Topic: Miracles Of

33:12.

Important Words:

لیبلی (that He might confer). یبلی is derived from ابلا which is derived from بلاء . They say بلاہ or ابتلاہ i.e. he tried, proved or tested him with something good or evil. ابلاہ اللّٰه بلاء حسنا means, God did to him a good deed. ابلیته معروفا means, I conferred upon him a favour or benefit. بلاء means, the act of trying or testing; a trial or a test; an affliction of any kind by which one’s patience or any other virtue is tried or proved or tested; a benefit, favour or blessing; grief; imposition of a difficult or troublesome thing. بلاء حسن means, a great benefit or favour or blessing of God or a good gift of God. الابتلاءsignifies trying, proving or testing with something; seeking and desiring; choosing or selecting (Lane).

Commentary:

The words, So you killed them not, but it was Allah Who killed them, signify that the victory at Badr was not due to any effort on the part of the Muslims; it was purely an act of God. Thus, as enjoined in the preceding verse, there is no justification for Muslims to flee from a battlefield.

The Battle of Badr, fought in the second year of Hijrah, began with single combats; then there was a general attack. At this juncture the Holy Prophet took a handful of pebbles and cast them towards the enemy. That was a token for the help of God to come, just as striking the water of the sea with the rod by Moses was a signal for God’s aid to arrive. When the Holy Prophet cast the pebbles, there rose a strong gale which, blowing directly in the direction of the enemy, blinded their eyes with sand and thus contributed to their discomfiture and the victory of the Muslims. It is to this incident that the words, it was Allah Who threw, refer, hinting that really it was the hand of God, and not the hand of the Prophet, which cast the pebbles, and that the victory was due to the fact that God had come to the help of the Muslims.

The reader should note that while speaking of the Companions of the Holy Prophet in the words, you killed them not, the verse ascribes no act to the Companions, but simply denies their having killed the enemy, whereas in the case of the throwing of the pebbles by the Holy Prophet the verse says, thou threwest not when thou didst throw, but it was Allah Who threw, thus hinting that although victory came from God, yet the Holy Prophet also had a share in the affair. He contributed his share in the form of earnest prayers which drew the help of God.

The throwing of a handful of pebbles and sand by the Holy Prophet bears a remarkable resemblance to the striking of the waters by Moses with the rod. Just as in the latter case the act of Moses was a signal for the wind to blow, which led to the drowning of Pharaoh and his hosts in the sea, similarly, the throwing of a handful of pebbles by the Holy Prophet was a signal for a strong wind to blow which led to the destruction of Abu Jahl (of whom the Holy Prophet spoke as the Pharaoh of his people) and his host in the desert. Again, after the Battle of Badr, the bodies of Abu Jahl and other leaders of the Quraish were cast into the bottom of a pit or an old well, and thus the similarity of the fate of Abu Jahl with that of Pharaoh was completed; for, just as the latter together with his host was drowned into the depths of the sea, so was the former with his comrades cast into the bottom of a well.

The reference in the words, Allah is All-Hearing All-Knowing, is to the prayers of the Holy Prophet which God heard and accepted and in response to which He conferred such a signal victory on the Muslims.

21:2.

Important Words:

انشق (is rent asunder) is derived from شق. They say شق الشیء i.e. he split, clave, tore or rent the thing. شق العصا means, he broke the staff, i.e. he separated himself from the community. An Arab would say, شق عصا المسلمین i.e. he created disunion and dissension among the Muslims. انشق القمر means, the moon was or became rent asunder; or according to some, the affair became manifest (Lane, Aqrab & Mufradat).

القمر (the moon). قمر الشیء means, the light of the thing became intense. أقمر اللیل means, the night became bright with the light of the moon. القمر means, the moon in its third night and after; the moon absolutely. أقمار العلم و شموسه means, the ulema or learned men of the people. القمران means, the sun and the moon (Lane & Aqrab).

