وَلَوَ اَنَّ عَلَيْهِم مِّنَ وَلَٰكِن بِمَا
And if the people of the townships had believed and kept from evil, surely We should have opened for them blessings from the sky and from the earth. But (unto every messenger) they gave the lie, and so We seized them on account of what they used to earn — 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-Aʿrāf begins at vol. 3, p. 191 (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.
Sustained interpretation of the verse as a verse — lemma, gloss, expansion.
1383 / 1964 · Arabic · Lesson 19, ¶14 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 3, p. 216 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle
أي عذبناهم بَعْتَةَ) فجأة (وَهُمْ لا يَشْعُرُونَ) بوقت مجيئه ( وَلَوَ آنَّ أَهْلَ الْقِرىّ)
Read in context →سؤال عن معنى قوله تعالى: ﴿وَفِي ٱلسَّمَآءِ رِزْقُكُمْ وَمَا تُوعَدُونَ﴾ (الذاريات:22)، وقوله: ﴿وَلَوْ أَنَّ أَهْلَ ٱلْقُرَىٰٓ ءَامَنُواْ وَٱتَّقَوْاْ لَفَتَحْنَا عَلَيْهِم بَرَكَٰتٍ مِّنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ﴾ الأعراف:96
al-Fatāwā wa-l-ajwiba · undated · Arabic · §1, pp. 241, 243 · Mawsūʿat al-āthār al-nathriyya li-ṣāḥib al-fayḍa al-Tijāniyya, maḥwar 5 · compiled by Muḥammad b. al-Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh al-Tijānī · answered in writing
والثانية: في مدح الإيمان والتقوى، بأنهما سبب فتحه علينا بركات من السماء والأرض… يعني أن أهل القرى لو آمنوا الإيمان التام الحقيقي لفتح عليهم بركات السماء، وهي الفتوح والمعارف والأسرار والواردات والإلهامات التي هي بركات العالم العلوي، وبركات الأرض التي هي علوم الدرايات والروايات والمعاملات.
As for the second: it is in praise of faith and taqwā in that the two are the cause of His throwing open to us blessings from the heaven and the earth… if the people of the townships were to believe with the complete, real faith, the blessings of the heaven would be thrown open to them — the openings [futūḥ], the maʿārif, the secrets, the wāridāt and the inspirations, which are the blessings of the upper world; and the blessings of the earth, which are the sciences of dirāyāt and riwāyāt and of dealings.
Excerpt from the answer; the full text is not published here. Translation by Amadu Kunateh. The compiler's footnotes are not included.
§1. The edition prints this reference itself.
Here the verse warrants a claim argued from other authorities. It is not the object of commentary.
السؤال الأول عن قوله تعالى: ﴿هُدًى لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ…﴾ (البقرة:2-5) هل الصفات متحدة أو متباينة؟ … السؤال الثاني: عن قوله تعالى: ﴿فَإِنْ ءَانَسْتُم مِّنْهُمْ رُشْداً فَٱدْفَعُوٓاْ إِلَيْهِمْ﴾ (النساء:6) من المراد بهم في هذه الآية من أرباب الأحوال؟
al-Fatāwā wa-l-ajwiba · undated · Arabic · §4, p. 249 · Mawsūʿat al-āthār al-nathriyya li-ṣāḥib al-fayḍa al-Tijāniyya, maḥwar 5 · compiled by Muḥammad b. al-Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh al-Tijānī · answered in writing
الثانية: التجنب عن كل ما يؤثم من فعل أو ترك حتى الصغائر عند قوم، وهو المتعارف عليه بالتقوى في الشرع، وهو المعنى المراد في ﴿وَلَوْ أَنَّ أَهْلَ ٱلْقُرَىٰٓ ءَامَنُواْ وَٱتَّقَوْاْ﴾ (الأعراف:96).
The second [kind of taqwā]: keeping clear of everything that incurs sin, whether by doing or by leaving undone — even the minor sins, in the view of some. This is what is commonly recognised as taqwā in the sharīʿa, and it is the sense intended in ﴿And had the people of the townships believed and had taqwā﴾ (al-Aʿrāf 96).
Excerpt from the answer; the full text is not published here. Translation by Amadu Kunateh. The compiler's footnotes are not included.
§4. The edition prints this reference itself.
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.