Q 2:269 in the tafsīr of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse

مَنْ وَمَنْ فَقَدُ وَمَا إِلَّآ أُوْلُواْ

He giveth wisdom unto whom He will, and he unto whom wisdom is given, he truly hath received abundant good. But none remember except men of understanding — 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-Baqara begins at vol. 1, p. 54 (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

1931 – 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.

1930

1940

1950

1960

1931Kāshif al-ilbās

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 الكريمtafsīrunbracketed quotation

1383 / 1964 · Arabic · Lesson 7, ¶50 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 2, p. 3 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

قبل أن تصل إلى المسكين.[32] كانت قليلة فصارت كثيرة، كانت صغيرة فصارت كبيرة، كانت محروسة فصارت حارسة، كانت فانية فصارت بافية كانت عدوا فصارت حبيبا{ يُوتى الْحِكْمَةَ} العلم النافع المؤدي إلى العمل {مَنْ يَشَآءٌ وَمَنْ يُوتَ الْحِكْمَةَ فَقَدُ أوتِىَ خيْراً كثيرا} لمصيره إلى السعادة الأبدية، فالحكمة العلم بالقرآن، العلم النافع، حيث ذُكرت في القرآن يكون معناها مواعظ القرآن وسنة الرسول صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم والعمل للآخرة. علم تضمن هذا وصفه القرآن بأنه خير كثير، بعدما كانت الدنيا وما فيها قليلو والعلم قليل بهذا صار كثيرا، والذي قيل إنه قليل لا نعرف نهايته أبدا {وَمَا يَذَّكَّرُ إلاَّ اءلواالأَلْبَابُ وَمَا أَنْفَقْتُم مِن نَفَقَةٍ} أديتم من زكاة أو صدقة {آوْ نَذَرْتُم مِن نَذْرِ} فوفيتم {فَإِنَّ أللَّهَ يَعْلَمْهُ } فيجازيكم عليه {وَمَا لِلظَّـٰلِمِينَ مِنَ أنصارَ} مانعين {إن تَبْدُواْ الصَّدَقَـٰتِ

Read in context →

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.

Kāshif al-ilbās ʿan fayḍat al-khatm Abī l-ʿAbbās

كاشف الإلباس عن فيضة الختم أبي العباسproof-text

1350 / 1931 · Arabic · ed. Cissé 2001 — page not yet resolved · al-Tijānī b. ʿAlī Cissé

Not yet ingested. Cited for maʿrifa — 'He gives wisdom to whomsoever He pleases.' Observed by sampling the Fons Vitae translation, not by a census of the Arabic — no verse-index of the Arabic Kāshif exists. Wright's 2010 analysis counts 271 citations from 112 scholarly authorities but does not treat the Qurʾānic citations as a category.

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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