Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 13 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:13

نَّحْنُ نَقُصُّ عَلَيْكَ نَبَأَهُم بِٱلْحَقِّ ۚ إِنَّهُمْ فِتْيَةٌ ءَامَنُوا۟ بِرَبِّهِمْ وَزِدْنَـٰهُمْ هُدًى

“It is We who relate to you, [O Muḥammad], their story in truth. Indeed, they were youths who believed in their Lord, and We increased them in guidance.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Two men were sent north to fetch this story, and here the Teller takes it back, with a declared standard: in truth.

A reflection

He takes the story back off them

Arabic does not need the pronoun here. The verb already says We. Putting the word in is emphasis, and the emphasis is doing work.

Remember who had owned this story until now. Two men had been sent north to ask the scholars of Madinah what to put to him. And one commentary preserves a sharper detail about one of those men. He had been to al-Hira and learned the tales of Rustam and Isfandiyar. When the Prophet left an assembly he would take the seat and say: by Allah, O Quraysh, I tell a better story than he does. Then he would entertain them with the kings of Persia.

So there was a rival storyteller in Makkah, and the subject under dispute was who could hold a room.

Against that, this: We relate to you their account, in truth. One commentary glosses the last phrase with a single word, truthfulness.

On a market day a broadside seller could have a murder ballad printed by the afternoon. A confession, a weeping mother, a moral, all invented to order and set in type while the ink dried. Four streets away the parish register gave the date and the name and nothing else. Both sheets were about the same man. Only one was accountable to anything.

The ego wants to be the narrator of its own life, because a narrator chooses which details go in. Here the narrator is named, and so is the standard He is working to.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.