Q 7:187 in the tafsīr of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse

عَنِ أَيَّانَ اِنَّمَا لَا إِلَّا هُوَۖ فِے لَا إِلَّا كَأَنَّكَ عَنْهَاۖ اِنَّمَا وَلَٰكِنَّ لَا

They ask thee of the (destined) Hour, when will it come to port. Say: Knowledge thereof is with my Lord only. He alone will manifest it at its proper time. It is heavy in the heavens and the earth. It cometh not to you save unawares. They question thee as if thou couldst be well informed thereof. Say: Knowledge thereof is with Allah only, but most of mankind know not — 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-Aʿrāf begins at vol. 3, p. 191 (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 20, ¶31 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 4, p. 3 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

يظهرها (لِوَقْتِهَا إِلَّ هُوَ) وقت مجيئ الساعة لا يعلمه إلا اللّٰه تَفُلَتْ) عظمت قي اِلسَّمَٰوَتِ وَالأَرْضِ) على أهلهما لهولها لاَ تَاتِيكُمُ إِلَّا بَغْتَةَ) فجأة ( يَسْئَلُونَكَ كَأَنَّكَ حَبِىٌّ) مبالغ في السؤال أو مبالغ في العلم (عَنْهَا)) حتى علمتها (قُلِ اِنَّمَا عِلْمُهَا عِندَ اَ۬للَّهِۖ وَلَٰكِنَّ أَكْثَرَ اَ۬لنَّاسِ لَا يَعْلَمُونَۖ) أن علمها عند اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى. القيامة ثلاث: موت

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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 48, ¶94 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 9, p. 108 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

خشية اللّٰه وعين باتت تحرس في سبيل الله)1 وكثرة الضحك تميت القلب حتى لا تؤثر فيه المواعظ، يقول الرسول صلى اللّٰه عليه وسلم: (من يأخذ عني خمسا فيعمل بها أو يعلم من بعمل بها وله الجنة. قال أبو هريرة أنا يا رسول الله، قال: اتق محارم اللّٰه تكن أعبد الناس، وارض بما قسم اللّٰه لك تكن أغنى الناس، وأحسن إلى جارك تكن مؤمنا، وأحبّ للناس ما تحب لنفسك تكن مسلما، وإياك وكثرة الضحك فإن كثرة الضحك تميت القلب) 2 «آفَمِنْ هَذَا الْحَدِيثِ» القرآن «تَعْجَبُونَ» تكذيبا «وَتَضْحَكُورَ» استهزاء «وَلاَ تَبْكُونَ» لسماع وعده ووعيده (وَأَنتُمْ سَمِدُونَ) لاهون غافلون (بَاسْجُدُوا لِهِ) الذي خلقكم ( وَاعْبُدُوا ولا تسجدوا للأصنام ولا تعبدوها.

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Lesson 48 is titled by sūra rather than by āya, and its bounds (Q 51:28–Q 54:55) 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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