Tafsir Al Jalalayn - English — Al-Kahf 18:1 – An-Nur 24:64

Praise — which is the attribution [to a person] of that which is beautiful — is established [as something that], belongs to God [alone], exalted be He. Now, is the intention here to point this out for the purpose of believing in it, or to praise [God] thereby, or both? All are possibilities, the most profitable of which is [to understand] the third [as being the intention behind this statement]; Who has revealed to His servant, Muhammad (s), the Book, the Qur’ān, and has not allowed for it, that is, [He has not allowed that there be] in it, any crookedness, [any] variance or contradiction (the [last] sentence [wa-lam yaj‘al lahu ‘iwajan] is a circumstantial qualifier referring to al-kitāb, ‘the Book’);

[a Book] upright, (qayyiman is a second circumstantial qualifier for [added] emphasis) to warn of, to make, by this Book, the disbelievers fear, severe chastisement from Him, from God, and to bring to the believers who perform righteous deeds the good tidings that theirs will be a fair reward,

wherein they will abide forever, and this [reward] is Paradise;

and to warn those, from among the disbelievers, who say, ‘God has taken a son’.

They do not have, in this, in this saying, any knowledge, nor did their fathers, before them, who [also] used to say this. Dreadful, grave, is the word that comes out of their mouths (kalimatan, ‘word’, is for specification and it explains the unidentified [feminine] person [of the verb, kaburat, ‘dreadful’]; and that which is the object of censure has been omitted, and that is their above-mentioned saying [that God has taken a son]). They speak nothing, thereby, but, an utterance of, lies.

Yet it may be that you will consume, destroy, yourself in their wake — following [your being with] them, that is, after they have left you — if they should not believe in this discourse, [in this] Qur’ān, out of grief, out of rage and anguish on your part, because of your eagerness that they believe (asafan, ‘out of grief’, is in the accusative because it functions as an object denoting reason).

Truly We have made all that is on the earth, in the way of animals, plants, trees, rivers and so on, as an adornment for it, that We may try them, that We may test mankind observing thereby, which of them is best in conduct, therein, that is, [to see which of them] is the most abstemious of it.

And indeed We shall turn all that is therein into barren shreds, that produce no plants.

Or did you think, did you suppose, that the Companions of the Cave, the cavern in the mountain, and the Inscription, the tablet wherein their names and lineages had been inscribed — the Prophet (s) had been asked about their tale — were, with regard to their tale, a [unique] marvel from among, the entirety [of], Our signs? (‘ajaban, ‘a marvel’ is the predicate of [the defective verb] kāna [sc. kānū], the preceding [min āyātinā, ‘from among Our signs’] being a circumstantial qualifier). In other words, [did you suppose] that they were a marvel exclusively from among all [Our] other signs, or that they were the most marvellous among them? Not so.

Mention, when the youths took refuge in the Cave (fitya, ‘youths’, is the plural of fatā, and denotes a mature young man) fearing for their faith from their disbelieving people, they said, ‘Our Lord! Give us mercy from Yourself and remedy for us our affair through rectitude’, [through Your] guidance.

So We smote their ears, that is, We made them sleep, in the Cave for several years, for a [fixed] number of years.

Then We aroused them, We awakened them, that We might know, a knowledge of direct vision, which of the two parties, the two groups in disagreement over the length of their stay [in the cave], was better in calculating (ahsā is [of the pattern] of af‘al, meaning ‘more precise’]) what they had tarried (li-mā labithū is semantically connected to the following) in [terms of the] length of time (amadan, [in the accusative] denotes purpose).

We relate, recite, to you their story with truth, that is, truthfully. They were indeed youths who believed in their Lord, and We increased them in guidance.

And We strengthened their hearts, to [enable them to] speak the truth, when they stood up, before their king, who had commanded them to prostrate to idols, and said, ‘Our Lord is the Lord of the heavens and the earth. We will not call on any god besides Him, that is, other than Him, for then we shall certainly have uttered an outrage, in other words, [we shall have spoken] a statement that contains shatat, meaning one of extreme disbelief, were we, hypothetically, to call on any god other than God.

These (hā’ūlā’ is the subject [of the sentence]) our people (qawmunā is an explicative supplement [to the subject]) have taken gods besides Him. Why [if what they claim is true] do they not bring some clear warrant, some manifest argument, regarding them? regarding worship of these [idols]. And who does greater wrong — in other words, no one does greater wrong — than he who invents a lie against God?, by ascribing partners to Him, exalted be He. Some among the youths said to the others:

And when you withdraw from them and from that which they worship except God, then take refuge in the Cave. Your Lord will reveal for you something of His mercy and prepare for you in your affair some comfort’ (read mirfaqan or marfiqan), that is to say, something for you to find comfort in, in the way of lunch or supper.

And you might have seen the sun, when it rose, inclining (read tazzāwaru or tazāwaru) away from their Cave towards the right, side of it, and, when it set, go past them on the left, avoid them and pass over them, so that it does not fall on them at all, while they were in a cavern therein, in an ample space inside the Cave where the coolness and the gentle breeze of the winds reached them. That, which is mentioned, was [one] of God’s signs, [one of] the proofs of His power. Whomever God guides, he indeed is rightly guided, and whomever He leads astray, you will not find for him a guiding friend.

And you would have supposed them — had you seen them — awake, that is, conscious, because their eyes were open (ayqāz, ‘awake’, is the plural of yaqiz), though they were asleep (ruqūd is the plural of rāqid). And We caused them to turn over to the right and to the left, lest the earth consume their flesh, and their dog [lay] stretching its forelegs, his paws, on the threshold, at the opening of the cave: whenever they turned over it would turn over just like them, both during sleep and consciousness. If you had observed them you would have turned away from them in flight and you would have been filled (read la-mulli’ta or la-muli’ta) with awe because of them (read ru‘ban or ru‘uban, ‘awe’): [it was] through this awe that God protected them from anyone entering upon them.

And so, just as We did with them that which We have mentioned, it was that We aroused them, We awakened them, that they might question one another, concerning their state and the length of their stay [in the cave]. One of them said, ‘How long have you tarried?’ They said, ‘We have tarried a day, or part of a day’: [he said this] because they had entered the cave at sunrise and were awakened at sunset, and so they thought that it was [the time of] sunset on the day of their entry. Then, they said, unsure about this [fact], ‘Your Lord knows best how long you have tarried. Now send one of you with this silver coin of yours (read bi-warqikum or bi-wariqikum) to the city — which is said to be the one now called Tarsus (Tarasūs) — and let him see which is the purest food, that is, which of the foods of the city is the purest, and [let him] bring you a supply thereof. Let him be careful and not make anyone aware of you.

For indeed if they should come to know of you, they will [either] stone you, kill you by stoning, or make you return to their creed, and then, if you do return to their creed, you will never prosper’.

And so, just as We aroused them, it was that We disclosed them, [to] their people and the believers, that they, that is, their people, might know that God’s promise, of resurrection, is true: by virtue of the fact that One Who has the power to make them sleep for [such] a long period of time, or sustain them in that state without nourishment, also has the power to resurrect the dead; and that, as for the Hour, there is no doubt, no uncertainty, concerning it. Behold (idh adverbially qualifies a‘tharnā, ‘We disclosed’) they were disputing, that is, the believers and the disbelievers, among themselves their affair, the affair of the youths, with regard to building something around them [as a monument]; so they, the disbelievers, said, ‘Build over them, that is, around them, a building, to cover them up; their Lord knows them best.’ Those who prevailed regarding their affair, the affair of the youths, namely, the believers, ‘We will verily set up over them, around them, a place of worship’, for prayers to be performed therein. And this indeed took place at the entrance of the cave.

They will say, that is, [some of] those disputing the number of the youths [of the cave] at the time of the Prophet (s), in other words, some of these will say that they [the youths] were: ‘Three; their dog the fourth of them’; and they, some [others] among them, will say, ‘Five; their dog the sixth of them’ — both of these sayings were those of the Christians of Najrān — guessing at random, in other words, out of supposition, not having been present with them [at the time], and this [statement ‘guessing at random’] refers back to both sayings, and is in the accusative because it is an object denoting reason, in other words, [they said this] for the reason that they were [merely] supposing it. And they, that is, the believers, will say, ‘Seven; and their dog the eighth of them’ (the sentence is [part of] the subject clause, the predicate of which is the adjectival qualification of sab‘a, ‘seven’ [namely, thāminuhum, ‘the eighth of them’] with the additional wāw [wa-thāminuhum], which is said to be for emphasis, or an indication that the adjective is [semantically] attached to that which it is qualifying). The qualification of the first two sayings as being ‘random’, but not the third, is proof that [the latter] is the satisfactory and correct [number]. Say: ‘My Lord knows best their number, and none knows them except a few’: Ibn ‘Abbās said, ‘I am [one] of these “few” [described]’, and he mentioned that they were seven. So do not contend concerning them except with an outward manner [of contention], [except] with that which has been revealed to you, and do not question concerning them, do not ask for opinions [from], any of them, [from] the People of the Scripture, the Jews. The people of Mecca asked him [the Prophet] about the story of the People of the Cave, and so he said to them, ‘I will tell you about it tomorrow’, but without adding [the words], ‘If God wills’ (inshā’a’ Llāhu) and so the following was revealed:

And never say regarding something, that is, for the purpose of [doing] something, ‘I will indeed do that tomorrow’, in other words, [I will do something] at some future [point] in time,

without [adding], ‘If God will’, in other words, unless [firmly] adhering to the will of God, exalted be He, by saying, ‘If God will’ (inshā’a’Llāh). And remember your Lord, that is, [remember] His will, making [things] conditional on it, if you forget, to make [things] conditional on it: mentioning it after forgetting [it] is the equal [in validity] to mentioning it at the time of the statement — as al-Hasan [al-Basrī] and others have said — as long as the person is still in the [same] place [in which he made the statement]. And say, ‘May be my Lord will guide me to [something] closer [in time] than this, [closer] than the story of the People of the Cave, as an indication of [the truth of] my prophethood, by way of guidance, and God indeed did so.

And they tarried in the Cave three hundred (read [with tanwīn] thalāthami’atin) years (sinīn is an explicative supplement to thalāthami’atin, ‘three hundred’): these three hundred years in the case of the People of the Cave were solar years; but for [the number of] lunar ones, the Arabs add nine years thereto, and this is mentioned in His saying: and add nine, that is, nine years; in other words three hundred solar years, while three hundred and nine lunar ones.

Say: ‘God is more knowledgeable of how long they tarried, [more knowledgeable] than those contending over this [issue] — and this [fact] has already been mentioned [above, verse 19]. To Him belongs the Unseen of the heavens and the earth, that is, [to Him belongs] the knowledge thereof. How well He sees!, namely, God — this form is for [expressing] amazement [at something]. How well He hears!, likewise [for expressing amazement]. These two [expressions] are being used metaphorically. What is meant is that nothing can escape God’s sight or hearing. They, the inhabitants of the heavens and the earth, have no guardian, someone to assist [them], besides Him, and He makes none to share in His rule’, for He is Independent, without need of a partner.

And recite that which has been revealed to you of the Book of your Lord. There is none who can change His words. And you will not find, besides Him, any refuge.

And restrain yourself, detain [yourself], along with those who call upon their Lord at morning and evening, desiring, through their worship, His Countenance, exalted be He, and not any of the transient things of this world — and these are the poor; and do not let your eyes overlook, turn away [from], them — these [the eyes] are being used to refer to the person [addressed] — desiring the glitter of the life of this world. And do not obey him whose heart We have made oblivious to Our remembrance, that is, [to] the Qur’ān — this was ‘Uyayna b. Hisn and his companions — and who follows his own whim, by attributing partners [to God], and whose conduct is [mere] prodigality, excess.

And say, to him and to his companions that this Qur’ān is, ‘The truth [that comes] from your Lord; so whoever will, let him believe, and whoever will, let him disbelieve’ — this is [meant as] a threat to them. Indeed We have prepared for the wrongdoers, that is, the disbelievers, a Fire, and they will be surrounded by its pavilion, [by] that which encloses [the Fire itself]. If they cry out for help, they will be succoured with water like molten copper, like thick [burning] oil, which scalds faces, because of [the intensity of] its heat, if it is brought near them. What an evil drink, that is, and how ill, is the Fire [as], a resting-place! (murtafaqan is a specification derived from the agent of the verb, in other words, vile is the person choosing to rest thereon; and this is in contrast to what He will say next about Paradise: How fair a resting-place [below, verse 31]. For, indeed, what resting-place can there be in the Fire?

Truly those who believe and perform righteous deeds — indeed We do not leave the reward of those of good deeds to go to waste (this [last] sentence is the predicate of the [previous] inna’lladhīna, ‘truly those who’, and in it an overt identification [of the recipients of the reward] has replaced the [would-be] pronominalisation, in other words, it is ‘their reward’ [which shall not be left to go to waste], and We will reward them with what it [the reward of good-doers] comprises).

Those, for them there shall be Gardens of Eden, as a [place of] residence, underneath which rivers flow; therein they shall be adorned with bracelets of gold (min asāwir: it is said that min here is either extra or partitive; it [asāwir] is the plural of aswira — similar [in pattern] to ahmira [for himār] — which is the plural of siwār) and they shall wear green garments of fine silk (sundus) and [heavy] silk brocade (istabraq is that [silk] which is coarse: [God says] in the verse of [sūrat] al-Rahmān [Q. 55:54], lined with [heavy] silk brocade); reclining therein on couches (arā’ik is the plural of arīka, which is a bed inside a [curtained] canopy, and is also a tent adorned with garments and curtains for a bride). How excellent a reward, a requital, is Paradise, and how fair a resting-place!

And strike, coin, for them, for the disbelievers together with the believers, a similitude: two men (rajulayn is a substitute [for mathalan, ‘a similitude’] and constitutes, together with what follows, an explanation of the similitude), to one of whom, the disbeliever, We had assigned two gardens, orchards, of vines, and We had surrounded them with date-palms and had set between them [a field of] crops, from which he acquired [his] food supplies.

Each of the two gardens (kiltā, ‘each [of the two]’ is a singular [noun] that indicates a dual [number]; and [the entire clause] is the subject) yielded (ātat is the predicate thereof) its produce, its fruit, without stinting, diminishing, anything thereof. And We caused a stream to gush forth therein, to run through them.

And he had, together with his two gardens, fruit (read thamar, thumur, or thumr, [all of which constitute] the plural of thamra, [sing.] ‘a fruit’, similar [in pattern] to shajara [pl.] shajar, khashaba [pl.] khushb, or badana [pl.] budn) and he said to his companion, the believer, as he conversed with him, boasting before him: ‘I have more wealth than you and am stronger in respect of men’, in respect of clansmen.

And he entered his garden, [taking] with him his companion, accompanying him all around it, showing him its fruits — God does not say [here] his ‘two gardens’, because what is meant is the beautiful [part of the] garden (rawda); or because [to mention just] one suffices — having wronged himself, through [his] disbelief. He said, ‘I do not think that [all] this will ever perish, become non-existent.

Moreover, I do not think that the Hour will ever come; and [even] if I am indeed returned to my Lord, in the Hereafter, according to your claim, I shall surely find better than this as a resort’, as a [place of] return.

His companion said to him, as he conversed with him, responding to him: ‘Do you disbelieve in Him Who created you of dust — as Adam was created of it — then of a drop of fluid, [of] semen, then fashioned you, made you upright and gave you the form of, a man?

But lo (lākinnā is actually [made up of] lākin anā, ‘but I … ’, where the hamza vowel has [either] been transferred onto the nūn [of lākin], or omitted [altogether] with the nūn assimilated with the like of it) He [is] (huwa, this is the pronoun of the [subject] matter [to be stated] and is clarified by the sentence that follows it: the meaning [in other words] is ‘[But, it is that] I say that [He is]’) God, my Lord, and I do not ascribe any partner to my Lord.

And if only when you entered your garden, you had said, upon admiring it, ‘This is “What God has willed. There is no power except in God”. In a hadīth [it is stated that]: ‘Whoever is given something good in the way of family or wealth and upon receiving it says, “What God wills [comes to pass]; there is no power except in God” (mā shā’a’Llāh lā quwwata illā bi’Llāh), he will never experience any ill therefrom’. If you see me (anā is a pronoun separating two direct objects) as less than you in wealth and children,

maybe my Lord will give me [something] better than your garden (this is the response to the conditional clause [beginning with lawlā, ‘and if only’]) and unleash upon it bolts (husbān is the plural of husbāna), that is to say, thunderbolts, from the heaven so that it becomes a bare plain, a [piece of] smooth ground upon which no foot can stand firm;

or [maybe] its water will sink [deep] down (ghawran functions in meaning like ghā’iran, and it constitutes a supplement to yursila, ‘He [will] unleash’, but not [a supplement] to tusbiha, ‘it becomes’, because the sinking of water [deep into the earth] does not [necessarily] result from thunderbolts) so that you have no means of acquiring it’, no possible way of reaching it.

And his fruit was beset, through the curbing measures mentioned above, [it was beset] together with his garden by destruction and were thus ruined, and so he began to wring his hands, out of regret and anguish, because of what he had spent on it, on the cultivation of his garden, as it lay fallen, [having] collapsed, on its trellises, those supporting the vines, so that [first] these collapsed and then the vine-grapes collapsed [after them], saying, ‘O (yā is for exclamation) I wish I had not ascribed any partner to my Lord!’

But there was no (read takun or yakun) party, [no] persons, to help him, besides God, at the moment of its destruction, nor could he help himself, at the moment of its destruction, [all by] himself.

There, that is, [on] the Day of Resurrection, [all] protection (walāya; if read wilāya, then [it means] ‘sovereignty’) belongs to God, the True (if read as al-haqqu then it is as an adjective qualifying walāya [or wilāya], or [if] read as al-haqqi, then it is an attribute of [God’s] Majesty). He is better at rewarding, than the rewarding of any [person] other than Him, if such [a person] were [in a position to] reward; and best in consequence (read ‘uquban or ‘uqban), [He is best] in terms of the consequence for believers (both [thawāban, ‘rewarding’, and ‘uqban, ‘consequence’] are in the accusative for [the purpose of] specification).

And strike, draw, for them, your people, the similitude of the life of this world (mathala’l-hayāti’l-dunyā constitutes the first direct object) as water (ka-mā’in, the second direct object) which We send down out from the heaven, and the vegetation of the earth mingles with it, [the vegetation] multiplies by the sending down of the water; or it is that the water mixes with the vegetation such that it is nourished and flourishes; and it then becomes, the vegetation becomes, chaff, dried up, its [various] parts [broken up] in fragments, scattered, strewn and dispersed, by the winds, which then blow it away. The import is: [the life of] this world is likened to flourishing vegetation which then becomes dry, is broken up and scattered by the winds (a variant reading [for riyāh, ‘winds’] has rīh). And God is Omnipotent, Powerful, over all things.

Wealth and children are an adornment of the life of this world, [adornment] with which one arrays oneself therein. But the enduring things, the righteous deeds — and these are: ‘Glory be to God’ (subhāna’Llāh), ‘Praise be to God’ (al-hāmdu li’Llāh), ‘There is no god but God (lā ilāha illā’Llāh), ‘God is Great’ (Allāhu akbar); some add [the following] ‘There is no power or strength except in God’ (lā hawla wa-lā quwwata illā bi’Llāh) — [these] are better with your Lord for reward and better in [respect of] hope, in other words, [they are better] in terms of what a person hopes for and desires from God, exalted be He.

And, mention, the day when the mountains shall be set in motion — they shall be removed from the face of the earth and become ‘[as] scattered dust’ [Q. 56:6] (a variant reading [for tusayyaru’l-jibālu] has nusayyiru’l-jibāla, ‘We shall set the mountains in motion’) and you will see the earth exposed, manifest [in full view], with no mountain or anything else on top of it. And We shall gather them, believers and disbelievers, such that We will not leave out anyone of them.

And they shall be presented before your Lord in ranks (saffan is a circumstantial qualifier) in other words, ranged so that every community is in a row [on its own], and it shall be said to them: ‘Verily you have come to Us just as We created you the first time, that is to say, individually, barefoot, naked and uncircumcised; and it shall be said to the deniers of the Resurrection: rather you claimed that (a [of allan] is an, softened in place of the hardened one, in other words [it is to be understood as] annahu) We would not appoint for you a tryst’, for resurrection.

And the Book shall be set in place, the Book of every man — in his right hand, if [he is from] among the believers, and in his left hand, if [he is from] among the disbelievers. And you will see the guilty, the disbelievers, apprehensive, fearful, of what is in it, and they will say, when they observe the evil deeds [recorded] in it: ‘O (yā is for exclamation) woe to us!, [O this is] our destruction! (this [form waylatanā] is a verbal noun, but in this form it cannot be [conjugated as] a verb) What is it with this Book that it leaves out neither small nor great, from among our sins, but [instead it] has counted it?’, enumerated it and fixed it [in the record] — they are stupefied by it in this respect. And they shall find all that they did present, fixed [in writing] in their [individual] Book. And your Lord does not wrong anyone, He does not punish him [if he is] without guilt, nor does He diminish [anything of] the reward of a believer.

And when (idh is dependent because it is governed by [an implicit] udhkur, ‘mention [when]’) We said to the angels, ‘Prostrate before Adam’, a prostration involving a bow, not placing one’s forehead down [to the ground], as a greeting to him; and so they prostrated, [all] except Iblīs. He was [one] of the jinn — some say that these [creatures] are a species of angels, in which case the exceptive clause [illā Iblīs, ‘except Iblīs’] is a continuous one; but it is also said to be discontinuous, since Iblīs is [considered] the progenitor of [all] the jinn, having offspring who are mentioned alongside him further below; angels, on the other hand, do not have offspring; and he transgressed against his Lord’s command, that is to say, he rebelled against obedience to Him by refraining from [performing] the prostration. Will you then take him and his offspring — this address is to Adam and his progeny (the [final pronominal suffix] hā’ in both words refers to Iblīs) for your patrons instead of Me, obeying them, when they are an enemy to you?, in other words, [when they are your] enemies (wa-hum lakum ‘aduwwun is a circumstantial qualifier). How evil for the evildoers is that substitute!, of Iblīs and his offspring, in obeying them instead of obeying God.

I did not make them a witness, that is, Iblīs and his offspring, to the creation of the heavens and the earth, nor to their own creation, that is to say, I did not make any of them present at the [moment of the] creation of the other. Nor do I take misleaders, devils, as [My] support, as assistants in [the process of] creation, so why do you obey them?

And the day (yawma is in the accusative because it is governed by [the implicit] udhkur, ‘mention’) when He will say (yaqūl, or [it may be] read as naqūl, ‘We will say’), ‘Call those partners of Mine, [those] graven images, as you used to claim’, let them intercede for you in the way you used to claim; and then they will call them, but they will not respond to their call, they will not answer them, and We shall set between them, between the graven images and those who worship them, a gulf of doom — a valley from among the valleys of Hell, in which they shall all be destroyed (the term [mawbiq] derives from [the verb] wabaqa meaning halaka, ‘he was destroyed’).

And the criminals will behold the Fire and realise that, are certain that, they are about to fall into it. And they will find no means of avoiding it, of circumventing [it].

And verily We have dispensed, We have explained, for mankind in this Qur’ān [an example] of every kind of similitude (min kulli mathalin is an adjective qualifying an omitted clause, in other words, ‘[We have dispensed therein] a similitude from every kind of similitude), that they may be admonished. But man is most disputatious, [he is] most contentious in matters of falsehood (jadalan is a specification derived from [al-insān, ‘man’] the subject of kāna) in other words, the meaning is that the disputatiousness of man is what can be found in him most.

And nothing prevented people, that is, the disbelievers of Mecca, from believing (an yu’minū is [after al-nāsa, ‘people’] constitutes the second direct object clause) when the guidance, the Qur’ān, came to them, and from asking forgiveness of their Lord, without that there should come upon them the precedent of the ancients (sunnatu’l-awwalīn constitutes the subject of the verb) that is to say, Our precedent of dealing with them, which is the destruction decreed for them, or that the chastisement should come upon them before their very eyes, in front of them and for them to see — which was their being killed on the day of Badr (a variant reading [for qibalan] has qubulan, which [in the accusative] is the plural of qabīlin, meaning, ‘of various kinds’).

And We do not send messengers except as bearers of good tidings, to believers, and as warners, as threateners to disbelievers. But those who disbelieve dispute with falsehood, when they say that, ‘Has God sent a human as a messenger [from Him]?’ [Q. 17:94] and the like of such [statements], that they may refute thereby, that by way of their disputing they may invalidate, the truth, the Qur’ān. And they have taken My signs, namely, the Qur’ān, and that whereof they have been warned, in the way of the Fire, derisively, in mockery.

And who does greater wrong than he who has been reminded of the signs of his Lord, yet turns away from them and forgets what his hands have sent ahead?, what he has committed in the way of disbelief and acts of disobedience. Indeed on their hearts We have cast veils, coverings, lest they should understand it, that is, lest they should comprehend the Qur’ān, in other words, and so [as a result] they do not comprehend it; and in their ears a deafness, a heaviness, and so they do not hear it; and though you call them to guidance, they will not be guided in that case, that is, given the casting [of veils] mentioned, ever.

And your Lord is the Forgiver, Full of Mercy. Were He to take them to task, in this world, for what they have earned, He would have hastened for them the chastisement, therein; but they have a tryst, which is the Day of Resurrection, from which they will not find any escape, any refuge.

And those towns, that is to say, the inhabitants of those [towns], such as ‘Ād and Thamūd, as well as others, We destroyed them when they did evil, [when] they disbelieved, and We appointed for their destruction (a variant reading [for mahlikihim] has muhlakihim) a tryst.

And, mention, when Moses, son of Amram (‘Imrān), said to his lad, Joshua son of Nun (Yūsha‘ bin Nūn), who used to follow him around, serve him and acquire knowledge from him, ‘I will not give up, I will not stop journeying, until I have reached the juncture of the two seas — the point where the Byzantine sea and the Persian sea meet, beyond the east, — though I march on for ages’, for a very long time before reaching it, if it be far.

So when they reached a juncture between the two, between the two seas, they forgot their fish — Joshua forgot his luggage [leaving it behind] at the moment of departure, and Moses forgot to remind him — and so it, the fish, made its way into the sea, that is, it formed it — through God’s forming it — by burrowing, that is, like [through] a burrow, which is a passage that is long and enclosed; this was [so] because God, exalted be He, held back the flow of the water [preventing it] from [engulfing] the fish and it [the water] withdrew from around it [the fish] and remained thus like a cleft without closing, and what was beneath it [the cleft] stood still.

And when they had made the traverse, of that location, having journeyed until the morning of the following day, he, Moses, said to his lad, ‘Bring us our breakfast, (ghadā’) that [meal] which is consumed at the beginning of the day. We have certainly encountered on this journey of ours much fatigue’, exhaustion, which took its effect [on them] after the traverse.

He said, ‘Do you see? — in other words, remember, when we sheltered at the rock, in that location, indeed I forgot the fish — and none but Satan made me forget (al-shaytān, ‘Satan’, substitutes for the [suffixed pronoun] hā’ [of ansānī-hu]) to mention it (an adhkurahu, an inclusive substitution, in other words [it should be understood as] ansānī dhikrahu, ‘he [Satan] made me forget the mentioning of it’) — and it, the fish, made its way into the sea in an amazing manner’ (‘ajaban constitutes the second direct object), that is to say, Moses and his lad were amazed by it, because of what has already been explained concerning it.

Said he, Moses, ‘That, namely, our losing the fish, is what we have been seeking!’, what we have been after, for it is a sign for us of the presence of the one whom we seek. So they turned back, retracing their footsteps, until they reached the rock.

