Al-Qasas

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

Those, namely, these signs, are the signs of the Manifest Book (the genitive annexation conveys the [partitive] sense of min, ‘of’ [‘verses from the Manifest Book’]), [the Manifest Book] which reveals truth from falsehood.

We will recount, narrate, to you [something] of the tale of Moses and Pharaoh truthfully, for a people who believe, for their sake, since they are the ones to benefit from such [an account].

Truly Pharaoh had exalted himself in the land, the land of Egypt, and reduced its people into sects, groups, to serve him, oppressing a group of them, namely, the Children of Israel, slaughtering their sons, the new-born, and sparing their women, keeping them alive — for some of the [Egyptian] priests had told him, ‘A new-born of the Children of Israel shall bring about the end of your kingdom’. Indeed he was of those who cause corruption, through [the use of] slaughter and otherwise.

And We desired to show favour to those who were oppressed in the land, and to make them exemplars (read a’immatan, pronouncing both hamzas, or by replacing the second one with a yā’) whose good example would be followed, and to make them the inheritors, of Pharaoh’s kingdom;

and to establish them in the land, the land of Egypt and Syria, and to show Pharaoh and Hāmān and their hosts (a variant reading has wa-yarā Fir‘awnu wa-Hāmānu wa-junūduhumā, ‘so that Pharaoh and Hāmān and their hosts might see’, with all three [nouns] in the nominative) from them that of which they were apprehensive, [that which] they feared of the new-born [Israelite] who would bring about the end of their kingdom.

And We revealed, by inspiration or in a dream, to the mother of Moses — who was the said new-born; his sister was the only other person aware of his birth — ‘Suckle him, then, when you fear for him, cast him into the waters, namely, the Nile, and do not fear, that he should drown, or grieve, for being separated from him, for We will restore him to you and make him one of the messengers’. She suckled him for three months during which he never cried. She then began to fear for him and so she placed him in a basket coated with pitch and made as a cradle for him on the inside. She then closed it and cast it into the waters of the Nile at night.

Then Pharaoh’s folk, aids, picked him up, with him [still] in the basket, the morning following that night — it was placed him in front of him [Pharaoh] and then opened and Moses was brought out of it, sucking milk from his thumb — to be, at the end of the affair, an enemy, slaying their menfolk, and a [cause of] grief to them, enslaving their womenfolk (a variant reading [for hazanan] is huznan, both of which are alternative forms of the verbal noun, and it functions as an active participle, derived from hazanahu, which is like ahzanahu, ‘he caused him grief’). Truly Pharaoh and, his minister, Hāmān, and their hosts were sinners, that is, disobedient, and so they were punished at his [Moses’s] hands.

And Pharaoh’s wife said, after he and his aids had resolved to slay him: he is, ‘A joyous sight for me and you. Do not slay him. Perhaps he will be of benefit to us, or we will adopt him as a son’, and so they obeyed her [wish]. And they were not aware, of the sequel to their affair with him.

And the heart of Moses’s mother, when she found out that they had picked him up, became empty, of everything other than him. Indeed (in, softened from the hardened form, its subject omitted, in other words [understand it as] innaha) she was about to expose him, that is, as being her son, had We not fortified her heart, with patience, that is, We made it at peace, that she might be of the believers, [of] those who have faith in God’s promise (the response to [the conditional] lawlā, ‘had … not’, is given by the preceding [statement]).

And she said to his sister, Mary, ‘Follow him’, in other words, follow where he goes in order to find out his news. So she watched him from afar, from a distance, secretly, while they were not aware, that she was his sister, or that she was [even] watching him.

