Sūrah 96 · Āyāt 15–19

The threat: seizing by the forelock. The surah answers the forbidder's defiance with a warning. Al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī gloss "We shall seize him by the forelock" (la-nasfaʿan bi-l-nāṣiya) two ways: a violent dragging of the nāṣiya (the front-hair) to the Fire — abasement, as in "they are seized by the forelocks and the feet" (55:41) — or a scorching that blackens the face, since safʿ is "the mark of burning." Al-Mīzān records al-Ṭabarsī's lexical note (safʿ is "a violent pulling") and adds that calling the forelock itself "lying, sinful" is figurative — the lie and the sin belong to its owner, who "lies in what he says and errs in what he does." The Enlightening Commentary canvasses the same range of meanings — seizing, dragging, blackening, abasing — and inclines, with the lexicographers, to "seizing and dragging" as primary.

"Let him call his gang — We shall call the zabāniya." Al-Ṭabarsī ties verse 17 to Abū Jahl's boast that none had a larger nādī (assembly) than he; God answers that he may summon his clansmen for help, while "We [too] shall call the keepers of hell" — the zabāniya, which al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān agree are the harsh angels charged with the Fire (al-Ṭūsī surveying the grammarians on the word's singular). Al-Mīzān reads the command "let him call" as one of incapacitation: a taunt at the futility of any helper against them. Al-Ṭabarsī notes the threat was historically fulfilled — "Abū Jahl was slain on the Day of Badr." Al-Qummī and al-Burhān carry a different occasion: after Abū Ṭālib's death, Abū Jahl and al-Walīd called out, "Come, kill Muḥammad, for the one who protected him has died" — so the nādī he calls is the gathering plotting murder, and the Prophet was shielded by the protection (jiwār) of Muṭʿim b. ʿAdī.

"Prostrate and draw near." The surah that opened with "Read" closes with "Do not obey him, but prostrate and draw near." Al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī read "do not obey him" as a direct refusal of the forbidder, and "draw near" as nearness to God's reward through obedience — al-Ṭūsī adding "without ostentation or seeking repute." Al-Mīzān observes that "do not obey him in forbidding prayer" is precisely what shows the "prostration" here to mean the prayer itself. All the sources converge on the tradition — al-Ṭabarsī from Ibn Masʿūd, al-Mīzān and al-Burhān from Imam al-Riḍā via al-Kāfī — that "the nearest a servant is to God is when he is prostrating," reading it directly into "prostrate and draw near." Finally, al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān all note that the prostration on reciting this verse is obligatory: al-ʿAlaq is one of the four ʿazāʾim — with al-Sajda, Fuṣṣilat and al-Najm — at which prostration is required, every other prostration-verse being only recommended. Al-Burhān closes the surah with al-Ṣādiq's luminous narration that God set over every created thing another that overcomes it — sea, earth, mountain, iron, fire, water, wind, man — until man transgressed and was subdued by death, and death itself by God: a fitting coda to a surah about the futility of human self-sufficiency.