So [there] they found one of Our servants, namely, al-Khidr, to whom We had given mercy from Us — according to one opinion this [mercy] was prophethood; according to another it was authority, and this [latter] is the opinion of the majority of scholars — and We had taught him knowledge from Us (‘ilman is the second direct object), in other words, some knowledge of unseen things; al-Bukhārī reports the [following] hadīth: ‘Moses was delivering a sermon among the Children of Israel and was asked, “Who is the most knowledgeable of people?”, to which he [Moses] said, “Myself”. God then reproached him for not having attributed [his] knowledge as [coming] from Him. God then revealed to him the following: “Truly, there is a servant of Mine at the juncture of the two seas; he is more knowledgeable than you”. Moses then asked, “My Lord, how do I reach him?” He [God] said, ‘Take a fish with you and place it in a basket and [the place] where you lose the fish will be [the place] where he is.” He [Moses] took a fish and placed it in a basket and departed together with his lad Joshua son of Nun until they reached the rock. [There] they placed their heads back and fell asleep. The fish began to move about in the basket, until it escaped from it and fell into the sea, and it made its way into the sea in an amazing manner. God then held back the flow of the water [preventing it] from [engulfing] the fish, forming a kind of arch over it. When he awoke, his companion [Joshua] forgot to inform him of [what had happened to] the fish, and so they journeyed on for the remainder of that day and night until on the morning [of the second day] Moses said to his lad, ‘Bring us our breakfast’, to where he says, and it made its way into the sea in an amazing manner’. He [Bukhārī] said, ‘For the fish, it [the way into the sea] was [by] ‘burrowing’ (saraban), and for Moses and his lad it [this way] was ‘amazing’ (‘ajaban) …’ [and so on] to the end [of Bukhārī’s report].

Moses said to him, ‘May I follow you for the purpose that you teach me of what you have been taught [in the way] of probity?’, namely, [something] of right conduct through which I might be rightly-guided (a variant reading [for rashadan] has rushdan, ‘probity’); he asked him this because to increase [one’s] knowledge is [something which is] always sought.

Said he, ‘Truly you will not be able to bear with me.

And how can you bear with that whereof you have never been informed?’: in the above-mentioned hadīth [of Bukhārī] after this verse [there is the following statement]: ‘O Moses, I possess knowledge which God has taught me and which you do not have, and [equally] you possess knowledge which God has taught you and which I do not have’. (His saying khubran, ‘informed’, is a verbal noun meaning that which you have never encompassed, in other words, the truth of which you have never been informed of.)

He said, ‘You will find me, God willing, patient, and I will not disobey, in other words, and [you will also find me] non-disobedient [towards], you in any matter’, with which you charge me. He [Moses] made this [statement] conditional upon the Will [of God] because he was not confident of himself in what he had committed himself to. Indeed, this is the custom of prophets and saints, namely, that they do not put their trust in themselves for a single moment.

He said, ‘If you follow me then do not question me (lā tas’alnī, a variant reading has lā tas’alannī) concerning anything, that you might find objectionable in what I do, according to your [limited] knowledge, and be patient, until I [myself] make mention of it to you’, in other words, [until] I mention it to you with [an explication of] the reason for it. Moses accepted his precondition bearing in mind the respect which a student should exercise in the presence of a teacher.

So they set off, making their way on foot along the coast of the sea, until, when they embarked on the ship, which was carrying them, he, al-Khidr, made a hole in it, by destroying a plank or two on the starboard side with an axe after they had sailed into deep waters. Said he, Moses, to him, ‘Did you make a hole in it to drown its people? (li-tughriqa ahlahā, ‘for you to drown its people’; a variant reading has li-yaghraqa ahluhā, ‘so that its people might drown’). You have certainly done a dreadful thing’, that is, a grave and reprehensible thing — it is reported that the water did not [actually] penetrate it.

He said, ‘Did I not say [that] you would not be able to bear with me?’

He said, ‘Do not take me to task on account of that which I forgot, that is, [on account of the fact that] I was not mindful of submitting to you [in the matter] and of refraining from showing disapproval of your actions, and do not exhaust me, [do not] charge me, in this affair of mine with difficulty’, [with] hardship during my companionship of you, in other words, treat me throughout it with forgiveness and indulgence.

So they set off, after leaving the ship, making their way on foot, until, when they met a boy, who had not yet reached puberty, playing with [other] boys, among whom his face was the fairest — and he, al-Khidr, slew him, by slitting his throat with a knife while he lay down, or by tearing his head off with his hand, or by smashing his head against a wall, all of which are [different] opinions (the coordinating fā’ [of fa-qatalahu, ‘and he slew him’] is used here because [it indicates that] the slaying took place after the encounter; the response to idhā, ‘when’ is [the following statement, qāla …]) — he, Moses, said, to him: ‘Have you slain an innocent soul, that is, a pure one that had not reached the age of [legal] responsibility (a variant reading [for zākiya] has zakiyya), [one slain] not in retaliation for another soul?, in other words, one that has not slain any soul. Verily you have committed an dreadful thing’ (read nukran or nukuran), that is to say, an abomination.

He said, ‘Did I not say to you that you would never be able to bear with me?’ (laka, ‘to you’, has been added to that [same statement] which was made before because this time there could not be any excuse [for Moses’s impatience].

And for this reason, he said, ‘If I ask you about anything after this, after this instance, then do not keep me in your company, do not allow me to follow you, for truly you [will] have found from me (read ladunnī or ladunī), on my part, [sufficient enough] excuse’, for you to part company with me.

So they set off, until, when they came to the folk of a [certain] town, namely, Antioch (Antākya), they asked its folk for food, they asked them for food by way of hospitality, but they refused to extend them any hospitality. They then found in it a wall, one hundred cubits high, about to collapse, that is, it was close to falling down because of its tilt; so he, al-Khidr, straightened it, with his [own] hands. He, Moses, said, to him, ‘Had you wished, you could have taken (a variant reading [for la-ttakhadhta] has la-takhidhta) a wage for it’, some [sort of] payment, since they did not extend us any hospitality despite our need for food.

Said he, al-Khidr, to him, ‘This is the parting, that is, the moment for parting, between me and you (baynī wa-baynika, here [the preposition] bayna has been annexed to a non-multiple [noun], but this is allowed [grammatically] because it is then repeated with [its other noun together with] the coordinating wāw). I will inform you, before I part company with you, the interpretation of that over which you were not able to maintain patience.

As for the ship, it belonged to poor people, ten [in number], who earned a living on the sea, with it, leasing it [to others], as a way of gaining [a living]; and I wanted to make it defective, for behind them, whenever they returned — or [meaning] before them now — was a king, a disbeliever, seizing every ship, that was usable, by force (ghasban, is in the accusative as a verbal noun containing an explanation of the nature of such ‘seizure’).

And as for the boy, his parents were believers and We feared lest he should overwhelm them with insolence and disbelief — for he is as [described] by the hadīth of Muslim, ‘He was [incorrigibly] disposed to disbelief, and had he lived [longer] this [disposition of his] would have oppressed them, because of their love for him, they would have followed him in such [a path of disbelief]’.

So We desired that their Lord should give them in exchange (read yubaddilahumā or yubdilahumā) one better than him in purity, that is, in righteousness and God-fearing, and closer, than him, to mercy (read ruhman or ruhuman, in other words [it is to be understood as] rahmatan, ‘by way of mercy’) namely, [closer to] dutifulness towards his parents. Thus God, exalted be He, gave them in exchange a girl, who [afterwards] married a prophet and gave birth to a prophet through whom God guided an entire community.

And as for the wall, it belonged to two orphan boys [who lived] in the city, and beneath it there was a treasure, a buried trove of gold and silver, belonging to them. Their father had been a righteous man, and so because of his righteousness they were protected both in [terms of] their souls and their possessions, and your Lord desired that they should come of age, that is, [He desired for them] the attainment of maturity, and extract their treasure as a mercy from your Lord (rahmatan min rabbik is a direct object denoting reason, operated by [the verb] arāda, ‘He desired’). And I did not do it, namely, what has been mentioned of [his] making a hole in the ship, the slaying of the boy and the repair of the wall, of my own accord, that is, [out of] my own choosing; nay, it was because of a command in the form of an inspiration from God. This is the interpretation of that over which you could not maintain patience’ (one may say istā‘a or istatā‘a to mean ‘he had the capacity for [something]’; in this instance and the previous one both forms [of the verb] have been used. Moreover, there is a variety of expression in the use of fa-aradtu, ‘I desired’, fa-aradnā, ‘We desired’, and fa-arāda rabbuk, ‘Your Lord desired’).

And they, the Jews, question you concerning Dhū’l-Qarnayn, whose name was Alexander; he was not a prophet. Say: ‘I shall recite, relate, to you a mention, an account, of him’, of his affair.

Indeed We empowered him throughout the land, by facilitating [for him] the journeying therein, and We gave him to everything, of which one might have need, a way, a route to lead him to that which he sought.

And he followed a way, he took a route towards the west,

until, when he reached the setting of the sun, the place where it sets, he found it setting in a muddy spring (‘ayn hami’a: [a spring] containing ham’a, which is black clay): its setting in a spring is [described as seen] from the perspective of the eye, for otherwise it is far larger [in size] than this world; and he found by it, that is, [by] the spring, a folk, of disbelievers. We said, ‘O Dhū’l-Qarnayn — by [means of] inspiration — either chastise, the folk, by slaying [them], or treat them kindly’, by [merely] taking them captive.

He said, ‘As for him who does wrong, by way of [practising] idolatry, we shall chastise him, We shall slay him. Then he shall be returned to his Lord and He shall chastise him with an awful chastisement (read nukran or nukuran), that is, a severe [one], in the Fire.

But as for him who believes and acts righteously, he shall have the fairest reward, namely, Paradise (the annexation construction [jazā’u l-husnā, ‘the fairest reward’] is explicative; a variant reading has jazā’an al-husnā, ‘[he shall have] as a requital that which is fairest’; al-Farrā’ said that this accusative [reading of jazā’an] is [intended] as an explanation [of the nature of the requital] by way of attribution [to ‘that which is fairest’]; and we shall speak to him mildly in our command’, that is to say, we shall command him with what he will find easy [to bear].

Then he followed a way, towards the east,

until, when he reached the rising of the sun, the place where it rises, he found it rising on a folk, namely, Negroes (zanj), for whom We had not provided against it, that is, [against] the sun, any [form of] cover, in the way of clothing or roofing, as their land could not support any structures; they had underground tunnels into which they would disappear at the rising of the sun and out of which they would emerge when it was at its highest point [in the sky].

So [it was], in other words, the situation was as We have stated; and We encompassed whatever pertained to him, that is, what Dhū’l-Qarnayn possessed in the way of machinery, men and otherwise, in knowledge.

Then he followed a way,

until, when he reached between the two barriers (read al-saddayn or al-suddayn here and [likewise] further below [at verse 94, saddan or suddan]) — [these were] two mountains [lying] in the remote regions beyond the land of the Turks; Alexander sealed the breach between the two, as will be described [below] — he found on this side of them, that is, in front of them, a folk that could scarcely comprehend speech, in other words, they could only understand it after much agonising (a variant reading [for yafqahūna, ‘comprehend’] has yufqihūna, ‘be understood’).

They said, ‘O Dhū’l-Qarnayn, truly Gog and Magog (read Ya’jūj wa-Ma’jūj or Yājūj wa-Mājūj: these two are non-Arabic names of two tribes and are therefore indeclinable) are causing corruption in the land, plundering and oppressing [us] when they come forth to attack us. So shall we pay you a tribute, some [form of] payment (a variant reading [for kharjan] is kharājan), on condition that you build between us and them a barrier?, an obstruction, so that they will not be able to reach us.

He said, ‘That, wealth and so on, wherewith my Lord has empowered me (makkannī, a variant reading has makkananī) is better, than the tribute that you offer me, and so I have no need for it. I shall build for you the barrier without [demanding] a fee; so help me with strength, in that which I [will] demand from you, and I will build between you and them a rampart, a fortified barricade.

Bring me ingots of iron!’, namely, pieces thereof, as large as the [blocks of] stone to be used in the construction; he used these [ingots] in his construction, placing between them firewood and coal. Until, when he had levelled up [the gap] between the two flanks (read al-sudufayn, or al-sadafayn or al-sudfayn, meaning, the two flanks of the two mountains) he set up bellows and [lit a] fire around this [construction] — he said, ‘Blow!’, and they blew, until, when he had made it, namely, the iron, a fire, that is, like a fire, he said, ‘Bring me molten copper to pour over it’ (the two verbs [ātūnī, ‘bring me’, and ufrigh, ‘pour’] are in contention over this [direct object, qitran, ‘molten copper’]; it [this direct object] has been omitted before the first [verb] because it is being governed by the second [verb]). Thus he poured the molten copper over the hot iron so that it penetrated between the [individual] ingots, making a [solid] single whole.

And so they, Gog and Magog, were not able to scale it, to climb up its length, because of its [great] height and smoothness, nor could they pierce it, because of its firmness and thickness.

Said he, Dhū’l-Qarnayn, ‘This, namely, the barrier, the ability to make it, is a mercy from my Lord, a grace [from Him], because it prevents them from coming forth. But when the promise of my Lord comes to pass, [the promise] of their coming forth, which will be near [the time of] the Resurrection, He will level it, pulverised and flattened, for my Lord’s promise, of their coming forth and [of] other things, is [always] true’, it will be. God, exalted be He says:

And on that day, the day of their coming forth, We shall let some of them surge against others, mixing with one another, on account of their multitude, and the Trumpet, namely, the Horn signalling the Resurrection, shall be blown and We shall gather them, namely, creatures, in one place, on the Day of Resurrection, a [single] gathering.

And on that day We shall present, We shall bring close, Hell to the disbelievers, plain to view,

those [disbelievers] whose eyes (alladhīna kānat a‘yunuhum substitutes for al-kāfirīna, ‘the disbelievers’) were masked from My remembrance, namely, the Qur’ān, such that they were blind, unable to be guided thereby, and who could not [bear to] hear, that is to say, they were unable to listen to what the Prophet used to recite to them, out of spite for him, and so they did not believe therein.

Do the disbelievers reckon that they can take My servants, namely, My angels, [as well as] Jesus and Ezra, as patrons, as lords, beside Me? (awliyā’a, ‘as patrons’, constitutes the second [direct] object of [the verb] yattakhidhū, ‘that they can take’; the second direct object of [the verb] hasiba, ‘reckon’, has been omitted). The meaning is: do they suppose that the mentioned ‘taking [as patrons]’ will not incur My wrath and that I will not punish them for this? No! Truly We have prepared Hell for the disbelievers, these [the ones mentioned above] and others, as [a place of] hospitality, in other words, it has been prepared for them just as a house is prepared for a guest.

Say: ‘Shall We inform you who will be the greatest losers in [regard to] their works? (al-akhsarīna a‘mālan, a specification that happens to correspond to that which is specifically meant); and these [losers] are described in His words [as being]:

Those whose effort goes astray in the life of this world, [those] whose deeds are invalid, while they reckon, they think, that they are doing good work, [good] deeds for which they will be rewarded.

Those are they who disbelieve in the signs of their Lord, in the proofs of His Oneness, [proofs] such as the Qur’ān and otherwise, and the encounter with Him’, that is, and [who disbelieve] in resurrection, reckoning, reward and punishment. So their works have failed, they are invalid, and on the Day of Resurrection We shall not assign any weight to them, in other words, We shall not accord them any value.

That, namely, the matter which I [God] have mentioned concerning the failure of their deeds and so on (dhālika, ‘that’, constitutes the subject) is their requital — Hell — because they disbelieved and took My signs and My messengers in mockery, that is to say, [taking] both of them as something to be derided.

Truly those who believe and perform righteous deeds — theirs will be, according to God’s prescience, the gardens of Firdaws, which are at the centre of Paradise and [at] its highest part (the annexation thereto [of firdaws to jannāt, ‘gardens’] is explicative) as [a place of] hospitality, as an abode;

wherein they will abide, with no desire, demand, to be removed from them, to be transferred to some other [gardens].

Say: ‘If the sea, in other words, [if] its waters, were ink (midād is what one writes with) for the Words of my Lord, [Words] that testify to His laws and His marvels, such that these [Words] are written with it, the sea would be spent, in recording them, before the Words of my Lord were spent (read as tanfada or yanfada) even though We brought the like of it, namely, [the like of] the sea, as replenishment’, in order to add it to the other [sea], it would [also] be spent, while they [God’s Words] would not be exhausted (madadan, ‘as replenishment’, in the accusative because it is a specification).

Say: ‘I am only a human being, a son of Adam, like you; it has been revealed to me that your God is only One God (annamā, the anna assimilated with the mā retains [its function of referring to] the verbal noun), in other words, the Oneness of the Divine is [what is being] revealed to me. So whoever hopes to encounter his Lord, through the Resurrection and the Requital, let him do righteous work and not associate with the worship of his Lord, that is to say, [let him not commit idolatry] in [performing] it by feigning [faith] before, anyone’.

Kāf hā yā ‘ayn sād: God knows best what He means by these [letters].

This is, a mention of your Lord’s mercy to His servant (‘abdahu, a direct object of rahma, ‘mercy’) Zachariah (an explication of it [the direct object]),

when (idh is semantically connected to rahma, ‘mercy’) he called out to his Lord a call, entailing a supplication, in secret, in the middle of the night, because this [time of the night] invites a faster response [to one’s supplication].

He said, ‘My Lord, truly the bones, all [the bones], within me have become feeble, weak, and my head is alight with grey hair (shayban, a specification derived from the subject of the verb in other words, hoariness has spread throughout his hairs just as a spark of fire spreads through firewood) and I wish to supplicate to you, and I have never been in my supplications to You, my Lord, unsuccessful, that is, [I have never been] disappointed, in the past, so do not disappoint me in what follows.

And truly I fear my kinsfolk, namely, those who will succeed me [as closest after me] in kinship, such as [my] paternal cousins, after me, that is, after my death, [I fear] for the religion, lest they forsake it, as You have witnessed in the case of the Children of Israel, in the way that they changed [their] religion, and my wife is barren, she does not conceive. So grant me from Yourself a successor, a son,

who may inherit from me (read yarithnī in apocopated form as a response to the imperative statement [fa-hab lī, ‘grant me’], or read yarithunī as an adjectival qualification of waliyyan, ‘a successor’) and inherit (also read in both ways [mentioned]), from the House of Jacob, my forefather, [inherit] knowledge and prophethood, and make him, my Lord, acceptable’, that is, pleasing to you.

God, exalted be He, in responding to his request for a son that will be the incarnation of His mercy, says: ‘O Zachariah! Indeed We give you good tidings of a boy, who will inherit in the way that you have requested — whose name is John. Never before have We made anyone his namesake’, that is, [never has there been] anyone with the name ‘John’.

He said, ‘My Lord, how shall I have a son when my wife is barren and I have reached infirm old age?’ (‘itiyyan, [derives] from [the verb] ‘atā, ‘it became withered’) in other words, [he had reached] extreme old age, 120 years; and his wife had reached the age of 98 (‘atiya in terms of its root derives from ‘utuwwun, but the tā’ is vowelled as -ti-, to soften it, the first wāw [vowel] is changed into a yā’ to be in harmony with the –ti- vowelling, while the second [wāw letter] is changed into a yā’ so that the [previous] yā’ can be assimilated with it).

He said, ‘It, the matter [in question], of creating a boy from both of you, shall be so! Your Lord says, “It is easy for Me, namely, to restore your sexual potency and tear open your wife’s womb [in preparation] for conception, for I certainly created you before when you were nothing”’, [you were nothing] before your created form became manifest. As God wished to manifest this great power, He inspired him [the form of] the question, in order for him to receive the response that will indicate it [this power]. And when his soul yearned for the prompt arrival of that whereof he had been given good tidings:

He said, ‘Lord, appoint for me some sign’, namely, some indication of my wife’s becoming pregnant. Said He, ‘Your sign, for this, is that you shall not speak to people, that is, that you [should] refrain from speaking to them, but not [from speaking] the remembrance of God, exalted be He, for three nights, that is, together with the days thereof, as [stated] in [sūrat] Āl ‘Imrān, ‘for three days’ [Q. 3:41], while [you are] in sound health’ (sawiyyan, a circumstantial qualifier referring to the subject of the verb tukallima, ‘you shall [not] speak’) in other words, despite there being no defect [in you].

So he emerged before his people from the sanctuary, that is, from the temple — they had been waiting for him to open it in order to perform [their] prayers therein after his command, as was the custom — and signalled, indicated, to them, ‘Make glorifications, perform prayers, at morning and evening’, at the beginning of the day and [at] its end, as per usual. He then realised, upon his being prevented from speaking to them, that she was pregnant with John.

And two years after his birth, God, exalted be He, said to him: ‘O John! Hold on to the Scripture, namely, the Torah, firmly’, earnestly. And We gave him judgement, prophethood, while still a child, a three-year old;

and compassion, a mercy for mankind, from Us, from Our presence, and purity, a charity for them, and he was God-fearing — it is related that he never committed a sin, nor contemplated [committing] one;

and dutiful to his parents, that is, virtuous towards them. And he was not arrogant or rebellious, disobedient to his Lord.

‘And peace, from Us, be upon him, the day he was born, and the day he dies, and the day he shall be raised alive!’, that is, [on] those fearful days in which he sees what he will never have seen before — in these he will be given security [from fear].

And mention in the Book, [in] the Qur’ān, Mary, that is, [mention] her tale, when she withdrew from her family to an easterly place, that is, [when] she secluded herself in a place on the east side of [her] home.

Thus she veiled herself from them, she draped herself in a veil to conceal herself while she washed her hair [from lice], or [washed] her clothes, or cleansed herself from her menses; whereupon We sent to her Our Spirit, Gabriel, and he assumed before her, after she donned her clothes, the likeness of a well-proportioned human, perfect in physical form.

She said, ‘Lo! I seek refuge in the Compassionate One from you! If you fear God’, and leave me alone on account of my invocation of refuge in God.

He said, ‘I am only a messenger of your Lord, that I may give you a boy [who shall be] pure’, in [his] prophethood.

She said, ‘How shall I have a boy when no human being has [ever] touched me, by way of conjugality, neither have I been unchaste?’, [neither have I been] a fornicator.

He said, ‘It, the matter in question, of creating a boy from you without a father, shall be so! Your Lord has said: “It is easy for Me, in other words, by Gabriel’s breathing into you, by My command, so that you become pregnant with him — since what has been mentioned is meant as a reason, the following [statement] is added as a supplement thereto: and so that We may make him a sign for mankind, of Our power, and a mercy from Us, to whoever believes in him. And it, the creation of him, is a thing [already] decreed”’, according to My knowledge. So Gabriel breathed into the opening of her shirt, whereupon she sensed the formed foetus in her womb.

Thus she conceived him and then withdrew, retreated, with him to a distant place, far from her family.

And the birth pangs, the pains of childbirth, brought her to the trunk of the palm-tree, that she may support herself against it, and then she gave birth: the conception, formation [of the foetus] and delivery [all] took place within one hour. She said, ‘O (yā is [used] to call attention [to something]) would that I had died before this, affair, and become a forgotten thing, beyond recall!’, a thing abandoned which no one knows or mentions.

Then he called her from below her, namely, Gabriel — for he was lower than her, ‘Do not grieve. Your Lord has made below you a rivulet, a river of water, which had dried up.

And shake the trunk of the palm-tree towards you, [a palm-tree] which had withered (the bi- [in bi-jidh‘i’l-nakhlati, ‘the trunk of the palm-tree] is extra) — there will drop (tusāqit, originally this is tatasāqat, but the second tā’ is changed into a sīn and is assimilated with the [second] sīn; a variant reading omits it [the second tā’] altogether) on you dates (rutaban, a specification) fresh and ripe (janiyyan, an adjectival qualification of it [of rutaban, ‘dates’]).

So eat, of the dates, and drink, from the rivulet, and [let] your eye be comforted, by the child (‘aynan, ‘[your] eye’, a specification derived from the subject of the verb, in other words [what is meant is] li-taqarra ‘aynuki bihi, ‘that your eye may be comforted by him’) that is, let it [your eye] be at peace and not covet any other than him; and if (immā: the nūn of the conditional particle in is here assimilated with the extra mā) you [happen to] see (tarayinna: the third consonantal root [the yā’] and the second [the hamza] have been omitted, with the [fatha] vowel therein transferred to the [first consonant] the letter rā’, and a kasra vowel applied to the yā’ of the [feminine] person, because of two unvowelled consonants coming together) any human being, and should he ask you about your child, then say, “I have vowed to the Compassionate One a fast, that is to say, an abstention from speaking of his affair and from [speaking to] any other humans — which is indicated by [the following statement]), so I will not speak to any human today”’, that is, after [saying] this.

Then, carrying him, she brought him to her folk (tahmiluhu, ‘carrying him’, a circumstantial qualifier), and they saw him, and they said, ‘O Mary, truly you have done a curious thing!, an astounding [thing], for you have begotten a son without [his having] a father.

O sister of Aaron — he was a righteous man, in other words [what is meant is], O you who are like him in [terms of] chastity — your father was not a wicked man, that is, a fornicator, nor was your mother unchaste’, that is, a fornicatress: so how is it that you have this child?

Thereat she pointed, them, to him, intimating [to them that they], ‘talk to him’. They said, ‘How can we talk to one who is, who happens to be, in the cradle, [still] a little child?’

He said, ‘Lo! I am God’s servant. He has given me the Scripture, namely, the Gospel, and made me a prophet.

And He has made me blessed wherever I may be, that is, [He has made me] of great benefit to mankind — [this is] a foretelling of what had been preordained for him — and He has enjoined upon me prayer and alms-giving, He has commanded me to [do] both of these, as long as I remain alive;

and [He has made me] dutiful towards my mother (barran, in the accusative because of the implicit [verb] ja‘alanī, ‘He has made me’). And He has not made me arrogant, haughty, wretched, disobedient to his Lord.

And peace, from God, be upon me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised alive!’ — the same is being said about him as [was said above] regarding the lord John. God, exalted be He, says:

That is Jesus, son of Mary, a statement of truth (read qawlu’l-haqqi, as the predicate of an implied subject, in other words, ‘the statement of the son of Mary [is a statement of truth]’; or read qawla’l-haqqi, because of [it being the object of] an implied [verb] qultu, ‘I say’, meaning, ‘[I say] a statement of truth’) concerning which they are in doubt (yamtarūna, derives from [the infinitive] al-mirya) — they are the Christians, who say, ‘Indeed Jesus is the son of God’; [but] they lie.

It is not [befitting] for God to take to Himself a son. Glory be to Him — in affirmation of His being transcendent above [doing] such a thing. When He decrees a thing, that is, [when] He will for it to happen, He only says to it, ‘Be!’, and it is (read fa-yakūnu because of an implied [pronoun] huwa [sc. fa-huwa yakūnu]; or read fa-yakūna because of an implied an [sc. an yakūna]). An example of this is His creating Jesus without [his having had] a father.

And indeed God is my Lord and your Lord. So worship Him (read [the introductory particle] as anna, with an implicit [preceding] udhkur, ‘mention’; or read [it] as inna, with an implicit [preceding] qul, ‘say’, [a reading] indicated by [the fact that God says elsewhere] ‘I only said to them that which You commanded me: “Worship God, my Lord and your Lord” ’ [Q. 5:117]). This, that has been mentioned, is a straight path, a route leading to Paradise.

But the factions differed among themselves, that is to say, the Christians, [they differed] regarding Jesus: was he the son of God? A god alongside Him? Or [was he] the third of three [gods]? So woe — [meaning] severe punishment [will be meted out] — to those who disbelieve, [those who disbelieve] in the way mentioned and in other ways, at the scene of an awful Day, that is to say, [woe to them] when they are present at the Day of Resurrection and [witnessing] its terrors.

How hearing they are and seeing, they are (these two constructions [are used to] express ‘amazement’, meaning, ‘how well they [will] hear and how well they [will] see’) on the Day when they come to Us, in the Hereafter. Yet the evildoers (an example of a proper noun [‘evildoers’] replacing a third person pronominalisation) today, that is, in this world, are in manifest error, that is, [error] that is evident therein, having been deaf [unable] to listen to the truth and blind [unable] to see it. In other words, [the meaning is]: O you, the one being addressed, marvel at how [well] they will [be able to] hear and see in the Hereafter after they had been deaf and blind in this world.

And warn them, threaten, O Muhammad (s), the disbelievers of Mecca, of the Day of Regret, namely, the Day of Resurrection, on which the sinner will regret not having been virtuous in [the life of] this world, when the matter will be decided, for them thereupon, that they be chastised, while they, in this world, are [yet] heedless, of it, and do not believe, in it [the Day of Resurrection].

Indeed We (innā nahnu, [a repetition of the first person] for emphasis), shall inherit the earth and all who are on it, of rational beings and others, by destroying them, and to Us they shall be returned, thereon [on the Day of Resurrection] for requital.

And mention, to them, in the Book Abraham, that is, [mention] his tale. Indeed he was a truthful one ([the intensive form siddīq] means ‘extremely truthful’), a prophet (the following [statement] substitutes for the [preceding] predicate).

