Sūrah 53 · Āyāt 1–18

Al-Najm 1–18 — The Oath by the Star and the Two Visions

The sura opens with a divine oath — By the star when it sets — and its answer: your companion has neither strayed nor erred, nor does he speak from caprice; it is only a revelation revealed (vv.1–4). It then describes how the Prophet received that revelation and the two visions granted him: the Mighty in power drawing near at two bow-lengths or nearer (vv.5–10), and a second vision by the Lote-Tree of the Uttermost Boundary beside the Garden of Refuge, where the sight did not swerve nor overstep and he saw of the greatest signs of his Lord (vv.11–18).

What is 'the star'? The four Arabic exegetes preserve a spread of readings. Al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī list the Pleiades at its dawn-setting, the Qurʾān sent down piecemeal (nujūman), the whole body of stars, and the shooting-stars cast at devils — and both stress that God may swear by any of His creation while creatures may swear only by Him. Al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī judges the plain sense to be simply a luminous heavenly body 'when it sets,' holding the other glosses unsupported by the wording, though he notes the many Ahl al-Bayt reports that the whole passage narrates the face-to-face revelation of the Ascent. Al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī take the 'star' itself as the Prophet — al-Qummī reading idhā hawā as his descent on the Miʿrāj (a refutation of those who deny it), and al-Baḥrānī collecting narrations in which a literal star fell into ʿAlī's house to designate his succession, so that 'he did not err' is glossed 'in preferring his Ahl al-Bayt.' The Enlightening Commentary surveys the same views and inclines to the star as a sign of God's creative power and of the falsity of star-worship.

The one 'mighty in power.' Al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī identify shadīd al-quwā / dhū mirra as Gabriel, who appeared to the Prophet in his true form 'on the highest horizon'; al-Qummī, by contrast, refers dhū mirra fa-stawā to the Prophet himself, adding al-Riḍā's saying that every prophet was 'possessed of pure black bile.'

Did he see God or Gabriel? This is the passage's great crux, and the sources divide as they classically do. Al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī report both Ibn ʿAbbās's 'he saw his Lord with his heart' and ʿĀʾisha's firm denial ('sight does not reach Him,' 6:103), and then give as their companions' doctrine that God raised the Prophet bodily and awake to behold the heavenly kingdom with his own eye. Al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī resolves the crux philosophically: the fuʾād's seeing is a truthful mode of witnessing (shuhūd) beyond the outer senses, and its object is not God's Essence — which no sign or vision can encompass (20:110) — but the greatest signs of his Lord, the partitive min being decisive. Al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī fill the vision with walāya: the whispered revelation is that ʿAlī is master of the executors and 'as the Ark on the day of the Flood,' the Sidra is where 'the Shīʿa converse,' and Ṭūbā is rooted in ʿAlī's house. Al-Baḥrānī also transmits a variant recitation from al-Bāqir (thumma danā fatadānā…) and the 'two pomegranates of Paradise,' material rendered here strictly as attributed and flagged for review. On the Lote-Tree all agree it marks a boundary beyond which knowledge does not pass, beside the Garden of Refuge, veiled in a covering light — the summit of the Prophet's ascent and the seal of the sura's opening argument for the truth of his revelation.