Taha · Makki · ayah 99 of 135

Taha 20:99

كَذَٰلِكَ نَقُصُّ عَلَيْكَ مِنْ أَنۢبَآءِ مَا قَدْ سَبَقَ ۚ وَقَدْ ءَاتَيْنَـٰكَ مِن لَّدُنَّا ذِكْرًا

“Thus, [O Muḥammad], We relate to you from the news of what has preceded. And We have certainly given you from Us a message [i.e., the Qur’ān].”

Saheeh International

Essence

Musa's long story closes by turning to the Prophet ﷺ: thus We tell you the past, and give you a Reminder from Our presence.

A reflection

The only narrator who was there

Thus do We relate to you some of the news of what has gone before. After the long story of Musa, Allah steps forward as narrator.

A narration-based commentary draws out what that means. The Prophet ﷺ had not seen any of it. These were things that happened before him, which he neither witnessed nor observed. Another narration-based commentary adds that the story of Musa was told exactly as it happened. So too the stories of the past are told as they occurred, with nothing added and nothing missing.

That is a remarkable claim, and a humbling one. Every human account of the past has a narrator who was not fully there. Historians piece together fragments. Witnesses remember what suited them. Nations tell the stories that flatter them. Even our own family histories are edited, softened and polished with each retelling.

Picture a man who has told the story of how he built his business at dinner parties for thirty years. In each telling, his own role has grown a little and his partner's has shrunk. One day his old partner's daughter shows him a box of letters from the early years. He reads them and realises, with a jolt, that the story he has been telling is not quite true. He was not lying. He was simply the narrator of his own ego.

The Quran's stories come from the only narrator who saw everything and needs no one's approval. That is why they can show prophets misjudging, brothers quarrelling, and a whole people bowing to gold. Nothing is flattered.

Some hear We and suspect self-importance. But this is not a storyteller seeking applause. It is the One whose knowledge, as the previous ayah said, encompasses all things. The plural is the majesty of the source. And the ego that likes to be the hero of its own story might sit quietly and listen to a better Narrator.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.