Q 20:115 in the tafsīr of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse

وَلَقَدْ إِلَيٰٓ مِن وَلَمْ لَهُۥ

And verily We made a covenant of old with Adam, but he forgot, and We found no constancy in him — 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 Ṭāhā begins at vol. 6, p. 69 (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.

loci in the corpus

distinct acts

2 of 2

text available

Exegesis of the verse

Sustained interpretation of the verse as a verse — lemma, gloss, expansion.

Fī riyāḍ al-tafsīr li-l-Qurʾān al-karīm

في رياض التفسير للقرآن الكريمtafsīr

1383 / 1964 · Arabic · Lesson 33, ¶56 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 6, p. 84 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

أنَّهُ و لَا إِلَةَ إِلَّ اللَّهُ " فلهذا قدم البخاري باب العلم قبل العمل. والعلم حيث ذكر فالمراد به العلم النافع، العلم بالله وما يقرب إليه زلفى. طلب الرسول صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم بأمر ربه الزيادة في العلم " زِدْنِه عِلْماً" لأن العلم بحر لا ساحل له، لا سيما العلم بالله، كما أن ذاته ليس لها غاية ولا نهاية فصفاته كذلك وأسماؤه كذلك والعلم كذلك لا ينتهي أبدا (وَلَقَدْ عَهِدْنَآ إِلَى ءَادَمَ) وصيناه أن لا ياكل من الشجرة وصِ قَبْلُ) قبل أكله منها ( تَنسىَ ترك عهدنا (وَلَمْ نَجِدْ لَهْ عَزْما ) ما وجدنا لأدم عزما وصبرا عما تميناه عنه.

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The verse used, not interpreted

Here the verse warrants a claim argued from other authorities. It is not the object of commentary.

Fī riyāḍ al-tafsīr li-l-Qurʾān al-karīm

في رياض التفسير للقرآن الكريمproof-textunbracketed quotation

1383 / 1964 · Arabic · Lesson 28, ¶2 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 5, p. 70 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

1 (أَفَمَنْ يَّعْلَمُ أَنَّمَآ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْكَ مِن رَّبِّكَ اَ۬لْحَقُّ) فأمن به (كَمَنْ هُوَ أَعْم۪يٰٓۖ ) لا يعلمه ولا يؤمن به؟ لا. (إِنَّمَا يَتَذَكَّرُ ) يتعظ (أُوْلُواْ اُ۬لَالْبَٰبِ) أصحاب العقول، لا يتذكر إلا أولوا الألباب. الطرق إلى اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى لابد فيها من الذكر والتفكر والتذكر. والتذكر فوق التفكر، فإن التفكر طلب والتذكر وجود. الإنسان أصل روحه خرج من حضرة اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى غارقا في توحيد اللّه لا يعرف سوى اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى، فلما خوطبوا يوم ألست بربكم نطقوا كلا قالوا بلى، ولما تلبسوا بهذه الملابس والغواشي نسوا ذلك العهد القديم " وَلَقَدْ عَهِدْنَآ إِلَى ءَادَمَ مِن قَبْلُ

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Lesson 28 runs Q 13:19–Q 14:52. 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.

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.

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