Sūrah 87 · Āyāt 1–5

al-Aʿlā 87:1–5 — "Glorify the Name of your Lord, the Most High," and the five signs of His lordship. The passage opens, as the Enlightening Commentary frames it, with a sūra that "contains the essence of the Prophet's doctrine and mission" and "names seven attributes of God the Most High," beginning with His praise. The command sabbiḥ isma rabbika al-aʿlā is read by all six present sources as both glorification and instruction.

"The Name" and "the Most High." al-Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān) and al-Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān) converge that tasbīḥ is to hold God transcendent above every blameworthy attribute and ugly act, and that "by the Name the Named is intended." Both root al-aʿlā not in spatial height but in power: al-Ṭabarsī glosses it "the All-Powerful than whom none is more powerful, who subdues everyone," and al-Ṭūsī insists the description is "transferred to the sense of the most powerful," so that "even were the notion of elevation-of-place void, it would not be void to grasp it by its reality." al-Ṭabaṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) deepens this into the passage's governing idea: hallowing the Name is "His hallowing in the stage of speech, corresponding to His hallowing in the stage of act," entailing complete monotheism — that no other be mentioned with lordship alongside Him. He reads the whole opening as preparation for the Prophet's mission: God "first sets aright his speech" before promising recitation and commanding the call. Both al-Ṭabarsī and al-Burhān preserve the ritual sequel: al-Bāqir (ʿa) and the narration of ʿUqba ibn ʿĀmir direct that subḥāna rabbī al-aʿlā be said in the prostration — paired with al-ʿaẓīm (56:74) in the bowing.

Created, proportioned, determined, guided. On khalaqa fa-sawwā, al-Ṭūsī and al-Ṭabarsī give taswiya as proportioning each created thing in soundness — "setting right its hands, eyes and legs," or making man's "stature upright, not inverted like the beasts"; al-Mīzān defines it precisely as "the gathering of parts" then "making them equable so that each is set in the place that befits it." On qaddara fa-hadā, all four classical sources share the vivid image — al-Ṭūsī, al-Ṭabarsī and al-Mīzān alike — of an existential, instinctive guidance: "the infant guided to its mother's breast, the chick to the feeding of its parents." al-Ṭabarsī adds the spread of opinions (guidance to male/female, to good and evil, to extracting food, medicine and poison from things), and Tafsīr al-Qummī compresses the verse to "He determined the things by the primary determining, then guided to them whom He wills" — a phrase al-Burhān and al-Mīzān both transmit from ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm.

The pasture turned to dark scum. On akhraja al-marʿā fa-jaʿalahu ghuthāʾan aḥwā, the lexical unanimity is striking: al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān all define al-ghuthāʾ as "what the torrent casts upon the side of the valley of grass and plants" and al-aḥwā as "the black" — vegetation that, drying, blackens after its greenness. al-Ṭabarsī notes the grammatical option (al-Zajjāj's) that aḥwā describes the pasture green-to-blackness before it becomes scum, and closes with the reading most resonant for the sūra's argument: "it is a parable God struck for the passing of the world after its freshness." al-Mīzān binds the image back to the thesis — the pasture's rise and decay is "among the instances and indications of lordly governance, just as creating, proportioning, determining and guiding are likewise" — so that the four verses together form "a proof of His absolute lordship." The al-Burhān material here is narrational, framing v1 with the cosmic vastness of the Throne (the angel Ḥazqāʾīl who cannot reach its shank and cries "Glory to my Lord, the Most High"), recorded strictly as attributed report.