And We had forbidden him to [take to the breasts of] fostermothers from before, that is to say, we prevented him from taking to the breasts of any suckling mother other than his own mother. Therefore he would not accept the breasts of any of the foster-mothers brought for him. So she, his sister, said, ‘Shall I show you a household — having seen their affection for him — who will take care of him for you, by having him suckled and so on, and who will act in good faith towards him?’ (the [suffixed] pronoun in lahu has been interpreted as referring to the king, as a response to them [when they asked Mary how she could be sure]). Her suggestion was accepted. So she brought his mother and he took to her breast. She explained to them that he had taken to her [breast] because of her pleasant scent and the wholesome taste of her milk. Permission was given to her to breast-feed him in her own house and so she returned with him, just as God, exalted be He, says:

Thus We restored him to his mother so that her eyes might delight, in seeing him [again], and not grieve, thereat, and that she might know that God’s promise, to restore him to her, is true; but most of them, that is, the people, do not know, about this promise, or of the fact that this was his sister and the other was his mother. He [Moses] remained with her until he was weaned during which time she was paid wages at one dinar per day. She took this because it was money from enemy territory (harbī). She then brought him [back] to Pharaoh in whose household he was raised, as God recounts of him in sūrat al-Shu‘arā’ [Q. 26:18], Did we not rear you among us as a child, and did you not stay with us for years of your life?

And when he came of age, namely, at 30 or 33, and [then] was [fully] mature, that is, when he reached the age of 40, We gave him judgement, wisdom, and knowledge, comprehension of religious matters before he was sent as a prophet. And so, just as We rewarded him, do We reward those are virtuous, to their own souls.

And he, Moses, entered the city, Pharaoh’s city, Memphis, having been absent from it for a while, at a time when its people were oblivious, the time of the afternoon nap, and found therein two men fighting, one of his own faction, namely, an Israelite, and the other of his enemies, in other words, an Egyptian, who was exploiting an Israelite to carry firewood to Pharaoh’s kitchen. So the one who was of his faction called to him for help against the one who was of his enemies, and so Moses said to him, ‘Leave him be!’, and it is said that he replied to Moses [thus]: ‘I am truly considering making you carry this [firewood]!’. So Moses punched him, that is, he hit him with his fist clenched — he [Moses] was a strong man with a powerful strike, and did away with him, that is, he killed him, but he had not intended to kill him. He buried him in the sand. He said, ‘This, killing of him, is of Satan’s doing, inciting my anger. Indeed he is an enemy, to the son of Adam, a manifest misleader’, of him.

He said, remorsefully, ‘My Lord, I have indeed wronged myself, by killing him, so forgive me!’ So He forgave him. Truly He is the Forgiving, the Merciful, that is to say, the One Who has always possessed, and will always possess, these two attributes.

He said, ‘My Lord, forasmuch as You have been gracious to me, with forgiveness, protect me [so], I will never be a partisan, a supporter, of the criminals’, the disbelievers henceforth, if you were to protect me.

In the morning he was in the city, fearful, vigilant, waiting to see what would happen to him [in reaction] from the side of the slain man; — when behold, the one who had sought his help the day before cried out to him for help [again], asking for his help against another Egyptian. Moses said to him, ‘Clearly you are a trouble-maker!’, whose trouble-making is evident, judging by what you did yesterday and today.

But when (fa-lammā an: an is extra) he was about to strike the man who was an enemy to both of them, to Moses and the one seeking his help, he, the one seeking help, supposing that Moses was about to strike him, because of what he [Moses] had said to him, said: ‘O Moses, do you want to slay me just as you slew a soul yesterday? You merely want to be a tyrant in the land, and you do not want to be of the reformers’. The Egyptian heard this and realised that the slayer had been Moses. Thus he hurried off to Pharaoh to inform him of this. Pharaoh then ordered slaughterers to slay Moses, and they set off in his direction.

And a man, who was the [only] believer among Pharaoh’s kinsfolk, came from the outskirts of the city, hastening, walking fast, via a route quicker than theirs. He said, ‘O Moses, lo! the council, of Pharaoh’s folk, are conspiring, discussing [the means], to slay you. So leave, the city. Truly I am speaking to you in good faith’, in bidding you to leave.

So he departed from it, fearful, vigilant, lest any of the pursuers catch up with him, or [in the hope] that God might rescue him. He said, ‘My Lord, deliver me from the evildoing people’, Pharaoh’s people.

And when he turned his face towards Midian, in the direction thereof — and this [Midian] was the town of [the prophet] Shu‘ayb, eight day’s journeying from Egypt, [so] named after Midian son of Abraham; he [Moses] did not know the route to it — he said, ‘Perhaps my Lord will show me the right way’, that is to say, which route to follow, in other words, the simplest route to it. God thus sent forth to him an angel with a goat, which he [Moses] set off following towards it [the town].

And when he arrived at the Water of Midian, [the name of] a well therein, he found a group of people there watering, their flocks, and he found, besides them, two women holding back their flock, from the water. He, Moses, said, to the two: ‘What is your business?’, that is, ‘What is the matter with you, that you are not watering?’ They said, ‘We do not water [our flock] until the shepherds have moved on (ri‘ā’u, ‘shepherds’, the plural of rā‘in) that is to say, until they have returned from the watering, for fear of being crushed [by the throng], after which we go to water (a variant reading [for yasdiru, ‘move on’] is the 4th form [subjunctive] yusdira, ‘to drive away’, meaning, until they [the shepherds] have driven their flocks away from the water’) and our father is a very old man’, unable to [come and] water.

So he watered [their flock] for them, from another well nearby, by lifting a rock from on top of it, which only ten men could have lifted; then he retreated to the shade, of an acacia tree (samura), because of the extreme heat of the sun and he was hungry, and said, ‘My Lord, indeed I am in utter need of whatever good, [whatever] food, You send down to me’. The two women returned to their father quicker than usual and so he asked them why [it was so]. They told him about the man who had watered [their flock] for them. So he said to one of them, ‘Summon him to [come to] me’.

God, exalted be He, says: Then one of the two women came to him, walking bashfully — in other words, covering her face with the sleeve of her shirt, being shy of him — and said, ‘My father invites you, that he may pay you a wage for watering [our flock] for us’. He accepted her invitation, while inwardly he disapproved of accepting any wage, for it was as though she sought to remunerate him and as though he were of those who would want it [which he was not]. She walked in front of him but when the wind began to blow off her dress and reveal her legs, he said to her, ‘Walk behind me and show me the way’, which she did. Finally he came to her father, Shu‘ayb, peace be upon him, who was sitting with some supper in front of him. He said to him, ‘Sit and have some supper’. He [Moses] said, ‘I hope that this is not [some sort of] compensation for having watered [their flock] for them? For we are People of a House and do not demand compensation for good deeds’. He [Shu‘ayb] said, ‘No. It is [simply] a custom of mine and of my forefathers to be hospitable to guests and to offer them food’. Thus, he [Moses] ate and informed him of his predicament. God, exalted be He, says: So when he came to him and recounted to him the story (al-qasas is a verbal noun with the sense of al-maqsūs, ‘that which is recounted’), of his slaying of the Egyptian and their intention to slay him and his fear of Pharaoh, he [their father] said, ‘Do not be afraid. You have escaped from the evildoing people’, as Pharaoh had no authority over Midian.

One of the two women, the one that had been sent [by her father], either the elder or the younger, said, ‘O my father, hire him, employ him in return for a wage, that he may tend our flock instead of us. Surely the best [man] you can hire is the strong, the trustworthy man’, in other words, hire him on account of his strength and trustworthiness. He [Shu‘ayb] asked her about him and she told him, as mentioned above, how he had lifted the rock off the well and that he had said to her, ‘Walk behind me’, in addition to his lowering his head when he realised that she was coming towards him, refusing to lift it [until she left]. He [Shu‘ayb] therefore was keen to have him marry [one of his daughters].

He said, ‘I desire to marry you to one of these two daughters of mine, either the elder or the younger one, on condition that you hire yourself to me, that you are employed by me to tend my flock, for eight years. And if you complete ten, that is, the tending of ten years, that, completion, shall be of your own accord. I do not want to be hard on you, by making it [the marriage] conditional on ten [years service]. God willing — [expressed] to seek [God’s] blessing — you shall find me to be one of the righteous’, of those who fulfil their covenants.

He, Moses, said, ‘That, which you have said, is [settled then] between me and you. Whichever of the two terms, the eight or the ten (the mā [in ayyamā, ‘whichever of the two’] is extra), in other words, the tending thereof, I complete, there shall be no injustice [done] to me, by demanding [of me] to do more [tending]. And God is Guardian, Keeper or Witness, over what we, you and I, say’. The contract was agreed in this way. Shu‘ayb bid his daughter to give Moses a staff with which to beat off predatory beasts from his sheep — the staffs of the prophets were in his keeping. It was Adam’s staff, made from the myrtle of Paradise, that fell into her hands and so Moses took it, with Shu‘ayb’s knowledge.

So when Moses had completed the term, of his tending — of eight years, or of ten years, which is what is generally assumed — and was travelling with his family, his wife, with the permission of her father, in the direction of Egypt, he saw in the distance on the side of the Mount [Tūr] a fire (al-Tūr is the name of a mountain). He said to his family, ‘Wait, here; I see a fire in the distance. Maybe I will bring you from it news, about [how to rejoin] the route [to Egypt] — for he had strayed from it [along the way] — or a brand (read with any of the three vowels [jadhwa, jidhwa, or judhwa], which [either] means ‘a bundle’, or ‘a flame’) from the fire, that you may warm yourselves’ (tastalūna: the tā’ replaces the tā’ of the [8th verbal paradigm] ifta‘ala of the verb saliya, or salaya).

And when he reached it, a call came from the right bank, [the right] side, of the valley, to Moses, at the blessed spot, [blessed] for Moses, because of his hearing God’s speech therein, from the tree (mina’l-shajarati substitutes for min shāti’i, ‘from the [right] bank’, and the preposition [min, ‘from’] has been repeated because it [the tree] grows there) — the tree was a jujube, a bramble, or a boxthorn — [saying] that (an here is explicative, and not in its softened form) ‘O Moses! Indeed I am God, the Lord of the Worlds’.

And: ‘Throw down your staff’, and he threw it down. And when he saw it quivering, moving, as if it were a serpent (jānn: is a small snake [so called] because of the speed of its movement) he turned his back, to flee from it, and did not look back, in other words, he did not return, and so there called out [the voice]: ‘O Moses! Come forward, and do not be afraid. Indeed you are safe.

Insert your, right, hand, meaning, the palm, into your bosom (jayb is the neck [area] of the shirt) and [then] take it out, and it will emerge, not in its usual skin colour [but], white, without any blemish, any [vestige of] leprosy. So he inserted it and took it out and it shone as bright as the sun, blinding the eyes; and draw your arm [back] to your side [as a precaution] against fear (read rahab, rahb or ruhb), in other words, [against] the fear produced by the glow of the hand, so that you insert it [back] into your bosom and it is restored to its former state; it [the arm] is referred to as jināh, ‘wing’, because they are for humans what wings are for birds. These then (read fa-dhānika or fa-dhānnika) namely, the staff and the hand (both of which [‘asā and yad] are feminine nouns, but the demonstrative pronoun [dhānika] used for them, being the subject, is in the masculine because its predicate is masculine) shall be two proofs, to be sent, from your Lord to Pharaoh and his council; for surely they are an immoral people’.

He said, ‘My Lord, I have indeed slain a soul among them — the mentioned Egyptian — and so I fear that they will slay me, because of him.

And my brother Aaron is more eloquent, more intelligible, than me in speech. So send him with me as a helper, as an aid (a variant reading [for rid’an, ‘helper’] is ridan) to confirm me (read [either] in apocopated form, yusadiqnī, as a response to the request, or [as an indicative] with damma inflection, yusadiqunī, as an adjectival qualification of rid’an, ‘helper’), for I truly fear that they will deny me’.

He said, ‘We will strengthen your arm, We will make you strong, by means of your brother, and We will give authority, victory, so that they will not be able to touch [either of] you, with any evil; go both of you, with Our signs the two of you, and those who follow you [two], will be the victors’, over them.

But when Moses brought them Our clear signs (bayyinātin, a circumstantial qualifier) they said, ‘This is nothing but concocted, invented, sorcery. And we never heard of such [a thing], to have [ever] existed, in, the days of, our forefathers’.

And Moses said, (wa-qāla, or qāla, without the ‘and’) ‘My Lord knows best who brings guidance from Him (the suffixed pronoun [in ‘indihi] refers to the Lord) and whose (man here is a supplement to the previous man) will be (read takūna or yakūna) the sequel of the [Blissful] Abode, that is to say, the praiseworthy sequel in the Abode of the Hereafter, in other words, it is I [Moses], in both cases, and I speak truthfully in what I have brought [you]. Truly the evildoers, the disbelievers, will not be successful’.

And Pharaoh said, ‘O [members of the] council, I do not know of any god for you other than me. So kindle for me, O Hāmān, [a fire] over the clay, and bake for me bricks [of clay], and make me a tower, a lofty palace, that I may take a look at the god of Moses, to observe him and inspect him; for truly I consider him to be a liar’, in his claim of [the existence of] some other god and that he is his messenger.

And he and his hosts acted arrogantly in the land, the land of Egypt, without right, and thought they would not return to Us (read active yarji‘ūna, or passive yurja‘ūna, ‘they would [not] be brought back’).

So We seized him and his hosts, and flung them into the waters, the sea, and they drowned. So behold how was the sequel for the evildoers, when they ended up being destroyed.

And We made them, in this world, leaders (read a-imma, pronouncing both hamzas, or by changing the second one into a yā’), chieftains of idolatry, who invite to the Fire, by inviting to idolatry, and on the Day of Resurrection they will not be helped, by having the chastisement averted from them.

And We made a curse, ignominy, pursue them in this world, and on the Day of Resurrection they will be among the spurned, those banished [from God’s mercy].

And verily We gave Moses the Scripture, the Torah, after We had destroyed the former generations, the people of Noah, ‘Ād, Thamūd and others, [containing] eye-openers for mankind (basā’ira, is a circumstantial qualifier referring to al-kitāb, ‘the Scripture’, the plural of basīra, which is the [perceptive] light of the heart), in other words, illumination for the hearts [of mankind], and as guidance, from error, for those who implement it, and mercy, for those who believe therein, that perhaps they might remember, [that] they might be admonished by the admonitions it [the Scripture] contains.

And you were not, O Muhammad (s), on the western side, of the mountain, the valley, or the spot, [to the west] of Moses at the time of the communion, when We decreed, revealed, to Moses the commandment, to deliver the Message to Pharaoh and his people, nor were you among the witnesses, to this, to know it and inform of it;

but We brought forth generations, communities, after Moses, and life was prolonged in their case, in other words, they lived long lives and so they forgot the covenants [made with God], knowledge disappeared and revelation ceased. Then We brought you as Messenger and revealed to you the story of Moses and others. And you were not a dweller, a resident, among the people of Midian reciting to them Our revelations (tatlū ‘alayhim āyātinā, a second predicate [after thāwiyan, ‘dweller’), to know their story and inform of it; but truly We are the senders, of you [as Messenger] and [the senders] to you of the stories of former generations.

And you were not on the side of the Mount when We called out, to Moses to take the Scripture earnestly; but, We have sent you, as a mercy from your Lord, that you may warn a people to whom no warner came before you — these are the people of Mecca — and that perhaps they may remember, they may be admonished.

Otherwise, if an affliction, a punishment, should befall them because of what their own hands have sent before them, in the way of disbelief and otherwise, they might say, ‘Our Lord, why did You not send a messenger to us, that we might have followed Your signs, the ones sent with the messengers, and been of the believers?’ (the response to [the conditional particle] lawlā, ‘if’, has been omitted, and what follows it is a [new] subject; the meaning is: ‘were it not for the affliction that is the cause of their saying’, or, ‘were it not for their saying that is the cause of their affliction, We would have hastened on for them their punishment and We would not have sent you as a messenger to them’).

But when the truth, namely, Muhammad (s), came to them from Us, they said, ‘Why has he not been given the like of what Moses was given?’, in the way of signs, such as the glowing hand, the staff and others, or [by having] the Book revealed all at once. God, exalted be He, says: And did they not disbelieve in what was given to Moses before?; [before] when, they said, regarding him and Muhammad (s), ‘Two sorcerers (sāhirān; a variant reading has sihrān, ‘two sorceries’, namely [what they said regarding] the Qur’ān and the Torah) abetting each other.’ And they said, ‘We indeed disbelieve in both’, the two prophets and the two Scriptures [of Moses and Muhammad].

Say, to them: ‘Then bring some Scripture from God that is better in guidance than these two, Scriptures, that I may follow it, if you are truthful’, in what you say.

