Tafsir of An-Nahl 16:68

(i.e., He inspired it, cast it into its soul/consciousness, and taught it in a manner known only to the Subtle, the Acquainted.)

Some have interpreted this "inspiration" to the bee as subjection/servitude (taskhir), intending by it the meaning of the word itself, and they forbade the interpretation of literal inspiration (wahy), because inspiration belongs only to rational beings, and the bee is not among them. Yes, actions proceed from it and states exist within it which make one imagine that they are possessors of intellect and owners of a policy that even the most learned fall short of. You see among them one who is like a leader—he is the largest of them in body, a critic of judgment over the rest of them, and all of them serve him and carry burdens for him. He is called the Ya’sub (the queen/king bee) and the Amir (the prince). They have mentioned that if they are driven away from their hive, they go with their entire colony to another place. If they want to return them to their hive, they beat drums and musical instruments for them, and they return to their hive by means of those melodies.

They build their houses with equal sides; rational human beings could not do so without instruments like a ruler and a compass. They choose these shapes over other shapes—such as triangles, squares, pentagons, and others. There is a subtle secret in this, for they have said: It is established in geometry that if they were shaped in other forms, there would necessarily remain empty, wasted gaps between them. They have many other astonishing states besides this, which many people have witnessed. Exalted is He who gave everything its creation, then guided.

The Sufis, according to what Al-Sha'rani mentioned in more than one place, do not forbid the intended meaning of literal inspiration. They have established that there are messengers and prophets among all animals, though the Sacred Law (Shar’) rejects this. Some of the Illuminationist (Ishraqi) philosophers held the view that a rational soul exists for all animals, and I am almost inclined to agree with them on this. We have not heard of anyone other than the Sufis asserting what I have heard from them.

"Bee" (al-nahl) is a genus; the singular is nahlah. It is feminine in the language of the Hijaz, and for this reason, the Exalted said: "Take" (ittakhidhi - feminine imperative). Ibn Wathab read it as al-nahl with two fathahs, which could be a dialectal variation or an assimilation to the vowel of the nun.

The an (in an ittakhidhi) is either masdariyyah (forming a verbal noun) predicated upon the ba of association—meaning "by taking"—or it is explanatory (tafsiriyyah), and what follows it explains the inspiration. This is because inspiration, in view of its well-known meaning, contains the sense of "speech" even without the letters, and that is sufficient to make it explanatory. Abu Hayyan overlooked this, or did not consider it, and said: "There is some doubt in this, because inspiration here means 'inspiration' by consensus, and there is no meaning of speech in inspiration."

"From the mountains, houses" (i.e., nests). The root of "house" (bayt) is the shelter of a human, and it is used here for the nest that the bees build to produce honey, by way of likening it to what a human builds, due to the beauty of its craftsmanship and the correctness of its division, as you have heard. It was read as buyutan with a kasrah on the ba for the sake of the ya, otherwise the plural of fa'l is fu'ul with a dammah.

"And from the trees and from that which they trellis" (i.e., that which people trellis/construct, meaning raising it up, such as vines, as narrated from Ibn Zayd and others, or roofs, as reported from Al-Tabari, or more general than both, as some have said).

The "from" (min) in the three instances denotes partitive selection (tab’id)—either with respect to individuals or with respect to parts—for bees do not build in every tree, every mountain, every trellised structure, or every place therein. Some have said that min is partitive only with respect to individuals, and the other meaning (parts) is known from external evidence, not from the implication of min, for it is not permissible to use it for both simultaneously. Our master, Ibn Kamal, has a separate treatise on this issue, so let it be consulted. Regardless, in this—along with what will come shortly, God willing—is the elegant craftsmanship of itbaq (antithesis/correspondence).

Explaining "houses" as that which they build is the view held by more than one. Abu Hayyan said: The apparent meaning is that it is an expression for the holes/niches that are in the mountains, in the hollows of trees, the hives that the son of Adam makes for bees, and the niches that are in walls. Since there are two types of bees—those whose abode is in the mountains and thickets and are not tended to by anyone, and those that are in people's houses and are tended to in hives and the like—the command to "take houses" encompasses both types.