Synthesis: Sūrat al-Furqān 35–44

Triangulated from Ṭabarsī's Majmaʿ al-Bayān [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], Qummī [qummi], al-Ṭūsī's al-Tibyān [tusi_al_tibyan], al-Baḥrānī's al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan], and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī's al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan]. All five are present for this passage.

Human-review flags: al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] is flagged — its units are coarse (one covers vv. 32–40, the other vv. 41–62), so its exposition of vv. 35–44 was translated in full while out-of-passage material (the 25:32–34 piecemeal-revelation argument and the 25:45–62 shade/wind/two-seas section) was set aside and condensed.

What the passage says. A roll-call of ruined nations warns Muḥammad's Meccan opponents: Moses is given the Book with Aaron as wazīr (minister), both sent to a people who "denied Our signs" and were destroyed; Noah's people are drowned and "made a sign"; ʿĀd, Thamūd, the People of the Rass, and "many generations between" each receive parables and each is "shattered utterly." The deniers pass the town of the "evil rain" yet expect no resurrection; they mock the Messenger; and the climactic question — "Have you seen him who takes his desire (hawā) as his god?" — reduces them to "cattle, nay, more astray."

How the present sources read it. On v. 35, al-Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] reads the opening as a divine oath and glosses wazīr as one "who bears [Moses'] burdens"; al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] frames the whole Moses-vignette as evidence for Muḥammad's own messengership over against the deniers, noting the Book is mentioned before the sending and destruction even though the Torah came only after Pharaoh's drowning. On the unanimity motif of v. 37 (they "denied the messengers," plural, though only Noah addressed them), al-Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] agree: rejecting one messenger is rejecting all, since the prophets are one in proclaiming tawḥīd.

The People of the Rass (v. 38). Here the sources diverge most instructively. al-Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] catalogues the lexical options — a well into which they cast their prophet (ʿIkrima), the town Falaj in al-Yamāma (Qatāda), "every dug thing / mine" (Abū ʿUbayda), the people of Antioch — then adds the Ahl al-Bayt report that "their women were practitioners of lesbianism (saḥḥāqāt)." The distinctly Shīʿī material is carried by Qummī [qummi] and al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan]: both transmit Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq's identification, via ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm ← Ibn Abī ʿUmayr ← Jamīl, of "the people of the Rass" with the Rassiyyāt — women who lie with women — citing the verse as Qurʾānic proof. al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] uniquely preserves the long ʿUyūn Akhbār al-Riḍā narration (Imam ʿAlī via al-Riḍā, through the full chain of Imams): they worshipped a pine, Shāh Darakht, planted by Yāfith b. Nūḥ after the Flood by a spring (Rawshan-āb); twelve towns on the Rass river bore the names of the Persian months; their king was Tarkūdh b. Ghābūr; they were called "Rass" because they buried (rassū) their Israelite prophet in a well; God destroyed them with a red wind, brimstone, and blazing coals. al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] summarises this same ʿUyūn report, sets it beside Ṭabarsī's "uncased well" gloss and Nahj al-Balāgha's "cities of the Rass," and gathers the Kāfī and al-Durr al-Manthūr parallels ("every river and well is a rass"). The present sources thus give two complementary identifications — the tree-worshipping nation who buried their prophet, and the women named al-Rassiyyāt — and nothing further.

tatbīr (v. 39). Qummī [qummi] and al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] both transmit, from Ḥafṣ b. Ghiyāth, that tabbarnā tatbīran means "We broke to pieces (kassarnā taksīran)" — "a word in the Nabaṭī language" (a variant reads Coptic); al-Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] glosses al-tibr as broken gold/glass and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] as al-taftīt (fragmentation) — all converging, and consistent with the Aramaic/Nabataean root confirmed on cross-check.

The town and the mockery (vv. 40–42). Qummī [qummi], al-Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan], al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan], and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] agree the "evil rain" town is Sadūm of Lot's people, pelted with sijjīl ("clay"), on the Ḥijāz–Syria road — so the Meccans passed the ruins yet, denying resurrection, took no warning.

Desire as god (vv. 43–44). On hawā, Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] preserves a qirāʾa dimension (al-Aʿraj's anomalous "al-ulāha = the sun") and three glosses (Saʿīd b. Jubayr's idol-discarder, Ibn ʿAbbās, al-Qutaybī). al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] argues grammatically — against several exegetes — that ittakhadha ilāhahu hawāhu keeps its natural order ("took his god [to be] his desire"), since these men concede an obeyed deity but install desire in the truth's place; on v. 44 he distinguishes the two roads to felicity (hearing or reasoning), holding the deniers "more astray" than cattle because they were equipped to know yet refused. al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] anchors v. 44 in Imam Mūsā al-Kāẓim's words to Hishām and al-Aṣbagh's report on the "three spirits."

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