Sūrah 83 · Āyāt 29–36

The passage (83:29-36). The Surah closes by turning the tables. In this world {those who committed crimes used to laugh at those who believed} — {winking at one another} as they passed, {returning to their people exulting}, and sneering {"Indeed these are astray,"} though {they had not been sent over them as keepers}. But {today} — the Day of Requital — {those who believed will laugh at the disbelievers, upon couches gazing: Have the disbelievers been requited for what they used to do?}

The mockers and the reversal. Al-Tabarsi names the worldly mockers as the Quraysh chiefs — Abu Jahl, al-Walid b. al-Mughira, al-'As b. Wa'il — laughing at Companions like 'Ammar, Khabbab, and Bilal, whether at their earnestness in worship or in denial of the Resurrection. Al-Tusi reads the same scene of the early believers taunted for being "foremost to faith." Both, with al-Mizan, gloss {they returned exulting} (fakihin/fakihin — a variant both note) as returning delighted or jesting at the believers' expense, and {they had not been sent as keepers} as mockery of the mockers: the criminals were never appointed guardians or witnesses over the believers. On {today the believers laugh}, al-Mizan reads the fronting of {at the disbelievers} as "restriction by inversion" — today the laughter runs the other way — and explains {thawab} ("requited") in its root sense of any requital returning to the doer, here a punishment; al-Tabarsi and al-Tusi add the image of a door to Paradise repeatedly opened then shut against the disbelievers, and justify the believers' laughter as joy permitted only because enmity to God's enemies remains.

'Illiyyun's couches and the gaze. Al-Mizan ties the closing {upon couches gazing} back to 18-28: the righteous on their couches now gaze at the very requital of the crimes — the laughter, the winking, the "these are astray" — that were aimed at them, the wheel come full circle.

The Imami reading. Al-Qummi and al-Burhan transmit, as-attributed, that the passage came down concerning 'Ali: al-Burhan gathers several chains (via 'Abaya b. Rib'i, Mujahid, al-Kalbi from Ibn 'Abbas, and Imam al-Sadiq) in which Quraysh — al-Harith b. Qays and his circle, or Banu Umayya and the hypocrites — mocked 'Ali as "the one Muhammad chose from his household," and the Day-of-Resurrection scene (from Imam Zayn al-'Abidin) in which 'Ali, seated on couches at the brink of Gehenna, laughs as it overturns and the two mockers beg his intercession; al-Qummi again uses the coded epithets "Zurayq and Habtar and whoever followed them," referents left unidentified here. Al-Burhan also notes the cross-attestation "from the path of the opponents" (al-Hibari to Ibn 'Abbas) that "those who believed" are 'Ali and "those who committed crimes" the hypocrites of Quraysh — and appends, out of sequence, the white-spot/black-spot hadith on 83:14 (al-Kafi, al-Mufid) and Imam al-Rida's anti-anthropomorphic gloss on 83:15 that "veiled from their Lord" means "veiled from the reward of their Lord," not spatially.