Synthesis: Sūrat al-Naḥl 35–50

Triangulating Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān), al-Qummī, al-Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān), al-Baḥrānī (al-Burhān), and Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān); all five are present for this passage.

Human-review flags: tabatabai_al_mizan is marked needs_human_review — its two coarse units span vv. 22–40 and 41–64, so only the vv. 35–50 portions were translated and its long philosophical excursuses were heavily (but faithfully) condensed; nothing was added.

What the passage says. The idolaters excuse their shirk with a fatalist argument — "had God willed, we would not have worshipped anything besides Him … nor forbidden anything" (v. 35) — and God answers that the messengers owe only "clear conveyance." Every nation received a messenger ("Worship God and shun the ṭāghūt"), some guided, some upon whom misguidance fell (v. 36); the Prophet cannot guide whom God lets stray (v. 37). The deniers swear God will not raise the dead; He refutes them — "Yes, a binding promise" (vv. 38–40, capped by "Be, and it is"). Then come the rewards of the wronged Emigrants (vv. 41–42), the command "ask the People of the Reminder (ahl al-dhikr)" (vv. 43–44), the threat against schemers secure from God's plan (45–47), and the cosmic prostration of all shadows, creatures, and angels (vv. 48–50).

How the present sources read it. On v. 35, all four discursive commentaries treat the fatalist excuse as a refutation of compulsion (jabr). Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] both say God "rejected this saying," explicitly making it "the nullification of the school of the mujbira." Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] goes deeper: the idolaters' real aim was to disprove prophethood itself — since the divine creative will never fails, their continued worship "proves" God did not will its cessation, hence (they conclude) no law and no message. He stresses two distinct wills — creative (takwīnī, never disobeyed) and legislative (tashrīʿī, which may be disobeyed) — a point the Enlightening Commentary [enlightening_commentary] echoes pastorally ("compulsory faith is of no use").

On v. 36's "misguidance," Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] agree it is consequent on the servant's turning away (and both note God names punishment "ḍalāl," citing al-Qamar 54:47). Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] systematizes this into initial misguidance (the servant's, by evil choice) versus misguidance as recompense (God's), arguing misguidance is privative (ʿadamī), not an existential gift.

The sharpest sectarian divergence is at vv. 38 and 43. On v. 38, the Sunnī-shared occasion (a Muslim's dispute with a polytheist) appears in Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] (from Abū al-ʿĀliya), but al-Qummī [qummi] and al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] reject it outright: per Abū Baṣīr and Sīrīn from al-Ṣādiq, "the polytheists did not swear by God but by al-Lāt and al-ʿUzzā," so the verse concerns deniers of the rajʿa — the return of some dead before the Resurrection when the Qāʾim arises. Al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] stacks six isnāds for this (incl. ʿAlī's "I am the most entitled of people to this verse"). On v. 43, Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] list three glosses of ahl al-dhikr — people of past-nation reports, People of the Book (Ibn ʿAbbās/Mujāhid), People of the Qurʾān — and both append the Imāmī reading via Jābir from al-Bāqir, "We are ahl al-dhikr." Al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] devotes twenty-three narrations to it, with al-Bāqir and al-Riḍā affirming "we are the People of the Reminder … the ones questioned" and refuting the Jews-and-Christians reading ("then they would call you to their religion"). Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan], notably, argues from context that the historical addressees were the polytheists, for whom the only applicable referent was the People of the Torah — while grounding the verse in a universal rational principle (the ignorant must refer to experts) and affirming the Prophet's (and, via the thaqalayn ḥadīth, the Ahl al-Bayt's) authority to expound the Qurʾān.

On vv. 45–47, al-Qummī [qummi], Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan], and al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] gloss "seizing in their going to and fro" as punishment amid trade and travel; al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] reads it eschatologically (Khasf al-Baydāʾ, the swallowed army before the Qāʾim's rising). On takhawwuf (v. 47) the sources split between "gradual diminution" (most exegetes, per Ṭabarsī/Ṭūsī) and "a state of dread" (al-Ḥasan); al-Qummī's [qummi] line "upon watchfulness" is distinctive. On vv. 48–50, all converge: shadows' turning is their prostration (al-Qummī [qummi], al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] verbatim), and Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] reads the whole as proof of tawḥīd — the angels singled out precisely because most idol-gods were angelic, their "fear … above them" being awe of God's station, not dread of punishment. Al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] extends to v. 51 with al-Ṣādiq's anti-dualist argument and the gloss "two gods" = "two Imams."

Sources present: tabarsi_majma_al_bayan, qummi, tusi_al_tibyan, bahrani_al_burhan, tabatabai_al_mizan, enlightening_commentary; silent: (none).