The Beneficent One, Who is established on the Throne — 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
2 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, ¶83 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 6, p. 40 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle
الرهن. الرحمن مطلقا هو اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى ويسمى غيره الرحمن لكن بإضافة شيء، رحمان البمامة مثلا (عَلَى ألْعَرْشِ إسْتَوى) استواء يليق به تبارك وتعالى. العرش أكبر المخلوقات 1. وفي لغة العرب العرش سرير الملك، والمخلوقات مندرجة تحت العرش، المخلوقات الجسمانية. والله تبارك وتعالى ذكر أنه استولى على هذا العرش وباستيلائه على العرش استولى على جميع خلقه إن كان أكبر المخلوقات المحيط بهم جميعا هو مستول عليه فهو مستول على ما اندرج تحته، «اَ۬لرَّحْمَٰنُ عَلَي اَ۬لْعَرْشِ اِ۪سْتَو۪يٰۖ» الرحمن صفة من صفاته تبارك وتعالى، أول صفة تجلى بها هي الرحمة فبرحمته أوجد ما أوجد، رحمته سبقت غضبه 2،
The Throne (ʿarsh) is sharʿ inverted… so the Law is the sum of the earth's mercy and its landing-place.
al-Raḥmān ʿalā l-ʿarsh istawā — inna l-ʿarsh maqlūb sharʿ: the consonants of ʿ-r-sh reversed give sh-r-ʿ. The Throne is where God's mercy descends, so the Law is the sum and landing-place of mercy on earth. NO PARALLEL FOUND in the published scholarship on Niasse.
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.