Sūrat Āl ʿImrān · 3 : 110

Q 3:110 in the tafsīr of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse

عَنِ وَلَوَ لَّهُمۖ مِّنْهُمُ

Ye are the best community that hath been raised up for mankind. Ye enjoin right conduct and forbid indecency; and ye believe in Allah. And if the People of the Scripture had believed it had been better for them. Some of them are believers; but most of them are evil-livers — 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 Āl ʿImrān begins at vol. 2, p. 34 (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.

3
loci in the corpus
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distinct acts
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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 9 — vol. 2, p. 79 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · Muḥammad b. al-Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh al-Tijānī · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

In this session, not yet located. Lesson 9 runs from Q 3:92–Q 3:175. Of the 84 āyāt in that span, as many as 60 are quoted where the session reaches them; this one is not, so whether he takes it up here is not established. The page given is where the lesson opens — start there and read on.

Most of Shaykh Ibrāhīm’s Qurʾānic commentary is oral. Sixty-two cassettes of Wolof exegesis covering the whole Qurʾān have never been transcribed, and this index reaches only what the written sessions quote. An absence here belongs to the index, not to the corpus.

Read Lesson 9 →

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 5, ¶82 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 1, p. 120 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

" لَسْئَلَيّ ألذِينَ أُرْسِلَ إِلَيْهِمْ وَلَنَسْئَلَىَّ الْمَرْسَلِينَ". إذا اجتمع الخلائق أولهم وآخرهم إنسهم وجنهم وملائكتهم في صعيد واحد، أول من يحاسب القلم يسأل هل بلغ للوح ما أمِر بتبليغه؟ يقول: نعم. فيقر اللوح بأنه بلغه القلم. ويقال للوح: هل بلغت لجبريل الكتاب الفلاني الذي أنزله إلى النبي الفلاني؟ يقول اللوح إنه بلغ لجبريل. جبريل هل بلغت لنوح؟ فيقول: نعم بلغتُ. نوح هل بلغتَ لأمتك؟ يقول: نعم بلغت لأمتي فكفروا. أيتها الأمة هل بلغ إليكم نوح؟ قالوا: لا "مَا جَآءَنَا مِنْ بَشِيرِ وَلاَ نَذِيرِ". فتأتي أمة محمد صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم ويشهدون أن الأنبياء بلغوا رسالاتهم وأن نوحا بلغ. فيقول قومه: كيف يشهد هؤلاء علينا وهم جاءوا أخيرا؟ يقول اللّه لأمة محمد: كيف تشهدون لنوح وأنتم جئتم بعده بقرون؟ يقولون: أنزلت القرآن كتابا لا يأتيه الباطل من بين يديه ولا من خلفه على محمد فبلغ لنا قوله تعالى "إِنَّا أَرْسَلْنَا نُوحاً إِلَىٰ قَوْمِهِ أَنَ انذِرْ قَوْمَكَ" فيقول الحق جل جلاله: يا محمد أمتك عدول …

Read in context →

Lesson 5 runs Q 2:106–Q 2:202. 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.

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

في رياض التفسير للقرآن الكريمproof-textunbracketed quotation

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

"وَرَفَعْنَا لَكَ ذِكْرَكَ} وذلك بأن قرن ذكره بذكر اللّٰه عند الأذان وعند الإقامة وعند الخطبة وعند التشهد أي عند النطق بالشهادتين من قال أشهد أن لا إله إلا اللّٰه قال وأشهد أن محمدا رسول الله، وهذا لم يكن لغيره من سائر الأنبياء. والله تبارك وتعالى أخبر في كتابه أنه خاتم النبيئين وهذا يدل على أنه أفضل منهم جميعا لأنه غير معقول أن يختم شيء فاضل بشيء مفضول. الصانع إذا أتى لآخر عمله يأتي ببراعة عمله يجعله ختاما فلما كان محمد خاتم النبيئين تبين أنه أفضل منهم جميعا لأن الختم بشيء مفضول غير معقول وغير حكمة، والله أخبر في كتابه أن أمة محمد خير الأمم جميعا "كُنتُمْ خَيْرَ أمَّةٍ أخْرِجَتْ لِلنَّاس" من أين لهم بِهذا؟ من النبي صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم. لماكنا خير أمة بسبب محمد صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم تبين أن محمدا أفضل من الأنبياء الذين أرسلوا إلى الأمم قبلنا؛ وكتابه أفضل من كتبهم، ودينه أفضل من أديانهم، وشريعته أفضل من شرائعهم، ومع ذلك فهو أكثرهم معجزة. موسى هو أكثر الأنبياء معجزات ذكر اللّٰه أنه أعطاه …

Read in context →

Lesson 7 runs Q 2:253–Q 3:14. 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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