides to what is most upright.”
The fifth matter: beyond its being, of itself, a miracle, it went further — repeating the call and the open declaration in arguing by its miraculousness and in challenging the people; it proclaimed the proof and cried out to them, a repeated and emphatic cry, that they should oppose it — were it not a miracle — and bring the like of it, or ten sūras, or a single sūra of its like, if that were something within the reach of the limited power of humankind. It called them to a settlement of fairness and accommodation: it granted them that, should they bring ten sūras, or a single sūra of its like, this summons would be lifted from them and they would find relief from its burden — so heavy upon their misguidance — and they might call upon whomever it is rationally possible to call besides God, if they were able, or if they found any rational way to it. It granted them this by way of accommodation and concession in argument, the offer being suspended upon the impossible; and they had in this respite and leisure to make ready their means for mustering support and cooperation.
In Sūrat Hūd (Meccan) (11:13): “Do they say, ‘He has fabricated it?’ Say, ‘Then bring ten sūrahs like it, fabricated, and invoke whomever you can, besides God, should you be truthful,’” (11:14) “But if they do not respond to you, know that it has been sent down by God’s knowledge.” And in Sūrat Yūnus (Meccan) (10:38): “Do they say, ‘He has fabricated it?’ Say, ‘Then bring a sūrah like it, and invoke whomever you can, besides God, should you be truthful.’” And in Sūrat al-Baqara (2:23): “And if you are in doubt concerning what We have sent down to Our servant, then bring a sūrah like it, and invoke your helpers besides God, should you be truthful” — [those] whom you call upon and to whom you ascribe [such powers] — (2:24) “And if you do not — and you will not — then beware the Fire whose fuel …” And in Sūrat al-Isrāʾ (Meccan) (17:88): “Say, ‘Should all humans and jinn rally to bring the like of this Qurʾān, they will not bring the like of it, even if they assisted one another.’”
Now, several years passed while the summons of the messengership — the giving of due warning and admonition, and the arguing by the Qurʾān’s miraculousness — pressed continually upon them; and they were in the utmost vexation at it, the utmost loathing of it, and dread of its outcome; in the utmost anguish at the effects of the summons, its advance, and its ascendancy; and in the utmost craving after their caprices, their savage customs, their chieftaincies, and their clinging to their objects of worship. Yet, for all that, they were unable to oppose anything of the Noble Qurʾān — not even by bringing a single sūra of its like — such as would let their own proof stand forth, cause the Messenger’s proof to fall from them, and relieve them of their toil, their disquiet, and their pains from his summons: [a summons] that had scattered their idolatrous solidarity, threatened their savage chieftaincies and their caprice-driven legislations, and set apart father from sons, brother from brother, husband from wife, and kinsman from kinsman, troubling their concord and estranging their affections. In his summons he had imposed upon them a reform and a submission they had not reckoned on; and they found for this no device but foolish denial, stubborn obstinacy, the harshness of persecution, and the seeking of Abū Ṭālib’s intercession that the Messenger abandon his summons — or else revolt in savage persistence, in which they plunged into terrors and took upon themselves hardships, the fighting of kinsmen and brothers, the endurance of adversities, and the humiliation of defeat. Why, then,
did they not band together, all of them, for ten years or more, and produce something of the like of the Noble Qurʾān — even a single sūra — and vie with the Messenger (God bless him and his Household) and bring him to arbitration in the [poetic] fairs and assemblies they had set up for such a thing, so that theirs would be the proof and the victory in the verdict and the settlement of fairness, and they might proclaim the triumph and find relief from the toil of this summons and its threat to their misguidance? Why did they not do so, when the Qurʾān and the Messenger had summoned them to it by way of a challenge — they being who they were, the springs of their eloquence and rhetoric abundant, their instincts in Arabic letters overflowing, their talents free-flowing, the very materials of the Qurʾān, in its words and its constructions, [drawn] from their own tongue, and its style of the kind of their own craft, in which they had complete practice, surpassing skill, and well-known refinement? “And to God belongs the conclusive argument” (6:149).
Had there been even the very least of a countering — the bringing of a single sūra like the Qurʾān — misguidance would have raised it aloft like a beacon-fire upon a signal-height; thousands upon thousands of the adversaries of Islam and the Qurʾān would have made festival of it; their registers would have recorded it across the regions of the earth and the generations of the nations; they would have received it with the utmost jubilation and assailed [Islam] with it in the mightiest assault — for it would be the peaceable arbiter and the literary proof above which they could have no [greater] proof in dispute and demonstration. But have you ever heard that anyone breathed of this a single word, or that a pen was set running in it? Indeed, this matter lay apart from the interior of Islam, so that it cannot be said that the might of the Muslims suppressed it, or the intrigues of their collusion.
Rather, its seed and its planting-ground, its fence, its preservation, and its safeguarding go back to thousands upon thousands, in every generation, of its [would-be] champions — the adversaries of Islam and the Qurʾān — whether that be before the Hijra, or after it, or after the time of the Messenger (God bless him and his Household). Do you not see that, after Islam had settled firmly in the Arabian Peninsula, there remained in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq many Jews, Christians, and their like — thousands, or thousands upon thousands, of Arabs, or of those who know the Arabic language, speak it, and are versed in its letters? Add to these the hypocrites, who plotted against Islam to the utmost of their capacity in the time of the Messenger and after him. Would such people ever hide away what was the very object of their quest, the weapon of their onslaught, the equipment of their assault, their most decisive proof, and the greatest of defences for their religions? But “there is no perfume after the bride”5 [it is too late to avail]. Yet what can they do against sheer non-existence — and the incapacity of latecomers to concoct [the like]?
Among the things that bear witness to what we have said, and that make its illustration plain to obvious reflection, is that the sinful hand prevailed — when opportunity offered — even over the traditionists and the exegetes: it insinuated into many books of tafsīr the fable of the “cranes” (al-gharānīq) and the fable of the “occasion of revelation” concerning the verse of [the Prophet’s] wishing in Sūrat al-Ḥajj, as we find in most of the commentaries; and so it defiled the sanctity of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) with whatever it pleased and as opportunity offered it, and likewise the sanctity of all the prophets and messengers in
[reports of] their speech and their recitation — to the point that not the least confidence in that [material] remains with them.6
So much for the aspect of miraculousness by which the proof is established against the Arabs. The Glorious Qurʾān has, besides, [other] aspects of miraculousness in the recognition of which every rational human being shares, once he is acquainted with them; and these are many. We shall point to some of them in this abridgment.
We do not assert this [miraculousness] merely on the ground of its reporting past events and vanished nations — even though the Messenger of God who brought it neither read nor wrote, entered no school, and undertook no [course of] learning, as is well known from the history of his life (God bless him and his Household). For it might be said that such reporting is, in the ordinary course, possible for the human kind, though liable to slips beyond number. Rather we say: the Noble Qurʾān shares, in its historical narration, certain of the stories with the current Torah — the Torah that Jews and Christians agree is the Book of God sent down to His messenger Moses. That Torah relates those stories filled with fables, or with blasphemy, or with a disorder resembling the speech of one afflicted with delirium (birsām).7
Thus, for one: the story of Adam, in God’s forbidding him to eat from the tree, and the fables and blasphemy it contains in ascribing lying and deception to God (mighty and exalted is He), together with the rest of the affairs of the story, as given in the third chapter of the Book of Genesis. And for another: what is given in its fifteenth chapter — Abraham’s doubting of God’s promise to give him the land in Syria, and the mention of a sign [demanded] in that. And for another: what is given in the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters — the coming of the angels to Abraham with the good news of Isaac, their informing him of the destruction of the people of Lot, and the account of their going to Lot and their exchange with him. And for another: what is given in the third chapter of the Book of Exodus, in God’s addressing Moses from the tree [i.e. the bush], and — toward its end — the gist of which is that God (exalted be His station) inaugurated the messengership for Moses by instructing him to lie. And for another: what is given in the thirty-second chapter of the Book of Exodus — that it was Aaron who made the calf to be a god for the Children of Israel, called [people] to its worship, and set up for it the rites of worship.
Look, then, at these stories in the passages named from the current Torah. The Noble Qurʾān relates the first story in the two sūras al-Aʿrāf and Ṭāhā; the second at the end of Sūrat al-Baqara; the third in the two sūras Hūd and al-Dhāriyāt; the fourth in the sūras Ṭāhā, al-Naml, and al-Qaṣaṣ;
and the fifth in the two sūras Ṭāhā and al-Aʿrāf. So these stories came, with the dignity of divine revelation, purified of every fable and blasphemy, and of everything that clashes with the holiness of God and the holiness of His prophets — running upon what accords with reason, well-ordered in argument, and noble in expression. This establishes the proof and necessitates the certainty that it can come only from the revelation of God, and cannot come from a human being — as a human being — such as the Messenger of God, who undertook no learning in the divine sciences, was graduated from no school, and was reared only among savage, idolatrous Bedouin of the most savage sort of savagery and idolatry. Indeed, had he pursued every branch of instruction and graduated from every college, he could not have kept himself — and kept his teachings and his speech — free of the likes of these blasphemous fables.
In that age and before it there was nothing but the teachings of the Jews and Christians — whose basis in religion rests upon the fables of the current Torah we have pointed to, and to which they devoted themselves in their worship, their festivals, their teachings, and their schools; or the teachings of the idolaters, among them his own people, those base and ignorant teachings; or the teachings of the Magians, branching off from both of the two [former]. For, God’s blessings be upon him, had he taken the aforementioned stories from the current Torah itself — learning them accurately — or from the clergy who controlled its teaching, and had he wished to fabricate them as [purported] revelation, currying favour with them or deceiving them so that they might respond and follow his summons, he would have brought them with the [same] fable and blasphemy that are in the Torah. And had he taken them superficially from the mouths of men, as an unlettered person takes [things] from the tongues of the common folk, he would have added to them many times over their fables and their blasphemy — as his being unlettered, his upbringing, and the ignorance, savagery, and idolatry of his people and his land would require and entail. But “it is just a revelation that is revealed” (53:4) to a messenger whom, in delivering the truths, no reproach of any reproacher and no dissent of nations could deflect. See the detailing of this in Volume One of al-Riḥla al-Madrasiyya.8
In the same way runs the discourse regarding what is mentioned in the Old Testament, which the People of the Book count as truthful revelation: it ascribes to Job the most repugnant remonstrance against God, impatience at His decree, the imputing of injustice to Him (mighty and exalted is He), and the demand to bring Him to arbitration — to the point that he takes to rebuking his exhorters and those who forbid him this insolence, and dismissing their view as foolish. It ascribes adultery to David in the most repugnant manner, and ascribes to Solomon that he persisted in upholding the associating of partners with God and the worship of idols, and that he built many edifices for idol-worship. The calamities of the Gospels in disparaging the sanctity of the Messiah are many — despite their small size and scanty text: they ascribe to his sacred person the drinking of wine, repeated lying, states contrary to chastity, his rebuking of his mother and disparaging her sanctity, the assertion of a plurality of
gods and lords, and other such things as we shall point to. The Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) came with the revelation of his Qurʾān, holding these prophets far above [such things] and clearing them of these hideous stigmas. See the detailing of this in Volume One of Kitāb al-Hudā.9
In the same way, too, runs the discourse regarding the fabulous stories mentioned in the Torah and the Old Testament that clash with the majesty of God and the holiness of His prophets, their honour, and the honour of their families — as in the fables of: Adam’s hiding from God; the Tower of Babel; the affair of Lot with the wine and his two daughters; the wrestling with Jacob; Jacob’s deceiving of his father and his repeated lying to him; the story of Judah with his daughter-in-law Tamar and the birth of the tribe of Judah, from whom [came] David, Solomon, and many of the prophets; the story of Amnon son of David and his kinsman with his sister Tamar; the escapades of Samson; and God’s (exalted be His station) taking counsel with the host of heaven in order to entice Ahab, king of Israel10 — and much of the like.
Because the Noble Qurʾān is the speech of the All-Holy God and His revelation, it mentions nothing of that. Were it a fabrication of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), as the wrongdoers allege, it would ordinarily have been impossible — given human nature, its aims, and its ingratiating tendencies — that he should mention nothing of these [stories], with all their historical clangour. For a human being who seeks out the stories of the two Testaments and recounts them in his speech and for his purposes would not let slip what we have pointed to.
The Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) rose to teach humankind and to illumine their insight in an age of darknesses, ignorance, and blindness, and to guide them to the realities of knowledge that the accumulated darknesses of error had veiled in those benighted ages — darknesses that had seized the quarters of the world such that they left not the least glimmer of the light of truth to be struck for the vanquished minds. So he came (God bless him and his Household), in his Qurʾān, with an abundant multitude of radiant proofs concerning the most important and noblest of the sciences — proofs running upon the finest method and the most universally beneficial in argumentation and instruction. He brought them in the loftiest manner: [a manner] that draws the common person’s attention to the light of the innate instinct, making it present to his awareness, and to the brilliance of self-evident truths, making it clear to his understanding; while, in the import of those proofs, it keeps pace with the philosopher in the laws of logic and the ordering of his syllogisms upon the fundamentals of reason. Thus it argued for the existence of the Deity and the necessary implications of His divinity, His knowledge and His power, and His oneness;
for bodily resurrection; that the Qurʾān is a divine revelation; and for the Messenger’s truthfulness in his summons. In none of these proofs is there scarcely to be found any doctrinal flaw, any literary weakness, any taint of discrepancy, or any blemish of contradiction. So if you suppose any human being living in that benighted age, and picture his upbringing and rearing among the savage, idolatrous Bedouin in that land barren of all instruction and arid of every excellence in the sciences, and [suppose] that he engaged in no learning, no schooling under a teacher, no reading of any writing, and no study of any book — you will know that it is ordinarily impossible for him, as a mere human being and without a divine revelation to him, to bring forth the exposition of the sound sciences, contradicting the general ignorance of his age, his environment, and his people, and to argue for them with those luminous, precious proofs upon that method distinguished by its excellence.
And if you wish to gain further insight into what we have said, look at what is in the Gospels of what they ascribe to the arguments of the Messiah — far be his sacred person from it — and the fallen, corrupt proofs they cite for matters most of which are error or mistake, such as the argument for a plurality of gods, for a plurality of lords, and for the prohibition of divorce; and look at the error and distortion they contain. True, they mention an argument for the resurrection from the dead — but what error and confusion they brought to the proof and to the states of the resurrection! (If you wish to acquaint yourself with something of that, see Volume One of Kitāb al-Hudā, pp. 112–116, 197, and 205, and Volume One of al-Riḥla al-Madrasiyya, pp. 73 and 32–39.)
The Noble Qurʾān has plunged into the arts of knowledge and reform in which those pre-eminent in refinement specialize — in the domains of philosophy, politics, oratory, and reform: theology, or ethics, or civil legislation and administrative organization, or the art of war; or glad tidings and the encouragement [held out] by [promised] recompense, or warning and the threat of exemplary punishment; or proofs and parables; or the admonition of counsels and object-lessons. In all this it has proceeded, in [these] noble arenas, with the finest style and the most upright method, and it has attained in all of it the most honourable and highest of ends in refinement — repeating, as wisdom requires, many of its stories and its aims. And in all of this it is disfigured by no lapse of discrepancy, no stumble of contradiction, no weakness of confusion, no collapse of argument, no corruption of content, and no absurdity of expression. There it stands, manifest before all the world, to everyone who seeks guidance, scrutiny, and reflection, proclaiming with the splendour of pride, the beauty of soundness, and the might of vindication: “Indeed this Qurʾān guides to what is most upright” (17:9); “Do they not contemplate the Qurʾān? Had it been from [someone] other than God,
they would have surely found much discrepancy in it” (4:82) — [discrepancy] scattered throughout its chapters and its aims. Is it, then, ordinarily possible that all this should come from a human being whose age, upbringing, rearing, land, and people — and their savage, idolatrous ignorance — we have described to you? You have an object-lesson in the books of the two Testaments: those which, for many centuries, most of the world that prides itself on knowledge and civilization applauds and approves, ascribing them with the utmost ceremony to the dignity of revelation — yet how very much weakness, collapse, discrepancy, and contradiction is found in them! Something of that has been set down in the books Iẓhār al-Ḥaqq, al-Hudā, and al-Riḥla al-Madrasiyya.11 Consider, too, that each one of the Gospels amounts to no more than a weekly newspaper [in bulk], yet confusion, contradiction, and discrepancy have multiplied in them to an appalling, astonishing degree; something of this has been set down in Volume One of Kitāb al-Hudā, pp. 196–234. Furthermore, the Gospels and the books of the New Testament are founded upon [the premise] that the current books of the two Testaments are sound books of divine revelation; so consider how much discrepancy and contradiction has occurred between the Gospels and the New Testament on the one hand and the Old Testament on the other! Something of what we have mentioned has been set down in Volume One of al-Riḥla al-Madrasiyya, pp. 132–184.
Suppose the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) an ordinary human being, of the sort we have repeatedly described — in his age, his upbringing, his rearing, his land, his people, their ignorance, and their savage customs. Then consider: is it ordinarily possible for such a human being — were he not a recipient of revelation — to bring forth of himself, out of his own humanity, the like of what he brought in the Noble Qurʾān: a just law of rights, valuable statutes, and reasonable ordinances, all of them proceeding upon what is beneficial for humankind in civilization, society, politics, and war, its preliminaries and its consequences? In its concern for reform it ranged from the governance of the whole world down to the ordering of the family, the household, and the married couple — indeed, down to the affairs of the scribe and the witness, as in Sūrat al-Baqara, verse 282: there it forbade any harming of the scribe and the witness, and prohibited that they be burdened, on account of the writing, the testimony, and its rendering, with the harm of hardship and toil and the waste of time beyond what the mere rendering naturally requires. In this is an object-lesson for those possessed of understanding. Look, then, at the general and particular laws and statutes in the Noble Qurʾān, and take note of their dignity and glory in surpassing legislation and praiseworthy reform. To recognize their glory and dignity you need not measure them against the laws of his own region and people — those tyrannical, savage, idolatrous laws. Indeed, your insight will increase if you look at the laws of the current Torah, which the Jews
and Christians, in their generations, have esteemed for more than twenty-five centuries and count as a sacred book of divine revelation. Look, then, at what is in it: the law of consecrating Aaron and his sons, with the detailing of their garments and their arrangements; the law of the wife of a deceased brother, and her release and the reckoning of her firstborn son to the second brother; the law of the woman whose husband alleges that he did not find her a virgin; and the law of killing the children and women of lands conquered in war. You will recognize that such laws could come only from a base and cruel human being — and your insight into the glory of the noble Qurʾān in its legislation will increase, and [into the truth] that it could come only from a divine revelation.12 And look at the New Testament and its abolition of the order of civilization and of standing firm against injustice and aggression — such that it left the world with no deterrent order and no just disciplinary law: your insight will increase [into the truth] that whoever falsely ascribes to revelation in the matter of legislation must inevitably commit a lapse that disfigures history and at which the truths groan in distress. Recognize, then, the miraculousness of the Qurʾān in its legislation, distinguished by the excellence of divine revelation.
If you look at the darknesses of the age, the region, and the upbringing, the prevalence of ignorance in the community, the evil of deeds, and the absence of study in knowledge or of training in virtue under righteous sages, you will see that these things have a great effect upon ignorance of the noble virtues, deviation from their road, and floundering in knowing them and marking out their bounds. The labours of a mind hemmed in by the general ignorance, the benighted generation, and the region rife with the promptings of caprice cannot return humankind to uprightness in this. Should a man desirous of reform then attempt something of the refinement of morals, he would find, in his word and deed, no guidance but to something indicated by [mere] common currency among a number of people; and should the would-be philosopher take upon himself some instruction in ethics, he would flounder in it a floundering in which ignorance and error prevailed and slips followed one upon another.
From amid those darknesses the Noble Qurʾān dawned with its lights, and brought what the ordinary course does not permit a human being to bring, in such darknesses, of his own accord and by falsely ascribing it to revelation. So it came, in its summary and its detail, exhausting the noble virtues to their very bounds — urging [people] to adorn themselves with them by such spurring and enticement as wisdom requires — and enumerating the base vices, restraining [people] from being defiled by them by such deterring and repelling as reform requires. For this it established in the world the noblest of radiant schools, the loftiest of guiding philosophies, and the most eloquent of admonishing oratories.
Here is some of its comprehensive [utterance] on this — such as His words (exalted is He) in Sūrat al-Naḥl (16:90): “Indeed God enjoins justice and kindness and generosity towards relatives, and He forbids indecency, wrong, and aggression. He advises you, so that you may take admonition.” And from Sūrat al-Furqān what is in verses 64 through 75; from Sūrat al-Maʿārij what is in verses 23 through 33; from Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt what is in verses 10, 11, and 12; and other [passages] besides, of which scarcely a sūra is devoid, which no [item of] instruction passes over, by which no people is favoured above another, and which does not overshoot — through excess — into deficiency and the disruption of the order of civilization and the ease of society.
You have an object-lesson [in the fact] that the current Torah contains a trickle of the teachings of the true Torah; but, being a human patchwork and fabrication, it has muddied the trickle that is in it and done away with the purity of the divine teaching. Thus it commanded the Children of Israel to judge with justice toward their kinsman, and forbade them rancour against the sons of their own people, the pursuit of slander, false testimony against their kinsman, and that one of them betray his fellow. But alas for the nobility of this command and prohibition! — for it disfigured its beauty by restricting its teaching to the Children of Israel, and by restricting the thing commanded and the thing forbidden to the kinsman, the [own] people, and the fellow.
You have an object-lesson, too, [in the fact] that the current Gospels have gone to excess with their cold [asceticism]: they forbade the restraining of wrongdoers by taking redress from the wrongdoer, the cutting off of the sources of corruption by the prescribed penalties, and the repelling of wrongdoers — rather they taught that whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also; whoever wishes to dispute with you and take your garment, leave him the cloak as well; and whoever takes what is yours, do not demand it back. Thus, by their human excess, they defiled the sanctity of the teachings of the Messiah received from the divine revelation.
Its miracle recurred in the Qurʾān in its foretelling of the unseen — a foretelling such that soothsaying and shrewd physiognomy would, in view of the present situation, have predicted its opposite: the dominance of idolatry, the weakness of the Islamic summons, and the exemplary punishment, banishment, and harshness meted out to those who answered it. Thus, for one: His words in Sūrat al-Ḥijr (Meccan), in the command to the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) to proclaim the summons, [to announce] the glad tidings of its success and the humbling of its opponents and adversaries — and that was at the height and rampancy of idolatry and the raging of the polytheists against the Messenger of God — (15:94): “So proclaim what you have been commanded, and turn away from the polytheists,” (95): “Indeed We will suffice you against the deriders,” (96): “—those who set up besides God another god. Soon they will know!” And God sufficed him with the noblest sufficing, on which hopes could not, in the ordinary course, have been pinned. And there became clear to the polytheists, and they knew,
what lay in His words at the end of the verse: “Soon they will know.” And His words in Sūrat al-Ṣaff (Meccan), amid the situation we have described of the dominance of idolatry and the polytheists (61:9): “It is He who has sent His Apostle with the guidance and the religion of truth that He may make it prevail over all religions though the polytheists should be averse.” So He made it prevail over the [other] religions with the mightiest prevailing, by which the noses of the polytheists were rubbed [in the dust].
And among the foretellings of the unseen are His words (exalted is He) in Sūrat al-Rūm: “Byzantium has been vanquished” (2) “in a nearby territory, but following their defeat they will be victors” (3) “in a few years.”13 So Byzantium vanquished Persia and entered its kingdom before ten years had passed. And His words (exalted is He) in Sūrat Tabbat, concerning Abū Lahab and his wife: “Soon he will enter the blazing fire, and his wife [too], the firewood carrier, with a rope of palm fibre around her neck.” This is a foretelling that the two of them would die in unbelief and would not attain the felicity of Islam — which would have effaced from them the sins of idolatry and set down its burdens. And the two of them died in unbelief, just as He had foretold with a decisive foretelling.
You have, in this, an object-lesson [in the fact] that the Gospel of Matthew mentioned a single foretelling of the unseen for the Messiah — namely, that he would remain buried in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. Yet the Gospel of Matthew did not fail, toward its end, to belie this foretelling: it agreed with the other three Gospels that, on the evening of the Sabbath night, certain people asked Pilate for his body, took it down from the cross, shrouded it, and buried it; and that before the dawn of Sunday the Messiah rose from the dead and came forth from his tomb. On this reckoning, the Messiah would have remained in the tomb only the night of the Sabbath, its day, and the night of Sunday — that is, one day and two nights.
This being so: when I compare the Noble Qurʾān with what is ascribed to divine revelation among the books of the religious nations — including the Brahmans, the Buddhists, and others — I had at hand only the books of the two Testaments; so my comparison with the two ought not to be taken as a bias against the Jews and Christians in particular. In this I have my excuse: for it is not right that a person, in the service of the truth and the clarification and vindication of what is real, be swayed by the reproach of any reproacher or turned back by the censure of any censurer — for the service of the truth is a support to all humankind, and God is the One whose help is sought.
This is a little of the exposition concerning the aspects mentioned, for this abridgment cannot hold more than that. Grant that insinuating whispers press in upon the truths and mislead minds with flimsy doubts about the miraculousness in some of its single instances — yet is that possible in view of their totality? Is it permissible that in the mind of one possessed of awareness there should stir a doubt about the miraculousness of the Book that comprehends, in its excellence, these dazzling marvels, and that lies utterly beyond the reach of human capacity — especially in that age and those circumstances? Does his reason allow him aught but to say: “It is just a revelation that is revealed” (53:4)?
The Noble Qurʾān continued — in accordance with the wisdom of revelation and legislation and the benefits and requirements that arose moment by moment — to be sent down by stages, piecemeal (nujūman):14 a verse, two verses, or more, or a whole sūra. Whenever something was sent down, the hearts of the Muslims yearned toward it, their breasts were gladdened by it, and they hastened to commit it to memory with the finest eagerness and longing, the fullest devotion, and the keenest delight. They received it with jubilation, and took it up, seizing the boon, from the recitation of the great Messenger — who proclaimed aloud the command of God and hastened to convey [it] and to summon to God and His Qurʾān.
Their memory took it up with that innate power of retention by which the Arabs were distinguished and for which they were known, and they fixed it in their hearts like an engraving in stone. The emblem of Islam and the mark of the Muslim at that time was to adorn and perfect oneself by memorizing what was being sent down of the Noble Qurʾān — so as to gain insight from its proofs and be illumined by its teachings, its laws, its noble morals, its glorious history, its dazzling wisdom, and its surpassing, miraculous Arabic eloquence. So the Muslims made their recitation of it the proof of the summons, the miracle of eloquence, the tongue of the worship of God, the accent of His remembrance, the interpreter of intimate prayer to Him, the companion of solitude, the refreshment of the soul, a lesson in perfection, an exercise in refinement, a ladder for ascent, a training in civilization, the sign of admonition, the emblem of Islam, and the badge of faith and of advancement in virtue. The Muslims persisted in this until, in the Messenger’s time, they came to be numbered in thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands — all of them bearers and memorizers of the Qurʾān,15 even if they differed in this according to
precedence [in Islam] and merit. Now, since His revelation did not cease during the lifetime of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), the whole of it was not [yet] gathered in a single codex — even though what had been revealed of it was gathered in the hearts of the Muslims and in their writings of it. And when God chose for His Messenger the Abode of Honour, and revelation thereupon ceased — so that no further sending-down of the Qurʾān was to be looked for — the Muslims saw fit to record it in a comprehensive codex. So they gathered its material, with thousands of its memorizers overseeing [the task] and with the scrutiny of its extant writings — those in the keeping of the Messenger, the scribes of the revelation, and the rest of the Muslims — [gathering it] as a whole, in parts, and by sūras.16 True, it was not arranged in the order of its [chronological] sending-down, nor was its abrogated [verse] placed before its abrogating.17
So the Noble Qurʾān has continued, amid this great celebration of it among the Muslims, generation after generation: at every moment you see for it thousands of assembled codices and thousands of memorizers; codices are ever being copied one from another, and the Muslims recite one to another and hear one from another. Thousands of codices stand watch over the memorizers, and thousands of memorizers stand watch over the codices, and the thousands of both classes stand watch over whatever is newly produced of either — we say “thousands,” but they are hundreds of thousands and thousands upon thousands. No historical matter has ever attained such mass, concurrent transmission (tawātur) and such self-evident permanence as the Noble Qurʾān has attained — even as God (magnified be His bounties) promised in His words in Sūrat al-Ḥijr (15:9): “Indeed We have sent down the Reminder, and indeed We will preserve it,” and His words in Sūrat al-Qiyāma (75:17): “Indeed it is up to Us to put it together and to recite it.”
And if you should hear, in the anomalous narrations, something about the alteration (taḥrīf) of the Qurʾān and the loss of a part of it, give those narrations no weight; and say whatever sound knowledge pleases concerning their confusion, their feebleness, the weakness of their transmitters, their contradicting [the consensus of] the Muslims, and the flimsiness of what their frail transmissions have brought.
And [consider] what has been attached to the dignity of the Qurʾān of that which bears no resemblance to it. Listen, then, to [the following] matters.
The First Matter. It is reported in them that Abū Bakr was the one whose judgement first led to the collection of the Qurʾān, and that it was he who asked Zayd b. Thābit to collect it, that this weighed heavily upon Zayd, and that Abū Bakr kept pressing him until he accepted. It is also reported that Zayd was the one whose judgement first led to collecting it, that he resolved upon it and spoke of it to ʿUmar, that ʿUmar spoke of it to Abū Bakr, and that Abū Bakr then consulted the Muslims about it. It is also reported that Abū Bakr was the one who collected the Qurʾān in his own days. It is reported that ʿUmar was killed without having collected it. It is reported that ʿUthmān was the one who collected it in his days, by his order. It is reported that ʿUmar — when he wished to collect it — commanded Zayd b. Thābit and Saʿīd b. al-ʿĀṣ that Zayd should dictate and Saʿīd should write. It is reported that this was done by ʿUthmān in his days, after the killing of ʿUmar. And it is reported, too, that the one dictating was Ubayy b. Kaʿb, while Zayd wrote it and Saʿīd rendered it in correct [grammatical] form; and in another narration, that Saʿīd and ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥārith rendered it in correct form. This is some of the state of these narrations in their mutual contradiction and confusion. Among what is reported in them is [a narration] whose gist is that [Sūrat] Barāʾa was the last of the Qurʾān to be sent down — so what historical value do you see in this narration? See, at the least, Volume One of Kanz al-ʿUmmāl and its abridgment.
The Second [Matter]. In the fifth volume of the Musnad of Aḥmad, on the authority of Ubayy b. Kaʿb, who said: The Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) said, “God has commanded me to recite the Qurʾān to you.” [Ubayy] said: So he recited, “The faithless from among the People of the Book…” (98:1) — and he recited within it:18 “If the son of Adam were to ask for a valley of wealth and it were given him, he would ask for a second; and if he asked for a second and it were given him, he would ask for a third; and nothing fills the belly of the son of Adam but dust; and God relents toward whoever repents. And that upright religion, in God’s sight, is the ḥanīfiyya — not the polytheist, nor the Jewish, nor the Christian [religion]; and whoever does good, it will not be denied him.” In al-Ḥākim’s narration in al-Mustadrak — and in others’ too — “The essence of religion, in God’s sight, is the ḥanīfiyya, not the polytheist [one]”; and in another, “not the polytheist,” and so on. And from the Jāmiʿ al-Uṣūl of Ibn al-Athīr al-Jazarī: “Religion, in God’s sight, is the ḥanīfiyya, the muslima, not the Jewish, nor the Christian, nor the Magian.” In the Musnad, too, after this narration, on the authority of Ubayy, who said: The Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) said to me, “God has commanded me to recite to you,” and he recited to me, “The faithless from among the People of the Book and the polytheists were not set apart until the proof had come to them — an apostle from God reciting
impeccable scriptures, wherein are upright writings; and those who were given the Book did not divide, except after the proof had come to them” (98:1–4) — “Religion, in God’s sight, is the ḥanīfiyya, not the polytheist, nor the Jewish, nor the Christian [one]; and whoever does good, it will not be denied him.” Shuʿba said: Then he recited [some] verses after it, then he recited, “If the son of Adam had two valleys of wealth, he would ask for a third valley; and nothing fills the belly of the son of Adam but dust.” He said: Then he closed it with what remained of it. End [of quotation].
These narrations were also transmitted by Abū Dāwūd al-Ṭayālisī, Saʿīd b. Manṣūr (in his Sunan), and al-Ḥākim (in his Mustadrak), as [given] in Kanz al-ʿUmmāl. It is also recorded in the Musnad, on the authority of Abū Wāqid al-Laythī, who said: “We used to come to the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) when [something] was sent down to him, and he would relate it to us. One day he said to us: God (mighty and majestic) has said, ‘We sent down wealth for the keeping-up of prayer and the giving of alms; and were the son of Adam to have a valley, he would love to have a second; and were he to have two valleys, he would love to have for them a third; and nothing fills the belly of the son of Adam but dust; then God relents toward whoever repents.’” End.
Grant that [sound] knowledge and truthfulness make no demand of the traditionists — we do not [even] say the [popular] storytellers — and put no question to them about this gross confusion in what they allege to be part of the Qurʾān, nor question them about distinguishing between the eloquence of the Qurʾān and its lofty rank, on the one hand, and the feeble descent of these clauses, on the other. But is it not [the right] of knowledge to ask them about the error in their words “not the polytheist [religion]” — for is religion [ever] described as “polytheist”? — and in their words “the ḥanīfiyya, the muslima” — and is religion, or the ḥanīfiyya, [ever] described as “muslima [submitting]”? — and their words “the essence of religion,” and their words “We sent down wealth for the keeping-up of prayer”: what is the meaning of “sending down” wealth, and what is the meaning of its being “for the keeping-up of prayer”?
Now listen to what follows. In the sixth volume of the Musnad of Aḥmad, with a chain, on the authority of Masrūq, who said: I asked ʿĀʾisha, “Did the Messenger of God used to say anything when he entered the house?” She said: “When he entered the house he would utter, as a maxim: ‘Were the son of Adam to have two valleys of wealth, he would seek a third valley; and nothing fills his mouth but dust; and We made wealth only for the keeping-up of prayer and the giving of alms; and God relents toward whoever repents.’” And in the sixth volume, with its chain, on the authority of Jābir, who said: The Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) said, “Were the son of Adam to have a valley of wealth, he would wish for two; and were he to have two valleys, he would wish for a third; and nothing fills the belly of the son of Adam but dust.” And with his chain, too: Jābir was asked, “Did the Messenger of God say, ‘Were the son of Adam to have a valley of palm-trees, he would wish for the like of it, until he wished for [many] valleys; and nothing fills the belly of the son of Adam but dust’?” End.
But do you find it strange, or ordinarily impossible, that the son of Adam should have a valley of wealth or of palm-trees? Is there not, in every age, among the sons of Adam one who has owned a valley of that — indeed [many] valleys? How, then, can it be sound, in correct speech, to say “Were the son of Adam to have…,” “If the son of Adam had…”? Is not law (“were,” “if”) a particle of [contrary-to-fact] impossibility? How astonishing, then, are the transmitters of these narrations: were they not Arabs, or [at least] acquainted with the Arabic language?
True — this [grammatical] objection is removed by the version Aḥmad narrates in the Musnad of Ibn ʿAbbās, “if the son of Adam had two valleys of gold” (gold being effectively unattainable in such measure), and likewise by what comes below in al-Tirmidhī’s narration from Anas. But then, to wish for a valley, or two, or three, is no sin requiring repentance — so what relevance is there in following it with the clause “and God relents toward whoever repents”? And if you wish for more of the mutual repulsion and confusion in this narration, listen to what al-Ḥākim narrated in al-Mustadrak: that Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī said, “We used to recite a sūra that we likened, in length and severity, to Barāʾa, but I was made to forget it — except that I retained of it: ‘Were the son of Adam to have two valleys of wealth, he would seek a third; and nothing fills the belly of the son of Adam but dust.’” It is mentioned in al-Durr al-Manthūr that a number [of transmitters] reported it on the authority of Abū Mūsā. Add to this, among the mutual repulsion and contradiction, what he adduced with a chain in al-Itqān, again on the authority of Abū Mūsā, who said: “A sūra like Barāʾa was sent down, then withdrawn, and there was retained of it: ‘God will surely support this religion by a people who have no share [in the Hereafter]; and were the son of Adam to have two valleys, he would wish [for a third]’” — and so on. And al-Tirmidhī adduced, with a chain, on the authority of Anas b. Mālik, who said: The Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) said, “Were the son of Adam to have a valley of gold, he would love to have a second; and nothing fills his mouth but dust; and God relents toward whoever repents.”
There you see that the narrations of ʿĀʾisha, Jābir, Anas, and Ibn ʿAbbās make the report of “the valley and the two valleys” a saying of the Messenger of God and a maxim of his — and, by so presenting it, they themselves deny that it is part of the Noble Qurʾān. Yet, for all that, there has been ascribed to the speech of the Messenger (God bless him and his Household) material to which some of the foregoing objections still apply — material from which he must be held far above. And set aside, besides, the confusion that leaves the narration a farce.
The Third Matter. Among what they have attached to the dignity of the Glorious Qurʾān is their statement — in the narration on the authority of Zayd b. Thābit: “We used to recite the verse of stoning:19 ‘The old man and the old woman, when they commit fornication, stone them both outright.’” In the narration from Dharr, on the authority of Ubayy: that Sūrat al-Aḥzāb used to rival Sūrat al-Baqara — or was longer than it — and that in it, or toward its end, was a verse of stoning: “The old man and the old woman, stone them both outright, as an exemplary punishment from God; and God is Mighty, Wise.” In al-Sayyārī’s narration (a Shīʿī), on the authority of Abū ʿAbd Allāh [al-Ṣādiq], with the addition of the words “for the lust they have satisfied.” In the narration of the Muwaṭṭaʾ, al-Mustadrak, Musaddad, and Ibn Saʿd, on the authority of ʿUmar — as will come — “The old man and the old woman, stone them both outright.” In the narration of Abū Umāma b. Sahl, that his maternal aunt said: “The Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) made us recite the verse of stoning: ‘The old man and the old woman, stone them both outright, for the pleasure they have satisfied.’” And the like is the narration of Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh and Sulaymān b. Khālid (Shīʿīs), on the authority of Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him). How astonishing! How could these traditionists be content, for the glory and dignity of the Qurʾān, that this severe ruling be laid upon “the old man and the old woman” without the cause even being mentioned — namely their fornication, at the least — let alone the condition of
iḥṣān (being married)? And [note] that the satisfying of lust is more general than [sexual] intercourse, and intercourse is more general than fornication, and fornication often occurs without iḥṣān [i.e. outside marriage]. Let us be lenient with whoever claims that “satisfying lust” is a euphemism for fornication — indeed, grant further that it means fornication together with iḥṣān; still we say: what licenses the intrusion of the fāʾ (“so / then”) in the words “so stone them both,” when there is nothing to justify its entry — no conditional or the like, neither expressed nor such as could soundly be supplied? The fāʾ entered upon the predicate in His words (exalted is He) in Sūrat al-Nūr (24:2), “As for the fornicatress and the fornicator, flog…,” only because the word “flog” stands as the apodosis to the attribute of fornication in the subject, while fornication stands as the protasis. But stoning is no penalty for old age, nor is old age a cause of it. Indeed, the only thing the entry of the fāʾ here indicates is the falsehood of the narration!
Perhaps in Sulaymān b. Khālid’s narration a word has dropped out, such that the form of his question was: “Do they say there is [a verse of] stoning in the Qurʾān?” And how could [the Qurʾān] be content, for its glory and dignity in this severe ruling, that the command be restricted to “the old man and the old woman,” when the community is agreed that it applies generally to every married (muḥṣan), adult, sane fornicator, male or female? And that the ruling of stoning be stated unrestrictedly, when the community is agreed that iḥṣān is a condition for it? And, over and above this, that it should [seem to] confirm the unrestricted sense and make it as though an explicit statement of generality, by way of the rationale of “the satisfying of pleasure and lust,” in which the married and the unmarried alike share? So discern, from what you have heard, the mutual repulsion, the incoherence, and the flaw in the transmission of this farce.
Add to this what is narrated in the Muwaṭṭaʾ, al-Mustadrak, Musaddad, and Ibn Saʿd: that ʿUmar said — less than twenty days before his death, concerning what they allege to be the verse of stoning — “Were it not that people would say, ‘ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb has added to the Book of God,’ I would have written it: ‘The old man and the old woman, stone them both outright.’” Al-Ḥākim and Ibn Jarīr reported — the latter also declaring it sound — that ʿUmar said: “When it was sent down, I came to the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) and said, ‘Write it’ — in the Kanz al-ʿUmmāl copy, ‘Write it out for me’ — but it was as though he disliked that.” And ʿUmar said: “Do you not see that the old man, if he fornicates and is not muḥṣan, is flogged; while the young man, if he fornicates and is muḥṣan, is stoned?” So the traditionists narrate that ʿUmar reports that the Messenger of God disliked that a sent-down verse be written — while ʿUmar himself enumerates the flaws in it. How astonishing they are!
In al-Itqān, al-Nasāʾī reported that Marwān said to Zayd b. Thābit, “Will you not write it in the codex?” He said: “Do you not see that the two already-married young persons are stoned? We mentioned that to ʿUmar, and he said, ‘I will settle it for you.’ Then he said, ‘O Messenger of God, write out for me the verse of stoning.’ He said, ‘You cannot.’” End. So Zayd b. Thābit himself raises an objection to it! And when they saw the contradiction between ʿUmar’s words “write it out for me” and the Prophet’s words “you cannot,” they said: ʿUmar meant by that, “Permit me to write it” — as though they did not know that ʿUmar was an Arab, who would not express “permit me to write it” by saying “write it out for me”! And, even so, they could offer no acceptable sense for the Prophet’s words “you cannot.” In a narration in Kanz al-ʿUmmāl, on the authority of Ibn al-Ḍurays, on the authority of ʿUmar: “I said to the Messenger of God, ‘Write it, O Messenger
of God’; he said, ‘I cannot.’” And Ibn al-Ḍurays reported, on the authority of Zayd b. Aslam, that ʿUmar addressed the people and said: “Do not doubt [the ruling of] stoning, for it is true. I had resolved to write it in the codex, so I asked Ubayy b. Kaʿb, and he said, ‘Did you not come to me while I was having the Messenger of God recite it to me [for memorization], and you pushed me in the chest and said, “How can you have him recite to you the verse of stoning while they are coupling as donkeys couple?”’” End. So this narration says that ʿUmar did not accept that anything be sent down concerning stoning. Would that the traditionists might explain the upshot of Ubayy’s reply to ʿUmar, and the upshot of ʿUmar’s forbidding Ubayy from having it recited!
And al-Tirmidhī reported, on the authority of Saʿīd b. al-Musayyab, on the authority of ʿUmar, who said: “The Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) stoned, Abū Bakr stoned, and I have stoned; and were it not that I dislike adding to the Book of God, I would have written it in the codex.” So ʿUmar here says that writing [the ruling of] stoning in the codex would be an addition to the Book of God — and that he dislikes it. So set these four narrations against one another, and recognize the offence of those traditionists enamoured of piling up narrations. And if you look at Volume Three of Kanz al-ʿUmmāl, pp. 90 and 91, your insight into the confusion and the flaw will increase.
Now, among what clashes with and combats these narrations is what is reported: that ʿAlī (peace be upon him), when he flogged Sharāḥa al-Hamdāniyya on a Thursday and stoned her on a Friday, said, “I flog her by the Book of God, and I stone her by the Sunna of His Messenger” — as narrated by Aḥmad, al-Bukhārī, al-Nasāʾī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq (in the Jāmiʿ), al-Ṭaḥāwī, al-Ḥākim (in his Mustadrak), and others; and the Shīʿa narrated it from ʿAlī (peace be upon him) in mursal form. So ʿAlī (peace be upon him) bears witness that stoning is [drawn] from the Sunna, not from the Book.
Among what they have attached to the dignity of the Glorious Qurʾān is what is narrated in al-Itqān and al-Durr al-Manthūr — that al-Ṭabarānī, al-Bayhaqī, and Ibn al-Ḍurays reported that two sūras belong to the Qurʾān (al-Rāghib, in his Muḥāḍarāt, called them “the two sūras of qunūt”),20 and they ascribed the two to ʿAlī’s teaching, to ʿUmar’s qunūt, to the codices of Ibn ʿAbbās and Zayd b. Thābit, and to the reading of Ubayy and Abū Mūsā. The first of the two: “In the Name of God, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful. O God, we seek Your help and Your forgiveness, and we praise You with good and do not deny You; and we cast off and forsake whoever is dissolute toward You.” End. We do not say to this transmitter that this speech does not resemble the eloquence of the Qurʾān or its manner — for we are lenient with him as to recognizing that — but we say to him: how can his phrase “is dissolute toward You” (yafjuruka) be sound? How can the word yafjur (“acts dissolutely,” an intransitive verb) take an object? And, further, “casting off” (khalʿ) is [properly] said of idols — so what, then, is the meaning here, and by what is the error to be removed? The second of the two: “In the Name of God, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful. O God, You [alone] do we worship, and to You do we pray and prostrate, and to You do we strive and hasten; we hope for Your mercy and fear Your punishment — al-jadd! — Your punishment surely overtakes the unbelievers.” End. And let us be lenient with the transmitter, too, in what we were lenient with him in the first narration,
but we say to him: what is the meaning of al-jadd here — is it “majesty,” or “wealth,” or “the opposite of jest,” or is it merely the exigency of the rhymed prose? True, in the narration of ʿUbayd it is “we fear Your vengeance,” and in the narration of ʿAbd Allāh, “we fear Your punishment.” And what is the point of the expression “overtakes”? And what relevance, and what soundness of rationale, is there in [grounding] the believer’s fear of God’s punishment upon the [statement] that “God’s punishment overtakes the unbelievers”? Rather, this expression would suit as a rationale for the believer’s not fearing God’s punishment — since His punishment overtakes the unbelievers.
Among what they have attached to the Glorious Qurʾān is what [the author of] Faṣl al-Khiṭāb transmitted from the book Dabistān al-Madhāhib: that it ascribed to the Shīʿa [the claim] that the burning of the codices was the cause of the loss of sūras of the Qurʾān that had been sent down concerning the merit of ʿAlī (peace be upon him) and his Household (peace be upon them) — “among them,” [it says,] this sūra.21 And it cited a passage matching some twenty-five verses in its rhyme-endings, cobbled together out of clauses of the Noble Qurʾān in the manner of its verses. So hear the error in it — quite apart from the feebleness of its patched-together style.
Of the error: “And He chose from among the angels, and made from among the believers; those are in His creation” — what did He choose from among the angels? And what did He make from among the believers? And what is the meaning of “those are in His creation”? Of it: “The likeness of those who fulfil Your covenant is that I have rewarded them with the Gardens of Bliss” — would that I knew: what is their likeness? Of it: “And We sent Moses and Aaron with what he appointed as successor; so they wronged Aaron; so [it is] a comely patience” — what is the meaning of this mumbling? What is the meaning of “with what he appointed as successor”? What is the meaning of “so they wronged Aaron”? To whom does the pronoun in “they wronged” refer? And to whom is the command to “comely patience” addressed? Of it: “And indeed We gave you judgement, like those messengers who were before you, and We appointed for you from among them a legatee (waṣī), that they might return” — what is the meaning of “We gave you judgement”? And to whom do the pronouns in “from among them” and “that they” refer? Is the referent of the pronoun [floating] in the void of the [forger’s] mind? And what relevance has “that they might return”? Of it: “And indeed ʿAlī is devout in the night, prostrating, wary of the Hereafter and hoping for the reward of his Lord; say: Are those who did wrong equal, while they know of My punishment?” — say: what is the [grammatical] place of “Are those who did wrong equal,” and what relevance has it to “while they know of My punishment”? Perhaps there stirred in this cobbler’s mind verses eleven and twelve of Sūrat al-Zumar, at the end of which is: “Say, ‘Are those who know equal to those who do not know?’” (39:9); so the cobbler wished to patch something together out of the two, in his ignorance, and said, at the end of what he cobbled, “Are those who did wrong equal” — not understanding that the rhetorical (rebuking) interrogative was employed in the two verses because there is mentioned in them the one who sets up equals to God so as to mislead from His way, [set against] the one devout in the watches of the night hoping for the mercy of his Lord: the two are not equal, just as “those who know and those who do not know” are not equal. This is but some of the discussion of this farce.
And [note] that the author of Faṣl al-Khiṭāb was among the traditionists who narrate copiously and who apply themselves diligently to the tracking-down of anomalous reports, and that he would count the likes of this passage in Dabistān al-Madhāhib as the very object of his quest — yet even he said that he had found no trace of this passage in the books of the Shīʿa. So how astonishing is the author of Dabistān al-Madhāhib: whence did he bring this claim, ascribed to the Shīʿa? In which of their books did he find it? Is this how transmission from books is to be done? But it is no wonder — “a trait I know well from Akhzam”22 — for how often have they transmitted from the Shīʿa the like of this lying report, as in the Kitāb al-Milal of al-Shahrastānī, the Muqaddima of Ibn Khaldūn, and other [works] that some people have written in these [recent] years. And God is the One whose help is sought.
It is not hidden that the shaykh of the traditionists, the one known for his care in what he transmits — namely al-Ṣadūq (may his resting-place be sweet) — said in the Kitāb al-Iʿtiqād: “Our belief is that the Qurʾān which God sent down upon His Prophet (God bless him and his Household) is what is between the two covers, and no more than that; and whoever ascribes to us [the claim] that we say it is more than that is a liar.” End. And he construed the narrations that speak of diminution upon other [interpretations].
Toward the end of the relevant chapter in the Kitāb al-Maqālāt of al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (may his secret be sanctified): he said that a group of the people of the Imāmate hold that it — the Qurʾān — has not had a single word, verse, or sūra diminished from it, but [only] that there was omitted [from the standard codex] what had been entered in the codex of the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) of its interpretation and the exposition of its meanings according to the reality of its sending-down. And from al-Sayyid al-Murtaḍā (may his secret be sanctified): his holding that there is no diminution, and that whoever dissents in this among the Imāmiyya and the Ḥashwiyya23 is not to be reckoned with in his dissent; for the disagreement in this is to be referred to a group among the traditionists who transmitted weak reports that they supposed to be sound.
At the beginning of al-Tibyān of al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī (may his secret be sanctified): “As for discussion of any addition to it or diminution from it, that too is unbecoming to it; for [any] addition to it is agreed by consensus to be false, and as for diminution, the apparent [position] of the Muslims’ school is likewise its contrary. This is the [view] most fitting the sound [tenet] of our school, the one al-Murtaḍā championed, and the one apparent from the narrations. Except that many narrations have been transmitted, from both the Special [Shīʿī] and the General [Sunnī] side, of the diminution of much of the verses of the Qurʾān and of the transposition of some of it from one place to another — [narrations] whose path is that of solitary reports (āḥād), which necessitate neither knowledge nor practice; and the better course is to turn away from them.” End. And al-Ṭabrisī followed him in this in the Majmaʿ al-Bayān.
And in Kashf al-Ghiṭāʾ, in the Book of the Qurʾān, the eighth investigation — on its [alleged] diminution: “There is no doubt that it is preserved from diminution by the safeguarding of the Sovereign, the Requiter, as the plain text of the Qurʾān and the consensus of the scholars in every age indicate; the rare [dissent] is of no account; and the reports that speak of diminution — self-evident reason forbids acting upon their apparent [sense]” — until he says: “so they must inevitably be interpreted upon one of [several] construals.” And from al-Sayyid al-Qāḍī Nūrullāh, in his book Maṣāʾib al-Nawāṣib: “What has been ascribed to the Imāmī Shīʿa of the
occurrence of alteration in the Qurʾān is not [something] the generality of the Imāmiyya have held; only a small faction of them held it — [a faction] of no account among them.” And from al-Shaykh al-Bahāʾī, likewise: “They have differed over the occurrence of addition and diminution in it; but the correct [view] is that the Mighty Qurʾān is preserved from that, be it addition or diminution — as His words (exalted is He) indicate: ‘and indeed We will preserve it’ (15:9). As for what has become widespread among people concerning the dropping of the name of the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) from it in certain places — such as His words, ‘O Apostle! Communicate that which has been sent down to you [from your Lord]’ (5:67), with ‘concerning ʿAlī’ [supposedly added]24 — and the like, that is not credited by the scholars.”
And from al-Muqaddas al-Baghdādī, in his Sharḥ al-Wāfiya: “The discussion is only about diminution; and what is well known among our companions — indeed, consensus has been reported upon it — is [likewise] the absence of diminution.” And from him, too, [reporting] from al-Shaykh ʿAlī b. ʿAbd al-ʿĀlī, that he composed an independent treatise denying diminution, cited the foregoing statement of al-Ṣadūq, then raised as an objection the ḥadīths that [seem to] indicate diminution, and answered that when a ḥadīth comes contrary to the evidence of the Book, the mass-transmitted Sunna, or consensus, and it is not possible to interpret it or to carry it upon some [acceptable] construal, it must be discarded.
This being so: the contemporary traditionist [al-Nūrī] exerted himself, in the book Faṣl al-Khiṭāb, in gathering the narrations by which he argued for diminution, and swelled the number of its chained reports (masānīd) by the number of the chainless ones (marāsīl) [reported] from the Imāms (peace be upon them) in the books — such as the marāsīl of al-ʿAyyāshī, Furāt, and others — although the discerning researcher is certain that these chainless reports are themselves taken from those chained ones [and so ought not to be counted twice]. Among the totality of narrations he adduced is [material] the truthfulness of which cannot possibly be entertained; and among them is what varies with a variance that leads to mutual incompatibility and contradiction — and this abridgment has no room to expound the latter two sorts.
This, moreover, though the abundant portion of the narrations traces its chains back to a mere handful of individuals, each of whom the scholars of rijāl [transmitter-criticism] have described: some as “weak in ḥadīth, corrupt in doctrine, his transmission shunned”; some as “confused in ḥadīth and in doctrine, his ḥadīth [partly] recognized and [partly] rejected, transmitting from the weak”; some as “a suspect liar — ‘I do not hold it lawful to relate a single ḥadīth from his tafsīr’ — known for [doctrinal] ‘suspension’ (waqf), and the most hostile of people toward al-Riḍā (peace be upon him)”; some as “an extremist (ghālī) liar”; some as “weak, not to be regarded or relied upon, one of the liars”; and some as “corrupt in transmission, accused of exaggeration (ghuluww).” It is plain that, with the likes of these, their multitude avails nothing. And even were we to be lenient and pay heed to their narrations in so weighty a matter, it would be obligatory — from the [combined] import of the many narrations — to construe them [as meaning] that their contents are an interpretation (tafsīr) of the verses, or a [deeper] construal (taʾwīl), or an elucidation of what is known with certainty to fall under the general wordings [of the Qurʾān], since it is the clearest of the instances [covered] and the most deserving of the general ruling; or [an elucidation of] what was specifically intended and expressly designated within the general [wording] at the time of the sending-down; or of what was the occasion of the revelation; or of what was the intended meaning of the ambiguous wording.
Upon one of the last three of these construals is carried whatever is reported in [some of] them that it is “a sending-down” (tanzīl) and that “Gabriel brought it down” — as the very act of reconciling the narrations bears witness. Likewise, the “alteration” (taḥrīf) spoken of in them is to be carried upon alteration of meaning; and witnessing to that is the letter of Abū Jaʿfar [al-Bāqir] (peace be upon him) to Saʿd al-Khayr, as in the Rawḍa of al-Kāfī, in which occurs: “And part of their casting the Book [behind them] was that they kept its letters [intact] but altered its bounds [its meanings].” Likewise, whatever is reported in them that a word “was in the codex of the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him)” or of Ibn Masʿūd is to be carried upon [the sense] that it was in it by way of interpretation and construal. Witnessing to that, too, is the saying of the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) to the heretic (zindīq) — as in the Nahj al-Balāgha and elsewhere: “I brought them the Book, complete, comprising both the sending-down (tanzīl) and the [inner] construal (taʾwīl).”
Among the narrations we have pointed to: the contemporary traditionist adduced, concerning Sūrat al-Maʿārij, four narrations mentioning that the phrase “by the walāya of ʿAlī”25 is entered in the codex of Fāṭima (peace be upon her) — “and thus it is in the codex of Fāṭima.” Yet it is not hidden that her codex (peace be upon her) is [in fact] a book communicating the secrets of knowledge, as is known from several narrations in the Uṣūl of al-Kāfī, in the chapter on “the Scroll, the Codex, and the Comprehensive [book]” (al-Ṣaḥīfa, al-Muṣḥaf, al-Jāmiʿa), in which occurs the saying of al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “There is not in it a single letter of your Qurʾān,” and “I do not claim that there is any Qurʾān in it” — as in [reports graded] sound and good.
Among them: what is in al-Kāfī, in the chapter that “the Imāms (peace be upon them) are witnesses over the people,” in the sound report of Burayd from Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him), and his narration from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), of their saying (peace be upon them) concerning His words (exalted is He), “We have made you a middle nation” (2:143): “We are the middle nation”; and in the elaboration of it, from the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him): “And we are those of whom God said, ‘We have made you a middle nation.’” Thus, what is reported chainlessly (mursal) in the two tafsīrs of al-Nuʿmānī and Saʿd — that the verse read “imāms, a middle [nation]” — must be carried upon [the sense of] interpretation; and the “alteration” is only of meaning.
Among them: as narrated in al-Kāfī, in the chapter that “the Imāms are the guides,” from al-Fuḍayl: “I asked Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him) about the words of God (exalted is He), ‘and there is a guide for every people’ (13:7), and he said, ‘Every imām is a guide for the generation among whom he is.’” And the narration of Burayd from Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him) concerning His words, “You are only a warner, and there is a guide for every people” (13:7): “The Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) is the warner; and in every age there is, from among us, a guide who guides them to what the Prophet brought — and the guides after him are ʿAlī (peace be upon him), then the legatees, one after another.” The like is the narration of Abū Baṣīr from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), and of ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Qaṣīr from Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him): “The Messenger of God is the warner, and ʿAlī is the guide.” And to the same purport came the narrations of the generality [Sunnīs], chained, by the routes of Abū Hurayra, Abū Barza, and Ibn ʿAbbās, and by the route of the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) — which al-Ḥākim declared sound in his Mustadrak.
And when you have grasped this fully, would it please you that Faṣl al-Khiṭāb should resort, in its patching-together and multiplication [of reports], to citing from some later tafsīrs, and from al-Dāmād in the marginalia to al-Qabasāt — his statement that “the ḥadīths, by our routes and theirs, concur” that the sending-down read: “You are only a warner to [My] servants, and ʿAlī
is a guide for every people”? [But] this is the [kind of] verse that panegyrists chant, and one who knows the Arabic language would not consent to have its composition ascribed to him! I do not think you will find, by our routes or the routes of the Sunnīs, anything other than what you heard first [the canonical wording] — which is other than what he cited. So take heed.
Among them: the narration of al-Kāfī, from Abū Ḥamza, from Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him), who said: His words (mighty and majestic), “By God, our Lord, we were not polytheists” (6:23) — they mean “by the walāya of ʿAlī (peace be upon him).” This is explicit in its being an interpretation. So it governs, by its elucidation, the two weak reports of Abū Baṣīr in their appearing [to say] that the phrase “by the walāya of ʿAlī” was dropped from the verse; and the elucidation drawn from Abū Ḥamza’s narration extends to the likes of these. Among them: the narration of ʿUmar b. Ḥanẓala from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him) concerning His words in Sūrat al-Baqara, “providing for a year, without turning them out” (2:240): “[being] turned out.” And I can only think you will say that the Imām’s appending of the word “turned out” is [merely] an interpretation of what is meant by “turning out,” not a statement of a diminution from the Noble Qurʾān; yet Faṣl al-Khiṭāb adduced it under the heading of a statement of diminution. So take heed.
Among them: the sound report of Muḥammad b. Muslim from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), as in al-Kāfī at the beginning of the chapter on withholding zakāt, in which: then he (peace be upon him) said, “It is the words of God (mighty and majestic), ‘They will be collared with what they grudge on the Day of Resurrection’ (3:180) — meaning what they grudged of the zakāt.” So the narration is as good as explicit that the phrase “of the zakāt” is [only] an interpretation from the Imām, not from the Qurʾān. So it governs, by its elucidation, the chainless report of Ibn Abī ʿUmayr — from one he named — from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him) concerning His words, “They will be collared with what they grudge” — “of the zakāt” — “on the Day of Resurrection” (3:180), and diverts it from being a statement of diminution.
Among them: the sound report of Abū Baṣīr from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), as in al-Kāfī in the chapter that “God and His Messenger designated the Imāms, one after another,” in which: I said to him, “People say: why, then, did He not name ʿAlī (peace be upon him) and his Household in the Book of God?” He said: “Say to them: The [obligation of] prayer was sent down upon the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), yet God did not name for them [the] three [cycles] or four [by number]; it was the Messenger of God who explained that to them. And likewise regarding zakāt and ḥajj.” The tenor of the narration is the Imām’s (peace be upon him) confirming the people’s statement that God did not name ʿAlī in the Qurʾān, and that the naming was [rather] from the exposition of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) — in the ḥadīth “Whomever’s master I am, ʿAlī is his master” and the ḥadīth of the Two Weighty Things (al-Thaqalayn).26
Witnessing to this is what is also narrated in al-Kāfī, in this same chapter — a little after that — in the sound report of the Excellent Ones (al-Fuḍalāʾ) from Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him), the narration of Abū al-Jārūd from him (peace be upon him), and the narration of Abū al-Daylam from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him): that they recited — in the setting of argument, where there was no dissimulation (taqiyya) — His words (exalted is He), “O Apostle! Communicate that which has been sent down to you from your Lord, and if you do not, you will not have communicated His message” (5:67), and did not mention, in reciting the verse, the words “concerning ʿAlī.” This indicates that whatever is reported concerning the mention of ʿAlī’s name in this passage — indeed, in others too — is only an interpretation and an elucidation of what is meant in the revelation of the Qurʾān, the interpretation and elucidation having been brought
by Gabriel from God under the heading of revelation in the absolute sense (al-waḥy), not [as] Qurʾān: “Nor does he speak out of [his own] desire: it is just a revelation that is revealed” (53:3–4). Among them: the narration of al-Fuḍayl from Abū al-Ḥasan the Past [al-Kāẓim] (peace be upon him), in the chapter on “the subtle points of the sending-down concerning the walāya” in al-Kāfī. He said: “I said, ‘This is what you used to deny!’ (83:17). He said, ‘It means the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him).’ I said, ‘Is [that] a sending-down (tanzīl)?’ He said, ‘Yes.’” Now, [the Imām] mentioned the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) by his word “it means,” by way of interpretation and the elucidation of what is meant and pointed to in His words “This”; so his answer “Yes” is [itself] evidence that what was specifically intended in the revelation of the Qurʾān they (peace be upon them) also call a “sending-down.”
So this narration and its likes are decisive in cutting off the [vain] clutchings of Faṣl al-Khiṭāb at the narrations it heaped up — whose state you have come to know in sum. To what we have mentioned, and to other [matters], point the statements we have cited from the eminent scholars (may their secrets be sanctified). And if it be said, “This narration is weak, and so are a number of the foregoing narrations,” we say: the bulk of what Faṣl al-Khiṭāb heaped up is the very like of this narration, or weaker still, as we indicated in describing its transmitters; and, besides, what we have cited of the sound (ṣaḥīḥ) reports is sufficient for those possessed of understanding.
Because of the mass, concurrent transmission (tawātur) of the Noble Qurʾān among the generality of the Muslims, generation after generation, its substance, its form, and its current recitation have continued upon a single pattern. Nothing has affected its substance and form of what is reported from certain people of divergence in its reading — from the seven well-known reciters27 and others; the reading of no one of them has come to dominate its form by [people’s] following him, not even in some copies. Nor has there dominated over it what is reported of the abundance of readings differing from it — the transmission of which has spread in the books, such as the Jāmiʿ of al-Bukhārī and the Mustadrak of al-Ḥākim, chained to the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), ʿAlī (peace be upon him), Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿUmar, Ubayy, Ibn Masʿūd, Ibn ʿUmar, ʿĀʾisha, Abū al-Dardāʾ, and Ibn al-Zubayr. See, at the least, Volume One of Kanz al-ʿUmmāl, pp. 284–289.
True, the codex of ʿUthmān has perhaps been followed — as is said — merely in the orthography (rasm) of the writing, in some copies, in a countable [few] words: such as the addition of an alif between the shīn and the yāʾ in the word li-shayʾ (“about anything”) in Sūrat al-Kahf (18:23), and its addition likewise in la-adhbaḥannahu (“I will surely behead him”) in Sūrat al-Naml (27:21), and the like in a few words. And the seven readings — let alone the ten — concern only the form of some words, not the addition or subtraction of a word. Even so, they are but solitary reports (āḥād) [transmitted] from solitary individuals, necessitating neither assurance nor confidence — quite apart from their being weakened by mutual contradiction and by their divergence from the current, mass-transmitted orthography in use among the generality of the Muslims over the long stretch of years. And each of the reciters is a single individual whose probity and trustworthiness have not even been established; he transmits from single individuals, the state of most of whom is like his own, and single individuals like him transmit from him — and they often differ in transmitting from him. For how often did Ḥafṣ and Shuʿba differ in transmitting
from ʿĀṣim! And likewise Qālūn and Warsh in transmitting from Nāfiʿ; Qunbul and al-Bazzī in their transmitting, through their masters, from Ibn Kathīr; the transmission of Abū ʿAmr and Abū Shuʿayb, through al-Yazīdī, from Abū ʿAmr; the transmission of Ibn Dhakwān and Hishām, through their masters, from Ibn ʿĀmir; the transmission of Khalaf and Khallād, through Sulaym, from Ḥamza; and the transmission of Abū ʿUmar and Abū al-Ḥārith from al-Kisāʾī.28 And [this] though not one of the chains of these solitary readings is characterized by soundness (ṣiḥḥa) even in the Sunnīs’ technical usage regarding transmission — let alone the Imāmiyya’s — as is not hidden from anyone who has ranged through the field. So how astonishing is the one who describes these seven readings as “mass-transmitted” (mutawātir)!
Now, each of these reciters agrees, in his reading, for the most part, with the written form current among the Muslims — though ʿĀṣim, in Shuʿba’s transmission, may occasionally depart from it as an anomaly. It is therefore not proper, in reciting, to turn away from what is current in the orthography and acted upon among the generality of the Muslims throughout their generations, toward the peculiarities of these readings — added to which we, the community of the Imāmī Shīʿa, have been commanded to recite as the people recite (that is, the mass and generality of the Muslims).
Perhaps you will say: most of the seven readings, or the ten, arise from the breadth of the Arabic language in the setting and form of the word — such as ʿalayhim, ilayhim, and ladayhim, with kasra or ḍamma on the hāʾ, and with sukūn or ḍamma on the mīm; and such as taẓāharūn, with fatḥa on the ẓāʾ or with its doubling — so that, whichever reading it is recited by, I am still reciting in accordance with Arabic. But how can it be hidden from you that the recitation of the Qurʾān — in its very being, and in its realization — must follow what was revealed to the Messenger and addressed to him at its sending-down upon him, and that is one single wording? So it is incumbent upon you to seek it out by whatever establishes it [with certainty]. The recitation of the Qurʾān is not [a matter of merely] studying the lexicons of the language.
And do not cling, for this, to what is reported that “the Qurʾān was sent down upon seven aḥruf,” for it is a flimsy, feeble clutching. First: it is stated in al-Itqān, in the second question of the sixteenth category, that there has been disagreement over the meaning of “the seven aḥruf” amounting to forty opinions — of which he cited thirty-five from Abū Ḥayyān; and that is only because of the feebleness of its narration and its confusion in wording and meaning. And in al-Itqān, too, toward the end of the sixteenth category: “Many of the common folk have supposed that what is meant by them is the seven readings — and that is an ugly ignorance.” And second: al-Ḥākim narrated in his Mustadrak, with a chain sound by the conditions of al-Bukhārī and Muslim, from Ibn Masʿūd, from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household): “The Qurʾān came down from seven gates, upon seven aḥruf: restraining and commanding, lawful and unlawful, clear (muḥkam) and ambiguous (mutashābih), and parables; so hold lawful its lawful…” And Ibn Jarīr narrated, chainlessly (mursal), from Abū Qilāba, from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household): “The Qurʾān was sent down upon seven
aḥruf: commanding and restraining, encouraging and warning, disputation, narratives, and parable.” And Ibn Jarīr, al-Sanjarī, Ibn al-Mundhir, and Ibn al-Anbārī narrated from Ibn ʿAbbās, from him (God bless him and his Household): “The Qurʾān is upon four aḥruf: lawful and unlawful…” — the ḥadīth. And al-Sanjarī adduced with a chain, in al-Ibāna, from ʿAlī (peace be upon him): “The Qurʾān was sent down upon ten aḥruf: bearer of glad tidings and warner, abrogating and abrogated, admonition and parable, clear (muḥkam) and ambiguous (mutashābih), lawful and unlawful.”
And third: there has come, in the narrations of the seven aḥruf — with chains “good” in their own technical usage — what will apprise you of their feebleness and their fitness to be classed as fable. In Aḥmad’s narration, from the ḥadīth of Abū Bakra: that the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) kept asking Gabriel for an increase in the modes (aḥruf) of recitation until it reached seven aḥruf. He — meaning Gabriel — said: “All of them are healing and sufficient, so long as you do not seal a verse of punishment with mercy, or a verse of mercy with punishment.” And he added, in another ḥadīth: “such as your saying: taʿāl, aqbil, halumma [come here], idhhab [go], asriʿ, aʿjil [hurry].” And the like is in al-Ṭabarānī’s narration from Abū Bakra.
In al-Itqān: Aḥmad and al-Ṭabarānī reported the like from Ibn Masʿūd. Abū Dāwūd, in his Sunan, reported from Ubayy, from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) — down to his words, “until it reached seven aḥruf” — then he said: “None of them but is healing and sufficient; if you say ‘all-hearing, all-knowing,’ ‘all-mighty, all-wise,’ [it is right] — so long as you do not seal a verse of punishment with mercy or a verse of mercy with punishment.” And in Kanz al-ʿUmmāl — in what Aḥmad, Ibn Manīʿ, al-Ghassānī, Ibn Abī Manṣūr, and Abū Yaʿlā reported from Ubayy, from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household): “If you say ‘all-forgiving, all-merciful,’ or ‘all-hearing, all-knowing,’ or ‘all-knowing, all-hearing,’ then God is [indeed] such — so long as you do not seal a verse of punishment with mercy or [one of] mercy with punishment.” And Ibn Jarīr reported from Abū Hurayra, from him (God bless him and his Household): “This Qurʾān was sent down upon seven aḥruf, so recite, and there is no harm; but do not join the mention of mercy to punishment, nor the mention of punishment to mercy.” And Aḥmad reported, from the ḥadīth of ʿUmar: “The whole Qurʾān is correct, so long as you do not make a [statement of] forgiveness into punishment, or punishment into forgiveness.” Look, then, at these narrations that [purport to] explain the seven aḥruf — how they have licensed tampering with the recitation of the Noble Qurʾān according to whatever the reciter fancies, so long as he does not seal a verse of mercy with punishment, or the reverse!
And fourth: among the narrations is what cuts the chain of the seven readings [at the root]. From Ibn al-Anbārī, in al-Maṣāḥif, with a chain from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, who said: “The reading of Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, Zayd b. Thābit, the Emigrants, and the Helpers was one.” And from Ibn Abī Dāwūd, with a chain from Anas, who said: “I prayed behind the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), and behind Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, and ʿAlī — and all of them used to recite ‘Master of the Day of Retribution’ (1:4).” And it is also narrated that the first to read “King (malik) of the Day of Retribution” was Marwān b. al-Ḥakam.
And fifth — and this is “the decisive word” (faṣl al-khiṭāb):29 it is narrated by the routes of the Shīʿa in al-Kāfī, with a chain from Abū Jaʿfar al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): “The Qurʾān is one, sent down from One; but the divergence comes from the side of the transmitters.” Al-Ṣadūq related the like chainlessly, in his Iʿtiqādāt, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him). And in al-Kāfī, too, in the sound [report]
from al-Fuḍayl b. Yasār, who said: I said to Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), “People say that the Qurʾān was sent down upon seven aḥruf,” and he (peace be upon him) said, “They have lied; rather it was sent down upon a single mode (ḥarf), from the One.” And what we have said is corroborated by al-Sayyārī’s narration of it, too, from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon them).
The need for it has [several] stations. The First: on the individual words of its wording and the clarification of their meaning in Arabic. The Noble Qurʾān was sent down in the most eloquent of the dialects of the Arabs, the most current and familiar to the Arab kind; so the meanings of its individual words are not hidden from the Arabs, save rarely, for some of the causes from which the human kind is never free — as is reported concerning al-abb and al-qaḍb30 in His words (exalted is He) in Sūrat ʿAbasa, “fruits and pastures” (80:31) and “vines and vegetables” (80:28). But when the non-Arab nations were honoured by Islam, and the Arabic language developed through the [ethnic] mixing and the passage of time, it befell some of the words — which had been current, familiar, and known in meaning at the time of the revelation — that they became, thereafter, strange in common usage and remote from people’s understanding of their meanings. And this kept increasing day by day, until its malady spread even to some of the elite; and their taking refuge, in this, in mere following and imitation has had no slight effect.
Therefore, in interpreting the individual words of its noble wording, recourse is to be had to what yields assurance and confidence — from the practice of the science of the Arabic language, and reflection upon the attested instances of its usage that are known to be from the speech of the Arabs and their tongue; and reflection upon the style of the Noble Qurʾān, the instances of its own usage, and their recitation has a great part in this. As for mere reliance upon individual lexicographers — holding their statements binding and imitating their opinions — that is inadmissible; for most of what they rest their statements upon is nothing but reliance on what they attain according to their own understandings and their tracking of the instances of usage, together with a confusing of the literal with the figurative and a failure to make sure of the contextual indicators and the [particular] features of usage. Do you not see how often they testify, one against another, to error and to mere supposition?
Among the witnesses to what we have said is the confusion and floundering that has occurred in interpreting al-lams and al-mass [both roughly “touch”].31 In al-Nihāya: “masistu al-shayʾ means: when you touch it (lamastahu) with your hand.” In al-Qāmūs: “lamasahu: he touched it (massahu) with his hand,” and “masistuhu, that is, lamastuhu.” In al-Miṣbāḥ: “masistuhu: I reached it with my hand without a barrier — thus they restricted it,” having said before that: “lamasahu: he reached it with the hand — thus they explained it.” Ibn Durayd said: “the root of al-lams is with the hand, so as to know the touch (mass) of the thing,” and: “lamastu [means] masistu, and everything touching (māss) is [also] lāmis.” Al-Fārābī said: “al-lams is al-mass.” In al-Tahdhīb, from Ibn al-Aʿrābī: “al-lams is the touching (mass) of the thing”; and, in the chapter of the mīm: “al-mass is your touching the thing with your hand.” Al-Jawharī said: “al-lams
is al-mass.” Then he said, in al-Miṣbāḥ: “And if al-lams is [identical with] al-mass, how do the jurists distinguish between them?” End. Perhaps you will grant that the jurists are the more adept at deriving meaning from the tracking of the instances of usage — that being on account of what they have habituated themselves to, and by which they have honed their minds, of expending effort in inquiry and verification. For the difference between the two meanings of lams and mass is clear, by the judgement of immediate sense (tabādur) and the tracking of usage. It is not hidden that what is well known and what immediately comes to mind — with a coming-to-mind that yields certainty that there has been no [semantic] transfer from the original lexical meaning — is that al-lams is contact by that part of the body which has sensation, with the intention of sensing the thing touched: not specifically touching with the hand, nor mere contact (mass). True, many instances of lams are with the hand, on the consideration that it is the usual instrument and the strongest in sensation. Just as al-mass is contact in the absolute [sense], without the intention of sensing. A number of the pillars of our scholars have stated plainly that the meaning of mass — lexically, indeed customarily — is what we have described, as in al-Muʿtabar, al-Muntahā, Rawḍ al-Jinān, and al-Ḥadāʾiq, and indeed al-Muhadhdhab al-Bāriʿ. And I think that whoever investigates carefully — consulting custom and immediate sense, and tracking the instances of usage, ancient and modern — does not doubt that the meaning of lams is what we first described.
Among the witnesses to what we have said is the confusion over the meaning of al-tawaffī, and what has been [supposed] in interpreting its wording, which recurs in the Noble Qurʾān.32 The lexicographers placed “causing to die” (imāta) within the meaning of tawaffī; and many of the exegetes, in interpreting His words (exalted is He) in Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (3:55), “O Jesus, I shall take you[r soul], and I shall raise you up toward Myself,” said: that is, “cause you to die”; some said, “cause you to die a natural death”; and some, “cause you to die at your [appointed] time, after [your] descent from heaven.” It is as though they did not attend carefully to the [root-]material of tawaffī and its derivation, to the Qurʾān’s own usages, and to the common measure uniting them; nor to the soundness of the interpretation of this noble verse and the belief of the Muslims that Jesus did not die and was not killed before the raising to heaven, as the Qurʾān has stated plainly; nor to [the fact] that the Qurʾān reports — of what preceded its own sending-down — that the Messiah said to God, “when You had taken me away” (5:117). From all of this, they did not perceive that the meaning of tawaffī — the sound common measure in the Qurʾān’s usage of it and its derivatives — is [rather] “taking” and “taking in full” (istīfāʾ): realized by causing-to-die, by sleep, and by taking [someone] from the earth and the world of humankind to the world of heaven.
The Qurʾān’s own usage suffices to make this clear, as in His words (exalted is He) in Sūrat al-Zumar (39:42): “God takes the souls at the time of their death, and those that have not died, in their sleep. Then He retains those for whom He has ordained death, and releases the others” [until a specified time]. Do you not see that the speech would not be sound if one said, “God causes the souls to die at the time of their death”? And how could it be sound that “those that have not died” He “causes to die” in their sleep? And as in His words (exalted is He) in Sūrat al-Anʿām (6:60): “It is He who takes your souls by night, and He knows what you do by day, then He reanimates you therein
so that a specified term may be completed; then to Him will be your return” (6:60). For the “taking” of people by night is only by taking them in sleep; then God raises them up by wakefulness in the day, so that they may thereby complete their appointed terms; then to God is their return, by death and the [final] resurrection. And as in His words (exalted is He) in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (4:15): “until death takes them away” — for the speech would not be sound if one said, “until death causes them to die.” The upshot is that the meaning of tawaffī, in the instances of its use in the Qurʾān and elsewhere, is [only] the taking of a thing in full — that is, completely — as one says “a coin in full [weight].” This meaning the lexicographers themselves gave for tawaffī in their dictionaries, saying that tawaffāhu and istawfāhu are one in meaning, and they cited for it the poet’s words: “The sons of al-Adrad belong to no one; nor does Quraysh take them [all] in [their] number” — that is, does not take them in full, completely.
I say: yet between istīfāʾ and tawaffī there is a clear difference in respect of the effect of the derivation. For istīfāʾ is of the istifʿāl [pattern] — like istikhrāj (“extraction”) — pointing to the taker’s seeking, summoning, and exertion [to obtain the thing]; whereas tawaffī points to [sheer] power over the taking, without need of summoning, seeking, or exertion. It is for this that the Noble Qurʾān used the word tawaffī and turned aside from the plain “taking” (akhdh), because [akhdh] does not signify completeness and fullness — as tawaffī does, signifying complete power — in the vein of the meaning in “Indeed we belong to God, and to Him do we return” (2:156).
You have an object-lesson, in what we have said, in His words (exalted is He): “God takes the souls at the time of their death, and those that have not died, in their sleep.” For if you make His words “and those that have not died” a conjunct coordinated with “the souls,” you cannot say that the meaning of “takes” (yatawaffā) is “causes to die.” And if you say that the “taking” in sleep is a figurative causing-to-die, we say: how can the meaning of a single word be two meanings — a literal and a figurative — each meaning separately governing an object, one object coordinated with the other, while the governing sense at work differs? And can a single word be a mirror for each of the two independent meanings at once? No, it cannot. And if you make His words “and those that have not died” the object of an elided word “takes,” indicated by His words “takes the souls,” we say: the indication of the present word to the elided one is only by its own meaning — as is not hidden from one acquainted with the usages of speech in any language — so how can tawaffī in the sense of “death” be made an indicator of an elided “taking” that is of another meaning? There remains, then, nothing but that tawaffī is of one meaning — the taking [of a thing] completely and in full: whether from the world of life, or from the world of wakefulness, or from the world of earth and mingling with humankind to the heavenly world — as in the taking of the Messiah.
Among the strange [claims] is what someone said: that the raising of the Messiah to heaven does not involve the taking of the thing completely. End. Would that I knew — what remained of the Messiah on earth? And what part of him withstood God’s power in the taking of him, such that his raising should not involve the taking of the thing completely? This being so, it is not hidden that the Qurʾān speaks plainly that the Messiah — they did not kill him
nor did they crucify him, but so it was made to appear to them (4:157), and God raised him up toward Himself (4:158). The belief of the Muslims is constant — like their consensus — that he did not die, but was raised to heaven, [to remain] until he descends at the end of time.33 It is for this that some of those who interpret tawaffī as “causing to die” took refuge in interpreting His words (exalted is He), “O Jesus, I shall take you [in full],” as “cause you to die at your [appointed] time, after [your] descent from heaven.” But I do not know what such a one would do with the Qurʾān’s report of what preceded its own sending-down, in His words toward the end of Sūrat al-Māʾida (5:116–117): “And when God said, ‘O Jesus son of Mary! Was it you who said to the people, “Take me and my mother for gods besides God”?’ He said, ‘Immaculate are You! … I said to them nothing but what You commanded me … But when You had taken me away, You Yourself were the watcher over them.’” Is it, then, permissible that this verse be interpreted [of] a death after the descent [from heaven]?
And is the analogy in this to His words (exalted is He), “And the Trumpet is blown,” even sound? And is it hidden that the tenor of the Messiah’s speech in the two verses is that, after God took him [in full] and his deliveries in the summons of his mission were cut off, and his being a witness over his community ceased, the matter reverted purely to God’s being the watcher over them? The flow of the speech and its coherence indicate the connectedness of the two states. And “the watcher” — however you interpret it — is only a watcher during the existence of that community in this world, the abode of [religious] obligation, not the Hereafter, which is the abode of recompense and requital. Nor is a [sudden] leap sound here — from the days of the Messiah’s summons to his community during his mission, and his being a witness over them, to what comes after his descent from heaven at the end of time, when he will be a helper (wazīr) in the Islamic summons, not the bearer of a [distinct] summons. It is plain that what is meant by “the people” in the two verses — those about whom the speech runs — are only those who were the Messiah’s community, in the age of his mission and the term of his summons and delivery. As for diverting the drift of the speech to the people who are [alive] in the days of his descent from heaven, that is nothing but a rash [claim] with all its faults, and a distortion of the words.
As for His words (exalted is He), “And the Trumpet is blown,” it was not an initial, free-standing report in which the occurrence of the past-tense verb is [reckoned] by the state of the speaker — as in the two Māʾida verses; rather it came in the context of His words, “They await but a single Cry that will seize them” (36:49), amid the events of the time of the Rising and the Resurrection and their preludes. So, in its context, it looks to that [future] moment, and the context makes it, in its import, equivalent to His saying, “and the Trumpet is [then] blown at that time.” It is [therefore] upon the true [sense of] the past tense, but reckoned by [reference to] that [future] moment — as in His words, “and hell is brought [near] on that day” (89:23).
This being so: some of the exegetes said of His words (exalted is He), “O Jesus, I shall take you [in full],” [that it means] “cause you to die a natural death.” I say: if he intends a causing-to-die after the Messiah’s descent from heaven, he shares in the objection already brought against the foregoing interpretation; and if he intends [God’s] causing him to die before that, and before the sending-down of the Qurʾān, he contradicts what is well known of the belief of the Muslims and their consensus throughout their generations — and the question is put to him, too: whence did he bring “a natural death”? And what would he do with what has come in the Qurʾān
much that is incompatible with restricting tawaffī to natural death? Rather, what is meant by it is the taking [of the soul] by death, even if [that death be] by killing — as in His words in Sūrat al-Ḥajj (22:5) and Sūrat Ghāfir (40:67), on the stages of the creation of the human being from dust and a drop [of fluid] to decrepitude: “and among you is he who is taken away, and among you is he who is relegated to the nethermost age”; in Sūrat al-Baqara (2:234): “As for those of you who are taken [in death], leaving wives”; in Sūrat Yūnus (10:104): “Rather I worship [only] God, who takes you away”; in Sūrat al-Naḥl (16:70): “God created you, then He takes you away”; in Sūrat al-Sajda (32:11): “Say, ‘You will be taken away by the angel of death’”; in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (7:37): “until, when Our messengers come to them to take them away”; in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (4:97): “those whom the angels take away”; in Sūrat al-Naḥl (16:28, 32): “those whom the angels take away”; in Sūrat al-Anʿām (6:61): “Our messengers take him away”; in Sūrat Muḥammad (47:27): “But how will it be when the angels take them away, striking their faces and their backs?”; in Sūrat al-Anfāl (8:50): “Were you to see when the angels take away the faithless”; and in Sūrat al-Zumar (39:42): “God takes the souls at the time of their death, and those that have not died, in their sleep.”
You will scarcely find, in the Glorious Qurʾān, the word tawaffī used [specifically] for what is meant to be a “natural death.” Whence, then, was that brought into His words, “I shall take you [in full]”? Indeed, the word tawaffī and its derivatives have been afflicted by [people’s] pulling at its meaning right and left, until the common folk supposed it synonymous with death — so that they say of one who has died, tuwuffiya (in the passive), and say of the dead person mutawaffī (with kasra on the fāʾ), in the active-participle form!34 It is even related that the Commander of the Faithful, ʿAlī (peace be upon him), was walking behind a bier in Kūfa and heard a man asking about the deceased and saying, “Who is the mutawaffī?” (with kasra) — [and he corrected him].
As for what is ascribed to Ibn ʿAbbās — that the meaning of His words, “O Jesus, I shall take you [in full],” is “I shall cause you to die” — I regard it as [no more sound] than what is ascribed to him in the “Questions of Nāfiʿ b. al-Azraq,”35 as recorded in the second section of the thirty-sixth category of al-Suyūṭī’s al-Itqān: that Nāfiʿ asked him about the words of God, “whose keys would weigh down (tanūʾu) a band of men endowed with strength” (28:76) — [glossing it] by what reduces to the sense of “they burden them and lie heavy upon them,” as ʿAmr b. Kulthūm said in his muʿallaqa: “and the two flanks of a supple [woman], grown tall, whose haunches weigh down (tanūʾu) with what they bear,” and as the lexicographers cited: “save a staff of hard wood, [in] a hand grown long with it, whose blow bears down (tanūʾu) with palm and forearm.”
It is related that Ibn ʿAbbās said to him in reply: “[It means] ‘to be heavy’ (li-tathqula); have you not heard the poet’s words: ‘She walks, and her haunches weigh her down — the walk of a weak [man] who staggers under a load (yanūʾu bi’l-wasq)’?” — that is, [one who] rises under the load with effort and strain, which is the reverse of the sense [supposed] in the Qurʾān. But do you really think Ibn ʿAbbās interprets the tanūʾ that is in the verse by other than its [true] meaning — as, from this citation ascribed to him, there arose the objection
of the Christians — that the Qurʾān brought the word tanūʾ out of place? And do you think Ibn ʿAbbās did not know that the meaning of “yanūʾu bi’l-wasq” is not “to be heavy” but “to rise under it with effort”? And do you think Ibn ʿAbbās was ignorant of the line of the muʿallaqa, [failing] to cite it in a citation correct, apposite, and well-ordered? How could that be, when the muʿallaqāt were, for the poetry of that age, like the choicest verse of the ode! But — “an arrow twanged that was not [truly] of them.”36 We have [here] departed from the brevity we prefer; yet we have not departed from the original aim of the discourse on the exegesis of the Noble Qurʾān — rather we have hastened toward something of the good. And God is the Granter of rectitude and success.
It is not hidden that the Noble Qurʾān is built upon the loftiest modes of Arabic eloquence and its artistry — in the beauties of figurative usage (majāz), metaphor (istiʿāra), metonymy (kināya), allusion, and intimation, and other features of speech lofty in its eloquence — features that were familiar to the understanding in the age of the revelation, when Arabic letters flourished and their market stood high, and that were such that every Arab hearer would grasp what was meant by them, and their merits, by the familiarity of [native] disposition and the anchoring of instinct. But after the [various] nations shared in the blessing of Islam, the Arabian Peninsula filled with [other] peoples, and the Arabs dispersed through military service into non-Arab lands, the style of Arabic speech changed among the generality of the people, and the merits of speech and the modes of discourse altered. So that once-familiar eloquence became strange to the common folk, and that natural, instinctive [understanding] came to require, for its acquisition, the practice of habituation and the toil of learning and training in the Arabic language and its letters upon the sound path — without obstructive imitation, without halting at [mere] names, and without rigid clinging to the husks of the rules that were laid down by those trained in Arabic from among the elite, drawing, so far as they could, from that ancient literature; for they recorded something of its commonplaces, while much of its secrets and realities escaped them.
And the ruggedness of inquiry, and rigid adherence to imitation, have perhaps led them into the stumbles of mere supposition, or the shrinking-back of doubts. Consider that a number of the grammarians — such as the commentators on the Alfiyya of Ibn Mālik, and others — said, of the rājiz’s words “They brought a watered milk — have you ever seen the wolf?”, that the [syntactic] estimation is: “a watered milk of which is said, ‘have you ever seen…,’” and so on. Yet it is not hidden that the rājiz wishes to describe the watered milk by what makes plain its state and the change of its colour through the abundance of water; and what use, in that, is its being merely “something of which ‘have you ever seen the wolf’ is said”? They did not perceive that the description the rājiz intends — as the context requires — he has pointed to by his interrogative, which stands as a living image of it. It is as though he said: “They brought a watered milk whose colour is like the colour of the wolf — have you ever seen the wolf, any day? For the colour of this milk is like its colour” — so know how it was. Among the witnesses to this is that the author of al-Kashshāf — despite his deep grounding in Arabic letters and his knowledge of the niceties of speech
his speech and interpretation became confused over a single word that recurs in the Noble Qurʾān in one and the same form — namely His words fa-lā uqsimu.37 In Sūrat al-Wāqiʿa, at His words (56:75–76), “So I swear by the places where the stars set! And indeed it is a great oath, should you know,” he said:38 “that is, ‘I do swear,’ and the lā is redundant, like it in His words, ‘so that the People of the Book may know’ (57:29).”39 And at His words (75:1–2), “I swear by the Day of Resurrection! And I swear by the self-blaming soul,” he said: “The introduction of the negating lā upon the verb of swearing is widespread in their speech and their poems. Imruʾ al-Qays said: ‘Nay — by your father, O daughter of the ʿĀmirī — the folk shall not claim that I flee’; and Ghawiyya b. Salama said: ‘Ah, Umāma has called out, setting off, to grieve me — but for you I care not, no!’ And its benefit is the corroboration of the oath. And they also said: it is a connective — that is, redundant — like it in ‘so that the People of the Book may know’ (57:29).” And he said, on this, a statement with all its faults.
He said: “The [right] way is to say that it [the lā] is for negation; and the sense is that He does not swear by the thing [merely] out of magnifying it. His words (56:75–76) indicate this: ‘So I swear by the places where the stars set! And indeed it is a great oath.’ It is as though, by introducing the particle of negation, He says: ‘My magnifying of it by swearing by it is as no magnifying at all’ — meaning that it deserves [something] beyond that.” End. The tenor of this explanation of his requires that he say “out of magnifying the thing sworn by,” for that is clearer than what he said. Would that he had not confused the entry of the lā upon the verb of swearing — as in the two verses — with its entry upon the particle of swearing — as in the two lines of Imruʾ al-Qays and Ghawiyya, and others whose answer-clause falls only negated. For it is plainly evident that the lā there is negating, laid down as a preparation for the negation of the answer-clause, to emphasize it; and its way is the way of His words in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (4:65): “But no, by your Lord! They will not believe until they make you the judge.”
In Sūrat al-Ḥāqqa, at His words (69:38–39), “I swear by what you see, and what you do not see,” he said: “an oath by all things.” In Sūrat al-Balad, at His words (90:1), “I swear by this town,” he said: “I swear by the sacred town.” And he said nothing about His words fa-lā uqsimu in Sūrat al-Maʿārij, al-Takwīr, and al-Inshiqāq. Among the witnesses to this is what you have heard from the author of al-Kashshāf regarding His words, “so that the People of the Book may know” (57:29): that the lā in li-allā is redundant. He stated this plainly, too, in the tafsīr of Sūrat al-Ḥadīd, saying: “‘li-allā yaʿlama’ [means] ‘so that they may know.’” And a number [of scholars] agreed with him — whereupon the enemies of the Noble Qurʾān seized the opportunity and objected against the Qurʾān that it contains linguistic redundancy!
But Volume One of Kitāb al-Hudā, pp. 350 and 355, has made plain the falsity of the claim of redundancy — as a number [of scholars] hold: that the meaning is that God promised those who believe, and fear God, and believe in His Messenger, that He would give them a double portion of His mercy, appoint for them a light by which to walk, and forgive them — and that among the ends of this is that the People of the Book should [come to] know that the believers are not [as they had supposed] powerless over God’s grace, and that grace is in God’s hand. Would that I knew: why is the majesty of the Glorious Qurʾān and its excellence not held far above the [supposed] linguistic
redundancy — which has no purpose but to create an illusion? And in interpreting His words in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (7:12), “Said He, ‘What prevented you from prostrating, when I commanded you?’ ‘I am better than him,’ he said, ‘You created me from fire and You created him from clay,’” he said in al-Kashshāf, too: “the lā in ‘allā tasjuda [that you not prostrate]’ is a connective — that is, redundant — on the evidence of His words (in Sūrat Ṣād, 38:75), ‘What prevented you from prostrating before that which I created with My own two hands?’; and like it is ‘so that the People of the Book may know’ (57:29), in the sense of ‘so that they may know.’” End.
I say: reflection upon the verses of al-Aʿrāf and of Ṣād bears witness that the lā is not redundant; rather it was brought, in al-Aʿrāf, to point to a matter stated plainly in the verses of Ṣād. For an act may have an impediment [preventing it] — an opposite, a rebuke, heedlessness, incapacity, or weariness — and it may also have a motive that drives one to abandon it and disobey the command. So God asked — in denial or rebuke — in Sūrat Ṣād about the impediment, by His words “What prevented you from prostrating?”, and about the motive driving the disobedience, by His words “Are you arrogant, or are you [one] of the exalted ones?” And in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf He pointed — by the presence of the lā — to the question about the motive driving [Iblīs] to disobedience, after the question about the impediment. It is as though He said: “What prevented you from prostrating, and what drove you not to prostrate?” It is for this that Iblīs’s answer, in both places, was the statement of the motive driving him not to prostrate — not the giving of an impediment as cause — for he said: “I am better than him; You created me from fire and You created him from clay.”
The same holds for His words in Sūrat Ṭāhā (20:92–93): “He said, ‘O Aaron! What kept you, when you saw them going astray, from following me? Did you disobey my command?’” For the causal branching in “Did you disobey my command?” shows that there had preceded both the question about the impediment to following and [the question] about the motive driving him to the disobedience of abandoning it — pointed to by the introduction of the lā. Yet he said in al-Kashshāf: “the lā is redundant, and the meaning is, ‘What prevented you from following me?’”
And God said in Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ (21:95): “It is forbidden for [the people of] any town that We have destroyed: they shall not return.” In al-Kashshāf he interpreted “destroying” as the [mere] resolve upon it, and “returning” as returning from unbelief to Islam — this being his choice, apparently, among three construals — then said: “and the lā is a redundant connective.” End. Would that he had kept “destroying” upon its apparent sense, and interpreted “returning” as the return to faith and repentance at the sight of the signs of destruction and the states of death — like the belief of Pharaoh at the drowning (Sūrat Yūnus, 10:90); or like those of whom it is said, “when death approaches one of them, he says, ‘I repent now’” (Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 4:18); and as God mentioned, concerning the polytheists and wrongdoers, in Sūrat al-Muʾminūn (23:99–100): “When death comes to one of them, he says, ‘My Lord! Take me back, that I may act righteously in what I have left behind.’” For this saying of theirs is a return to repentance — but it is not accepted, as God said in the three places. And the meaning of the noble verse would [then] be that the people of the towns
that God destroyed: it is forbidden to them — by reason of their witnessing the signs of destruction and the presence of death — [that a return should avail them]; and it is impossible, in the ordinary course, and utterly ruled out, that they should not return to repentance and faith by [their] innate nature, even though it will not benefit them; and they continue in the state they are in, until, when the Hour comes and the Day of Resurrection arrives and they behold what they were promised, they say: “Woe to us! We have certainly been oblivious of this!” (21:97).
And God said in Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (3:79–80): “It does not behove any human that God should give him the Book, judgement, and prophethood, and then he should say to the people, ‘Be servants of mine rather than of God,’ but rather, ‘Be men of the Lord, by virtue of your teaching the Book and your studying [it]’; and he would not command you to take the angels and the prophets for lords.” It is not hidden that His words “and he would not command you” are coordinated with “should… say,” which is coordinated (by thumma, “then”) with what is negated in “It does not behove” — that is, it is not for him [to do that]. And the lā here is negating, brought to confirm the negation in [both] matters, like your saying, “It is not for you to stand, nor to eat” — lest it be imagined that the negation is [only] of joining the two, so that each singly were permitted. [Read] as he said in al-Kashshāf in the second of his two construals of the verse.
For he said in al-Kashshāf that the verse has two construals: one, that we take the lā as redundant, the meaning being “…then he commands the people to be servants of his, and commands you to take the prophets [and angels for lords]”; the other, that we take the lā as negating, not redundant, the meaning being “It does not behove any human whom God makes a prophet that he should command the people to worship him and forbid you to worship the angels” — that is, it is not for him to combine the command and the prohibition. How astonishing is one who allows himself — in the like of the eloquence of the Glorious Qurʾān — to interpret “he would not command you” (lā yaʾmurukum) by “he forbids you” (yanhākum)! Were the speech of any ordinary person interpreted so, he would heap blame upon it without stint.
Al-Zamakhsharī was not alone in claiming the redundancy of lā in these instances; a number of exegetes and grammarians claimed it, as Ibn Hishām noted in al-Mughnī under the entry “lā.” Yet were the redundancy of lā [really] established in the speech of the Arabs, current in their poetry and prose, it would still not be admissible to say so in the like of the eloquence and majesty of the Noble Qurʾān, and specifically in the very instances where they claimed it. For eloquence — indeed, the mere soundness of speech — requires the affirming of an affirmative meaning and the removing of any illusion of negation from it. How, then, is its noble content to be disturbed by what suggests negation and muddles the sense? A reporter who knows how to speak does not admit into his report what suggests its own opposite. This, moreover, though I have found no witness they cited for the redundancy of lā except the words: “And you blame me for [my] diversion — that I should not love it — yet diversion has a caller, tireless, unheedful.” Were this truly of Arab poetry, and were what is meant by it what they understood, it would still be admissible to supply within it: “and you command me not to love it,” or “you summon me to not love it.” And among their oddities is that some of them cited, too, the poet’s words:
“His generosity refused the ‘no’ of niggardliness, and ‘yes’ [i.e. giving] hastened it on — what a youth, whose very slayer generosity does not hold back!” Indeed, al-Zamakhsharī did not agree with them in their claim of the redundancy of lā in His words in Sūrat al-Anʿām (6:109), “And what will make you realize that, even if it came, they would not believe?”, and His words therein (6:151), “Say, ‘Come, I will recite what your Lord has forbidden you: that you not ascribe any partner to Him.’”
Among the witnesses to this is that you [have just] heard al-Kashshāf’s statement about the entry of the negating lā upon the oath, its being widespread in the Arabs’ speech and poems, and the poetic witnesses he cited; yet, for all that, he said in the tafsīr of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, at His words “But no, by your Lord! They will not believe until they make you the judge”: “Its meaning is ‘by your Lord’ — like His words ‘by your Lord, We will surely question them’ (15:92) — and the lā is redundant, to emphasize the sense of the oath, just as it was added in ‘so that they may know’ to emphasize the obligation of knowing.” End. Look into it and take heed, and say: where now is the “widespread usage” you mentioned? And where has the citing of poetry gone? Were it not for the aversion to [seeming] animus, we would have cited more than this from al-Kashshāf and others; but in this is sufficiency for those possessed of understanding.
Among [these cases] is what al-Sayyid al-Raḍī cited in Ḥaqāʾiq al-Taʾwīl, of some [scholars’] holding to the redundancy of the wāw in His words in Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (3:91), “even were he to offer it as ransom”; in Sūrat Ibrāhīm (14:52), “and that they may be warned thereby”; and in Sūrat al-Zumar (39:73), “and its gates are opened.”40 I say: for the like of this wāw there are [many] instances in the Qurʾān, and in all of them it is the wāw of coordination with an elided [element] indicated by the Qurʾān’s context — through the nobility of its method and the excellence of its style in the paths of eloquence — the setting displaying it by the radiance of that excellence in the plainest manner, as will be pointed out, in its proper places, God willing.
Among the witnesses to this — a matter brought about by [scholarly] falling-short — is that a group halted, failing to reach [the sense], in some of what the Noble Qurʾān contains of the singular gems of excellence and the benefits of eloquence, until it began to appear, from their hesitation, that this was contrary to the rules of Arabic; whereupon the enemies of the Qurʾān seized the opportunity to object. And [God’s] granting of success has helped [us] to take up those objections and make plain their error, by clarifying the excellence of the Noble Qurʾān in their [respective] passages, through the secrets of eloquence, the pith of Arabic letters, and its dazzling styles. Something of that has been written in Volume One of Kitāb al-Hudā — specifically the Thirteenth Introduction, from page 321 to its end.
Among the witnesses to this is that many of the figurative usages (majāzāt) and metaphors (istiʿārāt) of the Noble Qurʾān — clear in their [semantic] relation, surpassing in the likeness intended and the aim of the allusion, and supported by the judgements of reason and the clear (muḥkam) verses of the Book — these metaphors, which were among the blossoms of instinctive Arabic letters when its garden was bright and flowering, became, after its foliage had withered, a battleground of opinions and a target of denial — even though the clear verses of the Book hover protectively about them and the rational proofs support them, in [affirming] the sanctity of God and His singular possession of perfection. Among them is what is in the Qurʾān of the ascription of “leading astray” (iḍlāl) to God (exalted be His name), in several verses — among them the twenty-seventh
of Sūrat al-Raʿd (13:27), and the [verse] in Sūrat Ibrāhīm (14:4), and the like. For the expression, in this, by “leading astray” (iḍlāl) is a figurative usage surpassing in beauty:41 by its excellence it portrays the human being’s need — beset with his soul that incites to evil — for God’s gentle kindness (luṭf) and His care in granting him success (tawfīq); it points to the great, noble effect that divine kindness and enabling grace have in the favour bestowed upon the human being; and it calls attention [to the fact] that God’s forsaking of the rebellious human — by lifting His care in granting success and consigning him to himself — resembles “leading him astray” in the strength of its effect. All of this is for the sake of extolling the favour of God’s enabling grace toward His servants; and for these surpassing merits, “leading astray” was figuratively borrowed for God’s forsaking of His rebellious servant and consigning him to himself — God protect us!
It would have sufficed, as an indicator that “leading astray” is here used figuratively and turned from the requirement of its literal coinage, [to adduce] what is in the Qurʾān of the clear (muḥkam) verses — such as His words in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (7:28), “Indeed God does not enjoin indecency,” and in Sūrat al-Naḥl (16:90), “Indeed God enjoins justice and kindness and generosity toward relatives, and He forbids indecency, wrong, and aggression; He advises you, that you may take admonition.” For God’s glorifying Himself by this suffices as an indicator that the “leading astray” ascribed to God (exalted be His station) is only figurative; and His glory and His acts of kindness determine what is meant by it — namely, what we have described. And how could the “leading astray” ascribed to God be upon its literal sense, when God Himself blames those who go astray, punishes them for it, and rebukes them by His words: “How can you be unfaithful to God?” (2:28); “Why do you mix the truth with falsehood and conceal the truth?” (3:71); “why do you bar [others] from the way of God?” (3:99); “What is the matter with you? How do you judge!” (68:36); “what is the matter with them that they will not believe?” (84:20); “what is the matter with them that they evade the Reminder?” (74:49); “what harm would it have done them had they believed?” (4:39)? The full discussion is in the works of theology; something of it has been set down in Volume Three of al-Riḥla al-Madrasiyya, pp. 29 to 42.
Among [these cases] is that the Ẓāhirī sect paid no heed to the figurative usage, and its plain aspect, in His words “The All-beneficent settled upon the Throne” (20:5);42 and there did not turn them away from the literal meanings of these words [even] the necessary knowledge — from the Qurʾān and from decisive proofs — that God is transcendent above body, direction, and place, [knowledge] by which they might have recognized that what is meant by “the Throne” here is [His] majestic power and the sovereign’s dominion over the whole kingdom, in eternity past and future. And in order to bring this mighty [reality] before our deficient minds, and to fill our hearts with its magnitude, the Qurʾān portrayed it — for our limited conception — by likening it to what we know and whose effects we know: the corporeal throne of the earthly king, by [whose] ascending upon it, a temporal ascent, his sovereignty takes effect and his power pervades [the realm].
Among the astonishing legacies of the Ẓāhirīs is what Ibn Mardawayh, al-Khaṭīb (in his Taʾrīkh), and Ibn Manṣūr (in his Sunan) reported, from the musnad of ʿUmar, from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), concerning His words “settled upon the Throne” — he said: “until there is heard from it the creaking of the saddle.” See Kanz al-ʿUmmāl, Volume One, p. 226, and likewise the Muntakhab al-Kanz. And “the creaking
of the saddle and the pack-saddle” is its sound — the sound of its wood — from the pressure of the weight of the rider and the load. The like of this will come in the exegesis of the Verse of the Throne (Āyat al-Kursī). And in the Mīzān of al-Dhahabī — among the most disavowed of what has come from Mujāhid in exegesis — concerning His words, “It may be that your Lord will raise you to a praiseworthy station” (17:79): he said, “He seats him with Him upon the Throne”! And in Shawāhid al-Ḥaqq — the book of Shaykh Yūsuf al-Nabhānī, p. 130 — [it is said]: among the books of Ibn Taymiyya is the Kitāb al-ʿArsh; the author of Kashf al-Ẓunūn stated that he mentioned in it that God sits upon the Throne, and has left a place in it in which He seats the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) with Him! — as Abū Ḥayyān mentioned regarding His words, “His seat embraces the heavens and the earth” (2:255), saying: “I read in the Kitāb al-ʿArsh of Aḥmad b. Taymiyya, in his own hand, what amounted to what we have mentioned.” And Kashf al-Ẓunūn cited it, by another route, from al-Subkī. End. Upon this same string struck Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in his epistle, printed within a collection of several epistles issued at Mecca — see pp. 155 and 156 of the collection — and likewise ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ḥasan, on p. 36 of the said collection.
There has come in the Qurʾān a great deal of general wordings by which the particular is meant, or which are explicit as to a particular by reason of their having been sent down concerning it, and other such things that were well known in the age of its sending-down — then the causes of obscurity began to filch it away little by little and to make [it appear] its opposite, as in the fable of the “cranes” (al-gharānīq) and the verse of [the Prophet’s] wishing. The recourse in interpreting that is [to] what yields certain knowledge: the consensus of the Muslims, or their agreement in the transmission of the interpretation, or in the transmission from the Messenger (God bless him and his Household) as to the one to whom recourse is to be had, after him, in interpreting the Book of God — as [in] the ḥadīth of the Two Weighty Things (al-Thaqalayn), mass-transmitted and certain, which our brethren the Sunnīs themselves recorded in their books, adducing its transmission from more than thirty Companions who heard it from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), and it has remained thus mass-transmitted in every age to the present. It is his words: “I am leaving among you the two weighty things — or the two successors: the Book of God, and my kindred, the People of my House. So long as you hold fast to the two, you will never go astray; for the two shall not part until they return to me at the Pool.”
The word “kindred” (ʿitra), together with the many sound ḥadīths designating the People of the House, determines what is meant by “the People of the House” — quite apart from the indication of [linguistic] custom and usage. And his words “so long as you hold fast to the two, you will never go astray,” together with “for the two shall not part until they return to me at the Pool,” determine the twelve infallible Imāms of the Messenger’s kindred and progeny. Among the evidences of this is the consensus of the Muslims that anyone besides these is not infallible, and is not characterized as being “like the Book of God,” such that whoever holds fast to him does not go astray
Here are the names of the Companions who heard this ḥadīth from the Messenger of God: ʿAlī the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him); ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbbās; Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī; Jābir al-Anṣārī; ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar; Ḥudhayfa b. Asīd; Zayd b. Arqam; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf; Ḍamīra al-Aslamī; ʿĀṣim b. Layla; Abū Rāfiʿ; Abū Hurayra; ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥanṭab; Zayd b. Thābit; Umm Salama; Umm Hāniʾ, the sister of the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī (peace be upon him); Khuzayma b. Thābit; Sahl b. Saʿd; ʿAdī b. Ḥātim; ʿUqba b. ʿĀmir; Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī; Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī; Abū Sharīḥ al-Khuzāʿī; Abū Qudāma al-Anṣārī; Abū Laylā; and Abū al-Haytham b. al-Tayyihān. Those whose names we mentioned after Umm Hāniʾ each transmitted it singly, as did those before them; and they stood up in the open square of Kūfa, together with seven men of Quraysh, and testified that they had themselves heard it from the Messenger of God. So these are thirty-three.
Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣbahānī narrated it, in the book Manqabat al-Muṭahharīn, with a chain from Jubayr b. Muṭʿim; he chained it, too, from Anas b. Mālik and from al-Barāʾ b. ʿĀzib. Muwaffaq b. Aḥmad — Akhṭab Khwārazm — narrated it from ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ. And scarcely any musnad, jāmiʿ, or book of [the family’s] merits among the Sunnīs is free of this ḥadīth — from the first that ḥadīth was brought out of [oral] memorization and the breasts of the memorizers onto the pages of the traditionists. It is still transmitted in them from one Companion or more; and it may be transmitted, in a single work, from more than twenty Companions — either in summary, as in al-Ṣawāʿiq [al-Muḥriqa], or chained and detailed, as in the books of al-Sakhāwī, al-Suyūṭī, al-Samhūdī, and others. Whoever wishes to look further, let him consult the two volumes written on the chains of this ḥadīth in the book al-ʿAbaqāt.
The Imāmiyya narrated it in their books, by their repeated chains, from al-Bāqir, al-Riḍā, al-Kāẓim, and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon them), from their forefathers, from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household); and by other chains from the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), ʿUmar, Abū Dharr, Jābir, Abū Saʿīd, Zayd b. Arqam, Zayd b. Thābit, Ḥudhayfa b. Asīd, Abū Hurayra, and others, from the Messenger of God — as in Ghāyat al-Marām and the Tafsīr al-Burhān of al-Sayyid Hāshim al-Baḥrānī (may his resting-place be sweet), and elsewhere.
Perhaps you will say: al-Bukhārī did not record this ḥadīth in his Jāmiʿ. Know, then, that the traditionists pay no heed to a ḥadīth’s being widespread, mass-transmitted, and knowledge-yielding from this angle — as is the way of the verifying scholar in his proof and his inquiry after realities. What matters to the traditionist, and what is the [proper] subject of his craft, is only the solitary ḥadīth (al-ḥadīth al-āḥādī)
which he takes according to their [rules for] the modes of receiving [a report] — from one man to another, upon conditions he lays down for the chain. So it is as though al-Bukhārī did not find his condition met in any one of the solitary chains of the ḥadīth. But al-Ḥākim, in his Mustadrak, supplied against him and against Muslim the ḥadīth of Zayd b. Arqam, by the route of Ḥabīb from Abū al-Ṭufayl, who said: “When the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) returned from the Farewell Pilgrimage and alighted at Ghadīr Khumm,43 he ordered that [the ground beneath] the great trees be swept, then said: ‘I have been summoned, and I have answered. I am leaving among you the two weighty things — one of them greater than the other: the Book of God, and my kindred; so look how you [treat] me regarding the two, for they shall not part until they return to me at the Pool.’ Then he said: ‘God (mighty and majestic) is my master (mawlā), and I am the master of every believer,’ then took ʿAlī’s hand and said: ‘Whomever’s master I am, this one is his master; O God, befriend whoever befriends him, and be an enemy to whoever is his enemy.’” Al-Ḥākim said: this is a sound ḥadīth by the conditions of the two Shaykhs, though they did not record it at its full length.
And by the route of Muslim b. Ṣubayḥ from him: the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) said, “I am leaving among you the two weighty things: the Book of God and the People of my House; and the two shall not part until they return to me at the Pool.” Al-Ḥākim said, again: this is sound in chain by the conditions of the two Shaykhs, though they did not record it. I say: I have found no one who took al-Ḥākim to task for supplying [his Mustadrak] with these two ḥadīths — so that [silence] amounts to agreement, from his contemporaries and those after him, upon the supplementation and upon the soundness of the two by the conditions of al-Bukhārī and Muslim.
And by the route of Salama b. Kuhayl from Abū al-Ṭufayl: that he heard Zayd b. Arqam say — and he related the like of the first ḥadīth, and in it: “I am leaving among you two matters; you will not go astray if you follow them: the Book of God, and the People of my House, my kindred” — the ḥadīth. Al-Dhahabī took it to task, [saying] that in its route is Muḥammad b. Salama, whom al-Saʿdī deemed feeble, and to whom Ibn ʿAdī attributed disavowed ḥadīths. By “al-Saʿdī” he means Ibrāhīm b. Yaʿqūb al-Saʿdī al-Jūzajānī, as he noted in the entry on Muḥammad b. Salama. I say: and what will make you realize what al-Saʿdī [was]! For he is well known for naṣb.44 In al-Mīzān, [it is reported] from Ibn ʿAdī that “he inclined strongly to the school of the people of Damascus in animus against ʿAlī (peace be upon him).” He said of Ismāʿīl b. Abān al-Warrāq — al-Bukhārī’s own shaykh — that “he was inclined away from the truth”; yet Ibn ʿAdī said, “he did not lie” — al-Jūzajānī meaning, by “inclined away from the truth,” only the Shīʿism to which the Kūfans held. Know, then, the [real] reason for the animus of al-Jūzajānī and Ibn ʿAdī against Muḥammad b. Salama.
By the very life of true knowledge, the ḥadīth, in its mass transmission, has no need of being taken up in the Jāmiʿ of al-Bukhārī. So much for that. As for having recourse, in interpretation and the occasions of revelation, to the likes of ʿIkrima, Mujāhid, ʿAṭāʾ, and al-Ḍaḥḥāk — with which the books of tafsīr have been filled, [citing] their chainless statements — that is [something] in which the Muslim is not excused, in the matter of his religion, between himself and God, and by which no proof is established;45 for those statements, if they be [taken as] narrations, are severed, chainless reports (marāsīl maqṭūʿa); and nothing among the chained reports counts as a proof except what is built upon the firm foundations of religious knowledge — even if there were not
anything to turn [one] away from them except what is recorded in the rijāl-books of the Sunnīs themselves, it would suffice. And [the principle is that] disparagement (jarḥ) takes precedence over accreditation (taʿdīl) when the two conflict.46 As for ʿIkrima, censure of him is abundant: that he was a liar, untrustworthy, held the view of the Khārijites, and so on. Al-Aʿmash was asked, “What ails Mujāhid’s tafsīr, that it is at variance [with others]?” — or something to that effect — and he said, “He took it from the People of the Book.” Among the disavowed reports from Mujāhid is his gloss on His words “It may be that your Lord will raise you to a praiseworthy station” (17:79): he said, “He seats him with Him upon the Throne.”
As for ʿAṭāʾ, Aḥmad said: “Among the chainless reports there is none feebler than the marāsīl of al-Ḥasan and ʿAṭāʾ; the two would take [reports] from anyone.” Yaḥyā b. al-Qaṭṭān said: “The marāsīl of Mujāhid are far dearer to me than those of ʿAṭāʾ; ʿAṭāʾ would take from every sort,” and it is reported that Ibn Jurayj and Qays b. Saʿd abandoned him. As for al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, it has been said that he practises tadlīs; and you have heard Aḥmad’s statement about him and about ʿAṭāʾ. As for al-Ḍaḥḥāk b. Muzāḥim the exegete, Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd’s word is reported: “al-Ḍaḥḥāk is weak in our estimation”; he used to transmit from Ibn ʿAbbās, yet his ever meeting him was denied, so that it was said he never saw him at all. As for Qatāda, they have mentioned that he practises tadlīs. As for Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Wakīʿ said of him, “he was a liar”; al-Nasāʾī, “Muqātil used to lie”; and Yaḥyā, “his ḥadīth is nothing”; and Ibn Ḥibbān said, “he used to take from the Jews and the Christians [that part] of the knowledge of the Qurʾān which agreed with their books.” As for Muqātil b. Ḥayyān, it is reported from Wakīʿ that he is charged with lying, from Ibn Maʿīn that he is “weak,” and from Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, “no heed is paid to Muqātil b. Ḥayyān, nor to Ibn Sulaymān.” Look, at the least, at al-Dhahabī’s Mīzān among the rijāl-books. And set aside [the fact] that the principles of [religious] knowledge, with us, refuse any reliance upon their narrations — let alone their bare opinions — except in the setting of debate, or of corroboration, or where a ḥadīth attains widespread transmission and concurrence.
This being so: many books of tafsīr have babbled a hideous falsehood — namely, what they alleged: that the Messenger (God bless him and his Household) recited Sūrat al-Najm in Mecca, in an assembly of the polytheists, until, when he recited His words “Have you considered Lāt and ʿUzzā, and Manāt, the third one?” (53:19–20), he said — in magnifying these idols, far be his sacred person from it — “Those are the exalted cranes (al-gharānīq), and their intercession is indeed to be hoped for.”47 Gabriel [then] informed him of what he had said, and he grieved at it; so there was sent down upon him, that same night, a verse of consolation! But with what would it console him, on their claim? It consoles him with what strips every prophet and every messenger of all trust in his recitation and his delivery of the message! The verse is His words in Sūrat al-Ḥajj (22:52): “We did not send before you any apostle or prophet but that, when he recited, Satan interjected [something] in his recitation.” So they said: the meaning is that when he spoke, or related, or recited, Satan insinuated his misguidance into it!
If so, then what is the state of the wretched nations, and of their guidance, with this insinuation from which — by their claim —
no prophet or messenger was safe, and from which nothing of their speech, their reports, or their recitation was safe — as they allege?! “This is not how camels are brought to water, O Saʿd!” Did it not deter them, at the least, [to know] that Sūrat al-Ḥajj is Medinan — in it the call to the ḥajj was commanded (22:27), fighting was permitted (22:39), and jihād was enjoined (22:78) — and that this came only years after the Hijra? For the span between that and the time they assign to the fable of the cranes, and to this verse’s descent on its very night, is more than ten years. Something of the discussion of this is set down in Volume One of Kitāb al-Hudā, pp. 123–129; there is no harm in consulting it.
Among [these matters] is that a number of the exegetes and reciters waver over the stopping-point (waqf) at certain words, from hesitation as to each word’s connection with what follows or precedes it; in this they took no account of the fitnesses of the speech and its excellence, or of the [syntactic] need for supplying [an elided element], or its felicity. Among these is the word “fīhi [in it]” in His words at the beginning of Sūrat al-Baqara (2:2): “This is the Book, there is no doubt in it, a guidance to the Godwary” — their claim being that it is a fronted predicate for “a guidance to the Godwary,” and they posit the like for “there is no doubt” — although stopping at “there is no doubt” renders the speech unsettled and truncated in a way no supplying can mend, and although there is no need to make the adverbial phrase a fronted predicate for “guidance,” with its clause then a second predicate for “This is the Book”; for the word “guidance” is itself [suited to be] the predicate. This is the more fitting to the dignity of the Glorious Book; for God has said that it is “a guidance and a mercy” — as in al-Aʿrāf (7:52) and al-Naḥl (16:64) — and that the Qurʾān is “a guidance and good news for the faithful” (27:2), “a guidance for mankind” (2:185), and “for those who have faith, a guidance and a healing” (41:44).
Among these is the word “hādhā [this]” in His words in Sūrat Yā Sīn (36:52): “Who raised us from our place of sleep? This is what the All-beneficent had promised.” It is as though they do not attend [to the fact] that the context has no need of qualifying “the place of sleep” with a demonstrative — even for clarification — since they say that only upon coming forth from the graves. And to strip the demonstrative “this” of its being a subject, with “what [the All-beneficent] promised” as its predicate, is to strip the speech of [its proper] order and render its fair form disturbed — closer to negation than to affirmation, which is the opposite of the meaning the verse was framed to convey.
So much for that. As for those who assaulted the interpretation of the Qurʾān with their own opinions, by what they call “the interpretation of the inner [meaning]” (tafsīr al-bāṭin) — resting their opinions upon the pretensions of [mystical] unveiling and “arrival,” and the leanings of philosophizing, or of [seeking] novelty, or of the love of standing apart and of fame for a new saying, whatever [faults] be in these — they have preferred the wilderness of [private] opinion over the sound path [drawn] from the principles of knowledge, and parted from it at the very first step.
The Noble Qurʾān often ascribes reasoning, perception, [right] guidance, and the like to the heart (qalb).48 The modernists (al-mutajaddidūn) ascribe perception and its effects to the brain, relying, in their surmise, on [the fact] that they have seen the convolutions of the brain — its folds — to be more [numerous] in the human being than in the other animals, and that the cranial nerves connected to the surface of the brain, whose fibres are dispersed through its interior, are linked to the nerves of the sense-organs, like the ear and the eye. But the investigations of anatomy stand against this surmise.
For the nervous ensemble, and the spinal cord extending to the first lumbar vertebra — which is below the twelfth vertebra of the back — all of these are like the marrow of the brain in being composed of the grey matter and the white matter; so there is no [special] feature in the brain’s composition by which its distinction from them — as the seat of perception and reasoning, to their exclusion — might be surmised. And the nerves, just as they connect to the sense-organs, connect also to the heart, the liver, and the stomach — indeed, even to the teeth and the [other] organs of the body, down to the fingertips of the hands and feet. As for what appears [to show] that the smallness of the brain accompanies weakness of perception and reasoning — until it reaches [the point of] idiocy — this does not indicate their claim; rather it is possible that its departure from the natural measure for the human being — like many bodily accidents — occasions the weakness of the other, reasoning part in performing its function. And the difference between the brains of men and of women obtains in the hearts of the two classes as well.
This, moreover, though the brain increases in growth in the period of the scantiness of the reasoning faculty — up to the seventh year — then grows slowly until the fourteenth, then its growth recedes to the twentieth, and from there to the thirtieth, and halts at forty, then its weight decreases by about an ounce every ten years — whereas the human being, from twenty upward, increases in the power of reasoning and rises to being stronger and better in reasoning and perception. The heart, by contrast, keeps growing and increasing until the last periods of life, especially in males; and this is more fitting to the times of good reasoning and sound perception. Added to this, the heart is the source of the vital motion that governs the circulation of the blood, the causes of life and growth, and the distribution of the [bodily] powers to all parts of the body; so it is more fitting than any other [organ] that the animal spirit should employ it in its intellectual acts. Further, the structure of the heart is composed of fibrous rings and muscular fibres, all of a wondrous kind of interweaving, crossing, and meshing — so that it is said that the muscular structure of the heart is not [even] known, as it ought to be, to this day; and that the structure of the heart and its muscular fibres are far more interwoven, crossing, and meshed than the structure by which the muscles of the sentient animal life — responsive to the will, which are among the acts of the soul and compliant in their acts to its command — are distinguished. All of this points to
that the musculature of the heart and the distinctive feature of its structure have a great, surpassing psychical work, exceeding what has been mentioned for the muscles of animal life; and the most fitting thing to [attribute to] that is perception and reasoning. True, it is possible that the brain is a repository for the forms of the things perceived, which the heart deposits with it. The gist of the argument is this: the aspects of miraculousness in the Noble Qurʾān are a proof that it is sent down from God — the Creator of the heart and the brain by His knowledge and His wisdom — and He has informed [us] that the locus of perception and reasoning, and their effects, is the heart.
Among what is at hand for me, as I write this exegesis, of the Shīʿī books of tafsīr, and from which I cite: the Tafsīr of al-Qummī — ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm; and the fifth volume of Ḥaqāʾiq al-Taʾwīl fī Mutashābihāt al-Tanzīl of al-Sayyid al-Raḍī (may his resting-place be sweet) — this being its [only] extant portion, running from the fifth verse of Sūrat Āl ʿImrān to the end of the interpretation of the fifty-first [verse] of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ; the Mukhtaṣar al-Tibyān of al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī — of which copies are very few, with cross-references to his two books al-Khilāf and Sharḥ Jumal al-ʿIlm; the Majmaʿ al-Bayān of al-Ṭabrisī; and al-Burhān of al-Sayyid Hāshim al-Baḥrānī — an exegesis [made] through ḥadīth, which, with al-Wasāʾil, is my intermediary to the Tafsīr of al-ʿAyyāshī.
As for the tafsīr ascribed to the Imām al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī (peace be upon him), we have made plain — in a separate treatise devoted to it — that it is a lie, a forgery;49 among what indicates that is the very [presence] in it of contradiction and incoherence in the speech of the two transmitters, and in what the two allege to be [genuine] narration, and its contradicting of the Glorious Book and of what is securely known of history — as al-ʿAllāma pointed out in al-Khulāṣa and elsewhere.
Of the books on the verses of legal rulings (āyāt al-aḥkām): Kanz al-ʿIrfān of al-Miqdād, Zubdat al-Bayān of al-Ardabīlī, and al-Qalāʾid of al-Jazāʾirī. Of the books of ḥadīth: al-Kāfī, [Man lā yaḥḍuruhu] al-Faqīh, the two Tahdhībs, al-Wasāʾil, and a number of the books of al-Ṣadūq and others. Of the Sunnī works, of the books of tafsīr: the Tafsīr of al-Ṭabarī, al-Kashshāf, and al-Durr al-Manthūr fī al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr of al-Suyūṭī; and of the books of ḥadīth: their canonical collections, the Muwaṭṭaʾ of Mālik, the Musnad of Aḥmad, the Mustadrak of al-Ḥākim, and Kanz al-ʿUmmāl and its abridgment.
Al-Durr al-Manthūr is the most comprehensive of [works] for the transmitted material in exegesis — in respect of the ḥadīths, their transmitters, and those who brought them out in their books — and for this reason my references are, for the most part, to it, even where the ḥadīth is [originally] brought out from their own Ṣaḥīḥ-collections, which are of higher repute than it; and I may cite from those collections what it did not mention. I cite from it only what it chains to the most noble Messenger (God bless him and grant him peace), or to the noble Companions (may God be pleased with them); as for what it transmits as merely halted upon the Successors (mawqūf) and those after them, I have no need of it. And God is the Granter of success and the Helper. Let us [now] begin — with God’s help and His granting of success — upon the [main] object.
(1:1) In the Name of God, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful. (1:2) All praise belongs to God, Lord of all the worlds, (1:3) the All-beneficent, the All-merciful, (1:4) Master of the Day of Retribution. (1:5) You [alone] do we worship, and to You [alone] do we turn for help. (1:6) Guide us on the straight path, (1:7) the path of those whom You have blessed — such as have not incurred Your wrath, nor are astray.
It has been named “Fātiḥat al-Kitāb” (the Opening of the Book) by mass transmission — as in his words (God bless him and his Household), “There is no prayer for one who does not recite the Opening of the Book,” and the like. And the narrations of the two groups — the Shīʿa and the Sunnīs — from the Messenger of God, the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) are abundant in naming it “the Mother of the Book” (Umm al-Kitāb), “the Mother of the Qurʾān,” “the Seven Oft-Repeated” (al-Sabʿ al-Mathānī), and “the Great Qurʾān.”50 From Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): it was named “the Oft-Repeated” (al-Mathānī) only because it is repeated (tuthannā) in the two rakʿas.
The narration is widespread, from the two groups, from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) — indeed, almost mass-transmitted in its meaning — that in its recitation is a healing from disease.
al-Wāḥidī mentioned, in Asbāb al-Nuzūl, and it is [reported] from al-Thaʿlabī in his tafsīr, on the authority of ʿAlī (peace be upon him): “Fātiḥat al-Kitāb was sent down at Mecca” — the ḥadīth. It is reported from ʿAmr b. Shuraḥbīl [something] the gist of which is that its descent was at the beginning of the mission and of Gabriel’s coming down with the revelation — though in the contents of the narration is what is in it [i.e., matter open to question]. And from a man of the Banū Salima [there is] what entails that it used to be recited before the Hijra. God said in Sūrat al-Ḥijr (15:87): “Certainly We have given you [the sūra of] the seven oft-repeated verses and the great Qurʾān.” And since Sūrat al-Ḥijr is entirely Meccan, from before the Hijra, in that — together with what has been mentioned regarding its naming — is an indication that it was sent down at Mecca before the Hijra. Yet it is marked, in the headings of the codices, as Medinan; and it has been said that it is both Meccan and Medinan. It is seven verses, by the agreement of the Muslims and the concurrence of the ḥadīths — beyond the ḥadīths of the “seven oft-repeated” — indeed, the ḥadīths in the transmissions of the two groups are mass-transmitted on that.
“In the Name of God, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful” is a part of the sūra — by the agreement of the Imāmiyya and the Shāfiʿiyya, the consensus of the People of the House,
the abundant narrations from them (peace be upon them), and the agreement of the Muslims upon writing it in the codices from the first, and to this day. The reports, by the routes of the Sunnīs, from the Messenger of God — among them the sound (ṣaḥīḥ) and the good (ḥasan) by their own terminology — are abundant on that: as in the ḥadīths of ʿAlī (peace be upon him), Umm Salama, ʿAmmār, Jābir, Burayda, Ṭalḥa b. ʿUbayd Allāh, Ibn ʿUmar, Abū Hurayra, Anas, and al-Nuʿmān b. Bashīr; and as it is also reported from ʿAlī (peace be upon him), Ibn ʿAbbās, and Muḥammad b. Kaʿb al-Qurẓī.
It is recited aloud (jahr), by the agreement of the Imāmiyya, and the consensus, practice, and ḥadīth of the People of the House, and the ḥadīth of the Sunnīs from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) by the routes of ʿAlī (peace be upon him), ʿAmmār, ʿĀʾisha, al-Ḥakam b. ʿUmayr, Ibn ʿUmar, Anas, Abū Hurayra, and al-Nuʿmān b. Bashīr. The Tafsīr al-Burhān of al-Sayyid Hāshim al-Baḥrānī — of the Imāmiyya — and the Tafsīr al-Durr al-Manthūr of al-Suyūṭī — of the Sunnīs — have recorded much of the ḥadīths to which we have pointed; let whoever wishes to see the detail consult the two.
“In the Name of God” (bism Allāh) attaches to an elided [governing word] indicated by the apparent [sense of the] context. It has been said that its [implied] estimation is “begin,” or “recite,” or “say.” I say: on the estimation of “recite” or “say,” the [particle] bāʾ has the sense of seeking help by the Name of God — as one says “write with the pen” — and that on account of the majesty of the Name of God and its blessing, [which is] by the majesty of the Named (mighty and exalted is He) and His blessing; and the thing recited or said would then be what comes after the basmala, of the sūra. Against this manner of estimation it may be objected, first, that it contradicts the basmala’s being a part of the sūra and its equality with the rest of its verses in the ruling of recitation; and that the escape from this — by making the basmala also an object governed by “recite,” or a thing said [governed] by “say” — entails the estimation of yet another governing word to which the bāʾ and its genitive attach; so what is it, then?
Likewise, what we have mentioned may be objected against al-Kashshāf’s estimation of “I recite” or “I recite [aloud]” — [as] from the speech of the reciter — with the thing recited being what comes after the basmala. And against all of them — even “begin,” as a command — it may be objected, secondly, that it is not tenable for these estimations to hold uniformly in a sūra headed by an address to the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), such as “O Prophet,” “O you who are wrapped [in your mantle],” “Say, ‘It has been revealed…’” — indeed, all the sūras headed by the word “Say” and the like; and likewise the sūras headed by an address to other than the Prophet, such as “O mankind,” “O you who have believed.” For God’s commanding the servants to recite or to say takes [such a sūra] out of being — at the outset of its descent — a performative address (khiṭāb inshāʾī) from God to His Messenger, or to mankind, or to those who believe. And likewise if the estimated [word] be “recite” or “recite [aloud]” in the imperfect. Added to this is that the word “recite” or “recite [aloud]” cannot rightly be
[uttered as] from God; for He (exalted be His station) is the very Speaker of the Qurʾān and its Originator — so how could reciting be ascribed to Him? If you say: “In the sūras indicated we make the estimated [word] something that does not contradict their [mode of] address, and in others we make it ‘recite’ or ‘recite [aloud]’ in the imperfect, from the speech of the people” — we say: first, what will you do with what we objected at the outset? Secondly, what is it that you would estimate in the sūras indicated, such that it does not contradict the [performative] status of their address? — for that ought to be shown. And thirdly, that entails severing [the uniformity] among the contexts of the basmalas in the Qurʾān, without evidence and without any compelling need — whereas the apparent [truth] is that they are, in all the sūras, upon a single, coherent pattern; that the estimated [word], in those sūras and others (in the state of the descent and God’s revealing, and in the state of the people’s reciting), is one and the same; and that the reciter recites the basmala according to what it attached to in the state of [its] descent, and that what it attached to is of the sent-down Qurʾān that the people were commanded to recite, even if it be an estimated [word].
