Q 17:85 in the tafsīr of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse

عَنِ مِنَ وَمَآ مِّنَ إِلَّا

They are asking thee concerning the Spirit. Say: The Spirit is by command of my Lord, and of knowledge ye have been vouchsafed but little — 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

3 of 3

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

(وَيَسْتَلُونَكَ سبب نزولها أن اليهود أرسلوا إلى قريش: سلوا محمدا عن ثلاثة أشياء إن أجابكم عن الجميع فليس بنبي، وإن لم يجب عن شيء فليس بنبي، وإن أجاب عن بعض وسكت عن بعض فهو نبي حقا. سلوه عن الروح وسلوه عن فتية خرجوا وساروا على وجه الأرض ما كان أمرهم، وسائح ساح في البلاد طاف بالمشرق والمغرب 1. فسألوا الرسول صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم فقال غدا آتيكم بالجواب ونسي صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم أن يقول إن شاء اللٰه ففتر الوحي خمسة عشر يوما وبعد ذلك أتاه جبريل بقوله تعالى: "وَلاَ تَقُولَنَّ لِشَأْءٍ إِنِّي بَاعِلٌ ذَلِكَ غَداً اِلّاَّ أَنْ يَشَآءَ اللَّةٌ وَاذْكْرِ رَبَّكَ إِذَا نَسِيتَ"، سألوه عن الروح فأتى الجواب وسألوه عن الفتية وسيأتي وعن السائح وسيأتي في السورة الآتية إن شاء اللّٰه 2 (وَيَسْئَلُونَةَ) اليهود عَبِ الرُّوجَ) الذي يحيى به البدن (فُلِ) لهم (اِ۬لرُّوحُ مِنَ اَمْرِ رَبِّے) علمه لا تعلمونه (وَمَآ أُوتِيتُم) أنتم اليهود (مِّنَ اَ۬لْعِلْمِ إِلَّا قَلِيلاࣰۖ) أجابهم عن الروح. الروح من عالم …

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

في رياض التفسير للقرآن الكريمtafsīrunbracketed quotation

1383 / 1964 · Arabic · Lesson 30, ¶199 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 5, p. 144 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

عالما ببواطنهم وظواهرهم وهو قال في سورة الأنعام "وَلَوْ جَعَلْنَٰهُ مَلَكاً لَجَعَلْنَٰهْ رَجْلًا" محل الإشكال لم يعلموا هل الرجل ملك أم لا لأن اللّٰه لو نزل ملكا لجعله على صورة رجل (وَمَنْ يَهْدِ اللَّهُ فَهُوَ الْمُهْتَدِء وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَلَن تَجِدَ لَهَمَ أَوْلِيَآء) يهدونهم (مِن دُونِهِۦۖ وَنَحْشُرُهُمْ يَوْمَ اَ۬لْقِيَٰمَةِ) ماشين (عَلَىٰ وُجُوهِهِمْ عُمْياً وَبُكْماً وَصُمَا مَأْوِيْهُمْ جَهَنَّمٌ كَلَّمَا خَبَتْ) سكن لهبها (زِدْنَهُمْ سَعِيرًا)) تلهبا واشتعالا (ذَلِكَ جَزَاؤُهُم بِأَنَّهُمْ كَفَرْواْ بَايَتِنَا وَقَالوا) منكرين للبعث (أَ۟ذَا كُنَّا عِظَٰماࣰ وَرُفَٰتاً اِنَّا لَمَبْعُوثُونَ خَلْقاࣰ جَدِيداًۖ اَوَلَمْ يَرَوَاْ) يعلموا (أنَّ اللَّهَ ألذِ خَلَقَ السَّمَوَاتِ وَالارْضَ) مع عظمهما (قَادِرٌّ عَلَى أَنْ يَخْلُقَ مِثْلَهُمْ) أي الأناسي (وَجَعَلَ لَهُمْ وَ أَجَلًا) للموت (لاَّ رَيْبَ فِيهِ وَأَبَى ألظِّلِمُونَ إِلاَّ كُبُورَا جحودا له (قُل لَوَ آنتُمْ تَمْلِكُونَ …

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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.

The verse used, not interpreted

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

On the spirit and the Exalted Essence

proof-text

سؤالك عن الروح والذات العلية

al-Fatāwā wa-l-ajwiba · undated · Arabic · §20, p. 274 · 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

الجواب باختصار: قال تعالى: ﴿وَيَسْأَلُونَكَ عَنِ الرُّوحِ قُلِ الرُّوحُ مِنْ أَمْرِ رَبِّي﴾ اعلم أن الأرواح على أقسام: أرواح العامة وأرواح الخاصة وأرواح خاصة الخاصة.

The answer, in brief. God said: “They ask you about the spirit. Say: the spirit is of my Lord’s command.” Know that spirits fall into classes: the spirits of the common, the spirits of the elect, and the spirits of the elect of the elect.

Excerpt from the answer; the full text is not published here.

He quotes only as far as "min amr rabbī" and stops there, leaving out the rest of the verse. The citation is not exegesis of the verse: it licenses the taxonomy that follows rather than construing "amr". But the fatwā answers the question the verse itself records being put to the Prophet, so reading it as a bare proof-text understates what he is doing. Transcribed from a photograph of the printing; not yet checked against a clean copy.

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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