Nazm Ring Theory of the Quran | Ayatul Kursi | Shaykh Dr. Yasir Qadhi

The Ring Theory of Ayatul Kursi

Question for all of you. Question is, do you think somebody in our times can read the Quran and extract a new meaning that nobody before him has ever extracted? I'm surprised most of you are saying yes. Why am I surprised? Because a lot of people are hesitant for change. A lot of people don't want to hear new interpretations. They like what they heard in the past. In fact, for many people, to hear a new interpretation is actually a sign of heresy, blasphemy. إِنَّا وَجَدْنَا آبَاءَنَا عَلَىٰ أُمَّةٍ We don't want to hear anything else.

But if we truly believe the Quran has been revealed for every time, every place, every people, then if we can understand even the Quran, you can extract new benefits, new fawad, new tafsir. How much more so from the seerah, how much more so from our organic fiqh.

So today, even though it's gonna be a little bit of tafsir, but the topic is broader. And that is an example of what I'm trying to illustrate that it is actually possible for later scholars to look at the same verses and derive something, whether you agree or not, whether it's valid or not, but it's very interesting, very profound. And I'm going to give the illustration of the verse I just recited in the first rak'ah, which is the most oft-recited verse or one of the most oft-recited verses, Ayatul Kursi.

Who can imagine in our generation somebody is gonna come and derive something about Ayatul Kursi that nobody before him ever thought of. I will give you an example, bear with me. I'm gonna give you an example and you take it or leave it.

The Blessings of Ayatul Kursi

Ayatul Kursi. By the way, of course, Ayatul Kursi we all know. Its blessings are too many, that's a whole different lecture. What are some of the blessings? Very quickly, some of the blessings of Ayatul Kursi:

It is a protection from shaitan. The famous hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, when Abu Hurairah was guarding against the sadaqah three nights in a row, somebody tried to steal, Abu Hurairah felt pity. The last night, he promised him, I'm gonna take you to the Prophet ﷺ. And this old man said, okay, if I teach you something that will benefit you for the rest of your life, knowledge, allow me and I'll never come back. What did he say? He said, recite Ayatul Kursi before you go to sleep and Allah will send an angel to protect you and no shaitan will come close to you until the next morning. Abu Hurairah came to the Prophet ﷺ, told him what had happened. The Prophet ﷺ said, don't you recognize your guest? He said, no. He said, that was Iblis. صَدَقَكَ وَهُوَ كَذُوبٌ. He told you the truth in this hadith, in this narration, but he is a liar. So this is one blessing of Ayatul Kursi. Recite it before you go to sleep.

Another blessing, quickly, before I move on. Another blessing of Ayatul Kursi. After prayer, what is the blessing? Hadith is in Tirmidhi and Nasa'i and others. Please memorize this hadith, it's beautiful. Whoever recites Ayatul Kursi as a habit after every single salah, the only thing that is between him and Jannah is his death. If you make this small habit, the famous Indian scholar, Shah Waliullah ad-Dahlavi said, commenting on this hadith, that in fact, this ayah is so blessed that the one who recites it deserves Jannah right then and there if he does it with iman. But because Allah has said, كُلُّ نَفْسٍ ذَائِقَةُ الْمَوْتِ So then death has to come between him and Jannah. Otherwise, Ayatul Kursi deserves Jannah right then and there. This is what Shah Waliullah said.

A third blessing of Ayatul Kursi is that in the famous hadith of Sahih Muslim, where the Prophet ﷺ asked Ubayy ibn Ka'ab, which ayah is the most magnificent of the whole Quran? And Ubayy ibn Ka'ab was shy. He goes, I don't know, Ya Rasulullah, tell me which ayah is the most magnificent. أَعْظَمُ آيَةٍ فِي كِتَابِ اللَّهِ And Ubayy ibn Ka'ab said immediately, اللَّهُ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ الْحَيُّ الْقَيُّومُ He recited the whole verse. And the Prophet ﷺ tapped him like, you know how men do to men, like out of pride, out of happiness, like, wow, we do high five in our culture. He hit him. Not to hit, you don't get the point. On the shoulder like, good job. And he goes, that knowledge has been made easy for you, يَا أَبَا الْمُنذِرِ Meaning this is the best ayah in the Quran.

We can go on and on of the blessings of Ayatul Kursi, the tafsir of Ayatul Kursi. There are 18 names and attributes and pronouns of Allah in Ayatul Kursi, literally 18. One of the highest concentrations in the whole Quran.

The Ring Composition Theory

And you can read any tafsir of Ayatul Kursi, but there is one tafsir that is rather unique, that is the tafsir in our times, that is known in English as the ring composition theory. The ring composition theory.

And this tafsir, it owes its origins to one of the most unique scholars of the last century. And his name is Hamiduddin Farahi. Hamiduddin Farahi was a scholar born and died under the British Raj. Indian scholar, born and died under the British Raj. And he passed away in 1930. For the Indian-Pakistanis in the audience, he is the first cousin of Shibli Nu'mani. Shibli Nu'mani and Hamiduddin Farahi, first cousins. And Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan appointed him. He was a student in Aligarh. And he sent him to be a professor of Arabic as a student. And Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan said, he wrote a letter to the professors of the next college. He goes, I'm sending you a student. He is more qualified than any of your professors. This one, he was an undergraduate. Farahi, and if you read his Arabic, it is mind-boggling. He's writing in fluent Arabic, classical Arabic, and he's lived his whole life in India. It is just a different level. And everybody who knows Farahi knows this.