The apparent [truth], then, is that the basmala, in all the sūras, attaches to the word “I begin” — [in the] first person — from the speech of God (exalted be His name), by way of extolling the majesty of His noble Name and its blessings, and magnifying Him for the majesty and greatness of the Named (exalted be His station), to whom belong the most beautiful Names — even as He commanded, in the Qurʾān, the mention of His Name and His glorification, as in Sūrat al-Māʾida, al-Ḥajj, al-Muzzammil, al-Dahr [al-Insān], and al-Aʿlā. So the estimated [word] is ordered, in all the sūras and all the states, upon a single system and a single pattern. And no strangeness nor difficulty attends what we have deemed apparent; and how could it, when God Himself has ascribed “beginning” to His holy Essence, in His creating, as in His words (exalted be His name), “and He commenced the creation of the human being from clay” (32:7), [and] “as We began the first creation” (21:104)? And He has sworn by His creatures — the sun, the moon, the soul, and others — magnifying them, because they are the manifestations of His power and the signs of His wisdom.
God’s revealing of the sūras to His Messenger has a beginning and an end, as the sūras themselves do — even as God said in Sūrat al-Aḥqāf, concerning the Qurʾān, “and before it [was] the Book of Moses” (46:12). And set aside [the fact] that the Noble Qurʾān is speech composed of letters and words, which — and whose composition — must have a beginning and an end; and it must have a cause for its being brought into existence, for it is not Necessary of Existence — the Necessary of Existence being One, [namely] God; and the cause of the existence of what is revealed is nothing but the creating of God, the Creator of everything. God said in Sūrat al-Zukhruf, “Indeed We have made it an Arabic Qurʾān” (43:3); and “making” (jaʿl) is [the same as] “creating” (khalq), and everything made and created has a beginning.51
“Allāh” is a proper name for the Necessarily Existent, the God of all the worlds — magnified be His names and mighty His bounties. Its lām is [pronounced] full [velarized] after a fatḥa or a ḍamma. “al-Raḥmān”: I do not think you doubt that the meaning of “mercy” (raḥma) is received by people’s understandings from its wording,
in [everyday] discourse, in all its bounds and features; that their [native] instincts in the language grasp it in its particularities; and that in every setting they distinguish what is meant by it. Yet the setting of exegesis may confuse the mind, for lack of a synonymous word and for want of exhaustiveness in expounding the features of the meaning and its bounds. Mercy has been interpreted as “tenderness and affection,” or “compassion and fondness,” or “gentleness and kindly inclination.” All these interpretations merely hover about the meaning and point to something of it from afar. Do you not see that, in each of the three, its two words differ in meaning, and that these glosses fall short — especially since “mercy” takes an object [i.e., is transitive]?
The foundation and pillar of the meaning of “mercy” is that it relates to one in need of what he cannot [himself] attain — of gaining good and repelling harm; and that what moves the merciful one is that needy one’s need and the desire to relieve and aid him in it, without its reverting to any aims of the merciful one — a need [of his own], love, or a special tie. And from its taking an object it is known that it is not an expression of mere psychological affect (infiʿāl), but is used for a state of soul relating to the needy one in the manner described. With respect to God (exalted be His station), it is a mode of His essential perfection that relates to those in need in the manner described. And because the human being falls short, of his kind, in comprehending the attributes of God as they truly are, the Noble Qurʾān has proceeded to express them by what is used for what resembles them — in effects and features — of the praiseworthy attributes of human beings, and has proceeded upon that in [the choice of] root and derivation. “Mercy” is [also] used for the [act of] relieving itself, or for the very thing by which one is relieved. Of the third [usage], apparently, are His words in Sūrat Āl ʿImrān, “and bestow Your mercy upon us” (3:8), and in Sūrat al-Kahf, “Our Lord! grant us a mercy from Yourself” (18:10), and the like; and in the Qurʾān there is also what admits of application to the first and second meanings.
So “al-Raḥmān” is of the faʿlān pattern, [denoting] one possessed of the manifest active attribute of evident effect, which has continuance and persistence — like ghaḍbān (“enraged”), rayyān (“sated with drink”), and farḥān (“joyful”).52 It thus indicates the manifest actuality of [His] being merciful and its persistence. And the omission of the [grammatical] object — together with its being derived from a transitive [verb] — indicates the universality of this being-merciful, of evident effect, and its encompassing of everyone in need of it — and all are in need of it. Who is it whose being-merciful — or whose mercy, in the sense of relieving — is actual, manifest, of evident effect, persistent, all-encompassing, absolute? And who is able for this relieving, other than God (magnified be His bounties)? For this reason this noble name is [reserved] exclusively for God (exalted be His station). “al-Raḥīm” is an assimilate epithet (ṣifa mushabbaha), taken in this form from the fixed meanings — like ingrained traits and dispositions — so it indicates the fixity of mercy and its permanence for God, as dispositions and traits [are] permanent and inseparable for human beings. By this signification and this feature it is more emphatic in praise; and from this angle it was fitting to ascend to it in glorification and praise. Nor is it precluded that an assimilate epithet be taken, in this form, from a description transitive by its [original] coinage — since it may be made intransitive by imbuing it with the sense of an ingrained trait
and the disposition — so it reverts to the sense of faʿula (with a ḍamma on the middle radical), as in His words in Sūrat Ghāfir (40:15), “Raiser of ranks, Lord of the Throne”: that is, “high are His ranks,” the attribute being annexed to its own subject, like ḥasan al-wajh (“fair of face”), which is among the peculiarities of the assimilate epithet — as al-Sharīf said in his gloss on al-Kashshāf, relating it from Ṣarf al-Miftāḥ and al-Zamakhsharī’s al-Fāʾiq.
Among the witnesses that the word al-Raḥīm is imbued with an intransitive sense is that, wherever it is mentioned in the Qurʾān connected to a governed [object], it is connected by means of the bāʾ — after the manner of the intransitive — rather than the strengthening lām: as in Sūrat al-Baqara (2:143), “Indeed God is most kind and merciful to mankind”; in Sūrat al-Ḥajj (22:65), “Have you not regarded that God has disposed for you whatever is in the earth … Indeed God is most kind and merciful to mankind”; in Sūrat al-Ḥadīd (57:8–9), “Why should you not have faith in God while the Apostle invites you … and indeed God is most kind and merciful to you”; in Sūrat al-Isrāʾ (17:66–67), “Your Lord is He who drives for you the ships in the sea … indeed He is most merciful to you”; in Sūrat al-Tawba, “indeed He is most kind and merciful to them” (9:117), and “most kind and merciful to the faithful” (9:128); in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (4:29), “Indeed God is most merciful to you”; and in Sūrat al-Aḥzāb (33:43), “and He is most merciful to the faithful.” And this attribute is not exclusive to God; for it came, in Sūrat al-Tawba, describing the Messenger (God bless him and his Household) (9:128): “most kind and merciful to the faithful.”
You have come to know — from what we cited of al-Baqara, al-Ḥajj, al-Isrāʾ, and al-Ḥadīd — [that which requires] discarding the narration which says that al-Raḥmān is [merciful] to all His creation while al-Raḥīm is [merciful] to the believers in particular. And from what we cited of al-Isrāʾ and al-Ḥajj there ought likewise to be discarded the narration which says that al-Raḥmān is the Merciful of this world and the next, and al-Raḥīm the Merciful of the next [alone] — in accordance with what we have been commanded regarding the testing of ḥadīth against the Book of God.
“All praise belongs to God” (al-ḥamd li-llāh). Praise (ḥamd) is a well-known laudation by [mention of] good, which the speaker sets, according to what is settled in his mind of the language, in its [proper] places; its meaning is known by its features, and it is distinguished from what neighbours it in usage and understanding.53 But confusion comes from the side of exegesis: one says it is the brother of madḥ (“commendation”) — its synonym; another interprets it as shukr (“gratitude”), citing their saying “al-ḥamdu li-llāhi shukran,” taking “shukran” as an absolute object, not an object of purpose; another says ḥamd, madḥ, and shukr are near [in meaning]; another makes it [fall] upon the essential attributes of the praised one and upon his giving; and another restricts it to laudation of a voluntary, excellent act. The apparent [truth] — from reflection upon the instances of usage and immediate sense —
is that ḥamd is laudation, by [express] wording, by [mention of] good, of a voluntary, excellent act, when the excellent [act] has some bearing upon the one praising; otherwise it is madḥ. As for shukr, it is the meeting of a benefaction with a kind of benefaction that includes acknowledgement — whether by deed or word — [including] some acknowledgement of that benefaction and its bounty, not the mere acknowledgement of the bare act, [and] not [merely] in respect of its being a benefaction. And I think their saying “al-ḥamdu li-llāhi shukran” [means] only that “shukran” is an object of purpose, as in “I glorified Him in magnification.” The doer of an excellent [act], among people, deserves praise only if he did it for its excellence, or for the face of God — which is the very spirit of doing the act for its excellence — “and few are they”; indeed, he does not deserve it, even outwardly, if it is known that he did it neither for God nor for its excellence. And that [rare] few deserve praise only in respect of their undertaking the excellent act and choosing it; for the powers by which he acted, the perception by which he knew its excellence, the guidance to the doing of the excellent [act], and the very objects that bring the conferring of it to realization — all these are God’s and from God (magnified be His bounties). For this reason all praise, in its very reality, belongs to God — the Absolutely Self-Sufficient, the Great in favours, whose bounties cannot be counted, and of whose mighty [favours] no human being, in any state, is [ever] devoid.
The clause “all praise belongs to God” is declarative (khabariyya), [taken as] being of the speech of God in His glorifying of His own Essence and extolling His majesty. But al-Ṣadūq narrated, in al-Faqīh, from the Kitāb al-ʿIlal of al-Faḍl b. Shādhān, from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him): “There is nothing of the Qurʾān and of [all] speech in which is gathered, of the comprehensive [goods] of good and wisdom, what is gathered in the Sūra of Praise. For His words ‘all praise belongs to God’ are but a rendering of the gratitude God has made obligatory, and a thanksgiving for the good to which God has [granted] His servant success; ‘Lord of all the worlds’ is an affirmation of His oneness and a praising, and an acknowledgement that He is the Creator, the Owner, none other; ‘the All-beneficent, the All-merciful’ is a seeking of tenderness and a mention of His bounties upon all His creation; ‘Master of the Day of Retribution’ is an acknowledgement to Him of the Resurrection, the Reckoning, and the Requital” — the ḥadīth. So the clause “all praise belongs to God,” to its end, is [uttered] upon the tongue of the servants, a teaching for them of how they [should] praise, affirm [His] oneness, and acknowledge; it is declarative in form, comprising the performative [act of] praising — that all of it, in its reality, belongs to God.
“Lord of all the worlds” (rabb al-ʿālamīn): the rabb is the owner-and-governor, or the nurturer; and “al-ʿālamīn” is the plural of ʿālam (“world”). “The All-beneficent, the All-merciful”: its interpretation has preceded. “Master of the Day of Retribution” (mālik yawm al-dīn): the Owner of the Day of Resurrection, whose affair is in His hand — He disposes of it by His justice or by His mercy, as He wills.54 In al-Tibyān, al-Kashshāf, and Majmaʿ al-Bayān [it is said] that the annexation of “Owner” (mālik) to “the Day of Retribution” is of the kind of annexing an active participle to an adverbial [of time] — as in their saying, “O thief of the night, of the people of the house.” But I see no pressing need for what they mentioned. It is narrated in al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān, chainlessly, from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), and by al-Qummī with a chain from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him); and Ibn Jarīr and al-Ḥākim — who declared it sound — reported with a chain from Ibn Masʿūd and [some] of the Companions that “the Day of Retribution” is the Day of Reckoning — and I think that is [meant] to make plain that it is the Day of Resurrection. In al-Tibyān and al-Bayān, al-dīn is the reckoning and the requital; and in
al-Kashshāf, the requital. They cited as evidence their saying, “kamā tadīnu tudānu” (“as you requite, you are requited”), and the line of the Ḥamāsa ascribed to Sahl b. Rabīʿa: “We forgave the Banū Dhuhl, and said, ‘The folk are brethren; perhaps the days will bring them back a people such as they [once] were.’ But when [their] evil showed itself openly, and nothing remained but aggression, we requited them (dinnāhum) as they had requited [others].” — [used] in the sense: as you requite another when he does ill, so you too are requited when you do ill; and “we requited the Banū Dhuhl for their aggression as they had requited others” — for the apparent sense of the verse is that Sahl’s people had first forgiven them, nothing having proceeded from [Sahl’s people] that would make the Banū Dhuhl’s aggression itself a requital. Perhaps of this meaning of “dīn” is al-Aʿshā’s saying, “He requited (dāna) [the tribe of] Rabāb when they loathed obedience, in swift succession, with raid and onslaught”; and perhaps of this same category is al-Dayyān among the names of God — to whom belong the most beautiful Names — and “the Requiter (Dayyān) of the Day of Retribution”; and al-Aʿshā’s saying, addressing the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), “O lord of mankind and requiter (dayyān) of the Arabs”; and the ḥadīth — as in al-Nihāya — “ʿAlī was the requiter (dayyān) of this community [after its Prophet].” The matter of interpreting “dīn” in the verse is easy; it ranges between these meanings and what is near them, and it is no wonder if its precise reality has here become ambiguous to us, through the breadth of its usage.
Nor should it be hidden that His words “Lord of all the worlds, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful, Master of the Day of Retribution” stand as the proof that praise belongs to Him (magnified be His bounties), and as the proof for the restricting of worship and of the seeking of help to Him, in His words “You [alone] do we worship, and You [alone] do we ask for help.” For is any worshipped — or is help sought of any — in respect of being “Lord of the worlds,” other than the Lord of the worlds, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful, the Master of the Day of Retribution? And can it be sound, in any awareness, that one turn away from worshipping Him, or fail to seize [the chance of] seeking help from Him?
The word “iyyāka [You alone]” was repeated for two reasons.55 The first: for the express statement of the restricting of each of worship and of help-seeking to Him; for had it been said “iyyāka naʿbudu wa-nastaʿīn,” the form of the wording would have suggested that what is restricted is the [combined] sum of the two — worship and help-seeking — not each one [separately]. The second: because the restriction in the two differs — with respect to worship, it is a restriction of all its instances; with respect to help-seeking, a restriction in view of [only] some of its instances, as will come, God willing. This mode, in the noble verse, is of the category of iltifāt (“turning”), from the third person to [direct] address. Iltifāt is frequent in the speech and poetry of the Arabs, who count it among the beauties of eloquence; it varies in beauty, yet however far it reaches, it scarcely reaches what this iltifāt has reached of dazzling beauty, surpassing excellence, and the highest degrees of eloquence. For it portrays the servant with his gaze fixed upon the majesty of his Master, turning toward His presence with the acknowledgement that there is no [object of] worship but Him and no [source of] help but He — entreating with the address of servitude and lowliness, and the intimate prayer of dread and longing, humbled before His lordship, stretching out to His mercy the hand of [utter] devotion in his asking and his seeking of help.
The common folk and the elite continue to use the word “worship” (ʿibāda) at their ease, along the course of what is settled in their minds, upon a single pattern — understanding that meaning by immediate sense and knowing, by their [linguistic] taste, its figurative [uses] and the aspect of figurativeness in them. The axis on which their usage turns is this: that worship is what they see as betokening submission (khuḍūʿ) to one whom the submitter takes as a god, so as to render him thereby what he deems the god’s due of the distinction of divinity; or under the heading that [the object] is a symbol or image of one whom they claim to be a god — exalted is God above what they associate [with Him].
But error and shirk, or calumny and falsehood, or floundering in interpretation, have occurred here in three stations.56 The first: rendering that by which the reality of worship is realized to what is not fit for it — [what] is, rather, a creature of God — as, for example, the worship of idols. The second: the station of calumny, fabrication, and the service of corrupt aims to promote sinful factional partisanships; so they say of one who renders the Prophet or the Imām some [measure of] reverence — on the ground that he is a servant, a creature of God, brought near to Him because he worshipped and obeyed Him — that he has [thereby] worshipped that revered one and associated [him] with God in his worship! Do you not know against whom they hurl this calumny? They calumniate one who reveres the Prophet or the Imām as a means of drawing near to God — because God chose him and honoured him with the station of messengership or of the imāmate, which is by God’s appointment and His covenant, even as God promised that to Abraham in His words in Sūrat al-Baqara (2:124): “And when his Lord tested Abraham with certain words, and he fulfilled them, He said, ‘I am making you the Imām of mankind.’ He said, ‘And from among my descendants?’ He said, ‘My covenant does not reach the wrongdoers.’”
This reasonable, lawful reverence is not less than — nor outside the [same] kind as — what is [well] known and witnessed of these partisans’ reverence for their kings, chiefs, and rulers, and their submission to them in word and deed, however far they go in [their] Bedouin haughtiness! This evil practice spread, inherited from the error of the Khārijites in their partisanship — for they ascribed shirk and unbelief to the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), when, at the raising of the codices, they forced him to concede the arbitration of two men [supposed] to act by what the Qurʾān requires in Muʿāwiya’s schism, and forced him [also] to the two arbiters’ being Abū Mūsā and Ibn al-ʿĀṣ; and as they, secondly, ascribed shirk to his son al-Ḥasan the grandson (peace be upon him), when his people and the chiefs of his troops played the hypocrite — some going over to Muʿāwiya, others corresponding with him and promising to hand al-Ḥasan over or to withhold their hand [from battle] — so al-Ḥasan (peace be upon him) delivered an address in his camp, stuffed with hypocrisy: consulting, establishing the proof, and testing them, that the people might know their hypocrisy and be clear-sighted about their affair, whether in war or in truce.
And this baneful calumny, this pestilent intrigue of sinful partisanship, became, in the later ages, a means for the assault upon what God has forbidden [to be violated] of the Muslims’ blood, wealth, and honour, and upon the sanctities of the Messenger and the Imāms
(peace be upon them); and there ensued from that what makes the skin crawl. Had not their [own] rulers curbed their excess, there would have ensued, from their aggression — and from [the Muslims’] defending themselves — distressing events among the Muslims. And God is the One whose help is sought. O God, You [alone] do we worship, and You [alone] do we ask for help.
The third station: worship has often been interpreted as a kind of gratitude together with a kind of submission, or of obedience.57 Is it hidden from you that these interpretations rest upon laxity as to the particularities of usage, or upon confusion in the setting of exegesis? And is it hidden that most instances of each of the things they mentioned are not seen by people as worship — and that they would fault one who calls it, or part of it, “worship,” save figuratively? The word “worship” (ʿibāda) and what is derived from it — like ʿabada and yaʿbudu — you will not find used literally except in what we have described: a human being’s treating one whom he takes as a god with the treatment of the God deserving of that by His station in divinity.
I have not found it used, in the Noble Qurʾān, for other than that, except in three places — and even these did not depart from a regard to the likeness of that literal meaning and a figurative use of its wording: His words in Sūrat Maryam (19:44), “Father! Do not worship Satan. Indeed Satan is disobedient to the All-beneficent,” and in Sūrat Yā Sīn (36:60), “Did I not exhort you, O children of Adam, that you should not worship Satan.” The name of “worship” was here borrowed for blind, perpetual obedience to Satan — just as the believers cast the reins of their obedience to God, clear-sighted in their affair, because He is their God — after the manner of the figurativeness in His words in Sūrat al-Furqān (25:43), “Have you seen him who has taken his desire to be his god?”, and al-Jāthiya (45:23), “Have you seen him who has taken his desire to be his god?” For they were not [actually] worshipping Satan, nor had they [literally] taken their desire as a god. And the third of them: His words in Sūrat al-Muʾminūn (23:47), “They said” — that is, Pharaoh and his court — “Shall we believe two humans like ourselves, while their people are worshippers of us?” — that is, [people] persisting in labour in our service, as the believer persists in the worship of God; or on the consideration that Pharaoh laid claim to divinity, so that they made — by [false] likening and dissembling — the Children of Israel’s submission [rendered] under subjugation into a “worship” of Pharaoh.
This being so: Shaykh Muḥammad ʿAbduh plunged into inquiry at this station — as his student related from him in his tafsīr of Sūrat al-Fātiḥa58 — and came near the target in his words, though he did not quite hit the mark. He said, in sum: however much the lover may go to excess in exalting his beloved and submitting to [her], and efface himself in [her] desire and will; or however much some people exaggerate in exalting kings and chiefs, so that you see of their submission what you do not see of the submission of the devout to God — the Arabs did not call any of this submission “worship.” What, then, is worship? And he said: the sound modes [of Arabic] and pure Arabic usage indicate that worship is a kind of submission reaching the utmost limit, arising from the heart’s sensing a greatness of the worshipped one whose source it does not know, and its belief in a power (sulṭa) whose inmost nature it does not grasp — the utmost it knows of it being that it encompasses him,
but that it is beyond his comprehension. End of his statement. Had he but declared plainly the gist of his words, and the criterion of their soundness — which is what we have advanced: the restricting of worship to [its] relating to one whom the worshipper sees as a god — his sentences would not have come to be self-contradicting, crippled by criticism. And though he thereafter took hold of his own sound saying, “Worship has many forms in every religion, ordained to remind the human being of that sense of the supreme divine authority,” this saying is coherent only if there be reckoned, in the meaning of worship, its being directed to rendering the one taken as a god his due of exaltation and submission; for what reminding sense would there be in [worship] were it not for that reckoning? And if what we have mentioned be not reckoned, there is no escape, for his foregoing sentence, from criticism: for the forms of many acts of worship do not reach — nor even approach — the utmost limit of submission, as [is seen] in the worship of the pious devotees, compared with the submission of that lover to his beloved, or of those [others] in exalting kings and chiefs. Moreover, the worshipper of God knows that the source of the greatness is the divine authority; and if it be beyond his comprehension, that is on account of its universality over the uncountable range of possible things — not in that it is a great divine authority [otherwise] attainable by comprehension from this angle.
In distinguishing worship (ʿibāda) from servitude (ʿubūdiyya), he said: “Hence some of the scholars said that ‘worship,’ in the language, can be [directed] only to God.” I say: he means that worship — inasmuch as its literal meaning in the language has, taken into it, a relating to divinity and to a god — cannot rightly relate to any but God, beside whom there is no god; he does not mean that it was, in the language, ascribed only to God. For how could it be hidden from him that it came — in the very usages of the Qurʾān — ascribed to other than God in more than seventy places? So, apparently, there is no weight in his objection, “but the Qurʾān’s usage contradicts it.” True, [this] may be objected against one who said that the word ʿibād (“servants”) is derived from ʿibāda (“worship”): that he was heedless of His words in Sūrat al-Nūr (24:32), “And marry off those who are single among you, and the righteous among your male slaves (ʿibād) and your female slaves.”
God said in Sūrat al-Māʾida (5:2): “cooperate in piety and God-wariness.” As for cooperation in the [merely] permitted [acts], that too is a good deed (iḥsān) that God has commanded in His Book, by His words in Sūrat al-Naḥl (16:90), “Indeed God enjoins justice and kindness,” and in al-Baqara (2:195), Āl ʿImrān (3:134), and al-Māʾida (5:13), “Indeed God loves the virtuous.” And it is known of necessity, from the way of the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), his Companions, the Imāms, and the Muslims, that they seek help, in most of their permitted affairs, by [means of] tools, the mount, the servant, the wife, the companion, messengers, hired workers, and others. And in al-Baqara (2:45, 153), “take recourse in patience and prayer.” And in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (4:64), “Had they, when they wronged themselves, come to you and pleaded to God for forgiveness, and the Apostle had pleaded for forgiveness for them, they would have surely found God all-clement, all-merciful” — for God blamed them for
their not coming to seek help toward forgiveness through the Messenger’s asking forgiveness [for them]. And this suffices as proof and indication that aid, in all its kinds, is not restricted to God, and that we are not obliged to restrict our seeking of help — [taken] in an absolute sense — to God. The detail of that: we look at the seekings-of-help of humankind, in word and deed, and we see them to be of two modes.59 The first mode is seeking help by the means appointed by God for attaining the object — [means] which, with the causation in them, are of God’s appointing and creating. The second mode is seeking help of the God — inasmuch as He is God — [who] aids by His divinity and His absolute, surpassing essential power. There is no doubt that the second mode is [that which is] certain in [being] restricted to God; for seeking help in this mode, if it be [sought] of other than God, is a deification of that other and an associating [of it] with God. And from what we have mentioned — of the verse and the [prophetic] way, and of the pairing of “You [alone] do we worship, and You [alone] do we ask for help” within the context of God’s oneness and glorification — the proof is established that this [second] mode of seeking-help is precisely what is restricted to God, not the first mode.
There is no doubt that seeking intercession with God in supplicating Him, and taking [the] means to Him by the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), the Imāms, and the saints (awliyāʾ) in [one’s] needs, is [only] of seeking-help in the first mode.60 If you ask even the most uncultivated of the rabble about what they do in taking-means by the Prophet, the Imāms, and the saints, they say: “We seek their intercession with God, and set them before our entreaties to Him, for their honour with Him and their standing in His sight, because they are among His honoured servants.” If you say to them, “You sometimes address them with entreaty and glorification and the asking of the need from them — what is this?”, they say: “We address them with entreaty that they may intercede; with glorification of what they are worthy of, out of respect for their station with God; and with asking the need of them, as an insistence and an emphasis in seeking intercession — and to make plain that their intercession is a successful means; as you say to the one brought near to the king, concerning a matter whose decision returns to the king, ‘I want this matter from you.’” If you say, “Why not ask your requests of them [directly]?”, they say: “How, when they are [but] human beings, unable [to do] what God alone has the power to do inasmuch as [it belongs to] divinity — and there is no god but God?” If it be said, “God is the most merciful of the merciful, so what need is there for intercession?”, we say: seeking intercession was ordained for the [same] wisdom for which supplication (duʿāʾ) was ordained — even as God, the most merciful of the merciful, said in Sūrat Ghāfir (40:60), “Call Me, and I will hear you”; (40:65) “So supplicate Him, putting exclusive faith in Him”; and in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (7:29), “and invoke Him, putting your exclusive faith in Him”; (7:56) “and supplicate Him with fear and hope.” For supplicating God is a training in worshipping Him, in taking refuge in Him, and in resorting to His divinity and His power. If it be said, “Where was seeking intercession ordained?”, we say: it suffices, as indication
as to its being sanctioned by the Glorious Book, [to adduce] what we mentioned of the sixty-seventh verse of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (4:64), in [God’s] blaming them for not coming to seize the intercession of the Messenger through his asking forgiveness for them. And the turning and shift (iltifāt) — from God’s addressing His Messenger, in that verse, to His words “and the Apostle had pleaded for forgiveness for them” — is only to point [to the fact] that the wisdom in it is [to give] them training in submission to the Messenger and to the station of messengership: by coming to his presence and submitting to his honour through [showing] need, asking his plea for forgiveness, and [seeking] his intercession for them — all so that they might submit, in good order, to obedience to him in the matters of religion and faith. This sanctioning — its aspect, wisdom, and cause — runs [likewise] in the intercession of the Imāms and the saints. And let the one seeking intercession be alerted, by his seeking, to the honour of the one obedient to God for his obedience, so that this moves him to the desire for obedience. This is a matter whose sanctioning is [well] known, acted upon in the true religions — as the Noble Qurʾān related that the sons of Jacob, the prophet of God, sought intercession by their father with God and asked his asking-of-forgiveness for them, and Jacob promised them that, as in Sūrat Yūsuf (12:97), “Father! Plead [with God] for forgiveness of our sins,” (12:98) “He said, ‘I shall plead with my Lord to forgive you.’”
And the wisdom we have mentioned runs likewise for His messengers, in seeking their intercession after their death — so that people’s submission to them may be preserved in what they knew, commanded, and pointed to of the matter of religion and the welfare of the two abodes; and, again, so that [people] be alerted to the honour of obedience to God. If one should say, “How can intercession be sought through the dead, and where are they, after their death, [in relation] to the station of intercession?” —
we say: God has made known to us, in His Glorious Book, that souls remain after death upon the psychical station they are in — either enjoying the station of honour, or afflicted with abasement and [divine] wrath.61 And He brought the state of the soul after death, and its survival, near to our deficient understandings by comparing its two states in death and in sleep; for He said (exalted be His name) in Sūrat al-Zumar (39:42): “God takes the souls at the time of their death, and those that have not died, in their sleep. Then He retains those for whom He has ordained death, and releases the others until a specified time. There are indeed signs in that for a people who reflect.” And in Sūrat al-Baqara (2:154): “And do not call those who were slain in God’s way ‘dead.’ Rather they are living, but you are not aware.” And [in] Āl ʿImrān (3:169): “Do not suppose those who were slain in the way of God to be dead; rather they are living and provided for near their Lord,” (170) “exulting in what God has given them out of His grace …” (171) “They rejoice in God’s blessing and grace, and that God does not waste the reward of the faithful.” And His words “that God does not waste the reward of
the faithful” — without His saying “the reward of those who strive in His way” — to indicate that this is among the effects of faith that run for every believer, not among the effects proper to being slain in God’s way. And He said (exalted be His name) in Sūrat Ghāfir (40:45–46): “Then God saved him from their evil schemes, while a terrible punishment besieged Pharaoh’s clan — the Fire, to which they are exposed morning and evening; and on the day when the Hour sets in …” So the declaration of the survival of souls after death is complete: this [soul] in its honour, and that [soul] in its abasement.
If one should say: God has Himself negated intercession in the Noble Qurʾān — for in Sūrat al-Baqara (2:254), “before there comes a day on which there will be no bargaining, neither friendship, nor intercession,” and in Sūrat al-Sajda (32:4), “You do not have, besides Him, any guardian or intercessor,” and other verses besides — we say:62 the Qurʾān has negated intercession from [one] aspect, namely: intercession for the polytheists; or the intercession that the polytheists claim for those whom they take as gods alongside God — on the claim that they are gods, empowered by their own divinity, so that their intercession takes effect by nature and of necessity; or the intercession of an intercessor who is obeyed of necessity — as in Sūrat Yā Sīn (36:23), Ghāfir (40:18), al-Zumar (39:44), and al-Muddaththir (74:48). And He affirmed it from another aspect, by way of exception — indeed, by way of a corrective (istidrāk) that wards off any impression of its being absolutely negated of everyone — for He said: “except by His permission,” “except after His permission,” “have you taken a covenant with God?” “except him whom the All-beneficent allows and of whose word He approves,” “except for someone He approves of,” “except those who are witness to the truth,” “except after God grants permission to whomever He wishes and approves” — as in al-Baqara (2:255), Yūnus (10:3), Maryam (19:87), Ṭāhā (20:109), al-Anbiyāʾ (21:28), Sabaʾ (34:23), al-Zukhruf (43:86), and al-Najm (53:26).
The intercession excepted and corrected [into affirmation] in the verses of al-Baqara, Yūnus, and Sabaʾ is unrestricted — not confined to the Day of Resurrection, nor to before the intercessor’s death in this world. Had the Qurʾān been given its due of reflection, and had souls been kept safe from the plague of caprices and partisanship and the promptings of bigotry and naṣb, there would not have arisen the tumult of some people against the Muslims’ seeking the intercession of the Messenger, the Imāms, and the saints — for they are honoured servants, and the worthiest of God’s servants that we should believe He has given leave to intercede, honouring them, for the wisdom we have mentioned. We have contented ourselves here with the indication of the Glorious Book, [dispensing] with pointing to what is mass-transmitted in meaning of the Muslims’ ḥadīths on these matters; in their books of ḥadīth there is much of it, and the matter is plain. But “for some [hidden] reason did Quṣayr cut off his own nose.” And Shaykh Muḥammad ʿAbduh has — as his student related it in [the section on] Sūrat al-Fātiḥa, pp. 46–47 of the third printing — a statement he cast out heedlessly in the whirlwind of that tumult, which is strange, given his [usual] care to refine his speech, to reflect upon the Noble Qurʾān and interpret it, and to guard
against the enslavement to caprices. His book of tafsīr was not at hand for me, that I might see what is in it at this station.
(1:6) Guide us on the straight path, (1:7) the path of those whom You have blessed — such as have not incurred Your wrath, nor are astray.
“Guide us on the straight path” (ihdinā al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm): guidance (hidāya) is used for pointing out the way and indicating the good63 — as in His words in Sūrat Fuṣṣilat (41:17), “As for [the people of] Thamūd, We guided them, but they preferred blindness to guidance,” and al-Shūrā (42:52), “And indeed you guide to a straight path”; and it is [also] used for bringing [one] to the goal by enabling grace and support — as in Sūrat al-Qaṣaṣ (28:50), “Indeed God does not guide the wrongdoing lot,” (28:56) “You cannot guide whomever you wish, but God guides whomever He wishes,” and al-Nisāʾ (4:68), “and We would have surely guided them to a straight path,” and al-Anʿām — after mentioning a number of the prophets — (6:87), “and We … guided them to a straight path.” This [latter] meaning is the apparent one, and the one intended in the verse — even if Sūrat al-Fātiḥa was the first of the Qurʾān to be sent down. Guidance takes its object [the one guided] both by itself and by the preposition “to.” al-ṣirāṭ is the way; al-mustaqīm (straight) is that in which there is no deviation or crookedness — the nearest path leading to the object, whose traveller is furthest from error and its fear, clear-sighted in his affair from the outset, since the beacon of truth and the tidings of arrival grow plain to him from his first turning toward it.
In the ḥadīth of the generality [Sunnīs] — as in al-Durr al-Manthūr — [it is said] that it is, in the verse, the Book of God, or Islam, or the Messenger of God and his two Companions after him. In the Tafsīr al-Burhān, from the tafsīr of Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, with a chain from Ibn ʿAbbās, on “Guide us on the straight path,” he said: “Say, O company of servants: point us to the love of Muḥammad and the People of his House”; and from the tafsīr of al-Thaʿlabī, with a chain from Abū Burda: “the path of Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household) and the People of his House.” In the Imāmī narrations: that it is the Commander of the Faithful, or that it is the Imāms.64 Whatever of that is sound is [to be understood] by way of designating one of the [true] instances, or the clearest of them. “the path of those whom You have blessed” — with enabling grace and support, so that they were favoured with arrival and won nearness [to God]. “not those against whom is [Your] wrath” — because they opposed the truth after the morning of guidance had shone, the evidence had become clear, and the proof had been established, so that they merited God’s wrath; the word “ghayr” is in the genitive, as an adjective of “those.” In the ḥadīth and the narrations, “those against whom is wrath” are the Jews, or the nawāṣib; whatever of that is sound is by way of designating some of the [true] instances. “nor those who are astray” — through their ignorance and their falling short of seeking the truth and knowing it, despite the clarity of the evidence and the establishing of the proof; and the word “lā (nor)” was brought with “those who are astray” for thoroughness in seeking refuge from the two groups: those against whom is wrath, and those who are astray.
Medinan; two hundred and eighty-six verses
In the Name of God, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful. (2:1) Alif, Lām, Mīm. (2:2) This is the Book, there is no doubt in it, a guidance to the Godwary, (2:3) who believe in the Unseen, and maintain the prayer, and spend out of what We have provided for them;
“In the Name of God, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful”: its interpretation has [already] passed, in Sūrat al-Fātiḥa. (1) “Alif, Lām, Mīm”: the knowledge of its meaning is with God, His Messenger, and the repositories of His knowledge and trustees over His revelation.65 It is no wonder that there should be, in the Qurʾān, [something] that is a communication, in special secrets, with the Messenger and the trustees of the revelation. “This is the Book” (dhālika al-kitāb): the Qurʾān, pointed to with the demonstrative of the far [object], for the loftiness of its station and the height of its rank — customary among the Arabs in pointing to the great one of lofty rank. “there is no doubt in it”: there is in it no place for doubt, and doubt about its affair is not fitting; or there is in it nothing dubious — rather it is “a guidance” in actuality, bringing [one] to the reality of religion, the law of truth, and the pillars of faith, “to the Godwary” [i.e. wary] of God — those who, out of their God-wariness, turn to the Qurʾān, follow it with true following, obey its commands, desist at its prohibitions, take on its [refining] manners, and seek guidance by its teachings.
“Being wary” (al-ittiqāʾ) is taken from wiqāya (guarding): one says, “he guarded against the sword with the shield,” that is, guarded against what is feared. And so [al-Baqara] 2:24, “so beware the Fire,” and 2:48, “and beware a day when no [soul] shall compensate.” The God-wariness (taqwā) of God is an expression for guarding against what is feared from Him — His wrath and punishment — which is guarded against by seeking His good pleasure and obeying His commands and prohibitions. The unqualified [use] of taqwā in describing them indicates that it is a general, fixed attribute of theirs, an ingrained habitus, like “the scholar” and “the jurist.” The “those who” in the coming verse, and the one after it, is not a subject whose predicate is “those follow their Lord’s guidance” — as some tafsīrs supposed — but is an adjective of “the Godwary.” (2) “Those who” — out of their strength in God-wariness, faith in the truth, and following the proof — “believe in the Unseen”: [in] what they have not seen or sensed, the certainty of faith coming to them by the proof from the Book of God and the word of one whose infallibility is [itself] established by proof — such as the raising [of the dead], the resurrection, the promise and the threat, the Garden and the Fire, and the states of the Resurrection. Among the [true] instances of those who believe in the Unseen are those who believe in the rising of the awaited Mahdī (may God hasten his relief), as in the narration from the People of the House (peace be upon them).66
“and maintain the prayer”: they keep to it constantly at its times, upright upon its bounds, its conditions, and its sincerity in worship, with longing toward God in intimate prayer and standing in obedience in His presence. “and out of what We have provided them” — of wealth, indeed of knowledge too, as in the narration of the People of the House — “they spend”, as God has made obligatory or recommended, of righteousness and benefaction by teaching and exposition; and they spend it while knowing and acknowledging that it is God’s provision and favour upon them, so that their spending is more deeply [woven] into obedience joined with gratitude, and nearer to [true] knowledge, benefaction, and perseverance. (3) “and those who”: another attribute
(2:4) and who believe in what has been sent down to you and what was sent down before you, and are certain of the Hereafter. (2:5) Those follow their Lord’s guidance, and it is they who are the felicitous.
…of the Godwary. And the conjunctive wāw was brought to draw attention to the excellence of this attribute; for enumeration by conjunction represents to the mind each of the attributes as independent in its merits, unlike when they run on without conjunction. Do you not see that the mind finds, in the sheen of the attributes in “the man came — the learned, and the righteous, and the generous, and the brave” — what it does not find in “the learned, righteous, generous, brave man came”? “who believe in what has been sent down to you” — of the revelation, the Book and other [than it] — and acknowledge that it is sent down from God upon His Messenger, as a mercy to the servants and a kindness from Him, so that the emblem of faith in it shows upon them. “and what was sent down before you” — upon the messengers and prophets, according to what comes to them of the means of knowing of its sending-down — the clearest of which is the report of the Noble Qurʾān and of the chosen Messenger concerning it; and that is [part] of faith in the Unseen, for they did not themselves witness a sign or miracle from those bygone prophets. “and of the Hereafter” — which the Qurʾān mentioned, and what is in it, and of which you [O Prophet] informed them in your glad tidings and warning — “they are certain,” and they see it, by their faith in the Unseen, with true certainty, as though it were seen by the eye.
The imperfect form in “they are certain” indicates the fixity and permanence of the certainty — which shows its mark in the perseverance of obedience, in dread of God’s wrath and punishment, and in longing for God’s good pleasure and the reward He has prepared in the Hereafter for the righteous. And it is these — described by these attributes — who are certain of the Hereafter: not one who belies it in belief and word; nor one who [merely] shapes it, forcing his belief in it contrary to what God’s messengers and Books brought; nor one whose conduct, in his evil deeds and neglect of obedience, portrays the weakness of his faith in the Hereafter — [such] that his heedlessness of it in his deeds and omissions all but consumes what belief in it he outwardly forces upon himself, God protect us.
And after extolling the attributes of the Godwary, guided by the Book, there came the glad tidings of the honour of their station and the profit of their commerce; so God said concerning them: (5) “Those” [are] established “upon guidance from their Lord” — and enabling grace and support — since, by their faith and their turning to obedience, they were worthy of it. “and it is they who are the felicitous” — they and no others: in this world, by the ease of the contentment they have come to feel, the appraising of favours and gratitude for them, the excellence of contentment with God’s decree and submission to His wisdom, and the ease of tranquillity, righteousness, and good character; and in the Hereafter, by the felicity of abiding bliss. And, on the occasion of [describing] the state of the Book in its guidance toward the described Godwary, and their [portion] of guidance and felicity, God mentioned to His Messenger the state of some of the unbelievers: that they, in their persistence in error upon unbelief and rebellion, are such that your warning avails nothing with them, and they will not believe
(2:6) As for the faithless, it is the same to them whether you warn them or do not warn them, they will not have faith. (2:7) God has set a seal on their hearts and their hearing, and there is a blindfold on their sight; and there is a great punishment for them.
…in God, His Messenger, and His Book. This is what the flow of the Noble Qurʾān requires — especially with the report about those who disbelieved beginning without a conjunctive wāw. (6) “As for those who disbelieved”: [this] means a particular class of those who profess unbelief, [those] known to the Messenger; or the tyrants (ṭawāghīt) in general, whom God knows will — through their rebellion — die persisting upon the error of associating [partners with God] and unbelief in God, His Messenger, His Book, and what the two brought in the summons to the truth, [and this] despite the precious proofs and the clear evidence. These — “it is the same to them whether you warn them or do not warn them, they will not believe,” and they do not choose faith, because, by their tyranny and their engrossment in the error of unbelief, they have shut up their hearts and their hearing and firmly sealed them against the entry of anything of the summons of faith and the evidences of its signs, or of the light of truth and the healing exposition — so that they merited being deprived of God’s enabling grace (tawfīq) and His support.67 And His enabling grace and support are among the strongest of what aids the servant in choosing obedience and faith, for they lift from his path what would trip him and make his feet slip — the promptings of Satan, the lapses of caprice, and the striving of the soul that incites to evil toward its base lusts. So the deprivation of the rebellious of enabling grace was as a seal upon what they had themselves closed off by their evil choice and their tyranny.
And because that deprivation is from God — on account of their [having] departed from [all] fitness [for grace] — the “sealing,” by which it was named, was ascribed to God (mighty and majestic), since it is God in whose hand is the affair of enabling grace, the granting and the withholding alike. On this [basis] He said: (7) “God has set a seal on their hearts and their hearing, and upon their sight is a covering” — [born] of [their] rebellion, since they preferred blindness to guidance, so that they do not see the lights of truth and gnosis, [even] with their blazing like the sun at high forenoon. “And for them” — for the rebellion in unbelief, tyranny, and opposition to God and His Messenger they have committed — “is a great punishment.”
It is not hidden that the position of the ʿAdliyya — both the Imāmiyya and the Muʿtazila — is that it is impossible, for the majesty of God, the All-Holy, the Perfect, the Self-Sufficient, that He prevent the human being, by [irresistible] compulsion, from accepting faith, or compel him into unbelief, or be Himself the creator of the unbelief in him — let alone that He then blame and punish him for it. For all that is rationally foul (qabīḥ), as is [known] among the innate self-evident [truths]; and it is self-evident that the foul is impossible to issue from God, the Self-Sufficient, the All-Holy. We [already] mentioned, in the latter part of the Second Station of the Fourth Chapter of the Introduction, that God has glorified His holiness, in the Qurʾān, by [His] transcendence above what is [even] less than that in foulness, and rebuked people for evil deeds. But Ibn al-Munayyir
bore down hard upon al-Zamakhsharī at this station, in his gloss on al-Kashshāf, and adduced for his [Ashʿarī] school [several] arguments long harped upon by the Ashʿarites.68 The first: that the ʿAdliyya’s position contradicts the rational proof of God’s oneness, its requirement being that there be no originated thing except by God’s power. This is repelled [by noting] that the question of [God’s] power is other than the question of [His] oneness; the utmost said of God’s power is that it does not fall short of any possible thing — even though [a foul act] becomes impossible to issue from Him, on account of its foulness and for the majesty of His holiness and perfection. It is no requirement of the proof of oneness that fornication, sodomy, unbelief, and the barring of the unbelievers from faith should occur by God’s act, creating, and power. As for their saying that ascribing agency to people — their bringing their own acts into existence — entails shirk in God’s attribute, that is refuted [by noting] that the oneness obligatory in faith is the oneness of God and the denial of a partner to Him in divinity and what returns to it; in other than that, the Qurʾān itself has made God and His servants share in the [generic] kind of the attribute of life, knowledge, mercy, and creating — even though God’s attributes are distinguished from their kind by His perfection.
The second: the textual proof, such as “[God is the] creator of all things” (6:102) and “Is there any creator other than God?” (35:3). This is answered [by noting] that Ibn al-Munayyir and those who argue thus are as though they had neither read nor heard, from Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt, Abraham’s words to his people (29:17), “you create a falsehood”;69 nor God’s words to Jesus in Sūrat al-Māʾida (5:110), “and when you would create from clay the form of a bird”; nor Jesus’s words in Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (3:49), “I will create for you out of clay the form of a bird”; nor His words, of this same category, in Sūrat al-Muʾminūn (23:14), “So blessed is God, the best of creators!” Why did they not attend to [the fact] that the “creating” restricted to God is only the creating and origination proper to divinity? Upon this came His words in Sūrat al-Raʿd (13:16), “Or have they set up for God partners who have created the like of His creation, so that the creation seemed alike to them? Say: God is the creator of all things.”
The third: that though the issuing of some acts from people be foul in the [case of the] “witnessed,” yet ruling their issuing from God foul is an analogizing of the “absent” to the “witnessed,” which is invalid. This is answered, first: how ugly it is to speak of God and His affairs as “the absent”! — when He is Witness over everything, and nearer to you than the jugular vein. And secondly: the ruling of some of people’s acts as foul is not [derived] from the five senses, that it might be said “the senses do not perceive God”; for people [well] know that the ʿAdliyya frame this question in terms of the rational good and foul, and proclaim that what rules a thing good or foul is the intellect itself, by its own perception, without any intrusion of sense or [need of] the act’s existence in the external [world]. Would that I knew: has the intellect [any] “witnessed” and “absent”? And thirdly: that the ruling of the
innate intellect that the foul is foul to issue from its doer is [made] only in view of the doer’s intellect, the aspect of his perfection, and his knowledge of the act and of the aspect of its foulness; and for this [reason] the intellect does not rule the doer at fault in the case of children and the insane, who do not discriminate, nor in the case of one heedless of the act or of its foulness. And God is the Perfect, the All-Knowing, the All-Aware — so He (holy be His majesty) is the first whose act the intellect regards, and [concerning whom] it rules that the issuing of the foul from Him is impossible.
The fourth: that it is foul, on the part of a human being, that he should enable his slave [to commit] foul and indecent acts before his own sight and hearing, then punish him for it — all the more since the power by which people commit indecencies is from God, with His knowledge of who will commit them. This is answered [by noting] that the foul “enabling” is that specific to the doing of indecencies; but God gave the human being his faculties that he might benefit by them in the permitted and the preferred [acts], as a favour, for the preservation of his species and the ordering of his society. The utmost of the matter is that he is [also] able to employ them in the forbidden — which He has guided him to abandon by the intellect, by the prophets’ prohibitions in His revelation, and by their warning [him] with the threat [of punishment]. So these faculties are an extended favour, having no bearing on the example they gave; God did not create a faculty specific to evil deeds, that it might refute what we hold on the question of foulness.
The fifth: that a foul wrong (ẓulm) is only [one’s] disposing of another’s property without leave; and God is the Owner of the servants and of everything, so whatever He does with them is not a wrong. This is answered, first: that the intellect does not, in its rulings, halt at what some legal manuals or lexicons say of the meaning of ẓulm — [written] out of laxity, or restriction to the point of need. For every one possessed of awareness, if he saw the owner of a slave [who] had stopped his mouth and forcibly kept him from drinking water, persisting while saying, “Drink! drink!” — until, when thirst harmed the [slave] while he was prevented from drinking, his owner flared into rage against him and set to rebuking and punishing him because he had not drunk — and likewise were he to do the like with an animal he owns: everyone who sees or learns of that state rules, by sheer self-evidence, that the slave and animal are wronged, and that the owner is a wrongdoer who has done a foul thing. And secondly: that the requirement of what they claimed is that the prophets and messengers who spent their lives in God’s obedience and worship and the summons to Him, bearing hardships patiently — that God might, [permissibly], punish these noble ones on the Day of Resurrection in Hell forever, with the punishment of Iblīs and Pharaoh (by their claim), and that this be neither wrong nor foul, since they are His slaves and property! The sixth: that there may [permissibly] be some wisdom warranting God’s compelling His servants to unbelief and evil deeds and then punishing them, so that the intellect — given this possibility — has no way to ruling this compulsion and punishment foul. This is answered [by noting] that the intellect [does] rule foulness and impossibility here, because it finds that no wisdom [could] lift its foulness [as coming] from God, nor is it fit
that any wisdom [should] lift its foulness. And were anyone to attempt to close, against the intellect, the door of this [immediate] finding, that would be an inane sophistry that closes against the intellect the door of its own rulings — invalid of necessity. Moreover, this [appeal to] the possibility of some [hidden] wisdom recoils upon them inescapably: for by their denial of rational foulness and of the impossibility of the foul issuing from God, they have closed against themselves the door of [any] knowledge of the truthfulness of the prophethoods, of [the principle] that God does not manifest a miracle at the hand of a liar, and of the truthfulness of the divine Books and what is in them of the sanctification of God and the affair of the Resurrection, the bliss, the punishment, the Garden, and the Fire. For if they say, “We know from God’s custom that He does not lie and does not manifest a miracle at the hand of a liar,” we say to them, first: why do you not [likewise] permit that there be some wisdom warranting a departure from custom? Having dismissed the intellect at this station, it is not [open] to you to say the intellect finds that no wisdom permits a departure from custom — and, besides, a departure from custom has in it no impediment that [some] wisdom might not counter, unlike the foul, as we said. And secondly: the claim to know God’s custom befits none but an eternal [being] acquainted with all God’s acts from eternity, in negation and affirmation, so as to know what became His custom and what did not. And who claims he is that eternal one? And what bars a departure from custom, even absent [any] wisdom? Glory be to You, O God — how manifest are Your holiness and perfection to the intellects You have bestowed upon Your servants, by whose rulings You have established the proof against them!
(2:8) And among the people are those who say, “We have faith in God and the Last Day,” but they have no faith.
(8) “And among the people” — that is, a folk among them, namely the hypocrites — “are those who say” (the pronoun made singular in view of the word “man [those who]”) “We have faith in God and the Last Day.” The apparent [meaning] — as agreement has been reported upon it — is that what is meant are those who display faith while concealing hypocrisy;70 among the witnesses to that is His words afterward (2:14), “When they meet the faithful, they say, ‘We believe,’ but when they are alone with their devils …” They mentioned their faith in God and the Last Day, gathering the [two] extremities of faith — since faith in the Last Day is [logically] a branch upon faith in the Messenger and the Qurʾān — and so as to display, in their deceiving, that they fear God and the punishment of the Hereafter and hope for the bliss of the reward, thus keeping close to God-wariness [for show]. What they mean by “we believe” is that the attribute of faith is [now] fixed for them, so that they are of the company of the believers — not [merely] to report the bare occurrence of faith in the past, which is compatible both with steadfastness and with later apostasy and hypocrisy. For this [reason] God said, “but they have no faith” — rather they are hypocrites. (9) “They seek to deceive God and those who have faith.” Deceiving (mukhādaʿa) is what causes and engenders deception (khadīʿa), of word or deed; and deception is what is caused and engendered by
(2:9) They seek to deceive God and those who have faith, yet they deceive no one but themselves, but they are not aware. (2:10) There is a sickness in their hearts; then God increased their sickness, and there is a painful punishment for them because of the lies they used to tell.
…that, when it is not prevented by the knowledge of the one whose deception is sought, or by his being set aright by God, or by his wariness. The [grammatical] reciprocal form (mufāʿala) may come from one side [only]71 — as in “God granted him health” (ʿāfāhu Allāh), “he punished the criminal,” “I inspected the thing,” “I undertook the affair.” But this deceiving of theirs neither causes nor engenders a deception except for themselves; “yet they deceive” — by it — “no one but themselves,” for what returns upon them, in this world and the next, of the evil consequence of this deceiving and hypocrisy; “but they are not aware.”
If it be said: these hypocrites — if they are in reality materialists (dahriyyūn) denying the existence of a God, how do they direct deceiving toward Him? And if they are idolaters who acknowledge God, His divinity, and His knowledge, yet associate idols with Him, how is their venturing to deceive Him to be conceived — that they should seek from Him inadvertence? We say: if that be inconceivable, given their vacillation in hypocrisy and their floundering in the errors of caprice and unbelief, [then] some exegetes said that “deceiving” came here by way of figurative usage and metaphor, since this saying of theirs resembles deceiving, even if they did not intend it. But what is apparent from the context is that, by this saying, they [do] deceive the Messenger and the believers, in the true sense of deceiving; and it is not admissible to use the word in the literal and the figurative meaning at once. So some kept “deceiving” upon its literal sense, and said the figurativeness is only in ascribing it to God, not in ascribing it to those who believe — the figurativeness being that boldness to deceive the Messenger (foremost of the believers, inasmuch as he is God’s Messenger) is as boldness to deceive God; so “deceiving” was ascribed to God in the manner of His words in Sūrat al-Fatḥ (48:10), “Indeed those who swear allegiance to you swear allegiance only to God.” This is the more apparent of the two views.
(10) “There is a sickness in their hearts”: the sickness of hypocrisy and duplicity. The name of “sickness” was here [used] figuratively, since in it is a departure from ordinary health; and hypocrisy is a departure from the innate uprightness of humankind and their proceeding upon what the luminous evidences make plain. Because of their rebellion in their hypocrisy, they departed from [all] fitness for the enabling grace to uprightness, so God turned His noble face from them and deprived them of the blessings of His kindness. “Then God increased them” — by depriving them of enabling grace — “in sickness,” after the manner of one who rebels through tyranny, so that God consigns him to his soul, engrossed in foulness ever since it gave its reins loose to caprice and Satan. It has [also] been said: the sickness is the anguish of envy and enmity toward the believers, and by God’s depriving them of His grace it increased — and on this consideration the increase was ascribed to God. And it has been said “then He increased them” is an imprecation against them — but the fāʾ does not suit that. And other [views have been said]. “And for them [p.71]
(2:11) When they are told, “Do not cause corruption on the earth,” they say, “We are only reformers!” (2:12) Look! They are themselves the agents of corruption, but they are not aware. (2:13) And when they are told, “Believe like the people who have believed,” they say, “Shall we believe like the fools who have believed?” Look! They are themselves the fools, but they do not know. (2:14) When they meet the faithful, they say, “We believe,” but when they are alone with their devils, they say, “We are with you; we were only deriding [them].”
“a painful punishment” — severe in pain — “because of the lies they used to tell” in their hypocrisy and deceiving, and their saying “we believe” when they are not believers. And what do you think of their punishment for their unbelief, evil deeds, and corruption! (11) “And when it is said to them, ‘Do not cause corruption on the earth’” — by your hypocrisy and evil deeds — “they say, ‘We are only reformers!’” And how false a saying, from the sick of heart, and from one who lords it — through ignorance or hypocrisy — over the realities, religion, and people’s affairs, whom his hangers-on then call “the great reformer”! (12) “Look! They are themselves the agents of corruption, but they are not aware” of their defect, nor of what accrues to them of the stigma of error, the exposure of their state, and the vileness of [their] repute. (13) “And when it is said to them, ‘Believe like the people who have believed’” — with the true known faith, steadfast upon its sound teachings, noble morals, and the obedience [shown] in aiding the religion of truth — “they say,” out of their error, “‘Shall we believe like the fools who have believed?’” — [meaning] those who submitted to Islam, the rulings of its religion, striving in God’s way, and the manifesting of the truth. “Look! They” — the hypocrites — “are themselves the fools,” who chose the folly of hypocrisy and squandered their right guidance in [true] knowledge, the religion of truth, and the felicity of the two abodes; “but,” by their persistence in error, “they do not know” that of which knowing would be an excellence and a means of safety from the meanness of ruinous folly.
And these hypocrites — beyond the foulnesses of unbelief already mentioned — [are] vacillating, of two tongues and two faces: (14) “When they meet those who believe” — with faith fixed upon insight — “they say,” in their falsification, “‘We believe,’” [i.e.,] we are now of the company of the believers; “and when they are alone with their devils” — who entice them to unbelief and opposition to God and His Messenger — “they say” to them, in private, “‘We are with you,’” upon what you are upon, of your company; “‘we were only’” — in our state with the believers and our showing them we are of them — “‘mocking’” them. So perdition to the counsels of the hypocrites! (15) “It is God who mocks them” — by giving them respite and granting them something of the trash of this world, their outcome in the end being the basest abasement and the severest punishment.72 The word “mocking” was [here] used figuratively, for its resemblance to it in their exulting in the outward show of respite and endowment — though it is joined with contempt for them and the preparing of a painful punishment.
(2:15) It is God who derides them, and leaves them bewildered in their rebellion. (2:16) They are the ones who bought error for guidance, so their trade did not profit them, nor were they guided. (2:17) Their parable is that of one who lighted a torch, and when it had lit up all around him, God took away their light, and left them sightless in a manifold darkness.
The beauty of this metaphor increases in its juxtaposition with their saying, “we were only mocking.” And how far short of it falls ʿAmr b. Kulthūm’s saying in his muʿallaqa: “Ah — let no one act ignorantly against us, lest we act ignorantly beyond the ignorance of the ignorant!” “and leaves them … in their rebellion” — He gives them rein and respite in their persistence upon their rebellion, [together] with their deprivation of enabling grace — and this stands as the interpretation of that for which “mocking” was [figuratively] used. “bewildered” (yaʿmahūn): al-ʿamah is blindness of opinion and insight, and wavering in error.
(16) “They are the ones who bought error for guidance”: since they were of those for whom God had prepared, by His kindnesses, the means of guidance, and [for whom] He made their land the alighting-place of the blessing of the Hijra, the dawning-place of the lights of revelation, and the beacon of the evidences and proofs; the kindnesses had encompassed them, guidance came upon them morning and evening, and they answered the summons of Islam without the compulsion of war or the terror of the sword. Yet this guidance — by whose sweet springs and ripe fruits they had been blessed with nearness — they exchanged for error. Now every rational buyer must needs regard his profit by what he has bought, and his gladness in his commerce — this being the first thing sought of profit. Profit is the opposite of loss; and whoever does not profit in his commerce, and for whom what he bought has no benefit, is a loser. It suffices these [people] of folly that they bought and traded, “yet their trade did not profit them,” and there is no benefit for them in what they bought — let alone its evil consequence in this world and the next — “nor were they guided” from the outset, for they did not display Islam out of insight and faith, but for other aims. It has [also] been said: “nor were they guided” in their commerce; but the first is more apparent and more fitting to the state [of affairs].
(17) “Their parable,” in their state, “is that of one who lighted a fire” and sought its kindling for his need of light, “and when it had lit up all around him,” from [every] quarter, and his benefiting by its light in the affairs that concern him drew near, that light departed, and this kindler returned into a pitch darkness in which he sees nothing, groping blindly, guided to no way. These hypocrites used to be honoured with the presence of the Messenger (God bless him and his Household), listening to his speech and his proofs in his exposition, his evidences in his guidance, and his recitation of the Book of God — so they were like one who lighted a fire for guidance; and when the ways of right guidance and the dwellings of truth had lit up for them by God’s kindness, they rebelled against God by their hypocrisy, and so departed from being fit [p.73]
(2:18) Deaf, dumb, and blind, they will not come back.
…for enabling grace and support, and God consigned them to their souls that incite to evil and their wicked caprices, which drew down over them the darknesses of error by their own evil choice. And that God might extol the noble effect enabling grace and support have in reinforcing the intellect in its combat against the whisperings of Satan and the promptings of the soul that incites to evil, He expressed their state in their error — by way of figurative usage and the metaphor of likeness — [saying] that they, at that point, “God took away their light,” and pointed to the meaning of that by His words, “and left them sightless in a manifold darkness” — that is, God left them to their caprices and evil choice, so that they came to grope in the darknesses of error, seeing in them no way of guidance.
The Noble Qurʾān has [here] followed the finest method of eloquence in setting forth their parable and its evil result:73 it stated the course of the parable and its purport, and contented itself with stating [only] its result — through the indication of the evil result for the state of those on whose account the parable was struck — thus handing the hearer the completion of the parable and the result of the hypocrites’ state in the most concise, intelligible exposition; just as it contented itself with the parable’s premises, [dispensing] with mentioning the hypocrites [explicitly] in their kindling of the fire of guidance and its lighting up around them, as we described. And a mind of good understanding may conceive it better than we have. Had the Qurʾān spread the discourse out as we expounded it, prolixity would have followed; had it neglected what it stated of the hypocrites’ state, no result of value would have come of the parable; and had it stated the kindler’s result before it, the mind would have grown familiar with it and would not have been startled by the hypocrites’ appalling result — contrary to the intended aim and to the excellence of exposition.
Among the things it is fitting to note is that some tafsīrs known for [their] excellence gave the interpretation of the verse otherwise than we have, and from that [several] things arose: first, the boldness of non-Muslims to object against the Noble Qurʾān; secondly, [the exegete’s] taking refuge in making “alladhī [the one who]” mean “alladhīna [those who]” — which, besides its feebleness, contradicts the singular pronoun in “lighted” and “around him”; thirdly, his citing as evidence His words in Sūrat al-Tawba (9:69), “and you gossiped as they gossiped” — although “alladhī” there is [for] the singular, not “those who”; fourthly, the omission of the evil result for the hypocrites — and in that is what is in it — [and] moreover, His words “deaf, dumb, blind” are among the attributes of the hypocrites, not part of the parable’s completion, so that connecting them to the hypocrites [on his reading] entails a great leap and a separation by a long foreign interposition.
These hypocrites, whose light God took away as we described, are, in their error: (18) “deaf” (ṣumm), plural of aṣamm, one lacking the faculty of hearing — said [to be] one born so; “dumb” (bukm), plural of abkam — said [to be] the mute, said [to be] one born so, and said [to be] the mute [afflicted] with speechlessness and imbecility; “blind” (ʿumy) [p.74]
… they will not come back. (2:19) Or that of a rainstorm from the sky, wherein is darkness, thunder, and lightning: they put their fingers in their ears due to the thunderclaps, apprehensive of death; and God besieges the faithless.
…plural of aʿmā (blind). They were likened to that because, by their insistence upon error, they have taken themselves out of any benefiting and guidance by what they hear of the evidences, exhortation, warning, and teaching; out of guidance by asking about the truth and conversing about it; and out of benefiting by what they witness that would make plain to them the way of right direction. “So they will not come back” to the reality of faith, since Satan has gained mastery over them.
(19) “Or that of a rainstorm from the sky”: it is coordinated by “or” (aw) so as to call attention — by the alternation between the two parables — to the difference in their course and their purport.74 It is as though it were said: if you wish the parable struck for the state of the hypocrites vis-à-vis Islam and its guidance, then [it is] by “one who lighted a fire,” to its end; and if you wish it struck for the case of Islam vis-à-vis the hypocrites, then its parable is that of a rainstorm from the sky — the word “parable” being elided, since what precedes and the flow of speech indicate it. The ṣayyib is [rain] pouring from on high; the sky is the direction of height above the earth. So what is meant is the abundant, pouring rain by which the earth comes to life and blossoms with its plants, and by which crops and cattle thrive — the mainstay of livelihood for people, especially the Arabs, the folk of the deserts, and the herds. Yet it is not free of being accompanied by darknesses following one on another whenever the pouring cloud lowers darkly and the horizons grow black with it, especially by night.
For this [reason] the pouring rain was described — by a breadth in the adverbial [construction] — as [one] “wherein is darkness, thunder, and lightning,” since it is not free of thunder, lightning, and thunderbolts — the crashing thunders, terrifying by their sound, which are what is meant in the verse, though “thunderbolt” (ṣāʿiqa) is also a name for the fire that comes down with that terrifying thunder. So Islam, for people and the order of their society, is like the pouring rain: in it are their life and their felicity in the two abodes, and the blossoming of the earth by justice, righteousness, security, and the goodliness of society. But the obstinacy of those who oppose the truth and its people made Islam like the rain [in] not being free of darknesses of hardships, wars, and enmity from the polytheists, and thunders of slaying and fighting and distressing threats — for all but the steadfast of the people of insight, who held their souls cheap in God’s way and the attaining of felicity. And in it are flashes of victory, hopes of triumph, the seizing of spoils, and the might of victory, invincibility, and awe. So [the hypocrites], when they hear the thunderbolts of war, are seized by panic and dread of being slain. Their state was likened [to those who] “put their fingers in their ears” on account of “the thunderclaps, apprehensive of death,” and in fear that their hearts be torn out from the horror of their sounds. And how foolish are their minds! Whither do they flee from death, and what avails them their dread? “And God besieges [p.75]
(2:20) The lightning almost snatches away their sight: whenever it shines for them, they walk in it, and when it becomes dark for them, they stand. Had God willed, He would have taken away their hearing and sight. Indeed God has power over all things. (2:21) O mankind! Worship your Lord, who created you and those who were before you, so that you may be Godwary — (2:22) He who made the earth a place of repose for you, and the sky a canopy, and sends down water from the sky …
“the faithless” — the hypocrites, [who] have no escape from His decree: “Wherever you may be, death shall overtake you” (4:78); “had you been in your houses, those destined to be slain would have set out toward the places where they would lie” (3:154). Or what is meant is: what [use] is this fear and panic, when the state [of affairs] is that God besieges the unbelievers who war on Islam, and is the One who forsakes and destroys them? — the signs of that having appeared at the battle of Badr and before it. (20) “The lightning almost” — that is, what we mentioned of the lightning of Islam and the lights of its might — “snatches away their sight” by the intensity of its lights. So they, “whenever it shines for them,” and they take ease in its splendour and their hopes cling to worldly felicity, “walk in it,” keeping pace with the Muslims and displaying agreement; “and when it becomes dark for them” — the light of hopes being cut off, at what they at times see of the darknesses of hardships — “they stand [still],” halting in their place in hypocrisy, fixed upon the bewilderment of their error. “Had God willed, He would have taken away their hearing and sight,” so they would hear neither the glad tidings [realized] in Islam nor the hardships that at times befall the Muslims, nor see that, and so not waver in the error of hypocrisy. “Indeed God has power over all things.”
(21) “O mankind! Worship” God “your Lord,” and submit to Him with the submission due to divinity, and obey Him, for He is your Lord, your Owner, your Governor, and your Nurturer, “who created you and those who were before you, so that you may be Godwary.” “Perhaps” (laʿalla) did not come [here] for [divine] hoping, but to make plain that it is not entailed, from their worshipping God, that they [thereby] fear Him with the God-wariness due Him; rather it is possible that the [said] God-wariness occur from them by their good choice, and possible that it not occur, by their evil choice.
And, to argue [His claim to worship] by the bounties of lordship and the effects of power, He mentioned, of the Lord’s attributes, that He is (22) “He who made the earth a place of repose for you,” smoothed out, so that benefiting by it is made easy for you in dwelling, sowing, and planting; “and the sky a canopy,” [so that] you do not fear the falling of its bodies upon you. There is in this no explicit [statement] agreeing with the old astronomy, nor any explicit [statement] contradicting the new astronomy;75 for the reality of the matter none knows but God, and the configurations posited in the two systems have no basis but surmise, which doubts and rebuttals push against — what is [actually] perceived by sense being only the motions of the heavenly bodies. “And He sends down from the sky” — that is, from its direction, or [it may be] that “the sky” here means the direction of height — “water,” which is the rain by which He gives life to [p.76]
… and with it He brings forth crops for your sustenance. So do not set up equals to God, while you know. (2:23) And if you are in doubt concerning what We have sent down to Our servant, then bring a sūra like it, and invoke your helpers besides God, should you be truthful.
…the earth after its death. “And with it He brings forth” — by the properties He created and appointed in it — “crops” (of which what may be meant encompasses grains and foods) “for your sustenance.” And could that come from other than the God — the Powerful, the Knowing, the Wise? You yourselves acknowledge the God, and that all this is of His creating and bestowal; so what ails you that you set up gods alongside Him — even on the claim that they are “descents” of the divinity, or “emanations” from the God, or His “manifestations,” or [built] upon the doctrine of the ten intellects, that nothing can issue from God except the First Intellect?76 Exalted is God above what they describe!
“So do not set up rivals (andād) to God”: andād is the plural of nidd. It has been said the nidd is the like (mithl); and it has been said, the opposite. In al-Nihāya: it is the like of a thing that opposes and rivals it. In al-Miṣbāḥ: the nidd is only [something] opposing. In al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān: “the root of nidd is the opposing like.” In al-Kashshāf, at this verse: “it is said only of the opposing, contending like” — and the like of it in Jamʿ al-Jawāmiʿ. Now the polytheists assign to their idols, and to what they deify, the attribute of divinity and its acts — and by that they make each of what they associate a rival to God, a contending like set up against Him in His divinity. “while you know” that the God — the Creator, the Worshipped, the Obeyed — is God; so what are these claims, and what is this shirk, contradicting your own knowledge? Had you reflected upon the shining proofs, you would have known how the delusions confused [things] for you and the caprices deceived your minds. So affirm God’s oneness, O people, as is His due, and believe in the servant of God, His Messenger, who brought the dazzling proofs and upon whom the Great Qurʾān was sent down.
(23) “And if you are in doubt concerning what We have sent down” — of the Qurʾān — “to Our servant,” and you doubt that it is the speech of God and His revelation sent from Him, and would allow that a human brought it from himself without revelation,77 “then bring a sūra like it” — like the Qurʾān — for it was sent down in your Arabic tongue, and you are the people of eloquence and rhetoric, who have reached the pinnacle of Arabic letters that human power attains, and you have [all] respite and leisure. “And invoke your witnesses besides God” — those who aid you and testify for you, that you may seek support by their testimony (for God will not testify for you, since He knows you are not able for it); or: invoke the men of your eloquence, who attend the fairs and markets of the Arabs [p.77]
… should you be truthful. (2:24) And if you do not — and you will not — then beware the Fire whose fuel will be humans and stones, prepared for the faithless. (2:25) And give good news to those who have faith and do righteous deeds, that for them shall be gardens with streams running in them …
…for vying in eloquence and competing in its arenas; so seek help by them in that, besides God. For seeking help by God in that, and supplicating Him, [would] make the bringing of the sūra — and more — possible, by means of God’s aid and revelation, as it was possible for the Messenger of God. “should you be truthful” in your claim that it is possible for the human being, by his human power, to bring [the Qurʾān], or its like, or a sūra like it. And these [people] — though their being truthful in that is impossible, so that it would fit to say “had you been truthful” (law kuntum) — yet it was said “if you be” (in kuntum) by way of going along with them and gentleness in address. As for His words “and if you are in doubt” — although their apparent [state] is denial of the Qurʾān’s being sent from God — it may be [so phrased] because He knows that among them is one [somewhat] affected by the abundance of witnesses to the messengership and the sending-down, so that his affair returns from denial to doubt; so God argued against them with the proof that severs both the whisperings of doubt and the obstinacy of denial. Or He argued against the least opponent of faith — doubt — with a proof that runs [equally] in it and in denial.
(24) “And if you do not” — and you [do] not bring a sūra like it, through your incapacity and the human power’s falling short — “and you will not” — a report to them that they will not do it, it being beyond human power however they excel in eloquence, and however they cooperate and seek help of [other] humans — “then beware the Fire.” That is: if you are incapable and do not do it, it is [then] incumbent upon you to know that the Qurʾān is sent down from God upon His Messenger, and to believe in the Book and the Messenger. And if the honour of humanity, the intellect, and the desire for felicity do not call you to faith — after the manner of the faith of free men — then let it be no less than that fear call you, as in the obedience of slaves; for behind you is the Fire of which the Qurʾān has warned you, “whose fuel is people and stones.” al-Waqūd (with fatḥa) is that by which the fire is kindled. What, then, do you think of a Fire whose fuel is people — with their flesh, blood, and refuse — and whose fuel is stones without restriction? So guard against it by your faith and your obedience to God and His Messenger. “It has been prepared” — made ready — “for the faithless,” who die upon unbelief.
Then He (exalted be His station) joined His threat to the unbelievers with His glad tidings to the believers, saying: (25) “And give good news to those who have faith and do righteous deeds, that for them shall be gardens” in which they take delight; and among the perfection of their splendour, their refreshment, and the beauty of their aspect is that “streams run beneath them,” after the wont of gardens of splendour and radiance: that the water is neither cut off from them nor rises above them, so that they would become like stagnant pools [p.78]
… whenever they are provided from them with a fruit for sustenance, they will say, “This is what we were provided before,” and they will be given it resembling one another; and for them therein are purified mates, and they will abide therein forever. (2:26) Indeed God is not ashamed to strike a parable of a gnat or something above it. As for those who have faith, they know it is the truth from their Lord; and as for the faithless, they say, “What did God mean by this parable?”
…rather, the channels of their waters are lower than their ground; [the blessed] take delight in their fruits. And “whenever they are provided from them with a fruit for sustenance,” they see it [to be] of the [same] kind as the fruits of this world, and “they say” thereupon, “This is what we were provided before,” in this world. The wisdom in the Garden’s fruits being of the kind of this world’s fruits is that this is more conducive to desire for the Garden’s bliss, and better in effect as glad tidings; for souls take delight in what is familiar, and were people told of what they had seen no specimen of, they would not desire it as they desire what they know. “And they will be given it” — the apparent [sense] is the sustenance of the Garden — “resembling one another” in beauty and goodness, no poor [thing] mixed with its good. “And for them therein are purified mates” (azwāj muṭahhara), whom God purified in creating them — and let that suffice as a fixed description; the unrestricted “purification” entails that they are hallowed of everything deemed foul, in creation and character. “And they, therein, shall abide” for the whole span of eternity.
(26) “Indeed God is not ashamed to strike a parable of any [thing]” — a parable that accords with the fittingness in the likening, whether by the lowly or the weighty.78 The verse gives to understand a rebuke of one who found God’s striking of parables objectionable; and it may be [meant] to forestall objection to the two foregoing parables and others, even if none had [actually] objected. Occasions [of revelation] have been transmitted for it, but they are not sound, nor free of doubt and defect. In the striking of a parable are great benefits in instruction and understanding, not otherwise obtained; for by likening [a thing] to the sensed, the known, and the familiar, the soul’s response intensifies and the mind is drawn to grasp the matter for which the likeness is struck. The meaning of “God is not ashamed” is that He does not abandon the striking of a parable — with its wisdom and subtlety of exposition — on account of the lowliness of that by which the likeness is made, or [because] the thing likened is far greater than it. The fittingness required that for that “abandoning” the word “shame” (istiḥyāʾ) be [figuratively] borrowed — shame being an affect in the soul, an abashment that prevents disclosing a thing even when a purpose attaches to it. “a gnat” — of these gnats, deemed lowly for their smallness — “or something above it. As for those who believe, they know it is the truth from their Lord,” proceeding upon wisdom in expounding the reality; “and as for those who disbelieve, they say” — in objection and disdain — “What did God intend by this as a parable?” The apparent [sense] is that they say “God intended” by way of [p.79]
Thereby He leads many astray, and thereby He guides many; and He leads no one astray thereby except the transgressors — (2:27) those who break the covenant of God after its solemn pledge, and sever what God has commanded to be joined, and cause corruption on the earth: it is they who are the losers.
…mockery of the Messenger’s claim that the parable is a revelation sent from God; for the unbelievers — indeed the hypocrites too — deny that revelation, and had they acknowledged it they would not have said this. God turned away from expounding what He intended by the parable — for its exposition is joined to it — and from mentioning its benefit — for its wisdom and result are clear, [and] none feigns ignorance of them but the obstinate fool. But He answered them with its evil result in relation to them, in their obstinacy, and with its praiseworthy effect in relation to the believers, saying “He leads many astray by it” — of the people who reject or mock the parable — that is, their result in that comes to be error, even though God intended by it their understanding and guidance.79 That is as one says, “So-and-so killed so-and-so by his forbearance”: he intended by his forbearance only its excellence, but its result was that the other, deluded by his ignorance, grew bold against a third and slew him; so the killing was ascribed to the first, on the consideration that his forbearance had, as its result, that slaying [carried out] by the deluded one by his own evil choice. “And He guides many by it” — the believers, who ponder it, take guidance by its import, and know its wisdom. “And He leads none astray by it” — in the [said] sense — “but the transgressors” (fāsiqīn), who are the unbelievers and hypocrites, [those] who rend the veil; for fisq, in the language, is a thing’s coming out of its covering — one says “the date fasaqat” when it comes out of its skin. Its generality [covering] unbelievers and hypocrites is not impaired by its being, in the later technical usage, specific to the Muslim who commits acts of disobedience.
(27) “those who” — the more apparent [reading is that] this describes transgressors in general, not specifically those whom the parable leads astray — “break the covenant of God after its solemn pledge.” The “undoing” (naqḍ) of a building is its demolition; of a rope, the loosing of its twist — the opposite of firmly plying it. “Covenant” (ʿahd) is used of an injunction — as in His words (36:60), “Did I not enjoin upon you, O children of Adam” — and of a promise joined with a display of commitment. Mīthāq is a verbal noun from wuthūq (trust-firmness), like mīʿād from waʿd, and mīlād from wilāda. That is: they undo God’s injunction, or the covenant they gave Him, made firm with binding confirmations. God’s covenant — in its binding of the bond between servant and Lord — was likened to a rope firmly plied, so for its violation “undoing” was borrowed.80 The more apparent [sense] is whatever God enjoined upon people and made binding — whether by the indication of the intellect or by the conveyance of the messengers and the sent-down Books; and whether in oneness and [divine] cognition, or in prophethood, or in the imāmate, or in religion and the sacred law. “And they sever what God has commanded to be joined” — among which is the joining of the ties of kinship, and the joining [of oneself] to the Messenger and the Imām by obedience, as He commanded [p.80]
(2:28) How can you be unfaithful to God, seeing that you were lifeless and He gave you life, then He will make you die, then He will give you life, then to Him you shall be brought back?
…God; and the joining of the Messenger’s kindred by affection and the like. “And they cause corruption on the earth. It is they who are the losers” — in their transgression and the evil deeds mentioned of them.
(28) “How can you disbelieve in God?”: the repeated address may be to the unbelievers, “how” being for rebuking them for their unbelief [together] with the proof then mentioned; or it may address all people, an exposition that it does not befit a human of [any] awareness to choose unbelief, given the standing of the proofs — in his very existence and states — for the reality of the cognition of God. Does he then disbelieve in God?! “when you were dead and He gave you life”: the wāw is that of the circumstantial clause; there is no need to supply an implied “qad” — indeed it is not correct, for it would make the clause merely “when you were dead,” which does not suffice for the proof. Rather the circumstantial clause is the whole of “when you were dead and He gave you life,” or it and what follows — cohering as a single circumstantial meaning only if the whole is made the predicate of an elided “you”: that is, “and you — these matters, sufficient to indicate the existence of the One, All-Subduing God, come one after another upon you.”
What is meant by their being “dead” is that they were things lacking life; among the nearest [instances] is that they were drops [of seed] in the loins, or in the wombs a clot, a lump, or bones and flesh — with no life in any of that — and then life was placed in them. That comes to be not without an agent, nor from nothing, nor from one lacking knowledge, wisdom, and will. So let the human being take a lesson from the dazzling wisdom and marvels of craft in the composition of his body, its parts and arrangements and the causes of his life; then from what he was granted of life, senses, and perception. I have made plain the [manner of taking a] lesson from that — in customary and rational terms — in the epistle al-Balāgh al-Mubīn. “Then He makes you die” at your [appointed] terms. “Then He gives you life”: if this be part of the proof, it must bear a matter known and sensed to all — namely that He gives life to your species by giving life to your likes among people, and in this complete, perpetual power is a lesson for those of understanding. And if it be not part of the proof — as befits “then to Him you shall be returned” — but a report of the loci of His power, then what is meant is: He gives you life in the grave. It may [also] mean: He gives life to some of you in the rajʿa (the Return) held by the Imāmiyya, the [giving of] life being ascribed to the species [only] figuratively.81 “Then to Him you shall be returned” on the Day of Resurrection. Their “returning” is not after any absence or separation from Him (mighty and exalted); rather [it is] as you say to one present with you, “to me is your return” — that is, there is no escape for you, and I must needs carry out upon you my judgement and justice, even though [p.81]
(2:29) It is He who created for you all that is in the earth, then He turned to the heaven, and fashioned it into seven heavens, and He has knowledge of all things.
…I have granted you respite for a time. Among the confirmations of the proof — [here] carried in the manner of [conferring] favour, and to God be thanks — is His words (29): “It is He who created for you” — for your benefits, those you know and those you do not, [and] among your benefits is your taking a lesson from their creation — “all that is in the earth,” of plants, waters, animals, and minerals. So look with insight and take a lesson; turn your attention to what is in the earth, the seas, the plants, and the animals, of the manifestations of the God’s power, will, wisdom, and mercy. “Then He turned to the heaven” — the direction of height. The expression by “turning” (istiwāʾ) is figurative, on the consideration of the directing of His will and wisdom to the creation of the heavens on high, after He had created the earth and appointed in it its nourishments in four days.82 “And fashioned them” — and He explained the pronoun’s vagueness by His words — “seven heavens. And He, of everything” He has created “is Knowing,” just as upon [His] creatures appear the evidences of His knowledge and of His creating by will according to His wisdom. He mentioned, of the heavens, seven — on the consideration of what [people] saw and knew in those ages of the seven planets and the eclipsing of some by others; though the heavens, in the old astronomy, are nine (since the sphere of the fixed stars and the “Atlas” sphere are, as they claim, two further heavens), and in the new astronomy — reckoning the planets’ orbits — [there are] more. “And He, of everything, is Knowing.”
It is not hidden that ellipsis (ḥadhf) — [omitting] what the context indicates and to whose omission the tenor of the speech directs — is one of the doors of eloquence among the Arabs, frequent in their prose and their poetry. Let us mention some of their poetry, for the fittingness of the [present] context and as a preparation for what will come [in the discussion] of the kinds of ellipsis in the eloquence of the Noble Qurʾān.
Labīd b. Rabīʿa al-ʿĀmirī said:
She said, the morning we conversed apart beside her neighbour’s [tent]:
“You are the one you [once] were — but for the grey hair and old age.”
— he elided the predicate of “you were” (that is, “handsome,” or the like), [meaning] the grey hair and old age have changed you.
And Musāwir b. Hind b. Qays said:
You claimed your brothers, Quraysh, / have a covenant, while you have none;
those were made secure from fear and hunger — / yet the Banū Asad hungered and feared.
— he elided [the explicit] giving-them-the-lie, since his argument indicates it.
And ʿAbd Manāf al-Hudhalī said, at the close of his ode:
Until, when they had driven them into [the pass of] Qatāʾida, / off at a rush, as the drovers drive the straying camels …
— he elided the answer of “when” and its governing [verb], by the indication of the context and his word “off at a rush.”
And al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza al-Yashkurī said in his muʿallaqa: [p.82]
(2:30) When your Lord said to the angels, “Indeed I am going to set a viceroy on the earth …”
[al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza:]
Do not think us [off guard] in your moments of inadvertence — we [were wary long] before, when the enemies slandered us.
— he elided the second object (namely, “plunderers of the kingdom,” or “heedful of it,” or the like), or the predicate of “we [were],” or both.
And another said:
When it is said, “Journey on, for Laylā — perhaps —” / there crossed, short of Laylā, a crook-horned [ill omen], most enraging.
— he elided the predicate of “perhaps” (laʿalla), for a subtlety he preferred in what he longed for of Laylā.
And ʿUbayd b. al-Abraṣ said, addressing Imruʾ al-Qays:
We are the ones [who …] — so gather your hosts, then send them against us.
— he elided the relative’s complement, so that there be present in the hearer’s mind what the poet intends of the aspects of valour and intimidation. We have gathered in this preliminary [note] some witnesses to ellipsis and its lofty purposes, to refer back to in citing what will come of the Noble Qurʾān’s unique gems in the aspects of eloquence and the brilliance of exposition.
This [said]: the report has come in abundance from the People of the House (peace be upon them) that, before Adam, there was on the earth a kind of creation who caused corruption and destruction83 — as in the sound report of ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm in his tafsīr from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), and the strong report from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) from his forefathers from the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon them); al-Ṣadūq [too] related it in al-ʿIlal; and [there is] the report of Tafsīr al-Burhān from al-ʿAyyāshī, and al-ʿAyyāshī from ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn and from ʿĪsā b. Ḥamza from Abū ʿAbd Allāh. Al-Ḥākim related that in his Mustadrak, by way of the generality [i.e., Sunnī chains], and declared it sound, from Ibn ʿAbbās; and al-Ṭabarī [too] brought it out in his tafsīr. And when God had mentioned His creating of the earth and what is in it, that the human might benefit, and mentioned the creation of the heavens, He mentioned the beginning of His creating of the human, the affairs that transpired therein, and what is in the human’s creation of wisdom and of nobility for certain of its favoured individuals. So He said (mighty and majestic): (30) “When your Lord said to the angels, ‘Indeed I am going to set a viceroy (khalīfa) on the earth.’” “When” (idh) is an adverbial [of time], and its governing [verb] is elided, [which] His words “they said,” to the end of the narrative, interpret — as will come, God willing. And “setting” [means] creating: “I am making him a viceroy.” The viceroy (khalīfa) is one who succeeds another; and what may be meant is one who succeeds the earlier creation mentioned in the [aforesaid] reports. It has [also] been said that “idh” is a [direct] object — that is, “mention to the people, in the Qurʾān, that time” — like His words (19:16) “And mention in the Book Mary, when she withdrew from her family.” But from this view it follows that [p.83]
… they said, “Will You set in it someone who will cause corruption in it, and shed blood, while we celebrate Your praise and proclaim Your sanctity?” He said, “Indeed I know what you do not know.”
…the “mention” be restricted to God’s words to the angels, “Indeed I am setting a viceroy on the earth,” and that what follows be extraneous, since it was not made to branch upon it so as to be bound to it — as [things are] bound in His words [about Mary] “then the birth-pangs brought her,” to the end. The fitting [reading], then, is that “idh” be an adverbial attached to an elided [verb] that the tenor of the speech (which interprets it) indicates — namely, that the estimation is: “and when your Lord said to the angels ‘I am setting a viceroy on the earth,’ there transpired therein exchanges and affairs which His words interpret”: “they said, ‘Will You set in it one who will corrupt in it and shed blood?’” They said that having seen the earlier creation and their corruption and bloodshed, as the [aforesaid] reports indicate; and al-ʿAyyāshī related, by his chain from Hishām b. Sālim from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him): “How did the angels know [to say] ‘will You set in it one who will corrupt in it and shed blood,’ had they not [already] seen in it one who corrupts and sheds blood?”84
Their saying this need not be an objection or a sin on their part; rather they said it because God had informed them, in this address, that the viceroy is a human of clay — as in His words in the Meccan Sūrat Ṣād (38:71), “When your Lord said to the angels, ‘Indeed I am about to create a human being out of clay.’” So from his humanness they knew that he is possessed of appetite and anger, and they had observed, from the state of the earlier ones, that from appetite and anger arise corruption and bloodshed. Out of their hatred for corruption and disobedience to God, they asked about the wisdom in creating this viceroy, given that in appetite and anger he is like the earlier ones from whose corruption the earth had been purged. “While we” — of Your kindness in creating us without appetite or anger — always “celebrate,” the celebrating [being] “Your praise, and proclaim [Your] sanctity,” the sanctifying [being] “to You”; so if You wish the earth peopled with the righteousness of Your worship, set us in it. Yet, with [all] that, it would have been fitter for them that this question not issue from them at this station — even though their question was for learning — but rather that they consign the affair to God, His wisdom, and His knowledge of what is best. “He said” to them, “Indeed I know what you do not know” — for in that is a noble wisdom and a hidden kindness: [that] among humans will be prophets, messengers, and imāms in whom are appetite and anger, and who are, withal, at the highest degrees of purity, of [freely] chosen infallibility (ʿiṣma ikhtiyāriyya), of obedience and worship of God, and of self-effacement in guiding people and setting them aright. And in what we indicated from Tafsīr al-Qummī and al-Ṣadūq’s ʿIlal, from the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him): “‘setting on the earth a viceroy’ — [one] who will be a proof (ḥujja) of Mine over My creation.” And in it also: “I shall make of his progeny prophets and [p.84]
(2:31) And He taught Adam the Names, all of them; then presented them to the angels and said, “Tell me the names of these, if you are truthful.” (2:32) They said, “Immaculate are You! We have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Indeed You are the All-knowing, the All-wise.” (2:33) He said, “O Adam, inform them of their names,” and when he had informed them of their names, He said, “Did I not tell you that I know the Unseen of the heavens and the earth, and I know what you disclose and what you were concealing?”
…righteous servants and rightly-guiding imāms, and I shall make them viceroys,” [to the end of] the ḥadīth. (31) “And He taught Adam the Names, all of them” — that is, the names of these guides.85 Al-Ṣadūq related, by two reliable chains from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “God (blessed and exalted) taught Adam the names of all His proofs, then presented them — they being spirits — to the angels, and said, ‘Tell Me the names of these.’” “Then presented them” — they being pure spirits and sanctified lights that shine with guidance, purity, and chosen infallibility — “to the angels,” that they might know their surpassing merit, and that there appear to them something of the aspect of the wisdom in God’s creating the human, and of His knowledge of those by whose light the earth would be illumined and by whom the proof would stand over the angels. “And He said” — after presenting them and acquainting the angels with their meritorious state — “Tell Me the names of these” whose merit you have come to know, “if you are truthful” in the claim of knowledge [such] that you said what you said. (32) “They said, ‘Immaculate are You! We have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Indeed You are the All-knowing’” — “the All-wise” in Your acts. (33) “He said, ‘O Adam, inform them of their names’; and when he had informed them of their names, He said” to the angels, “Did I not tell you” — in what I taught you of the majesty of divinity, or in the sense of the earlier saying “I know what you do not know” — “that I know the Unseen of the heavens and the earth,” and, above that, that I know what is in [your] inmost thoughts, “and I know what you disclose and what you were concealing.” His words “and what you were concealing” indicate that there was something the angels concealed.
This [said]: it has [also] been claimed of these verses that God taught Adam the name of the dish, the pot, and everything — even the camel, cow, and sheep; and [it has been] said, the names of medicines, plants, trees, mountains, and the like. But in all this there is no fittingness to the angels’ question, nor to the arguing against them by knowledge of the loci of wisdom in creating the viceroy; indeed there is in it no answer to the question at all. Moreover, that does not fit His words “presented them,” “these,” “their names” — for the demonstrative and these pronouns are specific to rational beings; and the claim that God let the rational predominate [in reference] over the rest of things is nothing but a rash assertion. Added to which, God said “the Names, all of them,” to make apparent the merit of the knowledge by this generality — especially on what has been claimed [of its scope]; so it does not fit that a word specific in the language to rational beings be brought, contrary to [p.85]
(2:34) And when We said to the angels, “Prostrate before Adam,” they prostrated, but not Iblīs: he refused and acted arrogantly, and he was one of the faithless. (2:35) And We said, “O Adam, dwell with your mate in the Garden, and eat thereof freely whencesoever you wish; but do not approach this tree …”
…the generality, given what they claimed; nor does it apply to the alleged generality [covering] all things save after [much] toil and strain from a claim of predominance (taghlīb) for which there is no indication in the wording or the flow of speech — unlike the predominance in His words (24:45), “God created every animal from water; among them are some who [creep on their bellies] …,” to the end. (34) “And when We said to the angels, ‘Prostrate before Adam.’” The apparent [sense] is that “idh” here is like its predecessor in meaning and governing [verb], and that His words “they prostrated,” down to His words “O Children of Israel,” are a branching-out and an interpretation of what happened at that time. The command to the angels to prostrate encompasses Iblīs, by his being merged, at that time, into their company — even though he was originally of the jinn; and Iblīs knew the command encompassed him, which is why he did not excuse himself [by claiming] the command did not include him, but took refuge, in his arrogance, in analogy (qiyās).86
The prostration may be [directed] to Adam from the outset, by way of honouring (takrīm), not worship; for the prostration specific to God — which reason and the sacred law forbid to be offered to any other — is only what is by way of worship and submission under the aspect of divinity. And it may be [directed] to God, in thanks for His creating Adam and for the merit belonging to him and to some of his progeny, whereby there accrues to Adam a kind of honouring and magnifying — and on this consideration God said “Prostrate before Adam.” The first aspect is the more apparent from the wording. And though the prohibition of any prostration to other-than-God is established in our sacred law, its prohibition was not established even at that time. “They prostrated, but not Iblīs: he refused” the prostration, “and acted arrogantly, and was one of the faithless.” (35) “And We said, ‘O Adam, dwell with your mate in the Garden.’” A man’s wife is called zawj and zawja, the former being the higher [classical] usage, and with it the Qurʾān came. The Garden (janna) is a name for the orchard. Al-Kulaynī and Ibn Bābawayh related with a chain, and al-Qummī [related] in raised form, from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), that Adam’s garden was of the gardens of this world, in which the sun and moon rose; had it been of the gardens of the Hereafter, or of eternity, he would not have been expelled from it (end [of report]) — and this does not entail its being on the earth.87 “And eat thereof freely whencesoever you wish.” The command to eat, like the command to dwell in the Garden, is only for permission and favour. Raghad is a description of the verbal noun: [eat] an ample, pleasant eating in which is no toil; and “eat from wherever you wish” of what may be eaten of it, without restriction or [any] guiding prohibition. “But do not approach this tree.” It is not hidden — from the indication of the context, the parallels, and al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) — that what is meant here is the not-eating of it, not nearness in the absolute; but the prohibition was issued in the form of forbidding [p.86]
… lest you should be among the wrongdoers. (2:36) Then Satan caused them to stumble from it, and he dislodged them from what they were in …
…approach, in order to make plain the being-cautious of eating from it — like His words “And do not approach the orphan’s property” (6:152) and “Do not approach prayer while you are intoxicated” (4:43). What has been related about the reality of the tree is not sound. The prohibition here is for guidance (irshād), not for legal proscription — by the evidence of His words expounding the state, in the Meccan Sūrat Ṭāhā (20:117–119), that [Satan] is an enemy to the two of them: “So let him not drive you both out of the Garden, and you become miserable (fa-tashqā)” — that is, you fall into the hardship of livelihood and its toil. The flow’s indication of this is confirmed by his ascribing the misery to Adam and not to his wife, in view of the custom [prevailing] on earth that the man is the one who toils in securing livelihood, the woman being his dependent: “Indeed you will neither hunger in it” — the Garden — “nor go naked; and you will neither thirst in it, nor suffer the sun”; you have no need to weary your mind and body in securing food, clothing, drink, and what shades you from the sun’s heat.88
So no sin of disobedience, nor transgression, was made consequent upon Iblīs’s expelling them; nor did He warn them of that, as [pure] kindness would require. The prohibition is then for sheer guidance, that they not fall into the plight of eating — which, by [divine] wisdom, entails the exit from the Garden’s bliss to the misery and toil of earthly life. And the violation of a guiding prohibition is [indeed] also called “disobedience” (maʿṣiya) — but not every disobedience equals a sin and an offence. “Lest you both be among the wrongdoers (ẓālimīn)” — of yourselves, by [your] exit from bliss to toil. And a wronging like this warrants no blame, nor is counted a sin. Ẓulm, in the language, runs equivalent to putting a thing out of its place, and [is] the opposite of fairness, or [it is] deviation — whence the ḥadīth, “they kept to the road and did not ẓalamū it,” that is, did not deviate from it. Strange indeed is he who said that ẓulm is a name of censure that may be applied only to one deserving the curse — [citing] His words, “Look! the curse of God is upon the wrongdoers.” Does he not know that the said verse came, in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf and Sūrat Hūd (11:18–19; 7:44–45), qualified: “upon the wrongdoers — those who bar from the way of God and seek to make it crooked, and disbelieve in the Hereafter”? (36) “Then Satan caused them to slip from it”: “his foot zallat” [means] it did not hold firm in its place and shifted from it; and so [of] the human, “azallahu” [means] he carried him, or drove him, to the slip. So Satan made them slip, by his whispering, beguiling, and deceiving with the lying oath, from the injunction indicated by His words “and do not approach this tree,” and “so let him not drive you out of the Garden, and you become miserable.” Or: he dislodged them from the Garden and did not leave them fixed in it. Reports have been related on the manner of his reaching them, by whispering and beguiling address, that are not sound. “And he dislodged them” — by his beguiling of them he became a cause of their exit, since the [divine] interest in their dwelling in the Garden had changed; so the “expelling” was ascribed to him by way of figurative attribution — “from what they were in,” of bliss [p.87]
… and We said, “Get down, being enemies of one another! On the earth shall be your abode and sustenance for a time.” (2:37) Then Adam received certain words from his Lord, and He turned to him clemently. Indeed He is the All-clement, the All-merciful. (2:38) We said, “Get down from it, all together! Yet, should any guidance come to you from Me …”
…clothing, and the ample life. “And We said, Get down” — the address is to Adam, Eve, and Iblīs; and if Iblīs had descended to earth before that, this address is admissible in the sense “be alike in the descent from it.” “each of you” — Iblīs, Adam, and Eve, or their progeny — “an enemy to the other”; humankind’s enmity to Iblīs is by [regard to the] species, even though some people obey him. “And for you on the earth is a dwelling-place” (mustaqarr) “and enjoyment” — a name for what is benefited from — “for a time,” bounded for each by his death — even Iblīs, at the last blast, near the Resurrection.
(37) “Then Adam received from his Lord words”: the receiving (talaqqī) here is Adam’s taking the words from God by facing, accepting, learning, and acting. The context requires that Adam regretted his opposing of God in His guiding command, and desired to repent and return to the station of the friends [of God] who follow His guidance in [both] act and abstention; he sought the means by which God would relent toward him, so God taught him words that halt him in the station of the penitent and acquaint him with the merit of the meritorious. It has been related, through the chains of both parties, that it was a kind of supplication.89 In al-Durr al-Manthūr, from what al-Daylamī brought out in al-Firdaws with a chain from ʿAlī (peace be upon him), is a supplication in which is “O God, I ask You by the right of Muḥammad and the House of Muḥammad,” repeatedly. And from what Ibn al-Najjār and al-Bayhaqī brought out with a chain from Ibn ʿAbbās from the Messenger (God bless him and his Household): “I asked him about the words Adam received from his Lord; he said, ‘He asked by the right of Muḥammad, ʿAlī, Fāṭima, al-Ḥasan, and al-Ḥusayn (peace be upon them), so He relented toward him.’” The like is related by way of the Imāmiyya — as al-Kulaynī and al-Ṣadūq related from Ibn ʿAbbās and in raised form, and al-ʿAyyāshī the like from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Kathīr from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), and from him also in mursal form. There is no contradiction between the “supplication” reports and the reports of seeking intercession by the People of the House, for combining them is admissible. “And He turned to him clemently” — He returned to him with mercy, the kindness of guidance, and nearness of rank. “Indeed He is the All-clement, the All-merciful.” For brevity, Eve’s repentance is not mentioned here — and because it is [already] known, mentioned in the Meccan Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (7:23). (38) “We said, Get down from it, all together”: the command to descend is repeated so as to mention what was bound up with it of speech, as the Meccan Sūrat Ṭāhā indicates (20:121–122), for it gathered [there], after a single command, what is here after two. And “all together” intends also Adam’s progeny, by way of their parents’ descent. “Yet, should any guidance come to you from Me” — “immā” being conditional [p.88]
… so those who follow My guidance shall have no fear, nor shall they grieve. (2:39) But those who are faithless and deny Our signs — they shall be the inmates of the Fire; they shall remain in it forever. (2:40) O Children of Israel, remember My blessing which I bestowed upon you, and fulfill My covenant that I may fulfill your covenant, and be in awe of Me [alone].
…conditional; and the guidance is the messengership, the signs, and the evidences of truth. “So whoever follows My guidance, no fear shall be upon them, nor shall they grieve” in the Hereafter — this sentence being the answer to the condition in “should any guidance come.” (39) “And those who” do not follow the guidance but rather “disbelieve and deny Our signs — those are the inmates of the Fire, abiding therein.” (40) “O Children of Israel” — an address to those of them present at the [time of] revelation. Isrāʾīl is the epithet of Yaʿqūb, son of Isḥāq, son of Ibrāhīm the Friend, arabicized from the Hebrew Yisrāʾīl; it is related that its meaning is “servant of God” or “strength of God.” “Remember My favour which I bestowed upon you” — in what God singled out their fathers with: the enabling grace to the [divine] oneness inherited from Abraham, the sending of Moses and the prophets among them, their deliverance from Pharaoh and his people, the appearing of the signs, the sending down of the manna and quails, their inheriting of the Holy Land, the destruction of their enemies, and more. This manner is customary in address: to address the present [members] of a tribe and nation with the affairs of their forebears — especially what redounds, in pride or in bane, upon the present; and its witnesses in the prose and verse of the Arabs and others are very many. “And fulfil My covenant”: God cut a covenant with the Children of Israel to act by what is in the Torah of His oneness and worship, to follow the religion of truth and act by the sacred law, and to follow the prophet whom God would raise for them from their brethren, the Banū Ismāʿīl, putting His word in his mouth — and that they hear him and obey.90 However much the Torah was distorted, this covenant remained in it; and the Jews’ reciting it and adhering to it throughout their generations is an adherence to this covenant — as [it binds] those addressed by the verse, the Jews contemporary with the Messenger (God bless him and his Household). “that I may fulfill your covenant” — of kindness, enabling grace, support, and the reward of the Hereafter. A universal rule is taken from the verse: whoever does not fulfil God’s covenant in what he received of religion and the sacred law has himself broken God’s covenant with him, and departed from being fit for the kindness, mercy, and answering of supplication [thereby] promised — and on this came the sound report of al-Qummī from Jamīl from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) on the answering of supplication. And among God’s covenants, and the instances of this rule — as in al-Kāfī (the reliable report of Samāʿa from al-Ṣādiq) and Ibn Bābawayh’s report from Ibn ʿAbbās — is what the Messenger (God bless him and his Household) contracted for the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) at Ghadīr Khumm, as the ḥadīth is transmitted by mass-testimony (tawātur) among the Muslims. “And Me [alone] fear”: rahba is fear; the estimation is “and Me [alone] fear,” that is, let your fear be confined [p.89]
(2:41) And believe in that which I have sent down confirming that which is with you, and do not be the first to defy it, and do not sell My signs for a paltry gain, and be wary of Me [alone]. (2:42) And do not mix the truth with falsehood, nor conceal the truth while you know. (2:43) And maintain the prayer, and give the zakāt, and bow along with those who bow.
…confined to Me, and let no fear of anything move you to break My covenant; so fear Me and do not break My covenant. The word “fear” [in the first clause] was elided, “so fear Me” indicating it. (41) “And believe in what I have sent down” — the Qurʾān I sent down upon My Messenger Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household), the prophet God and Moses promised you and whose following God took your covenant for — “confirming what is with you” and remained with you even in your distorted Torah: namely that God places His word in that prophet’s mouth; and the Qurʾān’s inimitability has shown you it is the speech of God. Or “confirming what is with you” of faith in God, the name of His oneness, and belief in the prophethoods, Moses’s messengership, and his signs.91 It is not correct to say it confirms the Torah [now] with them, distorted with the gravest distortion comprising unbelief and superstitions — for the Qurʾān is explicit in contradicting it in that, as we indicated in the First Chapter of the Introduction, on the Qurʾān’s inimitability from the historical side. “And do not” disbelieve in it [and so] “be” — [you] with your Torah’s covenant regarding the prophet and God’s placing His word in his mouth, and with the manifold evidence of the Qurʾān’s inimitability — “the first to disbelieve in it,” the first to be counted among its deniers; that [being] for the gravity of your unbelief after the proof stood against you from several sides. One says of the great liar and the deeply corrupt, “the foremost liar,” “the foremost transgressor,” i.e., the first to be counted among liars and transgressors. “And do not sell My signs” — with the proof plain against you — “for a paltry price.” The word “buying” is borrowed for their exchanging of God’s signs for their caprices, for the exchange of one thing for another that is in it — as Abū Dhuʾayb al-Hudhalī said:
And if you deem that I was foolish among you, / [know that] after you I bartered forbearance for folly.
The paltry, contemptible price is their fear of their grandees, or their zeal for their Israelite fellowship, or their envy of the Messenger (God bless him and his Household), and other falsehoods of caprice. “And Me” — fear, or beware My retribution upon the unbelievers who oppose the truth by their caprices — “so be wary of Me. (42) And do not confound the truth with falsehood” — do not put upon the known truth the garb of falsehood, to promote your falsehood — “and conceal the truth while you know” it. So submit [to Islam], in fulfilment of God’s covenant and in acting by the truth you know. (43) “And establish the prayer, and give the zakāt, and bow with those who bow” — of the Muslims.
(2:44) Will you bid others to piety and forget yourselves, while you recite the Book? Do you not apply reason? (2:45) And take recourse in patience and prayer; and it is indeed hard, except for the humble …
(44) “Will you bid others to piety (birr)” — of truthfulness, following the truth, and obeying God — “and forget yourselves, while you recite the Book?” — for in it is a remnant of the true Torah’s injunctions in guiding and teaching [people] to follow the truth and act by knowledge. “Do you not apply reason?” — how does it not appear foul, of a human being, to leave the doing of the good he knows? (45) “And take recourse” — for what is sought of you, wherein is your felicity in religion and in the world, and reach it by the means that discipline the soul and turn you to God in seeking His help and His enabling grace and support — “in patience (ṣabr)”: patience in fulfilling God’s covenant, in believing in His Messenger Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household) and what was sent down to him, in obeying God’s commands and prohibitions, in opposing the soul that incites to evil, in combating unbelief and error by aiding the religion and spreading guidance and bidding right and forbidding wrong, and [patience] under worldly calamities by submission to God’s decree. For “patience” in the noble verse is unrestricted, and its effect in all we have mentioned is manifest and praiseworthy, as the Book and the Sunna indicate concerning the merit of patience;92 and in some of our reliable reports “patience” is interpreted as fasting — that being in view of its being one of the instances [of patience], having a great effect in disciplining the soul and turning it to God. “And prayer” — for its words and states teach, in every respect, the refinement of character; and to perform it in its reality, pondering the contents of its verses and its litanies, guides to every good; it is God’s gate in confiding to Him and seeking His help. “And it is indeed hard” — upon the generality of people, who see it a heavy burden weighing on them, so that whoever rises to it rises in laziness and reluctance — “except for the humble (khāshiʿīn)”: khushūʿ is above khuḍūʿ [submission] and admits no affectation; a kind of brokenness that appears upon the person, the heart, the eye, and the voice, as came in the Noble Qurʾān — that is, except upon those whose emblem is humility out of fear of God, as though they looked out upon death, the return, and the reckoning, and so were humbled and made ready provision, seeking forgiveness and confiding to the Truth in longing and dread, supplication and praise. Long hope did not overcome them, that they should see death far off and so grow secure in life and defer righteous deeds; rather they overcame hope and brought death near to their reckoning — as the Commander of the Faithful said to Hammām, describing the God-wary: “he sees his death near,” that is, he sees the marks of it upon him. Their state is as al-Ḥasan (peace be upon him) said in his counsel to Junāda: “work for your Hereafter as though you die tomorrow.” (46) “Those who” looked upon this world [p.91]
(2:46) … those who are certain that they will meet their Lord, and that they will return to Him. (2:47) O Children of Israel, remember My blessing which I bestowed upon you, and that I gave you an advantage over all the nations. (2:48) Beware of the day when no soul shall compensate for another, nor shall any intercession be accepted from it, nor any ransom received from it, nor will they be helped. (2:49) And when We delivered you from Pharaoh’s clan, who inflicted a terrible torment on you …
…and its passing away with the eye of insight, and longed for the bliss of the Hereafter; so they “reckon that they will meet their Lord” and fulfil their terms in their [very] hour or what is near it, “and that they” — soon — “will return to Him”: a return of recompense and submission. (47) “O Children of Israel, remember My blessing which I bestowed upon you” — something of the exposition of this passed at verse 40, and it is repeated here in emphasis, to draw them to the blessings and to establish the proof by them against [them] — “and” remember “that I gave you an advantage” by [them] “over all the nations,” in the time of your forebears. (48) “And beware” — the Day of Resurrection, the day of the reckoning and the retribution — “a day when no soul shall discharge aught for another soul,” that is, it shall not pay or render anything of what is due from it. “Nor shall intercession be accepted from it” — from the first soul — inasmuch as it is a soul having some tie to the one interceded for.93 There passed, in the commentary on Sūrat al-Fātiḥa, what indicates from the Noble Qurʾān the realization of intercession by God’s leave and good pleasure; and the Muslims are agreed that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) has an accepted intercession — even though the Muʿtazila rashly claimed it is restricted to the benefits of the believers. The Imāmiyya are agreed on the affirmation of intercession for the noble Prophet, his pure Household, his chosen companions, and the righteous of the believers; and with that the reports of both parties came. “Nor shall any ransom be received from it” — from the second soul; the ʿadl of a thing (with fatḥa) is what stands in its place from another genus — meaning, no equivalent ransom shall be accepted from it. It is possible the pronoun here [too] returns to the first soul, meaning: neither its intercession is accepted nor a ransom taken from it for the second soul; but the first [reading] is more apparent and more suited to the exhaustive [enumeration], and farther from a return to the meaning of “shall not discharge.” “Nor will they be helped” — the people of that Day have no helper against God, His reckoning, and His punishment. Let those possessed of awareness beware of it. (49) “And” remember, O Children of Israel, “when We delivered you from Pharaoh’s clan” — [they] being in a state of “inflicting upon you” (close in sense to “handing you over to”) “the evil of torment.” ʿAmr b. Kulthūm said in his muʿallaqa:
When the king imposes abasement on a people, / we refuse to let abasement settle among us.
… and slaughtered your sons and spared your women; and in that there was a great test from your Lord. (2:50) And when We parted the sea with you, and We delivered you and drowned Pharaoh’s clan as you looked on. (2:51) And when We made an appointment with Moses for forty nights, you took up the Calf in his absence …
“They slaughtered your sons” — that is, made frequent and general their slaughter of them — “and spared your women” — the daughters born to you, not slaughtering them as [they did] the sons, as though they left them, seeking their life; and they were named “women” in view of their remaining, in kind, until the age of maturity. “And in that was a great trial (balāʾ) from your Lord.” The trial was ascribed to God in view of His decree and His power to lift it, and His granting respite to Pharaoh’s clan. (50) “And” remember “when We parted the sea with you” — We separated the sea, part of it from part.94 From His words in Sūrat al-Shuʿarāʾ, “and each part was as a great mountain” (26:63), it is known that its partings were several, and the Israelites’ paths within it several. “We parted [it] with you” — that is, you were the divider and separator between its parts, in your crossing through it upon the dry [ground] — and this is clearer as to the miracle, and clearer as to the breaking of custom. “So We delivered you” — from the straits of Pharaoh and his hosts, and from the sea — “and drowned Pharaoh’s clan” — when they followed you into the sea — “as you” — outside the sea — “looked on” at their drowning. The sea is the Gulf of Suez, of the Red Sea, its width — by the variation of its locations — from about ten miles to about twenty. The drowning was here confined [in mention] to Pharaoh’s clan, in view of the favour [conferred] by deliverance from their army through its drowning; and concerning Pharaoh, his insolence, and the vengeance upon him, God said in Sūrat al-Isrāʾ (17:103), “so We drowned him and all who were with him.” (51) “And when We made an appointment with Moses for forty nights” — in view of the sum of the two appointments: the first, thirty nights, and the second, their completion by ten, as in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (7:142). “Then you took up the Calf” as a god — as in the Meccan Sūrat Ṭāhā (20:88), “and they said, ‘This is your god and the god of Moses.’”95 We have found no explicit [text] to be relied upon that those who worshipped the Calf were all the Children of Israel then present, save Aaron, or [only] some of them — for the tenor of the address here, and in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, is [framed] in view of some of the Children of Israel; so it may be in view of some of Moses’s army. Yes, in the sūras of al-Aʿrāf and Ṭāhā the taking of the Calf and al-Sāmirī’s misguiding are ascribed to “the people of Moses,” but that may be in view of a large portion. And it is perhaps inferred that they were [only] some, from Aaron’s words in Sūrat Ṭāhā (20:94), “I feared lest you should say, ‘You have caused a rift among the Children of Israel.’” — but the crowding of possibilities as to what he meant by “rift” crowds out that inference. The Noble Qurʾān’s aim in its narratives [p.93]
… in his absence, and you were wrongdoers. (2:52) Then We excused you after that, so that you might give thanks. (2:53) And when We gave Moses the Book and the Criterion, so that you might be guided. (2:54) And when Moses said to his people, “O my people! You have wronged yourselves by taking up the Calf. Now turn penitently to your Maker, and slay [the guilty among] yourselves. That will be better for you with your Maker.”
…is only reminder and admonition; their historicity does not concern it, that it should specify all or some. “In his absence” — after Moses was absent from you at his Lord’s tryst — “and you were wrongdoers” to yourselves, to your minds, and to the realities. (52) “Then We excused you after that” — after the calf-worship occurred. The tenor, in addressing the Children of Israel by the states of some of them, does not leave the verse [without] an apparent [sense] of pardoning those who worshipped the Calf; or it may [refer] then to those who did not worship it but failed [in their duty] and did not aid Aaron by forbidding this great wrong, so He pardoned them upon their repentance, as in the coming verse. “So that you might give thanks” — “perhaps” (laʿalla) was brought in place of the lām of purpose, for the reason we shall give, God willing, at verse 181. (53) “And when We gave Moses the Book and the Criterion (furqān)”: the order of the story requires that it is the Tablets, of which came, in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (7:145), “And We wrote for him in the Tablets, of everything, an admonition and an elaboration of all things,” and (7:154) “he took the Tablets, in whose inscription is guidance and mercy” — so that, by their guidance, they distinguish (fāriqa) between truth and falsehood, and were thus named a “criterion”; and it may be that “the Book and the Criterion” means the Torah. “So that you might be guided” — that is, to the end that you be guided, “perhaps” being brought for what we indicated. (54) “And when Moses said to his people, ‘O my people! You have wronged yourselves by taking up the Calf’” as a god, “‘now turn penitently to your Maker’” — God, who created and originated you after your non-existence. And what we mentioned of the tenor of the verses, in addressing the tribe by the deed of some of it, does not leave the verse [with] an apparent [sense] that they all worshipped the Calf. And if you desire the sincere repentance that erases the associating [of partners] with God through calf-worship that fell among you, “‘slay yourselves.’”96 The clause is a substitution (badal) for “turn penitently,” to make plain that that whereby your repentance is realized is that you proceed to the slaying of one another — so that this was the very repentance here. The apparent [sense] is not that they take their own lives, each killing himself, but the slaying of the souls related to them by kinship and close ties of blood — for they were fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, and cousins, all bound by the loyalty of the tribe, of nationhood, and of the Israelite fellowship. “‘That’” — your repentance by slaying yourselves and your proceeding to it, in obedience to God, in expiation of the associating [with God] that fell [among you], and in deterrence from its like — “‘is better for you with your Maker.’” And in the expression by His words “your Maker,” in [p.94]
Then He turned to you clemently. Indeed He is the All-clement, the All-merciful. (2:55) And when you said, “O Moses, we will not believe you until we see God visibly,” a thunderbolt seized you as you looked on. (2:56) Then We raised you up after your death, so that you might give thanks. (2:57) And We shaded you with clouds, and sent down to you manna and quails: “Eat of the good things We have provided for you.” And they did not wrong Us …
the verse is an indication that God is your Maker and the Bestower [of blessing] by creating you; so how paltry are the souls of the polytheists, and their being slain, beside the protection of His oneness and the crushing of the error of associating [partners] with Him, and beside His good pleasure and His relenting toward you! So they did something of that, as the tenor indicates, together with His words “Then He relented toward you” — an address to the Children of Israel present in the age of the Messenger, in the aforementioned manner of addressing part of the tribe by the deeds of [another] part, and in view of [the fact] that the relenting toward Moses’s people in that event returns its benefit upon those addressed and upon all the Children of Israel in all their generations, by the continuance of their national fellowship and the form of religion and [divine] oneness. “Indeed He is the All-clement, the All-merciful.” (55) “And when you said” — they were addressed with that in view of the saying of the forebears of their tribe — “‘O Moses, we will not believe you until we see God visibly,’ a thunderbolt seized you” — the mighty sound; and its “seizing” them is its overpowering them, [and] what is meant is its putting them to death — “as you looked on,” in your imagining that you would see God (exalted be His station).97 Ibn Bābawayh related in al-ʿUyūn, from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him), the summary of which is: that the Children of Israel said to Moses, “We will not believe that God sent you and spoke to you until we hear the speech of God.” So he chose from them seventy men; and when they heard the speech of God from the six directions, they said, “We will not believe that this is the speech of God until we see God visibly” — so the thunderbolt seized them and they died. (56) “Then We raised you up after your death” — the whole address [being] in view of the states of the forebears — “so that you might give thanks” — that is, to the end that you thank God for [your] revival after death. (57) “And We shaded you with clouds” — the apparent [sense], from the favour [conferred] by the shading, is that it is other than the cloud of rain — “and We sent down upon you the manna” — [it] is also so named in the current Hebrew Torah, or is named mān; some exegetes said it is the [sap] taranjabīn, but there is no reliance-worthy support for that — “and the quails (salwā)” — also named in the Hebrew Torah salw or salāw, read in the Septuagint saliw; in the books of language it is a bird, or like the pigeon. “Eat of the good things We have provided you” — a report of the address to the ancients in the age of Moses. “And they did not wrong Us” — by the acts of disobedience, ingratitude for blessings, calf-worship, and their saying “O Moses, we will not believe you until we see God visibly” that issued from them; for God is beyond need of their obedience, and their disobedience harms Him not. Rather it is they whom obedience benefits and disobedience [p.95]
(2:57) … but they used to wrong themselves. (2:58) And when We said, “Enter this town and eat from it freely wherever you wish, and enter the gate prostrating, and say, ‘Relieve us!’ — that We may forgive you your iniquities, and We shall increase the virtuous.” (2:59) But the wrongdoers changed the saying to other than what they were told.
…harms. “But they used to wrong themselves” by their acts of disobedience. (58) “And when We said, ‘Enter this town.’” I know of no town in the time of Moses (peace be upon him) that they were commanded to enter, and to enter its gate prostrating, in the manner set down in the verse within the sequence of these narratives; and it is very far-fetched that what is meant is the tent Moses pitched in the wilderness and consecrated for worship,98 for the name “town” does not befit it, nor His words “eat from it freely wherever you wish.” Rather it befits [the case] that it be the town of Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis), which Solomon built, and to which the Children of Israel would come at their seasons for worship, enjoying therein ease and security. It may be that this saying from God came in the revelation to Moses (peace be upon him), for the current Torah mentions that Moses (peace be upon him) would relate to them, from God’s revelation, the rulings of their coming to the place God would choose after the tent — as in Deuteronomy, scattered from chapter twelve to thirty-one. There is nothing far-fetched in there being found, in this distorted Torah, something of the ruins of the true Torah — and God is the Knower of the realities of things. “And enter the gate prostrating (sujjadan)” — plural of “prostrate”; perhaps what is meant is the gate of Jerusalem, the sense being that your entering be for prostration, worship, and seeking forgiveness, as is the way of places of worship. “And say, ‘Ḥiṭṭa’” — in the nominative, a predicate of an elided [subject]: that is, “our prostration and worship are a lifting-away (ḥiṭṭa) of our sins.” The sentence is declarative, [but] supplication is meant by it — that is, “make our prostration and worship a cause for the lifting-away of our sins from us.” One says, “he lifted the load from the beast,” that is, removed and set it down from it. “That We may forgive you your iniquities, and We shall increase the virtuous” — those virtuous by their deeds — over the forgiveness, with reward. (59) “But the wrongdoers changed the saying to other than what they were told,” and said what does not return to seeking forgiveness and the lifting-away of the loads of their sins from them. Perhaps among the instances of that is that they omitted the command to worship, seek forgiveness, and continue in prostration at Jerusalem, and changed it [into the claim] that God had commanded them in the Torah that, if they could not carry their tithes, they should sell them for silver and spend it in the town of Jerusalem [p.96]
So We sent down on the wrongdoers a plague from the sky, because of the transgressions they used to commit. (2:60) And when Moses prayed for water for his people, We said, “Strike the rock with your staff.” Thereat twelve fountains gushed forth from it; every tribe came to know its drinking-place. “Eat and drink of God’s provision, and do not act wickedly on the earth, causing corruption.” (2:61) And when you said, “O Moses, we will not put up with one kind of food. So invoke your Lord for us, that He may bring forth for us of what the earth grows — its greens, its cucumbers, its garlic …”
[selling them] for what their souls craved of cattle, sheep, wine, and intoxicants, as in the fourteenth chapter of Deuteronomy.99 Would one possessed of awareness accept that God commands the spending of the tithe on the drinking of wine and intoxicants in His house of worship? “So We sent down upon the wrongdoers” — the mention of the wrongdoers is repeated, either to specify the plague to the wrongdoers, or in registration of the foulness of their wrong and to make plain that their wrong is the cause of the plague’s descent upon them — “a plague (rijz)” — that is, a punishment — “from the sky, because of” — that is, by reason of — “the transgressions they used to commit,” and [because] they did not seek forgiveness and the lifting-away of their sins, but changed what was said to them. (60) “And when Moses sought water” — asked of God the giving of drink — “for his people, We said, ‘Strike the rock with your staff’” — so he struck it; that was elided, its indication by the context being clear — “thereat twelve fountains gushed forth from it,” [they] drinking of their water, “every tribe [knowing] its drinking-place.” The number of the fountains, and the distinction of each set of people from another by [its own] drinking-place, allows the inference that each fountain was a drinking-place for one of the twelve tribes (asbāṭ) of the Children of Israel. “Eat and drink of God’s provision” — with which He provided you by way of miracle and the breaking of custom, without any admixture of striving or contrivance on your part — that being the manna and quails, and this water gushing from the rock; so thank God, seek His mercy, obey Him, and rely on Him — “and do not act wickedly (lā taʿthaw)” — its meaning is close to “do not tyrannize” and the like — “on the earth, causing corruption.” (61) “And when you said, ‘O Moses, we will not endure one [kind of] food’” — for which we find no substitute on some days, namely the manna and quails — “‘so invoke for us your Lord, that He bring forth for us of what the earth grows — of its greens’” — the herbage with which the earth turns green, including mint, leek, celery, and the like of what a human eats — “‘and its cucumbers’” — the long green cucumber — “‘and its fūm.’” It is related in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, in mursal form from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), that the fūm is wheat; Ibn Jarīr related it in his tafsīr, and al-Suyūṭī in al-Durr al-Manthūr, from Ibn ʿAbbās, citing the saying [p.97]
“… its lentils, and its onions.” He said, “Do you seek to replace what is superior with what is inferior? Go down to a town, and you will get what you asked for.” So they were struck with abasement and poverty, and became deserving of God’s wrath. That, because they used to disbelieve in the signs of God and kill the prophets unjustly. That, because they disobeyed and used to transgress. (2:62) Indeed the faithful, the Jews …
of Abū Miḥjan al-Thaqafī, or Uḥayḥa b. al-Julāḥ: “Medina’s supply came from a sowing of fūm.” It is also related in al-Durr al-Manthūr, from Ibn ʿAbbās, that it is garlic, citing for it a verse of Umayya b. al-Ṣalt — but there is no [real] witness in it; and the lexicographers’ words are insufficient for [clear] exposition. “‘And its lentils, and its onions.’ He said, ‘Do you seek to replace what is inferior with what is better’” than it? “‘Go down to a town (miṣran)’” — with nunation. It is possible that what is meant is Egypt (Miṣr) known [by name], nunated because its being made declinable is admissible on account of the quiescence of its middle [letter], like Hind and Daʿd — though it is mentioned, elsewhere than this place, four times as indeclinable; or “go down to [any] town of the towns,” as is more fitting to the nunation. The command to “go down,” on both interpretations, is only for [showing their] incapacity (taʿjīz), for Egypt is the land of their bondage and abasement and the gathering-place of their afflicting enemy — added to which, wandering (al-tīh) had been decreed upon them, so how could they be able to go down to Egypt?100 “‘Then indeed you shall have’” there, if you were able — and how [could you be]? — “‘what you asked for.’ And abasement was struck upon them” — the apparent [sense] is that the pronoun is not specific to those who asked for onions and what was mentioned, for the killing of the prophets was not known of them; rather the pronoun returns to the [whole] kind of the Children of Israel, since abasement was struck upon them “and poverty,” as is known clearly after the dissolution of their kingdom at Samaria, [a matter] completed by the Babylonian captivity. “And they became deserving of” — [a phrase] close in sense to “they returned with” — “wrath from God. That” — that is, the striking of abasement and poverty and the fastening of God’s wrath upon them — “because they used to disbelieve in the signs of God and kill the prophets” — the attribute inseparable from the killing of the prophets being its being “unjustly (bi-ghayr al-ḥaqq),” like His words “for which he has no proof,” in His words in Sūrat al-Muʾminūn (23:117), “And whoever invokes another god besides God, of which he has no proof, his reckoning rests only with his Lord.” “That” — it may be an emphasis of the first demonstrative, and it may, more nearly, be a pointing to their killing of the prophets — “because they disobeyed,” that is, by their disobedience which they habituated, “and used to transgress,” such that transgression became a custom for them. (62) “Indeed those who believed” — that is, displayed faith, of the Muslims — “and those who are Jews” — that is, professed Judaism. It is said in history that the Children of Israel, after Solomon, most of their tribes apostatized to associating [partners with God] and the worship of idols and the two golden calves their king made; then they perished thereafter by slaughter and captivity, and no name or national trace of them remained in the Israelite [people]. And those who remained upon the form of [divine] oneness and the sacred law, upon [p.98]
… the Christians, and the Sabaeans — those who believe in God and the Last Day and act righteously — they shall have their reward with their Lord, and no fear shall be upon them, nor shall they grieve.
…a vacillation between idolatry and faith according to the ages and the kings; and their name, the designation of the Mosaic [religion], and the reverence for Jerusalem remained in most ages among them until today — [these being] only the tribe of Judah and those who followed them, like the tribe of Benjamin. So the designation, for whoever affiliates himself with the Mosaic religion, became “those who are Jews.” Other aspects have been mentioned for this description, and God is the Knower. “And the Christians (al-Naṣārā)” — they who affiliate themselves with the following of the Messenger Jesus. It is said its singular is naṣrān and naṣrāna, cited by the poets’ usage; and it is said, as to the reason of the naming, that it is from “helping” (nuṣra), for the Messiah’s words, “Who are my helpers unto God? The disciples said, We are the helpers of God,” as in the sūras of Āl ʿImrān and al-Ṣaff (3:52; 61:14); and it is said [it is] an ascription to al-Nāṣira (Nazareth), a village in the land of Galilee in Palestine, in which the Messiah grew up, [he] being called “the Nazarene,” so this epithet attached to those affiliated with his following — and God is the Knower. “And the Sabaeans (al-Ṣābiʾīn)” — many views are [held] concerning them; the apparent [case] is that among them are the Sabaeans present [today] between Basra and Baghdad, and perhaps they are a branch of the Jews distinguished by a secret religion; and it is perhaps known of some of them that they affiliate themselves with the following of John, son of Zachariah, and they have, in their religion, an intense fondness for water and concern for its affair.101 “Whoever believes” — of these — “in God,” with the reality of faith in Him, in sincerity toward His oneness in divinity and toward the attributes of majesty and beauty that are His, “and the Last Day,” with the reality of faith in the bodily resurrection, the Garden, the Fire, the reckoning, the recompense, and what is mentioned in the Noble Qurʾān concerning the Last Day — and whoever is such does not rebel against God’s signs and evidences, nor is seized by the arrogance of nationhood, but rather effaces himself in the quest for the truth, no blamer’s blame nor pull of caprices taking hold of him in it — “and acts righteously,” upon the reality of the sacred law. It is not hidden that belief in the Messenger of God, Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household), and in what he brought, is inseparable from the reality of the said faith and the righteous deed. Do you not see, at the least, that the reality of faith in the resurrection and the Last Day, as it came in the Noble Qurʾān, is found with no sect [of them] — let alone faith in God and the majesty, holiness, and oneness that are His, [with] the [full] reality of faith? “They shall have their reward” — their recompense, made ready — “with their Lord, and no fear shall be upon them” in the Hereafter, “nor shall they grieve.” The predicate of “indeed” (inna) is either the sentence “whoever believes” with its recompense, or the sentence “no fear …,” “whoever believes” being a substitute for the noun of “inna” and what is coordinated upon it, the fāʾ entering upon the predicate because “whoever” (man) comprises the sense of a condition; and perhaps the first is more apparent. Regard was had, in “man,” to its wording in “believes” and “acts,” and to its sense in “they shall have” [p.99]
(2:63) And when We took a pledge from you, and raised the Mount above you: “Hold on with power to what We have given you, and remember what is in it, so that you may be Godwary.” (2:64) Then after that you turned away; and were it not for God’s grace on you and His mercy, you would surely have been among the losers. (2:65) And certainly you know those of you who violated the Sabbath, whereupon We said to them, “Be you spurned apes.” (2:66) So We made it an exemplary punishment for those before it and those after it, and an admonition to the Godwary.
(63) “And” remember, O Children of Israel, “when We took your pledge” — the solemn covenant indicated at verse 40 — “and raised the Mount (al-Ṭūr) above you” — [it is] Mount Sinai, or a part of it; and what has been said of its raising and its naming does not serve as a proof — and God is the Knower. “Hold on to what We have given you” — namely the Torah — “with power (bi-quwwa)”; and in al-Barqī’s reliable report, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) was asked, “Is it the power of the bodies or the power of the heart?” He said, “Both together”; and from al-ʿAyyāshī, from al-Ṣādiq, the like — that is, do not slacken, in your bodies or your hearts, in taking hold of what is in the Torah.102 “And remember what is in it” — in the Torah — and do not forget it; among that is the description of the prophet whom God would raise for them from their brethren, the offspring of Ismāʿīl, not from them, in whose mouth He would place His speech, namely the Noble Qurʾān. “So that you may be Godwary” — that is, to the end that you be wary of God; “perhaps” was brought in the position of purpose, since the coming-about of God-wariness from them is not necessitated, but returns to their good choice. (64) “Then you turned away” — turning-away (tawallī) is [properly] turning the back, used here as a metonym for shunning what was taken of the pledge upon them — “after that” taking of the pledge; “and were it not for God’s grace on you and His mercy” — by accepting repentance — “you would surely have been among the losers,” whose capital is gone: loss being a metonym for their ruin through error. (65) “And certainly you have known” the affair of “those of you who transgressed in the Sabbath,” after God had forbidden them to fish on it — they [being] the people of the town that lay by the sea, as its story was mentioned before this, in the Meccan Sūrat al-Aʿrāf, from verse 163 to 166 — “whereupon We said to them, ‘Be apes, spurned,’” after the manner of His words, “His command, when He wills a thing, is only to say to it ‘Be,’ and it is” (36:82). (66) “So We made it” — that is, the event of the transformation (maskh); and perhaps the nearer [reading] is that it [refers to] the town indicated in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf — “an exemplary punishment (nakāl)” — nakāl is a name for the manifest, or lasting-in-effect, chastisement, or for the effect itself — “for what was before it and what was after it” — that is, apparent to the towns and places before it, in view of their people, as one says “an effect for the onlookers” — “and an admonition to the Godwary,” that is, that it be, for the Godwary, an admonition increasing them in insight in faith and cognition, and steadying them in firmness upon God-wariness. There are other possibilities [too], and God is the Knower.
