Q 4:66 in the tafsīr of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse

وَلَوَ اَنَّا عَلَيْهِمُۥٓ أَنُ أَوُ مِن مَّا إِلَّا مِّنْهُمْۖ وَلَوَ اَنَّهُمْ مَا بِهِۦ لَّهُمْ

And if We had decreed for them: Lay down your lives or go forth from your dwellings, but few of them would have done it; though if they did what they are exhorted to do it would be better for them, and more strengthening — 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-Nisāʾ begins at vol. 2, p. 146 (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.

locus

act

1 of 1

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 الكريمtafsīr

1383 / 1964 · Arabic · Lesson 11, ¶84 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 2, p. 161 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

اتَبْعُوا مَآ أَنزِلَ إِلَيْكُم" ليس اتباعه إلا امتثال أمره فقط واجتناب تهيه، والرسول صلى اللّه عليه وسلم "اتَّبِعَوهُ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَهْتَدُونَ" الرسول هو المبين للقرآن وهذا كلامه أنترك هذا القرآن الذي نزل عليه ونأخذ بمذهب غيره؟ ما فهمنا هذا الإتباع (وَلَوَ اَنَّا كَتَبْنَا عَلَيْهِمُۥٓ أَنُ اُ۟قْتُلُوٓاْ أَنفُسَكُمُۥٓ أَوُ اُ۟خْرُجُواْ مِن دِيٰ۪رِكُم) كما كتبنا على بني إسرائيل (مَا بَعَلُوه) المكتوب عليهم ( لا قَلِيل) لو أوجب الله على هذه الأمة أن يقتلوا أنفسهم لا متنعوا، قال عمر: مرني بارسول اللّٰه أقتل نفسي الآن، قال اللّٰه «إِلاَّ قَلِيلٌ» كمثل عمر3 (مِنْهُمْ وَلَوَ انَّهُمْ فَعَلُّواْ مَا يُوعَظُونَ بِهِ) من طاعة الرسول (لَكَانَ خَيْراً لَهُمْ وَأَشَدَّ تَثْبِيتام تحقيقا لإيمانهم (وَإِذاً)

Read in context →

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.

Go to1–176