The Beneficent, the Merciful — Pickthall
Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse (d. 1975) read the whole Qurʾān aloud at Medina Baye over fifty-six sessions between ẓuhr and ʿaṣr in Ramaḍān 1383/1964, and his students wrote those sessions down as Fī Riyāḍ al-Tafsīr. He comes back to the same āya elsewhere — in the fatwās, the Ḥikam, the poetry — decades apart. About the tafsīr →
In the printed edition: Sūrat Al-Fātiḥa begins at vol. 1, p. 46 (Tūnis 2022, 10 vols.)
The āya above is Warsh ʿan Nāfiʿ, the rasm of the printed edition. The root behind each underlined word comes from a Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim corpus, realigned to this Warsh text word by word; 125 of the 6,236 āyāt differ in word count between the two riwāyāt, and those were aligned rather than assumed. A word carries no underline where the corpus supplies no root. Lexicon entries are a reading aid and carry no page reference; the edition does not cite them. Page references elsewhere on this site follow the ten-volume Tunis 2022 printing this site was transcribed from; published scholarship on this text cites the six-volume Tunis 2010 printing, whose pagination is different.
Each mark is one work in which Shaykh Ibrāhīm engages this verse, placed by date of composition. Hollow marks are loci we know of but cannot yet show.
Sustained interpretation of the verse as a verse — lemma, gloss, expansion.
Shaʿbān 1375 / March–April 1956 · Arabic · al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya (ed. AK), p. 2 · held at students’ request
Not yet ingested. al-Raḥīm: raḥma as riqqat al-qalb is impossible of God; its terminus, tafaḍḍul, is not. Hadith of the hundred mercies.
Shaʿbān 1375 / March–April 1956 · Arabic · al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya (ed. AK), p. 3 · held at students’ request
Not yet ingested. EXCURSUS 1 — five names, five pillars: al-Fātiḥa fīhā khamsat asmāʾ, kull ism yushīr ilā qāʿida min qawāʿid al-sharʿ. al-Ḥamdu lillāh → tawḥīd; rabb al-ʿālamīn → the five prayers; al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm → zakāt; mālik yawm al-dīn → ḥajj, and the fast.
1383 / 1964 · Arabic · Lesson 1, ¶60 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 1, p. 29 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle
(إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ) شريعة، (وَإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِينٌ) حقيقة، (إهْدِنَا الصِّرَطَ الْمُسْتَقِيمَ) دعاء، الرب بمعنى المصلح والمربي، وصلاة العبد تربي إسلامه وتصلحه، والرحمن صيام صيغة مبالغة في الرحمة، العبد بلغ من رحمته بالمسكين حتى أذاق نفسه الجوع الذي يعانيه المسكين ليتصدق عليه، وهذا ركن الصيام، والرحيم ركن الزكاة رحم المسكين فقطع له جزء من ماله ، وملك يوم الدين هذا الحج، كما أن الناس يحشرون في المحشر من جميع الآفاق، يأتون إلى بقعة واحدة كذلك الحج. يقدر في أول الفاتحة قولوا الحمد لله رب العالمين، لأن آخر الفاتحة نزل من كلام العبد، فإذا لم يقدر قولوا، تكون الفاتحة كأن أولها من كلام الرب وآخرها من كلام العبد، ولما أحيبنا أن نقول كلها من كلام العبد قدرنا قولوا: (ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلهِ رَبِّ الْعَلَمِيَن الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ مَلِكِ يَوْمِ ٱلدِّينِ… إهْدِنَا الصِّرَاطَ الْمُسْتَفِيمَ) هذا من كلام العبد طبعا. ملِكٍ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ) استحق مخاطبته، فخاطب الحضرة بقوله: (إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ) لا نعبد …
and reminding. [42] so that he might give him alms. This is the pillar of fasting. And al-Raḥīm is the pillar of zakat: he showed mercy to the destitute and so cut off for him a portion of his wealth. And Mālik yawm al-dīn — this is the hajj: just as people are gathered at the place of gathering from every horizon, coming to a single plot of ground, so too is the hajj. «al-Ḥamdu li-Llāh» [the praise is for Allah] The degrees of the Garden are eight, and al-Ḥamdu li-Llāh is eight letters; whoever says al-Ḥamdu li-Llāh merits the eight ranks of the Gardens. [44] «Lord of the worlds» (Q. 1:2) — the owner of the worlds; a plural of ʿālam, and the ʿālam is everything other than Allah, Blessed and Exalted. It is pluralised in the masculine so as to take in all existent things. «The Entirely Merciful» — the bestower of the great blessings and of their outward aspects — «The Especially …
Read in context →Here the verse warrants a claim argued from other authorities. It is not the object of commentary.