(2:67) And when Moses said to his people, “Indeed God commands you to slaughter a cow,” they said, “Do you take us in mockery?” He said, “I seek God’s refuge lest I be one of the ignorant!” (2:68) They said, “Invoke your Lord for us, that He clarify for us what she is.” He said, “He says, She is a cow neither old nor young, of a middle age. So do what you are commanded.” (2:69) They said, “Invoke your Lord … what her colour is.” He said, “He says, A yellow cow, bright of hue, pleasing to the onlookers.” (2:70) They said, “Invoke your Lord … what she is; indeed cows are much alike to us, and, God willing, we shall be guided.” (2:71) He said, “He says, A cow not broken to till the earth …”
(67) “And when Moses said to his people, ‘Indeed God commands you to slaughter a cow.’” The gist of the story, from what al-Qummī related by a reliable chain from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), and Ibn Bābawayh in al-ʿUyūn, soundly, from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him): that a man of the Children of Israel treacherously killed his cousin and accused the Children of Israel of his killing, so they fell to disputing and warding off this accusation from themselves; they referred their affair to Moses, and God willed to make the reality of the matter appear by way of miracle. So Moses said to them, “Indeed God commands you to slaughter a cow.” They found the matter strange, and “said,” in their ignorance, “‘Do you take us in mockery?’ He said, ‘I seek God’s refuge lest I be one of the ignorant.’ They said, ‘Invoke your Lord for us, that He clarify for us what she is.’” And in the sound [report] from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him): “Had they set out for any cow [whatever], it would have sufficed them; but they made it hard [upon themselves], so God made it hard upon them.”103 That is [also] related in al-Durr al-Manthūr by several routes from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) and Ibn ʿAbbās. And in al-Qummī’s report, that God pointed, by the descriptions of the cow, to the cow of a man dutiful to his father, as a reward for his dutifulness, that they might buy it at the dear price — and there is no contradiction between the two reports, for it is admissible that that be the outcome of God’s knowledge of their making it hard upon themselves. “He said, ‘He says, She is a cow neither old’” — not aged — “‘nor young,’” [not] of tender age, in the beginning of her years, “‘but of a middle age (ʿawān),’” midway in her life, “‘between that’” — that is, the two [aforesaid] descriptions — “‘so do what you are commanded.’ (68) They said … ‘what her colour is.’ He said, ‘He says, A yellow cow, bright of hue’” — intense and pure in yellowness — “‘pleasing to the onlookers.’ (69) They said … ‘what she is; indeed cows are much alike to us’” in these descriptions, “‘and, God willing, we shall be guided.’ (70) He said, ‘He says, A cow not broken (lā dhalūl)’” — the “broken” is the one made easy and made to yield, by taming and training, to the works wanted of its kind; and this [cow] does not yield to all the works of cattle. He made that plain [by saying] that she “‘tills the earth’” [p.101]
“… and does not water the tillage, sound, without blemish.” They said, “Now you have come with the truth!” So they slaughtered it, though they were about not to do it. (2:72) And when you killed a soul and disputed about it — and God was to bring out what you were concealing — (2:73) We said, “Strike him with a piece of it.” Thus does God revive the dead, and He shows you His signs, that you may apply reason. (2:74) Then your hearts hardened after that …
and is yielded to for its ploughing — “and” yet she “does not water the tillage” (that is, the sown ground, or the crop), nor submits to [buckets] being let down upon her from wells and rivers — “sound” of defects, “without blemish (shiya)” — there being in her no colour differing from the mass of her colour. “They said, ‘Now you have come with the truth’” — that is, with the truth of the described, specified [cow] — “so they slaughtered it, though they were about not to do it,” either for the dearness of its price, as is related, or for other causes. (72) “And when you killed a soul and disputed about it (iddāraʾtum)” — that is, some of you killed it, and the accusation and quarrel spread among you, so that each of you sought to ward it off and push it from himself — “and God was to bring out” — by His power, from the secret of concealment to knowledge and manifestation — “what you were concealing,” that is, what the killer among you concealed of the killing and its cause. Now the command to slaughter the cow, their obstinacy in questioning about it, and their sluggishness in slaughtering it were [all] among the appurtenances of the killing, their accusing of one another, and their disputing among themselves; yet God set those matters apart in mention, to remind the Children of Israel of their forebears’ dragging-of-feet in complying with God’s command, their ascribing of mockery to Moses when God’s command reached them removing their difficulty, their contentiousness by much questioning until “they were about not to do it,” and as a favour upon them in going along with them in their contentiousness and their sluggishness toward His commands — that He might lift their quarrel, deliver the innocent, and make the exculpation appear by certain knowledge. Then He set about reminding them of His favours upon them, the making-manifest of the truth, and the settling of the dispute in the miraculous manner that makes God’s power plain to them, and bound together the ends of the story by His words (magnified be His bounties): (73) “So We said, ‘Strike him’” — the slain one mentioned in the previous verse — “‘with a piece of it,’” that is, of that cow which they were commanded to slaughter, and slaughtered.104 So they struck him with a piece of it, and he returned alive and told of his killer; the affair of the killing appeared by the miracle [to] certain knowledge, and the quarrel was lifted. All this the tenor of the speech indicates, together with the reminder of the favour therein upon them, [and] with His words (magnified be His power): “Thus does God revive the dead, and shows you His signs, that you may apply reason” — by pondering and taking a lesson from God’s signs, His power, His reviving of the dead, and His mercy toward you, that you may know your right course and be guided to the even way. And their applying reason is one of the purposes, [even] if the noblest and most beneficial to them; and “perhaps” was brought because their applying reason is not necessitated but returns to their good choice in reflecting, taking a good lesson, gaining insight, not [wilfully] forgetting, and not yielding to the whisperings of caprices and their errors. (74) “Then your hearts hardened” [p.102]
… after that; so they are like stones, or even harder; for indeed among stones are some from which streams gush forth, and among them some that split so that water issues from them, and among them some that fall down for the fear of God. And God is not oblivious of what you do. (2:75) Are you then eager that they should believe you, when a party of them would hear the word of God and then distort it after they had understood it, knowing [what they did]? (2:76) And when they meet the faithful they say, “We believe,” and when they are alone with one another they say, “Do you recount to them what God has disclosed to you, that they may argue with you thereby …”
so it swerved from taking a lesson from God’s signs and from applying reason to the evidences of right guidance — “after that” — after all the signs mentioned; the “kāf” of address in “that” was made singular in view of the collective, or the folk, not the group. “So they are like stones” in their hardness — and let that suffice you as hardness — “or even harder” — that is, if you wish to describe them in view of the effects, they are harder than stones. “For indeed among stones are some from which streams gush forth” — among that are the springs flowing from the rocky mountains — “and among them some that split, so that water issues from them” — among that is what happens, at earthquakes, of splitting and bursting — “and among them some that fall down for the fear of God.” And all this happened to the Children of Israel, and they witnessed it with the eye: in the rock from which the springs gushed, and the mountain to which God disclosed Himself and made it crumble to dust.105 But as for you, O Children of Israel, your hearts are not affected by the signs and the evidences of truth; rather you do what the ruinous caprice and the misguiding Satan entice you to, and what obstinacy toward the truth and persistence in tyranny carry you to. “And God is not oblivious of what you do” — rather He grants you respite and gives you rein; then to Him you shall return. (74 [end])
(75) “Are you then eager” — an address to the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) and the believers — “that they should believe you,” in God, His Messenger, and His Qurʾān, and answer your call to the reality of faith — [they] being the people of obstinacy and of deliberate persistence in error — “when a party of them would hear the word of God” — at His addressing of Moses, or from Moses and the prophets, [together] with their acknowledgment of their prophethood, over and above the miracles’ indication of it — “then distort it” — change and alter it, not out of ignorance but by deliberate design and error — “after they had understood it,” grasped it fully, “knowing” that they are distorters, lying against God. This was the state of their forebears in error. As for these whom you hope will believe you with the truth, they are as in this verse: (76) “And when they meet those who believe, they say, ‘We believe’; and when they are alone with one another, they say, ‘Do you recount to them what God has disclosed to you’” — of the knowledge of the Torah, and inform them of what is in it of the description of Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household), his messengership, and the command to follow him — “‘that they may argue with you thereby’” — so that the outcome be that the proof stand by it [p.103]
“… before your Lord? Do you not apply reason?” (2:77) Do they not know that God knows what they hide and what they disclose? (2:78) And among them are the unlettered, who know nothing of the Book except hearsay, and they only conjecture. (2:79) So woe to those who write the Book with their hands and then say, “This is from God,” that they may sell it for a paltry gain. So woe to them for what their hands have written, and woe to them for what they earn! (2:80) And they say, “The Fire shall not touch us except for a number of days.” Say, “Have you taken a promise from God? … Or do you ascribe to God what you do not know?” (2:81) Nay …
against you, so they argue with you by it “before your Lord. Do you not apply reason” to the outcomes entailed by that? In al-Ṭūsī’s Tibyān (may his soul be sanctified): it is related from Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him) that a folk of the Jews, not of the obstinate colluders, when they met the Muslims would recount to them what was in the Torah of the description of Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household); so their grandees forbade them that, and said, “Do not tell them what is in the Torah of Muḥammad’s description, that they argue with you by it before your Lord” (end).106 So perdition to their delusions! (77) “Do they not know that God” — their Lord, from whom they conceal the truth in dread of the believers arguing with them before Him — is God, who “knows what they hide and what they disclose? (78) And among them are the unlettered (ummiyyūn)” — the unlettered [being], as in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, one who neither writes nor reads well — “who know nothing of the Book except hearsay (amānī)” — a discontinuous exception, meaning: they have nothing but the falsehoods and fabrications they hear from the deceivers; or nothing but wishful fancies of knowledge — “and they only conjecture,” conjecturing at what they hear. (79) “So woe (wayl)” — an inchoative, since it is a beneficial indefinite, and “to those” its predicate; al-wayl is grief, ruin, and hardship of punishment — “to those who write the Book with their hands, then say, ‘This is from God,’ that they may sell it for a paltry price” — of the trash of this world, false leadership, or the promotion of falsehood. In Majmaʿ al-Bayān: they set upon the Torah and distorted the description of the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) to cast doubt thereby [in the minds of] the weak among the Jews; and this is what is related from Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him). “So woe to them for what their hands have written,” since they distort it, or know not what it entails, “and woe to them for what they earn” of sins, unbelief, and deeds of error, or the distortion for the sake of misguiding and concealing the truth. (80) “And they” — the Jews — “say, ‘The Fire shall not touch us except for a number of days,’” that is, few. “Say” to them, O Messenger of God: “‘Have you taken’” — by way of denying interrogation — “‘a promise from God’” to that [effect]? “‘For God shall never break His promise. Or do you say’” — in fabrication or arbitrariness — “‘against God,’” in this false claim, “‘what you do not know?’ (81) Nay” — a rebuttal of their saying [p.104]
… whoever commits a misdeed and is besieged by his iniquity — such are the inmates of the Fire; they abide in it forever. (2:82) And those who have faith and do righteous deeds — they are the inhabitants of the Garden; they abide in it forever. (2:83) And when We took a pledge from the Children of Israel: “Worship none but God, and do good to parents, kin, orphans, and the needy; and speak kindly to people; and maintain the prayer, and give the zakāt” — then you turned away, except a few of you, being disregardful. (2:84) And when We took your pledge: “You shall not shed your [own people’s] blood, nor expel your folk from your homes” …
and an exposition of the reality of the matter, [namely] that “whoever earns” — by his evil choice — “a misdeed and is besieged by his iniquity” — that is, it becomes inseparable from him and takes him over as a thing that encompasses [one] takes him over, and faith and repentance after unbelief did not efface it from him — “such” — pointed to with the plural, in view of the collective sense in “whoever earns” — “are the inmates of the Fire; they abide in it” forever. (82) “And those who have faith and do righteous deeds — they” — and not others — “are the inhabitants of the Garden; they abide in it forever. (83) And when We took a pledge from the Children of Israel” — that is, remember when We said to them sayings and enjoined them upon them and took from them the solemn covenant to act by them: “‘Worship none but God’” alone, with no partner to Him in worship and divinity — the sentence is declarative, prohibition being meant by it, and the declarative in the position of demand is more emphatic than the imperative; it, and the sentences coordinated upon it, are governed by the saying indicated by “taking of the pledge” — “‘and to parents good [conduct]’” — iḥsānan being a verbal noun standing in for the verb, this construction being more emphatic than “and do good” — “‘and to kin, orphans, and the needy’” — coordinated upon “parents” in the command to do good to them — “‘and speak kindly to people.’” These injunctions are not specific to the Children of Israel; rather they are among the most important of what [divine] kindness requires toward every nation to which a messenger is sent. It is related in al-Kāfī, by a reliable chain, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), on His words “and speak kindly to people”: “Say to people the best of what you would love to be said of you”; and Ibn Bābawayh related, by a reliable chain, from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): “Say to people the fairest of what you would love to be said of you.”107 “‘And maintain the prayer, and give the zakāt’ — then you turned away” and drew back into opposing that pledge, “except a few of you, being disregardful” of the pledge, rebellious against God’s commands and prohibitions. (84) “And when We took your pledge” — a turning [of address] to the Jews, either in view of the pledge taken upon their forebears, or in view of [the fact] that their faith in Moses’s messengership and their Torah is an adherence to the injunction encompassing them and a giving of the pledge upon it, like their forebears — “‘You shall not shed your [own] blood,’” [that is,] let none of you shed the blood of another, “‘nor expel your [own] folk from your homes,’” [that is,] let none of you drive out another from your lands [p.105]
… then you acknowledged it, and you bear witness. (2:85) Then there you were, killing your folk and expelling a party of your folk from their homes, backing one another against them in sin and aggression; and if they came to you as captives, you would ransom them, though their expulsion was forbidden you. Do you then believe in part of the Book and disbelieve in part? … (2:86) They are the ones who bought the life of this world for the Hereafter; so their punishment shall not be lightened, nor shall they be helped. (2:87) Certainly We gave Moses the Book, and followed him up with the messengers, and gave Jesus, son of Mary, the manifest proofs, and confirmed him with the Holy Spirit. Is it not so that whenever a messenger brought you what your souls did not desire …
He expressed [it] by “yourselves” (anfusakum) in emphasis of the prohibition, for they are one nation and the sons of one father; and the [discussion of the] declarative sentence in the position of demand, and its place in parsing, is as passed. “Then you acknowledged it, and you bear witness” to the taking of the pledge. (85) “Then there you were” — the folk upon whom the pledge was taken and who acknowledged and bore witness; mentioning that in intensification of the rebuke — “killing your folk” — some of you killing others — “and expelling a party of your folk from their homes” unjustly; nay, “backing one another against them in sin and aggression,” though they are your folk and of you. “And if they came to you as captives” — seeking your help in ransoming them — “you would ransom them,” expending their ransom in accordance with your Book; so why do you expel them from their homes in wrong, “though” the case is that “their expulsion was forbidden you” in the Book? “Do you then believe in part of the Book and disbelieve in part?” So what is the requital of those among you who do that — that is, the killing and expulsion, or the whimsical vacillation between belief and unbelief — “except disgrace in the life of this world? And on the Day of Resurrection they shall be consigned” — an exposition that what is meant by “whoever does [that]” is the collective — “to the severest punishment; and God is not oblivious of what you do,” for nothing hidden is hidden from Him, and He has readied for every deed its requital. (86) “Those” — the violators of God’s pledge — are “the ones who bought the life of this world for the Hereafter” — and how foul is their loss by this purchase! — so then “their punishment shall not be lightened, nor shall they be helped” — and who is it that would help them against God? (87) “Certainly We gave Moses the Book” — the Torah — “and followed him up” — that is, sent after him, following his death — “with the messengers.” In al-Kāfī, in the chapter on the difference between the messenger (rasūl) and the prophet (nabī), [it is stated] that the messenger is the one who beholds the angel and to whom Gabriel comes, so that he sees him and he addresses him with the revelation — as in the two sound reports of Zurāra and al-Aḥwal from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), and the reports of Ismāʿīl from al-Riḍā and of Burayd from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon them).108 And those whose names are mentioned, of the prophets after Moses, are Dāwūd, Sulaymān, Ilyās, al-Yasaʿ, and Dhū al-Kifl — the apparent [view] being that he is Ezekiel [p.106]
… and We gave Jesus, son of Mary, the manifest proofs, and confirmed him with the Holy Spirit. Is it not so that whenever a messenger brought you what your souls did not desire, you waxed proud, so a party you denied and a party you slay? (2:88) And they said, “Our hearts are wrapped.” Rather God has cursed them for their unbelief, so little is what they believe. (2:89) And when there came to them a Book from God, confirming what is with them — and aforetime they would pray for victory over those who disbelieved …
…and Jonah, Zachariah, John, the Messiah, and the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household). Those whose messengership the Qurʾān stated explicitly are Ilyās, Yūnus, the Messiah, and the Messenger of God. “And We gave Jesus son of Mary the clear proofs” — of miracles — “and confirmed him with the Holy Spirit” — Gabriel. O Children of Israel, “is it [not] so that whenever a messenger brought you what your souls did not desire, you waxed proud” against his call to the truth and strove in opposing it, “so a party” of the messengers “you denied, and a party you slay.” (88) “And they said” — the Children of Israel — “our hearts are wrapped (ghulf),” that is, in a covering, [so that] we do not understand what the Messenger says in his conveying — their aim being to fault what he says; as God related of the polytheists in Ḥā-Mīm al-Sajda (41:5), “and they said, our hearts are in coverings from what you call us to, and in our ears is deafness, and between us and you is a veil.” And they are not [truly] ones who do not understand what the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) says, for he brought, in his message, what innate nature and the self-evidence of minds require, its soundness hidden from none.109 “Rather” they rebelled against God and disbelieved deliberately, so He deprived them of the blessing of enabling grace, and “God cursed them” and removed them from His mercy “for their unbelief” and obstinacy, “so little is what they believe” — the fāʾ for the branching upon their deprivation; “little” a description of the verbal noun, and “mā” for emphasizing the fewness by an added vagueness in “little”; the apparent [sense] being the fewness of those who believe among them. (89) “And when there came to them a Book from God” — the Noble Qurʾān, with its evidences of inimitability and its proofs that it is from God — “confirming what is with them” — of [divine] oneness, the sending of messengers, the revelation of Books, and the sacred law — “and they were” — these obstinate rebels — “aforetime” — before the Qurʾān’s revelation, or the Messenger’s coming to Medina — “praying for victory (yastaftiḥūn) over those who disbelieved.” It is related in al-Kāfī, in reliable form, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), the summary being: that the Jews found in their books that Muḥammad’s place of migration was between ʿAyr and [Uḥud], so they went out seeking the place, and a folk of them settled it; then they would say to the Aws and Khazraj, “When Muḥammad is [at last] sent, we shall surely drive you from our homes.” But when God sent Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household), the Anṣār believed in him and the Jews disbelieved in him — and that is God’s word, “and they were aforetime praying for victory.” From al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr, from al-Ṣādiq, the like; and in the sound report of Isḥāq b. ʿAmmār [p.107]
… so when there came to them what they recognized, they disbelieved in it; so God’s curse be on the unbelievers! (2:90) Evil is that for which they sold themselves, that they disbelieve in what God sent down, out of insolence that God should send down of His grace upon whomever He wishes of His servants. So they earned wrath upon wrath; and for the unbelievers is a humiliating punishment. (2:91) And when it is said to them, “Believe in what God has sent down” …
…from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), what is near this; likewise the first, seventh, and eighth ḥadīth, which al-Ḥākim graded sound, in al-Durr al-Manthūr. So “praying for victory” means they sought triumph [over the Arabs] by [issuing] threats, or sought, in their speech, what they hoped of future conquest and victory. And al-Durr al-Manthūr also relates that the Jews, when fighting the Arabs, would seek God’s help in supplication by the name of the Prophet Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household). “So when there came to them what they recognized” — of the Prophet’s affair, his messengership, and that God places His speech in his mouth — “they disbelieved in it,” despite their recognition of it, like the unbelief of Iblīs; “so God’s curse be on the unbelievers. (90) Evil is that for which they sold themselves.” In Majmaʿ al-Bayān: mostly ishtaraytu means “I bought,” and it is sometimes used for “I sold”; here, as in al-Tibyān and al-Kashshāf, ishtaraw means “they sold.” I say: it is [also] admissible to keep the buying upon its usual sense — the verse being a rebuke and a charge of folly to the Jews: for the self ought to be “bought” with faith, noble character, and righteous deeds in this worldly life, that it may be perfect, pure, and winning of eternal felicity.110 So what ails these fools, that vile envy carried them to hoard for themselves the superstitions of nationhood and the Jewish fellowship, making the price of their purchase, for this dire aim, the unbelief in God’s signs, out of envy and insolence? Evil is what they did, and evil is that for which they sold themselves. “That they disbelieve in what God has sent down” — their unbelief being the thing specifically censured; and its foulness increases, with their knowing it is God’s revealed speech promised them, [in] that this unbelief was out of envy and “insolence (baghy),” that God should raise a messenger from other than them, and “that God should send down of His grace” — His speech, signs, and the revelation of His sending — “upon whomever He wishes of His servants,” knowing his fitness for messengership, from the offspring of Ismāʿīl. “So they earned wrath upon wrath” — God’s wrath for unbelief with recognition and standing proof, and His wrath for their envy, insolence, and obstinacy to the Messenger for being from other than them — “and for the unbelievers is a humiliating punishment” that abases and disgraces them. (91) “And when it is said to them, ‘Believe in what God has sent down’” — of the Qurʾān, that it is God’s speech, sent down upon His noble Messenger [p.108]
… they say, “We believe in what was sent down to us,” and they disbelieve in what is beyond it, though it is the truth confirming what is with them. Say, “Then why did you kill God’s prophets aforetime, if you were believers?” (2:92) Certainly Moses brought you the clear proofs, then you took up the Calf after him, and you were wrongdoers. (2:93) And when We took your covenant and raised the Mount above you: “Take what We gave you with power, and hear.” They said, “We hear and disobey,” and were made to drink the Calf into their hearts, by their unbelief …
and yield, by your faith, to following him — for you have known it is from God and the proofs stood by it against you. “They said” — from their error and the misguidance of their Jewish partisanship — “we believe in what was sent down to us” — the implication of their saying being unbelief in other than what is in their books — “and they disbelieve in what is beyond it,” that is, in what is besides it, of what God sent down upon other than them (like His words, “and lawful to you is what is beyond that”), or in what is after it. “And” the case is that the Qurʾān, which they disbelieve in when told “believe in what God has sent down,” “is the truth, confirming what is with them” — of the Messenger’s description, God’s placing His speech in his mouth, and his being of their brethren, the offspring of Ismāʿīl, not of them — that is, it is the truth by which those promises come true. Then God refuted the [surface] wording of their saying “we believe in what was sent to us,” making plain their lie in this claim and their forebears’ persistence in opposing faith — the folk being sons of the folk, upon their pattern — and said to His Messenger: “Say” in refuting them: “then why did you kill God’s prophets aforetime, if you were believers” in what was sent down to you?111 For God’s prophets called you only to faith and to acting by what was sent down to you. (92) “Certainly Moses brought you the clear proofs” — the dazzling signs after which there is no room for doubt or deviation from faith — “then you took up the Calf after him” and apostatized that foul apostasy and associated [partners with God], “and you were wrongdoers. (93) And” remember “when We took your covenant and raised the Mount above you: take what We gave you with power, and hear” — this is the sense of His words at verse 63, “and remember what is in it, that you may be Godwary” — “they said, ‘We hear and disobey,’ and were made to drink the Calf into their hearts, by their unbelief,” that is: by reason of their unbelief and error they plunged into the love of the Calf, until the Calf, as it were, entered the depths of their hearts, as the drink one takes in enters the depths of the body — so that the Calf became like a beloved present in the heart by its love; and the one who made them drink it into their hearts is Satan, or the beguiling of caprices. Then the discourse returned to rebuking them and refuting their lying saying “we believe in what was sent to us,” with [the point] that faith commands and impels one to follow what one believes and to act by it; and what was sent down to you commands the oneness of God and the shunning [p.109]
Say, “Evil is that which your faith commands you, if you are believers.” (2:94) Say, “If the abode of the Hereafter with God is purely yours, apart from [other] people, then wish for death, if you are truthful.” (2:95) But they will never wish it, for what their hands have sent forth; and God knows the wrongdoers. (2:96) And you will surely find them the greediest of people for life — [greedier] even than those who associate [partners with God]; each of them wishes that he might be given a life of …
of idols, and worship of Him alone, and obedience to the prophets and honouring them, and faith in the Messenger of God and His Book. Do you [then] say that your alleged, illusory faith commanded you [to do] the foul deeds mentioned of you? Then “Say, ‘Evil is that which your faith commands you, if you are believers’” — and where is faith in you? But “if you are believers” was said in going along with them in address, and descending from [outright] negation to the form of doubt-casting; this is among the marvellous styles in reproach. And among their being silenced by proof: they claim they are God’s people, that theirs is the Hereafter, salvation, and bliss, and that they are God’s children and His beloved (as in Sūrat al-Māʾida, 5:18), and they mention in their Torah that they are God’s firstborn son. So God said to His Messenger: (94) “Say” to them, “‘if the abode of the Hereafter with God is purely yours’” — exclusive to you — “‘apart from [other] people, then wish for death’” in longing for the great, everlasting bliss and supreme felicity prepared in the Hereafter for its people, “‘if you are truthful’” in your claim, knowing your own truthfulness.112 (95) “But they will never wish it, ever, for what their hands have sent forth” of ruinous sins and error — and though they deny that, it is not hidden from God — “and God knows best the wrongdoers. (96) And” — beyond [the fact] that they do not wish death — “you will surely find them the greediest of people for a life” — any life, however little — “and” [greedier for life] “than those who associate [partners with God]” — who deny the resurrection and the bliss after death. “Each of them wishes” — out of their greed for life — “that he might be given the life of” [p.110]
… a thousand years; yet it would not remove him from the punishment, that he be given [long] life. And God sees well what they do. (2:97) Say, “Whoever is an enemy of Gabriel — [know that] it is he who brought it down upon your heart, by God’s leave, confirming what was before it, and a guidance and good news for the believers.”
a thousand years — and what would that [long] life avail him? Would it lower from him any of his sins, or ward off from him the punishment, so long as he does not believe and act righteously? Never. Al-Balāghī then dwells on the fine grammatical point that the “law” in “each of them wishes that (law) he might live” is here not the “law” of wishing but a particle introducing a verbal-noun clause (“that”), used where its content is remote or impossible — the sign being that in the Qurʾān what follows the fāʾ after this “law” comes in the nominative, not the subjunctive (as in 4:89; 4:102; 68:9), whereas after the “law” of wishing the verb after the fāʾ is put in the subjunctive (as in 2:167; 39:58).113 “A thousand years; yet it is not” — that is, [not] any one of them — “going to remove him” — the bāʾ added for emphasis of the negation — “from the punishment, that he be given [long] life” — the verbal noun being the subject of “remove him”: that is, his being given [long] life will not remove him [from it]. “And God sees well what they do” of evil deeds — and the length of their lives in the doing of evil deeds is what plunges them into the pit of the punishment. (97) “Say, ‘Whoever is an enemy of Gabriel’” — [let him know] that “‘it is he who brought it down’” — the Qurʾān — “‘upon your heart, by God’s leave, confirming what was before it’” — of God’s true Books and the cognitions of the truth — “‘and a guidance’” — a second circumstantial [state], coordinated upon “confirming” — “‘and good news for the believers,’” that is, those who are guided and reach the truth by it, and for whom the Qurʾān is good news, are only the believers. The verse gives to understand that it has an occasion and cause of revelation, and the tenor requires its connection to the Jews.114 Something has been related on that, mentioned in al-Durr al-Manthūr, but it is not connected in chain nor free of defect; and in Tafsīr al-Burhān something [is related], in whose support is what is in it; and al-Qummī mentioned something without mentioning its source — and God is the Knower of the reality of the state. (98) “Whoever is an enemy of God, His angels, and His messengers, [p.111]
(2:98) … Gabriel and Michael — then God is indeed an enemy of the unbelievers. (2:99) And certainly We have sent down to you clear signs, and none disbelieves in them except the transgressors. (2:100) Is it not so that whenever they made a covenant, a party of them cast it away? Rather most of them do not believe. (2:101) And when there came to them a messenger from God, confirming what is with them, a party of those given the Book cast the Book of God behind their backs, as if they did not know. (2:102) And they followed what the devils recited over Solomon’s kingdom — and Solomon did not disbelieve, but the devils disbelieved, teaching people sorcery — and [they followed] what was sent down to the two angels at Babylon, Hārūt and Mārūt …
“and Gabriel and Michael — then God is indeed an enemy of the unbelievers” — that is, none is so save an unbeliever, and God is an enemy of the unbelievers; and that suffices them as disgrace and bane. (99) “And certainly We have sent down to you clear signs” in which is no doubt, “and none disbelieves in them except the transgressors (fāsiqūn)” — those who have gone out of obedience to the truth and right guidance and preferred unbelief. (100) “Is it not” — the interrogation for rebuke and reproach at their foul custom, that whenever “they made a covenant” with God, or His messengers, or [His] prophets, “a covenant, a party of them cast it away” — flung it, a metonym for breaking and opposing it — “a party of them,” not the small party; “rather most of them do not believe” nor hold firm to their covenant. Among them are the Banū Qurayẓa, al-Naḍīr, Qaynuqāʿ, and others who broke their covenant and pledge to the Messenger of God and the Muslims by the foulest breaking, in the foulest treachery.115 (101) “And when there came to them a messenger from God” — Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household) — “confirming what is with them” — of [divine] oneness, the sending of messengers, the revelation of God’s Books, and the description of the messenger they were promised (and it became plain to them that he is the very [foretold one]) — and brought them the Book, God’s speech mentioned in their Torah — “a party of those given the Book cast the Book of God” — the Qurʾān, by which the proof stood over them and which they knew to be God’s Book — “behind their backs,” a metonym for their shunning and unbelief in it, “as if they did not know” that it is God’s Book, foretold in their books, and that the luminous proofs stood by it. (102) “And they followed” — of falsehoods and unbelief — “what the devils recited over Solomon’s kingdom” — that is, over the people of his realm — “and Solomon did not disbelieve, but the devils disbelieved, teaching people sorcery, and [they followed] what was sent down upon the two angels at Babylon, Hārūt and Mārūt.” Ibn Bābawayh related in al-ʿUyūn, from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him), that Hārūt and Mārūt taught people sorcery [only] that they might guard themselves thereby against the sorcery of the sorcerers and undo their guile; and he mentioned the sense of [p.112]
(2:102) … And they would not teach anyone without saying, “We are only a trial, so do not disbelieve.” Yet they would learn from them that by which they cause a rift between a man and his wife — though they cannot harm anyone by it except by God’s leave — and they learn what harms them and does not benefit them; and certainly they knew that whoever buys it has no share in the Hereafter. And evil is that for which they sold themselves …
His words: “And they would not teach anyone” until they warned him and “said, ‘We are only’” — by way of — “‘a trial’” and a test: we teach people for a sound end, “‘so do not disbelieve’” and [do not] use what we teach for the ends of misguidance. “So they learn” — that is, people [learn] — “from them” — from Hārūt and Mārūt — “that by which they cause a rift between a man and his wife; though they cannot harm anyone by it except by God’s leave.” What is meant by the “leave” is God’s not annulling the effect of the sorcery — that is, the effect of sorcery is not a thing necessary that God is unable to lift; rather He did not annul it, but left it between it and people, in their evil choice, as He left them [to] the rest of the acts of disobedience and kinds of wrong, for a wisdom He decreed in the world. “And they learn” — of sorcery — “what harms them and does not benefit them,” since they do not use it to undo the sorcery of the sorcerers and ward off their guile. Al-Qummī related in his tafsīr that ʿAṭāʾ asked al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) at Mecca about Hārūt and Mārūt, and he mentioned of their affair, in [the matter of] disobedience, something near what the generality [of Sunnīs] relate from Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibn ʿUmar, and Kaʿb al-Aḥbār (as you see it gathered in al-Durr al-Manthūr); and in what we mentioned of his report from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him) is something of a counter to what is related from al-Bāqir. Its transmitter from al-Bāqir is Muḥammad b. Qays, [a name] shared between the weak [transmitter] and other[s]; and it is possible that al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), according to the state of the moment and [of his questioner] ʿAṭāʾ, related to him what they relate from Ibn ʿUmar, Ibn ʿAbbās, and Kaʿb, without [anything] that would give the sense of his confirming it. Al-Shaykh, in al-Tibyān, made no reference to this report — and it is far-fetched that he was unacquainted with it. As for the view that it contradicts the infallibility (ʿiṣma) of the angels, it may be repelled by saying that what is [firmly] established of their infallibility is [only] so long as they are stripped of appetite and greed, not when these two are placed in them, as the report holds — and God is the Knower of the reality of the state.116 “And certainly they knew that whoever buys it” — the lām for the oath, and the sentence after it its answer — “has no share (khalāq) in the Hereafter,” that is, no portion — and that is the manifest loss; the buying being an expression for their expending, in exchange for it, their religion and their Hereafter. “And evil is that for which they sold themselves” — that is, sold; and it may be [read] to mean the buying in its usual sense, in the manner we mentioned at verse 90 [p.113]
… had they known! (2:103) And had they believed and been Godwary, a reward from God would have been better; had they known! (2:104) O you who believe, do not say “Rāʿinā,” but say “Unẓurnā,” and hear …
— that is, they sold; and it may [also] be meant in the usual sense of buying, in the manner we mentioned at verse 90. “For which they sold themselves, had they known,” for it is the foulest of prices and the basest. (103) “And had they believed and been Godwary, a reward from God would surely have been better” for them than what they seek by the practice of sorcery and its learning — let alone [the difference between] the perfection of faith and God-wariness and the baseness and deficiency of sorcery; the lām binding the answer of “had,” and “a reward” an inchoative, “better” its predicate, the sentence the answer of “had.” “A reward” was made indefinite to make plain that a single [instance], the least token of what is with God of reward, is better for them than what they followed. “Had they known!” — “law” here [being] in the sense of wishing, running upon what people use in [ordinary] discourse in the like of this station; and God is exalted and sanctified above the reality of wishing. (104) “O you who believe” — Aḥmad brought out in his Musnad, from Ibn ʿAbbās, and Abū Nuʿaym in al-Ḥilya, from Ibn ʿAbbās, that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) said: “No verse came down in which is ‘O you who believe’ but that ʿAlī is its head and its commander.” Al-Ṭabarānī and Ibn Abī Ḥātim brought it out from Ibn ʿAbbās, the wording being “but that ʿAlī (peace be upon him) is its commander and its noble one”; and in Kashf al-Ghumma much of the like [is related] from Ibn Mardawayh, by his chains, from Ibn ʿAbbās and Ḥudhayfa. And the report has no meaning save that ʿAlī (peace be upon him) is the head of those who believe, their commander, and their noble one.117 “Do not say ‘Rāʿinā,’ but say ‘Unẓurnā,’ and hear.” It came, in verse 46 of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, that the Jews “distort words from their places” and say “Rāʿinā,” twisting [it] with their tongues and reviling the religion. In al-Ṭūsī’s Tibyān: Abū Jaʿfar (that is, al-Bāqir, peace be upon him) said, “This word — that is, ‘Rāʿinā’ — is an abuse in Hebrew that they used to resort to.” Al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Maghribī said: “I researched that — the abuse al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) mentioned — and found them saying rāʿ, on the pattern of qāl, in the sense of corruption” (end). I say: I traced the Hebrew Old Testament and found that the word rāʿ — with a slanted fatḥa toward the alif, called by them qāmeṣ — means evil or foul; among that is what is in the second and third chapters of the first book of their Torah; and [it also comes] in the sense of “the wicked one,” one of the wicked; among that is what is in the first chapter [p.114]
… and hear; and for the unbelievers is a painful punishment. (2:105) Neither the faithless of the People of the Book nor the idolaters wish that any good be sent down upon you from your Lord; but God singles out for His mercy whom He wills, and God is of great grace. (2:106) Whatever verse We abrogate or cause to be forgotten …
…of the fifth book [Deuteronomy]; and in the sixty-fourth and seventy-eighth of their Psalms; and in the Hebrew rendering of the Gospels. And “nā” is the pronoun of the speaker [in rāʿinā]; in Hebrew its alif is turned, or inclined, to a wāw, so that rāʿinā, in Hebrew, comes to mean “our wicked one,” or the like. And rāʿinā in Arabic — al-Tibyān explained it as “hear from us and we shall hear from you,” al-Qāmūs as “give ear to my speech,” al-Nihāya [glossing] murāʿāt as considerate regard. The believers were forbidden to say “rāʿinā” to the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), lest the Jews take it, in their addressing of the Messenger, as a means to abuse him and revile the religion. “And hear” what the Messenger says; “and for the unbelievers” — those who abuse the Messenger, or who do not hear his word — “is a painful punishment. (105) The faithless of the People of the Book and the idolaters do not wish that any good be sent down upon you from your Lord” — “min” added, falling within the scope of negation, its benefit being to make plain and emphasize the [total] comprehensiveness — “but God singles out for His mercy” and His messengership “whom He wills,” in accordance with the interest and the fitness — for He knows best where He places His message — “and God is of great grace,” withholding His grace from none who is worthy, of whatever people. (106) “Whatever verse We abrogate”: the Qurʾān named what came in the earlier divine Books “a sign” and “signs,” and praised those who recite them.118 In Sūrat Āl ʿImrān, after censuring the People of the Book (3:113): “They are not [all] alike; of the People of the Book is an upright nation, reciting God’s signs in the watches of the night, and they prostrate.” In Sūrat Maryam, after mentioning the prophets and the righteous of old (19:58–59): “when the signs of the All-merciful are recited to them, they fall down prostrate, weeping; then there succeeded, after them, a succession who neglected the prayer.” And in Sūrat al-Zumar (39:71): “did there not come to you messengers from among you, reciting to you the signs of your Lord?” Abrogation (naskh) and replacement (tabdīl) are counterparts; the apparent [sense] is their replacement, not the abrogation of their ruling by technical naskh — for in the latter is a figurative usage for which there is no indication; indeed the context and the pronouns may bar it. “Or cause it to be forgotten (nunsihā)” — [it is] from forgetting (nisyān), not from deferment (nasʾ); and the fittingness of the context with the preceding verse [is] to point [to the fact] that the import is that, though it weighed upon the People [of the Book] [p.115]
… We bring one better than it, or the like of it. Do you not know that God has power over all things? (2:107) Do you not [know] …
…of the Book that their prophets’ books and signs be abrogated by the Qurʾān and its signs, in the station of recitation, remembrance, prayer, sacred law, and guidance — let alone that those books and signs were [already] distorted and altered until their reality became a thing forgotten; for the Qurʾān is sent down from God according to the interest that required its revelation, and “whatever verse We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than it” in effect “or the like of it.” The “causing to forget” was ascribed to God figuratively, as “misguidance” was, in view of the rebellion of those affiliated with its Book, until they departed from the fitness for kindness and enabling grace, so God consigned them to their souls, and they distorted and altered it until it became a thing forgotten. There is no instance of this verse in the Qurʾān’s verses one with another. As for abrogating the Qurʾānic verse itself, in the sense of abrogating its recitation (naskh al-tilāwa), scarcely any interest requiring it is to be known, let alone the aspects of corruption that stir [against it]; added to which, there is no evidence of its occurrence, and if aught is related on it, there passed, in the second and third [points] of the Second Chapter of the Introduction, what invalidates and belies it.119 It has been related from al-Shaykh al-Mufīd’s Maqālāt that the non-occurrence of this abrogation is the doctrine of the Shīʿa and a group of the people of ḥadīth and others. As for what is related from al-ʿAllāma in Nihāyat al-Uṣūl, from al-Karakī in the [book on] purity of his Jāmiʿ, and from al-Ṭabrisī, affirming its occurrence — they rested it upon the alleged “stoning verse,” and we [already] indicated what is in it. The apparent [truth] is that abrogation in this sense contradicts His words, “Indeed We have sent down the Reminder, and indeed We are its Preserver” (15:9). As for the causing of them to be forgotten, that contradicts the preservation verse and His words, “We shall have you recite, so you will not forget” (87:6). And there is no clinging to His words “except what God wills” (87:7): for taking the speech as an exception by [divine] will leaves no aspect for the favour and the promise in “We shall have you recite so you will not forget”; rather it is a corrective, to make plain that the non-forgetting is by God’s power and will, not a necessary, natural matter — [so] had the interest required, and God willed to leave him to his humanness, he would forget. That is as His words in Sūrat Hūd (11:108), “as for the felicitous, in the Garden, abiding therein … except what your Lord wills — a gift unfailing.” We have lengthened the discourse here because it has not [otherwise] been given its due. “Do you not know” — an address and rebuke to the human being, by the evidence of what follows — “that God has power over all things”: He sends down good, sends the messengers, shows mercy and kindness, and brings better than what He abrogated, and does not single out His kindness to one people apart from [another] people, when they are worthy of it. (107) “Do you not know, O human, that to God belongs the kingdom of the heavens and the earth,” and all people are His servants — He does what He wills and what His kindness and mercy require, to whoever is worthy [p.116]
… know that to God belongs the kingdom of the heavens and the earth, and that besides God you have no guardian or helper? (2:108) Would you question your Messenger as Moses was questioned formerly? Whoever exchanges faith for unbelief has strayed from the even way. (2:109) Many of the People of the Book wish to turn you back into unbelievers after your faith, out of envy from within themselves, after the truth had become clear to them. Yet pardon and forbear until God brings His command. Indeed God has power over all things. (2:110) And maintain the prayer and give the zakāt; and whatever good you send ahead for yourselves, you will find it with God. Indeed God sees well what you do. (2:111) And they say, “None shall enter the Garden except one who is a Jew or Christian.” Those are their [false] hopes …
and none who has rebelled against Him and disobeyed Him escapes Him. “And besides God you have no guardian or helper. (108) Would you question your Messenger” — who was sent to you [all] together — “as Moses was questioned formerly,” of their demanding to see God and other suggestions of obstinacy. “And whoever exchanges faith for unbelief has strayed from the even way.” (109) Many of the People of the Book wish to turn you back into unbelievers after your faith” — the discourse on “law” after “wish” passed at verse 94 — “out of envy” of you “from within themselves,” the [souls] that incite to evil and swerve, whose beguiling they chose over the guidance of their minds, “after the truth had become clear to them. Yet pardon and forbear” — over the lapses of their envy and their attempts to misguide you — “until God brings His command”: of the command to punish them by expulsion, banishment, or slaying, when they flaunt treachery and enmity to you and to the religion, so that the proof stands against them and God gives you power over them.120 “Indeed God has power over all things. (110) And maintain the prayer” within its bounds and its times, “and give the zakāt” — for that is a good returning to yourselves — “and whatever good you send ahead for yourselves” — in the abode of works and accountability, for the abode of recompense and bliss — “you will find it” — that is, its recompense and reward — “with God. Indeed God sees well what you do,” even if you keep it secret. (111) “And they said” — the People of the Book mentioned before — “none shall enter the Garden except one who is a Jew” — the Jews said that; and the Christians said, none shall enter the Garden except one who is a Christian — and the discourse was made most concisely by His words “or Christian”; the purport of each group’s saying being that the Muslims shall not enter the Garden. “Those” — the claim of each group [p.117]
… Say, “Produce your proof, if you are truthful.” (2:112) Nay — whoever submits his face to God, being a doer of good, he shall have his reward with his Lord; no fear shall be upon them, nor shall they grieve. (2:113) The Jews say, “The Christians stand on nothing,” and the Christians say, “The Jews stand on nothing,” though they [both] recite the Book …
of them, that they [alone] shall enter the Garden, are “their [false] hopes,” the lying [fancies] by which they beguile themselves that they shall enter the Garden. “Say, ‘Produce your proof’” — your evidence for these claims and those fancies — “‘if you are truthful’” in them; for the truthful must needs have a proof and an evidence. (112) “Nay” — a rebuttal and refutation of the negation they uttered, after the manner of His words in Sūrat al-Taghābun (64:7), “the faithless claim they will not be raised; say, ‘Nay, by my Lord, you shall surely be raised.’” “Whoever submits (aslama)” — like “he committed his affair to God,” that is, entrusted and left it [to Him] and did not intrude upon it by opposing [His] will — “his face” — the face is [a thing] known, and what is meant is a metonym for his turning and directing [himself] in the path of cognition, worship, obedience, and the seeking of enabling grace and guidance, and [his] committing it “to God,” not intruding upon it by the swerving of caprices, the promptings of error, and the pulls of the soul that incites to evil — “and he being a doer of good (muḥsin)” in his deed — “he shall have his reward with his Lord” (the pronouns made singular in view of the word “whoever”), “and no fear shall be upon them” of God’s punishment, “nor shall they grieve” at deserving punishment. (113) “The Jews said, ‘The Christians stand on nothing,’” because they are not upon their creed, “and the Christians said, ‘The Jews stand on nothing,’” because they are not upon their creed; and each of the two groups directs its said saying at everyone not upon its creed — even at the Muslims, they say this saying of theirs — “though they [both] recite the Book,” that is, its kind: the books in their hands, which they ascribe to revelation and prophethood, though in those books are words of truth and a remnant of the true revelation, such that they [in fact] profess by it.121 And in those words which they recite is what amounts to [this]: that the Garden, salvation, and the religion of truth are bound up with the [true] oneness of God, His worship and obedience, and the affirmation of His prophets, Books, and signs; and that among the Jews before the time of Jesus, and among the Christians of the elect of the Messiah and his followers, were those upon the straight path in that. So how does each group utter its said saying, when they recite their books and know what is the foundation in the religion of truth? [p.118]
(2:113) … So said those who have no knowledge, [words] like their saying. God will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection concerning that in which they used to differ. (2:114) And who is a greater wrongdoer than one who bars God’s mosques, lest His name be mentioned in them, and strives for their ruin? Such ones ought not to enter them save in fear; for them, in this world, is disgrace, and for them, in the Hereafter, is a great punishment. (2:115) And to God belong the East and the West …
And “likewise said” the polytheists — “those who have no knowledge” of what is the foundation in the religion of truth — “[words] like their saying. So God will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection concerning that in which they used to differ,” and will judge for whoever was upon the reality of the sound religion. (114) “And who is a greater wrongdoer than one who bars God’s mosques” — the mosque (masjid) being that in which the worship of God and prostration to Him are customary, even if it be among the shrines not called, in the jurists’ usage, a “mosque” — “lest His name be mentioned in them,” and He be worshipped in them by prayer and the recitation of His Book, “and strives for their ruin?” In al-Tibyān: it is said what is meant is the polytheists of the Arabs, of Quraysh, for they barred the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) from the Sacred Mosque — and that is what is related from Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him). I say: in al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn Isḥāq and Ibn Abī Ḥātim brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās what is of this sort; and upon it, the meaning of its “ruin” is that it be left to false worship, such as whistling, hand-clapping, prostration to idols, and the naked circumambulation of men and women. The apparent [truth] is that what is related is an exposition of the occasion of revelation, which does not make the general [verse] particular.122 And there are, at this station, strange and wondrous interpretations, among them what al-Wāḥidī mentioned from Qatāda (and others mentioned from al-Ḥasan too): that Nebuchadnezzar ruined Jerusalem, the Christians aiding him in that. Would that I knew what Nebuchadnezzar has to do with the Christians, when he was some six hundred years before the Messiah! And near it in strangeness is what al-Wāḥidī mentioned, related from Kaʿb al-Aḥbār. “Such ones ought not to enter them” — God’s mosques — “save in fear; for them, in this world, is disgrace, and for them, in the Hereafter, is a great punishment. (115) And to God belong the East and the West” — by way of example, that is, His are all the directions, all in His dominion, by the evidence of His words coming later, “to God belong the East and the West,” concerning the turning of the qibla from Jerusalem [p.119]
… so wherever you turn, there is the Face of God. Indeed God is all-embracing, all-knowing.
and the direction of the north-west, to the Kaʿba and the direction of the south — that is, to God belong all the directions; no one direction, apart from another, has an essential, natural peculiarity binding it to the turning toward the worship of God and His supplication. “So wherever you turn, there is the Face of God” — and God forbid that a direction or place be exclusively His. In the sound report of al-Faqīh, from Isḥāq b. ʿAmmār, from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him): “this verse came down concerning the one at a loss” — that is, in the obligatory prayer — “to God belong the East and the West, so wherever …,” the verse. And it is related that al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) argued by the verse for the soundness of the prostration of recitation toward other than the qibla, as in al-Ṣadūq’s report in al-ʿIlal from al-Ḥalabī; and for the non-repetition of the obligatory prayer if it was prayed, in error, toward other than the qibla, as in al-Tahdhīb’s report. And the generality [of Sunnīs] related, on the soundness of the prayer in this case, that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) was told of it, or asked about it, and the verse came down — al-Durr al-Manthūr naming ten who brought this out from ʿĀmir b. Rabīʿa, and [others] from Jābir al-Anṣārī. And in al-Ṣadūq’s foregoing report, al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) argued by the verse for the soundness of the voluntary prayer upon a riding-beast, wherever it turns. And al-Durr al-Manthūr [relates] that Ibn Jarīr and Ibn al-Mundhir brought out from Mujāhid: when “Call upon Me, I shall answer you” (40:60) came down, they said, “toward where?” — so “wherever you turn, there is the Face of God” came down. Now, looking at the sum of what is related, and the verse’s indication and proof, guides [us to see] that the report of its revelation on a particular occasion is only in view of its applying to it and its being intended within the generality of its revelation. Likewise the reported [material], the tongue of the verse, and its tenor testify that its import is a general rule, made plain by the proof to which reason too testifies — save that God singled out certain places, honouring them, so that whoever prays the obligatory [prayer], and a portion of the voluntary, faces them, and the dead and the sacrificial animal are turned toward them, in accordance with what the Book and Sunna indicate; and what is other than that remains under the ruling of the generality in this decisive verse and its proof. Its generality is emphasized and made firm by His words, “Indeed God is all-embracing” in mercy and kindness, “all-knowing” of whoever turns to His presence in obedience. And of the strange [things] is al-Wāḥidī’s saying that Ibn ʿAbbās’s view is that this verse is abrogated by His words, “and wherever you are, turn your faces toward it” (2:150). Does not every Muslim know that the verse “wherever you turn” — if its revelation was before the turning of the qibla to the Kaʿba, was particularized from the first of its revelation by the facing, in the obligatory [prayer], of a particular direction (which was then the direction of Jerusalem, since the Messenger’s prayer toward it was from the first of his arrival at Medina)?123 “And so long as I live, time will keep showing me wonders!” For there has arisen, among the innovators of a folk in our own ages, [those] who forbid — and strike — whoever turns, in the mosque of the noblest Messenger, when supplicating and seeking intercession by the Messenger, toward the direction of his noble grave on the eastern side — as though God had not sent down the foregoing verse, and they knew not the custom that the one seeking intercession sets his intercessor before him! And God judges, and He is the best of judges.
(2:116) And they said, “God has taken a son.” Immaculate is He! Rather, to Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and the earth; all are devoutly obedient to Him. (2:117) The Originator of the heavens and the earth; and when He decrees a matter, He only says to it, “Be,” and it is. (2:118) And those who have no knowledge say, “Why does God not speak to us …”
(116) “And they said, ‘God has taken a son’” — the sayer of this being the Christians, and indeed others who took [it] from them, like the Greeks and others, and the Brahmins and the Buddhists, when they made the leaders of their religion gods born of God124 — “Immaculate is He!” in [His] transcendence and magnification above that; “rather, to Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and the earth,” and all are alike in being created by God, and His, and His property; “all are devoutly obedient (qānitūn) to Him” — they mentioned, among the meanings of qunūt, humility and obedience: that is, humbled, or obedient by yielding to His creating-power, His power, and His divinity. So where is sonship and divinity, [when set] against the created? And “obedient” came in the sound masculine plural, by predominance [of the rational]. (117) “The Originator (badīʿ)” — an intensive [form] of “originator,” that is, bringer-into-being and inventor — “of the heavens and the earth,” not after [any] prior model. “And when He decrees a matter” — that is, creates and fashions [it], as in His words in Sūrat Fuṣṣilat (41:12), “so He decreed them seven heavens in two days,” and Abū Dhuʾayb’s saying, “upon the two of them are two coats of mail that David decreed [fashioned], or the making of the perfect [armourer] Tubbaʿ” — the “matter” being the thing or the event — “He only says to it, ‘Be’” — that is, He needs no laying of premises and preparations that its existence would [otherwise] require and without which it would be impossible; rather things are at the beck of His will: He wills, and it is. And His words “He says to it, ‘Be’” are only a metonym for His will, by [analogy with] that whereby people display their will, namely their command. “And it is” — a branching upon “He says,” not a [conditional] answer to His words “Be,” since the “being” after the fāʾ is the very being commanded, for its parts, following upon it. (118) “And those who have no knowledge” — of the loci of God’s wisdom, His proof, and the indication of His signs — “said, ‘Why does God not speak to us’” — “lawlā” here in the sense of “why not,” for [demanding] presentation and request, what is meant being His speaking to them in particular [p.121]
(2:118) … or a sign come to us?” So said those before them, [words] like their saying; their hearts are alike. We have made the signs clear for a people who are certain. (2:119) Indeed We have sent you with the truth, a bearer of good news and a warner; and you shall not be questioned about the inmates of Hell. (2:120) Never will the Jews be pleased with you, nor the Christians, until you follow their creed. Say, “Indeed the guidance of God is the [true] guidance.” And should you follow their desires after …
“or a sign come to us” — [a sign] special to them, according to their suggestion, in insolence and arrogance, as God related of them in the Meccan Sūrat al-Isrāʾ (17:90–93), from His words “and they said, ‘We will not believe you until you make a spring gush forth for us from the earth’” to His words “until you send down upon us a Book we may read.” “Likewise said those before them, [words] like their saying” — in the corrupt suggestion, though they [too] witnessed what wisdom requires of signs and evidences — as the Jews said, “we will not believe you until we see God openly,” and that after they had seen the evidences of Moses’s messengership, like the sign of the staff and the parting of the sea. “Their hearts are alike” in error and unbelief in the clear signs. Had the signs run according to the suggestion of the suggesters, of those steeped in error and cavilling, they would have ceased to be signs — indeed they would thereby have become ordinary matters by which no proof stands — let alone that many of them demand what is rationally impossible, like the Children of Israel’s saying “we will not believe you until we see God openly.” And are the signs [anything] but what wisdom requires, according to the state of those called to faith, of what yields certainty and by which the proof stands? And the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) brought that in the finest manner. “We have made the signs clear for a people who are certain” — by what necessitates certainty through its sufficient indication, and who do not cavil at it in the obstinacy of error and the arbitrariness of caprices; for the Qurʾān was sent down inimitable, according to what wisdom requires, from many aspects, so that the certain were illumined by its certainty, and the excuses were cut off from the deniers and the doubters, since He challenged them to bring ten sūras, or a sūra like it.125 I say: something of that was indicated in the First Chapter of the Introduction. And do not grieve, O Messenger of God, at the saying of these [people]: (119) “Indeed We have sent you with the truth, a bearer of good news” — to the believers, of the bliss prepared for them — “and a warner” — of the punishment and abasement prepared for the unbelievers and the obstinate — “and you shall not be questioned about the inmates of Hell” who merited it by their evil choice. (120) “Never will the Jews be pleased with you” — until you follow their creed; that was elided, His words “nor the Christians, until you follow their creed” indicating it — “Say”: I follow the guidance, and where, [compared] to it, are your desires and your blind following in them? “Indeed the guidance of God is the [true] guidance; and should you follow their desires, after the [knowledge] that has come to you” of the religion of truth and of their error in what they are upon, then “you would have” — nor would anyone [have], against whom the proof has stood [p.122]
… the knowledge that has come to you, you shall have against God no guardian or helper. (2:121) Those to whom We gave the Book recite it as it ought to be recited: they believe in it. And whoever disbelieves in it — they are the losers. (2:122) O Children of Israel, remember My blessing which I bestowed upon you, and that I favoured you over all the nations. (2:123) And beware of a Day when no soul shall compensate for another, nor ransom be accepted from it, nor intercession benefit it, nor will they be helped. (2:124) And when his Lord tested Abraham with certain words, and he fulfilled them, He said, “I am making you …”
from his intellect and your conveying [it]; “against God” — [attached to the] sought-for guardian and helper, [namely] rescue and deliverance — “no guardian or helper.” (121) “Those to whom We gave the Book” — the Qurʾān — “recite it as it ought to be recited” — the sentence a circumstantial [clause] for “gave them,” not the predicate, for not everyone given the Qurʾān recites it as it ought.126 In Majmaʿ al-Bayān, from al-ʿAyyāshī from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him): that reciting it as it ought is the pausing at the mention of the Garden and the Fire — asking [for] the first and seeking refuge from the second. And this accords in meaning with what al-Daylamī [relates] from Abū ʿAbd Allāh [too]: “They recite its verses distinctly, gain understanding by it, act by its rulings, hope its promise, fear its threat, take a lesson from its stories, comply with its commands, and desist at its prohibitions. By God, it is not the memorizing of its verses, the learning of its letters, the reciting of its sūras, and the studying of its tenths and fifths; they memorized its letters and squandered its rulings; it is only the pondering of its verses and the acting by its rulings.” God said, “a blessed Book We have sent down to you, that they may ponder its verses” (38:29). “Those believe in it” (the sentence “those” being the predicate of “those to whom”), “and whoever disbelieves in it — they are the losers,” and that is the manifest loss. (122) “O Children of Israel, remember My blessing … and that I favoured you over all the nations. (123) And beware a Day when no soul discharges aught for another, nor ransom is accepted from it, nor intercession benefits it, nor are they helped” — the discourse on the two verses passed after verse 43, and the two are repeated here to register their meaning against the Jews. (124) “And when his Lord tested Abraham with words, and he fulfilled them, He said, ‘I am making you …’”: the tenor of the three verses after this, and their coordination upon it, requires that “idh” be the object of an implied “mention”; and the connection of the verse’s words and meanings requires that His words “I am making you,” to the end, be an interpretation of the “words” — the agent in “he fulfilled them” being God. Ibn Bābawayh’s report in Kitāb al-Nubuwwa, from al-Mufaḍḍal b. ʿUmar from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), testifies to that; and on it runs what is related [p.123]
“… the Imam of mankind.” [Abraham] said, “And of my progeny?”
in Majmaʿ al-Bayān from Qatāda, Abū al-Qāsim al-Balkhī, and the choice of al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Maghribī. In al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn Jarīr brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās that the “words” are “I am making you an imam for the people” and the verses after it; Ibn Jarīr and Ibn Abī Shayba [related] the like from Mujāhid. But were “idh” an adverbial governed by “He said, I am making you,” the “words” would be something else, so that the agent in “he fulfilled them” might be thought to be Abraham. In Tafsīr al-Qummī: it is what God tested him with, of what He showed him in his sleep, of the slaughtering of his son, and Abraham fulfilled them — [though] it is not known whether the sayer is al-Qummī or the Imam. And al-Durr al-Manthūr relates from Ibn ʿAbbās, in this vein, five mutually-conflicting reports. On what we said first, the meaning is: God tested Abraham with the words of his imamate and the imamate of the imams, and the bearing of its burdens and the rendering of its thanks.127 “An imam (imām) for the people” — a reference-point, a goal, and a leader in the affairs of religion and of the world. The ḥadīth is abundant from the Imams (peace be upon them) that Abraham’s imamate was after his prophethood and messengership — as in al-Kāfī from Jābir from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), from Zayd al-Shaḥḥām, Hishām, and Durust from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), and in al-ʿUyūn from ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Muslim from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him). It is [further] indicated by [the fact] that Abraham’s prophethood was before any child was born to him and before his old age, whereas the verse requires that God’s saying to him, making him imam, was after he had children and hoped for progeny from them; before that he had no such hope, for the Qurʾān, in Sūrat al-Ḥijr, reports that when he was given glad tidings of Isaac he said, “do you give me glad tidings when old age has touched me? Of what, then, do you give tidings?” (15:54). And “jāʿil” here is not [in the sense of] “I made in the past,” for it governs the object “imam”; and His words “for the people” attach to “jāʿil,” pointing to the favour upon the people, and that the imamate is a kindness from God and among the greatest interests for their affairs — or [they] attach to “imam,” fronted for the importance of the imamate’s generality to the people and its bearing on their public and private interests. “He said” — Abraham — “and of my progeny?” The apparent [sense] is a coordination upon “jāʿil” in “I am making you,” that is, “and [will You make] of my progeny [imams]?” — being of the nature of a confirmatory question, for increased joy and gladness and a kind of thanks, if he knew, from the words and the names, that the imams are of his progeny; or [a genuine] question, if he did not know they are of his progeny. It has been said the meaning is “and make of my progeny [imams].” But in it is affectation, in an estimation added beyond what the flow indicates — especially in view of al-Faḍl’s report indicating that the imams’ names were known within the “words”; for it is far-fetched of Abraham’s station to seek an increase upon [p.124]
He said, “My covenant does not reach the wrongdoers.” (2:125) And when We made the House a place of return for the people, and a sanctuary …
what God had informed him of His decree. “He said” — God (exalted be His name), in exposition of the merit of this imamate — “My covenant does not reach the wrongdoers,” an exposition of the imamate’s honour in its supreme excellence and of the imam’s merit; for the imamate is, by My appointment and covenant, in [its] indication of the imam according to his fitness for this dignity in his perfection, his upholding of the people’s interest as kindness in their welfare requires, and his fitness for their yielding to him.128 This noble covenant is of the nature of a bequest and an indication of designation; its like is their expression “heir-designate” (walī al-ʿahd). And “the wrongdoer” comprises whoever has wronged himself by opposing the truth — and how does one who has no restraint, from his [own] perfection, against wronging himself or others, befit that God should covenant to him the imamate of the people, the setting-aright of their affairs, and their guidance? “Is He who guides to the truth worthier to be followed, or he who does not guide unless he is guided?” (10:35). In al-Burhān’s report from al-Kāfī, and al-Mufīd, from Hishām b. Sālim and Durust from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), on the verse: whoever worshipped an idol, an image, or a likeness cannot be an imam. And from the Shaykh’s Amālī (with a chain), and Ibn al-Maghāzilī in al-Manāqib (in raised form), from Ibn Masʿūd from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), on the verse — God’s saying to Abraham: “whoever prostrated to an idol besides Me, I do not make him an imam”; and he (God bless him and his Household) said, “so the summons ended at me and my brother ʿAlī — neither of us ever prostrated to an idol.” And from al-Kāfī (with a chain) and al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (in raised form), from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “the foolish (safīh) is not the imam of the God-wary.” So the mention of idol-worship is by way of specifying one instance of the disqualifiers of the imamate — namely what contradicts the infallibility (ʿiṣma) whose being required in this imamate reason indicates. Among the witnesses and offshoots of that: innate nature and the ruling of reason moved all civilized governments to make, among their fundamental laws, that whoever is convicted of a crime warranting punishment — even imprisonment for a short term — is dropped, in their terminology, from civil rights: that is, he has no office in the government by which he is set in authority over others, and no repentance avails him in that. Is God not the wisest of judges? (125) “And” — coordinated upon “when He tested” in the prior verse — “when We made the House” — the Sacred [House], the Kaʿba — “a place of return (mathāba) for the people” — a resort for them, the tāʾ for intensity, since its being a resort was made perpetual; for you see one who bears hardships in visiting it longing to return to it, time after time — a strange secret and a sign of God’s signs.129 “And a sanctuary (amn)” — whoever alights in its protection is secure, despite the wildness of the Bedouin and their mutual enmity — also of the House’s signs; more exposition of it will come, God willing, at verse 97 of Sūrat Āl ʿImrān. “And take” — coordinated upon “mention” — “from the Station of Abraham [p.125]
… and take from the Station of Abraham a place of prayer.”
a place of prayer.” The Station of Abraham (maqām Ibrāhīm) is now the name of a spot at which prayer is offered, in view of its containing the rock upon which Abraham (peace be upon him) stood, so that the marks of his two feet came to be in it. Abū Ṭālib said of it: “and the tread of Abraham in the rock, a print upon his two feet, barefoot, unshod.” In al-Kāfī, in the good [report] like the sound, from Abū ʿAbd Allāh: “the Station of Abraham [is] where he stood upon the stone, so his two feet left a mark in it.” In Majmaʿ al-Bayān, from Ibn ʿAbbās, a story that the Station is a rock which Ishmael’s wife placed under Abraham’s feet when she washed his head, so his feet left their mark in it; and that ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm related, with a chain from Abān from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), this same story. In al-Durr al-Manthūr, al-Azraqī brought out from al-Muṭṭalib b. Abī Wadāʿa and another that the flood of Umm Nahshal, in the days of ʿUmar, swept the Station from its place, so ʿUmar asked about its place, and al-Muṭṭalib claimed he had the measure of its place, so it was set in its place [as it is] now. And [al-Durr al-Manthūr relates] that al-Bayhaqī brought out in his Sunan, from ʿĀʾisha, that the Station, in the time of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) and the time of Abū Bakr, was adjoining the House; then ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb moved it back. In al-Kāfī and al-Faqīh, in the reliable [report] like the sound, from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): the place of the Station which Abraham set was by the wall of the House, and it did not cease to be there until the people of the Jāhiliyya moved it to the place it is in today; and when the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) conquered Mecca, he returned it to the place Abraham (peace be upon him) had set it; [it remained so] until ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb held office, and he asked the people, “who among you knows the place the Station was in?”, and one said, “I had taken its measure with a strap, and it is with me,” and brought it to him, and he measured it, then returned it to that place. The like of it is mentioned in al-Masālik, from Sulaymān b. Khālid from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), mentioning that the Station is the pillar of rock upon which Abraham used to stand when building the House, and that in Abraham’s time it adjoined the House, opposite the place it is in today. In Tafsīr al-Qummī, in Sūrat al-Ḥajj, [it is said] the Station in Abraham’s time adjoined the House, and upon it Abraham called [people] to the Ḥajj. And in Ibn Muslim’s implicit-subject [report] and the sound [report] of Ibrāhīm b. Abī Maḥmūd from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him), related in al-Kāfī, is what indicates that the Station’s place in the time of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) was other than its place in the days of the Imams down to now. I say: the apparent [sense] is that what is meant by “the Station of Abraham” in the verse is the direction of his standing and the site of his standing, not specifically his foot-tread in his standing, or the rock itself — for one cannot make a place of prayer of that.130 And it is related in al-Wasāʾil, from our Imams (peace be upon them), more than [p.126]
… And We charged Abraham and Ishmael: “Purify My House for those who circumambulate, those who make it a retreat, and those who bow and prostrate.”
twelve ḥadīth, that the prayer of the circumambulation [is] behind the Station according to its place in their time (peace be upon them) and now — five of them citing His words “and take from the Station of Abraham a place of prayer,” and six specifying “behind [it].” Upon this is carried what was worded “at the Station” — the expression “at” (ʿind) being also a restriction upon the [otherwise] absolute “behind” — and likewise what was worded “return to the Station” or “come to the Station”; and this is among what witnesses that the direction, and the measure of its breadth, is intended. Perhaps the obligation of setting the Station forward, according to its second place, is for the sake of honouring it against having one’s back to it, or for the sake of concealment on behalf of the Shīʿa; and the confining, in Zurāra’s report, to the [now] well-known Station is apparent [as being] in relation to the prayer for the obligatory circumambulation — [whereas] for the supererogatory circumambulation, [the worshipper prays] wherever he wishes in the Mosque; and Ṣafwān’s mursal [report] may be brought down to that, as Ibrāhīm b. Abī Maḥmūd’s sound report and the rest may be brought down to concealment on behalf of the Shīʿa, so that prayer between the first and second places of the Station is permitted. But the possibility [of its being] for the honouring of the Station itself gives preponderance to the apparent [sense] of the reports, and bars certainty of [ritual] discharge save by prayer behind it. “And We charged Abraham and Ishmael: ‘Purify My House for those who circumambulate, those who make it a retreat, and those who bow and prostrate’” — that is, those circumambulating it for the worship of God; the retreat (ʿukūf) being the tarrying around it for worship, even [merely] by the tarrying itself in its court; the “bowing” the plural of one bowing, and the “prostrating” the plural of one prostrating — [and] what is meant is those praying around it.131 From al-Ṣadūq in al-ʿIlal, and al-Shaykh in al-Tahdhīb, by two sound chains from ʿImrān and ʿAbd Allāh, the two Ḥalabī brothers: “I asked Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), do the women perform the [full] ablution when they come to the House? He said, ‘Yes; for God (mighty and majestic) says, “purify My House for those who circumambulate, those who make it a retreat, and those who bow and prostrate,” so it behooves the servant not to enter save while pure, having washed off from himself the sweat and the filth, and purified [himself].’” What is meant by “coming to the House” is turning to it for circumambulation and the like. From al-Kulaynī, by a reliable chain from Muḥammad al-Ḥalabī from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), the like, [but] omitting the question, and in it, “so it behooves the servant not to enter Mecca save while pure” — and this interprets what the “entering” attaches to in the reports of his two brothers. And it is known that the ordinary circumambulation of the people, their retreat, their bowing, and their prostration are only outside the House and around it. So it [also] indicates that what is meant is the purifying of the House’s court, on account of the sanctity of the House ascribed to God, which He made [a thing] circumambulated around, retreated at, bowed to, and prostrated toward — [the worshippers] being, by the secondary, incidental consideration, a regard for the state of the worshippers around it. It is upon this that the reasoning by the noble verse [in the ḥadīth] runs, for it indicates the primary, essential consideration by a clear indication. What is meant by the purifying is what its unrestricted [use], in its linguistic sense, requires — namely the removal [p.127]
(2:126) And when Abraham said, “My Lord, make this a secure town, and provide its people with fruits — such of them as believe in God and the Last Day.” He said, “And whoever disbelieves, I will let him enjoy a little, then drive him to the punishment of the Fire, and evil is the destination.” (2:127) And when Abraham raised the foundations of the House, with Ishmael: “Our Lord, accept from us! Indeed You are the All-hearing, the All-knowing. (2:128) Our Lord, make us …”
of everything that contradicts the sanctity of the House, of formal and moral filth, whether customary or by the Lawgiver’s disclosure, as the Ḥalabīs’ report witnesses. The command in “purify” is of the nature of a report, to expound the duty and the aim — like one’s saying “bathe for major impurity and for Friday” — as His words “and We charged” point [to]; so it is not barred from comprising the obligatory and the recommended, and the charge understood from it carries over to other than Abraham and Ishmael. (126) “And” mention “when Abraham said, ‘My Lord, make this’” — the House’s court and sanctuary, namely Mecca — “‘a secure town,’” its people and whoever is in it being safe from the harm of people, “‘and provide its people’” — its dwellers — “‘with fruits’” — not all its dwellers, but “‘such of them as believe in God’” (he did not say “in You,” preserving the specification of faith in God by the explicit [mention] of His mighty name) “‘and the Last Day.’ He said” — God (magnified be His bounties), the gist being: I have answered your prayer, and I do not restrict My provision in this passing world to the believers; rather I provide in it the believer and the unbeliever [alike]. “‘And whoever disbelieves’” and persists in his unbelief, “‘I will let him enjoy’” in this world “‘a little’” — the span of his short life, [short] in relation to what is beyond it — granting him respite, the proof standing against him, and giving him rein — “‘then drive him’” — take him by force, by death and the gathering — “‘to the punishment of the Fire’” prepared for the unbelievers, “‘and evil is the destination’” [that is] his destination.132 (127) “And” mention “when Abraham raised the foundations” — the foundation of the House [being] its base, and raising the foundations here [being] the building upon them and making it high — “of the House” (the Kaʿba) “with Ishmael,” [the two of them] in a state of drawing near [to God], saying, “‘Our Lord, accept from us’” our obedience, “‘indeed You are the All-hearing’” of supplication, “‘the All-knowing’” of our intentions in Your obedience. (128) “‘Our Lord, make us’” — by Your enabling grace — “‘submissive (muslimayn) to You.’” The apparent [sense] is that islām, in origin, is entering into peace (silm) — [the opposite of] warring and defiance — and, in relation to God, it is realized by yielding to His divinity, His oneness, and the messengership of His messengers and His Books; it became specific, in usage, to this meaning, and, after the messengership of the Seal of the Prophets, Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household), the current usage became that [together] with yielding to his messengership, and that his Qurʾān and sacred law are from God; and true islām is the yielding within the soul that runs parallel to faith, and that is what is meant here [p.128]
“… submissive to You, and of our progeny a nation submissive to You; and show us our rites, and turn to us clemently. Indeed You are the All-clement, the All-merciful. (2:129) Our Lord, raise among them a messenger from among them, who shall recite to them Your signs, and teach them the Book and wisdom, and purify them. Indeed You are the All-mighty, the All-wise.” (2:130) And who renounces the creed of Abraham except one who fools himself? …
— that is, make us submissive to You for the span of our lives, in the sense of “make us firm, by Your guidance and enabling grace, upon islām, as You have guided us to it.” “And” make, by Your enabling grace and kindness, “‘of our progeny a nation submissive to You’” — they did not ask that for all their progeny, on account of God’s prior saying to Abraham “My covenant does not reach the wrongdoers” when Abraham said “and of my progeny,” or on account of what they knew of the state of humankind in their choosing of faith, and that many of them prefer blindness to guidance; so they asked that there be, of their progeny, a submissive nation, not [only] the imam in particular. “‘And show us’” — the pronoun may comprise the submissive nation of their progeny — “‘our rites (manāsik),’” the rite being worship, so the sight sought would be upon its reality. “‘And turn to us clemently’” — seeking the turning in view of the submissive nation’s entry into the supplication; or the pronoun may be specific to Abraham and Ishmael, so what is meant by the turning toward them is the return upon them with mercy and kindness (the original meaning of “turning” being return); or they may intend by “turning” a kind of its known sense, out of self-abasement before God and a deeming-small of their deeds beside God’s majesty, as is the emblem of the sincere friends [of God]. “‘Indeed You are the All-clement, the All-merciful.’ (129) ‘Our Lord, raise among them’” — the nation of their progeny — “‘a messenger from among them, who shall recite to them Your signs, and teach them the Book and wisdom, and purify them’” by his guidance and his striving in the summons, “‘indeed You are the All-mighty’” in the executing of Your will, the aiding of Your messenger in his conveying, and the carrying-out of Your rulings, and his teaching and purifying of Your servants, “‘the All-wise’” in what You do. The instance of this supplication is the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), in his universal messengership; he is the Messenger of God in the progeny of Abraham and Ishmael, and by them his summons began, and he (God bless him and his Household) is also of their progeny.133 In Tafsīr al-Qummī, the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) said, “I am the prayer of my father Abraham”; in al-Bayān it is related that he (God bless him and his Household) said that, and al-Durr al-Manthūr related it from a group. (130) “And who” — an interrogation returning to denial and negation — “renounces the creed of Abraham” — in [its] oneness, cognition, noble character, and pure ḥanīf [monotheism] — “except one who fools himself (safiha nafsahu)?” — that is, except one who harmed himself by his folly; for the creed of Abraham runs, in its cognitions and morals, upon the clear, reasonable, innate way, so that none renounces it save the foolish [p.129]
… And We certainly chose him in this world, and in the Hereafter he is among the righteous. (2:131) When his Lord said to him, “Submit,” he said, “I submit to the Lord of all the worlds.” (2:132) And Abraham enjoined it upon his sons, and [so did] Jacob: “O my sons, God has chosen for you the religion, so do not die except as submitters.” (2:133) Were you witnesses when death came to Jacob, when he said to his sons, “What will you worship after me?” They said, “We will worship your God and the God of your fathers Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac — one God — and to Him we submit.” (2:134) That was a nation that has passed: for it what it earned, and for you what you earned, and you shall not be questioned about what they used to do.
renounces it. “And We certainly chose him” — Abraham — and selected him as a messenger, imam, and guide — “in this world, and in the Hereafter he is among the righteous” — that is, counted among those who, in this world, were righteous, guiding [others]. (131) “When [his Lord] said” — an adverbial for “We chose him” — “to him, ‘Submit (aslim),’” and this saying, to the like of Abraham, is before the time of maturity; we [already] mentioned the meaning of islām [just] now. “He said, ‘I submit,’” and he pointed to his cognition, and that his islām is upon a proof and insight, by his words, “‘to the Lord of all the worlds.’ (132) And Abraham enjoined it upon his sons” — that is, enjoined upon them the ḥanīf creed, the creed of Abraham — “and [so did] Jacob” — that is, Jacob [too] enjoined it upon his sons; each of them said to his sons, in the station of enjoining and urging the following of the creed unto death, and that caprices not toy with them so that Iblīs seize the opportunity from them at death and turn them from the ḥanīf [faith] and islām: “‘O my sons, God has chosen for you the religion’” — the [well-]known religion, the religion of the ḥanīf [faith] and islām, and chose it for you pure [and] purified, so cleave to it and be firm in following it as it ought to be followed — “‘so do not die except as submitters’” upon the ḥanīf religion. (133) “Were you” — a turning-away and denial, fitting to be an address to the People of the Book and a denial of a claim of which they have no knowledge, nor were they present, nor witnessed what they rest the claim upon — “witnesses,” present, “when death came to Jacob”? — for there transpired in it nothing of what you claim; rather [it was] “when he said to his sons, ‘What will you worship after me?’” — he said “what” because the objects of worship of the people of error are mostly of what does not reason, like animals and images — “they said, ‘We will worship your God and the God of your fathers, Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac’” — and Ishmael was included in the interpretation of “fathers” by a kind of predominance over him, and because he is an uncle to Jacob, and the uncle is like a father — “‘one God, no partner to Him, and to Him we submit.’ (134) That was a nation that has passed” and gone by — the apparent [sense] being that what is meant by the “nation” is the Children of Israel — “for it what it earned” of good, “and for you what you earned, and you shall not be questioned about what they used to do”; rather each is questioned about his own charge and about what stood [p.130]
(2:135) And they say, “Be Jews or Christians, that you may be guided.” Say, “Rather, the creed of Abraham, a ḥanīf, and he was not one of the polytheists.” (2:136) Say, “We believe in God, and in what was sent down to us, and what was sent down to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and what Moses and Jesus were given, and what the prophets were given from their Lord; we make no distinction between any of them, and to Him we submit.”
against him as proof; so look to yourselves. (135) “And they said” — the People of the Book, Jews and Christians, each group calling to its own sect — “‘Be Jews or Christians’” (“or” dividing the sayings of the two groups) “‘that you may be guided.’ Say”, O Muḥammad, “‘Rather” we follow “the creed of Abraham, a ḥanīf’” — the ḥanīf being the affirmer of oneness who follows the religion of truth — “‘and he was not one of the polytheists’” — perhaps an oblique jab at the Jews and Christians. And in “the creed of Abraham,” to its end, is an argument for the obligation of following it: if we estimate “we follow,” the argument’s import is “and you must follow that”; if we estimate “follow!”, its import is “as we ourselves have followed.” O People of the Book, let not the caprices of nationhood and the partisanship of Jewry or Christianity seize you, for the truth is worthier to be followed. Rather, (136) “Say” — out of true faith, conviction, and following of the proof — “‘We believe in God, and in what was sent down to us’” — in view of [what was] sent down to their prophets and messengers, like the Torah, the Gospel, and the Psalms — “‘and what was sent down to Abraham’” — namely the scrolls of Abraham, upon which his sons proceeded until the time of Moses; and on this consideration was said “‘Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes (al-asbāṭ)’” — since no descent of a book to those [particular] named [persons] is [otherwise] known.134 From al-Kāfī, by its chain from Sadīr from Abū Jaʿfar: that Jacob’s sons — that is, other than Joseph — were not prophets; and the like from al-ʿAyyāshī. The asbāṭ are the plural of sibṭ, [meaning] the child’s child; whence al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn (peace be upon them) are called “the two sibṭs,” and the tribes of the Israelites were named, in view of their descent from Jacob’s sons, asbāṭ, a single tribe of them [being] a sibṭ — and on this runs the usage of the Noble Qurʾān. “‘And what Moses and Jesus were given’” — of miracles, or the dignity of prophethood — “‘and what the prophets were given’” — of the dignity of prophethood and revelation — “‘from their Lord; we make no distinction between any of them,’” of whatever tribe he be, when the evidences indicate his prophethood, “‘and to Him’” — that is, to God — “‘we submit.’”
(2:137) So if they believe in the like of what you believe in, then they are guided; but if they turn away, they are only in defiance, and God will suffice you against them, and He is the All-hearing, the All-knowing. (2:138) The dye of God! And who is fairer than God in dye? And Him do we worship. (2:139) Say, “Do you argue with us about God, when He is our Lord and your Lord? Ours are our deeds and yours your deeds, and to Him we are sincerely devoted.” (2:140) Or do you say that Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes were Jews …
(137) “So if” they say that and “believe in the like of what you believe in”, O Muslims, “then they are guided; but if they turn away” in their unbelief, “they are only in defiance” and obstinacy, not in the quest for truth; “and God will suffice you against them”, O Messenger of God, and guard you from the guile of their defiance; “and He is the All-hearing” of your supplication, or of what they say, “the All-knowing” of what is in [their] inmost selves. (138) “The dye of God (ṣibghata Allāh)” — in the accusative as a substitute for “the creed of Abraham.” From al-Kāfī (with a chain) from al-Ṣādiq — or one of the two [Imams] (peace be upon them) — by three chains, two of them reliable like the sound; and from al-Ṣadūq (soundly) from Abū ʿAbd Allāh; and from al-ʿAyyāshī by another chain: that the “dye” is Islam, which is the creed of Abraham. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn Jarīr and Ibn Abī Ḥātim brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās: “the religion of God.” It was named a “dye” in view of the noble mark that shows of [divine] oneness, noble character, and the adornment of the sacred law.135 “And who is fairer than God in dye?” — by the upright religion He guides to and gives the enabling grace to follow. “And Him do we worship” — Him alone — associating none other with Him in divinity and worship. (139) “Say, ‘Do you argue with us about God’” — and dispute with us — claiming that you are the affirmers of oneness and that prophethood is among you? And how do you argue with us in that, when God does not, by His kindness and vast mercy, favour one tribe over another, but regards fitness therein — for He knows best where He places His messengership, and withholds His kindness and enabling grace only from one who has rebelled against Him by associating [partners] and by disobedience? So how would He favour you and reserve to you what you claim? “‘And” the case is that “‘He is our Lord and your Lord’” — and all of us are His servants, and His kindness is general and His mercy vast to all His servants — “‘and ours are our deeds’” — for we have believed in God, affirmed His oneness, and worshipped Him, and God does not let go to waste the reward of one who does good — “‘and yours your deeds’” — if you do a good better than sincere faith and worship — “‘and to Him we are sincerely devoted’” in His worship and divinity, associating nothing with Him. And in that is a fine oblique reproach of them. (140) “Or do you say”, O People of the Book, and claim, “that Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes were Jews” [p.132]
… or Christians? Say, “Are you more knowing, or God?” And who is a greater wrongdoer than one who conceals a testimony he has from God? And God is not oblivious of what you do. (2:141) That was a nation that has passed: for it what it earned, and for you what you earned, and you shall not be questioned about what they used to do. (2:142) The foolish among the people will say, “What has turned them from the qibla they were following?” …
“or Christians?” (“or” dividing the sayings of the two groups: the Jews say they were Jews, the Christians say they were Christians). “Say, ‘Are you more knowing, or God?’” — [and] you have [in fact] claimed the impossible: where were Jewry and Christianity in the time of these [patriarchs]? “Or God,” who informed [us] that Abraham was a ḥanīf, a submitter, and was not one of the polytheists, and that he submitted to the Lord of the worlds, and that Jacob enjoined it upon his sons, so that they said, “we worship God, one God, and to Him we submit,” as passed [just] now. “And who is a greater wrongdoer than one who conceals a testimony he has from God?” — whether in relation to their knowledge that those they mentioned were submitters upon the ḥanīf religion, or [in relation to] the testimony to the messengership of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household).136 The matter is not confined to Jewry, nor Christianity — had the two remained upon [true] oneness and the sacred law; for God informed them, in the Torah, that He would raise for them a prophet from their brethren and place His speech in his mouth, and the Messiah informed them of a messenger coming after him whose name is Aḥmad. “And God is not oblivious of what you do” — and your claim and your lie against Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes profit you nothing, with the proof standing by God’s sending of His messengers in your time with the dazzling signs; so [attend] to yourselves, and do not excuse yourselves falsely by those who have passed, for (141) “That was a nation that has passed: for it what it earned, and for you what you earned, and you shall not be questioned about what they used to do” — rather you shall be questioned about your [own] deeds and your dealing with the Messenger of God and the religion of truth. (142) “The foolish among the people will say, ‘What has turned them from the qibla they were following?’” — namely Jerusalem, for the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) prayed toward it, upon his coming to Medina, for a time. In al-Tahdhīb’s report from Muʿāwiya b. ʿAmmār from Abū ʿAbd Allāh, [it was] until after his return from Badr; and in al-Faḍl b. Shādhān’s epistle likewise, [saying] he prayed in Medina toward Jerusalem seventeen months; and in Qurb al-Isnād, from al-Bāqir, nineteen months (which is what is mentioned in al-Faqīh); and from al-Shaykh al-Mufīd in Musār al-Shīʿa, [that] in mid-Rajab of the second year of the Hijra the qibla was turned from Jerusalem to the Kaʿba.137 The like of this is what al-Durr al-Manthūr related of the reports of the generality [of Sunnīs]. And in al-Kāfī, in the good [report] like the sound, from al-Ḥalabī from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him): “I asked him, did the Messenger of God pray toward Jerusalem? He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, did he place the Kaʿba behind his back? He said, ‘As for when he was at Mecca, no; but when he migrated to Medina, yes — until he was turned to the Kaʿba’” [p.133]
(2:142) … Say, “To God belong the East and the West; He guides whom He wills to a straight path.” (2:143) And thus We have made you a middle nation, that you may be witnesses over the people, and that the Messenger may be a witness over you …
— and perhaps the report gives to understand that he (God bless him and his Household) prayed at Mecca toward Jerusalem without turning his back on the Kaʿba. From al-Nuʿmānī, by his chain from the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him): that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) prayed, at the beginning of his mission, toward Jerusalem all the days of his stay at Mecca; and in al-Faqīh: “the Messenger of God prayed toward Jerusalem, after prophethood, thirteen years [at Mecca], and nineteen months at Medina.” In al-Durr al-Manthūr, al-Ṭabarānī brought out from ʿUthmān b. Ḥunayf, and in the ḥadīth: the Messenger of God, before he came from Mecca, [prayed] with the qibla toward Jerusalem. And it may be reconciled [by saying] that the Messenger of God used to combine the two qiblas at Mecca, as the [foregoing] intimation in al-Ḥalabī’s report suggests; and in al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn Abī Shayba, Abū Dāwūd (in his [book on] the abrogating), al-Naḥḥās, and al-Bayhaqī brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās that the Prophet, at Mecca, used to pray toward Jerusalem with the Kaʿba before him — and God is the Knower. “Say, ‘To God belong the East and the West’” — that is, all the directions; for the turning of the qibla was from the north-west quarter to roughly the point of the south. This objection of theirs is only from foolishness: do they imagine that a particular direction contains God, or that He whose it is, and [is] in His dominion, [has] a particular direction, or that some directions have a necessary claim to being faced from which no departure is conceivable? Do they not reason that the facing [of the qibla] is a matter of devotion from God, which He institutes according to wisdom and interest? “‘He guides whom He wills to a straight path’” — of what wisdom requires and what leads to guidance and truth. (143) “And thus” — as We guided you to a straight path — “We have made you a middle nation (ummatan wasaṭan)” — the “middle” being the choicest of a thing, since it is protected from corruption; in Tafsīr al-Qummī, “middle” means “just,” which is what is related in the reports of the generality [of Sunnīs], as in al-Durr al-Manthūr — “that you may be witnesses over the people, and that the Messenger may be a witness over you.” It is known that the whole nation is not qualified by choiceness, justice, and being witnesses over the people, for among them are many whose state is not hidden. So these attributes are [borne] only in view of a part [of the nation], and the one addressed is that part.138 It is related in the Uṣūl of al-Kāfī, from Burayd from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him): “We are the middle nation, and we are God’s witnesses over His creation”; and in the good [report] like the sound from Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him) the like; and from al-Ṣaffār by this chain the like, and by another sound chain [too]. From al-Ḥaskānī in Shawāhid al-Tanzīl, from Sulaym al-Hilālī from ʿAlī (peace be upon him): “We are those of whom God said, ‘We made you a middle nation.’” And from al-ʿAyyāshī, from Ibn Abī ʿUmayr al-Zubayrī from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him) on this verse: “Do you suppose that one whose testimony is not admissible in this world over a measure of dates, God would seek his testimony on the Day of Resurrection and accept it from him in the presence of all the nations?” [p.134]
(2:143) … And We did not appoint the qibla you were following except that We might know who follows the Messenger from who turns back on his heels; and it was indeed hard …
“And We did not appoint the qibla you were following”: the apparent [sense] of His words in the verse after this, “so We shall surely turn you to a qibla,” is that it came down before his (God bless him and his Household) turning to the Kaʿba; and the apparent [sense] of the flow is that this verse came down before that — yet the apparent [sense] of His words in it, “you were following,” is “you used to face in the past, then were turned from it.” These apparent [senses] pose a difficulty. For this [reason] some said “was” (kāna) is complete [in sense], meaning “which you are upon.” Al-Kashshāf said “which you were following” is a second object of “We appointed,” what is meant by the relative being Mecca — that is, “We did not appoint the qibla [to be] Mecca” — but in it is contortion and departure from what is fitting, and moreover the difficulty stands. It is lifted from the root [if we hold] that “you were following it” is not specific to [the time] after the turning from it and the cessation of the “being”; rather it is said in view of the past “being” and his (God bless him and his Household) facing Jerusalem for several months, without regard to the cessation — like “and God is ever Forgiving, Merciful” — that is, “We did not appoint Jerusalem a qibla for you this [past] period except that We might know” — the lām [being] of outcome, and the restriction [being] in view of the outcome, not the wisdom of the legislation — “who follows the Messenger from” [him who] “turns back on his heels.”139 The like of this is frequent in the Qurʾān, as in His words “and that He might know the believers,” “and that He might know those who dissembled,” “that God might know who fears Him in the unseen,” “and that God might know who helps Him,” “that We might know which of the two parties better reckoned,” “except that We might know who believes in the Hereafter,” “and We shall surely test you until We know the strivers among you and the steadfast.” The aspect in all these instances and their likes is one: that His knowledge (exalted be His station), though eternal and everlasting, yet, by its being conjoined to the existence of the object of knowledge in the external [world], has an effect and impact in restraint and rebuke, or in glad tidings, among people; and for the sake of this effect and impact the expression ran in the manner of the future verb in these instances, in view of that conjunction and the conjoined knowledge. Upon this manner ran the expression in the Noble Qurʾān by His words “God wills,” as came in more than twenty places, though His will is eternal. And [moreover,] were it said “that this may occur,” it would suggest compulsion (jabr), whereas the benefit of informing [us] that God knows it would be lost; and were it said “that what is known to God by eternal knowledge may occur,” the doubt of compulsion would arise, and they would say, “then the servant has no power to omit it, since it would entail God’s knowledge turning into ignorance” — and they would not attend, as they did not attend, [to the fact] that this knowledge is dependent [on the act], having no effect in the servant’s power. “And it was indeed hard” (2:143) [p.135]
(2:143) … hard, except for those whom God has guided; and God would not let your faith go to waste. Indeed God is most kind and merciful to mankind. (2:144) We do see the turning of your face toward the sky; so We shall surely turn you to a qibla you will be pleased with. So turn your face toward the Sacred Mosque …
“except for those whom God has guided” — “in” [being] the lightened [particle], necessitating the lām of emphasis. The apparent [sense] of the flow requires that the pronoun in “it was” return to the qibla they were upon, namely Jerusalem — and this is also the apparent [sense] of al-Tahdhīb’s reliable [report] from Abū Baṣīr from one of the two [Imams] (peace be upon them): “I said to him, ‘He commanded him to pray toward Jerusalem?’ He said, ‘Yes; do you not see that God (exalted) says, “and We did not appoint the qibla”?’ and he recited the whole verse to His words “Merciful.’” And “hard” [means] heavy; it was necessary that the facing of Jerusalem be heavy upon Quraysh and the Arabs, except those whom God guided to faith in the Messenger of God, who [thus] know that it is a command from God the Wise. “And God would not let your faith go to waste; indeed God is most kind and merciful to mankind.” In al-Kāfī, from Ibn Abī ʿUmayr al-Zubayrī from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him) on the verse: that God named the prayer “faith.” In al-Faqīh: the Muslims said, “Is our prayer toward Jerusalem lost, O Messenger of God?” so that was sent down. And in al-ʿAyyāshī’s report: when the qibla was turned, they said, “what of our state” — that is, in our past prayers — “and what of the state of those who died [praying] toward Jerusalem?” so God sent down “and God would not let your faith go to waste.” And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, from Ibn ʿAbbās the like, and al-Ḥākim graded it sound.140 (144) “We do see the turning of your face toward the sky” — “qad” here for frequency [of occurrence]. Al-Qummī said in his tafsīr: the Jews used to taunt the Messenger of God and say, “he is a follower of ours, praying toward our qibla,” so the Messenger of God grieved and went out in the dead of night gazing at the horizons of the sky, awaiting God’s command. In Majmaʿ al-Bayān it is ascribed to al-Qummī’s report from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him); and in al-Faqīh the like is mentioned, its report referred to Kitāb al-Nubuwwa. So the verse indicates that he (God bless him and his Household) had a role in the affair of the qibla. “So We shall surely turn you to a qibla you will be pleased with” — for it is well-pleasing by its merit, its precedence, the wisdom of the summons of the Arabs, and its being the first House set up for the people, in which are clear signs. “So turn your face toward” [p.136]
(2:144) … and wherever you may be, turn your faces toward it. Those given the Book surely know that it is the truth from their Lord; and God is not oblivious of what they do. (2:145) Even if you brought those given the Book every sign …
“the Sacred Mosque” — that is, toward it; and the qibla is the Kaʿba, by necessity, as the Muslims voice it in instructing their dying and in their [prayer-]sequels and elsewhere; and the ḥadīth came on that in a manner not falling short of mass-transmission. In al-Bukhārī’s collection and others, from Ibn ʿUmar, that the Prophet prayed two rakʿas facing the Kaʿba and said, “this is the qibla.” In the collections of al-Bukhārī, Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, al-Nasāʾī, and the Muwaṭṭaʾ, from al-Barāʾ, Anas, and Ibn ʿUmar, in the ḥadīth of the qibla’s turning, that the worshippers’ turning was to the Kaʿba; and both parties related that the earth was drawn together for the Messenger of God and he saw the Kaʿba, so he set his prayer-niche opposite the water-spout. From the way of the Imāmiyya, some fourteen ḥadīth are adduced in al-Wasāʾil that the Kaʿba is the qibla; and most of these ḥadīth state plainly that the Kaʿba is what the Messenger of God was turned to in this verse. There is no bar to the Kaʿba being called a “mosque,” in view of its being prostrated toward; or [it may be] said that the verse came down in the second year of the Hijra, so the address, in appointing the Kaʿba a general qibla, was directed to the Messenger of God and the Muslims with him, and the people of Medina and its environs — so the expression ran by “the Sacred Mosque,” in view of the breadth of their facing toward the Kaʿba by the facing of confrontation, reverence, and magnification, by which that is realized among people, as is the apparent [sense] of the verse; and their facing the Mosque in this manner entails facing the Kaʿba in this manner too. “And wherever you may be, turn your faces toward it” — that is, toward it, in the aforementioned manner, not the geometric facing; for to charge the distant with that — even the like of the people of Medina, or [any place] a stage, say, from Mecca — would entail charging [them] with what is beyond capacity.141 There is no doubt that the farther the one facing [is], the wider his facing-quarter toward the Kaʿba by the reverential, magnifying confrontation becomes; and we have exhaustively treated that in our epistle on the qibla. “And those given the Book” — the Jews and Christians — “surely know that it” — the turning to the Kaʿba — “is the truth from their Lord” — either because they know that the affair of the qibla and facing is hinged on God’s legislation and command, or because they know the Kaʿba is God’s House from the time of Abraham; and in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, because it was in the prophets’ glad tidings to them that there would be a prophet whose attributes are such-and-such, and that he prays toward the two qiblas — and the like in al-Kashshāf. “And God is not oblivious of what they do” of their sayings and deeds, in obstinacy, contrary to what they know. (145) “And even if you brought those given the Book” — [who] were not granted the enabling grace to believe in you [p.137]
(2:145) … every sign, they would not follow your qibla; nor are you to follow their qibla; nor are some of them followers of the qibla of others. And were you to follow their desires, after the knowledge that has come to you, you would then indeed be among the wrongdoers. (2:146) Those to whom We gave the Book recognize him as they recognize their own sons; but a party of them conceal the truth while they know. (2:147) The truth is from your Lord, so do not be among the doubters. (2:148) And for each is a direction to which he turns, so vie in good works …
“every sign, they would not follow your qibla” — namely the Kaʿba — “nor are you to follow their qibla” — [in] any following, especially after you were commanded to turn toward the Sacred Mosque — “nor are some of them followers of the qibla of others” — for the Christians face the east and the Jews face Jerusalem. “And were you to follow their desires, after the knowledge that has come to you, you would then indeed be among the wrongdoers.” This is a rebuke and reproach to them, that they are people of corrupt desires whom none follow but the wrongdoers; and the Messenger of God was addressed thereby to cut off their greed and to make plain his merit, since he never follows their desires — by the evidence of His words: (146) “Those to whom We gave the Book recognize him” — that is, they recognize the Messenger of God by the attributes with which he was described in their books and the name by which he was named, in a manner in which no doubt ought to be, as in Tafsīr al-Burhān from Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī (with a chain containing a raising) from the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), and from ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm, in the good [report] like the sound, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him); and in the verse is a turn from address to the third person — “as they recognize their own sons,” even if they have been absent from them a long time; “but a party of them conceal the truth while they know” it from their books.142 This party are [the ones] other than the rabble who know nothing of their books, and other than those who submitted [to Islam] or testified to the truth [yet] persisted in error. (147) “The truth is from your Lord” — that is, it is the truth from your Lord — “so do not be among the doubters” who waver in what the sound proof stands upon; and the address in the prohibition is meant for other than the Prophet, as in His words in Sūrat al-Isrāʾ (17:23), “should [one of them] reach old age at your side … do not say to them ‘uff’ nor rebuff them.” (148) “And for each is a direction to which he turns.” I have found nothing from the Prophet and the People of the House on that. It may be interpreted in view of [His words] in Sūrat al-Māʾida (5:48), “for each of you We appointed a law and a way; had God willed He would have made you one nation, but that He might test you in what He gave you; so vie in good works.” So the meaning — and God is the Knower — is: for each of the nations to whom God legislated rulings [there is] a law that God assigned to them and commanded them to follow, so long as the [next] sacred law and the direction after it did not abrogate it, [and] God assigns [it to] the people. “So vie in good works” [p.138]
(2:148) … Wherever you may be, God will bring you all together. Indeed God has power over all things. (2:149) And whencesoever you go out, turn your face toward the Sacred Mosque; and indeed it is the truth from your Lord, and God is not …
And His words “so vie (fa-stabiqū)” came governing the object directly, here and in the verse of al-Anʿām, and in Sūrat Yūsuf (“and they raced to the door”), and in Sūrat Yā-Sīn (“so they raced to the path”); were it in the sense of the [ordinary] contending for precedence (with i in the second syllable), it would have to be made transitive by “to,” and the accusative by the dropping of the preposition, in the like of this station, is far from the nobility of the Qurʾān in its Arabic and eloquence. So the aspect is that, in these instances, it is from seeking the “stake” (sabaq, with a) — that which the foremost attains by his precedence, whence [comes] the stake set in the wagers of a race; and making the good works, the door, and the path a “stake” in the verses is a subtle metonym for its being the sought goal and the intended benefit in the racing. The upshot of the meaning — and God is the Knower — is: for every nation [there is] a sacred law it was commanded to follow, and some laws have been abrogated, so hasten to the truth and seek that the goods of the rulings — namely those not abrogated, and which the Book that guides to what is most upright brought — be a stake for you, and the noble goal of your hastening; and it is naught but the sacred law of the Messenger of God and the Noble Qurʾān. Of that, and the most important of the instances of the “good works,” is the walāya (guardianship), as [related] from al-Kāfī from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), as in the verse “your guardian is only [God]” (5:55), and the two ḥadīth of Ghadīr and of the Two Weighty Things, and other than that.143 “Wherever you may be, God will bring you all together; indeed God has power over all things” — in view of the tenor, the meaning is that He will gather you on the Day of Resurrection for the reckoning and requital, of punishment or bliss, and God is not incapable of your gathering, for He brings you [together] wherever you are. But in view of the generality of the wording and the multitude of its instances, it is related in Tafsīr al-Burhān, in some twelve reports from the Imams (peace be upon them), that they cited the verse for God’s gathering of the companions of the awaited Proof [the Mahdī] from the corners of the earth to rise with the Proof (peace be upon him). And for emphasis in the matter of facing the Kaʿba in prayer, and its generality in all states, in travel and at home, God (exalted) said: (149) “And whencesoever you go out” — whether the going-out be from Mecca to Medina, or from Medina to Syria (such that the face, in the journey to Jerusalem, would be on a slight deviation or a straight [line]), or [going out] toward Mecca, the east, or the west — “turn your face”, in all these states and all these directions, “toward the Sacred Mosque” — that is, toward it — “and indeed it” — the facing of the Sacred Mosque in prayer, upon the absolute [rule] provided for — “is the truth from” the command of “your Lord” and His sacred law that runs upon wisdom and the nobility of the House; and God does not let your reward go to waste in complying with His command. “And God is not oblivious of what you do.” (150) And whencesoever you go out, turn your face toward the Sacred Mosque [p.139]
(2:150) … and wherever you may be, turn your faces toward it, so that people may have no argument against you — except those of them who do wrong; so do not fear them, but fear Me — and that I may complete My blessing upon you, and that you may be guided. (2:151) As We sent among you a messenger from yourselves, who recites to you Our signs, purifies you, teaches you the Book and wisdom, and teaches you what you did not know.
the Sacred Mosque.” This address is to the Messenger, and, though it suffices for the generality of the legislation and the charge upon the Muslims, wisdom requires emphasis by the text and its reiteration; so it was said, as before, “And wherever you may be” — an address to the Messenger and his community — “turn your faces toward it,” even if you be at Jerusalem and in its town, “so that” — that is, this was legislated for you by the aforementioned commands so that — “people may have no argument against you,” even were it a void [argument]:144 this one says, “he follows our qibla”; that one says, “they abandoned their Kaʿba, for all their boasting of its precedence and merit”; this one says, “they abandoned the qibla of Abraham and Ishmael”; or this one says, “it is written that the prophet prays toward the two qiblas,” and that one says, “it is written that he prays toward the Kaʿba.” “Except those of them who do wrong” — an exception from “the people,” for these wrongdoers do not cut off their disputing and their arguing by falsehoods, according as their caprices and their wrongdoing entice them. “So do not fear them, but fear Me” — that is, let your fear be of Me — “and that I may complete My blessing upon you” by legislating the facing of the well-pleasing qibla, the qibla of Abraham, and its restriction to it, “and that you may be guided” — that is, that you may be guided to know God’s kindness in perfecting the blessing upon you thereby and cutting off the arguments of those who dispute with you; or [guided] to the establishing of the prayer, within its bounds, toward this qibla. But since guidance is of the acts of the human and arises from his choice — of reflection and his shunning the doubts of caprices and their obstinacy — “perhaps” (laʿalla) was said in its rationale; and likewise every goal in the Qurʾān that is of the deeds of the servants and returns to their choice, like “perhaps you will give thanks,” “[perhaps] you will reflect,” did not come out in the manner of certainty in the rationale. And God was gracious, in the matter of the qibla, to His servants, for these noble ends. (151) “As We sent among you a messenger from yourselves” — and his being from you is nearer to your yielding to Islam — “who recites to you Our signs, and purifies you” by his religion, his sacred law, and his teachings, “and teaches you the Book and wisdom, and teaches you what you did not [use to] know” — of what concerns you, adorns you, and refines you; and were you to count God’s blessing therein, you could not number it. (152) “So remember Me” — by what is [the cause] of your felicity [p.140]
(2:152) … Remember Me, and I will remember you; give thanks to Me, and do not be ungrateful to Me. (2:153) O you who believe, seek help in patience and prayer; indeed God is with the patient. (2:154) And do not say of those slain in God’s way, “[They are] dead”; rather they are living, but you are not aware. (2:155) And We shall surely test you with something of fear and hunger, and loss of wealth, lives, and fruits; and give glad tidings to the patient — (2:156) those who, when an affliction befalls them, say, “Indeed we belong to God, and indeed to Him we return.” (2:157) Upon those are blessings from their Lord, and mercy; and it is they who are the [rightly] guided.
and what is [due] from you of worship, obedience, and thanks for My blessings, [and] I will requite you with recompense, kindness, blessing, and increase. And, for the sake of the verbal correspondence, the expression of that ran by His words “I will remember you; and give thanks to Me” for My blessings, recognizing them, “and do not be ungrateful to Me” — do not deny Me My blessing. (153) “O you who believe, seek help” — in the affair of your religion, your worship, and your obedience to God, and the shunning of His acts of disobedience, and in your afflictions — “in patience,” for it is the excellent mount, the key of relief, and the means to the glad tidings of the blessings and mercy from God, “and prayer” — coordinated upon patience, for it is God’s door in confiding to Him and seeking His help, the ascent of felicity, and that which forbids indecency and wrong. “Indeed God is with the patient,” and that suffices as glad tidings. (154) “And do not say of those slain in God’s way” [that] they are “dead; rather” they are “living, but you are not aware” of their life, because their world is not your world; and God (magnified be His bounties) informed [us] of the honour and gladness their felicitous life has, as in verses 169 and following of Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (3:169).145 (155) “And We shall surely test you”, O you who believe (as the tenor of the address requires), or O people, “with something of fear and hunger, and loss of wealth, lives, and fruits; and give glad tidings to the patient” in that — [patient] in contentment with what God decreed and in submission to His wisdom — so that what was mentioned does not turn them from thanksgiving for the blessing they are in, nor from His worship, His obedience, and striving in His way; rather they are (156) “those who, when an affliction befalls them, say, ‘Indeed we belong to God’” — and all that is ours, of life and blessing, is only from Him, without our meriting the least thing of it; He does, by His wisdom, what He wills — “‘and indeed to Him we return’” in the Hereafter, so He deals with us according to our patience or our impatience, which is a denial of His blessings. (157) “Upon those are blessings from their Lord” — a comely praise — “and mercy” by reward and requital, “and it is they who are the [rightly] guided” to the truth, by their patience and their submission to God [p.141]
(2:158) Indeed al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa are among God’s sacraments; so whoever makes the Ḥajj to the House, or performs the ʿUmra, there is no blame on him to go around between them. And whoever volunteers good …
and their knowledge and confession that they belong to God and that to Him they return. (158) “Indeed al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa” — two well-known spots at Mecca between which one paces (saʿy) in the Ḥajj and the ʿUmra — “are among God’s sacraments (shaʿāʾir)” — of the landmarks of the acts of obedience which God appointed in the Ḥajj and the ʿUmra — even though it happened that the polytheists set up idols upon them, as they set them upon the Sacred House, until the Messenger of God cast them down at the conquest of Mecca, when he raised the Commander of the Faithful upon his shoulders and he hurled them to the ground. “So whoever makes the Ḥajj to the House, or performs the ʿUmra, there is no blame on him to go around between them (an yaṭṭawwafa bihimā)” — the going-around (ṭawāf) is named for the pacing in view of its repetition, [the pacer] being like the one circumambulating who returns to his starting point. The Muslims had held back from pacing between the two, on account of the idols, so the imagining of prohibition was removed by His words “no blame” — because the two are among God’s sacraments; and that does not negate the obligation [of the saʿy], as is established from the Sunna, and upon it is the consensus of the Imāmiyya and most of the generality [of Sunnīs].146 In Tafsīr al-Burhān, from Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb in al-Kāfī, in the good [report] like the sound, from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), in the ḥadīth of the Prophet’s Ḥajj: that the Muslims used to suppose the pacing between al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa was a thing the polytheists made, so God sent down “indeed al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa,” the verse. I say: I have not found this wording in its likely places in al-Kāfī. From al-ʿAyyāshī: Abū ʿAbd Allāh said, in the report of Ḥammād b. ʿUthmān, that there were idols upon al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa, so when the people made the Ḥajj they did not know how to act, so God sent down this verse; and when the Prophet made the Ḥajj, he cast them down. In al-Kāfī, in the chapter on the saʿy, in the reliable mursal [report] from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him): that the Messenger of God stipulated upon Quraysh, in the ʿUmra of the Fulfilment (ʿUmrat al-Qaḍāʾ), that they remove the idols from al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa; then they came to him and said, “O Messenger of God, so-and-so did not pace between al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa, and the idols have been restored,” so God (mighty and majestic) sent down “there is no blame on him to go around between them.” Al-Qummī mentioned the like in his tafsīr, and [mentioned] in it that the ʿUmra of the Fulfilment was in the seventh year of the Hijra. “And whoever volunteers good” — the form tafaʿʿala comes for the taking-on and the making [of a thing], as [in] “he pillowed the stone”; and the sense of seeking, desiring, and acquiring may appear upon it, as [in] “I acquainted myself,” “I learned,” “I gained insight” [p.142]
(2:158) … then God is indeed appreciative, all-knowing. (2:159) Indeed those who conceal what We have sent down of clear proofs and guidance, after We have made it clear to the people in the Book — those God curses, and the cursers curse them, (2:160) except such as repent, make amends, and clarify: those I turn to [in forgiveness], and I am the All-clement, the All-merciful. (2:161) Indeed those who disbelieve and die while they are unbelievers — upon those is the curse of God, the angels, and all people, (2:162) abiding therein; the punishment shall not be lightened for them, nor shall they be reprieved. (2:163) And your God is One God; there is no god but He …
— from insight, [these being] other than the reflexive. And of that is the saying of Imruʾ al-Qays of his beloved: “I discerned her [fire] from Adhriʿāt, though her abode is at Yathrib — how far off her abode, [seen only by a] lofty gaze!” So the meaning is: whoever takes on the legislated good as an obedience, by seeking and desiring it. There is no evidence from the language, nor from the form or the material of “volunteering,” of its being specific to the recommended [acts]. Rather, the station refuses that, for the saʿy is a due in the recommended Ḥajj and ʿUmra, [and] becomes obligatory by embarking upon them. The upshot of the verse is that going around al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa is good, for it is a magnifying of God’s sacraments and an obedience to Him therein — [so] whoever volunteers good, “then God is indeed appreciative” of the obedience — nothing of it hidden from Him, and He requites for it — “all-knowing”; and though thankfulness is specific to blessing and bestowal, its ascription to God is figurative. (159) “Indeed those who conceal what We have sent down of the clear proofs” — the manifest [signs] in guidance — “and guidance, after We have made it clear to the people” and elucidated its evidences “in the Book” — the generality in “the Book,” [comprising] the Qurʾān and God’s other Books, is more fitting to the generality of the rebuke, the standing of the proof, and the meriting of the curse, and that has many instances (of them what is related in al-Burhān from al-ʿAyyāshī) — “those God curses” — He drives them from His mercy — “and the cursers curse them” — that is, they call [down] upon them the being-driven from mercy. (160) “Except such as repent, and make amends” [in] their deeds “and clarify” what they used to conceal, and other than it of the truth that ought to be clarified: “those I turn to [in forgiveness], and I am the All-clement” to whoever repents [with] the due of repentance, “the All-merciful. (161) Indeed those who disbelieve and die while they are unbelievers — upon those is the curse of God” and His driving them from His mercy, “and” the curse of “the angels” — their supplicating with the curse — “and all people” by their cursing the wrongdoers and the deniers of the truth; and whomever God drives from His mercy is [thereby] punished. (162) “Abiding therein” — that is, in the curse; so they are abiding in the punishment — “the punishment shall not be lightened for them, nor shall they be reprieved” — from “reprieve,” the granting of respite in the punishment, and the granting of respite for excuse and repentance.147 (163) “And your God is One God” in divinity and its attributes, no partner to Him therein; “there is no god but He” [p.143]
(2:163) … the All-beneficent, the All-merciful. (2:164) Indeed in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of night and day, and the ships that sail the sea with profit to people, and the water God sends down from the sky — reviving thereby the earth after its death and scattering therein every [kind of] moving creature — and the shifting of …
— and this phrasing, in [affirming] God’s oneness in divinity and negating aught besides Him therein, is clearer than to be muddled by the rules of parsing. “The All-beneficent, the All-merciful” — and the exposition of the two words passed in the basmala of al-Fātiḥa. By the truth of [my] life: the import of this noble verse — in the existence of the God, His singularity in divinity, His origination of the world by His wisdom, will, beneficence, and mercy — is a matter that innate nature displays to free minds in the clearest of manifestations. Yet God (magnified be His bounties) willed, by His kindness, to draw minds’ attention to that by the upright proof, in a manner from which the common person suffices himself by his simple regard, and the learned deduces, according to his readiness in the sciences, from everything that knowledge displays, a sufficient demonstration. So He mentioned here (magnified be His graces) some of the observed signs of His creation, and said: (164) “Indeed in the creation of the heavens” — and what is seen in them of the fixed stars and the wandering planets, raised one above another upon a specific orbit, each continuing upon its ordered course along the zone of the constellations, besides what is known by science of the benefits of the wanderer’s course along that zone — “and the earth” — and what is in it of the mountains and their dazzling wisdoms (among them the gushing of springs from their heights and the bringing-forth of fire from their volcanoes), and of the kinds of minerals, and of the seas and their currents, and the wisdoms therein — “and the alternation of night and day” upon a measured, continuous system, alike in the days of the years, the day increasing, in each locale of the earth’s northern half, by the measure of what decreases, on that day, in the like locale in latitude of the southern half (and the night’s decrease and increase run inversely to the day in the locales alike in latitude of the two halves) — “and the ships that sail the sea with profit to people” — of the commerce of far countries and the reaching of distant lands, and how the winds called the trade-winds were subjected for them, so that you see the ships sailing, in one time and one sea, each to its destination, north or south, east or west — “and the water God sends down from the sky, reviving thereby the earth” — by vegetation, trees, and growth — “after its death” — its being barren and parched — and He brought forth in it the spirit of the power of growth, which is not attained by the customary manures,148 nor by running water (though something of the power may be attained by the alluvium of the flood, saturated with the spirit of the rain) — “and scattering therein every [kind of] moving creature” by the blessing of its revival — “and the shifting of the winds” which they name equatorial [p.144]
(2:164) … the winds, and the clouds disposed between the sky and the earth — are surely signs for a people who reason. (2:165) And among the people are those who take, besides God, rivals …
and polar and seasonal and trade[-winds]; and [consider] what is in their steadiness and their calm in the sea called the Pacific (that is, the still) Ocean — which lies between Asia and America, though the measure of its breadth from east to west exceeds seven thousand miles, and from south to north more than that — and the steadiness of their kinds, too, in the sea called the Atlantic Ocean, which lies between Europe and America, its breadth perhaps reaching four thousand miles; so that there is not, in these two mighty oceans and the two roads joining the Old World and the New World, the peril of the storms and cyclones that occur in the Sea of China and India and the Sea of the Antilles facing Central America. “And the clouds disposed between the sky and the earth” — running whither the [divine] power and wisdom direct it; you see it, in one place, letting fall its rain in drops and in a downpour, and so on, and between that come intervals and differing states in its falling; and while it is standing still, it moves off swiftly, or with deliberation.149 Now, in every one of these matters, and every one of these states ordered in the finest order, the free mind finds a clear indication that each of that is only from the bringing-into-being of a God, powerful, knowing, wise, and His governance according to His will, wisdom, and mercy; and a manifest indication that He alone has no partner in divinity, [given] this wondrous creation and this ordered governance; and were there [another] god with Him, this system would be disordered and the creatures corrupted, as He (magnified be His station) said in Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ (21:22), “were there in the two [heaven and earth] gods other than God, they would both go to ruin,” and in Sūrat al-Muʾminūn (23:91), “nor is there any god with Him — then each god would have carried off what he created, and some of them would have overcome others.” And the discourse ran, with more than this exposition, on the contents of these verses, in the second part of al-Madrasa al-Sayyāra, on pages 116 to 125 and 155 to 160, and in the third part on pages 17 and 18. And however could exposition and clarification attain a tenth of what is in these verses of the secrets of power and the wisdoms indicating the God and His oneness? In sum, in what is mentioned in the noble verse are “surely signs” — dazzling [signs] and luminous indications — “for a people who reason”; and however much they reflect upon what was mentioned, there appear to their minds, of the signs and indications, [many] times what they [already] knew. (165) “And among the people are those who take, besides God, rivals (andād)” — the discourse on the “rival” passed at verse 22; and the taking of rivals is more general than deifying them [and includes] following them in their wrongdoing — and, in view of the second sort, the report came from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), as in al-Tibyān and al-Bayān, and from al-ʿAyyāshī in raised form from him (peace be upon him) [p.145]
(2:165) … loving them as [they should] love God; but those who believe are more ardent in love for God. And if only the wrongdoers could see — when they behold the punishment — that all power belongs to God, and that God is severe in punishment. (2:166) When those who were followed disown those who followed, and they behold the punishment, and the bonds between them are cut off …
and in al-Burhān from al-Kāfī and al-Ikhtiṣāṣ of al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (with a chain). It has been said, of “besides God” in this verse, [that it is] in view [of the fact] that the taking of rivals — even in the aforementioned general sense — is only a backsliding from the knowledge of God, the reality of His divinity, and the sanctity of His oneness and His worship, or a backsliding from His obedience, the following of His sacred law, and [the following of] him whose following was commanded. “Loving them as [they should] love God; but those who believe are more ardent in love for God” — for the truth of their knowledge of Him, in their sincerity in His oneness and their certainty that the creation and the command are in His hand, and that He is the All-beneficent, the All-merciful. “And if only the wrongdoers could see” — by their taking of rivals and their transgressing of God’s bounds in justice — “when they behold the punishment” and witness its terrors, and that there is no helper besides Him, “that all power belongs to God” (the sentence “that power” — that is, its source — the object of “could see”), “and that God is severe in punishment” (coordinated upon the object of “see”). In the verse is a severe rebuke and a charge of folly against these [people], pointing [to the fact] that they are not guided by their minds, nor by reason’s indication of God’s oneness in divinity, the confinement of the divine power to Him, the necessity of following His commands in him whose following was commanded, and following His prohibitions in [shunning] him whose following in error was forbidden; nor are they guided to certainty of what God threatened, of the kinds of painful punishment on the Day of Resurrection, and that there is, besides Him, no guardian or helper. Rather these are like the beasts, attending only to what they see and sense. So had these wrongdoers, when they behold, by sense, the punishment of the Resurrection — and what the two verses after this one mention of its terrors — and behold the confinement of the divine power to God and the severity of His punishment, they would have desisted from their error and their taking of rivals, and turned in penitence to God’s oneness and His obedience. The answer of “if only” (law) was omitted, for the station’s indication of it, in brevity, and to be estimated in every manner suiting the station — as Imruʾ al-Qays said: “Would that it were a single soul that dies at once! — but it is a soul that falls away, soul upon soul.” And there passed, after verse 27, something of the witnesses to omission for the station’s indication [of the missing clause].150 (166) “When those who were followed disown those who followed, and they behold the punishment, and the bonds between them are cut off” — the “bond” (sabab) is the rope by which one reaches the ascent, so that when it is severed with the person clinging to it, he despairs of his deliverance from his plight; and He made a metonym by that of the severing [p.146]
(2:167) And those who followed will say, “Had there been for us a return, we would disown them as they have disowned us.” Thus will God show them their deeds as regrets for them, and they shall not leave the Fire. (2:168) O people, eat of what is lawful and good in the earth, and do not follow the footsteps of Satan; indeed he is to you …
of their hopes by the means they used to imagine. (167) “And those who followed will say, ‘Had there been for us a return (karra)’” — “law” for wishing, the estimation being “would that there were possible for us a return,” as was pointed to at verse 90. It is said [“law” here] needs no answer, like the answer of the conditional; and some said it is the conditional “law” imbued with the sense of wishing, so that it needs an answer, though its omission predominates for the discourse’s indication of it — and they argued by the saying of Muhalhil b. Rabīʿa, “Would that the graves were dug up over Kulayb … [to tell] which sword-hero [I am] … on the day of the two Shaʿthams, [his] eye would be gladdened” — bringing its answer joined to the lām; and there is no harm in this argument. “‘We would disown them’” — the [leaders] followed (“disown” in the subjunctive, falling in the answer of the wish after the fāʾ) — “‘as they have disowned us’” — a disowning that would profit us in deed and requital, in an abode wherein is neither deed nor reckoning. “Thus” — as they disown one another, the bonds being cut off, and their hopes come to naught — “will God show them” in the Hereafter “their deeds” in the world “as regrets for them” — that is, the causes of their regrets over themselves for what they neglected therein.151 Among the instances of that is what is in al-Tibyān and al-Bayān, related from Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him): “The man earns wealth and does no good with it, then one who does a righteous deed with it inherits it, so the first sees what he earned as good deeds in another’s scale”; and the like is related in al-Burhān from al-Shaykh al-Mufīd’s Amālī and from al-Kāfī and al-ʿAyyāshī. “And they shall not leave the Fire” — and that is the meaning of abiding in it, [God’s] refuge being sought. (168) “O people, eat” — the command here for permission — “of what is” in “the earth” — of some of it, of what God made lawful — “lawful” in itself, “good” in its source; and in that is a sufficiency for you, by which you live, of God’s blessing and mercy, in ease and in safety in the Hereafter. “And do not follow the footsteps of Satan” — nor trail his track in his beguiling, the path of his misguidance and his whispering to you; for he whispers to you only with what harms you, and calls you only to what ruins you in this world and the Hereafter. “Indeed he is to you” [p.147]
(2:168) … a manifest enemy. (2:169) He only commands you to evil and indecency, and that you say against God what you do not know. (2:170) And when it is said to them, “Follow what God has sent down,” they say, “Rather, we follow what we found our fathers upon.” What, even though their fathers understood nothing, nor were guided? (2:171) The likeness of those who disbelieve is as the likeness of one who shouts at what hears nothing but a call and a cry — deaf, dumb, blind, so they do not reason. (2:172) O you who believe, eat of the good things We have provided you, and give thanks to God, if it is Him you worship. (2:173) He has only forbidden you carrion …
“a manifest enemy” for his enmity; and had you looked with insight into what he beguiles the unbelievers and the transgressors with, you would have known that he does not hide his enmity to you and his willing of your harm in the two abodes.152 It is related in al-Kāfī and al-Tahdhīb, from al-Ṣādiq and al-Bāqir (peace be upon them), that the oath to slaughter one’s child, the oath by divorce and manumission, the vow, and one’s saying “I owe a thousand sacrificial camels,” “I am bound to a thousand pilgrimages,” or “all my wealth is an offering and every slave I own is free if I speak to so-and-so” — all this is of the footsteps of Satan (as in al-Burhān with a chain from al-ʿAyyāshī in raised form); and al-Durr al-Manthūr related something of this sort from Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibn Masʿūd, al-Ḥasan, and Jābir b. Zayd. (169) “He only commands you” — Satan, by his beguiling and whispering — “to evil,” such that you recognize, when you look with the eye of insight, that it is an evil which reason and the sacred law rebuke, “and indecency,” which is that whose foulness is [reckoned] grave, “and that you say”, lying, “against God what you do not know” to be from Him. (170) “And when it is said to them” — the strayers from the truth — “‘Follow what God has sent down’” of the religion and the sacred law, “they say”, we do not follow that, “‘Rather, we follow what we found our fathers upon’” of belief and deed — blindly imitating their fathers in error; so [God] charged them with folly: “What, even though their fathers understood nothing, nor were guided?” — and so they were, being upon other than what reason and the sacred law guide to. (171) “The likeness of those who disbelieve” — in these sayings of theirs, whose corrupt meanings they do not reflect upon — “is as the likeness of” the deaf one “who shouts” — as the shepherd calls out to his flock — “at what hears” and distinguishes, of the meanings of his shout, no intelligible sense “but a call and a cry” — a sound without meaning; and they, in that, are “deaf, dumb, blind, so they do not reason.” (172) “O you who believe, eat of the good things We have provided you, and give thanks to God” for His blessings, “if it is Him you worship” — not that a [real] condition is meant, and the making of thanks contingent on His worship; rather [it is] to make plain that thanks for His blessings is inseparable from His worship, out of knowledge that He is the God of the world, its Creator and its Governor. (173) “He has only forbidden you carrion (al-mayta)” — the animal upon which death came, [meaning] other than the animal ritually slaughtered [p.148]
(2:173) … and blood and the flesh of swine, and what has been offered to other than God. But whoever is compelled, not desiring nor transgressing …
by what God legislated for it of the means of ritual slaughter that make eating lawful. “And blood and the flesh of swine” — He specified the flesh of swine (comprising here its fat too), by way of care to make plain its prohibition, though it be of the forbidden carrion — “and what has been offered” — the voice raised at its slaughter or [neck-]sticking, with the naming — “to other than God” — like that slaughtered as an offering to an idol, image, or tree, or over which the name of an idol or image is mentioned (both are related), for it is of the carrion. And the confinement in the verse is relative, in respect of the edible [kinds] of animal. “But whoever is compelled” to eat something of that, by the measure by which he preserves his life, while being “not desiring nor transgressing (ghayra bāghin wa-lā ʿādin)”:153 “bāgh,” and “transgression” and its derivatives, came in the Qurʾān in more than twenty places upon one sense, not transitive of itself but transitive by “upon”; and the words of the exegetes and lexicographers differed in interpreting it (envy, or wrong, or aggression, or corruption — from “the wound festered,” or the exceeding of the bound past the truth or the aim), according to the suitabilities of the instances of its usage, not for a [real] difference in it — this being other than “bāghī” in the sense of “seeker” (whence in the Qurʾān “and they seek to make it crooked,” and its like, transitive of itself). In al-Kāfī and Maʿānī al-Akhbār, from al-Bazanṭī from one he named, from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him): “the bāghī is the one who rises against the Imam, and the ʿādī is the one who cuts the road [as a highwayman]” — and its chain is sound; and by it [the verse] was interpreted in al-Mabsūṭ, al-Sharāʾiʿ, al-Qawāʿid, al-Irshād, and al-Lumʿa, and in al-Rawḍa it is [called] the most widely-held. From al-ʿAyyāshī, from Ḥammād b. ʿUthmān from Abū ʿAbd Allāh: “the bāghī [is] the one who rises against the Imam”; and from Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl (raising it) to Abū ʿAbd Allāh: “the bāghī [is] the wrongdoer, and the ʿādī the usurper.” And there are reports [reading] the bāghī as the seeker of game for sport (from al-Kāfī and al-Tahdhīb, from Ḥammād, and from al-Faqīh and al-Tahdhīb, from ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm al-Ḥasanī from al-Jawād) — the pleasure-hunter’s journey being “not a journey of truth” but a false journey. These interpretations are each in view of one instance of “desiring” and “the desirer”; so whoever it is true to say of him that he is desiring or transgressing may not partake of the carrion, even if compelled to it, taking by the absolute [wording] of the Glorious Book. “There is no sin upon him” (2:173) [p.149]
(2:173) … there is no sin upon him; indeed God is All-forgiving, All-merciful. (2:174) Indeed those who conceal what God has sent down of the Book and sell it for a small price — those eat nothing into their bellies but the Fire, and God will not speak to them on the Day of Resurrection, nor purify them; and for them is a painful punishment. (2:175) Those are they who bought error for guidance, and punishment for pardon; how patient they are toward the Fire! (2:176) That is because God sent down the Book with the truth; and those who differ about the Book are in far schism.
“there is no sin upon him” if he eats of what was mentioned by the measure by which he preserves himself — and above this measure is forbidden, for he is not compelled to it. “Indeed God is All-forgiving, All-merciful. (174) Indeed those who conceal what God has sent down of the Book and sell it for” — that is, take in exchange for it — “a price” — however great that price be, it is “small” in relation to their concealing of what God sent down — “those” (the predicate of “indeed”) “eat nothing into their bellies” of this base price “but the Fire, and God will not speak to them on the Day of Resurrection, nor purify them” — so let them not be deceived that people, in this passing world, speak to them and hold them pure, for theirs is a severe punishment — “and for them is a painful punishment. (175) Those are they who”, in this deed of theirs, have “bought error for guidance, and punishment for pardon” — [so] they did thereby the deed of one who bears the Fire with a mighty patience — “how patient they are toward the Fire! (176) That” — namely, that God will not speak to them nor purify them, and theirs is a painful punishment — “is because God sent down the Book with the truth,” its guidance made plain, its evidences sufficient, “and those who differ about the Book” — in schism and hypocrisy — “are in far schism”, its term [far off].154 (177) “Righteousness (al-birr) is not”, O people, “that you turn your faces” — in what you have grown accustomed to of the forms of your worship, which you cannot leave off among people [p.150]
(2:177) Righteousness is not that you turn your faces toward the east and the west; rather, righteousness is [that of] one who believes in God and the Last Day, the angels, the Book, and the prophets; and gives wealth, out of love for Him, to kin, orphans, the needy, the wayfarer, and beggars, and for [freeing] slaves; and maintains the prayer and gives the zakāt; and those who fulfil their covenant when they covenant; and the patient in hardship, adversity, and the time of battle — those are they who are truthful, and it is they who are the Godwary.
