Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 104 of 165

Al-An'am 6:104

قَدْ جَآءَكُم بَصَآئِرُ مِن رَّبِّكُمْ ۖ فَمَنْ أَبْصَرَ فَلِنَفْسِهِۦ ۖ وَمَنْ عَمِىَ فَعَلَيْهَا ۚ وَمَآ أَنَا۠ عَلَيْكُم بِحَفِيظٍ

“There has come to you enlightenment from your Lord. So whoever will see does so for [the benefit of] his soul, and whoever is blind [does harm] against it. And [say], "I am not a guardian over you."[335]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Insights have arrived from your Lord: whoever sees gains, whoever stays blind loses, and the messenger keeps no ledger.

A reflection

A sign on the water

An old fisherman takes his grandson out at dawn. The sea looks the same in every direction to the boy. Then the old man points. A patch of water lies strangely flat, and gulls are circling low. 'There,' he says. 'They are feeding underneath.' The boy sees it now, and cannot unsee it.

That is close to the first picture in baṣāʾir, the word for what has 'come' to us here. The lexicons say a baṣīra was a spot of blood on the ground. The hunter read it to find where his wounded quarry had gone. An old poem the commentators quote speaks of men carrying their baṣāʾir on their shoulders; the language scholars explained it as blood. So a baṣīra was first a small visible sign that leads you to something hidden. Then it became the evidence itself, and finally the inner sight that reads evidence.

One classical commentary draws the line neatly. Baṣar is the light of the eye by which it sees. Baṣīra is the light of the heart by which it understands. Another adds a careful point. The ayat are not themselves the insight. They are so strong and so clear that they produce insight in anyone who stops to read them. They are named after what they cause.

Think back over the pages just before this ayah. A seed split open in the dark soil. Dawn split out of night. Stars set as markers for travellers. Rain, then green shoots, then fruit ripening on the branch (6:95-99). Each of those is a flat patch of water with gulls above it. Each is a small sign pointing to Someone underneath.

The boy's eyes were fine before his grandfather pointed. What he lacked was a reading. The Quran does not hand you new eyes. It hands you baṣāʾir: things to read, and the reading itself.

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.