Sūrah 43 · Āyāt 1–14

Al-Zukhruf 1–14 — The Clear Book and the Signs of the One Lord

What the passage says. The sūra opens with the detached letters Ḥā Mīm and an oath by “the Manifest Book,” sworn to a single point: “We have made it an Arabic Qurʾān so that you may reason” (vv. 1–3). This recited Book has a higher origin — “with Us in the Mother of the Book, sublime and wise” (v. 4). God then rebukes His deniers rhetorically: shall He withhold the Reminder simply because they are a prodigal people? (v. 5) He consoles the Prophet with the fate of earlier nations who mocked their prophets and were destroyed though mightier (vv. 6–8), and turns to proofs of His sole lordship drawn from the disbelievers’ own admission that God created the heavens and earth: the earth spread as a cradle, its paths, measured rain reviving dead land — “likewise you will be raised” — the pairs of things, and the ships and cattle given for transport, with the prayer of the rider (vv. 9–14). It closes by exposing those who “assigned Him a portion of His servants,” calling man “a manifest ingrate.”

How the present sources read it. On the Book’s twin attributes “lofty and wise,” the four Sunnī-facing philological sources and al-Mīzān diverge instructively. Al-Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān) and al-Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān) read ʿaliyy as loftiness in eloquence and rank and ḥakīm as the display of consummate wisdom, and both draw from innā jaʿalnāhu a proof of the Qurʾān’s createdness (ḥudūth), “for the made is the very thing originated.” Al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) rejects these glosses as weak: for him ʿaliyy and ḥakīm name a mode of the Book’s being in the Preserved Tablet that lies beyond the reach of intellects — consolidated and undivided, prior to its parceling into sūras and verses — and the Arabic Qurʾān is its “likeness” (mithl), sent down clothed in language “in the hope that you may reason.” Al-Mīzān also frames the whole unit structurally: the sūra is set for warning, and vv. 9–14 form a single argument that God’s acknowledged creation is itself the management (tadbīr) idolaters wrongly assign to others.

The two Imāmī narrative sources read v. 4 christologically of the Imam: al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī (al-Burhān) both report, through al-Ṣādiq and al-Riḍā, that “he is, with Us in the Mother of the Book, lofty and wise” designates ʿAlī, inscribed in the Fātiḥa’s “Guide us to the straight path” — al-Burhān stacking many chains (including the Ghadīr supplication and al-Barsī’s report of ʿAlī’s “three hundred names in the Qurʾān”). This is presented as the sources give it, an Imāmī taʾwīl laid over the plain sense that the pronoun refers to the Book. On v. 5, al-Qummī and al-Burhān gloss “the Reminder” concretely as God’s ḥujja — “a Messenger, an Imam, or [other] proofs.” On v. 13, al-Qummī and al-Burhān converge on the rich riding-etiquette material — the Aṣbagh b. Nubāta stirrup narration, the supplications taught by al-Riḍā to ʿAlī b. Asbāṭ, and the definition of al-sakīna as “a wind from Paradise with a human-like face” — which al-Ṭabarsī corroborates from al-ʿAyyāshī and, via Muslim, from Ibn ʿUmar’s travel-supplication. Al-Mīzān independently distinguishes the two acts commanded here: the tasbīḥ (“Glory to Him who subjected this”) against a partner in lordship, and the shukr (remembering the blessing), citing al-Kashshāf’s report that al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī corrected a rider who glorified but neglected to give thanks.

The published English. An Enlightening Commentary frames the sūra among the seven Ḥawāmīm, names it from zukhruf (“gold”) in v. 35, and reads the closing prayer of vv. 13–14 as a summons to “certain knowledge” (ʿilm al-yaqīn) that all creatures are subjected for humankind’s perfection, whose final end is the return to God. All six sources are present for this passage; none was silent.