The discourse regarding the interpretation of His statement: ﴿And when your Lord said﴾
Abū Jaʿfar said: Some of those attributed to knowledge of the languages of the Arabs among the people of Baṣra claimed(1) that the interpretation of His statement, "And when your Lord said," is "And your Lord said"; and that "when" (idh) is among the redundant particles, and that its meaning is omission. He argued for his view that we described from him in that regard with the verse of al-Aswad ibn Yaʿfur:
So when [it is] that, there is no sweetness in remembering it, ... while time follows good with corruption.(2)
Notes
- (1) He is Abū ʿUbayda (see Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr 1: 125), and as mentioned previously in several places in al-Ṭabarī's words. This is supported by what al-Baghdādī cited in his commentary on the verse of ʿAbd Manāf ibn Ribʿī (al-Khizāna 3: 171) from Ibn al-Sīd: "Abū ʿUbayda said: 'idhā' is redundant, which is why no apodosis was brought for it." Now, the two upcoming textual proofs pertain to the redundancy of "idhā", not "idh", and this is from Abū ʿUbayda's boldness and error; whoever said it, he was bold and mistaken.
- (2) Al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, poem no. 44, and the verse is not in the transmission of Ibn al-Anbārī, the commentator on al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt. His words "lā mahāh": it is said, "there is no mahah (with two fatḥas) or mahāh to our life", meaning: it has no beauty or freshness. They claimed that the wāw in his saying "So when that... (fa-idhā wa-dhālika...)" is redundant and inserted, as if he said: "so when that... (fa-idhā dhālika...)". Al-Ṭabarī said in the interpretation of the statement of the Exalted: {Until, when they arrive at it and its gates are opened and its keepers say to them, "Peace be upon you; you have done well, so enter it to abide eternally"} vol. 24, p. 24: "The grammarians differed regarding the place of the apodosis of "idhā" in His saying: {Until, when they arrive at it}. Some Basran grammarians said: it is said that His saying: {and its keepers say to them} has the meaning of: 'its keepers say to them,' as if treating the wāw as redundant. Something similar has come in poetry where the wāw appears redundant, as the poet said:
So when that—O Kubaysha—was nothing
except the delusion of a dreamer's vision
So it resembles wanting to mean: 'So when that was not...'" And Abū Saʿīd al-Sukkarī said in Sharḥ Aṣhʿār al-Hudhaliyyīn 2: 100, commenting on the verse of Abū Kabīr al-Hudhalī:
So when that is nothing except its time,
and when something passes, it is as if it were never done
Abū Saʿīd said: "The wāw is redundant. He said: I said to Abū ʿAmr: A man says: 'Our Lord, and to You belongs praise.' He replied: A man says: 'I have taken this for such-and-such,' so he says: 'And it is yours.'"
And Ibn al-Shajarī said in his Amālī 1: 358: "It was said regarding the verse that the wāw is inserted, but that is nothing, because the redundancy of wāw has not been established in any pure Arabic speech." What Ibn al-Shajarī held is correct, and every proof among those they cited has an explanation in rhetoric, this not being the place for its detailed explanation. And al-Ṭabarī's rebuttal in this place suffices against what Abū ʿUbayda claimed regarding the redundancy of , as will come later: "And it is not permissible to invalidate a letter that served as evidence for a meaning in speech," to the end of what he said. And this is of sound understanding. His commentary on the verse afterwards indicates that he does not view the as redundant, namely his statement in his commentary: "So when that in which we are, and what has passed of our life."
This translation was produced with AI assistance and is part of an ongoing human-review process. Found a mistake? Use the feedback option in the reader menu.
