Lo! We offered the trust unto the heavens and the earth and the hills, but they shrank from bearing it and were afraid of it. And man assumed it. Lo! he hath proved a tyrant and a fool — 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-Aḥzāb begins at vol. 7, p. 218(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 41, ¶96 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 8, p. 3 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle
أي الشريعة المحمدية1، الصلوات الخمس وصيام رمضان والحج والزكاة؛ والأمانة أعظم من ذلك «انَّا عَرَضُنَا الأَمَانَةَ» هي الخلافة العظمى «عَلَي اَ۬لسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَالَارْضِ وَالْجِبَالِ» على الملا الأعلى والأسفل، عرض على الملا الأعلى الملائكة والحور والولدان ما أطاقوا حمل الخلافة والملا الأسفل كذلك ما أطانوا «وَأَنَيَ أَنْ يَحْيِلْتَهَا وأَشْبَفْنَ مِنْهَا وَحَمَلَهَا ألإانسَنْ» آدم بعد عرضها عليه (إنَّهُ كَانَ ظُلُوماً) لنفسه بما حمله جَهُولا به. الخلافة لا تكون إلا في بني آدم، لا يصلح للخلافة عن اللّٰه إلا البشر فيهم قوة روحانية وقوة جسمانية فبتجمع القوتين أطاق حمل الخلافة، فقال إنه عرض الأمانة وهي القطبانية العظمى الخلافة على الملا الأعلى والأسفل «بَأَيْنَ أَنْ يَحْمِلْتَهَا وأَشْقَفْرَ مِنْهَا وَحَمَلَهَا ألإنسَرْ» الخليفة «إِنَّهُ.
On ﴿We offered the trust﴾ (Q 33:72): what the trust is, and what the wrongdoing and the ignorance are
tafsīr
السؤال عن آية ﴿إِنَّا عَرَضْنَا ٱلْأَمَانَةَ﴾ الآية وما الظلم
al-Fatāwā wa-l-ajwiba · undated · Arabic · §6, p. 256 · Mawsūʿat al-āthār al-nathriyya li-ṣāḥib al-fayḍa al-Tijāniyya, maḥwar 5 · compiled by Muḥammad b. al-Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh al-Tijānī
ومختصر الجواب أن الأمانة هي الخلافة والإنسان هو الكامل في عصره كآدم وكداود إلى علي حرازم إلخ فظلمه تعدي طور العبودية والاتصاف بصفات الربوبية وجهله شهوده للذات لا يعلم ما سوى الله تعالى وذلك عين العلم فضد كسب ضدا.
The answer in brief is that the trust is the khilāfa, and the human being is the perfect one of his age, like Ādam and like Dāwūd, down to ʿAlī Ḥarāzim and so on. His wrongdoing is the overstepping of the bound of slavehood and being qualified by the attributes of Lordship; and his ignorance is his witnessing of the Essence — he knows nothing other than Allah, and that is knowledge itself. So one opposite earned an opposite.
Excerpt from the answer; the full text is not published here. Translation by Amadu Kunateh. The compiler's footnotes are not included.
§6. The edition quotes the verse without a printed reference; the identification is inferred.
The verse used, not interpreted
Here the verse warrants a claim argued from other authorities. It is not the object of commentary.
Abbreviated answers: the quṭb, the seeing of God in the Garden, ikhlāṣ, hayba, journeying, and quṭbness — editorial summary; the printing states no question here
proof-text
al-Fatāwā wa-l-ajwiba · undated · Arabic · §10, p. 260 · 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
مختصر الأجوبة: لأني أختصرها جدا خوفا على نفسي من إباحة السر. فالقطب تجل من تجليات الحق يجمع سائر التجليات، والجنة وما فيها من سائر التجليات فهي تجل من تجليات القطب ومعها خمسة عشر عالما كلها يمدها ويتصرف فيها ويستمد هو من الختم الكتم.
The answers in brief — for I am keeping them very short out of fear for myself of making the secret free for the taking. The quṭb is a tajallī among the tajalliyāt of al-Ḥaqq which gathers all the rest of the tajalliyāt; and the Garden and what is in it of all the tajalliyāt is a tajallī among the tajalliyāt of the quṭb. Along with it are fifteen worlds, all of which he supplies and disposes over, while he himself draws his supply from the Seal, the Concealed One.
Excerpt from the answer; the full text is not published here. Translation by Amadu Kunateh. The compiler's footnotes are not included.
§10. The edition quotes the verse without a printed reference; the identification is inferred.
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 and how well attested the attribution is. Loci 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.