“toward the east and the west” — that is, toward them, by way of example. “Rather, righteousness is [that of] one who believes in God” — the due of faith, associating nothing with Him, and not demolishing his faith by following caprice and Satan in opposing God’s commands and prohibitions — “and the Last Day” — the Day of Resurrection, and the reality of faith in it [being] that its effect shows upon his deeds, his sayings, and his character — “and the angels, and the Book” — the Qurʾān, [faith in which] entails faith in the divine Books mentioned in it — “and the prophets” — the head and foundation of that being faith in their Seal, the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), for by faith in him the door of faith in the prophets before him is opened, since he informed of them, and they were mentioned in the Qurʾān sent down on him; and but for that, there would be no way to know them, since the transmission of their miracles and their claim to prophethood is broken and dubious. “And gives wealth, out of love for Him” — the love of God, sincerely, for His noble Face — “to kin” — al-Tibyān and al-Bayān [say] the giver’s relatives are meant; I say that is nearer in respect of the wording, though [they say] it may mean the Prophet’s relatives, which I say is nearer, in custom, to giving wealth out of love of God, being farther from selfish motives and love of relatives — “orphans” in need, “the needy, the wayfarer” — the traveller in need on his journey, even if he has wealth he cannot reach — “beggars,” and for “[freeing] slaves; and maintains the prayer” within its bounds, “and gives the zakāt; and those who fulfil their covenant when they covenant” — the condition mentioned to make plain this kind of covenant, the one issuing from them; and the plural form [is used] to point to the covenants that occur among groups of people, and as an oblique jab at the treachery of Banū al-Naḍīr, Qurayẓa, and their like, who kept no bond or pact — “and the patient in hardship” — poverty and the like — “and adversity” — sickness and the like — “and the time of battle” — war and its severity; “the patient” in the accusative, by way of praise, for the great excellence in the patience of these patient ones, since upon it is built steadfastness in the religion, obedience to God, thanks for His blessings, and courage and advance in aiding the truth, and safety from error and apostasy.155 [p.151]
(2:178) O you who believe, retaliation (al-qiṣāṣ) is prescribed for you regarding the slain: the free for the free, the slave for the slave, and the female for the female …
“those are they who are truthful, and it is they who are the Godwary.” It is known that none of the Companions of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) gathered these attributes save the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī (peace be upon him); and the survey of the [historical] states — among them the day of Uḥud, the [Battle of the] Parties, Khaybar, and Ḥunayn — apprises you of his being singled out by this excellence. So he is meant by this verse, with certainty; and as for other than him, there is, at the least, doubt in his comprehensiveness of it. In Majmaʿ al-Bayān, from al-Zajjāj and al-Farrāʾ, that these attributes and the comprehending of them are specific to the infallible prophets — and would that I knew what they held against Abū al-Ḥasan!156 As for His words “rather, righteousness is [that of] one who believes in God,” it is a surpassing style of eloquence, bringing the discourse out of the form of a supposition — which does not matter in the exposition — into the form of occurrence and proof by direct sight; [as] al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza said, and al-Nābigha al-Jaʿdī, and al-Ḥuṭayʾa [in verses cited as witnesses]. So the aim of the verse is to point to those who were characterized by these attributes and by whose light the earth shone, and to argue and contrast by them — not the mere contrast between turning the face toward east and west and the reality of righteousness; for had it been said “rather, the righteous is one who believes,” to the end, the discourse would go out to supposition, not occurrence; and likewise had it been said “rather, righteousness is the righteousness of one who believes.” (178) “O you who believe, retaliation is prescribed for you” — in the sacred law, in regard for the right of the slain and his heirs — “regarding the slain” — retaliation (qiṣāṣ) being the taking of the offender by the like of his offence and the following of his track in it; and this is specific to the intentional [killing], by His words in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (4:92), “and whoever kills a believer by mistake, [the penalty is] the freeing of a believing slave and blood-money handed over to his family,” and upon it is the consensus of the Muslims and their ḥadīth. And not all Muslims are equal and alike in [the價 of their] blood; rather “the free for the free, the slave for the slave” — and the absoluteness of their kind, in comprising male and female, is restricted by His words “and the female for the female,” as the absoluteness of this is restricted by His words “the free for the free, the slave for the slave”; for the Muslim bondwoman is not equal to the free Muslim woman. Concerning this verse are two investigations. The first: on what is excluded from its absoluteness, and in it are questions. The first [question]: a Muslim is not slain for an unbeliever, even a protected one (dhimmī); upon it is the consensus of the Imāmiyya and many of the generality [p.152]
[The exposition of retaliation continues, in a series of legal questions.] As for a Muslim not being slain for an unbeliever, they are refuted by His words in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (4:141), “and God will never grant the unbelievers a way over the believers”; the blood-money (diya) is, however, established for the protected one by the text of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, so that, if this conflicts with the apparent [sense] of the negation of a “way,” it is a specification of it, and what remains falls under the ruling of the generality. They are argued against, too, by what Aḥmad, al-Bukhārī, Muslim, al-Tirmidhī, and al-Nasāʾī brought out, by their chains, from Abū Juḥayfa from ʿAlī (peace be upon him), in the document [received] from the Messenger of God: “a Muslim is not slain for an unbeliever”; and what Aḥmad, al-Nasāʾī, and Abū Dāwūd brought out, by chains sound in their view, from ʿAlī, in the document the Messenger of God enjoined: “the believers’ blood is equal … a believer is not slain for an unbeliever” — the meaning of “their blood is equal” being that the small [in status] is equal to the great, and the lowly to the noble. The like is related from Ibn ʿUmar from the Prophet.157 Yet it is well-known among the Imāmiyya — perhaps by consensus — that when a Muslim habitually kills protected persons, he is slain by way of chastisement, no honour [being] to him, as their ḥadīth speak, and the like is related from ʿUmar. The second [question]: the father is not slain for his son, by the consensus of the Imāmiyya and their many ḥadīth, and it is the well-known [view] of the generality’s jurists, related from the Prophet through ʿUmar and Surāqa b. Mālik (al-Tirmidhī saying the practice is upon this among the people of knowledge); [though] Mālik [held] that if he slaughtered him or split his belly, retaliation is upon him. As for the mother, she is slain for her child, upon our principles, since no exempting [proof] is established for her. The third [question]: a freeman is not slain for a slave, nor a free woman for a bondwoman, whether the slain be the property of the killer or of another, by the consensus of the Imāmiyya and their ḥadīth — said to be the doctrine of the Companions — argued by what al-Bayhaqī brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās from the Prophet, “a freeman is not slain for a slave,” and what ʿAbd al-Razzāq [related] from ʿUmar, “a slave is not retaliated [for] from a freeman,” and what Ibn Abī Shayba and al-Qazwīnī [related], that Abū Bakr and ʿUmar say the master is not slain for his slave. The second investigation: the verse is set forth to make plain [the] equality and parity, so there is no indication in it of confining retaliation to the peculiarities of these three pairings, such that each is slain only for the one paired with him in the verse [p.153]
(2:178) … But whoever is pardoned anything by his brother …
— nor [confined] to when the killer is one [person]. The consensus of the Muslims and their ḥadīth testify to the non-adherence to these pairings, and in that are [several] questions. The first: what parity, equality, and redress are attained by is known by regard to the Sunna, in the distinction between the blood-money of a man and of a woman. The second: if a woman kills a man, or a slave kills a freeman, the killing of the offender suffices, by the consensus of the Imāmiyya and their ḥadīth that the offender offends against no more than himself; and I do not recall a report of any dissent from the generality in it. The third: if a group kill one [person], such that, had each been alone with his offence, death would have resulted by it, they may all be slain for him — except one who, alone, would not be slain for him (like the father in relation to the child, the Muslim in relation to the protected one, and the freeman in relation to the slave); and on the whole question is the consensus of the Imāmiyya and their ḥadīth, and the generality (among them, in Multaqā al-Abḥur) reported the consensus of the Companions on it — though the argument, from the Noble Qurʾān, is [also] the absoluteness of His words “retaliation is prescribed for you regarding the slain,” what comes after it looking only to equality and comparison, not to restriction; yet each one has returned to him, of his blood-money, the measure of what is upon his associates of the offence. The fourth: if a man kills a woman, he may be slain for her after her heirs return to [his heirs] what he exceeds her by, namely half his blood-money.158 Now, the prescribing of retaliation and its legislation upon the believers — that they yield and hand themselves over to it if they offend — indicates, by higher priority, its being prescribed upon others of the protected and the [treaty-]secured when they kill one whose life is inviolable, even incidentally. That does not conflict with its lapsing by the heir’s full pardon; and the permissibility and preferability of pardon [is established] by the pardon-verses in the Noble Qurʾān, or by the pardon of part [of the due] — as when he pardons the peculiarity of [the manner of] the killing and settles with him upon the blood-money — as in His words, “But whoever” — of those upon whom retaliation [is due] — “is pardoned anything by his brother.” In the expression “brother” is an inducement to pardon, by pointing [to the fact] that the offender, being of the Muslims, is an Islamic brother to the heir, and the heir his brother; and it behooves the brother to have [due] regard [p.154]
(2:178) … then [let there be] a fitting follow-up, and a handing-over to him with kindness. That is an alleviation from your Lord, and a mercy. And whoever transgresses after that, for him is a painful punishment. (2:179) And in retaliation there is life for you, O people of understanding, that you may be Godwary. (2:180) Prescribed for you, when death approaches any of you [and] he leaves wealth, is the bequest to the parents and near kin, in a fitting manner — an obligation upon the Godwary.
for his brother’s brotherhood, and be lenient with him, and overlook his slip. “[Anything]” — an attribute of the [implied] absolute object standing in for the agent, that is, some pardon and a portion of it, by his being content with the blood-money, as the rest of the discourse indicates — “then [let there be] a fitting follow-up”: the fitting dealing between the two, after the pardon, is a following-up by the heir of the offender upon whom the blood-money has settled, “in an honourable manner” — like [granting] respite unto ease — “and a handing-over” by the offender “to him” — the heir — “with kindness,” as [the heir] was kind to him in pardoning the retaliation. “That” — the law of pardon and the passing to the blood-money with a fitting follow-up — “is an alleviation” upon you, O offenders, “from your Lord, and a mercy. And whoever transgresses after that” and returns to killing, “for him is a painful punishment” in the Hereafter. (179) “And in retaliation” — the [aforementioned] — “there is life for you”; for it is the best deterrent to people from their audacity in killing souls (which may bring on a war in which many people perish), since retaliation is a killing not embarked upon, for the lowliness of yielding to a killing one knows [will come] in cold blood, where there is no bar and no deterrent. So in it is life for people, in respect of security from being killed unjustly and from what its consequences bring, and life for whoever is deterred from it by fear of retaliation. So grant that one unjust person died, by right of retaliation, by happenstance — yet thereby the lives of many are preserved, as is not hidden from you, “O people of understanding” and intellects, who recognize the error in some people’s saying that retaliation is a sheer diminution in human life.159 Retaliation was prescribed for the end that you may guard against killing people, out of fear of it, or guard [yourselves before] God in that; but since guarding and God-wariness are a matter of the human’s choice, with no coercion in it, it was said “that you may be Godwary. (180) Prescribed for you, when death approaches any of you” — that is, draws near to you, its marks appearing by sickness and the like — “[and] he leaves wealth” — that is, property — “is the bequest to the parents” (inasmuch as they are parents, not conditioned on their being alive together) “and near kin, in a fitting manner” — the nearest of kin, who may be two or a group in one degree of kinship, or the nearest may be one; the plural ran in the verse in view of people [generally], not to restrict [it] to a plurality — “an obligation” (the apparent [sense] is that it is a circumstantial [state] of the bequest) “upon” those Godwary of God; and in this is an emphasis of its being prescribed. It is not hidden that the Muslims are agreed that this bequest is not obligatory [p.155]
(2:181) And whoever alters it after he has heard it, its sin is only upon those who alter it; indeed God is All-hearing, All-knowing. (2:182) But whoever fears from a testator a swerving or a sin, and sets [things] right between them …
after a time from the Hijra to the end of the matter; and the Imāmiyya are agreed that the lawfulness of the bequest to an heir is not abrogated, and upon that are their ḥadīth. It may be that the obligation mentioned in the verse was at the outset of the change, by the sacred law, of the inheritances of the Jāhiliyya; for they used not to give inheritance to the women, nor the children, nor whoever was unable to bear arms, so wisdom required that the change be gradual — by way of the bequest first, then by the rulings of inheritance — for the changing of the Jāhilī inheritance was hard upon people (whence you see many of the tribes, even in these times, not yielding to the lawful inheritance, but proceeding upon the Jāhilī manner).160 (181) “And whoever alters it” — the bequest absolutely, indicated by the mention of “bequest,” not the particular foregoing bequest [only], as the repeated masculine [pronoun], four times, indicates, and as is witnessed by what is amply related from the Imams (peace be upon them) [applying] this verse to the bequest of wealth in God’s way and [for] the Ḥajj — “after he has heard it” and known it, even by testimony — “its sin is only” — [the sin] consequent upon opposing the bequest — “upon those who alter it”; for the testator, if not negligent in delaying what he bequeathed, is quit of it by the bequest, and its sin — [whether the bequest be] a debt or a [specific] object — and the whole sin remains upon the alterer. “Indeed God is All-hearing, All-knowing” — nothing of that is hidden from Him. (182) “But whoever fears from a testator a swerving (janaf)” — an inclining from the truth by error — “or a sin” — such as a bequest of what is not hidden to be a disobedience — the apparent [sense] of the verse [being] the fear of a swerving or sin that [already] occurred, not the fear of their occurring in the future; and the sense of the “fear” [is] that it be in the station of trial and action, namely after the testator’s death, [it being] the fear of the consequences of acting upon them, or of leaving off returning them to the truth, even by way of enjoining the right upon one able [to do so] — “and sets [things] right” — sets his deed right and does the righteous [thing] by returning the bequest to the legislated truth, as in His words in Sūrat al-Māʾida (5:39), “whoever repents after his wrongdoing and sets [things] right” — “between them” (an adverbial for “sets right,” the pronoun returning to the heir and the legatees, as the station indicates) [p.156]
(2:182) … there is no sin upon him; indeed God is All-forgiving, All-merciful. (2:183) O you who believe, fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, that you may be Godwary. (2:184) [For] counted days …
— that is, [what was] between the heir and the legatees. “There is no sin upon him” — an exposition of [his] safety from the sin of the alteration mentioned in the verse, and a specification of its generality; and the removing of the imagining of prohibition sufficed, since the aspect of obligation in this setting-right is clear; and for added reassurance He said, “indeed God is All-forgiving, All-merciful” to sinners — so how should one who set [things] right and turned back the injustice of a bequest to the truth of the sacred law fear? (183) “O you who believe, prescribed” and enjoined “for you is fasting (al-ṣiyām)” — in the language, the withholding and refraining from a thing — “as it was prescribed for those before you” — that is, as its being prescribed upon them; and you obtained its excellence, and the kindness in it, as they obtained [it]. It is said what is meant is the consoling of the believers thereby; and the reports indicate that it differed, according to the [various] sacred laws, in its bounds and time — in al-ʿIlal’s report, from the Imam al-Ḥasan al-Mujtabā (peace be upon him) from his grandfather (God bless him and his Household), the fasting upon the nations was more than what is upon the Muslims in the month of Ramaḍān; and in al-Faqīh’s report, from Ḥafṣ b. Ghiyāth from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), the fast of the month of Ramaḍān was not prescribed upon the nations before us, but was prescribed upon the prophets [only].161 “That you may be Godwary” — in the sense of “that you may guard,” by the lām of purpose, exchanged for “perhaps” (laʿalla) because God-wariness is a matter of choice, and the attainment of God-wariness by fasting is the general end for people (though it comprises other ends), for its breaking of the appetites that impel to acts of disobedience. (184) “[For] counted days” — not exceeding the measure of a month unto [several] months; and His words after the verse of the month of Ramaḍān, “so whoever of you witnesses the month, let him fast it, and whoever is sick,” the verse, make plain the measure of the days and their place. The governor in “days” is “fasting,” and it suffices for governing the adverbial, so there is no need for the excess of estimation. “So whoever of you is sick” [p.157]
(2:184) … or on a journey, then a number of other days; and upon those who can [scarcely] bear it, a redemption [by] feeding a poor person. So whoever volunteers good, it is better for him …
— [one whom] fasting increases in sickness, or the recovery from which is slowed by it — “or on a journey” — the exposition of the journey and its measure being consigned to the Sunna — “then a number” (in the nominative, as in the Muslims’ codices and their current recitation, even the Seven Readings; the estimation being: “the one upon whom fasting is prescribed, in the two states,” as the wording and tenor indicate — there being no indication of estimating other than it — “is a number”) “of other days,” in [a time] other than sickness and travel; the “number” being the measure of what was missed by travel and sickness, as “counted days” indicates. And the flow of the condition and the response indicates that fasting in the aforementioned sickness and travel is not prescribed nor legislated, just as, in the other days, it is the prescribed, obligatory, legislated [thing]; and upon that is the consensus of the People of the House (peace be upon them) and their ḥadīth. “And upon those who can [scarcely] bear it (yuṭīqūnahu)” — that is, who perform it [only] with the utmost of their capacity; al-Nihāya said ṭawq is a noun for the measure of what one can do with hardship. Ibn ʿAbbās [glossed] “those who can [scarcely] bear it” as “who take it on with effort”; and in the reading “yuṭawwaqūnahu,” “who undertake it with strain.” The report abounds that Ibn ʿAbbās used to read “yuṭawwaqūnahu” for this sense (related [also] from ʿĀʾisha, ʿIkrima, ʿAṭāʾ, Mujāhid, and Saʿīd b. Jubayr); and Ibn Jarīr brought out from ʿAlī the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) that the verse came down concerning the very old [man], and the report abounds on that from Ibn ʿAbbās, with his stating plainly that it is not abrogated.162 [It is related] of Anas b. Mālik that he weakened for fasting a year before his death, so he broke [his fast] and made a bowl of tharīd and called thirty poor people and fed them. In the sound [report] from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): His words “and upon those who can [scarcely] bear it, a redemption [by] feeding a poor person” [mean] the very old [man] and the one seized by [excessive] thirst; and the like [in] Ibn Bukayr’s mursal from Abū ʿAbd Allāh, and al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from Abū Baṣīr and Rifāʿa from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him); and the reports on the ruling itself are abundant, and in them [are also] the very old woman and the woman who fears for her child. “A redemption” — for each day — “[by] feeding a poor person” — measured in the reports as a mudd of wheat. “So whoever volunteers good” — the exposition of that passed at verse 158 — “it is” — the volunteering — “better” [and] accruing “for him”; and there is no evidence of its being specific to increasing the feeding, but it is general, and among its instances is the prescribed fast [p.158]
(2:184) … and to fast is better for you, if you knew.
the prescribed [fast]. “And to fast” — its verbal noun [standing] in the place of the inchoative, turned to the verb that the issuing from the agent may show, and [as] an incitement to choosing it in the future — “is better for you” — the predicate of the inchoative: you know it is better for you — “if you knew” that the [religious] charge is a kindness from God to His servant, that obedience and the fulfilling of the obligations are an ascent to felicity, and that in fasting is a great excellence and many benefits. The incitement and emphasis in the matter of fasting was repeated by His words “that you may be Godwary,” “so whoever volunteers good,” and “to fast is better for you if you knew” — [all] on account of what is in fasting of great excellence and the burden in its withholding. Some said His words “and to fast,” the verse, refer to the one granted the concession of the redemption; but it is repelled, first, in that there is no determinant for its returning to what was mentioned, given its aptness to return to other; second, that its returning to what they supposed does not suit the emphasis of “if you knew”; and third, the tenor of the address in the verse requires that it be an address to those addressed as having fasting prescribed upon them, whereas the one upon whom is the redemption came [only] in the wording of the third person. And some said it refers to fasting in travel; but it is repelled, first, [by the same want of a determinant]; second, that it does not suit the flow of the verse, [namely] that what is prescribed in travel is “a number of other days,” there being no mention, in the ruling of travel, of a substitution [between two options] such that one substitute be preferred over the other; and third, its conflict with what is soundly [related] from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), “it is not righteousness to fast while travelling.”163 [This is] as related by Aḥmad, al-Bukhārī, Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, and al-Nasāʾī, and Ibn Ḥibbān in his Ṣaḥīḥ, from Jābir from him (God bless him and his Household); and Ibn Māja from Ibn ʿUmar; and Aḥmad, al-Nasāʾī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, al-Ṭabarānī, and al-Bayhaqī from Kaʿb b. ʿĀṣim al-Ashʿarī; and what Ibn Māja related from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf, and al-Nasāʾī from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān [in mawqūf form], “the one fasting in travel is like the one breaking [the fast] at home”; and what al-Daylamī [related] in al-Firdaws, and ʿAbd al-Razzāq, from Ibn ʿUmar from him (God bless him and his Household), “God has given, as alms, the breaking of the fast to the sick and travellers of my community; would one of you love to give alms to someone, then keep [demanding] them back?” — the like of which is related in al-Kāfī, al-Faqīh, al-ʿIlal, and al-Tahdhīb, soundly, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) [p.159]
[The witnesses against fasting in travel continue.] And [there is] what al-Nasāʾī and al-Tirmidhī brought out (stating its soundness) from Jābir: that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), on his journey to Mecca in the year of the Conquest, called for a cup of water and broke [his fast], and some people broke [theirs] and some fasted; and it reached him that people had fasted, so he said, “those are the disobedient” — related [also] in al-Kāfī and al-Faqīh, soundly, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him). And what Aḥmad and the Four [Sunan] and a group brought out from Anas al-Kaʿbī from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), that he invited him to food, and he excused himself by fasting, so he (God bless him and his Household) said to him, “God has remitted from the traveller a portion of the prayer and the fast”; al-Nasāʾī brought out the like from ʿAmr b. Umayya al-Ḍamrī. And what is in Kanz al-ʿUmmāl, from al-Shāfiʿī and al-Bayhaqī in al-Maʿrifa, from Saʿīd b. al-Musayyab (in mursal form) from him (God bless him and his Household), “the best of you are those who, when they travel, shorten the prayer and break the fast” — related [also] in al-Kāfī and al-Faqīh, soundly, from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him). And what ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Ibn Shāhīn, and Jaʿfar al-Firyābī [related]: that ʿUmar ordered a man who fasted in the month of Ramaḍān on his journey to make it up. And what al-Tirmidhī said, [that] the view of some of the people of knowledge among the Companions of the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) is that breaking [the fast] in travel is more excellent, until some of them held that repetition is [due] upon him if he fasts in travel — more than one relating this saying from ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf, Abū Hurayra, and ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr. As for what they cling to of [contrary] ḥadīth: some of it concerns the recommended fast (like the ḥadīth of Ḥamza al-Aslamī, for he used to fast continuously, or fasted much); some is wavering between the obligatory and the recommended, so there is no clinging to it at all; and as for what is explicit in the choice to fast in the month of Ramaḍān — then, [even] setting aside its chain, its opposition to the People of the House and many of the Companions, the consensus of the Imāmiyya, and its being beset by the [foregoing] counter-evidences, and its unfitness to dispose the style of the verse and the one after it — it is not hidden that clinging to it requires establishing that its import was after the revelation of the noble verse and the one after it; and however [is one to] establish that? From al-ʿAyyāshī, from Muḥammad b. Muslim from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): that the verse came down while the Messenger of God was at Kurāʿ al-Ghamīm at the time of the dawn prayer, so he broke [his fast] and ordered the people to break [theirs], and named those who wished to fast “the disobedient.”164 If it be said: the revelation of the qibla verse of Sūrat al-Baqara was in the second year of the Hijra, so how does the revelation of some of its verses come as late as the year of the Conquest? I say: what is far-fetched in that, [given] that Sūrat al-Baqara’s conclusion was not fixed [early]? It is related, by our ways, that the verse of al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa came down in the ʿUmra of the Fulfilment in the seventh year of the Hijra; and Aḥmad, al-Bukhārī, Muslim, al-Tirmidhī, and others brought out from Kaʿb b. ʿUjra that there came down concerning him, at al-Ḥudaybiya, His words from the sūra (2:196), “so whoever of you is sick, or has a hurt in his head, then a redemption …”; and the ʿUmra of al-Ḥudaybiya was in Dhū al-Qaʿda of the sixth year.
(2:185) The month of Ramaḍān, in which the Qurʾān was sent down as a guidance for people and clear proofs of the guidance and the Criterion — so whoever of you witnesses the month, let him fast it; and whoever is sick or on a journey, then a number of other days. God desires for you ease …
And it is known that the enjoyment [of the ʿUmra unto] the Ḥajj (tamattuʿ) was not known in the sacred law before the Farewell Pilgrimage; indeed it is known from its ḥadīth that its matter was a thing sent down upon the Messenger of God at that time — so all that came down in Sūrat al-Baqara concerning the Ḥajj of tamattuʿ and its offering came down at the Farewell Pilgrimage, [down] to His words “and complete the Ḥajj and the ʿUmra for God” (2:196), as is in our report from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him). (185) “The month of Ramaḍān” — an interpretation of the “counted days,” that is, they are the month of Ramaḍān. In al-Kāfī, al-Faqīh, and others, from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): “Do not say ‘Ramaḍān came and Ramaḍān went,’ for Ramaḍān is a name of God’s names; but say ‘the month of Ramaḍān’”; and from the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) [something] near this; and in Kanz al-ʿUmmāl [is] the like of al-Bāqir’s saying from Ibn ʿUmar and Abū Hurayra. “In which the Qurʾān was sent down” — to the Frequented House (al-Bayt al-Maʿmūr) in the heaven, then Gabriel came sending it down in stars [i.e., piecemeal] upon the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), as in al-Kāfī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), Ibn Jarīr’s tafsīr from Ibn ʿAbbās, and al-Durr al-Manthūr (which al-Ḥākim graded sound) from Ibn ʿAbbās, [saying] “to the House of Might (Bayt al-ʿIzza)” — “as a guidance” (a circumstantial [state] of the Qurʾān, that is, guiding) “for people, and” [as] evidences, “clear proofs of the guidance and the Criterion (furqān)” — in al-Kāfī and al-ʿAyyāshī from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him): “the Qurʾān is the whole of the Book, and the Criterion is the decisive [ruling] obligatory to act by.”165 Then God divided the state of people in the time of their fasting, its lawfulness, and its obligation, in emphasis of what preceded and in removal of doubts, and said (magnified be His station): “So whoever of you witnesses” — that is, is present [for] — “the month” (in the accusative as an adverbial, that is, is present in it, while not sick) “let him fast it,” for it is the time appointed for its fasting; “and whoever is sick or on a journey, then a number” — [what is] prescribed upon him, and the time of his charged fasting, is a number [equal to] what he did not fast in the month of Ramaḍān — “of other days,” in which he is neither sick nor travelling. So God separated the two rulings and distinguished the two subjects, appointing a time for the resident’s fast and a time for the traveller’s fast; and had the traveller’s fasting in the month of Ramaḍān been preferable with God, He would not have emphasized this division and distinction between the two subjects and the two times in this plain manner. Rather, God (magnified be His bounties) mentioned in this verse what increases the exposition and reinforces the clarification, and said: “God desires for you ease [p.161]
(2:185) … and does not desire for you hardship, and that you complete the number, and that you magnify God for having guided you, and that you may give thanks.
— [ease] of kind, by the sick’s and the traveller’s breaking of the fast — “and does not desire for you hardship” of kind; so fasting in travel is not willed by God, for in it is a hardship of kind. In al-Kāfī and al-Faqīh, from ʿUbayd b. Zurāra: “I said to Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), His words ‘so whoever of you witnesses the month, let him fast it’? He said, ‘How plain it is! Whoever is present, let him fast it, and whoever travels, let him not fast it.’” And from al-ʿAyyāshī, from Zurāra from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): “How plain it is for whoever comprehends it!” And because His words “God desires for you ease” are in the station of rationale and the exposition of some of the ends in the prescribing of the fast upon the manner mentioned in the two verses: so, in view of the placing of the fast, in sickness and travel, in [a number of] other days, it was rationalized by facilitation — as if it were said, “that it may be made easy for you”; “and that you complete the number” (coordinated upon the [implied] estimated [phrase]) — so that you may win the excellence of fasting the counted days, complete in number, unlike [the case] were that not legislated and the sick and traveller compelled to break [the fast], as they are, of kind, the likely [subjects] of compulsion to that. And in view of the guidance to the sacred law of truth, He said (exalted be His name), “and that you magnify God for having guided you” — for His guiding you to the religion and the sacred law; and this magnification (takbīr) is, with us, recommended by consensus, the rare dissent not harming [it] — and by it said al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, and Abū Ḥanīfa (per what is transmitted from him), [al-Ṭūsī] ascribing it in al-Khilāf to the jurists. Its time, with us, is after the sunset prayer on the night of Shawwāl, and the night [prayer], the dawn [prayer], and the Feast — by the consensus of the Imāmiyya, and al-Kāfī’s and al-Faqīh’s report from Saʿīd al-Naqqāsh from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), and al-Iqbāl’s report by its chain from Muʿāwiya b. ʿAmmār from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him); and near the doctrine of the Imāmiyya is what Ibn Jarīr brought out in his tafsīr, by his two chains, from Zayd b. Aslam and Ibn ʿAbbās; and the form of the takbīr is mentioned in the books of jurisprudence. “And that you may give thanks” — that you may thank God for His blessing upon you by the religion of truth, His kindness in prescribing the fast and its benefits, and His facilitating it for you, and for the blessing of food and drink, since you attend to it by your hunger and thirst.166 It is not hidden that the thanks sought is not of the timed, terminating acts to which the [religious] charge drives (like the completing of the number and the takbīr), but a perpetual act of the soul, like God-wariness and being-guided, returning to the human’s choice — that he perpetuate his attention to God’s blessings, the knowledge of their measure, his need of them, and his incapacity [without] them, [so that] he choose settled thankfulness; and that needs a strength in the choice and a firmness upon it and upon the struggle against the opposing fancies. For the sake of this subtlety, the expression of the rationale and the end ran by His words “and that you may give thanks,” and likewise its analogues, whose rationale was expressed by “perhaps.” As for the measure [p.162]
(2:186) And when My servants ask you about Me — indeed I am near; I answer the call of the caller when he calls Me. So let them answer Me and believe in Me, that they may be rightly guided. (2:187) Permitted to you, on the night of the fast, is going in to your wives; they are a garment for you and you are a garment for them. God knew that you used to betray yourselves, so He turned to you [in forgiveness] and pardoned you. So now lie with them …
of the travel in which one does not fast, and its description, and the description of sickness — its exposition is consigned to knowing it from the Sunna and consensus in the books of jurisprudence. (186) “And when My servants ask you about Me — indeed I” — that is, then inform them that I, and the like — “am near” by kindness, mercy, and answering; for He is exalted above place — “I answer the call of the caller when he calls Me.” The condition was mentioned, though known from what preceded it, to alert [us] that not everyone who calls God for his need is [truly] calling God by the reality of the call to God — in respect of [utter] detachment, the truth of turning to God, and the knowledge of Him, of which is the acknowledgement of His wisdom and the breadth of His mercy to His servants. “So let them answer Me” in what I called them to, of what is their welfare, felicity, and right guidance — this sentence being, as it were, in the station of a condition, that is, “if they would have Me answer their call, let them answer Me” — “and believe in Me, that they may be rightly guided” — that is, that they may be [rightly] guided; and the like of it passed [before].167 (187) “Permitted to you, on the night of the fast, is going in (al-rafath) to your wives” — the rafath here is [marital] intimacy — “they are a garment for you and you are a garment for them” — a metonym for the intensity of the bond of woman and man in [mutual] enjoyment. “God knew that you used to betray yourselves” and cast them into the doing of the forbidden — “so He turned to you [in forgiveness]” for what you did “and pardoned you” — that is, [pardoned the previous] prohibition of [marital] relations on the night of the fast in the month of Ramaḍān. “So now lie with them” — the command for permission; the “lying with” (mubāshara) being the joining of skin to skin, a metonym for relations, since it is among their necessary preliminaries; and what is meant by “now” is [the time] after the revelation of the verse. The verse itself indicates that relations were forbidden on the night of the fast, absolutely or in a particular state, and that some Muslims did the forbidden and had relations, so that prohibition was abrogated as a pardon from God. In al-Kāfī, soundly with a chain from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), the gist [being] that relations, eating, and drinking were forbidden, in the month of Ramaḍān, upon whoever slept — that is, after the night [ʿishāʾ] prayer; and it happened to a man that he slept, then, when he worked by day in the Trench, he began to faint, so the verse came down. In Tafsīr al-Qummī, from his father, [raising it] to al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), the like, adding that a folk of the young men used to have relations by night, secretly, so God sent down the verse. The like is related in al-Durr al-Manthūr by several ways [p.163]
(2:187) … and seek what God has ordained for you; and eat and drink until the white thread becomes distinct to you from the black thread at dawn; then complete the fast until night …
and [al-Durr al-Manthūr] added that Ibn Jarīr and Ibn al-Mundhir brought out, in a ḥadīth from Thābit, and Ibn Jarīr and Ibn Abī Ḥātim in another from Ibn ʿAbbās, and Ibn Jarīr in a third from Thābit, that among those who had relations after the night prayer, in the time of prohibition, was ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb; and the like from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Abī Laylā, and from Kaʿb b. Mālik from his father. “And seek what God has ordained for you” — that is, for your kind, of offspring — “and eat and drink” — the command in the two for permission, its term extending — “until” — the limit of permissibility, at which it is cut off — “the white thread becomes distinct to you” — [it] comes to be in the horizon, entailing, customarily and by kind, that it become distinct to the kind of people; so the limit is that the dawn be such that the faster sees it, not its [full] prevailing over [the sky], as [is the case] with night, coming later. And this limit is [also] the limit of the rafath, by the consensus of the Muslims, since its lawfulness is bound to the night, which is cut off at dawn. “The white thread” — namely the true dawn (fajr ṣādiq), transverse, in which is the power of becoming distinct, not the false [dawn] (kādhib), elongated like a wolf’s tail, built upon concealment and dwindling — and upon that is the consensus of the Muslims and the ḥadīth of the two parties, a portion of them gathered in al-Wasāʾil and al-Durr al-Manthūr; and it was named a “thread” to point [to the fact] that the limit is what becomes distinct when it is like a thread — “from the black thread” — namely what is around the dawn, of the night — “at dawn” — an exposition of “the white thread.” “Then complete the fast until night” — the coordination with “then” for the customary interval and delay between the cutting-off of eating and drinking and the dawn, in preservation of the bounds of their permissibility in the night and their prohibition at the first of dawn.168 Night is the blackness and darkness succeeding the day (whence they say “a most dark night”); and the limit for the fast is that the night envelop the faster and reach him, not [merely] its existing — for it exists at every time, by rotation over the lands — nor its [being] seen, else it would have been said “until it becomes distinct” and the like, as was said of the dawn. So the limit is that the eastern redness go, and the blackness of the succeeding night reach the faster — that is, [reach] the zenith of his head; for the east, in the direction of the sky, overshadows the west, and gains, of the sun’s light, what the redness appears by, and the day remains by it, until the sun is veiled little by little, so the night appears and creeps upon the manner of its [the sun’s] veiling, until it reaches the head; so the day does not depart from the faster save by the departure of the redness from the zenith of his head. Upon that, of the reports of the Imāmiyya, is Abān’s report from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), and the reports of Abān, ʿAmmār, and Ibn Shurayḥ, the two mursals of Ibn Ashyam and Ibn Abī ʿUmayr, and al-Mufīd’s raised [report] from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him); and what is worded by the sun’s vanishing and setting does not conflict with it, for what we pointed to [p.164]
(2:187) … And do not lie with them while you are in retreat in the mosques. These are God’s bounds, so do not approach them. Thus does God make clear His signs to people, that they may be Godwary. (2:188) And do not consume your wealth among yourselves wrongfully, nor proffer it to the judges …
[is what is meant]. And this is what is understood from what al-Bukhārī, Muslim, al-Tirmidhī, Abū Dāwūd, Ibn Jarīr, Ibn Abī Shayba, and al-Nasāʾī brought out from ʿUmar: the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) said, “when the night comes on from here, and the day retreats from here, and the sun sets, the faster has broken [his fast]”; and what al-Bukhārī, Abū Dāwūd, and Ibn Jarīr brought out from ʿAbd Allāh b. Abī Awfā, by several chains: the Messenger of God said, “when the night comes on from here” — and he struck with his hand toward the east — “the faster has broken.” And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, from Bashīr b. al-Khaṣāṣiya: “‘and complete the fast until night’ — so when it is night, break [the fast]”; and it is not hidden that, in the presence of the eastern redness, the night has not come on from the direction of the east, nor is there night [yet] upon the faster. “And do not lie with them” — that is, let not your skin touch their skin, by touching and kissing with desire, and by relations absolutely; and this is the doctrine of the Imāmiyya, upon which is their consensus, for the absoluteness of “lying with” and the station’s indication that what is meant by it is what returns to enjoyment and pleasure — “while you are in retreat (ʿākifūn) in the mosques”; the retreat (ʿukūf) [being] residence in the place and cleaving to it — and the matter of this retreat, its attributes, and its legislated conditions, is consigned to the Sunna, its import known from the books of jurisprudence. “These” — what was recognized in these verses, of the prohibition of what must be abstained from in the fast, and its prohibition before night, and the prohibition of wasting the number [of days made up] in other days, and the prohibition of lying with women for the one in retreat — “are God’s bounds, so do not approach them” — an emphasis in warning against them, and a command to cleave to the bounded obligations and not to incline from them toward those bounds. “Thus” — the exposition in these matters — “does God make clear His signs” and evidences “to people” in what is their welfare, “that they may be Godwary.” (188) “And do not consume your wealth among yourselves” — that is, let not some of you consume the wealth of others — “wrongfully” and unlawfully; of which is gambling, as related in al-Kāfī soundly from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him); and of which — as [also] related in al-Kāfī from al-Ṣādiq — is that the debtor has wealth and spends it on himself and does not discharge his debt by it; and of which — as in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, raised to al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) — is consuming wealth by the false oath. “Nor proffer it” — that is, send it as a bribe — “to the judges”, as one who lets down his bucket to draw out water169 [p.165]
(2:188) … that you may consume a portion of people’s wealth sinfully, while you know. (2:189) They ask you about the new moons. Say, “They are timekeepers for people and [for] the Ḥajj.” It is not righteousness that you come to houses from their backs; rather, righteousness is [that of] one who is Godwary. And come to houses from their doors, and be wary of God, that you may prosper. (2:190) And fight in God’s way those who fight you, but do not transgress; indeed God does not love the transgressors. (2:191) And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from where …
“that you may consume a portion of people’s wealth sinfully, while you know” that it is forbidden to you. (189) “They ask you”, O Messenger of God, “about the new moons” — [why the moon] is [thus] and grows and wanes. “Say” to them what their minds grasp of its wisdom: “‘They are timekeepers for people’” — they distinguish for them what they need, in their affairs, of the measures of time and its seasons, by months and years, by a sensible timekeeping for the common [folk]; indeed by the cycle in which the crescents come to be, people know the hours of the night, by the crescent’s gradation in rising and setting until it becomes a full moon, then until it returns a crescent — “‘and [for] the Ḥajj’” — that is, timekeepers for the Ḥajj. “It is not righteousness” and the doing of good “that you come to houses from their backs” — a metonym for their Jāhilī, caprice-driven legislations and their supposing that acting by them is righteousness — “rather, righteousness is [that of] one who is Godwary” — so look to these who were Godwary of God and sincere to Him in His obedience and the following of His sacred law, and recognize righteousness from their deeds; and at verse 177 we mentioned the aspect and the benefit in making the relative “one who” the predicate of “righteousness.” “And come to houses from their doors” — and [come to] matters from their [proper] aspects, and the deeds of righteousness from where God commanded and legislated. From al-Barqī’s Maḥāsin (with a chain) and al-ʿAyyāshī (raised) from Jābir from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), on His words “and come to houses from their doors,” he said: “that a matter be approached from its [proper] aspect, whatever the matters be.” And of this door is what the report of the two parties agreed upon, of the Prophet’s saying (God bless him and his Household): “I am the city of knowledge and ʿAlī is its gate.”170 “And be wary of God” in His commands and prohibitions, in what He legislated of the upright religion — and this is righteousness — “that you may prosper.” (190) “And fight in God’s way” and the aiding of the religion of truth “those who fight you” in obstinacy to the religion, “but do not transgress” in fighting beyond the legislated bound; “indeed God does not love the transgressors” — and how severe is the loss of one whom God does not love! (191) “And kill them wherever you find them” — that is, come upon them — “and drive them out from where they drove you out” — namely Mecca the Magnified. Let their fighting not loom large in the hearts of the strayers, when [the disbelievers] transgressed against the Muslims, fighting them, because they had submitted [to Islam] before that, and drove them from their homes in Mecca; and beyond that, they persisted in striving [p.166]
(2:191) … they drove you out; and sedition is worse than killing. And do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque unless they fight you there; but if they fight you, then kill them — such is the requital of the unbelievers. (2:192) But if they desist, then God is All-forgiving, All-merciful. (2:193) And fight them until there is no sedition and the religion is for God; but if they desist, then there is no aggression save against the wrongdoers. (2:194) The sacred month for the sacred month, and sanctities are [subject to] retaliation …
to seduce the Muslims and turn them from their religion, once by torment and once by fighting. “And sedition (fitna)” — the turning of the believers from their religion and misguiding them — “is worse than killing” in harm to humankind; for the strayer who leads astray is a seed-bed of corruption in the earth, as He said in Sūrat al-Burūj (85:10), “indeed those who persecuted the believing men and women, then did not repent — for them is the punishment of Hell, and the punishment of the Burning.” “And do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque” — the prohibition comprising Mecca and what is a sanctuary of the Mosque — “unless they fight you there” — that is, in its sanctuary, by the indication of His words “at the Mosque” — “but if they fight you” at the Mosque, “then kill them; such is the requital of the unbelievers” in their transgression and their violation of the sanctity of the Sacred Mosque. (192) “But if they desist” — it is said, desist from their unbelief by repentance and Islam; and it may be that what is meant is, if they desist from fighting you, then pardon them, after the manner of His words in Sūrat al-Anfāl (8:61), “and if they incline to peace, then incline to it” — “then God is All-forgiving, All-merciful. (193) And fight them until there is no sedition” — in al-Tibyān the fitna is polytheism, and it is what is related from Abū Jaʿfar; perhaps in view [of the fact] that it causes the being-seduced, since it causes misguidance and turns from the truth, as in His words in Sūrat al-Māʾida (5:49), “and beware of them, lest they seduce you from part of what God has sent down to you” — “and the religion is for God” — that is, upon the reasonable reality [of it], in which is no unbelief, polytheism, second [set of] acts of worship, or Jāhilī caprice-laws; for religion, in this station and its like, is an expression of the human’s bonds with the station of divinity, in respect of belief in what returns to the God, His messengers, His Books, His worship, obedience, and the sacred law. “But if they desist” — in al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān, that is, refrain from unbelief and yield to Islam; and it may be the desisting from fighting the Muslims — “then there is no aggression” beyond the bound of peace “save against the wrongdoers”, the transgressors.171 In al-Tibyān and al-Bayān, this verse is an emphasis of the content of the first verse, not an abrogation of its restrictions in fighting; and this is the apparent [sense] of the tenor of the verses, with His words (194) “The sacred month for the sacred month” — so whoever fights the Muslims in a sacred month, the Muslims fight him in a sacred month, as whoever fights them at the Sacred Mosque, they fight him in it — “and sanctities are [subject to] retaliation”: so when the polytheists, in their enmity to [God’s] oneness and the religion of truth [p.167]
(2:194) … So whoever transgresses against you, transgress against him in like measure as he transgressed against you; and be wary of God, and know that God is with the Godwary. (2:195) And spend in God’s way, and do not cast yourselves, by your own hands, into destruction; and do good — indeed God loves the doers of good. (2:196) And complete the Ḥajj and the ʿUmra for God …
and their defiance of God and His Messenger, [find that] their enmity and fighting of the Muslims is not held back by the sanctity of the sacred month nor the sanctity of the Sacred House, they [may] not take shelter in the sanctities; rather it is [urged] against them, by retaliating [upon] them thereby. As for the sanctities themselves, they did not lapse, nor is retaliation taken from them by the polytheists’ offence; rather there opposed them the sanctity of God, in aiding His oneness, His Messenger, and the religion of truth, and honouring the sanctities. The sacred months are Rajab the single, Dhū al-Qaʿda, Dhū al-Ḥijja, and Muḥarram; and perhaps the origin of their sanctity is the sacred law of Abraham, like the sanctity of the House, so the Arabs continued upon that, and Islam confirmed it. “So whoever transgresses against you” — [beyond] the bounds of the truth — “transgress against him” — [to] the bounds of peace and reciprocity — “in like measure as he transgressed against you; and be wary of God, and know that God is with the Godwary” and their helper. (195) “And spend in God’s way, and do not cast” yourselves “by your own hands into destruction.” This prohibition is general, of every plunging into the causes and likely-places of destruction; and the prohibition must be restricted to when there is not, in that plunging, the life of the religion and its aiding — as in the Messenger of God’s rising at the outset of his summons, and the advance of the Master of Martyrs [al-Ḥusayn] in his refusal to pledge allegiance to Yazīd, in a time like his. “And do good” — do the good and seek it in your acts and abstentions, after the manner of His words in Sūrat al-Kahf (18:30), “indeed We do not let go to waste the reward of one who does good work” — “indeed God loves the doers of good” for their acts and abstentions.172 How mighty is this comprehensive teaching of good! From al-Kāfī, and al-ʿAyyāshī, from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him): “were a man to spend what is in his hands in God’s way, he would not have done well, nor been granted [enabling]; does not God say ‘and do not cast yourselves by your own hands into destruction, and do good, indeed God loves the doers of good’ — that is, the moderate?” For the moderate is the one who did the good and did it well; and the Imam’s (peace be upon him) standing, and his saying “he would not have done well,” and his interpreting the doers of good as the moderate, leaves no room for the saying that the report’s import is near the interpreting of “destruction” by extravagance. (196) “And complete the Ḥajj and the ʿUmra for God” — the ʿUmra in the accusative by coordination upon the Ḥajj; the two being known acts of worship, their parts and conditions mentioned in the Sunna [p.168]
(2:196) … but if you are prevented …
and ordered in the books of jurisprudence; and completing them “for God” is an evidence that they are two acts of worship in which the performing of them for God, drawing near to Him, is required. The apparent [sense], from consulting the ḥadīth and the moulding of the wording, is that His words “and complete the Ḥajj and the ʿUmra” are a command and an imposition to bring them into being complete, with their legislated parts and conditions — like His words “who did well [in] work,” that is, brought it into being well, and like their [expressions] “narrow the mouth of the inkwell,” “lengthen the nib of the pen,” “space out between your lines,” and much of that. So, of the import of the verse, is the obligation of the ʿUmra — as in al-Tahdhīb’s sound [report] from Zurāra from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) on His words: “the ʿUmra is obligatory upon [all] creatures, in the station of the Ḥajj,” and he mentioned the verse; and the like [in] al-Kāfī’s sound [report] from Muʿāwiya b. ʿAmmār from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), al-ʿIlal’s sound [report] from Muʿāwiya, and al-Tahdhīb’s sound [report] from al-Faḍl Abī al-ʿAbbās. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn ʿUyayna, al-Shāfiʿī (in al-Umm), and al-Bayhaqī brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās the like; and al-Ḥākim brought out from Zayd b. Thābit from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household): “the Ḥajj and the ʿUmra are two obligations.” In al-Kāfī, soundly from Ibn Udhayna, in a ḥadīth from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) on His words “and complete the Ḥajj and the ʿUmra,” he said: “He means, by their completion, their performance and the guarding against what the one in [the state of] iḥrām guards against in the two”; the like from al-ʿAyyāshī from Abū Baṣīr from al-Ṣādiq. Al-Kashshāf, in interpreting “complete,” [said] “bring the two into being complete,” then carried it upon the mere command to complete them — that is, after embarking upon them — and chose that the ʿUmra is not obligatory, and was odd in his interpreting of the two ḥadīth of Ibn ʿAbbās and ʿUmar; then he said the command to complete is [both] for obligation and recommendation, as you say “fast the month of Ramaḍān and six of Shawwāl,” commanding an obligation and a supererogation — while in Sūrat al-Māʾida, in the verse of ablution, he [said] what amounts to [this]: that it is not admissible that the command be [both] for obligation and recommendation, since the word’s comprising two different meanings is of the manner of riddling and obscuring; and in this that we transmitted from him is a mutual contradiction and oddity at which the beholder marvels — al-Muqaddas al-Ardabīlī alerting to it in Zubdat al-Bayān.173 “But if you are prevented (uḥṣirtum)” — in al-Miṣbāḥ, Ibn al-Sikkīt and Thaʿlab [said] “the enemy ḥaṣarahu in his dwelling” [means] confined him, and “the sickness aḥṣarahu” (with the alif) prevented him from travel — al-Farrāʾ [saying] this is the speech of the Arabs, and upon it are the people of the language; the like [is] transmitted from al-Kisāʾī and Abū ʿUbayda; and the Imāmī reports have repeatedly [held] that the [one prevented by illness] (muḥṣar) is other than the [one prevented by an enemy] (maṣdūd), the two differing in some rulings — as in Zurāra’s reports from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) [p.169]
(2:196) … then [send] such offering as is feasible, and do not shave your heads until the offering reaches its place. And whoever of you is sick or has a hurt in his head, then a redemption by fasting, or charity, or sacrifice …
and Ibn Abī Naṣr’s from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him), and Muʿāwiya b. ʿAmmār’s from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him). In them, the muḥṣar is the sick, and the maṣdūd is the one whom the polytheists turn back — as they turned back the Messenger of God — not from sickness. In al-Durr al-Manthūr, Saʿīd b. Manṣūr, ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd, Ibn Jarīr, and Ibn Abī Ḥātim brought out, by the way of Ibrāhīm from ʿAlqama from Ibn Masʿūd, on the verse: “when a man enters [iḥrām] for the Ḥajj and is prevented,” to his saying “then when he recovers,” the ḥadīth; and Ibrāhīm said, “I mentioned this ḥadīth to Saʿīd b. Jubayr, and he said, ‘thus did Ibn ʿAbbās say in this ḥadīth.’” “Then [send] such offering as is feasible” — that is, if you are prevented and sickness bars you from completing [the rites], then send, that the release [from iḥrām] may be allowed you, what is feasible for each, according to his state and time, of the offering — of camels, cattle, or sheep; and the well-known [view] with us is that whoever drove the offering [with him], then was prevented, that suffices him, for it is of “what is feasible.” The offering (hady) is what is offered of the herd-animals for slaughter at Mecca or Minā. “And do not shave your heads” — that is, do not release [from iḥrām], for the shaving is the first of the release — “until the offering reaches its place” — that is, the place appointed for it by the Sunna in the kind of that rite: if he is performing the Ḥajj, the offering’s place is Minā; if performing the single ʿUmra, its place is Mecca, or the court of the Kaʿba, or al-Ḥazwara. As for the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) and his Companions in the ʿUmra of al-Ḥudaybiya, they were turned back (maṣdūdīn) from the Sacred Mosque, not prevented [by sickness] (muḥṣarīn). “And whoever of you is” — in the state of iḥrām — “sick”, needing to shave in his sickness, “or has a hurt in his head, then a redemption by fasting, or charity, or sacrifice”: in al-Tahdhīb, by its chain from ʿUmar b. Yazīd from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “whoever is beset by a hurt or a pain and takes on what is not fitting for the one in iḥrām [to do] when healthy, then the fasting of three days,” to his saying “and the sacrifice is a sheep he slaughters.” The “hurt” (adhan) is what harms, of which is abundant lice; for it is related in al-Kāfī and the two Tahdhībs, soundly, and from al-ʿAyyāshī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) passed by Kaʿb b. ʿUjra al-Anṣārī, the lice scattering from his head, and said to him, “do your vermin hurt you?” He said “yes,” so the verse came down, and the Messenger of God ordered his head shaved and imposed on him the fasting of three days, or charity to six poor persons (to each poor person two mudds), or the sacrifice [of] a sheep; the like is mentioned in al-Faqīh and al-Muqniʿ. The like of that was brought out from the generality by Aḥmad, the authors of the collections, and others, adding that it was in the year of al-Ḥudaybiya.174 “Then when you are secure” — from the turning-back and the like — “whoever enjoys (tamattaʿa)” — that is, releases and enjoys what is forbidden [p.170]
(2:196) … Then when you are secure, whoever enjoys the ʿUmra [in proceeding on] to the Ḥajj …
the enjoyment of what is forbidden to the one in iḥrām — like perfume, sewn [garments], women, and the like — “the ʿUmra” — by the [prior] performing and completing of the ʿUmra — “[in proceeding on] to the Ḥajj” — that is, to the iḥrām of the Ḥajj. This tamattuʿ was legislated at the Farewell Pilgrimage, [a thing] more manifest than to be denied; and there is no harm in pointing to something of its ḥadīth. From al-Tahdhīb and al-ʿIlal, soundly, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) from his forefathers (peace be upon them): when the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) finished his pacing between al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa, Gabriel came to him at his finishing and said, “God commands you to command the people to release [from iḥrām], except one who drove the offering.” So the Messenger of God turned to the people and said, “O people, this is Gabriel” — and he pointed with his hand behind him — “commanding me, from God, to command the people to release, except one who drove the offering.” So he commanded them with what God commanded. A man rose and said, “O Messenger of God, shall we go out to Minā with our heads dripping [from relations] with women?” And others said, “he commands us with a thing while he himself does otherwise?” So he said, “O people, had I foreseen of my affair what I have [now] come to know from the last of it, I would have done as the people [now] do; but I drove the offering, and one who drives the offering does not release until the offering reaches its place.” So the people shortened [their hair] and released, and made it an ʿUmra. And Surāqa b. Mālik al-Mudlijī rose to him and said, “O Messenger of God, is this that you commanded us for this year of ours, or forever?” He said, “Rather, forever, till the Day of Resurrection,” and interlaced his fingers; and God sent down thereby a Qurʾān: “whoever enjoys the ʿUmra [in proceeding on] to the Ḥajj, then such offering as is feasible.”175 This ḥadīth is a part of what came in the long report from Muʿāwiya b. ʿAmmār from al-Ṣādiq from al-Bāqir (peace be upon them), soundly, in al-Kāfī and al-Tahdhīb; and Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, al-Nasāʾī, and Ibn Māja related it, at its length, in their collections, and Aḥmad in his Musnad, and others, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) from al-Bāqir from Jābir. The authors of the Six Collections and others brought out that the people had entered iḥrām for the Ḥajj, seeing naught but it (as from Jābir, Anas, Abū Saʿīd, al-Barāʾ b. ʿĀzib, Ibn ʿAbbās, and Asmāʾ bint Abī Bakr — indeed ʿĀʾisha, by the ways of al-Aswad, ʿAmra, and Muḥammad b. al-Qāsim). The report abounds on the matter of release and tamattuʿ, by his (God bless him and his Household) saying, “had I foreseen of my affair what I have [now] come to know, I would not have driven the offering, and would have done as you did” [p.171]
— or “as I commanded you,” or “I would release as they released”; and in some [reports], “I am the most dutiful of you, the most truthful of you, and the most Godwary, and were it not that I drove the offering …” (Muslim, al-Nasāʾī, al-Ḥākim in his Mustadrak, and Ibn Ḥibbān in his Ṣaḥīḥ brought it out); and in al-Ṭabarānī’s report from Jābir, “do you cast doubt on me, when I am the trustee of the people of the heavens and the earth?” Jābir, al-Barāʾ, Anas, ʿĀʾisha, and Ḥafṣa related that by the way of the generality. And Jābir, Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibn ʿUmar, Surāqa b. Mālik, and a nephew of Jubayr b. Muṭʿim related his (God bless him and his Household) saying, “the ʿUmra has entered into the Ḥajj till the Day of Resurrection” (as in the collections of Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, al-Nasāʾī, al-Tirmidhī, the Musnad of Aḥmad, Ibn ʿAdī, al-Ṭabarānī, and al-Baghawī). These imports are repeated, gathered and scattered, in the Musnads and the Six Collections of ḥadīth and others, related from a great number of the Companions. It is not hidden that upon the lawfulness of this tamattuʿ and the absolute release — as is the import of the ḥadīth of the two parties — is the consensus of the Companions and the generality of the Muslims in all ages; none has said it is abrogated by a legal abrogation; and the practice continued upon it by the verdict of all the scholars in all the ages. Yet there occurred, in some ḥadīth, certain anomalies (shawādhh), which it behooves us to alert to under [several] points.176 First: this verse, by which the tamattuʿ Ḥajj and the release were legislated, is conditioned by security, and the Muslims at the Farewell Pilgrimage were at the mightiest side of strength and security — the Arabian Peninsula being then subject to the authority of Islam, enjoying its general security and the overpowering authority of its justice (al-Bukhārī brought out from Ḥāritha b. Wahb al-Khuzāʿī, “the Messenger of God prayed with us — and we were the most numerous we ever were, and the most secure — at Minā, two rakʿas”). So, of the anomalies, is what is related in the collections of the generality, from some of the Companions, that he barred the mutʿa of the Ḥajj — so the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) argued against him that it is the Sunna of the Messenger of God which he instituted at the Farewell Pilgrimage, and he [the Companion] excused [himself] and said, “yes, but we were fearful” (as Muslim, Aḥmad, Abū ʿAwāna, al-Ṭaḥāwī, and al-Bayhaqī brought out). Second: it is related in the Six Collections and others that the Companions of the Messenger of God, at the Farewell Pilgrimage — all of them, even ʿĀʾisha — had entered iḥrām for the Ḥajj, seeing naught but it; so, of the anomalous, is what the report from ʿUrwa from ʿĀʾisha alone [holds]: that some entered for the Ḥajj and some for the ʿUmra [p.172]
— and these are the ones commanded with the release and the tamattuʿ — and that ʿĀʾisha was in iḥrām for the ʿUmra. Third: it is related, by the way of the Imāmiyya from the People of the House, and [by] Jābir, that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) said, “the ʿUmra has entered into the Ḥajj till the Day of Resurrection” — the generality [too] related it in their collections and Musnads, as passed; and [likewise] Surāqa’s question and his (God bless him and his Household) answer, “Rather, forever, till the Day of Resurrection.” Upon that is the practice of the Muslims and their jurists. Muslim and Aḥmad brought out from Dhakwān from ʿĀʾisha that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) entered upon her angry, because he had commanded the people to release and some had hesitated; and Aḥmad brought out from al-Barāʾ the like. Al-Bukhārī, Aḥmad, al-Nasāʾī, and others brought out from ʿAlī the Commander of the Faithful that the mutʿa is the Sunna of the Messenger of God, [and] he does not leave it for the saying of anyone of the people; and Aḥmad and Muslim [brought out] that Ibn ʿAbbās was told of the release after the ʿUmra, and he said, “the Sunna of your Prophet, even if you resent [it].” When you have grasped what we mentioned, you know that, of the anomalies, is what Muslim and others brought out — that the mutʿa in the Ḥajj was for the Companions of Muḥammad in particular, or for the caravan that was with the Messenger of God (Abū Dāwūd and al-Nasāʾī) — though, if what is meant by that is the excluding of the residents present at the Sacred Mosque from the lawfulness of the mutʿa, the report runs according to the Book, the Sunna, and the consensus of the Muslims. And of the anomalies is what Muslim brought out: that Ibn ʿAbbās used to command the mutʿa and Ibn al-Zubayr used to forbid it, so Jābir said, “upon my hands the ḥadīth turns: we performed tamattuʿ with the Messenger of God; then when [the caliph] rose, he said [barring it]” — al-Balāghī remarking: “would that I knew what is meant by the sayer’s saying [that the caliph made allowance for himself]; and was the command to release a breaking of God’s command to complete the Ḥajj and the ʿUmra, an opposition to it? And if a breaking, why should it not be an abrogation of that kind — especially with his (God bless him and his Household) saying ‘had I foreseen of my affair what I have come to know,’ and ‘the ʿUmra has entered into the Ḥajj till the Day of Resurrection,’ and his saying to Surāqa ‘till forever’?”177 And of the anomalies is what Aḥmad, al-Bukhārī, Muslim, al-Nasāʾī, Ibn Māja, and others brought out, that [the caliph] barred the mutʿa in the months of the Ḥajj and said, “I did it with the Messenger of God, and I bar it” — and there was mentioned in it only opinions that do not pass muster in [mere] approval, let alone [in] standing against the sacred law; and the like from Abū Mūsā, that [the caliph], asked about his barring the tamattuʿ, said he knew the Messenger of God did it, but disliked that they should [remain] with their wives, then go to the Ḥajj with their heads dripping [p.173]
(2:196) … then such offering as is feasible; and whoever finds none, then a fast of three days during the Ḥajj …
[from relations]; and what Aḥmad, al-Bukhārī, Muslim, and others brought out from Abū Mūsā, that [the caliph] said on that, “if we take by the Book of God, then God said ‘and complete the Ḥajj and the ʿUmra for God’; and if we take by the Sunna of the Messenger of God” — and in one of al-Bukhārī’s reports, “and if we take by the saying of the Prophet (God bless him and his Household)” — “then he did not release until the offering reached its place.” The discourse on His words “and complete the Ḥajj and the ʿUmra for God” passed [above]; and as for the Sunna — glory be to God! — did the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) institute for his community aught but what the ḥadīth of the Muslims and their consensus agreed upon, of the tamattuʿ and the release, and that it is a Sunna forever, and that the ʿUmra entered into the Ḥajj till the Day of Resurrection? This entering, with the release, makes plain that each of the ʿUmra and the Ḥajj occurs complete, in the sacred law, by this aspect; and as for his (God bless him and his Household) [own] act, it was timed, specific to whoever drove the offering that year, as his saying “had I foreseen of my affair what I have come to know” delimits it. “Then such offering as is feasible” — of a camel, cow, or sheep; and it is a devotion (nusuk), not a redress (jubrān), as al-Shāfiʿī said. “And whoever finds none, then a fast of three days” — consecutive — “during the Ḥajj”: namely the day of Tarwiya, the day before it, and the day of ʿArafa; upon it is the consensus of the Imāmiyya and the report of the two parties; and if that escapes him, he does not fast them on the days of tashrīq.178 Upon that are many reports; and in Ibn Sinān’s sound [report], al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) adduced for it that the Messenger of God ordered Budayl b. Warqāʾ to call out at Minā among the people not to fast — and the like [in] the sound [report] of Sulaymān b. Khālid and Ibn Muskān from him (peace be upon him), and in ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. al-Ḥajjāj’s report from al-Kāẓim (peace be upon him). And Aḥmad and Muslim brought out from Nubaysha al-Hudhalī, the Messenger of God said, “the days of tashrīq are days of eating and drinking”; and from Kaʿb b. Mālik, that the Messenger of God sent him and Aws b. al-Ḥadathān [to call], on the days of tashrīq, “the days of Minā are days of eating and drinking”; and Aḥmad and al-Nasāʾī [brought out] from Ḥamza al-Aslamī the like; and Aḥmad and al-Ḥākim (grading it sound on the conditions of al-Bukhārī and Muslim) from Budayl b. Warqāʾ. These criers are more knowing of what they were commanded and called out with, so there does not oppose them what al-Bukhārī and Ibn Jarīr brought out from ʿĀʾisha and Ibn ʿUmar, of the licence to fast them for one who does not find the offering — since the two did not ascribe the licence to the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), and it is liker to personal reasoning, as al-Bukhārī brought out that ʿĀʾisha used to fast them [p.174]
(2:196) … and seven when you return; that is ten complete. That is for whoever’s family is not present at the Sacred Mosque …
and her father used to fast them. “And seven when you return” — to your families; and the secret in this expression, rather than His saying “when he returns,” is that, for whoever resides at Mecca, the return of his companions to their town is reckoned [for him], as the verdict of the Imāmiyya and their ḥadīth [hold] — of which is al-Tahdhīb’s sound [report] from Muʿāwiya b. ʿAmmār, in which al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) related that from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household); and it may [also] be in view of the reckoning of the return by the general departure on the thirteenth of Dhū al-Ḥijja — in the sense that whoever returns to his family by the first departure, the fast of the thirteenth is not valid of him at his family’s. “That” — the three in the journey of the Ḥajj and the seven at the return — “is ten” — counted, with God, as one rite; there does not harm in it the long interval, nor the performing of the seven outside the rites of the Ḥajj and outside its months, nor the fasting in travel — “complete” in the rite, like the completeness of the [feast] sacrifice and the offering. “That” — the tamattuʿ of the ʿUmra [in proceeding on] to the Ḥajj — “is for whoever’s family is not” — in view of his homeland and dwelling — “present at the Sacred Mosque”: from ḥaḍar and settled life, the opposites of the Bedouin and the desert-life — that is, whoever is not of the people of Mecca, its villages, and what is customarily ascribed to it, such that the dweller there is not reckoned among those [remote] from the Sacred Mosque, but among the people of its settled district and its “present ones.”179 The Muslims are agreed that whoever is within the Ḥaram is of those present at the Sacred Mosque, even if he reaches, from the eastern side, twelve miles (the mile being, presumably, three thousand five hundred cubits by the cubit of the hand). But some of the Imāmiyya estimated the limit for the one present at the Sacred Mosque, from each of its sides, by what does not reach twelve miles — [though] there is no evidence for it, and the sound reports are explicit in the contrary of it: of them, what is mentioned in them, that the people of Marr al-Ẓahrān are of those present at the Mosque, for it is a stage from Mecca; and the transmitted [report] that admits no interpretation is what does not reach forty-eight miles, by the text that the people of ʿUsfān and Dhāt ʿIrq are of those present at the Sacred Mosque — the distance of the two places from Mecca being more than thirty or forty miles. Abū Ḥanīfa and his companions held that the one present at the Sacred Mosque is whoever is within the [pilgrimage-]stations (mawāqīt); al-Shāfiʿī, whoever does not reach the distance of the shortening of the prayer; and some, whoever is within the Ḥaram. (2:196) “And be wary of God” [p.175]
(2:196) … and know that God is severe in punishment. (2:197) The Ḥajj is [in] known months …
by obeying Him in what you were commanded or forbidden in the matter of the Ḥajj and its rulings, “and know that God is severe in punishment” for opposing the sacred law in that; for He legislated the Ḥajj by these bounds as a kindness to you — since He is beyond need of your worship — and of His kindness is that He should be severe upon you with the threat, over opposition, for what He knows of the caprices’ toying with you. (197) “The Ḥajj” — that is, the time of the Ḥajj, in which it is valid — “is [in] known months” — determined; and though the polytheists used to postpone them (yansaʾūnahā) to other months, yet the postponement (nasīʾ) is but an increase in unbelief (9:37). They are Shawwāl, Dhū al-Qaʿda, and Dhū al-Ḥijja, no others. Indeed all of Dhū al-Ḥijja is, by some considerations, a time for some of the parts [of the Ḥajj], like Shawwāl and Dhū al-Qaʿda. In al-Tadhkira: “upon it are most of our scholars,” and it is the apparent [sense] of what is related in al-Kāfī, al-Faqīh, and al-Tahdhīb from Samāʿa and Muʿāwiya from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that they are Shawwāl, Dhū al-Qaʿda, and Dhū al-Ḥijja, and the like from Zurāra from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him). And in al-Durr al-Manthūr and others (like al-Bayhaqī and al-Bukhārī) in ḥadīth, with chains, from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), that they are Shawwāl, Dhū al-Qaʿda, and Dhū al-Ḥijja, as in the ḥadīth of Abū Umāma, Ibn ʿAbbās, and Ibn ʿUmar. And [there is] the explicit saying of al-Kāẓim (peace be upon him): “Jaʿfar” — meaning al-Ṣādiq — “used to say, all of Dhū al-Ḥijja is of the months of the Ḥajj” (al-Tahdhīb, soundly, from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. al-Ḥajjāj); and the explicit saying of al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), on its comprising [the time] after the days of tashrīq for the fasting of the three [days] in substitution for the offering then: “we, the People of the House, say that, for His words ‘then a fast of three days during the Ḥajj’ — he says, ‘during Dhū al-Ḥijja’” (al-Kāfī and al-Tahdhīb, from Rifāʿa). What is meant in the verse is that the totality of the time, of the three months, is a time for the totality of the acts of the Ḥajj — that is, some of the parts are valid in them, like the iḥrām, which is a part of one of the two rites, the Ḥajj and the ʿUmra — even if some acts are specific to the day of ʿArafa and after it. So it is not permitted that the iḥrām of the Ḥajj precede the mentioned months, by the consensus of the Imāmiyya and the ḥadīth of the People of the House; and by it said ʿAṭāʾ, Mujāhid, Ṭāwūs, and al-Shāfiʿī.180 In al-Durr al-Manthūr [p.176]
(2:197) … so whoever undertakes the Ḥajj therein, then no sexual contact, no transgression, and no disputing in the Ḥajj …
a group is mentioned who related that [Shawwāl, Dhū al-Qaʿda, Dhū al-Ḥijja] — among them al-Shāfiʿī and al-Ḥākim (grading it sound) from Ibn ʿAbbās, and Ibn Mardawayh from Jābir from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), and al-Shāfiʿī and others from Jābir [in mawqūf form]. The iḥrām is a part of the Ḥajj, and the Ḥajj is [in] known months. It is related in al-Tadhkira, from Mālik, al-Thawrī, al-Nakhaʿī, Abū Ḥanīfa, Isḥāq, and Aḥmad, that the iḥrām contracts [validly] before the mentioned months, so that if he remains in his iḥrām until the months of the Ḥajj, it is valid for the Ḥajj — clinging to His words “they ask you about the new moons; say, they are timekeepers for people and the Ḥajj.” It is repelled [by the point] that the crescents’ all being timekeepers for people and the Ḥajj is only in view of the totality of the events for people and the Ḥajj; for they are timekeepers for the Ḥajj and for people, in their events and affairs, [only] when some crescents are distinguished from others by [an event’s] occurrence, beginning, or end — and were no crescent distinguished from another in timekeeping, all time would be a container with no time or station in it, so the crescents would not be timekeepers. And [even] were we to concede, His words “the Ḥajj is [in] known months” would be a text on the determination, like the Sunna’s text determining the ninth and tenth of Dhū al-Ḥijja for some of its acts. And the tamattuʿ ʿUmra is like the Ḥajj: nothing of it occurs outside the mentioned months, by the consensus of the Imāmiyya and the ḥadīth of the People of the House, and what they related from their grandfather (God bless him and his Household), “the ʿUmra has entered into the Ḥajj till the Day of Resurrection” (which the generality ascribed, in their collections and Musnads, to five of the Companions from the Messenger of God, as we pointed to). So when it is [thus] entered into it, it is timed by its time; and the iḥrām he made for the tamattuʿ ʿUmra [in proceeding on] to the Ḥajj was in Dhū al-Qaʿda, nor did [aught] come permitting its precedence over Shawwāl. The Muslims are agreed that the tamattuʿ ʿUmra may not, in all its acts, precede the months of the Ḥajj — though in al-Tadhkira, from al-Shāfiʿī’s second saying, [it is held that] if he enters iḥrām for the ʿUmra in Ramaḍān and performs the rest of its acts in Shawwāl and performs the Ḥajj that year, he is a performer of tamattuʿ; and Abū Ḥanīfa [held] it permissible, too, that some of its acts precede the months of the Ḥajj, up to three circuits of its circumambulation.181 “So whoever undertakes (faraḍa) the Ḥajj therein” — that is, made its completion an imposed obligation upon himself by his contracting the iḥrām, by the talbiya, or the marking of the offering, or its garlanding (as in al-Kāfī’s sound [report] from Muʿāwiya from al-Ṣādiq) — “then no sexual contact (rafath), no transgression (fusūq), and no disputing (jidāl) in the Ḥajj” — that is, the Ḥajj, by its nature [p.177]
and the interest of its legislation, refuses these matters. The estimation of the discourse is: whoever undertakes the Ḥajj therein, let him not bring, into his Ḥajj, sexual contact, transgression, or disputing — because there is no sexual contact and no transgression, to the end; so the response of the condition was omitted, for this mentioned sentence’s indication of it, an indication by which its [express] mention with it would be of the [dispensable] appendages of speech. And the news-form was brought [instead]; and the name “the Ḥajj” was stated plainly in His words “in the Ḥajj,” to make clear that the Ḥajj, in itself, is repelled by these matters, and to be known that their absence is not a mere [personal] charge specific to whoever undertakes the Ḥajj, but an aim the Lawgiver wishes to attain from the charged ones — even in a case in which there is not, from another aspect, a wrong that must be forbidden and a sin whose aiding is unlawful — as when the [non-muḥrim] husband compels his wife, by the right of marriage, to relations in her obligatory or [permitted] recommended Ḥajj, or the master [compels] his bondwoman in her Ḥajj by his leave, or the [non-muḥrim] woman complies with her not-yet-mature husband in relations in his Ḥajj, and the like of that. For, by the import of the verse and the aim, the non-occurrence [of these] is wished from every charged one, [including] barring it, if his barring has effect. Upon that came the sound [report] of Isḥāq b. ʿAmmār from al-Kāẓim (peace be upon him), that the non-muḥrim master, if he knew that it does not befit him to have relations with his bondwoman in her Ḥajj by his leave, an atonement is upon him — as the [scholarly] companions gave verdict, upon its absoluteness, in question and answer; indeed the apparent [truth] is that it is not hidden from him that having relations with her, with her consent, does not befit him, for it is an aiding upon sin. Were it said “and no disputing in it,” it would bear the pronoun’s returning to that undertaken Ḥajj, in respect of his having imposed it on himself, and what returns to his charge specific to it — not in respect of the very Ḥajj’s repelling these matters, even if some of them be lawful in other than it, like the relations of spouses and one’s saying “no, by God” and “yes, by God” in the station of truthfulness. In al-Tibyān and others, the rafath, with our companions, is a metonym for relations — and it is one of the generality’s reports from Ibn ʿAbbās from the Messenger of God; the argument for our companions in it being their consensus and what is in al-Kāfī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “the rafath [is] relations, the fusūq lying and reviling, and the jidāl the man’s saying ‘no, by God’ and ‘yes, by God.’” The like is in al-Faqīh from al-Ṣādiq (without mentioning reviling), and in al-Tahdhīb from al-Kāẓim (mentioning boasting in place of reviling); and relations is the certain [meaning] of the rafath, witnessed by His words that passed, “permitted to you, on the night of the fast, is going in (al-rafath) to your wives.”182 And though other meanings are mentioned for it in the lexicons, they are by way of possibility, the [governing] principle in it being [presumptive] exemption. “And whatever good you do [p.178]
(2:197) … And whatever good you do, God knows it. And take provision — for indeed the best provision is God-wariness; and be wary of Me, O people of understanding. (2:198) There is no sin upon you in seeking a bounty from your Lord. Then when you pour forth from ʿArafāt …
“of good, God knows it” — and He will pay you your recompense in full, He being the All-knowing, who does not let go to waste the reward of the doers of good. “And take provision” — of the God-wariness of God and righteous deeds; the provision (zād) being what is prepared, of food, for the need of travel, a metonym here for the readiness for the Hereafter — “for indeed the best provision”, of what a person takes care to provide himself with, prepares for his necessity, and deems binding for his need, “is God-wariness” of God and acting by His commands and prohibitions.183 By my life, the branching-off with the fāʾ makes plain the refutation of what was mentioned in the exegesis — that a folk used to throw away their provisions and style themselves “the trusting ones,” so it was said to them, “take provision of food, and do not cast yourselves, all of you, upon the people” (a report on that from Ibn ʿAbbās and others is counted in al-Durr al-Manthūr); yet presenting it to the Book of God, in the verse’s branching with the fāʾ, apprises you [of its sense]. “And be wary of Me” — an explicative coordination upon “take provision,” its benefit being exposition and emphasis — “O people of understanding”, who recognize, by their minds, their need to provide themselves with righteous deeds, the obligation of the God-wariness of God, and what God-wariness has of the supreme end. (198) “There is no sin upon you” in “seeking a bounty from your Lord.” In Tafsīr al-Burhān, from al-ʿAyyāshī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), interpreting the verse, his words: “He means the sustenance; for when a man releases from his iḥrām and completes his rite, let him buy and sell.” The aspect of the connection is a corrective, removing what might be imagined, by reason of the prohibition of the rafath and disputing and the command of God-wariness, [namely] that there is harm in one’s earning what is in excess, of kind, over what was prepared, of wealth, for the journey of the Ḥajj. In al-Tibyān it is related from Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him): its meaning is “that you seek forgiveness” — perhaps the mention of forgiveness in view of its being the most important instance, for the kind of humankind, of what is [then] sought from God; and the aspect of connection is that, after the incitement to God-wariness and cleaving to the bounds in the obligatory and the forbidden, kindness required inciting to the increase of good, of which is the seeking of forgiveness by its causes. “Then when” [p.179]
(2:198) … remember God at the Sacred Waymark, and remember Him as He has guided you, though before that you were of the astray. (2:199) Then pour forth from where the people pour forth …
you pour forth “from ʿArafāt” — the pouring-forth (ifāḍa) [is] the making of a thing overflowing, from the overflowing of water; that is, when your throng pours forth, in a likening of the surge of their great throng in their setting-out at their [appointed] hour, after the afternoon, all at once, to the overflow of water bursting forth at its outset. ʿArafāt is the well-known standing-place, in it being the rite of the ninth day; and in the expression by “pouring-forth” is an indication that the standing at ʿArafāt has a residence bounded in time, in which the people gather, then set out, all of them, like overflowing water, and that ʿArafāt is the origin of this pouring-forth and the overflow of the throng. “Remember God” — by prayer and drawing near to Him in obedience, in the rite and the standing — “at the Sacred Waymark (al-Mashʿar al-Ḥarām)” — namely al-Muzdalifa, [also called] Jamʿ, named a “waymark” (mashʿar) because it is a place of a sort of God’s sacraments (shaʿāʾir). Then God emphasized the incitement to remember Him and turn to Him, by expounding the argument and reminding of His deserving [it] in thanks for His mighty blessing, and said: “and remember Him as He has guided you”, and favoured you with the guidance, that noble blessing, “though before” — the wāw for the circumstantial [state], and “though” lightened from the heavy, giving emphasis, in the sense of “and indeed you were” — “that” — that is, before the guidance indicated by “He has guided you” — “you were of the astray.” And do not make al-Mashʿar a mere path of one passing from ʿArafāt to Minā, as Quraysh used to prescribe [it], by their [self-]legislation and their tyranny over the rest of the Arabs; rather stand in it for the rite, so that the surging of your throng from it, after the standing in it, be a pouring-forth from it, like the pouring-forth from ʿArafāt, and remember God in it.184 (199) “Then pour forth from where the people pour forth” — those who acted upon the sacred law of the Ḥajj by its reality: namely Abraham the Friend (peace be upon him), who brought the sacred law of the Ḥajj, and Ishmael and Isaac, and whoever came after them of the followers of this sacred law. It came, in what we pointed to [above] from al-Kāfī and al-Tahdhīb, soundly, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) from al-Bāqir from Jābir, in his mention of the Ḥajj of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household): then he (God bless him and his Household) proceeded — that is, from Minā, the people with him — and Quraysh used to pour forth from al-Muzdalifa, which is Jamʿ (that is, they do not stand at ʿArafa, so that they would have a pouring-forth from it; rather they stand at al-Mashʿar and their pouring-forth is from it), and they used to bar the people from pouring forth from it (that is, from al-Muzdalifa — meaning they do not let the people, after their pouring-forth from ʿArafāt, stand at al-Muzdalifa so that they too would have a pouring-forth from it; rather they have of it only a thoroughfare) [p.180]
(2:199) … and seek God’s forgiveness; indeed God is All-forgiving, All-merciful. (2:200) Then when you have completed your rites …
so the Messenger of God proceeded, Quraysh hoping that his pouring-forth would be from where they used to pour forth (that is, that he would not go on to ʿArafa but tarry at al-Muzdalifa, his pouring-forth being from it), so God sent down to him “then pour forth from where the people pour forth and seek God’s forgiveness,” meaning Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac in their pouring-forth, and whoever came after them — the ḥadīth. There ought to be no doubt that the referent of the pronoun in “from it” is al-Muzdalifa, since there did not precede, in the ḥadīth, the least mention or indication of ʿArafāt. In Tafsīr al-Burhān, drawing from al-ʿAyyāshī, five reports are mentioned holding that what is meant is “pour forth from ʿArafāt”; yet in them is what supports Jābir’s ḥadīth, that Quraysh barred the people from pouring forth with them from al-Muzdalifa — that is, barred them from tarrying in it on their return from ʿArafa, so that the pouring-forth from al-Muzdalifa might be realized for them. But in those reports is variance (some [saying] the one commanded to pour forth from where the people pour forth is Quraysh, some that it is the Messenger of God); and the like [is] what al-Durr al-Manthūr counted in their reports — and none of it is strong enough to withstand Jābir’s ḥadīth, championed by al-Ṣādiq’s and al-Bāqir’s (peace be upon them) transmission of it (which is a confirmation of it by the two of them). It [also] conflicts with, and is repelled by, the tenor of the verse and the coordination in it by “then.” What al-Kashshāf and others mentioned, by [a] feeble analogy, avails nothing in that. Yes — in Majmaʿ al-Bayān [it is said] our companions related that here is a fronting and a delaying, its estimation being: “there is no sin upon you in seeking a bounty from your Lord, then pour forth from where the people pour forth; then when you pour forth from ʿArafāt, remember God,” the verse. But I have not found the report [readily] to see its chain; and had it been from an Imam, [al-Ṭabrisī] would have mentioned it in the Majmaʿ, as is his custom; so the [operative] ruling is the exposition of al-Ṣādiq’s and al-Bāqir’s report from Jābir, corroborated by the agreed-upon order of the Qurʾān.185 “And seek God’s forgiveness; indeed God is All-forgiving, All-merciful. (200) Then when you have completed your rites” — performed them and finished them; the “rites” (manāsik) here [being] the acts of the Ḥajj, for by them one worships God [p.181]
(2:200) … then remember God as you remember your fathers, or with a more ardent remembrance. Among the people is one who says, “Our Lord, give us in this world,” and he has no share in the Hereafter. (2:201) And among them is one who says, “Our Lord, give us good in this world and good in the Hereafter, and guard us from the punishment of the Fire.” (2:202) Those shall have a share of what they earned; and God is swift at reckoning. (2:203) And remember God in the numbered days …
— “then remember God as you remember your fathers, or with a more ardent remembrance”: for it is the custom of people, especially the Arabs, that their fathers do not vanish from their remembrance — by boasting of them, extolling their virtues and their good deeds, swearing by them, and the like. So the general sense in the verse is that you not be heedless of the remembrance of God after the performance of the rites; and the worthiest thing to argue against them by, in that, is that they are not heedless of the remembrance of their fathers — so how are they heedless of the remembrance of God, as He deserves, He being the mighty God, His the majesty and glory, their Creator, and [the source of] every blessing upon them, even that which is from their fathers, [for] it is from Him (magnified be His bounties)? Rather, their remembrance of God ought to be more ardent than the remembrance of the fathers, in a manner suiting God’s majesty and His blessings.186 In al-Kāfī’s sound [report] from Manṣūr b. Ḥāzim from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): they used, when they abode at Minā after the [feast-]slaughter, to vaunt themselves, a man of them saying “my father was such and such,” so God said “then when you have completed your rites, remember God as you remember your fathers” (the like from al-ʿAyyāshī from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq, and a number of what is in al-Durr al-Manthūr). Now, remembering God as He deserves runs parallel to cleaving to God-wariness; but the states of people differ therein, and they are, in it, of [several] classes, some mentioned in the verses. “Among the people is one who says, ‘Our Lord, give us in this world’” — having turned away from the Hereafter and forgotten it — “and he has no share in the Hereafter”, that is, no portion, because he turned from it, did not work for it, and asked nothing of its good. (201) “And among them is one who says, ‘Our Lord, give us’” a blessing “‘good in this world and’” a blessing “‘good in the Hereafter, and guard us from the punishment of the Fire’” — in al-Kāfī’s sound [report] of Jamīl from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “God’s good pleasure and the Garden in the Hereafter, and livelihood and good character in this world.” (202) “Those shall have a share of what they earned” — “of” [being] explicative, for what they asked is not attained by mere supplication — “and God is swift at reckoning” for His servants of the two mentioned classes. (203) “And remember God in the numbered days” — namely the days of tashrīq [p.182]
(2:203) … So whoever hastens off in two days, there is no sin upon him; and whoever delays, there is no sin upon him — for one who has been Godwary …
— as in al-Kāfī’s two sound [reports] from Muḥammad b. Muslim and Manṣūr b. Ḥāzim, al-Tahdhīb’s sound [report] from Ḥammād b. ʿĪsā from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), al-Wasāʾil’s two sound [reports] from Qurb al-Isnād from Ḥammād from him (peace be upon him), and the like of al-ʿAyyāshī’s reports and al-Durr al-Manthūr’s report from Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibn ʿUmar, and Ibn al-Zubayr. And the remembrance of God [here] is the takbīr, as in the two sound [reports] of Muḥammad and Manṣūr [mentioned]; its form, agreed upon among the Muslims (as in al-Tibyān), being: “God is greater, God is greater, there is no god but God, and God is greater; God is greater, and to God be praise”; and our companions added, following the reports from their Imams, the People of the House (in reconciliation of them): “God is greater for having guided us, and praise be to God for what He has bestowed on us and provided us of the beasts of the herd.” It is recommended, upon the well-known [view], by the sound [report] of ʿAlī b. Jaʿfar from his brother al-Kāẓim: “I asked him about the takbīr in the days of tashrīq, is it obligatory or not? He said, ‘recommended; and if one forgets, there is nothing upon him’”; so the command in the verse is for recommendation. Its time is after each obligatory [prayer], from the noon prayer on the day of [feast-]slaughter to the dawn prayer of the thirteenth day — so [there are] fifteen takbīrs; and for whoever departs by the first departure, ten times. The jurists of the generality differed in its number, but Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī (in one of his sayings) agreed with our companions. “So whoever hastens off in” — within — “two days” — from “he hastened his stay at Minā within two days by hastening its end,” so he departs by the first departure; and had it [meant] “made haste and hurried,” or [been] reflexive (as in al-Kashshāf), the verse would indicate the permissibility of departure on the first of them too, which is void by the consensus of the Muslims. And for the sake of making the hastening within two days, our companions and the jurists of the Sunna (except Abū Ḥanīfa and his companions) stipulated its being before sunset of the second day; so were he to reach evening, the first departure is forbidden him. “There is no sin upon him; and whoever delays, there is no sin upon him”: for this sentence there is an apparent [sense] needing no exposition; but in al-Kāfī’s report from Ismāʿīl b. Najīḥ is a rebuttal of it, and the ḥadīth of the two parties came contrary to it — namely that what is meant is “his sins are forgiven.”187 Of them [are] al-Ḥalabī’s sound [report] on His words “the Ḥajj is [in] known months,” ʿAbd al-Aʿlā’s sound [report], Ibn ʿUyayna’s report, Ibn Najīḥ’s report, and al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from Muʿāwiya b. ʿAmmār and Abū Baṣīr from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him); and al-Durr al-Manthūr related it from ʿAlī the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), Ibn Masʿūd, Ibn ʿUmar, and Ibn ʿAbbās (in one of the two reports). So the upshot of the meaning of the noble verse is: whoever completes his Ḥajj, by hastening or by delaying, his sins are forgiven — for there is no effect, for the two bare titles of “hastening” and “delaying,” in the forgiveness of sins. And by this aspect, and [by] the hastening’s being a completion of the Ḥajj, its permissibility is known, and that it is “for one who has been Godwary” [of] women and hunting, as is well-known among the Imāmiyya, in view of the specification to the two mentioned matters, and [it being] agreed upon [p.183]
(2:203) … And be wary of God, and know that to Him you shall be gathered. (2:204) And among the people is one whose speech about the life of this world pleases you, and he calls God to witness what is in his heart, though he is the staunchest of adversaries. (2:205) And when he turns away …
in view of the entering into all that is forbidden to the one in iḥrām (as [related] from Ibn Saʿīd), or into what obliges an atonement upon him (as [related] from Ibn Idrīs and Abī al-Majd) — as came, concerning women and hunting in particular, Ḥammād b. ʿUthmān’s sound [report] and his other report (as in al-Tahdhīb), Jamīl’s sound [report], and Ibn al-Mustanīr’s reliable [report] from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him); and by it came one of al-Durr al-Manthūr’s reports from Ibn ʿAbbās. What is meant is the guarding against the forbidden, and what is forbidden to him in his Ḥajj of what is between women and men, whether [the pilgrim] be a man or a woman. There are other reports from the two parties whose import the Imāmiyya did not take, and upon that is their consensus — added to [the point] that His words “for one who has been Godwary” cannot be soundly interpreted by absolute God-wariness in its generality, for its attainment up to the time of departure occurs only for the infallible, so no place would remain for the favour of forgiving sins (were that a restriction of it), nor a subject for the alleviation upon the rest of people (were it a restriction of the permissibility of departure); just as it cannot be soundly interpreted by the mere attainment of God-wariness, and an instance of it, in the past, for there is no benefit in this restriction [then], since everyone who has a Ḥajj has [already] attained an instance of God-wariness. So a particular God-wariness must be meant — which the foregoing reports made plain — and, in view of this, many ḥadīth fall away. “And be wary of God, and know that to Him you shall be gathered” — the tenor of the verse [being] that you not rely upon the forgiveness of your past sins by reason of the Ḥajj, but be wary of God in what remains of your lives, and let it be upon your knowledge and remembrance, always, that you shall, inescapably, be gathered to God, so He will call you to account for your deeds and requite you — so prepare for that by God-wariness and provide yourselves with it, for it is the best provision. (204) “And among the people is one whose speech pleases you” and you deem it goodly “about the life of this world” (attached to “pleases you”) — that is, he displays faith, purity, and good companionship, and says “that is in my heart” — “and he calls God to witness what is in his heart” — that is, he says, “I call God to witness that,” its entailment being the claim that God knows that [to be true] — “and” the case is [that] “he” is an adversary to you and to faith, and “the staunchest of adversaries” in that; the “staunchness” (ladad) [being] intensity in enmity — as His words in Sūrat Maryam (19:97), “and that you may warn thereby a most contentious (ludd) folk.”188 (205) “And when he turns away (tawallā)” — from “governance,” by his coming to have authority [p.184]
(2:205) … he strives in the land to work corruption in it, and to destroy the tillage and the progeny; and God does not love corruption. (2:206) And when it is said to him, “Fear God,” pride in sin seizes him; so Hell suffices him, and evil is the resting-place. (2:207) And among the people is one who sells himself seeking God’s good pleasure …
and dominion, “he strives in the land” — the “striving” (saʿy) [being] the hastening in walking, and [also] said [to be] action (whence His words in Sūrat al-Najm (53:39), “that the human has nothing but what he strives for,” and in Sūrat al-Dahr (76:22), “and your striving is thanked”) — my supposition being that it is here of the first sense, a metonym for action — “to work corruption in it, and to destroy the tillage and the progeny”: what is meant by the tillage here is the crop, for the earth is tilled for it; and the progeny (nasl) [is] what is born by procreation, people being the progeny of Adam. From al-ʿAyyāshī, from al-Ḥusayn b. Bashshār from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him): “the progeny [is] the offspring, and the tillage the crop”; and from Zurāra from al-Ṣādiq and al-Bāqir: “the progeny [is] the child and the tillage the earth” (this returns to interpreting it by the crop); and in Majmaʿ al-Bayān it is related from al-Ṣādiq that the tillage in this place is the religion and the progeny [is] the people (I suppose he took it from Tafsīr al-Qummī, for in it: “he said, the tillage in this place is the religion” — this speech having no indication in it that it is a report from al-Ṣādiq). “And God does not love corruption”, nor aids upon it — but He grants that striver respite and gives him rein. (206) “And when it is said to him” — that corrupter — “‘Fear God,’” and do not work corruption, “pride” — which he sees for himself — “in sin seizes him” — that is, his exulting in sin overpowers him, by the false mutual backing upon falsehood and sins; so he disdains the saying of one who says to him “fear God.” In al-Tibyān: “pride seized him” on account of the sin, of unbelief, in his heart; and it is said, “pride seized him” means the pride called him to sin. “So Hell suffices him” — that is, let it be reckoned [his lot] in the end, Hell — “and evil is the resting-place” which he spread for himself by his evil deeds.189 (207) “And among the people is one who sells himself (yashrī nafsahu) seeking God’s good pleasure” — in al-Tibyān, “sharā” [means] “sold”; in al-Kashshāf, “he sells it,” that is, expends it in striving [in God’s way]; I say it may be [that] the usual sense of buying is meant, in the manner we mentioned at verse 84 — that is, he buys himself with righteous deeds, seeking God’s good pleasure over them, which is its felicity, purchased for it. In al-Tibyān it is related from Abū Jaʿfar (that is, al-Bāqir, peace be upon him) that it came down concerning ʿAlī (peace be upon him) when he slept upon the bed of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) when Quraysh wished to kill him (God bless him and his Household); and al-Burhān and Ghāyat al-Marām related it, from al-ʿAyyāshī by his chain, from Ibn ʿAbbās and from Jābir from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him); and al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī related it [p.185]
in his Amālī, by his chains from the men of the Sunna and others, from Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, Ibn ʿAbbās, Anas, and Abū ʿAmr b. al-ʿAlāʾ, and from Abū al-Yaqẓān ʿAmmār from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household); and in his Majālis, from Abū Dharr, that the Commander of the Faithful argued, in the [consultative] Council (Shūrā), that the verse came down concerning him. In Ghāyat al-Marām it is related by Ibn Bābawayh, Ibn Shādhān, al-Kulaynī, al-Ṭūsī, Ibn ʿUqda, al-Barqī, Ibn Fayyāḍ, al-ʿAbdakī, al-Ṣafwānī, and al-Thaqafī, by their chains, from Ibn ʿAbbās, Abū Rāfiʿ, and Hind b. Abī Hāla; and, of the people of the Sunna, the Ḥāfiẓ Abū Nuʿaym related it from Ibn ʿAbbās, and al-Thaʿlabī in the first part of his tafsīr; and it was [also] related by Ibn ʿUqba in his epic-poem, and Abū al-Saʿādāt in the [book on] the virtues of the Ten, by their chains, from Abū al-Yaqẓān ʿAmmār. Al-Ghazālī related it, in the chapter on selflessness (īthār) of the Iḥyāʾ, in the detailed manner, in [the account of] God’s boasting of ʿAlī to Gabriel and Michael, and the verse’s descent concerning him; and likewise al-Rāzī, al-Naysābūrī, and al-Shīrāzī cited it in their tafsīrs, and Ibn al-Athīr in al-Inṣāf (in his combining of the two Kashshāfs), and it is [in] al-Fuṣūl al-Muhimma from the Iḥyāʾ; al-Thaʿlabī [also] related it, by his chain, from al-Suddī. Al-Ḥākim related in his Mustadrak, al-Dhahabī in his Talkhīṣ al-Mustadrak, Akhṭab Khwārazm Muwaffaq in his Manāqib, and al-Ḥamawaynī in his Farāʾid and Faḍāʾil al-Ṣaḥāba, by their chains, from Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn (peace be upon him): he said, “the first who sold himself seeking God’s good pleasure was ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, at his sleeping upon the bed of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household).” And Aḥmad related in his Musnad, by a sound way, and al-Ḥākim in his Mustadrak (grading it sound on the conditions of al-Bukhārī and Muslim), from Ibn ʿAbbās, in a ḥadīth: “and ʿAlī sold himself, put on the garment of the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), and slept in his place” — the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) having clothed him in his cloak, while Quraysh wished to kill the Prophet — the ḥadīth. Now, in al-Kashshāf [al-Zamakhsharī] did not mention this report, but interpreted “sells himself” by “he sells it and expends it in striving,” then mentioned the report concerning Ṣuhayb, that he bought himself and ransomed it from the polytheists of Quraysh with his wealth — and this does not suit his interpreting [it] by “he sells and expends it,” but rather suits what is related concerning the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), in the expending of himself and his sleeping upon the bed of the Messenger, to ransom him by it. And the wonder is at al-Suyūṭī: for, with the length of his reach in ḥadīth and his exhaustiveness, in al-Durr al-Manthūr, of the reports relating to exegesis — even the anomalous and the disowned — he yet did not mention what is amply [transmitted] by their ways in the descent of this verse concerning the Commander of the Faithful and his sleeping upon the bed, and [instead] related its descent concerning Ṣuhayb, or with Abū Dharr, or with another; and what Ṣuhayb relates of the Prophet’s (God bless him and his Household) saying to him, “the sale has profited190 [p.186]
(2:207) … and God is Most Kind to the servants. (2:208) O you who believe, enter into peace (al-silm) all together …
“the sale” does not suit [al-Zamakhsharī’s reading of] the expending of his wealth, nor does the verse suit Abū Dharr’s escape from his family. If it be said, the verse is Medinan, so how should its descent be in ʿAlī’s (peace be upon him) sleeping upon the bed at Mecca? I say: the event of the sleeping was when the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) went out from Mecca as an emigrant, so the verse came down after that, in the extolling of ʿAlī (peace be upon him). Moreover, there was not, between what they relate of Ṣuhayb’s affair with Quraysh and the expending of his wealth, and ʿAlī’s (peace be upon him) sleeping upon the bed, but a day or so — so how did the Medinan verse suit Ṣuhayb’s affair and not suit the affair of the Commander of the Faithful in his sleeping upon the bed? “And God is Most Kind to the servants” — this closing and its favour suit only the affair of the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) and God’s kindness to him, in guarding him by Gabriel and Michael from Quraysh’s killing, as in what we pointed to of the reports of Abū Nuʿaym, al-Thaʿlabī, Ibn ʿUqba, Abū al-Saʿādāt, al-Ghazālī, al-Rāzī, and others.191 (208) “O you who believe, enter into peace (al-silm) all together” — in what is at hand of the lexicons, al-silm (with the sīn voweled to i and the lām quiescent) is reconciliation; and what is meant by it is amity and the absence of war, not the contracting of a truce that yields peace. It is made feminine, carried upon its opposite, “war,” as in His words in Sūrat al-Anfāl (8:61), “and if they incline to peace, then incline to it.” Of the strange [readings] is what al-Durr al-Manthūr related, that what is meant by al-silm is the laws of Islam, or that al-silm is Islam, and that the addressed ones are the People of the Book; and stranger [still] is what is transmitted [from al-Zamakhsharī] in al-Kashshāf, that the addressed ones are the hypocrites — as they were strange in interpreting al-silm by obedience. How [so], when the verse and the one after it proclaim that they are the kind of the believers in God and His Messenger Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household), and that they were, at the time of the address by the verse and throughout the Messenger’s lifetime, all in accord in peace among themselves? So what, then, were they commanded to enter into? It is naught but a title that guarantees for them the perpetuity of peace after the Messenger (God bless him and his Household) and secures its ordering; and we have not found, for this title, a sound exposition and interpretation except what came from the People of the House (peace be upon them): in al-Kāfī, by its chain from ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAjlān from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), interpreting al-silm in the verse, he said, “[it is] in our authority (walāya).” Likewise the report of Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qummī from al-Fuḍayl, Ibn Shahrāshūb’s report, and al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from al-Kalbī from al-Ṣādiq; and in al-Shaykh’s Amālī, from Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), he said, “in the authority of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib,” and likewise Ibn Shahrāshūb’s report from Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn [p.187]
(2:208) … and do not follow the footsteps of Satan; indeed he is a manifest enemy to you. (2:209) But if you slip after the clear proofs have come to you, know that God is Mighty, Wise. (2:210) Do they wait for aught but that God should come to them in canopies of cloud …
and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon them), and al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from Abū Naṣr from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him); and in its meaning are other reports of al-ʿAyyāshī, from Zurāra, Ḥumrān, and Muḥammad b. Muslim from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq, and his report from Jābir from al-Bāqir, and his report from Masʿada from al-Ṣādiq from his father from his grandfather (peace be upon them). By the truth of my life, the authority (walāya) of ʿAlī (peace be upon him) and the Imams of the House of the Messenger is the noblest kind of peace and the greatest of it in blessing; by it the general peace among the Muslims after the Messenger (God bless him and his Household) is set in accord, and by it its order is secured and its foundation settled. Had the whole of the Muslims held fast to it, the grinding wars would not have happened — like the wars of al-Baṣra, Ṣiffīn, al-Nahrawān, Karbalāʾ, al-Ḥarra, and others — nor would the choicest of the Muslims have gone as [slaughtered] offerings to the cruelty of Ziyād, his son, al-Ḥajjāj, and their like: “indeed we belong to God, and to Him we return.”192 “All together” (kāffatan) is in the sense of “jointly,” a circumstantial [state] of the plural pronoun in “enter,” there being no sense in its being a circumstantial of “peace,” especially with what we mentioned of the state of the Muslims in the Messenger’s time. “And do not follow the footsteps of Satan” — the “footsteps” being the plural of “footstep,” that is, do not follow his trace and tread in his steps in misguidance, nor be led along his trail by his seduction. “Indeed he is a manifest enemy to you” in his enmity; and does his enmity hide [itself]? Here you are, with the least attention, knowing that he incites you to every foul thing and casts you, by his seduction, into every evil and hateful [thing]. (209) “But if you slip after the clear proofs have come to you” — of which are His words, (33:33) “God only desires to remove impurity from you, O People of the House, and to purify you with a thorough purification” — its exposition confirmed by the mass-transmitted ḥadīth of the two parties, that what is meant by the People of the House are ʿAlī, al-Zahrāʾ, and their progeny (God’s blessings be upon them) — and His words, (42:23) “say, ‘I ask of you no reward for it save love for [my] kin,’” and other verses whose interpretation is transmitted [as being] in the excellence of ʿAlī (peace be upon him), his leadership, and his authority, as has passed and will come (God willing), and what is mass-transmitted, in wording or in meaning, of the ḥadīth of the two parties in the excellence of ʿAlī (peace be upon him), his authority, and his command over the believers. “Know that God is Mighty” — in enforcing His command and manifesting the truth without coercion — “Wise. (210) Do they wait” — that is, the kind of people, if the intent of the verse is the states of the Resurrection and its terrors; and if the intent is the terrors of the end of time, then what is meant is some of the people, the people of that hour — “for aught but that God should come to them in canopies of cloud” — the ascription of coming to God is figurative, that is, the traces of His power, His grandeur, and His overpowering authority come to them, as [p.188]
(2:210) … and the angels, and the matter be decided? And to God are [all] matters returned. (2:211) Ask the Children of Israel how many a clear sign We gave them; and whoever changes God’s blessing after it has come to him — indeed God is severe in punishment. (2:212) The life of this world has been adorned for those who disbelieve, and they mock those who believe; but those who are Godwary shall be above them on the Day of Resurrection …
as one says, to whom the king’s army came with the might of his authority, “the king came to you.” “Canopies” (ẓulal) is the plural of “canopy” (ẓulla), namely what overshadows you; and “cloud” (ghamām) is well-known — and it may be that “canopies of cloud” is figurative for the hardships that overwhelm them and the darknesses of the terrors, as the atmosphere darkens with cloud. “And the angels” — an agent by coordination upon “should come”; and ascribing the coming to them [the angels] there is no bar to its being real. In al-Durr al-Manthūr’s reports on the verse is what is hard to interpret and impossible in its purport, for it is anthropomorphism (tajsīm) and ascribes the taking-of-place, in a location, to God (magnified be His station).193 “And the matter be decided” — for there is no repeller of God’s decree — “and to God are [all] matters returned” — He being their Guardian, returning them to Himself [by] the overpowering authority of His divinity, His necessity [of being], the contingency of all besides Him, and its need, in all its states, of Him (magnified be His authority). (211) “Ask”, O Messenger, “the Children of Israel” — by way of establishment and rebuke over their rebellion and their ingratitude for the blessings — “how many a clear sign We gave them”, that is, made manifest to them, guiding them to the truth and making plain to them the ways of right guidance in [God’s] oneness, the revelation of the Torah from God, the prophethood of the Messenger of God, and the revelation of his Qurʾān; and they won, of those signs and the clear proofs of their evidences and their guidance, the mighty blessing — but they changed it, and how [often] they met it with apostasy, denial, obstinacy, and ingratitude! “And whoever changes God’s blessing after it has come to him” — as those clear signs came — then give him tidings of the severe punishment; “indeed God is severe in punishment. (212) The life of this world has been adorned for those who disbelieve” — Satan and the caprices of the commanding soul adorned it, as in His words in Sūrat al-Anfāl, al-Naḥl, al-Naml, and al-ʿAnkabūt. It is said God adorned it for them by creating in it the desired, pleasing things; but that is nothing, for the creation of these things is for people in general, not for those who disbelieve in particular. In al-Kashshāf: it may be that God adorned it for them by forsaking them so that they deemed it goodly, or because He gave them respite; I say, and upon that came His words in Sūrat al-Anʿām (6:108), “thus have We adorned for every community their deeds,” and in Sūrat al-Naml (27:4), “We have adorned for them their deeds” — but this is figurative, not to be resorted to save as the evidence requires. “And they mock those who believe” — either for their poverty, or for their faith in the Hereafter and their hope of it, or for their advancing to bear hardships by reason of faith. “But those who are Godwary shall be above them” — above the mocking disbelievers — “on the Day of Resurrection”, in the bliss of the Gardens and the loftiness [p.189]
(2:212) … and God provides for whom He wills without reckoning. (2:213) Mankind were one community; then God sent the prophets as bearers of glad tidings and warners, and sent down with them the Book …
of [His] good pleasure. Is what is meant by “those who are Godwary” [identical with] “those who believe,” or is it a pointing to [the fact] that not all who believe attain the lofty degrees on the Day of Resurrection — as came in the amply-transmitted ḥadīth, related in the Ṣaḥīḥs of the Sunna and others from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), that some of his Companions will be taken, on the Day of Resurrection, to the right and to the left, and he will say “my Companions, my Companions,” and it will be said to him, “you do not know what they innovated after you”? God is the Knower of what is meant. “And God provides” — by [His] honouring and the raising of degrees — “for whom He wills”, of His servants, according to fitness and the deserving of honour, “without reckoning” and [without] a bounded limit; and God is of mighty bounty. (213) “Mankind were one community” — no separation among them in what returns to a creed or a sacred law. In al-Tibyān it is related from Abū Jaʿfar (al-Bāqir, peace be upon him) that he said: they were, before Noah, one community upon the natural disposition (fiṭra) of God, neither guided nor astray, so God sent the prophets. What is meant is “not guided” [with] the whole of guidance in the [religious] knowledge — for the fiṭra guides only to the root of divinity, [God’s] oneness, and something of His attributes (magnified be His station), and does not lead to the bodily Return with the particulars the noble Qurʾān brought, nor to the sacred law — and “not astray” [with] the whole of straying; so they are, absolutely speaking, astray, for their straying from much of what is desired of them to know and be guided to.194 In al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from Masʿada from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “I said, ‘were they astray before the prophets, or upon guidance?’ He said, ‘they were not upon guidance, but upon the fiṭra of God upon which He created them.’” All this accords with what al-Kāfī ascribed to Yaʿqūb b. Shuʿayb from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) on the verse: “there was, before Noah, a community astray, so God sent the prophets” (likewise al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from Yaʿqūb, and his report from Muḥammad b. Muslim from al-Bāqir, “this was before Noah — they were astray,” and his report from Zurāra, Ḥumrān, and Muḥammad b. Muslim from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq, “they were astray”); and it is not related from the People of the House that they were disbelievers. Yes — the reports wavered, as in al-Durr al-Manthūr, from Ibn ʿAbbās: in some his saying “upon Islam, all of them” (and near it what is related from Ubayy b. Kaʿb), and in some, by the way of al-ʿAwfī, “they were disbelievers.” “Then God sent the prophets as bearers of glad tidings” — of God’s good pleasure, His recompense, and the bliss of the Hereafter, for whoever believed in God, was Godwary of Him, and did righteously — “and warners” — for whoever opposed all that or some of it, of God’s wrath and His retribution, the Day of Resurrection and His painful, abasing punishment — “and sent down with them the Book” — that is, the kind of the divine Book [p.190]
(2:213) … with the truth, that it might judge between people concerning that wherein they differed; and none differed in it save those who were given it, after the clear proofs had come to them, out of insolence among themselves. So God guided those who believed to the truth of that wherein they differed, by His leave; and God guides whom He wills to a straight path. (2:214) Or …
which the messengers of the prophets bring from God — so it may be that what is meant by “the prophets” is specifically the messengers upon whom a Book descends, or the absolute [class of] prophets, the expression “the sending-down of the Book with them” being in view of its being sent down upon the messengers among them. God sent it down “with the truth” — that is, to make plain the truth and clarify for people the way of guidance in their religion and their sacred laws; and of its ends and benefits is that it be a reference and a decisive arbiter in disagreement, [so] in view of this noble end He said, “that it might judge” — by its exposition — “between people” — the people at large, not those [prophets] mentioned in particular; had they been meant, it would have been said “that it might judge between them” — “concerning that wherein they differed”, their ignorance and their caprices calling them to differ therein. “And none differed in it” — that is, in the Book — “save those who were given it” and differed in it “after the clear proofs had come to them” — of its firm, decisive [verses], reinforced by the indication of reason. In this sentence is a repelling of what might be imagined — [namely] how the Book judges between people, when every sect of the one community, in its religious and sectarian dispute with the other sect, argues by the Book that gathers the community and claims its indication of what it holds. So God said what amounts to [this]: the Book, sent down for the community by [His] wisdom in the tongue of humankind and the tongue of that community and its idiom — though in it be an explicit, decisive [verse], and an apparent [sense] by [linguistic] positing, and a figurative [usage] whose sense is apparent by verbal or self-evident rational indications — yet its explicit, its decisive, and its clear proofs leave no room for [false] imagining; rather they stand in wait for the caprices’ toying with its apparent [senses] and its figurative [usages]. So they did not differ for a hiddenness or difficulty of its indication; rather the difference occurred “out of insolence (baghyan)” arising “among themselves,” and a deviation of some from the truth and a swerving to insolence, that the insolent might obscure their affair by clinging to the ambiguous [verses]. “So God guided those who believed” — by the reality of faith, and brought them, by His enabling, “to the truth of that wherein they differed, by His leave” and His support with kindness, for they are fit for that by their faith and their pondering of the Book. “And God guides” and brings to the truth “whom He wills” — of whoever is fit for His kindness and His enabling (magnified be His blessings) — “to a straight path.”195 It is admissible that the verse be carried upon the difference in the Book itself and its being sent down from God, what is meant by the clear proofs being the [evidentiary] miracles and the evidences of the Messenger’s truthfulness and the Book’s descent from God. (214) “Or do you suppose”, O Muslims, “that you shall enter the Garden” and attain its lofty degrees, as recompense [p.191]
(2:214) … do you suppose that you shall enter the Garden, when there has not yet come to you the like of [what befell] those who passed away before you? Affliction and adversity touched them, and they were convulsed, until the Messenger and those who believed with him said, “When is God’s help?” — Behold, God’s help is near! (2:215) They ask you what they should spend. Say, “Whatever wealth you spend, let it be for the parents, the near kin, the orphans, the needy, and the wayfarer; and whatever good you do …”
for righteous deeds, without steadfast sincerity, patience, and firmness in aiding the religion and [bearing] its hardships, and without a sifting of the truthful from the lying — [as He said,] (49:17) “they deem it a favour to you that they have submitted; say, ‘do not deem your submission a favour to me; rather God has favoured you, in that He guided you to faith, if you are truthful,’” and (3:142) “or did you suppose that you shall enter the Garden, when God has not yet known those of you who struggle and known the steadfast?” — that is, when the strugglers among you have not yet struggled nor the steadfast been steadfast, [such] that God should have known, by His knowledge following [things] in eternity, that they would struggle and be steadfast, by their choice, out of desire for what is with God and in aiding the religion of truth.196 “When there has not yet come to you the like of [what befell] those who passed away before you” — of the helpers of the truth among the [past] communities; “the like” (mathal) in the sense of “likeness” — that is, you are tested and tried and made steadfast as they were tested and made steadfast. And what came to them, and upon which they were steadfast, is that “affliction touched them” — from misery, the opposite of bounty — “and adversity” — from harm, the opposite of gladness — it befell them and touched them with its pain, not the mere occurrence of it — “and they were convulsed” by the surging of the trial and the tribulations and the agitation of states; but the steadfast among them stood firm in their hardship in the matter of the religion and did not weaken; rather that state endured with them, they [holding] to their patience and firmness, “until” the Messenger and the believers take refuge in God’s help and seek to draw down His help and mercy, and “the Messenger and those who believed with him said, ‘When is God’s help?’” — a supplication and a seeking of help, out of their desire for the manifesting of the religion of truth. So be like them, and be patient and firm, O Muslims, and yours are the glad tidings of help: “behold, God’s help is near!” (215) They ask you what they should spend. Say” — in answer to them what apprises them of what they spend, namely what is good and beneficial, intended for benevolence and the face of God, and what makes plain its [proper] places, lest their spending be a squandering of wealth and entailing of corruptions: “Whatever wealth you spend, let it be for the parents” — the two sides of the parents: the father and the grandfather, the mother and the grandmother — “and the near kin” of the spender (advanced over the [general] relatives, in whose giving is the joining of the womb, as an exposition of their importance and their precedence when they equal others in the rest of the merits) “and the orphans” — the orphan being the small [child] who has no father — “and the needy” — the poor — “and the wayfarer” — he who is in need on his journey, though he have wealth he cannot reach. “And whatever good you do, God knows it”, even if you keep it secret; for no hidden thing is hidden from Him, nor does He let go to waste [p.192]
(2:215) … of good, God knows it. (2:216) Fighting is prescribed for you, though it is hateful to you. Yet it may be that you dislike a thing while it is good for you, and it may be that you love a thing while it is evil for you; and God knows, and you know not. (2:217) They ask you about the sacred month — fighting in it. Say, “Fighting in it is grave; but barring from God’s way …”
the reward of the doers of good. (216) “Prescribed” and imposed “for you is fighting” — an imposition of sufficiency (farḍ kifāya), that you may win the excellence of striving and the aiding of the religion, and that some of you may attain the honour of martyrdom and its goodly life — “and” the case is [that] “it is hateful to you” — the “hatefulness” (kurh, with the u) a verbal noun in the sense of “the hated,” a hatefulness of temperaments, even if the sincere in aiding Islam desire it. “Yet it may be that you dislike a thing while it is good for you”, and finer in trace and end, in this world or the Hereafter or both, “and it may be that you love a thing while it is evil for you; and God knows” what is good for you and what is evil, “and you know not” that — so He chooses for you, by His kindness and enabling, what is good. (217) “They ask you about the sacred month — fighting in it.” Al-Qummī mentioned, in his tafsīr, concerning its occasion of descent, the gist [being] that a raiding-party (sariyya) of the Messenger of God, headed by ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaḥsh, fell in, at the valley of Nakhla, upon a caravan of Quraysh, killed Ibn al-Ḥaḍramī, took it as spoils, and captured two captives — and that was on the first day of Rajab, of the sacred months. Al-Durr al-Manthūr mentioned a report from Jundub b. ʿAbd Allāh, in which the Companions of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) doubted whether that day was of Rajab or of Jumādā; and in what it mentioned from Ibn ʿAbbās, they supposed that night was of Jumādā, and it was the first of Rajab, and they did not perceive it (the like of what is related from Abū Mālik al-Ghifārī, and from al-Zuhrī and Abū Miqsam; and what is mentioned in ʿUrwa’s report on that is disordered and self-conflicting). In al-Kāfī, soundly, from ʿUmar b. Yazīd from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), on [the point] that the day follows the past night, not the coming one, he said, “because the people of the valley of Nakhla, when they saw the crescent, said ‘the sacred month has entered’” — the report pointing to the story.197 The meaning is: the polytheists ask you, by way of denial, or the Muslims, by way of inquiry, about the sacred month — [is there] fighting in it? “Fighting” being a substitutive [appositive] of inclusion from “the sacred month.” “Say” what amounts to [this]: the leaving of fighting in the sacred month is but a means to a kind of respect of people and a stilling of evil; but when it is the people who are the violators of the sanctities, those have no sanctity and no honour — so how is the fighting of the polytheists in the sacred month to be denounced, when they are the tyrants ever defying God, His Messenger, and the believers, and [that too] in the sacred month? For them [there is] “fighting in it” — — “[which is] grave; and a barring” of people “from God’s way”; and they persist upon this [p.193]
(2:217) … and unbelief in Him, and [barring from] the Sacred Mosque, and expelling its people from it, is graver with God; and sedition is graver than killing. And they will not cease fighting you until they turn you from your religion, if they can. And whoever of you turns from his religion and dies while he is an unbeliever — those, their works have come to nothing in this world and the Hereafter, and those are the companions of the Fire, abiding therein forever.
barring, ever since the summons of Islam and [God’s] oneness appeared, in defiance of God, “and unbelief in Him, and” a barring from “the Sacred Mosque” — they do not leave the Muslims a way to it — “and expelling its people from it” — namely the Messenger of God and whoever believed with him of the people of Mecca, by that distressing expulsion, in enmity to God, His oneness, His Messenger, and his summons to righteousness — “is graver with God” than what you reckon grave, of fighting the polytheists in the sacred month. Rather they persist in wishing to seduce the believers from [God’s] oneness and the religion of truth, by deception or whatever kinds of harm are feasible for them; “and sedition (fitna)” from the religion “is graver than killing” — [this] though their raiding and fighting were only for their threatening, terrifying, and deterring them from harming the believers, for they persist in insisting upon enmity to the religion of truth. “And they will not cease” — in their straying and error — “fighting you” — this is a turning to the address of the Muslims, and in it a suitability for their being the [ones] asking about fighting the polytheists in the sacred month — “until they turn you from your religion” — this being their aim in fighting you — “if they can” [continue] to persist in fighting you; and in it is glad tidings that they will not be able, nor persist. “And whoever of you turns from his religion and dies while he is an unbeliever — those” (a plural, in view of the sense of “whoever”) “their works have come to nothing” and fallen, as though they had not been, so there is no trace of them, no honour, and no deserving [reward], with unbelief and apostasy — “in this world” (in view of their boasting of their works in Islam, or the arranging of [their] effects) “and the Hereafter”, for the apostate who dies upon unbelief has dropped himself, by his unbelief, from the fitness for recompense, even if he did the work, in its time, in its [proper] manner — “and those are the companions of the Fire, abiding therein forever.” In al-Tibyān and al-Mabsūṭ: our companions related that it — that is, the fighting of the polytheists in the sacred months — remains upon prohibition, for whoever holds these months to have a sanctity; and [al-Ṭūsī] gave verdict by that in al-Nihāya, [saying] “the book of struggle (jihād) of the Khilāf was not at hand to me”; the report being the unattributed [muḍmara] of the two Tahdhībs and al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr from al-ʿAlāʾ b. Fuḍayl, in whose way is Muḥammad b. Sinān. In al-Muntahā it is “the saying of our companions,” and in al-Jawāhir “there is no dispute in it with us,” the unattributed [report] being reinforced thereby. It is not opposed by the Messenger’s (peace be upon him) fighting Hawāzin, in the year of the Conquest, in Shawwāl, and al-Ṭāʾif in Dhū al-Qaʿda, for those he fought were of [those] who violated the month’s sanctity and began the fighting; rather it is indicated by His words in Sūrat Barāʾa (9:5), “so when the sacred months have passed, kill the polytheists …” — the making [of the killing] contingent upon that being not in respect of the term of the covenant (for that is particular and this verse is general; that [is] four months and this about fifty days).198
(2:218) Indeed those who believed, and those who emigrated and strove in the way of God — those hope for the mercy of God; and God is Forgiving, Merciful. (2:219) They ask you about wine and gambling …
al-mushrikīn) — and the making [of the killing] contingent upon that is not in respect of the term of the covenant, for that is particular and this verse is general; that [is] four months and this about fifty days. (218) “Indeed those who believed” — with the reality of faith; and it may be that what is meant by them are the believers who were not able to emigrate at that time, and by the coordinate [phrase] the emigrating strivers; or it may be that the emigrants are meant, the word “those who” repeated for [special] care of their emigration and their striving — “and those who emigrated” from their lands for the sake of Islam and its aid — emigration (hijra) being taken from “forsaking,” and specified in the sacred law to whoever forsook the lands of polytheism in the way of Islam and the following of the Messenger (God bless him and his Household) before the Conquest — “and strove” in that [with] their utmost and their capacity (this being specified to the lawful war) “in the way of God — those hope for the mercy of God” — the sentence “those [hope]” being the predicate of “those who”; and their hope for God’s mercy suffices [as] a knowledge of God and an increase of good from His bounty and mercy — “and God is Forgiving, Merciful,” so it is as though it were said: God shows them mercy because He is Merciful, so how [much more] with one who hopes for His mercy by his intention and his deed? Rather He forgives them what has passed and accepts their repentance. (219) “They ask you about wine (al-khamr)” — in al-Tibyān: the generality of the people of Medina said, everything of which the much intoxicates is wine. Its derivation is either from “fermenting” (ikhtimār), which is a concomitant of the kind of liquid intoxicants, or from its “clouding” (mukhāmara) of the intellect. It is amply [transmitted] from our reports, from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) and the Imams of the People of the House, that it is a name for every intoxicant — as in Ibn al-Ḥajjāj’s sound [report] from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), al-Qummī’s report in his tafsīr from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), the reliable transmitted and unattributed [reports] from ʿĀmir b. al-Simṭ from Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn (peace be upon him), al-Hāshimī’s report from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), and al-Ṭūsī’s Amālī report by his chain from al-Nuʿmān b. Bashīr from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), as al-Wasāʾil counted [them] in the first chapter of drinks — and in the fifteenth chapter also, from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): “the Messenger of God said, every intoxicant is forbidden, and every intoxicant is wine.” And the report is amply [transmitted] from al-Ṣādiq, al-Kāẓim, and al-Riḍā (peace be upon them) that faqqāʿ [barley-beer] is wine.199 “And gambling (al-maysir)” — it is games of chance; and [the author of] al-Miṣbāḥ erred in his saying “al-maysir is the Arabs’ gambling with the divining-arrows,” and did not attend to His words in Sūrat al-Māʾida (5:90), “wine, gambling, idols, and divining-arrows [are but an abomination].” Had the divining-arrows and gambling with them been the very [substance of] al-maysir, their coordination upon al-maysir, with the separator, would not be sound; rather they were coordinated upon it by way of coordinating the particular upon the general, for the importance in it. In al-Kāfī, with a chain, from al-Kāẓim: “al-maysir is games of chance”; and by his chain from al-Bāqir from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household): it was said, “O Messenger of God, what is al-maysir?” [p.195]
(2:219) … Say, “In both is great sin, and [some] benefits for people; but their sin is greater than their benefit.” And they ask you what they should spend. Say, “The surplus.” Thus does God make plain to you the signs, that you may reflect …
he said, “everything one gambles with, even knuckle-bones and walnuts.” It was said, “and what are the divining-arrows?” He (God bless him and his Household) said, “their [gaming-]shafts by which they seek portions.” In al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from al-Kāẓim (peace be upon him) from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “backgammon (al-nard) and chess (al-shaṭranj) are of al-maysir”; and in al-Kashshāf, from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), “beware these two ill-omened games, for they are of the gambling of the non-Arabs,” and from ʿAlī (peace be upon him), that backgammon and chess are of al-maysir; and in al-Durr al-Manthūr, by its two chains from Ibn ʿAbbās and Ibn ʿUmar, “al-maysir is games of chance.” [Al-Zamakhsharī in] al-Kashshāf floundered here, saying first “al-maysir is games of chance,” then after this “if you say, what is the description of al-maysir? I say, they had ten shafts, which are the divining-arrows,” to the end, and then after this “and in the ruling of al-maysir are the kinds of gambling, of backgammon and chess.” Now, the style of the answer in this verse, in view of His words in Sūrat al-Māʾida, (5:90) “wine, gambling, idols, and divining-arrows are but an abomination of Satan’s work,” and the verse after it, gives to understand that they asked him (God bless him and his Household) while they mentioned their benefits for people, in the drinking of wine, the winning at gambling, and the like of what caprice suggests; so the answer came by way of forbearance and of emphasis in the argument for their prohibition. “Say”, O Messenger, “in both is great sin, and [some] benefits” — indefinite, an indication of their being unknown and paltry — “for people; but their sin” — in this world, in health, honour, livelihood, and peace with people, and in the Hereafter — “is greater than their benefit”; and it is fitting, in God’s kindness and mercy and His regard for the interests of His servants, their perfecting, and their refinement in the sacred law of truth, that He forbid the two of them for the sake of their great sin. “And they ask you what they should spend” — at [times of] their poverty and their wealth — “say, the surplus (al-ʿafw)” — each according to his state; for in al-Kāfī, with a chain from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), “al-ʿafw is the middle [amount],” that is, the moderate measure between what is extravagance and what is of niggardliness, according to the person’s state (the like [in] al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from Jamīl from him, and in his report from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān from him, “they are those who, when they spend, are neither extravagant nor stinting, but keep a mean between that”; and from Yūsuf from al-Ṣādiq and al-Bāqir, “sufficiency,” and in Abū Baṣīr’s report, “moderation”). It is not hidden that He did not restrict the spending to its being in the way of God; rather it is absolute spending.200 “Thus” — an address to the Messenger of God — “does God make plain to you” — the pronoun made plural in view of the exposition’s including the community — “the signs”, in the matter of wine, gambling, spending, and others, “that you may reflect” — to the end that you reflect, by your choice, and take [p.196]
(2:220) … about this world and the Hereafter. And they ask you about the orphans. Say, “To set right their affairs is better; and if you mix with them, they are your brothers. And God knows the corrupter from the reformer; and had God willed, He would have burdened you. Indeed God is Mighty, Wise.” (2:221) And do not marry idolatresses until they believe …
your portion of right guidance. (220) “About” the matters of “this world and the Hereafter” — that you may follow your right guidance and act by what is the setting-right of the two abodes. “And they ask you about” the matter of “the orphans” — concerning mixing with them in their properties. In Tafsīr al-Qummī, soundly, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): when His words in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (4:10) came down, “indeed those who devour the properties of the orphans wrongfully devour only fire into their bellies, and shall roast in a blaze,” everyone who had an orphan [in his charge] put [him] out, and they asked the Messenger of God about putting them out, so God sent down “and they ask you about the orphans” (the like of it [in] al-Durr al-Manthūr’s corrected report from Ibn ʿAbbās). “Say, to set right their affairs” — by undertaking their charge, guarding their properties, spending on them from [those properties], and the goodly rearing, disciplining, and teaching of them — “is better” than putting them out and the wasting of their properties and their discipline. “And if you mix with them” — in food and property — “they are your brothers” — in religion, or in the tribe, or in near kinship; and there is no harm in mixing with them if you deal purely with them as brothers deal purely, and set [things] right. “And God knows the corrupter” — who devours the orphans’ properties wrongfully or wastes them — “from the reformer” — who mixes with them in benevolence and setting-right; so seek the recompense and beware the punishment of Him from whom no hidden thing is hidden (something of the modes of mixing with them is related in al-Kāfī, al-Tahdhīb, and others, so let it be consulted). “And had God willed, He would have burdened you” — that is, borne you upon what is hardship for you and charged you with it, of setting right the orphans’ affair and not mixing with them — “indeed God is Mighty” in His will, “Wise” in His sacred law, applying it upon the wisdom of justice and facilitation. (221) “And do not marry idolatresses until they believe.” In al-Durr al-Manthūr, of what al-Bukhārī and others brought out from Ibn ʿUmar, that he, when asked about marrying the Christian and the Jewish [woman], would cite this verse as evidence for its prohibition. In al-Tibyān: this verse is upon its generality, in the prohibition of intermarriage with all disbelievers, and is neither abrogated nor particularized; and [al-Ṭabrisī] followed him, in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, upon this phrasing to its end, adding by his saying “it is general with us,” and confirming that at the end of his words by his saying “and it is our creed.” In this there is doubt; for the consensus he claimed in al-Intiṣār, upon the prohibition of marrying the women of the People of the Book, admits of interpretation, like many of his [claimed] consensuses — for al-Qummī said, in his tafsīr, that the verse is abrogated by His words (5:5) “and the chaste women of those who were given the Book,” and stated plainly the licitness and the abrogation in his exegesis of this verse, which is the seventh of Sūrat al-Māʾida.201 In al-Mabsūṭ [al-Ṭūsī] ascribed the prohibition to the [leading] investigators of our companions [p.197]
(2:221) … And a believing bondwoman is better than an idolatress, though she please you. And do not marry [your women] to idolaters until they believe. And a believing bondman is better than an idolater, though he please you. Those call to the Fire, but God calls to the Garden and to forgiveness, by His leave; and He makes plain His signs to people, that they may take heed.
or to some of them; and he said: all our companions have permitted the temporary marriage (tamattuʿ) of the women of the Book, and their bedding by the possession of the right hand — and [al-Ṭabrisī] followed him upon that in the Majmaʿ, in the exegesis of His words (5:5) “and the chaste women of those who were given the Book.” The permitting of the permanent [marriage] also is related from al-Ḥasan and the two Ṣadūqs among the ancients. An aspect for the discourse here is that this verse, and likewise His words in Sūrat al-Mumtaḥina (60:10), “and do not hold to the marriage-bonds of the disbelieving women,” — are the two of them abrogated by His words in Sūrat al-Māʾida (5:5), “today the good things are made licit for you … and the chaste women of those who were given the Book before you, when you have given them their dowries”? Or is this [latter] the abrogated one? The reports have differed in this matter, and the settling of the discourse in that is committed to the discussions of jurisprudence. It may be said that the verse of al-Māʾida is particular to the licitness of the women of the Book by the marriage of mutʿa, that [being] by reason of its conditioning by His words “when you have given them their dowries,” for this condition is particular to the marriage of mutʿa. It is not [validly] said that this is refuted by the coming of this condition in the tenth verse of Sūrat al-Mumtaḥina, concerning the marriage of the believing emigrant women; for we say that that, in the verse of al-Mumtaḥina, may — as is the preponderant [view] — be an exposition that the Muslims should not drop their dowries altogether, contenting themselves with what they were commanded [to pay] of giving their first husbands, of the polytheists, what they had spent upon them of dowry; the upshot being that their marrying the emigrant women is upon the customary [manner] of marriage in kind, without an offsetting for them by what was given to their first husbands on their account, and without a dropping of their dowries.202 “And a believing bondwoman is better” for you in marriage “than a” free “idolatress,” however she be, “though she please you” and you desire her. “And do not marry” your women “to idolaters” — [it is] said [that is] in view of the custom that the woman is given in marriage by the guardian, so it is likewise forbidden to the believing woman that she give herself in marriage to the idolaters — “until they believe. And a believing bondman is better than a” free “idolater, though he please you. Those” — meaning the idolaters, women and men — “call to the Fire,” and the whispering of the [idolatrous] spouse, of the kind of husband or wife, has an evil, dreadful effect that must be guarded against. “But God calls to the Garden” — and of that is that He commands you to keep far from the whispering of the idolatrous consort — “and” He calls you to attain “forgiveness, by His leave” in that, by reason of His guidance and His direction of you and His enabling you to righteous deeds. “And He makes plain His signs to people” — with what is their guidance in it and the pointing to the wisdom — “that they may take heed.”
