Q 50:16 in the tafsīr of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse

وَلَقَدْ مَا بِهِۦ وَنَحْنُ إِلَيْهِ مِنْ

We verily created man and We know what his soul whispereth to him, and We are nearer to him than his jugular vein — 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 Qāf begins at vol. 9, p. 92 (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 الكريمtafsīrunbracketed quotation

1383 / 1964 · Arabic · Lesson 47, ¶123 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 9, p. 56 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

( عَذَّاليكَ) مثل هذا الإحياء (الخَرُوج) من القبور فكيف تنكرونه (كَذَّبَتْ قَبْلَهُمْ قَوْمُ نُوحࣲ وَأَصْحَٰبُ اُ۬لرَّسِّ)) بعر كانوا مقيمين عليها بمواشيهم يعبدون الأصنام ونبيهم قيل حنظلة بن صفوان (وَتَمُودُ قوم صالح (وَعَادَ) قوم هود (وَفِرْعَوْنُ وَإِخْوَٰنُ لُوطࣲ وَأَصْحَٰبُ اُ۬لَايْكَةِ) الغيضة قوم شعيب كلهم تقدم قصصهم مرارا (وَقَوْمُ تُبَّعْ) هو ملك اليمن الذي أسلم ودعا قومه إلى الإسلام فكذبوه ١ ، فمر بالمدينة وبقي علماؤه العشرة في المدينة ينتظرون النبي فهم ولدوا الأوس والخزرج الذين جاءوا هم الأنصار بعد، والذي استودع عنده كتاب تبع لرسول اللّٰه صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم وهو جد أبي أيوب الأنصاري الذي نزل الرسول صلى اللّه عليه وسلم في بيته رأسا. أبو أيوب هذا الذي ما زال قبره محروسا في القسطنطينية بالترك (كَلّ كَذَّبَ الرِّسْلَ) كقريش (مَحَقَّ وَعِيدة) وجب نزول العذاب على الجميع (أَبَعَيِينَا بِالْخَلْوِ اِلاوَّلِ) لم نعي به ولا نعي بالإعادة وَبَلْ هُمْ بِح لَبْسٍ) شك مِنْ خَلْوِ جَدِيدٌ …

Read in context →

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.

The verse used, not interpreted

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

Two questions: whether the attributes in ﴿a guidance for those of taqwā﴾ (Q 2:2–5) are one or distinct; and who is meant in ﴿if you perceive in them sound judgement﴾ (Q 4:6)

proof-text

السؤال الأول عن قوله تعالى: ﴿هُدًى لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ…﴾ (البقرة:2-5) هل الصفات متحدة أو متباينة؟ … السؤال الثاني: عن قوله تعالى: ﴿فَإِنْ ءَانَسْتُم مِّنْهُمْ رُشْداً فَٱدْفَعُوٓاْ إِلَيْهِمْ﴾ (النساء:6) من المراد بهم في هذه الآية من أرباب الأحوال؟

al-Fatāwā wa-l-ajwiba · undated · Arabic · §4, p. 249 · Mawsūʿat al-āthār al-nathriyya li-ṣāḥib al-fayḍa al-Tijāniyya, maḥwar 5 · compiled by Muḥammad b. al-Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh al-Tijānī · answered in writing

اعلم رزقنا الله وإياك الفهم عنه أن الله تبارك وتعالى جمع الكتب المنزلة كلها في سبعة أسباع القرآن. وجمع الأسباع السبعة في السبع المثاني، وجمع ذلك في سبعة أحرف بسم الله، وجمع ذلك في الألف، وافتتح به كتابه العزيز… ﴿هُدًى لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ﴾، أي: على الخصوص إرشادا وهدى، على الناس كلها بيانا… وليس في كون بعض الناس لم يهتدوا ما يخرجه من أن يكون هدى، فالشمس شمس وإن لم يرها الضرير.

Know — may Allah grant us and you understanding from Him — that Allah gathered all the sent-down books into the seven sevenths of the Qurʾān; and gathered the seven sevenths into the seven oft-repeated; and gathered that into the seven letters of bismillāh; and gathered that into the alif, and opened His Mighty Book with it… ﴿a guidance for those of taqwā﴾ — that is, for them in particular as direction and guidance, and for all people as clarification… The fact that some people have not taken the guidance does not remove it from being guidance: the sun is the sun even if the blind man does not see it.

Excerpt from the answer; the full text is not published here. Translation by Amadu Kunateh. The compiler's footnotes are not included.

§4. The edition prints this reference itself.

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.

Go to1–45