When he said to his father, Āzar, ‘O my father! (the [final] tā’ here [of abati] has replaced the [possessive] yā’ of [genitive] annexation [sc. of yā abī]; the two, however, are never used together) — he [Abraham’s father] used to worship idols. Why do you worship that which neither hears nor sees, and is of no avail to you, suffices you [not], in any way? whether in [terms of] benefit or harm.

O my father! Indeed there has come to me of knowledge that which has not come to you. So follow me that I may guide you to a path, a route, that is right, [that is] straight.

O my father! Do not worship Satan, by obeying him through [your] worship of idols. Truly Satan is disobedient ([the intensive form‘asiyyan] means ‘one given to disobedience’) to the Compassionate One.

O my father! I do fear lest a chastisement from the Compassionate One should befall you, if you do not repent, and then you become an ally of Satan, an assistant and a comrade [of his] in the Fire.

He said, ‘Are you renouncing my gods, O Abraham?, so that you are denouncing them [in this way]? If you do not desist, from criticising them, I shall surely assail you, with stones, or with evil words, so beware of me; and stay away from me for a long time’.

He said, ‘Peace be to you, from me — in other words, I shall not cause you any harm. I shall ask forgiveness of my Lord for you. Truly He is ever gracious to me (hafiyyan, from hafiyyun, meaning bārrun, ‘kind’) answering my prayers. And indeed he [Abraham] fulfilled his above-mentioned promise [as described] in [sūrat] al-Shu‘arā’, And forgive my father [Q. 26:86]; but this was before it became clear to him that he [Abraham’s father] was an enemy of God, as mentioned in [sūrat] Barā’a [Q. 9:114].

And I shall shun you and that which you call upon, [that which] you worship, besides God. I will supplicate, I will worship, my Lord — hopefully in calling upon, in worshipping, my Lord I shall not be wretched’, as you have become wretched by your worship of idols.

And so after he had shunned them and that which they worshipped besides God, by having set off to the Holy Land, We gave him, two sons for him to find solace in, Isaac and Jacob, and each, of the two, We made a prophet.

And We gave them, all three [of them], out of Our mercy, wealth and offspring, and We assigned for them a worthy repute [one] that is lofty, sublime, namely, [We assigned] fair praise [of them] among all the members of the [Abrahamic] religions.

And mention in the Book Moses. Indeed he was devoted [to God] (read either as mukhlisan, to mean ‘one sincerely devoted to worship [of God]’; or read mukhlasan, [to mean ‘he was delivered’] as in God had delivered him from defilement) and he was a messenger, a prophet.

And We called him — with the words, ‘O Moses! Verily I am God’ [Q. 27:9] — from the right side of the Mount (al-Tūr, is [actually] the name of a mountain) that is, [from the side] to the right of Moses as he was approaching [the Mount] from Midian; and We brought him near in communion, as God, exalted be He, made him hear His speech.

And We gave him out of Our mercy, Our grace, his brother Aaron (Hārūn, either a substitution [for akhāhu, ‘his brother’], or an explicative supplement [thereof]), [likewise] a prophet (nabiyyan, a circumstantial qualifier, constituting the import of the ‘gift’ [to Moses], which was in response to his [Moses’s] request that He [God] send forth his brother with him; he [Aaron] was older in years than him).

And mention in the Book Ishmael. Indeed he was true to his promise — he never promised anything which he did not fulfil; he [once] waited for three days for someone whom he had promised [to meet]; or [it is said that he waited] an entire year until that person [finally] returned to the place in which he [Ishamel] was [supposed to have met the former]; and he was a messenger, to [the tribe of] Jurhum, a prophet [likewise].

He used to enjoin upon his kinsfolk, that is, his people, prayer and the [payment of] alms, and he was pleasing to his Lord (mardiyyan, ‘pleasing’, is actually marduwwun, but both wāw letters have been changed to two yā’ letters, while the kasra vowel [has also been changed to] a damma vowel).

And mention in the Book Idrīs, who was Noah’s great-grandfather. Indeed he was a truthful one, a prophet.

And We raised him to a high station — he is alive in the fourth, or sixth, or seventh heaven, or [he is] in Paradise into which he was admitted after he was made to experience death and brought back to life, and he has not exited therefrom.

Those (ūlā’ika is the subject) to whom God has been gracious (alladhīna an‘ama’Llāhu ‘alayhim is an adjectival qualification of it [of the subject]) from among the prophets (mina’l-nabīyyīna, an explication of it [of the subject] functioning like an adjectival qualification in terms of import. That which follows it [mina’l-nabīyyīna, ‘from among the prophets’] up to [where] the conditional sentence begins, constitutes an adjectival qualification of al-nabīyyīna, ‘the prophets’; and so His saying … ) of the seed of Adam, namely, Idrīs, and of those whom We carried with Noah, in the Ark, namely, Abraham — [who is the] son of his [Noah’s] son Shem (Sām) — and of the seed of Abraham, namely, Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob, and, of the seed of, Israel — who is Jacob — namely, Moses, Aaron, Zachariah, John and Jesus, and from among those whom We guided and chose, that is to say, from among their number (the predicate of ūlā’ika, ‘those’, is [the following, idhā tutlā …]) when the signs of the Compassionate One were recited to them, they would fall down prostrating and weeping (these [sujjadan and bukīyyan] constitute the plural [forms] of sājid, ‘prostrate’, and bākin, ‘weeping’ [respectively]) in other words [what is meant is]: be [you] like them (bukiyyun is originally [formed from] bakūyyin, but the wāw is changed into a yā’ and the damma vowel into a kasra).

But there succeeded after them a posterity who neglected the prayer, by abandoning [performance of] it, [a posterity] such as the Jews and the Christians, and followed [their] lusts, in the way of acts of disobedience. So they shall [soon] encounter Ghayy — a valley in Hell — that is, they shall fall into it;

whereas those who repent and believe and act righteously — such shall enter Paradise and shall not be wronged, they shall [not] be diminished, in any way, in their reward;

[they shall enter] Gardens of Eden, as [a place of] residence (jannāti ‘Adnin, substitutes for al-janna, ‘Paradise’) which the Compassionate One has promised to His servants [a promise] in the Unseen (bi’l-ghaybi, a circumstantial qualifier, in other words [a promise made while] they do not see it). Indeed His promise, that is to say, that which He promises, is ever fulfilled, meaning that it always arrives (the original [form of ma’tiyyan] is ma’tūyun); or [what is meant by] His promise here is Paradise, to which those deserving of it shall arrive.

Therein they shall not hear anything that is trifling, of talk, but, they shall hear, only [a greeting of] ‘Peace!’, from the angels to them, or from some among them to others. And therein they will have their provision morning and evening, in other words, according to the [equivalent] measure of these two in the [life of this] world, since there is no day or night in Paradise, only everlasting light and illumination.

That is the Paradise which We shall give as inheritance, [which] We shall grant and [in which] We shall lodge, those of Our servants who are God-fearing, through [their] obedience of Him.

When the Revelation did not come for a number of days, the Prophet (s) said to Gabriel, ‘What prevents you from visiting us more often than you do?’ and so the following was revealed: And We do not descend except by the commandment of your Lord. To Him belongs all that is before us, namely, ahead of us, of the affairs of the Hereafter, and all that is behind us, of the affairs of this world, and all that is between those [two], namely, all that takes place from this [point in] time until the coming of the Hour, in other words, to Him belongs knowledge of all of those things. And your Lord is never forgetful, meaning that He is never neglectful of you [even] when the Revelation is postponed from [being sent to] you.

He is, the Lord, the Owner, of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them. So worship Him and be steadfast in His worship, in other words, [continue to] perform it patiently. Do you know [of] anyone who could be His namesake? , [anyone] named with that [same title]? No!

And man, the denier of the Resurrection — namely, Ubayy b. Khalaf or al-Walīd b. al-Mughīra, concerning whom the verse was revealed — says, ‘When (read a-idha, either pronouncing the second hamza, or not, but inserting an alif between the two [hamzas] in both [readings]) I am dead, shall I then be brought forth alive?’, from the grave, as Muhammad (s) says? (the interrogative [here] statement is meant as a denial, in other words [he means to say] I shall not be brought forth alive after death; mā [of mā mittu, ‘I am dead’] is extra, for emphasis, likewise [extra is] the lām [of la-sawfa, ‘shall I then’]). He [God] then responds to him with the following saying [of His], exalted be He:

Does not man then remember (yadhdhakaru, is actually yatadhakkaru, but the tā’ has been changed to a dhāl and assimilated with the [other] dhāl; a variant reading leaves it as yadhkuru) that We created him before, when he was nothing?, and thus infer from the first act [of creation] the [possibility of] resurrection.

For by your Lord, We will surely gather them, namely, the deniers of the Resurrection, and the devils, that is to say, We shall gather every one of them with his devil [bound together] in a chain; then We shall bring them around Hell, [around] the outside of it, crouching, on their knees ([jithiyyan is] the plural of jāthin, and is originally [formed as] jathawuwwin or jathawiyyun [deriving] from [the verb] jathā, [imperfect tense] yajthu or yajthī, two [variant] forms).

Then We shall pluck out from every party, every sect, whichever of them was most hardened in disdain, in insolence, of the Compassionate One.

Then indeed We shall know best those most deserving of it, most worthy of [being in] Hell, the most hardened of them and others [like them], for the burning, for the admission [into it] and the scorching [therein], and We shall start with them ([siliyyan is] originally [formed as] salawiyyun, from [the verb] saliya or salaya).

There is not one of you but shall come to it, that is, [but] shall enter Hell. That is an inevitability [already] decreed by your Lord, [something which] He made inevitable and [which] He decreed; He will not waive it.

Then We will deliver (read nunajjī or nunjī) those who were wary, of [committing] idolatry or disbelief, [We will deliver them] from it, and leave those who did wrong, by way of idolatry and disbelief, crouching therein, on their knees.

And when Our manifest, evident (bayyinātin, ‘manifest’, is a circumstantial qualifier) signs, in the Qur’ān, are recited to them, namely, [to] the believers and the disbelievers, those who disbelieve say to those who believe, ‘Which of the two parties — us or you — is better in station, in lodging and abode (read as maqāman, it is [derived] from [the first form] qāma, ‘he stood’; read as muqāman, it is [derived] from the [fourth form] aqāma, ‘he took up residence’) and more excellent in assembly?’ (nadiyyan, meaning the place in which a folk assemble and converse). They [the disbelievers] mean ‘we [are the better of the two parties]’, and so we will fare better than you. God, exalted be He, says:

And how many — in other words, many — a generation, that is, a community from among the communities of the past, have We destroyed before them, who were superior in [their possession of] gear, in wealth and chattel, and in appearance, [superior] as a sight (ri’yan derives from [the infinitive] al-ru’ya). Thus in the same way that We destroyed those [ones] because of their disbelief, We will destroy these [ones also].

Say: ‘As for him who is in error (man kāna fī’l-dalālati, a conditional clause, the response to which is [fa’l-yamdud, ‘He shall prolong’ and what follows it]) the Compassionate One shall defer (fa’l-yamdud, functions in the sense of a predicate) him, from chastisement by [granting him] some respite, in this world, drawing him on [to his eventual chastisement] gradually, until, when they catch sight of that which they were promised, whether it be chastisement [in this world], by being killed or taken captive, or the Hour, the Resurrection that comprises Hell, they will enter it. Then they will surely know who is worse in [respect of] position and weaker in [respect of the number of] hosts’, in [respect of the number of] supporters, themselves or the believers? Their hosts will be the devils, while the hosts of the believers against them will be the angels.

And God increases in guidance those who found [right] guidance, through faith, [increasing them] by way of the signs He reveals to them; and the enduring things, the righteous deeds — namely, obedience [the reward of] which endures for that person — are better in your Lord’s sight in [terms of] reward, and better in [terms of the] return, that is, as something which will be repaid and returned to him [the believer], in contrast to the deeds of the disbelievers. The [use of the qualification] khayr, ‘better’, here is meant to counter [the use of the same in] their statement, ‘Which of the two parties is better in station?’ [above, Q. 19:73].

Have you seen him who disbelieves in Our signs, namely, al-‘Ās b. Wā’il, and says, to Khabbāb b. al-Aratt — who had said to him, ‘You will be resurrected after death!’, and who had requested from him repayment of money — ‘I shall assuredly be given, on the supposition that there is [such a thing as] resurrection, wealth and children?’, and so I will repay you [then]. God, exalted be He, says:

Has he come to learn [something] of the Unseen, that is, has he been given [some] knowledge of it and [of the fact] that he will be given what he has mentioned (here the interrogative hamza [of a-ittala‘a, ‘has he come to learn?’] suffices in place of the conjunctive hamza, which has therefore been omitted) or has he made a covenant with the Compassionate One?, to [the effect that he] be given what he claims?

Nay, he shall not be given [any of] that, but We will assuredly write down, We shall command that it be written down, that which he says and prolong for him the chastisement endlessly, We shall give him because of that [claim] an extra chastisement, in addition to the chastisement for his disbelief;

and We shall take over from him that which he talks about, of wealth and children, and he shall come to Us, on the Day of Resurrection, alone, with neither wealth nor children.

And they, namely, the disbelievers of Mecca, have taken besides God, graven images [as], [other] gods, for them to worship, that they may be for them a [source of] might, [that they may be] intercessors before God, so that they will not be chastised.

Nay, that is to say, there is none to prevent their being chastised, but they, namely, the [idol] gods, shall reject their worship, that is, they will deny it — as [is stated] in another verse: It was not us that they used to worship [Q. 28:63]) — and they shall be [pitted] against them as opponents, enemies, supporting one another [against them].

Have you not regarded that We unleash the devils against, We have set them upon, the disbelievers to urge them, to incite them to [commit] acts of disobedience, impetuously?

So do not make haste against them, to demand [that they receive] chastisement. Indeed We are only counting for them, the days and the nights, or [their] every breath, carefully, until the time [arrives] for their chastisement.

Mention, the day on which We shall gather those who fear God, by their [adherence to] faith, to the Compassionate One, [honoured] on mounts (wafdan, the [accusative] plural of wāfid, meaning ‘mounted’);

and drive the guilty, [guilty] on account of their disbelief, into Hell, a thirsty herd (wirdan, the [accusative] plural of wārid, meaning ‘one who is thirsty and on foot).

They, namely, mankind, will not have the power to intercede, save him who has made a covenant with the Compassionate One, [the covenant being] the profession of lā ilāha illā’Llāh wa-lā hawla wa-lā quwwata illā bi’Llāh, ‘there is no god but God, and there is no power or strength except in God’.

And they say, that is, the Jews and the Christians and those who claim that the angels are God’s daughters, ‘The Compassionate One has taken a son’. [But] God, exalted be He, says to them:

Truly you have uttered something hideous, that is, a great abomination.

The heavens are almost (read takādu, or yakādu) rent (read takādu tatafattarna), by being torn apart (a variant reading has yanfatirna), because of it and the earth [is almost] split asunder, and the mountains [almost] fall down crashing, collapsing on top of them, because of [the fact]:

that they have ascribed a son to the Compassionate One. God, exalted be He, says:

when it is not meet for [the Majesty of] the Compassionate One to take a son, that is to say, such a thing does not befit Him.

There is none in the heavens and the earth but he comes to the Compassionate One as a servant, servile, submissive, on the Day of Resurrection, including [individuals such as] Ezra and Jesus.

Verily He knows their number and has counted them precisely, and therefore [the knowledge of] their total number does not elude Him, not even [the knowledge] of one of them.

And each one of them will come to Him on the Day of Resurrection, [each one] alone, without wealth or any helper to protect him.

Truly those who believe and perform righteous deeds — for them the Compassionate One shall appoint love, between them, so that they have mutual love and affection, and God, exalted be He, will love them.

Indeed We have made it easy, namely, the Qur’ān, in your tongue, only that you may bear good tidings therewith to the God-fearing, those who will be prosperous because of their faith, and warn, threaten, therewith a folk [who are] contumacious (luddan, the [accusative] plural of aladd), in other words, [extremely] disputatious, [using] false arguments — and they are the disbelievers of Mecca.

And how many — in other words, many — a generation, namely, [how many] a community from among the communities of the past, We have destroyed before them, for their denial of [Our] messengers. Can you see, [can] you find, [so much as] one of them, or hear from them [so much as] the faintest sound? No, indeed! So, just as We destroyed those [folk], We shall destroy these [Meccans].

Tā hā: God knows best what He means by these [letters].

We have not revealed the Qur’ān to you, O Muhammad (s), that you should be miserable, that you should toil because of what you used to do after it was revealed [to you], in the way of long vigils performing night prayers; in other words, so unburden your soul;

but, We have revealed it, only to remind, therewith, him who fears, God;

a revelation (tanzīlan, a substitution, standing in place of the [conjugated] verb [derived] therefrom which renders it [tanzīlan] accusative) from Him Who created the earth and the high heavens (‘ulā, the plural of ‘ulyā, similar [in pattern] to kubrā, kubar, ‘large’);

He is, the Compassionate One presided upon the Throne (al-‘arsh, in the [classical Arabic] language denotes a king’s seat) a presiding befitting of Him;

to Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth and whatever is between them, of creatures, and whatever is beneath the soil (al-tharā, is moist earth) meaning [whatever is beneath] the seven earths, since these lie beneath it.

And should you be loud in your speech, in remembrance [of God] or supplication, then God has no need for this to be [spoken] loud, then indeed He knows the secret and [that which is] yet more hidden, than that [secret], namely, that which the soul whispers [to itself] and that which occurs to the mind but which you do not speak of [to anyone], so do not strain yourself to be loud [in your speech].

God — there is no god save Him. To Him belong the Most Beautiful Names, the ninety nine [Names], cited in the hadīth (al-husnā is the feminine form of al-ahsan, ‘the best’).

Has the story of Moses — indeed, it has — come to you?

When he caught sight of a fire and said to his family, namely, to his wife, ‘Wait, here! — this was when he was leaving Midian, heading for Egypt — Indeed I see a fire [in the distance]. Perhaps I [can] bring you a brand from it, [bring you] a burning wick or a torch, or find at the fire some guidance’, that is, someone to guide me by showing me the [proper] route — for he had lost it in the darkness of the night. He [Moses] said, ‘perhaps’ (la‘alla) because he could not be certain of fulfilling his promise.

And when he reached it — it was a boxthorn — he was called [by name], ‘O Moses!

Indeed (read as innī, if one understands nūdiya, ‘he was called’, as meaning qīla, ‘it was said’; or read it as annī, because of an implied [prefixed] bā’) I am (anā, reiterates the [first person indicator] yā’ [of innī] used by the [direct] speaker) your Lord. So take off your sandals, for lo! you are in the holy, [meaning] either the pure, or the blessed, valley of Tuwā ([this is] either a substitution, or an explicative supplement; read [Tuwan] with nunation or [Tuwā] without: it is [considered] declinable on account of it being a location; but [alternatively considered] indeclinable, if taken as considered a feminine proper noun denoting a place name).

And I [Myself] have chosen you, from among [all of] your people, so listen to what is being revealed, to you from Me.

Verily I am God — there is no god except Me. So worship Me and establish prayer for to make remembrance of Me, in it.

The Hour is assuredly coming. [But] I will to keep it hidden, from mankind — and its nearness [in time] will manifest itself to them through its signs — so that every soul may be requited, thereupon, for what it strives for, of good or evil.

So do not let him bar you, distract you, from it, that is, from believing in it, who believes not in it but follows his own whim, in denying [the truth of] it, lest you perish, that is, lest you be ruined if you are barred from [remembering] it.

And what is that, that happens to be, in your right hand, O Moses?’ (the interrogative is meant as an affirmative, [but it is expressed as an interrogative] in order that the miracle [to be manifested] in it be [shown as] consequent upon it).

He said, ‘It is my staff. I lean, I support myself, upon it, when I leap [across something] or walk, and I beat down [leaves], I strike the leaves on trees, with it, so that they fall, for my sheep, which then consume them; and I have uses for it (ma’ārib, ‘uses’, is the plural of ma’ruba, with the rā’ taking any [one] of the three vowels [sc. ma’ruba, ma’raba or ma’riba] meaning ‘needs’) in other ways, such as [using it] to carry food supplies and waterskins, as well as to drive away [undesirable] animals. He [Moses] gives an extensive response to indicate his [many] needs for it.

He said, ‘Cast it down, O Moses!’

And he cast it down, and lo! it was a serpent, a giant snake, moving swiftly, moving about on its belly swiftly with the speed of a small snake — which is called al-jānn and which is [also] used to refer to this [serpent] in another verse [Q. 27:10; Q. 28:31].

He said, ‘Take [hold of] it and do not fear, it. We will restore it to its former state (sīratahā, in the accusative because the genitive-operating preposition has been removed). And so he placed his hand in its mouth and it became a staff once again; and it became clear that the place into which he put his hand was the place where it [the staff] is held, between its two prongs. Moses was shown this [miracle] lest he be terrified when it turns into a snake in the presence of Pharaoh.

And thrust your hand, the right one, meaning, the palm, into your flank — that is, your left side, below the arm into the armpit, and [then] take it out — it will emerge white, in contrast to the skin-colour that it was, without any fault, that is, [without any sign of] leprosy, radiating like the rays of the sun, blinding to the eyes [of onlookers]. [That is] yet another sign (āyatan ukhrā: this together with baydā’a, ‘white’, constitute two circumstantial qualifiers referring to the subject of [the verb] takhruj, ‘it will emerge’).

That We may show you, thereby, when you do this [as described above] in order to manifest it, of Our greatest signs, the sign that is the greatest proof of [the truth of] your Mission [from God]: and should he want it to be restored to its former state, he would thrust it into his armpit, as has been mentioned, and [then] bring it out.

Go, as a messenger [from God], to Pharaoh, and [to] those with him. He has indeed transgressed’, he has exceeded the [usual] limits in his disbelief by claiming to be a god.

He said, ‘My Lord, expand my breast for me, expand it so that it may accommodate the [weight of the Divine] Message.

And make easy, facilitate, for me my affair, that I may deliver it.

And undo the knot upon my tongue — the result of his having been burnt by a live coal which he had placed [accidentally] in his mouth as a child;

so that they may understand what I [shall] say, when I am delivering the Message.

And appoint for me a minister, an assistant for that [task], from my family,

Aaron (Hārūna, constitutes the second object), my brother (akhī, an explicative supplement).

Confirm through him my strength, my courage;

and let him share in my affair, namely, in [the delivery of] the Message (both verbs [ushdud, ‘confirm’, and ashrikhu, ‘let him share’] are in the imperative and in the apocopated imperfect tense, constituting the response to the request [of Moses]).

So that we may glorify You, [by making] glorifications, over and over again,

and remember You, [by making] remembrance, over and over again.

Indeed You are ever Seeing of us’, ever Knowing, having been gracious [to us] by way of [appointing us to deliver] the Message.

He said, ‘You have been granted your request, O Moses!, as a favour [from Us] to you.

And certainly, We have done you a favour [already] another time,

when (idh, for explanation [of that favour]) We revealed to your mother, either in [her] sleep or by way of inspiration — when she gave birth to you and feared that Pharaoh would have you slain for being one of the newborn [of the Children of Israel] — that which was revealed, regarding your affair (this [mā yūhā, ‘that which was revealed’] is substituted by [what follows, an iqdhifīhi …]),

“Cast him, place him, in the ark, then cast him, [while] in the ark, into the river, [into] the flow of the Nile, and then the river shall throw him up onto the shore, that is, its bank (the imperative here [fa’l-yulqihi, ‘let it throw him’] functions as a predicate); [there] an enemy of Mine and an enemy of his, namely, Pharaoh, shall take him”. And, after he took you, I cast upon you love from Me, that you may be loved by people; and indeed Pharaoh, and all who saw you, loved you; and that you might be reared under My eyes, be nurtured under My guardianship and My protection of you.

When (idh, for explanation) your sister, Maryam, walked up, to obtain news of you, for they had brought wet nurses [for you] but you would not take to the breast of any of them, and she then said, “Shall I show you someone who will take care of him?”. Her offer was accepted and so she brought [them] his mother and he took to her breasts. Thus We restored you to your mother that her eyes might rejoice, in seeing you again, and not grieve, at that point [anymore]. Then you slew a soul, namely, the Copt in Egypt — and you became distressed for having slain him because of [how] Pharaoh [would react]; whereupon We delivered you from [great] distress, and We tried you with various ordeals, We tested you by landing you in some other [ordeal] and [again] delivered you from it. Then you stayed for several years, ten [years], among the people of Midian, after you had reached it having left Egypt, [staying] with the prophet Shu‘ayb and marrying his daughter. Then you came [hither] as ordained, in My knowledge, with the Message [that you will deliver] — and this was when you were forty years old, O Moses!

And I chose you for Myself, to deliver the Message.

Go, you and your brother, to the people, with My, nine, signs, and do not flag, be remiss, in remembrance of Me, by uttering glorifications and otherwise.

Go the two of you to Pharaoh. Truly he has transgressed [the bounds], in claiming to be the Lord.

And speak to him gentle words, for him to renounce such [claims], that perhaps he may be mindful, be admonished, or fear’, God and so repent — the ‘hope’ [for Pharaoh’s repentance] is [expressed] from their perspective, for God knows that he was not going to repent.

The two [of them] said, ‘Our Lord, We truly fear that he may forestall us, that is, by hastening to punish us, or become tyrannical’, against us, that is, be high-handed [with us].

He said, ‘Do not fear, for I shall be with the two of you, by [providing you with] My assistance, hearing, what he says, and seeing, what he does.

So go to him and say, “Truly we are two messengers of your Lord, so let the Children of Israel go with us, to Syria, and do not [continue to] chastise them, in other words, release them from your exploitation of them in those oppressive works of yours, such as digging, construction and the lifting of heavy objects. We have verily brought you a sign, a definitive argument, from your Lord, as proof of our truthfulness in [delivering] the Message; and may peace be upon him who follows [right] guidance, that is to say, may he be secure from [God’s] chastisement.

Indeed it has been revealed to us that the chastisement shall befall him who denies, [the truth of] what we have brought, and turns away” ’, [and who] rejects it. And so they came to him and said [to him] all of what has been mentioned.

He said, ‘So who is your Lord, O Moses?’ — he [Pharaoh] restricted this [question] to him [Moses], because [between him and Aaron] he is the principal [bearer of God’s Message] and also because of his [Pharaoh’s] having pampered him while he was being reared [as a child].

He said, ‘Our Lord is He Who gave to everything, in creation, its [peculiar] nature, through which it is distinguished from another [thing], and then guided [it]’, the animal among them to its source of food, drink and procreation and in other ways.

He, Pharaoh, said, ‘So what of, the status [of], the generations, the communities, of old?’, such as the people of Noah, Hūd, Lot and Sālih, with regard to their having worshipped graven images.

Said he, Moses, ‘The knowledge thereof, that is, the knowledge of their [otherworldly] status, is, preserved, with my Lord, in a Book, namely, the Preserved Tablet (al-lawh al-mahfūz), and He shall requite them in accordance with it on the Day of Resurrection. My Lord does not err, He is [never] absent from anything, nor does He, my Lord, forget, anything.

He is, the One Who made for you, as well as [for] all creatures, the earth a cradle, a bed, and threaded, facilitated, for you therein ways, roads, and sent down from the heaven water, rain. God, exalted be He, says, as a complement to Moses’s description of Him and as an address to the people of Mecca: and therewith We brought forth various kinds, species, of plants (shattā, ‘various’, adjectivally qualifies azwājan, ‘kinds’), in other words, [plants] of different colours, flavours and [different] in other ways (shattā is the plural of shatīt, similar [in pattern] to marīd, [plural] mardā, as [may be used] in [a phrase like] shatta al-amr, ‘the affair has become divided’).

Eat, thereof, and pasture your cattle, therein (an‘ām, ‘cattle’, is the plural of na‘am, which are camels, cows and sheep; one says ra‘atu’l-an‘āmu, ‘the cattle grazed’ or ra‘aytuhā, ‘I grazed them’; the imperative here is meant as a permissive and a reminder of [God’s] grace, the sentence being a circumstantial qualifier referring to the subject of [the verb] akhrajnā, ‘We brought forth’, in other words [what is meant is], ‘[We brought forth the plants] permitting you to eat thereof and to graze [your] cattle [thereon]’). In that, which is mentioned here, there are indeed signs, indeed lessons, for people of sense, possessors of intellect (al-nuhā, the plural of nuhya, similar [in pattern] to ghurfa, [plural] ghuraf. The intellect is called by this [term, nuhya] because it shows a person the sense to refrain from committing vile deeds).