Commentary:

Whether or not "splitting of the moon" into two parts, observable by the naked eye, contravened any physical law of nature, it cannot be denied that the event lacks historical evidence which could at all be described as unimpeachable. At the same time no one can presume to have fathomed all divine mysteries or fully comprehended or encompassed all the secrets of nature. It is not possible to imagine that such an event, affecting a considerable area of the globe, should have remained unnoticed in the observatories of the world or that it should have remained unrecorded in books of history. But the incident having found a mention in such reliable collections of Hadith as Bukhari and Muslim and having been narrated successively in traditions of reliable authority and reported by such learned Companions of the Holy Prophet as Ibn Mas‘ud and Ibn ‘Abbas, does show that some natural phenomenon of unusual importance must have taken place in the time of the Holy Prophet. Some commentators of the Quran—Radi among them—have sought to solve the difficult problem by declaring the incident to be a lunar eclipse. Imam Ghazali and Shah Wali Allah also hold the view that the moon had not in fact been rent asunder, but that God had so contrived that it appeared to the beholders as such. However, taking into consideration the forceful language in which it has been mentioned in the Quran, the incident appears to be something more than a mere lunar eclipse. It indeed constituted a great miracle shown by the Prophet at the insistent demand of disbelievers (see Bukhari & Muslim). It seems to be a vision of the Holy Prophet in which the Companions of the Holy Prophet and some of the Quraish were made to share—just as the rod turning into a serpent was a vision of Moses in which the magicians were made to share. Alternatively, it may be that just as the striking of seawater by Moses with his rod coincided with the ebb of the tide and thus assumed the character of a miracle, because God alone knew when the sea would recede and it was He Who commanded Moses to strike the waters at the time of recession, similarly God may have commanded the Holy Prophet to show the miracle of the cleaving asunder of the moon at a time when a heavenly body was to take such a position in front of the moon that it caused the moon to appear to the beholders as split into two parts.

But the most plausible explanation, which is also possessed of very deep spiritual significance of this, one of the most outstanding miracles shown by the Holy Prophet, lies in the fact that the moon was the national emblem of the Arabs and the symbol of their political power, just as the sun at that time was the national ensign of the Persians. When Safiyyah, the daughter of Huyay bin Akhtab, a leader of the Jews of Khaibar, mentioned to her father that she had seen in a dream that the moon had fallen into her lap, he slapped her face saying that she wanted to marry the leader of the Arabs. After the fall of Khaibar Safiyyah’s dream was fulfilled when she was married to the Holy Prophet (Zurqani & Usdul-Ghabbah). Similarly, ‘A’ishah had seen a dream that three moons had fallen in her private apartment which saw its fulfilment when the Holy Prophet, Abu Bakr and ‘Umar were buried there one after the other (Mu’atta’, KitabuI-Jana’iz). According to this sense of the word و قمر the verse would signify that the hour of destruction of their political power with which the disbelieving Arabs had been threatened in 53:58 has already arrived. The word الساعه (Hour) in that case would refer to the Battle of Badr in which all the chiefs and leaders of the Quraish were killed and the foundations of the complete destruction of their power were laid. Thus the verse constituted a mighty prophecy which met with remarkable fulfilment, nearly eight or nine years after its announcement. Moreover, the Holy Prophet has been called "illuminating moon" (قمراً منیراً) in the Quran. In this sense of the word the verse would mean that after the Holy Prophet’s separation from the Quraish, the "Hour" of the destruction of their power would arrive, and it happened likewise. About a year after the Migration of the Holy Prophet to Medina, the Battle of Badr was fought which broke the Quraishite power.

Taking the expression انشق القمر in the sense, "the affair has become manifest," the verse would mean that the hour of the destruction of the Quraishite power has arrived and that now it would become manifest that the Prophet was a true Divine Messenger.

The word الساعة, besides the Battle of Badr, may apply to the Battle of the Ditch and the Fall of Mecca, as these three events combined to bring about complete and total annihilation of the power of pagan Arabs.