And Farahi spent 50 years studying the Quran. 50 years just ta'ammul, tadabbur of the Quran. And he proposed a theory. Again, I'm teaching you. I'm not saying I agree or disagree. Because people get sensitive. Look, every scholar has the right to contribute. And whether you agree or disagree, Farahi's theory is very intriguing, very interesting. And it affected multiple tafsirs, multiple scholars. And I'm gonna give you an example today with Ayatul Kursi.

Farahi had a different understanding of what? He says, I'm summarizing. He says, the Quran, most scholars have done tafsir ayah by ayah, word by word, grammatical analysis by grammatical analysis. If you look at Tafsir al-Tabari, Tafsir al-Zamakhshari, Tafsir al-Tha'labi, it's basically an ayah, and then all the tafsir, the i'rab, the linguistics, the balagha, the sabab al-nuzul, the next ayah, the next ayah, and then you go on and on and on this way.

He says that no, the Quran is a deliberately crafted, internally cohesive, structured book. And you need to look at the context, not just the word, not just the ayah. You need to look at what is before it and what is after it. You need to look at the nazm, the coherence, the context of the whole surah. Every surah, he argued, has a central theme. It's not random just verse here, verse there. Every surah has one central concept. And if you understand that concept, every ayah fits in place. It's not just, we call it atomistic, bit by bit. No, it's not atomistic. It is nazm. It is coherence in its entirety.

And so he says, to understand the Quran, you don't just need to look at the ayah. You need to look at the context of the ayah. You need to look at what came before, what came after, the whole surah. Tafseer has to be holistic, not atomistic. This is, now you will say, this seems common sense. But the response is, nobody before him crafted this theory in this wording, proposed it with such perfection, and then attempted tafseer based upon this. And Farahi died 1930. It's not like centuries ago, one century ago, okay, but 1930.

And his main argument was that the Quran has symmetry. The Quran has thematic structure. It is interconnected, like an intricate puzzle. You cannot just take one piece of the puzzle, and ignore the rest of the surah. It doesn't work that way. In order to understand that one piece, you must look at the whole surah, and then understand that one piece.

And one can say that some scholars before him had some basic notions. In particular, the great scholar al-Biqa'i, he has a tafseer in which he attempted to do a little bit of this, as Zamakhshari at times mentions it. But the fact of the matter is, nobody before Farahi proposed it in such a holistic, complete manner.

And then his students after him took this to the next level. His main student is a great Indian scholar, most of our Pakistani, Urdu speaking people know of him, Amin Ahsan Islahi. Amin Ahsan Islahi wrote one of the largest tafseers in Urdu, based upon Farahi's usool. And Amin Ahsan Islahi, when he came to this ayah, Ayatul Kursi, based upon Farahi's understanding, proposes what we call in English a ring theory. Very interesting, I'm gonna summarize it. And again, just for the record, I'm not saying it is correct. But at the same time, what's wrong with it? You see, I mean, I just have to be careful because people get very sensitive like, Ibn Kathir didn't say it, who is Farahi? So with utmost respect, why is Ibn Kathir the end-all and be-all? Why is At-Tabari the end-all and be-all? Why can't a mufassir also offer something? And whether you like it or not like it.

The Nine Phrases Structure

So what is his theory in a nutshell? Listen to this. He argues that, Ayatul Kursi consists of nine phrases:

Nine phrases. So far so clear? Okay. What the nazm theory argues is, these nine phrases are paired together. The first with the ninth, the second with the eighth, the third with the seventh, the fourth with the sixth. And right in the middle is one standing alone verse, the fifth one. The nazm theory. How so? What is going on? And if you look at it, it goes one and nine complementary. They fulfill the message. Two and eight complementary. Three and seven complementary. Four and six complementary. And right in the middle is the verse that perfectly segues between the two.

So far so clear. We're going to go over it. But you understand the concept, right? Now, nobody before the Farahi school ever looked at Ayatul Kursi in this manner. I checked myself. Go back to any classical book of tafsir. It's something new. And so what if it's something new? It's amazing. It's phenomenal. It's something that really increases your iman, your love for the Quran and very interesting.

The Pairing Analysis

So let's go over this. What is this pairing together? The point is once you understand the nazm, the coherence, once you understand the whole picture, now the ayah even adds meaning, a profundity.

So the first phrase, اللَّهُ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ الْحَيُّ الْقَيُّومُ. The last phrase, وَهُوَ الْعَلِيُّ الْعَظِيمُ. Names, attributes of Allah. All of them describing who is Allah. الْحَيُّ الْقَيُّومُ, الْعَلِيُّ الْعَظِيمُ. Attributes that are attributes of majesty, of perfection. Allah is giving himself absolute oneness, absolute divinity. وَلَهُ الْأَسْمَاءُ الْحُسْنَىٰ. So the first and the ninth are paired together in describing who is Allah, the perfection of Allah, the unicity of Allah, the absolute transcendence of Allah.

The second and the eighth, لَا تَأْخُذُهُ سِنَةٌ وَلَا نَوْمٌ. Neither sina, sina means falling sleepy, this is sina, you know, just drowsy. Neither drowsiness nor sleep ever overtakes him. In other words, Allah is talking about the perfection of his monitoring, the perfection of his ilm. He never becomes tired, he never falls asleep. Contrast this to the eighth verse, وَلَا يَئُودُهُ حِفْظُهُمَا. Exact match. وَلَا يَئُودُهُ حِفْظُهُمَا. He never feels fatigue in preserving and maintaining. Exact match, right? You have over here, لَا تَأْخُذُهُ سِنَةٌ وَلَا نَوْمٌ. You have over there, وَلَا يَئُودُهُ حِفْظُهُمَا. The same concept that in the first one, Allah is talking about the perfection of his hayaa.