From it, that is, from the earth, We created you, by creating your father Adam from it, and into it We shall restore you, [when you are] interred after death, and from it We shall bring you forth, at the Resurrection, a second time’, in the same way that We brought you forth [from it] when We initiated your creation.

And verily We showed him, that is, We made Pharaoh see, all Our signs, [all] nine, but he denied, them, and claimed that they were [the result of] sorcery, and refused, to affirm the Oneness [of God], exalted be He.

He said, ‘Have you come to us so that you may expel us from our land, Egypt, and so that kingship over it may be yours, by your sorcery, O Moses?

Yet We [too] shall produce for you a sorcery like it, [one] which will counter it. So fix a tryst between us and you, for that [purpose], [a tryst] which neither we nor you shall fail to keep, [at] a place (makānan is in the accusative because the genitive-operator preposition [fī, ‘at’] has been removed) of equal distance (read siwān or suwān), in other words, in the middle, equidistant for a person coming from either side.

Said he, Moses, ‘Your tryst shall be the Day of Adornment — a festive day of theirs on which they adorn themselves and [the public] assemble — and let the people assemble, [let] the inhabitants of Egypt gather, at forenoon’, the time for this [tryst], to observe what will transpire.

Then Pharaoh withdrew, retreated, and summoned up his guile, that is to say, those [human] elements of his guile from among the sorcerers, and then came, with them to the tryst.

Moses said to them — and there were 72 of them, each with a rope and a staff in his hand — ‘Woe to you!, meaning, may God make you liable to woe. Do not invent a lie against God, by ascribing partners to Him, lest He annihilate you (read fa-yushitakum or fa-yashatakum) by some chastisement, from Him. For verily he who invents lies, against God, fails’, [he] is the loser.

So they disputed their matter among themselves, regarding Moses and his brother, and kept secret their private counsel, that is, their conversation regarding the two,

They said, to each other, ‘These two men (hādhān, this [form] concords with the forms used by those [grammarians] who use the alif [ending] for all three cases of the dual person; Abū ‘Amr has [the variant reading] hādhayn) are indeed sorcerers who intend to expel you from your land by their sorcery, and do away with your excellent traditions (muthlā, the feminine form of amthal, meaning ‘the noblest’) in other words, [they will do away with the loyalty of] the noblemen among you, because these [latter] will prefer the two of them [Moses and Aaron] on account of their triumph.

So summon up your guile, in the way of sorcery (read fa’jma‘ū, from [the first form] jama‘a, meaning ‘he gathered’, or read fa-ajmi‘ū, from [the fourth form] ajma‘a, meaning ‘he resolved [to do something]’) and come in battle-line (saffan, a circumstantial qualifier, meaning ‘standing in rows’). For truly he who is uppermost, [he who] triumphs, this day shall be the victor!’

They said, ‘O Moses, you choose: either cast, your staff first, or we shall be the first to cast’, their staff.

He said, ‘Nay, you cast!’, and so they cast, and lo! their ropes and their staffs (‘isiyyihim: derives from ‘isūwwun, but the two wāw [letters] have been changed into two yā’ [letters], with the kasra vowelling applied to both the ‘ayn and the sād) appeared to him by [the effect of] their sorcery as though they were, snakes, gliding swiftly, on their bellies.

And Moses sensed fear within himself, that is to say, he feared that if [the effect of] their sorcery was of the same kind as his miracle, he would become suspect in people’s minds and they would not believe in him.

We said, to him, ‘Do not be afraid! Indeed you shall have the upper hand, over them by triumphing.

And cast that which is in your right hand — and this was his staff. It shall swallow up that which they have produced. For what they have produced is only a sorcerer’s trick, that is to say, a kind thereof, and the sorcerer does not succeed wherever he may go’, in his sorcery. So Moses cast his staff and it swallowed up all of that which they [had] produced.

Thereat the sorcerers cast [their heads] down prostrating, they fell down prostrating to God, exalted be He: They said, ‘We [now] believe in the Lord of Aaron and Moses’.

Said he, Pharaoh, ‘Do you profess belief (read a-āmantum pronouncing both hamzas, or with the second changed to an alif) in him before I, myself, give you permission? He is indeed your chief, your teacher, who taught you sorcery. I shall assuredly cut off your hands and feet on opposite sides (min khilāfin, a circumstantial qualifier meaning ‘alternate [hands and feet]’, in other words, the right hands and the left feet) and I shall assuredly crucify you on the trunks of palm trees. And you shall then know which of us — meaning himself and the Lord of Moses — is harsher in [inflicting] chastisement, and [which of us is] more lasting’, more enduring in [sustaining] opposition to him [Moses].

They said, ‘We will not choose you over what has come to us of clear signs, proving the truthfulness of Moses, and [over] Him Who originated us, created us (wa’lladhī fatarana, either an oath, or a supplement to [the preceding] mā, ‘what’). Decree what you will decree, that is, do what you say. What you decree is only [relevant] in the life of this world (al-hayāta’l-dunyā, is in the accusative because the scope [of his decree] is being indicated, in other words ‘[you can only decree] in it’); yet you will be requited for it in the Hereafter.

Indeed We profess belief in our Lord, that He may forgive us our sins, in the way of ascribing partners [to God] and otherwise, and the sorcery to which you forced us, to learn and to perform in order to oppose Moses. And God is better, than you in rewarding if he is obeyed, and more enduring’, than you in chastisement if he is disobeyed.

God, exalted be He, says: Truly whoever comes to his Lord a criminal, a disbeliever, like Pharaoh, for him there shall be Hell wherein he shall neither die, and thus find rest, nor live, a life of any benefit to him.

And whoever comes to Him a believer, having performed righteous deeds — the obligatory and supererogatory deeds, for such shall be the highest degrees (al-‘ulā, the plural of ‘ulyā, the feminine form of a‘lā) —

the Gardens of Eden, that is to say, as a [place of] residence (this [jannātu ‘Adnin, ‘Gardens of Eden’] is an explication thereof [of al-darajātu’l-‘ulā, ‘the highest degrees’]) underneath which rivers flow, abiding therein, and that is the reward of him who keeps pure, of sins.

And verily We revealed to Moses, [saying], ‘Lead My servants on a journey by night (read as an asri, ‘that: lead on a journey by night’, from [fourth form] asrā, ‘he travelled by night’; or read as an’isri, from [first form] sarā, ‘he travelled by night’, both being alternative forms), in other words, travel with them by night from the land of Egypt, and strike for them, make for them, by striking your staff, a dry path in the sea. So he fulfilled what he had been commanded, and God made the ground dry so that they were able to pass through it. Do not fear to be overtaken, that is, [fearing] that Pharaoh might catch you, and do not be afraid’, of drowning.

Then Pharaoh pursued them with his hosts, with him [Pharaoh] alongside them, and there engulfed them what did engulf them of the sea, and it drowned them.

And Pharaoh led his people astray, by calling them to worship him, and he did not guide them, nay he led them to destruction, in contrast to what he said [to them], and I guide you only to the path of rectitude [Q. 40:29].

O Children of Israel, truly We delivered you from your enemy, Pharaoh, by drowning him, and We made a tryst with you on the right side of the [Tūr] Mount, in order to give Moses the Torah, that it may be implemented it [by you], and We sent down to you manna and quails, namely, turunjabīn [citrus fruit] and the quail. The ones being addressed in the vocative [by ‘O Children of Israel’] are those Jews living at the time of the Prophet (s), and they are addressed with reference to the graces which God bestowed on their forefathers at the time of the prophet Moses as a preface to what God [now] says to them:

‘Eat of the good things We have provided you, that is to say, of that which has been bestowed on you as a grace [from God], but do not transgress regarding it, by being ungrateful for the grace thereof, lest My wrath descend on you ([if read] fa-yahilla, it means ‘[lest] it [My wrath] become incumbent [upon you]’; or [if read] fa-yuhilla, it means ‘[lest] it descend [on you]’). And he on whom My wrath descends (read yahlil, ‘becomes incumbent’, or yahlul, ‘descends’) certainly perishes, falls into the Fire.

And indeed I am Forgiving toward him who repents, from ascribing partners [to God], and believes, affirms God’s Oneness, and acts righteously, is sincere in [performing] the obligatory and the supererogatory [deeds], and then follows guidance’, by adhering to what has been mentioned up to his death.

‘And what has hurried you [to depart] from your people, in order to come to the appointed time to receive the Torah, O Moses?’

He said, ‘They are close, behind me, coming, upon my track, and I hastened to You, my Lord, that You may be pleased’, with me, in other words, to please you [even] more — before [giving] the response, he gives an excuse, according to what he supposed [was the situation with his people],

But those he supposed [to be following him] had remained behind, for He, exalted be He, said, ‘Indeed We tried your people after you, that is, after your departure from them, and the Samaritan led them astray’, so they took to worshipping the [golden] calf.

Thereupon Moses returned to his people, angry, with them, and sad, extremely grieved. He said, ‘O my people, did not your Lord promise you a fair promise?, that is, a true [promise] that He will give you the Torah? Did the period, the length of my absence from you, seem too long for you, or did you desire that wrath should become incumbent against you from your Lord, by your worship of the [golden] calf, and so you broke your tryst with me?’, and failed to follow after me?

They said, ‘We did not break our tryst with you of our own accord (read the mīm with any of the three vowellings, meaning ‘by our own power’ or ‘of our own will’), but we were laden with (read hamalnā, ‘we carried’, or hummilnā, ‘we were made to carry’) the burdens, the weight, of the people’s ornaments, of the trinkets of Pharaoh’s folk — which the Children of Israel had borrowed from them on the pretext of [using them for] a wedding, but which had remained with them — and we cast them, we threw them into the fire at the command of the Samaritan, and so, just as We cast, did the Samaritan cast, what he had on him of their trinkets together with the dust that he took from the track left by the hoof of Gabriel’s steed, as follows:

Then he produced for them a calf, which he fashioned from the [melted] trinkets — a [mere] body, of flesh and blood, with a low, in other words, [it made] a sound that was audible; it was transformed into such [a state] because of the dust [from Gabriel’s steed] the effect of which is [to create] life in whatever thing it is placed. After he had fashioned it, he placed it [the dust] in its mouth. And they, namely, the Samaritan and his followers, said, ‘This is your God and the God of Moses: so he, Moses, forgot’, his Lord here and set off in search of him. God, exalted be He, says:

Did they not see that ([in allā] an has been softened in place of the hardened form, with its subject omitted, in other words [it should be] annahu) it, the Calf, did not reciprocate their words, that is, that it did not give them any response in return, nor did it have any power over hurt for them, that is, [any power] to prevent it, or any benefit?, that is, [any power] to procure it [for them], in other words, how can such [a thing] be taken as a god?

And Aaron had certainly said to them beforehand, that is, before the return of Moses, ‘O my people, you are only being tested thereby! But truly your Lord is the Compassionate One, so follow me, in worship of Him, and obey my command’, therein.

They said, ‘We will not cease to cling to it, persisting in worship of it, until Moses returns to us’.

He, Moses, said, upon his return, ‘O Aaron, what held you back when you saw them going astray, by worshipping it,

that ([allā] read an [instead], the lā being extra) you did not follow me? Did you then disobey my command?’, by remaining among those who worship [something] other than God, exalted be He?

He, Aaron, said, ‘O son of my mother (read ya’bna’ummi or ya’bna’umma, meaning ummī, ‘my mother’) the mention of her is more effective in provoking the affection of his heart — do not clutch my beard, which he had seized with his left hand, or my head!, for he had seized his hair with his right hand in anger. Indeed I feared that, if I followed you, for inevitably a group of those who did not worship the calf would have followed me, you would have said, “You have caused division among the Children of Israel — and have been furious with me — and you did not wait for my word”’, concerning what my opinion would have been in this matter.

He said, ‘And what have you to say, what was the motive for [doing] what you did, O Samaritan?’

He said, ‘I perceived what they did not perceive (read [either as third person plural] yabsurū or [as second person plural] tabsurū ‘[what] you [did not] perceive’), in other words, I realised what they did not realise, so I seized a handful, of dust, from the track of, [from] the hoof of the steed of, the messenger, Gabriel, and threw it [in], I cast it onto the figure of the calf that had been fashioned. Thus my soul prompted, [thus] it adorned for, me’ and it was cast into me [the idea] that I seize a handful of the dust from that mentioned [hoof] and cast it onto what possessed no spirit, so that it might [thus] acquire a spirit. I had seen that your people had asked that you make for them a god, and so my soul suggested to me [the idea] that this calf should be their god.

Said he, Moses to him, ‘Begone! It shall be yours [as your lot] throughout life, that is, for the duration of your life, to say, to whomever you may see, “Do not touch [me]!”, that is, do not come near me — he used to wander about [aimlessly] throughout the land, and whenever he touched a person, or a person touched him, both would succumb to a fever. And indeed there will be a tryst for you, for you to be chastised, which you will not fail to keep (read lan tukhlifahu, meaning ‘[a tryst] which you shall not miss’; or lan tukhlafahu, ‘for which you will not be forgotten’, meaning: ‘nay you will be sent forth to [keep] it’). Now look at your god to whom you remained clinging! (zalta is actually zalilta, but the first lām has been omitted in order to soften it), that is to say, [you remained] by his [your god’s] side, worshipping him. We will surely burn it, in fire, and then scatter [the ashes of] it into the waters, we will disperse it into the winds of the sea; and, after having slaughtered it, Moses did [exactly] that which he has mentioned.

Indeed your God is the One God, than whom there is no other god. He embraces all things in [His] knowledge’ (‘ilman, a specification derived from the subject of the verb, in other words, it means ‘His knowledge embraces all things’).

Thus, just as We have related to you O Muhammad (s) this story, We relate to you some stories, [some] accounts, of what is past, of communities, and We have given you from Ourselves a Reminder, a Qur’ān.

Whoever turns away from it, and does not believe in it, he shall indeed, on the Day of Resurrection, bear a burden, a heavy load of sin;

therein, that is, in the chastisement for [such] sin, abiding. And evil for them on the Day of Resurrection is that burden! (himlan, a specification qualifying the person of [the verb] sā’a, ‘evil’; the subject of derision, the implied wizruhum, ‘their sin’, has been omitted; the lām [of lahum] is explicative and substitutes for yawma’l-qiyāma, ‘the Day of Resurrection).

The day the Trumpet is blown, the Horn, the Second Blast, and We shall assemble the criminals, the disbelievers, on that day bruised, in the eye along with their faces blackened.

They will whisper to one another, speaking secretly amongst themselves: ‘You have tarried, in this world, only ten nights’, with the [full ten] days.

We know very well what they will say, regarding this matter — that is, it is not as they say — when the justest, the most upright, of them in the way, in this, will say, ‘You have tarried only a day’: they will deem their stay in this world as having been very brief, on account of the terrors they will witness in the Hereafter.

They will question you concerning the mountains, how will they be on the Day of Resurrection? Say, to them: ‘My Lord will scatter them as ashes, by pulverising them into moving sand and dispersing them with the wind;

then He will leave them a level hollow, a flattened [level] surface,

wherein you will see neither crookedness, [neither] slope, nor any curving’, [nor] any rise.

On that day, that is, on the day the mountains are scattered as ashes, they will follow, that is, mankind [will follow], after rising from their graves, the Summoner, to the Gathering, by [the call of] his voice — this [Summoner] will be [the archangel] Isrāfīl, and he will say: ‘Forward to the parade before God!’ — there will be no deviation therein, that is, in the manner in which they follow [him], in other words, they cannot but follow [him]. Voices will be hushed, will become silent, before the Compassionate One, so that you hear nothing but a faint shuffle, the light tread of feet walking towards the Gathering, similar to the sound of the hoofs of camels as they pass.

On that day intercession will not profit, anyone, except [intercession] from him whom the Compassionate One permits, that he intercede for such [a person], and whose word He approves, that is to say, because such [an intercessor] will say, ‘there is no god but God’ (lā ilāha illā’Llāh).

He knows what is before them, of the affairs of the Hereafter, and behind them, of the affairs of this world, and they do not comprehend such [things] in knowledge: they have no knowledge of such [things].

And faces shall be humbled, they shall be submissive, before the Living, the Eternal Sustainer, namely, God; and he will certainly have failed, he will have lost, [he] who carries [the burden of] evildoing, that is, [of] idolatry.

But whoever does righteous deeds, acts of obedience, being a believer, shall fear neither wrong, by having his evil deeds increased, nor injustice, by having his good deeds diminished.

Thus (kadhālika, a supplement to [the previous] kadhālika naqussu, ‘thus We relate’ [Q. 20:99]), just as We have revealed what has been mentioned, We have revealed it, that is, the Qur’ān, as an Arabic Qur’ān, and We have distributed, We have repeated, in it [statements] of threats, so that they may fear, associating others with God, or it, the Qur’ān, may arouse in them a remembrance, of the destruction of those communities before, and may thus be admonished.

So exalted be God, the King, the Truth, above what the idolaters say. And do not hasten with the Qur’ān, that is, to recite it, before its revelation is completed for you, [before] Gabriel is through delivering it, and say, ‘My Lord, increase me in knowledge’, that is, [knowledge] of the Qur’ān: thus every time something of it was revealed to him his knowledge increased because of it.

And We made a covenant with Adam, We enjoined him not to eat of the tree, before, that is, before he ate of it, but he forgot, he disregarded Our covenant, and We did not find in him any constancy, any resoluteness or patience in [abiding by] what We forbade him from.

And, mention, when We said to the angels, ‘Prostrate before Adam’; so they prostrated, except Iblīs, who was the father of the jinn — he used to keep company with the angels and worship God alongside them: he refused, to prostrate before Adam, he said: ‘I am better than him’ [Q. 7:12].

Then We said, ‘Adam, indeed this is an enemy of yours and of your wife, Eve (read Hawwā’). So do not let him cause you both to be expelled from the Garden, so that you then toil, [so that you then] become fatigued by [the toil of] tillage, sowing, harvesting, milling, baking and otherwise — the statement is restricted to [the mention of] his [Adam’s] ‘toil’ because it is the man who has to strive [to provide] for his wife.

It is indeed [assured] for you that you will neither be hungry therein nor go naked,

And it is indeed [assured] for you (read wa-annaka or wa-innaka, as a supplement to the subject of inna [sc. laka, that is, ‘you’] and its clause) neither to be thirsty therein, nor to suffer the sun’: you will not be exposed to any heat of a midday sun, for there is no sun in Paradise.

Then Satan whispered to him saying, ‘O Adam, shall I guide you to the Tree of Immortality, which gives everlasting life to the one who eats thereof, and a kingdom that does not waste away?’, that does not perish while he remains immortal.

So both of them, Adam and Eve, ate of it, and their shameful parts were exposed to them, that is, the front [private part] of each became visible to the other, as well as the other’s behind — both of these [parts] are called saw’a, ‘shame’, because its exposure ‘shames’ (yasū’u) that person); and they began to piece together, they took to sticking, onto themselves leaves of the Garden, to cover themselves up therewith. And Adam disobeyed his Lord and so he erred, by [his] eating from the tree.

Thereafter his Lord chose him, He brought him close [to Him], and relented to him, He accepted his repentance, and guided him, that is, He guided him to seek repentance regularly.

He said, ‘Go down both of you, that is, Adam and Eve, including all of your progeny, from it, from the Garden, all together, some of you, some of the progeny, being enemies of others, because of some wronging others. Yet if (the nūn of the conditional particle in has been assimilated with the mā, which is extra) there should come to you guidance from Me, then whoever follows My guidance, the Qur’ān, shall not go astray, in this world, neither shall he be miserable, in the Hereafter.

But whoever disregards My remembrance, [disregards] the Qur’ān and does not believe in it, his shall be a straitened life (read dankan with nunation, a verbal noun meaning ‘straitened [circumstances]’). This [statement] has been interpreted in one hadīth to mean the punishment of the grave for the disbeliever. And on the Day of Resurrection We shall bring him to the assembly, namely, the one who disregards the Qur’ān, blind’, blind in eyesight.

He shall say, ‘My Lord, why have you brought be to the assembly blind, though I used to see?’, in the world and at the raising from the grave?

He will say, ‘So it, the affair, is. Our signs came to you, but you forgot them, you neglected them and did not believe in them; and so, just as you forgot Our signs, today you will be forgotten’, abandoned in the Fire.

And so, just as We requite him who disregards the Qur’ān, We requite him who is prodigal, [him who] associates others with God, and believes not in the signs of his Lord. And the chastisement of the Hereafter is more terrible, than the chastisement of the life of this world and the punishment of the grave, and more enduring, longer lasting.

Is it not a guidance, has it not become clear, to them, to the disbelievers of Mecca, how many (kam, is predicative and the object of [the following] ahlaknā) We destroyed, in other words, Our frequent destruction, before them of generations, that is, of past communities, for denying messengers, amid [the ruins of] whose dwelling-places they walk? (yamshūna is a circumstantial qualifier referring to the person of the pronoun lahum, ‘to them’) during their journeys to Syria and other places, that they might thus be admonished? (what has been mentioned [by grammarians] regarding the derivation of [the verb] ihlāk to be that verb that does not contain a particle referring to [the object of] the action of the verb, as a way of preserving the [original] sense [of the statement], is acceptable). Surely in that there are signs, lessons, for people of sense, for possessors of intellect.

And but for a decree that had already preceded from your Lord, that their chastisement be deferred to the Hereafter, it, destruction, would have been an inevitability, [their destruction] would have been necessary in this world, and a specified term, fixed for them (ajalun musamman, a supplement to the pronoun concealed in kāna, ‘it would have been’, the separation [of both subjects] by the predicate of both serves as an emphasis).

So be patient with what they say — this is abrogated by the ‘fighting’ verse [cf. Q. 2:190ff] — and make glorifications, pray, by praising your Lord (bi-hamdi rabbika is a circumstantial qualifier, in other words, ‘ensconced in such [praise]’) before the rising of the sun, the morning prayer, and before its setting — the afternoon prayer — and in the watches of the night, [during] the hours thereof, and make glorifications, perform the sunset and the evening prayer, and at either side of the day (wa-atrāfa’l-nahāri, a supplement to the syntactical locus of the accusative clause wa-min ānā’i, ‘and in the watches’), in other words, perform the noon prayer, because the time for it begins at the point where the sun starts to go down, which is the [end] side of the first half [of the day] and the [start] side of the second half [of the day]; that perhaps you may be pleased, with the reward that you will be given.

And do not extend your glance toward what We have given to some pairs, [certain] categories, among them to enjoy, [as] the flower of the life of this world, its adornment and delight, that We may try them thereby, [to see] if they transgress [the bounds]. And your Lord’s provision, in Paradise, is better, than what they have been given in this world, and more enduring, longer lasting.

And bid your family to prayer, and be steadfast in [the maintenance of] it. We do not ask of you, We [do not] charge you with [the procurement of], any provision, [either] for yourself or for anyone else. We [it is Who] provide you, and the [best] sequel, Paradise, will be in favour of God-fearing, for such people.

And they, the idolaters, say, ‘Why does he, Muhammad (s), not bring us a sign from his Lord?’, of the sort which they request. Has there not come to them (read ta’tihim or ya’tihim) the clear proof, the statements, of what is in the former scriptures?, the tales contained in the Qur’ān relating to past communities and [the details of] their destruction for denying the messengers?

Had We destroyed them with a chastisement before him, before [the coming of] Muhammad (s) the Messenger, they would have said, on the Day of Resurrection: ‘Our Lord, if only You had sent us a messenger, so that we might have followed those signs of Yours, given to the messengers [to convey], before we were [thus] abased, at the Resurrection, and disgraced?’, in Hell.

Say, to them: ‘Each, [one] of us and you, is waiting, to [see] what this affair will lead to. So wait! For you shall indeed know, at the Resurrection, who are the followers of the even path, the straight way, and who is [rightly] guided’, away from error, us or you.

Nigh has drawn for mankind, the people of Mecca, the deniers of the Resurrection, their reckoning, [on] the Day of Resurrection, yet they are heedless, of it, disregardful, of the preparation [required] for it by way of [embracing] faith.

There does not come to them any new reminder from their Lord, [revealed] gradually, in other words, [new] words of the Qur’ān, but they listen to it as they play, [as they] engage in mockery,

with their hearts preoccupied, heedless of its meanings. And they are secret in [their] conference, [their] speech, [they] the evildoers (alladhīna zalamū, a substitution for the [third person plural indicator] wāw of wa-asarrū’l-najwā, ‘and they are secret in conference’) ‘Is this, namely, Muhammad (s), other than a [mortal] human being like yourselves?, and so what he produces is [mere] sorcery. Will you then take [to] sorcery, [will] you [succumb and] follow it, even though you are able to see?’, [even though] you know that it is sorcery?

He said, to them, ‘My Lord knows the words, that are [spoken], in the heavens and the earth, and He is the Hearer, of what they keep secret, the Knower’, of it.

Nay (bal, in the three instances [below] effects a transition from one subject to another) but they say, regarding those parts of the Qur’ān he [the Prophet] has brought [to them] are: ‘A muddle of nightmares, a confusion [of things] he has seen in [his] sleep. Nay, he has fabricated it, he has invented it; nay, he is a poet, and what he has brought is [merely] poetry! So let him bring us a sign, such as was sent to the ancients’, like the she-camel [Sālih], the staff and the [glowing] hand [of Moses]. God, exalted be He, says:

No town before them ever believed — meaning [none of] its inhabitants — of those that We destroyed, for the denial of the signs brought to them. Would they then believe? No.

And We sent none before you other than men to whom We revealed (read nūhī or yūhā, ‘[to whom] it is revealed’) and [We sent] not any angels. Ask the People of the Remembrance, those with knowledge of the Torah and the Gospel, if you do not know, this; for they will know it. Since you are more likely to believe them than the believers are to believing Muhammad (s).

And We did not make them, namely, the messengers, bodies that did not eat food, nay, they eat it; and they were not immortal, in this world.

Then We fulfilled to them the promise, to deliver them. So We delivered them and whomever We would, [of] those who believed in them, and We destroyed the prodigal, those who denied them.

Now We have sent down [as revelation] to you, O clan of Quraysh, a Book in which there is the remembrance that is yours, for it is in your language. Will you not understand?, and so believe in it?

And how many did We destroy of towns — meaning its inhabitants — that had been wrongdoing, disbelieving, and brought forth another people after it!

And when they felt Our might, [when] the inhabitants of the town sensed destruction [to be near], behold, they ran away from it, they flee hastily [therefrom].

But the angels said to them scornfully: ‘Do not run [away]! Return to the opulence, the comforts, which you were given to enjoy and your dwelling-places, that perhaps you might be asked’, for something of your worldly possessions as usual.

They said, ‘O (yā is for calling attention [to something]) woe to us!, [this is] our destruction! We have indeed been doing wrong’, through [our] disbelief.

So that, saying, remained their cry, which they would make and repeat, until We made them as reaped [crops], as crops harvested with sickles when they were killed with the sword, stilled, dead, like the stillness of fire when it is extinguished.

And We did not create the heaven and the earth and all that is between them, playing, being frivolous, but to indicate Our power and to benefit Our servants.

Had We desired to find some diversion, that which provides diversion, in the way of a partner or a child, We would have found it with Ourselves, from among the beautiful-eyed houris or angels, were We to do [so]. But We did not do so, thus We never desired it.

Nay, but We hurl, We cast, the truth, faith, against falsehood, disbelief, and it obliterates it, and behold, it vanishes, disappears (damaghahu, ‘it obliterates it’, actually means ‘it struck the brain with a blow’, [a blow] which is fatal). And for you, O disbelievers of Mecca, there shall be woe, severe chastisement, for what you ascribe, to God, of mate or child.

And to Him, exalted be He, belongs whoever is in the heavens and the earth, as possessions, and those who are near Him, namely, the angels (wa-man ‘indahu, the subject, the predicate of which [is the following clause]) do not disdain to worship Him, nor do they weary.

They glorify [Him] night and day, and they do not falter, in it, for it comes to them as [naturally as] breathing comes to us, [something] which we can never be distracted from.

Or (am, functions with the meaning of bal, ‘nay’, to effect a transition [in subject-matter]; the hamza is for [rhetorical] denial) have they chosen gods, that are, from the earth, such as stones, gold or silver, who, that is, gods [who], resurrect? who bring the dead back to life? No! Indeed only one who brings the dead back to life can be God.

