Maʿālim al-tanzīl, by Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥusayn ibn Masʿūd al-Baghawī (d. 516 AH / 1122 CE). A commentary of the school of ḥadīth, valued for its restraint; it keeps the early reports and little else.
Part 2 of 2: the commentary on The family of ʿImrān (3:33-64). The parts follow the order of the verses; this one covers 3:62-64.
On 3:62-64
God, Exalted, said: Indeed this is the true narrative (3:62), the true report, and there is no god but God; here min (“any”) is a connective particle, the implicit form being “and there is no god but God”. And indeed God is the Almighty, the All-Wise.
Then if they turn away (3:63), turn aside from faith, then indeed God is All-Knowing of the corrupters, those who worship other than God and call people to the worship of other than God.
His words, Exalted: Say, “O People of the Book, come to a word that is equitable between us and you” (3:64), to the end of the verse. The commentators said: The delegation of Najrān came to Medina and met with the Jews, and they disputed over Abraham (peace be upon him). The Christians claimed that he was a Christian and that they follow his religion and have the best claim of people to him, and the Jews said: rather, he was a Jew, and they follow his religion and have the best claim of people to him. The Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “Both parties are free of Abraham and his religion; rather, Abraham was a ḥanīf, a Muslim1, and I follow his religion; so follow his religion, the religion of Islam.” The Jews said: “O Muḥammad, you only wish that we take you as a lord, as the Christians took Jesus as a lord,” and the Christians said: “O Muḥammad, you only wish that we say about you what the Jews said about Ezra.” So God, Exalted, sent down: Say, “O People of the Book, come to a word.” The Arabs call every account that has an exposition a “word” (kalima), and from this the ode is called a kalima. Equitable (sawāʾ): just between us and you, even, that is, an even matter. One says “so-and-so called to al-sawāʾ“, that is, to fairness. The sawāʾ of anything is its middle, and from this come His words, Exalted: and he saw him in the midst (sawāʾ) of the Blaze (37:55). Fairness is called sawāʾ only because the most just of affairs and the best of them is the middle of them. Sawāʾ is an adjective qualifying “word”, except that it is a verbal noun, and verbal nouns take neither dual nor plural nor feminine. When you give the sīn a fatḥa you lengthen it (sawāʾ), and when you give it kasra or ḍamma you shorten it (siwan, suwan), as in His words, Exalted: a place equally distant (suwan) (20:58). Then He explained the word and said: “that we worship none but God.” The position of an is nominative, on the assumption of an implied “it is”; al-Zajjāj said: nominative as a subject (mubtadaʾ); and it was said: its position is accusative through the removal of the preposition, its meaning being “in that we worship none but God”; and it was said: its position is genitive as a substitute for “word”, that is, “come to our worshipping none but God”. “And that we associate nothing with Him, and that none of us take others as lords besides God,” as the Jews and the Christians did; God, Exalted, said: They have taken their rabbis and their monks as lords besides God (9:31). ʿIkrima said: it is their prostrating to one another, that is, do not prostrate to other than God. And it was said: its meaning is, we do not obey anyone in disobedience to God. “Then if they turn away, say, ‘Bear witness‘,” then you say to them, “bear witness”, “‘that we are Muslims‘,” sincere in the affirmation of God’s oneness.
ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Aḥmad al-Malīḥī informed us: Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Nuʿaymī informed us: Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf informed us: Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl informed us: Abū al-Yamān al-Ḥakam ibn Nāfiʿ informed us: Shuʿayb informed us, from al-Zuhrī: ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUtba ibn Masʿūd informed us that ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās (may God be pleased with them both) informed him that Abū Sufyān ibn Ḥarb informed him that Heraclius sent for him among a party of riders of Quraysh who were trading in Syria during the period in which the Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) had made a truce with Abū Sufyān and the disbelievers of Quraysh. They came to him while he was at Īliyāʾ (Jerusalem), and he summoned them to his court, with the great men of the Romans around him, and called for the letter of the Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) which he had sent with Diḥya ibn Khalīfa al-Kalbī to the governor of Buṣrā, who had handed it over to Heraclius. He read it, and behold, it ran:
“In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. From Muḥammad, the servant of God and His messenger, to Heraclius, the great one of the Romans. Peace be upon whoever follows the guidance. To proceed: I call you with the call of Islam. Accept Islam and you will be safe; accept Islam and God will give you your reward twice over. But if you turn away, then upon you is the sin of the peasants (arīsiyyīn)2. O People of the Book, come to a word that is equitable between us and you: that we worship none but God, and that we associate nothing with Him, and that none of us take others as lords besides God. Then if they turn away, say, ‘Bear witness that we are Muslims’ (3:64).”
About this text
This is a complete English rendering of Maʿālim al-tanzīl on these verses, prepared for this website from the public-domain Arabic text (tafsir.app, src=baghawi). Nothing is abridged: every opinion, every report with its chain of transmission, every verse of poetry and every grammatical note is translated. Qur’anic quotations are in bold; the translator’s own notes are confined to the numbered footnotes and identify names, terms and variant readings only. A second translator has not checked the rendering, and the Arabic is linked so that any passage can be compared. The modern editors’ apparatus is not part of the classical text and is not translated.
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