Q 3:81 in the tafsīr of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse

وَإِذَ لَمَآ مِّن ثُمَّ لِّمَا مَعَكُمْ بِهِۦ عَلَيٰ ذَٰلِكُمُۥٓ وَأَنَا مَعَكُم مِّنَ

When Allah made (His) covenant with the prophets, (He said): Behold that which I have given you of the Scripture and knowledge. And afterward there will come unto you a messenger, confirming that which ye possess. Ye shall believe in him and ye shall help him. He said: Do ye agree, and will ye take up My burden (which I lay upon you) in this (matter)? They answered: We agree. He said: Then bear ye witness. I will be a witness with you — 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.

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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 8, ¶89 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 2, p. 46 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

(ايَامُرُكُم بِالْكُفْرِ بَعْدَ إِذَ آنتُم مُسْلِمُونَ) لا ينبغي ذلك و اذكر ( إِذَ آخَذَ اللَّهُ مِيثَقَ التَّبِيَ) عهدهم (لَمَآ ءَاتَيْنَٰكُم مِّن كِتَٰبࣲ وَحِكْمَةࣲ ثُمَّ جَآءَكُمْ رَسُولࣱ مُّصَدِّقࣱ لِّمَا مَعَكُمْ) من الكتاب والحكمة وهو محمد صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم ( لَتُومِنُنَّ بِهِ وَلَتَنصُرُنَّهُ )

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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 40, ¶76 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 7, p. 195 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

إلى مكة وتعاهد مع أبي سفيان على محاربة النبي صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم، نقض العهد، بعد ذلك ركب إلى غطفان، وركب إلى هوازن، حتى ركب إلى الحبشة، فجمعوا جيوشا أتى للمدينة المنورة اثنا عشر ألفا حتى قربوا من المدينة فعلم النبي صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم بذلك فاستشار سلمان الفارسي الذي عاش في الجاهلية ستين سنة، قال له: ما الرأي في هذا؟ فقال: كنا إذا وقع لنا مثل هذا نحفر خندقا حول المدينة حتى لا يدخلها عدو، فخط النبي صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم الخندق وقسمه بين المهاجرين والأنصار وأهل البيت، فتنازعوا في سلمان الذي جاء هذا الرأي، قال المهاجرون: سلمان منا، وقال الأنصار: سلمان منا، قال النبي صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم: (سلمان منا أهل البيت)1 فلحق بأهل البيت، فصاروا يحفرون الخندق حتى وصلوا إلى حجر لا يؤثر فيه معول، فخرج سلمان وأخبر النبي صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم، فتوضأ وصب الوضوء على الحجر وهو في ذلك الوقت صام ثلاثة أيام متوالية لا يجد ما يفطر به فيواصل صومه حتى أنه وقت دخوله للخندق ربط بحجر على بطنه الشريف صلى اللّٰه عليه …

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Lesson 40 is titled by sūra rather than by āya, and its bounds (Q 31:22–Q 33:55) 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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