Sūrat al-Insān · Āyāt 1–10

What the passage says

The sūrah opens by asking man to look back at his own beginning: there was a stretch of time when he "was not a thing worth mentioning" (v.1) — not because he was simply nothing, but because he had not yet been brought into actual existence. Then God created him "from a drop of mingled fluid" — the male and female fluids joined together — "to put him to the test," and gave him hearing and sight (v.2). Having equipped him to perceive, God "guided him to the way," leaving him free to be either grateful or ungrateful (v.3).

The two destinies follow at once. For the ungrateful — those who reject the truth — God has readied "chains, iron collars, and a blaze" (v.4). For "the pious" (al-abrār) there is instead a cup "seasoned with camphor" (v.5), drawn from "a spring where God's servants drink, making it gush forth wherever they please" (v.6).

The passage then describes who these pious ones are, by their deeds in this life. They "fulfil their vows" and live in fear of "a day whose evil is widespread" — the terrors of the Resurrection (v.7). Out of love, and at the very moment they themselves crave it, "they feed the needy, the orphan, and the captive" (v.8) — saying inwardly, "We feed you only for the sake of God; we want no reward from you, nor thanks" (v.9), "for we fear from our Lord a frowning, fateful day" (v.10).

Convergence — where the six agree

• All six read the opening question as a statement in disguise. Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, and Ṭabāṭabāʾī all explain that the hal ("has there…?") is an affirmation meant to make a person reflect: you yourself once did not exist, so you plainly have a Maker. The Enlightening Commentary makes the same point in plain terms — man's particles were once "scattered in the soil, the seas, and the atmosphere," too small to be worth mentioning.

• On "he was not a thing mentioned," the Imāmī narrations gathered by al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī, and cited again by Ṭabarsī and Ṭabāṭabāʾī, converge on one gloss from Imāms al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq: man "was a thing, but was not mentioned" — known in God's knowledge, not yet present in creation. Ṭabāṭabāʾī systematizes this: "mentioned" stands for actually existent, so the verse denies that he was yet a real man, not that he was nothing at all.

• All six take v.3 as a clear affirmation of human free will. Al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī preserve the Imāms' gloss — "either one who takes the way, so he is grateful, or one who leaves it, so he is ungrateful" — and read it as a refutation of those who deny that man has any act of his own. Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, Ṭabāṭabāʾī, and the Enlightening Commentary all reach the same conclusion: because the wording is general, God has guided everyone, and the choice is genuinely man's.

• All six anchor verses 5 onward in a single, well-known event: al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn fell ill; ʿAlī, Fāṭimah, and their servant-girl Fiḍḍa vowed to fast three days for their recovery; and on three successive nights the family gave away its only food — to a needy man, an orphan, and a captive — breaking each fast on water alone, until Gabriel brought down the sūrah. The story is related most fully by al-Baḥrānī (with the ʿAlī–Fāṭimah poetic exchange) and in al-Qummī, and is reported as the occasion of revelation by Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, Ṭabāṭabāʾī, and the Enlightening Commentary alike, all noting it is transmitted by both Shīʿī and Sunnī sources.

• The same sources agree the sūrah's opening section is Medinan. Ṭabarsī marshals the chains of revelation-order to place it among the Medinan sūrahs and rebuts a partisan critic who called it Meccan; Ṭabāṭabāʾī and the Enlightening Commentary add that the mention of a "captive" itself points to Medina, since captivity followed the Hijra.

Divergence — where they differ

• On the identity of "man" in v.1, the sources part ways. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī report the view (from al-Ḥasan, Qatāda, and Sufyān) that Ādam is meant, alongside the reading that it is the human race in general. Ṭabāṭabāʾī and the Enlightening Commentary decide firmly for the genus, arguing the Ādam-reading is contradicted by "created from a drop." Uniquely, al-Baḥrānī carries a report from Ibn Shahrāshūb that "man" here points to ʿAlī — its proof being that very phrase, "created from a drop," since Ādam was not.

• On the "test" in v.2, Ṭabāṭabāʾī makes a distinctive move: he reads it as the embryological transfer of man from stage to stage (as gold is assayed), not as moral trial — and argues the grammar requires this. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī, by contrast, read it as testing through religious duty, and the Enlightening Commentary weighs both before favouring the moral sense.

• On the spring of v.6, Ṭabāṭabāʾī alone offers a second, inward reading: the pious ones' own righteous deeds are the camphor-drink they keep making gush — a meaning he draws from the present-tense verbs — alongside the plain reading of a paradisal fountain.

• On "they fulfil their vows" (v.7), a genuine split appears. Al-Baḥrānī carries Imāmī reports glossing the "vow" as the covenant of walāya (allegiance to the Imams) taken in the primordial pledge — a reading Ṭabāṭabāʾī explicitly rejects as contrary to the plain wording. Most sources keep the ordinary sense: fulfilling what one has vowed.

• On the "captive" of v.8, most read a war-captive, and Ṭabāṭabāʾī and the Enlightening Commentary defend this. But al-Baḥrānī uniquely preserves a report reading "captive" as a man's own household dependent, whom he should treat generously.

Each scholar's full text is in the source panels below.