Q 17:102 in the tafsīr of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse

لَقَدْ مَآ هَٰٓؤُلَآءِ الَّا وَإِنِّے يَٰفِرْعَوْنُ

He said: In truth thou knowest that none sent down these (portents) save the Lord of the heavens and the earth as proofs, and lo! (for my part) I deem thee lost, O Pharaoh — 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-Isrāʾ begins at vol. 5, p. 165 (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

2 of 2

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 30, ¶200 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 5, p. 144 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

(إِذْ جَآءَهُمْ فَقَالَ لَهُۥ فِرْعَوْنُ إِنِّے لَأَظُنُّكَ يَٰمُوس۪يٰ مَسْحُوراࣰۖ) ظن فرعون أن موسى مسحور أي مخدوع مغلوب على عقله (قَالَ) موسى (لَقَدْ عَلِمْتَ مَآ أَنزَلَ هَٰٓؤُلَآءِ) الآيات (والاّ رَبُّ السَّمَوَتِ وَالأَرْضِ بَصَآئِرَ عبرا ولكنك تعاند (وَإِنِّے لَأَظُنُّكَ يَٰفِرْعَوْنُ مَثْبُوراࣰۖ) هالكا، فراسة موسى صدقت وفراسة فرعون ذهبت هباء منثورا، ظن موسى مسحورا وموسى رسول حقا صادق، وموسى ظن أن فرعون سيهلك فهلك (فَأَرَادَ أَنْ يَسْتَفِزَّهُمْ) يخرج موسى وقومه (مَ الاَرْضِ) أرض مصر (بَأَغْرَفْتَهُ وَمَن مَعَهُ جَمِيعاً وَقُلْنَا مِنْ بَعْدِهِ، لِبَنِىِ إِسْرَاءِيلَ أَسْكْنُواْ الأَرْضَ فَإِذَا جَآءَ وَعْدُ الأخِرَةِ الساعة جِيْنَا بِكْمْ لَهِيهام جميعا أنتم وهم ( وَبِالْحَقِّ أَنزَلْنَه القرآن (وَبِالْحَقِّ نَزَلَ) كما أنزل لم يعتره تبديل (وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَكَ)) يا محمد (إِلّ مُبَشِّرا من آمن بالجنة (وَنَذِيرا من كفر بالنار ( وَفُرْءَاناك نزلنا القرآن رًفْتَاه مفرقا في …

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The verse used, not interpreted

Here the verse warrants a claim argued from other authorities. It is not the object of commentary.

Fī riyāḍ al-tafsīr li-l-Qurʾān al-karīm

في رياض التفسير للقرآن الكريمproof-textunbracketed quotation

1383 / 1964 · Arabic · Lesson 33, ¶5 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 6, p. 84 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

سحر وأبى أن يقبلها أو أراه اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى جميع آيات الأنبياء، حيث أن موسى سرد له ما جرى من آيات الأنبياء قبله وما سيجري بعده، وما جرى على يديه فكذبَها كلها وأبى، أو أنه عندما أنكر آيات موسى فقد أنكر آيات جميع الأنبياء، فلهذا وصف فرعون هنا بأنه كذب بآيات اللّه كلها وأبى أن يقبلها. وفرعون اختلف فيه هل كان يعلم بوجود اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى أو لا يعلمه، الصحيح أن فرعون كان يعلم اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى بدليل أن موسى قال: "لَقَدْ عَلِمْتَ مَا أَنزَلَ هَؤْلاءِ الاَّرَبُّ السَّمَوَاتِ وَالأَرْضِ" صرح موسى بأن فرعون يعلم خالقه. وهو بسؤاله لموسى "وَمَا رَبّ الْعَلَمِينَ" وإجابة موسى له بقوله "رَبُّ الْمَشْرِقِ وَالْمَغْرِبِ" "رَبُّكُمْ وَرَبُّ ءَابَآئِكُمُ الاوَّلِينَ" رماه بالجنون "إِنَّ رَسُولَكُمُ ألذِة ارْسِلَ إِلَيْكُمْ لَمَجْنُونٌّ يسأل عن الماهية، هو سأل عن ذات الله، وموسى ما أجاب إلا بالصفات، الجواب ما طابق السؤال، رماه فرعون بالجنون، هذا دليل على أن فرعون كان يعلم اللّٰه ولكنه كفر عنادا …

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Lesson 33 is titled by sūra rather than by āya, and its bounds (Q 20:53–Q 21:63) are inferred from where the neighbouring sessions begin, so they are soft at the edges. This āya falls outside it. He quotes it here inside the commentary on another verse, which is why it is not filed as exegesis of this one.

The printing brackets no quotation here. A run of consecutive words in this paragraph — three at the shortest — occurs in one place in the muṣḥaf and nowhere else, and every āya lying inside that run is credited, so a run crossing a boundary attests both. Matching folds together the letter shapes the scan confuses, so the words need not stand in the āya exactly as printed.

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. Passages 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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