Had there been in [either of] them, that is, [in] the heavens and the earth, gods other than God, that is, other than Him, the two would have surely deteriorated, they [the heavens and the earth] would have deviated from their observed order, because counteractive forces would exist among such [gods], as is usually the case, when there is more than one ruler, that there is counteraction and a lack of consensus regarding something. So glory be to God — an exaltation — the Lord, the Creator, of the Throne, al-kursī, above what they ascribe, the disbelievers, to God, of His having a partner and otherwise.

He shall not be questioned about what He does, but they shall be questioned, about their actions.

Or have they chosen besides Him, exalted be He, other than Him, gods? (herein is an interrogative meant as a rebuke). Say: ‘Bring your proof, for this — but such a thing is impossible. This is the Remembrance of those with me, namely, my community, and that [Remembrance] is the Qur’ān, and the Remembrance of those before me, of communities, namely, the Torah and the Gospel and other Books of God, not a single one of which contains the statement that with God there exists another god, in the way that they claim — exalted be He above such a thing. Nay, but most of them do not know the truth, the affirmation of God’s Oneness, and so they are disregardful’, of that discernment that leads to [knowledge of] it.

And We did not send any Messenger before you but We revealed to him (read nūhī or yūhā, ‘[but] it was revealed to him’) that, ‘There is no god except Me, so worship Me’, that is, affirm My Oneness.

And they say, ‘The Compassionate One has taken a son’, from the angels. Glory be to Him! Nay, but they are [merely] servants who are honoured, in His presence; for [the very] servitude [of all creatures to Him] is inconsistent with [the attribution of any of them as] progeny [of His].

They do not [venture to] speak before Him — they only speak after He has spoken, and they act according to His command, that is, following [His issuing of] it.

He knows what is before them and what is behind them, that is, what they have done and what they will do, and they do not intercede except for him with whom He is satisfied, that he be interceded for, and they, for awe of Him, exalted be He, are apprehensive, fearful.

And should any of them say, ‘I am a god besides Him’, that is, [besides] God, in other words, [a god] other than Him — and this is Iblīs, who summoned [others] to worship his soul and commanded that it be obeyed — such a one We will requite with Hell. Thus, in the same way that We requite him, We requite wrong-doers, idolaters.

Have they not ([one may] read a-wa-lam or a-lam) realised, [have they not] come to know, those who disbelieve, that the heavens and the earth were closed together and then We parted them, We made seven heavens and seven earths — or [it is meant] that the heaven was parted and began to rain, when it did not use to do so, and that the earth was parted and began to produce plants, when it did not use to do so; and We made, of water, [the water] that falls from the heaven and that springs from the earth, every living thing?, in the way of plants and otherwise: in other words, water is the cause of such [things] having life. Will they not then believe?, by affirming My Oneness?

And We set in the earth firm mountains lest it should shake with them, and We set in them, [in] the firm mountains, ravines, as roads (subulan substitutes [for fijājan, ‘ravines’, which are wide through-routes]), that perhaps they may be guided, to their destinations during travel.

And We made the heaven a roof, for the earth, [functioning] like the roof of a house, preserved, from collapsing; and yet of the signs thereof, namely, [the signs of this heaven such as] the sun, the moon and the stars, they are disregardful, failing to reflect on them and thus realise that the Creator of such [things] can have no partner.

And He it is Who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon, each (kullun, the nunation of this [particle] stands in place of the second noun [of the genitive construction] that would have been al-shams, ‘the sun’, or al-qamar, ‘the moon’, or their subsidiaries, namely, al-nujūm, ‘the stars’) in an orbit, a circular [one] like a mill in the sky, swimming, moving with speed, like a swimmer in water. In order to effect the analogy with the latter, the plural person [of the verb employed] for rational beings is used.

When the disbelievers said that Muhammad (s) would die, the following was revealed: And We did not assign to any human being before you immortality, permanence [of life] in this world. What, if you [are fated to] die, will they be immortal?, in it? No! (The last sentence constitutes the [syntactical] locus of the interrogative of denial).

Every soul shall taste death, in this world, and We will try you, We will test you, with ill and good, such as poverty and wealth, sickness and health, as an ordeal (fitnatan, an object denoting reason, in other words, for the purpose of seeing whether you will be patient and give thanks or not). And then unto Us you shall be brought back, that We may requite you.

And whenever the disbelievers see you, they only take you in derision, that is, as one to be derided, saying: ‘Is this the one who mentions your gods?’, that is, [the one who] derides them? And yet when it comes to the mention of the Compassionate One, to them, they (hum, [repeated] for emphasis) are disbelieving, of it, saying, ‘We do not know of any such [individual]’.

The following was revealed regarding their demand that chastisement be hastened: Man was created of haste, that is to say, because he is so hasty in his affairs, it is as if he had been created out of it. Assuredly I shall show you My signs, My promises of chastisement, so do not demand that I hasten, in [sending] it. And so He [God] made them suffer death at [the battle of] Badr.

And they say, ‘When will this promise, of resurrection, be [fulfilled], if you are truthful?’, about it.

[God] exalted be He, says: If those who disbelieved only knew of the time when they shall not [be able to] ward off, repel, the Fire from their faces, nor from their backs, nor shall they be helped, [nor] shall they be protected from it at the Resurrection (the response to the [conditional particle] law, ‘if only’, is [something along the lines of] ‘they would not have said that’).

Nay, but it, the Resurrection, shall come upon them suddenly, dumbfounding them, confusing them, and they shall not be able to ward it off, nor shall they be granted any respite, [nor shall they] be given any [extra] time to make a repentance or offer an excuse.

And verily messengers before you were derided — herein is a statement to comfort the Prophet (s) — but those who mocked them were encircled by, it was sent down [against them], that which they used to deride, namely, chastisement — likewise it shall befall those who have derided you.

Say, to them: ‘Who can guard you, preserve you, by night and day from the Compassionate One?’, from His chastisement, if it should befall you? In other words, no one can do such a thing. Those being addressed [here] do not fear God’s chastisement because they deny [the truth of] it. Nay, but of the Remembrance of their Lord, that is, the Qur’ān, they are disregardful, failing to reflect on it.

Or is it that they have (am, ‘or’, functions with the sense of a hamza used to indicate denial, that is, [read it as] a-lahum, ‘do they have’) gods to defend them, against that which might cause them harm, besides Us? In other words, do they have anyone other than Us to defend them against such [things]? No! They, namely, the gods, cannot help themselves, and so they will not [be able to] help them; nor shall they, the disbelievers, be protected from Us, from Our chastisement (one may say sahibaka’Llāhu, to mean ‘May God preserve and protect you’).

Nay, but We provided [comforts] for these and their fathers, in the way of the graces which We bestowed on them, until life lasted long for them, so that they were deluded by such [longevity]. Do they not see how We visit the land, [how] We target their land, diminishing it at its edges?, by granting the Prophet victory [through conquest]. Are they the ones who will prevail? No, it is rather the Prophet and his Companions [who will do so].

Say, to them: ‘I warn you only by the Revelation’, [that comes] from God, and not by my own prompting. But the deaf do not hear the call when (idhā, read pronouncing both hamzas fully, or omitting the second [hamza] between it and the yā’) they are warned. They are like those who are deaf, when they fail to act in accordance with the warnings they hear.

And if a whiff, a slight instance, of your Lord’s chastisement were to touch them, they would indeed say, ‘O (yā, used for drawing attention [to something]) woe for us!, [O this is] our destruction! Truly we were doing evil’, in ascribing partners to God and denying [the Mission of] Muhammad (s).

And We shall set up the just balances, the equitable ones, for the Day of Resurrection, that is, on it, and no soul shall be wronged in any way, neither by deducting a good deed [from its record], nor by adding [to it] an evil one; and even if it, the action, be the weight of a [single] mustard seed, We shall produce it, with its full weight, and We suffice as reckoners, to count all things.

And verily We gave Moses and Aaron the Criterion, the Torah that discriminates between truth and falsehood, and [between] what is lawful and unlawful, and an illumination, by it, and remembrance, an admonition therein, for those who are wary of God,

those who fear their Lord in concealment, from people, that is, when they are in seclusion from them, and who, on account of the Hour, that is, [on account of] its terrors, are apprehensive, fearful.

And this, namely, the Qur’ān, is a blessed Remembrance which We have revealed. Will you then deny it? (the interrogative here is intended as a rebuke).

And verily We had given Abraham his rectitude before, that is, his [right] guidance before he came of age — and We were Aware of him, in that he was deserving of such [guidance],

when he said to his father and his people, ‘What are these images, [these] idols, to which you [constantly] cleave?’, that is, which you are constantly worshipping.

They said, ‘We found our fathers worshipping them’, and so we followed their example.

He said, to them, ‘Truly you and your fathers, by worshipping them, have been in manifest error’.

They said, ‘Do you bring us the truth, in that which you are saying, or are you being frivolous?’, in this regard.

He said, ‘Nay, but your Lord, the [only] One worthy of being worshipped, is the Lord, the Owner, of the heavens and the earth, [the One] Who originated them, [Who] created them without any precedent, and to that, which I have said, I am a witness.

And, by God, I shall devise [a stratagem] against your idols after you have gone away, with your backs turned’.

And so, after they had set off to a gathering of theirs on one of their festival days, he reduced them to fragments (read judhādhan or jidhādhan, meaning ‘pieces’), [smashing them] with a hatchet, [all] except the principal one among them, around whose neck he hung the hatchet, that they might return to it, that is, to the principal one, and see what he had done to the others.

They said, upon returning and seeing what had been done, ‘Who has done this to our gods? Truly he is an evildoer’, in this regard.

They said, one to the other: ‘We heard a young man making [ill] mention of them, deriding them — he is called Abraham’.

They said, ‘Then bring him before the people’s eyes, that is, openly, that they may testify’, against him as being the perpetrator.

They said, to him, after he had been brought [before them]: ‘So, is it you (read a-anta, [either] pronouncing fully the two hamzas; or substituting an alif for the second one, or not pronouncing it [the second one], and inserting an alif between the one not pronounced and the other one, or without [this insertion]) who has done this to our gods, O Abraham?’

He said, concealing his deed: ‘Rather it was this principal one among them did it. So question them, about the perpetrator of this, if they can speak!’ (here the response to the conditional statement precedes [the conditional clause]; in the preceding clause there is an intimation for them that an idol, acknowledged as being incapable of action, cannot be a god).

So they turned [thinking] to themselves, in reflection, and they said, to themselves: ‘Truly it is you who are the evildoers’, for worshipping that which cannot speak.

Then they were turned, by God, on their heads, that is to say, they were made to return to their disbelief and said, ‘By God, you are certainly aware that these [idols] cannot speak’, in other words, how can you thus command us to question them?

He said, ‘Do you then worship, besides God, that is, in His place, that which cannot benefit you in any way, with regard to [granting you] provision and otherwise, nor harm you?, in any way if you were not to worship it?

Fie (read uffin or uffan, with the sense of a verbal noun, meaning ‘a putrid thing or a vile thing [be]’) on you and what you worship besides God, that is, other than Him. Do you not comprehend?’, that these idols are not worthy of being worshipped and are not fit for such [a purpose] — only God, exalted be He, is worthy of it.

They said, ‘Burn him, that is, [burn] Abraham, and stand by your gods, by having him burnt, if you are to do anything’, in the way of standing by them. Thus they gathered lots of firewood and lit a fire throughout it. They then tied up Abraham, placed him in a ballista and had him hurled into the fire. God, exalted be He, says:

We said, ‘O fire! Be coolness and safety for Abraham!’, and so it only consumed the bonds [with which he had been tied]. Its heat departed, but its luminosity remained. And by His words wa-salāman, ‘and safety’, Abraham was safe from (salima) death because of its coolness.

And they sought to outwit him, namely, by having him burnt, but We made them the greater losers, in what they sought.

And We delivered him, as well as Lot — son of his [Abraham’s] brother Hārān — from Iraq, [and brought them] to the land which We have blessed for all peoples, [blessed it] with an abundance of rivers and trees, and this is Syria. Abraham settled in Palestine, and Lot in the Sinful City (al-mu’tafika, cf. Q. 53:53); and between the two is [the distance of] a day’s journey.

And We gave him, namely, Abraham — for he had asked for a child, as mentioned in [sūrat] al-Sāffāt [Q. 37:100] — Isaac, and Jacob as a gift, that is, as [something] in addition to what was requested; or it means ‘a grandson’; and each of them, that is, himself and the two born of him, We made righteous, [We made them] prophets.

And We made them leaders (read a-immatan pronouncing both hamzas, or substituting the second one with a yā’), whose example of good [conduct] is followed, guiding, people, by Our command, to Our religion, and We inspired in them the performance of good deeds and the maintenance of prayers and the payment of alms, that is, [We inspired] that these [good deeds] be performed, [prayers] be maintained, and [alms] be payed by them and by their followers (the [final] hā’ of iqāma has been omitted to soften [the reading]), and they used to worship Us.

And to Lot We gave judgement, the ability to judge decisively between opposing parties, and knowledge; and We delivered him from the town which had been committing, that is, whose inhabitants had been committing, deeds of, vileness, by way of homosexual intercourse, hazelnut-hurling and bird-games and other things. Truly they were a folk of evil [people] (saw’ is the verbal noun of sā’ahu, ‘he harmed him’, the opposite of sarrahu, ‘he delighted him’), immoral.

And We admitted him into Our mercy, by Our saving him from his people. He was indeed one of the righteous.

And, mention, Noah (what follows [Nūhan] substitutes for it) when he called, when he supplicated [to God] against his people — with the words My Lord, do not leave [upon the earth any inhabitant from among the disbelievers] … to the end [of the verse, Q. 71:26], before, that is, before [the time of] Abraham and Lot. And We responded to him, and delivered him and his people, who were in the Ark with him, from the great agony, namely, [from] drowning and his people’s denial of him.

And We helped him, We defended him, against the people who denied Our signs, the ones indicating his Mission, lest they cause him any harm. They were indeed an evil people, so We drowned them all.

And, mention, David and Solomon, that is, [mention] their story (Dāwūda wa-Sulaymāna is substituted by [the following, idh yahkumāni …]) when they gave judgement concerning the tillage, a field of crops or a vineyard, when the sheep of a [certain] people strayed into it, that is, [when these sheep] grazed there at night, but without a shepherd, because they had escaped; and We were witnesses to their judgement (li-hukmihim shāhidīna: here the plural person is being used in the case of a dual). David decreed: to the owner of the tillage belong the head of the sheep. Solomon decreed: he shall benefit from [the use of] their milk, offspring and wool until such time as the tillage is restored to its original state at the hands of the owner [of the sheep], after which he [the owner of the tillage] should return them [the sheep] to him [their owner].

And We gave understanding of this, that is, the judgement, to Solomon. [It is said that] both of their decisions were [the result of] independent judgement [exercised by both], and that David consulted Solomon; but it is also said [that their decisions were] by way of inspiration [from God] — the second [decision] abrogated the first. And to each, of the twain, We gave judgement, prophethood, and knowledge, in matters of religion. And We disposed the mountains to glorify [God] with David, and the birds also, were disposed to glorify [God] with him, for he [David] had commanded such [glorification on their part], so that whenever there was a lapse [on his part], he would [be reminded to] apply himself to the task [of glorifying God] promptly. And We were [certainly] doers, of this disposing of them to glorify [God] along with him, even if it should amaze you, that they should [be able to] respond to the lord David.

And We taught him the art of making garments, namely, coats of mail — [which are called labūs] because they are worn (tulbas). He was the first [human being] to make them; hitherto there were [only] plates [of armour] — for you, as well as all mankind, to protect you (read nuhsinakum, [the subject being] ‘God’; or yuhsinakum, [the subject being] ‘David’; or tuhsinakum, [the subject being] ‘garments’) against your [mutual] violence, your wars against your enemies. Will you then, O people of Mecca, be thankful?, for My favours, by believing in the Messenger — in other words, be thankful to Me by [doing] this.

And, We disposed, for Solomon the wind to blow strongly — in another verse it is [described as being] rukhā’an, ‘to blow softly’ [Q. 38:36]; in other words, [it is either] blowing violently or gently [respectively], according to what he [Solomon] wanted — making its way, at his command, to the land which We have blessed, namely, Syria; and We have knowledge of all things, among them the fact that God, exalted be He, knew that what He gave to Solomon would prompt him to be subservient to his Lord, and so God did this in accordance with His knowledge.

And, We disposed, of the devils some that dived for him, plunging into the sea and bringing out of it jewels for Solomon, and performed tasks other than that, that is, other than diving, such as building and otherwise. And We were watchful over them, lest they should spoil what they had made, for whenever they completed a task before nightfall, they would [invariably] spoil it, unless they were occupied with some other [task].

And, mention, Job (Ayyūba, is substituted by [the following, idh nādā rabbahu …]) when he called out to his Lord — after he had been afflicted with the loss of all of his possessions and children, the laceration of his body, his being shunned by all except his wife, for a period of thirteen, seventeen, or eighteen years, as well as [the affliction of enduring] a straitened means of livelihood — ‘Indeed (read annī because of the implicit yā’ [of the first person pronoun]) harm, adversity, has befallen me, and You are the Most Merciful of the merciful’.

So We responded to him, in his call, and removed the harm that had befallen him, and We gave him [back] his family, his male and female children, by bringing them back to life — of each sex there were three or seven along with them [other children] the like of them, from his wife, for she was made younger. He had also possessed a threshing floor for wheat and another for barley, so God sent two clouds and one of them poured forth gold onto the wheat threshing floor and the other poured forth silver onto the barley threshing floor, until they overflowed; as a mercy (rahmatan, a direct object denoting reason) from Us (min ‘indinā, an adjectival phrase) and a reminder to worshippers, that they be patient and thus be rewarded [by God].

And, mention, Ishmael and Idrīs and Dhū’l-Kifl — all were of the patient, in [maintaining] obedience to God and staying away from acts of disobedience to Him.

And We admitted them into Our mercy, through [granting them] prophethood. Indeed they were among the worthy, of it. Dhū’l-Kifl was so called because he undertook (takaffala) to fast every day and stay up every night in prayer, and to pass judgement between people without succumbing to anger, and fulfilled this [undertaking]. It is also said, however, that he was not a prophet.

And, mention, Dhū’l-Nūn, the one of the whale, namely, Jonah son of Amittai (Yūnus bin Mattā) when he went off enraged ([Dhā’l-Nūn] is substituted by [the clause idh dhahaba mughādiban]) by his people, that is, furious with them because of what he had suffered at their hands — even though he had not been granted permission [by God to go off as he did] — thinking that We had no power over him, that is, that We could [not] compel him to [submit to] Our decree in the way that We did by imprisoning him inside the stomach of the whale; or that We could [not] make circumstances difficult for him. Then he cried out in the darknesses, [through] the darkness of the night, the darkness of the sea and the darkness of the whale’s stomach, that: ‘There is no god except You! Glory be to You! I have indeed been one of the wrongdoers’, for leaving my people without [Your] permission.

So We responded to him and delivered him from the distress, by [means of] those words, and thus, in the same way that We delivered him, We deliver the believers, from their anguish when they call out to Us seeking succour.

And, mention, Zachariah (Zakariyyā, is substituted by [the following, idh nādā rabbahu …]) when he cried out to his Lord, saying: ‘My Lord, do not leave me without an heir, without a son to inherit from me, and You are the best of inheritors’, the One that endures after all of your creation has perished.

So We responded to him, in his call, and gave him John, as a son, and We restored [fertility to] his wife for him, and so she bore a child, having been barren. Truly they, those prophets that have been mentioned, would hasten to, [they would] hurry [to perform], good works, [namely] acts of obedience, and supplicate Us out of desire, for Our mercy, and in awe, of Our chastisement, and they were submissive before Us, humble in their worship.

And, mention Mary, the one who guarded her virginity, [the one who] preserved it from being taken, so We breathed into her of Our spirit, namely, Gabriel, when he breathed into the opening of her garment and she conceived Jesus. And We made her and her son a sign for all the worlds, that is, [for] mankind, jinn and angels, because she bore him without [having] a male [partner].

‘Truly this, creed of Islam, is your community, your religion, O you who are being addressed — in other words, you must adhere to it as, one community, [this being] a necessary state [of affairs], and I am your Lord, so worship Me’, affirm My Oneness.

But they, that is to say, some of those being addressed, fragmented their affair among themselves, that is, they became divided in the matter of their religion, and at variance over it — these are the [different] sects of the Jews and the Christians. God, exalted be He, says: All shall return to Us, and We will requite each according to his deeds.

And whoever performs righteous deeds, being a believer — no rejection, that is, no denial, will there be of his endeavour, and We will indeed write it down for him, by commanding the guardian angels to record it and then We requite him for it.

It is forbidden for any town, meaning [it is forbidden for] its people, which We have destroyed that they should (lā yarji‘ūna: the lā is extra) return, that is, their return to this world is prohibited.

Until (hattā, [a particle] expressing the end of the prohibition of their return) when Gog and Magog (read Ya’jūju wa-Ma’jūju or Yājūju wa-Mājūju, [these are] non-Arabic names of two tribes; there is an implicit genitive annexation before this clause, namely, the [gates of the] sadd, ‘the barrier’, [built] against them) are let loose (read futihat or futtihat) — and this will happen near the [time of the] Resurrection — and they slide down, they hasten, from every slope, [every] highland.

And the true promise, that is, the Day of Resurrection, draws near and behold, when, the gaze of the disbelievers will be fixed, on that Day, because of its severity, saying: ‘O (yā is for exclamation) woe to us!, [this is] our destruction! Verily, in the [life of the] world, we were oblivious to this, Day. Nay, but we were doing wrong’, to our souls by our denial of the messengers.

‘Truly you, O people of Mecca, and what you worship besides God, that is, other than Him, in the way of graven images, shall be fuel for Hell, [you shall be] its fodder; and you shall come to it’, [you shall] enter it.

Had these, graven images, been gods, as you claim, they would never have come to it, [they would never have] entered it, and they will all, both the worshippers and the worshipped, abide therein.

For them, for the worshippers, there will be groaning therein and they will not hear in it, anything, because of the ferocity with which it boils. When [‘Abd Allāh] Ibn al-Ziba‘rī said, ‘Ezra, Jesus and the angels were worshipped: they must also be in the Fire then, according to what has just been stated’, the following was revealed:

Indeed those to whom [the promise of] the best reward, the [best] status, went beforehand from Us, and among such are those who have just been mentioned: they will be kept away from it.

They will not hear the faintest sound from it and they will abide in what their souls desired, of bliss.

The Supreme Terror — which is that a servant be ordered off to the Fire, shall not grieve them, and the angels shall receive them, upon their exiting from their graves, saying to them: ‘This is your day, the one which you were promised’, during the [life of the] world.

The day (yawma is in the accusative because of an implied preceding udhkur, ‘mention’) when We shall roll up the heaven as the Scribe, [al-sijill being] the name of an angel, rolls up the written scroll, that is, the scroll of the son of Adam when he dies (the lām [of li’l-kitāb] is extra; alternatively, [one may read the verse so that] al-sijill is ‘the scroll’, and al-kitāb means al-maktūb ‘what is written’, in which case the lām [of li’l-kitāb] has the sense of [the particle] ‘alā, ‘over’; a variant reading [for li’l-kitāb] has the plural, li’l-kutub, ‘the books’). As We began the first creation, from non-existence, We shall repeat it, after making it non-existent (the kāf [of ka-mā, ‘as’] is semantically connected to nu‘īdu, ‘We shall repeat [it]’, and its [suffixed] pronoun [-hu, ‘it’] refers back to awwala, ‘the first’; the mā relates to the verbal noun) — a promise binding on Us (wa‘dan is in the accusative because [it is the direct object] of an implied preceding wa‘adnā, ‘We promised’, and [the clause] constitutes a confirmation of the import of the preceding [verse, 103]). Truly We shall do [that], which We have promised.

Certainly We wrote in the Scripture, (al-zabūr) means ‘the Book’, that is, the revealed Books of God, after the Remembrance, meaning the Mother of the Book (umm al-kitāb), which is [kept] with God: ‘Indeed the land, the land of Paradise, shall be inherited by My righteous servants’ — [this promise] applies to all righteous ones.

Indeed there is in this, Qur’ān, a proclamation, sufficient means for [securing] entry into Paradise, for a people who are devout, acting in accordance with [what is stipulated in] it.

We did not send you, O Muhammad (s), except as a mercy, that is, to [give] mercy, to all the worlds, [the worlds of] mankind and jinn through you.

Say: ‘All that is being revealed to me is that your God is One God, that is, the only thing that is being revealed to me with respect to the Divine is His Oneness. So will you submit?’, [will you] accede to [affirming] the Oneness of the Divine that is being revealed to me? (the interrogative is meant as an imperative).

But if they turn away, from this, say: ‘I have proclaimed to you, I have notified you of [my declaration of] war [on you], all alike (‘alā sawā’ is a circumstantial qualifier referring to both the subject of the verb and the object) that is to say, you are [all] equal in having knowledge of this: I shall not proceed independently without [having first informed] you, in order for you to make preparations, although I do not know whether near or far is that which you have been promised’, with respect to chastisement, or to the [Day of] Resurrection that comprises this [chastisement]; only God knows it.

Indeed He, exalted be He, knows whatever is spoken aloud, and what you and others do, and He knows what you conceal, both you and others, of secrets.

I do not know; perhaps that, which I have notified you of, but whose time is not known, may be a trial, a test, for you, to see how you will act, and an enjoyment for a while, that is, until your terms of life are concluded (this [second] clause [wa-matā‘un, ‘and an enjoyment’] counters the former, which is the object of the optative expressed by [the particle] la‘alla, ‘perhaps’; the second [clause] cannot be an optative).

Say (qul, a variant reading has qāla, ‘He said’): ‘My Lord! Judge, between me and my deniers, with truth, by [assigning] chastisement for them or victory [for me] over them. And so they were chastised at [the battles of] Badr, Uhud, Hunayn, al-Ahzāb and al-Khandaq and he [the Prophet] was given victory over them. And our Lord is the Compassionate One, Whose help is to be sought against what you allege’, when you invent lies against God, saying that ‘[God] has taken a son’ [cf. Q. 2:116]; and against me, when you say, ‘[he is] a sorcerer’ [cf. Q. 38:4], or against the Qur’ān, when you say, ‘[it is] poetry’ [cf. Q. 52:30].

O mankind, that is, the inhabitants of Mecca and others: fear your Lord, that is, of His punishment, by being obedient to Him. Surely the earthquake of the Hour [of Doom], that is, the violent quaking of the earth after which the sun will rise from the west, [something] which will be near [the time of] the Hour, is a tremendous thing, in the way it will distress people — this itself being a sort of punishment.

On the day when you behold it, every, actually, nursing female, on account of this [tremendous day], will neglect her suckling, that is, she will forget it; and every pregnant female will deliver her burden, and you will see mankind [as though] drunk, because of the severity of [their] fear, yet they will not be drunk, because of any drink; but God’s chastisement is severe, and so they will be terrified of it.

The following was revealed regarding al-Nadr b. al-Hārith and his companions: And among mankind are those who dispute about God without any knowledge — they would say, ‘The angels are God’s daughters, and the Qur’ān [a collection of] the fables of the ancients’. In addition, they would deny resurrection and the bringing back to life of those who had become dust — and [those who] follow, in their manner of disputing, every rebellious devil,

about whom it has been decreed, in other words, it has been decreed with regards to a devil, that whoever takes him for a friend, that is, [whoever] follows him, he will make him go astray and will lead him, summon him, to the chastisement of the Blaze, namely, to the Fire.

O mankind, in other words, [O] people of Mecca, if you are in doubt about the Resurrection, then lo! [consider that] We have created you, that is, [We have created] your origin — Adam — from dust then, We created his progeny, from a drop, a sperm-drop, then from a clot, congealed blood, then from a [little] lump of flesh (mudgha), a piece of flesh, the size of what one would [be able to] chew (mā yumdagh), partly formed, shaped, complete in form, and partly unformed, that is, uncomplete in form, that We may make clear to you, the perfect nature of Our power, that you might [then] infer from this initial act of creation, the [reality of its future] restoration. And We establish (nuqirru, marks a new [grammatically independent] sentence) in the wombs whatever We will for a specified time, that is, until the time for it to come out, then We bring you forth, from the bellies of your mothers, as infants, and then, We extend your life, that you may come of age (ashuddakum), that is to say, [your] prime and strength, which is [that age] between thirty and forty years. And there are some of you who are taken away, by death, before coming of age, and there are some of you who are relegated to the most abject time of life, its most despicable [state] of decrepitude and senility, so that after [having had] some knowledge, he no longer knows anything — ‘Ikrima said, ‘Whoever recites the Qur’ān, such a state will not befall him’. And you see the earth torpid, barren, yet when We send down water upon it, it stirs, it moves, and swells, it rises and grows, and grows [plants of] (anbatat min, min is extra) every delightful, fair, kind, species.

