If there were therein gods beside Allah, then verily both (the heavens and the earth) had been disordered. Glorified be Allah, the Lord of the Throne, from all that they ascribe (unto 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 Al-Anbiyāʾ begins at vol. 6, p. 107(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 33, ¶99 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 6, p. 84 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle
إلها إلا من يحبى الموتى (لَوْ كَانَ بِيهِمَام السماوات والأرض (ءَالِهَةُّ إِلاَّ أللَّه) غيره ( لَقَسَدَتَا ما يمكن مجموع آلهة، لو كان غير إله واحد لفسدت السماوات والأرض في أسرع من طرفة العين، ما حاجتنا إلى تعدد الآلهة؟ إما أن يكون بعض الآلهة كاملا وبعض ناقصا أو كلهم ناقصين، إذا كانوا كلهم ناقصين فليسوا بآلهة يحتاجون إلى من يكملهم فإذا كان بعض ناقصا وبعض كاملا استغنينا بالكامل وتركنا الناقص، إذا تعددت الآلهة لابد من خلاف بينها، فإذا تنازع اثنان لابد أن تقع بينهما حرب فإذا وقعت بينهما حرب لابد أن يغلب أحدهما الآخر، فإذا غلب أحدهما الآخر وهو مثل، ما جاز في المثل يجوز في الممائل ليست هذه آلهة إنما هي مخلوقات لا يمكن إلا إله واحد. هذا النظام الباقي في السماوات والأرض لم يبق إلا بأن الإله واحد لو تعدد لفسد كل شيء، اللّٰه واحد.
This one verse suffices a man in place of dialectical theology — on the oneness of acts, of attributes, and of the essence.
law kāna fīhimā ālihatun illā llāhu la-fasadatā — ʿilm al-kalām is blamed and an innovation, and this one verse suffices a man, on tawḥīd al-afʿāl wa-l-ṣifāt wa-l-dhāt.
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.