(2:222) And they ask you about menstruation. Say, “It is a hurt; so keep away from women during menstruation, and do not approach them until they become clean. Then when they have purified themselves, come to them …”
(222) “And they ask you about menstruation (al-maḥīḍ).” Al-maḥīḍ is a verbal noun of “the woman menstruated,” [used] when the blood, known and customary for women, takes her; and al-maḥīḍ comes [also] as a noun for the time of menstruation and its place. “Say, it is a hurt (adhan)” — that is, a filth, as it preceded, in His words “or has a hurt in his head,” that the “hurt” [there] is the lice. There is no escape, in His words “say, it is a hurt,” from a kind of ellipsis (istikhdām); for menstruation, in its verbal-noun sense, is not a filth that men shun; rather the filth and hurt is the blood. This ellipsis is made goodly by the intensity of the association and by dispensing, thereby, with the plain naming of the loathsome menstrual blood. “So keep away from women during menstruation” — that is, do not come to them in the place of menstruation and filth, namely the [vaginal] part; and it is possible to carry al-maḥīḍ upon the noun of time, [in which case] the keeping-away must be carried upon a specific keeping-away, to which the mind is led by the context, namely intercourse in the [vaginal] part — clarified by the aversion [expressed] in the menstrual blood’s being a hurt and filth, upon which the command to keep away is branched. As for the absolute keeping-away of women during the time of menstruation, it is contrary to the consensus of the Muslims; and the claim of taking [the verse] upon [its] absoluteness, after the particularization by what the consensus indicated, entails the particularizing of the greater part, which is unseemly. As for keeping away from what is beneath the waist-wrapper — as Abū Ḥanīfa and Abū Yūsuf say — no aspect of the aspects of the noble verse supports it, and their ḥadīth from ʿĀʾisha is conflicting. “And do not approach them” — by intercourse; and it is an emphasis of the command to keep away — “until they become clean (yaṭhurna)” — with the light ṭāʾ, as is inscribed in the copies of the Qurʾān current among the Muslims, hand from hand, and upon it is their recitation; no account [is taken] of what departs from that, of some [variant] readings, as we mentioned in the second chapter of the Introduction. The meaning is: until they be cleansed of that hurt and filth by the cessation of menstruation and the cleanness of the place — which is the terminus of the obligation of keeping away and not approaching. This is what suits the branching of the command to keep away upon the menstrual blood’s being a hurt and filth, and the causing [of the ruling] by it; and upon that is the consensus of the Imāmiyya and their ḥadīth. Abū Ḥanīfa and his companions agreed with them [in the case] where the blood ceases at the tenth [day], but not [in what is] before it; and in this detailing is a manifest disorder. “Then when they have purified themselves (taṭahharna), come to them” — it is not necessary that this branching be a repetition, in expounding the terminus mentioned in “until they become clean”; rather what is required, in the law of discourse, in view of “yaṭhurna” with the lightening and “taṭahharna” with the doubling, is that it be a branching for another matter beyond that terminus — namely that permissibility, in the more general sense contrary to prohibition, is attained at the terminus of the prohibition and the obligation of keeping away, which is the cleanness from menstruation; and that the intercourse which is commanded and sought203 [p.199]
(2:222) … from where God has commanded you. Indeed God loves the oft-repentant and loves those who purify themselves. (2:223) Your women are a tillage for you, so come …
for the continuance of the species and the goodly intimacy between the two spouses, or that it be permissible in the more particular sense — that is [attained] when they have purified themselves of the filths, by [their] washing their [vaginal] parts of the traces of the blood, even [if only] by the washing of menstruation; and He hung this upon “their purifying themselves,” following the [usual] preponderant [case], else the purpose is attained even if they fell into water, for instance, without their choice. “From where God has commanded you” — in the verse, [to] keep away from it; and upon it is al-Durr al-Manthūr’s report from Ibn ʿAbbās, and it is what suits the definition of that from which one comes. The expression by the word “from” does no harm in that, as al-Tibyān related from al-Farrāʾ. Al-Tibyān related the interpretation by their saying “from where God has commanded, of marriage rather than fornication,” as [related] from Abū Ḥanīfa; or “from where God has permitted it, rather than coming to the fasting or the pilgrim-sanctified wife, for instance,” as [related] from al-Zajjāj; and the two sayings are far-fetched in [several] respects. Strange indeed is he who said the command in “God has commanded you” is the creational command. Now, the permitting of coming from the [vaginal] part, after the command to keep away from it, does not indicate the restriction of the permissibility to intercourse in it, in any respect. “Indeed God loves the oft-repentant, and loves those who purify themselves.” In al-Faqīh, al-ʿIlal, al-Khiṣāl, al-Kāfī, and al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr, in their reports, is the mention of those who purify themselves from stool with water, and that the verse came down concerning that — perhaps in view of some of the instances.204 (223) “Your women are a tillage (ḥarth) for you.” The tillage, in the root, is the ploughing, a verbal noun of “he tilled the earth,” that is, ploughed it; then it was used for the earth that is tilled, as in this verse; then it was used for the earth’s growth that is caused by the tilling, as in His words (2:205) “he destroys the tillage and the progeny.” In the verse is a likening of the man’s enjoyment of his wife to the tilling of the earth, and of the wife to the earth that is tilled — so she was called a “tillage,” that is, a place of enjoyment for you, as the earth is a place of digging and tilling. What is meant is not that the coming to the woman is licit only where her coming is a sowing for progeny — [such] that, even if we said the meaning of “however you wish” is “at whatever time you wish,” or “in the [vaginal] part, whether from before or from behind,” the verse, upon these two suppositions, is silent about the prohibition of what is other than that, even if we said the command in His words “come to your tillage” is for obligation[Author’s note] — how [otherwise], when there is no dispute among the Muslims concerning the permissibility of coming to the [menopausal] woman past [childbearing] and the known-to-be-barren, and the coming to the woman generally in her flanks [p.200]
(2:223) … to your tillage however you wish …
and between her thighs and her shanks, even [in] what is between her buttocks, for instance? “So come” — the command for permissibility — “to your tillage however (annā) you wish” — [that is,] wherever you wish. Some have denied the coming of annā, in the language, in the sense of “how,” or in the sense of “at whatever time”; the first [sense, “wherever,”] is certain in the language, while the latter two are doubted. The apparent [truth] is that the interrogative annā is equivalent in meaning to the conditional; and whatever [instance] came, in the Qurʾān, of the interrogative [annā], is fit for place and direction to be meant by it — indeed, of them is what is not fit to be in the sense of “how,” as in His words in Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (3:165), “you said, ‘from where (annā) is this?’ Say, ‘it is from your own selves,’” and (3:37) “O Mary, from where (annā) is this for you? She said, ‘it is from God.’” As for the sense of “at whatever time,” there is nothing in the Qurʾān fit for it. In al-Durr al-Manthūr, in mentioning the second saying of the question, [there is] the mention of him who brought out from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī that a man came to a woman in her hinder part, and the people denounced that upon him, so there came down “your women are a tillage for you, so come to your tillage however you wish”; and the mention of him who brought out twelve reports from ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar, that the verse came down as a dispensation concerning the coming to women in their hinder parts (it is related from Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr that the report from Ibn ʿUmar in this sense is sound, well-known, famous; and there is brought, from Mālik, what belies the report of the disagreement from Ibn ʿUmar, and al-Dāraquṭnī graded it sound from Mālik). In al-Shaykh’s Tahdhīb, soundly from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), he cited this verse as evidence for the licitness, and did not mention that it came down concerning that; likewise al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from Zurāra from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him). The apparent [truth] is that their citing (peace be upon them) is by its generality, not by its descent in this matter. The gist of the discourse in the question is that Nāfiʿ’s saying of permissibility is well-known (al-Ṭaḥāwī and Ḥajjāj b. Arṭāt related it), and from Mālik are two reports; and in al-Khilāf, from al-Muzanī: some of our companions said [it is] forbidden, and some said licit, then he said, and the last of what al-Shāfiʿī said [was], “I do not permit it.” In al-Durr al-Manthūr and others is mentioned the report of permissibility from Abū Mulayka; and from ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Qāsim, “I did not find anyone I take as a model in my religion doubting that it is licit” — meaning the coming to the woman in her hinder part — then he recited “your women are a tillage for you,” then said, “and what thing is plainer than this?”205 And in it, al-Ṭaḥāwī, al-Ḥākim (in the Virtues of al-Shāfiʿī), and al-Khaṭīb brought out, from Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥakam, that al-Shāfiʿī was asked about it and said, “nothing is soundly [transmitted] from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) in its permitting or its forbidding, and the analogy is that it is licit.” And in it also, after mentioning the reports of the saying of prohibition, [it is said]: the memorizers [of ḥadīth] [said] concerning all the raised [marfūʿ] ḥadīth (meaning those chained up to the Prophet), and their number about twenty ḥadīth, all of them are weak, nothing of them being sound; and the arrested [mawqūf], meaning what its chain is arrested [p.201]
(2:223) … and send ahead for yourselves, and be Godwary, and know that you shall meet Him; and give glad tidings to the believers. (2:224) And do not make God, by your oaths, an obstacle to your being pious, Godwary, and setting things right among people; and God is Hearing, Knowing.
upon the Companion or the Successor, is the sound [category]; and the Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar said, of the raised [ḥadīth], “disowned, not sound by any way,” as al-Bukhārī, al-Bazzār, and al-Nasāʾī stated plainly. I say: our companions held to its permissibility, [but] with an intense dislike (karāha) — this being the upshot of our ḥadīth and the aspect of reconciling them; and by that it is denounced that the verse’s descent be concerning its permitting. Yes, there is no harm in its descent for the general [ruling]. “And send ahead for yourselves” — that is, these are the rulings of what returns to your world; so send ahead for your Hereafter, of good things and righteous deeds, what will benefit you therein. “And be Godwary of God” — for the best provision is God-wariness — “and know that you shall meet Him” — that is, let your deed be the deed of the knowing one, certain that he will die, be gathered, and meet his Lord on the Day of reckoning and recompense; not the deed of the heedless one, [even] with his acknowledgment of the Return in his Islam. “And give glad tidings”, O Messenger, “to the believers” — with the reality of faith, and the firm ones upon it, such that they deserved the description by that. (224) “And do not make God, by your oaths, an obstacle (ʿurḍa).” The “obstacle” (ʿurḍa) is what one meets and encounters much, as one says, “the human is an ʿurḍa [target] for affliction.” So do not multiply your oaths by God according to all that occurs to you and to which you incline in contentment and in anger, saying therein, “by God I will not give so-and-so,” “by God I will not spend upon the poor,” “by God I will not speak to my brother,” “by God I will not visit my mother,” “by God I will not set things right among people.” In al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from Manṣūr b. Ḥāzim from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), and from Muḥammad b. Muslim from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), on the verse: “it means the man swears not to speak to his brother, and the like of that, or not to speak to his mother.” “To your being pious, Godwary, and setting things right among people” — that is, [it is] that you be pious, Godwary, and set [things] right — a causal [clause] and an exposition of some of what is an aspect and end for the prohibition in “do not make,” even if there is another aspect [namely] the magnifying of God and His exaltation. In al-Kāfī, in al-Khazzāz’s sound [report] from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “do not swear by God, [whether] truthful or lying, for God (mighty and exalted) says, ‘and do not make God an obstacle by your oaths.’” Perhaps this aspect enters into piety and God-wariness; so the prohibition of the oath that conflicts with piety, God-wariness, and setting-right is a metonym for its not being contracted [as binding] in these instances. In al-Kāfī, from Isḥāq b. ʿAmmār from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), on the verse, he said: “when you are called to set [things] right between two, do not say ‘upon me is an oath that I will not do [it]’” (the like of it is what al-Durr al-Manthūr brought as a report from Ibn ʿAbbās). It is said the meaning is: do not make God, by way of swearing by Him, a barrier and a hindrance from what you swore to leave, by naming what is sworn to be left an “oath”; and this is the reference of what al-Tibyān mentioned first, and the plain [sense] of what al-Kashshāf restricted itself to — but the first is more apparent and more suited to what is related, and more comprehensive. “And God is Hearing” of your oaths, “Knowing.”206
(2:225) God will not take you to task for the unconsidered [word] in your oaths, but He will take you to task for what your hearts have earned; and God is Forgiving, Forbearing. (2:226) For those who forswear their wives is a waiting of four months; then if they recant, indeed God is Forgiving, Merciful. (2:227) But if they resolve upon divorce, indeed God is Hearing, Knowing.
of your states and what sets you right. (225) “God will not take you to task for the unconsidered [word] (al-laghw) in your oaths” — that is, by reason of the unconsidered [word] in your oaths, when you breach the oath, or [when] it does not accord with reality. The laghw is what one does not intend by it the contracting of the oath; rather it runs upon the tongue as a prop in speech — as you see a man to whom you say “what did you do today?” and he says “by God, I rose from sleep; by God, I went out to such a place,” without intent for an oath. In Majmaʿ al-Bayān [it is said] it is what is related from Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him) and Abū ʿAbd Allāh; and the habit in speech may draw [one] to “no, by God” [and] “yes, by God”: in al-Kāfī from Masʿada from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) on the verse, “the laghw is the man’s saying ‘no, by God’ [and] ‘yes, by God,’ contracting upon nothing.” “But He will take you to task for what your hearts have earned” — of sins, in that upon which you contracted the oaths and [then] lied or breached [them]. “And God is Forgiving” — if you repent — “Forbearing”, not hastening you with punishment, that perhaps you may repent. (226) “For those who forswear (yuʾlūna)” — the forswearing (īlāʾ) [is] the oath, from al-alīya, the oath; and it is known, from the completion of the verse and the rest of the indications, that it is the oath to leave off the intercourse of the wife absolutely, or [for] a fixed term, the subject of the verse’s rulings being what exceeds four months — “their wives is a waiting of four months”; so the wives have no right, therein, to demand intercourse, and theirs is the demand after it. So if the four months elapse and they demand [it], “then if they recant (fāʾū)” — that is, return from their oath to their intercourse — “indeed God” forgives them the breach and the contravention of the oath, in mercy to the two spouses, in the goodliness of their union and the order of the affair of the children, for He is “Forgiving, Merciful. (227) But if they resolve upon divorce” or effect it, “indeed God is Hearing” of what they say, “Knowing” of their intentions. The two verses indicate that the forswearer, if the woman demands her right after the four months, his affair is restricted and revolves between recanting or divorcing; so if he recants and has intercourse, there befalls him the atonement for breaking the oath (kaffārat al-yamīn) mentioned in Sūrat al-Māʾida in the eighty-ninth verse.207 The oath, in respect of what is after the four months, is not an oath upon a wrong [such] that it should then dissolve and its atonement fall away; that [is] because the forswearer can take her out of the wrong by divorcing. Upon all this came [p.203]
(2:228) And divorced women shall wait by themselves three periods (qurūʾ); and it is not lawful for them to conceal what God has created in their wombs, if they believe in God and the Last Day …
the ḥadīth of the two parties. (228) “And divorced women” — by the lawful divorce — “shall wait” — a predicative sentence by which the command is meant, and that is more emphatic than the [imperative] form in demand and imposition, by its casting in the mould that the one required of it does it and does not belie you — “by themselves,” restraining them from what the state and their natures require, of aspiration to marriage and its preliminaries, and they do not depart from the husband’s care and his guardianship, “three periods (qurūʾ)” — the qurʾ comes for the [state of ritual] purity (ṭuhr) and for menstruation, and it is here the purity; upon it is the consensus of the Imāmiyya and their ḥadīth, the saying of the Mālikīs and the Shāfiʿīs, and what is related from ʿĀʾisha, Zayd b. Thābit, and Ibn ʿUmar, as in al-Durr al-Manthūr (in which Ibn Shihāb said, “I heard Abū Bakr b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān say, I did not find one of our jurists but he says this”).208 [It is so] by His words at the opening of Sūrat al-Ṭalāq (marked as being Meccan), (65:1) “O Prophet, when you divorce women, divorce them for their waiting-period (ʿidda),” that is, in [the time from which begins] their waiting-period, which is desired for the clearing of the womb, and near it — as one says “a child was born after six [nights] had passed of the month,” or “seven remaining of it.” The consensus of the Muslims has settled that the divorce of the sunna is what is in the [state of] purity; and by it came the saying of the most noble Messenger (God bless him and his Household) to Ibn ʿUmar, when he divorced his wife while she was menstruating: “Not thus did God command you; the sunna is but that you await the [state of] purity [and] face it [squarely],” and his words (God bless him and his Household), “so if it appear to him to divorce her, purified, before he has touched her, that is the divorce for the waiting-period, as God (mighty and exalted) sent down” — or, “that is the waiting-period for which God commanded that women be divorced,” as in the collections of the generality and our collections in ḥadīth. The absolute [ruling of] the sentence of the divorced women here is qualified by the ruling of the forty-eighth verse of Sūrat al-Aḥzāb (33:49) and the fourth of Sūrat al-Ṭalāq (65:4), with their reinforcement by our reports concerning the [woman] past [menstruation], without doubt. “And it is not lawful for them to conceal what God has created in their wombs, if they believe in God and the Last Day” — meaning that she who believes in God and the Last Day [p.204]
(2:228) … and their husbands have a better right to take them back during this [waiting], if they desire setting-right …
does not make bold to conceal what God created in her womb. This severe rebuke suits its being over the concealment of the pregnancy — either that she may leave the waiting-period, in outward appearance, sooner, or that she conceal it out of aversion to its being ascribed to its father, or for some other of the causes of concealment. As for the concealing of the menstruation during the days of the waiting-period, or after its end, for the sake of increasing the term of the waiting-period so as to consume the maintenance and hope for the taking-back after the elapse of the real waiting-period, that is far-fetched, for it entails that the relative clause — namely “what God created in their wombs” — be brought in view of what has passed of the time of the concealment (as will come in the reconciling of the two senses). So what suits the style of the wording, its apparent [sense], and that severe rebuke, is the concealing of the pregnancy — supported by al-Burhān’s and al-Wasāʾil’s report from al-ʿAyyāshī from Abū Baṣīr from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) on the verse: “it is not lawful for her to conceal the pregnancy, when she is divorced while pregnant and the husband does not know [it].” It is not possible to reconcile the two senses from this one wording, as al-Durr al-Manthūr mentioned its report from Ibn ʿUmar and Mujāhid; [that is] because the concealing of what God created in their wombs, of the menstrual blood, is [only] in view of its exit from the womb, and what would be meant by its creation in their wombs [would then be] in view of what has passed — so the discourse, upon this, [would] amount to saying “and let them not conceal what has come out of their wombs, of what was created in them before that”; whereas the concealing of the pregnancy is in view of its settledness in the womb, and the one wording is not fit to reconcile these two regards and considerations.209 In Tafsīr al-Qummī on the verse: “it is not lawful for the woman to conceal her pregnancy, her menstruation, or her purity; for God has committed to women three things: the purity, the menstruation, and the pregnancy” — it does not appear from the context that it is a report transmitted from an Imam in exposition of what is meant by “what God created in their wombs,” if the contrary do not appear, over and above what we made plain [namely] that the two matters cannot be reconciled in the one wording (in Majmaʿ al-Bayān what we mentioned of Tafsīr al-Qummī is ascribed to a report from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), but we have found no trace of it — perhaps [al-Ṭabrisī] relied upon Tafsīr al-Qummī). “And their husbands (buʿūlatuhunna)” — the plural of baʿl, the tāʾ for the feminizing of the plural; the sense of baʿl [being] the husband, with the sense of enjoying his wife, sporting with her, and consorting with her — perhaps the turning from the expression “husbands (azwāj)” to the expression buʿūla [is] to exclude the [wife] not yet consummated [with], and to hint at the aspect of their being “more entitled to take them back” in view of the state before the divorce, of wifehood; and the woman has no right to oppose the husband in taking her back, “during this” waiting, “if they desire setting-right,” not harming. [p.205]
(2:228) … and they have [rights] like that which is [owed] upon them, honourably; and men have a degree above them; and God is Mighty, Wise. (2:229) Divorce is twice; then [either] a retaining honourably, or a releasing kindly …
Or “if” (in) was brought to mention the state in which the taking-back and its desire are realized, as in His words (24:33) “and do not compel your slave-girls to prostitution if they desire chastity.” This ruling in the taking-back is qualified by the ruling of the [woman] divorced by khulʿ, as in the coming verse, and the ruling of the [woman] divorced thrice, as in the one after it. “And they have [rights] like that which is [owed] upon them”, of goodly consorting, “honourably; and men have a degree above them” in excellence and precedence — the expression “men” brought rather than “husbands” [as] a pointing to the aspect of the precedence, the perfection of manliness, and the excellence of the man’s undertaking of her affairs and his spending upon her. “And God is Mighty” in His ruling, “Wise” in His ordinances. (229) “Divorce” — of the single wife, in which the mentioned taking-back is prescribed, and [in which] God did not make a deterrent from it, by hanging the taking-back after it upon the woman’s marrying a husband other than him — “is twice.” And because divorce is that the husband severs the tie of wifehood between him and his wife and releases her from the bond of his wifehood, it is self-evident that it is not realized without the wifehood and its customary tie, upon which the realizing of its subject depends — as this sense is related in al-Kāfī and others from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon them), and upon it is the creed of the People of the House, the consensus of the Imāmiyya, and the creed of Ibn ʿAbbās. In al-Durr al-Manthūr, al-Bayhaqī brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās that Rukāna said to the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), “I divorced her thrice in one sitting,” [and] he (God bless him and his Household) said, “yes; that is but one.” And ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, al-Nasāʾī, al-Shāfiʿī, al-Ḥākim, and al-Bayhaqī brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās: “in the time of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), Abū Bakr, and two years of ʿUmar’s caliphate, the triple divorce [in one sitting] was one; then ʿUmar said, ‘the people have hastened in a matter in which they had respite, so were we to enforce it upon them —’ so he enforced it upon them” (the like of it by the way of Ṭāwūs). So when the man divorces a sound divorce, that tie which the divorce severs has been cut from her wifehood, and no [further] divorce befalls him for that divorced [woman] except by that tie’s having returned, either by a taking-back or by a marriage with a new contract; and if what befell, of its wording, first, is neither sound nor a divorce, what befalls after it is not a second divorce but a first, and likewise the discourse concerning the third. So when the mentioned divorce befalls, “then [either] a retaining” — that is, God’s ruling therein is [that] either you take them back to wifehood and retain them upon that “honourably” in consorting, “or a releasing” — by leaving the divorce to run its course until the waiting-period elapses — “kindly” in rendering the maintenance, the housing, and the dealing.210 [p.206]
(2:229) … And it is not lawful for you to take back anything of what you have given them, unless the two fear that they will not keep within God’s bounds; so if you fear that the two will not keep within God’s bounds, there is no sin upon the two of them in what she ransoms herself with. These …
In al-Tibyān [it is said]: it is what is related from our Imams; and in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, it is what is related from Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him) and Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him). I say: I did not find that related under the heading of the interpretation of “a releasing kindly” by benevolence; perhaps the two [authors] took it from what is related in the description of the divorce of the sunna; or what is meant by “a releasing kindly” is the third pronouncement, as related in al-Kāfī and al-Tahdhīb from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), in al-Faqīh from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him), from al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon them), and in al-Durr al-Manthūr from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household). “And it is not lawful for you” — in the absolute [ruling of] divorce — “to take back anything of what you have given them” — nor of other than it — [the taking being] particularized to what they were given in view of the preponderant [case], that the husband, at his parting from his wife or her aversion to him, looks, in the affair of her divorce, to reclaiming the dowry he gave her — “unless the two fear” — that is, the two spouses, by reason of the wife’s dislike of him and her threatening him with sin if he does not divorce her, so that each of the spouses is exposed to opposing God in His commands, prohibitions, and forbidden [things], and so the two fear “that they will not keep within God’s bounds” in what is between the spouses, for particular motives (He turned from the address to the third person, in honouring, and in distancing from addressing [them] with what is meant here, of the not-keeping within God’s bounds). “So if you fear” — according to what you have learned of the two’s state and their speech — “that the two will not keep within God’s bounds, there is no sin” — no wrong — “upon the two of them” — in respect of the giving and the taking — “in what she ransoms herself with” from her husband.211 Several matters are understood from the verse. The first: it is admissible that the ransom, in the case of the verse, be the whole of what he gave her or more than it, as [there is] no dispute in it with us, by text and verdict — for the negation of sin was hung upon “what she ransoms herself with,” absolutely; had a part of what she was given, or the whole and no more, been intended, it would have been said, “there is no sin upon the two of them in taking it.” The second: that there be, from the wife, an aversion such that it is feared, for her aversion, that the two will not keep God’s bounds — as His words “she ransoms herself with” also indicate. The third: it is known, from the word “ransoming,” that there is no taking-back for the husband in the waiting-period, else the ransoming would not be realized. The fourth: the case of this [verse] differs from the case of the twenty-third of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, for that confined itself to excepting its [own] case from the going-away with some of what they were given [only] when she brings a manifest indecency — nay, it is permitted to the husband, with us, to press her hard then. The fifth: the picture of the mentioned parting by the wife’s ransoming is, by the tenor of the verse, of the divorce whose rulings were being expounded, so it does not differ from it as to the occurrence of the three [counting], as our ḥadīth texts hold and as is well-known — nay, upon it is the consensus — and likewise the occurrence of the [need for a] making-lawful [before remarriage] by it, even if it occur by the wording “I release you (khalaʿtuki)” without the word “divorce,” as is textually stated in our ḥadīth. “These” — a pointing to the mentioned rulings, of divorce and taking [p.207]
(2:229) … are God’s bounds, so do not transgress them; and whoever transgresses God’s bounds — those are the wrongdoers. (2:230) Then if he divorces her, she is not lawful for him thereafter until she marries a husband other than him; then if he divorces her, there is no sin upon the two of them to return to each other, if they think they will keep within God’s bounds. And these are God’s bounds, which He makes plain for a people who know. (2:231) And when you divorce women and they reach their term, then retain them honourably or release them …
and giving, [these are] “God’s bounds, so do not transgress them” — “to transgress the bound” and “to overstep it” are one in sense — “and whoever transgresses God’s bounds — those are the wrongdoers” to others, nay, and to themselves, by casting themselves into the ruin of disobedience. (230) “Then if he divorces her” — a third [time]; and do not forget that the divorce is not realized save when it comes upon a wifehood — “she is not lawful for him”, neither by taking-back nor by [re]marriage, “thereafter” — that is, after the third divorce, however long the span — “until she marries a husband other than him” and becomes for him a lawful wife by a specifically permanent contract. “Then if he divorces her” — that other [man], a sound divorce (what is meant by that [being] the example of the severing of the tie of permanent marriage, for death is like divorce in the making-lawful, by the consensus of the community) — “there is no sin upon the two of them” in “returning to each other”, by their resuming the knot of marriage, out of desire from the two of them and firmness upon goodly companionship, and being disciplined, by what intervened of the second’s marriage, from hastening to strife and the harshness of divorce, “if they think they will keep within God’s bounds.” It is established in the sunna, by the way of the two parties, that the absolute [wording of] the verse concerning the second’s marriage is qualified by his having intercourse with her, and upon it is the consensus of the community; ejaculation is not stipulated in the intercourse, by the absoluteness of the sunna. As for the “tasting of his little honey (ʿusayla)” in the ḥadīth of the two parties, what is meant by it is the pleasure of intercourse, not her savouring of the man’s fluid — clarified [by the fact] that in it [is] “the tasting of her little honey,” and it is known that there is no account [taken] of the descent of the woman’s fluid, just as there is no pleasure for the man in the woman’s fluid, [such] that it should be for him like the tasting of the honey; rather what is meant is that she taste the pleasure of his intercourse and he taste the pleasure of her intercourse in the [vaginal] part, for it is the meeting-place of the two little honeys, in the preponderant [case], not other than it. Yes — that requires the non-sufficiency of the measure of the glans and less; and there is no harm in taking by what is more precautionary. “And these” — a coordination upon His words “these” in the previous verse — “are God’s bounds, which He makes plain for a people who know,” so they know their aspects upon their reality and teach them, in detail, to the ignorant of them.212 (231) “And when you divorce women and they reach their term” — that is, draw near to reaching the end of their waiting-period, as one says “I reached the town,” that is, drew near to reaching it — “then retain them” — by the taking-back — “honourably” in dealing with her (as in His words in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, (4:19) “and consort with them honourably”), or the meaning [is] “then take them back honourably” — “or release them” and leave them upon their state until their waiting-period elapses [p.208]
(2:231) … honourably; and do not retain them to cause harm, that you may transgress; and whoever does that has wronged himself. And do not take God’s signs in mockery, and remember God’s blessing upon you, and what He has sent down upon you of the Book and the wisdom, admonishing you thereby; and be wary of God, and know that God is Knower of all things. (2:232) And when you divorce women and they reach their term, do not prevent them from marrying their [former] husbands, when they agree honourably among themselves …
“honourably” in the dealing, the maintenance, and the housing, without harm in any of that. “And do not retain them” — by the taking-back — “to cause harm” — a verbal noun standing in for the absolute object, that is, a retaining [that is] a harming — “that you may transgress” against them; “and whoever does that has wronged himself” by his wronging of the weak woman, and cast himself into the ruin of disobedience to God, His wrath, and the enmity of the weak one whom he harmed and against whom he transgressed. “And do not take God’s signs” — with what is made plain in them of your rulings, in your setting-right and the order of your society — “in mockery”; nay, take your portion and your right guidance from acting by them, for whoever is not made happy by acting upon them is like the mocker, or a mocker of them. “And remember God’s blessing upon you” — by the mighty blessings in life, livelihood, and Islam — “and what He has sent down upon you” — in view of the sending-down upon the Messenger of God, for your conveyance — “of the Book” — namely the noble Qurʾān, for your guidance in religion, the sacred law, and the summons to God — “and the wisdom” which it comprises — “admonishing you” — God [admonishing you] — “thereby; and be wary of God” in what He legislated, of what He commanded you or forbade you, for He is the Watcher over you, “and know” — that is, do your deed while you know — “that God is Knower of all things. (232) And when you divorce women and they reach their term, do not prevent them” — O divorcers — the preventing (ʿaḍl) [being] the barring or the confining — “from marrying” those who will be, in the future, “their husbands, when they agree honourably among themselves.” That [is] by the divorcer’s taking her back near the elapse of the waiting-period, not out of desire for her but so as to bar her from husbands. It is said what is meant is that the customary guardian not bar her from marrying the one who was her husband after the elapse of his waiting-period — as its descent is related in al-Durr al-Manthūr concerning the affair of Maʿqil and his sister, or Jābir and his cousin — [but] it entails the figurative [use] in “you divorce women,” by carrying it upon the divorcing of the kind of humankind, for the guardian is not a divorcer, and in this figurative [use] is far-fetchedness; and if we come to it, the better [course] is to make the address to the absolute preventer, even if he be the divorcer.213 Or [it means] that the divorcer prevents his wife and bars her, after the waiting-period, from marrying — and it is a rare supposition, since few of the divorcers are those who have this power — and the nearer [reading] is the first; and the word “their husbands” is figurative, either in view of the wifehood’s being in the past [p.209]
(2:232) … By this is admonished whoever of you believes in God and the Last Day; that is purer for you and cleaner; and God knows, and you know not. (2:233) And mothers shall suckle their children two full years, for whoever wishes to complete the suckling; and upon the one to whom [the child] is born is their provision and their clothing honourably. No soul is burdened save to its capacity: no mother shall be harmed by her child, nor one to whom [a child] is born by his child …
— as in the second [reading] — or in view of its being in the future, as in the first and the third. “That” — an address to the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) — “by this is admonished whoever of you” — that is, of the Muslims — “believes in God and the Last Day,” for he is the one fit to be admonished, so the admonition benefits him and he halts at the prohibitions of the sacred law. “That” — an address to the Muslims, the thing pointed to [being] the leaving of the mentioned preventing — “is purer for you and cleaner; and God knows” what is your setting-right, “and you know not. (233) And mothers” — absolutely, [both] divorced and not divorced — “shall suckle their children” — an informing of the duty prescribed for them in the sacred law, gathering the aspects of the interest, as will come — “two full years,” not falling short of twenty-four months, “for whoever wishes to complete the suckling” and gives what corresponds to it, of a wage — namely the father and whoever holds the affair of the infant after him; and whoever wishes to suckle it for less than the two years, that is his, and its least is twenty-one months, as our agreement is transmitted upon it, and upon it are the two reports of Samāʿa and ʿAbd al-Wahhāb from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him). “And upon the one to whom [the child] is born is their provision and their clothing” — the apparent [truth] is that there is no dispute that the provision and the clothing are a metonym for the wage mentioned in the sixth verse of Sūrat al-Ṭalāq (65:6), what is regarded in its determination [being] the two states of ease and hardship, as in the seventh of it also (65:7); and perhaps the wage of the like [ujrat al-mithl] approaches the worth of the provision and the clothing, but their heading is nearer to modesty than the heading of “wage” and haggling over it. The expression here of the father as “the one to whom [the child] is born (al-mawlūd lahu)” came [as] an exposition of the aspect of the wisdom in the wage for the suckling’s being upon him — [namely] that the child is a part of him and the growth of his fluid, and that the mother rears, by her suckling, a child [born] for him — “honourably,” and without unfairness to either of the two parents, and it is not straitened thereby upon the father above his capacity, in view of his state and what is required of him in the affair of his livelihood and [of] whoever’s maintenance is obligatory upon him. “No soul is burdened” — in a respect — “save to its capacity” in that respect. “No mother shall be harmed by her child, nor one to whom [a child] is born by his child” — the reading acted upon among the people, and upon which is the tracing of the [Qurʾān] copies, is the fatḥa of the rāʾ in “tuḍārra,” [it] being jussive by the prohibitive “not,” voweled for the meeting of the two quiescents with the fatḥa, for its likeness to the alif before it; and the word is fit to be [read as] active or passive.214 [p.210]
(2:233) … and upon the heir is the like of that. But if the two desire a weaning, by mutual consent of the two and consultation …
the doubled rāʾ being, in estimation, [read] with a kasra or a fatḥa. But the apparent [truth], from the sound [report] related in al-Kāfī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), is that it is [read as] active — for his words (peace be upon him): “God forbade that the woman harm the man, or that the man harm the woman; and [that] the heir is forbidden to harm the infant, or to harm its mother by the suckling.” The prohibition of harm by reason of the child is absolute — whether the harm be in respect of the wage and the like of that, in the affair of the suckling, or in respect of the mother’s barring her husband, the father, from her intercourse for fear of pregnancy and its harm to the suckling, or in respect of the father’s refraining from what is due to the mother, of intercourse, for fear of her pregnancy and its harm to the suckling — as he (peace be upon him) cited the verse as evidence for the two matters, and by each of the two senses other reports came. “And upon the heir is the like of that” — in al-Ḥalabī’s sound [report] and the two reports of al-Kinānī and Abū Baṣīr from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that he [the heir] is forbidden to harm by the infant, or to harm its mother in her suckling; and in al-Durr al-Manthūr from Ibn ʿAbbās, “that he not harm.” Of the strange [things], with [all] that, is what is in Kanz al-ʿIrfān, in interpreting “the heir” by the infant. In al-Tibyān: it is related in our reports that upon the heir, whoever he be, is the maintenance; and [al-Ṭūsī] pointed, in al-Khilāf and al-Mabsūṭ, to the report — apparently Ghiyāth’s report from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “an orphan was brought to the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), and he said, ‘let the nearest of the people to him, of the clan, take charge of his maintenance, just as he eats his inheritance.’” The report — if the heir in its particular case is not the grandfather — may be interpreted, in its case, upon [moral] obligating [rather than legal compulsion], for the spread of the verdict by that then. For the creed of the Imāmiyya — even al-Shaykh in his books — is that the maintenance is obligatory only upon the two [lines of] direct [ascendants and descendants], so it is a consensus of ours; so “the heir” in the verse is either the heir of the child, in the sense of the child’s being an inheritance — that is, a remainder for him in undertaking his affair — so he is his heir in this sense, like the grandfather, the executor, and the ruler (there being in that no figurative [usage] by the [rule of the] language, even if what circulates in usage is the heir of the property); or [the expression] runs in the manner of the preponderant [case], in that the one who has the guardianship, by himself or by [testamentary] charge, is an heir — like the grandfather, the brother, and the executor, for instance, or the [one placed in] charge by the ruler. There is no indication from the noble Qurʾān of more than what is in the foregoing reports — [namely] that what is upon the heir is that he not harm.215 “But if the two desire” — the suckling [woman] and the father, even if he be a grandfather — “a weaning” for the child from the suckling before the two years, “by mutual consent of the two” “and consultation”, in view of the welfare of the child, not the mere consent of the two out of regard for their caprices, [p.211]
(2:233) … there is no sin upon the two of them. And if you wish to have your children suckled [by another], there is no sin upon you, provided you hand over what you give, honourably. And be wary of God, and know that God is Seeing of what you do. (2:234) And those of you who die and leave wives — [the wives] shall wait by themselves four months and ten [nights]; then when they reach their term, there is no sin upon you in what they do with themselves honourably; and God is Aware of what you do.
“there is no sin upon the two of them”; and it is admissible that this include what is after the two years, when the hastening of the weaning is harmful to the child — as when it is sick, for instance — in the span in which the delaying is permitted. “And if you wish” — [there being] no harm [in it] — “to have suckled”, by wet-nurses, “your children” — a second object of “to have suckled” — “there is no sin upon you when” you have observed the welfare of the child, by [there being] no dallying of the wet-nurse over her wage, and [when] “you hand over what you give” and settle in the [contract of] suckling, “honourably,” without repelling or making hardship. “And be wary of God” in what He commanded you and forbade you, “and know” — that is, act by the requirement of your knowledge — “that God is Seeing of what you do,” so fear Him. (234) “And those of you who die (yutawaffawna)” — that is, are taken in full, and by that taking is meant the taking by death, as passed, expounded, in the first station of the fourth chapter of the Introduction — “and leave” behind them “wives”: “those” [is] the subject and the sentence “die” its relative [clause], the sentence “leave” coordinated upon it, and the sentence “they shall wait,” which is a predicate by which the emphatic command is meant, is a predicate of the subject, the connector between the two being the pronoun which the context and the tenor draw out — for it is clear that the agent of the waiting is those wives whom the dying leave. “By themselves”, restraining them from marriage, adornment, and the like, “four months and ten” — that is, and ten nights. “Then when they reach their term”, by the completing of that, “there is no sin upon you in what they do with themselves” — of going out of the houses, seeking husbands, and leaving off the mourning — of what is “honourable,” lawful, according with uprightness and chastity. In Tafsīr al-Qummī, al-Tibyān, Majmaʿ al-Bayān, and others [it is said] that this verse is abrogating of the ruling of the seventh verse after it [i.e. 2:240], and upon that are al-Durr al-Manthūr’s reports on this verse from Ibn ʿAbbās and Ibn ʿUmar. I say: perhaps its being fronted, in the order of the recitation, over that [later verse], is that it be arranged in a single sequence with the decisive verses concerning divorce and the waiting-periods; and perhaps the abrogation is hinted at in His words “there is no sin upon you” — by what is meant being, there is no sin upon you from their going out and their exposing themselves to husbands before the year, [something] the prohibition of which used to be obligatory upon you.216 “And God” of what you do [p.212]
(2:235) And there is no sin upon you in what you hint of a proposal to the women, or keep concealed within yourselves. God knows that you will remember them; but do not make appointment with them secretly, save that you speak an honourable word …
is “Aware,” so do not oppose Him. (235) “And there is no sin upon you in what you hint (ʿarraḍtum) of a proposal to the women” — the order of the verses, the tenor of the verse, and His words in it “until the prescribed [term] reaches its end” indicate that what is meant by “the women” are those in the waiting-period for death, and upon it is the agreement; the verse is fit for the generality [to include] some of the [other women] in a waiting-period also, and the detail of that is committed to the books of jurisprudence. The hinting (taʿrīḍ) is the contrary of the explicit [statement], by what the scope of the proposal admits, of the aspects of speech; it is the implying, in speech, of an indication of a thing there is no mention of in it. The “proposal” (khiṭba) is the speech indicating the seeking of the woman for marriage. “Or keep concealed within yourselves” — by there occurring within you the desire for marrying her and the resolve upon it, and you keep it secret — “God knows that you will remember them” by the tongue, by disclosing the desire to marry them; and that does not indicate rebuke, for it is permissible that they intend, in mentioning her, a preferable aspect — especially in the age of the Messenger (God bless him and his Household), like the setting-at-ease of the hearts of the believing emigrant women, cut off, having orphans, that their hearts might be reassured by the existence of a supporter. “But do not make appointment with them secretly (sirran)” — in al-Ḥalabī’s sound [report] from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that he say to her, “I appoint you [to meet] at the house of the family of so-and-so,” and the like of it ʿAbd Allāh b. Sinān’s report from him (peace be upon him); and in ʿAlī b. Ḥamza’s report from him (peace be upon him): “‘I appoint you [to meet] at the house of the family of so-and-so’ — hinting to her at the coarse [talk] and speaking coarsely” — that is, he speaks obscenely, in wording, by mentioning to her the intercourse and what returns to it, explicitly, contrary to allusion and modesty; for intercourse is expressed by “the secret,” as in Imruʾ al-Qays’s saying [that his like no longer keep secret trysts], and al-Aʿshā’s saying [warning against approaching a neighbour-woman whose “secret” is forbidden], and al-Farazdaq’s [on keeping secrets from all but their people] — [verses cited as lexical witnesses that sirr denotes intercourse]. “Save that you speak an honourable word” — the exception is disjunct, to remove what might be imagined, of the barring from all that indicates marriage (since marriage issues in intercourse); rather it is permitted to speak the honourable [word] accordant with modesty, decorum, and noble address — like his saying, “do not forestall me with yourself when the waiting-period elapses,” or “I am one who honours women,” or “were your waiting-period to elapse, do not slip past me,” and the like of this, of the allusive turns of speech; and by it came al-Durr al-Manthūr’s reports from Ibn ʿAbbās.217 (236) “And do not resolve the marriage-knot” — and do not effect it and make it binding; and by that came al-Durr al-Manthūr’s report [p.213]
(2:235) … And do not resolve the marriage-knot until the prescribed [term] reaches its end; and know that God knows what is in your souls, so beware Him; and know that God is Forgiving, Forbearing. (2:236) There is no sin upon you if you divorce the women while you have not touched them, nor appointed for them a settled [dowry]; and provide for them …
from Ibn ʿAbbās. As for the resolve upon the contract after the waiting-period, it is licensed in the verse, especially in His words “or keep concealed within yourselves.” “Until the prescribed [term] reaches its end (ḥattā yablugha al-kitābu ajalahu)” — in al-Tibyān, its meaning is the elapse of the waiting-period, without dispute; the requirement of the wording [being] “until the Book (al-kitāb, the Qurʾān), in view of its prescribing the waiting-period, reaches its term in its elapse,” or “until the [thing] prescribed [reaches its term],” from “he wrote” in the sense of “he prescribed” — and the two are the same in respect of the figurative [use] of its reaching the term. “And know that God knows what is in your souls” — of what prompts to the outward deeds, of which is what is forbidden to you; the aim [being] to alert them to what they know of God’s knowledge, as an increase in the warning. “So beware Him” — [lest] you oppose Him and act by the acts of disobedience — “and know”, with that, “that God is Forgiving” — if you repent, so hasten to repentance and do not despair of God’s mercy, and beware Him in the leaving of repentance as you beware Him in disobedience — “Forbearing,” not hastening you with punishment; rather He gives you respite that you may repent to Him, so He turns to you, by His forbearance, as though you had not sinned. (236) “There is no sin upon you” — no wrong; and this is a repelling of what might be imagined, of a sin in the two mentioned cases, for they are a parting before the beloved end, sought in the sacred law from marriage, and a severing of what was hoped, of the intimacy of marriage and its joys, without an evil companionship having issued — especially with the courtesy to the woman and her family, by [there being] no hardship in the advancing of the bridal-gift and its fixing in the contract. (In al-Kashshāf, [al-Zamakhsharī] interpreted “no sin” by his saying, “no consequence upon you, of an obligation of a dowry”; and it is repelled [by the fact] that it is not known, from the language or the Qurʾān, that the “sin” (junāḥ) comes with other than the sense of “wrong” — so why does he interpret it here by a consequence of property?) “If you divorce the women” — that is, in the span and state in which you “have not touched them” by intercourse (and that was upon the run of custom, in the fixing of the bridal-gift for them in the contract), “nor appointed” — [it is] jussive by coordination upon “touched them” — “for them a settled [dowry]” — namely the bridal-gift. What is meant is the removal of the sin in each of the two states: the state of no intercourse with the fixing of the bridal-gift, and the state of it [i.e. no intercourse] with no fixing; and it was coordinated with the word “or” — as in His words in Sūrat al-Dahr (76:24) “and do not obey any sinner or ingrate among them” — lest the requiring of the gathering of the two be imagined. “And provide for them” — obligatorily, by the apparent [sense] of the command; and the other verse, by its tenor and its arrangement with this one, is as [good as] explicit that half the dowry is the whole of what she deserves for whom the bridal-gift is fixed218 [p.214]
(2:236) … the well-off according to his measure, and the straitened according to his measure — a provision honourably, a duty upon the doers of good. (2:237) And if you divorce them before you have touched them, but you have appointed for them a settled [dowry], then half of what you appointed, unless …
the bridal-gift; so the obligatory provision (mutʿa) is particular to her who was not touched by intercourse and for whom no dowry was fixed. Upon that is our consensus, al-Kāfī’s sound [report] from al-Ḥalabī, his sound [report] from Abū Baṣīr and his [other] report from him, al-Faqīh’s report from al-Kinānī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), and al-Durr al-Manthūr’s report from Ibn ʿAbbās; and in al-Khilāf, upon it is the consensus of the Companions. The purport of the two verses, in their arrangement, is the joining of the two classes of the un-consummated [wives] in the [ruling of] no sin in divorcing them, then the division — by the particularizing of half the dowry to her for whom [one] was fixed, and the particularizing of the provision to her for whom no settled [dowry] was fixed. Upon this division and restriction is carried the absolute [ruling of] the two-hundred-and-forty-second verse of the sūra [i.e. 2:241] and the [verse of] Sūrat al-Aḥzāb (33:49); and the matter is not of abrogation, [such] that it should hinge upon knowing the earlier and the later; rather it is of the carrying of the absolute upon the restricted — whether the discourse be a detailing after a summary, or a summary built upon the detail. The provision [is] “upon the well-off” — that is, the one of ampleness in wealth, like the rich — “according to his measure,” that is, the measure that befits his ampleness of wealth, “and upon the straitened” — that is, the one of little wealth — “according to his measure” and what suits his scantness; as though, by the mention of the two [cases], it were said, “upon each [is] what suits his state.” In al-Faqīh it is related that the rich provides with a house or a servant, the middling with a garment, and the poor with a dirham or a ring; in Abū Baṣīr’s report from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), that the least of the provision, upon the straitened, is a head-cover and its like; and in al-Ḥalabī’s, ʿAbd Allāh b. Sinān’s, and Samāʿa’s report from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that the well-off provides with the male and female slave, and the poor is provided [for] with wheat, raisins, a garment, and dirhams — perhaps all [is] by way of example and the suiting of the state. “A provision (matāʿan)” — the matāʿ [is] what is enjoyed, so it is an object of “provide for them,” and it may come in the sense of the providing; in al-Tibyān it is a circumstantial [state] of “his measure,” the governor in it [being] the adverb [“upon”], as though [that be] by what is in the word “upon,” of the sense of obligating. “Honourably” — a description of the matāʿ upon the first [reading], and attached to it upon the [others]. “A duty (ḥaqqan)” — a description of the matāʿ — “upon the doers of good” — an exposition that the provision, honourably, is a benevolence desired by the doers of good, who see it a duty upon them in the sacred law of benevolence. (237) “And if you divorce them before you have touched them, but you have appointed for them a settled [dowry]” — an exposition of the ruling of the first class in the previous verse and its due, so there is known from it the particularizing of the second class with the provision — “then half of what you appointed”, which is a due for them that must be given, “unless they forgo” it, wholly or in part, when they are of age, permitted the disposal of their properties219 [p.215]
(2:237) … they forgo it, or he in whose hand is the marriage-knot forgoes it. And that you forgo is nearer to God-wariness; and do not forget bounty among yourselves. Indeed God is Seeing of what you do. (2:238) Keep watch over the prayers, and the middle prayer …
— whether the forgoing be from them directly, or from their agent [charged] with the forgoing, or the agent permitted every disposal of their properties, or [permitted] in this divorce in particular, for instance. “Or he in whose hand is the marriage-knot forgoes it” — namely the guardian of the minor [girl] whom God has placed [it] in his hand to contract the knot of her marriage; and that, with us, is only the father and the grandfather — I mean the father’s father, or his father. In al-Tahdhīb’s sound [report] from ʿAbd Allāh b. Sinān from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “he is the guardian of her affair”; and from Rifāʿa from him (peace be upon him): “the guardian who takes some and leaves some.” In some of our ḥadīth is gathered whoever forgoes by [right of] guardianship or by [right of] the general agency: in al-Tahdhīb’s reliable [report], by Ibn Abī ʿUmayr’s mursal [chain] from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), “the father, and the one whom the woman appoints and puts in charge of her affair, of a brother, a relative, or another,” and in the sound [report] related in al-Kāfī, al-Faqīh, and al-Tahdhīb from al-Ḥalabī, Abū Baṣīr, and Samāʿa from him (peace be upon him), “he is the father, the brother, the man to whom [charge] is bequeathed, and he whose command is effective in the woman’s property, so he buys for her and trades” (the like of it al-Tahdhīb’s sound [report] from Abū Baṣīr and Muḥammad b. Muslim from al-Bāqir, peace be upon him). As for the one to whom [charge] is bequeathed, in the two sound [reports], he is the one to whom the father and the grandfather bequeathed the undertaking of the minor’s affair, if he sees the welfare in the forgoing, as in the forgoing of the father and the grandfather; and as for the brother, his affair is known from Ibn Abī ʿUmayr’s mursal; and the apparent [reason] that the grandfather is not mentioned here is his entering under the heading of the father. “And that you forgo” — your forgoing, O people — “is nearer to God-wariness.” The weak-souled woman may find something within herself if God preferred the forgoing for her by a special address; so God was gentle with her, by what amounts to [this]: He does not prefer the forgoing for her in respect of her being a woman, nor in respect of its being a dowry; rather every forgoing is a goodly, preferable [thing] from all people, and this instance is of it, and [seeing that] the husband did not benefit by a pleasure or a service in return for what is his — so the seeking of the forgoing in this manner is more agreeable to the heart of the divorced woman and more apt to move her to forgo; for the mere forgoing of the human, of his right, has [in it] a bounty and an excellence, and by its excellence it is nearer to the excellence of God-wariness. “And do not forget bounty among yourselves” — O people, and hear, O divorced woman — and let not the rancours of souls carry you to leaving what has bounty in it. “Indeed God is Seeing of what you do,” so He requites you for your benevolence. (238) “Keep watch” — O people — “over the prayers”, in establishing them at their times, with their bounds and conditions, their sincerity, and their turning [to God], generally, “and the middle prayer” — namely the noon prayer; and [related] from al-Khilāf, upon it is the consensus of the sect, and what is related in our ḥadīth is that it is the noon prayer — like the sound [report] of Maʿānī al-Akhbār from Abū Baṣīr and al-ʿAyyāshī’s two reports from ʿAbd Allāh b. Sinān220 [p.216]
(2:238) … and stand before God, devoutly obedient. (2:239) And if you fear, then [pray] on foot or mounted; and when you are secure, remember …
and Muḥammad b. Muslim from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), and Zurāra’s sound [report] from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) — even if there came in it, afterward, as in al-Kāfī and al-Faqīh, what has the form: “and he said, in some of the readings, ‘keep watch over the prayers and the middle prayer — the afternoon (ʿaṣr) prayer.’” Upon this report, it is not hidden that the Imam does not resort to [citing] some of the readings save in caution from the [pressure of the] time and its people; so he mentioned the current report from the codex of ʿĀʾisha and her transmission, and one of the reports from the codex of Ḥafṣa and her transmission from the reading of Ibn ʿAbbās, Ubayy b. Kaʿb, and al-Sāʾib b. Yazīd, [as] a silencing [screen] over his first exposition of the real ruling. And if you look to what al-Durr al-Manthūr counted of the reports of the matter, you see in them, of disorder and conflict, a fearsome thing: in some of them the dawn, in some the noon, in some the afternoon, in some the sunset — and often the report from the single person conflicts [with itself]; “and the bane of the reports is but their transmitters.” “And stand” — in the prayer — “before God, devoutly obedient (qānitīn)” — from al-ʿAyyāshī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), “obedient”; and in Samāʿa’s report, “it is supplication,” whence His words in Sūrat al-Zumar (39:9) “or is he who is devoutly obedient (qānit) in the watches of the night, prostrating and standing …”; and in al-Tibyān, it is said its root is supplication in the state of standing — that is, in the prayer; and in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, it is what is related from Abū Jaʿfar and Abū ʿAbd Allāh (I say: I did not find it from the two of them, peace be upon them, in the exegesis of the verse; yes, in Zurāra’s sound [report] from al-Bāqir, peace be upon him, “this verse came down on a Friday, and the Messenger of God being on his journey, so he made qunūt in it”). Indeed, their use (peace be upon them) of the word qunūt for the supplication in the prayer, in the state of standing, is frequent — and it is the well-known qunūt, as in our reports, and it is known in the tongue of the Companions and others, as in the reports of al-Durr al-Manthūr and others on the verse. (239) “And if you fear, then on foot” — the plural of “walker,” namely he who goes on his foot, like “standing” the plural of “stander,” as in Sūrat al-Furqān and Sūrat al-Zumar — that is, if you fear, then your ruling in your prayer is that you leave off what conflicts with the taking-caution, of the standing, bowing, and prostration, according to what the fear and caution require, and [pray] at your ease, while you are on foot, “or mounted,” the plural of “rider”; and what does not conflict with caution stays upon its [normal] state, like the recitation, the glorification, the witnessing, and the salutation. Yes, the verse’s indication of the gesturing (īmāʾ) for the bowing and prostration may be hidden, save in view of its being what is feasible of the two’s humbling, and the clarity of the rule of “the feasible” in this instance, to reason and the reasonable, as [in] other than it of the instances. In al-Kāfī, in ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s sound [report], he said: “I asked Abū ʿAbd Allāh [about] the verse — what do you say, [when] one fears a beast or a robber, how does he pray? He said, ‘he says the takbīr and gestures with his head’” — that is, for the bowing and prostration. “And when you are secure, remember God as He taught you”221 [p.217]
(2:239) … God as He taught you what you did not know. (2:240) And those of you who die and leave wives — a bequest for their wives, provision for the year, without expulsion; but if they leave, there is no sin upon you in what they do with themselves honourably; and God is Mighty, Wise. (2:241) And for the divorced women is a provision, honourably — a duty upon the God-wary. (2:242) Thus does God make plain to you His signs, that you may understand.
by His kindness, in the prayer and other than it, “what you did not know” — of the invocations of the prayer, its rulings, and other [things]. (240) “And those of you who die (yutawaffawna)” — that is, draw near to death — “and leave” behind them “wives” — God has prescribed upon them “a bequest” — the bequest (waṣiyya) comes in the sense of the thing bequeathed — “for their wives, a provision”: [matāʿan is] a substitute for “bequest,” in the sense of the thing bequeathed; and if we make “bequest” here in the sense of the enjoining, the estimation [is] “God has made for them what is enjoined, in the enjoining, a provision,” and the like of that — the first being more apparent — “to the year”, from the time of his death, in her maintenance, “without expulsion” — a description of the provision, to include the dwelling. Perhaps this was not a term for the waiting-period of death in every case; rather, if she wished to remain in her husband’s house, hers is the maintenance and the housing, by [right of] the bequest, for a year. “But if they leave” — of their own accord, absolutely, or after the passing of four months and ten [nights], or the farther of the two terms if she is pregnant — she has [thereby] dropped her right. It is said the year was her waiting-period, then it was abrogated, and what is meant by the verse is [that] they leave after the year. “There is no sin upon you in what they do with themselves honourably” — in respect of the lawful marriage, or the choosing of what accords with her state and her welfare in the going-out. As for the obligation of the bequest, if there was [one], it is abrogated by agreement; and as for its permissibility, [related] from Majmaʿ al-Bayān, it remains with us, unabrogated. “And God is Mighty” in His ordinances, “Wise” in His sacred law. (241) “And for the divorced women is a provision honourably” — by right — “a duty upon the God-wary”: if what is meant by the verse is the emphasis of what preceded, of the provision of her who was not touched nor had a settled [dowry] fixed for her, then its absolute [wording] runs upon that restriction — and this is what suits its nearness to those two verses, the apparent [sense] of His words “a duty upon the God-wary,” and what we pointed to just now, of the consensus and the reports. It is possible to carry this verse upon the recommendation, in the absolute [class of] divorced women, in view of al-Ḥalabī’s sound [report] and his [other] report, ʿAbd Allāh b. Sinān’s and Samāʿa’s sound [report] (as in al-Kāfī), and Abū Baṣīr’s report (as [related] from al-ʿAyyāshī) — [though] in it is doubt. (242) “Thus” — an address to the Messenger of God — “does God make plain”, by His kindness, “to you His signs” — an address to the people, for their need, in the order of their affair, of the exposition of these rulings — “that you may understand.”222
(2:243) Have you not regarded those who went forth from their homes, in thousands, in fear of death, and God said to them, “Die,” then revived them? Indeed God is bounteous to the people, but most of the people do not give thanks. (2:244) And fight in the way of God, and know that God is Hearing, Knowing.
that you may reason, when you turn, of your own choice, to pondering these signs and acting by them. (243) “Have you not regarded those” — that is, have you not learned of their affair; his (God bless him and his Household) knowledge of what is in it, of faith and certainty, being set at the level of seeing with the eye — “who went forth from their homes, in thousands, in fear of death” — that is, they went forth in fear of death, in flight — “and God said to them, ‘Die’”: His command, when He wills a thing, is but to say to it “Be,” and it is; so His creational will was expressed by the command “die” and by the “being,” as a pointing to [the fact] that His power needs no labour or the plying of preliminaries — “then revived them” after their death. In Rawḍat al-Kāfī, from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon them), is the story of these [people], their flight from the plague, their death, and their remaining without burial until they became bones, which the passers-by gathered and moved aside from the way, so Ḥizqīl the Prophet, of the Children of Israel, passed by them and prayed to God for their revival, and He revived them (from al-ʿAyyāshī and Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh, from Ḥumrān from al-Bāqir, an abridgment of this story; and al-Durr al-Manthūr related, on that, several reports from Ibn ʿAbbās and some of the Successors).223 “Indeed God is bounteous to the people” — He acquaints them with His power, gives them sight by His admonitions, surrounds them with His kindnesses, and enfolds them in His mercy — “but most of the people do not give thanks. (244) And fight” — O people — “in the way of God,” and do not fear death, for affairs are in the hand of God, and for you is the admonition in the flight of these from death, their death, and their revival. “And know that God is Hearing” of your supplication, your seeking of help, and what you say in the affair of the struggle, the summons to God, and the religion of truth, “Knowing” of your intentions in your struggle. (245) “Who is it that will lend God a goodly loan …” [p.219]
(2:245) Who is it that will lend God a goodly loan, that He may multiply it for him manifold? And God straitens and expands, and to Him you shall be returned.
God’s wisdom and His mercy have required, in the affair of the human and the order of his civilization and his interlacing in society, that He make some of them needy of others in the concerns of livelihood and wealth; just as His wisdom and mercy required, in the perfection of the human and his attaining the honour of excellence and the goodly recompense, that He make him free-choosing in his acts and states, in faith and unbelief, obedience and disobedience. And His wisdom, mercy, and kindness required that He command the cooperation in piety and benevolence, that the rich turn to the poor with something of what is of God’s provision and creation, and spend something of God’s wealth in the aid of the truth and its people and the repelling of falsehood and its people; and His mercy and kindness required that He make the human desirous of spending in the way of God and of good, upon the poor and in the struggle, aiding him, by this encouragement, against the avarice of his soul, the pulls of his greed, and what the poverty of his contingency prompts to him. So the noble Qurʾān came in the finest manner of encouragement, the gist of what it points to and heralds being: you, O people, cannot but know that every blessing you have is from God and His creation of the world and what is in it; and yet God, by His wisdom and kindness, summons you to spend something of what He has favoured you with, upon the road of your setting-right and felicity; and whoever spends of his wealth, intending thereby the face of God, God makes it a loan upon Himself, when it is a goodly loan and spending, of lawful wealth, lacking what mars it, of ostentation, reproach, and the like. “That He may multiply it for him” — the answer to the seeking of the loan, emphasized by the style of His words. Al-Ṣadūq related in Maʿānī al-Akhbār, soundly, from al-Khazzāz, and al-ʿAyyāshī from ʿAlī b. ʿAmmār from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): when “whoever brings a good deed shall have better than it” (27:89) came down, the Messenger of God said, “O God, increase me,” so God sent down “whoever brings a good deed shall have ten times its like” (6:160); so he said, “Lord, increase me,” so God sent down “who is it that will lend God a goodly loan, that He may multiply it for him manifold?” — so the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) knew that the “much” of it is uncounted and has no end.224 “And God straitens and expands” — in Tafsīr al-Burhān, from al-Ṣadūq with a chain from al-Ṣādiq, “He withholds and gives”; and what is meant is drawing them toward [the truth] that the affair of provision is in the hand of God (magnified be His station), so let the one of ampleness seize the chance of spending and the loan of God before his provision is straitened upon him and the regret remains to him; and let him not fear poverty in his spending, for in His hand is the expansion of provision. “And to Him you shall be returned,” so He will pay you the recompense of what you spent, and the regrets of the greedy, avaricious [one] over what he neglected shall intensify. (245) “Have you not …” [p.220]
(2:246) Have you not regarded the chiefs of the Children of Israel after Moses, when they said to a prophet of theirs, “Send us a king that we may fight in the way of God”? He said, “Might it be that, if fighting were prescribed for you, you would not fight?” They said, “And why should we not fight in the way of God, when we have been expelled from our homes and our children?” Yet when fighting was prescribed for them, they turned away, except a few of them; and God is Knower of the wrongdoers.
“Have you not regarded” — the “seeing,” as passed just now, a metonym for knowledge — “the chiefs” — that is, the nobles and notables — “of the Children of Israel after” the death of “Moses, when they said to a prophet of theirs.” In Tafsīr al-Qummī, soundly, from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): the Children of Israel wrought disobediences, altered God’s religion, and rebelled against their Lord’s command, and there was among them a prophet who commanded them and forbade them, but they did not obey him — and it is related that his name was Irmiyā the Prophet. I say: this and what follows it is not of the sound [report], but a mursal [detachment] from al-Qummī, and in it is what is contrary to the sound; for al-Qummī himself will relate, in the exegesis of the two-hundred-sixty-first verse, soundly from al-Ṣādiq, that Irmiyā the Prophet was a contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar and the captivity of Babylon, as the [order of] history requires — and between that age and the age of Ṭālūt is about four hundred years and nine generations. In al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān: it is said he is Ashmūʾīl, and it is what is related from Abū Jaʿfar (al-Bāqir, peace be upon him); and in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, “he is, in Arabic, Ismāʿīl” — and in this is a stop, for Ismāʿīl, in Hebrew, is “Yishmaʿ-Īl.” “Send us a king that we may fight” with him “in the way of God.” “He said” — their prophet to them — “Might it be (hal ʿasaytum)” — ʿasā [means] hoping, in the beloved, and apprehension, in the hated — “that, if fighting were prescribed for you, you would not fight?” “They said” what amounts to “what would bar us from fighting?” — “And why should we not fight in the way of God, when we have been expelled from our homes and our children” — by war and the driving from the homelands. Is there, after this, a soul-restraint from fighting, or a benefit calling to leaving it — added to [the point] that it is a fighting in the way of God and a defence of the religion and [God’s] oneness? Yet with this declaration from them, “when” Ṭālūt was sent to them as king, and “fighting was prescribed” and imposed “upon them”, with him, “they turned away” and failed [it], “except a few of them; and God is Knower of the wrongdoers” — He knows their state from before that.225 (246) “Their prophet said to them, ‘God has sent Ṭālūt to you as king’” — it is said he was named Ṭālūt for his tallness (ṭūl) [p.221]
(2:247) … They said, “How shall he have the kingship over us, when we are worthier of the kingship than he, and he has not been given ampleness of wealth?” He said, “Indeed God has chosen him over you and increased him amply in knowledge and body; and God gives His kingship to whom He wills, and God is Vast, Knowing.” (2:248) And their prophet said to them, “Indeed the sign of his kingship is that the Ark will come to you, in it a tranquillity (sakīna) from your Lord …”
— and in the books of the Jews [it is said] that he was taller than every one of the Children of Israel, from his shoulder upward. “They said, ‘How (annā)” — [that is,] whence — “shall he have the kingship over us, when we are worthier of the kingship than he?’” In Tafsīr al-Qummī, or its report, that he was of the tribe of Benjamin.226 “And he has not been given ampleness of wealth” — to found by it his kingship and its administration. “He said” — their prophet to them — “Indeed God has chosen him over you and increased him amply” — that is, [with] a breadth — “in knowledge and body”: he governs, by his knowledge, the realm and the concerns of fighting, and fills, by the amplitude of his body, the eyes with an awe befitting kings and the marks of strength and courage. “And God gives His kingship to whom He wills” — so there is no objection for you in that — “and God is Vast” in His bounty and mercy — that is, vast of bounty and mercy — “Knowing” of what wisdom requires in every station. (247) “And their prophet said to them” — in the station of argument and the indicating that Ṭālūt shall be king over them, that [being] by God’s choosing of him — “Indeed the sign of his kingship” — the proof by which you know that — “is that the Ark will come to you” — the chest. In Majmaʿ al-Bayān [it is said] it was in the hands of the enemies of the Children of Israel, who had overcome them for it when the affair of the Children of Israel was disordered and the events befell them; then God wrested it from their hands and returned it to the Children of Israel, the angels bearing it — and that is related from Abū ʿAbd Allāh. “In it a tranquillity (sakīna) from your Lord” — in Tafsīr al-Qummī, from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him), that it is a wind [p.222]
(2:248) … and a remnant of what the House of Moses and the House of Aaron left, borne by the angels …
from the Garden, having a face like the face of a human (the like of it in Majmaʿ al-Bayān and al-Durr al-Manthūr from the Commander of the Faithful); and in Maʿānī al-Akhbār’s report, from Yūnus from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him), “a spirit of God.” But in the Uṣūl of al-Kāfī, in Muḥammad b. Muslim’s sound [report] from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), “the tranquillity is faith,” and the like of it in the sound [report] of Ḥafṣ and Hishām from al-Ṣādiq, and the like of it in Abū Ḥamza’s sound [report] from al-Bāqir (who added, on His words “and strengthened them with a spirit from Him” (58:22), “it is faith”), and the like of it in Jamīl’s sound [report] from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him). The apparent [truth] is that these expressions are likenesses and allusions according to the state of the instance, the address, and the addressed; so perhaps the tranquillity [was] a thing occasioning security and reassurance, which God placed in the Ark that the Children of Israel might find rest in it — for it was to them at the level of the greatest banner in the wars — and in al-Tibyān [it is said] this is the more fitting (Majmaʿ al-Bayān deemed the like of it apparent, and it is one of al-Durr al-Manthūr’s reports from Ibn ʿAbbās). “And a remnant of what the House of Moses and the House of Aaron left” — of the relics of prophethood — “borne by the angels” — the sentence a circumstantial [state] of “will come to you.” In Rawḍat al-Kāfī, in the reliable [report] of ʿAbd Allāh b. Sulaymān from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) concerning the Ark, the wording being “and the angels used to bear it in the form of the cow.”227 I say: on the supposition of this transmitted [report] issuing from the Imam (peace be upon him), what is in the books of the Jews is a picture of the reality he mentioned; for in the sixth chapter of the First [Book] of Samuel is the breach of custom in the return of the Ark — [namely] that when the polytheists had plundered the Ark from the Children of Israel, a scourge of death and diseases befell them, so they wished to return the Ark and to ascertain, of its state and its dignity, whether it was that which had caused that scourge from God upon them; so they agreed to place it on a cart and yoke it to two suckling cows, unbroken, which no yoke had trained, then to turn back from them and their calves to the house — [reasoning] that if the two cows went with the cart, calmly and straight, they would know that this custom-breaching affair, of the two cows’ state, was of God’s signs to make plain the Ark’s dignity; and the two cows went with the Ark and the cart in the finest straightness and knowledge of the way, until they brought the Ark to the land of the Children of Israel. By the requirement of the noble verse and the noble report, the angels undertook the bearing of the Ark, by this custom-breaching bearing, in that outward form of the subjecting of the two cows. In Majmaʿ al-Bayān [al-Ṭabrisī] mentioned something bearing a likeness to this, and did not ascribe it to an Imam [p.223]
(2:248) … Indeed in that is a sign for you, if you are believers. (2:249) So when Ṭālūt set out with the troops, he said, “Indeed God is testing you by a river: whoever drinks of it is not of me …”
[though] he mentioned, in the commentary of Rawḍat al-Kāfī, something of the history of Ibn al-Athīr and other exegetes. I say: the interpretations of these matters are either taken from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) or the Imam, or [taken] not [at all]; for the historians — nay, and the exegetes — as we mentioned in the third station of the fourth chapter of the Introduction, some of them take from the oral transmission, distorted by alteration, of the People of the Book, going back to their books of the Old [Testament], which were, in the times of the exegetes and historians, in the Hebrew, Babylonian, and Greek tongues, and were forbidden to other than the Jews and Christians (and it is unlawful, in the creed of the two parties, that they [the People of the Book] give access to them even to the common folk among them); but after there appeared, among the Christians, the sect of the Evangelicals, who translated them into every tongue and spread them in the lands — these books, with the alteration in them, are less altered than the transmissions taken from them by the oral transmission that was not built upon preservation and trustworthiness. “Indeed in that” — that is, in my informing [you] of the coming of the Ark, in the state of its being borne by the angels — “is a sign for you”, acquainting you with God’s blessing and His power, that you may obey Him, and acquainting you with my truthfulness and [with] Ṭālūt’s being made king over you by God — all that “if you are believers” in God, His signs, and their indication, with the reality of faith. In Tafsīr al-Qummī, by a sound chain from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him): [the Ark] was such that, when it was placed between the Muslims and the disbelievers, if a man advanced before the Ark he did not turn back until he was slain or was victorious; and God revealed to their prophet that Goliath (Jālūt) — the chief of the polytheists and their champion — would be slain by one over whom the coat of mail of Moses fitted, his name being David (Dāwūd) son of Jesse; and Jesse was a shepherd, having ten sons, the youngest of them David; and when Ṭālūt gathered the Children of Israel for war, he sent to Jesse to bring his sons, and he called them one by one and clothed each in the coat of mail of Moses — some [being] too tall for it and some too short — and said to Jesse, “have you left any of your sons?” He said, “yes, the youngest of them; I left him with the flock,” so he sent for him; and when he was called he came, and with him a sling, and three rocks in his way called to him, “O David, take us,” so he took them in his pouch; and when he came to Ṭālūt, he clothed him in the coat of mail of Moses and it fitted him, so Ṭālūt set out with the troops.228 (248) “So when Ṭālūt set out with the troops” — that is, when he became king and marshalled his troops in his camp, and “set out” in the sense of parting, with his troops, from the camp and the gathering-place, and marched to the place of war — “he said” to his troops, “Indeed God is testing you by a river” in your way, that your obedient may be distinguished from your disobedient — “whoever drinks of it is not of me” — that is, of my companions [p.224]
(2:249) … and whoever does not taste of it, he is of me, save one who scoops a scoop with his hand.” Yet they drank of it, except a few of them. So when he crossed it, he and those who believed with him, they said, “We have no strength today against Goliath and his troops.” Those who reckoned that they would meet God said, “How many a small band has overcome a large band by God’s leave! And God is with the steadfast.” (2:250) And when they went forth against Goliath and his troops, they said, “Our Lord, pour steadfastness upon us, and make firm our feet, and help us against the disbelieving people.”
the obedient, nor of the party of God. “And whoever does not taste of it” — that is, savour it — “he is of me” — of my companions and of the party of God — “save one who scoops a scoop” — a single [one] — “with his hand,” for he is excused in that. “Yet they drank of it” and disobeyed, “except a few of them” — in Tafsīr al-Qummī, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that those who did not drink nor scoop were three hundred and thirteen men (the like of it from al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr from him, peace be upon him; and al-Durr al-Manthūr mentioned the report of that from al-Barāʾ and Ibn ʿAbbās). “So when he crossed it, he and those who believed with him” — namely his troops, those who drank and those who did not drink, for all of them were believers, not polytheists, even if some of them disobeyed — “they said” — that is, the kind of them said, not all of them — “We have no strength today against Goliath and his troops.” In Rawḍat al-Kāfī, soundly from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), as related in Tafsīr al-Qummī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that those who scooped said this saying, and those who did not scoop are those of whom God said, “Those who reckoned that they would meet God” — that is, those whom hope did not distract; rather they brought death near, at every moment, to their reckoning, out of longing for the meeting of God, by the lifting of the veil of appetite, as we set forth at the forty-third verse — [they] said, out of the strength of their faith, the firmness of their resolve, and their good opinion of God (and the believer sees by the light of God): “How many a small band” — that is, a group and party — “has overcome a large band by God’s leave” and His help — “and God is with the steadfast. (249) And when” they made ready for fighting and “went forth”, in the field of war, “against Goliath and his troops,” they did not rely upon themselves, however far they had attained of obedience and self-devotion in the way of God; rather “they said”, in their recourse to God and their supplication for enabling, uprightness, and help, to manifest the religion of truth: “Our Lord, pour (afrigh) steadfastness upon us” — the pouring [being] the emptying-out; they likened steadfastness to water that overwhelms them, poured upon them, so they asked of God the enabling for much, availing steadfastness, such that it be as though steadfastness were poured upon them, pouringly — “and make firm our feet” upon the truth and the struggle in Your way — “and help us against the disbelieving people,” as an exaltation of the religion of truth. (250) “Thus they routed them by God’s leave” — it is transmitted that the routing of the disbelievers was after David slew Goliath229 [p.225]
(2:251) … and David slew Goliath, and God gave him the kingship and wisdom, and taught him of what He willed. And were it not for God’s repelling the people, some of them by means of others, the earth would surely have been corrupted; but God is bounteous to the worlds. (2:252) These are God’s signs, which We recite to you in truth; and indeed you are of the messengers. (2:253) Those messengers — We favoured some of them above others; of them is one to whom God spoke …
— but the mention of the slaying was delayed so that what was mentioned of David’s excellences might run in a single sequence, for that is more emphatic in his extolling and clearer in expounding the greatness of the blessing upon him. “And David slew Goliath, and God gave him the kingship” — the awe-inspiring [kingship] — “and wisdom, and taught him of what He willed” — like the decisive judgement, prophethood, the Psalms, and the making of coats of mail. “And were it not for God’s repelling the people” — from tyranny and general corruption — “some of them” — a substitute for “the people” — “by means of others, the earth would surely have been corrupted.” For God (magnified be His wisdom) created the people free-choosing in their acts, and of the ends [is] that they enjoy [life] in the earth and progeny issue from them, and the disbeliever beget the believer and the profligate the righteous; and God knew that there would be, among the people, the likes of Yazīd, Muslim b. ʿUqba, and al-Ḥajjāj — and were the way left free for the likes of these, they would fill the earth with corruption and corrupt it; and the destroying of the corrupter and the vengeance upon him in this world does not deter [from general corruption] one who intends it — rather they reckon all that of the ways of the cosmos and the requirements of the customary causes, like death, which has not deterred the people from their error, even if they draw near it by old age and disease. So of what deters them is God’s command to the believers to repel the corrupters, and the existence of contenders, among the people, against the corrupters in their aims; so that, and what befell of the overcoming and subduing of the corrupters at [the time of] the contention, was a repelling from God of the pervasion of corruption; and the corrupters’ dread of the assault of force, the eruption of contention, and the triumph of the adversaries was a generic deterrent, in the preponderant [case], halting the corruption from its general tyranny. “But God” favoured the worlds by barring the generality of corruption in the earth, through the repelling of the people, some by others, with the ruling remaining upon its instances; so God (magnified be His bounties) is “bounteous to the worlds. (251) These” — that is, the stories of the mentioned matters — “are God’s signs, which We recite to you”, O Messenger of God, “in truth” and upon their reality, by the divine revelation; “and indeed you are of the messengers” from God to the people, to bring them out of the darknesses to the light. (252) “Those messengers” — the [feminine] demonstrative in view of the plurality — “We favoured some of them above others; of them is one to whom God spoke” — that is, [to] him, and favoured him by His speaking to him, like Moses and the Messenger of God; for it has come, amply, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that the change that comes over him (God bless him and his Household) at the revelation is [only] at God’s speaking to him, without the mediation of Gabriel, as is related230 [p.226]
(2:253) … and raised some of them in degrees; and We gave Jesus son of Mary the clear proofs and strengthened him with the Holy Spirit. Had God willed, those after them would not have fought one another after the clear proofs had come to them; but they differed — so of them was one who believed and of them was one who disbelieved. And had God willed, they would not have fought one another; but God does what He wills. (2:254) O you who believe, spend of what We have provided you, before there comes a Day in which there is no bargaining, no friendship, and no intercession; and the disbelievers — they are the wrongdoers.
with a chain, in the Maḥāsin of al-Barqī, ʿIlal al-Sharāʾiʿ, al-Ṣadūq’s Tawḥīd, Ikmāl al-Dīn, and al-Shaykh’s Amālī; nay, the ḥadīth of the Ascension (Miʿrāj), from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), speak that God addressed him, conversed secretly with him, and called to him, as in Tafsīr al-Qummī, Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt, ʿIlal al-Sharāʾiʿ, al-Ṣadūq’s Amālī, and al-Shaykh’s Amālī, by their chains from al-Kāẓim, al-Ṣādiq, al-Bāqir, the Commander of the Faithful, and Ibn ʿAbbās, as the people of the Sunna [also] related that in the ḥadīth of the Ascension. “And raised some of them in degrees; and We gave Jesus son of Mary” the [evidentiary] miracles, “the clear proofs, and strengthened him with the Holy Spirit” — Gabriel. “Had God willed” to compel His servants upon the non-existence of unbelief and disobedience to Him, and that accorded with His wisdom, He would have done [it], for He is the Powerful, the Overpowering, and “those after them” — of their communities — “would not have fought one another after the clear proofs had come to them”; and that was not for a hiddenness of the truth from either of the two parties — “but they differed” by reason of the following of caprice by some of them, “so of them was one who believed” in God and in what came to him of the clear proofs, “and of them was one who disbelieved” and followed his caprice, so they fought one another. “And had God willed, they would not have fought one another” — but [it was] so that He might recompense the believers with the recompense of the strivers in the aid of the truth — “but God does what He wills” of what kindness and wisdom require. (254) “O you who believe, spend of what We have provided you” — if the obligatory spending is meant, as is the apparent [sense] of the demand, then it is the alms-due (zakāt), since no general obligatory spending other than it is known; and do not fear poverty in your spending, for what you have is only of God’s provision, and He is your Provider, so seize the chance in your wealth in the abode of this world — “before there comes a Day” — namely the Day of Resurrection — “in which there is no bargaining”, that you might purchase what benefits you in it, “no friendship” that avails you in it, if you are not of those who were wary of God in what He commanded them and forbade them and [who] sent ahead for themselves ((43:67) “the friends, on that Day, are enemies one to another, save the God-wary,” as in Sūrat al-Zukhruf), “and no intercession” — save for one who has taken a covenant with God, and save by God’s leave, and for one with whom He is pleased, as we pointed to in Sūrat al-Fātiḥa, concerning intercession. “And the disbelievers — they are the wrongdoers” to themselves, since they left themselves, for that Day, no means qualifying them for God’s mercy to them and their deliverance.231 [p.227]
(2:255) God — there is no god but He, the Living, the Self-Subsisting. Neither slumber nor sleep seizes Him. His is what is in the heavens and what is in the earth. Who is it that intercedes with Him save by His leave? He knows what is before them and what is behind them, and they encompass nothing of His knowledge save what He wills. His Footstool (kursī) embraces the heavens and the earth …
(255) “God” — a name and proper [name] for the Necessary of Existence, the God of the worlds (magnified and exalted). “There is no god but He” — the “god” being the hallowed Essence described by the attributes of divinity, like the necessity of existence, knowledge, power, creativeness, and others; so there is nothing described by the attributes of divinity and deserving to be named a god, having realization, save God. “The Living (al-ḥayy)” — [for whom is] established the attribute of life, and [it] perpetual by the perpetuity of His Essence and the necessity of His existence by His Essence; and the sense of “the Living” is clear, apparent. “The Self-Subsisting (al-qayyūm)” — an intensive [form] of “one who undertakes the affair,” for He (magnified be His bounties) is the [One] undertaking the bringing-into-being of the world and its governance, the intensification [being] in view of the generality and the perpetuity. “Neither seizes Him” — neither overcomes Him nor takes hold of Him — “slumber (sina)”, nay, “nor sleep” — the sina being from drowsiness, the doze that does not reach sleep but overcomes and occasions distraction and heedlessness from undertaking what is undertaken. “His is what is in the heavens”, of existents, “and what is in the earth”, all of them — even the heavens and the earth — as you say, “the king’s, and under the sway of his kingship, is what is in Iraq,” that is, even the land of Iraq and its bounds; as the Qurʾān contented itself, in this sense, current in customary discourse, with His words “His is the dominion of the heavens and the earth” and “to God belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth,” as in about eighteen places. “Who is it that intercedes with Him save by His leave?” — for all that is in the heavens and the earth is His and of His creation; so there is none there of whom it might be imagined, as the polytheists say, that he has a natural deserving of intercession and influence, by the fancying of his deification alongside God — of which is [the notion of] begetting and manifestation (exalted is God above what they say — there is no god but He). Intercession is only for a servant brought near, by God’s leave to him for it, as an honouring of him and an exalting of the rank of His righteous, obedient servants, and an urging of the people to obedience and its lofty degrees. “He knows what is before them and what is behind them” — that is, [before and behind] the angels, jinn, and humans, of the rational [beings], for whom the negation of intercession and its affirmation are sound in some respect; what is meant by “what is before them and what is behind them” [being] what has passed and what is to come. “And they encompass nothing of His knowledge” — that is, of what He knows — “save what He wills” and has taught to His servants and opened for them the door of its perception.232 “Embraces …” [p.228]
(2:255) … and their preservation does not weary Him; and He is the High, the Great. (2:256) There is no compulsion in religion; right guidance has become distinct from error. So whoever disbelieves in the Rebel (ṭāghūt) …
“His Footstool (kursī) embraces the heavens and the earth.” Al-Ṣadūq related in his Tawḥīd, by his chain from al-Mufaḍḍal from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that the Throne (ʿarsh) is the knowledge upon which God apprised His prophets and His proofs, and the Footstool (kursī) is the knowledge upon which He apprised no one; and by his chain from Ḥafṣ b. Ghiyāth from him (peace be upon him), concerning the kursī in the verse, he said, “His knowledge”; and by his chain from ʿAbd Allāh b. Sinān from him (peace be upon him), concerning the kursī or the ʿarsh, “it is the knowledge whose measure none can [take]” (and in Majmaʿ al-Bayān [it is said] this is related from Abū Jaʿfar and Abū ʿAbd Allāh, peace be upon them, and in al-Tibyān it is related from the two of them). In al-Durr al-Manthūr [al-Suyūṭī] mentioned a company who brought it out from Ibn ʿAbbās, and mentioned a company who brought out [anthropomorphic reports of the “footstool” as a place of the feet, with a creaking] — [reports] whose purport is impossible, for it is anthropomorphism. Now, when God (magnified be His station) made plain that His is what is in the heavens and the earth, He willed to make plain the all-embracing of His knowledge and the sway of His governance over all that is His and His dominion; so it suited [Him] to bring [it] near to our deficient perception by the likening to the corporeal [things] familiar to us, so He likened the embracing and the sway to what would be — by way of imagining — in the throne of a king; and upon that ran the expression of the Imams (peace be upon them) concerning the heavens and the earth, that they are in the kursī. “And their preservation does not weary Him” — burden Him and be hard upon Him — [that is,] of the two kinds, the heavens and the earth; and how [should it], “and He is the High” in His station, His power, and His knowledge, “the Great” in His authority and His majesty? (256) “There is no compulsion in religion.” The interpretation of “religion” has passed at the one-hundred-eighty-ninth verse; and religion is not a thing whose glorious reality and honourable perfection is hidden from the people, [such] that it might be desired of them by compulsion — how [so], when it is the religion of the natural disposition (fiṭra), its path straight, its way clear, its expanses radiant, its signposts luminous, its signs plain, its proofs guiding? “Right guidance has become distinct from error” — by the indication of reason and the fiṭra, the succession of the [evidentiary] miracles, and the coming of the proofs — even if the obstinate one blinds himself to them, until his obstinacy has blinded his heart and the eye of his insight. “So whoever” opposes his caprice, follows his reason and the clear proofs of his fiṭra, and “disbelieves in the Rebel (ṭāghūt)” — the ṭāghūt [being] taken from tyranny (ṭughyān); and this word is mentioned in the noble Qurʾān eight times233 [p.229]
(2:256) … and believes in God, has grasped the firmest handhold, which does not break; and God is Hearing, Knowing. (2:257) God is the Friend (walī) of those who believe; He brings them out of the darknesses into the light. And those who disbelieve — their friends are the Rebels, who bring them out of the light into the darknesses; those are the companions of the Fire, in it …
— in some of them its named [referent] is a predicate of the plural and the plural pronoun returns upon it (as in “their friends are the ṭāghūt [who] bring them out” in [this] verse), in some the apparent feminine pronoun of the collective (as in “that they worship it,” in the nineteenth of Sūrat al-Zumar (39:17)), in some the singular pronoun (as in the sixty-third of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ), and in some it is pointed to by “these” (as in the fifty-fourth of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ). In al-Nihāya and al-Qāmūs, it is [used] for the singular and the plural; and the lexicographers mentioned that ṭāghūt is said of the idol, the Satan, and the head of every misguidance. The ṭāghūt is taken from tyranny — either in view of its being a great cause of the tyranny of misguidance, like the idols (and in al-Nihāya: whence the ḥadīth “this is the ṭāghiya of Daws and Khathʿam,” that is, their idol and object of worship), or in view of its tyranny in its seducing, its rebellion, and its calling to misguidance, like the Satan and the heads of misguidance. So in every station of the noble Qurʾān there is meant, by the ṭāghūt, what suits its context; and what suits [this] station is the idols, or the callers to polytheism, or the satans — the sense of “disbelieves in,” in respect of each of the latter two, [being] that he opposes it in its seducing to polytheism and disavows it and its followers. “And believes in God, has grasped” — that is, made firm his grasp — “the firmest handhold”, which is the surest of handholds, for it “does not break” ever; and in the faith in God there is no source of doubt, misgiving, or weakness in the proof. “And God is Hearing” of your words in the faith in Him, “Knowing” of your intentions. (257) “God is the Friend (walī) of those who believe” — that is, He is the foremost Governor and the worthiest to govern them in what is most conducive to their welfare, by His kindness; and though His kindness (magnified be His bounties), by indication and guidance, is general to all humankind, He specified “those who believe” with mention, because they did not oppose the truth nor take themselves out of the fitness for God’s enabling them to the truth and bringing [them] to the exalted station — so He “brings them out”, by His enabling, “from the darknesses” — the darknesses of misguidance and disobediences — “into the light” — the light of guidance and obedience. (257) “And those who disbelieve” and opposed the truth and took themselves out of the fitness for God’s kindness and His guardianship in governing their affairs by enabling and setting-aright, and have taken the ṭāghūt as [their] guardian — they, then, “their friends are the Rebels (ṭāghūt), who bring them out” — the apparent [sense] of the pronoun [being] the intending of the seducers to unbelief and the enticers to misguidance, like the satans and the heads of misguidance, for they bring them “from the light” — the light of enabling and the reaching of the truth — “into the darknesses” — the darknesses of forsakenness, unbelief, and misguidance. “Those” — the disbelievers — “are the companions of the Fire, in it”234 [p.230]
(2:257) … abiding forever. (2:258) Have you not regarded him who disputed with Abraham about his Lord, because God had given him the kingship? When Abraham said, “My Lord is He who gives life and gives death,” he said, “I [too] give life and give death.” Abraham said, “Indeed God brings the sun from the east, so bring you it from the west.” Then the one who disbelieved was confounded; and God does not guide the wrongdoing people.
“abiding forever. (258) Have you not regarded” — what is meant is “have you not known,” as we mentioned just now — “him who disputed with Abraham about his Lord” — the disputing includes wrangling, even if refuted; and the apparent [truth] is that the disputant is Nimrod (al-Namrūd) the king. In Majmaʿ al-Bayān [it is said] this dispute was before the casting of Abraham into the fire — [related] from al-Ṣādiq (I say: I have not found its report); and in Tafsīr al-Qummī, not under the heading of a report, and al-Durr al-Manthūr from al-Suddī, [it is said] it was after that. His tyranny, his rebellion, and his insolence emboldened him to dispute Abraham with falsehood. “Because God had given him the kingship” — that is, because God had given him the kingship in this world and given him rein, so he disputed Abraham. “When Abraham said, ‘My Lord’” — and my God — “is He who gives life and gives death.’ He” — Nimrod — “said, ‘I give life and give death.’” It is said he turned the speech from its [true] aspect, when Abraham said to him, “how do you give life and give death?” he said, “I resort to two men upon whom death [i.e. execution] has become due, and I release one and kill the other, so I have given life and given death.” Al-Qummī said [this] in his tafsīr, not under the heading of a report, and the like of it is brought in al-Durr al-Manthūr [as] a report from Ibn ʿAbbās. I say: the requirement of the verse, and Nimrod’s disputing Abraham about his Lord, is that he did not claim to be a partner to God, that he should say “I too give life and give death like God” and juggle in that by killing one of the two persons and letting the other live; rather he denies Abraham’s Lord and claims divinity for himself — so his saying “I give life and give death” is a reckless begging [of the question], by which he intends the giving-life and the death that Abraham stated. So Abraham wished to shut the door of [such] beggings, by silly, false claims; and therefore “Abraham said” — if you are able to give life and death, as you allege, “Indeed God brings the sun from the east” — and the One able to give life and death is able to dispose of the sun — “so bring you it from the west.” Then the one who disbelieved was confounded (buhita)” — that is, Nimrod, the disbeliever in God, or the kind of him who disbelieved, of those present, Nimrod and his cohorts; and buhita [is] in the passive, so he is dumbfounded. “And God does not guide” — that is, does not enable nor bring, by His kindness — “the wrongdoing people”; rather He leaves them and their caprices. And it is known that the noble Qurʾān’s noble aims, in its glorious method, do not attach to the stories in respect of their being history; it mentions them only for admonition, the striking of parables, and other of the praiseworthy aims — so it is as though it were said, “have you not regarded him who disputed with Abraham about his Lord,” to the end of the verse, for of the people235 [p.231]
(2:259) Or like him who passed by a township, and it lay fallen upon its roofs. He said, “How shall God revive this after its death?” So God made him die a hundred years, then raised him. He said, “How long have you tarried?” He said …
there is one who is, in his obstinacy, his misguidance, and his stubbornness against the manifest truth, like this. (259) “Or like him who passed by a township”: al-Qummī related in his tafsīr, and al-Ṭabrisī in his Iḥtijāj, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that he is Irmiyā (Jeremiah) the Prophet; and in Tafsīr al-Burhān, from the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), that he is ʿUzayr (Ezra); and in al-Durr al-Manthūr, from the Commander of the Faithful — al-Ḥākim grading it sound — and from Ibn ʿAbbās by several ways, that he is ʿUzayr; so there is no room for the author of al-Kashshāf in his choice that the [person] of the story is a disbeliever, and Ibn al-Munīr, in his gloss, has spared us the labour of refuting what al-Kashshāf relied upon in his claim. “And it lay fallen upon its roofs” — that is, its tops collapsed, as in His words in Sūrat al-Ḥāqqa (69:7) “so you would see the people therein prostrate, as though they were the hollow trunks of fallen palm-trees, fallen upon their roofs” — that is, their ceilings (and the ʿarsh is said of the couch, and its being intended here is possible); it is said the sense of khāwiya is “empty,” but upon this there would be, in the parsing of “upon its roofs,” a strain far from the dignity of the Qurʾān. “He said, ‘How (annā)” — how — “shall God revive this after its death?’” In al-Qummī’s report in his tafsīr, from al-Ṣādiq, [it is said] he looked at the beasts of prey eating the carcasses and said, “how shall God revive these after their death?” And in al-Durr al-Manthūr’s report from Ibn ʿAbbās, in mentioning the township, [it is said] its people had perished, and he saw bones and said “how shall [God] revive?”, the verse. It is not hidden that the apparent [sense] of the word “revive,” “its death,” the story of the speaker’s death and his revival, and the arguing upon him by that — all these point and hint to the [thing] pointed to by the word “this,” namely the bodies or the bones, [the mention of which] was dispensed with by the indication of the context and the hints of the verse, as in His words a few verses before, “and God said to them, ‘die,’ then revived them,” and much of the like of that. “So God made him die a hundred years” — it is not hidden that the apparent [sense] of the verse is the real sense of death; and moreover, al-Qummī’s report from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), and al-Durr al-Manthūr’s report which al-Ḥākim graded sound from the Commander of the Faithful, and his other reports from Ibn ʿAbbās, al-Ḥasan, and Wahb — all these are explicit that this person died, his parts dissolved and scattered, and God revived him by gathering them and clothing his bones. But the contemporary Egyptian exegete said what amounts to [this]: the causing-to-die and the death here are an expression of the loss of sensation and perception, which is called a swoon (subāt), not the parting of the spirit from the body — the first part of his tafsīr was not at hand to me, that I might see what he says about what has passed, of His words (2:56) “then We raised you up after your death, that you might give thanks.” “Then raised him. He said, ‘How long have you tarried?’” — in this death of yours — “He said …”236 [p.232]
(2:259) … “I tarried a day, or part of a day.” He said, “Rather you have tarried a hundred years; so look at your food and your drink — it has not spoiled; and look at your donkey — that We may make you a sign for the people; and look at the bones, how We raise them up, then clothe them with flesh.” So when it became clear to him, he said, “I know that God is Powerful over everything.” (2:260) And when Abraham said, “My Lord, show me how You revive the dead,” He said, “Do you not believe?” He said, “Yes indeed, but that my heart may be at rest.” He said, “Take four of the birds, and draw them to you …”
“I tarried a day, or part of a day.” He said, “Rather you have tarried a hundred years” — and the divine will has shown you something of the custom-breaking and the proofs of the power to revive the dead, though their limbs be scattered. “So look at your food and your drink — it has not spoiled” — [it] was not affected by the drawn-out years, though the run of custom [requires] that the changes of the years succeed upon it until they dissolve it in the course of the hundred years; so by this power God revives the dead. “And look at your donkey” — the repetition of the command to look points to the passing of the discourse to another aspect, indicating the length of his tarrying in death, namely that his donkey — the years have annihilated it, its parts have perished and its bones scattered, as the reports pointed to declare. “That We may make you a sign for the people” — that is, We caused you to die and raised you after decay, that you might see, by eyesight, how God revives the dead, and that We might make you a sign and an admonition for the people concerning the revival of the dead and the power of God; and this is apparent from the existence of the coordinating wāw and the tenor of the discourse. “And look at the bones, how We raise them up (nunshizuhā)” — with the pointed zāy and the ḍamma of the first nūn, that is, We make them, after their scattering by decay, [such that] some of them rise and lift to others by [re-]composition; and the two reports pointed to have declared his bones and the bones of his donkey [being revived], but the revival of the bones of the people of the township is not known [to have occurred]. “Then clothe them with flesh. So when it became clear to him” what was mentioned, “he said, ‘I know’” — it is known that he did not say “now I have come to know,” [indicating] that he was knowing of that [before], and that he knows by a continuous knowledge, and by these observations his knowledge was confirmed — “that God is Powerful over everything.” (260) And when Abraham said, ‘My Lord, show me how You revive the dead.’” Matters ran in that, indicated and interpreted by what is in the verse, namely: “He” — God — “said”, by an interrogative of avowal, “Do you not believe” in My power to revive the dead and that I revive them? “He” — Abraham — “said, ‘Yes indeed’” — I am a believer in that — “but” the eyewitnessing has a great effect in reassurance and the firm-rooting of knowledge in the heart, so I asked the seeing — “that my heart may be at rest” and my certitude increase, by reason of the beholding, in what I believed in (as in al-Kāfī’s report at the opening of the Chapter of Doubt of its Uṣūl, and the sound [report] from al-Maḥāsin). “He” — God — “said” — and if you seek the seeing — “Take four of the birds, and draw them (ṣurhunna) to you” — with the ḍamma of the ṣād and the quiescence of the rāʾ, in the sense of “incline them and gather them to you”; it is said its sense is “cut them,” but there is no sense to the attaching of “to you” to it237 [p.233]
(2:260) … then place upon each mountain a part of them, then call them — they will come to you hastening; and know that God is Mighty, Wise. (2:261) The likeness of those who spend their wealth in the way of God is as the likeness of a grain that grows seven ears, in every ear a hundred grains; and God multiplies for whom He wills, and God is Vast, Knowing. (2:262) Those who spend their wealth in the way of God, then do not follow up what they spent with reproach …
— as for its attaching to His words “take,” with the existence of the many separators and the branching by the fāʾ, there is no room for it in eloquent speech; and “taking” is not equivalent to “inclining and gathering to,” but is more general. “Then place upon each mountain a part of them” — and this suffices to indicate the precedence of the command to cut [them into pieces]; and the sound and reliable reports from al-Bāqir, al-Ṣādiq, and al-Riḍā (peace be upon them) have multiplied, that the mountains were ten, as most of them are counted in al-Wasāʾil, in the chapter of bequeathing by the part. “Then call them — they will come to you hastening” — and He contented Himself with the mention of this promise, over the mention of the occurrence, for what is known of God’s power and that there is no failing of His promise. “And know” — that is, let your knowledge be confirmed — “that God is Mighty” in His power, “Wise” in His works. (261) “The likeness of those who spend their wealth in the way of God” — that is, the parable that is struck for these, in their multiplied recompense from God and the blessed result of their spending, is “as the likeness of a grain” — that is, like the parable that is struck by a grain — “that grows” — [the verb] ascribed to some of its causes — “seven ears, in every ear a hundred grains.” And that is no imagined supposition, like the fangs of ghouls; rather it is much, witnessed, seen — even if it be little in relation to the kind of the abundant crop; and it is often witnessed that from the grain issues more than seven ears — nay, ten and twenty — and it is often observed, in our region, in the strong, choice ear of wheat and barley, that it reaches eighty grains. “And God multiplies for whom He wills” — according to his intention, his sincerity, and his turning to good — “and God is Vast” in His mercy, His power, and His recompense, “Knowing” of the deeds of His servants, their intentions in them, and their aspects. And it is not hidden that “the way of God” is not particular to the struggle; in Majmaʿ al-Bayān [it is said] the verse is general in the spending in the doors of piety, and it is what is related from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him). I say: and His words “and God is Vast,” with the tenor of the verse, give [to understand] that the multiplied recompense is not particular to spending; rather it embraces all the deeds of good, as related in the Maḥāsin of al-Barqī in ʿUmar b. Yazīd’s sound [report], and [related] from al-Shaykh’s Amālī and al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr in al-Wābishī’s reliable [report] from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him). (262) “Those who spend their wealth in the way of God, then do not follow up what they spent” — after its delivery to whom they gave it — “with reproach (mann)” — the reproach is well-known.238
(2:262) … nor affront — theirs is their reward with their Lord, and no fear is upon them, nor shall they grieve. (2:263) An honourable word and a pardon are better than a charity followed by affront; and God is Self-sufficient, Forbearing. (2:264) O you who believe, do not void your charities by reproach and affront, like one who spends his wealth for the display of people and does not believe in God and the Last Day. His likeness is as the likeness of a smooth rock upon which is dust; then a downpour strikes it and leaves it bare. They have no power over anything of what they earned …
— and it is that the giver should lord it over the one he gave to, [on the ground] that he gave him; and of it is his saying, “Did I not give you? Did I not do you good?” — lording it over him, not in the station of what is preferable, of clearing oneself of the charge of severance and niggardliness. “Nor affront” by reason of the giving. “Theirs is their reward with their Lord” — an exposition that the multiplied recompense mentioned in the previous verse is a wage for the spenders upon their spending; and that is more agreeable in the souls of the generality, and in it is a rousing of their desire, even if God’s [pure] favour is more agreeable to the elect and nearer to [His] honouring. “And no fear is upon them, nor shall they grieve. (263) An honourable word” — in the excusing [of oneself], not disowned nor estranging, as that he be gentle in speech in turning away the asker, excusing himself to him, and praying for him — “and a pardon” for what issues from him, of importunity or vexation in the asking, “are better than a charity followed by affront; and God is Self-sufficient” — He enriches the asker out of His amplitude, but for the sake of your interests in this world and the Hereafter He sought a loan of you in the charity and the giving to the asker — “Forbearing,” so it is upon you, O His servants, to show forbearance and pardon for what slips out from the asker. And God confirmed His direction in the affair of spending and charity, and said (magnified be His bounties): (264) “O you who believe, do not void your charities by reproach and affront” — and so come to have spent your wealth and left yourselves nothing with God of the wage and the reward; for the corruption of reproach and affront, and its baseness, carries away the excellence of your charities, even if you intended by them the drawing-near [to God] at their time. So you, in that, are “like one who spends his wealth for the display of people” — the display (riʾāʾ) is taken from “seeing”; it is that the human do the deed not for its goodness nor for the face of God, but that the people may see him, in vaunting himself thereby — “and does not believe in God and the Last Day”, that he might seek what is with God. “So his likeness” — that is, the likeness of the ostentatious hypocrite who does not believe in God, in [the point] that there is no good in him nor in his spending — “is as the likeness of a smooth rock (ṣafwān)” — the ṣafwān, like the ṣafā, is the smooth stone — “upon which is dust”, giving the fancy that it is a useful earth, fit for plants; “then a downpour strikes it” — that is, a rain of great drops and heavy fall — and sweeps that dust from that rock, “and leaves it” a bare rock, “stripped smooth (ṣaldan)” — that is, hard and slippery, unfit for any result. “They have no power” — that is, the ostentatious, by their spending pointed to in the verse — “over anything of what they earned” — over any benefit239 [p.235]
(2:264) … and God does not guide the disbelieving folk. (2:265) And the likeness of those who spend their wealth seeking the good pleasure of God, and to make firm [what is] of their own souls, is as the likeness of a garden upon a height: a downpour strikes it, and it yields its produce twofold; and if a downpour does not strike it, then a light shower. And God is Seeing of what you do. (2:266) Would any of you wish that he had a garden of palms and vines, beneath which the rivers flow …
of what they spent — and it was of what they earned and toiled in earning and gathering; so they have power neither over anything of its substance nor of its reward, and it went from them, by their ostentation and their hypocrisy, in waste — and that is more intense for their regrets. “And God does not guide” — does not bring to guidance by His enabling — “the disbelieving folk,” for they have taken themselves out, by their hypocrisy, from their fitness for the enabling. (265) “And the likeness of those who spend their wealth seeking the good pleasure of God, and to make firm [what is] of their own souls” — that is, and that they may make their souls firm upon obedience to God and the seeking of His good pleasure. For the expending of wealth is hard for the kind of people, even if the bodily acts of worship are easy for them; and it is said that the kind of the Bedouin used to find the alms-tax hard and reckon it like a tribute. So those who are open-handed with their wealth and spend it seeking God’s good pleasure have, among the praiseworthy ends, the making firm of their souls upon obedience and the doing of good. The entry of the preposition “of” upon “their souls,” though it is an object of the making-firm, is common in the language, like their saying “he broke in [something] of his temper” and “he shook [something] of his side.” Perhaps the secret in that is that this spender spends out of a soul he has already broken in and made firm, in sum, upon obedience, until it was open-handed to God with the wealth dear to it; so he makes it, among his aims in the spending, to make it firm upon obedience to God and the seeking of His good pleasure in respect of what is to come, of times and states — and by this consideration these noble spenders are as though they make firm a part of their souls. So their likeness is “as the likeness of a garden” — an orchard — “upon a height” — a raised ground, because it is purer in tree and finer in fruit and cleaner in air, for its soundness from the noxiousness of marshes and the earth’s seepage and the harm of that to tree and fruit — “a downpour strikes it” (its interpretation has passed; and it is known that the watering by rain, for the orchard — nay, for every crop — is finer for its growth and the goodness of its soil than every [other] watering) “and it yields its produce” — that is, its eaten fruit — “twofold” what it would yield were it watered without the rain-cloud; “and if a downpour does not strike it, then a light shower” suffices it in that, for the goodness of its bed, even if it be a rain of small drops. “And God is Seeing of what you do” — of which is your spending, according to your intentions. Then He repeated the parable, in the rebuke against voiding the charity by reproach and affront, in His words: (266) “Would any of you wish” — and how should he wish, and who is it that would wish — “that he had a garden of palms and vines”, and — in respect of the delight of its aspect and the permanence of its watering — “beneath which the rivers flow”240 [p.236]
(2:266) … he has therein of all fruits — and old age strikes him, and he has weak offspring; then a whirlwind bearing fire strikes it and it is burnt? Thus does God make plain to you the signs, that you may reflect. (2:267) O you who believe, spend of the good things you have earned, and of what We have brought forth for you from the earth; and do not aim at the foul of it to spend, when you would not take it yourselves save …
— [the garden] being such that “he has therein”, over and above the palms and the vines whose fruits are dessert, yield, and sustenance, “of all fruits” which are drawn as revenue and eaten as dessert — “and” he is at a time and in a state in which he is the most avid he can be for this garden, in that “old age strikes him” and the years, and he is cut off from earning and avidity has grown ardent in him, “and he has” — over and above that — “weak offspring”, upon whom he is avid to spend and to whom he is avid to bequeath; “then a whirlwind bearing fire strikes it” — the whirlwind (iʿṣār) being a wind that rises with dust, winding and circling, and uproots the tree and the palm by its force — “and it is burnt”: that precious garden is burnt by the fire and dissolved by the whirlwind. And if one of you would not wish that, but it is of the greatest of calamities upon him, then why does he set the fire of reproach and affront in the whirlwind of his ignorance, and burn thereby his spending and void it — when the need for its fruits is more intense than the need for that garden [is] for that needy man? “Thus does God make plain to you the signs, that you may reflect” — that is, to the end that you reflect and come to know your right guidance. (267) “O you who believe, spend of the good things you have earned” — by trade and the like — “and of what We have brought forth for you from the earth” — of minerals and by cultivation. The apparent [sense] is that what is meant is the absolute [class of] spending in the way of God, whether it be in the alms-tax or in other than it; and what is meant by “good” is what is not inferior in itself or by its being forbidden — as it was interpreted by the two mentioned matters in al-Kāfī’s reports from Abū Baṣīr from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), al-ʿAyyāshī’s reports from ʿAbd Allāh b. Sinān, Abū Baṣīr, and Rifāʿa from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), and from Zurāra and Abū al-Ṣabāḥ from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), and the like of them al-Durr al-Manthūr’s reports. From that is confirmed the verse’s apparentness in the more general sense of “good” — [good] by lawfulness and by quality, or by quality as opposed to inferiority and foulness. “And do not aim at” — do not purpose — “the foul”, turning to it from the good, with its foulness by inferiority or by unlawfulness, in the sense opposed to “good” in the general sense aforementioned — “of it to spend”, making your spending of it while the good exists. As for one who did not turn from the good to the foul, but all his wealth was inferior, it is accepted of him in the alms-tax and he is thanked for spending of it. “When you would not take it” — the wāw for the circumstantial [state], the sentence [being] for the removal of the sophistry in [determining] the instance of the foul; that is, you do not take it in your [own] dues, your gifts, and your bonds — “save” that you climb down and be lax about241 [p.237]
(2:267) … you shut your eyes to it. And know that God is Self-sufficient, Praiseworthy. (2:268) Satan promises you poverty and commands you to indecency; but God promises you a forgiveness from Him and a bounty; and God is All-embracing, Knowing. (2:269) He gives wisdom …
its inferiority and its foulness, and “you shut your eyes to it” — a metonym for the mentioned climbing-down, like one who shuts his eyes lest he see its foulness. “And know that God is Self-sufficient” — [free of need] of your spending upon His servants; He it is who provides you and them, and whatever blessing you have is from God — “Praiseworthy,” that is, praised for His blessings and His general bounties; but He legislated the spending for you and sought it from you for the sake of your interests in this world and the Hereafter, so let not Satan, by his seduction, drive you from the great bounty of spending. (268) “Satan promises you poverty” and frightens you with it, that you may not spend, “and commands you to indecency” — whose being indecency is not hidden from you; so know by this his enmity to you, his foulness, and his deception in what he promises you and frightens you with. “But God promises you a forgiveness from Him” for what you have neglected, “and a bounty” — that is, an increase in His blessing and His mercy — “and God is All-embracing” in His bounty and mercy — that is, ample of bounty and mercy — “Knowing” of your spending and your intentions in it. (269) “He gives wisdom” — in al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān, on the sense of wisdom: “and it is said it is the Qurʾān and jurisprudence, and it is what is related from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him).” What I have found from al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), is that the wisdom is the [religious] knowledge and understanding in religion; and in Tafsīr al-Burhān from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), “wisdom is the radiance of knowledge, the balance of God-wariness, and the fruit of truthfulness.” In al-Kāfī, in the chapter on knowing the Imam, soundly from al-Ṣādiq: “obedience to God and knowing the Imam” (the like of it from al-Maḥāsin), and from al-Kāfī also, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “knowing the Imam and shunning the grave sins.” In al-Durr al-Manthūr’s reports from Ibn ʿAbbās, that the wisdom is prophethood, or the understanding of the Qurʾān, or knowing it — its abrogating and abrogated, its decisive and its ambiguous, its fronted and its delayed, its lawful and its forbidden, and its parables. I say: perhaps that is in view of what is more general in benefit and greater, of the instances of wisdom — for it is that which benefits, of the knowledge of realities. And of the painful and the regrettable is that the name of wisdom has become widely used — “just as the snake-bitten was called ‘sound’” — for Greek philosophy, and of it the fancies of the ten intellects: those fancies which denied the station of the Majestic God in divinity in a manner upon which idolatry did not dare; rather it is a whitewashed expression for Nature, since it allowed God nothing but that He caused the First Intellect by a natural causation, without will or choice from Him — so there is for Him no will, no creating, and no volition either, in other than the First Intellect, of existent things, and no kinship and no connection — contrary to the indication of reason and the noble Qurʾān that God is the Creator of creation by His volition, and that the world issues from a creating and a will. The clingings242 [p.238]
(2:269) … to whom He wills; and whoever is given wisdom has been given much good; and none remembers save the possessors of understanding. (2:270) And whatever you spend of expenditure, or vow of a vow, indeed God knows it; and the wrongdoers have no helpers. (2:271) If you disclose the charities, that is well …
to these fancies are refuted by solution and by rebuttal, by the necessity of contradiction, and by the flimsiness of their founding, in the number of the intellects, upon the imaginings of the ancient astronomy concerning the spheres and the confining of their number to nine — something of that having been pointed to in the Chapters on Doctrines of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (may his tomb be sanctified) and at the end of the second part of al-Madrasa al-Sayyāra. And with all this, those who hold the fancies of the intellects are called “the gnostics,” “the people of attainment,” and “[the people] of unveilings” — “just as the snake-bitten was called ‘sound’.” Exalted is God above what they say. “To whom He wills” — of His servants, according to his striving and what he has attained, by his choice, of being fit for this mercy, this blessing, and the enabling for it. “And whoever is given” — in the passive, and jussive by the conditional particle — “wisdom” — a second object — “has been given much good; and none remembers” — by what he is reminded of, of the verses of the noble Qurʾān, in spending and other than it, of the traits of character and the rulings, and comes to have a portion of wisdom — “save the possessors of understanding (albāb)”: the apparent [sense] of lubb is the heart, and the Qurʾān ascribes the reasoning and the comprehending to the heart. What is meant here is whoever’s heart has not been blinded by persisting in misguidance and the heedlessness of simple ignorance, and [by] compound misguidance — which is its ugliest, for he is as though he had no heart and no understanding. And lubb here may be interpreted by the intellect, as though that be an interpretation by what the metonymized sense issues in. (270) “And whatever you spend of expenditure” — “whatever” [being] a relative comprising the sense of the condition, its relative [clause] “you spend,” and its referent an elided pronoun which “of expenditure” interprets and expounds — whether the spending be in obedience or in disobedience, conjoined with sincerity or with ostentation — “or vow of a vow” — coordinated upon “you spend.” The lawful vow is that he say, “upon me, for God, is that I do or leave such a thing,” or “upon me, for God, if such be [the case], is that I do or leave such a thing”; and it is stipulated that the thing vowed be an obedience to God. The vow may [also] be to the idol, or in disobedience. “Indeed God knows it” as it is, and requites it with its requital. The sentence is a predicate of the relative, the connector being the pronoun in “knows it,” the predicate standing in the place of the recompense for the condition — and for that reason the fāʾ entered upon it. “And the wrongdoers have” — in their spending, or their vow to the idol, or in disobedience, or in their contravening the sound vow to God — “no helpers” to help them against God, oppose Him, and prevent them, by force, from His punishment. (271) “If you disclose the charities” — those by which the face of God is intended, of the obligatory and the recommended — “that is well” — that is, the charity is an excellent thing in itself, and its disclosing does not take away its excellence when nothing of ostentation, or of humbling the one given charity, befalls it by reason of [the disclosure]. As for what is mentioned243 [p.239]
(2:271) … but if you conceal them and give them to the poor, that is better for you, and He will efface for you some of your evil deeds; and God is Aware of what you do. (2:272) Their guidance is not upon you; rather God guides whom He wills. And whatever good you spend is for yourselves; and you do not spend save in seeking the face of God; and whatever good you spend shall be repaid to you in full, and you shall not be wronged. (2:273) [It is] for the poor …
in Majmaʿ al-Bayān and al-Kashshāf — that the meaning is “and excellent as a thing is the disclosing of them,” the annexed [noun] being elided and the [noun] annexed to it set in its place and given its inflection — that is an artifice unsuited to the majesty of the noble Qurʾān. “But if you conceal them and give them to the poor” — that is, and you are able, along with the concealing, to convey them to those who deserve them, of the poor, according to need and priority — “that” — namely the concealing — “is better for you,” because it is farther from ostentation, nearer to sincerity, and [is] a guarding of the poor man’s dignity and the honour of the self-restrained. “And He will efface for you some of your evil deeds” — that is, the concealing will be a cause for God’s effacing for you some of your evil deeds. “And God is Aware of what you do” — of what you disclose or conceal, [whether] you make display in it or are sincere thereby to Him — “Aware”: nothing is hidden from Him. (272) “Their guidance is not upon you” — O Messenger of God — that is, the bringing of them to the truth; nor are you answerable for that, for upon you is only the conveying. “Rather God guides” — that is, brings, by His enabling, to the truth and the righteous deed — “whom He wills”, of whoever is fit for the enabling. “And whatever you spend” — O people — “of good” — of wealth, or its good and choice part; or it was named “good” because the face of God and the way of good is intended by it — “is for yourselves”: the benefit of its spending returns [to you]. “And you do not spend save in seeking the face of God” — that is, the aspect by which one turns to God; in al-Tibyān, “seeking God’s good pleasure,” and in al-Kashshāf, “and the seeking of what is with Him.” What he mentioned is but an end intended by the preponderant [number] in their deed for God’s face; and the end may be, for the friends [of God], that God is worthy of worship — as is related from Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn (peace be upon him), his stating that plainly. And if what is mentioned in al-Durr al-Manthūr and others be not established — that the cause of this sentence’s descent is the dispensation for one who refrained from spending upon his idolatrous kin — then the apparent [sense] is that it is predicative, by which is meant the confirming of the prohibition against their spending save in seeking the face of God, pure of ostentation. “And whatever you spend of good shall be repaid to you” — that is, its recompense shall be conveyed to you complete and in full — “and you shall not be wronged” by its diminishing, nor by the delaying of its arrival past the place of need; for it reaches you in a state in which you are in the most intense need of that recompense.244 (273) “For the poor” — [al-Ṭūsī] said in al-Tibyān, and [likewise] Majmaʿ al-Bayān and al-Kashshāf, its estimation is “the expenditure is for the poor”; and what indicates that is the repeated mention of spending in the verses and their being driven for it. As for attaching the preposition to the words “and whatever you spend” at the beginning of the verse, it is not sound, because [p.240]
(2:273) … who are confined in the way of God, unable to journey in the land; the ignorant supposes them to be rich, from [their] self-restraint. You know them by their mark; they do not ask people importunately …
the spending is made transitive by “upon,” not by “to” — added to its remoteness by reason of the long separation and the lack of accord. “Who are confined (uḥṣirū) in the way of God” — in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, “Abū Jaʿfar” — meaning al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) — “said, it came down concerning the People of the Shelter (al-Ṣuffa); and al-Kalbī related it from Ibn ʿAbbās”; and in al-Durr al-Manthūr it is mentioned that Ibn al-Mundhir brought it out by the way of al-Kalbī, and Ibn Saʿd brought it out from Muḥammad b. Kaʿb al-Quraẓī from Ibn ʿAbbās. The wording of the verse is general, even if the People of the Shelter are, by the requirement of the report, the occasion of the descent. The “confining” is the barring or the confining that comes from the side of the confined one — that is, they barred themselves and confined themselves in the way of God, by reason of their enmity to the idolaters; or because they devoted themselves to the enlistment in the raiding-parties of the Messenger of God and his wars, and so confined themselves upon awaiting that, or upon the service of the religion, or the seeking of the religious sciences. So they are, for the sake of that, “unable to journey in the land” for earning and plying a trade for provision, by commerce and the like. “The ignorant” — of their state — “supposes them to be rich, from [their] self-restraint” and their breaking-in of their souls upon chastity along with the intensity of the need; for the disposition of chastity may be overcome by poverty and the continuance of need, but when it does not cease to be reinforced by self-restraint and the breaking-in of the soul, it is the victor. “You know them” — by what they are in, of poverty and need — “by their mark” and their bearing and the indications of their states upon the need — that is, their mark suffices for the making known of their state, not that the knowing of them as poor is confined to the indication of the mark; for the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) and many of the people used to know the state of many of those mentioned by [direct] experience and acquaintance. The apparent [sense] is that the address in “you know them” is not for the confining of the knowledge to the Messenger; rather the sense is, their state is known by their mark. So they, even if poverty stretches long with them, “do not ask people importunately (ilḥāfan).” In Ibn al-Athīr’s Nihāya: “whoever asks while he has forty dirhams has asked people importunately”; and al-Zajjāj said, “al-ḥaff is to be comprehensive in the asking while one has no need of it” (the like of it in al-Zamakhsharī’s Asās). They also interpreted the importunity as insistence in the asking. The sense of the verse is: they do not ask the kind of people, however much they need, nor does their asking comprehend everyone whose relief of them they deem possible — [such] that they be thereby importunate and insistent by the kind of asking, even if they do not insist with individuals of it. It is not required, in the excellence of those mentioned, that they never ask anyone at all; so it does not blemish their self-restraint that necessity should drive them to mention their state, as it happens, to one who is nearer to the believers than their own selves, or to one who deputizes for him. And it is not far-fetched that no one is free of asking a need, even of his intimates — nay, that may be obligatory or recommended. But in245 [p.241]
(2:273) … And whatever good you spend, indeed God is Knower of it. (2:274) Those who spend their wealth by night and by day, secretly and openly — theirs is their reward with their Lord, and no fear is upon them, nor shall they grieve.
Majmaʿ al-Bayān [it is said] it is said its meaning is that they do not ask people at all — [related] from Ibn ʿAbbās, and it is the saying of al-Farrāʾ, al-Zajjāj, and most of the masters of the [science of] meanings; and it was supported by al-Aʿshā’s saying, “her shank is not to be pressed for weariness or ache” — that is, there is in her no weariness nor ache, that her shank should be pressed; and it was supported in al-Tibyān by their saying “I have not seen his like,” by which they mean that he has no like — as they supported that by Imruʾ al-Qays’s saying, “upon a [track] not to be guided by its beacon,” that is, there is in it no beacon by which to be guided. I say: these witnesses do not resemble the verse; and had what is meant been that they do not ask at all, it would not be sound, from the like of the nobility of the Qurʾān, that it expound their excellence in a wording from which the contrary of what is meant appears, and which does not approach what is meant save by what they mentioned of the far-fetched interpretation. “And whatever good you spend, indeed God is Knower of it” — He will pay you its recompense in full. (274) “Those who spend their wealth by night and by day, secretly and openly — theirs is their reward with their Lord”, and in His hand is its multiplying, “and no fear is upon them, nor shall they grieve.” In what al-Ṣadūq related in al-ʿUyūn, with a chain, from al-Riḍā from his forefathers (peace be upon them), it came down concerning ʿAlī (peace be upon him); and al-Mufīd related in al-Ikhtiṣāṣ, with a chain, from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), that it came down concerning ʿAlī — and that [was] because he had with him four dirhams, and he gave one dirham in charity by night, one dirham by day, one dirham secretly, and one dirham openly. The like of it is related in al-Tibyān from Ibn ʿAbbās, and he said it is what is related from the two of them; and in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, it is what is related from Abū Jaʿfar and Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon them). Al-Kashshāf related it, and al-Wāḥidī ascribed it, in Asbāb al-Nuzūl, to Ibn ʿAbbās; al-ʿAyyāshī and al-Wāḥidī transmitted its report from al-Kalbī, and the like of it also is in the Manāqib of al-Khwārazmī, and [related] from the Ḥāfiẓ Abū Nuʿaym, al-Thaʿlabī in his tafsīr, al-Ḥamawaynī in his Farāʾid, and Ibn al-Maghāzilī. Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd mentioned, in his commentary on the Nahj, that his teacher al-Iskāfī argued, in refuting al-Jāḥiẓ, by the verse’s descent concerning ʿAlī (peace be upon him). In al-Durr al-Manthūr, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd, Ibn Jarīr, Ibn al-Mundhir, Ibn Abī Ḥātim, al-Ṭabarānī, and Ibn ʿAsākir brought out, by the way of ʿAbd Allāh b. Mujāhid from his father from Ibn ʿAbbās, and mentioned the like of it; and in Ibn Shahrāshūb’s Manāqib, that is related from Ibn ʿAbbās, al-Suddī, Mujāhid, al-Kalbī, Abū Ṣāliḥ, al-Thaʿlabī, al-Ṭūsī, al-Wāḥidī, al-Ṭabrisī, al-Māwardī, al-Qushayrī, al-Thumālī, al-Naqqāsh, al-Fattāl, ʿAlī b. Ḥarb al-Ṭāʾī, and ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥusayn, in their tafsīrs. I say: and likewise in Tanwīr al-Miqyās [p.242]246
(2:275) Those who devour usury shall not rise save as rises one whom Satan has prostrated by [his] touch …
— and it is the interpretation ascribed to Ibn ʿAbbās. And also, from al-Thaʿlabī, Juwaybir related from al-Ḍaḥḥāk from Ibn ʿAbbās that it came down concerning the affair of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf and ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (peace be upon him), and ʿAlī’s charity was the dearer of the two charities to God. Al-Wāḥidī and the author of al-Durr al-Manthūr related that the verse came down concerning the owners of horses who feed them in the way of God — but you will hardly find, between this and the verse, a suitability befitting the nobility of the Qurʾān. Now, it is not hidden what there is in charity and spending, of great benefits in the religious and social interests, and for the spender in the refining of his soul from the vice of niggardliness, and in his nearness to God and his deserving the multiplied recompense. Just as it is not hidden that usury, in its harms, is the reverse of that, and stands opposite it in contrariety in all we have mentioned, in complete opposition. And is its harm hidden, in its halting the market of commerce and the exchange of benefits and of aid, honourably, among the people? Do you not see that a man, while he is wealthy, is suddenly [found] to have had usury consume his fortune and leave him unable [to provide] the maintenance of his household? So it suited, in God’s kindness and His direction of His servants, that He follow His command and His rousing [of desire] for spending and charity with His rebuke and His reproach over usury; so He said (magnified be His bounties): (275) “Those who devour usury (al-ribā)” — the root of ribā is increase, and its use became well-known for, specifically, the increase taken in the exchange of part of a kind for its like, of what is measured and weighed, whether that be in a transaction or in a loan. Its prohibition, in sum, is known from the Book, the sunna, and the consensus of the Muslims — nay, it is not far-fetched that it is of the necessities of the sacred law, even if some of its instances are hidden from some people, as in some usurious transactions. What is meant by the usury is the taking of it and the wresting of it from its owner — as in His words in the sūra, (2:188) “and do not devour your wealth among yourselves wrongfully, nor proffer it to the judges that you may devour a party of the people’s wealth,” and in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, (4:2) “do not devour their wealth [by mingling it] with your wealth,” (4:29) “do not devour your wealth among yourselves wrongfully, unless it be a trade by mutual consent.” “They shall not rise save as rises one whom Satan has prostrated by [his] touch” — the khabṭ is the striking upon unevenness, and the beating of the tree that the leaves may scatter from it; “I beat the tree” [means] I brought down its leaves from it, and the name of the leaves fallen from the tree is khabaṭ. The apparent [sense] is that “has prostrated him” is like “he married her” and “he adopted him” — he took him as a khabaṭ, that is, made him like the beaten-down leaves in the succession of his falling, by reason of his touching him. In Majmaʿ al-Bayān, of the generality’s report, and in Tafsīr al-Qummī, of our reports, [it is said] that the Messenger of God was shown the state of these [usurers] the night he was taken by night to the heaven; and in the reports247 [p.243]
(2:275) … That is because they said, “Trade is only like usury,” whereas God has made trade lawful and made usury unlawful. So whoever — an admonition from his Lord has come to him and he desists — his is what has passed …
of al-Durr al-Manthūr, from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibn Masʿūd, Anas, and Ibn Salām: “he shall not rise on the Day of Resurrection save as rises one whom Satan has prostrated” — and by that Majmaʿ al-Bayān interpreted it, and it is the apparent [sense] of the station; and in al-Tibyān [al-Ṭūsī] seems to ascribe it to “it is said.” “That” — that is, their state in the mentioned rising — “is because they” — that is, as a punishment by reason of their having — “said”, in the falsity of their analogy and the error of their objection against the sacred law and its wisdom, “trade is only like usury” in that there is in its practice a profit, and the property-value in one of the two counter-values is greater than it is in the other, whereas trade is current among the people. But they erred in their analogy; for God (magnified be His station) has run the rulings of His sacred law upon [His] wise judgments, and often their aspect appears. “Whereas God has made trade lawful” — for its upholding the order of society and the interest of civilization in the exchange of benefit by the substances of properties and the aspects of need for their particularities, along with its being founded upon justice in the equality of the two counter-values in property-value, by [common] estimation at the time of the sale; the increase arising only incidentally, according to the difference of desire, of time, or of place. “And made usury unlawful” — for its being founded, from the outset, upon the increase in the substance and its value, and upon unfairness and the disruption of the goodliness of society, honourably, for the corruptions we have pointed to, and the closing of the door of benevolence and mutual aid. “So whoever — an admonition from his Lord has come to him” — the admonition [being] the reminding and the frightening from God’s punishment for disobeying Him and contravening His prohibition of usury, whether that be by the frightening God mentioned and frightened them with, of the verses of the Qurʾān (as in al-Tibyān), or by the frightening that traces back to God’s revelation, of what the Messenger (God bless him and his Household) frightens with, then the Imams (peace be upon them), then the preachers — the like of what is related in al-Kāfī, al-Faqīh, and al-Tahdhīb, soundly, from Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “a dirham of usury, with God, equals seventy fornications, all of them with a woman forbidden [by kinship]” — and in another ḥadīth, “in the Sacred House of God”; and in it also, “like a man’s marrying his mother in the Sacred House of God”; and the like of what has come of the Prophet’s (God bless him and his Household) cursing the devourer of usury; and in the reports of al-Durr al-Manthūr and others is the like of that. “And he desists” from usury by reason of the admonition, and repents, “his is what has passed” — the apparent [sense] of it is the past act, namely the taking of usury and the practising of its transaction; that is, that God turns to him in forgiveness and forgives him it. As for intending that what he took in the past becomes lawful to him if he repents, that needs a handling of the wording and an indication pointing to it. In al-Tibyān, Abū Jaʿfar (meaning al-Bāqir, peace be upon him) said: “whoever attained Islam and repented of what he did in the [age of] Ignorance, God set down from him what has passed” — the like of it in Majmaʿ al-Bayān. The report, along with its being mursal, is not known to be an interpretation of this verse, even if its subject be usury; and were it known248 [p.244]
(2:275) … and his affair is to God …
from it that what God set down is the property taken as usury in the past, it would be of the sort of [the maxim] that Islam severs what was before it. “And his affair” — in God’s turning to him in forgiveness and His enabling him for firmness upon it — “is to God”, according to His knowledge of the truthfulness of his repentance and his fitness for being enabled for perseverance in it; for forgiveness is not a natural concomitant of the mere display of repentance. This [is] in respect of the sin. But in respect of the excess property, which is usury in the debt, or [in] one of the two counter-values in the corrupt usurious transaction, the matter is committed to what the legal rulings require concerning people’s properties — even if it was taken in a state of ignorance of usury’s prohibition — not as appears from the two statements of al-Ṣadūq in al-Hidāya and al-Shaykh in al-Nihāya, that what is taken in the state of ignorance of usury’s prohibition need not be returned but is lawful to its taker (which [view] al-Durūs relied upon and some of the later of the later [scholars] inclined to), resting upon reports in which there is no indication of that. For what is related in al-Kāfī from Abū al-Maghrā, in al-Tahdhīb from al-Ḥalabī, and in al-Faqīh — all but its opening, as a mursal — all from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): its opening, related in al-Kāfī and al-Tahdhīb, indicates only the acceptance of repentance from usury, even if its prohibition be severe and aggravated; and the word “ignorance” in the report is like what is in the Qurʾān in the promise of [accepted] repentance for whoever does evil in ignorance — as in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (4:17), al-Anʿām (6:54), and al-Naḥl (16:119) — not the ignorance of the prohibition; then [it indicates] the lawfulness of the inherited property mixed with usury, and it is to be carried upon that which the fifth (khums) purifies, by way of reconciliation. As for its closing portion, which al-Kāfī and al-Faqīh alone [have], and [what is related] from al-Tahdhīb — in view of his words (peace be upon him) “so he wished to strip it away,” and his words “what has passed is his, and let him leave it in what he begins anew” — it indicates only that what has passed of his deed is forgiven him by reason of his repentance and his stripping the usurious property from his wealth. As for what al-Kāfī and al-Tahdhīb ascribe to al-Ḥalabī, and al-Faqīh sends as a mursal from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), concerning one who came to al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): its opening indicates only the lawfulness of the mixed [property], and is to be carried upon that which the fifth purifies, by way of reconciliation, or upon that in which the presence of the forbidden is [merely] possible — and that by reason of his words (peace be upon him) “for the property is your property.” As for its closing, from his words (peace be upon him) “for the Messenger of God set down …” to the end, there is in it no indication that it is a causal [justification] for his words “so eat it in wholesomeness, for the property is your property.” It did not occur in the question that his bequeather was ignorant of usury’s prohibition; so the utmost that appears from it is that one ignorant of usury’s prohibition, if he acted by it, is excused in respect of the sin. So the apparent [sense] is that what is meant by it is the setting-at-ease of the questioner’s heart, [namely] that the one who deals in usury is excused if he was ignorant of its prohibition — “so you are the more entitled to be reassured concerning the sin.” As for what he related in al-Tahdhīb from Muḥammad b. Muslim from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), concerning one who dealt in usury until his property grew much, it comprehends the case of his knowing the usury and his knowledge of its prohibition, if the apparent state249 [p.245]
(2:275) … And whoever returns [to it] — those are the companions of the Fire; therein they abide forever. (2:276) God effaces usury and causes the charities to grow; and God loves not every ingrate sinner. (2:277) Indeed those who believed and did righteous deeds, established the prayer and paid the alms — theirs is their reward with their Lord, and no fear is upon them, nor shall they grieve. (2:278) O you who believe, be wary of God and leave what remains …
and the question be not that. Just as what is apparent from the saying of those who said to him, “nothing is accepted from you unless you return it to its owners,” is that they closed upon him the door of forgiveness and the acceptance of repentance unless he return the usury to its owners, even if he did not know them or it was impossible for him. So al-Bāqir’s (peace be upon him) words, “your way out is from the Book of God: ‘so whoever — an admonition has come to him’,” the verse, are a refutation of these [men’s] severity, and [an affirmation] that truthful repentance and desisting are a way out from the sin of usury to forgiveness. As for the usurious property, it may suffice, in some cases, that he return it to the Imam or his deputy, or to the poor; so the acceptance of repentance is not restricted to returning it to its owners, upon every supposition. And his words (peace be upon him) “and the admonition is the repentance” — he means by it that what the purpose attaches to, in His words “so whoever — an admonition has come to him” up to His words “and he desists,” and by which the sin is forgiven, is only the repentance; as for the property, it has its own rulings. “And whoever returns” — to the practice of usury, deeming it lawful after the Qurʾān came down with its prohibition and that reached him; or to the objection against the sacred law by his saying “trade is only like usury”; or to each of those two, in unbelief and apostasy — and they persist in this returning of theirs until they die, as is the apparent [sense] of the verse — “those” (pointed to with the plural, in view of the sense in the relative) “are the companions of the Fire; therein they abide forever. (276) God effaces usury” — the effacing (maḥq) is the diminishing of a thing, state after state, until it perishes; so God causes usury to perish, even if He gives its taker rein for a time, until He takes it from him, or from those for whose sake he gathered it, like his heirs. “And causes the charities to grow” — that is, increases them, in view of the recompense and the multiplied reward. “And God loves not every ingrate (kaffār)” — a form of intensification in ingratitude; and the more apparent is that what is meant here is ingratitude for the blessing and the not being content with what God has favoured him with of the lawful, until he plunges into what God forbade him of usury — not legal unbelief; the intensification being realized by the repetition of his taking of usury and his ingratitude for the blessings. In al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān the two [authors] carried the unbelief upon the legal [sense], concerning one who deems the devouring of usury lawful; but the first is more general in the rebuke and more apparent in the station. “Sinner” — persisting in the doing of sin. (277) “Indeed those who believed” in God, His Messenger, His Book, and His sacred law, “and did righteous deeds” — of which is the restraining of the soul from what God forbade — “and established the prayer and paid the alms” — He stated the two by name in exaltation of their rank, even though they are of the kind of righteous deeds — “theirs is their reward with their Lord, and no fear is upon them, nor shall they grieve. (278) O you who believe”250 [p.246]
(2:278) … of usury, if you are believers. (2:279) But if you do not, then be apprised of a war from God and His Messenger; and if you repent, then yours are the principals of your properties — you shall not wrong, nor be wronged. (2:280) And if [the debtor] be one of hardship, then a respite until ease; and that you remit as charity is better for you, if you but knew. (2:281) And be wary of a Day in which you shall be returned to God …
and have submitted, “be wary of God” and fear Him, and do not contravene His command and His prohibition, “and leave what remains” for you with the people “of usury, if you are believers” upon the reality of faith — then leave it. (279) “But if you do not” and do not leave it, but persist in taking it, “then be apprised” — that is, know; as though it be taken from knowing by way of hearing with the ear — “of a war from God and His Messenger. And if you repent” of the persistence in taking it, or [if] you took it and repented after that, “then yours are the principals of your properties”, without the usurious increase; “you shall not wrong”, by taking usury, “nor be wronged”, by the diminishing of the principals of your properties.251 (280) “And if there be” — there occur — “one of hardship” — or, and if one of hardship be a debtor of yours; and he is one who does not find what he may discharge it with, other than what is excepted for him in the sacred law — “then a respite until ease”: that is, upon you, in his affair — or, that which God rules in his affair — is a respite from you for him until an ease occurs for him. And of the “ease” is that his report reach the Imam and he discharge [it] on his behalf from the portion of the debtors, if he spent the debt honourably, as al-Kāfī ascribed it to al-Riḍā (peace be upon him) and Majmaʿ al-Bayān sent it as a mursal from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him). “And that you remit as charity” — upon him, [remitting] the debt, wholly or in part — “is better for you” — that is, your almsgiving upon him with that is better, for what is in it of the reward of charity, the relieving of the debtor’s distress, and the settling of his heart in his hardship — “if you but knew” what is in this almsgiving of benefits you cannot do without. The sentence came as a conditional for the increase of the rousing [of desire]; that is, if you knew what is in the mentioned almsgiving of good, then you would desire it, inasmuch as you are rational — so give it in charity. And He expressed the verbal noun by the verb, that it might be more apparent in their advancing to the act of charity and choosing it, and in the charity’s attaching to the debt upon the straitened one. There is no indication in the verse of its ruling being particular to those mentioned in the previous verse, of the debtors by the usurious transaction; for its wording is absolute and its wisdom general — nay, had it been connected, it would have been mentioned with the branching by the fāʾ. So the apparent [truth] is its generality for every debt; and in al-Tibyān it is the saying of the two of them, and in Majmaʿ al-Bayān it is what is related from Abū Jaʿfar and Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon them). What is related in al-Durr al-Manthūr from Ibn ʿAbbās, of what suggests its being particular to the debt of usury, has no weight in its chain — over and above the flaw in its text, its disorder, and its making the counterpart of the debt of usury to be the trust. (281) “And be wary of a Day in which you shall be returned to God” — a returning of the Return and of surrender: be wary of that Day and its mighty terrors [p.247]
(2:281) … then every soul shall be paid in full what it earned, and they shall not be wronged. (2:282) O you who believe, when you contract a debt with one another for a stated term, write it down; and let a writer write between you with justice, and let not a writer refuse to write as God has taught him. So let him write …
by obedience to God and the desisting from His acts of disobedience. “Then every soul shall be paid in full what it earned” — of good and evil; and its being paid in full [is] in view of the paying in full of its recompense, of reward or punishment — “and they” — that is, the people, indicated by “every soul” — “shall not be wronged”, by the diminishing of the reward below the measure of the deed, or its absence, or the increase of the punishment above the measure of the crime, or its initiation without a crime. (282) “O you who believe, when you contract a debt with one another” — that is, you deal by a transaction in which there is a debt — “for a stated term” — and this is an exposition that the term must be determinate, with no uncertainty in it — “write it down” — that is, make it written, [which is] more general than undertaking the writing [oneself] or causing it. This debt is other than the pure loan, for there is no term in it and no account is taken of its being made termed. Perhaps the secret in particularizing the termed [debt] with mention is that the deferred is, in the preponderant [case], exposed to misapprehension and dispute over the term and the conditions — even if the wisdom of avoiding doubt runs in the loan also, in view of the property itself and its measure, as His words “unless it be a present trade which you circulate” etc. point to; just as His words “that is more equitable with God, more upright for the testimony, and nearer that you not fall into doubt” point to [the truth] that the ruling of the writing and the calling of witnesses is for direction, not for obligation — added to what is well-known of the practice of the observant of the law, of not writing in cases of assurance, as in His words “and if some of you trust others, then let him who is trusted render his trust”; and in al-Tibyān, “for the consensus of our age upon that” — that is, upon the absence of obligation. “And let a writer write between you with justice” — that is, upon the reality of the transaction, the term, and the conditions. The command here is to the two contracting parties, like your saying, “O owner of the estate, let a guard spend the night in your estate,” that is, appoint a guard; and we have mentioned that it is for direction. And this is more general than that the writer between them be one of the two, since the purpose is attained by him; or it looks to the state in the age of the descent, in that the preponderant [number] of the Arabs did not write. “And let not a writer refuse” — that is, one who is skilled in writing in the like of the station — “to write”: the prohibition here is for [the removal of] the disliked, since the causing of the writing is not obligatory upon the two contracting parties — so how should it be obligatory upon one other than them? And even if the craft of writing be obligatory by way of sufficiency, as a discharge of the obligation in the order of the world, that does not require that it be obligatory upon every writer to write in every instance. “As God has taught him” and favoured him with the writing, “so let him write” for the people in the place of their need, in thanks for God’s blessing. And this is the foundational and apparent sense of this sentence, and its style252 [p.248]
(2:282) … and let him upon whom is the due dictate, and let him be wary of God his Lord, and not diminish anything of it. But if he upon whom is the due be feeble-minded, or weak, or unable to dictate himself, then let his guardian dictate with justice. And call to witness two witnesses from among your men; and if the two be not [two] men, then a man and two women, from such as you approve of the witnesses — so that if one of the two errs, the one of them may remind the other …
also indicates that the writing is recommended. “And let him upon whom is the due” — and the debt — “dictate”: yumlil and yumlī upon the writer are one in sense — that is, he states the case to him at the writing, that he may write what the debtor states to him. “And let him be wary of God his Lord” in his dictation, for God is his Lord, the Knower of affairs and the Powerful over him, and the One to whom is his return and in whose hand is his punishment. “And not diminish” — in his dictation — “of it” — that is, of the due that is upon him — “anything”, not even of its aspects. The dictation was sought from him in this manner by way of recommendation, because he is the one who knows the due and its aspects, so his dictating according to the reality is nearer to his settling his own soul upon discharge, and to the creditor’s assurance thereby, and to their proceeding with one another honourably. And it is permitted, without dispute, that another dictate, or that the writer write according to his own knowledge, and then the debtor acknowledge it and [witnesses] testify to his acknowledgment. “But if he upon whom is the due be feeble-minded (safīhan)” — in his disposals of his property, such that the Lawgiver annulled his transactions and his acknowledgments therein and referred the matter in that to his guardian — “or weak” in his mind, like the minor, the insane, the simple-minded, and the senile, “or unable to dictate himself” — like the mute and his like, or one who is not skilled at making plain the particulars upon which the transaction proceeded — “then let his guardian dictate” — the one whose guardianship is appointed in the sacred law — “with justice”, upon the reality of the transaction and its intended particulars. The guardian over the minor is his father and his paternal grandfather; and if the two be not found, then the guardian of the rest of those mentioned, namely the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), or the Imam, or the deputy of one of the two — even by the generality of the appointment, like the legal magistrate or his deputy, even [if only] for that particular transaction. “And call to witness two witnesses from among your men” — the Muslims. “And if the two be not” — that is, the two present witnesses who are of the Muslims — “[two] men, then a man and two women” — that is, like [the case] in which a man and two women’s testimony suffices; but not the absolute witness, rather “from such as you approve of the witnesses” — that is, of such as the kind [of people] approve in testimony and rely upon their testimony, by reason of their being characterized by rectitude and the uprightness that deters them from lying and from laxity in testimony. And two women were made the substitute for the man out of caution against “that one of the two errs” and goes astray in the rendering of the testimony — for the kind of women are farther from the retention of these matters than the kind of men — “so that she may remind” — that is, at the time of the erring, “the one of them may remind the other,” and the two of them confer over the matter, each of them reminding the other of some particular253 [p.249]
(2:282) … And let not the witnesses refuse when they are called. And do not weary of writing it down, small or great, to its term. That is more equitable with God, more upright for the testimony, and nearer that you not fall into doubt — unless it be a present trade which you circulate among yourselves, in which case there is no sin upon you that you do not write it. And call witnesses when you sell to one another; and let neither writer nor witness be harmed …
of the matter, so that the one who erred recalls the reality of the matter with its particulars. This is in the station of the calling of witnesses sufficient for the establishing of the due thereby; so it does not conflict with what indicates its establishment by [one] witness and the oath. “And let not the witnesses refuse when they are called” — to bear the testimony; and it is not fitting that one refuse when he is called for that, as in al-Tahdhīb’s sound [report] and his [other] report from Abū al-Ṣabāḥ and Samāʿa from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), and his report also from al-Kāẓim, and al-Kāfī’s report from Abū al-Ṣabāḥ and his sound [report] from al-Ḥalabī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), and the like of them al-ʿAyyāshī’s reports. The prohibition is for [the removal of] the disliked; and witnessing to that is the tenor of the verse in its commands and prohibitions, and the two Imams’ (peace be upon them) saying “it is not fitting.” “And do not weary” — that is, do not tire nor become vexed — of “writing it down” — that is, the debt, in its aspects — “small or great,” for laxity in any of that may occasion dispute and the loss of something of the dues, “to its term” — that is, the debt’s. “That” — that is, what preceded of the rulings of the writing, the calling of approved witnesses, and the not wearying of thoroughness in the writing — “is more equitable with God” — that is, more just and more fitting that you be equitable and just — “and more upright for the testimony, and nearer” — and closer — “that you not fall into doubt” after that concerning the amount of the debt, its particulars, and its term. And these matters are sought for the attaining of their praiseworthy ends, which you may [well] need. “Unless it be” — the transaction between you — “a present trade” in which there is no debt, but “which you circulate” — that is, you pass the counter-value and the thing valued “among yourselves,” each of you taking the counter-value of what he paid in the trade — “in which case there is no sin upon you” — that is, no straitness or scruple, of what you were directed to free yourselves from in the affair of the debt — so there is no harm in “that you do not write it” — that is, that trade. “And call witnesses when you sell to one another”; and upon the recommendation of that is our consensus in the present [trade] — nay, the agreement of all save the People of the Literal [school] — and it is the sound [view] in other than it. “And let neither writer nor witness be harmed” — the apparent [reading], by reason of the preference of the foundational [sense] and of what suits the station, of thoroughness in the just social rulings and the wisdom of the regard of the Knower of the unseen for the events of the future, is that yuḍārra be [read as] passive, its root being yuḍārar with the fatḥa of the first rāʾ, which was then made quiescent, and the second voweled with the fatḥa in avoidance of the meeting of the two quiescents by reason of the jussive of the prohibition — that is, let there not be brought upon the writer, by reason of his writing, nor upon the witness, by reason of his testimony, a harm of what is in the very [act of] writing [p.250]254
(2:282) … And if you do so, it is a transgression in you. And be wary of God; and God teaches you, and God is Knower of all things. (2:283) And if you are upon a journey and do not find a writer, then a pledge taken in hand. And if one of you trusts another, then let him who is trusted render his trust, and let him be wary of God his Lord …
and its consequences, and in the very [act of] testimony and its rendering; and there is nothing upon him but its rendering, without harm. And upon the passive [reading] is the interpretation of Ibn ʿAbbās, according to what is in Tanwīr al-Miqyās and al-Durr al-Manthūr’s report, and its report also of ʿUmar’s reading upon his releasing the assimilation of the two rāʾs. “And if you do so” and harm them, “it is a transgression” — that is, a going-out from obedience and uprightness — [one] existing “in you”, as one says “in him is such a malady,” “he has what he has,” “in him is madness” — as came in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf, al-Muʾminūn, and Sabaʾ. “And be wary of God; and God teaches you” — so thank His bounty and act by what He has taught you of what has your setting-right in it and your way to the God-wariness of God, for you are ignorant. “And God is Knower of all things. (283) And if you are upon a journey and do not find a writer” and you wish to make your debt secure, “then a pledge taken in hand” — that is, your securities are pledges taken in hand. The rahn is a verbal noun of “I pledged the thing, I pledge it,” and is used for the thing pledged, as “endowment” is used for the thing endowed; and it is frequent in verse and prose, of which is [the verse]: “if they kill me, then my honour’s pledge is with them …” Its plural is rihān, like thamar and thimār. It may be said that the restriction of “taken in hand” here is only for the sake of the securing, on a journey in which there is no writer, depending upon the taking-in-hand and the attaining of this benefit in it. As for the pledge in residence, which is prescribed by the sunna and consensus, the taking-in-hand is not stipulated in it — as is the creed of Mālik, of the generality; rather it suffices, for its benefits, that the interdiction for the remaining creditors not attach to the pledged [thing]. But in al-Tibyān: “and of the conditions of the pledge’s validity is that it be taken in hand, by His words ‘then a pledge taken in hand’”; and [related] from his Khilāf is the contrary of that. And in Majmaʿ al-Bayān: “so if it is not taken in hand, the pledge is not contracted, by consensus”; and in al-Tahdhīb’s report from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), “there is no pledge save what is taken in hand” (the like of it from al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr). But it suffices to prevent [the claim of] consensus, what is in al-Sarāʾir and al-Ghunya, of the transmission of the absence of dispute in its validity when it gathers conditions the two [authors] mentioned — the taking-in-hand not being among them; and in Kanz al-ʿIrfān, that the [leading] investigators are upon the non-stipulation — nay, in al-Sarāʾir, that most of the [scholars] of attainment hold that the taking-in-hand is not a condition in the binding [force]; and the report was weakened by the shared [transmitter]. The completion of the discourse is in [the books of] jurisprudence. “And if one of you trusts another” and does not seek a security from him, but entrusts him with his debt, “then let him who is trusted render his trust” — namely the debt; and it is possible that it comprehend all trusts, even the deposit, in view of its suggestion of the causal [reason] and of this case’s being one of the instances of the general. “And let him be wary” — thereby — “of God his Lord”255 [p.251]
(2:283) … And do not conceal the testimony; and whoever conceals it, his heart is sinful; and God is Knower of what you do. (2:284) To God belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth. And whether you disclose what is in your souls or conceal it, God will bring you to account for it; then He forgives whom He wills and punishes whom He wills; and God is Powerful over all things. (2:285) The Messenger believes in what has been sent down to him …
and the Owner of his affair in this world and the Hereafter. “And do not conceal the testimony; and whoever conceals it, his heart is sinful” — “sinful” [being] the predicate of “indeed,” and “his heart” the agent; or “sinful” a fronted predicate and “his heart” the subject, the sentence [being] the predicate of “indeed.” The sin was ascribed to the heart in view of its being the instrument of the concealing, and to aggravate the sin by making plain the corruption of the source of deeds — for the corruption of the heart is the root of evil and the prompter to corruption. And “sinful” was said, rather than expressing it by the verb, to indicate the permanence of the sin by the permanence of the concealing. “And God is Knower of what you do. (284) To God belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth” — and He is the Creator of all and its Governor, and in His hand is its affair, and you are of that sum; so is anything of your affairs hidden from Him? “And whether you disclose what is in your souls or conceal it, God will bring you to account for it.” In al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān, that what is meant by the verse is what the command and the prohibition take in, of beliefs and volitions, of what is veiled from us; and upon that is al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from a man, and from Abū ʿUmar al-Zubayrī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him). Al-Durr al-Manthūr adduced upon this many reports, differing, conflicting, and disordered: of them, from Ibn ʿAbbās, that it came down concerning testimony, its establishing and its concealing — and the objection to the report is, what is the sense of the reckoning upon its disclosing and its establishing? And of them, from Ibn ʿAbbās and ʿĀʾisha, that it is not abrogated; and Ibn ʿAbbās interpreted “what they conceal” by the deeds which the guardian [angels] did not apprise themselves of. And of them, from Abū Hurayra and Ibn ʿAbbās, that it was abrogated by His words “God does not burden a soul save to its capacity”; and in the report from Ibn ʿAbbās [is] its interpretation by the whispering of the soul, and from him its interpretation sometimes by the soul’s inner talk and sometimes by [outright] denial. And of them, from Ibn Masʿūd and ʿĀʾisha, that its abrogator is His words “to it is what it earned and against it is what it acquired.” But this is not upright: for what does not enter into the human’s capacity, God does not burden him with, because burdening with it is ugly — so it cannot be established, [such] that it should be abrogated by His words “God does not burden a soul save to its capacity”; nor is this verse an abrogation of what does enter into the capacity. As for His words “to it is what it earned and against it is what it acquired,” were its affirming particular to the outward acts, there would be in it no indication of the negation concerning other than them, [such] that it be an abrogator.256 “Then He forgives whom He wills” — of whoever seeks forgiveness and repents, if he be fit for being turned to in forgiveness — “and punishes whom He wills; and God is Powerful over all things. (285) The Messenger” — Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household) — “believes in what has been sent down to him [p.252]
(2:285) … from his Lord, and the believers [also]. Each believes in God, His angels, His Books, and His messengers: “we make no distinction between any of His messengers.” And they say, “We hear and we obey. Your forgiveness, our Lord! And to You is the journeying.” (2:286) God does not burden a soul save to its capacity. To it is what it earned, and against it is what it acquired. “Our Lord, do not take us to task if we forget or err …”
from his Lord.” In Tafsīr al-Qummī, soundly, from al-Ṣādiq, and in Tafsīr al-Burhān from ʿAlī the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), and from Muqtaḍab al-Athar, with a chain, from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household): that when he was taken by night to the heaven, God (mighty and exalted) called out to him, “the Messenger believes in what has been sent down to him from his Lord,” and the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) answered on his own behalf and on behalf of his community, “and the believers [also]. Each believes in God, His angels, His Books, and His messengers: ‘we make no distinction between any of His messengers.’” Perhaps it is a pointing to whoever was carried by tribal partisanship or corrupt purposes to deny a messenger, after the proof of his messengership stood, denying him because he is not of his own people or because he opposes his corrupt purposes; and to those to whom it was said, (2:85) “believe in what God has sent down,” [and] they said, “we believe in what was sent down upon us,” and they disbelieve in what is beyond it — as in the eighty-fifth verse. “And they say, ‘We hear and we obey’” — an informing from God of their excellence in obedience and faith. “‘Your forgiveness’” — in the accusative by a verb of its own wording, namely “forgive”; and its sense is “we ask You Your forgiveness, O our Lord” — and in it is a gentleness in the asking, by a kind of argument upon His mercy; and the sense is, “You are our Lord and the Guardian of our affair, and whither should the servant go save to his Master?” The object of the forgiveness was not mentioned, because its seeking is general for everyone who needs forgiveness and has not gone out, by his evil choice, from his fitness for it. “‘And to You is the journeying’” — that is, our journeying in our affairs in this world and the Hereafter. (286) “God does not burden” — by His command or His prohibition — “a soul save to its capacity”: the capacity (wusʿ) is what the human’s power comprehends and enters into its scope; and the capacity was ascribed to the soul by this consideration, the sense being “save what its power comprehends.” God magnified Himself by that, [as] an indication of His being sanctified, in His perfection, from frivolity and from the ugly, in burdening with what is not within power; and it is admissible that it be of the speech of the Messenger and the believers, magnifying God for His justice. “To it” — that is, to the soul — “is what it earned” of good: God pays it to it in full, and nothing of His excellence and His recompense escapes it. “And against it is what it acquired” of evil — that is, against it is its burden and its deficiency, not against another. He expressed the evil by “acquiring” for the sake of the reproach of its doer and the argument against him; for “acquiring” indicates the working and the plying in the seeking of the gain, pointing thereby to [the truth] that the doing of evil was by a choice and a plying from the soul in seeking it, even though it is an evil from which reason and the sacred law have restrained it. “O our Lord” — and Owner of our affair and our refuge in our affairs — “do not take us to task if we forget or err” — from “error,” the opposite of deliberateness; and much257 [p.253]
(2:286) … Our Lord, do not lay upon us a burden as You laid it upon those before us. Our Lord, do not burden us with what we have no strength for. And pardon us, and forgive us, and have mercy upon us. You are our Master; so help us against the disbelieving folk.”