That, which is mentioned, from the commencement of man’s creation to the end of [the description of] the earth being revived, is because God, He is the Truth, the Constant, the Permanent, and because He revives the dead and has power over all things;

and because the Hour will come, whereof there is no doubt, uncertainty; and because God will resurrect those who are in the graves.

The following was revealed regarding Abū Jahl: And among mankind there are some who dispute about God without [any] knowledge or guidance, [being] with him, or an enlightening Scripture, one containing light, [being] with him,

turning aside (thāniya ‘itfihi, a circumstantial qualifier, meaning ‘turning his neck aside in disdain of belief; al-ītf means ‘a side’, and can be either the left or the right) to go astray (read li-yadilla; or li-yudilla, ‘to lead [others] astray’) from the way of God, that is, [from] His religion. For him there will be ignominy, chastisement, in this world — thus he [Abū Jahl] was slain on the day of Badr — and on the Day of Resurrection We shall make him taste the chastisement of the burning, that is, [the chastisement of] being burnt in the Fire, and it shall be said to him:

‘That is [the chastisement] for what your hands have sent ahead, in other words, what you have offered [in the way of deeds] — He refers to him with reference to the two [hands] as opposed to other [parts], because most actions are effected through them — and because God is not unjust to His servants’, chastising them without [their having committed] any sin.

And among mankind there are those who worship God on a knife-edge: that is, with uncertainty in his worship — such [a person] has been likened the [knife-] edge of a mountain in his precariousness — if good [fortune] befalls him, [so that he enjoys] health and security with respect to his own self and his property, he is reassured by it; but if an ordeal befalls him, a trial or ill-health with regard to himself or his property, he makes a turnabout, that is, he reverts to disbelief, losing both this world, when what he had hoped for in it has eluded him, and the Hereafter, by [his] disbelief. That is the manifest loss.

He calls on, he worships, besides God, in the way of idols, that which could not hurt him, should he refrain from worshipping it, and that which could not profit him, if were to worship it. Such, a call, is extreme error, from the truth.

He calls on him (the lām [of la-man] is extra) whose harm, when worshipped, is likelier than his benefit, even if he were to have any benefit, as he imagines [him to have]. Truly an evil patron, is he, that is, [an evil] helper, and an evil friend, [an evil] companion is he. After the mention of ‘the doubter’ and [his being in manifest] ‘loss’ [above, verse 11] there follows [the mention of] the believers and [their] reward, as follows:

Truly God shall admit those who believe and perform righteous deeds, in the way of obligatory and supererogatory acts [of worship], into gardens underneath which rivers flow. Indeed God does whatever He desires, in the way of showing beneficence to those who obey Him and degrading those who disobey Him.

Whoever supposes that God will not help him, namely, Muhammad (s) His Prophet, in this world and the Hereafter, let him extend a rope to the ceiling, [to] the roof of his house, fixing it there and [tying it] to his neck, and let him hang himself, that is, let him choke to death because of it, by severing his soul from [any existence on] the earth, as [reported] in the [various] Sahīh compilations. Then let him see whether his strategy, against the Prophet being helped, dispels that which enrages him, about it. In other words, let him choke to death with rage because of it, for it is inevitable.

So, just as We revealed the previous verse, We revealed it, that is, the remainder of the Qur’ān, as clear signs, manifest [signs] (bayyināt, ‘clear signs’, is a circumstantial qualifier) and indeed God guides whomever He desires, that he be guided (wa-anna’Llāha yahdī man yurīdu, a supplement to the [suffixed pronoun] hā’, ‘it’, of anzalnāhu, ‘We revealed it’).

Truly those who believe, and those of Jewry, namely, the Jews, and the Sabaeans, a sect from among them, and the Christians, and the Magians and the polytheists — God will indeed judge between them on the Day of Resurrection, by admitting the believers into Paradise, and all others into the Fire. Assuredly God, over all things, [the things] which they do, is Witness, Knowing them a knowledge of direct vision (‘ilm mushāhada).

Have you not seen, [have you not] realised, that to God prostrate whoever is in the heavens and whoever is in the earth, together with the sun and the moon, and the stars and the mountains, and the trees and the animals, that is, how they are submissive to Him in what He wills of them, as well as many of mankind?, namely, the believers, [who prostrate to Him] in addition to their submissiveness [to Him] when prostrating in prayer. And for many the chastisement has become due, and these are the disbelievers, for they refuse to prostrate, [an action] which is contingent on belief. And he whom God abases, [he whom] He makes unprosperous, there is none to give him honour, [none] to make him fortunate. Indeed God does whatever He will, in the way of abasing or giving honour.

These twain are two contenders, that is, the believers constitute one contending party, and the five [categories of] disbelievers constitute the other contending party (the term [khasm, ‘contender’] may be used to refer to one or many) who contend concerning their Lord, that is to say, concerning His religion. As for those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them, [garments] which they will wear — meaning that the Fire will encompass them — and boiling water will be poured over their heads, [hamīm is] water that has reached an extreme temperature,

whereby will be melted that which is in their bellies, of fats and otherwise, and, whereby will be grilled, their skins.

And there will be hooked rods of iron for them, for their heads to be beaten with.

Whenever they desire to exit from it, that is, [from] the Fire, on account of [their] anguish, they are made to return into it, they are driven back into it with the hooked rods, and, it shall be said to them: ‘Taste the chastisement of the burning!’, namely, the one that has reached ultimate [degree of] combustion.

And He [God] says of the believers: Indeed God shall admit those who believe and perform righteous deeds into gardens underneath which rivers flow; adorned therein with bracelets of gold and pearl (read wa-lu’lu’in, genitive, to mean [bracelets] made of both [elements], so that the pearls are set in gold; or read wa-lu’lu’an, accusative, as a supplement to the [syntactical] locus of min asāwira, ‘bracelets’); and their raiment therein will be silk, namely, the one forbidden for men to wear in this world.

And they shall be guided, in this world, to wholesome words, namely, ‘There is no god except God’, and they shall be guided to the path of the Praised, that is, to the praiseworthy way of God and His religion.

Truly those who disbelieve, and who bar from the way of God, [from] obedience to Him, and, from, the Sacred Mosque, which We have assigned, as a [holy] rite and a place of devotion, for mankind, equally for the dweller, the one who resides, therein and the visitor, the passer-by; and whoever seeks [to commit] sacrilege therein (the bā’ [of bi-ilhādin, ‘sacrilege’] is extra) by doing wrong, in other words, for such a reason, committing what is forbidden, even if he should curse the [Mosque’s] attendant, We shall make him taste a painful chastisement, that is, some such [chastisement] (from this [last clause] one may derive the predicate of [the introductory particle] inna, ‘truly’, and it is this: ‘We shall make them taste a painful chastisement’.

And, mention, when We settled, [when] We pointed out, for Abraham the site of the House, that he may build it — for it [the House] had been raised [to heaven] at the time of the Flood — and We commanded him, [saying]: ‘Do not ascribe any partner to Me and purify My House, of graven images, for those who circumambulate it and those who are resident, staying therein, and those who bow and prostrate ([al-rukka‘ and al-sujūd] are the plural forms of rāki‘ and sājid [respectively]), those praying.

And announce, call out, among the people the [season for] Pilgrimage. Thus he cried out from [the top of] the mountain of Abū Qubays, ‘O people, your Lord has built a House and has made pilgrimage to it an obligation upon you, so respond to [the call of] your Lord’, turning his face to the right and to the left, to the east and to the west; and every one of those for whom the performance of the pilgrimage had been preordained [by God] from among the loins of men and the wombs of women, responded to him [thus]: ‘At Your service, our Lord, [we are] at Your service’ (labbayka’Llāhumma labbayk). The response to the command [clause] is [the following]: and they shall come to you on foot, walking (rijāl, plural of rājil, similar [in pattern] to qā’im, ‘standing’, and [its plural] qiyām) and, riding, on every lean camel, that is, [on] every emaciated camel (dāmir, [this term] may be used to refer to both male and female [camels]). They shall come, that is, the lean camels (by grammatical agreement with the [feminine verb] form) from every deep ravine, [from every] distant route,

that they may witness, that they may be present before, things that are of benefit to them, in this world, such as commerce, or [of benefit] in the Hereafter, or in both — all [of which are [valid alternative] opinions — and mention God’s Name on appointed days, namely, the ten days of Dhū’l-Hijja, or the Day of ‘Arafa, or from the Day of Immolation up to the last days of tashrīq — all of which are [valid alternative] opinions — over the livestock which He has provided them, such as the camels, cows and sheep immolated on the Day of the ‘Īd, and any subsequent offerings or sacrifices. “So eat thereof, if it be recommended, and feed the wretched poor”, that is, the one in dire poverty.

Then let them do away with their self-neglect, that is to say, [let them] remove any dirt or unkemptness, such as [any] long fingernails, and let them fulfil (read wa’l-yūfū or wa’l-yuwaffū) their vows, in the way of offerings and sacrifices, and perform the circumambulation, the circumambulation following the egress [from ‘Arafa], of the Ancient House’, that is, the Old one, because it was the first House founded for mankind.

[That is] that (dhālika, the predicate of an implied subject, in other words: ‘the matter’ or ‘the affair’ is ‘that which has been mentioned’). And whoever venerates the sacraments of God, namely, those things whose violation is forbidden, that, veneration of them, shall be better for him with his Lord, in the Hereafter. And cattle are lawful for you, to consume, after [their] slaughter, except for that which has been recited to you, as being unlawful, in [the verse]: Forbidden to you is carrion … [Q. 5:3]. The exceptive clause [above] is a discontinuous one; but it could also be [taken as] continuous, so that the prohibition is of that which has died and so on. So avoid the abomination of idols (mina’l-awthān: min here is explicative [as opposed to partitive], in other words, ‘[avoid abomination], namely, idols’), and avoid false speech, that is to say, ascribing partners to God in your [uttering of the] talbiya, or [avoid] bearing false witness;

being hanīfs to God, [being] of those who have submitted [to God], inclining away from every religion except His religion, not ascribing partners to Him (this [clause] emphasises the preceding one, both [clauses] being circumstantial qualifiers referring to the [third person plural indicator] wāw [of ijtanibū, ‘avoid’]). For whoever ascribes partners to God, it is as though he had fallen from the heaven and been snatched away by [vulture] birds, that is, [as though] they had seized him swiftly, or [as though] the wind had blown him, dropped him, into a far-off place, so that there is no hope of his being saved.

That (dhālika, an implied subject, al-amru, ‘the matter [is]’, is taken to precede this [predicate]). And whoever venerates the sacraments of God, then that, in other words, then that veneration of them — namely, [of] the beasts of sacrifice offered in the Sanctuary, after the best of them have been selected and fattened — derives from the piety of the hearts, of those individuals. These [sacraments] are called sha‘ā’ir because they are marked out [ish‘ār] with something to indicate that they are offerings, such as having a hump pierced with a piece of metal.

You may benefit from them, such as riding on them and carrying your loads on them in a way that does not harm them, until a specified time, the time for its immolation. Thereafter its lawful sacrifice, that is, the site where its immolation becomes due, is by the Ancient House, meaning, the entire [Meccan] Sanctuary.

And for every community, that is, [for every] believing group that came before you, We have appointed a [holy] rite (read mansakan as the verbal noun [‘ritual’], or mansikan as a noun denoting the site [for a rite]) in other words, [for every community We have appointed] a sacrificial slaughter or the site for such [a ritual], that they might mention God’s Name over the livestock that He has provided them, at the point of slaughtering them. For your God is One God, so submit, yield, to Him. And give good tidings to the humbly obedient,

who, when God is mentioned, their hearts tremble, fear, and who endure [patiently] whatever may befall them, of ordeals, and who observe prayer, at its appointed times, and who, from that which We have provided them, expend, [from it] give voluntary alms.

And [as for] the sacrificial camels (al-budn, plural of badana, which are ‘camels’) — We have appointed them for you as one of God’s sacraments, the [ritual] ceremonies of His religion. There is good for you in them, benefit for you in this world, as already mentioned, and a reward in the Hereafter. So mention God’s Name over them, at the point of immolating them, when they are lined up, standing on three legs, with the left foreleg hobbled. Then, when their flanks have collapsed, fallen to the ground after immolation — which is the time when one may eat of them — eat of them, if you wish, and feed the [self-contained] beggar (al-qāni‘, [a beggar] who is content with what he is given, neither asking nor approaching [people]) and the suppliant (al-mu‘tarr, [a beggar] who asks [for charity] or approaches [people for that purpose]). So, that is, similar to such a disposal, We have disposed them for you, that it may be immolated or ridden — for otherwise it would not have been possible — that perhaps you might be thankful, for My graces to you.

Neither their flesh nor their blood shall reach God, that is, neither of these shall be raised up to Him; rather it is your piety that shall reach Him, that is, it is your righteous action, performed purely for Him, together with [your] faith, that shall be raised up to Him. Thus has He disposed them for you, that you may magnify God for His guiding you, for His pointing out to you the [ritual] ceremonies of His religion and the rites of His pilgrimage. And give good tidings to the virtuous, namely, those who affirm the Oneness [of God].

Indeed God protects those who believe, against the [ruinous] misguidance of idolaters. Indeed God does not love the treacherous, with regard to what is entrusted to him, the ungrateful, for His grace — these are the idolaters —in other words, He will punish them.

Permission is granted to those who fight, namely, to the believers, to fight back — this was the first verse to be revealed regarding the struggle [in the way of God] (jihād), because they have been wronged, as a result of the wrong done to them by the disbelievers. And God is truly able to help them;

they are, those who were expelled from their homes without right, for their expulsion; they were expelled, only because they said, that is, because of their saying: ‘Our Lord is God’, alone: such a saying is ‘right’, and so then to be expelled for [saying] it is to be expelled without right. Were it not for God’s causing some people (ba‘dahum, ‘some’, substitutes for al-nāsa, ‘people’) to drive back others, destruction would have befallen (read la-huddimat to emphasise a great number [of destructions]; or read la-hudimat) the monasteries, (sawāmi‘) is for monks, and churches, (kanā’is) are for Christians, and synagogues, (salawāt) is the Hebrew term for Jewish houses of worship (kanā’is), and mosques, (masājid) are for Muslims, in which, that is, in which mentioned places, God’s Name is mentioned greatly, and with such destruction acts of worship cease. Assuredly God will help those who help Him, that is, [who] help His religion. God is truly Strong, overpowering His creation, Mighty, Invincible in terms of His dominion and power;

those who, if We empower them in the land, by granting them victory over their enemies, maintain the prayer, and pay the alms, and enjoin decency and forbid indecency (this [last] is the response to the conditional clause, which together with the response constitute a relative clause of the relative noun [‘those who’]; hum, ‘they [are]’, may be taken as the implied subject before this). And with God rests the outcome of all matters, in other words, to Him these [matters] return in the Hereafter.

And if they deny you — these [words] to the end [of the statement] are meant to comfort the Prophet (s) — the people of Noah denied before them (kadhdhabat, in the feminine person on the basis of the [overall] import), and ‘Ād, the people of Hūd, and Thamūd, the people of Sālih,

as well as the people of Abraham, and the people of Lot,

and the inhabitants of Midian, the people of Shu‘ayb, and Moses was also denied: he was denied by the [native] Egyptians (al-qibt), and not by his people, the Children of Israel. In other words, [all of] those [people] denied their messengers, so take them [these messengers] as a good example [of constancy]. And I granted the disbelievers respite, I postponed [dealing with] them by deferring their requital, then I seized them, with chastisement, and how [terrible] was My abhorrence! (nakīr), that is to say, My rebuke (inkār) of them for their denial, by My destroying them (the interrogative is meant as an affirmative, in other words,: it [My chastisement] was well-placed).

How many a town I have destroyed (ahlaktuhā, a variant reading has ahlaknāhā, ‘We have destroyed’), while it was doing wrong, that is, while its inhabitants were [doing wrong] by being disbelievers, but now it lies fallen down, collapsed, on its roofs and, how many, a neglected well, abandoned because of the death of its owners, and a lofty palace, stands empty because of the death of its residents.

Have they, namely, the disbelievers of Mecca, not travelled in the land so that they may have hearts with which to comprehend, what befell deniers before them, or ears with which to hear?, the stories of how they were destroyed and their dwelling-places were ruined, and so take heed? Indeed it is not the eyes that turn blind, but it is the hearts that turn blind within the breasts (allatī fī’l-sudūr, for emphasis).

And they ask you to hasten the chastisement, even though God would never break His promise, of sending down the chastisement [upon them] — and so He sent it down on the day of Badr. And truly a day with your Lord, of the days of the Hereafter, on account of the [severity of the] chastisement, is like a thousand years of your counting (read ta‘uddūna, or ya‘uddūna, ‘their counting’), in this world.

To how many a town did I give respite while it was doing wrong; [but] then I seized it, meaning, [I seized] its inhabitants, and with Me lies the journey’s end, the [final] return.

Say: ‘O mankind, that is, [O] people of Mecca, I am only a manifest warner to you’, one whose warning is plain; but also I am a giver of good tidings to the believers.

And so those who believe and perform righteous deeds — for them there shall be forgiveness, of their sins, and a glorious provision, namely, Paradise.

But those who strive against Our signs, namely, the Qur’ān, in order to invalidate them, seeking to incapacitate (mu‘ajjizīna) those who follow the Prophet ([this meaning of mu‘ajjizīna] being derived from their assumption that these [followers] are incapable individuals) and impeding them from [practising their] faith; or [mu‘ajjizīna means] supposing Us to be incapable against them (a variant reading [of mu‘ajjizīna] has mu‘ājizīna, meaning, ‘contending with Us’) that is to say, they suppose that they will [be able to] elude Us by denying resurrection and requital — those, they shall be the inhabitants of hell-fire.

And We did not send before you any messenger (rasūl) — this is a prophet who has been commanded to deliver a Message — or prophet (nabī) — one who has not been commanded to deliver anything — but that when he recited [the scripture] Satan cast into his recitation, what is not from the Qur’ān, but which those to whom he [the prophet] had been sent would find pleasing. The Prophet (s) had, during an assembly of the [men of] Quraysh, after reciting the [following verses from] sūrat al-Najm, Have you considered Lāt and ‘Uzzā? And Manāt, the third one? [53:19-20] added, as a result of Satan casting them onto his tongue without his [the Prophet’s] being aware of it, [the following words]: ‘those are the high-flying cranes (al-gharānīq al-‘ulā) and indeed their intercession is to be hoped for’, and so they [the men of Quraysh] were thereby delighted. Gabriel, however, later informed him [the Prophet] of this that Satan had cast onto his tongue and he was grieved by it; but was [subsequently] comforted with this following verse that he might be reassured [of God’s pleasure]: thereat God abrogates, nullifies, whatever Satan had cast, then God confirms His revelations. And God is Knower, of Satan’s casting of that which has been mentioned, Wise, in His enabling him [Satan] to do such things, for He does whatever He will.

That He may make what Satan has cast a trial, a test, for those in whose hearts is a sickness, dissension and hypocrisy, and those whose hearts are hardened, namely, the idolaters, [hardened] against acceptance of the truth. For truly the evildoers, the disbelievers, are [steeped] in extreme defiance, [in] a protracted feud with the Prophet (s) and the believers, for his tongue uttered mention of their gods in a way that pleased them, and yet this was later nullified.

And that those who have been given knowledge, [of] God’s Oneness and the Qur’ān, may know that it, the Qur’ān, is the truth from your Lord, so that they may believe therein, and their hearts may find reassurance in it. And assuredly God guides those who believe to a straight path, [a straight] route, namely, the religion of Islam.

And those who disbelieve will not cease to be in doubt of it, that is, the Qur’ān — because of what Satan had cast onto the tongue of the Prophet (s) and what had thereafter been nullified — until the Hour comes upon them unawares, that is, the Hour of their death or [of] resurrection, [comes upon them] suddenly, or there come upon them the chastisement of a day of desolation (‘aqīm), namely, the day of Badr, which held nothing of good for disbelievers, much like a sterile wind (rīh ‘aqīm) that bears no good; or it means, the Day of Resurrection, [referred to as ‘desolate’] because thereafter there will be no more night.

Sovereignty on that day, namely, on the Day of Resurrection, will be God’s, alone (the [sense of God’s] ‘consolidation’ [of sovereignty on that Day] suggested by the clause renders the adverbial qualifier [yawma’idhin, ‘on that day’] into [accusative] dependent status). He will judge between them, between believers and disbelievers in the way that He explains next: Then those who believed and performed righteous deeds will be in Gardens of Bliss, as a bounty from God,

while those who disbelieved and denied Our signs, for them will be a humiliating chastisement, a severe [one], because of their disbelief.

And those who emigrated in the way of God, that is, in obedience to Him, from [emigrating from] Mecca to Medina, and then were slain, or died, God shall provide them with a good provision, namely, the provision of Paradise. Truly God is the best of providers, the most excellent of givers.

Assuredly He will admit them into a place (read mudkhalan or madkhalan, [respectively] signifying the means of entry, or the place [entered]) that is pleasing to them, and that is Paradise. And truly God is Knowing, of their intentions, Forbearing, in refraining from punishing them.

That, which We have related to you, [is so]. And whoever retaliates, [whoever] from among the believers requites, with the like of what he was made to suffer, at the hands of the idolaters wrongfully: that is whoever fights against them if they fight against him during the sacred month, and then is [again] made to suffer aggression, by them, that is to say, he is [again] wronged, by being expelled from his house, God will surely help him. Indeed God is Pardoning, to believers, Forgiving, them their engaging in combat during the sacred month.

That, help, is because God makes the night pass into the day and makes the day pass into the night, that is to say, He makes each enter into the other by increasing the one [and decreasing the other], which is a sign of His power, exalted be He, [the same power] that produces [His] help, and because God is Hearer, of the supplications of believers, Seer, of them, giving them faith and responding to their supplications.

That, help, also, is because God, He is the Truth, the Established [Truth], and what they call on (yad‘ūna; also read tad‘ūna, ‘you call on’), [what] they worship, besides Him, namely, idols, that is the False, the transient, and because God, He is the High, the One [supreme] above all things in His power, the Great, besides Whom all things are insignificant.

Have you not seen, realised, that God sends down water, rain, from the heaven whereupon the earth turns green, with plants — and this [too] is a sign of His power. Indeed God is Subtle, in dealing with His servants, when He brings forth plants through water, Aware, of what is in their hearts when the rain is delayed.

To Him belongs all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth, in terms of ownership. Surely God, He is Independent, of His servants, Praiseworthy, to His friends.

Have you not seen, realised, that God has disposed for you all that is in the earth, of beasts, and [that] the ships run upon the sea, for transport and to carry loads, by His command, by His leave, and He holds back the heaven lest it should fall on the earth, save [when it may do so] by His leave, and you are destroyed. Surely God is, with mankind, Gentle, Merciful, in disposing [things for them] and holding [others] back [from them].

And He it is Who gave you life, by originating you, then He will cause you to die, upon the conclusion of your terms [of life], then He will give you life [again], at the Resurrection. Truly man, that is, [truly] the idolater, is very ungrateful, for God’s graces by neglecting to affirm His Oneness.

For every community We have appointed a [holy] rite (read mansakan or mansikan) a [Holy] Law, which they are to observe, which they are to implement. So do not let them dispute with you, the intended meaning is ‘do not dispute with them’, about the matter, namely, the matter of the slaughter animal, when they said, ‘What God has killed is worthier for you to eat than what you killed’; but summon [people] to your Lord, [to] His religion. Indeed you follow a straight guidance, [a straight] religion.

And if they dispute with you, in the matter of religion, say, ‘God knows best what you do, and will requite you for it — this was [revealed] before the command to fight [them].

God will judge between you, O believers and disbelievers, on the Day of Resurrection concerning that wherein you used to differ’, when each of the two parties would say the opposite of what the other said.

Do you not know (the interrogative here is meant as an affirmative) that God knows all that is in the heaven and the earth? Truly that, which has been mentioned, is [recorded] in a Book, namely, the Preserved Tablet (al-lawh al-mahfūz). Indeed that, namely, the knowledge of what has been mentioned, is easy for God.

And they, the idolaters, worship besides God that, namely, idols, for which He has never revealed any warrant, [any] definitive proof, and that of which they have no knowledge, [when they claim] that these are gods. And those who do evil, by way of [practising] idolatry, shall have no helper, to protect them against God’s chastisement.

And when Our signs, in the Qur’ān, are recited to them, [though they are] clear, manifest, signs (bayyinātin, a circumstantial qualifier) you perceive on the faces of those who disbelieve denial, that is to say, denial of these [signs], in other words [you perceive] the effect of such [denial] in the way of aversion and frowning. They would almost pounce upon those who recite Our signs to them, that is, [they would almost] fall upon them in assault. Say: ‘Shall I inform you about something worse than that?, something more repulsive to you than the Qur’ān that is being recited to you? It is, The Fire! God has promised it to the disbelievers, in that their journey’s end shall be to it. And it is an evil journey’s end!’

O mankind, that is to say, [O] people of Mecca, a similitude is being struck, so listen to it, and it is that: truly those on whom you call, [whom] you worship, besides God, that is, other than Him, and these are the idols, will never create a fly (dhubāb is a generic noun, the singular of which is dhubāba, for both the masculine and the feminine) even if they rallied together to do so, to create it. And if a fly should take away something from them, [such as a drop] of the scents or the saffron in which they drench themselves, they would not be able to recover that from it, because of their [complete] incapacity: so how can they worship those [whom they suppose to be] partners of God, exalted be He? An odd thing — which He has expressed by striking a similitude. Feeble is the seeker, the worshipper, and the [thing] sought, the [thing] worshipped!

They do not esteem God, exalt Him, with the esteem He deserves, with the exaltedness [He deserves], for they ascribe to Him partners who can neither protect themselves from a fly, nor retaliate against it. Truly God is Strong, Mighty, Victor.

God chooses from the angels messengers and [also chooses] from mankind, messengers — this was revealed after the idolaters said, Has the Remembrance been revealed to him out of [all of] us? [Q. 38:8]. Truly God is Hearer, of what they say, Seer, of those whom He chooses as messengers, such as Gabriel, Michael, Abraham, Muhammad (s) and others, may God bless them and grant them peace.

He knows that which is before them and that which is behind them, in other words, what they have offered [in the way of deeds] and what they have left behind, and what they have done and what they will do next; and to God all matters are returned.

O you who believe, bow down and prostrate yourselves, in other words, perform prayer, and worship your Lord, affirm His Oneness, and do good, such as [showing] kindness to kin and [the adoption of] noble traits, that perhaps you may be prosperous, [that perhaps] you may secure everlasting life in Paradise.

And struggle in the way of God, in order to establish His religion, a struggle worthy of Him, by expending all effort therein (haqqa is in the accusative because it is a verbal noun). He has elected you, He has chosen you for His religion, and has not laid upon you in your religion any hardship, that is, [any] constraint, for He has facilitated [adherence to] it during times of difficulty, such as [His permitting you] to shorten prayers, to seek ritual purification from earth, to eat of carrion, and to break the fast during illness or travel — the creed of your father (millata is in the accusative because the genitive preposition kāf [sc. ka-millati, ‘like the creed of’] has been omitted) Abraham (Ibrāhīma, an explicative supplement). He, that is, God, named you Muslims before, that is, before [the revelation of] this Book, and in this, that is, [in] the Qur’ān, so that the Messenger might be a witness against you, on the Day of Resurrection, that he delivered the Message to you, and that you might be witnesses against mankind, that their messengers delivered the Message to them. So maintain prayer, observe it regularly, and pay the alms, and hold fast to God, trust in Him. He is your Patron, your Helper and the Guardian of your affairs. An excellent Patron, is He, and an excellent Helper, for you.

Indeed (qad is for confirmation) prosperous, victorious, are the believers,

those who in their prayers are humble,

and who shun vain talk, and other [nonsense],

and who fulfil payment of alms,

and who guard their private parts, against what is unlawful,

except from their spouses, that is, to their spouses, and what [slaves] their right hands possess, that is, concubines, for then they are not blameworthy, in having sexual intercourse with them.

