Sūrah 95 · Āyāt 4–5

Created in the Best of Forms, Relegated to the Lowest of the Low (95:4–5)

Here falls the "response to the oath" (jawāb al-qasam) that the three oath-verses were leading to: "We certainly created man in the best of forms (aḥsani taqwīm); then We relegated him to the lowest of the low (asfala sāfilīn)." The present sources divide over a single exegetical question — whether the "relegation" is a fact of nature (aging) or of moral destiny (the Fire) — and al-Mīzān adds a third, ontological register.

The two classical readings. al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī report, nearly verbatim of one another, two lines of interpretation. On taqwīm, both cite Ibn ʿAbbās that man alone is created "erect of stature" while other animals are bent over their faces, and al-Ṭūsī adds al-Farrāʾ's gloss that the verse marks the human being brought to "the balance and evenness of his youth." al-Ṭabarsī enriches this with the note that man is distinguished "by speech, discernment and governance." On asfala sāfilīn the two part into camps: Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibrāhīm [al-Nakhaʿī] and Qatāda take it as the return to decrepit old age and "diminished intellect"; al-Ḥasan, Mujāhid and Ibn Zayd take it as the return "to the Fire in the ugliest form," so that the "man" meant is the disbeliever — created free and rational, who disbelieved and was cast down. (al-Ṭabarsī's text here carries a reading, al-kharaf "dotage," that the fetched copy spelled al-khawf; the parallel in his own next passage confirms dotage, and the segment is flagged accordingly.)

al-Mīzān's reading. al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī construes taqwīm philosophically: man's being given "the best constitution (qiwām)" means his fitness, by creation, "to ascend to the loftiest height" and win an eternal felicitous life — a fitness realized through beneficial knowledge and righteous deed, which he anchors in Q 91:7–8 ("a soul... inspired with its wickedness and its God-wariness"), 35:10 ("to Him ascends the goodly word") and 58:11. For asfala sāfilīn he prefers the plain sense of radd ("relegation") to "a debased station lower than the low among the people of wretchedness and chastisement," canvassing the alternatives that radd means "making" or "altering." Crucially, he rejects the old-age reading on a grammatical ground the others do not press: the exception in the next verse — "except those who believe" — is a connected exception (istithnāʾ muttaṣil), yet aging befalls believer and disbeliever alike, so reading the relegation as senescence does not fit the exclusion; "the claim that the believer is preserved from it is arbitrary."

The Imāmī application. al-Qummī glosses "the best of forms" as revealed "concerning Zurayq" — a cipher-name in this tradition — and "the lowest of the low... except those who believe" as "the Commander of the Faithful." al-Burhān preserves a fuller narration from al-Riḍā: "man created in the best of forms" is "Abū Faṣīl" (again a cipher), who acknowledged the covenant to God's Lordship, Muḥammad's prophethood and the wilāya of his legatees, then "turned back" — so "the lowest of the low" is "the lowest depth" he sank to; while "those who believe and do righteous deeds" are "the Commander of the Faithful and his Shīʿa." These are recorded as attributed taʾwīl, segment-typed as ḥadīth, and are not the verses' plain sense — which the creation/aging/Fire glosses of the other sources supply.