Sūrah 26 · Āyāt 1–9

al-Shuʿarāʾ 1–9 — The Manifest Book and the sign that most refuse

The sūra opens with the disjoined letters Ṭā Sīn Mīm and the declaration that these are the signs of the Manifest Book (al-kitāb al-mubīn). On the letters the present sources converge on reverent restraint rather than decoding: Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī both refer the reader back to their treatment at the head of al-Baqara, then record the traditional glosses — that ṭsm and ṭs are among the Qurʾān's names (Mujāhid, al-Ḍaḥḥāk, Qatāda), or an oath and a divine name (Ibn ʿAbbās), and the ḥadīth from ʿAlī (a) reading ṭāʾ–sīn–mīm as Mount Sinai, Alexandria and Mecca. al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī preserve the esoteric reading that ṭsm is a cipher of God's Greatest Name; al-Baḥrānī adds al-Ṣādiq's gloss "the Seeker, the Hearing, the Originator, the Restorer." al-Mīzān does not dwell on the letters but frames the whole sūra: its purpose is to console the Prophet (ṣ) against a people who called him mad or a poet, by parading the fates of Mūsā, Ibrāhīm, Nūḥ, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, Lūṭ and Shuʿayb.

That consolation is explicit in verse 3, perhaps you will destroy yourself [with grief] that they will not believe. Every source reads bakhʿ as self-destroying sorrow and the verse as God lightening His Prophet's burden — Ṭabāṭabāʾī notes the sentence is cast as gentle disapproval (inkār) of such grief. The Enlightening Commentary draws the pastoral point: the Prophet's anguish shows how compassionate he was toward people dying of thirst beside the spring of guidance.

Verse 4 — if We wish, We can send down a sign before which their necks would bow — becomes the passage's exegetical crux. Grammatically all four Arabic sources wrestle with the masculine plural khāḍiʿīn qualifying "necks," offering the same menu of solutions (an elided "owners of the necks," necks = chiefs/groups, insertion, or lending necks a rational trait). Theologically Ṭūsī and Ṭabāṭabāʾī agree the point is that God could compel faith but will not, since compelled belief earns neither reward nor praise and would defeat the purpose of moral responsibility (taklīf) — the same lesson the Enlightening Commentary states as "faith must be voluntary, not compulsory." Alongside this, al-Baḥrānī (with a supporting narration in al-Qummī and noted in al-Mīzān) records an extensive Imāmī tradition reading the "sign" as the eschatological Cry from heaven (al-ṣayḥa) heralding the Qāʾim/Mahdī, before which the necks of the Umayyads bow. These are rendered here strictly as attributed; Ṭabāṭabāʾī himself flags them as application (jarī) to a case rather than the verse's literal sense.

Verses 5–6 trace a descent the Enlightening Commentary names in three steps — aversion, denial, then mockery — the last being the worst, after which "the tidings of what they mocked" (the punishments of this world and the next) will overtake them. Ṭūsī observes the threat is aimed at the denier because his state will turn to regret.

Finally verses 7–9 turn from the "religious signs" (the Qurʾān) to the "creational signs": how many a noble kind (zawj karīm) We caused to grow. Ṭūsī builds a tight monotheistic proof — no power like ours could originate such species, so their Maker is unlike us and self-sufficient in power — while al-Mīzān dwells on the pairing of plants, each mate completing the other and guided to its end, as evidence that the God who orders nature will not abandon man's guidance. The Enlightening Commentary adds the note on plant sexuality (zawj as "mate") as a scientific resonance. The passage closes on the Almighty, the Merciful: Ṭabāṭabāʾī reads the pairing precisely — as Almighty He seizes the deniers, as Merciful He keeps sending the reminder — and Ṭabarsī notes ʿazīz precedes raḥīm so that mercy is never mistaken for weakness.