of forgetfulness and error occurs by reason of laxity and shortcoming in guarding oneself so as to attain what one is charged with, and this is of that in which the taking-to-task for the contravening of the reality is not ugly; so they asked God that He not take them to task in that. “Our Lord, do not lay upon us a burden (iṣran)” — that is, a heavy load of onerous obligations, even for the wisdom of disciplining — “as You laid it upon those before us”, for their rebellion. “Our Lord, do not burden us with what we have no strength for” — of trial and testing, or of punishment in the abode of this world, nay and the Hereafter. “And pardon us” — pardon (ʿafw) is the dropping of a right, and what is meant is the dropping of the right of punishment — “and forgive us” — forgiveness (ghufrān) is the turning away from the sin — “and have mercy upon us”, which is a comprehensive supplication. “You are our Master” and the Guardian of our affair and our refuge, not another; “so help us against the disbelieving folk,” that we may be enabled to manifest Your religion and Your obedience in the religion of truth.258
Medinan; two hundred verses
In the Name of God, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful. (3:1) Alif, Lām, Mīm. (3:2) God — there is no god but He — the Living One, the All-sustainer. (3:3) He has sent down to you the Book with the truth, confirming what was before it; and He sent down the Torah and the Gospel (3:4) before, as a guidance for mankind; and He sent down the Criterion (al-Furqān) …
(1) “Alif, Lām, Mīm” — its knowledge is with God and the trustees of His revelation. “God — there is no god but He — the Living One, the All-sustainer”: something of its interpretation has passed in the Verse of the Throne. (2) “He has sent down to you the Book” — namely the noble Qurʾān — “with the truth,” it being “confirming what was before it” — that is, what preceded it of the divine Books; it bears witness to the truth of their ascription to the divine revelation and the truth of what is in them of realities. Or [it means] that, by its conforming, in its majesty, precisely to the tidings of the previous divine Books concerning it, and their description and extolling of it, it is the confirming instance for them in those tidings and that extolling. “And He sent down the Torah” — namely the reality sent down upon His messenger Moses — “and the Gospel” — namely the one true Book sent down upon His messenger Jesus — “before”, the Torah and the Gospel being “a guidance for mankind; and He sent down the Criterion.” In Tafsīr al-Qummī, soundly, from ʿAbd Allāh b. Sinān from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) on the verse: “the Criterion is every decisive matter; and the Book is the whole of the Qurʾān, which whoever was before it of the prophets confirms.” The like of it [is related] from the tafsīr of [p.254]
(3:4) … Indeed those who disbelieved in God’s signs — for them is a severe punishment; and God is Mighty, Lord of retribution. (3:5) Indeed God — nothing is hidden from Him in the earth nor in the heaven. (3:6) He it is who forms you in the wombs however He wills. There is no god but He, the Mighty, the Wise. (3:7) He it is who has sent down to you the Book …
al-ʿAyyāshī. And in al-Kāfī from him (peace be upon him): “the Qurʾān is the whole of the Book, and the Criterion is the decisive [matter], the acting upon which is obligatory” (the like of it from al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr). (3) “Indeed those who disbelieved in God’s signs” and denied their being sent down from God, and died upon their unbelief, “for them is a severe punishment” for what they disbelieved; “and God is Mighty” in the majesty of His station, “Lord of retribution” — by His might and His power — from the disbelievers. (4) “Indeed God” is Knower of all things: “nothing is hidden from Him in the earth nor in the heaven. He it is who forms you in the wombs” — the womb is the organ in which the foetus is formed, from the mother, up to the time of birth — “however He wills”, by His dazzling wisdom. And of the signs of that is that the outward organs of the human, though they are numbered [and few], He forms by His power and His wisdom in such a way that each of humankind is distinguished from the other. As for the wisdom of this forming, and what is in each of the organs, outward and inward, of dazzling wise purposes, great benefits, and wondrous secrets, that is greater than can be described. And what human knowledge has reached of it, this station does not have room for a part of it. In the new anatomy is what dazzles the minds with the splendours of its wise purposes and its wonders; and what appears of the human’s organs and the instruments of his senses suffices for the exposition of the wondrous wise purposes, to everyone of right guidance and perception. And all of that runs, in His wise judgment, His creating, and His forming, upon ordered laws. And in this is sufficiency in the argument that this is of the making of a Knowing God who creates by His will and His wisdom. “There is no god but He, the Mighty” by His power and His authority, “the Wise” in His creating and His works. (21:22) “Had there been gods in the two of them other than God, the two would have gone to ruin,” and (23:91) “each god would have taken away what he created, and some of them would have risen up over others.” (5) “He it is who has sent down to you the Book” — according to what the divine wisdom required, of its being upon the finest course in [modes of] discourse, and the most brilliant style in the speech of the Arabs, in that wherein they vie in glory in the arena of eloquence and contend in the station of displaying the beauties of speech and its surpassing merits — that it might be, by that evidentiary miracle of its, a manifest proof against them that it is a sending-down from the Lord of the worlds, as we pointed to something of the aspect of that in the first chapter of the Introduction. And upon that, its noble style must comprise the kinds of indications, the graces of allusions, the subtleties of pointings, and the fine points in the kinds of figurative usage, as is the case in eloquent speech. And wisdom may require [p.255]259
(3:7) … of it are verses decisive (muḥkamāt) — they are the mother of the Book — and others ambiguous (mutashābihāt). As for those in whose hearts is a deviation, they follow what is ambiguous of it, seeking sedition and seeking its interpretation; and none knows its interpretation …
that the verse come with a general or absolute wording while what is meant by it is confined to a kind or an individual which is the occasion of the descent, the circumstantial indications and their evidences pointing to it — like your saying “this” and “these” when you direct the pointing, by the indication, to a specified particular. And there is no doubt that what we have mentioned is of what breaks in with ambiguity, at the first outset, in its affair and in what its interpretation issues to. And that is either from the side of the hiddenness of the indication — even by reason of the deficiency in some understandings — or from the side of the obstinate contention in its affair according to [men’s] purposes, even if [the indications] be rational and self-evident; or [the indications] may be pointed to by the noble Qurʾān itself, or by the sound ḥadīth, or the amply transmitted, or the mass-transmitted. And for the sake of what we have mentioned of the wisdom, the glorious Book came to be, in respect of the aspects of indication in its wordings upon what is meant, [such that] “of it are verses decisive” — their expressions have been made decisive, by the requirement of wisdom, in their indication upon what is meant, by their running upon the explicit and the plain, together with the reinforcement of that by the judgment of self-evident reason and the requirement of the context. So their indication has been guarded, in respect of the language and usage, from the fancy of [alternative] possibility and the stirring of ambiguity — for those upright in perception and in the knowledge of the balances of speech, and cleared of the lapses of ignorance and the seduction of caprices and their toying with realities. And these decisive verses, each one of them in view of itself, is a mother, a root, and a reference for what it clarifies by its decisiveness, of the exposition of a reality, or the founding of a foundation, or the legislating of a ruling, or the clarifying of an ambiguous [verse] and the reinforcement of its indication; but in view of their sum in the glorious Qurʾān, and their being — by consideration of their decisiveness — a single reference making plain what is meant of the realities of the glorious Book, “they” — by their sum and the regard to it — “are the mother of the Book” and its reference, by which the intent of the realities of the sending-down becomes clear, and by which the indications of the ambiguous [verses] are reinforced, and their indication clarified, and the dust of fancies removed from them. “And” of it [are] “others ambiguous,” upon what we have pointed to of the styles of eloquent speech, the aspects of its beauties in discourse, and what wisdom requires. “As for those in whose hearts is a deviation” — that is, they preferred blindness over guidance, chose misguidance by their caprices, and swerved their hearts and inclined them away from the course of the truth and the acknowledgment of it, and made them feel the deviation and the wretched swerving — “they follow”, by their caprices and the impulses of their straying and the impulses of their leading-astray, “what is ambiguous” — in the manner we have pointed to — “of it” — that is, of the glorious Book; so they alter what it means, sophisticate in the indication of its contextual pointers, and turn it away from the cases of its descent, shutting their eyes to its manifest pointers and the clear proofs of their evidences, and cling to the ambiguous, “seeking sedition and seeking its interpretation” — that is, seeking to find a way to toying [p.256]260
(3:7) … save God — and those firmly rooted in knowledge …
with their interpretation of it according to their caprices, and turning it away from the import of its descent, and seeking to seduce the people thereby. “And none knows its interpretation” — that is, the interpretation of the whole Qurʾān — “save God and those firmly rooted in knowledge” — not these who have had no foot established for them in knowledge; nay, (83:14) “rather their hearts have been sullied by what they used to earn,” so they trod nothing but the mire of ignorance with the deviation of caprices. Now, concerning this ambiguous [matter] which the verse intends, people have a great dispute, even if some of them confused the locus of contention. So of the people [there are those] who stop, in the verse, at the word of Majesty and begin anew with His words “and those firmly rooted in knowledge,” by making “those firmly rooted” the subject and its predicate “say, we believe” — thereby excluding those firmly rooted in knowledge from the excellence of knowing the interpretation and lowering them from a rank they deserved and which the noble Qurʾān heralded in this radiant context, since it described them, in the course of it, with firm rootedness in knowledge. And of the people [there are those] who held to the coordinating of “those firmly rooted” upon the word of Majesty, and that God (magnified be His bounties) opened for those firmly rooted in knowledge the door of the knowledge of the interpretation, by His kindness, and honoured them with this rank by His teaching. This dispute is of what is not settled by [mere] assertions, nor by “perhaps” and “would that”; rather there must be in it the adducing of the evidences that remove the ambiguity of the cases of the wāw in coordinating the single [word] or the sentence, or in beginning anew. The utmost that is argued for the first saying is what al-Durr al-Manthūr gathered of its reports: of them, from Ibn ʿAbbās, he said, “its interpretation is [on] the Day of Resurrection; none knows it save God.” And from him also, in the exposition of the aspects of the Qurʾān: “and an interpretation which the learned know, and an interpretation which the Arabs know by their language, and an interpretation whose interpretation none knows save God — and whoever claims its knowledge is a liar.” And in another report: “and an interpretation which the learned expound, and an ambiguous [portion] whose interpretation none knows save God; and whoever claims its knowledge besides God is a liar.” And by the way of Ṭāwūs from Ibn ʿAbbās also: he used to recite it “and none knows its interpretation save God,” and say, “those firmly rooted in knowledge say, we believe.” And from al-Aʿmash, he said, “in the reading of ʿAbd Allāh [is]: ‘and indeed the reality of its interpretation is only with God, and those firmly rooted in knowledge say, we believe.’” And al-Durr al-Manthūr mentioned the report of this saying also from the opinion of ʿĀʾisha, Abū al-Shaʿthāʾ, ʿUrwa, ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, and Mālik. And it mentioned also ḥadīth that warn against disputation in the Book of God and the following of the ambiguous of it — of them what ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Saʿīd, ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd, the Six Collections, and others brought out from ʿĀʾisha from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), that he recited the verses and said: “so when you see those who dispute in it, they are those whom God meant, so beware them.” And in al-Bukhārī’s wording: “so when you see those who follow what is ambiguous of it, beware them.” And Ibn Jarīr combined the two expressions. — This argument is refuted, after averting the gaze from the chains and what is in them, [thus]: that the Day of Resurrection which is in Ibn ʿAbbās’s ḥadīth261 [p.257]
(3:7) … [who] say, “We believe in it; all of it is from our Lord.” And none remembers save the possessors of understanding.
is outside the locus of the dispute and the tenor of the verse and its subject, of interpretation; rather the locus of the dispute is what he meant by his words “and an interpretation which the learned know,” or “which they expound”; and his words in another ḥadīth, “its outward is the recitation and its inward is the interpretation — so sit with the learned by it, and keep apart from the foolish by it.” As for what is related of the [variant] reading, it is refuted by the mass-transmission of other than it and the consensus of the Muslims upon paying no heed to it. As for the opinions whose transmission we have mentioned, that is an exercise of judgment in the locus of contention without evidence. And as for the warning against whoever disputes and follows the ambiguous, that is but a warning against the straying who lead astray, whom the noble verse described — not [against] those firmly rooted in knowledge. This [being so], as for the second saying, its proof is the indication of reason, the sound transmission from the two parties, and the tenor of the noble Qurʾān. As for the indication of reason: the ambiguous which we have pointed to, and to the aspects of its ambiguity, and which the deviators from the truth follow and seek, seeking sedition in the affair of the religion, the order of the community, and the rulings of the sacred law, is very much in the Qurʾān. And of what is not sound in reason is that, with this abundance, God should deprive of its interpretation and the knowledge of it His noble guiding Messenger, His trustees over the revelation, and the learned of the community — so that the great portion of the noble Qurʾān would have no benefit in its being sent down to humankind at all, not even to the most noble Messenger, and no effect but the echo of its wordings and the blackness of its letters. As for the ḥadīth by our way: in Tafsīr al-Qummī, soundly, from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), he said: “the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) is the most excellent of those firmly rooted in knowledge; he knew all that was sent down in the Qurʾān, of the sending-down and the interpretation; and God would not send down upon him anything whose interpretation He had not taught him — and his successors after him know it, all of it” (and from al-ʿAyyāshī the like of it; and in al-Kāfī from one of the two [Imams], peace be upon them, the like of it). And in al-Kāfī, soundly, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “we are those firmly rooted in knowledge, and we know its interpretation” (the like of it from al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr). And in Nahj al-Balāgha and others, the saying of the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī (peace be upon him): “and indeed I brought them the Book comprising the sending-down and the interpretation.” And of the ways of the People of the Sunna, what is in al-Durr al-Manthūr: Ibn Jarīr, Ibn al-Mundhir, and Ibn al-Anbārī brought out, by the way of Mujāhid from Ibn ʿAbbās, his words, “I am of those who know its interpretation.” And Aḥmad, al-Ṭabarānī, and Abū Nuʿaym in al-Ḥilya brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās that the Messenger of God said: “O God, give Ibn ʿAbbās wisdom and teach him the interpretation.” And al-Ḥākim brought out in his Mustadrak, and Ibn Abī Shayba: “O God, give him understanding in the religion and teach him the interpretation.” And al-Ḥākim also brought out: “O God, teach him the interpretation of the Qurʾān.” And Ibn Māja, Ibn Saʿd, and al-Ṭabarānī brought out: “O God, teach him wisdom and the interpretation of the Book.” So look, at the least, to Kanz al-ʿUmmāl and its abridgment in the Book of Virtues. And were the knowledge of the interpretation confined to God and His Messenger and those firmly rooted in knowledge did not know it, the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) would not have supplicated with it for Ibn ʿAbbās; and what is the sense of supplicating for what is not hoped to occur? And al-Ḥākim brought out, sound upon the conditions of al-Bukhārī and Muslim — as is his custom in the Mustadrak — from Maʿqil b. [p.258]262
(3:7) … [who] say, “We believe in it; all of it is from our Lord.” And none remembers save the possessors of understanding. (3:8) “Our Lord, do not make our hearts swerve after You have guided us …”
Yasār, from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household): “Act by the Book of God; and whatever is ambiguous to you, ask about it the people of knowledge — they will inform you,” the ḥadīth. And that which is ambiguous to them is the ambiguous. And Aḥmad and Abū Yaʿlā in their two Musnads, al-Bayhaqī in his Shuʿab, al-Ḥākim in his Mustadrak, Abū Nuʿaym in al-Ḥilya, Saʿīd b. Manṣūr in his Sunan, and Ibn al-Sakan from al-Akhḍar al-Anṣārī, and al-Daylamī from Abū Dharr — all from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) — that ʿAlī (peace be upon him) fights over the interpretation of the Qurʾān as he (God bless him and his Household) fought over its sending-down. And the purport of the ḥadīth is that the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) was knowing of the interpretation of the Qurʾān upon its reality, so he fights in defence of it and in the establishing of its realities in the religion and its foundations, as the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) fought in defence of its sending-down. As for the indication of the Qurʾān’s tenor: the extolling of those firmly rooted in knowledge with this lofty extolling and this surpassing description suits only their being coordinated in the station of the knowledge of the interpretation, and their firm rootedness in it, and their glory in the faith in its import upon a clear insight into their affair. As for their saying “we believe,” were faith in the descent of its wording, without knowledge of its meaning and without acting by it, meant by it, what would have suited it is describing them as steadfast in faith and in submission to the Messenger of God in the sending-down. So then His words “they say, ‘we believe in it’” are a circumstantial [state] — that is, they know its interpretation while they say “we believe,” that is, in what they have come to know of its import; for much of it is religious foundations whose obscuring, at the time of the sending-down, wisdom required — by the absolute, or the general, or the metonym, or otherwise — together with the exposition of their interpretation and the particularity of what is meant by the circumstantial indications or the sunna, as its like occurred in the verse of the alms-tax, since its measure, the time of its taking, and the case of its obligation were left [unstated] until the sunna [came], as a breaking-in of the people in its affair and its difficulty upon them. And instances of that will pass, God willing. “All” — of the decisive and the ambiguous, the sending-down and the interpretation — “is from our Lord” and the Guardian of our affair, the Wise in His exposition to us and His guiding us to the truth. “And none remembers” — of the direction of the noble Qurʾān and this noble verse — “save the possessors of understanding. (8) Our Lord” — that is, O our Lord and Owner of our affair, and He in whose hand is our enabling and our forsaking. And the suitability of the tenor requires that this be a supplication from those firmly rooted in knowledge for the enabling toward firmness upon guidance by what God taught them of the interpretation. “Do not make our hearts swerve” — that is, do not forsake us and strip from us, for the evil of our deeds, Your kindness and Your enabling, so that our hearts should swerve and deviate from the truth and uprightness and we should seek sedition by toying with the interpretation of the Qurʾān — “after You have guided us”, by Your kindness, to the knowledge of the truth. And the fine point in the ascription of the making-to-swerve to God is the fine point in the ascription of the leading-astray to Him (magnified be His station); namely the heralding of what His enabling has of the life-giving effect263 [p.259]
(3:8) … and grant us mercy from Your presence; indeed You are the Bestower. (3:9) Our Lord, indeed You are the Gatherer of mankind for a Day in which there is no doubt; indeed God does not fail the appointment. (3:10) Indeed those who disbelieved — neither their wealth nor their children shall avail them anything against God …
and what His forsaking has of destructive ruin — as we mentioned in the penultimate of the witnesses of the second station of the Introduction concerning the ascription of the leading-astray, and made its affair plain in the exegesis of the sixth verse of Sūrat al-Baqara. “And grant us mercy from Your presence” — by kindness and enabling — “indeed You are the Bestower. (9) Our Lord, indeed You are the Gatherer of mankind for a Day in which there is no doubt” — namely the Day of Resurrection and the mustering from the graves for the recompense. How should there be doubt in it, when You have informed of it in Your noble Book with repeated, emphasized plainness and the decisive proof? “Indeed God does not fail the appointment” — and He turned from the pronoun to the explicit [noun], because the word of Majesty has in it a pointing to divinity, its perfection, and its sanctity; as though it were an argument for the absence of failure of the appointment, in the sense that the God is too majestic for that — so ours is certainty and complete trust in what He promised of the Return and the recompense. (10) “Indeed those who disbelieved” and died upon their unbelief — “neither their wealth nor their children shall avail them anything against” the punishment of “God” (as in al-Tibyān, and Majmaʿ al-Bayān in the exegesis of the hundred-and-twelfth verse, and in al-Jalālayn in the exegesis of the two verses), or His trial, or His retribution, or His wrath, or the absolute [class] of what is feared — so “from/against” is for the beginning, as your saying “I availed you in the war against its terrors from the right wing.” “Anything” — of availing, so it is in the station of the absolute object of “avail”; and it is possible that it be a direct object of “avail,” that is, they shall not avail anything of God’s punishment, nor requite him — so “of” would be partitive. The wealth and the children were mentioned because they are of the most important of what the ignorant human relies upon for what he fears of calamities, and they are that for which he sells his Hereafter and his religion. And al-ghinā, [both] shortened and lengthened, is like kalām [in form], the absence of need; and “so-and-so availed” [means] he undertook the need and sufficed in place of another — and to this returns al-Tibyān’s saying, “the being singled out by what negates the need.” Its use became frequent for [cases] in which the sufficer or the one made sufficient is of what does not reason, as its use for the repelling of what is not wanted and the deliverance from it — as in his saying, “when he said ‘enough for me,’ he said, ‘by God, an oath, that you avail from me the whole of what is in your vessel’” — that is, what is in your vessel; and ʿUthmān’s saying to the bearer of the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī’s (peace be upon him) letter, “avail it away from me.” And for the sake of what we have mentioned, the lexicographers came to circle around this sense, so they interpreted the availing by benefit, or the sufficing of the burden, or the discharging, or the turning-away, or the restraining. And often the object of the availing and the attachments to it are left [unstated], for the absence of need of that in the important [point] of the station, as Ṭarafa’s saying in his Muʿallaqa [p.260]264
(3:10) … and those — they are the fuel of the Fire. (3:11) Like the wont of Pharaoh’s folk and those before them: they denied Our signs, so God seized them for their sins; and God is severe in punishment. (3:12) Say to those who disbelieve: “You shall be overcome and gathered to Hell” — and evil is the resting-place.
— “and do not make me like a man whose care is not as my care, nor who avails what I avail and my presence.” And the object may be left and the intended attachments mentioned, as you say “I slaughtered with the knife,” “I defended you with myself,” and “I availed in the war against its assaults, or against its champions, or from its right wing,” for instance — so “from/against” in this example is, like [in] the verse, for the beginning, as [related] from al-Mubarrad and some [others]; and that is because the availing-away of the dreaded comprises the sense of deliverance from it. [Al-Zamakhsharī] said in al-Kashshāf, and [likewise] al-Mughnī, that “from” in the verse is in the sense of “instead of” — that is, their wealth and their children will not avail them instead of God’s mercy. I say: this interpretation is not upright while keeping the availing upon its [proper] sense; and how should God’s mercy be availing for the disbelievers, in the sense of the dreaded things’ being availed, sufficed, and discharged by the mercy, unlike the wealth and the children, in that they are not so instead of the mercy? Unless it be claimed that the word “availing” is here used in the sense of “benefit”; but that is figurative, and were it sound, it would need an indication, which is lacking here — for the sense of benefit is other than the sense of availing: you say, in the like of this station, “I availed on his behalf,” and you do not say “I benefited on his behalf”; added to [the point] that His words “shall not avail them” bar the use of the word “availing” in the sense of “benefit,” because the attachments and the prepositions are only in view of the meanings, not in view of the wordings. When you have known this, then say what you will of the interpretation of the author of al-Manār, where he said, “the sense of ‘from’ here is substitution, that is, their wealth and their children will not be for them a substitute for God who avails them of Him.” And I say: why did this exegete forget that the sending-down of the noble verse is “shall not avail them,” not “shall not make them rich”? And where is “from” from substitution? And the like of that is what is related from Abū ʿUbayda, that the sense of “from” in the verse is the sense of “with.” “And those” — that is, those who disbelieved — “they are the fuel of the Fire”; and shame upon them and destruction. (11) “Like the wont (daʾb) of Pharaoh’s folk” — daʾb is a verbal noun of “he was wont, he is wont,” when one habituates a thing and persists in it; that is, the state of these mentioned and their wont is like the wont of Pharaoh’s folk, that is, his people, “and those before them” of the communities: “they denied Our signs” — this is an interpretation of their wont, that is, like the wont of those mentioned in the denying — “so God seized them”, prevailed over them with the punishment, “for their sins” — that is, by reason of them — “and God is severe in punishment. (12) Say to those who disbelieve: ‘You shall be overcome and gathered to Hell’ — and evil is the resting-place”: the resting-place (mihād) is what the human spreads out for his rest; and Hell was expressed as a “resting-place” in mockery of them, and of their evil choice and their outcome. In Tafsīr [p.261]265
(3:13) There has indeed been for you a sign in the two hosts that met: one host fighting in the way of God and another disbelieving, seeing them twice their like by the sight of the eye. And God strengthens with His help whom He wills. Indeed in that is a lesson for those possessed of sight.
al-Qummī, that these are the Banū Qaynuqāʿ of the Jews, when they broke their covenant with the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) after the event of Badr; so he raided them and frightened them with what God had done to the idolaters, and they vaunted their men — so God sent down the verse; and they were overcome and driven out from their dwellings and their properties into exile, abased and rejected. In al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn Isḥāq, Ibn Jarīr, and al-Bayhaqī in al-Dalāʾil brought it out from Ibn ʿAbbās. And there is mentioned in al-Tibyān a saying that it is an informing to the Jews that the idol-worshippers — and of them Quraysh — will be overcome; and that is upon this [variant] reading, which is contrary to the mass-transmitted and customary [one]; and other than that is transmitted in al-Kashshāf. The first is nearer to what is correct. (13) “There has indeed been for you” — this verse also is of what God commanded His Messenger to say to them — “a sign”, an indication and an admonition, “in the two hosts” — two parties of the people — “that met” in the war: “one host” of the two “fighting in the way of God, and another” host of the two “disbelieving.” It appears from al-Qummī that they are the two hosts of the Muslims and the idolaters at the event of Badr; and that is al-Durr al-Manthūr’s and Ibn Jarīr’s report from Ibn ʿAbbās, and that is what suits the address to the Banū Qaynuqāʿ. “Seeing them twice their like by the sight of the eye” — it is well known that the Muslims at Badr were three hundred and thirteen men, and what is well known in the report is that the idolaters were about nine hundred and fifty. So the sense is that the Muslims used to see the throng of Quraysh as twice their like, according to the eye’s seeing of the throng and the form of the mustering, not according to the tallying of the number and the knowledge of the quantity. God showed them to them as twice their like, lest they belittle them and be lax in warring them out of belittling and reckoning them weak; and He showed them to them below their number in measure, lest their multitude terrify them so that they should shrink from engaging them and fail one another in meeting them — as God said in Sūrat al-Anfāl, (8:44) “and when He showed them to you, when you met, as few in your eyes, and made you few in their eyes, that God might carry through a matter that was to be done.” And it is said, concerning its meaning, that the idolaters, after the war was joined, God forsook them, so they came to see the Muslims as twice their like, though they were about a third of them. The first, in view of the two verses, is more apparent and nearer. “And God strengthens with His help whom He wills” — ayd is strength and taʾyīd is strengthening; and God strengthened the Muslims with that dazzling victory. “Indeed in that is a lesson” and an admonition “for those possessed of sight”: it is admissible that “sight” here be in the sense of insight, as the lexicographers mentioned; and it is admissible that the sense of the eye be meant by it — for the showing of a thing by the divine will contrary to custom is a sign and a lesson for those possessed of sight who know the custom of vision. Or [it means] that that victory, with what the Muslims were in of fewness and weakness of equipment, and what the idolaters were in of strength of equipment and multitude of number, is a lesson for whoever saw that.266 [p.262]
(3:14) Adorned for mankind is the love of desires — of women, sons, heaped-up heaps of gold and silver, marked horses, cattle, and tillage …
of the fewness and weakness of equipment, and what the idolaters were in of strength of equipment and multitude of number, is a lesson for whoever saw that. (14) “Adorned for mankind” — by kind, in relation to all the mentioned [things] — “is the love of desires” — that is, the things desired, as one says “so-and-so is my request” and “this is my petition and my need”; and “of” is explicative — and had the word “desires” been upon its literal [sense], it would have been made transitive and connected to what follows by “for” — “of women, sons, and heaped-up heaps of gold and silver.” In al-Tibyān, concerning the qinṭār: “and it is said it is the fill of a bull’s hide with gold, and it is what is related from Abū Jaʿfar” — meaning al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) — and in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, “and Abū ʿAbd Allāh,” meaning al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him). In al-Durr al-Manthūr, ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd, Ibn Abī Ḥātim, and al-Bayhaqī brought it out from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī. I say: that is one of the possibilities mentioned in the books of the language; and al-Durr al-Manthūr adduced from the Messenger of God several conflicting reports — that it is a thousand two hundred ounces, and in a report that it is a thousand ounces, and in another a thousand dinars, and in another a thousand two hundred dinars. And it ought to be that the report from al-Bāqir, al-Ṣādiq, and Abū Saʿīd was in the case of a question about the qinṭār of gold, or that their words “or silver” dropped from it. And “heaped-up” [means] gathered as qanāṭīr, as their saying “thousands amassed.” “And marked horses” — that is, sent out to graze at pasture, because of their multitude — “and cattle” — namely camels, cows, and sheep, in their kinds — “and tillage” — namely what is planted and sown. There is not mentioned in these [things] what is forbidden under its own title, so that God’s adorning of it should be more intense in contrariety to God’s sanctity than the commanding of indecency and wrong, from which God magnified Himself — and His is the glory — by the sanctification of His majesty and His transcendence above it. So there is no bar to God (blessed be His name) being the One who adorns the love of the mentioned desired things by way of their lawfulness, as the sacred law undertook to expound and delimited it by its bounds. He adorned the love of them for the human kind as a groundwork for the goodliness of their society, the survival of their kind, the order of their economy, their interlacing in the generality of benefits, and the order of exchange therein. He adorned the love of women and sons that it might be easy for husbands to bear with the companionship of women, their maintenance, and their deficiency, by kind, in character and uprightness — so that by that bearing the affair of procreation and generation might be ordered. And He adorned the love of sons that humankind might seek generation and undertake the well-known hardships in their maintenance and their rearing, the goodly forbearance with them in their upbringing, and the regard for the setting-right of their affairs and their outcomes. And He adorned the love of the mentioned properties that people might rise to work and to civilization, so that God’s blessings upon His servants might abound and they might attain thereby pleasure and enjoyment according to their love for their desired things, and know from them a specimen of the bliss [p.263]267
(3:14) … That is the enjoyment of the life of this world; but with God is the goodliness of the [final] return. (3:15) Say: “Shall I inform you of what is better than that? For those who are Godwary, with their Lord, are gardens beneath which the rivers flow, abiding therein forever, and purified spouses …”
of the Hereafter that endures — so that the longing for it might drive them to righteous deeds, and incapacity should not master people or beguile them by a cold [affected] Sufism. And the ḥadīth are abundant that abstinence in this world is the scrupulous avoidance of God’s forbidden things; and the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī (peace be upon him) stated plainly that he practises austerity in his livelihood because he is the head of the Muslims and the one looked to in emulation — so that whoever is pressed hard by poverty and touched by hardship may be consoled by his state (peace be upon him). And in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf, (7:31) “O Children of Adam, take your adornment at every place of prayer, and eat and drink, and be not extravagant; indeed He loves not the extravagant,” (7:32) “say, ‘who has forbidden the adornment of God which He has brought forth for His servants, and the good things of provision?’ Say, ‘they are for those who believe, in the life of this world’” — they enjoy them according to their truthful faith, upon the prescribed bounds, running upon the interests and the setting-right — “purely,” free of the consequences of punishment and chastisement, “on the Day of Resurrection. Thus do We set out the signs in detail for a folk who know.” And this adorning is only for the wisdom by which God created for the human an appetite and faculties by which he enjoys, in the life of this world, what God has made lawful to him — and He placed in the lawful a sufficiency for the need and an ample measure for enjoyment, and delimited its bounds by the prohibition of reason and the sacred law against indecency, wrong, and insolence, and what has in it the corruption of the person, the kind, and its order; and He admonished in that, warned, threatened, and cautioned, and sent the messengers for that, sent down the Books, legislated the sacred laws, appointed the Imams as guardians over their establishment, and enlisted for them the learned of the community. Indeed — that which Satan adorns is not the portion by which the human kind endures, and the nobility of civilization, and by which the order of society stands; rather it is, specifically, the forbidden things and what has in them the corruption of the order. “That” — that is, what was mentioned of the desired things — “is the enjoyment of the life of this world”, the perishing [one]; “but with God is the goodliness of the [final] return” — the place of recourse; and it is the return in which there is no perishing and no toil, and no sullying in its bliss — so it is the absolute goodly. (15) “Say” — O Messenger of God, to the people — “shall I inform you of what is better than that?” Of what is “for those who are Godwary” of God, desire His good pleasure, and seek what is with Him and what He has prepared for them; “with their Lord” there are “gardens beneath which the rivers flow” — that is, the water-channels of their trees, not in such a way that they should all be of the sort of swamps; and it is not hidden what is in the Qurʾān’s description of surpassing, distinguished delight — “abiding therein forever” — that is, in the gardens; there is no perishing for them nor for their bliss, as the enjoyment of the life of this world and its people perish, and no expulsion for them from them — “and purified spouses”, by what the rational desire, of the purity of spouses in constitution and character,268 [p.264]
(3:15) … and a good pleasure from God; and God is Seeing of the servants. (3:16) Those who say, “Our Lord, indeed we have believed; so forgive us our sins and shield us from the punishment of the Fire.” (3:17) The steadfast, the truthful, the devoutly obedient, the spenders, and those who seek forgiveness in the last hours of the night. (3:18) God bears witness that there is no god but He, and [so do] the angels and those possessed of knowledge — upholding justice …
and in that pleasant bliss; “and a good pleasure from God” — and it is the utmost end for the possessors of understanding in the bliss. “And God is Seeing of the servants” and what they do and what they deserve of recompense. (16) “Those who” — in this is an exposition of the descriptions of those who are Godwary; and how noble and how goodly they are as descriptions — “say, ‘Our Lord, indeed we have believed’” — that is, they believe and acknowledge to God their faith and make it a means to God in the supplication for their deliverance and the forgiveness of their sins — “‘so forgive us our sins and shield us from the punishment of the Fire.’ (17) The steadfast” — [refraining] from acts of disobedience, and upon the acts of obedience, and upon the calamities of the age, in submission to God’s command and contentment with His decree — “and the truthful” — and how noble and goodly a description! — “and the devoutly obedient” — persevering in worship — “and the spenders”, as God commanded them and called them to it, “and those who seek forgiveness in the last hours of the night”: the saḥar is the time just before the break of dawn, and it is the finest of times, by kind, for the presence of heart in worship and the turning to intimate discourse and supplication, and the farthest of them from the intrusion of ostentation. (18) “God bears witness” — the root of witnessing is from presence, attendance, and eyewitnessing; then it became widespread for what arises from that and its like, of the informing of a matter or a thing in order to establish it, and of this [sort] is the [present] station — so one says “he bore witness to such” — “that He” — that is, [witness] that “there is no god but He.” And God’s witnessing is His informing of His divinity and His oneness by the manifest indications and the decisive proofs; and of that is His creating of the world, the evidences of wisdom, the laws of the dazzling order in it, and the permanence of its ordering upon that. “And” witness to that also [is borne by] “the angels and those possessed of knowledge” — and they are those whom ignorance has not blinded from looking, at the least, to the order of the world and the permanence of its ordering, so they bore witness to that from knowledge, insight, and a valuable proof by which they guide the ignorant and withstand the obstinate. “Upholding justice (qāʾiman bi-l-qisṭ)” — in al-Tibyān: “and it is related in our exegesis that in the verse there is a fronting and a delaying, its estimation being ‘God bears witness that there is no god but He, upholding justice, and the angels,’ the verse” — that is, upon its being a circumstantial [state] of the pronoun “He.” But in it [is the objection] that the like of this mursal does not stand to establish anything, let alone its clashing with the mass-transmitted, of the reading and the codices. And in al-Kashshāf he allowed its being a circumstantial of the pronoun also, upon the customary reading. I say: what is most suited to the nobility of the noble Qurʾān, in its tenor and its glorious style, is that it be a circumstantial of the word of Majesty; for it is that which has the heading of the speech and its aspect, by which the distant of its sum is brought near and the disjoined connected — not its pronouns. So everything fit to be connected to it, of a circumstantial or otherwise, the heading269 [p.265]
(3:18) … there is no god but He, the Mighty, the Wise. (3:19) Indeed the religion with God is Islam; and those who were given the Book did not differ …
of the speech and its aspect draws it to itself, and it is not connected to another save by an indication — as is the case in every speech that has a portion of eloquence and uprightness. And they interpreted al-qisṭ by justice (al-ʿadl); and the apparent [truth] is that nearness in meaning is intended, not synonymy and identity in concept. For usage and what has come in the noble Qurʾān conflict with that: because one says ʿādil [just] and one does not say qāsiṭ save of the tyrant and his like; rather one says, for what they make to mean “just,” muqsiṭ. And aqsaṭa is made transitive by “to,” as in His words in Sūrat al-Mumtaḥina, (60:8) “that you deal kindly with them and act justly toward them” — whereas al-ʿadl is not made transitive by “to.” And I suppose that of them to be like the interpreting of ẓulm by jawr, though jawr is made transitive only by “upon,” while ẓulm is transitive by itself; for they interpret the word by what is near it in meaning where they find no synonym for it. And it is apparent, in what comes readily to mind, that jawr is more intense in transgression than ẓulm. And it has come amply in the ḥadīth of the two parties concerning the Mahdī (peace be upon him), that “he shall fill the earth with equity (qisṭ) and justice (ʿadl) as it was filled with wrong (ẓulm) and tyranny (jawr).” And in Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt, (49:9) “so make peace between the two of them with justice, and act equitably” — and the apparent [sense] of that is the founding [of a new sense], not emphasis. And God said in Sūrat al-Māʾida, (5:8) “witnesses with equity” — so qisṭ is more suited to witnessing than ʿadl. And “the upholder of a thing” is its realizer, its executor, and its perpetuator; that is, God bore witness, and He is the executor of equity and the truth and its perpetuator, in witnessing and other than it. So how mighty it is, and how great its rank, as a witnessing! “There is no god but He” — and this is an emphasis of the thing witnessed to, after the informing of it, as you say “I bear witness to such, and it is so” — “the Mighty” in His divinity and His oneness, “the Wise” in His works. (19) “Indeed the religion with God is Islam.” The interpretation of Islam has passed in the hundred-and-twenty-second verse, and the interpretation of “religion” in the hundred-and-eighty-ninth of Sūrat al-Baqara; and that the religion of Islam is the religion of the natural disposition (fiṭra), in which the evidences of reason and of contemplation in the kingdom of the world have shone forth, and the summons of the prophets and the messengers, and the plainness of the divine Books to which the indication of the miracles has borne witness. And there has remained, in what was altered of the Torah and the Gospel, what suffices in that. “And those who were given the Book did not differ” — concerning this religion; and they are the Children of Israel, and specifically the Jews and the Christians. For the preponderant [number] of the Children of Israel wavered in idolatry from the day they passed by the idol-worshippers — and that after they had submitted to Moses and seen the shining signs in Egypt and the splitting of the sea for them and their crossing in it upon dry land — so they said to Moses, “make for us a god as they have gods”[Author’s note]; and on the day they worshipped the calf; and they continued to waver in idolatry through their generations, as is [p.266]270
(3:19) … save after the knowledge had come to them, out of insolence among themselves; and whoever disbelieves in God’s signs — indeed God is swift at reckoning. (3:20) So if they dispute with you, say: “I have submitted my face to God, and [so has] whoever follows me.” And say to those who were given the Book and to the unlettered: “Have you submitted?” …
well known in their history and their books. And many of the Christians went to the tripling of the gods, the deifying of the Messiah, and the annulling of the sacred law by [their own] opinion, until that at last engrossed them.[Author’s note] “Save after the knowledge had come to them” — of [God’s] oneness and the sound religion, from the indication of reason, the natural disposition, the dazzling miracles, the clear signs, and the plainness of their Books, as something of that has remained in what they altered. Yet the difference arose among them “out of insolence among themselves” — from the disbelievers against the affirmers of oneness; or [it means] an insolence occurring among them against the truth and a rebellion against what they know. And that insolence continued among them until they denied the messengership of the Messenger of God, his Qurʾān, and what is in it of the knowledge of the truth and its sacred law — after the evidentiary miracle had indicated that, and their [own] Books in the glad tidings of the Messenger of God and his Qurʾān. “And whoever disbelieves in God’s signs” and denies their clear indication — “indeed God” is their Reckoner, their Punisher, and their Requiter for their unbelief on the Day of Resurrection, and He is “swift at reckoning.” (70:6) “Indeed they see it as far off,” and We see it as near.[Author’s note] (79:46) “The day they see it, it will be as though they had not tarried save an evening or its forenoon.”[Author’s note] (20) “So if they dispute with you” and contend with you, O Messenger of God, concerning [God’s] oneness and what you have brought — “then say” to them, in the argument that refutes them: you have agreed with us in some of your sayings and in what you have of the Books concerning the oneness of God in divinity, sanctity, and perfection, as is the truth and the reality; and is there any escape from that? (10:32) “What then is there, after the truth, but error? So whither are you being turned away?”[Author’s note] Indeed I “have submitted” and committed and left “my face to God” — I do not turn it away, by the straying of caprices, from God, His oneness, His obedience, and the religion of truth — “and whoever follows me” upon the manifest truth has likewise submitted his face to God. And the coordination of the relative upon the attached nominative pronoun in “I have submitted” was permissible by reason of the presence of the separator. “And say”, O Messenger of God, after this manner of arguing, “to those who were given the Book” of the Jews and the Christians, “and to the unlettered” — the people of the Mother of Cities, namely Mecca; or the Arabs, because by kind and in the preponderant [case] they do not read or write, but are upon what their mothers bore them of ignorance of that — for these unlettered ones also acknowledge God, His divinity, His sanctity, and His perfection — “have you submitted” and entered [p.267]271
(3:20) … So if they submit, they have been guided; and if they turn away, then upon you is only the conveying; and God is Seeing of the servants. (3:21) Indeed those who disbelieve in God’s signs and kill the prophets without right, and kill those of the people who enjoin justice — give them tidings of a painful punishment. (3:22) Those are they whose works have come to nothing in this world and the Hereafter, and they have no helpers. (3:23) Have you not seen those who were given a portion of the Book …
into God’s peace, so that you do not war Him nor oppose Him by idolatry and rebellion against His signs, His Messenger, and His Qurʾān? “So if they submit, they have been guided” — and that is the mighty triumph. “And if they turn away” from Islam and oppose God and His Messenger, then nothing of their reckoning is upon you, nor is it upon you that they not turn away — “then upon you is only the conveying” and the summons to God and the religion of truth. “And God is Seeing of the servants” — He knows what will be from you and from them, and He enables whoever is fit for the enabling. (21) “Indeed those who disbelieve in God’s signs and kill the prophets without right” — an exposition that the killing of the prophets can only be without right — “and kill those who enjoin justice (al-qisṭ)” — namely the truth and the honourable; and it is said, justice — “of the people” — of the righteous servants other than the prophets — “then give them tidings” — meaning the disbelieving killers — “of a punishment” in the Hereafter “painful”; and He expressed it by the giving of glad tidings in mockery of them and in reproach of them. And the fāʾ entered upon “give them tidings” because the predicate here is in the position of the recompense branching upon the unbelief and the killing of the prophets, as in His words (5:38) “the thief, male and female — cut off their hands.” (22) “Those are they” who, for the sake of what was mentioned of their unbelief and their killing of the prophets and the righteous, “whose works have come to nothing” — those of them in which there was goodness, like benevolence to the poor and the distressed and the like of that; so they have no effect in the deserving of recompense nor in the lightening [of punishment] for them, but have fallen — “in this world and the Hereafter; and they have no helpers” to help them against God and deliver them from His punishment. (23) “Have you not seen” — that is, has your knowledge not reached — “the” state of “those who were given a portion” — that is, a share and a part of a thing — “of the Book”: it is not far-fetched that what is meant here is the Torah and the Gospel, that is, of the kind of the Book, even if it is related that the occasion of the descent is some of the Jews. And it was expressed as “a portion of the Book” in view of [the fact] that the Torah and the Gospel had been altered and changed in most of the two of them, and there did not remain of the two, upon what was sent down, save a part — and it is the portion that remained of the Torah for the Jews and the Christians contemporary with the Messenger of God, and of the Gospel that remained for the Christians among them. For there has remained of the Torah Abraham’s faith and his oneness [of God], and his history making plain that he was before Jewry and Christianity and their sayings in religion and [God’s] oneness. And there has remained in it the glad tidings to the Children of Israel [p.268]272
(3:23) … who are summoned to the Book of God that it may judge between them, then a party of them turns away, and they are averse.
that God will send a prophet from their brethren — that is, from the offspring of Ishmael, not from themselves — and will put His word in his mouth, as in verses fifteen to twenty of chapter eighteen of Deuteronomy. And there has remained in it the ruling of retaliation in life, eye, tooth, and wounds, as in verse twenty-one of chapter nineteen of it. And there has remained in the Gospel something of the summons to the acknowledgment that God is the true God alone and that Jesus is His messenger, as in verse three of chapter seventeen of the Gospel of John. And there has remained the glad tidings of the Messenger of God, Aḥmad — “Periklutos” — even if they altered it to “Parakletos” and expressed it as “Fāraqlīṭ” and “the Comforter,” as in chapters sixteen and seventeen of the Gospel of John. And the state of these [people] is that they “are summoned to the Book of God” — namely the Qurʾān, concerning which the proof stood against them that it is the Book of God, by the evidences of its evidentiary miracle and the glad tidings of their [own] Books — “that it may judge between them, then a party of them turns away” — and they are the majority — “and they are averse” from the Qurʾān and the evidences of its proof; and of them are those who were enabled for Islam and submission to God’s rulings in His glorious Qurʾān. Now, the requirement of the two reports of al-Durr al-Manthūr and Majmaʿ al-Bayān from Ibn ʿAbbās is that what is meant by the Book of God to which they are summoned is the Torah. And that suffices as a weakener of the two reports; for the Torah was at that time altered with the most intense alteration, as you see it now — so how should the Qurʾān name it “the Book of God”? It is related in al-Durr al-Manthūr from Ibn ʿAbbās that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) summoned the Jews to the judgment of the Torah, [namely] that Abraham was not a Jew. And this report is weakened — after averting the gaze from its chain — [by the fact] that there is not in the Torah that Abraham was not a Jew; and the utmost that is in it is the mention of the disordered history, of which is that God revealed to him that his seed — that is, the Children of Israel — would be enslaved and abased in a strange land, that is, the land of Egypt, [for] four hundred years;[Author’s note] and the Torah also said, in chapter twelve of Exodus, that the span was four hundred and thirty years — this, along with [the fact] that the Samaritan copy and the Septuagint copy have increased the disorder and made the mentioned span a span for the Children of Israel’s and their fathers’ dwelling in the land of Egypt and Canaan; and we have spoken upon this disorder in the second part of the book al-Hudā.[Author’s note] So does the Messenger of God summon them to nothing at all in the like of this disordered book? And in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, from Ibn ʿAbbās, the Messenger of God summoned them [p.269]273
(3:24) That is because they said, “The Fire shall not touch us save for numbered days”; and what they used to fabricate deluded them in their religion. (3:25) So how [will it be] when We gather them for a Day in which there is no doubt, and every soul is paid in full what it earned, and they shall not be wronged? (3:26) Say: “O God, Owner of the sovereignty, You give the sovereignty to whom You will …”
to the judgment of the Torah in the stoning of the fornicator. And this report also is weakened by its content, let alone its weakness by its being a mursal and by what we mentioned in weakening the two reports. For what is found in their Torah is that the stoning is upon the girl whose husband did not find her a virgin, and upon the betrothed maiden if she fornicates, and upon the one who fornicates with her, as in chapter twenty-two of Deuteronomy. As for the one upon whom stoning falls in the sacred law of the Messenger of God, the extant Torah mentions concerning him only killing, as in the mentioned chapter and chapter twenty of Leviticus. So the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) does not judge by stoning contrary to his own sacred law, and argue by the altered Torah, and name it the Book of God. (24) “That” — that is, their turning away and their obstinacy against what they know of the truth, out of a delusion on their part — “is because they said” — that is, by reason of their supposing, in their corrupt belief, that their punishment for opposing the truth is easy and short in its span, and ought not to bar them from preserving the league of their caprices and their tribal partisanship — “the Fire shall not touch us” and we shall not be punished by it “save for numbered days”, few [in number]. “And what they used to fabricate deluded them in their religion” — which they were obliged to hold to, but they opposed it toward the caprices of partisanship and its straying — by their saying “the Fire shall not touch us save for numbered days”; so they disbelieved in the religion of truth, the Messenger of God, and his Book, and went astray and led astray. (25) “So how” [will] their state [be] “when We gather them” in the mustering after their death “for a Day in which there is no doubt” — namely the Day of Resurrection — “and every soul is paid in full what it earned” — that is, is requited with its recompense fully, that is, completely — “and they” — that is, the people of the mustering — “shall not be wronged” by the diminishing of the reward or by [unmerited] punishment? O Messenger of God, do not grieve at the People of the Book’s rebellion against the religion of truth and their backing of the idolaters in unbelief; for God will make you prevail over them, and will honour you and abase them, and will give you the authority to manifest His religion. (26) “Say: ‘O God’” — its sense is “O God,” and it is as though the doubled, fatḥa-voweled mīm at the end of the word is a substitute for the particle of calling, for the two do not gather; and the rajaz-poet’s saying “I say, ‘O Allāhumma, O Allāhummā’” is anomalous. “‘Owner of the sovereignty’” — the sovereignty (al-mulk) is domination and rule; and God is its Owner, and in His hand is its affair, and He is the Creator of that over which the rule is and of him who is a ruler. His is the sovereignty of the heavens and the earth. “‘You give the sovereignty’” — and the temporary rule — “‘to whom You will’” of the people, that You give it to. And God’s giving of the sovereignty is of [p.270]274
(3:26) … and You wrest the sovereignty from whom You will …
two aspects. The first is the special giving, to him who is distinguished among His servants by rectitude and fitness for the perfecting of humankind and their setting-right in the religious sciences, the excellent traits of character, the goodliness of society, and the attainment of a righteous, felicitous future — and this is the sovereignty of the messengers, the prophets, and the Imams of truth. The second is His giving not in this manner, but according to the course of the [divine] measuring-out in the world and the requirement of the causes which God has decreed in this creation, [as] a blessing in the life of this world, delimited for that by the bounds of noble character and the rational and legal obligations and the prohibition of its forbidden things — just as He favoured the human with the faculties that he might enjoy them in the obligatory, the recommended, and the permitted. So whoever goes upright upon the highroad, goes upright, and gains thereby perfection and the goodliness of recompense; and whoever strays by his evil choice, strays, and so loses his portion and merits what he merits. And each of the giving of sovereignty, of power, and of the faculties has an effect and an end which comes about through the goodness or the evil of the human’s choice. In Sūrat al-Naml, concerning the affair of Solomon the prophet, in his humility to God arising from his chosen infallibility, are his words in the matter of Bilqīs’s throne: (27:40) “so when he saw it settled before him, he said, ‘this is of my Lord’s bounty, that He may test me whether I give thanks or am ungrateful; and whoever gives thanks, gives thanks only for his own soul; and whoever is ungrateful — indeed my Lord is Self-sufficient, Generous.’” And in Sūrat Yūnus, (10:88) “and Moses said, ‘Our Lord, You have given Pharaoh and his notables adornment and wealth in the life of this world; our Lord, that they may lead astray from Your way’” — the verse; that is, and their outcome was that they should lead astray from Your way by their evil choice. And the discourse was separated by his saying “our Lord” to make plain that what is meant by the lām is the outcome, not the causal [purpose]. And in Sūrat al-Baqara, (2:258) “have you not seen him who disputed with Abraham concerning his Lord, because God had given him the sovereignty?” And of what ought to be alerted to is that al-Shaykh in al-Tibyān said that the pronoun in “God had given him the sovereignty” is a metonym for the one who disputed with Abraham, and ascribed its returning to Abraham to “it is said.” Then he said, concerning “You give the sovereignty to whom You will,” what amounts to: it is not permissible that God give the sovereignty to the transgressor, by His words (2:124) “My covenant does not reach the wrongdoers” — as though he looked, in this verse, to the first of the two aspects of the giving of sovereignty, and in the verse of al-Baqara to the second aspect. And perhaps the appearance of this mutual repelling arose from al-Tibyān’s abridgment; and for that reason its like did not occur in Majmaʿ al-Bayān. And in Tafsīr al-Burhān, from al-Kāfī by its chain from ʿAbd al-Aʿlā, and from al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr from Dāwūd b. Farqad — both from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) — is a report to be construed upon the questioner’s regard to the first aspect of the giving of sovereignty, which ought to run from the Messenger of God to the Imams of his House and his kindred, one of the Two Weighty Things. “And You wrest the sovereignty from whom You will” to wrest it from, by his death275 [p.271]
(3:26) … and You honour whom You will and You abase whom You will; in Your hand is the good; indeed You are Powerful over all things. (3:27) You make the night pass into the day and You make the day pass into the night …
or by transferring it to another. “And You honour whom You will” to make honoured, “and You abase whom You will” to make abased — by making each of the two parties, according to the course of the measuring-out running by Your wisdom in the order of the world through Your causing of the causes, and making him [come to be] in a state that is counted honour, or another that is counted abasement; and You may make each of them so by a special will, of help and aid, or of forsaking and humiliation. “In Your hand is the good” — He confined Himself to mentioning the good because the station is a station of teaching by the supplication for good and for help, and an intimation of the glad tidings of the two. “Indeed You are Powerful over all things” — and Yours, of the manifestations of power and the wonders of disposal in the creation, is what dazzles the minds. For You (27) “make the night pass into the day” — the making-to-pass (īlāj) is the entering of a thing into a thing that contains it and veils it; and the sense of making the night pass into the day is that what, in the daily rotation, is night, or a part of the night, in some of the seasons of the year and the places that are far from the equator, He makes day in another season or another place. And God has measured out the order of the world by His dazzling wisdom in the course of the earth, or of the sun, upon the zone of the constellations; and in this wondrous order are mighty wise purposes, traces of power, and the generality of mercy and of civilization, [such] as dazzle the minds. And the night and the day upon the circuit of the equator[Author’s note] are equal, and they are also nearly equal in all the earth on the day of its entering, or the sun’s entering, into the constellation of the Ram or of the Balance; and the two differ by increase and decrease according to the times and the positions on the earth in the northern and southern circuits, by an ordered, balanced difference for which there is no place of mention here. For in the northern circuits the night takes, after the perfection of its length, to decrease — differing regularly — from the entering of the earth or the sun into the constellation of the Goat, and is made to pass into the day; so the day takes to lengthen after the perfection of its decrease, or [comes to be] existing and increasing after its non-existence, and continues upon that until the entering into the constellation of the Crab, whereupon it then begins to increase [the other way]. And in the southern circuits the night takes, after the utmost of its length, to decrease and continues upon it, and what decreases of it is made to pass into the day, upon what we have pointed to of the balance and the ordering — and that from the time of the entering into the constellation of the Crab to the entering into the constellation of the Goat, whereupon it then begins to increase. “And You make the day pass into the night” — that is, You enter the day into the night, so the day takes to decrease in the northern circuits, upon the course of what we have mentioned, from the time of the entering into the constellation of the Crab to the entering into the constellation of the Goat. And in the [southern] circuits [p.272]276
(3:27) … and You bring forth the living from the dead and You bring forth the dead from the living, and You provide for whom You will without reckoning. (3:28) Let not the believers take the disbelievers as allies rather than the believers; and whoever does that is not of God in anything …
southern, from the time of the entering into the constellation of the Goat to the entering into the constellation of the Crab — until each of the night and the day beneath the two poles reaches, at one time nearly, by alternation, about six months. So glory be to the Wise, the Powerful! “And You bring forth the living from the dead and You bring forth the dead from the living” — it is said, like the bringing forth of the egg from the bird and the bringing forth of the chick from the egg; or the bringing forth of the animal from the sperm-drop and the sperm-drop from the animal. And it is said, He brings forth the believer from the disbeliever and brings forth the disbeliever from the believer; and in Majmaʿ al-Bayān that is related from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon them). And in Tafsīr al-Burhān, Ibn Bābawayh said, in a ḥadīth from the Imam al-ʿAskarī, he said, “my father related to me from his father from his grandfather al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him),” and mentioned that. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, Saʿīd b. Manṣūr, Ibn Jarīr,[Author’s note] Ibn al-Mundhir, Ibn Abī Ḥātim, al-Bayhaqī in al-Asmāʾ wa-l-Ṣifāt, and Abū al-Shaykh in al-ʿAẓama brought out from Salmān, in a ḥadīth, the like of that. And Ibn Mardawayh brought out from Salmān also the like of that. And Ibn Mardawayh also brought out from Ibn Masʿūd, or from Salmān, from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), the like of that. And ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Ibn Saʿd, Ibn Jarīr, Ibn Abī Ḥātim, and Ibn Mardawayh brought out, by the way of al-Zuhrī from ʿAbd Allāh, that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), concerning the affair of Khālida the believing woman, daughter of al-Aswad b. ʿAbd Yaghūth the idolater, said, “Glory be to Him who brings forth the living from the dead.” And Ibn Masʿūd brought out, by the way of Abū Salama from ʿĀʾisha from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), the like of it. “And You provide for whom You will” to provide, “without reckoning” and regard for the measure of the provision and exactitude in the giving, as one does who fears deficiency in his kingdom. (28) “Let not the believers take the disbelievers as allies” — in aid and affection, for kinship, love, friendship, or an alliance before Islam; and the verse is a prohibition to the believers that they take the disbelievers as allies “rather than the believers” — and “from” is for the beginning of the limit, and “rather than / short of” (dūn) is for the place that is before the place to which it is annexed; then its use became widespread as a metonym for the not reaching, with a thing, to that to which it is annexed, and the placing of it in another. So what is meant is: let not the believer turn aside with his alliance from the believers to the disbelievers. “And whoever does that is not of God in anything” — of good pleasure from God, or kindness, or enabling, or [His] guardianship, or recompense, or the excellence of faith, or other than that which the weak servant, needful of God his Lord and the Owner of his affairs, attains.277 [p.273]
(3:28) … unless you guard against them out of caution (tuqāt); and God warns you of Himself, and to God is the journeying. (3:29) Say: “If you conceal what is in your breasts or disclose it, God knows it; and He knows whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth …”
from God his Lord and the Owner of his affairs. One says, “he has with so-and-so a standing, a rank, and favour,” or “he is not of him in anything of that.” And it is understood from the suitabilities of the station that this prohibition and this threat run in the formal alliance; and it might be imagined that the prohibition and the threat run in it even if it were for the defence of oneself and the warding-off of evil at some times — so He made an exception of that by His words “unless you guard” — O believers — “against them” — that is, against the disbelievers — “out of caution (tuqāt)”: a verbal noun, absolute object of “you guard”; the guarding (ittiqāʾ), God-wariness (taqwā), and dissimulation (taqiyya) — the tāʾ in them being for singularity — and their derivation is from “shielding,” by your shielding yourself from the dread of a thing by another thing, as one says “he struck him with his sword, so he guarded against it with the shield,” and “he shielded himself with it from what he dreaded.” And the tāʾ of singularity gives the delimiting of the guarding — that is, unless you repel their evil from yourselves and from your religion while awaiting the opportunity in aiding it and manifesting it, and guard against them with a temporary, delimited caution, by displaying to them what repels their evil, of the form of a temporary alliance, where there is no room for you [to do] otherwise — and there is no benefit in the aiding of the religion by the killing of the man; rather, by his killing, a man of the men of Islam and its helpers is diminished. But do not let yourselves go on in that and exceed with it the measure of necessity, in such a way that it returns to weakness in the religion, laxity in its affair, and the [gaining of the] upper hand by the disbelievers; for the affair of the religion is mighty. So beware, then, of God’s wrath and His punishment. “And God warns you of Himself (nafsahu)”: what is meant by nafs is not that which is synonymous with the spirit connected to the body; rather [it is] His mighty Essence — for He is the Mighty, the Omnipotent, against whom there is no helper. And it is a usage widespread in the language and the noble Qurʾān; and of it are His words (66:6) “guard yourselves (anfusakum) and your families against a Fire whose fuel is people and stones”; and of it is what has come of the attaching of wronging to the nafs, like His words (7:160) “they used to wrong their own selves,” and the like of it in more than twenty places; and of it is the mention of striving with properties and selves, about ten times. So beware God, for He is severe in chastisement, painful in punishment; and be not lax in the affair of your religion, for this world is perishing and a departing shadow. “And to God is the journeying” — so He will pay every soul in full what it did. (29) “Say”, O Messenger of God, warning: “if you conceal what is in your breasts” — of your intentions and the aspects of your deeds — “or disclose it, God knows it” — so beware the intentions of hypocrisy and the affection for whoever opposes God and His Messenger. And how should anything of that be hidden from God, when He is the Creator of your souls and your bodies, the Undertaker over them by governance and preservation, and the Witness over them? He knows that from you. “And He knows whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth”278 [p.274]
(3:29) … and God is Powerful over all things. (3:30) The Day when every soul shall find present what it did of good; and what it did of evil, it will wish that between it and that were a far-off span. And God warns you of Himself; and God is Kind to the servants.
— that is, the whole world, for He is its Creator and its Governor. “And God is Powerful over all things” — of punishment, recompense, and seizing, for the journeying to Him. (30) “The Day when every soul shall find” — it is said “the Day” is governed by His words “He warns you”; and I say, “the Day” cannot be an object of “He warns you,” because “warn” is made transitive only to two objects and it has already taken them in full; nor a substitute for one of the two, as is not hidden; nor an adverb of the warning, because the warning and its benefit are in this world; nor an adverb of the wariness, even if it were sound in its parallels as an inflection, because wariness on that Day has no benefit and no end. And it is said that “the Day” is governed by an elided “remember.” The objection to it is that there is nothing to indicate that; and it is not to be analogized upon the positing of that at His words “and when,” that is, “and remember when,” because the tenor there points to that, and its mention was repeated explicitly in the noble Qurʾān in the Meccan sūras: Sūrat Maryam, “and remember in the Book Mary, when she withdrew”; Ṣād, “and remember Our servant Job, when he called”; and al-Aḥqāf, “and remember the brother of ʿĀd, when he warned.” This, along with [the fact] that the station is in the most complete fitness and suitability for “the Day” being an adverb of the journeying, and the separator is not a foreign [element]. “What it did” — that is, the recompense of what it did; “what” being a relative and the referent posited — “of good” — “of” being explicative; and had “what” been infinitival, it would have been said “of the good” — “present”, without deferral and without remoteness of attainment; rather it is present, God having prepared it in honouring and exalting of the doers of good. “And what it did of evil” — that is, and it shall find the recompense of what it did of evil present, in abasement of it and in retribution — that recompense being, from the intensity of its terror, its pains, and its disgrace, [such that] “it will wish that between it and that were a far-off span”: the span (amad) is in the sense of the limit, and what is meant here is spatial distance, so that its terrors should not affright it and it should not suffer its pains and its hateful things — for temporal distance avails nothing along with certainty, since everything that is coming is near. And it is said that the relative in “what it did” is a subject and the sentence “it will wish” its predicate, the sentence of the subject being coordinated upon the sentence “shall find.” The first is more apparent in yielding the mentioned sense from which there is no turning aside, and least in need of positing and interpretation. As for what is in al-Kashshāf and Jamʿ al-Jawāmiʿ, that “the Day” at the beginning of the verse is governed by “it will wish” and the pronoun in “between it and that” returns to that Day, the Day of Resurrection — in it [is the objection] that the verse is an informing of the state of every soul; and is it hidden that many of the pure souls, when they find what they did of good present, would wish that [p.275]279
(3:31) Say: “If you love God, then follow me; God will love you and forgive you your sins; and God is Forgiving, Merciful.” (3:32) Say: “Obey God and the Messenger.” But if they turn away — indeed God loves not the disbelievers.
the Day of Resurrection were hastened for them from the time of their death, that they might win their felicity? “And God warns you of Himself; and God is Kind to the servants” — and of His kindness is His repetition of the warning, the admonition, the direction to the way of deliverance, and His guidance to the straight path. (31) “Say” to the people, O Messenger of God: “if you love God” as you claim, then the first instance of this love is that you hasten to seek His good pleasure, to be guided by His guidance, and to comply with His command and His prohibition. And I have made plain to you the clear evidences and the decisive proofs that I am the Messenger of God, the door of His good pleasure and the light of His guidance, the interpreter of His command and His prohibition, the teacher of His instructions, and the means of your perfecting and your purification for nearness to Him. Therefore “follow me” in my direction of you, and in [the fact of] its bringing you near to God and the attainment of eternal felicity; for I am the speaking Book: (53:3) “nor does he speak out of caprice; it is naught but a revelation revealed” (God bless him and his Household). And God has commanded obedience to him and heralded its excellence in the noble Qurʾān in more than twenty places. Abū Dāwūd, al-Tirmidhī, Ibn Māja, al-Ḥākim in his Mustadrak (upon the conditions of al-Bukhārī and Muslim), and [what is related] from Ibn Ḥibbān in the chapters on the sunna and knowledge and the like — [all] with their chains from Abū Rāfiʿ from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) — brought out: he said, “let me not find one of you reclining upon his couch, to whom comes a matter of my command, of what I have commanded or forbidden, and he says, ‘we do not know; what we found in the Book of God we followed.’” And in al-Ḥākim’s report, by the way of al-Layth, “and otherwise, no.” And Aḥmad brought it out in his Musnad in another expression. And Aḥmad brought out in his Musnad, and Abū Dāwūd and al-Tirmidhī in the mentioned chapters, with their chains from Abū al-Miqdām from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), the like of this purport; as Aḥmad, Ibn Māja, and al-Ḥākim brought out from Abū al-Miqdām also, from him (God bless him and his Household), the like of it; and likewise Abū Dāwūd, in [the chapter on] the taxing of the People of Protection, from al-ʿIrbāḍ from him (God bless him and his Household); and likewise Ibn Māja from Abū Hurayra from him (God bless him and his Household). And these ḥadīth, described as sound and amply transmitted from four of the Companions, are of one purport concerning the following of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) in his command and his prohibition, and that it is not for anyone to repel that and say therein, “the Book of God suffices us.”280 “God will love you” — that is, if you follow me, God will love you; and that suffices as excellence, triumph, and felicity. “And forgive you your sins; and God is Forgiving, Merciful. (32) Say: obey God and the Messenger” — and this is an emphasis of what preceded. “But if they turn away” from that — “indeed God loves not the disbelievers”; and that is the manifest loss.
(3:33) Indeed God chose Adam and Noah, and the folk of Abraham and the folk of ʿImrān, above the worlds …
(33) “Indeed God chose (iṣṭafā) Adam and Noah, and the folk of Abraham and the folk of ʿImrān, above the worlds.” The ṭāʾ in iṣṭafā is a substitute for the tāʾ of the eighth form, as in “he chose,” that is, He chose him pure of admixture and mingling. And the purity may be in respect of merging, mingling with another, and equality with him — so He chooses [one] by messengership, as His words concerning Moses in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf, (7:144) “indeed I have chosen you above the people by My messages and by My speech”; or for kingship and the aiding of the religion, as in Sūrat al-Baqara concerning Ṭālūt, (2:247) “indeed God has chosen him over you”; or above the rest of the idolatrous communities, in view of the ascription to [God’s] oneness and the casting away of idols, as in Sūrat Fāṭir, (35:32) “then We made heirs to the Book those whom We chose of Our servants; and of them is one who wrongs himself”; or from mingling with another class, as in Sūrat al-Ṣāffāt, (37:153) “has He chosen daughters over sons?”; or in respect of clearing from partners and distinguishing it from what is shared of its kind, like the Messenger’s choosing from the spoils what he selects; or in respect of clearing from idolatry and the folly of caprices, as in Sūrat al-Baqara, (2:132) “indeed God has chosen for you the religion”; or in view of precedence in the choosing of faith and the summons to it, as in Sūrat al-Baqara concerning Abraham, (2:130) “and indeed We chose him in this world,” and as in Sūrat Ṣād concerning him and Isaac and Jacob, (38:47) “and indeed with Us they are of the chosen, the excellent.” So the aspect of the choosing and the purity is known from the station of the speech and its indications. And because God did not mention, between Adam and Noah in this verse, Shīth [Seth], the gift of God, and Idrīs the truthful prophet, it is known that this choosing is above the station of rectitude and prophethood; rather it is in the matter of the general summons, the leadership (imāma) of the people, and its supreme headship. And Abraham was not mentioned in this verse because there was mentioned His making him an Imam for the people and that God chose him in this world — that is, for that — as in Sūrat al-Baqara, 118 and 124. And in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, on His words “and the folk of Abraham and the folk of ʿImrān”: “it is said he meant Abraham himself and ʿImrān himself.” In it [is the objection] — along with its strangeness in the wording and its contrariety to the transmitted — that ʿImrān, whether he be the father of Moses or the father of Mary the mother of the Messiah, is not of those who have this special station of being chosen above the worlds. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn Jarīr, Ibn al-Mundhir, and Ibn Abī Ḥātim brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās, he said: “they are the believers of the folk of Abraham, the folk of ʿImrān, the folk of Yāsīn, and the folk of Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household).” And Ibn Saʿd and Ibn Abī Ḥātim brought out from al-Ṣādiq Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad from his father from his grandfather (peace be upon them) that the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī (peace be upon him) commanded al-Ḥasan (peace be upon him) to give the sermon; so he gave the sermon and came down, and he (peace be upon him) said, “a progeny, some of them from [p.277]281
(3:34) … a progeny, some of them from others; and God is Hearing, Knowing.
others; and God is Hearing, Knowing.” And from the tafsīr of al-Thaʿlabī, with a chain from al-Aʿmash from Abū Wāʾil, he said: “I read in the codex of Ibn Masʿūd, ‘indeed God chose Adam and Noah and the folk of Abraham and the folk of Muḥammad above the worlds.’” And in al-Tibyān: “and in the reading of the People of the House, ‘and the folk of Muḥammad above the worlds’”; and they also said that the folk of Abraham are the folk of Muḥammad, who are his family — and likewise in Majmaʿ al-Bayān. The detail of the discourse is that al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī related in his Amālī from Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm, he said: “I heard Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad (peace be upon him) recite ‘and the folk of Abraham and the folk of ʿImrān and the folk of Muḥammad above the worlds.’” And in Tafsīr al-Qummī, “the Learned One said, ‘the folk of Abraham and the folk of ʿImrān and the folk of Muḥammad above the worlds’ came down.” And the like of it from al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr from Ayyūb from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him); and from Abū ʿUmar al-Zubayrī from him (peace be upon him) the like of it; and also from Hishām b. Sālim: “I asked Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him) about His words ‘indeed God chose Adam and Noah,’ and he said, ‘it is the folk of Abraham and the folk of Muḥammad above the worlds’ — so they put a name in place of a name.” I say: this report is opposed by what outweighs it, of what indicates the establishment of “the folk of ʿImrān” in the Qurʾān; so it must be turned from its apparent [sense]. And what precedes is opposed by al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from Sadīr from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): he said, “‘indeed God chose Adam and Noah and the folk of Abraham and the folk of ʿImrān above the worlds, a progeny, some of them from others’” — he said, “we are of them, and we are the remnant of that kindred.” And from Abū Ḥamza from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), that he cited the verse as evidence and recited it upon what is inscribed in the codices. And in al-ʿUyūn, with its chain from al-Rayyān b. al-Ṣalt, that al-Riḍā (peace be upon him) recited it likewise, arguing [by it]. And in al-Nuʿmānī’s Ghayba, with its chain from Jābir al-Juʿfī from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), that the Master of the Command (may God hasten his relief) will argue, at his appearing, by the verse as it is inscribed, [to the effect] that he is the most entitled of the people to Noah and Abraham. And [related] from al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī, with his chain from Yūnus b. Ḥabāb from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) from his forefathers (peace be upon them), that the Messenger of God, in his address to the Commander of the Faithful, recited the verse in the mentioned manner. And these reports are clearer in chain than the first, sounder from conflict and mutual repelling among themselves, and more worthy of preponderance. And it is possible to reconcile [them] by [saying] that the folk of Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household) were intended, in the sending-down, by “the folk of Abraham,” by the revelation’s text to the Messenger concerning that; and perhaps it was set down in the codex of ʿAlī the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) and the codex of Ibn Masʿūd under the heading of the interpretation intended at the sending-down, as we mentioned in the Introduction at the end of the discourse upon the reports of “the decisive discrimination.” And the apparent [truth] is that Moses (peace be upon him), the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), and the Imams who have the general supreme leadership are the certain measure in what is meant by the folk of Abraham. As for Ishmael, Isaac, and Jacob, it is not known that their station in prophethood and headship is above the station of Shīth (peace be upon him) and Idrīs, who were passed over from the choosing of this verse. Just as the apparent [truth] concerning ʿImrān is that he is ʿImrān the father of Mary the mother of the Messiah, and that he was mentioned282 [p.278]
(3:34) … a progeny, some of them from others; and God is Hearing, Knowing. (3:35) When the wife of ʿImrān said …
because of the hiddenness of the pointing to the Messiah under the generality of “the folk of Abraham,” while the station required the pointing to him in a manifest manner. And bearing witness to it also are His words after this verse, “when the wife of ʿImrān said,” to the end of the story of the Messiah. (34) “A progeny, some of them from others; and God is Hearing” of the supplication of the supplicants and the hope of the hopeful, answering them — as Abraham’s supplication in his words “and of my progeny” — “Knowing” of what the interest and the places of kindness require. (35) “When the wife of ʿImrān said” — the grandfather of the Messiah. And the claim that “when” here is redundant is of the [category of] error. And making it an adverb of “Hearing, Knowing” does not suit their coming under the heading of a description indicating permanent, absolute establishment. And making it an object of an elided “remember” is far-fetched in the drift and the tenor — as these sayings were mentioned in al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān, and the last was mentioned in al-Kashshāf. And making it an adverb of the mentioned “chose” is not sound, since it cannot be an adverb of the choosing of Adam and Noah. So the [right] aspect is making it an adverb of a posited verb which the speech indicates; namely, He is the Hearer of the supplication — that is, He answered it — when she said; or He chose the folk of ʿImrān when she said, in the sense that the manifestations of the choosing appeared when she said. And the first is nearer. In Tafsīr al-Qummī, in a [chain] good as sound, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that the name of the wife of ʿImrān was Ḥanna. And likewise in al-Durr al-Manthūr, of what Isḥāq b. Bishr and Ibn ʿAsākir brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās; and al-Ḥākim brought it out in his Mustadrak from Abū Hurayra. And in Tafsīr al-Qummī, in Sūrat Maryam, and the report runs from Abū al-Jārūd from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), that Zechariah was the head of the rabbis and his wife was the sister of Mary the daughter of ʿImrān b. Māthān, and the Banū Māthān are of the offspring of Solomon son of David. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, of what al-Bayhaqī brought out in his Sunan from Ibn Masʿūd, Ibn ʿAbbās, and a number of the Companions, that Zechariah was the most excellent of those who wrote the Torah, and that Mary’s sister was his wife. And within what Ibn Bishr and Ibn ʿAsākir brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās is that Mary was the daughter of the leader of the reciters, and the leader of the reciters was of the offspring of Aaron, and Zechariah was the head of the rabbis, and Mary’s maternal aunt was his wife. And God is the Knower; and Abū al-Jārūd is weak. And in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, that Zechariah was of the priests — that is, of the offspring of Aaron, the custodians of the Holy House — and that his wife, the mother of John, was Mary’s kinswoman, that is, her relative and sharer in lineage, and that her conception of John was six months before Mary’s conception of the Messiah. And the current Gospels did not mention Mary’s lineage nor Jesus’s lineage on her side; rather they mentioned the lineage of Joseph the Carpenter, to whom they allege Mary was betrothed. For the Gospel of Matthew said, “and Jacob begot Joseph,” while the Gospel of Luke said that Joseph was the son of Heli.283 [p.279]
(3:35) … “My Lord, I have vowed to You what is in my womb, consecrated; so accept it from me; indeed You are the Hearing, the Knowing.” (3:36) Then when she delivered her, she said: “My Lord, I have delivered a female” — and God knew better what she had delivered — “and the male is not like the female; and I have named her Mary; and I commend her and her progeny to You from Satan the outcast.” (3:37) So her Lord accepted her with a goodly acceptance and made her grow a goodly growth …
And the Christians, on account of this difference in their books which they ascribe to revelation, have laboured and strained by their claim that “Heli” is Mary’s father. And we have treated of this station in the first part of the book al-Hudā.[Author’s note] “My Lord, I have vowed to You what is in my womb, consecrated (muḥarraran)” — that is, for the mosque, the Holy House. In Tafsīr al-Qummī, in a [chain] good as sound, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): that God revealed to ʿImrān, “indeed I am bestowing upon you a blessed male who will heal the blind and the leper and revive the dead by My leave, and I shall make him a messenger to the Children of Israel”; so he related that to his wife Ḥanna, and when she conceived, her pregnancy was, in her own mind, a boy — the report; and the like of it from al-ʿAyyāshī from Jābir from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him). So she reckoned that the one heralded was her nearer child. “So accept from me” my vow — that is, make it and take it as accepted with You. “Indeed You are the Hearing” of the supplication — that is, of my vow and what it issues in, of the supplication for the soundness of the pregnancy and its being made a male who would undertake what he was vowed for — “the Knowing” of my intention. (36) “Then when she delivered her” — the pronoun was feminized in view of the newborn’s being female — “she said: ‘My Lord, I have delivered a female’ — and God knew better what she had delivered”, for He it is who created her and formed her. And in al-Qummī’s report mentioned above, God says, “and God knew better what she had delivered.” “‘And the male’” — who was in my intention and in the glad tidings to ʿImrān and the aim of my vow — “‘is not like the female,’” for she cannot be a messenger nor undertake what is intended of the consecrated vowed one. “‘And I have named her Mary; and I commend her and her progeny to You from Satan the outcast’” — the one stoned with meteors, or with cursing. And as though she points thereby to what amounts to: “You, Lord, repel by Your kindness the evil of Satan and his seduction, as You have made him outcast — so shelter her and her progeny, by Your kindness, from his evil.” (37) “So her Lord accepted her” — and her Master, and made her and took her as accepted with Him — “with a goodly acceptance”, as her mother asked Him, and above it; “and made her grow a goodly growth”: the “growth” (nabāt) may be a verbal noun of “to grow,” and may be an absolute object of “made her grow” standing in for its verbal noun; and it is also used for what grows, as in His words in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf, and Ṭāhā, and ʿAmma, “its growth comes forth by the leave of its Lord,” “pairs of diverse growth,” “that We may bring forth thereby grain and growth” — so the sense would be, He made her grow, she being284 [p.280]
(3:37) … and He charged Zechariah with her keeping. Whenever Zechariah entered upon her in the sanctuary, he found with her a provision. He said: “O Mary, whence is this for you?” She said: “It is from God; indeed God provides for whom He wills without reckoning.” (3:38) There Zechariah supplicated his Lord; he said: “My Lord, grant me from Your presence a goodly progeny; indeed You are the Hearer of supplication.” (3:39) Then the angels called out to him, while he was standing praying in the sanctuary: “God gives you glad tidings of John, confirming a Word from God …”
a goodly growth. And what is meant, by both aspects, is the goodliness of her upbringing and her rearing in her rectitude and her perfection. “And He charged Zechariah with her keeping” — that is, He made Zechariah her keeper and the one undertaking her affair, according to the measuring-out, or by the casting of the lot with the reed-pens for him. And how noble a keeper — righteous, trustworthy, kind! “Whenever Zechariah entered upon her in the sanctuary” — the mosque — “he found with her a provision.” In al-Qummī’s foregoing report, he would find with her the fruit of summer in winter and the fruit of winter in summer; and the like of it is what Ibn Jarīr brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, Abū Yaʿlā brought out from Jābir the ḥadīth of al-Zahrāʾ (peace be upon her) and the bowl that was filled with bread and meat by God’s blessing and His giving — that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) asked her about that and she said, “it is from God”; so he (God bless him and his Household) said, “praise be to God, who has made you like the mistress of the women of the Children of Israel.” And al-Shaykh related in his Amālī from Ḥudhayfa b. al-Yamān what resembles that. “He said: ‘O Mary, whence is this for you?’” — and from where did it come to you? “She said: ‘It is from God; indeed God provides for whom He wills without reckoning’” — neither in running upon the custom nor upon the measure of necessity. (38) “There” — that is, when Zechariah saw the evidentiary miracle in the presence of winter fruit in summer and summer fruit in winter, he hoped that God would provide him a child, even though he had become an aged old man and his wife was barren. And “Zechariah supplicated his Lord; he said: ‘My Lord, grant me from Your presence a goodly progeny’” — the progeny (dhurriyya) is offspring and child, and “goodly” is righteous. And this is a summary of what preceded in its descent in the Meccan Sūrat Maryam, of His words (19:5–6) “so grant me from Your presence an heir, who shall inherit from me and inherit from the folk of Jacob; and make him, my Lord, well-pleasing.” “‘Indeed You are the Hearer of supplication’” — the Powerful to answer it. (39) “Then the angels called out to him” — that is, their kind, by way of distinction from the call of the human kind, even if the caller was one, as one says “the jinn killed him” — “while he was standing praying in the sanctuary: ‘God gives you glad tidings of John’” — so that was glad tidings of a male child — “‘confirming a Word from God’” — namely the Messiah, God’s messenger, as will come, God willing, at the forty-third verse, and His words in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, (4:171) “and His Word which He cast to Mary” — in view of his being created by the word “Be,” not by customary procreation. And the confirming of the Messiah’s messengership, on the part of the priests in whose hands was the legal headship over the Children of Israel,285 [p.281]
(3:39) … and a chief, and chaste, and a prophet from among the righteous.” (3:40) He said: “My Lord, how shall I have a boy, when old age has overtaken me and my wife is barren?” He said: “Thus God does what He wills.” (3:41) He said: “My Lord, appoint for me a sign.” He said: “Your sign is that you shall not speak to the people for three days …”
was of the hardest of matters upon the souls that incite to evil. So the informing of John’s confirming the messengership of the Messiah is a great praise of him and an extolling of him for his goodness and his rectitude, and that no blamer’s blame takes hold of him in the truth, nor the impulse of a soul that incites [to evil]. “And a chief (sayyid)” — chieftainship is headship and the guardianship of the affair, and the sayyid is one who is master over another. “And chaste (ḥaṣūr)” — in al-Qummī’s foregoing report, the ḥaṣūr is he who does not come to women; and the like of it is what is in al-Durr al-Manthūr, of what ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Ibn al-Mundhir, Ibn Abī Ḥātim, and Ibn ʿAsākir brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās, and Ibn Jarīr and al-Bayhaqī in his Sunan from Ibn Masʿūd. And its being prescribed, its preferability, and its praise are particular to him; for its being prescribed and its preferability, in a general manner, is not known in any divine sacred law. As for the sacred law of Islam, there is established from the most noble Messenger (God bless him and his Household) his saying: “marriage is my sunna; so whoever turns away from my sunna is not of me.”286 “And a prophet from among the righteous” — that was mentioned as a heralding of the excellence of prophethood, for all the prophets are of the righteous. (40) “He said: ‘My Lord, how shall I have a boy, when old age has overtaken me’” in years — one says “old age and decrepitude overtook him” and “death caught him up,” bringing the two down to the rank of a pursuer from whom there is no escape — “‘and my wife is barren,’” because she had not given birth in the span of her life. And Zechariah said that, notwithstanding that he had supplicated God to provide him progeny and an inheriting heir, either seeking reassurance by the glad tidings — because that is contrary to the custom in procreation from the like of the two of them — or in thanksgiving and acknowledgment of His blessing in answering his supplication contrary to the running custom in procreation; in the sense of “I and my wife are in such a state, so whence should I have a boy, were it not for Your power, Your mercy, and Your special care that breaks the custom in answering my supplication?” Al-Sayyid al-Raḍī (may God be pleased with him) mentioned that in Ḥaqāʾiq al-Taʾwīl. “He said: ‘Thus God does what He wills.’ (41) He said” — Zechariah, seeking increase of reassurance concerning the occurrence of that soon, and knowledge of the time of the conception, even though he was a believer in the truth of the glad tidings and in God’s power — “‘My Lord, appoint for me’”, in the indication upon the occurrence of the conception and the answering of my supplication, a mark and “‘a sign’” of Your signs that break the custom. “He said” — God, to him — “‘Your sign’” which you seek is “‘that you shall not speak to the people’” and shall not be able to speak to them, even though your tongue is loosed in the remembrance of God, His glorification, and prayer to Him, “‘for three days’” with their nights — and for that reason there came in Sūrat Maryam (19:10) “three nights, sound.” And it is common in Arabic and other [tongues], in the likes of this station, that the night enter into the “days” and the day into the “nights”: one says “I stayed in the town three days,” as one says “I stayed [p.282]
(3:41) … save by a sign; and remember your Lord much, and glorify [Him] in the evening and at daybreak. (3:42) And when the angels said: “O Mary, indeed God has chosen you and purified you, and chosen you above the women of the worlds. (3:43) O Mary, be devoutly obedient to your Lord, and prostrate, and bow with those who bow.”
in it three nights”; and the witnesses to that, even in the Hebrew tongue and the books of the two Testaments, are many, [more than] this station has room for. “Save by a sign (ramzan)” — the ramz is the conveying of a meaning by a kind of gesture; and the exception here is disjunct. “And remember your Lord much, and glorify [Him]” — the glorification of God is His declaring free [of imperfection] and His sanctification; or [it means] “and pray to Him the supererogatory prayers,” for it has come frequently in the ḥadīth, by the ways of the two parties, from the Messenger (God bless him and his Household), the Companions, and the Imams (peace be upon them), that the supererogatory prayers are named subḥa — “in the evening”, which is from the sun’s decline to the setting, the latter part of the day, “and at daybreak”, with the kasra of the hamza, from the time of the break of dawn to the time of the forenoon, as in al-Tibyān, al-Kashshāf, and others. (42) “And” remember “when the angels said” — that is, this kind, even if the sayer was one — “O Mary, indeed God has chosen you.” We have mentioned the sense of the choosing, and that the aspect of the choosing is known and taken from the indications of the station. So the sense, then, is: He chose you in that He accepted you and received you from your mother’s vow in your consecration to God. “And purified you” — over and above that — from the impurities that attach to women. “And chosen you above the women of the worlds”, and advanced you over them by the giving birth without a male. This is the utmost that the station and the indications indicate of the two aspects of the two choosings; and the mention of the choosing was repeated on account of the difference of the aspect in it. And there is not, in the wording and the indications of the station, an indication of her mastership (siyāda) over the women of the worlds. Indeed, her mastership over the women of her own world is established from the sunna. And it has been amply — nay, mass-transmittedly — related, from the ḥadīth of the two parties, from the most noble Messenger (God bless him and his Household), that Fāṭima his daughter (peace be upon her) is the mistress of the women of the worlds and the mistress of the women of the people of Paradise. And of that is what Aḥmad, al-Bukhārī, Muslim, al-Tirmidhī, al-Nasāʾī, Ibn Māja, Ibn Ḥibbān in his Ṣaḥīḥ, Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Ḥākim, Abū Yaʿlā, al-Rūbānī, al-ʿUqaylī, al-Ṭabarānī, Ibn ʿAsākir, the author of al-Istīʿāb, and others related from Ḥudhayfa, Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿĀʾisha, and Fāṭima (peace be upon her), from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household); and the ḥadīth to that effect by the way of the Shīʿa are very many.287 (43) “O Mary, be devoutly obedient to your Lord, and prostrate, and bow with those who bow.” The sense of devout obedience (qunūt) has been mentioned at the hundred-and-tenth verse and the two-hundred-and-thirty-ninth of Sūrat al-Baqara. Prostration is well known, and bowing is applied to the well-known inclination. And “he bowed,” “bow,” and “bow [fem.]” may be used for the performing of the units (rakʿāt) of the prayer, so one says of him who prayed, “he bowed light units” or “he bowed lengthy units” — that is, and be in the company of the praying ones who pray much; and the sense is not confined to the congregational prayer. [p.283]
(3:44) That is of the tidings of the unseen, which We reveal to you; and you were not with them when they cast their pens [to decide] which of them should have the keeping of Mary, nor were you with them when they were disputing. (3:45) When the angels said: “O Mary, indeed God gives you glad tidings of a Word from Him; his name is the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary …”
(44) “That” — that is, the story of the wife of ʿImrān, Mary, and Zechariah, and the angels’ glad tidings to the two of them — “is of the tidings of the unseen, which We reveal to you”; and of that is their disputing over the keeping of Mary and their casting their pens for the lot over her keeping. “And you were not with them when they cast their pens” for the lot, to take the result from it, namely “which of them should have the keeping of Mary; nor were you with them when they were disputing” over that, until they agreed upon the lot with the pens. So you are not relating to the people what you were present at and saw; nor is it recorded in the books current among the People of the Book — over and above [the fact] that you do not read a book, nor have you practised study or learning, and there was not in your people and your lands anything of [such] knowledge. And in this is a proof that it is a revelation of the tidings of the unseen from God. And there have been related in al-Durr al-Manthūr and others, concerning the casting of the pens and its manner, reports that do not stand as proof. (45) “When the angels said” — the apparent [truth] is that “when” here is a substitute or an explicative coordination for the “when” preceding in the fortieth verse. For the apparent [truth] is that the two sayings of the angels in the two verses were at Mary’s maturity, at one time, or at two near times fit to be counted as one period, like a year or the like. As for its being a substitute from “when they were disputing,” that is very far-fetched, because the disputing was, apparently, in Mary’s childhood, and the glad tidings at her maturity, at her conceiving the Messiah — and counting the two times, in the like of that, as one period is far-fetched. “O Mary, indeed God gives you glad tidings of a Word from Him; his name is the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary.” Jesus was named “the Word” because he came to be in his mother’s womb without a male, but by God’s word, namely His saying “Be”; and that is a metonym for His creational will without causes and preparatives. So the Messiah, by his origination, is a Word from God. And because what is meant by “the Word” is the male [child], the pronoun in “his name” was brought in the masculine, in view of the sense. And “the Messiah” is a title of Jesus, and “son of Mary” an ascription of him; but it is sound, in latitude [of expression], to say “his name is the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary.” And perhaps his being named “the Messiah” is taken from the Israelite custom concerning the spiritual chief, that he who was before him of the chiefs anoints (yamsaḥuhu) him for the spiritual headship; so that became a title for the spiritual chief, the anointing being the insignia of spiritual authority, like the crowning for the king. And he stated his ascription to his mother, to make plain that his ascription in birth is confined to his mother — a refutation of whoever names him the son of God. And perhaps of that is what the Gospels agreed upon in their relating of the Messiah’s speech, that he expresses himself as the son of man, that this may be288 [p.284]
(3:45) … eminent in this world and the Hereafter, and of those brought near. (3:46) And he shall speak to the people in the cradle and in maturity, and shall be of the righteous. (3:47) She said: “My Lord, how shall I have a child when no human has touched me?” He said: “Thus God creates what He wills; when He decrees a matter, He but says to it ‘Be,’ and it is. (3:48) And He will teach him the Book and the wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel. (3:49) And a messenger to the Children of Israel …”
a refutation of whoever supposes that he is the son of God by way of birth. “Eminent” — that is, possessed of standing — “in this world”: his supplication answered, chosen for messengership, a model for the believers, followed by the righteous, a manifester of miracles and marvels — “and the Hereafter, and of those brought near. (46) And he shall speak to the people” of the divine matters and what benefits them, while he is “in the cradle” — the sentence “he shall speak” being circumstantial, coordinated upon “eminent,” like the sentence “and of those brought near.” And of his speech in the cradle is what was mentioned from the beginning of the thirty-first verse to the end of the thirty-fourth of the Meccan Sūrat Maryam (19:31). “And” he shall speak to the people of the divine matters and the conveying of the messengership, while he is “in maturity (kahlan)”; and in that is glad tidings for Mary that he (peace be upon him) will reach the time of maturity, and an indication that he will not remain among the people to the time of old age. And it is well known that he (peace be upon him) was sent to the people when he was thirty years old, and was raised to the heaven after three years. “And of the righteous. (47) She said: ‘My Lord, how (annā)’” — and whence — “‘shall I have a child, when’” the case is that I “‘have not been touched by a human?’” Perhaps the reference of her question is to whether her giving birth will be upon the running custom, by marriage, and who is the husband from whom she will bear — for giving birth contrary to the custom is a strange, wondrous matter. “He said: ‘Thus God’” — that is, God thus provides you contrary to the decreed custom, even if no human has touched you, for He “‘creates what He wills’” however He wills; and He, “‘when He decrees a matter, He but says to it “Be,” and it is.’” The discourse upon this has passed at the hundred-and-seventeenth verse of Sūrat al-Baqara (2:117). (48) “And He will teach him the Book” — the wāw is coordinating and the sentence “He will teach him” is for the circumstantial state, coordinated in the sequence of the circumstantials upon “eminent.” And what is meant by “the Book” is either the verbal noun of “he wrote,” that is, the writing with his hand; or a book other than the Torah and the Gospel; or the kind [comprising all] books, the Torah and the Gospel being mentioned for their importance, by way of coordinating the particular upon the general. “And the wisdom and the Torah” — which is, in the root, a name for the Book sent down upon Moses (peace be upon him), and in Hebrew it is a name for the Law. Indeed, the convention has settled latterly that the books of the Jews which are called the Old Testament are called the Torah; and the apparent [truth] is that it is a convention of no account in this station. “And the Gospel” — namely the one Book that was sent down upon him (peace be upon him); and it is said that its sense in ancient Greek is “the Teaching.” “And” he being “a messenger” from God “to the Children of Israel” — in view of his beginning with them in289 [p.285]
(3:49) … “that I have come to you with a sign from your Lord: that I create for you from clay the likeness of a bird, then I breathe into it and it becomes a bird by God’s leave; and I heal the blind-born and the leper, and I revive the dead by God’s leave; and I inform you of what you eat and what you store in your houses. Indeed in that is a sign for you, if you are believers.”
the summons. “That I have come to you” — since the claim of messengership is supported by the proof for it, the mention of the evidentiary miracle makes the speech as though explicit in what amounts to: he being one who says to them, “my proof is that I have come to you.” And we have mentioned[Author’s note] that ellipsis, for what the speech indicates by its tenor, is one of the doors of eloquence among the Arabs. “With a sign from your Lord” — what is meant is the kind of sign and what is a proof for the messengership, even if what he brought was several signs. “That I” — the verbal noun woven from “that” and its clause being a substitute for “a sign,” or a predicate of an elided pronoun returning to “a sign,” the estimation being “it is that I” — “create” and form “for you from clay the likeness of a bird” — and there is no sign in that, for the forming of clay is within human power — “then I breathe into it and it becomes a bird”, a real one, “by God’s leave” and His creating it as a bird; and the proof is by God’s manifesting this evidentiary miracle at the hand of the Messiah. And in al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān, in the exegesis, that he made from clay the likeness of a bat and breathed into it and it became a bird; and it was related in al-Durr al-Manthūr, of what Ibn Jarīr brought out from Ibn Jurayj and Abū al-Shaykh from Ibn ʿAbbās — and nothing of that stands as proof. “And I heal the blind-born (al-akmah)” — and he is the one born blind, or the absolute [class of] the blind — “and the leper”, which is well known, “and I revive the dead by God’s leave” and His act. And the healing and the reviving were ascribed to him only because he is the cause, by his blessing and his supplication, in the appearance of this evidentiary miracle from God at his hand. And in the plural “the dead” is an indication of the multiplicity of the issuing of the reviving from God by his means. And in al-Ṣāfī, in al-Kāfī and al-ʿAyyāshī from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), and he mentioned Jesus’s reviving of his friend; and it was related also in al-Durr al-Manthūr. And the story resembles being the story of “Lazarus” mentioned in the Gospel of John. “And I inform you” — of the unseen — “of what you eat and what you store in your houses”, of what none but you knows. “Indeed in that is a sign for you”, sufficient in guiding you, by its decisive indication, to the faith that I am the Messenger of God, “if you are believers” in God, and that He, by His kindness, sends His messengers to guide His servants to rectitude and to summon them to felicity, and that He (magnified be His station) — the manifesting of the evidentiary miracle at the hand of the liar is impossible for His sanctity. Or [it means] if you have the disposition of faith in that whereby the proof stands and to which the signs bear witness — not [being] of those over whom Satan has gained mastery and led astray290 [p.286]
(3:50) “And [I come] confirming what was before me of the Torah, and to make lawful for you some of what was forbidden you; and I have come to you with a sign from your Lord. So be wary of God and obey me. (3:51) Indeed God is my Lord and your Lord; so worship Him. This is a straight path.” (3:52) Then when Jesus perceived unbelief from them, he said: “Who are my helpers unto God?” The Disciples said: “We are God’s helpers; we believe in God; and bear witness that we are submitters. (3:53) Our Lord, we believe …”
by caprice — as God said in Sūrat al-Anʿām, (6:111) “and even if We had sent down to them the angels, and the dead had spoken to them, and We had gathered before them all things face to face, they would not have believed,” and (6:124) “and when a sign comes to them, they say, ‘we shall not believe until we are given the like of what was given to God’s messengers.’” (50) “And confirming” — that is, and I have come to you being one who confirms “what was before me” — that is, what preceded me — “of the Torah”; “of” being explicative. “And to make lawful” — coordinated upon “confirming” — “for you some of what was forbidden you” in the Torah, of that whose ground of prohibition had passed away. And perhaps of it is what is in His words in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, (4:160) “so, for a wrong on the part of those who were Jews, We forbade them good things that had been made lawful to them.” “And I have come to you with a sign from your Lord” — He repeated the mention of the sign as an emphasis in the proof and as a groundwork for His words “so be wary of God” and beware His wrath and His punishment, by what shields you from that, such as obedience to Him and faith in His signs and their witness to His messengers — “and obey me”, for I summon you to God and to the way of your felicity in this world and the Hereafter. “(51) Indeed God is my Lord and your Lord”, and our God all together, and our Creator and the Governor of our affairs, and to Him is our return; and I and you are His servants — there is no god but He. “So worship Him”, and be humble to Him with the humility of the servant to his God; and of His worship is that you associate nothing with Him. “This” — that is, the God-wariness of God, His worship, and obedience to the Messenger in his summons to God, His oneness, and the religion of truth — “is a straight path”, [from which] whoever strays is not guided. (52) “Then when Jesus perceived unbelief from them” — in God’s signs and his messengership — “he said: ‘Who are my helpers unto God?’” — that is, in the summons to Him, to faith in Him and in His signs and in what He sent His messenger with. “The Disciples (al-ḥawāriyyūn) said” — in al-ʿUyūn, with a chain from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him), that they were named ḥawāriyyūn because they were sincere (mukhliṣīn) in themselves and purifiers of others from the filths of sins by admonition and reminding — “‘We are God’s helpers’” in the summons to His religion and striving in the way of the truth; “‘we believe in God’” and do not disbelieve as they disbelieve, “‘and bear witness that we are submitters’” — entering into God’s peace; we do not oppose Him, nor contravene His commands and His prohibitions, nor stand against Him in what He commanded of the summons to His way, the enjoining of the good, and the forbidding of the wrong. Then they turned to the honour of addressing God, the acknowledgment to Him of the blessing of faith, and the supplication for the permanence of their being enabled for that, and said: (53) “Our Lord, we believe in what You have sent down, and we follow the Messenger” — Jesus — in what he brought from You; “so write us”, by Your enabling and Your making firm, “with the witnesses”291 [p.287]
(3:53) … in what You have sent down, and we follow the Messenger; so write us with the witnesses. (3:54) And they plotted; and God devised; and God is the best of devisers.
to the truth, persevering upon that. Then the Qurʾān turned to the state of those from whom Jesus perceived unbelief, by His words: (54) “And they plotted; and God devised (makara); and God is the best of devisers.” Some of the lexicographers interpreted makr by deception. And in al-Tibyān: “and makr, though it is ugly, God ascribed it to Himself only for the pairing of the speech, as He said (2:194) ‘so whoever transgresses against you, transgress against him’ — and the second is not a transgression, but rather a requital”; and the like of it in Majmaʿ al-Bayān. And as though they looked, in that, to [the fact] that much of people’s use of the word makr is in what runs parallel to their use of the word “deception” by a human, to bring forbidden harm to another — and by that it is ugly. But the usage of the noble Qurʾān, and some cases, direct [us] to [the truth] that makr is hidden operations upon another in dealing with him, in his heedlessness of them. And it has come in the noble Qurʾān ascribed to God without pairing, as His words in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf, (7:99) “do they then feel secure from God’s devising? Yet none feels secure from God’s devising save the folk who are losers.” And God said here and in Sūrat al-Anfāl (8:30) “and God is the best of devisers” — so He applied the word “deviser” to Him (magnified be His station) and to another, meaning the wrongdoers, with a single wording; and it is not permissible to use a single wording in the literal sense and the figurative sense together, and the generality of the figurative the station refuses. And it has come in the supplication, in addressing God, “and do not devise against me in Your stratagem,” without pairing. And in Nihāyat al-Lugha: “and in the ḥadīth of supplication, ‘O God, devise for me and do not devise against me.’” As for what Ibn Bābawayh ascribed to al-Riḍā (peace be upon him), of his saying that God does not devise but requites for devising — in its chain is unknownness and neglect; and it is possible that he intended the negation of makr in the sense that runs parallel to deception for bringing ugly harm, as we have mentioned. Otherwise, presenting the report to what we have mentioned of the Qurʾān — as the People of the House commanded us — necessitates confidence that it did not issue from them (peace be upon them). This [being so], perhaps what is meant by their devising is what is mentioned, that they said to their king that Jesus seeks the kingship for himself, so he agreed with them upon his crucifixion and killing. And what is meant by God’s devising is the casting of the Messiah’s likeness upon another and his raising to the heaven. And in Tafsīr al-Qummī, with a chain from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), that the Messiah said to his companions, “which of you will have my likeness cast upon him, and be killed and crucified, and be with me in my rank?” and a youth said, “I, O Spirit of God”; so he said, “then you are he.” And the like of it in al-Durr al-Manthūr’s report, of what ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd, al-Nasāʾī, Ibn Abī Ḥātim, and Ibn Mardawayh brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās. And it is related from Wahb b. Munabbih, of what ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd and Ibn Jarīr brought out from him, that the one upon whom the Messiah’s likeness was cast292 [p.288]
(3:55) When God said: “O Jesus, indeed I am taking you and raising you to Myself, and purifying you from those who disbelieved; and I shall make those who followed you above those who disbelieved until the Day of Resurrection. Then to Me is your return, and I shall judge between you concerning that wherein you used to differ. (3:56) As for those who disbelieved, I shall punish them with a severe punishment in this world and the Hereafter, and they shall have no helpers.”
and crucified was he who was of his companions and took from the Jews thirty dirhams and guided them to the Messiah that they might kill him. And the like of it is in the tafsīr whose ascription to the Imam al-ʿAskarī (peace be upon him) we have invalidated; as the like of that is related in the Gospel of Barnabas, and that he is Judas Iscariot. And God is the Knower. And perhaps the secret in this likening is that, had the Messiah been made absent from them and raised to the heaven in concealment, they would have accused his family and those who believed in him of concealing him, so that the affliction would have engulfed them and killing, torture, and the disgracing of the women would have multiplied among them, in seeking to bring him forth. And had he been raised to the heaven openly, in the sight of the people, the misgiving of his divinity would have taken firm hold and spread even to some of the believers. And God is the best of devisers, for His devising and His hidden governance can only run upon wisdom, and kindness to the servants does not escape Him.293 (55) “When” — an adverb of God’s devising — “God said: ‘O Jesus, indeed I am taking you (mutawaffīka)’” — that is, taking you from among the people and from the world of the earth; and the discourse upon that has passed in the fourth chapter of the Introduction. “‘And raising you to Myself’” — He (magnified be His station) said “to Myself,” though no place contains Him and no place is void of Him, in honouring of the Messiah and in magnification of the end-point of the raising: from the earth in which are the disbelievers and the profligate, to the heaven devoted purely to God’s glorification and sanctification; so He expressed that metonymically by his raising to God. “‘And purifying you from those who disbelieved’” — that is, from the filth of their nearness and the affliction of their neighbourhood. “‘And I shall make those who followed you above those who disbelieved’”: as for the Christians, they are not of those who followed the Messiah — how [could they be], when they associated [others] with God, deified the Messiah, tripled the gods, and left themselves no sacred law? And indeed their Gospels and their books say that the Messiah did not annul the sacred law of the Torah; rather they, after him, annulled it. And those who followed him upon the religion of truth, the creed of Abraham, are only the believers, the affirmers of oneness with the true affirmation of oneness, of his people, and after them the Muslims by the summons of the Messenger of God. And He expressed it in the past tense in view of the believers of his people; for the kind of “those who followed him” had already been realized in view of a part of it — so they are above those who disbelieved, continuing upon that “‘until the Day of Resurrection. Then to Me is your return’” — by the mustering, all together — “‘and I shall judge between you concerning that wherein you used to differ’” of oneness, faith, and the sacred law of the truth. (56) “‘As for those who disbelieved, I shall punish them with a severe punishment in this world and the Hereafter, and they shall have no helpers’” — as they were afflicted with that mighty affliction of the general killing and the all-encompassing abasement in [p.289]
(3:57) And as for those who believed and did righteous deeds, He will pay them their wages in full; and God loves not the wrongdoers. (3:58) That We recite to you of the signs and the Wise Remembrance. (3:59) Indeed the likeness of Jesus with God is as the likeness of Adam: He created him from dust, then said to him “Be,” and he is. (3:60) The truth is from your Lord; so be not of the doubters. (3:61) So whoever disputes with you concerning him after the knowledge that has come to you …
the event of Titus; and they remained after that for killing, tribute, and the abasement of subjection. (57) “And as for those who believed and did righteous deeds, He will pay them” — God; and in it is a turning from the first person, in the station of terrifying by His might, to the third person, in the station of the believers’ trust in the recompense — “their wages in full”; and that is the noblest of ends. “And God loves not the wrongdoers. (58) That We recite to you” — by revelation, O Messenger of God — “of the signs and the Remembrance” — that is, the Qurʾān — “the Wise.” And since God mentioned the birth of the Messiah from Mary without a male, contrary to the custom, and the straying had stirred up from that two misgivings among the people — one of them the Jews’ accusation against Mary, and the second the Christians’ supposing that he is the son of God — for that reason He argued against the two parties by what they know and acknowledge of the creation of Adam. So what do the Jews say concerning Adam? And what do the Christians say concerning him? So He said, mighty and exalted: (59) “Indeed the likeness of Jesus” — in the disposal of the divine power in his birth, [he] being a human, contrary to the custom — “with God is as the likeness of Adam: He created him” and formed him “from dust, then said to him ‘Be’” — a living human — “and he is.” He (magnified be His station) did not say “and he was,” because the past does not indicate the necessity of the being’s following upon the saying “Be”; rather it takes in the following [that occurs] by coincidence — nay, this is the apparent [sense] and the certain measure of it. So the imperfect was brought to indicate the necessary concomitance, and that He (magnified be His power), when He says to a thing “Be,” it inevitably is. (60) “The truth is from your Lord” — that is, the informing of the states of the Messiah is the truth from your Lord — “so be not”, O hearer, “of the doubters” — the waverers. Or the address is to the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) in the manner we mentioned at the hundred-and-forty-second verse of Sūrat al-Baqara. (61) “So whoever disputes with you concerning him” — that is, concerning Jesus, supposing that he is a god and the son of God, clinging to his birth without a male. And disputation (muḥājja) is the exchanging of argument; and “argument” is more general than the sound demonstration and the corrupt wrangling, as we pointed to in Sūrat al-Baqara, 144. “After the knowledge that has come to you” — the intelligible, the sensed, and the revealed — that God (magnified be His station) is One, is not three, has no partner in divinity, and does not beget; and that the corporeal human, occupying space, changing, who hungers, suffers pain, weeps, grieves, and is in need, cannot rationally be a god; and that God’s creating of the animal294 [p.290]
(3:61) … then say: “Come, let us call our sons and your sons, our women and your women, our selves and your selves; then let us pray earnestly, and place God’s curse upon the liars.”
and the human does not depend upon generation from a male and a female, as is well known in the [case of the] rat and the hen; and the lesson is completed by the creation of Adam. “So say” to them, cutting off excuses and severing their persistence in error and misguidance after what you have brought of the truth and the decisive proof, of what has come to you of knowledge: “come to the mutual imprecation (mubāhala) and the supplication that God curse the liars in their claims, seize them, destroy them, and disgrace them.” “Come, let us call” — I and you — for this mutual imprecation and its dreadful consequence, the most important of those whose safety, honour, protection, and standing in life a human guards: “our sons and your sons, our women and your women” — and what is meant is the most important of those ascribed to a person, of the women, in the station of family and the necessary essential bond, like the mother, the sister, and the daughter, not the wife, who draws near by the word of marriage and grows distant by the word of divorce. “And our selves” — that is, and let us call our selves; and the caller must be other than the called, and what is meant is the person whose existence his caller sees, in effect, merits, excellence, and end, as being at the rank of his own existence in that, or the nearest of people to the station of his existence and what he seeks of the end of his existence — and by that he says “this is my self,” by a sound bringing-down and an acceptable figurative usage. “And your selves; then let us pray earnestly” — we, or we and they — that is, let us supplicate with the curse — “and place God’s curse” — and what is meant is His chastisement and His worldly punishment — “upon the liars.” And the report has agreed, concerning the occasion of the descent, that the Christians of Najrān[Author’s note] — a delegation of some of their spiritual chiefs came to the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) at Medina, and he (God bless him and his Household) argued against them in the matter of Jesus, and that he is a human, a messenger from God, and not a god as they suppose; and they did not turn to the truth by the indication of the radiant proof. So God commanded His Messenger to call them to the mutual imprecation, and he called them by the requirement of the noble verse. And some of them said to others: “if he comes to us with his family and his intimates, then he is upon certainty concerning his affair — so do not imprecate with him.” So he (God bless him and his Household) came out to them in the morning for the appointment, and with him were ʿAlī, Fāṭima, al-Ḥasan, and al-Ḥusayn (God’s blessings and peace be upon them).295 And in the ḥadīth of Muslim, al-Tirmidhī, al-Ḥākim, Ibn al-Mundhir, [p.291]
and al-Bayhaqī from Saʿd, that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) said: “O God, these are my People of the House.” So those [Christians] refused to imprecate with him and covenanted with him for the tribute. And in the report of Ibn Isḥāq, al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashshāf, al-Rāzī, Abū al-Saʿūd, and others in their tafsīrs, and al-Mālikī in al-Fuṣūl al-Muhimma, that the bishop of Najrān said: “indeed I see faces such that, were they to ask God to remove a mountain from its place, He would remove it — so do not pray earnestly.” And in the ḥadīth of Jābir, as in al-Ḥākim’s Mustadrak and al-Wāḥidī’s Asbāb al-Nuzūl and others: “‘our sons’ — al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn; ‘and our women’ — Fāṭima; ‘and our selves’ — ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib.” And in Ibn Ḥajar’s Ṣawāʿiq, al-Dāraquṭnī brought out that ʿAlī (peace be upon him), on the day of the Consultative Council, argued against its people and said: “I adjure you by God, is there among you anyone nearer in kinship to the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) than I, or one whom he made his self, and his sons his sons, and his women his women, other than I?” They said, “by God, no” — the ḥadīth. I say: and the shared measure in the ḥadīth is that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) called ʿAlī, Fāṭima, al-Ḥasan, and al-Ḥusayn (peace be upon them) to imprecate by them against the Christians of Najrān. The two parties related it with their chains from a company of the Companions, the Successors, and the Imams of the People of the House. So in the books of the People of the Sunna, Muslim and al-Tirmidhī brought it out in their two Jāmiʿs, Abū Nuʿaym in al-Dalāʾil, al-Bayhaqī in his Sunan, Ibn Abī Shayba, Saʿīd b. Manṣūr, ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd, Ibn Jarīr, Ibn al-Mundhir, al-Ḥākim in his Mustadrak, Ibn Mardawayh, al-Thaʿlabī in his tafsīr, al-Wāḥidī in Asbāb al-Nuzūl, Ibn Isḥāq in al-Maghāzī, Muwaffaq b. Aḥmad, Ibn al-Maghāzilī, al-Ḥamawaynī, al-Mālikī in his Fuṣūl, al-Suyūṭī in al-Durr al-Manthūr, and others, with their chains from Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ, Jābir, Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿAlī al-Yashkurī, and the grandfather of Salama; and from al-Shaʿbī, al-Ḥasan, al-Suddī, Muqātil, and al-Kalbī — nay, most of the exegetes mentioned it, and scarcely a book of tafsīr is free of relating it. And in the books of the Shīʿa, al-Qummī brought it out in his tafsīr, al-Mufīd in his Ikhtiṣāṣ, al-Ṣadūq in al-ʿUyūn, and al-Shaykh in his Amālī, from ʿAlī the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) and from Abū Dharr (may God be pleased with him) — that ʿAlī (peace be upon him) argued by that on the day of the Council — and [from] Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ, al-Ḥasan the grandson (peace be upon him), the grandfather of Muḥammad b. al-Munkadir, and al-Ṣādiq, al-Kāẓim, al-Riḍā, and al-Hādī (peace be upon them). So this ḥadīth is related, with numerous chains, from nine of the Companions, five of the Successors, and six of the Imams of the People of the House (peace be upon them). And the result of the noble verse and the certain ḥadīth is that God (mighty and exalted) commanded His Messenger to name ʿAlī his self, in order to make plain to the people that he is his second, of his community, in excellence, the noble end, the general guardianship, the supreme headship, the undertaking of the affair of the community and the religion and its governance, and the leadership (imāma) which is Abraham’s supplication in his words “and of my progeny.” And do you see God commanding His Messenger to name as his self one not possessed of these merits? Do you not see that it is not sound for anyone who knows how to speak to say296 [p.292]
of another person that he is “my self,” unless that person is, in the sayer’s view, his second in his merits and the aspect sought of him, and his trusted one in that? And by the truth of my life, this is a manifest matter. And the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) repeatedly expounded this sense, manifest from His words “and our selves,” as God commanded him, and expounded it in expressions suited to clarification and the establishing of the proof — so they are “light upon light” — such as his words (God bless him and his Household) to ʿAlī (peace be upon him): “you are to me in the station of Aaron to Moses, save that there is no prophet after me”; and his words (God bless him and his Household) at that mighty assembly at Ghadīr Khumm, addressing the Muslims: “O people, am I not nearer to the believers than their own selves?” — and when they said, “yes indeed, O God,” he said, in the [same] sequence, taking hold of ʿAlī’s (peace be upon him) upper arm: “whoever’s master I am, this ʿAlī is his master” — and other than that, for which this station is too narrow. And it is recorded in the books of the two parties like the sun at the height of the forenoon. This [being so], Ibn Taymiyya, in the book Minhāj al-Sunna, acknowledged the soundness of the ḥadīth indicating that the “self” of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) in the verse is ʿAlī (peace be upon him); but he attempted to bar what we have pointed to of its manifest aspect of indicating the Commander of the Faithful’s distinction in excellence and in the station of leadership in the community and the supreme headship. He said what amounts to: what is meant by “the selves” in the verse is whoever is connected by kinship and tribal community — and he adduced for that His words “so slay your selves,” “you shall not expel your selves from your dwellings,” “you kill your selves and expel a party of you from their dwellings.” So say to him: the annexation of “self” may occur in view of a kind of bond, like kinship and the tribal league, so one says “your selves” and “their selves,” as one says “your men” and “their men,” and “the selves of the town and the kingdom.” But is it hidden that when “self” is set in opposition to relatives — nay, to the nearest of relatives, as in the verse, and as in His words in Sūrat al-Taḥrīm, (66:6) “guard your selves and your families against a Fire,” and in Sūrat al-Zumar (39:15) and al-Shūrā (42:45), “those who have lost their selves and their families” — then “self” is not used save in the manner of literal truth, for the very self of the human to whom it is annexed, as in the verses of al-Taḥrīm, al-Zumar, and al-Shūrā; or in the manner of figure and metaphor, for one who is brought down, by what we have pointed to of the aspects of resemblance according to each human, to the rank of the human’s own particular self — as in this verse, for what we have mentioned of the summons and the sound, amply-transmitted, agreed-upon report. And of the curious things is that Ibn Taymiyya perceived that, were the expression by “self” regarding kinship, al-ʿAbbās the Messenger’s uncle and his sons and their like of the Banū Hāshim would have been called, for they were Muslims and emigrants at Medina — since the delegation of Najrān came in the tenth or ninth year of the Hijra. And on account of what he perceived, he said, in extricating himself from it, “because al-ʿAbbās was not of the foremost, nor did he have a special relation to the Messenger like ʿAlī; and as for his cousins, there was not among them the like of ʿAlī.” So look at this man’s confusion; for he297 [p.293]
— after the prolixity in sophistry and the heedlessness of “self” being set opposite the nearest of relatives — returned to acknowledging that the station is a station of distinction in religious excellence and the nobility of the loftiest station, in such a way that it suits that God command His Messenger to express ʿAlī, for that reason, as being his self. And it is not hidden that this indicates the utmost that the metaphor and the aspect of figure can bear, in surpassing [others] in perfection and in the general guardianship, after what is particular [to the Prophet] of messengership — a surpassing which entails the leadership after the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household).
And “as long as you live, time will show you wonders”: for Shaykh Muḥammad ʿAbduh — with his display and his desire to be known for freedom of conscience and inclination and for integrity of inquiry — as though he attended to the reality of the result from the noble verse and the ḥadīth, and perceived what is objected against his teacher Ibn Taymiyya in what he said, so he wished to shut a door that God and His Messenger had opened wide. He said, in his lesson, according to what the author of al-Manār mentioned in his tafsīr: that the reports agree that the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) chose for the imprecation ʿAlī, Fāṭima, and her two sons, and they carry the word “our women” upon Fāṭima and the word “our selves” upon ʿAlī alone; and the sources of these reports are the Shīʿa, and their aim in them is well known, and they laboured to circulate them as much as they could until they gained currency with many of the People of the Sunna; but those who forged them did not do well in applying them to the verse, for the word “our women” is not said by an Arab meaning by it his daughter — especially if he has wives; and further from that is that ʿAlī (peace be upon him) should be meant by the word “our selves.” I say: why should an Arab not say “our women,” in view of the kind and the matching of a plural with a plural in wording, while he means by it his daughter — because that is nearer to modesty than explicitness about his daughter, or for other of the aspects of speech? And will he say that “women” is applied only to wives? Then what will he say of the noble Qurʾān’s saying “and if they be women more than two”; “and for the women is a share”; “and they spared your women alive”; “their sisters, or their women”; “nor their women” — and much of the like of that; and there is no need to adduce the poetry of the Arabs. And of what we have pointed to, of the aspects of speech, is the exposition that Fāṭima (peace be upon her) is the sole distinguished one from the Messenger’s side under the heading of the women of the family, in her excellence, her importance, and her fitness for this station; and it is sound and amply transmitted from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) that Fāṭima is the mistress of the women of the worlds, as we pointed to in the exegesis of the fortieth verse. And likewise the discourse concerning the expression “our selves” and the intending of ʿAlī (peace be upon him) alone; and it is sound and amply transmitted from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household), his saying to ʿAlī (peace be upon him): “you are of me and I am of you,” as al-Bukhārī and Muslim related from al-Barāʾ, al-Ḥākim from ʿAlī (peace be upon him), al-Tirmidhī and al-Ḥākim from ʿImrān b. Ḥuṣayn, Aḥmad, al-Tirmidhī, al-Nasāʾī, and Ibn Māja from Ḥubshī b. Junāda, Aḥmad and al-Ḥākim from Burayda and Abū Rāfiʿ, and Ibn Abī Shayba and Ibn Jarīr from Burayda; and that he (God bless him and his Household) made298 [p.294]
(3:62) Indeed this is the true account; and there is no god but God; and indeed God is the Mighty, the Wise.
