Tafsir of Hud 11:62

"They said, 'O Salih! You were among us [i.e., in our midst] a source of hope [marjuwwan],' that is, a person of virtue and goodness; we used to hold you in higher esteem than all of us, according to what has been narrated from Ibn Abbas. Ibn Atiyyah said: 'a source of consultation,' meaning we hoped you would be a leader, filling the position of the great ones. Ka'b said: They hoped for him to be king after their king, because he was a man of noble lineage and wealth.

Muqatil said: They hoped for his return to their religion, as he used to despise their idols and turn away from their creed [before this], meaning before the call to monotheism and the abandonment of deity worship which you have undertaken. So, when we heard from you what we heard, our hope in you was cut off. It is also said: They hoped for his entry into their religion after he claimed the truth, then their hope was cut off. 'Before this' refers to before this time, not before the call he undertook. Al-Naqqash reported from some that 'marjuwwan' means 'insignificant' [haqiran]. It is as if he first interpreted it as 'delayed' [mu'akhkharan], not cared for nor given attention, then intended this meaning; otherwise, 'marjuwwan' in the sense of 'insignificant' has not appeared in the speech of the Arabs.

Their saying, 'Do you forbid us to worship what our fathers worshiped?' is stated in the mode of threatening and expressing abomination at that statement of his. The expression 'worship' [ya'budu] is to recount the past state. Talha read 'marjuwwan' with an alif and a hamza [marja'an].

'And we are indeed in doubt regarding that to which you invite us,' that is, monotheism, abandoning the worship of idols, and other matters such as seeking forgiveness and repentance.

'Murib' [suspicious/causing doubt]: It is an active participle from 'araba,' which is transitive by itself when it causes someone to fall into 'raybah' [doubt]—which is anxiety and the absence of tranquility due to certainty—or it is from 'araba,' the intransitive verb, when a person is characterized by doubt. The attribution in both interpretations is metaphorical, though as some investigators have noted, there is a difference: the first is transferred from concrete entities to meaning, and the second is transferred from the possessor of doubt to the doubt itself, as one says: 'a poetic poem' [shi'run sha'ir]. According to the first, it is a case of attribution to a cause, because the existence of doubt is the cause for the one who causes doubt to create doubt; without it, he would not have been able to create doubt.

The tanwin in 'murib' and in 'shakk' is for aggrandizement.

'Wa innana' [and we are] is written with three 'nuns.' It is also said 'inna' with two 'nuns,' both being dialects of the Quraysh. Al-Farra said: Whoever says 'innana' brought the letter out according to its root; the pronoun of the speakers is 'na,' so three 'nuns' gathered. Whoever says 'inna' found the gathering of them heavy, so he dropped the third and kept the first two. Abu Hayyan chose that the omitted one is the second 'nun,' not the third, because omitting the latter is an injustice to the word, as only one consonant letter would remain, whereas omitting the second is better because two letters remain after it. Furthermore, it is known that the second 'nun' is omitted from 'inna' with pronouns other than that of the speakers, whereas it is not known that the 'nun' of 'na' is omitted. There is no doubt that committing to the established convention is more appropriate than committing to the unestablished one."