Sūrah 88 · Āyāt 8–16

Al-Ghāshiya 8–16 — The blissful faces and the Garden

Against the wretched, the passage sets the second group: "faces that Day blissful, pleased with their striving," in a lofty Garden free of idle talk, with a flowing spring, raised couches, ready goblets, cushions in rows and carpets spread out.

The present sources read the contrast as deliberate. al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) notes that "blissful" (nāʿima) is not grammatically conjoined to "humbled," a stylistic mark of "the utter separation between the two parties' states," and derives it either from naʿūma (the radiance of joy on the skin, cf. 83:24) or niʿma (enjoying favour). On "pleased with their striving" he, al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī agree the lām strengthens the sense: they are content with the reward of their righteous work done in this world. al-Ṭabarsī glosses the Garden's "loftiness" as both rank/honour and place, "one degree above another as the Fire is descending levels," and the Enlightening Commentary frames the whole passage as consolation set beside the warning — informing believers of "both God's Wrath and Grace."

On the furnishings the four exegetical sources move almost in lockstep, and the two hadith-collections (al-Burhān, al-Qummī) supply the same Ibn ʿAbbās material. "No idle talk" (lāghiya) is "a vain, useless word" (al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī, al-Mīzān), which al-Qummī and al-Burhān gloss tersely as "jesting and lying." The flowing spring is generic — al-Mīzān notes God elsewhere names its springs (Salsabīl, the pure drink) — each believer having his own, flowing "as its owner wishes" (al-Ṭabarsī). On the raised couches, al-Ṭabarsī, al-Burhān and al-Qummī all carry Ibn ʿAbbās's description: frames "of gold set with chrysolite, pearls and rubies," which al-Ṭabarsī adds lower themselves to be sat upon and then rise; al-Burhān and al-Qummī add "rivers flowing beneath them." The goblets (akwāb) are ewers "without spouts or handles," of gold, silver and jewel (al-Ṭūsī, al-Mīzān, and the Ibn ʿAbbās reports). The cushions (namāriq) are pillows joined in rows "in the manner of kings' assemblies" (al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī citing Qatāda). Of the carpets (zarābī), al-Qummī and al-Burhān preserve a striking remark of ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm: "everything God created in the Garden has a likeness in this world except the zarābī, for it is not known what they are."

al-Ṭabarsī crowns the passage with a report from ʿAlī: the people of the Garden enter to find "the foundations of their houses of pearl-boulders," the couches, goblets, cushions and carpets before them, and "were it not that God ordained it for them, their eyes would be dazzled" — reclining with their spouses saying, "Praise be to God who guided us to this." One Imāmī identification carries over from the previous passage in al-Burhān and al-Qummī — that these "blissful faces" are "the followers of the Commander of the Faithful" (the Shīʿa of Muḥammad's Family) — noted here as-attributed.