And if thou wert to ask them: Who created the heavens and the earth, and constrained the sun and the moon (to their appointed work)? they would say: Allah. How then are they turned away — 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-ʿAnkabūt begins at vol. 7, p. 145(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.
2
loci in the corpus
2
distinct acts
1956 – 1964
attested span
1 of 2
text available
This verse across his life
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.
1960
March–April 1956al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya
1964Fī riyāḍ
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 39, ¶72 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 7, p. 145 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle
شيئا ولا تكسب شيئا، والطيور في الهواء تغدو خماصا وتروح بطانا، القادر على أن يرزق الدواب والحيوانات قادر على أن يرزق العبد إذا هاجر من أرض إلى أرض، فالرازق في كل بلد هو الله تبارك وتعالى «وَهُوَ ألسَّمِيعُ الْعَلِيمَ» العبد مبتلى بشيئين: حال الرزق ونظر الخلق، إذا أسقط هذين من قلبه وتوكل على اللّٰه وعلم أن اللّٰه هو الرازق وأسقط نظر خلت إليه حتى لا يميز بين مدحهم وذمهم كأنَّهم أموات صلى عليهم، هذا انفتح له الطريق إلى حضرة اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى، ويقدر على أن يقهر النفس حتى لا تميز بين شهوتِها، وجودها وفقدها عنده سواء (وَلَس سَأَلْتَهم) الكفار (مَّنْ خَلَقَ اَ۬لسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَالَارْضَ وَسَخَّرَ اَ۬لشَّمْسَ وَالْقَمَرَ لَيَقُولُنَّ اَ۬للَّهُۖ فَأَنّ۪يٰ يُوفَكُونَۖ) يصرفون عن توحيده بعد إقرارهم بذلك. الكفر ما جاءهم إلا بقوهم إن هذا إلا بشر فقط، كفروا بالنبي صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم فقط وقالوا إنه لا يستحق الرسالة لأنه إنسان كمثلهم يأكل ويشرب ويمشي في الأسواق. أما أن اللّٰه هو خالق السماوات والأرض …
Here the verse warrants a claim argued from other authorities. It is not the object of commentary.
al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya al-maʾkhūdha min al-qalam al-Sīrīnbiyya
الحكم القطبية المأخوذة من القلم السيرينبيةproof-text
Shaʿbān 1375 / March–April 1956 · Arabic · al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya (ed. AK), p. 8 · held at students’ request
Not yet ingested. Cited within the al-Ikhlāṣ commentary.
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.