And what is that in thy right hand, O Moses — 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.
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 32, ¶111 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 6, p. 40 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle
وما تلك؟ تفهم من السؤال أنه سؤال رجل مغمي عليه أو غائب عن حسه «وَمَا تِلْكَ بِيَمِينِكَ» موسى نسي العصا ونسي أن العصا في يده اليمنى حتى قيل له بيمينك - نسي موسى - يا موسى «وَمَا تِلْكَ بِيَمِينِكَ يَمُوسِى» فانتبه تذكر موسى، وتذكر يده اليمنى، ورأى عصا في يده (قَالَ هِي عَصَاىَ أَتَوَكَّؤا أعتمد عَلَيْهَا) عند الوثوب والمشي (وَأَهْشُ بِهَا عَلَى غَنَهِ فتأكل (وَلِيَ فِيهَا مَـَٔارِبُ أُخْر۪يٰۖ) بسط الجواب تلذذا واختصره أيضا تأدبا (قَالَ أَلْقِهَا يَمُوسِى لما قال هي عصاي أمره الحق تبارك وتعالى بإلقائها، فلهذا المريد كل ما يضيفه إلى نفسه تخاطبه الحضرة أن «أَلْقِهَا يَمُوسِى» (بَأَلْفِيْهَا وَإِذَا هِيى حَيَّةٌ تَسْعِىْ) وكل ما يضيفه المريد إلى نفسه فهو حية «بَأَلْفِيْهَا» فصارت حية ه قَالَ خُذْهَا وَلَا تَخَفْ فأخذها {سَنُعِيدُهَا سِيرَتَهَا الاولى وكان موسى جزعا مرتعدا
A single interpretive equivalence, often a received one, rather than commentary proper.
al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya al-maʾkhūdha min al-qalam al-Sīrīnbiyya
الحكم القطبية المأخوذة من القلم السيرينبيةgloss
Shaʿbān 1375 / March–April 1956 · Arabic · al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya (ed. AK), p. 4 · held at students’ request
Not yet ingested. hiya ʿaṣāya — al-ʿaṣā and al-maʿṣiya are cognate in the lafẓ: what the servant ascribes to himself becomes a living thing against him. Then Moses' tongue, the coal, and why the miracle required the earlier defect.
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 and how well attested the attribution is. Loci 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.