But whoever seeks [anything] beyond that, [intercourse with] wives and concubines, such as masturbation: those, they are transgressors, who have overstepped [the bounds] into what is not lawful for them.

And who are keepers of their trusts (may be read as plural, amānātihim, ‘their trusts’, or singular, amānatihim, ‘their trust’) and covenants, [made] between them, or between them and God, such as [the observance of] prayer and so on.

And who are watchful of their prayers (may be read as plural, salawātihim, ‘their prayers’, or singular, salātihim, ‘their prayer’) observing them at their appointed times.

Those, they are the inheritors, and none other than them,

who shall inherit Paradise (al-firdaws), the name of a garden, the highest of the gardens of Heaven — wherein they will abide; herein is an allusion to the Return [in the Hereafter] and so it is fitting that the Beginning [of creation] should be mentioned next:

And, by God, We certainly created man, Adam, from an extraction (min sulālatin, derives from [the verbal expression] salaltu’l-shay’a mina’l-shay’, ‘I drew one thing out of another’, meaning, ‘I extracted it therefrom’) his [Adam’s] substance being, of clay (min tīnin is semantically connected to sulālatin, ‘an extraction’).

Then We made him, namely, man, the progeny of Adam, a drop, a sperm-drop, in a secure lodging, which is the womb.

Then We transformed the drop [of semen] into a clot, congealed blood. Then We transformed the clot into a [little] lump of flesh (mudgha), a piece of flesh, about the size of what one would be able to chew (mā yumdagh). Then We transformed the lump of flesh into bones. Then We clothed the bones with flesh (a variant reading in both instances [instead of the plurals ‘izāman and al-‘izāma, ‘the bones’] is [singular] ‘azman [and ‘al-‘azma], ‘the bone’; and in all three instances above khalaqnā, means ‘We made it become’ [as opposed to ‘We created’]). Then We produced him as [yet] another creature, by breathing into him [Our] Spirit. So blessed be God, the best of creators!, that is, [the best of] determiners (the specificier noun for ahsana, ‘the best’, has been omitted because it is obvious: khalqan, ‘in terms of creation’).

Then indeed after that you die.

Then on the Day of Resurrection you shall surely be raised, for reckoning and requital.

And verily We created above you seven paths, that is, [seven] heavens (tarā’iq is the plural of tarīqa [so called] because they are the paths used by the angels) and of creation, that lies beneath these [paths], We are never unmindful, lest these should fall upon them and destroy them. Nay, but We hold them back, as [stated] in the verse: And He holds back the heaven lest it should fall upon the earth [Q. 22:65].

And We sent down water out of the heaven in measure, that suffices them, and We lodged it within the earth; and We are indeed able to take it away, so that they die of thirst together with their livestock.

Then We produced for you therewith gardens of date palms and vines — these being the most common fruits of the Arabs — wherein is abundant fruit for you, and whereof you eat, in summer and winter.

And, We produced, a tree that grows on Mount of Sinai (read Sīnā’ or Saynā’, indeclinable as it is a proper noun with the feminine ending denoting a location) that produces (read either as tunbitu from the fourth form [anbata], or as tanbutu from the trilateral form [nabata]) oil (bi’l-duhni: in the case of the former [reading of tunbitu] the bā’ [bi-] here would be extra, whereas in the case of the second [reading of tanbutu], it would be [a preposition needed] for the transitive) — and this [tree] is the olive tree, and seasoning for those who eat (wa-sibghin li’l-ākilīna, a supplement to bi’l-duhni, ‘oil’, [that is to say] it is [like] a dye that colours a morsel dipped in it) — and this [seasoning] is the [olive] oil.

And surely in the cattle, that is, [in] camels, cows and sheep, there is for you a lesson, an admonition for you to heed. We give you to drink (read nasqīkum or nusqīkum) of what is in their bellies, [of] milk, and you have many uses in them, such as [the extraction of] wool, fur and hairs and other [uses], and you eat of them.

And on them, the camels, and on ships you are carried.

And verily We sent Noah to his people, and he said, ‘O my people, worship God, obey God and affirm His Oneness. You have no [other] god besides Him (ghayruhu is the subject of mā, ‘no’; the preceding [min ilāhin, ‘god’] is the predicate, the min being extra). Will you not then fear?’ His punishment in worshipping [gods] other than Him?

But the council of his people, who disbelieved, said, to their followers, ‘This is just a human being like you who desires to gain superiority, to have the honour, over you, by acquiring followers, you being [his] followers. And had God willed, that none other than Him be worshipped, He would have sent down angels, with that [Message], and not [assigned] a human being [for it]. We never heard of such, an affirmation of God’s Oneness as that which Noah summons [us], among our forefathers, [among] past communities.

He, Noah, is just a man possessed by madness, a case of dementia. So bear with him for a while’, until he dies.

He, Noah, said, ‘My Lord, help me, against them, because they deny me’, because of their denial of me, by destroying them. God, exalted be He, says, responding to his supplication:

So We revealed to him [saying], ‘Build the Ark, the ship, under Our watch, under Our observation and protection, and [by] Our revelation, Our command. Then, when Our command comes, that they be destroyed, and the oven, of the baker, gushes, with water — and this was Noah’s sign — bring into it, admit into the ship, of every kind [of animal] two mates, a male and a female, that is, [two] of every species thereof (ithnayn is an object; min, ‘of’, is semantically connected to usluk, ‘bring into [it]’). According to the story God, exalted be He, gathered all the beasts of prey and the birds and other [animals] for Noah. As he [Noah] pushed forth his hands into each species, his right hand would fall upon a male and the left upon a female, whereafter he would take them on board the ship (a variant reading [for min kuli, ‘of every’] is min kullin, ‘of every [kind]’, in which case zawjayni, ‘[two] mates’, becomes a direct object, with ithnayn, ‘two’, [being repeated] for emphasis thereof); together with your family — his wife [?] and children — except for those against whom the Word has already gone forth, that they be destroyed, namely, his wife and his son Canaan (Kan‘ān), unlike Shem (Sām), Ham (Hām) and Japheth (Yāfith) whom, together with their three wives, he carried on board. In sūrat Hūd [the following is mentioned where Noah is told who he should carry in the ship]: ‘… and those who believe.’ And none believed with him except a few [Q. 11:40]. It is said that these were six men and their wives. Moreover it is said that all those who were on the ship numbered seventy eight, half of them were men and half were women. And do not plead with Me concerning those who have done wrong, those who have disbelieved, that I should refrain from destroying them. They shall indeed be drowned.

And when you have settled, [when] you are balanced, in the Ark together with those with you, say, “Praise be to God Who has delivered us from the wrongdoing folk”, [from] the disbelievers and the destruction that came upon them.

And say, upon disembarking from the ship: “My Lord, cause me to land with a landing (read munzalan as the verbal noun as well as the noun of place [for ‘landing’]; or manzilan as [meaning] the site of the landing) blessed, being that landing or place, for You are the best of all who bring to land” ’, that which has been mentioned.

Surely in that, mentioned matter of Noah, the ship and the destruction of the disbelievers, there are signs, indicators of God’s power, exalted be He, and indeed (wa-in, in has been softened in place of the hardened form, its subject being the pronoun of the matter) We were putting to the test, [indeed We were] trying the people of Noah by sending him [as God’s messenger] to them and [by] his admonitions [to them].

Then, after them, We brought forth another generation, [another] people, namely, and these were [the people of] ‘Ād.

And We sent among them a messenger of their own, namely, Hūd, saying, ‘Worship God! You have no other god besides Him. Will you not then be wary?’, of His punishment and become believers?

The council of his people, who disbelieved and denied the encounter of the Hereafter, [they denied] that they will end up thereat, and whom We had given affluence, whom We had provided with comforts, in the life of this world, said: ‘This is only a human being like you: he eats what you eat and drinks what you drink.

And, by God, if you obey a human being like yourselves (this [clause] contains both an oath and a conditional; the response belongs to the former [the oath], which [at the same time] suffices in place of a response for the latter [the conditional]) you will surely then, that is, should you obey them, be losers, you will have been duped.

Does he promise you that when you have died and become dust and bones, you shall be brought forth? (mukhrajūna, this is the predicate of the first annakum, ‘that … you’; the second annakum [simply] reiterates it because of the long separation [between the subject and its predicate]).

Far-fetched, far-fetched (hayhāt is a noun of action in the past tense, functioning as a verbal noun, meaning ba‘uda ba‘uda, ‘far from it, far from it!’) is what you are promised!, in the way of being brought forth from the graves (li-mā: the lām is extra, for explication).

There is nothing, that is, there is no life, but our life in this world: we die, and we live, [again only] through the lives of our offspring, and we shall not be raised [again].

He is, the Messenger is, just a man who has invented a lie against God, and we will not believe in him’, we will [not] accept the truth of resurrection after death.

He said, ‘My Lord, help me because they have denied me’.

He said, ‘In a little while, of time (‘ammā: the mā is extra), they will become remorseful’, about their disbelief and their denial.

So the Cry, the Cry of chastisement and destruction, seized them rightfully, and they died, and We made them as husks (ghuthā’ is desiccated vegetation, in other words, We transformed them into similarly desiccated [worthless] things). So a far removal, from mercy, for the evildoing folk, the denying [folk].

Then, after them, We brought forth other generations, [other] peoples.

No community can precede its term, by dying before it, nor be deferred, beyond it (the person [in the second verb yasta’khirūna, ‘be deferred’] is masculine, having been feminine [in the first verb tasbiqu, ‘precede’] because this [masculine plural] takes into account the [plural masculine] content [of the term ‘community’]).

Then sent We Our messengers successively (read tatran or tatrā: one following the other, with a long interval between every two). Whenever there came to a community (jā’a ummatan: read pronouncing both hamzas, or without pronouncing the second one between it and the wāw [vowel]) its messenger they denied him; so We made them follow one another, to destruction, and We turned them into folktales. So away with a people who do not believe!

Then We sent Moses and his brother Aaron with Our signs and a manifest warrant, a clear proof, namely, the hand, the staff and other signs,

to Pharaoh and his council; but they disdained, to believing in them and in God, and they were a tyrannical folk, subjugating the Children of Israel through oppression.

And they said, ‘Shall we believe two humans like ourselves, while their people are servile to us?’, obedient and submissive.

So they denied them [both] and became of those who were destroyed.

And verily We gave Moses the Scripture, the Torah, that perhaps they, his people, the Children of Israel, might be guided, thereby from error — he [Moses] was given it [the Scripture] after the destruction of Pharaoh and his folk all at once.

And We made the son of Mary, Jesus, and his mother a sign — He did not say ‘two signs’ because the same sign is in both of them: his being born without [his mother’s having] a male spouse. And We gave them refuge on a height (rabwa), a highland — in this case [either] the Holy House [of Jerusalem], Damascus or Palestine, all of which are [alternative] opinions — level (dhāt qarār), an flat [high-] land on which its inhabitants are able to settle (yastaqirru), and watered by springs, running water, over ground, which the eyes can see.

‘O messengers, eat of the good things, the lawful things, and perform righteous acts, such as obligatory and supererogatory [rituals]. Surely I know what you do, and will requite you for it.

And know, that this, creed of Islam, is your community, your religion, O you being addressed, that is, you must adhere to it as, one community — a necessary state [of affairs] (a variant reading [for anna, ‘that’] has the softened form [in]; a variant has inna, ‘truly’, indicating the beginning of [an independent] new sentence) and I am your Lord, so fear Me’, so be fearful of Me.

But they, the followers, split into sects regarding their affair, their religion (zuburan, ‘sects’, is a circumstantial qualifier of the subject of the verb taqatta‘ū, ‘they split’), in other words, [they became] opposing parties, the likes of the Jews and the Christians and others, each party rejoicing in, exultant with, what they had, that is, with the religion they had.

So leave them, the disbelievers of Mecca, in their error, their misguidance, for a while, until they die.

Do they suppose that in the wealth and children with which We provide them, in the life of this world,

We are hastening to [provide] them with good things? No. Rather, they are not aware, that this is a way of gradually drawing them [into their punishment].

Surely those who, for fear of their Lord, are apprehensive, are fearful of His chastisement,

and who believe in, [who] accept the truth of, the signs of their Lord — the Qur’ān;

and who do not associate others with their Lord,

and who give what they give, of voluntary alms and righteous deeds, while their hearts tremble [with awe], fearful lest it not be accepted from them, because (the particle lām, ‘for’, is taken as implied before annahum, ‘that they’) they are going to return to their Lord —

those [are the ones who] hasten to [perform] good works, and they [are the ones who] shall come out ahead in them, according to God’s knowledge.

And We do not task any soul beyond its capacity, what it can bear — thus he who is not able to pray standing, let him pray sitting down and he who is not able to fast, let him eat; and with Us is a Record that speaks the truth, regarding what it [a soul] has done — and this [Record] is the Preserved Tablet (al-lawh al-mahfūz), wherein deeds are written down; and they, namely, the souls in their acts, will not be wronged, in a single thing thereof, and so nothing is diminished of the reward for good deeds, nor is anything [extra] added to the evil deeds.

Nay, but their hearts, that is, [the hearts of] the disbelievers, are in ignorance of this, Qur’ān, and they have other deeds which they will perpetrate besides, the ones mentioned, against the believers, and they will therefore be chastised for them.

Indeed (hattā is for inceptiveness) when We seize their affluent ones, their wealthy and their leaders, with chastisement, [with] the sword, on the day of Badr, behold! they are supplicating loudly, clamouring [in supplication]. It is [then] said to them:

‘Do not supplicate [out loud] on this day! Truly you will not receive help, you will not be protected, against Us.

Verily My signs, in the Qur’ān, used to be recited to you, but you used to take to your heels, falling back in retreat,

disdainful, of [embracing] faith, because of it, that is, because of the [Sacred] House or the [Meccan] Sanctuary and their being inhabitants thereof, secure, in contrast to [the situation with] all [other] peoples in their hometowns, while in [your] night sessions (sāmiran is a circumstantial qualifier,) in other words, they come together to converse at night around the [Sacred] House, you talked nonsense’ ([if read as] tahjurūna, the third form [from hajara] means [while] ‘you disregarded’ the Qur’ān; [but if read] as the fourth form [tuhjirūna, from ahjara] it means [while] ‘you speak falsehood’ about the Prophet and the Qur’ān).

God, exalted be He, says: Have they not contemplated (yaddabbarū should actually be yatadabbarū, but the tā’ has been assimilated with the dāl) the discourse, namely, the Qur’ān that is proof of the Prophet’s sincerity, or has there come upon them that which has not come upon their forefathers?

Or is it that they do not recognise their [own] Messenger and so they reject him?

Or do they say, ‘There is a madness in him’? — this interrogative is meant as an affirmation of the truth of the Prophet’s sincerity, and [of the fact] that messengers did come to past communities, and [of the fact] that they [do indeed] recognise their Messenger to be truthful and trustworthy, and [of the fact] that there is no madness in him. Nay (bal is for transition), he has brought them the truth, namely, the Qur’ān that comprises [affirmations of] the Oneness [of God] and the Laws of Islam; but most of them are averse to the truth.

And if the truth, namely, the Qur’ān, had followed their desires, and come to them with [mention of] what they fancied in the way of God having a partner and a child, may God be exalted above such [associations], indeed the heavens and the earth and whoever is in them would have been corrupted, they [the heavens and the earth] would have deviated from their observed order, because contradictions would ensue, as is usually the case, when there is more than one ruler. Nay, We have brought them their Remembrance, namely, the Qur’ān, in which they are remembered and honoured, but they are disregardful of their [own] Remembrance.

Or do you ask them for any recompense?, any remuneration, in return for the faith that you have brought them? Yet the recompense of your Lord is, His remuneration, His reward and His provision [are], better (one reading has kharjan, ‘recompense’, in both instances [sc. kharjan fa-kharju]; another has kharājan in both [sc. kharājan fa-kharāju]) and He is the best of providers, the best of givers and remunerators.

And truly you summon them to a straight path, a [straight] route, that is, the religion of Islam.

And truly those who do not believe in the Hereafter, in resurrection, reward and punishment, deviate, swerve away, from the path, that is, the route [to salvation].

And had We shown them mercy and relieved them of the harm afflicting them — the famine that befell them in Mecca for seven years — they would surely persist in their insolence, [in] their error, bewildered, hesitating.

And We have already seized them with chastisement, [with] hunger, yet they did not humble themselves to their Lord, nor did they devote themselves to prayer, [nor] did they seek [the pleasure of] God through supplication.

Until (hattā is for inceptiveness), when We opened on them the gate of a severe chastisement, namely, the day of Badr, slaying [them], behold! they are aghast thereat, despairing of anything good.

And He it is Who made, created, for you hearing, meaning, ears, and eyes and hearts. Little thanks do you show (qalīlan mā: mā emphasises the paucity [of the thanks]).

And He it is Who dispersed, created, you on earth, and to Him you shall be gathered, resurrected.

And He it is Who gives life, by breathing the Spirit into the embryo (mudgha), and brings death, and due to Him is the alternation of night and day, in darkness and brightness, [and through] increase and diminution. Will you not then comprehend?, His handiwork, exalted be He, and so reflect?

Nay, but they say the like of what the ancients said.

They, the ancients, said, ‘What, when we are dead and have become dust and bones, shall we then be raised? No! (the two hamzas in each of the two instances are either pronounced fully, or with the second one not pronounced, but with an alif inserted between the two [hamzas] in both [readings]).

Already We and our fathers have been promised this, resurrection after death, before: these are nothing but the fables, the lies, of the ancients’, [mere] jokes and strange tales (asātīr, the plural of ustūra).

Say, to them: ‘To whom does the earth and whoever is in it, of creatures, belong, if you [truly] knew?’, their Creator and Owner.

They will say, ‘To God’. Say, to them: ‘Will you not then remember?’ (tadhakkarūna, the second tā’ [of tatadhakkarūna] has been assimilated with the dhāl) will you [not then] be admonished and so realise that the One Who has the power to originate creation also has the power to resurrect after death?

Say: ‘Who is the Lord of the seven heavens and the Lord of the Great Throne?’, that is, the throne (kursī).

They will say, ‘God’. Say: ‘Will you not then be God-fearing?’, will you then [not] be wary of worshipping [things] other than Him?

Say: ‘In whose hand is the dominion, the possession, of all things (the [final] tā’ [in malakūt] is hyperbolic), and who protects, while from Him there is no protection, if you know?’

They will say, ‘God.’ (a variant reading [for Allāh, ‘God’] in both instances [verses 87 and 89] has li’Llāh, ‘to God’, which is in keeping with the sense of ‘to whom belongs what has been mentioned?’). Say: ‘How then are you bewitched?’, [how then] are you duped and turned away from the truth, the worship of God alone, in other words, ‘How do you envisage [all] this to be invalid?’.

Nay, but We have brought them the truth, veracity, and they are indeed liars, in rejecting it, namely [the truth of the following]:

God has not taken any son, nor is there any god along with Him; for then, that is, if there were a god along with Him, each god would have taken away what he created, he would have made it exclusively his and prevented the other [god] from having any mastery over it; and some of them would surely rise up against others, in challenge, just as the kings of this world are wont to do. Glorified be God — an exaltation of Him — above what they ascribe, to Him, of what has been mentioned.

Knower of the Unseen and the visible, what is hidden and what is observed ([if] read in the genitive [‘ālimi’l-ghaybi, ‘Knower of the Unseen’], this is an adjectival qualification; [if] in the nominative [‘ālimu’l-ghaybi, ‘the Knower of the Unseen], this would be the predicate of an implied [preceding] huwa, ‘He is’) and exalted, magnified, be He above what they associate!, with Him [of partners].

Say: ‘My Lord! If (immā, this contains an assimilation of the conditional particle in with the extra mā) You should show me what they are promised, in the way of chastisement, that it is true, by their being slain at Badr,

my Lord, then do no put me among the evildoing folk’, lest I be destroyed when they are destroyed.

And truly We are able to show you what We promise them.

Ward off with that which is better, that is to say, with the [better] trait of pardoning and shunning them, the evil [act], the hurt they cause you — this was [revealed] before the command to fight [them]. We know best what they allege, [what] they invent of lies and [what they] say and so We will requite them for it.

And say: ‘My Lord, I seek protection in You from the promptings of devils, [from] their [evil] suggestions, which they whisper.

And I seek protection in You, my Lord, lest they visit me’, in any of my affairs, for they only visit to bring ill.

Until (hattā is for inceptiveness) when death comes to one of them, and he sees his place in the Fire and his [would-be] place in Paradise, had he been a believer, he says, ‘My Lord! Send me back (arji‘ūn, the plural [person] is [used] to indicate the gravity [of the plea]),

that I might act righteously, by witnessing that ‘there is no god but God’, that this might be, in that which I have left behind’, [in what] I have wasted of my life, in other words [that this affirmation might be] in its place. God, exalted be He, says: By no means!, that is, there shall be no return. It, namely, [the statement] ‘My Lord! Send me back’, is merely a word that he speaks, but [a word] in which there is no benefit for him; and behind them, ahead of them, there is a barrier, which prevents them from going back [to this world], until the day when they are raised, after which [day] there will be no more return.

And when the Trumpet is blown, the Horn, at the first or second blast, there will be no more ties [of kinship] between them on that day, for them to boast of among themselves, nor will they question one another, about such [ties], in contrast to their state in the life of this world, because of the gravity of the situation that will distract them from such [questioning] at certain points during the [Day of] Resurrection. At other [points] they are awake and [as is stated] in one verse: Some of them will turn to others, questioning each other [Q. 37:50].

Then those whose scales are heavy, with good deeds, they are the successful, the winners;

and those whose scales are light, because of evil deeds, they are the ones who have lost their souls, and so they will be, abiding in Hell.

The Fire will scorch their faces, it will burn them, while they glower therein, their upper and lower lips having receded from their teeth, and it will be said to them:

‘Were not My signs, in the Qur’ān, recited to you, were you [not] threatened therewith, and you used to deny them?’

They will say, ‘Our Lord, our wretchedness (shiqwatunā: a variant reading has shaqāwatunā, both of which are verbal nouns with the same meaning) overcame us, and we were an erring folk, [astray] from guidance.

Our Lord, bring us out of it! Then, if we revert, to disobedience, we will indeed be evildoers’.

He will say, to them by the tongue of a Keeper [of Hell], whose proportion is twice the size of this world: ‘Begone in it, away with you in the Fire, despicable [as you are], and do not speak to Me, about relieving you from the chastisement — so that [all] their hope is extinguished.

Indeed there was a party of My servants — namely, the Emigrants — who would say, “Our Lord, we believe; therefore forgive us, and have mercy on us, for You are the best of the merciful”.

But then you took them as an object of ridicule (read sukhriyyan or sikhriyyan, a verbal noun meaning ‘mockery’). Among those [ridiculed] were Bilāl [al-Habashī], Suhayb [al-Rūmī], ‘Ammār [b. Yāsir] and Salmān [al-Fārisī]; until they made you forget My remembrance, which you disregarded, as you were engaged in deriding them. Thus these [men] were the cause of the forgetting, which is why this [act] has been attributed to them, and you used to laugh at them.

Indeed I have rewarded them this day, abiding bliss, for the endurance they showed, while you mocked them and caused them hurt. They are indeed the winners’, of what they sought (read innahum as [indicating] a new sentence, or annahum as [indicating] a second direct object of the [verb] jazaytuhum, ‘I have rewarded them’).

He, exalted be He, will say, to them by the tongue of a Keeper [of Hell] (a variant reading [for qāla, ‘He will say’] has qul, ‘say’): ‘How long did you tarry in the earth, in this world and in your graves, in years?’ (‘adada sinīna is a specification).

They will say, ‘We tarried a day, or part of a day — they are uncertain thereof, deeming it shorter [than what it was] because of the gravity of the chastisement they are suffering. Yet ask those who keep count!’, namely, [ask] the angels who number the deeds of [all] creatures.

He, exalted, will say, to them, also by the tongue of Keeper [of Hell] (a variant reading [for qāla, ‘He will say’] has qul, ‘say’): ‘You tarried but a little, if only you knew, the length of time you tarried, [you would have realised that it is] trivial relative to how long you will tarry in the Fire.

Did you suppose that We created you aimlessly, and not for an underlying reason, and that you would not be returned to Us?’ (read active tarji‘ūna, ‘you [would not] return’, or passive turja‘ūna, ‘you [would not] be returned’) Nay! But [it was] so that We might enthral you with commands and prohibitions, where after you would be returned to Us for Us to requite [you] accordingly: And I did not create the jinn and mankind except that they may worship Me [Q. 51:56].

So exalted be God, above aimless action and other such things that do not befit Him, the King, the Truth! There is no god except Him, the Lord of the Noble Throne (‘arsh), the throne (kursī), which is a seat [similar to a king’s] that is exquisite.

And he who calls on another god along with God has no proof thereof (lā burhāna lahu bihi, an [extra] explicative adjectival qualification that has no [other syntactical] signification), his reckoning, his requital, will indeed be with his Lord. Truly the disbelievers will not be successful, they will not be felicitous.

And say: ‘My Lord, forgive and have mercy, on believers — [this] ‘mercy’ adds to the ‘forgiveness’ [in terms of God’s grace] — and You are the best of the merciful’, the most excellent of those who have mercy.

This is, a sūra which We have revealed and prescribed (read faradnāhā, or [the intensive form] farradnāhā, on account of the large number of prescriptions contained in it) and wherein We have revealed manifest signs, [signs] containing clear indications, that perhaps you might remember (tadhakkarūna: the second tā’ [of tatadhakkarūna] has been assimilated with the dhāl), that you might be admonished.

As for the fornicatress and the fornicator, that is, of those not in wedlock — because those [in wedlock] are stoned according to the Sunna (the al [in al-zāniya, ‘the fornicatress’, and al-zānī, ‘the fornicator’] according to some mentioned [opinions] is a relative [particle]; the clause [al-zāniyatu wa’l-zānī] is a subject, and because of its similarity to a conditional, the fā’ has been inserted into the predicate, which is [the following, fa’jlidū]): strike each of them a hundred lashes, [a hundred] strikes (one says jaladahu to mean daraba jildahu, ‘he struck him on the skin’). According to the Sunna, in addition to this [punishment] there is also banishment for a whole year. The slave, however, receives half of the mentioned [punishment]. And do not let any pity for them overcome you in God’s religion, that is to say, in [the fulfilment of] His rulings, by disregarding any part of their prescribed punishment, if you believe in God and the Last Day, namely, the Day of Resurrection: in this [statement] there is an incitement to [abide by] what was [mentioned] before the conditional [above] and it also constitutes the response to the latter, or [at least is] an indication of the response to it. And let their punishment, the flogging, be witnessed by a group of the believers — some say [that this should be a group of] three; some say four, as in the number of witnesses testifying to an act of fornication.

The fornicator shall not marry anyone but a fornicatress or an idolatress, and the fornicatress shall be married by none except a fornicator or an idolator, in other words, what is suitable for each of the two [for the purposes of marriage] is the above-mentioned; and that, namely, marrying of fornicators, is forbidden to believers, who are better [than those]. This was revealed when the poor among the Emigrants resolved to marry the wealthy whores of the idolaters, so that they [the women] would provide for them. Thus it is said that the prohibition applies specifically to them; but it is also said to apply in general; but it was abrogated by God’s words: Marry off the spouseless among you [Q. 24:32].

And those who accuse honourable women [in wedlock], who are chaste, of fornication, and then do not bring four witnesses, to testify as eyewitnesses to their fornication, strike them eighty lashes, that is, each one of them, and do not accept any testimony from them ever, in anything; and those, they are the immoral, for committing a grave sin (kabīra);

except those who repent thereafter and make amends, in their deeds, for God is indeed Forgiving, of their [unsubstantiated] accusations, Merciful, to them, in inspiring them to make repentance whereby their immorality is curbed and their testimony becomes [once again] acceptable — some say, however, that it can never be accepted [thereafter], if the proviso is taken to refer to the last clause.

And those who accuse their wives, of fornication, but have no witnesses, to [substantiate] this, except themselves — which happened with some Companions — then the testimony of one of them (fa-shahādatu ahadihim, the subject) shall be to testify [swearing] by God four times (araba‘a shahādātin, is in the accusative as a verbal noun) that he is indeed being truthful, in accusing his wife of committing fornication,

and a fifth time that God’s wrath shall be upon him if he were lying, in this (the predicate of the subject [fa-shahādatu ahadihim, ‘then the testimony of one of them’] is [the implicit] ‘will spare him the prescribed [legal] punishment for [false] accusation’).

