And what the one whose statement we described claimed (1)—regarding the verse of al-Aswad ibn Yaʿfur: that idhā is used superfluously—has no intelligible basis. Rather, if that were omitted from the speech, the meaning intended by al-Aswad ibn Yaʿfur in his statement: 'And idhā (when) that has no sweetness worth remembering' would be invalidated.

This is because by his statement: "So when that which we are in, and what has passed of our life..." and he indicated by his statement "that" what had previously been described of his life in which he was—"has no sweetness worth remembering" meaning it has no taste and no merit, because time succeeds the good of that with decay. Likewise, the meaning of the statement of ʿAbd Manāf ibn Ribʿ: 'Until, when they drove them into Qutāʾida... in a scattered rout...' If idhā were omitted from it, the meaning of the speech would be invalidated, because its meaning is: "until, when they drove them into Qutāʾida, they went in a scattered rout." Thus, his statement "drove them in a scattered rout" indicated the meaning of the omitted part, so there was no need to explicitly mention it due to the indication of idhā towards it, so it was omitted. Just as what we have mentioned previously in our book (2) indicates what the Arabs do in similar cases. And just as al-Namir ibn Tawlab said: 'For indeed death, whoever fears it, it shall find him wherever' (3) and he means: wherever he goes. And just as the Arabs say: "I came to you before and after," meaning before that and after that. So too is the case with idhā, just as a speaker says: