Sūrah 111 · Āyāt 1–3

Sūrat al-Masad 1–3 — Perish the two hands of Abū Lahab, and perish he! His wealth did not avail him, nor what he earned. Soon he will enter a Fire possessed of flame

These three āyāt are a curse and a sentence upon one named man — the Prophet's own uncle. Every present source reads them against a single, famous occasion. Al-Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān) gives the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī report of Ibn ʿAbbās: the Prophet climbed Mount al-Ṣafā, cried Yā ṣabāḥāh!, won Quraysh's admission that they had never known him to lie, then warned of "a severe punishment" — at which Abū Lahab spat back, "Perdition to you (tabban laka)! Was it for this that you gathered us?" The surah was the answer. The Enlightening Commentary gives the same Ṣafā scene (after wa-andhir ʿashīrataka, Q 26:214). Al-Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān) preserves a parallel: the surah answers Abū Lahab's sneer "Perdition to this as a religion!" when the Prophet offered the Banū ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib mastery "over the Arabs and non-Arabs" for "lā ilāha illā Allāh." Tafsīr al-Qummī alone sets it instead at the Dār al-Nadwa plot to kill the Prophet — an Imāmī framing recorded here without being harmonized with the Ṣafā account.

The wordplay and the curse. The sources converge on the lexicon: tabb / tabāb is "loss leading to perdition" (al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī), which al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī sharpens via al-Jawharī ("loss and perdition") and al-Rāghib ("the perpetuity of loss"). Why "his two hands"? Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, and al-Mīzān give the identical grammatical insight: most deeds are done by the hands, so the loss of his deeds is ascribed to them (cf. "his two hands have earned"), while wa-tabb extends the ruin to the man himself. Al-Farrāʾ (in Ṭabarsī) parses the two clauses precisely — tabbat a supplication (duʿāʾ), wa-tabb a factual report ("and he has indeed perished"), citing the variant reading wa-qad tabb of Ibn Masʿūd and Ubayy.

Why name him — and by a nickname? Al-Mīzān supplies the deepest reading: mentioning the kunya "Abū Lahab" ("Father of Flame") rather than his name is a mockery (tahakkum) — once {a Fire possessed of flame} is announced, "Perish the two hands of Abū Lahab" comes to mean "Perish the two hands of a man of Hell bound to its flame." Ṭabarsī and al-Mīzān add the complementary point that his name ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā ("servant of the idol al-ʿUzzā") was avoided so as not to ascribe him in wording to a false god (Qummī, by contrast, gives the name as ʿAbd Manāf). Both Ṭabarsī and the Enlightening Commentary relay Ṭāriq al-Muḥāribī's eyewitness of Abū Lahab stoning the Prophet bloody at Dhū al-Majāz, calling him a liar — establishing the relentless enmity the curse answers.

Wealth, sons, and the Fire. {His wealth did not avail him} — neither his riches nor "what he earned" repelled God's punishment (Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Mīzān, and Qummī, who notes he "was a man of much wealth"). Ṭabarsī preserves a striking gloss that "what he earned" includes his offspring ("a man's child is part of his earning"), tied to Abū Lahab's boast, "If what you say is true, I shall ransom myself with my wealth and my children." Finally {he will enter a Fire possessed of flame}: Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, and al-Mīzān all read this not only as the everlasting Fire of Hell but as a proof of prophethood — the Qurʾān foretold Abū Lahab would die in unbelief, "and it was as He said." Al-Baḥrānī (al-Burhān) adds vivid Imāmī narrations of the era's hostility — Umm Jamīl keeping Abū Lahab drinking while Quraysh plotted, ʿAlī breaking down the door to warn him — recorded as transmitted, isnāds unvetted, and flagged for review.