ʿAlī as his self, as Aḥmad related from ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥanṭab, of his words (God bless him and his Household) to the delegation of Thaqīf. And what Ibn al-Najjār brought out, that Ibn al-ʿĀṣ asked the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) about his love for ʿAlī (peace be upon him), and he said: “this man asks me about [my own] self.” And in al-Laʾāliʾ al-Maṣnūʿa, from Ibn al-Najjār also, from him, by another chain, he said (God bless him and his Household): “ʿAlī is my self; so whom have you seen saying anything about his own self?” And from Abū ʿUmar al-Zāhid in the book al-Yawāqīt, from him also, by another chain, he said (God bless him and his Household): “I did not suppose that anyone would ask about his own self.” But when we mention these reports and their like, it is said, “their sources are the Shīʿa, and their aim in them is well known,” to the end of the foregoing speech — and God judges, and He is the best of judges. And the plural, with a single one meant by it, has come in the noble Qurʾān. Does not His words in Sūrat al-Shuʿarāʾ suffice of that: (26:105) “the people of Noah denied the messengers, when their brother Noah said to them, ‘will you not be wary? Indeed I am to you a trustworthy messenger’”? And the like of it, “ʿĀd denied the messengers, when their brother Hūd said to them,” to the end; “Thamūd denied the messengers, when their brother Ṣāliḥ said to them,” to the end; “the people of Lot denied the messengers, when their brother Lot said to them,” to the end; “the people of the Thicket denied the messengers, when Shuʿayb said to them,” to the end — and what is meant by “the messengers” in each of the verses is a single one.
And whence is it for us that the ḥadīth of the mutual imprecation and their like, concerning the excellence of ʿAlī and the People of the House, should be related, chained to our age, from the likes of ʿImrān b. Ḥiṭṭān, Lammāza b. Ziyād, ʿAbd Allāh b. Shaqīq, Nuʿaym b. Hind, Jarīr b. ʿUthmān, Azhar b. ʿAbd Allāh, Ibrāhīm al-Saʿdī, and their like — of those whose own scholars of [the science of] men testified to their setting up enmity to the People of the House (peace be upon them), even if some, like Ibn Ḥajar in al-Taqrīb, were lax in the affair of one of them, saying of him, “he is charged with naṣb”? And would that I knew what this Shaykh has left of standing for their ḥadīth, their collections, their traditionists, their tafsīrs, and their exegetes, if the like of what he supposed of forgery gains currency with their generality. (62) “Indeed this” — namely what was mentioned of the birth of Jesus, God’s creating him, his acknowledgment that his miracles are only by God’s leave, that God is his Lord and the Lord of the people, his command to worship God, and other than that which indicates that Jesus is a human created by God, his affair in His hand and subject to His power — “is the true account”, which the Christians acknowledge and which their books that they ascribe to revelation mention. “And there is no god but God” — and where is the Messiah Jesus from divinity, when there befell him of persecution what befell, and he never ceased to take refuge in supplication, humility, and entreaty to God? “And indeed God is the299 [p.295]
(3:63) But if they turn away, then indeed God is Knower of the workers of corruption. (3:64) Say: “O People of the Book, come to a word equal between us and you: that we worship none but God, and associate nothing with Him, and that none of us take others as lords apart from God …”
Mighty, the Wise” in His divinity, His measuring-out, and His governance; and everyone besides Him is abased in his createdness and his need — so how should other than God be a god along with Him? (63) “But if they turn away” from believing you and following the truth, “then indeed God is Knower of the workers of corruption” — that is, they are workers of corruption, wishing to beguile the people and lead them astray, working corruption in the earth; and God is Knower of them, requiting them their requital. (64) “Say”, O Messenger of God: “O People of the Book, come to a word equal between us and you” — that is, even between us and you in our reciting it all together, in what is of the books of revelation or is ascribed to revelation, as is found in your Torah, your Gospels, and the rest of your books which you ascribe to revelation, of the oneness of God and that He is the God and the Lord who governs His creation alone, having no partner. And of the sum of that, in your Torah, from God’s speech: “that you may know that Yahweh[Author’s note] is the God; there is no other besides Him — that Yahweh is the God in the heaven above and upon the earth beneath; there is none besides Him”;[Author’s note] “I, I am He, and there is no god with Me”;[Author’s note] and the like of it in [affirming] oneness and denying a partner in the eighteenth Psalm, 31, and in the book of Isaiah 44:6 and 8. And in Deuteronomy from the Torah 6:4, and in the Gospel of Mark 12:29: “Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one.” And in the Gospel of John 17:3: “and this is eternal life, that they know You, that You are the only true God, and Jesus the Messiah whom You have sent.” And this word is that we not be humble with the humility of a servant to his God, in respect of His being a god — as is the sense of worship — “that we worship none but God” alone, “and associate nothing with Him” in worship and the ascription of divinity, and that we say of nothing other than God that it is a god; “and that none of us” — O company of humankind — “take others as lords apart from God.” For when God says, “I am the Lord,” and the Lord is one, then your saying that a human is a lord — as you said concerning Jesus — returns to the denial of God’s lordship, and is a making of the human, originated and subject to pains and the need and calamities of humanity, into a lord apart from God. Or the sense would be, “lords” in a rank below the rank of God, as is the view of the idol-worshippers concerning their associates, under whatever heading, of the supposed descents.300 And there is no bar to His addressing the Jews and the Christians with a matter shared between them, and in [p.296]
(3:64) … But if they turn away, then say: “Bear witness that we are submitters.” (3:65) O People of the Book, why do you dispute concerning Abraham …
the midst mentioning what is particular to the Christians; or that that comprehends the Jews in view of their saying (9:30) “Ezra is the son of God” — exalted is God above what they associate — “they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before,” as in Sūrat al-Tawba. And the apparent [truth] is that what is meant is “they imitate the saying” of the Brahmins, the Buddhists, and others, in the ascription of a son to God in view of a descent in divinity. And it may be that the taking of lords here is upon the measure of His words in Sūrat al-Tawba, (9:31) “they took their rabbis and their monks as lords apart from God.” For in al-Kāfī and al-Maḥāsin, from Abū Baṣīr from Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that they made lawful for them a forbidden thing and forbade them a lawful thing, so they worshipped them without perceiving it; and from al-Maḥāsin also, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), the like of it. And the like of it is what al-Tirmidhī brought out, and a company mentioned in al-Durr al-Manthūr in Sūrat al-Tawba, from ʿAdī b. Ḥātim from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household); and from a company also from Ḥudhayfa; and from al-Maḥāsin, also by a chain in which there is a mursal, from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): “they did not pray to them nor fast for them, but they obeyed them in disobedience to God.” And in al-Durr al-Manthūr also, Abū al-Shaykh and al-Bayhaqī brought out from Ḥudhayfa and mentioned the like of it. And from al-ʿAyyāshī, by his reports from al-Ṣādiq and al-Bāqir (peace be upon them), the like of what we have mentioned from the two of them (peace be upon them). And in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, from the tafsīr of al-Thaʿlabī, with his chain from ʿAdī b. Ḥātim concerning the verse of al-Tawba: “I said” — that is, to the Messenger of God — “we do not worship them”; so he (God bless him and his Household) said, “do they not forbid what God has made lawful, and you forbid it, and make lawful what God has forbidden, and you deem it lawful?” I said, “yes”; he (God bless him and his Household) said, “that is your worship of them.” And it is said “a word equal” means “just”; and what we have mentioned is more effective in the summons and more manifest in the proof, for its being supported by the binding [argument] from what is in their [own] books, and its pointing to [the fact] that the equality in this word indicates that it is of the foundations of their books, the first principles of reason, the core of the intelligible, and the clear proofs of self-evidence. “But if they turn away”, by their evil choice and their error, and do not turn to this summons, unique in nobility, “then say” to them — you, O Messenger of God, and the Muslims — “bear witness” and know, from what you observe of our state in [affirming] oneness, and bear witness against us, as a confirming of our acknowledgment of the truth and that we are upon clear insight in our affair, “that we are submitters” to God: we do not oppose Him by association, nor take another as a lord. (65) “O People of the Book, why do you dispute concerning Abraham?” — and the Jews suppose that he was a Jew and the Christians suppose that he was a Christian, and you cling, in your refuted argument, to mere impossible claims; while the case is that the utmost of the clingings for Jewry you trace back to the messengership of Moses and the descent of the Torah upon him, and the utmost of the clingings for Christianity you trace back to the messengership of the Messiah and the descent of the Gospel — over and above [the fact] that what is current of Jewry and Christianity is but of the innovations that arose after Moses301 [p.297]
(3:65) … when the Torah and the Gospel were not sent down save after him? Will you not use reason? (3:66) Lo! You are these who disputed concerning what you have knowledge of; so why do you dispute concerning what you have no knowledge of? And God knows, and you know not. (3:67) Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was upright (ḥanīf), a submitter; and he was not of the idolaters. (3:68) Indeed the nearest of people to Abraham are those who followed him, and this Prophet and those who believe; and God is the Guardian of the believers. (3:69) A party of the People of the Book wished that they might lead you astray …
and the Torah and the Messiah and the Gospel. And where is that from Abraham? “When the Torah and the Gospel were not sent down save after him” by many generations. “Will you not use reason?” — how do you speak and how do you claim? (66) “Lo! You are these” — you yourselves; that is, I do not direct the address and the reproach to you in view of what your forefathers did, but rather you yourselves — “who disputed concerning what you have knowledge of” — that is, you took, in your disputation, matters that are known, and came to sophisticate in them and cling to them: such as the messengership of Moses and the Torah, so that you came to attach to them your corrupt suppositions; and such as the birth of Jesus without a male and some of his miracles, so that the Christians came to suppose from that that Jesus, born of Mary, is a god along with God. “So why do you dispute concerning what you have no knowledge of” — nay, it is of the impossibilities, with no sophistry in it by a flimsy clinging to a known matter? “And God knows” your state, and the reality is clear, “and you know not. (67) Abraham was neither a Jew” — saying of the God “Elohim” in the plural form, as they have filled their current Torah with, and as they wrote in the book of Jeremiah 23:36, “Elohim ḥayyītem Yahweh ṣebāʾōt Elohēnū,” that is, “the living gods, the Lord of hosts, our gods” — nor does he say the lapses of their Torah in boldness against God’s majesty, as in the forbidding of Adam from the tree, the story of the tower of Babel, Jacob’s wrestling, and other than that, some of which is mentioned in the first part of al-Madrasa al-Sayyāra. “Nor a Christian” — tripling the gods, deifying the human, and abrogating the sacred law entirely by mere [personal] approval. “But he was upright (ḥanīf)” — an affirmer of oneness with the reality of oneness — “a submitter” — that is, entering into God’s peace in His oneness, the reality of His knowledge, and obedience to Him — “and he was not of the idolaters. (68) Indeed the nearest of people to Abraham are those who followed him” upon his uprightness, his submission, and his creed in religion, of the prophets and the affirmers of oneness, the righteous among the people; “and” in particular “this Prophet and those who believe” with him — for this Prophet is of the greatest of those who summon to Islam, the creed of Abraham upon its reality. “And God is the Guardian of the believers. (69) A party of the People of the Book wished that they might lead you astray” — “wished” is in the sense of “desired,” and “that they might lead you astray” is an interpretation of it; and the future302 [p.298]
(3:69) … and they lead none astray but themselves, and they do not perceive. (3:70) O People of the Book, why do you disbelieve in God’s signs while you bear witness? (3:71) O People of the Book, why do you clothe the truth with falsehood and conceal the truth, while you know? (3:72) And a party of the People of the Book said: “Believe in what has been sent down upon those who believe at the face of the day, and disbelieve at its end, that perhaps they may turn back. (3:73) And do not believe save one who follows your religion.” Say: “Indeed the guidance is God’s guidance” …
is only in relation to the wishing, not to the address. “And they lead none astray but themselves” — since [each] adds to his own straying by his straying in the attempt to lead astray a believing affirmer of oneness who is upon clear insight in his affair. “And they do not perceive. (70) O People of the Book, why do you disbelieve in God’s signs while you bear witness” that they are from God, according to what you recite of the books of your revelation, of the Torah and the Gospel and others, in the glad tidings of them and of the Messenger who brings them — in such a way that, from what you recite, the intending of these signs in particular is determined; or what is meant is “while you bear witness” and observe what indicates that they are from God. (71) “O People of the Book, why do you clothe the truth with falsehood” — that is, you make falsehood a garment over the truth, covering it with it in an attempt to veil it, and deceiving in its affair, that you may cloak your own affair — “and conceal the truth while you know” it. (72) “And a party of the People of the Book said” — the apparent [truth] is that they are of the Jews; they said to some of their people, teaching them to deceive the believers in the attempt to lead them astray from the truth: “believe” — that is, make a display of formal faith — “in what has been sent down upon those who believe at the face of the day” — that is, in its early part — “and disbelieve” — that is, and declare to them plainly unbelief and apostasy — “at its end.” So perhaps the Muslims, from this deception, will reckon that your unbelief in it and your apostasy on that same day was out of insight and knowledge on your part, by the uncovering of your error in your faith in it at the face of the day, and “that perhaps they may turn back”, by this deception, from their faith and apostatize from their religion. Al-Qummī related in his tafsīr, from Abū al-Jārūd from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), in this place, a report weak by Abū al-Jārūd and far from applying to the verse. And that party also said to their people, in beguiling them and enticing them to persist in straying and to conceal the truth: (73) “And do not believe” — that is, do not disclose your faith in what is in the books of your revelation, that God gives prophethood and revelation to a prophet like Moses in a manner from which the prophet of the Muslims is determined, and do not acknowledge that — “save to one who follows your religion” and is of you, for he will conceal it as we conceal it. “Say” to them, O Messenger of God: do you reckon that guidance to the truth depends, in its occurrence and non-occurrence, upon your acknowledging what is in your Torah and your books and your displaying faith? No indeed; rather “indeed the guidance is God’s guidance” — He guides whom He wills, by His kindness, of those who have not been partisan against the truth, to the even way.303 [p.299]
(3:73) … “that anyone should be given the like of what you were given, or that they should dispute with you before your Lord.” Say: “Indeed the bounty is in God’s hand; He gives it to whom He wills; and God is All-embracing, Knowing. (3:74) He singles out for His mercy whom He wills; and God is of mighty bounty.” (3:75) And of the People of the Book is he who, if you entrust him with a quintal, will render it to you; and of them is he who, if you entrust him with a dinar, will not render it to you unless you keep standing over him. That …
And the sentence “Say: indeed the guidance” is parenthetical in the midst of their speech of beguiling, brought for haste in rebuking them and in making foolish their view in their seduction. “That anyone should be given” — that is, and do not believe, to other than one who follows your religion, that anyone “other than you” should be given “the like of what you were given”, in view of your prophets and your books, of prophethood, messengership, the Book, and the sacred law — and [that] it should be in accordance with what you asked of Moses, so he informed you that He would raise up a prophet from your brethren, the sons of Ishmael, like Moses, and would put His word in his mouth. “Or” that you believe for them that they “should dispute with you before your Lord” by what He informed you of concerning the affair of the Messenger of God and his Qurʾān being God’s speech, and that they have the proof against you before God by what you know of the truth.[Author’s note] Or the sense is: say, “indeed the guidance is God’s guidance,” in that anyone should be given, to the end — so the sentence “that anyone should be given” would be attached to what God commanded His Messenger to say to them; and upon this, His words “Say: indeed the bounty” would be a repetition of the command to say, without the intervention of a foreign speech requiring it. And the more apparent is the first aspect. And there have been transmitted in al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān two other aspects of no account. “Say”, O Messenger of God, in making foolish their view in what they said and enjoined upon one another: “indeed the bounty” — and of it is messengership, the sacred law, the enabling for answering the summons to the two of them, the aiding of the summons and the raising high of its word, the appearing of guidance, the prevailing of the proof, the might of the religion of truth, and the ordering of its community — “is in God’s hand; He gives it to whom He wills; and God is All-embracing” in His bounty, His kindness, His mercy, and His power, “Knowing” of who is fit for messengership and the giving of bounty. (74) “He singles out for His mercy” — with bounty and guidance — “whom He wills” to single out with that, of His servants, for his fitness for it; “and God is of mighty bounty.” (75) And of the People of the Book is he who, if you entrust him with a quintal” — the interpretation of the quintal has passed at the fourteenth verse — “will render it to you”, holding to the judgment of reason and the natural disposition as to the ugliness of treachery in a trust; for its acceptance is a covenant to guard it and return it, and the sacred law of truth has forbidden treachery in it. “And of them is he who, if you entrust him with a dinar” — which is a legal mithqāl of gold, equalling about half an Ottoman lira — “will not render it to you unless you keep standing over him” in demand, argument, and force. “That” — that is, their treachery in the trust — “is because they”, in the suppositions of their straying, “said: ‘There is no way against us in respect of the unlettered’” — in sin and the inviolability of their properties.304 [p.300]
(3:75) … is because they said: “There is no way against us in respect of the unlettered”; and they speak falsehood against God, while they know. (3:76) Nay — whoever fulfils his covenant and is Godwary: indeed God loves the Godwary. (3:77) Indeed those who sell God’s covenant and their oaths for a paltry price — those have no portion in the Hereafter …
It is said that what is meant by “the unlettered” is the kind of the Arabs, in view of [the fact] that the preponderant number of them do not read or write. And it is possible that what is meant by them is whoever is other than the Children of Israel, for they ascribe them to “the nation” and “the nations.” And it is possible that they mean the followers of the unlettered Messenger of God. And perhaps they sophisticate, in denying [any] way [against them], by what is in their Torah, that it forbade them vengeance and rancour against the sons of their people, and calumny and slander among the sons of their people, and false witness against their kinsman — so they suppose from that that the non-Israelite is of forfeit inviolability in the rational social rulings, and of that is the rendering of a trust. “And they speak” — in denying [any] way [against them] and in treachery in the trust — “falsehood against God, while they know” that it is a lie on their part. For along with the judgment of reason, they read, of what remains in their Torah of the sacred law of truth, that a trust must be returned absolutely, and that the denial of a trust and a deposit is a transgression and a sin, and that they are forbidden theft, lying, and treachery, without confining these rulings to the Israelite — as in the sixth and the nineteenth chapters of Leviticus. (76) “Nay” — there is a way against them in respect of the unlettered, and they are answerable for the trust and the fulfilment of its covenant. And how goodly is the fulfilment of the covenant! “Whoever fulfils his covenant” — in the books of the language, awfā is in the sense of wafā; I say, what is used in the noble Qurʾān is awfā, ūfū, awfi, awfū, and al-mūfūn, all of them from awfā. And the apparent [truth] is that the pronoun in “his covenant” returns to the relative “whoever”; and it is said it returns to the word of Majesty in His words “and they speak falsehood against God” — and that is far-fetched, along with [the fact] that the acceptance of a trust does not comprise a covenant with God, but rather comprises a covenant with its owner. And the very fulfilment of the covenant is beloved to God; but not everyone who fulfils his covenant is beloved to God — rather, whoever fulfils it “and is Godwary” of God, that is, guards against His wrath and His punishment by righteous deeds and obedience to Him in His commands and His prohibitions, and God-wariness is for him a disposition and a way: “indeed God loves the Godwary”, whose constant practice is the wariness lest God turn His noble face away from them — and refuge is with God. (77) “Indeed those who sell God’s covenant” — that is, their covenant with God — “and their oaths for a price” — the buying attaches to the price as it attaches to the thing sold; and the price is in reality one of the two things sold and the two counter-values — “paltry”, whatever it be, for the sake of which their caprices carry them to breaking [the oath] and violating the covenant: “those have no portion” — that is, no share and no lot — “in the Hereafter; and God will not speak to them” — perhaps it is a metonym for His detestation of them305 [p.301]
(3:77) … and God will not speak to them nor look at them on the Day of Resurrection, nor purify them; and theirs is a painful punishment. (3:78) And indeed of them is a party who twist their tongues with the Book, that you may reckon it of the Book, though it is not of the Book; and they say, “It is from God,” though it is not from God; and they speak falsehood against God, while they know. (3:79) It is not for a human that God should give him the Book and the judgment and the prophethood, and then he should say to the people: “Be servants to me …”
and His displeasure with them. “Nor look at them on the Day of Resurrection” — that is, He does not incline to them with His mercy — “nor purify them” by pardon and forgiveness; “and theirs is a painful punishment. (78) And indeed of them” — that is, of the People of the Book — “is a party who twist their tongues with the Book” — over and above what has befallen it of alteration; that is, they twist their tongues and distort them, in their recitation, to what is not in it — “that you may reckon it of the Book, though it is not of” the kind of “the Book” at all; rather it is an addition and a fresh alteration on their part. “And they say” — in their excess in straying and lying against God, concerning that to which they twisted their tongues in falsehood of their own — “it is from God, though it is not from God; and they speak falsehood against God, while they know” that it is a lie on their part and a fabrication against God. (79) “It is not for a human that” God should send him as a guide for His servants to the truth, and “that God should give him the Book and the judgment” — in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, that is, knowledge; and in al-Kashshāf, wisdom. But each of the two is far from the wording; so the apparent [truth] is that it is the authority of messengership, the summons, and direction — “and the prophethood”, in the exposition of realities, “then” — after all this — “he should say”, that bearer of glad tidings, the messenger, “to the people: ‘Be servants to me.’” Three matters are indicated by this verse. The first: that the human, coming to be in the womb by degrees, an inanimate thing without a spirit, then the spirit attaching to him, then born weak and poor in all his states with no knowledge of his own, then advancing by degrees in knowledge and in emerging from ignorance and the likeness of beasts little by little, and living upon his poverty and his weakness in all his affairs — feeling pain, hungering, thirsting, grieving, fearing, and being persecuted: how is it conceivable, and how does the fancier fancy, that this should be a god, necessary of existence, a creator? The second: that even if it happens for some of the deficient humans to transgress by his corruption and his deficiency and claim divinity and summon people to his worship — yet it is not permissible or possible in reason that the human described in the verse should summon people to his worship and claim lordship and divinity. For God is the Wise, the Knower of what will be from His servants; so how, and He is the All-holy, should He contravene His wisdom and His knowledge and give the Book, the judgment, and the prophethood to one whom He knows will summon to associationism? Exalted is He above that. The third: the informing that this has not occurred and does not occur, because it is impossible against God’s majesty. So the noble verse306 [p.302]
(3:79) … apart from God”; but rather: “Be devoted to the Lord (rabbāniyyīn) …”
indicates, by its clear demonstration, the invalidity of the claim of whoever claimed divinity and lordship for a human, and the invalidity of the summons to the worship of a human, and is a refutation of and a reproach for that. And all this, in its generality, comprehends the Christians, and is a refutation of them and a giving of the lie to them in what they ascribe to the Messiah in the Gospel of John 10:33–36, that he claimed divinity and adduced the sixth verse of the eighty-second Psalm; and in what they also ascribe, in the Gospels of Matthew 22:41–46, Mark 13:35–38, and Luke 20:41–45, that he claimed lordship, arguing by David’s saying at the beginning of the hundred-and-tenth Psalm, “the Lord said to my lord” — although in the adducing there is a manifest alteration in sense, and in the second argument a verbal alteration of what is in the Hebrew Psalms, for its correct translation is “God said to my master.” And what do the Psalms avail if they mention something impossible in reason, which does not pass with one who knows God? And we have mentioned something of that in the first part of the book al-Hudā, pp. 115, 116, and 198, and the first part of al-Madrasa al-Sayyāra, p. 73 of the second printing. And the verse is also a reproach to them for their self-contradiction in their saying that the Messiah is a human to whom God gave the Book, the wisdom, and the prophethood, and that he was baptized — that is, washed — at the hand of John son of Zechariah with the washing of repentance, and that the Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove, as their Gospels state all this plainly; and [then] their saying that he — and God forbid it of him — claimed divinity and lordship. And the sense of that is the summoning of the people to be servants to him “apart from God”; for the summoning of people to the worship of a human is in reality a denial of the station of divinity and a transferring of what is God’s due, of worship, to another than He, of the humans. “But rather” the human whose excellence is heralded in the verse says to the people: “be devoted to the Lord (rabbāniyyīn)” — in al-Nihāya, the rabbānī is ascribed to the Lord (rabb) with the addition of the alif and the nūn for intensification. And in al-Tibyān, al-Qāmūs, and al-Nihāya, [it is] as one says “baḥrānī blood,” ascribed to the baḥr — which is the depth of the womb, or the well-known sea, for its breadth; and as one says raqabānī for one of a large neck, as in al-Tibyān and al-Qāmūs, and liḥyānī for one of a large beard. And perhaps to this returns the interpreting of the rabbāniyyūn by the learned jurists, or the God-fearing sages, or the wise scholars. And this word was also interpreted as those who govern the affair of the people in guardianship with setting-right, like the rubbān of the ship, taken from the rubbān who orders the affair of the people by his governance of it and his setting it right. But this last is repelled: first, that its requirement is that it be said rabbānīn without the ascriptive [ending]; second, that the Messenger does not say to all the people “be governors of the people’s affair in guardianship with setting-right” — rather the station of guardianship with setting-right and governance belongs only to particular individuals among the people, and the tenor of the verse307 [p.303]
(3:79) … by what you have been teaching of the Book and by what you have been studying.” (3:80) And [nor] that he should command you to take the angels and the prophets as lords. Would he command you to unbelief after you have been submitters? (3:81) And when God took the compact of the prophets …
does not suit the particularizing. And the foregoing interpretations did not look to the wording, but were taken from the intimations of its sense. So the rabbānī is he who is attached, in his states, his knowledge, and his deeds, to the ascription to God his Master, the Lord of the worlds, in what He loves and is pleased with. And this is what gathers the Messenger’s summons to the people and their setting-right. “By what you have been” — that is, by the requirement of what you have been — “teaching of the Book, and by what you have been studying” in the religion and the teachings of revelation. (80) “And [nor] that he should command you” — coordinated upon “he should say to the people,” negated by the import of “it is not [for a human]” — “to take the angels and the prophets as lords” apart from God, for that is unbelief in God. “Would he command you” — and how should he command you — “to unbelief” and summon you to it, “after you have been submitters”, entered into God’s peace by faith in Him and His oneness? And he is God’s Messenger, the Knowing, the Wise, and the summoner to God — so how should there issue from him what reason deems impossible for God’s messengers and prophets? (81) “And when” — and remember, in the Book; or “when” is an adverb for His words below, “He said: ‘Do you acknowledge?’” — “God took the compact of the prophets.” In the verse there are two aspects and two [sets of] reports. The first: that the compact is [taken] for the prophets upon their peoples — as you say, when you have covenanted with God, “I have placed upon myself God’s covenant and His compact”; and the compact would be for the prophets in view of its conveying to their communities and its binding upon them, even though God is the one who takes it, by His revelation and His command to the prophets to take it upon their peoples. So in al-Tibyān it is related from Abū ʿAbd Allāh — meaning al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) — that he (peace be upon him) said: its estimation is “and when God took the compact of the communities of the prophets, in the affirming of the truth of their prophet and acting by what he brought,” and that they opposed them thereafter and did not fulfil it and abandoned much of his sacred law and altered much of it. And likewise in Majmaʿ al-Bayān. And in the tafsīr of the author of al-Manār, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), it is upon the measure of His words (65:1) “O Prophet, when you divorce women” — the address being to the Prophet while what is meant is his community generally; then he mentioned from his teacher Muḥammad ʿAbduh the ascription of that to al-Ṣādiq. I say: I have not found the report readily with a chain. Indeed, in Tafsīr al-Burhān from al-ʿAyyāshī from Ḥabīb al-Sijistānī from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) is what returns to the like of what al-Tibyān related. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn Jarīr, Ibn al-Mundhir, and Ibn Abī Ḥātim brought out from Saʿīd b. Jubayr, he said: “I said to Ibn ʿAbbās, ‘the companions of ʿAbd Allāh’ (meaning Ibn Masʿūd) ‘read “and when God took the compact of those who were given the Book,” and we read “the compact of the prophets”’; so Ibn ʿAbbās said, ‘God only took the compact of the prophets upon their peoples.’” And Ibn308 [p.304]
(3:81) … “[that] whatever I have given you of a Book and wisdom, then there comes to you a messenger confirming what is with you, you shall believe in him …”
Jarīr brought out from ʿAlī the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), on His words “He said: ‘Then bear witness’”: “he says, then bear witness against your communities to that, and I am with you of the witnesses.” And upon this the address in what follows would be to the communities. And the second [aspect]: the taking of the compact from the prophets, the address in what follows being to them — as is the import of Tafsīr al-Qummī and its report from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him); and the like of it al-Burhān’s report from Saʿd b. ʿAbd Allāh from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), and from the author of the book al-Wāḥida from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him); and Ibn Jarīr’s report from ʿAlī (peace be upon him) also; and Ibn Jarīr’s and Ibn al-Mundhir’s report from Ibn ʿAbbās also. And upon it the address in what follows would be to the prophets. And the preponderance, after the mutual repelling of the reports and the regard to the tenor of the noble verse, belongs to the first aspect. And the compact (mīthāq) is the confirmed covenant; and it is like the vow and the oath in the entering of the lām upon its answer: you say, “I covenanted with God — if such be the case, I shall surely do such”; and “I vowed,” or “upon me for God,” or “I swore,” or “I took oath,” or “by God — if such be the case, I shall surely do such.” And the first lām is like the second in being for the receiving of the oath and its like by the answer; it is brought with the condition as a confirming of the condition’s entering into the compass of the oath and the covenant, and a strengthening of their receiving the answer — because the condition is a restriction of the answer and of its attachments, as in His words in Sūrat al-Tawba, (9:75) “and of them is he who covenanted with God: ‘if He gives us of His bounty, we shall surely give in charity.’” As that runs in the noble Qurʾān in the covenant and the oath, both manifest and posited — and of that is “they swore by God” in about fifty places. And the entry of this first [lām] upon the condition, to strengthen the connection, resembles the entry of the interrogative hamza of denial upon the condition, even though what is denounced, with the disbelievers in the Resurrection, is only the answer of the condition — as in Sūrat al-Isrāʾ, (17:49) “when we have become bones and fragments, shall we indeed be raised as a new creation?” and the like of it the hundredth verse, and other than that. And the first lām may suffice in place of the second, as in His words in Sūrat al-Ḥashr, (59:12) “if they are expelled, they will not go out with them; and if they are fought, they will not help them” — for it is the lām of the oath; and of what indicates that is His words “and if they helped them, they would surely turn their backs.” As the entry of the interrogative hamza upon the condition suffices, even though what is denounced is its answer, as in His words in Sūrat Maryam, (19:66) “and the human says, ‘when I am dead, shall I indeed be brought forth alive?’” And the second lām may suffice, as in His words in Sūrat al-Māʾida, (5:73) “and if they do not cease from what they say, there shall surely touch those who disbelieved …” This [being so], that by which the compact was taken is His words “whatever I have given you of a Book and wisdom, then there comes to you a messenger confirming what is with you, you shall believe in him and you shall surely help him.” And the correct [view] is that the first lām is the one that enters upon the particle309 [p.305]
(3:81) … “and you shall surely help him.”
of the condition, for the receiving of the compact; and “whatever” is conditional, like His words in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf, (7:18) “whoever of them follows you, I shall surely fill Hell with you all” — that is: whenever I have given you, O communities of the prophets, a Book heralding the prophethood to come, and a wisdom by which you know the wisdom of the sending of the Messenger and the evidences of his truthfulness, and you have thereby come to be upon clear insight concerning the messengership to come; then there comes to you, after this, a messenger the evidences of whose truthfulness in his claim of messengership from God have indicated it, and he being “confirming what is with you” of the glad tidings — that is, he is its confirming instance, by which it is verified, in view of its complete conformity to him and the clarity of the indication upon his messengership; or “confirming what is with you” of the knowledge of divinity, [God’s] oneness, and the prophethood of the noble prophets, so that his messengership is not barred, as is the preponderant [case] with the callers to misguidance, since they oppose the religion of truth in what returns to divinity, oneness, and the Return. And the compact in the verse is His words “you shall believe in him and you shall surely help him” — that is, that messenger.
This [being so], it is said that the lām in “whatever” is for the beginning, and “whatever” is a relative, not a particle of condition, and it is a subject whose predicate is “you shall believe in him.” And it is repelled: first, that the compact, like the oath, is of what care is taken to connect it to the answer and to have it received by the connectors of the oath — so this purpose is not undone by the lām of beginning, which has the foremost place in speech; and one does not gather two mutually repellent things, namely the connecting of the covenant and its receiving [of an answer] together with its severance by the lām of beginning. Second, that faith in what they were given of a Book and wisdom is obligatory from the first that their prophet brings it to them — so there is no sense in its being made consequent, by “then,” upon the coming of another messenger; and likewise the discourse concerning “you shall surely help him,” if its pronoun is returned to what they were given of a Book and wisdom. Third, it is not sound for the pronoun in the predicate to be singular unless what is meant by the Book and the wisdom is one single thing — and that is far-fetched; otherwise what is required is to make the pronoun dual. Fourth, if we make “you shall believe” a predicate of His words “whatever I have given you,” and likewise “you shall surely help him,” then what is the lām in the two of them? For it is then fit neither to be a connector for the answer of the covenant and the compact, nor a displaced [lām], because the displaced one is particular to the predicate of “indeed.” Fifth, were it said that the drift of the verse is “for that which I have given you of a Book and wisdom, you shall surely believe in it; then, if a messenger comes to you, you shall surely help him” — so that the sentence “there comes to you” and what follows it would be another individual instance of the kind of the compact taken — we would say: first, whence do we get the condition in “then if a messenger comes to you,” when there is not, upon your saying, a condition coordinated upon [it]? Second, that the noble Qurʾān is too exalted for the like of what you suppose, of convoluted speech with parts interlocking in a manner beside which the poet’s saying is easy: “and there is not his like among the people save a king whose mother’s father is living, his father resembling him.”310 [p.306]
(3:81) … He said: “Do you acknowledge and take up My burden upon that?” They said: “We acknowledge.” He said: “Then bear witness, and I am with you of the witnesses.” (3:82) So whoever turns away after that — those are the transgressors. (3:83) Do they then seek other than the religion of God, while to Him has submitted whoever is in the heavens and the earth, willingly and unwillingly …
So there is no escape from what we have mentioned of the interpretation; and the generality of the address is in view of whoever apprehends the summons of the second messenger, of the communities, and so on. And that the Messenger of God, Muḥammad the Seal of the Prophets (God bless him and his Household), is the most manifest of the individual instances of the messengers in this compact — for the repetition of the glad tidings of him in their books, glad tidings verging upon explicitness in determining him, by the nearest of what the human, ignorant of the unseen, can understand in the determining of one who is to come in the future; and for the manifestness of the evidence upon his messengership and his Book and its remaining in all ages — namely the noble Qurʾān and the evidences of messengership in it, as we pointed to in the first chapter of the Introduction. And of helping him (God bless him and his Household) is the helping of him who is his self and his executor in his community, and who is to him in the station of Aaron to Moses, and the possessor of the covenant of Ghadīr and the bequest of the Two Weighty Things and other than that — namely ʿAlī (peace be upon him); and upon this aspect are to be construed some of what has come of the reports concerning that. “He said” — that is, God (magnified be His name) to the prophets — “do you acknowledge” that among the communities, in your conveying it to them, “and take” upon your communities “upon that My burden (iṣrī)” — that is, My covenant and My compact? “They said” — the prophets — “we acknowledge” that among our communities; and in view of this saying of theirs being an answer to the confirming interrogative, it resolves also into their saying, “and we have taken upon them, upon that, Your covenant and Your burden.” “He said” — God, to the prophets — “then bear witness” against your communities to this compact, “and I am with you of the witnesses. (82) So whoever turns away after that” — of the communities — from this compact, and turns aside from it, and disbelieves in whoever comes of the messengers, and in particular their Seal, whose proofs are clear, whose demonstration is radiant, and whose miracle is universal and abiding — “those” who turn away “are the transgressors”, who go out from the veil of faith and obedience. (83) “Do they then seek other than the religion of God”, by their turning away from God’s covenant and the religion of truth — faith in God, His Messenger, and His Book — and by their opposing God with this turning away and their going out from His obedience? And this interrogative is a denunciation of them and a making-foolish of them; and the proof is His words “while to Him has submitted” — that is, while the case is that there has entered into His peace and yielded to Him (magnified be His station) “whoever is in the heavens and the earth”, of the angels, mankind, and the jinn, “willingly and unwillingly (karhan)” — with the fatḥa of the kāf. It is said it is from aversion, that is, willing and averse; and it is said from compulsion, that is, willing and compelled — as is the apparent [sense] of His words in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, (4:19) “it is not lawful for you to inherit women by compulsion,” that is, compellingly. And the second is what suits in the verse, for the opposing with willingness; and it is the requirement of the reports mentioned in the two tafsīrs of al-Burhān and al-Durr al-Manthūr from311 [p.307]
(3:83) … and to Him they shall be returned? (3:84) Say: “We believe in God, and in what has been sent down upon us, and what was sent down upon Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Tribes …”
al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), al-Kāẓim, and Ibn ʿAbbās, and what is mentioned in Majmaʿ al-Bayān as being related from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him). And what is meant by the compulsion is what was at the beginning, for the preponderant number of those who submitted under compulsion continued in Islam willingly and with desire. And the coordinating of “unwillingly” by the wāw, which is for conjoining, is only in view of the totality, even if one class is particular to willingness and one class to compulsion — and the matter in it is apparent. But along with interpreting submission (islām) as the acknowledgment of divinity and oneness and the professing of the religion of truth, the mention of whoever is in the earth would be only in view of a part of them, namely whoever professed Islam — for many of those in the earth, in every age, did not submit. And in that case the aspect of the proof for the denunciation, in His words “while to Him has submitted,” may be hidden. So the apparent [truth] is that submission in the verse is in a sense comprising the yielding to God in the knowledge of Him, His religion, His bringing-into-being, and His decree. And in that case, whoever is in the heavens and the earth is not free of an instance of that — nay, all created things, in one respect or several. And what is meant by submitting unwillingly is that in which the submitter’s will and desire are not the cause, such as the yielding to the bringing-into-being and the decree, and the knowledge to which the natural disposition prompts at a moment of heedlessness from the straying of caprice. For you see the human — even the materialist, the suspender [of judgment] — when a calamity befalls him in which his means are cut off, that his soul takes refuge, for deliverance from that calamity, in the One he sees as able to repel it from him by His overpowering power, in spite of the customary causes: and this is the Powerful God, and He is God (magnified be His station). And [it is] like the entering into the religion of Islam by compulsion at the outset. And the upshot is that God, the God to whom everything has yielded — and of that are the angels, mankind, and the jinn — “and to Him they shall be returned” on the Day of Resurrection, after none remains but He: this God — is it sound for them to seek other than His religion? And upon this, what we have pointed to of the reports transmitted in the exegesis of the verse would be transmitted in view of some of the instances of submission. (84) “Say”, O Messenger of God — you and whoever is obliged to follow you: we do not seek other than the religion of God; rather “we believe in God”, than whom there is no god, and in His religion, the religion of truth, as it was sent down in His holy books upon His messengers, “and in what has been sent down upon us” by the blessing of the revelation to you and the blessing of your messengership, “and what was sent down upon Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Tribes (al-asbāṭ)” — and they are the tribes of the Children of Israel ascribed to the sons of Jacob. So it is possible that what is meant by the sending-down upon them is in view of the sending-down upon their prophets, in the manner of His words in the verse “sent down upon us,” and [3:72] “in what was sent down upon those who believe,” and in Sūrat al-Baqara [2:91] “in what312 [p.308]
(3:84) … “and what was given to Moses and Jesus and the prophets from their Lord; we make no distinction between any of them, and to Him we are submitters.” (3:85) And whoever seeks other than Islam as a religion, it shall not be accepted from him, and he in the Hereafter is of the losers. (3:86) How shall God guide a people who disbelieved after their faith and bore witness that the Messenger is true, and the clear proofs came to them? And God does not guide the wrongdoing people. (3:87) Those — their recompense is that upon them is the curse of God and of the angels and of mankind all together. (3:88) Abiding therein; the punishment shall not be lightened for them, nor shall they be granted respite. (3:89) Save those who repented after that and set [things] right; for indeed God is Forgiving, Merciful.
was sent down upon us.” And the sense of “upon” in “upon Abraham” and “upon the Tribes” is one, the difference being only by the [regard of] consideration. And it is possible that what is meant by the Tribes is their prophets, like Moses and whoever came after him. “And what was given to Moses and Jesus and the prophets from their Lord” — of a Book, wisdom, marvel, and evidentiary miracle. “We make no distinction between any of them” in faith, nor do caprices and tribal partisanship turn us away from faith in some of them; “and to Him” — that is, to God — “we are submitters” in all of that. (85) “And whoever seeks other than Islam” to God “as a religion” — and of its most manifest instances is the yielding to what the Messenger of God, the Seal of the Prophets, brought — “it shall not be accepted from him”, [namely] other than Islam; and how should straying be accepted from him? “And he in the Hereafter is of the losers. (86) How shall God guide” and bring to the truth, by His kindness and His enabling, “a people who disbelieved after their faith and bore witness” — coordinated upon the sense of the verb in “their faith,” that is, after they believed and bore witness — “that the Messenger is true, and the clear proofs came to them”, manifest in their indication upon his messengership and the reality of faith? For these have taken themselves out, by their rebellion against God, from their fitness for His kindness and for His bringing them to guidance by His enabling. “And God” (magnified be His wisdom) “does not guide” and does not bring, by His enabling, “the wrongdoing people”, rebellious by their wrongdoing; rather, (87) “those — their recompense is that upon them is the curse of God” — that is, His expelling them from His mercy — “and of the angels”, by their supplicating against them with the curse, “and” likewise the curse “of mankind all together”; and in this is a permission for people to curse them and a request for that. (88) “Abiding therein” — that is, in the curse and God’s expelling them from His mercy — “the punishment shall not be lightened for them, nor shall they be granted respite” — a metonym for their not being reached by mercy, or their not being given respite on the Day of Resurrection from the punishment. (89) “Save those who repented” — in this world — “after that and set [things] right” — their deeds, that is, did righteous deeds — “for indeed God is Forgiving, Merciful” — that is, God forgives them their sins and shows them mercy with good pleasure and reward, because He is Forgiving, Merciful; and the cause was set, in the branching, in the place of the effect, for emphasis and to make plain that this forgiveness is not of what one hopes may happen by coincidence, but rather313 [p.309]
(3:90) Indeed those who disbelieved after their faith, then increased in unbelief — their repentance shall not be accepted, and those are the astray. (3:91) Indeed those who disbelieved and died while they were disbelievers — there shall not be accepted from any of them …
it is necessary in God’s mercy and His kindness, because He is Forgiving, Merciful to everyone who is fit for forgiveness and mercy. It is said that the verses came down concerning al-Ḥārith b. Suwayd, a man of the Anṣār who apostatized and then repented, and God turned to him in forgiveness. And in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, it is what is related from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him). I say: I have not found the report with a chain; and the reports in al-Durr al-Manthūr in this place are mutually repelling. (90) “Indeed those who disbelieved after their faith, then increased in unbelief — their repentance shall not be accepted.” And He said (magnified be His station) in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, (4:17) “repentance with God is only” — that is, by the requirement of His wisdom and His kindness in the summons to rectitude and the cutting off of the material of corruption, and His mercy to His servants — “for those who do evil in ignorance, then repent soon after” — of their lifetime, not at its end, at the death which they used to see as far off — “those, God turns to them in forgiveness; and God is Knowing” that their repentance is out of being guided and out of true remorse, not for the cutting off of their hopes of life and its desires and caprices at the sighting of death and the uncovering of realities, “Wise” in the accepting of repentance; (4:18) “and repentance is not for those who do evil deeds until, when death comes to one of them” — and he sees what he sees, so that the motives of caprice and the impulses of the soul that incites to straying are cut off from him for that reason — “he says, ‘indeed I repent now’; nor for those who die while they are disbelievers.” And He said (magnified be His name) in Sūrat Yūnus, concerning Pharaoh, (10:90) “until, when the drowning overtook him, he said, ‘I believe that there is no god but He in whom the Children of Israel believe, and I am of the submitters’” — (10:91) “now?”, O Pharaoh, when there have been cut off from you the hopes of tyranny that suggested to you your claim of lordship, so that you disobeyed and worked corruption and disbelieved in God’s signs? — “when you disobeyed before?” And the apparent [truth] is the consensus of the Muslims upon the acceptance of sincere repentance before the presence of death, and while the motives of caprice and the impulses of the inciting soul are prompting him to the ugly and his reason, his repentance, his fear of God, and his God-wariness are restraining him from it. So [these verses] are transmitted concerning the repentance of those who disbelieved after their faith at the sighting of death, or who died while they were disbelievers and on the Day of Resurrection attempt repentance. And perhaps what directs to that is the turning aside from saying “their repentance is not accepted” to His words “their repentance shall never be accepted”, which is explicit in negation in the future — even though the acceptance of repentance is concomitant with it. So in that is an indication that their future repentance, delayed past their ordinary life and their hopes in it, shall never be accepted from them. “And those are the astray” for the span of their life before the sighting of death — nay, and at it. (91) “Indeed those who disbelieved and died while they were disbelievers — there shall not be accepted from any of them the earth’s fill of gold”314 [p.310]
(3:91) … the earth’s fill of gold, even if he were to ransom himself with it. Those — theirs is a painful punishment, and they have no helpers. (3:92) You shall not attain piety until you spend of what you love; and whatever you spend of anything, indeed God is Knower of it. (3:93) All food was lawful to the Children of Israel, save what Israel forbade upon himself before the Torah was sent down …
The fāʾ entered upon the predicate because the subject, in view of its relative clause, comes out in the manner of a condition. And the earth’s fill of gold was mentioned because it is the utmost of what looms great in the human’s eye, by kind, of wealth, of a substitute, and of a means for deliverance; so that does not benefit him were he to give it in charity and the like of that, because the disbeliever’s deeds are void and he does not deserve recompense by them from Him in whom he disbelieved. “Even if he were to ransom himself with it” and offer it under the heading of a ransom; and this is the utmost of what enters into the imagination of the human kind of dreadfulness and frightening — “and indeed the punishment of the Hereafter is more severe.” “Those — theirs is a painful punishment, and they have no helpers” against God. O you who believe, (92) “you shall not attain piety (al-birr)” — and your spending will not be a piety with which God is pleased — by your spending the trifling thing which you do not accept for yourselves; rather “until you spend of what you love” and desire for its value; for your aim of drawing near to God appears only by your bestowing, for His noble face, what you do not deem contemptible. “And whatever you spend of anything, indeed God is Knower of it” — nothing of it is hidden from Him, nor of your intentions in spending it; and He requites you for it and multiplies the recompense for you, as He promised you that in the noble Qurʾān — so do not fear that anything of your spending and of your sincerity in intention will escape you. (93) “All food” — that is, the roots of the things eaten — “was lawful to the Children of Israel, save what Israel” — that is, Jacob — “forbade upon himself before” — attached to “forbade”; and it is said it is attached to His words “lawful”, but that is repelled by the necessity of a separation by a foreign [element], namely the sentence “save what he forbade,” which intimates the completion of what is before it — so convolution and obscurity would follow. Indeed, it is understood from His words “was lawful” that it was before the Torah forbade it by its being sent down — “the Torah was sent down” upon Moses. And for the alerting to the interpretation of the verse there are three preliminaries. The first: ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Qummī said in his tafsīr, “this speech is a relating from the Jews, and its wording is the wording of a statement” — that is, it is the speech of the Jews and of their lying claims; and it is, in the verse, in the station of the denunciatory interrogative, the particle of denunciation being elided by reason of the indication of His words “then bring the Torah” [and] “so whoever fabricates falsehood against God” — just as the interrogative particle was elided, by the station’s indicating it, in His words in Sūrat al-Baqara, (2:80) “say, ‘have you taken a covenant with God? — then God will never break His covenant’”; and His words in Sūrat al-Shuʿarāʾ, (26:22) “and that is a favour you count against me, that you have enslaved the Children of Israel” — upon the correct [reading] of interpreting that as Moses’s denunciation against Pharaoh. And were this315 [p.311]
(3:93) … Say: “Then bring the Torah and recite it, if you are truthful.”
speech an informing from God, God’s giving them the lie would not have suited it. The second: it is said, in the interpretation of that, that Jacob forbade upon himself the sinews and the flesh of the camel; so the Jews said that the flesh of the camel is forbidden in the Torah — that is, that it mentions that Israel forbade it upon himself. The third: that the alteration of the true Torah was before the Messenger of God by long-drawn centuries, ever since its trace was cut off by the apostasies of the Children of Israel and the succession of afflictions upon them; then Ḥilqiyā the priest claimed its existence in the time of Yūshiyā the king, and they mentioned the renewal of its writing by Ezra after the captivity of Babylon — as we pointed to in the fifth introduction of the book al-Hudā;[Author’s note] so consult it. And we [there] mentioned some of the testimonies to its alteration from the two books of Isaiah and Jeremiah, which are of the books of their revelation.[Author’s note] So the Torah in the time of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) is the very Torah existing in our ages; for it was at that time spread among the Israelites, the Samaritans, and the Christians in the East and the West and Abyssinia and others, in several languages — of them the Greek Septuagint and the Ethiopic — and there is not found among them save a slight difference. So the Torah current in our ages is the altered one by which the Qurʾān disputed with them, saying “then bring the Torah and recite it.” Therefore the sense of the verse is that some of the People of the Book said: all the roots of the things eaten were lawful to the Children of Israel before the Torah forbade what it forbade of them; then they excepted from that what they supposed Israel had forbidden upon himself before the Torah was sent down, so the Torah came down forbidding it. And all this is a lie and a fabrication — indeed, their [own] Torah gives them the lie in it, and mentions that the forbidden things, of the land animals, the water animals, and the birds, are only an abomination; for it forbade them to eat any abomination, as in the third verse of the fourteenth chapter of Deuteronomy; then it stated textually, in the mentioned chapter, the forbidden things, as it stated them textually in the eleventh chapter of Leviticus. So how should the abomination be lawful in the sacred law before the Torah? And also, the Torah did not mention that Israel forbade anything upon himself; rather it mentions only that Israel was struck upon the socket of his thigh, upon the sciatic sinew, [and] therefore the Children of Israel do not eat the sciatic sinew to this day. So their Torah says that this is a legislation from them, not from Israel, as in the thirty-second chapter of Genesis. O Messenger of God, these people do not desist from lying; so dispute with them by their [own] Torah, and “say” to them, in making plain their lie: “then bring the Torah and recite it” in these cases “if you are truthful”; for316 [p.312]
it is said: the Jews hold the impossibility of abrogation, so how do they claim a legal lawfulness before the Torah? We say: it is well known that the Jews suppose that the law in the Torah barred the abrogating of its rulings, because they are eternal; and this does not conflict with this claim of theirs concerning what was before. And we have mentioned their supposition and its invalidity in the first part of the book al-Hudā, pp. 288–291. And were the Jews, like some of the Christians, to suppose the impossibility of abrogation by reason, and that there was no sacred law before the Torah, then this claim of theirs would be in view of customary lawfulness and the absence of legal prohibition. And we have mentioned this supposition and its invalidity in the first part of the book al-Hudā, pp. 235–239 and 241–243. And other aspects have been mentioned in the interpretation of this verse, whose upshot is that the verse is an informing from God that the things eaten were lawful to the Children of Israel; and they mentioned for that [several] aspects. Of them is what is in al-Kashshāf, that the verse is a refutation of them in their claim that all that was forbidden to them had been forbidden to Noah and Abraham, so that they might escape, by this lying claim, from what the Qurʾān mentioned — that it was “for a wrong on the part of those who were Jews [that] good things that had been lawful to them were forbidden them,” as in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (4:160), and “for their insolence,” as in Sūrat al-Anʿām (6:146). And it is objected against this aspect that there is nothing in the verse that points to it; and there is nothing in the Torah indicating that what was forbidden to them was lawful before that and of the good things — rather the third verse of the fourteenth chapter of Deuteronomy makes plain that the things forbidden to them are an abomination, for in it is “do not eat any abomination,” and then it proceeded to mention the forbidden things which are mentioned in the eleventh chapter of Leviticus. As for the fat-tail, the fat, the caul of the liver, and the two kidneys, the Torah mentioned that they are burned upon the altar, a food of fire for the Lord, and that all the fat is for the Lord; and in all their dwellings they eat nothing of the fat and the blood, as in the third [chapter] of Leviticus. So there is nothing in their Torah that gives them the lie in what was mentioned for them of the claim, nor anything indicating that good things which had been lawful to them were forbidden them for their wrongdoing. And of them is what is in the tafsīr of al-Rāzī and others: that the Jews deny the occurrence of abrogation in the sacred law and suppose that what is now forbidden was forbidden forever, and that what Israel forbade was forbidden from the time of Adam (peace be upon him); so the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) demanded that they bring the Torah, because it speaks plainly that some kinds of food were forbidden only by reason of Israel’s forbidding it upon himself — thus in summary. And it is objected against this aspect also that there is nothing in the verse pointing to its being transmitted in the question of abrogation, and one is not turned, from its intimations, to abrogation at all; so bringing it down to that is to be joined to riddles — along with [the fact] that there is not in the Torah that what was forbidden to them was lawful, nor that what Israel forbade upon himself is forbidden to them, as we have mentioned; so their lie in their supposition does not appear from the Torah. So the two aspects share in [the point] that there is not, for what was mentioned in the two of them concerning317 [p.313]
(3:94) So whoever fabricates falsehood against God after that — those are the wrongdoers. (3:95) Say: “God has spoken truly; so follow the creed of Abraham, upright; and he was not of the idolaters.” (3:96) Indeed the first House set up for mankind is that at Bakka, blessed …
the Children of Israel, a saying or an explicit speech, or one indicated by one of the [modes of] indication, such that they should be tested in it by the bringing of the Torah and its recitation, so that their lie or their truthfulness in it might appear. (94) “So whoever fabricates falsehood against God after that — those are the wrongdoers. (95) Say: ‘God has spoken truly; so follow the creed of Abraham, upright; and he was not of the idolaters.’ (96) Indeed the first House set up for mankind” — as an emblem for the religion of truth and a waymark for the worship of God and His oneness — is the Kaʿba; as is argued for that, [for the period] after the Flood, by the history successive among the generations, and [by the fact] that the Holy House [of Jerusalem] is of what is known to be later. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn al-Mundhir and Ibn Abī Ḥātim brought out, by the way of al-Shaʿbī from ʿAlī (peace be upon him), he said: “there were houses before it, but it is the first house set up for the worship of God.” And in al-Ḥākim’s Mustadrak, with his chain from Khālid b. ʿArʿara from ʿAlī (peace be upon him), the like of this purport; and Ibn Shahrāshūb related the like of it also. And Ibn Abī Shayba, Aḥmad, ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd, al-Bukhārī, Muslim, Ibn Jarīr, and al-Bayhaqī brought out from Abū Dharr: “I said, ‘O Messenger of God, which mosque was set up first?’ He said, ‘the Sacred Mosque.’ I said, ‘then which?’ He (God bless him and his Household) said, ‘the Farthest Mosque.’” And it is related in al-Kāfī, with a chain, from al-Bāqir and from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon them), that the earth was spread out from beneath the place of the House; and the like of it from al-ʿAyyāshī from Muḥammad b. Muslim from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him). And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, al-Bayhaqī brought out in al-Shuʿab from Ibn ʿAbbās, he said: the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) said, “the first spot set down in the earth is the place of the House”; and Ibn Jarīr, Ibn al-Mundhir, and al-Bayhaqī in al-Shuʿab brought [it] out, and Ibn al-Mundhir brought out from Abū Hurayra and mentioned the like of it. “That at Bakka” — in al-Burhān, from Ibn Bābawayh in al-ʿIlal, soundly, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), he said: “the place of the House is Bakka, and the town is Mecca”; and the like of it from al-ʿAyyāshī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) — and perhaps the place of the House comprises the Mosque. And from al-ʿAyyāshī from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): “Bakka is the place of the House, and Mecca is the Sanctuary.” And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, a company is mentioned who brought out from Abū Mālik al-Ghifārī: “Bakka is the place of the House, and Mecca is what is other than that.” And from Ibn ʿAbbās: “Mecca is from the mountain-pass to al-Tanʿīm, and Bakka is from the House to the open valley.” And “Bakka” is taken from al-bakk, which is crowding and jostling. And it is related that this is the aspect of its naming, as in al-Kāfī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), and from al-Ṣadūq’s ʿIlal, by sound chains, from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), the like of it. “Blessed” — a circumstantial [state]; and the manifestations of the blessing in the House, from the aspect318 [p.314]
(3:96) … and a guidance for the worlds. (3:97) In it are clear signs — the Station of Abraham; and whoever enters it is secure …
of this world and the aspect of religion, are more manifest than to be hidden or denied. For it is in a land in which there is no substance of wealth, nor trade, nor agriculture, nor industry — and you see those who dwell beside it reaching tens of thousands, and they are, since the long-drawn centuries, in the Age of Ignorance and in Islam, in amplitude of livelihood and enjoyment of blessings, might, and security, in the midst of the wild, harsh, insolent Arabs; and the many thousands of the pilgrims come to it, and livelihood is not straitened upon them. And there is slaughtered, in the season of every year, of the sheep of its outskirts, more than a hundred thousand, and no shortfall appears in it. As for the aspect of religion, it is the blessed. “And a guidance for the worlds” — “guidance” is a circumstantial [state] in the sense of “guiding”; and for the increase of its guidance it was said “a guidance,” as one says “Zayd is justice.” And of the blessing of its guidance is that the Arabs gathered around Ishmael and received from him the religion of Abraham, the sacred law of circumcision, and the worship of God by the Ḥajj and the circumambulation — even if something of the straying of idolatry mingled with that afterward; nay, there remained in its Sanctuary something of the social and civil rights for the span of the Age of Ignorance, in spite of what was in its environment of the wildness of the Bedouin and their straying. And it suffices, as to the blessing of its guidance, that Mecca became a birthplace and a place of manifestation for the Seal of the Prophets and the choicest of the messengers, and a place of the descent of revelation, and a beginning for the righteous summons to the religion of truth — the religion of the natural disposition — and the holy sacred law and the order of society and rectitude, and a place of the dawning of the lights of the noble Qurʾān. “In it are clear signs” — by their manifest indication upon its lofty rank in nobility and its honour with God — “the Station of Abraham”; and it, and what is mentioned after it, is a detailing substitute for the mentioned signs. For the Station of Abraham is of the dazzling, everlasting signs of the House; and it is the rock upon which Abraham the Friend stood, and his two noble feet made an impression in it, a manifest impression, as one impresses in moist clay. And this rock and that impression are preserved until now, in spite of the long-drawn centuries, the succession of events, and the turning of states — and in that also is a great sign. And something of the discourse upon the Station has preceded at the hundred-and-nineteenth verse of Sūrat al-Baqara.[Author’s note] “And whoever enters it is secure” — that is, whoever enters its town319 [p.315]
and its well-known Sanctuary. And the sentence is of the kinds of detailing substitute from “the signs,” coordinated upon “the Station of Abraham” — that is, and the security of whoever enters it. And perhaps “whoever” was brought to give preponderance to what reasons over what does not reason. And in the security are manifest signs. For the Arabs, upon their anarchy, their wildness, and their recklessness in aggression and the pride of the Age of Ignorance, and their harshness in that — such that no sacred law, no spiritual restrainer, no authority, and no uprightness of character prevented them from it or deterred them — were yet submissive to the respecting of whoever entered the Sanctuary, their souls yielding to that through the many centuries in the surging of the waves of the Age of Ignorance, let alone in Islam. And that is not from the nature of the soil and the air, nor by way of a compulsion negating choice; rather it is because the divine care inspired the people, in honouring of the Sacred House, to respect the Sanctuary and whoever is in it. Indeed, the rebellion occurred from the army of Yazīd and from al-Ḥajjāj; and perhaps the wisdom in that is that people should know that this respect is not from the coercion of nature and constraint, but is rather an enabling from God which encompassed the idolaters and did not encompass whoever rebelled against God, opposed Him, and made enmity with Him.320 And in the sound [report] — or the good, like the sound — from al-Ḥalabī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), he said: I asked him about God’s words “and whoever enters it is secure”; he (peace be upon him) said: “when the servant commits a crime outside the Sanctuary, then flees to the Sanctuary, it is not proper for anyone to seize him from the Sanctuary; but he is barred from the market, and is not traded with, nor fed, nor given drink, nor spoken to — and when that is done, he is likely to come out and be seized. And when he commits a crime within the Sanctuary, the prescribed penalty is carried out upon him, because he did not observe a sanctity for the Sanctuary.” [Author’s note]
(3:97) … And it is God’s [due] upon the people that they perform the Ḥajj of the House — whoever is able to find a way to it …
And the like of it is the reliable [report] of Ḥafṣ; and ʿAlī b. Abī Ḥamza’s report from him (peace be upon him) concerning the thief and the criminal; and the like of it Muʿāwiya b. ʿAmmār’s sound [report] from him (peace be upon him) concerning the killer — and in it, “nor is he given shelter.” And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, a company brought out, by the ways of Saʿīd, Ṭāwūs, Mujāhid, ʿIkrima, and ʿAṭāʾ, from Ibn ʿAbbās, concerning the verse, the like of that. And that does not conflict with what is related, by the ways of the two parties, that it is security from God’s wrath, or in the Hereafter, or from the Fire; for that is an exposition of some of the instances comprised in the generality of the security. And by the requirement of the foregoing reports the scholars of the Imāmiyya have spoken, without a known dispute. And Abū Ḥanīfa and his two companions, and Zufar and al-Luʾluʾī, agreed with the Imāmiyya concerning retaliation for life, and argued by the verse. And it is objected against them that the security in it is absolute, so if it is given precedence over the evidence of retaliation, it is given precedence over the rest of the evidences of retaliation and the prescribed penalties, for that same reason — even if we carried the statement in the verse upon a command, though the verse is not to be carried upon that and does not depend upon it. Rather the verse indicates the appointing of the security in a general, positive manner; and its appointing by God, from the aspect of the sacred law, is the most manifest of the individual instances and the worthiest of them — for the mind does not assent that God (blessed be His name) should exalt the House by [saying] that of its signs is that the people respect it by an inspiration and an enabling from Him, while He (magnified be His station) does not legislate its respect in their rights and His rights. Indeed, the criminal within the Sanctuary has violated its sanctity, so he is seized for his crime therein, by God’s words in Sūrat al-Baqara, (2:191) “and do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque unless they fight you in it,” [and] (2:194) “and the sanctities are [subject to] retaliation.” And also, the food of the Arabs is, by kind, of what they hunt of the earth’s creatures and its animals, and they have in hunting an avidity and a custom — and with that they respect the game of the Sanctuary and Mecca. And of what is amply transmitted is that the animals do not kill one another in it, and that dogs and beasts of prey do not hunt in it. And of the signs of the House is what is amply transmitted, that the bird does not fly above it, but veers from it to the right or the left. “And it is God’s [due] upon the people that they perform the Ḥajj of the House — whoever is able to find a way to it.” His words “and it is God’s [due] upon the people” — the verse is an independent sentence, so it does not fall under the sum of the clear signs of the House. And al-ḥijj, with the kasra — and from Sībawayh that it is a verbal noun, and it is said a noun of a verbal noun — its sense in the language is the purposing by travel; and it came to be predominantly used for the purposing by travel to Mecca for the well-known rites of the Ḥajj, or it was transferred to the specific rites themselves. And “whoever is able” is a substitute from “the people.” And the restriction here by ability makes it known that it is other than the rational ability which is a condition in every obligation; so it is therefore the customary ability. And it is mentioned in al-Durr al-Manthūr, from many, of them al-Shāfiʿī, al-Tirmidhī,321 [p.317]
(3:97) … And whoever disbelieves …
Ibn Māja, and al-Ḥākim, that they brought out, with several chains, from ʿAlī (peace be upon him), Ibn Masʿūd, Jābir, ʿĀʾisha, Anas, Ibn ʿUmar, and ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ, that the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) was asked about “the way” in the verse and he said: “the provision and the mount.” And the like of it from ʿUmar and Ibn ʿAbbās. And in a report from Ibn ʿAbbās: “that the servant’s body be sound, and that he have the price of provision and a mount without its being burdensome to him.” And Mālik dissented in that concerning one who is able to walk and can earn in his journey, even by asking. And what is related by the ways of the Imāmiyya from al-Bāqir, al-Ṣādiq, and al-Riḍā (peace be upon them), as al-Wasāʾil enumerated, in the interpretation of the ability in the verse — according to the question and what the station requires of exposition — is: that he have that with which to perform the Ḥajj; and whoever is offered [the means] and is ashamed [to accept], he is of those who are able; and that whoever is sound in his body, unhindered in his path, having provision and a mount, is of those who are able; and by the provision and the mount together with soundness; and by soundness in his body and capacity in his property; and by strength in the body and ease in property. This [being so], the apparent [truth] is the absence of dispute among us that of the ability is that he have that with which to maintain his dependants in their food, their clothing, and their housing, and what they need in their livelihood until his return. And in al-Tibyān: “and it” — that is, the way — “is, with us, the existence of the provision and the mount and the maintenance of whoever’s maintenance is incumbent upon him, and a return to sufficiency upon coming back, either from property, or estates, or real property, or a craft, together with soundness and safety” — end [of quotation]; and the apparent [truth] is the entering of that into the customary ability. And al-Mufīd related in al-Muqniʿa, from Abū al-Rabīʿ al-Shāmī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), concerning the verse: he said, “what do the people say?” It was said, “the provision and the mount.” He said: “Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him) was asked about this and said, ‘the people would perish, then! If one who has provision and a mount, owning nothing besides the two of them or the measure of that by which he sustains his dependants and is independent of the people — if it were obligatory upon him to perform the Ḥajj with that and then return and beg the people with his palm, they would indeed perish!’” So it was said to him, “then what is the way, with you?” He (peace be upon him) said: “amplitude in property; and it is that he have with him that with part of which he performs the Ḥajj and a part remains by which he sustains himself and his dependants.” And it was related in al-Kāfī, al-Tahdhīb, al-Faqīh, and al-ʿIlal in something of that manner; and the report is reliable in itself, especially as Ibn Maḥbūb is of the companions of the consensus, and it is reinforced by the two Shaykhs’ acting upon it and a company of the ancients. And al-Ṣadūq related in al-Khiṣāl, with a chain from al-Aʿmash from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), he said: “and the Ḥajj of the House is obligatory upon whoever is able to find a way to it, and it is the provision and the mount together with soundness of body, and that the human have what he may leave behind for his dependants and what he may return to after his Ḥajj.” So what is mentioned in al-Tibyān is the stronger and the apparent [sense] of the ability. And the completion of the discourse upon the Ḥajj is committed to the books of jurisprudence, as the Qurʾān committed its affair to the sunna. “And whoever disbelieves” — it is not hidden that the import of the verse is322 [p.318]
(3:97) … then indeed God is Self-sufficient, [independent] of the worlds. (3:98) Say: “O People of the Book, why do you disbelieve in God’s signs, while God is Witness over what you do?” (3:99) Say: “O People of the Book, why do you bar from God’s way whoever believes …”
the reproach of whoever leaves the Ḥajj while able for it; and the Muslims are of those reproached — nay, they are the most manifest of the individual instances in this reproach. So “unbelief” is a metonym for the intensity of disobedience by the leaving of the Ḥajj, and a severity against those who leave it, in their squandering of this obligation of mighty effect in the religion and in Islam; and that the Muslim who squanders the Ḥajj is not a disbeliever in reality, nor do the rulings of the disbeliever run upon him even after his death — rather the rulings of the Muslim run upon him, by the consensus of the Muslims. And in al-Tahdhīb, in the sound [report] from Muʿāwiya b. ʿAmmār from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), in a ḥadīth: “and whoever disbelieves” — He means, whoever leaves [it]. And in al-Faqīh, from al-Ṣādiq from his forefathers (peace be upon them), in the Prophet’s (God bless him and his Household) testament to ʿAlī (peace be upon him): “ten of this community have disbelieved in God the Mighty” — and he counted nine of the people of the grave sins, like the talebearer and the fornicator, and the tenth: “one who found amplitude and died and did not perform the Ḥajj.” And Dharīḥ al-Muḥāribī related, in the sound [report], as in al-Kāfī, al-Muqniʿa, al-Tahdhīb, al-Maḥāsin, al-Faqīh, ʿIqāb al-Aʿmāl, and al-Muʿtabar, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that whoever was able and did not perform the Ḥajj until he died, “then let him die a Jew or a Christian.” And in al-Shaykh’s report: “if he wishes, a Jew, and if he wishes, a Christian.” And the like of it is al-Durr al-Manthūr’s report, of what Saʿīd b. Manṣūr and Aḥmad brought out in the Book of Faith, and Abū Yaʿlā and al-Bayhaqī, from Abū Umāma from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household); and of what al-Tirmidhī, Ibn Jarīr, Ibn Abī Ḥātim, al-Bayhaqī in al-Shuʿab, and Ibn Mardawayh brought out from ʿAlī the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household); and of what Saʿīd b. Manṣūr and Ibn Abī Shayba brought out of the saying of ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb. And the expression of the report, “then let him die, if he wishes a Jew and if he wishes a Christian,” indicates by its tenor that it is for severity concerning the evil of the outcome and the loss of the one who leaves [it]; for there escaped him what the Ḥajj has of excellence and of kindness to the servants by exposing them to the reward of this obedience and the establishing of these religious sacraments whose benefit returns to the people, for their poverty and their need of that. And whoever disobeys and leaves [it], the harm and the loss return upon him. “Then indeed God is Self-sufficient, [independent] of the worlds” all together: the obedience of the obedient does not increase in His kingdom, nor does the disobedience of the disobedient diminish from it. (98) “Say: ‘O People of the Book, why do you disbelieve in God’s signs?’” — and of the sum of them is what the Messenger of God brought and his glorious Qurʾān, and what is in the Sacred House of the clear signs. “And God is Witness over what you do” — nothing is absent from Him and no hidden thing is hidden from Him. (99) “Say: ‘O People of the Book, why do you bar from God’s way whoever believes?’” Al-Wāḥidī related in Asbāb al-Nuzūl323 [p.319]
(3:99) … “seeking to make it crooked …”
and al-Suyūṭī in al-Durr al-Manthūr, from Zayd b. Aslam, that the verse came down concerning Shās b. Qays the Jew, when he commanded a Jew to sit with the Aws and the Khazraj and stir up the rancours between them and remind them of the wars that had turned among them from the day of Bughāth and before it. And that is repelled — along with the flimsiness of the chain — [by the fact] that this is not a barring from God’s way; rather what suits it is the reproach for the kindling of sedition and the stirring up of evil among people. So the noble verse is upon its [own] course, in reproaching the People of the Book for their constant practice of setting themselves to lead people astray and bar them from Islam by [all] kinds of means. And “the way” (al-sabīl) is like “the road”: it is [treated as] masculine and feminine, and the more frequent in the Qurʾān is its masculine [treatment]. And it came in the feminine in Sūrat Yūsuf, (12:108) “say, ‘this is my way,’” and in this verse, “seeking to make it (tabghūnahā)” — that is, the way. He said in al-Tibyān: and its meaning is “you seek for it a crookedness”; and the like of it in al-Kashshāf. And al-Rāzī related it in his tafsīr from Ibn al-Anbārī, and that it is like “I gifted you a dirham,” that is, I gifted to you; and “I hunted you a gazelle,” that is, I hunted for you — and he recited: “so their servant turned away, then called out: ‘shall I hunt you a little gazelle, or a wild ass?’” And in al-Nihāya, in the ḥadīth: “abghinī stones with which I may cleanse myself” — one says abghinī such-and-such, with the hamza of connection, that is, “seek for me”; and “abghūnī a piece of iron with which I may cleanse myself.” And in Lisān al-ʿArab, Wāqid b. al-Ghiṭrīf said, as in the Dīwān al-Ḥamāsa and others: “if the milk of goats with the water of Muwaysil has brought me (baghānī) a disease — indeed I am sick.” And al-Aʿshā said: “until, when the sun’s horn scattered [its light], there came upon them in the morning a wolf, seeking-out, seeking for his people the provision (yabghī qawmahu al-mutaʿā)” — that is, he seeks for his companions the provision. And in al-Ṣiḥāḥ: “that he may seek good for him (li-yabghiyahu khayran), and he is not a doer [of it]” — that is, that he may seek for him. “Crookedness” — an object of “you seek it”; and the like of it in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf 43 and 84, Hūd 22, and Ibrāhīm 3. And in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf, [it is said] it is admissible that it be in the accusative as a verbal noun, like “he returned backwards” and “he wrapped himself in the deaf [manner]”; and it is repelled [by the fact] that “crookedness” is not of the sense of “they seek,” nor does it approach it — so it is not like these two examples. And the verbal noun is not put in the accusative as a verbal noun save by a governor of its own wording or its sense. And al-Rāzī mentioned another aspect, namely that “crookedness” is in the position of a circumstantial [state], the sense being “you seek it while straying” — that is, being crooked yourselves. And it is repelled [by the fact] that there is no indication [for it], and no need to interpret “crookedness” in the sense of “crooked ones” — added to [the point] that the verse’s sense is the denunciation of their leading astray; and he [himself] has324 [p.320]
(3:99) … “while you are witnesses? And God is not heedless of what you do.” (3:100) O you who believe, if you obey a party of those who were given the Book, they will turn you back, after your faith, as disbelievers. (3:101) And how should you disbelieve, while God’s signs are recited to you and His Messenger is among you? And whoever holds fast to God …
interpreted it [as meaning] that they used to contrive to cast misgivings by [all] kinds of stratagems — so there is no place for the interpretation that they seek God’s way while being astray; and the verse says “you bar from God’s way” — so look into it to its end and ponder it. And in al-Nihāya, al-ʿiwaj with the kasra is in what is not seen, like an opinion and a saying. And in al-Miṣbāḥ, al-ʿiwaj with the kasra is in the [abstract] meanings — and he adduced the speech of Abū Zayd. And in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf 84, al-ʿiwaj with the kasra is in religion and everything that is not seen. I say: and it is as though whoever said that had not read God’s words in Sūrat Ṭāhā, (20:105–107) “and they ask you about the mountains; say, ‘my Lord will scatter them utterly; then He will leave it a level plain; you will see in it no crookedness (ʿiwaj) and no unevenness.’” And the sense is: you seek, O People of the Book, by your barring from God’s way — by your falsifying, your deceiving, your altering, and your concealing of what is in your books — to make God’s way crooked; you seek crookedness for it, while it is the straight path, clear of proofs, radiant of waymarks, manifest of indication, brilliant of demonstration. “While you are witnesses” to the glad tidings of your books concerning the Messenger of God, his Qurʾān, and his religion; or “you are witnesses” to the indication of the evidentiary miracle and the clear signs upon the Messenger of God, the revelation of his Qurʾān, and the reality of his upright religion. “And God is not heedless of what you do” of barring from God’s way and the attempt to lead astray; and God — nothing escapes Him, and He is severe in retribution. (100) “O you who believe, if you obey a party of those who were given the Book” — in view of the giving of the true Book to their forebears before its alteration; and “the party” are those who set themselves to leading astray, beguiling, and barring from God’s way — and you yield to their straying by blind following, “they will turn you back”, by their beguiling and their leading astray, “after your faith, as disbelievers. (101) And how should you disbelieve”, when the kindnesses have flooded you and the proofs have been made clear to you, “while God’s signs are recited to you” — and in them is guidance and right direction — “and His Messenger is among you”, and he is the light of guidance and rectitude, the beacon of the proof, the Imam of setting-right, the door of God and His means to His creation? “And whoever holds fast to God” — al-ʿiṣma is prevention and preservation from what is dreaded; and the “preserver” (ʿāṣim) is the guardian, the preventer, by his causing or his act; and the “one who holds fast” (muʿtaṣim) is the one who takes refuge with the preserver and shelters with him, that he may prevent him and preserve him from what he sheltered and took refuge from in dread of it. And the aspects of the dread and its realizers differ in view of the standing of the one held fast to and the aspect of the dread. So holding fast to God, in this station, is the servant’s taking refuge325 [p.321]
(3:101) … has been guided to a straight path. (3:102) O you who believe, be wary of God as is His due of wariness …
and his cutting himself off to Him, that He may prevent him and preserve him, by His guidance and His enabling, from the dangers of straying, the following of caprice and the soul that incites [to evil], the destroyers of acts of disobedience and blameworthy traits of character, the perils of God’s wrath, and the deprivation of His kindness, His enabling, and His good pleasure. And the realizer of this holding-fast, after the opposing of caprice and the inciting soul, is the following of the indication of reason and the natural disposition and of what God’s messengers brought in the knowledge of Him, together with looking into His signs and following what they indicate, and faith in His messengers and His books. And in the state [prevailing at the time] of the address, it is faith in the Seal of the Prophets and his Qurʾān and following the two of them in what they brought and what the Messenger of God conveyed, with the [right] due of following. And whoever runs upon this holding-fast, “has been guided to a straight path” — and indeed this holding-fast is a straight path which qualifies the servant for God’s enabling him to travel the straight path. (102) “O you who believe, be wary of God” — that is, be wary of His wrath and what is feared from Him, by your obedience to Him — “as is His due of wariness (ḥaqqa tuqātihi)”. There came in Sūrat al-Baqara (2:121) “they recite it as is its due of recitation”; and in al-Anʿām 91, al-Ḥajj 73, and al-Zumar 67, “they did not esteem God as is His due of esteem”; and in al-Ḥajj 77, (22:78) “and strive in God as is His due of striving”; and in al-Ḥadīd 27, “yet they did not observe it as is its due of observance.” So the sense is: what is due and befits His majesty, of wariness of Him; and the accusative of “due” is by way of standing in for the absolute object to which it is annexed, since it is of its attributes. And in Tafsīr al-Burhān, from Maʿānī al-Akhbār and al-Barqī’s Maḥāsin, in the sound [report] from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “that He be obeyed and not disobeyed, and remembered and not forgotten, and thanked and not shown ingratitude.” And the like of it from Ibn Shahrāshūb, from the tafsīr of Wakīʿ from ʿAlī (peace be upon him). And in al-Durr al-Manthūr a company is mentioned who brought it out, of them al-Ḥākim — and he graded it sound — from Ibn Masʿūd. And al-Ḥākim also brought out, and graded it sound, from Ibn Masʿūd, he said: the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) said, “that He be obeyed and not disobeyed, and remembered and not forgotten.” And it is known that God does not charge the servant, in the individual obligations, with what he is not able for, nor gather upon him of them what is above what he is able for and what he cannot perform in its entirety. So the [right] due of the servant’s wariness of God is that he be wary of Him in all that He has bound him with — or as the foregoing reports mentioned. And the obligation, which is a kindness to the servants for their perfecting, does not come down below this measure, and the binding is not made lax in it. Indeed, kindness and facilitation, or the absence of power and ability from the outset, may require that he not be charged with some acts or abstentions, even if they be of the kind of the obligatory; and upon that, the committing of them is not of what one ought to be wary of God and fear on account of. And from Qatāda, al-Suddī, and al-Rabīʿ, that His words “be wary of God as is His due of wariness” are abrogated by His words in Sūrat al-Taghābun, (64:16) “so be wary of God as much as you are able” — as its report is mentioned in al-Durr al-Manthūr from Qatāda and al-Rabīʿ. And mentioned326 [p.322]
(3:102) … and do not die save as submitters. (3:103) And hold fast to God’s rope, all together …
also is whoever brought out the report of that from Ibn ʿAbbās and Ibn Masʿūd — as is mentioned whoever brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās that it was not abrogated. And in al-Tibyān, concerning the abrogation, is his saying “and it is what is related from the two of them”; and in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, “and it is what is related from Abū Jaʿfar (peace be upon him) and from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him).” I say: I have not found the report from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him). Indeed, from al-ʿAyyāshī from Abū Baṣīr from Abū ʿAbd Allāh (peace be upon him), that it is abrogated by His words “so be wary of God as much as you are able” — and al-ʿAyyāshī did not mention the intermediary between himself and Abū Baṣīr; and it is well known of al-ʿAyyāshī that he relies upon the weak. And in any case there is no escape from casting aside the report, or from interpreting the abrogation in it as the descent of the interpreter which removes what some suppose, by a surface view, that the due wariness charged is above [one’s] ability. And the wonder is at the Shaykh, where he pointed in his Tibyān to the report in the station of abrogation — he being the one who knows the reality of abrogation and the conditioning of obligation by power and ability; and the bringing down of the ability in the verse of al-Taghābun upon customary ability, though it is contrary to the tenor of the verse, necessitates laxity in the affair of God-wariness. “And do not die save as submitters” — it is possible that what is meant by submission here is the due of wariness, namely entering into God’s peace by obedience and by not opposing Him by disobedience, always; and it is a matter with which the believer in God, the Messenger, and the Day of Resurrection may not [always] be qualified. So what is meant by the verse is the permanence of being qualified by this noble attribute until death, and that they not die save while this is their permanent description and their continuing disposition — and of that is obedience to the Messenger and to whomever the Messenger commanded to be obeyed, allied with, and held to, as al-Burhān’s report from al-ʿAyyāshī from al-Ḥusayn b. Khālid from al-Kāẓim (peace be upon him) pointed to. And it is possible that what is meant by submission is what is contrary to unbelief and runs parallel to faith in sense, so that what is meant would be being qualified by this attribute until death. And the first is more apparent by the tenor and by the command to God-wariness as is its due; and the second is more suited to the current sense of Islam. (103) “And hold fast” — against falling — “to God’s rope, all together” — that is, being gathered upon holding fast to God’s rope and what God has made a preserving means against the fall of straying and its ruin. And the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) has indicated to us what is of the individual instances of this means and this rope, which whoever holds to does not stray, by his words (God bless him and his Household) in the ḥadīth of the Two Weighty Things: “which, if you hold fast to the two of them, you shall never stray — the Book of God and my kindred, my People of the House.” And the word “rope” was used metaphorically in327 [p.323]
(3:103) … and do not be divided. And remember God’s blessing upon you, when you were enemies and He joined your hearts, so that by His blessing you became brothers; and you were upon the brink of a pit of the Fire, and He rescued you from it. Thus does God make plain to you His signs, that perhaps you may be guided. (3:104) And let there be of you a community summoning to the good, and enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong …
the verse to point to [the truth] that not holding fast to it necessitates the fall into the abyss of straying and destruction. “And do not be divided” from God’s rope and from holding fast to it. “And remember God’s blessing upon you” — that is, let God’s mentioned blessing be upon your remembrance always, for you have in it an admonition and a lesson calling you to gather upon holding fast to God’s rope and restraining you from dividing from it. And that is: “when you were”, in your Age of Ignorance, “enemies” according to your tribes — nay, and many of your individuals — “and He joined” — God, by the blessing of Islam and the Messenger — “your hearts, so that by His blessing” upon you by this joining “you became brothers”, as is the custom of full brothers, in your being one hand with hearts joined. “And you were”, in your associationism, your aggression, and your deeds of the Age of Ignorance, “upon the brink of a pit of the Fire” — that is, the edge of the pit and its rim, on the verge of falling into it, there being between you and it nothing but death, and it is near to you — “and He rescued you” and delivered you “from it.” In al-Kāfī, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “and He rescued you from it by Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household)”; and the like of it from al-ʿAyyāshī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) also; and the like of it what is in al-Durr al-Manthūr from al-Ṭastī from Ibn ʿAbbās — and it is a manifest interpretation. “Thus does God make plain to you His signs” — and of them is the joining of your hearts after those severe enmities and the rancours deeply rooted in your hearts, so that by His blessing you became brothers; and of them is your rescue from those strayings that had brought you to the verge of abiding in the depth of Hell — He makes them plain to you “that perhaps you” may take heed and “may be guided. (104) And let there be of you a community summoning to the good, and enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong.” The lām is for the imperative, and “of you” is for partition; so the obligation is one of sufficiency, dependent upon the attainment of the purpose, as in al-Tibyān. And the ruling in the verse, like the rest of the obligations, is a general kindness to all people, even if the address is directed to the Muslims, because they are, at that [time], the ones giving ear to the address of revelation and receiving its sacred laws with the welcome of faith. And in al-Tibyān: “and it is said ‘of’ is for the specifying of those addressed from among the rest of the kinds, like it in His words ‘so shun the abomination of idols.’” I say: that is, that “of” here yields what is termed, in the [technical] idiom, abstraction (tajrīd), as “I saw in you a lion,” and “let there be for me of you a friend,” and like the leader’s saying to his companions, “let there rise of you an army” and “let there be ordered of you ranks,” when he wants all of them to rise and be ordered — that is, “be all of you328 [p.324]
a community summoning,” the verse. And it is repelled: first, that this is contrary to the apparent and current [sense] of the word “of,” and there is not in the station an indication turning it from partition to that; and of what witnesses to partition, or indicates it, is Masʿada b. Ṣadaqa’s reliable [report] related in al-Kāfī, al-Khiṣāl, and al-Tahdhīb, in which al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) adduced the verse for partition. Second, that this sense turns the aspect of the speech away from the enjoining of some of the Muslims to what is right and the forbidding of them from what is wrong, despite their need of the kindness of this setting-right; rather its aspect would be their enjoining and forbidding of others — and this is of what the generality of the verse’s kindness, the glory of its setting-right, and the nobility of its sacred law refuse. So the apparent [sense], then, of the word “of” and of the verse’s tenor is partition. And the mention of “a community” has two aspects. The first: the exposition that this station is instrumental, the attainment of the purpose by whoever attains it being intended from it, and it is not devotional, obligatory upon everyone in every state; rather the obligation may fall away from many people for their lack of effect, or for other of what is mentioned in its conditions. The second: the pointing to [the truth] that this station needs, in its effect, mostly, mutual backing and cooperation; and if the one who undertakes it is left alone, or fears that his aloneness will stand in the way of his rising and of the effect, then it is obligatory to obtain the effect by cooperation and gathering. And “the good” is well known: it is what sound reason guides to, or the sacred law indicates the excellence of. And the upright religion, the noble sacred law, and the noble Qurʾān have undertaken the indication of every good — such as Islam, faith, the religious sciences, the nobility of obedience, the following of the truth and justice, the adorning [of oneself] with excellent traits of character, the means of perfecting and refinement and the training of the soul and felicity, the excellence of knowledge, the order of society, civilization, rectitude, and setting-right. And when you follow the noble Qurʾān and the noble sunna, you find the summons to that and the commanding of it running upon the finest course, and the most general, the most beneficial, the clearest, and the most agreeable to wisdom. And “what is right” (al-maʿrūf) is what the reasonable and those who follow the sacred law recognize the preponderance of, in its goodness, from the indication of reason or of the sacred law. And “what is wrong” (al-munkar) is what the reasonable and those who follow the sacred law denounce and find repugnant, by the indication of reason or of the sacred law upon its badness. And in al-Kāfī and al-Tahdhīb, with a chain from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), in a ḥadīth: that the enjoining of what is right and the forbidding of what is wrong is the way of the prophets and the path of the righteous; a mighty obligation, by which the obligations are established, the ways [of the sects] are made secure, the earnings are made lawful, the wrongs are turned back, the earth is made flourishing, justice is taken from the enemies, and the affair goes upright — the ḥadīth. And the warning has been made severe in the sunna, and the reprobation, against leaving the enjoining of what is right and the forbidding of what is wrong; and it threatened with the punishment of this world and its ruin before the Hereafter. Of that is what is related in al-Kāfī, ʿIqāb al-Aʿmāl, and al-Tahdhīb, with a chain from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him): the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) used to say, “when my community leaves to one another the enjoining of what is right329 [p.325]
and the forbidding of what is wrong, let them expect calamities (wiqāʿ) from God.”[Author’s note] And it is mentioned in Kanz al-ʿUmmāl whoever brought out the like of its meaning from Ḥudhayfa, Abū Bakra, and Jarīr, from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household). And from al-Riḍā (peace be upon him) also: “you shall surely enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, or God will set over you the worst of you,[Author’s note] and the best of you will supplicate and it will not be answered for them.”[Author’s note] And it is mentioned in Kanz al-ʿUmmāl whoever brought out this meaning and the like of it from Ibn Masʿūd, Ḥudhayfa, Abū Hurayra, and ʿĀʾisha, from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household). And there have been gathered in al-Wasāʾil and Kanz al-ʿUmmāl, in the chapter on the enjoining of what is right, a number of the ḥadīth; so let them be consulted. And in this place there are [several] questions. The first: that even if the apparent [sense], by the language, is that the summoning, the enjoining, and the forbidding are what is by the tongue — yet what is known from the verse’s import, its purport, its aspect of setting-right, and its indications from the sacred law, is that what is meant is whatever is a prompter to yielding to the doing of what is right and a restrainer from what is wrong, of speech, act, and the means attaining that — even compulsion; but some of the practical means need permission from the one in charge of the affair, the ruler of the time, or whoever stands in his stead. The second: the Shaykh in al-Tibyān and al-Ḥillī in al-Sarāʾir held — and it is related from al-Murtaḍā, al-Ḥalabī, al-Qāḍī, and al-Ṭūsī in al-Tajrīd, and al-ʿAllāma, and many others; and the Shaykh’s relating it from a company has been transmitted — that the two are obligatory by way of sufficiency, in the sense that they are obligatory upon every charged person who has not lost the condition of the obligation, but they fall away by the arising of whoever suffices, or his rising to the two of them, together with the regard for the attainment of the purpose. And this is what is understood from this station and its like, in which the obligation is for a purpose attaching to other than the one charged; and it is the apparent [sense] of the verse and of Masʿada’s report pointed to. And in the Shaykh’s Nihāya and al-Wasīla, and it is related from some of the later [scholars], that the two are of the individual obligations; and it is mentioned in al-Mukhtalaf that the Shaykh argued for it by the verse and some of the reports transmitted in the chapter. And it is repelled [by the fact] that the verse is apparent in the obligation of sufficiency, and the reports do not conflict with that. This [being so], if the obligation needs the cooperation of a group, it is obligatory upon every one charged with it to prepare himself to join whoever cooperates with him — nay, and to summon to that. The third: there is stipulated, in the obligation of the two, the possibility of effect.330 [p.326]
(3:104) … and those are the successful. (3:105) And do not be like those who were divided and differed after the clear proofs had come to them; and those — theirs is a mighty punishment — (3:106) on the Day when faces shall be whitened and faces shall be blackened …
And the consensus upon that has been transmitted; nay, it is indicated by the knowledge that their obligation is only for the obtaining of compliance and desisting. And upon that, the two are not obligatory unless the insistence of the one enjoined upon leaving what is right, and of the one forbidden upon doing what is wrong, is ascertained. Nay, one may coincidentally [thereby] insult a penitent — and that is a corruption. And with doubt, the principle is the absence of obligation, especially with the possibility of the mentioned corruption and the necessity of guarding against insulting another save by right. And for that reason the enjoining and the forbidding depend upon knowing what is right or wrong: so if the ignorance is from the aspect of the sacred law, learning is obligatory, by the obligation of learning the legal rulings; and if it is from the aspect of external confusion, then the principle is exemption, together with the necessity of guarding against insulting another save by right. The fourth: that there be not in the two of them a corruption of the sort that has preceded, or a harm the guarding against which outweighs their benefit according to the particular case. And the detail is committed to the books of jurisprudence. “And those” — the wāw is for beginning anew, and those pointed to are they who summon to the good and enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong in the manner sought — “are the successful. (105) And do not be like those who were divided” from what it is obligatory to gather upon, of what has in it rectitude and success, “and differed” according to their caprices “after the clear proofs had come to them”, the manifest [proofs] of the evidences of the truth — so they turned away from them by the straying of their caprices. “And those — theirs is a mighty punishment.” And the wāw may be for beginning anew, and may be coordinating upon “those are the successful”; and in the coordination there is the suitability of opposition and of division in the arrangement. (106) “On the Day when faces shall be whitened and faces shall be blackened.” In al-Tibyān, what amounts to: that the governor of “on the Day” is “mighty”; and it is admissible that we make the sentence, in the sense of “they shall be punished,” govern it. And [al-Ṭabrisī] followed him upon his speech, in its very letters, in Majmaʿ al-Bayān. And in al-Kashshāf, the accusative of “on the Day” — that is, [its being] in the adverbial [position] — is by the adverb, namely “theirs is,” or by the eliding of “remember,” that is, as being an object, not an adverb; and al-Rāzī followed him upon that in his tafsīr. But the connection of the verses in the arrangement, and the mention of the whitening of the faces and their blackening upon the order of the success and the punishment in the two preceding verses, suit that “on the Day” be an adverb for the success of the successful and the outcome of the divided. And it is said that the whitening of the faces is a metonym for the radiance of their gladness, and their blackening a metonym for their state of disgrace, in the manner of His words in Sūrat al-Naḥl, (16:58) “and when one of them is given tidings of a female, his face becomes blackened and he is choked [with grief].” And this saying, as in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, is331 [p.327]
(3:106) … As for those whose faces are blackened: “Did you disbelieve after your faith? Then taste the punishment for what you used to disbelieve.” (3:107) And as for those whose faces are whitened, they shall be in God’s mercy; therein they abide forever. (3:108) Those are God’s signs; We recite them to you in truth. And God does not desire wrong for the worlds. (3:109) And to God belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth; and to God are matters returned. (3:110) You were the best community …
a turning aside from the literal [sense] of the wording without necessity. Rather the whiteness is upon its reality, and the brilliance of its light is a mark of honouring and glad tidings for the righteous, those brought near; and the blackness, with its darkening and disfigurement, is a brand of disgrace and chastisement for those distanced ones. “As for those whose faces are blackened: ‘Did you disbelieve after your faith? Then taste the punishment for what you used to disbelieve.’” In al-Tibyān, Majmaʿ al-Bayān, al-Kashshāf, and al-Rāzī’s tafsīr, [it is said] that the answer of “as for” is elided, its estimation being “then it is said to them, ‘did you disbelieve?’” I say: and it seems near to me that the answer be of the sort of “then they are in a painful punishment and a retribution from God’s wrath,” as His words “then taste the punishment” indicate; and there suits it His words in the other verse, “they shall be in God’s mercy; therein they abide forever.” And of the like of this ellipsis in the noble Qurʾān there is much; and its benefit is the making-dreadful by the answer, so that the hearer may estimate it in every manner of dread that the station intimates to him. And it is a wide door in eloquence; we have mentioned something of its witnesses at the twenty-eighth verse of Sūrat al-Baqara. Then they were addressed by way of turning [to the second person], in reproach and rebuke, by His words “did you disbelieve after your faith? Then taste the punishment” by reason of what you used to disbelieve. (107) “And as for those whose faces are whitened, they shall be in God’s mercy; therein they abide forever” — and that suffices as to the loftiness of the bliss and its felicity. (108) “Those” — that is, what We have set forth of the signs of the admonitions, the proofs, the direction, the bliss, and the punishment — “are God’s signs; We recite them to you in truth”, established of their contents; and of it is the threat and the punishment, for it is upon truth and justice and the criminal’s deserving [it] for his committing what God directed him to leave, or his leaving what God directed him to do, by the kinds of direction, enticement, and deterring. For God desires for the human his rectitude and his felicity by uprightness and voluntary purity. “And God does not desire wrong for the worlds. (109) And to God belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth; and to God are matters returned” — because He is the God of the world and its Governor and its Creator, and everything besides Him is in need of Him in its essence and its affairs; so every affair of the concerns of the world returns to Him. And the name of Majesty was repeated to intimate the aspect of the returning of matters to Him, for what is in His holy name of the sense of divinity and universal authority. (110) “You were the best community” — the “community” (umma) is the group; and one says332 [p.328]
(3:110) … brought forth for mankind: you enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and believe in God …
of the Muslims “the community of Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household),” in view of their being his group who believed in him. “Brought forth for mankind: you enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and believe in God.” And for the discourse upon the verse there are two stations. The first: that what appears at first sight from the verse is that kāna is “deficient,” indicating that the content of its predicate was in past time and has elapsed and been cut off. And for that reason there is mentioned in al-Durr al-Manthūr ten — most of them of the people of soundness with them, of them al-Ḥākim in his Mustadrak — who brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās concerning that, that he said: “they are those who emigrated with the Messenger of God to Medina.” And some of them brought out from ʿUmar, he said: “it is for our first and is not for our last.” And from ʿUmar also: “had God willed, He would have said ‘you are,’ and we would all have been [it]; but He said ‘you were,’ concerning the special [company] of the Companions of Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household) — and whoever does the like of their doing, they are the best community brought forth for mankind.” And in Ḥaqāʾiq al-Tanzīl, and it is related from al-Ḥasan — that is, al-Baṣrī — that that is a pointing to the Companions, not to whoever came after them of those whose state changed and whose descriptions differed. And in it also, it is related from al-Ḥasan that he used to say: “thus, by God, were they once”; and some of the Muslims used to say, “I take refuge with God from being a ‘was-man’ (kuntī).”[Author’s note] I say: and all this looks to the import of the deficient kāna; but it did not give its sense its due. For were it in the verse deficient, it would indicate the cutting off of the attribute that is in its predicate and its being exchanged; and in view of the address in it being to the Muslims, it would be of the most severe reproach and rebuke, with the evil of the outcome, for whoever of the Muslims was existing at the time of the verse’s descent and its address — and there were prominent among them at that time most of the great ones of the first foremost of the Emigrants and the Helpers. So how should the Qurʾān address these great ones and others of the community, at the time of the descent, with what issues in [saying] that they are at that time stripped of the attributes of the verse, [these] having been cut off from them after they had been possessed of its nobility? And333 [p.329]
the station is not to be analogized upon His words “and God is Hearing, Knowing” and its likes; for kāna in these cases is for the pointing to [the truth] that He is thus from eternity, and it is known that His eternal attributes are everlasting also, no cutting off and no elapsing befalling them — and this self-evident known [truth] turns kāna from its [ordinary] import, contrary to this verse. And at the least, there is not driven, for praise and glorification, what by its apparent [sense] yields blame and rebuke.[Author’s note] So the [right] aspect is that kāna in the verse be “complete,” like His words (2:280) “and if there be one of hardship, then a respite” — taken from the “coming-to-be” that is the passive counterpart of “bringing-into-being,” like His words “Be, and it is.” And “the best community” is a circumstantial [state] of the pronoun, and the sentence “brought forth” is a description of the community, in the sense of “made manifest to the people” and “brought forth from non-existence or from hiddenness.” The second station: that many of those existing at the time of the verse’s descent did not stand firm upon the obligation of enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong. And that the states mentioned concerning the killing of ʿUthmān and its circumstances, and the two wars of al-Baṣra and Ṣiffīn, place an ample portion of the great ones of the Emigrants and the Helpers upon other than the attributes of the verse — even if excuse is made for them by error in the exercise of judgment. And it has been amply — or mass-transmittedly — [related] from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) that groups of his companions, on the Day of Resurrection, will be barred from the Messenger of God and from reaching the Pool, and will be called out to the Fire; and the Messenger of God will say, “my companions!”, and it will be said, “indeed they turned back upon their heels, backwards.” And in Abū Hurayra’s ḥadīth: “so I do not see any escaping of them save like the stray beasts of the herd,” as Aḥmad related it in his Musnad, and al-Bukhārī, Muslim, and Ibn Māja in their Jāmiʿs, and al-Ḥākim in his Mustadrak, with several chains and approximate meanings.334 [p.330]
(3:110) … And had the People of the Book believed, it would have been better for them. Of them are the believers, but most of them are the transgressors. (3:111) They shall not harm you save with a hurt; and if they fight you, they will turn their backs to you, then they shall not be helped.
and al-Ṭabarānī and others related it with a chain from twelve of the Companions; and al-Bukhārī related it, in the chapter on the Pool, with his chains from seven of them. This [being so], as for if we say that what is meant by “the community” in the verse is the community of the Messenger of God until the Day of Resurrection, and the address ran to them in view of those existing among them — then how wide is the rent in the community, especially if we look to the days of Ziyād, Yazīd, al-Ḥajjāj, the House of Marwān, and their like! And to this second station looks what is related from Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿUmar, and al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, even if some of it did not strike its mark. And in Tafsīr al-Qummī, in the good, like the sound — or the sound — from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), in the station of denunciation: “the best community — you kill the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), and al-Ḥasan, and al-Ḥusayn!” — the ḥadīth. So there is no escape from the address being to a particular group who cleave to the obligation of enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong and to faith in God with the due of faith. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn Abī Ḥātim brought out from Abū Jaʿfar — meaning al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) — that they are the People of the House of the Prophet (God bless him and his Household). And from al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr, from Abū ʿUmar al-Zubayrī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him) concerning the verse: “He means the community for which Abraham’s supplication became due” — that is, His words (2:124) “indeed I am appointing you an Imam for mankind; he said, ‘and of my progeny?’; He said, ‘My covenant does not reach the wrongdoers’” — “so they are the community among whom, and from whom, and to whom God sent [His Messenger]; and they are the middle community; and they are the best community brought forth for mankind.” And in al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “they are the House of Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household).” And from Abū Baṣīr from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): “this verse was sent down only upon Muḥammad, concerning him and the executors after him.” And in some of the reports, that it came down “the best of Imams.” And what is meant is that this sense is intended in the sending-down, even if the wording is “community” — as the like of it has preceded in the Introduction, in the discourse upon the reports of “the decisive discrimination”; and al-Zubayrī’s report bears witness to it here. “And had the People of the Book believed” in God, His signs, His Messenger, and His Qurʾān, “it would have been better for them” — they would win its felicity. Indeed, “of them” — the people — “are the believers, and” yet “most of them are the transgressors” and those who go out, by their unbelief, from the veil [of faith]. And these (111) “shall not harm you save with a hurt” — by the tongue, and by stirring up [others] against you and gathering for your war; so they shall not harm you in the manifesting of your religion, your community, your Islamic might, and your victory. And in this is a mighty unseen glad tidings whose instance has been realized in the noblest of manners. “And if they fight you, they will turn their backs to you, then they shall not be helped” — as all that occurred during the existence of those addressed335 [p.331]
(3:112) Abasement has been stamped upon them wherever they are come upon, save by a rope from God and a rope from the people; and they incurred a wrath from God, and wretchedness was stamped upon them. That is because they used to disbelieve in God’s signs and kill the prophets without right; that is for what they disobeyed, and they used to transgress. (3:113) They are not alike …
of the Muslims, up to the seizing of Syria and what came after. (112) “Abasement has been stamped upon them” — in many centuries[Author’s note] — for what is mentioned at the end of the verse of their evil deeds — “wherever they are come upon” and apprehended and prevailed over; so they have no defence against abasement, “save” that they hold fast “by a rope from God” — by cutting themselves off and taking refuge with Him sincerely, so that He succours them — “and a rope from the people” — by entering into their covenant and protection, or their care and guardianship. And that was named a “rope” for its defending them from falling into the abyss of abasement. “And they incurred” — in the sense of “they returned” and the like — “a wrath from God” for the evil of their deeds; “and wretchedness (al-maskana) was stamped upon them.” In al-Qāmūs, of the senses of al-miskīn is the weak, the abased; and in al-Miṣbāḥ, from Ibn al-Aʿrābī, the abased, the subdued. And in al-Nihāya, of the senses that circle around al-miskīn and al-maskana are humbling and abasement. I say: and the apparent [truth] here is that the sense of al-maskana is what these senses circle around; and it is a necessary concomitant for the Jews, by reason of the breaking of their national and political might and the dissolution of their community in that, however much some individuals of them attain in wealth and partial, formal, temporary pride. “That is because they used to disbelieve in God’s signs” by the succession of their apostasies, and their unbelief in what the Messiah was given of them; “and kill the prophets without right” — the qualification is for clarification and for the recording of the ugliness of their deeds, for the killing of the prophets is all of it without right. “That is for what they disobeyed, and they used to transgress” God’s bounds. And the pointing was repeated as an emphasis, to make plain the aspects by which they deserve the swift chastisement and retribution.336 This is the state of the kind of the People of the Book in their generations; and not all of them are so, for they (113) “are not alike” and upon a single course in straying
(3:113) … Of the People of the Book is an upright community: they recite God’s signs in the watches of the night, and they prostrate. (3:114) They believe in God and the Last Day, and enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, and vie with one another in good works; and those are of the righteous. (3:115) And whatever good they do …
and error, all of them; rather “of the People of the Book is a community” and a group “upright (qāʾima)” — for worship; or it is a metonym for uprightness in faith and obedience and care for the duties of worship. “They recite God’s signs in the watches (ānāʾ) of the night” — ānāʾ is a plural whose singular is said to be iny or any, or anw with the wāw — that is, in the hours of the night and its times. “And they prostrate.” In al-Tibyān, the wāw is not for the circumstantial [state] but for coordinating the sentence “they prostrate” upon the sentence “they recite.” I say: I suppose the motive for this interpretation is his carrying the verse upon whoever of the People of the Book submitted [to Islam], and that what they recite is the verses of the Qurʾān, and there is no recitation in the prostration of the Muslims. But in it, first, there is no manifest benefit or source for the turning aside to the nominal sentence and the bringing of the pronoun, for restriction has no place [here], and the yielding of permanence is obtained from the imperfect verb. And second, it is not established that the verse came down concerning Ibn Salām and his like of those of the People of the Book who submitted; rather it is not known of these that they were qualified by the attributes mentioned in the verse and the one after it in such a way that they should deserve to be extolled by them — added to [the point] that the preceding verse, and in particular His words “and kill the prophets,” indicate that the tenor is concerning the states of the People of the Book of the early [generations]. So what suits is that the believers among them be meant, to make plain their excellence and take them out of that general blame. So what they recite is the verses of their true books; and it is not known that it is barred in their sacred law that they recite them in their prostration. Rather, upon both aspects it may be upright that the wāw be circumstantial, by what is meant being “they recite in the intervals between their successive prostrations in the standing for worship” — as one says “they speak while they are drinking,” and “they relate God’s blessing upon them and address [one another] with admonition and incitement to worship while they pray,” that is, in the intervals between their successive prayers. (114) “They believe in God” — a second description of “a community” — “and the Last Day” — the Day of the Return — and they act upon the reality of faith in it; “and enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, and vie with one another in good works” — by their God-wariness, their love of good, and their seeking God’s good pleasure, without slackening and without need of being prompted and compelled. And how clear is the word “they vie” in indicating the human’s choice in his acts! And the tenor of the verse and its glorification indicate that these attributes are established attributes of theirs, arising from firmly-rooted dispositions. “And those are of the righteous. (115) And whatever good they do, they shall not be denied it” — rather their excellence in it is extolled and God pays them its recompense in full. “And God is Knower of the Godwary” — however much337 [p.333]
(3:115) … they shall not be denied it; and God is Knower of the Godwary. (3:116) Indeed those who disbelieved — neither their wealth nor their children shall avail them anything against God; and those are the companions of the Fire, therein abiding forever. (3:117) The likeness of what they spend in this life of the world is as the likeness of a wind in which is a bitter cold, striking the tillage of a people who wronged themselves, and it destroyed it. And God did not wrong them, but they wrong themselves.
they keep secret their righteous deeds and their God-wariness. And the suitability of the station and the opposition required the reproaching of the disbelievers for their unbelief and the evil of their deeds, and the exposition of their loss, their disappointment, and the evil of their outcome; so He said, mighty and exalted: (116) “Indeed those who disbelieved — neither their wealth nor their children shall avail them anything against God; and those are the companions of the Fire, therein abiding forever.” And the interpretation of the verse has passed at the tenth verse; and there is added to it here the exposition of the abiding in the Fire, even if it indicated it by intimation in His words “and those are the fuel of the Fire.” And if it be said that these disbelievers may spend something of their wealth in joining the kin and benefiting the needy of the poor and the wretched and other than that, so why should their wealth not avail them? — then God has removed the ground of this misgiving by His words: (117) “The likeness of what they spend in this life of the world” and their squandering of it therein by their unbelief — even if they intended an aspect they suppose to be the face of God, but it is not the face of God, whose signs they disbelieved, and they associated with Him and described Him by attributes above which He is exalted — “is as the likeness of a wind in which is a bitter cold (ṣirr), striking the tillage of a people who wronged themselves, and it destroyed it.” This is of the composite likening, that there may be made plain from it the state of their unbelief along with their spending, in its voiding [it] by what they committed against themselves; and for that reason the likeness was headed by the exposition of the destroyer of the tillage, that the disbelievers might be terrified by its title at the head of the likeness. And al-ṣirr, with the kasra of the ṣād, is the severe cold, or the severity of cold, as most of the lexicographers and exegetes have stated textually; and it is mentioned in al-Durr al-Manthūr [that] a company brought it out from Ibn ʿAbbās by several ways. And al-Ṭastī related that Ibn ʿAbbās adduced for it al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī’s saying: “they do not [find it] cold when the earth is covered by the ṣirr of winter, [dry] from barrenness like tanned hide.” And there is recited in al-Kashshāf the poet’s saying: “do not count as equal wanderers whom a bitter-cold north-westerly strikes, with the people of the settled dwellings.” And “the tillage” is what is sown in the earth. And the most suitable in understanding His words “who wronged themselves” is that they wronged them by sowing it out of its season of sowing according to the seasons, or in other than its lands of sowing of the earth. “And God did not wrong them” by voiding their deed on account of their unbelief, “but they wrong themselves” by their choosing the unbelief that casts them into the ruin338 [p.334]
(3:118) O you who believe, do not take as intimates [any] apart from yourselves: they will spare no effort to ruin you; they wish for what distresses you. Hatred has already shown itself from their mouths, and what their breasts conceal is greater. We have made plain to you the signs, if you would use reason.
of the punishment, the baseness of the ruin, and the voiding of the deed. (118) “O you who believe, do not take as intimates (biṭāna)” — the biṭāna is a person’s special [confidant], the one who penetrates into his affair and comes to know his secret — “apart from yourselves” — that is, apart from your community and your believing people. And how goodly is the expression of them, in this station, by this pronoun, to make plain that your believing brethren, in the unity of your word in faith and your union in aiding it, are at the rank of your own selves! So how do you turn aside to others than them with the special [confidence] by which you acquaint them with the inward parts of your affairs and the sanctuary of your secrets in repelling the disbelievers? And this expression suffices as an exposition that those forbidden to be taken as intimates are of other than the believers; and the coming verse indicates that they are the hypocrites who, when they meet them, say “we believe.” And “from” is for the beginning of the limit, attached to His words “do not take”, or to the description of the biṭāna — and the first is more apparent; not for partition or for exposition, as in al-Tibyān, Majmaʿ al-Bayān, and what is transmitted of al-Rāzī’s tafsīr, and likewise the saying of the two tafsīrs al-Jalālayn and al-Manār, “from other than you” — for it would follow upon that that it be said “from those apart from you.” And He (magnified be His bounties) has made clear to the believers the aspect of the prohibition against taking these as intimates, [namely] that they “will spare no effort to ruin you (khabālan)” — “ruin” being a second object, and the sentence a clarifying description necessarily belonging to this biṭāna, not a restricting [one]. And they interpreted “they will spare no effort” by “they fall short”; and this does not suit its being made transitive to one object, let alone to two objects, as is what is much heard of its usage — so it must be made to mean “they will not stint you,” like His words in Sūrat Barāʾa (9:4) “then they did not fail you in anything.” And “ruin” (khabāl) is the corruption of judgment, or absolute corruption — that is, they render to you in full the corruption, or the corruption of judgment, by their intrigues. “They wish for what distresses you (ʿanittum)” — ʿanita [means] the distress (ʿanat) befell him, like “he died” and “he sickened”; and of what the lexicographers mentioned concerning al-ʿanat, of what suits the station, is harm and destruction, and hardship and the meeting of severity, and perdition. And perhaps its sense is one, applying in a single manner to these senses — that is, they wish for what has befallen you of distress. And the apparent [truth] is that the sentence “they wish” is another description of the biṭāna; and had it been an independent [sentence], it would have been said “indeed they have wished,” like His words “hatred has already shown itself” — their hatred for you — “from their mouths” and the slips of their words. “And what their breasts conceal” of what they keep secret of hatred for you “is greater” than what escapes from their tongues. So is it sound, after that, for the believer who defends the religion of Islam and rises to raise high the summons of the truth, to take these as intimates apart from the believers? “We have made plain to you the signs” and the indications concerning their state, “if you would use reason”339 [p.335]
(3:119) Lo! You are these who love them, while they do not love you; and you believe in the Book, all of it. And when they meet you they say, “We believe”; and when they are alone they bite their fingertips in rage at you. Say: “Die in your rage! Indeed God is Knower of what is in the breasts.”
the exposition, and the aim of the intimation, and the duty of acting upon the exposition and of guarding against taking as intimates any of them or of their like. (119) “Lo! You are these who love them” — “you” is the subject; and the apparent [truth] is that “these” is a call which yields here the benefit of specification, as an emphasis of their being blamed in the station of urging distance from those [people] and their like. “While they do not love you” — the apparent [truth] is that the sentence is circumstantial, its governor being “you love them”; and it is admissible that it be a second predicate by coordination. “And you believe in the Book” — the Qurʾān; and some of the exegetes have artificialities in the interpretation of “the Book” — “all of it”; and you have been forbidden in it, before this, from inclining toward those who do wrong, as in the Meccan Sūrat Hūd (11:113); and in it is (2:190) “indeed God loves not the transgressors,” as in Sūrat al-Baqara and the Meccan al-Aʿrāf (7:55); and (42:40) “the wrongdoers,” as in the Meccan Sūrat al-Shūrā; and (28:77) “the workers of corruption,” as in the Meccan Sūrat al-Qaṣaṣ; and (8:58) “the treacherous,” as in Sūrat al-Anfāl; and “the disbelievers,” as in Sūrat al-Rūm. So is it permissible and goodly of you, O believers in the Book, all of it, that you love whomever God does not love on account of his evil?[Author’s note] And the apparent [truth] is that the sentence is coordinated upon the predicate — that is, “lo, you love them and you believe in the Book, all of it”; and how do you gather the two matters, when you have heard from the Book that it forbids you from inclining toward those who do wrong and intimates to you that you should not love these and their like, for God does not love them? And in al-Kashshāf, that the sentence is circumstantial; and it is objected against him [by] the presence of the wāw, and it does not enter upon the circumstantial from an affirmative imperfect [verb]; and there is no motive for positing a pronoun so that it should be nominal. “And when they meet you they say”, in their hypocrisy and their deceiving, “we believe” in what you believe in, and we are with you and of you; “and when they are alone” and there is not with them any one of you, “they bite their fingertips in rage at you” — on account of your faith and the loftiness of your word by the appearing of Islam. And the biting of the fingertips occurs at the severity of rage, such that the enraged cannot restrain himself from biting his fingertips and paining them — as Abū Ṭālib said, “they bite in rage behind us upon their fingertips,” and al-Ḥārith b. Ẓālim al-Murrī, “they bite from rage the heads of their thumbs.” And the fingertips are the ends of the fingers, and al-abāhim is the plural of “thumb.” “Say” to them, O Messenger of God: “die in your rage!” — for God is the raiser-high of the word of truth and of the authority of Islam, and the forsaker of you. “Indeed340 [p.336]
(3:120) If good touches you, it grieves them; and if evil befalls you, they rejoice at it. But if you are patient and Godwary, their scheming shall not harm you at all. Indeed God encompasses what they do.
