Sūrah 85 · Āyāt 1–9

The passage (85:1-9). The sura opens with a triple oath — by the constellation-bearing heaven, by the Promised Day, and by "a witness and a witnessed" — then breaks into the imprecation "Cursed were the People of the Ditch": tyrants who dug a fuel-fed trench and burned believers alive whose only "crime" was faith in God, the Mighty, the Praiseworthy, Owner of the heavens and the earth, the Witness over all things.

The oath-objects. On the buruj the sources read two ways. The Enlightening Commentary and al-Tusi (al-Tibyan) gloss them as the lofty stations of the sun and moon — the twelve constellations — while reporting the Prophet's own gloss, "the stars." Al-Mizan sharpens this: burj is "the manifest thing," predominantly a fortress-tower, so the buruj are "the places of the stars," and al-Tabataba'i expressly rejects equating them with the zodiac of the astronomers (citing 15:16-17). Al-Burhan preserves an esoteric Imami ta'wil: the Prophet telling Ibn 'Abbas, "the heaven is I, and the constellations are the Imams after me." On "witness and witnessed" the field is famously crowded — al-Mizan counts the views at "thirty," and Majma' al-Bayan lists more than a dozen (Friday / 'Arafa; the Day of Sacrifice / 'Arafa; the Prophet / the Day of Resurrection; the recording angel; the community / the nations; the Black Stone / the pilgrims). The Enlightening Commentary narrates the celebrated scene of three teachers in the Prophet's mosque (Ibn 'Abbas, Ibn 'Umar, and al-Hasan b. 'Ali), the last identifying the Witness as Muhammad and the Witnessed as the Day of Resurrection (citing 33:45 and 11:103). Al-Mizan argues on linguistic grounds that "witnessing" here means beholding by presence — had it meant giving testimony, the form would be mashhud 'alayhi — so it best fits the Prophet, who witnesses his community's deeds and will testify over them.

The People of the Ditch. The sources converge that qutila is an imprecation/curse against the persecutors (al-Tusi, al-Mizan), while recording the minority reading that it reports the slain believers. Al-Mizan anchors the whole oath as preface: its answer is suppressed but supplied by v.10, and the Ditch is recalled "to urge the believers to patience." On who the People of the Ditch were, the accounts are many and all attributed: Tafsir al-Qummi and al-Burhan give the Dhu Nuwas narrative in full (the last Himyarite Jewish king burning the Christians of Najran, some twenty thousand slain — web-confirmed to c. 523 CE); Majma' al-Bayan adds the long Sahih Muslim hadith of the boy, the king, the sorcerer, and the monk (via Suhayb — verified to Muslim's Book of Zuhd, no. 3005), 'Ali's report that they were Magians "who had a Book that was raised," and Muqatil's three-location scheme (Najran; Syria / Antiyakhus; Persia / Bukhtnassar). Al-Mizan and al-Burhan both carry the 'Ayyashi tradition of the Abyssinian prophet and the infant who spoke from the cradle, urging his mother into the fire; al-Tabataba'i concludes the Ditch likely denotes multiple events across Abyssinia, Yemen, and Persia.

The closing attributes (vv.8-9). al-Tusi and Majma' al-Bayan read al-'Aziz as "the Subduer who is not subdued" and al-Hamid as "praised in all His deeds," and al-Mizan reads the whole string — al-'Aziz, al-Hamid, Owner of the heavens and earth, Witness over all — as proof that the burned believers were wronged and upon the truth, while their tyrants were "audacious against God" and will taste the consequence. The Enlightening Commentary draws the pastoral point the sura intends: these are signs that the persecutors' deeds "are recorded and kept for the Promised Day," and a soothing reassurance to the early Meccan believers that God watches over their perseverance.