Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The similitude of His light is as a niche wherein is a lamp. The lamp is in a glass. The glass is as it were a shining star. (This lamp is) kindled from a blessed tree, an olive neither of the East nor of the West, whose oil would almost glow forth (of itself) though no fire touched it. Light upon light. Allah guideth unto His light whom He will. And Allah speaketh to mankind in allegories, for Allah is Knower of all things — 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-Nūr begins at vol. 6, p. 190(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.
4
loci in the corpus
2
distinct acts
1931 – 1964
attested span
1 of 4
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.
1930
1940
1950
1960
1931Kāshif al-ilbās
1950-1960Tafsīr maʿānī
March–April 1956al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya
1964Fī riyāḍ
Exegesis of the verse
Sustained interpretation of the verse as a verse — lemma, gloss, expansion.
Tafsīr maʿānī al-Qurʾān al-karīm
تفسير معاني القرآن الكريمtafsīr
1950-1960 · Wolof · cassette not identified · audio · compiled by Introduction by Ibrāhīm M. Diop, Niasse's personal secretary · the annual Ramaḍān cycle
Not located. Sixty-two cassettes of Wolof exegesis covering the whole Qurʾān, recorded 1950–1960 (ALA IV #72). The boxed set has never been located. This locus is listed because the cycle is complete, not because the passage has been found — and because Wolof, not Arabic, was Shaykh Ibrāhīm's normal language of delivery.
al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya al-maʾkhūdha min al-qalam al-Sīrīnbiyya
الحكم القطبية المأخوذة من القلم السيرينبيةtafsīr
Shaʿbān 1375 / March–April 1956 · Arabic · al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya (ed. AK), p. 5 · held at students’ request
Light is of four kinds: a light that shows you and is not itself seen; a light that shows you and is seen, like the light of the eye; a light that only shows you, like the light of the intellect; and a light that shows you the existent and shows you the non-existent — and that is God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. He likened the believer's heart to the glass as a lesson to you… glass breaks quickly, and so does the heart. Guard it well.
FOUR LIGHTS: that which shows you and is not seen; that which shows you and is seen (the eye's light); that which only shows you (the intellect's light); and that which shows you the existent AND the non-existent — and that is God. Then the zujāja as the believer's heart: glass breaks fast; too much sleep, food and mixing with worldly people clouds it. COLLATION TARGET — Wright 2024 cites Fī Riyāḍ vol. 4, pp. 217-218 on this verse but does not analyse it.
Fī riyāḍ al-tafsīr li-l-Qurʾān al-karīm
في رياض التفسير للقرآن الكريمtafsīr
1383 / 1964 · Arabic · Lesson 36 — vol. 7, p. 3 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · Muḥammad b. al-Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh al-Tijānī · the annual Ramaḍān cycle
In this session, not yet located. Lesson 36 is titled by sūra rather than by āya; its bounds (Q 24:5–Q 25:77) are inferred from where the neighbouring sessions begin, so they are soft at the edges. Of the 137 āyāt in that span, as many as 60 are quoted in the transcription; this one is not among them, so whether he comments on it is not established. The page given is where the lesson opens — start there and read on.
Most of Shaykh Ibrāhīm’s Qurʾānic commentary is oral. Sixty-two cassettes of Wolof exegesis covering the whole Qurʾān have never been transcribed, and this index reaches only what the written sessions quote. An absence here belongs to the index, not to the corpus.
Here the verse warrants a claim argued from other authorities. It is not the object of commentary.
Kāshif al-ilbās ʿan fayḍat al-khatm Abī l-ʿAbbās
كاشف الإلباس عن فيضة الختم أبي العباسproof-text
1350 / 1931 · Arabic · ed. Cissé 2001 — page not yet resolved · al-Tijānī b. ʿAlī Cissé
Not yet ingested. Cited in support of the hierarchy of the saints. Observed by sampling the Fons Vitae translation, not by a census of the Arabic — no verse-index of the Arabic Kāshif exists. Wright's 2010 analysis counts 271 citations from 112 scholarly authorities but does not treat the Qurʾānic citations as a category.
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.