And the punishment, namely, the prescribed [legal] punishment for fornication that is established upon his testimony, shall be averted from her if she testify [swearing] by God four times that he is indeed lying, in accusing her of having fornicated;

and a fifth time that God’s wrath shall be upon her if he were being truthful, therein.

And were it not for God’s bounty to you and His mercy, in shielding you [from being exposed] in such [situations], and that God is the Relenting, in His acceptance of repentance in such [situations] and otherwise, Wise, in the rulings He has given for this and other matters, that He might make clear the truth therein and hasten punishment for those deserving it.

Truly those who initiated the slander, the worst calumny against ‘Ā’isha — mother of the believers, may God be pleased with her — accusing her [of fornication], are a band from among yourselves, a group from among the believers. She said [that these were] Hassān b. Thābit, ‘Abd Allāh b. Ubayy, Mistah [b. Uthātha], and Hamna bt. Jahsh. Do not suppose, O you believers other than the [mentioned] band, that it is bad for you; rather it is good for you, for God will reward you for it and reveal ‘Ā’isha’s innocence and [the innocence of] the one who [is supposed to have] committed it with her, namely, Safwān [b. al-Mu‘attal]. She [‘Ā’isha] related: ‘I accompanied the Prophet (s) during a raid, and this was after the [requirement to wear the] veil had been revealed. When he was through with it [the raid], he headed back [to the campsite] and one night, having drawn close to Medina, he announced that all should march off [home]. So I walked a distance [away from the campsite] and relieved myself. But when I came back to the campsite, [I realised that] my necklace (‘iqd meaning qilāda) had snapped. So I went back to look for it. In the meantime they had strapped my litter’ — in which one rides — ‘thinking that I was inside, for in those days women were slight and ate very small portions (‘ulqa). [Finally] I found my necklace, but when I went back to where I had been staying overnight, they had already departed. I sat in the place where I had camped; I assumed that the group would notice my absence and come back for me. But my eyes were overcome [by drowsiness] and I fell asleep. Safwān had pitched camp behind the army to rest for some of the night (‘arrasa), then set off while it was still night until he reached the site of the camp. He saw what looked like a person sleeping and recognised me when he [eventually] saw me, having seen me on numerous occasions before the [requirement of the] veil. I woke up to the sound of him saying, ‘To God we belong and to Him we shall surely return’ (innā li’Llāhi wa-innā ilayhi rāji‘ūn), for he had recognised me. So I concealed my face with my gown (jilbāb) — in other words, I covered it up with my wrap (mulā’a). By God he did not so much as say a word to me, nor did I hear him say anything other than the words, ‘To God we belong and to Him we shall surely return’, as he brought his camel to its knees and pressed with his foot against its foreleg [for me to mount it]. I then mounted it and he set off leading me back on the camel until we reached the army which had stopped because of the extreme midday heat; some had died [searching] for me. The one who bore the greater share of it [the sinful accusation] was ‘Abd Allāh b. Ubayy b. Salūl’ … her [‘Ā’isha’s] words end here; this was reported by the two Shaykhs [al-Bukhārī and Muslim]. God, exalted be He, says: Upon every man of them shall be the [onus of the] sin which he has earned, in this [affair], and as for him who bore the greater share thereof, that is, [him who] assumed most of [the responsibility for] it, having initiated it and made it public, namely, ‘Abd Allah b. Ubayy: there will be an awful chastisement for him, namely, the Fire in the Hereafter.

Why, when you [first] heard about it, did the believing men and women not think good of themselves, that is, [why did] some [not] think good of others, and say, ‘This is a manifest calumny?’, [this is] a patent lie? (there is a shift here in the address from the second to the third person), in other words, [why did] you [not] assume [good of them], O band [of believers] and say:

Why did they, that is, this band [of accusers], not produce four witnesses to it?, who had witnessed it. And since they did not produce the witnesses, those, in God’s sight, in His judgement, they are liars, in this [matter].

And were it not for God’s bounty to you and His mercy in the life of this world and the Hereafter there would have befallen you, for what you, O band [of accusers], engaged in, [for] what you indulged in, an awful chastisement, in the Hereafter;

when you were receiving it [welcomingly] with your tongues, that is to say, [when] you were reporting it one from the other (one of the two letters tā’ has been omitted from the verb [tatalaqqawnahu, ‘you were receiving it’]; idh, ‘when’, is dependent because of massakum, ‘befallen you’, or afadtum, ‘engaged in’) and were uttering with your mouths that whereof you had no knowledge, supposing it to be a light matter, a sinless [act], while with God it was grave, in sinfulness.

And why, when you heard it, did you not say, ‘It is not for us to speak about this. Glory be to You! — this [exclamation] here is meant to indicate amazement — This is an awful calumny?’, [an awful] lie?

God admonishes you, He forbids you, lest you should ever repeat the like of it, if you are [in truth] believers, [then] you will be admonished by this.

And God clarifies for you the signs, through commands and prohibitions, and God is Knower, of what He enjoins and what He prohibits, Wise, therein.

Truly those who love that indecency should be spread, by the tongue, concerning those who believe, by its being associated with them — and the ones [meant] are the band — theirs will be a painful chastisement in the life of this world, by way of the prescribed [legal] punishment for [false] accusation, and the Hereafter, by way of the Fire, as is God’s due, and God knows, that such [indecency] does not apply in their case, and you, O band [of accusers], as regards the calumny of which you spoke, do not know, whether such [indecency] took place among them.

And were it not for God’s bounty to you, O band [of accusers] and His mercy and that God is Gentle, Merciful, to you, He would have surely hastened to [bring about] your punishment.

O you who believe, do not follow in the steps of Satan, that is, his ways of making things seem attractive. For whoever follows in the steps of Satan, assuredly he, the one being followed, enjoins indecency, that is, [he enjoins] vile acts, and what is reprehensible, if followed, according to the Law. And were it not for God’s bounty to you and His mercy not one of you, O band [of accusers], would ever have grown pure, after the calumny of which you spoke, that is to say, [not one of you] would have ever been reformed or purified from this sin by repenting of it. But God purifies whom He will, from sin, by accepting his repentance from him, and God is Hearer, of what you have said, Knower, of your intentions.

And do not let those of you who possess bounty, the wealthy, and the affluent swear not to give to the near of kin and the poor and those who emigrate in the way of God — this was revealed regarding Abū Bakr who swore to provide no more for Mistah, his maternal cousin, a destitute Emigrant who had fought at [the battle of] Badr, because of his involvement in the calumny, when thitherto he had provided for him. And [it was revealed also regarding] certain Companions who swore not to give voluntary alms to those who had participated in [spreading] the calumny in any way. Let them forgive and excuse, them in this matter. Do you not love that God should forgive you? And God is Forgiving, Merciful, to believers. Abū Bakr said: ‘Indeed. I would love that God forgive me’, and he restored [thereafter] to Mistah what he used to expend on him.

Truly those who make accusations, of fornication, against honourably married, chaste, women who are unaware, of indecent acts — since it would never occur to them to commit such [acts] — who believe, in God and His Messenger, shall be cursed in this world and the Hereafter; and there will be an awful chastisement for them

on the day (yawma is in the accusative because of the [implicit sense of] ‘permanence’ to which lahum, ‘for them’, is semantically connected) when their tongues and their hands and their feet shall testify against them (read [feminine person] tashhadu or [masculine person] yashhadu, ‘testify’) concerning what they used to do, in terms of speech and action — this [day] is the Day of Resurrection.

On that day God will pay them in full their just due, He will requite them with the requital they deserve, and they shall know that God is the Manifest Truth, since He will have realised for them that requital of His whereof they had been in doubt. Among such [people] is ‘Abd Allāh b. Ubayy. The ‘honourable women’ mentioned above are the Prophet’s (s) wives, regarding whom no repentance has been mentioned [as being possible] in the case of their being falsely accused; those women regarding whom repentance has been mentioned, however, at the beginning of the sūra [verses 4-5], in the case of their being falsely accused, are women other these [wives of the Prophet].

Vile women, and [vile] words, are for vile men, and vile men for vile women, and the mentioned [vile words]. Good women, and as mentioned [good words], are for good men, and good men for good women, and the mentioned [good words], that is to say, what suits something vile is its like, and what suits something good is its like — such, good men and women, the like of ‘Ā’isha and Safwān, are absolved of what they say, [what] the corrupt men and women [say] about them. For them, for good men and women, will be forgiveness and a glorious provision, in Paradise. ‘Ā’isha felt honoured by some of the things [mentioned] in this [verse], namely, that she was created ‘a good woman’ and was promised ‘forgiveness and a glorious provision’.

O you who believe, do not enter houses other than your houses until you have [first] asked permission and greeted their occupants. So a person must say, ‘Peace be upon you, may I enter?’, as is stated in one hadīth. That is better for you, than entering without permission, that perhaps you might remember (tadhakkarūna: the second tā’ [of tatadhakkarūna] has been assimilated with the dhāl) the superiority of such [conduct] and so follow it.

And if you do not find anyone in them, to give you permission, [still] do not enter them until permission has been given to you. And if it is said to you, when you are seeking permission, ‘Go away,’ then go away, for this, going away, is purer, that is, better, for you, than sitting [and waiting] at the doorstep. And God knows what you do, whether you enter with permission or without it, and He will requite you for it.

You would not be at fault if you enter [without permission] uninhabited houses wherein is comfort, some benefit, for you, in the way of finding shelter and so on, as in the case of travellers inns and charitable hostels. And God knows what you disclose, [what] you do openly, and what you hide, what you do secretly when entering houses other than your own, be it for a righteous purpose or otherwise. It will be mentioned shortly that they should bid themselves peace when entering their own houses.

Tell believing men to lower their gaze, from what is unlawful for them to look at (min [of min absārihim, ‘their gaze’] is extra) and to guard their private parts, from doing with them what is unlawful [for them to do]. That is purer, in other words, better, for them. Truly God is Aware of what they do, with their gazes and private parts, and He will requite them for it.

And tell believing women to lower their gaze, away from what is not lawful for them to look at, and to guard their private parts, from what is not lawful for them to do with them, and not to display their adornment except for what is apparent, namely, the face and the hands, which may be seen by a stranger, when there is no danger of [either or both falling into] temptation — this being one of two opinions. The second [of these] is that [even] this is forbidden because there is a presumption that these [parts] will cause temptation — and this is the preferred opinion, if one must settle this topic [with a definitive opinion]; and let them draw their veils over their bosoms, that is, let them cover up their heads, necks and chests with veils, and not reveal their, hidden, adornment, namely, all that is other than the face and the hands, except to their husbands (bu‘ūl is the plural form of ba‘l, ‘male spouse’) or their fathers, or their husbands’ fathers, or their sons, or their husbands’ sons, or their brothers, or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or what their right hands own, all of whom are permitted to look thereat, except for the part from the navel down to the knees, which is unlawful for any other than their husbands to see; ‘their women’, however, excludes disbelieving women, for it is not permitted for Muslim women to reveal themselves to these; ‘what their right hands own’ comprises slaves; or such men who are dependant, on what food may be left over, not (ghayri, read as an adjective, or read ghayra as an exceptive) possessing any sexual desire, [not] those men who are in [sexual] need of women, so for example those whose male member cannot become erect; or children who are not yet aware of women’s private parts, in [the context of] sexual intercourse, and so to these they may reveal themselves except for that part from the navel to the knees. And do not let them thump with their feet to make known their hidden ornaments, as in a rattling anklet [and the like]. And rally to God in repentance, O believers, [repenting] of the occasions on which you may have looked at what is forbidden [to look at] of such [parts] and otherwise, so that you might be prosperous, [so that you might] be saved from such [sinful acts] when your repentance thereof is accepted — in this verse the prevalent address is to males over females.

And marry off the spouseless among you (ayāmā is the plural form of ayyim, namely, a spouseless female, whether she be a virgin or one previously married, or a spouseless male), this [stipulation] relates to free men and free women, and the righteous ones, the believers, among your male slaves and your female slaves (‘ibād is one plural form of ‘abd). If they, the free men, are poor, God will enrich them, through marriage, out of His bounty. God is Embracing, of [the needs of] His creatures, Knowing, of them.

And let those who cannot find the means to marry be continent, [those who do not have] the bridal money or the means for financial support needed for marriage, [let them restrain themselves] from fornication, until God enriches them, [until] He improves their means, out of His bounty, and they marry. And those who seek a written contract [of emancipation], from among those whom your right hand owns, of male slaves and female slaves, contract with them accordingly, if you know in them any good, such as trustworthiness and the ability to earn [income] in order to fulfil the amount stated in the written contract, which might be worded for example thus: ‘I contract you for [the amount of] two thousand to be paid over a period of two months, at one thousand a month, and if you fulfill this, you are a free man’, and the other would say, ‘I accept’; and give them — this is a command for the [slaves’] owners — out of the wealth of God which He has given you, in the measure that will help them to fulfill their commitment to you (the action of ītā’, ‘giving’, here suggests that some of the amount to which they have committed themselves should be waived). And do not compel your slave-girls, your handmaidens, to prostitution, fornication, when they desire to be chaste, to abstain therefrom (this ‘desire’ is the cause of the [act of] ‘compulsion’, so that the statement is not properly a conditional), that you may seek, through such compulsion, the transient things of the life of this world — this was revealed regarding ‘Abd Allāh b. Ubayy, who used to force his slave-girls to earn money through fornication. And should anyone compel them, then surely God, after their compulsion, will be Forgiving, to these [slave-girls], Merciful, to them.

And verily We have revealed to you clear verses (read mubayyanāt or mubayyināt), in this sūra, [verses] in which [if read mubayyanāt] what is mentioned is [already] clear, or which [if read mubayyināt] are clarificatory of [that which is mentioned], and an example, a curious tale, namely, that of ‘Ā’isha, of those who passed away before you, that is to say, of their kind of example, that is, [an example] of their curious tales, such as the tales of Joseph and Mary, and an admonition for those who fear God, in what He, exalted be He, has said: And do not let any pity for them overcome you in God’s religion [verse 2, above]; and, Why, when you [first] heard about it, did the believing men [and women] not think [good of themselves]… to the end [of verse 12, above]; and, And why, when you heard it, did you not say … to the end [of verse 16, above]; and, God admonishes you lest you should ever repeat [the like of it] … to the end [of verse 17, above]. This [admonition] is specifically for ‘those who fear God’ because they are the ones to benefit from such [an admonition].

God is the Light of the heavens and the earth, in other words, He illumines both of them with the sun and the moon. The likeness of His Light, that is, the description of it [as it resides] in the heart of a believer, is as a niche wherein is a lamp. The lamp is in a glass — this [glass] is the [case for the] lantern and the misbāh is the torch, that is, the wick that is lit; al-mishkāt is a recess that does not penetrate [to the other side], in other words, the tube inside the lantern, the glass, with the light inside it [is], as it were a glittering star, that is, a light-giving [star] (read dirrī’un or durrī’un, derived from al-dar‘, ‘to repel’, because it repels darkness; or read durriyyun, derived from al-durr, ‘pearls’) kindled, is this lamp (read past tense tawaqqada; a variant reading has the imperfect tense of awqada, in the passive voice: yūqadu; another reading has tūqadu, in which case the reference is to al-zujāja, ‘the glass’) from, the oil of, a Blessed Tree, an olive neither of the east nor of the west, but in between the two, so that no harmful cold or heat affects it; whose oil would almost glow forth [of itself], though no fire touched it, because of [the extent of] its purity. Light, by Him, upon light, by fire; the light of God is His guidance of the believer, light upon the light of faith. God guides to His Light, that is, [to] the religion of Islam, whom He will. And God strikes, He illustrates, similitudes for men, by approximating [such similitudes] to their comprehension, so that they might take heed and believe; and God is Knower of all things, including [knowledge of] how to strike similitudes.

In houses (fī buyūtin is semantically connected to yusabbihu, ‘glorify’, that will follow) [whose status] God has allowed to be raised, [houses He has allowed] to be venerated, and wherein His Name is remembered, through the affirmation of His Oneness, therein [they] make glorifications (read yusabbahu, ‘glorifications are made’, or yusabbihu, meaning ‘[therein] pray’) to Him in the mornings (al-ghuduww is a verbal noun, meaning al-ghadawāt, ‘the early mornings’) and the evenings, the darkness, after sunset,

men (rijālun, the subject of the verb yusabbihu, ‘make glorifications’; if [the passive is] read, yusabbahu, ‘glorifications are made’, it [rijālun, ‘men’] substitutes for the [impersonal] subject of lahu, ‘to Him’, so that rijālun, ‘men’, is the subject of an implied verb in response to an implied question as if one had asked: who makes glorifications to Him?) whom neither trading, purchase, nor sale distracts from the remembrance of God and the observance of prayer (the [final] hā’ of iqāmat, ‘the observance’, has been omitted to facilitate [the reading]) and payment of the alms. They fear a day when hearts and eyes will be tossed about, in fear, the hearts [tossed about] between [the hope of] deliverance and [the fear of] destruction, and the eyes to the right and to the left [out of anxiety] — this is the Day of Resurrection;

so that God may reward them for the best of what they did, that is, [reward them] the reward for it (ahsana means husna), and give them more out of His bounty; and God provides whomever He will without [any] reckoning (one says [of someone] yunfiqu bi-ghayri hisābin, to mean that such [a person] is so generous that it is as though he does not [need to] reckon what he spends).

And as for those who disbelieve, their works are like a mirage in a plain (qī‘a is the plural of qā‘, that is to say, fulāt, ‘an open space’). [A mirage is] a kind of radiation which one might observe therein at midday during extreme heat, resembling running water — which the thirsty man supposes to be water until he comes to it and finds it to be nothing, like what he had supposed. Likewise is [the case of] the disbeliever who supposes that his deeds, such as some voluntary alms, will benefit him; but when he dies and comes before his Lord he will not find his deed, in other words, it will be of no benefit to him; and he finds God there, namely, in the place of his deeds, Who pays him his account in full, that is, He requites him for it in this world; and God is swift at reckoning, that is, at requiting.

Or, [it is that] those who disbelieve, their evil deeds are, as the manifold darkness on a deep sea, covered by a billow, above which, that is, [above which] billow, there is [another] billow, above which, second billow, there are clouds, these being the, manifold [layers of] darkness, one on top of another, the darkness of the sea, the darkness of the first billow, the darkness of the second together with the darkness of the clouds. When he, an observer, holds out his hand, in such layers of darkness, he can scarcely see it, in other words, he would not [even] come close to seeing it. And he whom God has not granted any light has no light, that is to say, he whom God does not guide cannot be guided.

Have you not seen that God is glorified by all who are in the heavens and the earth, prayer being one form of glorification, and the birds (tayr is the plural of tā’ir), between the heaven and the earth, spreading their wings? (sāffātin is a circumstantial qualifier). Of each [one of them] He, God, verily knows its prayer and its glorification; and God knows what they do — the statement is predominantly directed to rational beings.

And to God belongs the kingdom of the heavens and the earth, the treasuries of rain, provision and vegetation, and with God is the journey’s end, the [final] return.

Have you not seen how God drives the clouds, moves them along gently, then composes them, joining some with others and making scattered pieces as one, then piles them up, some on top of others, whereat you see the rain issuing from the midst of them, [from specific] outlets in them? And He sends down from the heaven out of the mountains (min jibālin: min is extra) that are therein, in the heaven (fīhā substitutes [for mina’l-samā’i, ‘from the heaven’] with the repetition of a genitive preposition) hail, that is, [He sends down] some [hail], and smites with it whom He will and turns it away from whom He will. The brilliance of its lightning, its flashing, would almost take away the eyes, that look at it, in other words, [it would almost] snatching them away.

God alternates the night and the day, that is, He brings one in place of the other. Surely in that, alternation, there is a lesson, an indication, for those who see, those possessing insight, [an indication] of God’s power, exalted be He.

And God has created every beast, that is, [every] animal, from fluid, [from] a sperm-drop. Among them are some that creep upon their bellies, such as snakes and reptiles, and among them are some that walk on two feet, such as human beings and birds, and among them are some that walk on four, such as [four-legged] beasts and cattle. God creates whatever He will. Truly God has power over all things.

And verily We have revealed manifest signs, namely, the Qur’ān; and God guides whomever He will to a straight path, [a straight] route, and that is the religion of Islam.

And they, the hypocrites, say, ‘We believe in, we affirm [the truth of], God, [of] His Oneness, and the Messenger, Muhammad (s), and we obey’, them in what rulings they [God and Muhammad] give. Then after that a party of them turn away, they are averse to it, and those, those who are averse, they are not believers, as [believers] should be, [believers] whose hearts agree with [the words of] their tongues.

And when they are summoned to God and His Messenger, who conveys His words, that he may judge between them, behold, a party of them are averse, to come to him.

But if right be on their side they would come to him willingly, hastening compliantly.

Is there a sickness, disbelief, in their hearts? Or are they in doubt, are they uncertain of his prophethood, or do they fear that God and His Messenger will be unjust to them?, in judgement, in other words, that they will be wronged therein? No! Rather, those, they are the wrongdoers, for shunning him.

All that the believers say, when they are summoned to God and His Messenger, that he may judge between them, is that they say, in other words, the saying that befits them is [to say]: ‘We hear and we obey’, by responding [to the summons]. And those, then, are the successful, the ones who will be saved.

And he who obeys God and His Messenger, and fears God and fears Him (read yattaqh or yattaqhi), by being obedient to Him, those, they are the winners, of Paradise.

And they swear by God solemn oaths that if you order them, to [participate in the] struggle, they will surely go forth. Say, to them: ‘Do not swear! Acknowledged obedience, to the Prophet is better than the oaths to which you are not true. Surely God is Aware of what you do’, when you say you will obey but act otherwise.

Say: ‘Obey God, and obey the Messenger.’ But if you turn away, from obedience to him (tawallaw, ‘you turn away’: one of the two tā’ letters [in tatawallaw] has been omitted; an address to them), [know that] he is only responsible for that with which he has been charged, of conveying [the Message], and you are responsible for that with which you have been charged, of obedience to him. And if you obey him, you will be [rightly] guided. And the Messenger’s duty is only to convey [the Message] clearly’.

God has promised those of you who believe and perform righteous deeds that He will surely make them successors in the earth, in place of the disbelievers, just as He made those, Children of Israel, who were before them successors, in place of the [ruling] tyrants ([the verb may be] read as active istakhlafa, ‘He made [them] successors’, or as passive istukhlifa, ‘were made successors’) and He will surely establish for them their religion which He has approved for them, namely, [the religion of] Islam, by making it prevail over all religions and enrich them throughout the land, so that they become masters thereof, and that He will give them in exchange (read wa-la-yubdilannahum or wa-la-yubaddilannahum) after their fear, of disbelievers, security. And God fulfilled His promise to them in the way mentioned, and He praises them with His words: ‘They worship Me, without associating anything with Me’ (ya‘budūnanī lā yushrikūna bī shay’an is an [independent] new sentence, standing as a justification [for His promise]). And whoever is ungrateful after that, bestowal of grace, from among them, [whoever is ungrateful] for it, those, they are the immoral. The first to show ingratitude for that [grace of God] were the murderers of ‘Uthmān [b. ‘Affān], may God be pleased with him, and they began to kill one another [henceforth] after having been brothers.

And establish prayer and pay the alms, and obey the Messenger, that perhaps you may find mercy, that is to say, [do so] hoping for mercy.

And do not suppose (read tahsabanna or yahsabanna, the subject of the verb being the Messenger) that those who disbelieve can escape, Us, in the land, by eluding us. For their abode will be, their return will be [to], the Fire, and it is surely an evil destination, it is an [evil] place of return.

O you who believe, let those whom your right hands own, of male slaves and female slaves, and those of you who have not reached puberty, from among the free men, and who have not become [sexually] aware of women, ask leave of you three times: at three times [of the day]: before the dawn prayer, and when you put off your garments at noon, and after the night prayer. [These are] three periods of privacy for you (read thalāthu [‘awrātin lakum] with nominative inflection as the predicate of an implied subject followed by a genitive annexation, with the annexed term standing in place thereof [of the predicate], in other words [the implied predicate followed by the annexation is] hiya awqāt, ‘these are times of …’; or read thalātha [‘awrātin lakum] in the accusative, the implication being that awqāta is itself in the accusative as a substitute for the [syntactical] status of what precedes it, in place of which stands the annexed term). It is because clothes are taken off that private parts are revealed during such [periods]. Neither you nor they, namely, slaves and young boys, would be at fault, in entering upon you without asking leave, at other times, that is, after the three times of day [specified]; they frequent you, to provide service, [as] some of you [do] with others (this sentence corroborates the preceding one). So, just as He has clarified what has been mentioned, God clarifies for you the signs, the rulings; and God is Knower, of the affairs of His creatures, Wise, in what He has ordained for them. It is said that the ‘permission’ verse (āyat al-isti’idhān) was abrogated; but it is also said that it was not [abrogated], but that people thought little of neglecting to seek permission [in such situations].

And when the children among you, O free men, reach puberty, let them seek permission, at all times, just as those, [now] older free men, sought permission before them. So God clarifies His signs for you, and God is Knower, Wise.

And as for menopausal women, who have ceased to menstruate or to bear children because of old age, who do not expect to marry, for that reason, they would not be at fault if they put off their clothes, such a robe, a cloak, or the facial mask over a head veil, in such a way as not to display adornment, that is hidden, such as a necklace, a bracelet or an anklet; but to refrain [from doing so], by not putting them off, is better for them; and God is Hearer, of what you say, Knower, of what is in your hearts.

There is no blame upon the blind, nor any blame upon the lame, nor any blame upon the sick, that they be one’s table companions, nor, any blame, upon yourselves if you eat from your own houses, that is, [from] the houses of your offspring, or your fathers’ houses, or your mothers’ houses, or your brothers’ houses, or your sisters’ houses, or the houses of your paternal uncles or the houses of your paternal aunts, or the houses of your maternal uncles or the houses of your maternal aunts, or [from] that whereof you hold the keys, [from] that which you safeguard on behalf of others, or [from] those of your [faithful] friends (sadīq is [so called] because he is ‘faithful’ (sadaqa) to you in his affection). In other words: one is permitted to eat from the houses of those mentioned, even if they are not present, provided that they consent to it. You would not be at fault whether you eat together, in a group, or separately, individually (ashtāt is the plural of shatt). This was revealed concerning those who felt inhibited about eating alone and [who] when they could not find a table companion they would refrain from eating. But when you enter houses, that are yours, [houses] wherein there is no one, bid peace to yourselves, say, ‘Peace be upon us and upon God’s righteous servants’, for the angels will return your greeting; and if there is family therein bid peace to them, with a salutation (tahiyyatan is the verbal noun from hayyā, ‘he saluted’) from God, blessed and good, and for which one is rewarded. So God clarifies the signs for you, that is to say, He sets out for you in detail the [ritual] ceremonies of your religion, that perhaps you might comprehend, in order for you to understand this.

Only they are believers who believe in God and His Messenger and who, when they are with him, namely, the Messenger, in a collective affair, such as [during] the Friday sermon, do not leave, when they have an excuse, until they have asked leave of him. Truly those who ask leave of you — it is they who believe in God and His Messenger. So when they ask leave of you for some affair, [some] matter, of theirs, give permission to whom you will of them, to leave, and ask God to forgive them. Truly God is Forgiving, Merciful.

Do not, among yourselves, consider the calling of the Messenger to be like your calling of one another, by saying, ‘O Muhammad!’ (s), but say, ‘O Prophet of God’, or, ‘O Messenger of God!’ gently, respectfully and in a low voice. Verily God knows those of you who slip away surreptitiously, that is, those who leave the mosque secretly during the sermon without asking leave, hiding behind something (qad, ‘verily’, is for confirmation). So let those who contravene His command, that is, God’s command, or that of His Messenger, beware lest an ordeal, a trial, befall them, or there befall them a painful chastisement, in the Hereafter.

Lo! surely to God belongs all that is in the heavens and the earth, by way of possession, creation and servitude. He is ever aware of how you, O you who are obligated to [the prescriptions of] the Law, are behaving, with regard to faith or hypocrisy, and, He knows, the day when they shall be returned to Him (there is a shift here from the second person address [to that of the third person]), in other words, [He knows] when this [day] will be — He will inform them, thereupon, of what they did, of good and evil, and God is Knower of all things, which they do and otherwise.