God is Knower of what is in the breasts (dhāt al-ṣudūr)” — your hypocrisy is not hidden from Him. And dhāt al-ṣudūr is a metonym for the trait, or the inward secret, or the state, or the cause attaching to the breasts, of hypocrisy or faith and the like — upon the measure of their saying “the ailment of the chest,” “the ailment of the lung,” and “the ailment of the side.” And upon that came His words [3:154] “and that God may test what is in your breasts and may purge what is in your hearts; and God is Knower of what is in the breasts.” So the two verses are like His words in Sūrat al-Naml, (27:74) “and indeed your Lord knows what their breasts conceal and what they disclose”; and the like of it the sixty-ninth verse of Sūrat al-Qaṣaṣ. And the expression by dhāt al-ṣudūr and “what their breasts conceal” is only in view of [the fact] that the breast is a vessel for the heart, which is the reference for these matters, as His words “and may purge what is in your hearts” indicate — as you say “he knew the hidden things of the house,” that is, what is in its chests and the like of that. And by what we have mentioned you know what is in al-Miṣbāḥ al-Munīr, of his saying, “the sense is Knower of the very selves of the breasts.” And upon what we have mentioned of the sense of dhāt al-ṣudūr, they interpreted the poet’s saying, “that you may avail me of all that belongs to your vessel,” by annexing dhā to the vessel — that is, what attaches to your vessel, of milk or other than it that is in it. And upon it also is what is in al-Miṣbāḥ al-Munīr, that Ibn Fāris recited it in Mutakhayyar al-Alfāẓ: “and excellent is the cousin of the folk in what pertains to his property, when some of the folk are, in their property, a dog” — that is, in what is connected and attaches to his property. And al-Nābigha said: “their book is what pertains to the God, and their religion is upright; so they hope for nothing but the [good] outcomes” — al-majalla being the book; that is, their book is what is connected and attaches to the God and His revelation. (120) “If there touches you” an event of “good” of the events of this world, from which you attain some good, even by its [mere] touching — a metonym for the smallness of its benefit to you — “it grieves them”, for their envy and their hatred of you and of the religion of truth; “and if evil befalls you” — in the sense of “strikes you” a crushing striking, not by mere touching — “they rejoice at it”, and there does not take hold of them for that any tenderness of neighbourhood, or of kinship and connection to the tribe. “But if you are patient” upon what patience is praised for, of obedience to God, aiding His religion, striving against His enemy, and [enduring] the enmity of these and their hurt, “and are Godwary” of God in His commands and His prohibitions, “their scheming shall not harm you at all” — with the u of the rāʾ and its doubling, because the like of this assimilated [verb] does not show the jussive by quiescence save by the undoing of its assimilation, as in “if there touches you.” And in this is a promise to the believers of God’s protection of their community from the harm of the hypocrites. “Indeed God encompasses what they do” — so He protects you from their deeds341 [p.337]
(3:121) And when you went forth in the morning from your family, assigning to the believers their positions for the battle — and God is Hearing, Knowing — (3:122) when two parties of you were minded to lose heart …
by which they scheme against you. And the current reading in the codices and among the Muslims, even the Seven Readers, is “what they do” with the yāʾ; and it is not mentioned with the tāʾ save from al-Ḥasan and Abū Ḥātim — and with that, [al-Zamakhsharī] said in al-Kashshāf, “‘encompassing what you do’ of patience and God-wariness.” (121) “And when” — in al-Tibyān, al-Majmaʿ, and al-Kashshāf, that the governor in “when” is “remember” — “you went forth in the morning”: in al-Nihāya, al-ghudūw is the first part of the day; “he went forth in the morning, he goes forth, a going-forth.” And in al-Miṣbāḥ, ghadā in the sense of “he set out.” And what is meant is the sum of the march occurring in the first part of the day and its beginning, “from your family” and your place of residence. And in al-Majmaʿ, that it is the going out to Uḥud,[Author’s note] from Ibn ʿAbbās; and it is what is related from Abū Jaʿfar, meaning al-Bāqir (peace be upon him). And in al-Durr al-Manthūr it is mentioned who brought that out from Ibn ʿAbbās, and who brought it out from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf. And this verse and the one after it, with their features and their particularities, determine that. “Assigning to the believers their positions for the battle” — “he settled in the place” means he became established in it; and “he assigned him the position” means he set him firmly in it. And the sentence “assigning” is a circumstantial [state] of “you went forth,” because the sum of the march and the distance from the family in the first part of the day and its beginning had, among its concomitants and its states, the assigning for the battle — in that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) made positions for the battle at the foot of Uḥud and made it at their backs, and placed in the ravine ʿAbd Allāh b. Jubayr with fifty of the archers, lest the idolaters overwhelm them from that side; and he commanded the archers not to quit their place, however the war and its outcomes should turn. “And God is Hearing” of what was said in that going-forth, in the matter of the war, of the speech of the hypocrites and the speech of the Messenger and the believers, “Knowing” of the intentions and of what took place of the deeds in that war and its preliminaries. (122) “When two parties of you were minded to lose heart” — al-fashal is cowardice and weakness of heart. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr it is mentioned that a company, of them Muslim and al-Bukhārī, brought out from Jābir that the two parties are the Banū Salama and the Banū Ḥāritha of the Helpers; and Ibn Jarīr brought it out from Ibn ʿAbbās, and it is sent as a mursal in Majmaʿ al-Bayān from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon them). And in Tafsīr al-Qummī: it came down concerning ʿAbd Allāh b. Ubayy and a folk of his companions who followed his opinion in sitting back from aiding the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household). And it is repelled [by the fact] that the verse says “were minded to lose heart,” and it is known that ʿAbd Allāh and his companions did lose heart and sat back and played the hypocrite, as their state will come in the verse342 [p.338]
(3:122) … while God was their Guardian; and in God let the believers put their trust. (3:123) And God had already helped you at Badr, while you were abased; so be wary of God, that perhaps you may give thanks.
the hundred-and-sixtieth up to the hundred-and-sixty-second of the sūra.[Author’s note] And God (magnified be His station) said concerning the two parties, “while God was their Guardian” — and in that is an indication that God preserved the two of them from what they were minded to do. And there is mentioned, in the verses pointed to, much of God’s blame of ʿAbd Allāh and his companions and His detestation of them, and that they were, on that day, nearer to unbelief than to faith. And His words “when they were minded” are a substitute for “when you went forth in the morning.” “And in God let the believers put their trust” — for He is their Guardian and their Helper; so let them not grow feeble in the aiding of the religion on account of the hypocrisy of some and his forsaking [them]. How [should they], (123) “and God had already helped you at Badr” — that dazzling victory over your enemies, possessed of a number approaching a thousand and complete equipment of horses, camels, swords, and coats of mail — “while you were abased” by the fewness of your number, for your whole army was three hundred and thirteen men, and by the weakness of your equipment: and it is transmitted that most of their weapons were palm-branches, and there were not with them of horses but two, and their camels were counted mounts which some of them took in turns while some were on foot, and they had not gone out with the accoutrement of war nor with the pride of a warrior. “So be wary of God” in the aiding of His religion and trust in Him and in not forsaking one another on account of the hypocrisy of the hypocrite, “that perhaps you may give thanks” — that is, to the end that you thank God for what He grants you of the mighty blessings and the dazzling victory: “if you help God, He will help you.”343 [p.339]
(3:124) When you were saying to the believers: “Will it not suffice you that your Lord should reinforce you with three thousand of the angels sent down?” (3:125) Yes — if you are patient and Godwary, and they come upon you in this rush of theirs, your Lord will reinforce you with five thousand of the angels, marked out. (3:126) And God did not appoint it …
(124) “When you were saying” — he said in al-Tibyān, the estimation is “remember when”; and in al-Kashshāf, it is an adverb for “He helped you” — I say, and it is worthier and more apparent — “to the believers: ‘Will it not suffice you’” in firmness and reassurance of victory “‘that your Lord’” and the Guardian of your affair, the Powerful, “‘should reinforce you’” and send you a reinforcement for your victory “‘with three thousand of the angels sent down?’ (125) “Yes” — a rebuttal of the content of the negation in the sentence “will it not suffice you” — “if you are patient” and firm “and Godwary” of God in what God-wariness is required in, and of it is firmness for the aiding of the religion of truth, “and they come upon you” — that is, the idolatrous enemies of Quraysh, the aggressors, after their caravan had escaped, by their coming for your war — “in this rush of theirs (min fawrihim hādhā).” He said in al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān, “from this direction of theirs”; and it was related in al-Durr al-Manthūr from al-Ḥasan, ʿIkrima, al-Rabīʿ, Qatāda, and al-Suddī. And I have not found a trace for this sense in al-Nihāya and al-Miṣbāḥ, and I have not encountered it in the language. Indeed, in al-Qāmūs, “they came min fawrihim,” that is, from their direction and before they settled. And it was related in al-Durr al-Manthūr from ʿIkrima, Mujāhid, Abū Ṣāliḥ, and al-Ḍaḥḥāk, “from their rage,” taken from boiling over and the boiling of rage — and it is strange; and stranger than it is what is from al-Ḍaḥḥāk, of his saying “from their direction and their rage”; and from Ibn ʿAbbās, “from this journey of theirs” — and it is strange. And whoever interpreted it by rage said that the verse came down concerning the battle of Uḥud, and what is meant is their rage from the day of Badr. I say: and what would suit, were it sound in the language, is that it be said “from that rush of theirs” — added to [the point] that the apparent [sense] of the verse, the suitability of the two [verses] before it and after it, and the reports of al-Kāfī and al-ʿAyyāshī with their chains from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon them), [all indicate] that it came down concerning the affair of the battle of Badr. And in al-Kashshāf he made it from al-fawr, the opposite of delay — that is, from this near moment of theirs. And this is the well-known, the suitable, and what comes readily to mind from this word. “Your Lord will reinforce you with five thousand of the angels, marked out (musawwimīn)” — from al-sīmāʾ, which is the mark. And perhaps what is meant is that they took on the mark of human beings and did not remain upon their original form. But in al-Kāfī’s sound [report] from Abū al-Ḥasan (peace be upon him), and his report from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), in the interpretation of “marked out,” he said: “the turbans.” And the like of what is in al-Durr al-Manthūr, of what Ibn Isḥāq and al-Ṭabarānī brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās. (126) “And God did not appoint it” — that is, the reinforcement by the angels — because His helping the Muslims depends upon the angels? No indeed! Rather because those Muslims, apart from the elect, are human beings weak by their humanity, whose gladness and reassurance are not made firm save by sensible things running upon customs, such as multitude of number344 [p.340]
(3:126) … save as glad tidings for you, and that your hearts might be reassured thereby; and victory is only from God, the Mighty, the Wise — (3:127) that He might cut off a flank of those who disbelieved, or abase them, so that they turn back disappointed. (3:128) You have no [part] of the matter, whether He turns to them in forgiveness or punishes them; for indeed they are wrongdoers.
and the might of the reinforcement. So God willed, by His mercy, to go along with their humanity by that through which the glad tidings and the reassurance are realized for them in their war — nay, and the reassurance that they are upon the certain truth and that God is with them. So He did not appoint it “save as glad tidings for you”, O striving Muslims, “and that your hearts might be reassured thereby” — that is, by reason of the mentioned reinforcement. “And victory is only from God, the Mighty” in His command, “the Wise” in His works and His helping and the setting at ease of the hearts of the believers; and the victory is not from the angels nor from any other. (127) “That He might cut off” — a causal [clause] for the victory, not for His words above, “God helped you at Badr,” as is mentioned in al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān as his saying, and al-Kashshāf mentioned it as the first of the two interpretations; for it does not suit the alternation and division in His words “that He might cut off, or abase” — rather what suits it is the absolute victory by which is cut off “a flank” — that is, a part — “of those who disbelieved”, and He destroys them, as on the day of Badr and Khaybar and their like, “or abase them (yakbitahum)”, as on the day of the Confederates and its like. In al-Miṣbāḥ, kabatahu: he humiliated him and abased him; and “he kabata him upon his face”: he threw him down. And in al-Nihāya: he abased him, turned him away, threw him down, and disappointed him. And in al-Qāmūs: he threw him down, disgraced him, turned him away, broke him, turned back the enemy with his rage, and abased him. And from al-Khalīl, al-kabt is the throwing down of a thing upon its face; and the reality of al-kabt is the severity of the enfeeblement that falls in the heart — and the human may be thrown down upon his face for the faintness that enters him. And in al-Tibyān, al-kabt is disgrace; and he ascribed what is from al-Khalīl to “it is said.” And in al-Kashshāf: “He disgraces them and enrages them by the rout.” I say: and what is meant by al-kabt in the verse is a sense hovering around these senses, which they take from what occurs to them of the suitability of the station or the cases of usage; and perhaps it is a kind of figurative [usage] of what is mentioned from al-Khalīl. “So that they turn back disappointed” — disappointment is well known, and it was interpreted as being cut off from what one hoped, and that is more suitable than what is mentioned of interpretation for it. (128) “You have no” — O Messenger of God — “[part] of the matter”, in the concerns of the creation, in respect of the bringing to guidance, repentance, punishment, and the like of that — “anything” of what returns to God’s power and does not enter under your power; for you are a created human being, and the matter in that belongs only to God. “Or He turns to them in forgiveness” — with the accusative of “He turns” — that is, when they repent and set [things] right — “or He punishes them”, with the accusative also, when they do not repent so that He should turn to them. “For indeed they are wrongdoers.” He chose in al-Kashshāf that the accusative of “He turns” and “He punishes them” is by coordination upon “that He might cut off,” and that the sentence “you have no [part] of the matter” is parenthetical; and he ascribed other than it to “it is said.” And in al-Tibyān before him it is mentioned as the first of the two aspects,345 [p.341]
(3:129) And to God belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth; He forgives whom He wills …
and in Majmaʿ al-Bayān one of the two aspects. And it is repelled — in addition to the flimsiness of the sentence’s being parenthetical — [by the fact] that repentance and punishment have no suitability to being an end for the victory, such that it should be said that they are coordinated upon “that He might cut off” or “abase.” And there is transmitted in al-Kashshāf a saying whose upshot is that “He turns” and “He punishes them” are in the accusative by an implied “that” after “or,” and the verbal noun is in the genitive position by coordination with “or” upon “the matter” — that is, “you have no [part] of the matter, nor of the turning to them in forgiveness or their punishment, anything”; or in the nominative position by coordination upon “anything” — that is, “you have no [part] of the matter [that is] anything, or the turning to them in forgiveness, or their punishment.” And in al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān the two mentioned another aspect, which al-Kashshāf ascribed to “it is said,” namely that aw is in the sense of “unless” — and that is like Ziyād al-Aʿjam’s saying: “and I used to be, when I squeezed a folk’s spear-shaft, to break its joints, unless (aw) it went straight” — in the sense of “you have no [part] of the matter, save God’s turning to them in forgiveness or His punishing them,” so that your affair would be following upon God’s affair, by your contentment with His governance, as in al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān. And I say that the affair, in God’s turning to them in forgiveness or His punishing them, belongs to God alone; so it is not sound to except it and affirm it for the Messenger by a connected exception. And there avails nothing in that the branching by their saying “so your affair would be following upon God’s affair,” along with [the fact] that there is no indication upon this branching. So the [right] aspect is that the first aw be in the sense of “but” (illā) which is for correction, like the lightened lākin, as in the disjunct exception — removing what might be imagined from the speech preceding it. For the tenor of His words “you have no [part] of the matter”, after the mention of those who disbelieved in the preceding verse, may give rise to the imagining that nothing occurs of what the Messenger hopes for of their rectitude and their submission [to Islam]; so the correction ran with what amounts to [this]: the Messenger’s hope is not cut off by the foregoing negation; rather God turns in forgiveness to whoever repents and returns to Islam, and punishes those who do not repent, because they are wrongdoers by their unbelief and the evil of their deeds. And there have been related in al-Durr al-Manthūr, concerning the descent of the verse, reports that scarcely apply. Of them, from Aḥmad, al-Bukhārī, al-Tirmidhī, al-Nasāʾī, and others, from Ibn ʿUmar, that the Messenger of God said on the day of Uḥud, “O God, curse Abū Sufyān” — and he mentioned three with him — so the verse came down. And it is repelled [by the fact] that supplicating with the curse is not of the matter negated to the Messenger of God; rather it is a supplication which God appointed for His Messenger and for the rest of the believers by His words (40:60) “call upon Me, and I shall answer you.” And God has cursed the wrongdoers and the disbelievers. And likewise the discourse concerning what al-Bukhārī, Muslim, and a company brought out from Abū Hurayra, that the Prophet made the qunūt after the bowing and supplicated for the deliverance of [certain] persons and cursed some — so the verse came down. Added to [the point] that the verse does not suit supplication for deliverance; along with [the fact] that these two reports and their like are mutually conflicting by opposition in the occasion of descent. (129) “And to God belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth” — and the matter is in His hand — “He forgives whom He wills”, like His words in the Meccan Sūrat Ṭāhā346 [p.342]
(3:129) … and punishes whom He wills; and God is Forgiving, Merciful. (3:130) O you who believe, do not devour usury, manifold multiplied; and be wary of God, that perhaps you may be successful. (3:131) And be wary of the Fire which has been prepared for the disbelievers. (3:132) And obey God and the Messenger, that perhaps you may be shown mercy. (3:133) And hasten to a forgiveness from your Lord and a Garden whose breadth is the heavens and the earth, prepared for the Godwary — (3:134) those who spend in ease and in hardship, and who restrain [their] rage …
(20:82) “and indeed I am ever-forgiving toward whoever repents and believes and does righteously, then is guided.” “And punishes whom He wills” of those who do not make their repentance goodly; “and God is Forgiving, Merciful” to whoever repents and returns. (130) “O you who believe, do not devour usury, manifold multiplied.” This is an exposition of a kind of the aspects of corruption in it; and that is that it, by its nature and its injustice, consumes the properties of the debtor, and what he takes from him comes to be manifold multiplied in relation to what he borrowed. So beware, and [beware] the door of this injustice! “And be wary of God” — for God-wariness is that by which the order stands and society goes upright — “that perhaps you may be successful”, that is, to the end that you be successful. (131) “And be wary of the Fire” — Hell — “which has been prepared for the disbelievers”; and how base is its station and how mighty its punishment, by this ill-omened preparing! And how base is the Muslim who casts himself, by the evil of his deeds and his devouring of usury, into this Fire! (132) “And obey God and the Messenger, that perhaps you may be shown mercy” — that is, to the end that you be shown mercy, when you stand firm upon complete obedience. (133) “And hasten” — with your righteous deeds and the goodliness of your repentance, and do not procrastinate lest your portion escape you — “to a forgiveness” for you “from your Lord” and the Guardian of your affairs, “and a Garden whose breadth” — that is, the measure of its breadth — “is the heavens and the earth”; and its length must inevitably be more than that, according to what God wills. And the fancies of the ancient astronomy, in its spheres and its determiner of directions, would stir up a question here; but whoever knows God’s power and the amplitude of His dominion — these fancies do not obstruct his faith. And the amplitude of the Garden was mentioned that the human might be reassured that he shall have what his soul desires of an ample place; and perhaps this measuring of the breadth runs upon what the imagining of the kind of people attains, of likening to what exists externally. And this Garden “has been prepared for the Godwary” of God, God-wariness having been for them a firmly established disposition. And here is something of their noble attributes: (134) “Those who spend” — for the face of God — “in ease and in hardship.” In al-Durr al-Manthūr, from Ibn ʿAbbās, “in the two states of ease and of straitness.” And in al-Tibyān, “and it is said, in the state of gladness and of grief” — that is, nothing of that cuts them off from spending, so ease and straitness enter into it; end [of quotation]. And it ought to be that the causes of grief be meant as a kind of the kinds of hardship; and this is nearer and more comprehensive in its generality in the praise. “And those who restrain rage” — “he restrained his rage” means he confined it347 [p.343]
(3:134) … and who pardon people; and God loves the doers of good. (3:135) And those who, when they have done an indecency or wronged themselves, remember God and seek forgiveness for their sins …
and repelled it by patience from the surging of its effects, of speech or retaliation. And “the camel restrained” means it held back from chewing the cud. It is said, and its root is the restraining of the waterskin, that is, the binding of its head when it is filled — I say, [rather] what is meant was the restraining of its water from overflowing, and the camel’s restraining of what is in its rumen from bringing it out for rumination. “And who pardon people” — and pardon is nearer to God-wariness. And indeed the restraining of rage and pardoning people are of the excellences of character and the effects of virtue, which assist upon peace, calm, the goodliness of society, and the ease of humankind, in sum. And the attributes of this verse are of the most important instances of doing good. “And God loves the doers of good” — and that suffices as a glory and a triumph. (135) “And those who” — it is said it is in the genitive by coordination upon “the Godwary,” and “those” in the coming verse is a pointing to all [of them]; and forgiveness was mentioned because everyone other than the infallible is in need of it. And it is said “those who” is a subject and the sentence “those” is its predicate. And the first saying is more suited to the exposition of the recompense for the Godwary and to His words “and how excellent is the wage of the workers!”; for seeking forgiveness, even if it is a righteous deed, yet it is far-fetched that the extolling of the deeds of the Godwary should be left aside and the extolling confined to the seeking of forgiveness by those seekers of forgiveness. This [being so], if it be said that the particularity of what is mentioned, of the occurrence of the doing of an indecency and the wronging of the soul together with the remembrance of God and seeking His forgiveness and the absence of persistence, does not conflict with their being of the Godwary before that and after the remembrance of God and the seeking of forgiveness — even if the disposition of God-wariness was shaken in them at the [moment of] sin — then upon that the word “those who” would be coordinated upon “those who pardon,” in the sequence of the attributes of the Godwary; and in it is a kind of difficulty. And God is the Knower. “When they have done an indecency (fāḥisha)” — in al-Nihāya, the fāḥisha is everything whose ugliness is severe, of sins and acts of disobedience; and frequently it comes in the sense of fornication. And in al-Miṣbāḥ, faḥusha is like qabuḥa; and everything that exceeds the limit is fāḥish, and of that is “a gross overreaching.” And in al-Qāmūs, the fāḥisha is fornication and everything whose ugliness is severe, of sins. I say: and I suppose that the intending of fornication by the fāḥisha in some cases is only in view of its being of the manifest individual instances in indecency; so the more apparent in the verse is the use of fāḥisha for the absolute [class of] acts of disobedience that are gross in their ugliness. “Or wronged themselves” by what is less than that of sins. “They remember God” — it is said, they remembered and worshipped God. And the nearer is that what is meant is that, after Satan and the soul that incites [to evil] had made them heedless at the time of the sin and made them forget what is due to Him of obedience and of not opposing [Him], they remembered God and the majesty that is His, and that He is their mighty Lord and the Owner of their affair and the reference of their fear and their hope, and they awoke to their slip. “So they sought forgiveness” of God “for their sins”. So the secret in that would be their being distinguished from whoever348 [p.344]
(3:135) … and who forgives sins save God? — and who do not persist in what they did, while they know. (3:136) Those — their recompense is forgiveness from their Lord and gardens beneath which the rivers flow, therein abiding forever; and how excellent is the wage of the workers! (3:137) Precedents have passed away before you; so journey in the earth and see how was the end of those who cried lies.
had God upon his remembrance at the time of the disobedience and did it in opposition to Him and in obstinacy; for these are far — and refuge is with God — from repentance and the seeking of forgiveness. “And who forgives sins save God?” And does the one who knows God take refuge, for the forgiveness of his sin, with any but God? And if he seeks intercession with God through whoever has been granted intercession, that is of what confirms the taking of refuge and recourse to God. And perhaps in this denial is a pointing to whoever seeks forgiveness from idols, or from the priests, and relies upon their forgiving — as is customary among the sect of the “Catholics” of the Christians, even in these times. And who forgives sins save God? “And who do not persist in what they did” of their sins, and do not continue upon them in prolongation of disobedience, “while they know” — the sentence is circumstantial; that is, they did not persist while being knowing that their act is disobedience — for this is the ruinous persistence; but as for one who persists in what he does not know to be disobedience, he is not persisting in disobedience. (136) “Those — their recompense is forgiveness from their Lord and gardens beneath which the rivers flow, therein abiding forever; and how excellent is the wage of the workers!” And the [thing] singled out for praise in “how excellent” is the forgiveness and the gardens mentioned, in view of [the fact] that the remembrance of God and the seeking of His forgiveness is a righteous deed. Magnified be God’s bounties and His kindnesses! (137) “Precedents have passed away” and gone by “before you”, O people — or O you who believe — “precedents (sunan)”: of them are the precedents of the believers who affirmed the prophets and strove in the way of God and ran upon what they were directed to of righteous deeds and preparation for the felicity of the Hereafter and the seeking of what is with God, so they made this world an abode of journeying and provisioning — and with that they enjoyed in it, by contentment with what God apportioned, better than the bliss of others, sullied and spoiled by avidity, the reaching out of desires, and the bolting of souls in greed. And of them are the precedents of the disbelievers who cried lies, though the proof stood against them and the clear signs were manifest to them — all that for their plunging into straying and desires and the shortness of their gaze upon this world [alone]. “So journey in the earth” for the increase of the lesson and of insight, “and see how was the end of those who cried lies” to the messengers and God’s signs — when this world cut off their hopes and sullied their living, and left their dwellings to ruin or to the habitation of enemies, and their bliss to perdition, and their gathering to dispersal. So look to the traces of ʿĀd and Thamūd and the people of Lot; nay, and look to the kings who cried lies to the prophets, of the Children of Israel, and their followers of349 [p.345]
(3:138) This is a clarification for mankind, and a guidance and an admonition for the Godwary. (3:139) And do not grow feeble, and do not grieve; and you are the higher …
those tyrant communities — how their end became perdition, dispersal, expulsion from the dwellings, and the abasement of captivity and killing, and there did not remain in their dwellings but the name. (138) “This” — the apparent [truth] is that the verses from His words “and when you went forth in the morning” to here precede this verse in the sequence of the sending-down; so the pointing would return to the contents of those noble verses and what they comprise of lofty aims; or to the content of the preceding verse. And on account of the doubt of some of them concerning the order of the sending-down, he said that the pointing is to the Qurʾān — I say, and that is far-fetched, since, had the pointing been to the Qurʾān, it would have been said “this Qurʾān” and the like of that, as is said in the likes of that. “Is a clarification for mankind” — even for whoever is not guided and does not take admonition — “and a guidance” bringing to the truth, “and an admonition” calling to the taking of heed, “for the Godwary” of God; for the clarification effects in them the being guided and the taking of heed. (139) “And do not grow feeble (tahinū)” — O Muslims — by reason of what befell you on the day of Uḥud. And in the books of the language, al-wahn is weakness. But what appears from the cases of usage is that it is a particular kind of weakness. And in al-Qāmūs, and the author of al-Manār followed him, that it is weakness in the deed. So if the two meant the weakness of the doer in his deed, such that the feebleness would be a description of the doer, then the two forgot God’s words “and indeed the feeblest of houses is the house of the spider” (29:41); and if the two meant weakness of the deed, or weakness of the thing done, such that the feebleness would be a description of the deed or of the thing done in respect of its being done, then the two were heedless of this verse and of God’s words (3:146) “yet they did not grow feeble,” as will come shortly, God willing. And what is meant is: let there not appear upon you the trace of weakness and faintness. “And do not grieve” for what befell you. “And you are the higher” — and in this sentence there are [several] aspects. The first: in al-Tibyān, Majmaʿ al-Bayān, and al-Kashshāf, that it is circumstantial; so it would be like an argument against them in the prohibition of feebleness and grief, in the sense that you saw God’s helping you and your height over your enemy — for you were about a quarter of the idolaters, and you routed them and dealt heavily in killing among them at the beginning of the war. And along with your coveting the spoil and your emptying your positions in the war and your ravine which guarded your backs, and your being routed with that rout, God turned to you in forgiveness and blessed you with His Messenger and with the firmness of the truthful in their striving; so you returned and the idolaters were forsaken and shrank back from fighting you — for you are the higher in this war and its conclusion, however much befell you by what your hands earned. The second: it is deemed possible in al-Tibyān and al-Majmaʿ that the sentence “and you are the higher” be an independent [sentence] — that is, do not grow feeble and do not grieve if you are believers, and you are the higher; so it would be350 [p.346]
(3:139) … if you are believers. (3:140) If a wound touches you, a like wound has already touched the [other] folk; and those days We turn about among the people …
comprising the glad tidings of absolute height, even in the future. The third: that what is meant is “you are the higher” absolutely, according to what was mentioned in the first aspect and according to your knowledge of what God promised His Messenger and of His glad tidings to you of the height of the religion’s affair and the perishing of the idolaters; so upon it the sentence may soundly be circumstantial. And His words “if you are believers” would be a qualification for the affirming of the glad tidings, or for the glad tidings. And upon the first two aspects it would be making plain that their ceasing from feebleness and grief follows upon their faith in God. And it is admissible also, upon the first aspect, that it be a qualification for their assent and their faith that what is mentioned in it, of their height at the beginning of the war and its conclusion, was from God’s helping them. And the more apparent is the third aspect. (140) “If a wound (qarḥ) touches you” — perhaps the expression by “touching” is to make light of what befell them, by making plain that it is a touch, not a crippling blow. And al-qarḥ, with the fatḥa of the qāf, was interpreted in al-Tibyān, Majmaʿ al-Bayān, and al-Kashshāf as the wound; and from Mujāhid, wounds and killing. And it is admissible that it be the singular of qurūḥ [sores], a metonym for what befell them — and that is more apparent. “Then a like wound has already touched the folk” — the idolaters. It is said that this is a pointing to what befell the idolaters on the day of Badr, and it is what is related from al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. But the more apparent, and what suits the station and its style and its consoling and encouraging, is that what is meant is what befell the idolaters on the day of Uḥud; for there were killed of them on that day a great many of their champions and men of valour — history has counted ten and ten and so-and-so and so-and-so, in such a way that it is not much less than the martyrs of the Muslims. As for His words in the hundred-and-fifty-ninth verse (3:165) “you have already inflicted twice as much,” it is possible that what is meant by it is the slain and the captives of the idolaters on the day of Badr, and it is possible that what is meant by it is the slain of the idolaters at Badr and Uḥud. But it was made light for the idolaters, on the day of Uḥud, that they attained in it something of the revenge of Badr and were not struck with its shock; and it was made severe upon the Muslims, what they met, [because] it was contrary to what they hoped for of God’s helping them and the religion of truth, and [because] they had sinned by their fleeing, so some forsaking befell them. And for that reason their war became, by their pouring out upon the covetings of spoil and their fleeing, an ordinary war, with which the spirit of the first victory did not continue; so it ran upon the custom of wars whose victory is built upon advancing and fleeing, multitude and fewness, and what presents itself of the states of war and the divine measuring-out bound to the customary causes in the world of coming-to-be — of the turning about of days according to the measuring-out for their causes. And upon this aspect God (magnified be His name) said: “and those days We turn about among the people” by the requirement of the measuring-out upon the causes. And “the days” is an explicative coordination for “those” — that is, the days of the war, or the days of this world;351 [p.347]
(3:140) … and that God may know those who believe, and take of you witnesses [martyrs]; and God loves not the wrongdoers. (3:141) And that God may purge those who believe and blot out the disbelievers. (3:142) Or did you suppose that you would enter the Garden while God has not yet known those of you who strove, and known the patient?
and “We turn about” is the predicate. And what came about, came about according to the requirement of the states of the people — of the hypocrisy of ʿAbd Allāh b. Ubayy and his companions and their returning from the army; and of the disobedience of whoever disobeyed, like many of the companions of ʿAbd Allāh b. Jubayr; and of the fleeing of whoever fled — and what was, was, by the running of affairs upon their causes, for the carrying out of affairs upon their measures. “And that God may know those who believe” — that is, and that the end may be that the faith of those who believed and followed the Messenger to the war and strove be realized externally, and that God know them in eternity by His following knowledge, and that their work in faith and striving accompany that in its continuance. “And take of you witnesses (shuhadāʾ)” — that is, and that the end may be that some of you win martyrdom. And in the expression by His words “and take” is a mighty honouring of the martyrs, since their martyrdom was by His taking them and His choosing for them the goodliest. “And God loves not the wrongdoers” — but you fled and disobeyed, so the wrongdoers gained mastery over you according to the course of the causes, the measures, and the states of war. (141) “And that God may purge those who believe” — that is, and that the end may also be the purging of the believers from others than them. And purging (tamḥīṣ) is [either] the extricating from the blemish of admixture, by the distinguishing of the believer, by his faith, from another; or by the extricating of the believer from sins — and the more apparent is the first. “And blot out the disbelievers” by diminishing them little by little until they are effaced. (142) “Or did you suppose” — am is disjunctive, in the station of the denunciatory interrogative — “that you would enter the Garden while God has not yet known those of you who strove?” The sentence “while He has not yet known” is a circumstantial [state] of “you would enter”; and the word “not yet” yields continuous negation up to the time of the address, or [up to] the attachment of the circumstantial to what is in the station of occurrence. That is, did you suppose that you would enter the Garden in the state of God’s not knowing — with the knowledge following from eternity up to the time of entering the Garden — of the striving of the strivers? And the upshot of the sense is: or did you suppose that you would enter the Garden while the strivers among you have not yet striven? So God’s knowledge was mentioned because it is a necessary concomitant of the occurrence; and in that is an indication of the occurrence of the striving and the coming to be of the strivers and the patient. “And known the patient” — with the accusative of “know” by an implied “that,” and the wāw in the sense of “together with”; that is, He knows those who strove together with His knowing the patient — as one says “do not eat fish and drink milk,” with the accusative of “drink,” that is, do not eat it together with the partner, milk. And the knowledge of the patient would be a qualification for the effect of the knowledge of the strivers. And the upshot of it is that your entering the Garden is bound to the striving of the strivers together with the patience of the patient who are firm, for the duration of the striving, in the centre of the war and the blazing of its flame. So do not suppose that you enter the Garden [p.348]
were it not for these two pillars by which the religion stood and the community of Islam and guidance was ordered.352 And by the patience of the patient in that, and the truthfulness of their striving and their firmness, the might of Islam was preserved on that day; so your returning to the most noble Messenger with a renewed charge was made easy, and your repentance from the fleeing from the battle-line — so you became qualified for entering the Garden by the blessing of Islam and righteous deeds. This [being so], what is gathered from the event of Uḥud, according to history and ḥadīth, is that ʿAlī (peace be upon him) killed Ṭalḥa of the Banū ʿAbd al-Dār, the bearer of the idolaters’ standard; and most of the ḥadīth and history, and the soundest of it, is that he (peace be upon him) killed nine who took the standard of the idolaters in succession, of the Banū ʿAbd al-Dār, and their tenth was Ṣawāb their client. And the war grew severe and the idolaters were routed, so the Muslims poured out upon the spoil, and most of the companions of ʿAbd Allāh b. Jubayr coveted it and did not give ear to ʿAbd Allāh’s forbidding them from quitting the ravine, and did not keep the Messenger of God’s (God bless him and his Household) charge and his command concerning that; so there did not remain with ʿAbd Allāh but ten or fewer. So Khālid b. al-Walīd seized the opportunity of that and fell upon them with the cavalry of the idolaters and killed them, and the idolaters overwhelmed the Muslims from behind them while they were heedless with the spoils; so the Muslims fled in a dreadful rout. And the one upon whom history has agreed that he stood firm in that, in the thick of the war and the defence of the Messenger of God, is the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī; and there is disagreement concerning others. And there may be mentioned, for some of them, deeds [done] after the Muslims returned to the Messenger of God from their flight, so that it is reckoned that he was of the firm ones who did not flee. Al-Ṭabarānī related in al-Kabīr, as in Kanz al-ʿUmmāl and its abridgment, with a chain from Abū Rāfiʿ: when the bearers of the standards came upon ʿAlī on the day of Uḥud, Gabriel said, “O Messenger of God, indeed this is true fellowship (muwāsāt)!” So the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) said, “he is of me and I am of him.” So Gabriel said, “and I am of the two of you, O Messenger of God.” And Ibn Jarīr related in his History, with a chain by men of soundness with them, from Muḥammad b. ʿUbayd Allāh b. Abī Rāfiʿ from his father from his grandfather: when ʿAlī killed the bearers of the standards, the Messenger of God caught sight of a company of the idolaters of Quraysh and said to ʿAlī, “charge upon them”; so he charged upon them and scattered their gathering and killed ʿAmr al-Jumaḥī. Then the Messenger of God caught sight of a company of the idolaters of Quraysh and said to ʿAlī, “charge upon them”; so he charged upon them and scattered their company and killed Shayba b. Mālik. So Gabriel said, “O Messenger of God, indeed this is fellowship!” So the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) said, “he is of me and I am of him.” So Gabriel said, “and I am of the two of you.” He said: so they heard a voice, “no sword but Dhū al-Fiqār, and no youth but ʿAlī.” And Ibn al-Athīr mentioned the like of it in his History, save that he did not mention those killed in the two charges. And in al-Laʾāliʾ al-Maṣnūʿa, from Ibn ʿAdī with a chain by men of soundness with them, from the mentioned Muḥammad from his father from his grandfather, he said: the standard of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) on the day of Uḥud was with ʿAlī (peace be upon him), and the standard of the idolaters with Ṭalḥa b. Abī Ṭalḥa — and he mentioned a long report, and in it that seven bore the standard of the idolaters and ʿAlī (peace be upon him) killed them. So Gabriel said, “O Muḥammad, this is fellowship!” [p.349]
So the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) said, “I am of him and he is of me.” Then we heard a crier in the heaven saying, “no sword but Dhū al-Fiqār, and no youth but ʿAlī.”353354 And from Ibn al-Maghāzilī al-Shāfiʿī in al-Manāqib, with a chain from Abū Rāfiʿ: an angel called out from the heaven on the day of Uḥud, “no sword but Dhū al-Fiqār, and no youth but ʿAlī.” And Ibn ʿAdī related, with a chain from Ibn ʿAbbās, he said: a crier cried out on the day of Uḥud, “no sword but Dhū al-Fiqār, and no youth but ʿAlī.” But
Ibn ʿAdī said that in its chain is Yaḥyā b. Salama b. Kuhayl, and he is abandoned. And Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd said, at the end of the third part of his commentary on the Nahj: Abū ʿUmar al-Zāhid and Muḥammad b. Ḥabīb related in his Amālī, he said: when most of the Companions of the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) fled on the day of Uḥud, the squadrons of the idolaters thronged upon him — and he mentioned the like of what Ibn Jarīr mentioned, and added that ʿAlī (peace be upon him) killed ten of the first squadron, and added, in Gabriel’s saying, “indeed the angels have marvelled at the fellowship of this youth.” And that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) was asked about the crier and he (God bless him and his Household) said, “this is Gabriel.” Then Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd said: and this report has been related by a company of the traditionists, and it is of the well-known reports; and I came upon it in some copies of the Maghāzī of Ibn Isḥāq, and I saw some of them free of it. And I asked my teacher ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. Sukayna about this report and he said, “a sound report.” So I said, “then why is it that the Ṣaḥīḥs do not comprise it?” He said: “and is everything that is sound comprised by the books of the Ṣaḥīḥs? How much have the compilers of the Ṣaḥīḥs neglected of the sound reports!” And from al-Samʿānī, in the book Faḍāʾil al-Ṣaḥāba, with his chain from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), and he mentioned the like of this call. And from Ibn al-Maghāzilī, that he related with his chain from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him) that this call was made on the day of Badr. And Ibn ʿAdī related, with his chain from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): a caller called out from the heaven on the day of Badr, named Riḍwān, “no sword but Dhū al-Fiqār, and no youth but ʿAlī.” And from Sibṭ al-Jawzī, that it was called out on the day of Khaybar — and he graded it sound: “no sword but Dhū
(3:143) And you were longing for death before you met it …
al-Fiqār, and no youth but ʿAlī” — and that Aḥmad related it in al-Faḍāʾil; and he mentioned also that it is of what the call is related by on the day of Badr also. I say: and there is no conflict between these reports, since it is possible that this call issued at Badr and Uḥud and Khaybar; for the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) was distinguished on those days by the mighty stands. And if you say: the ḥadīth from Abū Rāfiʿ differs in its wording — is this not reckoned of the disorder that weakens the report? — I say: the difference is only by omission, and this is not of disorder; rather the omission is to be carried upon forgetfulness or other motives. And the ḥadīth has been afflicted with a difference more severe than this, for most of what is repeated of the ḥadīth in Aḥmad’s Musnad and the Six Jāmiʿs and others — or all of it — is not free of the like of this difference, and of what is more than it and more; so look into the books of ḥadīth and take the lesson.355 A curiosity: al-Ṭanṭāwī said on p. 143 of the second part of his tafsīr, “so the Muslims were routed, and the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) remained with a company of his Companions, such as Abū Bakr, ʿAlī, al-ʿAbbās, Ṭalḥa, and Saʿd.” I say: he may relate what appears from it that Abū Bakr is of the firm ones; but what is well known in ḥadīth and history is that he is not of those whose firmness endured from the beginning of the war to its end. And in Ibn Ḥibbān’s Ṣaḥīḥ, with a chain from ʿĀʾisha, she said: Abū Bakr said, “when it was the day of Uḥud, the people turned away, all of them, from the Messenger of God, and I was the first who returned to him.” Leave this aside; but I say to al-Ṭanṭāwī: where was al-ʿAbbās on the day of Uḥud? For al-ʿAbbās did not enter into the community of the Muslims and come to Medina save after the conquest of Mecca. And which al-ʿAbbās is this? And I imagined that the word “and al-ʿAbbās” was of the printing-press’s error, so I looked to the table of corrections and saw that he had corrected from the mentioned page two verbal errors, but not this great error of sense. Indeed, he mentioned on p. 154 that those who stood firm on that day with the Prophet (God bless him and his Household), of the Emigrants, were seven — and he did not mention al-ʿAbbās among them. So “suppose good [of him]” — even if he has, in the history of the East, oddities and [strange] states.356 (143) “And you were longing” — tamannawna for tatamannawna, one of the two tāʾs being elided, and the like of it is common and frequent in Arabic; and longing is well known — “for death before you met it.” In Tafsīr al-Qummī, and in Abū al-Jārūd’s report from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), that the believers, when he informed them of what was done for their martyrs on the day of Badr and of their stations in the Garden, desired that and said, “O God, show us a battle in which we may be martyred”; so God showed it to them on the day of Uḥud, and they did not stand firm save whoever of them God willed. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, [p.352]
(3:143) … then you have seen it, while you were looking on. (3:144) And Muḥammad is but a messenger; messengers have passed away before him. If then he dies or is killed, will you turn back upon your heels? And whoever turns back upon his heels shall not harm God at all; and God will recompense the thankful. (3:145) And it is not for a soul to die …
Ibn Jarīr and Ibn al-Mundhir brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās and mentioned the like of that. And if the reports do not stand as proof in that, the verse speaks of the like of it. And its station requires that what is meant by the longed-for death is martyrdom. “Then you have seen it” — it is said, you have seen its causes, of war and fighting. I say: and martyrdom and killing and the remaining of the bodies without spirits is a seen matter, and there is no bar to that being meant — indeed it is more apparent and worthier. And seeing is the sensing by the sight. “While you were looking on” — and looking is other than seeing, which is transitive to its object; rather it is the employing of the sight for the sake of seeing. And it suffices, in the exposition of the difference, that it is made transitive only by the word “to,” as the language and the usage of the noble Qurʾān have it. That is, you saw it, not as a matter of report, while you were employing your sight for the sake of seeing the state and the fighting and the martyrdom and the death of the martyrs. And there is no harm in longing for martyrdom, after the customary knowledge that the defence in aid of the religion must inevitably [involve] some of the Muslims attaining the felicity of martyrdom and its everlasting life — especially after what is related, that the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) informed them that there would be martyred of them the number of the captives of Badr. And where is this from longing for the mastery of idolatry and the diminution of the number of the Muslims, as is mentioned in the flimsy objection! (144) “And Muḥammad” (God bless him and his Household) “is but a messenger” of the human beings, upon whom death is decreed by the reaching of his term; “messengers have passed away” and gone and preceded “before him” — God called them and they answered; and he is like them, his affair in God’s hand, who calls him to the abode of felicity and nearness, and he answers. “If then he dies or is killed, will you turn back upon your heels”, retreating from obedience or from the religion? And the interrogative is for denunciation of them. And al-Bukhārī related, in the chapter on the Pool, and others elsewhere — and perhaps it is of the ḥadīth known between the two parties — that the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) informed [them] of the turning back of people of his Companions. “And whoever turns back” from obedience or from the religion “upon his heels shall not harm God at all”; rather he destroys only himself, for God is [free of need] of the worlds. “And God will recompense the thankful” for His blessing upon them of faith and the sacred law, since they knew what this blessing has of mighty worth and so stood firm upon it. (145) “And” do not suppose that death comes to you by coincidence and chance, from the presenting of accidents without a measuring-out from God, so that you imagine that caution and flight and sitting back from striving will deliver you from it; rather “it is not” — and it is not established, nay nor will it be established — “for a soul to die save by God’s leave” and His will and His measuring-out — “a writ”: in al-Tibyān and al-Majmaʿ357 [p.353]
(3:145) … save by God’s leave, a writ appointed. And whoever desires the reward of this world, We shall give him of it; and whoever desires the reward of the Hereafter, We shall give him of it; and We shall recompense the thankful. (3:146) And how many a prophet, with whom fought many godly men …
and al-Kashshāf, that it is a verbal noun in the accusative by a verb of its own wording — that is, “that was written as a writing.” I say: and it is admissible, if it is not the apparent [sense], that it be in the sense of “what is written,” and it is an explicative circumstantial [state] of “the leave.” “Appointed” — that is, the terms have been written in it with their limits. “And whoever desires” from God, by his deed, “the reward of this world” and the recompense in it, “We shall give him of it” — that is, of this world. “And whoever desires the reward of the Hereafter” and what God has prepared for its seekers, “We shall give him of it” according to his deed and his sincerity. “And We shall recompense the thankful” to God for His blessings — and the greatest of them is His enabling them for His obedience and the seeking of what is with Him. This is the apparent [sense] of the verse; and there are mentioned in al-Tibyān and Majmaʿ al-Bayān sayings for which there is no proof and in which there is none. (146) “And how many (ka-ayyin)” — the apparent [sense] of al-Mughnī and al-Shaykh al-Raḍī’s commentary on al-Kāfiya is the agreement of the grammarians and their like that it is compounded of the kāf of comparison and the relative ayy, and the nūn was written to preserve the nunation in the original; and that it became, after the compounding, a noun yielding the sense of kam of predication and multiplication, even if it differs from it in [certain] respects; and that its position is the beginning [of the sentence] and what is after its specifier is its predicate. And upon that Majmaʿ al-Bayān ran — nay, and the apparent [sense] of al-Tibyān; as for al-Kashshāf, he did not address anything of that in his tafsīr. I say: if they did not find in it, in the cases of its usage, the sense of the kāf of comparison and the sense of ayy, then whence did they come by the tale of its compounding and its origin and its becoming a noun by the compounding? For the Arabs do not speak nor relate the like of that; rather they use what is in their language by the requirement of their Arab instinct and upon their [own] course, without analysis. And if they were finding in it the sense of its two parts, then why do they say that it became a noun, and why do they not run upon the requirement of its two parts? And it has come in the noble Qurʾān seven times, as in the verse, and Sūras Yūsuf 105 (12:105), al-Ḥajj 44 and 47 (22:45), al-ʿAnkabūt 60, Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household) 14 (47:13), and al-Ṭalāq 8. Ḥassān said: “how many have been struck down on the morning of that [day] of yours — of the white-handed, the glorious, of the secret [council] of ʿAmr.” And its hamza may be lightened, and it comes upon the measure of fāʿil, as in Zuhayr’s saying in his Muʿallaqa: “and how many you see of one silent, who pleases you — his increase or his lack [appearing] in the speaking.” “A prophet” — a specifier and an exposition — “fought” — the predicate — “with whom many godly men (ribbiyyūn).” Ribbiyyūn is the agent of “fought”; and in al-Kashshāf and Majmaʿ al-Bayān is the admissibility that the agent be a pronoun returning to the prophet, and “with him godly men” a circumstantial sentence358 [p.354]
(3:146) … Yet they did not grow feeble for what befell them …
for “fought”; and that is repelled [by the fact] that the nominal sentence needs, in its being circumstantial, its connection by the wāw, or by it together with the pronoun. As for sufficing with the pronoun alone, that is of the weak, above which the worth of the noble Qurʾān is exalted; and al-Zamakhsharī states plainly the weakness in the like of it. As for the ribbiyyūn: in al-Kashshāf, that the ribbī, like the rabbānī, is ascribed to the Lord (al-rabb), and the rāʾ was given the kasra by the alteration of ascription — meaning that ascription is accompanied by many alterations in the structure of the word, even in its beginning, as one says for what is ascribed to al-dahr, duhrī with the u of the dāl, and biṣrī with the kasra of the bāʾ. And one of the two reports from Ibn ʿAbbās agrees with it. And the report has differed in the interpretation of the ribbī: in al-Durr al-Manthūr, from Ibn ʿAbbās, “many learned ones,” and from him also, “multitudes,” and “the many multitudes.” And from Ibn Masʿūd, “thousands.” And in al-Tibyān, the ribbī is ten thousand, and it is what is related from Abū Jaʿfar — meaning al-Bāqir (peace be upon him); and I have not found the report, and it is as though it is of Abū al-Jārūd’s report in his tafsīr, and he is weak. And from al-ʿAyyāshī, from Manṣūr b. al-Ṣayqal from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), “thousands of thousands” — and Manṣūr is of unknown state, and al-ʿAyyāshī’s report from him is a mursal. And in Tafsīr al-Qummī, the ribbiyyūn are the many multitudes, and the single ribwa is ten thousand. And in al-Qāmūs, the ribwa with the kasra is ten thousand, and the ribbī is the singular of the ribbiyyūn, and they are thousands of people. And upon that, the ascription of the ribbī to the ribwa needs an additional handling, by turning the wāw into a yāʾ then eliding the yāʾ — along with [the fact] that the apparent [sense] of the verse is the reproach of the Companions of the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) at Uḥud on account of their feebleness by their fleeing and their not being patient in striving in the way of their Lord and the protection of the religion, whereas the companions of the prophets fought with them and that did not befall them. So if the companions of every prophet are ascribed to the ribwa and the many multitudes and the tens of thousands, the reproach would not take its place in the argument — for the many multitudes and the tens of thousands, and what is beyond up to thousands of thousands, are, according to custom, emboldened by the multitude of their throngs and the number of their thousands. Added to [the point] that their being described as “many” would then have no benefit. And by this the report increases in weakness and in deserving to be cast aside — unless it be said that they are ascribed to the ribwa and the tens of thousands and beyond in view of the repetition of the many battles with that prophet and the alternation of the strivers, and in all of them they stand firm; and in that is far-fetchedness. And upon it the sense would be: and how many a prophet, with whom many fought in his striving, and they stood firm and were patient upon what befell them — so what is it with you that you were not patient, and none of you stood firm but two, and the like of that? And upon al-Kashshāf’s saying: O you who are ascribed to the Lord and to striving in the way of their Lord, why did you flee and not be patient, as the many were patient of those ascribed by faith and obedience to their Lord, who strove in the way of their Lord along with the prophets? “Yet they did not grow feeble for what” — that is, on account of what — “befell them” of the hardships359 [p.355]
(3:146) … in the way of God, nor did they weaken, nor did they abase themselves; and God loves the patient. (3:147) And their saying was nothing but that they said: “Our Lord, forgive us our sins and our excess in our affair, and make firm our feet, and help us against the disbelieving folk.” (3:148) So God gave them the reward of this world and the goodliness of the reward of the Hereafter; and God loves the doers of good. (3:149) O you who believe, if you obey those who disbelieve, they will turn you back upon your heels, and you will turn back as losers.
of war and striving “in the way of God, nor did they weaken.” And this indicates that the sense of feebleness is either what is near in sense to weakness, or a particular kind of it — for mere emphasis by two synonyms is far-fetched. So it is possible that what is meant is: the order of their society was not disrupted, and neither panic nor the dying-down of resolves befell them; nor did their bodies weaken by reason of their surrendering to dread and fear and the terror of war. “Nor did they abase themselves” — istikāna is abasement and humbling. And it is possible that this is an allusion to what is related, that some were minded to make ʿAbd Allāh b. Salūl a mediator to seek for them safe-conduct from Quraysh. Rather, the godly men were patient with the patience of the noble in their wars. “And God loves the patient” — and that suffices them as excellence and glory. (147) “And their saying was” — in the hardships of wars and their like — “nothing but that they said: ‘Our Lord, forgive us our sins and our excess in our affair’” — the saying of one who deems his own deed small, who fears the slips of error and seeks from God the setting-straight and forgiveness for what has passed — “‘and make firm our feet’” in striving in Your way and Your obedience — the saying of the patient one who has settled his soul upon firmness and seeks from God the enabling and the setting-straight — “‘and help us’” in our striving “‘against the disbelieving folk.’ (148) So God gave them” — a recompense for what they did — “the reward of this world”, of victory and conquest and the rest of the blessings, “and the goodliness of the reward of the Hereafter.” And in the mention of “the goodliness” is an exposition of the greatness of their reward in the Hereafter, even though all of it is goodly — and what goodliness! — as a recompense for their doing of good. “And God loves the doers of good. (149) O you who believe, if you obey those who disbelieve” — in general obedience, or in the matter of striving and religion. And it is said that the verse came down concerning ʿAbd Allāh b. Abī Salūl, who returned from the army of the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) from the battle of Uḥud with three hundred of his companions, and set to making the Muslims forsake the Messenger of God. And in al-Kashshāf, Majmaʿ al-Bayān, and Tafsīr al-Burhān as a mursal from ʿAlī (peace be upon him): it came down concerning the saying of the hypocrites — that is, to the Muslims at the rout — “return to your brethren and enter into their religion.” And upon it the case of descent would be one of the instances, and the verse is upon its generality. “They will turn you back” from the religion of truth and faith and striving, backwards and to straying, “upon your heels, and you will turn back” — by their turning you back to straying — “as losers.” And that suffices as ruin,360 [p.356]
(3:150) Rather God is your Master, and He is the best of helpers. (3:151) We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, because they associated with God that for which He has sent down no authority; and their refuge is the Fire, and evil is the abode of the wrongdoers. (3:152) And God had already fulfilled to you His promise, when you were slaying them by His leave …
so do not obey them. (150) “Rather God is your Master” and the Guardian of your affair, and He is for you and your Helper; “and He is the best of helpers. (151) We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved.” The ḥadīth has been amply [transmitted] that the idolaters returned from the battle of Uḥud to Mecca terrified; and the verse is general, for the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) was helped by his enemies’ terror of him, as ḥadīth and history and the states of the idolaters and their wars against the Muslims bear witness. “Because they associated” — that is, by reason of their associating — “with God that for which He has sent down no” — concerning its divinity and its deserving to be associated with God in divinity — “authority” and proof from Him. For all these idolaters founded their associationism upon the acknowledgment of God and His divinity and what is His of the perfection of divinity; but they suppose concerning the associates that they are lesser gods, according to what their straying pictured for them of birth from God, or descents of divinity, and the like of that. So the proof stands against the idolaters [thus]: how should God (magnified be His station) neglect the affair of a god born of Him, or who is of His descents, and not send down an authority upon his divinity and his station therein and his deserving of worship, as they suppose? For He (magnified be His bounties) did not leave a prophet whom He sent without establishing the proof upon his prophethood, lest his station be lost and the benefit of his prophethood be lost; so how should He lose the benefit and annul the wisdom, and not establish a proof nor send down an authority concerning the divinity of one born of Him or who has become of His descents? Leave aside this argument — but whence have they the proof upon the divinity of their associates? And has God sent down concerning that an authority by which they may argue? For the reference of that is to God, not to the fancies of straying. And this is a binding argument against the idolaters, over and above the rational proofs upon the oneness of the God and the invalidity of associationism, and that everything they associate with God is bound by the concomitants of createdness and origination and the impossibility of its divinity. “And their refuge is the Fire, and evil is the abode of the wrongdoers.” The refuge (maʾwā) is the place which is prepared and come to, that one may rest and take shelter in it; and the abode (mathwā) is the place in which the stay is long. And the expression by “refuge” ran as a rebuke of the evil of their outcome — and that the Fire is their abode and the place of their staying; and evil is the abode prepared for the wrongdoers. (152) “And God had already fulfilled to you His promise” to you of victory, and its instance appeared to you, “when you were slaying them by His leave” — that is, killing them by God’s help and His will. And in al-Tibyān, al-ḥass is killing by way of extirpation. And in al-Nihāya, “they ḥassū them with the sword a ḥass”: they extirpated them by killing. And in al-Kashshāf, “you were killing them a swift killing.” And upon this circles the speech361 [p.357]
(3:152) … until you lost heart and disputed about the matter and disobeyed, after He had shown you what you love. Of you is he who desires this world, and of you is he who desires the Hereafter. Then He turned you away from them …
of the lexicographers in their books. ʿUtba al-Laythī said: “we cut them down with the white [blades], a cutting-down, as though we were splitting colocynth among them with the skulls.” And al-ḥasīs is the slain. Ṣalāʾa b. ʿAmr said, as in Lisān al-ʿArab and others: “my soul be for them at the breaking of the lances, when they have flung down every cut-down champion.” And there was, in the Muslims’ killing of the idolaters at the beginning of the war on the day of Uḥud, a killing of extirpation; for they extirpated the bearers of the standard, the Banū ʿAbd al-Dār, and the swift killing spread among the idolaters until they were routed, and the Muslims fell upon their baggage for the spoils. And that killing and that rout were by God’s leave and His help, contrary to the balance of war and the clash of force with force and the multitude of the idolaters’ number and their equipment — for they were about four times the striving Muslims. And in al-Tibyān, “‘when you were slaying them’ [was] on the day of Badr, ‘until you lost heart’ on the day of Uḥud.” And in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, most of the exegetes hold that what is meant by the whole is the day of Uḥud, and he transmitted what al-Tibyān mentioned from Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī. And what we have mentioned is the requirement of the Qurʾān’s tenor, so it is the apparent [sense]; and upon it are Ibn ʿAbbās’s two reports in al-Durr al-Manthūr — even if in what they graded sound of them there is an apparentness of Ibn ʿAbbās’s presence on the day of Uḥud, and that is contrary to what is well known of history, that Ibn ʿAbbās was not at that time an emigrant; rather his emigration is not known save after the conquest of Mecca. “Until you lost heart” — that is, the instance of God’s promise to you of victory appeared and you came to be killing them a swift killing, and that continued until, when you lost heart, that was cut off by reason of your losing heart and what proceeded from you. And losing heart was interpreted as cowardice — that is, their cowardice when the idolaters charged back upon them after their flight. And upon this, the coordination after the mention of losing heart would be contrary to the [chronological] order, and that is permissible with the wāw. “And disputed about the matter” — and of that is what occurred from the archers, the companions of Ibn Jubayr, in the ravine, where most of them desired the spoil and disobeyed the Messenger’s command and parted from the firm ones who commanded them to stand firm in their position. “And disobeyed” by going from the ravine to the spoil, and by your fleeing from the Messenger of God, “after He had shown you” — God — “what you love” of victory and your killing of them and their rout. (153) “Of you is he who desires this world” — so he preferred the spoil over obedience to the Messenger, or preferred the life of this world, by fleeing, over striving in the way of God — “and of you is he who desires the Hereafter” — so he stood firm and strove the striving of the patient. “Then He turned you away from them” — coordinated upon “God fulfilled to you” — that is, He turned you away362 [p.358]
(3:152) … that He might try you; and He has already pardoned you; and God is of bounty toward the believers. (3:153) When you were climbing away and not turning aside for anyone, while the Messenger was calling you in your rear; so He requited you with grief upon grief, that you might not …
by what the measuring-out required in the states of the war and the mutual forsaking in it; so He committed you to yourselves — “that He might try you”: the lām is for the end; that is, and of the ends of what took place is that He test you and your deeds appear, so that God may raise the degrees of the patient. “And He has already pardoned you” — that is, whoever disobeyed and was not patient; and this pardon is of God’s bounty by the blessing of your faith. “And God is of bounty toward the believers. (153) When you were climbing away” — “when” is an adverb for “He turned you away,” and what is meant is their flight. And tuṣʿidūna, with the u of the tāʾ, is from aṣʿada in the sense of “he entered upon and took to ascending into the mountains,” like anjada and athama; or “he entered upon ascending in the land,” that is, journeying in it. Ḥassān said, “they contend with the reins, ascending”; and another said, “my desire is with the riders of Yemen, ascending.” And you did not turn, in your fleeing and your climbing away — “and not turning” your bodies “aside for anyone”, whether he was one of you calling to firmness, or one seeking refuge with one of you, or a warring enemy. “While the Messenger was calling you” to his aid and to striving against the idolaters. It is said his call (God bless him and his Household) was, “to me, O servants of God! Return — I am the Messenger of God.” “In your rear” — the rear of the folk is the group that is the last of them. And the apparent [truth] is that the preposition and its object are attached to “calling you,” as one says “he called out among the people.” And this requires that their foremost had pressed far in flight and grown distant, so that the calling and the summons were in their rear. And it is admissible that it be a circumstantial [state] of the agent in “calling you” — that is, while he was in the group that is your rearmost, from the side of the enemy and the fighting; and what is meant by it are the firm ones. “So He requited you” — God; and it is coordinated upon “He turned you away” — that is, He recompensed you. And al-thawāb is the recompense for obedience and for disobedience, even if its use for obedience is frequent. “Grief upon grief” — in al-Tibyān, “grief upon grief,” and it is said “together with grief.” And in Tafsīr al-Qummī and al-Durr al-Manthūr, in the interpretation of “grief upon grief” by exposition of the cause of the grief, are reports that do not stand as proof for relying upon them, especially with the conflict in al-Durr al-Manthūr’s reports. And in al-Kashshāf, “grief by reason of a grief you made the Messenger of God taste by your disobedience”; end [of quotation] — and there is no proof for what he said. And he said after that what amounts to: it is admissible that the agent of “He requited you” be the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) — that is, as you grieved for what befell him, his grief [was] for what came down upon you, and he shared with you his grief to console you, “that you might not grieve,” the verse; end [of quotation] — and it is foreign to the tenor of the verses and the state of the event. And grief is well known; and though it is interpreted as sorrow, yet usage and what comes readily to mind bear witness that it is an expression for a known state that befalls the human at calamities and sorrow, by which his breast is straitened, and it is nearer to the sense of anguish than of sorrow. “That you might not grieve for what escaped you” of363 [p.359]
(3:153) … grieve for what escaped you nor for what befell you; and God is Aware of what you do. (3:154) Then He sent down upon you, after the grief, a security — a drowsiness overcoming a party of you — while a party, their own selves had preoccupied them, thinking of God other than the truth, the thought of the Age of Ignorance, saying: “Have we any [part] of the matter?” Say: “Indeed the matter, all of it, belongs to God.” They conceal within themselves what they do not disclose to you, saying: “Had we any [part] of the matter, we would not have been killed here.” Say: “Even had you been in your houses, those upon whom killing was written would have gone forth to …”
the triumph over your enemy and your victory over him, “nor for what befell you” of the sin of disobedience to God and the opposing of His Messenger, and the rout and their worldly ruin, of the breaking and the feebleness and the fear and the terror of the enemy’s charge upon you and upon your lands and your families. This is the apparent [sense] from the tenor — that is, and He requited you with grief upon grief, and the end of the piling of griefs upon you is that you be distracted from the mentioned sorrow. “And God is Aware of what you do” — nothing of your deeds and their aspects is hidden from Him. (154) “Then He sent down upon you, after the grief, a security — a drowsiness overcoming a party of you” — that is, it occupies them and makes them heedless of fear, so that their state becomes equal to the state of one secure, like His words in Sūrat al-Anfāl in the mention of the event of Badr, (8:11) “when He covered you with drowsiness, a security from Him.” And this is a kind of the kindness toward this party, upon whom there had come, among the sum of their griefs, the grief of the disobedience by fleeing, out of fear of God and remorse for the sin. “While a party” — another, of you, and they are those who were not fit for this kindness; rather they are sunk in their cares and their griefs — “their own selves had preoccupied them” in the matter of the life of this world, and they had despaired of the victory. “A party” is the subject and the sentence “had preoccupied them” the predicate. “Thinking of God other than the truth” concerning His promise to His Messenger of victory and that He would make him prevail over religion entire — “the thought of the Age of Ignorance”; and the sentence is a second predicate. “Saying” — a circumstantial [state] of the pronoun in “thinking,” or a third predicate — “have we any [part] of the matter?” — that is, of the victory; and even if it was not an address to the Messenger of God but rather among themselves, it is possible that they meant by “the matter” the truth, and their interrogative would be denunciatory, as what follows intimates. “Say” to them, O Messenger of God, in answer to their asking of you, or their discourse among themselves: “indeed the matter, all of it, belongs to God” and in His hand are the reins of affairs. “They conceal within themselves” from you “what they do not disclose to you, saying” — within themselves, or among themselves in their discourse — “had we any [part] of the matter, we would not have been killed here. Say”, O Messenger of God, to the people, in the exposition of the reality, what would be an answer to what you were informed of, of what these conceal from you: that the affair of killing follows the measuring-out and the decree, so that the martyrs may win the felicity of martyrdom and the hypocrite and the idolater may perish. “Even had you been”, O people, “in your houses, those upon whom killing was written would have gone forth to their resting-places” — in martyrdom or in perdition, by the ruling of God’s decree.364 [p.360]
(3:154) … their resting-places; and that God might try what is in your breasts and purge what is in your hearts; and God is Knower of what is in the breasts. (3:155) Indeed those of you who turned away on the day the two hosts met — Satan only made them slip by some of what they had earned; and God has already pardoned them. Indeed God is Forgiving, Forbearing. (3:156) O you who believe, do not be like those who disbelieved and said of their brethren, when they journeyed in the land or were on a raid: “Had they been with us they would not have died nor been killed” — that God might make that a regret in their hearts; and God gives life and gives death …
And of the ends of that is that the felicitous may win his felicity and the wretched be made wretched by his abasement. “And that God might try what is in your breasts” and bring out what is hidden in them, of obedience and hypocrisy. And the causal [clause] by the lām of end is coordinated upon a posited end, as we have mentioned, and the like of it of what the tenor indicates. “And purge what is in your hearts” and extricate what is in the heart of the believing, striving, patient one, of righteous intentions and firm faith, and distinguish that from what is in the hearts of the impatient and the hearts of the hypocrites and the disbelievers. “And God is Knower of what is in the breasts” and what is in them; but the trying and the purging are for the appearing of that externally by the presenting of the prompters. (155) “Indeed those of you who turned away” — routed — “on the day the two hosts met” at Uḥud — “Satan only made them slip” and cast them into the slip “by some of what they had earned” — that is, by reason of their yielding to him through what they had earned of the sins which made it easy for him to make them slip by the like of this great sin. “And God has already pardoned them” by reason of their repentance and the blessing of the most noble Messenger. “Indeed God is Forgiving” to whoever makes his repentance goodly, “Forbearing” — so He did not hasten them with punishment. (156) “O you who believe, do not be like those who disbelieved” in God, so they ascribe the events of being to the coincidence of their customary causes, without God’s disposal in the world and the running of affairs by His will, His measuring-out, and His decree — “and said of their brethren” who are of their tribe and their people — that is, concerning the affair of their brethren — “when they journeyed in the land” on an ordinary journey “or were on a raid” and some of them died or were killed. And al-ghuzzā is the plural of ghāzī, as shuhhad and ʿuwwad are plurals of shāhid and ʿāʾid. And the word “when(ever)” was brought because this saying of theirs is universal and its adverb universal in relation to the journey and to the raid, and the adverb is not a particular time such that “when [past]” should be said. “Had they been with us” and not journeyed and not raided, “they would not have died nor been killed” — they believe that by their unbelief and the evil of their judgment, and they say it — “that God might make” — that is, and of the ends of that is that He make, by His measuring-out, “that” belief and that saying “a regret in their hearts” — that is, a cause of regret, since they sorrow and say in their sorrow and their regrets, “why did we let them journey? Why did we let them raid?” “And God gives life and gives death”365 [p.361]
(3:156) … and God is Seeing of what you do. (3:157) And if you are killed in the way of God or die, a forgiveness from God and a mercy are better than what they amass. (3:158) And if you die or are killed, to God you shall be gathered. (3:159) So it is by a mercy [from God] …
— in His hand is the affair of life and death, not as they suppose by their unbelief. For how many a one present, in soundness and ease, has God caused to die; and how many a traveller and raider suffers hardships and terrors and God returns him safe! “And God, of what you do” — O you who believe, or O people — “is Seeing”: nothing of them nor of their aspects is hidden from Him; so be wary of God in your deeds, and of them are your words. (157) “And if you are killed in the way of God or die”, there would be for you the mighty recompense, and your wage would fall due upon God; and of your wage is forgiveness and mercy — and who is there that does not need the two of them? And “a forgiveness” — of the instances of forgiveness — “from God and a mercy” — of the instances of mercy — “are better than what they amass” of the refuse of this world. (158) “And if you die or are killed”, O people, “to God you shall be gathered” — a promise emphasized by the two lāms of the oath; and you shall not escape Him, but He will requite you for your deeds: if good, then good, and if evil, then evil. Or: and if you die or are killed in the way of God, to God you shall be gathered and to Him you shall come, and He will pay you your wages in full. (159) “So it is by a mercy (fa-bimā raḥmatin)” — he said in al-Tibyān that mā is redundant, brought as an emphasis of the speech; and Majmaʿ al-Bayān added, “by the consensus of the exegetes.” But his claim of consensus is out of place, for al-Tibyān transmitted from al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Maghribī that mā is in the sense of ayy — that is, “by what mercy!”; and Ibn Hishām transmitted it from a company, even if he raised against it what is not raised. And in al-Shumunnī’s glosses on al-Mughnī, from Abū al-Baqāʾ from al-Akhfash and others; and its transmission is related also from Ibn Kaysān. And al-Sayyid al-Raḍī said in Ḥaqāʾiq al-Taʾwīl: “and Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Mubarrad has a doctrine which I hold, namely that there is nothing of the particles that came in the Qurʾān save for a beneficial sense.” And al-Raḍī said also that mā’s sense is the magnifying of the measure of the mercy by which he was gentle to them. And its reference is to what al-Ḥusayn said; and to it returns al-Rāzī’s choice, that the sense is “by what mercy!” — and what is meant is the ayy that yields magnification, as you say “what a man is this!” And many of those we have mentioned are earlier than Majmaʿ al-Bayān, and they are the pillars of the discipline and the money-changers of the language and the reference in the like of that. And al-Rāzī said in his tafsīr: “the investigators have said that the entry of a word of idle coinage into the speech of the Most Wise of the wise is not permissible.” And ʿAntara said in his Muʿallaqa: “O what a quarry of a ewe for one to whom she were lawful! — she was forbidden to me; and would that she had not been forbidden” — for the sense of mā is the sense of the wondering ayy, for the purpose of magnifying; and the nobility of the taking of her as quarry, by her own nobility, is apparent from366 [p.362]
(3:159) … from God that you were gentle with them; and had you been harsh, hard of heart, they would have scattered from around you. So pardon them and seek forgiveness for them and consult them in the affair; then when you are resolved, put your trust in God — indeed God loves those who trust. (3:160) If God helps you, none can overcome you; and if He forsakes you, who then is there to help you after Him? And in God let the believers put their trust. (3:161) And it is not for a prophet to defraud …
the verse. And al-Fand al-Zammānī said: “O what a thrust of an aged shaykh, decrepit and worn!” — until he said, “I sought relief by it when the like of me shrank from armour”; for his words “I sought relief by it” indicate that mā is for wonder, by magnifying the affair of the shaykh in his thrust. And al-Farazdaq said: “I called out that if you escape, it would be after what despair! — and Death had already looked upon you,” that is, after what severe despair. This [being so], those whom we have seen saying that mā is redundant in the verse say that it was added for emphasis. Is there then no one to say to them: in what respect is the emphasis, and why is it emphasized? Indeed, they find for it a sense upon which their deficient, newly-invented rules do not fit, so they take refuge in naming it “emphasis.” “From God” upon them — nay, upon the rest of humankind — “you were gentle with them”, and you came to bear with them and incline to them in the difference of their opinions and their states, and in what proceeds from them of what is not approved, so that they might join you and be guided by your guidance, and thus the pillar of the religion be raised, the community of Islam be ordered, and the might of unbelief and straying be crushed. “And had you been harsh, hard of heart” — interpreted in al-Tibyān and al-Kashshāf as coarse, cruel of heart, and it is one of the modes of what the lexicographers mentioned — “they would have scattered from around you” and dispersed from you; but you are of a mighty character, and to the believers kind and merciful. “So pardon them and seek forgiveness for them and consult them in the affair” which presents itself — that is, and set them right and draw their hearts by consultation; not because they furnish him with rectitude or knowledge of the right course. How [should they], when God is his setter-straight: (53:3) “nor does he speak out of caprice; it is naught but a revelation revealed.” “Then when you are resolved” upon what God has shown you by the light of prophethood and set you straight in, “put your trust in God — indeed God loves those who trust” in Him. (160) “If God helps you, none can overcome you; and if He forsakes you” and commits you to yourselves, “who then is there to help you after Him?” He (magnified be His station) likened His forsaking them, by their deserving forsaking, to one who turns away from them and passes them by. “And in God let the believers put their trust”, and to Him let their recourse be. (161) “And it is not for a prophet to defraud (yaghulla)” — with the fatḥa of the yāʾ; and al-ghulūl is treachery in the spoils. And the meaning is that defrauding does not occur from the prophets, and this has not occurred from any one of them367 [p.363]
(3:161) … And whoever defrauds shall bring what he defrauded on the Day of Resurrection; then every soul shall be paid in full what it earned, and they shall not be wronged. (3:162) Is then he who follows God’s good pleasure like him who incurs a wrath from God and whose refuge is Hell? And evil is the destination.
— because they are infallible and God’s trusted ones. And al-Durr al-Manthūr adduced reports from Ibn ʿAbbās, and Tafsīr al-Burhān from al-Ṣadūq, with a chain in which there is unknownness, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that the verse came down concerning a red mantle that was lost from the spoils on the day of Badr, and some of the people said, “the Messenger of God took it.” And in the report from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him): so God made His Messenger prevail concerning the mantle, and this verse came down. And in the reports from Ibn ʿAbbās there is conflict. “And whoever defrauds shall bring what he defrauded on the Day of Resurrection” — and God will disgrace him by it from the first of his mustering. “Then every soul shall be paid in full what it earned” — that is, shall be paid the recompense of what it earned, when the reckoning and the recompense come; so it shall be paid the recompense of what it earned of defrauding and other than it, just as every soul shall be paid the recompense of what it earned, if good then good and if evil then evil — it shall be recompensed in full, that is, completely, so long as the sinner has not repented in this world and God has turned to him in forgiveness, in which case he would be like one who has no sin. “And they shall not be wronged” by the recompensing of the evildoer with other than what he earned, nor shall the recompense of the doer of good be diminished. (162) “Is then he who follows” — in his deeds and his words and his abstentions and his religion and his yielding by obedience and emulation and being guided and the following of him whom God has appointed the guardian of his affair, and in his dealing with people and his entering into their private affairs and what returns to the social body — “God’s good pleasure”, in that he looks, in every matter of these, to God’s good pleasure therein according to what the religion of truth and God’s sacred law indicate, and the light of the truth cleared of caprices, and the right direction of the natural disposition; and he takes account of himself in it and makes God’s good pleasure his original aim and his sole object of following, by which he travels in the way of the truth and the straight path and the supreme felicity. Those whose speech we have seen of the lexicographers and the exegetes said that riḍwān is like riḍā, a verbal noun of “he was pleased”; but the apparent [truth], from the cases of usage, is that it is a noun of a verbal noun, and that its sense is fuller than the sense of riḍā. And is one who follows God’s good pleasure, upon what has been mentioned, “like him who incurs” — that is, returns, by the evil of his deeds and his acts of disobedience and his retreating from the upright course — “a wrath from God”, and has become thereby a corrupt, noxious member in human society, “and whose refuge is Hell? And evil is the destination.” And by the truth of my life, this surpassing teaching, for all its brevity, guarantees to whoever follows it and treads its path the excellence of rectitude and the winning of individual and social felicity. And every adorning with goodly character whose life does not stand by the spirit of following God’s good pleasure is but like the image in a mirror and a vanishing shadow and a deceiving mirage; and however its whitewashed image may please, it is to the social body like poison in368 [p.364]
(3:163) They are degrees with God; and God is Seeing of what they do. (3:164) God has indeed conferred a favour upon the believers, when He raised up among them a Messenger from among themselves, reciting to them His signs and purifying them …
rich food. And there is transmitted in al-Tibyān, Majmaʿ al-Bayān, and al-Durr al-Manthūr the carrying of the verse upon particular cases; and there is no support for that, in opposing the apparent generality of the verse, save the sayings of Saʿīd b. Jubayr, al-Ḍaḥḥāk, Ibn Jurayj, and Mujāhid. And in Tafsīr al-Burhān, from al-Kāfī with a chain in which there is weakness, and from al-ʿAyyāshī as a mursal from ʿAmmār from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that those who follow God’s good pleasure are the Imams (peace be upon them). And the report does not stand as proof for the restriction; indeed they (God’s blessings be upon them) are, in this community, the most manifest of the individual instances and the highest of them in degree. (163) “They are degrees with God.” In al-Tibyān and al-Majmaʿ, the estimation of the verse is “they are possessors of degrees” — the believers being possessors of lofty degrees and the disbelievers possessors of base degrees. And in al-Kashshāf this is ascribed to “it is said”; and he said before it, and did not make plain the reference of the pronoun: “that is, they are disparate as the degrees are disparate” — meaning that they were likened, in their disparity, to degrees, so [God] predicated the degrees of them by way of metaphor, as one says “Zayd is a lion” with regard to courage; and it is one of the doors of eloquence, and worthier than the positing [of an elided word], and more apparent. And al-Rāzī in his tafsīr made the return of the pronoun to those specifically who follow God’s good pleasure worthier, and adduced for that four aspects that do not stand as proof. Indeed, in ʿAmmār’s report pointed to there is what requires that in another respect, were it a proof. “And God is Seeing of what they do. (164) God has indeed conferred a favour upon the believers” and blessed them with the mighty blessing, “when He raised up among them” — to begin with them, according to the wisdom, in the general summons to all humankind — “a Messenger from among themselves.” The ascription of “themselves” to them is in view of Arabness and nationality and the growing-up among them, in such a way that they would be aware of his states and the aspects of his perfection and his surpassing dispositions in truthfulness and trustworthiness and the like of that, which requires the soul’s reliance upon him and calls to affirming him and turning to faith in him. And by his being of them they know his tongue and his modes of address, and they yield to him; and the pride of Arabness and the partisanship of nationality do not prevent them from yielding to him, as they would were he other than an Arab. So it was of the mighty kindness to the Arabs and the favour upon them that He made easy for them the way of faith in the Messenger of God by making him of them, and thereby removed what their ignorance and the pride of nationality and Arabness required of stumbling-blocks. And of His favour (magnified be His bounties) is that He made the proof of the messengership, and its miracle, in their language — as we mentioned that in the Introduction, concerning the wisdom of the miracle for the Arabs being the noble Qurʾān. So the Messenger (God bless him and his Household) came to be “reciting to them His signs” — God’s signs, of the Qurʾān — so they understand their senses and their intimations without a translation that would be hard for them. “And purifying them, and teaching them” — by his recitation369 [p.365]
(3:164) … and teaching them the Book and the wisdom, though before that they were in manifest error. (3:165) Or when an affliction befell you — you had already inflicted twice its like — you said, “Whence is this?” Say: “It is from your own selves.” Indeed God has power over all things. (3:166) And what befell you on the day the two hosts met was by God’s leave, and that He might know the believers, (3:167) and that He might know those who played the hypocrite. And it was said to them: “Come …”
and his conveying and his sermons and his admonitions and his exposition — “the Book and the wisdom, though they were” — the wāw for the circumstantial [state], and the kasra-voweled in lightened from the heavy, yielding emphasis and affirmation, for they were — “before” — that is, before He raised him up among them and they believed in him — “in manifest error” in respect of the [religious] sciences, the sacred law, character, rectitude, justice, and civilization. O you Muslims of the companions of Uḥud, according to your kind: (165) “Or when” you opposed the Messenger’s command and emptied your positions for the striving and plunged into the spoil and fled that flight, “an affliction befell you” — which had not befallen you at the beginning of your striving and your firmness, with the [corresponding] soundness of the idolaters warring against you; rather “you had already inflicted” upon the idolaters “twice its like” — for there were killed of them at Badr and Uḥud twice what was killed of you on the day of Uḥud; or the affliction of the idolaters on the day of Badr, by their slain and their captives, was twice your affliction on the day of Uḥud — “you said” — the answer to “when” — “whence is this” that has befallen us, and from where has it come to us? You say that in dismay and in deeming it grave. “Say”, O Messenger of God, in answer to them: “it is from your own selves”, since you opposed the Messenger and hastened to the spoil; or since you opposed the Messenger, as al-Durr al-Manthūr related from Ibn ʿAbbās; or since you coveted, at the event of Badr, the ransom of the captives, and the Messenger of God warned you that there would be killed of you their number, and you consented — as in al-Durr al-Manthūr, that Ibn Abī Shayba and al-Tirmidhī brought it out (and he graded it good), and Ibn Jarīr and Ibn Mardawayh, from ʿAlī the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him); and in Majmaʿ al-Bayān, it is what is related from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him). Indeed, God is able to help you as He helped at Badr and mightier than it, as you saw the manifestation of the victory at the beginning of the war on the day of Uḥud. “Indeed God has power over all things. (166) And what befell you on the day the two hosts met” of killing and wounds “was by God’s leave” and His measuring-out for the war and the striving in His way, that whoever won it might attain martyrdom. “And” in it is another end, namely the distinguishing of the goodly by his striving from the foul by his hypocrisy and his returning from the army — “that He might know”, that is, that His eternal following knowledge be established and accompany, in its continuance, the existence of the known, “the believers” who followed the Messenger of God to the striving. (167) “And that He might know those who played the hypocrite” — and they are ʿAbd Allāh b. Abī Salūl and his followers. “And it was said to them: ‘Come, fight in the way of God, or defend’” your people and your lands and your honour, if you have no desire for370 [p.366]
(3:167) … “fight in the way of God, or defend.” They said: “Had we known of fighting, we would have followed you.” They, on that day, were nearer to unbelief than to faith; they say with their mouths what is not in their hearts; and God knows best what they conceal. (3:168) Those who said of their brethren, while they themselves sat back: “Had they obeyed us they would not have been killed.” Say: “Then ward off death from yourselves, if you are truthful.” (3:169) And do not reckon those who were killed in the way of God as dead; rather they are living with their Lord, provided for, (3:170) rejoicing in what God has given them of His bounty, and rejoicing at those who have not joined them from …
striving in the way of God. “They said”, in the making of excuses and in hypocrisy — although the enemy had descended with his equipment and his numbers upon their courtyard, seething with rancour, and fighting was known by the courses of custom and the states of the Arabs — “had we known of fighting, we would have followed you” — and they lied. “They, on that day” — by their hypocrisy — “were nearer to unbelief than to faith; they say with their mouths what is not in their hearts” of hypocrisy and siding with unbelief; “and God knows best what they conceal. (168) Those who” — a description of “those who played the hypocrite” — “said of their brethren” — that is, concerning the affair of their brethren by tribe and nationality — “while they themselves sat back”: the sentence is either circumstantial, by positing “already” upon the view of the Baṣrans and al-Farrāʾ, or without positing upon the view of the Kūfans and al-Akhfash; or coordinated by the wāw which is for absolute conjoining — that is, they sat back from the fighting and returned from the army to Medina. “Had they obeyed us” by sitting back and not going to the war, “they would not have been killed.” And this saying of theirs returns to their denial that the affair of death or killing is in God’s hand and by His measuring-out and His decree; rather they ascribe the two of them to causes which can be repelled and guarded against. So it is as though they do not look to [the fact] that how many a brave man casts himself into the furnace of war and the gullets of death and then returns to his family, by God’s leave, safe; and how many a sound man at ease among his family, death has come upon him, by God’s leave, in his place of safety. “Say”, O Messenger of God, to them, in rebuttal of their supposition: if death is of what is repelled and guarded against, “then ward off” and repel “death from yourselves, if you are truthful” in your supposition and in the import of your saying, “had they obeyed us they would not have been killed.” (169) “And do not reckon those who were killed in the way of God as dead” — according to what the imaginers imagine of the annulment of their perception and their becoming like inanimate things. And the form of the address is to the most noble Messenger, and its bent is the teaching of the people. “Rather” they are “living with their Lord”, the Powerful, the Merciful, “provided for” with what they enjoy in that felicitous life and that praiseworthy world, while they are (170) “rejoicing in what God has given them of His bounty” of the bliss; and they know the states of the people of this world and are gladdened by their rectitude and their deliverance thereby from deserving punishment. “And they rejoice” — coordinated upon “rejoicing” — “at those who have not joined them from371 [p.367]
(3:170) … behind them, that no fear shall be upon them nor shall they grieve. (3:171) They rejoice at a blessing from God and a bounty, and that God does not let go to waste the reward of the believers. (3:172) Those who responded to God and the Messenger after the wound had befallen them; for those who …
behind them” — by death or by martyrdom; that is, they rejoice at their felicity through their rectitude — “that no fear shall be upon them” in the Hereafter, that is, that no fear shall be upon them, “nor shall they grieve” on the Day of Recompense. (171) “They rejoice” — another circumstantial [state], like “rejoicing” — “at a blessing from God” upon them in their bliss, “and a bounty, and” at “that God does not let go to waste the reward of the believers”; rather He pays them their recompense in full. (172) “Those who” — a subject — “responded to God and the Messenger” when the Messenger called them to follow the army of the idolaters upon their return from the battle of Uḥud, to overawe them, and they answered his call, “after the wound had befallen them” by that calamity and the multitude of the wounds. So they followed them, with the Messenger of God, to Ḥamrāʾ al-Asad — which is a market of the Arabs eight miles from Medina — and returned without meeting a battle.[Author’s note] “For those who did good” in their deeds in the life372 [p.368]
(3:172) … did good among them and were Godwary, is a great reward.
of this world and the abode of works — that is, they made their deeds goodly, like His words “whoever is best in deed” — “among them and were Godwary, is a great reward.” The sentence is the predicate of “those who.” And how much, how much, ought the human to be wary and to cleave to God-wariness and watch over his outcome and take account of himself in the days of his life and seek sincerity to God in his deeds! For these who responded to God and the Messenger in that hardship and that wound — the thanks of the response and the promise of the reward did not run for all of them upon [God’s] messengers; rather the import of the verse divided them, in its partitioning, into those of them who did good and were Godwary, and into others; and it particularized the promise of the reward to the first portion. So the praise and the reward, in the reality of the matter, in this verse and the two after it, is only for some, even if its form runs upon their kind. As the like of that ran in the last verse of Sūrat al-Fatḥ, in His words (48:29) “Muḥammad is the Messenger of God, and those who are with him are hard against the disbelievers” — and he mentioned the goodly praise, until He said (mighty and exalted), “God has promised those of them who believed and did righteous deeds forgiveness and a great reward”: so He divided them by the word “of them” also, that same awe-inspiring division. And by the division of these two verses He disclosed the state of the absoluteness or the generality in others than the two of them, and made plain that its running, in the reality of the matter, is upon some, not all — and alas! And in al-Kashshāf, that “from” in “of them” is for exposition, like it in His words at the end of Sūrat al-Fatḥ, “God has promised those of them who believed and did righteous deeds forgiveness,” because those who responded to God and the Messenger had all of them done good and been Godwary. And Ibn Hishām in al-Mughnī transmitted the like of it from Ibn al-Anbārī. And of the strange things, from one who is counted among the prodigies in grammar and Arabic and expertise in the nobility of the noble Qurʾān in its eloquence and rhetoric — and how is it hidden from him that it is required, in the “from” that is for the exposition of a genus, that what it expounds have in it an ambiguity in its genus, and that in its object there be an exposition that removes that ambiguity and undertakes the clarification of what is meant, and that it be sound to carry it upon what it expounds, a carrying beneficial by its exposition? What, then, is there in His words “of them” of new clarification removing an ambiguity? And what is the benefit in the exposition in the sayer’s saying “those who did good among them and were Godwary”? And there is transmitted in the tafsīr of al-Manār, from his teacher, his choosing that “from” in the verse is for partition, because of the sincere believers there were those who did not go out to Ḥamrāʾ al-Asad — meaning that the pronoun in “of them” returns to the believers at the end of the preceding verse. I say: and this373 [p.369]
(3:173) Those to whom the people said: “Indeed the people have gathered against you, so fear them” — yet it increased them in faith, and they said: “God suffices us, and He is the best Trustee.”
is not sound if the relative, namely “those who,” at the beginning of the verse, is a subject, because its predicate, namely the sentence “for those who,” would remain without a connector. And for that reason the pupil built the soundness of what his teacher said upon the accusative of “those who” by way of praise. And I say that the accusative by way of praise is built upon the relative, namely “those who,” being a description of the believers, like the saying of al-Kharnaq bint ʿAffān of the Banū Qays: “may my people not be far — those who are the poison of the enemies and the bane of the slaughter-camels; the ones who descend at every place of battle, and the goodly ones at the knotting of the loin-cloths.” And there is not, in this accusative by way of praise, a coordination that would indicate difference. Rather, were there a coordination, it would not require difference, but would run upon the course of His words in Sūrat al-Baqara (2:177) “and the patient in hardship,” and in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, “and those who maintain the prayer.” So then the partition and the division return to those who responded — and whence is it known that “those who” here is in the accusative by way of praise? So let there be reflection upon the speech of the author of al-Manār and his teacher in this place. And would that I knew what this artificiality is in the interpretation of the verse, along with the consensus of the community that not all the Companions are infallible! (173) “Those who” — a substitute for “those who” which is the subject, in view of the part; or for [the relative] governed by the lām, in view of the whole — and it is the more apparent — “to whom the people said” — that is, some of them. It is said a company of the merchants; and it is said Nuʿaym b. Masʿūd al-Ashjaʿī.[Author’s note] And in al-Tibyān and al-Majmaʿ, it is the saying of Abū Jaʿfar and Abū ʿAbd Allāh — that is, al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon them). “Indeed the people” — that is, the idolaters — “have gathered against you” an army for your war, “so fear them” — “yet it increased them” — that saying — “in faith” in God and the religion of truth and the obligation of aiding it and striving in its way, or in His promise of victory. “And they said: ‘God suffices us’” as a Helper against their throngs, “‘and He is the best Trustee’” over them. And in al-Tibyān, al-Majmaʿ, and al-Kashshāf, [the Trustee is] the one to whom the affair is committed. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn Mardawayh brought out from Abū Rāfiʿ that the Prophet (God bless him and his Household) directed ʿAlī (peace be upon him), with a company with him, in pursuit of Abū Sufyān; and a Bedouin of Khuzāʿa met them374 [p.370]
(3:174) So they returned with a blessing from God and a bounty; no evil touched them, and they followed God’s good pleasure; and God is of mighty bounty. (3:175) That was only Satan frightening his allies; so do not fear them, but fear Me …
and said, “the folk have gathered against you”; so they said, “God suffices us and He is the best Trustee” — and this verse came down concerning them. I say: and it is possible that the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him), with the company, were in the vanguard of the pursuit, or pursued them from Ḥamrāʾ al-Asad. (174) “So they returned with a blessing from God and a bounty.” And the indication of the branching by the fāʾ is not hidden — that this returning with the blessing and the bounty was from the march by which they responded to God and the Messenger, as mentioned in the two preceding verses. So there is no aspect and no soundness in making what is meant by the response the march to Ḥamrāʾ al-Asad while what is meant by the returning with the blessing and the bounty is the return from the battle of the Lesser Badr in the second year, as in the report which al-Durr al-Manthūr mentioned that al-Nasāʾī, Ibn Abī Ḥātim, and al-Ṭabarānī brought out with a sound chain by the way of ʿIkrima from Ibn ʿAbbās; and al-Kashshāf’s tafsīr ran upon its course in the separating, contrary to the branching in the noble verse. “No evil touched them” of war or calamity, “and they followed God’s good pleasure” in this response of theirs. And good tidings for whoever perseveres in doing good and God-wariness, as God stipulated it, so he wins the felicity of the great reward! “And God is of mighty bounty” — and of His bounty they were enabled for this response and returned with a blessing from Him and a bounty. (175) “That was only Satan” — this is an encouragement of the believers to advance to striving; and its upshot is that those who wanted you to fear the idolaters, by their saying “the people have gathered against you,” arose only from Satan’s suggestion and his intrigues in promoting straying; for he frightens the believers by his straying allies, in protection of unbelief and straying. “Frightening his allies” — khāfa is transitive to one object: you say “I feared the dog”; and it is transitive, with the doubling, to a second object, as you say “ʿAmr made me fear the dog.” And the second object may be elided, as you say “ʿAmr frightened me”; and the first object may be elided, as you say “ʿAmr frightened by the dog” and as in the verse — so it is as if it were said “he frightens you by his allies,” as is related of the readings of Ibn ʿAbbās and Ibn Masʿūd. But the word “frightening” in the general reading is more comprehensive and more complete in benefit, in the station of blaming Iblīs, and [in] the generality of his frightening the people by his allies, and the generality of his allies in the prohibition against fearing them, in a manner that yields the glad tidings of security from their evil — not Quraysh in particular. “So do not fear them” — that is, Satan’s allies — for God is your Helper as He promised you, “that He might cut off a flank of those who disbelieved, or abase them, so that they turn back disappointed.” “But fear Me” — for felicity is in the servant’s fear of his Lord375 [p.371]
(3:175) … if you are believers. (3:176) And let not those who hasten into unbelief grieve you; indeed they shall not harm God at all. God desires to appoint for them no portion in the Hereafter; and theirs is a mighty punishment. (3:177) Indeed those who have bought unbelief with faith shall not harm God at all; and theirs is …
and his God-wariness of Him — “if you are believers” in God and His promise of victory, and that He must be obeyed in His command and His prohibition, and that He is the Owner of the affair of benefit and harm, severe in punishment, and to Him they shall return. O Messenger of God, (176) “and let them not grieve you” — with the fatḥa of the yāʾ and the u of the zāy; yaḥzan comes with the fatḥa of the yāʾ and the zāy for the intransitive, and with the u of the zāy for the transitive; and in al-Miṣbāḥ it is the dialect of Quraysh — I say, and upon it is the usage of the noble Qurʾān, as in this verse and eight cases in the rest of the sūras; and upon this dialect came maḥzūn as the passive participle in the general language. And grief is well known. “Those who hasten into unbelief” and plunge headlong into the aspects of its straying and the promptings of its error, without pausing, in the following of caprice and the opposing of God and the rebellion against Him, and without deliberation to look into the proofs of faith and the evidences of the truth, nor giving ear to the summoner of guidance. And it is known that these and their like have gone out, by their rebellion, from their fitness for God’s kindness and the Messenger’s mercy; so let not the Messenger grieve out of mercy for them — rather let him grieve for their opposing God and their rebellion against faith in Him. And for that reason God’s consoling of His Messenger was by His words (magnified be His name): “indeed they shall not harm God at all” — for God is [free of need] of the worlds. And “at all” falls in the position of the verbal noun, that is, anything of harm; and by its falling within the scope of the negation it yields generality. And for the sake of what has been mentioned of their rebellion and their hastening into unbelief, they went out from the fitness for kindness and deprived themselves of its good; so for that reason “God desires to appoint for them no portion” — that is, no share of good — “in the Hereafter” — that is, He desires their deprivation. And He expressed it by “desire” as an emphasis, to make plain that the deprivation’s occurring is because God’s will attached to it; “and your Lord is not a wronger of the servants.” “And theirs” — over and above that — “is a mighty punishment”, a recompense for what they used to disbelieve. (177) “Indeed those who have bought unbelief with faith” — after the proofs of the truth and the demonstrations of faith had been made clear, from the natural disposition and the signs and the Messenger’s summons and the light of indication, so that faith after that was as though within their possession: so they turned from it and left it and chose unbelief, as the buyer turns from the price and takes in exchange for it the thing sold, in which he desires. And it is possible that what is meant by them in this verse are those hastening into unbelief, so the verse would be an emphasis of the one before it in a matter whose emphasis suits the state. And it is possible that what is meant is one who comprehends both those hasteners and whoever is below them in rebellion, so the verse would yield generality and, within it, emphasis — and perhaps that is more apparent. “They shall not harm God at all; and theirs is a painful punishment. (178) And let not those who disbelieve reckon that Our granting them respite”376 [p.372]
(3:178) … is good for themselves; We grant them respite only that they may increase in sin; and theirs is an abasing punishment. (3:179) It was not for God …
in their lifespans, and Our extending for them in their terms, not hastening them with punishment and destruction, “is good for themselves” — that is, for each one in respect of his own self, which is the dearest of selves to him and the worthiest of his seeking good for it. And the speech ran upon this wording lest it give the fancy that the good and the increase in sin return to the totality, as it would were it said “for them.” “We grant them respite only that they may increase in sin” — the lām in “that they may increase” is for the outcome, like it in His words in Sūrat al-Qaṣaṣ, (28:8) “so Pharaoh’s folk picked him up, that he might be an enemy and a grief for them.” And the restriction in “only” is in view of the outcome, and that the respite for them has, in its outcome, no good so long as they remain upon unbelief. “And theirs is an abasing punishment” by which they see their abasement for what they disbelieved. (179) “It was not for God.” In the verse, according to the sayings, there are [several] aspects. The first: in al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn Abī Ḥātim brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās that the address in this verse is to the disbelievers; and the possibility of that is mentioned in al-Tibyān, and likewise in Majmaʿ al-Bayān in a confused manner. And al-Kashshāf and the two tafsīrs of al-Rāzī and al-Manār did not mention it as ascribed [to anyone], as though they paid it no heed. And the requirement of Abū al-Saʿūd’s tafsīr is that the choice of the investigators is other than it. And upon it the sense would be: O you disbelievers, it was not for God, by the requirement of His kindness to His servants, to leave them without the sending of a messenger and a summons to the truth, and to leave the believers upon what you are upon of unbelief; rather He establishes the proof and makes the demonstration shine, so the goodly believe, even if the wretched of straying and the tyrants of unbelief show obstinacy — so He thereby distinguishes the foul, by his straying, from the goodly, who chooses the guidance of faith. And this possibility may be argued for by His words in the second verse, in the continuation of the address, “so believe in God and His messengers; and if you believe and are Godwary, you shall have a great reward.” But there is no witness in that, since its like has run in the address to the believers, as in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ 58, “O you who believe … if you believe in God and the Last Day,” [and] 135, “O you who believe, believe in God and His Messenger”; and in Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household), after the address to those who believed, in the thirty-second verse [35], “and if you believe and are Godwary, He will give you your wages”; and in al-Anfāl, in the address to the believers concerning the fifth of the spoils, “if you have believed in God and what We sent down upon Our servant,” and other than that. Added to [the fact] that the apparent [truth] in the Qurʾān’s address is that it is an address to the believers, and carrying it upon others than them needs an indication, and it is lacking — let alone that the tenor in the preceding verses is the address to the believers. The second aspect: that the address is to the believers and what is meant by “the foul” are the hypocrites, as is transmitted in al-Tibyān and al-Majmaʿ, and al-Kashshāf and some377 [p.373]
(3:179) … to leave the believers upon what you are upon, until He distinguishes the foul from the good; nor was it for God to acquaint you with the unseen; but God chooses of His messengers whom He wills …
of the books of tafsīr said it. And upon it: if what is meant by the hypocrite is one who displays Islam and conceals unbelief from the outset, that does not accord with the idiom of the noble Qurʾān, for it makes the hypocrites a class opposite to the believers, not a class of them — as in His words in this sūra [3:166–167] “and that He might know the believers, and that He might know those who played the hypocrite”; and Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt 10, “and God shall surely know those who believed and shall surely know the hypocrites”; and al-Aḥzāb 72 [73], “that God may punish the hypocrites, men and women, and the idolaters, men and women, and that God may turn in forgiveness to the believers”; and al-Ḥadīd 13, “on the day when the hypocrites, men and women, will say to those who believed.” The third: and it is the more apparent, the nearer — that what is meant by “the foul” is one who was honoured at that time with faith, then rebels by the grave sins and the enormities, because he was pliant of rein to caprice and Satan; so he hastens to the ruinous sins and apostasy and turning back upon the heels and insolence and corruption in the earth and departure from the religion. So his foulness arises from the testing; and the sense of the verse would be: it was not for God, and it is not of His noble station and His wisdom and His kindness, “to leave the believers” absolutely — and they are those honoured with the description of faith — “upon what you”, O you existing at the time of the address, of the believers, “are upon”, of the confusion of the state outwardly, “until” His commands and prohibitions issue, by His kindness and His wisdom, with the sacred law and its foundations in the felicity of humankind and the perfecting of the religion and the completing of the blessing and the righteous order, and His measures run according to wisdom in what has, as its outcome, the trial and the testing — so the inciting souls that have not been broken in hasten to their choosing the foulness of rebellion and the bolting into error. And of the effects of that is that “He distinguishes the foul”, by his hastening in his choosing of what we have pointed to of the ruinous sins — yamīza, with the fatḥa of the yāʾ, the kasra of the mīm, and the quiescence of the yāʾ, the imperfect of māza, in the sense of “he separated and made plain” — “from the good”, who is constant upon obedience to God and the following of the truth and the opposing of caprice. And this aspect is supported by what is in Tafsīr al-Burhān from al-ʿAyyāshī from ʿAjlān b. Ṣāliḥ from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him). “Nor was it for God” — nor does it befit His wisdom and His kindness and the majesty of His station — “to acquaint you with the unseen” in the concerns of the sacred law and what we have pointed to of its foundations and the cases of the testing; for that is a great station of which you are not worthy, and rather it would disrupt your community and the concerns of Islam. And the informing of this unseen befits, by the requirement of wisdom, only the station of the Messenger; and God knows best where to place His messengership, [namely] with him who is worthy of it by his voluntary perfection. “But God chooses of His messengers whom He wills” according to the messenger’s worthiness and the requirement of the interest and His wisdom (magnified be His bounties),378 [p.374]
(3:179) … So believe in God and His messengers; and if you believe and are Godwary, you shall have a great reward. (3:180) And let not those who are niggardly with what God has given them of His bounty reckon it good for themselves; rather it is evil for them …
not by compelling the choosing of one who was not worthy and whose choosing wisdom does not require. He said in al-Tibyān: and “of” here is for the exposition of the description, not for partition, because the prophets are all of them chosen; end [of quotation] — meaning by that that it is for the exposition of the aspect of the choosing by the exposition of the genus of the chosen, as in His words “whatever God opens for the people of mercy,” [and] “whatever verse We abrogate”; and as in your saying “I have with me twenty of the dirhams,” when you mean by “the dirhams” their genus that is exposed to plurality and number, not when you mean by them specified dirhams which are more than twenty — as al-Shaykh al-Raḍī made clear in the commentary on al-Kāfiya. And I have not found readily anyone who stated plainly the exposition here besides al-Tibyān, even if it gleams from the speech of some. And if “of” is for partition, the choosing would be only by that whereby He prefers some of the messengers over others, not by the root of messengership; and the sense would be, “and God chooses from among His messengers whom He wills of them, and prefers him with a distinguished station of the knowledge of the unseen and of honour.” But this sense does not suit the tenor, nor the branching by His words “so believe in God and His messengers” in what they brought from God, because God chose them for that. “And if you believe and are Godwary, you shall have a great reward. (180) And let not those who are niggardly reckon” — in what God has made obligatory of spending — “with what God has given them of His bounty”. And in that is an argument against those who are niggardly in what God has imposed: that what they are niggardly with is only of God’s giving, and the surplus beyond their actual need. “It good for them” — “good” is a second object of “let them not reckon,” and the [first] object is the niggardliness indicated by His words “are niggardly”, or that with which they were niggardly of what God gave them; and upon every supposition it is made manifest for the station of its being an object, and the pronoun of separation “it” precedes it. So let them not say, “we kept our properties for our good and our benefits.” “Rather it is evil for them” — for what is in that of the baseness of disobedience and the vice of avarice and evil thought of God and the ruin of punishment and the deprivation of reward and the loss of the excellence of obedience and the goodliness of open-handedness and mercy and mutual aid in society. And that was interpreted as the withholding of the alms-tax, as related in Tafsīr al-Burhān from al-Kāfī in Muḥammad b. Muslim’s sound [report], and from al-Kāfī and the Shaykh’s Majālis in Ayyūb b. Rāshid’s reliable [report] from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him); and from al-ʿAyyāshī’s tafsīr from Muḥammad b. Muslim from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), and from Ibn Sinān from al-Ṣādiq from his forefathers from the Messenger of God (peace be upon them), and from Yūsuf al-Ṭāhirī from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him). And al-Durr al-Manthūr related it of what al-Bukhārī brought out from Abū Hurayra from the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household); and Aḥmad, ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd, and al-Tirmidhī brought it out — and he graded it sound — and Ibn Māja, al-Nasāʾī, Ibn Jarīr, Ibn Khuzayma, and Ibn379 [p.375]
(3:180) … They shall be collared with what they were niggardly with on the Day of Resurrection; and to God belongs the inheritance of the heavens and the earth; and God is Aware of what you do. (3:181) God has indeed heard the saying of those who said: “Indeed God is poor and we are rich.” We shall write down what they said, and their killing of the prophets without right …
al-Mundhir and Ibn Abī Ḥātim and al-Ḥākim — and he graded it sound — from Ibn Masʿūd from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household); and what a company brought out and al-Ḥākim also graded sound, of the other ḥadīth from Ibn Masʿūd from the Prophet (God bless him and his Household). And al-Durr al-Manthūr related also other reports interpreting the verse by other than this sense, and there is no account [to be taken] of them, especially what was concerning niggardliness toward a kinsman, for they do not suit the severity and the warning in His words “they shall be collared with what they were niggardly with on the Day of Resurrection.” And in what we have pointed to of the ḥadīth of the two parties is what means that God will make the punishment of that a serpent about his neck, collaring him, gnawing at him with it — and what is of the like of this sense. So why are they niggardly, and why do they hoard, when they are soon to perish and to leave what they were niggardly with? “And to God belongs the inheritance of the heavens and the earth; and God is Aware of what you do. (181) God has indeed heard the saying of those who said: ‘Indeed God is poor and we are rich.’” In al-Durr al-Manthūr, from Ibn ʿAbbās by the way of ʿIkrima, that the one who said that was “Finḥāṣ,” who said it to Abū Bakr when he entered the house of study upon the Jews. And from Ibn ʿAbbās also, by the way of Saʿīd b. Jubayr, that the Jews came to the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) when God sent down (2:245) “who is it that will lend God a goodly loan?”, and said, “is our Lord poor, that He asks His servants for a loan?” — so God sent down the verse. And between the two reports there is conflict, and in the two of them are other aspects. And in Tafsīr al-Qummī he said: “they saw the friends of God poor, so they said, ‘had God been rich He would have enriched His friends.’” And this transmission’s ascription to an Imam is not known; and God is the Knower. Indeed, it is known from what follows the verse that the sayers were of the Jews. “We shall write down what they said” — that is, We shall preserve in the record what they said, that they may meet the chastisement of its recompense. And this is more effective in the threat than that it should be said “We have written down what they said,” because writing in the past may admit of pardon and reconsideration. “And” We shall write down “their killing of the prophets without right.” The ascribing of the killing of the prophets to them is either in view of the tribe — that is, and We preserve against their people, who are like them in rebellion, their killing of the prophets, for the folk are the sons of the folk; or in view of these [men’s] contentment with their forebears’ killing of the prophets, so their sin is preserved against them and the killing is ascribed to them in view of the tribe and the forebears. For in al-Kāfī, with a chain from Marwak from a man from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him), that between the sayers “God has made a covenant with us” — and they are “those who said, indeed God is poor” — and the sayers to the prophets there were five hundred years. “And I suppose that this reckoning is by way of example concerning the multitude, or that the original was one thousand five hundred years”;380 [p.376]
(3:181) … and We shall say: “Taste the punishment of the burning.” (3:182) That is for what your hands sent ahead, and that God is not a wronger of the servants. (3:183) Those who said: “Indeed God has covenanted with us that we should not believe in any messenger until he brings us an offering consumed by fire” …
so God bound them with the killing by their contentment with what they did. And the like of it are al-ʿAyyāshī’s reports from Samāʿa and from Maʿmar and from Muḥammad b. Hāshim from one who related to him, from al-Ṣādiq (peace be upon him). And in al-Durr al-Manthūr there is mentioned whoever brought out from al-Shaʿbī the like of that, and from al-ʿAlāʾ b. Badr, that he was asked about the ascribing of the killing of the prophets to them when they did not witness that, and he said, “by their alliance with those who killed God’s prophets.” “And We shall say” to these: “taste the punishment of the burning. (182) That is for what” — that is, by reason of what — “your hands sent ahead, and that God” — with the fatḥa of the hamza and the doubling of the nūn — “is not a wronger of the servants” — that is, and because God does not wrong His servants, after His wisdom and His mercy required that He create them choosing in their acts, [and] that He appoint for them a general deterrent from evil, of prohibition and threat and recompense. Or: because God does not wrong him who has the right; rather He must appoint for him that by which he is assuaged, of the punishment of the offender, or compensate him for it — but the offender here is not worthy of being compensated for. Or: because God is not a wronger who would equate the prophets and their killers in safety on the Day of Resurrection and in deliverance. (183) “Those who” — a substitute for “those who” in the preceding verse — “said”, lyingly and calumniously, “indeed God has covenanted with us that we should not believe in any messenger.” The apparent [truth] is that what they meant is whoever claims messengership, not one whose messengership they acknowledge and [then] hang their faith in him upon what they said; rather they said “in any messenger” in dissembling and sophistry in speech. “Until he brings us an offering consumed by fire”, that this might indicate, by its miraculousness, his truthfulness in his claim of messengership. In Tafsīr al-Qummī: there was with the Children of Israel a basin in which they would offer the offering, placing it in the basin, and a fire would come and fall upon it and burn it. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, from Ibn ʿAbbās in a ḥadīth: so when it was accepted from him, a fire would descend upon it from the heaven and consume it. And this, even if it falls short of probative force, yet the apparent [sense] of the verse approaches explicitness that the fire’s consuming of the offering is of the sort of the miracle that breaks the custom, not of a human’s burning it with fire. And in al-Kāfī’s sound [report], with its chain from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him), concerning the story of Adam’s two sons mentioned in the thirtieth verse of Sūrat al-Māʾida (5:27), as [also] from al-ʿAyyāshī in his tafsīr, his words (peace be upon him): “the offering was consumed by the fire.” And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, Ibn Jarīr brought out from Ibn Masʿūd, from people of the Companions, in a ḥadīth: “so the fire descended and consumed Abel’s offering.” And Ibn Jarīr also brought out from Ibn ʿAbbās, in a ḥadīth: “so the fire came and descended and consumed the sheep.” I say: and this is not impossible in reason, even if it be381 [p.377]
a breaking of the custom.[Author’s note] (184) “Say”, O Messenger of God, in the exposition of their lying in their speech — that they believe in the messenger who brings them what they said; and leave aside their lie that God covenanted with them what they supposed —
(3:183) … Say: “Messengers did come to you before me with the clear proofs and with what you said; so why did you kill them, if you are truthful?” (3:184) So if they deny you, messengers before you were denied, who came with the clear proofs and the scriptures and the illuminating Book. (3:185) Every soul shall taste death; and you shall only be paid your wages in full on the Day of Resurrection. So whoever is drawn away from the Fire and admitted into the Garden has indeed triumphed; and the life of this world is nothing but the enjoyment of delusion. (3:186) You shall surely be tried …
“messengers did come to you before me” with the miracles, “with the clear proofs” indicating their truthfulness in their claiming messengership and their righteous summons, “and with what you said” of the offering consumed by fire — “so why did you kill them?” — that is, your forebears killed them, and the folk are the sons of the folk — “if you are truthful” in your supposition that God covenanted with you, and that you run upon God’s covenant and follow the clear proofs and God’s covenant in faith. This [being so], I have not learned from the ḥadīth who the messengers were that brought an offering consumed by fire and whom the Children of Israel killed.382 (184) “So if they deny you”, O Messenger of God, along with what you have brought of the dazzling proofs and the illuminating Book — then this is the constant practice of the straying. “Messengers before you were denied, who came with the clear proofs” in their proofs and the miracles, “and the scriptures” — it is said they are the books comprising judgments and admonitions — “and the illuminating Book” by its sacred laws and its [religious] sciences and its judgments. (185) “Every soul shall taste death” — and in that is a consolation for the Messenger of God and the believers, for the world of these straying ones is perishing and there is nothing upon you of their burdens. “And you shall only be paid your wages in full on the Day of Resurrection” — the address is to the believers, as becomes clear from the coming verse; and in it are glad tidings for the believers that the paying-in-full with the complete recompense is only in the [matter of] reward, whereas the recompense of what occurs of evil deeds is exposed to indulgence and expiation and forgiveness for whom God wills. “So whoever is drawn away from the Fire” — that is, removed from it — “and admitted into the Garden”: and the admission into the Garden is not an additional qualification, since there is no intermediary between the Garden and the Fire; rather what is meant is that whoever is drawn away from the Fire will be of the people of the Garden.383 “Has indeed triumphed; and the life of this world” which is before death “is nothing but the enjoyment of delusion” — that is, a vanishing enjoyment by which the deluded are deluded. (186) “You shall surely be tried” — balāhu and ibtalāhu are one in sense, and it comes in good and in evil, as in Sūras al-Aʿrāf 167, al-Anbiyāʾ 34, al-Naml 39, and al-Fajr 14 and 16. And its sense is that there be brought upon them, in this life of the world, obligations [p.379]
(3:186) … in your properties and your souls; and you shall surely hear from those who were given the Book before you, and from those who associate [others with God], much hurt. But if you are patient and Godwary, then that is of the resolute courses. (3:187) And when God took the compact of those who were given the Book: “You shall surely make it plain to the people and not conceal it” — then they cast it behind their backs and bought with it a paltry price; and evil is what they buy. (3:188) Do not reckon those who rejoice at what they have brought and love to be praised for what they have not done …
according to the requirement of the interests, and their being exposed to felicity, and measures according to what wisdom required to be measured out in this perishing world, of causes. And of the ends of that is that their deeds appear in existence, in obedience and perfection, or in disobedience and wretchedness — “in your properties and your souls; and you shall surely hear from those who were given the Book before you, and from those who associate” — that is, the idolaters of the Arabs — “much hurt” from the evil of their speech, as is transmitted of the speech of some of the Jews and some of the idolaters and their inciting to war against the Muslims. “But if you are patient and are Godwary” and hold to obedience to God and do not grieve with a grieving that reaches sin — and the more apparent is that what is meant is the absolute [class of] necessary God-wariness, like the absolute [class of] patience, in what comes upon them of obligations and measures and what they hear of hurt — “then that is of the resolute courses (ʿazm al-umūr).” One says “he resolved the matter,” with the accusative of “the matter” as an object, as in His words in Sūrat al-Baqara (2:227) “they resolve upon divorce,” and [2:235] “and do not resolve the marriage-knot.” And “resolve” returns to the binding of the inner intention and decisiveness in action. And the apparent [truth] is that it is, in the verse, of the annexation of the verbal noun to its object; and that what is meant is that patience and God-wariness need firmness and insight and strength in the will and rootedness in virtue and steadfastness in perfection, which issue in resolve and decisiveness and action. (187) “And when God took the compact of those who were given the Book: ‘You shall surely make it plain to the people and not conceal it’” — and of that is its glad tidings of the Messenger of God and his Qurʾān, as we have pointed to repeatedly — “then they cast it” — flung it and threw it — “behind their backs”: a metonym for their turning away from it and leaving it and not acting by it and not making it plain, and doing with it what is more severe than concealment. “And bought with it” — and took in exchange for it — “a paltry price” of the refuse of this world or the promptings of caprices; “and evil is what they buy” — that base price. (188) “Do not reckon” — the straying who lead astray — “those who rejoice at what they have brought” about, “and love to be praised for what they have not done.” And this description of them indicates that they used to rejoice at what they had brought of what is display or [self-]legislation, so they add to its corruption the vice of conceit. And al-Durr al-Manthūr related, concerning the occasions of descent and the sense of the verse, what God knows best. And the second object of “do not reckon” is elided, for the making-dreadful, and so that the hearer may estimate it384 [p.380]
(3:188) … so do not reckon them in a place of safety from the punishment; and theirs is a painful punishment. (3:189) And to God belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth; and God has power over all things. (3:190) Indeed in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for the possessors of understanding — (3:191) those who remember God standing and sitting and upon their sides, and reflect upon the creation of the heavens and the earth …
by what befits these of their blame. And this is one of the doors of eloquence, whose witnesses we mentioned at p. 81 and 82. Then He branched, upon what was pointed to of their baseness in this world, their evil outcome in the Hereafter, by His words: “so do not reckon them in a place of safety (mafāza) from the punishment.” The mafāza was interpreted in al-Tibyān, Majmaʿ al-Bayān, and al-Kashshāf as the place of deliverance; and the lexicographers mentioned, among the senses of al-fawz, deliverance. “And theirs is a painful punishment” — an emphasis in the informing of their punishment and the threat to them. (189) “And to God belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth” — that is, and what is in them of existent things; and that comprehends the whole world — “and God has power over all things. (190) Indeed in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for the possessors of understanding”, who turn with their hearts and their intellects to what is in that of the aspects of wisdom indicating that they are of the making of the Wise, One, Powerful God. And something of the pointing to that has preceded at p. 143 and 144, and in the exegesis of the twenty-sixth verse of this sūra. (191) “Those who” — a description of the possessors of understanding — “remember God standing” — the plural of “standing,” and it is a circumstantial [state] — “and sitting” — the plural of “sitting,” and it is a circumstantial also — “and” reclining “upon their sides” — [pointing] to those constant in the remembrance of God in all their states. For from al-Mufīd’s Amālī and the Shaykh’s Amālī from him, with a good chain, from al-Bāqir (peace be upon him): “the servant does not cease to be in prayer so long as he is in the remembrance of God, standing or sitting or reclining; indeed God says” — and he recited the verse. And in al-Kāfī, from al-Bāqir also, he said concerning the verse: “the sound one prays standing and sitting” — that is, by the standing and the sitting, like the sitting between the two prostrations and for the witnessing and the salutation — “and the sick prays sitting; and ‘upon their sides’ [is] the sick one who is weaker than the sick one who prays sitting”; end [of quotation]. And what is meant by that is the exposition of some of the instances. But in al-Durr al-Manthūr, of what al-Firyābī, Ibn Abī Ḥātim, and al-Ṭabarānī brought out from Ibn Masʿūd concerning the verse: “this is only in the prayer — if he is not able standing, then sitting; and if not able sitting, then upon his sides.” “And reflect upon the creation of the heavens and the earth” and what is in that of the marvels of the making and the traces of power and the dazzling judgments, taking the lesson thereby and being certain that it is of the making of the Powerful, Wise God, bearing witness and acknowledging to God385 [p.381]
(3:191) … “Our Lord, You have not created this in vain. Glory be to You! So shield us from the punishment of the Fire. (3:192) Our Lord, indeed whomever You admit into the Fire, You have disgraced him; and the wrongdoers shall have no helpers. (3:193) Our Lord, indeed we heard a caller calling to faith: ‘Believe in your Lord’ — so we believed. Our Lord, forgive us our sins and efface from us our evil deeds and take us [in death] with the righteous. (3:194) Our Lord, and give us what You promised us …”
and worshipping Him by their witness and their acknowledgment, saying: “Our Lord, You have not created this” creation “in vain”, for You are the Knowing, the Wise. “Glory be to You” — a sanctifying and a declaring You free [of imperfection]. “So shield us from the punishment of the Fire.” And perhaps that is on account of what they witness of the wisdom and the traces of grandeur and the greatness of the blessing upon the human, so that fear takes hold of them of falling short in obedience to the God and His worship and thanks for His blessings; so they ask of Him the enabling that would shield them from the punishment of the Fire, acknowledging that in entering the Fire there is a disgrace and a scandal disclosing foulness and evil of deeds. (192) “Our Lord, indeed whomever You admit into the Fire, You have disgraced him.” In al-Kashshāf, that is, You have gone to the utmost in disgracing him; and the like of it in their speech is “whoever has attained the pasture of security has attained,” and “whoever has outstripped so-and-so has outstripped” — and it is goodly. And upon it is resolved what Ibn Jarīr and al-Ḥākim brought out from Jābir, his words, “and God did not disgrace him when He burned him with the Fire — and short of that there is disgrace” — by what is meant being “He did not originate his disgracing when He burned him with the Fire; rather the disgracing by entering it is the most severe of the kinds of disgrace and the most hideous.” “And the wrongdoers shall have” — that is, these who enter and are disgraced; and they were pointed to by this description as an exposition that they wronged themselves, since by their unbelief and their disobedience they cast them into deserving the Fire — “no helpers”; and who is there that would help them against God? (193) “Our Lord, indeed we heard a caller calling to faith” — that is, we heard what he called with, and it is the sense of His words “believe in your Lord”, your Creator and your Nurturer and the Governor of your affairs — “so we believed.” In Majmaʿ al-Bayān, from Ibn ʿAbbās and Ibn Masʿūd, the caller is the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household); and by that al-Qummī interpreted it. And in al-Durr al-Manthūr, from Muḥammad b. Kaʿb al-Quraṭī, “it is the Qurʾān; not all the people hear the Prophet (God bless him and his Household)” — and it seems to be an opinion of his, and it is refuted against him [by the fact] that what is heard is what he called with, and it is what comprehends the relaying of his summons, like His words in Sūrat al-Tawba (9:6) “until he hears the speech of God.” And had the caller been left upon its absoluteness, so as to apply to all the messengers, and the verses comprehended everyone to whom they apply of the believers of the [various] communities, it would have been more suited to the tenor of the verses; and perhaps there bears witness to it His words in the coming verse, “through Your messengers. Our Lord, forgive us our sins and efface from us our evil deeds and take us” — that is, and let us be, at Your taking of us, “with the righteous” and in their company. (194) “Our Lord, and give us what You promised us” — that is, enable us for faith and God-wariness and righteous deeds, that we may be worthy of what You promised us386 [p.382]
(3:194) … through Your messengers, and do not disgrace us on the Day of Resurrection; indeed You do not break the appointment. (3:195) So their Lord answered them: “Indeed I do not let go to waste the work of any worker among you, male or female; you are of one another. So those who emigrated and were expelled from their homes and were hurt in My way, and fought and were killed — I shall surely efface from them their evil deeds and shall surely admit them into gardens beneath which the rivers flow, a recompense from God; and God — with Him is the goodliness of recompense.” (3:196) Let not the going to and fro of those who disbelieve in the land delude you. (3:197) A little enjoyment; then their refuge is Hell, and evil is the resting-place.
if we believe and are Godwary; for God’s promise, as in the Qurʾān, is conditioned upon holding fast to faith and God-wariness. “Through Your messengers” — the word “through/upon” was brought as a pointing to [the truth] that the promise is a revelation sent down from God upon His messengers in the glad tidings of the believing, Godwary ones; that is, and give us what You sent down upon Your messengers of Your promise to us among the sum of those who believed and were Godwary and did righteously. “And do not disgrace us on the Day of Resurrection; indeed You do not break the appointment” — they said that in glorification of God and acknowledgment of His holiness. (195) “So their Lord answered them: ‘Indeed I’” — with the fatḥa of the hamza, that is, by His saying “indeed I,” the [verb of] saying being elided for the clarity of the speech, and the sense of what is said standing in [its place] in the entry of the bāʾ upon it — “‘do not let go to waste the work of any worker’” — that is, I answer your supplication and give you what I promised you upon its condition; for your God-wariness and your doing of righteous deeds qualify you for the reward and the forgiveness of sins and the effacing of evil deeds — “‘among you, male or female’” — “of” is for the exposition of the genus of the worker — “‘you are of one another’” — that is, of the genus of one another in the description of faith and obedience and work; so how should the work of some of you go to waste? So let each of you work for the recompense. And in this is an incitement to work; and He increased it in exposition by His words: “‘So those who emigrated’” from their homes for what befell them of hurt in the way of faith and the aiding of the summons of the truth, “‘and were expelled from their homes and were hurt in My way, and fought and were killed’” — the specification of that was made textual because it is of the most excellent of works, and to indicate that all of it is under God’s eye — “‘I shall surely efface from them their evil deeds and shall surely admit them into gardens beneath which the rivers flow, a recompense from God.’” He stated plainly the name of recompense and requital for the work, because it is more complete in the delight; and He stated plainly the name of Majesty, in extolling the nobility of the recompense and its honour and its greatness. “‘And God — with Him is the goodliness of recompense’”, by His vast mercy and His complete power. (196) “Let it not delude you” — the address is to the Messenger and another is meant by it, or [it is addressed] to another — “the going to and fro of those who disbelieve in the land”, enjoying health and respite; for it is (197) “a little enjoyment” in its short span, the days of their life. “Then their refuge is Hell, and evil is the resting-place” spread for them by their unbelief and the evil of their deeds. (198) “But” — a correction from the evil state of the disbelievers and their threat, by the mention of the felicity387 [p.383]
(3:198) But those who are wary of their Lord — theirs are gardens beneath which the rivers flow, abiding therein forever, a hospitality from God; and what is with God is better for the righteous. (3:199) And indeed of the People of the Book there are those who believe in God and in what has been sent down to you and what was sent down to them, humbling themselves to God, not selling God’s signs for a paltry price. Those — theirs is their reward with their Lord; indeed God is swift at reckoning. (3:200) O you who believe, be patient and vie in patience and hold fast, and be wary of God, that perhaps you may be successful.
of the Godwary and their glad tidings — “those who are wary of their Lord — theirs are gardens beneath which the rivers flow, abiding therein forever”, they being “a hospitality (nuzul)” — and al-nuzul, with two u-vowels, is what is prepared for the guest and his honouring, of entertainment and lodging; and in that is the mighty honour and the great gladness, since they were a hospitality for them by reason of their honour — “from God”; and what a favour! “And what is with God is better for the righteous. (199) And indeed of the People of the Book there are those who believe in God and in what has been sent down to you” — by its descent upon the Messenger of God; and its necessary concomitant is faith in His Messenger. And it is said “to you” in view of the summons beginning with them; otherwise it is sent down for all humankind, in the summoning of them to felicity and the religion of truth and its sacred law. “And what was sent down to them” — by its descent upon their prophets. They believe while they are “humbling themselves to God” — the mention of humbling has passed at p. 90 — “not selling God’s signs for a paltry price. Those — theirs is their reward with their Lord; indeed God is swift at reckoning” — so there is no delay in paying them their wages in full on the Day of Recompense. (200) “O you who believe, be patient” upon what patience is praised for and in that wherein it is praised — even if it was interpreted, in what Tafsīr al-Burhān and al-Durr al-Manthūr gathered of the ḥadīth, by some of the instances of what patience was commanded upon or in — “and vie in patience (ṣābirū)” — of the reciprocal form, and the matching of patience with patience; and there is understood from the station the increase of patience in the station of matching. “And hold fast (rābiṭū)” — what is obtained from the ḥadīth to which we pointed in the two tafsīrs of al-Burhān and al-Durr al-Manthūr is that the holding-fast here is not upon the sense that appears from the reciprocal form; rather it is like ʿāyana and sāfara and ḍāʿafa, so it is here in the sense of “stand firm and persevere and cleave.” “And be wary of God, that perhaps you may be successful” — that is, to the end that you be successful. And it is said “that perhaps you” [is used] because success is not a necessary concomitant of the mere occurrence of these matters; rather its condition is perseverance in them, together with sound faith, until death. May God enable us and all the believers for that, and make us firm upon it; indeed He is the Most Merciful of the merciful and the Best of those who are asked.388
The first part of the tafsīr Ālāʾ al-Raḥmān is complete. And praise be to God, and thanks, as is His due.
And the second part follows it, God willing; its beginning is Sūrat al-Nisāʾ.
Those of them that are printed. In exegesis: (1) this first part. In jurisprudence: (2) his gloss upon the discussions of sale from the Makāsib of the late Āyat Allāh al-Anṣārī; (3) certain detailed treatises on the solving of difficult questions, among them a treatise on summary knowledge (al-ʿilm al-ijmālī) and its standing with respect to the [procedural] principles. In religion and the suppression of caprices: (4) Kitāb al-Hudā ilā dīn al-Muṣṭafā, two parts; (5) Anwār al-Hudā; (6) Naṣāʾiḥ al-Hudā; (7) al-Riḥla al-Madrasiyya wa-l-Madrasa al-Sayyāra, three parts, and a translation of some of it into Persian, also three parts; (8) Aʿājīb al-Akādhīb, and its translation into Persian; (9) a treatise on [divine] oneness and the trinity; (10) Answers to the Baghdad Questions; (11) the first treatise in criticism of the verdict for the demolition of the noble tombs in the two Sanctuaries; (12) the second, likewise on this subject; (13) al-Balāgh al-Mubīn on the divine matters; and [a treatise showing that] the ablution of the Imāmiyya and their prayer and their fasting are, according to the evidences of Islam, upon the more cautious course and the nearer to certainty of discharge among all the sayings of the Muslims.389
As for his books that have not been printed until now, they are — in jurisprudence: (16) the Arabic original of this [work] translated into English; (17) a scholarly investigative gloss upon the first part of al-ʿUrwa al-Wuthqā; (18) on emulation, unfinished; (19) on the Friday prayer for one who travels after the sun’s decline; (20) on the options [in sale], unfinished; (21) a treatise of verdicts on the questions of suckling according to the school of the Imāmiyya and the four schools of the People of the Sunna; (22) on the water completing a kurr; (23) on the washing-water; (24) on the forbiddenness of touching the Qurʾān for one in a state of minor impurity; (25) on mentioning what indicates the school of the Imāmiyya in the legal rulings, over and above their valuable proofs — namely what has come in the ḥadīth of the People of the Sunna: he wrote of it the discussions of purity and much of the discussions of prayer, then was drawn away from it by what was, in his view, more important; (26) on the direction of prayer and on the positions of the towns of the inhabited world in relation to Mecca the Magnified according to the difference in longitude and latitude — and he made clear, in the course of it, some of the error in relying upon the old almanac; and the lack of certain instruments hindered him from completing the book with the exposition of each town’s deviation from Mecca and its measure; (27) on the stations of consecration and their parallels upon the routes to Mecca by land and sea, with a diagramming of the mentioned routes and the measures of their distances and the determining of the positions parallel to the station; (28) on the dispositions of the sick; (29) on his acknowledgment; (30) on suckling; (31) a gloss upon the book of pre-emption from Jawāhir al-Kalām; (32) on the [inheritance doctrines of] ʿawl and taʿṣīb, which he wrote in his youth; (33) on the slaughtered animals of the People of the Book; (34) on the forbiddenness of shaving the beard; (35) on binding the religious person to what is incumbent upon him in the rulings of his religion, with a composition and collection and derivation in which none preceded him. In the principles of jurisprudence: (36) a treatise on the imperatives. His various books other than in jurisprudence: (37) a treatise on the standing of the exegesis ascribed to the Imam al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī (peace be upon him); (38) The Summoner of Islam and the Summoner of the Christians. [p.385]
(39) in refutation of George Sale and of Hāshim al-ʿArabī; (40) in refutation of the book Taʿlīm al-ʿUlamāʾ; (41) al-Shihāb, in refutation of the book Ḥayāt al-Masīḥ by one of the Qādiyānīs; (42) in refutation of the book Yanābīʿ al-Islām by a certain Christian. And he has many various treatises, the sum of which amounts to a bulky volume; and they are in answer to the questions coming to him from the [various] lands concerning what returns to the roots of religion in the divine matters, and prophethood and the Ascension, and the imamate and the Mahdī (peace be upon him) and what relates to that; and in the refutation of the misgivings of certain Christians.
And he had bound himself not to write his name upon the printed editions of his books, for certain reasons, and out of wariness lest ostentation and the pride of self-display should filch it; but certain matters afterwards compelled him to write his name.390
| On the evidentiary miracle and the aspect of its testimony | 3 |
| The wisdom of the variety of the miracle, and that for the Arabs it is the Qurʾān | 4 |
| The distinction of the Qurʾān over the other miracles | 5 |
| Its challenge to the Arabs by the demand to match it, and their incapacity | 7 |
| Its miraculousness from the aspect of history, and the state of the two Testaments therein | 9 |
| Its miraculousness from the aspect of argumentation, and the state of the Gospels therein | 11 |
| Its miraculousness from the aspect of uprightness and soundness from difference and contradiction, and the state of the two Testaments in that | 12 |
| Its miraculousness from the aspect of just legislation and the order of civilization, and the state of the two Testaments in that | 13 |
| Its miraculousness from the aspect of character, and the state of the two Testaments therein | 14 |
| Its miraculousness from the aspect of the knowledge of the unseen, and the state of the Gospels therein | 15 |
| On the collection of the Qurʾān into a single codex | 17 |
| The disorder of the reports concerning its collection | 19 |
| Something of what has been attached to the nobility of the Qurʾān; the tale of the valley and the two valleys | 20 |
| Stoning, and “the old man and the old woman — stone them both” | 21 |
| The tale of the two sūras of al-Qunūt | 23 |
| The tale of Dabistān al-Madhāhib | 24 |
| The Imāmiyya’s holding that there is no diminution in the Qurʾān | 25 |
| The book Faṣl al-Khiṭāb, and its critique | 26 |
| The recitation of the Qurʾān; the seven readings, their readers and their transmitters; the report of the seven modes, and the oddities that came in some of them | 29 |
| On its exegesis, and the lexicographers | 32 |
| The confusion in the sense of tawaffī, and what the truth of it is | 33 |
| The verse of the ʿaṣaba | 36 |
| The figurative usages of the Qurʾān, and its style, and the blundering of the later-born in the Arabic language | 37 |
| “Lā uqsimu,” and what befell al-Kashshāf and others therein, and their supposition of the addition of “lā” | 38 |
| “Li-allā yaʿlama”; “an lā tasjuda”; “an lā tattabiʿanī” | 39 |
| “Lā yarjiʿūna”; “lā yaʾmurakum” | 40 |
| “Fa-lā wa-Rabbika,” and al-Kashshāf | 41 |
| The claim of the addition of the wāw | 41 |
| The figurative usages of the Qurʾān; what is meant by the leading-astray ascribed to God, and the indications of figurative usage | 41 |
| What is in it of the decisive verses | 42 |
| “He settled upon the Throne,” and the Literalists | 42 |
| Al-Nabhānī; Abū Ḥayyān; al-Shahrastānī | 43 |
| Ibn Taymiyya, and the Throne | 43 |
| The ḥadīth of the Two Weighty Things, and its mass transmission | 43 |
| Its transmitters among the Companions | 44 |
| Al-Ḥākim’s supplement upon al-Bukhārī and Muslim | 45 |
| Muḥammad b. Salama; al-Jūzajānī; Ibn ʿAdī | 45 |
| Recourse in exegesis to the likes of ʿIkrima and Mujāhid | 45 |
| Their states in the books of the science of men; and the fable of the “cranes” | 46 |
| The hesitation concerning the pause | 47 |
| The seat of reasoning; the heart, and the brain | 48 |
| The books at my disposal | 49 |
| Sūrat al-Fātiḥa: its naming; the place of its descent | 50 |
| Its basmala; the raising of the voice in it; its inflection | 51 |
| The createdness of the Qurʾān; “the All-beneficent” | 52 |
| “The All-merciful” | 53 |
| “All praise belongs to God” | 54 |
| “Lord of all the worlds”; “Master of the Day of Retribution” | 55 |
| “You [alone] do we worship, and You [alone] do we ask for help” | 56 |
| Worship, and the intrigues of partisanship concerning its sense | 57 |
| The interpretation of worship; and Muḥammad ʿAbduh | 58 |
| The restriction of the seeking of help to God | 59 |
| Seeking intercession with God through those brought near | 60 |
| Seeking intercession through those brought near among the dead | 61 |
| The soul’s subsistence after death | 61 |
| Intercession | 62 |
| “Guide us on the straight path” | 63 |
| Sūrat al-Baqara; and the Godwary | 64 |
| Those certain of the Hereafter; and the felicitous | 65 |
| Forsaking; “God has sealed their hearts” | 66 |
| Compulsion and choice | 67 |
| On the hypocrites | 69 |
| “They seek to deceive God”; “in their hearts is a sickness” | 70 |
| On the states of the hypocrites | 71 |
| Their parable in Islam is as the parable of one who lighted a fire | 72 |
| The parable of Islam with them is as a rain-cloud from the sky | 74 |
| The completion of the parable; “O mankind, worship” | 75 |
| The conferring of favour — nay, the argument — by what God created for the human | 75 |
| And the prohibition of setting up equals [to God] | 76 |
| The argument for the messengership by the miraculousness of the Qurʾān | 76 |
| The glad tidings of the believers | 77 |
| “He is not ashamed to strike a parable” | 78 |
| “Those who break God’s covenant” | 79 |
| How they break God’s covenant | 80 |
| And the argument by the creation of what is in the earth, and the heavens | 81 |
| A caution concerning ellipsis in Arabic | 81 |
| God’s informing the angels of the creation of the human | 82 |
| And their question concerning the wisdom [of it] | 83 |
| Adam’s knowledge of the names; “he told them their names” | 84 |
| And what the names were | 84 |
| The prostration to Adam; the unbelief of Iblīs | 85 |
| The forbidding of Adam and Eve from eating of the tree | 86 |
| Satan caused the two of them to slip | 86 |
| Their being sent down to the earth; Adam’s repentance | 87 |
| “The words” — Muḥammad (God bless him and his Household), ʿAlī, Fāṭima, and the two Ḥasans (peace be upon them) | 87 |
| The address to the Children of Israel and the reminding of them; and the fulfilment of God’s covenant | 88 |
| “Believe in what I have sent down, confirming” | 89 |
| “And seek help by patience and prayer” | 90 |
| ʿAlī (peace be upon him), the Commander of the Faithful | 90 |
| “Those who reckon that they shall meet their Lord” | 90 |
| “Rāʿinā” in Hebrew | 90 |
| “And be wary of a day when none shall requite”; the reminding of the Children of Israel of their deliverance from Pharaoh’s folk | 91 |
| “We parted the sea for you”; “you took up the Calf” | 92 |
| “So repent”; “and slay yourselves” | 93 |
| “We shall see God openly”; “then We raised you up”; the clouds; the manna and the quails | 94 |
| “Enter this town”; “and say, ‘relief’” | 95 |
| “Strike the rock with your staff” | 96 |
| “Abasement was stamped upon them”; those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabaeans | 97 |
| The Mount; “become apes” | 99 |
| The story of the slaughtering of the cow, and their obstinacy | 102 |
| On the People of the Book | 103 |
| On the messengers after Moses | 105 |
| The Messenger of God and the Qurʾān; the Jews used to seek victory by the Messenger of God | 106 |
| The forbidding of Adam and Eve — see above | 106 |
| “Evil is what they bought” | 107 |
| “Drink [the ashes of] the Calf” | 108 |
| “They longed for death”; “though after a rejection” | 109 |
| “An enemy to Gabriel” | 110 |
| Hārūt and Mārūt | 111 |
| Faith and God-wariness | 113 |
| “Whatever verse We abrogate or cause to be forgotten” | 114 |
| The warning of the believers against the People of the Book | 116 |
| The Jews and the Christians, each blaming the other | 117 |
| The barring of God’s mosques, that His name be not remembered in them | 118 |
| “So wherever you turn your faces, there is the face of God” | 119 |
| Wine, and the current Torah | 119 |
| Abraham and “the words”; and the imamate | 122 |
| “The House a place of resort and a security” | 124 |
| “We shall never be patient with a single food” | 124 |
| The Station of Abraham | 125 |
| Mecca, a secure Sanctuary | 127 |
| The supplication of Abraham and Ishmael for Islam, and for the raising up of the Messenger from their progeny | 128 |
| The choosing of Abraham; his submission; his testament concerning it | 129 |
| On the People of the Book and faith | 130 |
| The dye of God | 131 |
| On the turning of the qibla to the Kaʿba | 132 |
| “A middle nation” | 133 |
| “And We did not appoint the qibla”; “and indeed it was hard” | 134 |
| The turning of the qibla to the Kaʿba | 135 |
| The People of the Book; “and to each is a direction” | 137 |
| “Fight in the way of God” | 137 |
| “So vie in good works”; and the turning toward the Kaʿba | 138 |
| On facing [the qibla]; “a messenger from among you” | 139 |
| “Seek help by patience and prayer”; on the patient | 140 |
| Al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa; “so whoever volunteers good” | 141 |
| “They conceal what God has sent down”; on [divine] oneness | 142 |
| The signs of the creation of the heavens and the earth; and the ships, the rain, and the winds | 143 |
| The taking of associates [with God]; the misleader’s disowning of the misled | 145 |
| The hopes of their followers; “eat of what is in the earth” | 146 |
| The forbidding of foul things; “but whoever is compelled, not craving” | 148 |
| “Then pour forth from where the people pour forth” | 148 |
| “They conceal what God has sent down” | 149 |
| “It is not piety”; “rather piety is [that of] one who believes in God” | 150 |
| On retaliation and its questions | 151 |
| The bequest to the parents and the near kin | 151 |
| “Whoever fears from a testator a swerving” | 155 |
| The imposing of the fast upon the Muslims | 156 |
| “Whoever is sick or on a journey” | 157 |
| “And upon those who are able to it, a redemption” | 158 |
| No fasting on a journey | 159 |
| The month of Ramaḍān; the sick and the traveller | 160 |
| “God desires ease for you” | 161 |
| “Lying with your women” | 162 |
| The dawn; and the night, the time of breaking the fast | 163 |
| “Do not devour your wealth wrongfully” | 164 |
| “They ask you about the new moons” | 164 |
| “The sacred month for the sacred month” | 166 |
| “Complete the Ḥajj and the ʿUmra for God” | 168 |
| The Ḥajj of tamattuʿ | 170 |
| The offering; its substitute; the days of tashrīq | 173 |
| “Those present at the Sacred Mosque” | 174 |
| “The Ḥajj is [in] known months” | 175 |
| “No rafath, no fusūq, and no disputing” | 177 |
| “When you pour forth from ʿArafāt” | 179 |
| “Remember God in the numbered days” | 181 |
| The takbīr in the days of tashrīq | 182 |
| The hastening to complete the Ḥajj in the first departure | 182 |
| “That he may work corruption in it”; pride in sin | 183 |
| “One who sells himself seeking God’s good pleasure” | 185 |
| The Commander of the Faithful, and his sleeping upon the Messenger’s bed | 185 |
| “Enter into peace, all together” | 186 |
| “Adorned for those who disbelieve” | 188 |
| “Mankind were one community” | 189 |
| “Or did you suppose that you would enter the Garden?” | 191 |
| “They ask you what they should spend” | 191 |
| “Fighting is prescribed for you” | 192 |
| “They ask you about the sacred month” | 193 |
| “They ask you about wine and gambling” | 194 |
| “And they ask you what they should spend” | 195 |
| “And they ask you about the orphans” | 196 |
| “And do not marry idolatresses” | 196 |
| “And they ask you about menstruation” | 198 |
| “Your women are a tillage for you” | 199 |
| “And do not make God an obstacle by your oaths” | 201 |
| On the forswearing [of one’s wife] | 202 |
| The waiting-period of the divorced woman; the qurʾ; “let them not conceal” | 203 |
| Divorce before consummation | 203 |
| The taking-back during the waiting-period | 204 |
| “Divorce is twice” | 205 |
| On redemptive divorce | 206 |
| The threefold divorce; some of the rulings of divorced women | 207 |
| The forbiddenness of preventing divorced women [from remarrying] | 208 |
| The mothers, and the rulings of suckling | 209 |
| The waiting-period of widowhood | 211 |
| The hinting at betrothal during it | 212 |
| “Keep watch over the prayers” | 215 |
| The prayer of fear | 216 |
| The bequest for divorced women, and the provision | 217 |
| “He said to them, ‘Die’; then He revived them” | 218 |
| “Who is it that will lend God [a loan]?” | 219 |
| The Children of Israel; “raise up for us a king” | 220 |
| Ṭālūt; the sign of his kingship | 221 |
| The Ark, borne by the angels | 222 |
| “So when Ṭālūt set out with the hosts” | 223 |
| The states of the believers among the hosts | 224 |
| David and Goliath; “God’s repelling of some people by others” | 225 |
| The differing of the communities of the prophets | 226 |
| The Verse of the Throne | 227 |
| The Footstool; “no compulsion”; the idol | 228 |
| “He who disputed with Abraham”; Nimrod | 230 |
| “He made him die a hundred years”; and al-Manār | 231 |
| “How do You revive the dead?”; the four birds | 232 |
| “It brought forth seven ears” | 233 |
| “Do not void your charities”; the smooth rock | 234 |
| “As the likeness of a garden” | 235 |
| “So it was burnt” | 236 |
| “Satan promises you poverty” | 237 |
| Wisdom; the disclosing of the charities | 238 |
| The middle prayer | 238 |
| Spending — for the poor; “those who are confined” | 239 |
| “They do not ask people importunately” | 240 |
| ʿAlī the Commander of the Faithful (peace be upon him) | 241 |
| On usury | 242 |
| Certain of the Egyptian exegetes | 242 |
| Its forbiddenness, and the incitement to repent of it | 243 |
| On the granting of respite to the straitened | 246 |
| The writing of debt, and its rulings | 247 |
| The pledge, and the rendering of the trust | 250 |
| The concealment of testimony | 250 |
| Al-Ṭanṭāwī’s history | 250 |
| Sūrat Āl ʿImrān | 253 |
| The forming of the human | 254 |
| The decisive verses; the mother of the Book; the ambiguous verses | 255 |
| Those firmly rooted in knowledge know the interpretation | 256 |
| “It shall not avail them anything against God” | 259 |
| Al-Kashshāf; al-Mughnī; the tafsīr of al-Manār | 260 |
| The pointing to the battle of Badr | 261 |
| Who it is that adorns the love of desires | 262 |
| Some of the attributes of the Godwary | 264 |
| “So if they dispute with you” | 266 |
| Ibn Taymiyya | 266 |
| “They are summoned to the Book of God” | 268 |
| “Say: O God, Owner of the sovereignty” | 269 |
| “You make the night pass into the day,” etc. | 271 |
| “You bring forth the living from the dead,” etc. | 272 |
| “Whether you conceal what is in your breasts” | 273 |
| “The Day when every soul shall find” | 274 |
| The following of the Messenger, and obedience | 275 |
| “He chose Adam and Noah,” etc. | 276 |
| The conceiving of Mary, and her delivery | 279 |
| Zechariah’s keeping [of her]; a provision; al-Zahrāʾ | 280 |
| Zechariah’s question; his asking for the sign | 281 |
| The choosing of Mary | 282 |
| The glad tidings to Mary of the Messiah | 283 |
| His speech in the cradle; Mary’s question | 284 |
| The miracles of Mary | 285 |
| The Messiah and the Children of Israel; the Disciples | 286 |
| “And they plotted, and God devised” | 287 |
| The wisdom of the likening [of another] to the Messiah | 287 |
| “Indeed I am taking you” | 288 |
| “The likeness of Jesus with God” | 289 |
| The Verse of Mutual Imprecation | 290 |
| “God bears witness”; and the possessors of knowledge | 290 |
| The ḥadīth of the Mutual Imprecation: the People of the House | 291 |
| ʿAlī (peace be upon him), the self of the Messenger of God (God bless him and his Household) | 292 |
| Muḥammad ʿAbduh, and his strange speech | 293 |
| “Indeed the religion with God is Islam” | 295 |
| “Come to a word equal [between us]” | 295 |
| “Why do you dispute concerning Abraham?” | 296 |
| “Abraham was neither a Jew,” etc. | 297 |
| The People of the Book; and a party of them | 298 |
| “And of the People of the Book” | 299 |
| “Whoever fulfils his covenant” | 300 |
| The prophet does not claim divinity | 301 |
| The Gospels and the Messiah; those devoted to the Lord | 302 |
| The compact of the prophets | 303 |
| The compact, and the entry of the lām upon its answer | 304 |
| Faith in the messenger, and helping him | 305 |
| “And to Him has submitted” — willingly and unwillingly | 306 |
| Fāṭima (peace be upon her), mistress of the women of the worlds | 306 |
| Faith in God and the prophets | 307 |
| On repentance | 308 |
| “Those who died while they were disbelievers” | 309 |
| “You shall not attain piety”; “all food was lawful” | 310 |
| Spending; the restraining of rage | 310 |
| On Mecca and the Sacred House | 313 |
| The signs of the House; the Station of Abraham | 314 |
| The author of al-Manār; and al-Ṭanṭāwī | 315 |
| The Ḥajj of the House, and the [requisite] ability | 316 |
| “O People of the Book, why do you bar?” | 318 |
| “You seek crookedness for it” | 319 |
| The warning of the believers against those who lead astray | 320 |
| “As is His due of wariness” | 321 |
| “Hold fast to God’s rope” | 322 |
| The enjoining of what is right and the forbidding of what is wrong | 323 |
| “Faces shall be whitened and faces shall be blackened” | 326 |
| “You were the best community” | 327 |
| “They shall not harm you save with a hurt” | 330 |
| “Abasement was stamped upon them”; “they are not alike” | 331 |
| “An upright community, reciting” | 332 |
| “Their wealth shall not avail them”; and the harm | 333 |
| The states of the hypocrites | 334 |
| “What is in the breasts” | 335 |
| “If good touches you, it grieves them” | 336 |
| The event of Uḥud; “two parties were minded” | 337 |
| Al-Ṭanṭāwī; “God helped you at Badr” | 338 |
| “In this rush of theirs”; “He will reinforce you”; “marked out” | 339 |
| “Only as glad tidings”; “that He might cut off”; “you have no [part]” | 340 |
| “Or He punishes them”; the Prophet’s (God bless him and his Household) supplication | 341 |
| And al-Manār and his teacher | 341 |
| “Whose breadth is the heavens and the earth” | 342 |
| Pardon; “they remembered God” | 343 |
| “And who forgives”; “precedents have passed away” | 344 |
| “Do not grow feeble”; al-Manār; “you are the higher” | 345 |
| “If [a wound] touches you”; “We turn them about” | 346 |
| “That He might know”; “that He might purge”; “or did you suppose?” | 347 |
| ʿAlī, and his patience and his fellowship | 348 |
| “No sword but Dhū al-Fiqār, and no youth but ʿAlī” | 349 |
| Shīʿism | 349 |
| Al-Ṭanṭāwī; “you were longing for death” | 351 |
| “And Muḥammad is but [a messenger]”; “it is not for a soul to die” | 352 |
| “And how many”; “many godly men” | 353 |
| “Yet they did not grow feeble” | 354 |
| “For which He sent down no [authority]”; “and God had already fulfilled to you” | 356 |
| “You were slaying them”; “until you lost heart” | 357 |
| “You were climbing away”; “grief upon grief” | 358 |
| “A security, a drowsiness” | 359 |
| “They said, of you” | 360 |
| “So it is by a mercy”; the non-addition of “mā” | 361 |
| “He followed God’s good pleasure” | 363 |
| “They are degrees”; “a Messenger from among themselves” | 364 |
| “You had already inflicted twice its like” | 365 |
| The sayings of the hypocrites | 366 |
| “They rejoice”; “those who responded” | 367 |
| “For those who did good among them”; al-Kashshāf and others | 368 |
| “They have gathered against you”; “it increased them in faith” | 369 |
| “So they returned with a blessing” and good pleasure; “Satan frightens his allies” | 370 |
| “Let them not grieve you”; “they bought unbelief with faith” | 371 |
| “We grant them respite only” | 372 |
| “Those who rejoice” | 372 |
| The answering of their supplication; “those who emigrated”; on those who disbelieved | 372 |
| “It was not for God to leave”; “until He distinguishes” | 373 |
| “So believe in God and His messengers”; “and let not those who are niggardly reckon” | 374 |
| “Those who said, indeed God is poor”; and their killing of the prophets | 375 |
| “God is not a wronger of the servants”; “an offering consumed by fire” | 376 |
| The author of al-Manār and his teacher | 377 |
| “Messengers did come to you before me”; “so if they deny you,” to the end | 378 |
| “Every soul shall taste death” | 378 |
| “You shall surely be tried”; the compact of those who were given the Book | 379 |
| “Those who remember God standing and sitting and upon their sides” | 380 |
| Their saying, “we heard a caller calling to faith”; their supplication | 381 |
| On the Godwary; the People of the Book; “be patient and vie in patience” | 383 |
| The end of the first part | 383 |
End of the index of the first part.