Q 89:27 in the tafsīr of Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse

But ah! thou soul at peace — 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-Fajr begins at vol. 10, p. 177 (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

1956 – 1964

attested span

2 of 3

text available

This verse across his life

Each mark is one work in which Shaykh Ibrāhīm engages this verse, placed by date of composition. Hollow marks are loci we know of but cannot yet show.

1960

March–April 1956al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya

1964Fī riyāḍ

Exegesis of the verse

Sustained interpretation of the verse as a verse — lemma, gloss, expansion.

al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya al-maʾkhūdha min al-qalam al-Sīrīnbiyya

الحكم القطبية المأخوذة من القلم السيرينبيةtafsīr

Shaʿbān 1375 / March–April 1956 · Arabic · al-Ḥikam al-quṭbiyya (ed. AK), p. 7 · held at students’ request

لَا يُمْكِنُ لِلنَّفْسِ الاِطْمِئْنَانُ إِلَّا بِالمَعْرِفَةِ. أَمَّا نُفُوسُ أَهْلِ الدُّنْيَا فَلَا تَطْمَئِنُّ، لِأَنَّهَا دَائِمَةٌ حَرِيصَةٌ فِي الطَّلَبِ

The soul cannot come to rest except through gnosis. The souls of worldly people never rest, because they are perpetually avid in pursuit.

yā ayyatuhā l-nafsu l-muṭmaʾinna — lā yumkin li-l-nafs al-iṭmiʾnān illā bi-l-maʿrifa. The souls of worldly people never rest: desire in pursuit cannot rest, desire in possession fears loss. WRIGHT'S 2024 THESIS (maʿrifa bi-llāh as the telos of Niasse's exegesis) stated flatly in 1956, on a verse he does not treat, in a text he does not know.

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

في رياض التفسير للقرآن الكريمtafsīr

1383 / 1964 · Arabic · Lesson 55 — vol. 10, p. 167 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · Muḥammad b. al-Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh al-Tijānī · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

In this session, not yet located. Lesson 55 is titled by sūra rather than by āya; its bounds (Q 87:1–Q 111:5) are inferred from where the neighbouring sessions begin, so they are soft at the edges. Of the 273 āyāt in that span, as many as 101 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 55 →

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 27, ¶4 · numbered by Ḥafṣ · lesson opens at vol. 5, p. 39 · the annual Ramaḍān cycle

متمكنة جدا، إذا استمرت عليها فيوضات الرحمة تصير مطمئنة بحضرة اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى لا تلتفت إلى غير ولا إلى غيرية فاستحقت النداء من الحضرة "يُأَيَّتُهَا النَفْسُ الْمُطْمَئِنَّةٌ ارْجِعِي إِلَى رَبِّكِ رَاضِيَةً مَرْضِيَّةَ" إذا رجعت إلى حضرة اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى تصير راضية بجميع مجاري أحكامه، فإذا كانت راضية تصير مرضية عند اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى. اللّٰه هو الملك الحق، والإنسان عبد والعبد لا يزال يعترض على مولاه في جميع أفعاله، ما دام لم يرض عن الله فالله لا يرضى عنه، وإذا كان راضيا عن جميع ما صدرت به الأحكام الإلهية تكون نفسه نفسا راضية وتكون مرضية عند اللّٰه تبارك وتعالى فتصير كاملة. هي سبعة مقامات: النفس الأمارة بالسوء، النفس اللوامة، النفس الملهمة، النفس المطمئنة، النفس الراضية، النفس المرضية، النفس الكاملة. سلوك غير الأنبياء من النفس الأمارة بالسوء إلى أن تصل إلى الكمال، وسلوك الأنبياء من النفس المطمئنة إلى الكمال (إِنَّ اَ۬لنَّفْسَ لَأَمَّارَةُۢ بِالسُّوٓءِ » تشمِ إلى معنى في الآية …

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Lesson 27 runs Q 12:53–Q 13:18. 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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