Q 57:20 in the tafsīr of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse

أَنَّمَا فِے ثُمَّ ثُمَّ وَفِے مِّنَ وَمَا إِلَّا

Know that the life of the world is only play, and idle talk, and pageantry, and boasting among you, and rivalry in respect of wealth and children; as the likeness of vegetation after rain, whereof the growth is pleasing to the husbandman, but afterward it drieth up and thou seest it turning yellow, then it becometh straw. And in the Hereafter there is grievous punishment, and (also) forgiveness from Allah and His good pleasure, whereas the life of the world is but matter of illusion — 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-Ḥadīd begins at vol. 9, p. 174 (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.

loci in the corpus

distinct acts

1956 – 1964

attested span

1 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 49, ¶85 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 9, p. 152 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

لدكر اللّه (وَكَثِيرࣱ مِّنْهُمْ فَٰسِقُونَۖ اَ۪عْلَمُوٓاْ) خطاب للمؤمنين (أَنَّ اَ۬للَّهَ يُحْيِ اِ۬لَارْضَ بَعْدَ مَوْتِهَاۖ) بالنبات، فكذلك يفعل بقلوبكم يردها إلى الخشوع (قَدْ بَيَّا لَكُمُ الآيَاتِ) الدالة على قدرتنا (لَعَلَّكُمْ تَعْقِلُونَۖ إِنَّ اَ۬لْمُصَّدِّقِينَ) سيذكر الصدقة حتى نظن أن لا قربة إلا الصدقة «إِنَّ الْمُصَّدِّفِيرَ» المتصدقين من الرجال ه وَالْمُصَّدِّفَتِ) اللاتي تصدقن من النساء ( وَأَفْرَضُواْ اللَّهَ فَرْضاً حَسَنا وقد دفعوا الصدقة عن طيب نفس، من أطيب مال، ابتغاء وجه الله، هذا هو القرض الحسن (يُضَعَفْ) قرضهم (لَهُمْ وَلَهُمَ أَجْرٌ كَرِيمٌ وَالذِينَ عَامَنُواْ بِاللَهِ وَرُسُلِهِ أوْلَيِكَ هُمْ الصِّدِّيفُونَ المبالغون في التصديق (وَالشَّهَدَآءُ عِنْدَ رَبِّهِمْ) على المكذبين من الأمم (لَهُمْو أَجْرُهُمْ وَنُورُهُمْ وَالذِيسَ كَبَرْواْ وَكَذَّبُواْ بِئَايَتِنَا( الدالة على وحدانيتنا (أَوْلَيِكَ أَصْحَبُ الْجَحِيمُ) النار (اِ۪عْلَمُوٓاْ أَنَّمَا اَ۬لْحَيَوٰةُ …

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Glossed in passing

A single interpretive equivalence, often a received one, rather than commentary proper.

al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya al-maʾkhūdha min al-qalam al-Sīrīnbiyya

الحكم القطبية المأخوذة من القلم السيرينبيةgloss

Shaʿbān 1375 / March–April 1956 · Arabic · al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya (ed. AK), p. 6 · held at students’ request

Not yet ingested. laʿib / lahw / zīna / tafākhur / takāthur mapped onto the seven-year ages of a life. Whoever has not repented to God by thirty is al-maghbūn.

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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