Q 5:38 in the tafsīr of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse

بِمَا مِّنَ

As for the thief, both male and female, cut off their hands. It is the reward of their own deeds, an exemplary punishment from Allah. Allah is Mighty, Wise — 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-Māʾida begins at vol. 3, p. 33 (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

2 of 2

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 14, ¶23 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 3, p. 49 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

منها. (وَالسَّارِقُ وَالسَّارِقَةُ فَاقْطَعُوٓاْ أَيْدِيَهُمَا) يمين كل منهما من الكوع، وبينت السنة أن الذي يقطع فيه ربع دينار فصاعدا، وأنه إذا عاد قطعت رجله اليسرى من مفصل القدم ثم اليد اليسرى ثم الرجل اليمنى وبعد ذلك يعزر بالضرب. ذكر أن السارق والسارقة حكمهم أن تقطع أيديهما، وبينت السنة أن الذي تقطع فيه اليد ربع دينار. أورد يهودي شبهة على الإسلام قال: إن هذا الإسلام مضطرب حيث أوجب خمسمائة دينار في دية اليد، من قطع يد إنسان يعطيه خمسمائة دينار، وإنسان سرق ربع دينار فقط تقطع يده ما باله؟ أجابه ابن حجر بأن الأمانة هي التي أغلت اليد حتى صارت خمسمائة دينار، والخيانة هي التي أرخصتها حتى صارت ربع دينار فقط، هذا حكمة اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى. وبدأ بالرجُل عند ذكر السرقة لأن الرجل أقوى على السرقة من المرأة، كما بدأ بالمرأة في الزنا في قوله تبارك وتعالى "ألزَّانِيَةُ وَالزَّانِ" لأن المرأة أقوى على الزنا من الرجل، إن لم تقبل المرأة لا تقع الفاحشة أبدا (جَزَآءً بِمَا كَسَبَا نَكَلًا) عقوبة لهما مِسَ …

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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 41, ¶11 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 8, p. 3 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

"وَالسَّارِفُ وَالسَّارِفَةُ بَافْطَعُواْ أَيْدِيَهُمَا جَزَآءً

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Lesson 41 is titled by sūra rather than by āya, and its bounds (Q 33:56–Q 35:14) 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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