1383 / 1964 · Arabic · Lesson 44, ¶26 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 8, p. 159 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle
إلا قدما صوتت من طول القيام، أجاب نفسه: «يلِهِ أُلْوَاجِدِ الْقَهَارِ». سأل وأجاب نفسه كما أن العبد سأل وأجاب نفسه، قسمت الصلاة بيني وبين عبدي نصفين، نصف لي ونصف للعبد وللعبد ما سأل، "الْحَمْدُ لِلهِ رَبِّ ٱلْعَلَمِيَ ألرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيم مَلِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّيِِّ إِيَّاتَ نَعْبَدُ وَايَّاكَ نَسْتَعِينَ" هذا لله تبارك وتعالى، وبقي للعبد "إهْدِنَا ألصِّرَطَ ألْمَسْتَقِيمَ صِرَط ألذِينَ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ غَيْرِ الْمَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلا أْلضَّآلِينَ" والعادة إذا كان اثنان واحد يدعو والآخر يقول آمين، والمصلي يناجي ربه، الداعي هو المصلي، فلما قال ولا الضالين أجاب نفسه أيضا نائبا عن الحق فقال: آمين. كما أن الحق لما قال «لِمَنِ اِلْمُلْكُ الْيَوْمُ» قال «يلهِ اِلْوَاحِدِ ٱلْفَهَارِ» (اِ۬لْيَوْمَ تُجْز۪يٰ كُلُّ نَفْسِۢ بِمَا كَسَبَتْۖ لَا ظُلْمَ اَ۬لْيَوْمَۖ إِنَّ اَ۬للَّهَ سَرِيعُ اُ۬لْحِسَابِۖ) يحاسب جميع الخلق في قدر نصف نهار من أيام الدنيا لحديث بذلك [2]، قيل
Read in context →Lesson 44 is titled by sūra rather than by āya, and its bounds (Q 40:1–Q 41:46) are inferred from where the neighbouring sessions begin, so they are soft at the edges. This āya falls outside it. He quotes it here inside the commentary on another verse, which is why it is not filed as exegesis of this one.
The printing brackets no quotation here. A run of consecutive words in this paragraph — three at the shortest — occurs in one place in the muṣḥaf and nowhere else, and every āya lying inside that run is credited, so a run crossing a boundary attests both. Matching folds together the letter shapes the scan confuses, so the words need not stand in the āya exactly as printed.
1383 / 1964 · Arabic · Lesson 56, ¶54 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 10, p. 223 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle
( بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ اِلرَّحِيمِ) قولوا ( اِلْحَمْدُ لِلهِ رَبِّ الْعَلَمِينَ) أي ملكهم (الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ)
Read in context →Lesson 56 is titled by sūra rather than by āya, and its bounds (Q 112:1–Q 114:6) are inferred from where the neighbouring sessions begin, so they are soft at the edges. This āya falls outside it. He quotes it here inside the commentary on another verse, which is why it is not filed as exegesis of this one.
Entries are grouped by what Shaykh Ibrāhīm is doing with the verse, then ordered oldest first inside each group, so the same words can be seen carrying different work across a career. Every entry names the witness it comes from. Passages that are known but not yet available are listed rather than hidden. Beyond Fī Riyāḍ al-Tafsīr, 156 āyāt have so far been indexed from his other writings — the Ḥikam, the fatwās, Kāshif al-Ilbās, theQanābīl, the Tafsīr Maʿānī cassettes. A verse with nothing under this heading has not been searched in them and found wanting; it has not been searched.