|
The tafsir that stands most visibly behind this booklet is that of Maulana Hamid-ud-Din Farahi, whose reading of Surah al-'Asr as an aphorism of exceptional concentration and wisdom Dr. Israr Ahmad adopts as his own point of departure, quoting Farahi's Majmu'a-e-Tafasir-e-Farahi at several points to establish the meaning of key terms such as iman and amal-i-saleh. Farahi's characterization of the surah as comparable in economy and depth to Surah al-Ikhlas, one delineating the unity of God in a few words and the other delineating the path to salvation in a few words, provides the organizing analogy for the book's opening argument. Alongside Farahi, Dr. Israr Ahmad invokes the well-known statement attributed to Imam al-Shafi'i, that serious reflection on this surah alone would suffice for a person's guidance even if nothing else in the Qur'an had been revealed. He also draws on Shah Waliullah of Delhi's classification of a distinct branch of Qur'anic exegesis termed Tazkeer bi Ayyamillah, concerned with drawing moral lessons from the Qur'an's references to the rise and fall of past nations, a category he treats as relevant to the surah's opening oath by time. The book itself has a double provenance reflecting two distinct occasions of address. Its first component was composed as a written article for the Lahore monthly Meesaq in 1966. Its second component originated as a spoken address to the staff and senior students of Aitchison College, Lahore, delivered in the early 1970s; the College's Principal at the time arranged for the talk to be recorded, had it transcribed, and saw to its publication, first in Meesaq in June 1973 and then as an independently distributed pamphlet, before the two pieces were brought together for publication by the Markazi Anjuman Khuddam-ul-Qur'an, Lahore. Dr. Israr Ahmad's own foreword frames the booklet as the first installment of an intended series of similarly structured studies proceeding through the Qur'an, a project situated within a broader tradition of short, thematically focused Qur'anic exposition aimed at a general Urdu-reading and English-reading audience rather than a specialist scholarly one.
|
