Tafsir at-Tabari: Jami' al-Bayan - Dar al-Tarbiyah wa al-Turath Edition

And al-Aʿshā said regarding something similar:

She departed, having left behind in the soul her longing, After harmony; and the best of affection is that which benefits.

As for the āyah among the verses (āy) of the Qur'an, it bears two possible senses in the speech of the Arabs:

One of them is that it was named an āyah because it is a sign (ʿalāmah) by which the completion of what precedes it and its beginning are known, like the sign that serves as an indication of a thing by which it is inferred, as the poet said:

Take my message to her—may God prolong your life, O young man— With the sign (āyah) that she came swaying towards us.

Meaning: with the sign of that. And of this sense is the statement of Him whose mention is Majestic: ﴿Our Lord, send down to us a table spread from heaven to be for us a festival for the first of us and the last of us and a sign from You﴾ [Sūrat al-Mā'idah: 114], meaning: a sign from You of Your answering our supplication and granting us our request.

And the other sense is: the story (qiṣṣah), as Kaʿb ibn Zuhayr ibn Abī Sulmā said:

Lo, convey to this critic a story (āyah): Was he awake when he said what he said, or was he dreaming?

He means by his saying "an āyah": a message from me and news concerning me.

So the meaning of the verses (āyāt) would be: stories—one story following another story, with separations and connections.

(1) His Dīwān: 73. "After harmony": meaning after the togetherness and affection we were in.
(2) The poetry is by Suḥaym, the slave of Banū al-Ḥasḥās, his Dīwān: 19, and it comes in Tafsir al-Tabari (1/156, Būlāq). "Aliknī ilayhā": convey a message from me to her; the message is "al-alūk" and "al-maʾlaka". "Tahādā fī mashyihi": he swayed in his gait out of coquetry or weakness.
(3) In the manuscript: "with a sign that indicated", which is an error.
(4) His Dīwān: 64, and his narration is: "Is he awake?" In my commentary on the book Ṭabaqāt Fuḥūl al-Shuʿarāʾ by Ibn Sallām (89), I deduced that the correct reading is "āyatan" (as a sign), as it appears in the manuscript of al-Ṭabaqāt, and the commentary of al-Ṭabarī indicates the correctness of what I deduced. The lexicographical works neglected to explain this word in its proper sense, despite its occurrence in the poetry of Kaʿb and others, such as the saying of Ḥajal ibn Naḍla:
Convey to Muʿāwiya al-Mumazzaq a sign
from me, for I am not like some who make false claims.

Translation · EN

Notes