[Surah al-Ḥijr: 87]. He said: It is Fātiḥat al-Kitāb. Then he was asked about it while I was listening, so he recited it: ﴿[All] praise is [due] to Allah, Lord of the worlds﴾ until he reached its end, then he said: It is repeated in every recitation—or he said—in every prayer. The doubt is from Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī (1).
And the meaning that we stated regarding that is what Abū al-Najm al-ʿUjlī intended by his saying:
Praise be to Allah Who granted me health, ... and every good after it He gave me,
From the Qur'an and from the oft-repeated (al-mathānī) (2)
And likewise the statement of the other rajaz-poet:
I adjure you by the Revealer of the Criterion, ... the Mother of the Book, the seven of the oft-repeated (mathānī) (3)
Repeated from verses of the Qur'an, ... and the seven, the seven long ones that are near (4)
And there is nothing in the necessity of the name "the Seven Oft-Repeated" for Fātiḥat al-Kitāb that negates the validity of the necessity of the name al-Mathānī for the entire Qur'an, and for the chapters of hundreds that are doubled (5). For each has a perspective and an understood meaning, and naming part of that as al-mathānī does not invalidate naming other things by it.
As for the rationale for naming the chapters of hundreds that follow in the Qur'an as al-mathānī, we have demonstrated its validity, and we shall demonstrate the validity of naming the entire Qur'an by it when we reach it in Surah al-Zumar, if Allah wills.
Notes
- (1) Report 135: It will come in the Tafsir of verse 87 of Sūrat al-Ḥijr 14: 38-39 (Būlāq), with this Chain of transmission, with the wording "in every recitation," and al-Ṭabarī had no doubt there. And "Abū Rajāʾ" in this Chain of transmission is "Muḥammad ibn Sayf al-Azdī al-Ḥaddānī al-Baṣrī", and he is trustworthy; Ibn Maʿīn, Ibn Saʿd, al-Nasāʾī, and others declared him trustworthy.
- (2) Al-Lisān (th-n-y); and Majāz al-Qurʾān by Abū ʿUbayda: 7. And his statement "after it": the pronoun refers back in the masculine to the sense of well-being in the preceding verse. The narration of al-Lisān and Abū ʿUbayda is "and every righteous good", then the latter narrated:
"Lord of the repeated verses and the Qur'an"
- (3) Majāz al-Qurʾān by Abū ʿUbayda: 7, "Mother of the Book" as a substitute for "the Criterion".
- (4) In the printed edition it is "tabayyana", which makes no sense, and in place of this word there is a blank in the manuscript. And "thunīna": repeated time after time. And his statement "al-dawānī": in its place there is a blank in the manuscript. It is as if he intended the plural of "dāniya" (near-hanging), describing them as "dawānī", i.e., their fruits are hanging low.
- (5) In the printed edition: "existence" (wujūd) in place of "obligation" (wujūb) in both preceding instances. And in the printed edition "and for what is repeated of the surahs", while in the manuscript it is: "and for what is the hundreds...", both of which are errors. His statement has preceded on p. 103: "As for al-Mathānī, they are what doubled the hundreds and followed them, so the hundreds were first for them, and al-Mathānī were second for them," and "thannā" means: came second to it.
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