Sūrah 112 · Āyāt 1–2

Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ 1–2 — "Say: He is Allah, One; Allah, al-Ṣamad."

These two verses open the Qur'an's most concentrated statement of monotheism with two affirmations: that God is aḥad (One) and that He is al-ṣamad. All six sources agree the Sūrah answered a demand to "state the lineage (nasab) of your Lord." Qummī and the Enlightening Commentary report (from Imām al-Ṣādiq) that the Jews put this question and the Prophet was silent for three days until the Sūrah descended; al-Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān), al-Mīzān, and al-Burhān preserve the same occasion with variant questioners — ʿAbdullāh b. Sūriyā the Jew, ʿAbdullāh b. Salām, and the Meccan pagans. The Enlightening Commentary adds a further report of the Christians of Najrān and reconciles all the variants by noting the question was likely asked by each of them separately — itself a sign of the Sūrah's weight. (Web cross-check: the four-verse Sūrah is reported predominantly Meccan precisely because it answers Quraysh, though some hold it Medinan — a tension al-Mīzān itself records.)

On aḥad, the sources carefully separate aḥad from wāḥid. Al-Mīzān gives the sharpest analysis: aḥad applies only to what admits no multiplicity, externally or mentally, and so cannot be counted or entered into number — unlike wāḥid, which always implies a possible second. For this reason, he notes, aḥad is never used affirmatively except of God, citing ʿAlī's sermon, "Everything named with oneness is paltry except Him." Al-Ṭabarsī independently makes the same grammatical point (say "no wāḥid withstands him" and two still might; say "no aḥad withstands him" and all are excluded) and unfolds three senses of God's oneness — in His essence/attributes, in His acts (all pure benefaction), and in deserving worship alone. Al-Ṭūsī adds that aḥad marks God as uniquely qualified by eternity, self-derived power, knowledge, life and existence, and turns the word into a refutation of the corporealists (mujassima): a body is "many parts," never aḥad, so the verse proves God is not a body. Qummī glosses aḥad as "singular in description" (aḥadī al-naʿt), citing the Prophet: "a light in which is no darkness, a knowledge in which is no ignorance." Al-Burhān's narration from al-Ṣādiq frames the whole verse as "the relating of Allah to His creation" — One, ṣamad, pre-eternal, neither in His creation nor it in Him, ungraspable by sight.

On al-ṣamad, the present sources converge on one primary meaning and jointly reject another. Al-Mīzān roots ṣamad in qaṣd (intending-with-reliance): "the Lord to whom recourse is made" (al-maṣmūd ilayhi), and, the verse being unrestricted, the One intended in every need in existence. Al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī likewise gloss it as "the venerated Lord, resorted to in needs, above whom is none," each citing pre-Islamic verse (the Asadī, al-Zibriqān) for al-sayyid al-ṣamad. The Enlightening Commentary gathers the lexicons — Rāghib's Mufradāt ("a Lord to whom reference is made in matters of importance") — and Imām al-Ḥusayn's five meanings (lordship complete; everlasting; no hollow interior; neither eats nor drinks; never sleeps). Notably, al-Ṭūsī and al-Burhān reject the lexical reading muṣmat — "solid, not hollow" — as applied to God: that, says al-Ṭūsī, "is anthropomorphism and disbelief," and al-Burhān argues it would contradict "there is nothing like Him" (Q 42:11). Web cross-check confirms both lexical senses are attested in the dictionaries, but the Imāmī tradition here admits only the "Lord sought in needs" sense for God. The two verses thus pair a description of essence (aḥad) with a description of act (al-ṣamad) — a structure al-Mīzān makes explicit and the closing verses will complete.