Then if they do not respond to you, regarding your invitation [to them] to bring a Scripture, know that they are only following their desires, in [persisting in] their disbelief. And who is more astray than he who follows his desire without any guidance from God?, in other words, there is no one more astray than such [a person]. Truly God does not guide the evildoing, the disbelieving, folk.

And now verily We have brought, We have explained [to], them the Word, the Qur’ān, that perhaps they might remember, [they might] be admonished and believe.

Those to whom We gave the Scripture before this, that is, [before] the Qur’ān, they believe in it, too. This was revealed regarding certain Jews who became Muslims, such as ‘Abd Allāh b. Salām and others, and [certain] Christians who had come from Abyssinia and Syria [who also became Muslims].

And, when it is recited to them, the Qur’ān, they say, ‘We believe in it. It is indeed the Truth from our Lord. Lo! [even] before it we had submitted’, we affirmed God’s Oneness.

Those will be given their reward twice over, for believing in both Scriptures, for the patience they showed, for having been steadfast in implementing [the prescriptions in] them; and they ward off, from themselves, evil with good, and expend, give as voluntary alms, of that which We have provided them.

And when they hear vanity, vile words and hurtful intent from the disbelievers, they disregard it and say, ‘To us [belong] our deeds and to you [belong] your deeds. Peace to you — a parting truce (salām mutāraka), in other words you are secure from any abuse or the like on our part. We do not desire [friendship with] the ignorant’, we do not seek companionship with them.

The following was revealed regarding the Prophet’s longing for his uncle Abū Tālib to embrace faith: You cannot guide whom you like, to be guided, but [it is] God [Who] guides whomever He will, and He knows best those who will be guided.

And they, his people, say, ‘If we were to follow the Guidance with you, we will be deprived from our land’, torn out of it swiftly. God, exalted be He, says: Have We not established for them a secure Sanctuary, [one] in which they are secure from the raids and killings that occur among the Arab tribes, to which are brought (read tujbā or yujbā) fruits of all kinds, [fruits] from every direction, as a provision, for them, from Us? But most of them do not know, that what We say is the truth.

And how many a town We have destroyed whose lifestyle was one of arrogant ungratefulness — by ‘town’ is meant the inhabitants thereof. Those are their dwellings, which have not been dwelt in after them except a little, by passers-by, for a day or part of it. And it was We Who were the [sole] inheritors, after them.

And your Lord never destroyed the towns, because of evildoing on their part, until He had raised up in their mother-town, that is, the major [town] among them, a messenger to recite Our signs to them. And We never destroyed the towns unless their inhabitants were committing evil, by denying the messengers.

And whatever things you have been given are [only] the [short-lived] enjoyment of the life of this world and an ornament thereof, in other words, [things] which you enjoy and adorn yourselves with for the days of your lives, after which they perish; and what is with God, in other words, His reward, is better and more lasting. Will you not understand? (ta‘qilūna; or read ya‘qilūna, ‘will they [not] understand’) that what lasts is better than what perishes.

Is he to whom We have given a fair promise, which he will receive, which he will attain, and that [promise] is Paradise, like him to whom We have given the enjoyment of the life of this world, [enjoyment] which will disappear soon, then on the Day of Resurrection he will be of those arraigned?, before the Fire. The former is the believer, the latter the disbeliever: in other words the two are not equal.

And, mention, the day when He, God, will call to them and say, ‘Where [then] are My partners, those whom you used to claim?’, were partners of Mine.

Those against whom the Word [of punishment] will have become due, the justified [Word], that they be admitted into the Fire — and these are the leaders of misguidance — they shall say, ‘Our Lord! These are the ones whom we led astray (hā’ūlā’i’lladhīna aghwaynā is both a subject and an adjectival qualification). We led them astray (aghwaynāhum, the predicate thereof) and they went astray, even as we went astray — we did not compel them to [follow] error. We declare our innocence, of them, before You; it was not us that they worshipped’ (mā, ‘not’, is for negation; the direct object [iyyānā, ‘us’] precedes [the verb ya‘budūna, ‘they worshipped’] in order to concord with the end-rhyme of the verses).