Sūrah 51 · Āyāt 52–60

al-Dhāriyāt 52-60 — the perennial denial, the purpose of creation, and the All-Provider

The sūra closes where it began. Every prior nation met its messenger with “a sorcerer or a madman”; the Prophet is told to “turn away … you are not blamed,” then to “remind, for the Reminder benefits the believers.” Then comes the sūra’s summit — “I did not create jinn and mankind except to worship Me; I desire no provision from them … Truly God is the Provider, Lord of Power, the Firm” — sealed with a warning that the wrongdoers have “a portion like their fellows,” and “woe to those who disbelieve, from their Day.”

On the recurring cry, Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān agree the nations concur without collusion because “the doubt is one,” and “have they enjoined it?” is a rebuke: no, “they are rebels.” On “turn away … you are not blamed,” Ṭabarsī and al-Mīzān preserve the same striking occasion, from Mujāhid: ʿAlī reported that when the verse came “not one of us but reckoned with ruin,” fearing the revelation cut off, until “And remind” set their souls at ease. Here the Imāmī sources open a doctrinal seam: Qummī and Baḥrānī read the sequence as proof of badāʾ — God “resolved on the destruction of the people of the earth,” then “it appeared to Him to do otherwise” — Baḥrānī adding al-Riḍā’s use of these verses before al-Maʾmūn, and a report that the destruction was to spare “ʿAlī and those with him.” These are rendered strictly as attributed traditions.

On the great verse “I created jinn and mankind only to worship Me,” the present sources form a rich chord. Ṭabarsī and al-Mīzān take the lām as purposive — the aim of creation is worship, though many refuse, like a host whose guests may decline the meal without frustrating his purpose; al-Mīzān refines this into its most careful form: the lām is of genus, so the purpose is realised in the species though it fail in individuals, and “worship” is not the cosmic tasbīḥ but its inmost reality, the servant’s abasement before his Lord — “what those who read ‘worship’ as ‘knowledge’ intend.” Ṭūsī turns the verse into a weapon against the Determinists: God did not create anyone for unbelief and the Fire, for His speech bears no contradiction. Baḥrānī grounds it in hadith — al-Ṣādiq’s “He created them for worship,” Mūsā b. Jaʿfar on the wretched and the felicitous, and the long Adam-covenant narration — while Qummī reads it as creation for command and moral test (taklīf), noting a tradition that it is “abrogated,” which al-Mīzān explains means clarified, not annulled, by the “rest of the verse” about the higher purpose of mercy (11:118-119).

On the close, all agree “I desire no provision from them” negates any benefit accruing to God, who is “the Provider, Lord of Power, the Firm” — al-Mīzān noting the three names underscore that provision is His alone. The “portion (dhanūb)” of the wrongdoers is a share of punishment like the destroyed nations’ (Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Mīzān), and the closing “woe” shifts from “wronged” to “disbelieved” to mark that the wrong meant is unbelief (al-Mīzān). One caution belongs to the record: both Qummī and Baḥrānī cite v.59 with the interpolated words “Āl Muḥammad, their right,” which are no part of the muṣḥaf and are flagged here as such.