Synthesis: Sūrat al-Dukhān 1–16

Triangulating Majmaʿ al-Bayān (Ṭabarsī), al-Tibyān (Ṭūsī), al-Burhān (Baḥrānī), Tafsīr al-Qummī, al-Mīzān (Ṭabāṭabāʾī), and the Enlightening Commentary.

Human-review flags: al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] — one long bayān unit (vv. 1–33) faithfully condensed for this passage, not word-for-word. al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] — the long opening narration of Imam al-Kāẓim and the Christian convert condensed; the esoteric (bāṭin) identifications are rendered as-attributed, not endorsed.

What the passage says. The sūra opens, like its sister Ḥawāmīm, with the detached letters Ḥā-Mīm and an oath 'by the manifest Book' that the Qurʾān was 'sent down on a blessed night' (v. 3) — a night in which 'every wise/decisive matter is distinguished' (v. 4) — as a command and a mercy from the Lord of the heavens and the earth, beside whom there is no god (vv. 5–8). The disbelievers, however, 'play in doubt' (v. 9), so the Prophet is told to 'watch for the Day the sky brings a manifest smoke' (v. 10) that will envelop the people, who will then plead for relief and faith — a plea the Qurʾān rebukes as too late (vv. 11–14) — before the promise that the respite is brief and 'the greatest seizure' is coming (vv. 15–16).

The blessed night and the apportioning of every matter (vv. 3–5). All five present sources agree the blessed night is Laylat al-Qadr, anchoring it in Q97:1 and Q2:185 and rejecting the rival 'mid-Shaʿbān' view (ascribed to ʿIkrima). Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī give the fullest scholarly frame: the qirāʾāt of rabb al-samāwāt (Kufan genitive vs. nominative), the iʿrāb of the oath (its answer is 'Indeed We have been warning,' v. 3b, with v. 3a a parenthesis), and the lexical sense of baraka as 'the growth of good.' Both rehearse the spectrum on how the Qurʾān descended (whole to the lowest heaven then in installments over twenty-three years; or merely beginning that night). al-Mīzān turns this into its signature argument: matters have two stages — iḥkām (undifferentiated brevity) and farq/tafṣīl (distinction and detail) — and the Night of Decree is precisely when cosmic affairs pass from the first to the second; he reconciles 'whole' and 'gradual' descent through the ijmāl/tafṣīl distinction (citing Q11:1, Q43:3–4) and reads the present-tense 'is distinguished' as proof of recurring cosmic decree. Qummī and al-Burhān add the distinctly Imāmī layer: what is apportioned each Night of Decree (terms, provisions, trials), subject to badāʾ and the divine will, is conveyed from the Prophet to the Commander of the Faithful, to the Imams, and finally to the Master of the Age — and 'the angels circumambulate around us in it' (al-Bāqir). al-Burhān's al-Iḥtijāj ḥadīth from ʿAlī makes the grammatical present tense (tanazzalu… yufraqu) an argument that the night's 'matter' is ongoing and tied to the Imams as God's standing Proofs (rendered as-attributed).

The esoteric reading (al-Burhān). Uniquely, al-Burhān opens with al-Kulaynī's narration of the Christian who sought out Imam Mūsā al-Kāẓim, to whom the Imam gives a bāṭin taʾwīl: Ḥā-Mīm = Muḥammad, 'the manifest Book' = ʿAlī, 'the [blessed] night' = Fāṭima, and the 'wise matter' distinguished from her = her righteous progeny. This is reported, not endorsed, and stands beside — not against — the plain-sense reading the other sources share.

The smoke (vv. 10–11). Here the sources visibly diverge. Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān lay out the two main views even-handedly: (1) the famine of Mecca following the Prophet's imprecation 'years like the years of Joseph' (Ibn Masʿūd, al-Ḍaḥḥāk), when hunger made men see smoke between themselves and the sky; and (2) an unrealized portent of the Hour, a smoke that will fill the earth for forty days (Ibn ʿAbbās, al-Ḥasan, traced to the Prophet). al-Mīzān adds and then dismisses two further views (the dust of the Conquest; the Resurrection). Qummī, by contrast, reads the smoke through the Return (al-rajʿa) — 'when they come forth from the grave' — and argues grammatically that since v. 15 says 'you will revert,' the smoke cannot be at the final Resurrection (after which there is nothing to revert to). The Enlightening Commentary surveys the same options and, weighing the Ḥudhayfa/ʿAlī traditions about the forty-day sign, judges the eschatological reading 'preferable' — God warning the disbelievers of a portent before the Resurrection.

The rebuke and the seizure (vv. 12–16). All sources read the plea 'remove the punishment, we believe' as belated and insincere: a clear Messenger already came and was dismissed as 'one taught, a madman' (Qummī ties the slur of madness to the swoon that seized the Prophet at revelation; the Enlightening Commentary recalls the 'Roman slave' calumny of Q16:103). On 'the greatest seizure' (v. 16), Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī carry both classical readings — Badr (Ibn Masʿūd, Mujāhid) or the Day of Resurrection (al-Jubbāʾī's choice) — while al-Mīzān notes that the epithet 'greatest' tilts toward the Resurrection (Q88:24). The Enlightening Commentary closes the unit by insisting the retribution (intiqām) is for the administration of justice, not the gratification of anger.