Q 42:27 in the tafsīr of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse

۞وَلَوْ فِے وَلَٰكِنْ مَّا اِ۪نَّهُۥ

And if Allah were to enlarge the provision for His slaves they would surely rebel in the earth, but He sendeth down by measure as He willeth. Lo! He is Informed, a Seer of His bondmen — 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-Shūrā begins at vol. 8, p. 207 (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.

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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 45, ¶50 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 8, p. 203 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

أللَّه غَبُور للذنوب (شَكُورٌ) للقليل فيضاعفه (آمْ يَقُولُونَ إَجْتَرِى عَلَى اللَّهِ كَذِباه بنسبة القرآن إلى اللّه تعالى (فَإِنْ يَشَلِ اللَّهِ يَخْتِم) يربط (عَلَىٰ قَلْبِكَ) بالصبر على أذاهم بهذا القول وقد فعل حتى صبر الرسول صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم (وَيَمْحُ ألَّهُ ألْبَطِلَ) الذي قالوه (وَيُحِقُّ الْحَقَّ) يثبته ( بِكَلِمَتِة) المنزلة على نبيه (إِنَّهُو عَلِيمٌ بِذَاتِ الصُّدُورُ) بما في القلوب (وَهُوَ اَ۬لذِے يَقْبَلُ اُ۬لتَّوْبَةَ عَنْ عِبَادِهِۦ) منهم (وَيَعْبُوا عَرِ السَّيِّئَاتِ) المتاب عنها (وَيَعْلَمُ مَا يَفْعَلُونَۖ وَيَسْتَجِيبُ اُ۬لذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَعَمِلُواْ اُ۬لصَّٰلِحَٰتِ) يجيبهم إلى ما يسألون (وَيَزِيدُهُم مِّن فَضْلِهِۦۖ وَالْكَٰفِرُونَ لَهُمْ عَذَابࣱ شَدِيدࣱۖ) هو النار (وَلَوْ بَسَطَ اللَّهُ الرِّزْقَ لِعِبَادِهِ) جميعهم ( لَبَغَوْا مِى الأَرْضِ وَلَكِنْ يُنَزِّلُ بِفَدَرٍ مَا يَشَآءُ الله تبارك وتعالى لو أجرى الرزق على وفق ما يتمنى كل إنسان لبغى الناس جميعا وأفسدوا …

Read in context →

On ﴿Were Allah to spread provision wide for His servants, they would overreach﴾ (Q 42:27), which appears to conflict with what is observed — editorial summary; the printing states no question here

tafsīr

al-Fatāwā wa-l-ajwiba · undated · Arabic · §5, p. 254 · Mawsūʿat al-āthār al-nathriyya li-ṣāḥib al-fayḍa al-Tijāniyya, maḥwar 5 · compiled by Muḥammad b. al-Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh al-Tijānī

يفهم منه أن الله لم يبسط الرزق ليلا يقع البغي، ومعلوم أنه يبسط الرزق لبعض عباده… والذي يظهر لي في إزالة هذا التعارض أن المراد لو بسط الله الرزق بلا واسطة إذ أن الله تعالى قدر في الأزل أنه لا يرزق عبدا كائنا من كان رزقا حسيا أو معنويا إلا بواسطة سبب وميقات زماني ومكاني.

It is understood from this that Allah did not spread provision wide so that baghy [overreaching] should not occur. Yet it is known that He does spread provision wide for some of His servants… What appears to me, in removing this conflict, is that what is meant is: had Allah spread provision wide without an intermediary. For Allah decreed in pre-eternity that He would not provide any servant whatsoever, with a sensory or a meaning-bearing provision, except by way of a secondary cause and an appointed term in time and place.

Excerpt from the answer; the full text is not published here. Translation by Amadu Kunateh. The compiler's footnotes are not included.

§5. The edition quotes the verse without a printed reference; the identification is inferred.

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.

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