Tafsir of Al-An'am 6:86

(And Ishmael and Elisha and Jonah...)

(And Ishmael): He is, as Al-Nawawi said, the eldest son of Abraham, peace be upon him. It is said—as reported from Al-Jawaliqi—that it ends with a nun. It is said that its meaning is: "obedient to God."

(And Elisha): Ibn Jarir said: He is the son of Akhṭūb ibn al-‘Ajūz. Ḥamzah and Al-Kisā'ī read it as (Al-Yasa‘), patterned like ḍaygham. It is a foreign name to which the definite article al- has been prefixed, contrary to the standard rule; it was assimilated, then rendered a marker of Arabization, as Al-Tabrizi stated. He explicitly noted that using it without the [definite article] is an error that people overlook. It is not like al-Yazīd in the verse: "I saw al-Walīd ibn al-Yazīd as blessed, the burden of the Caliphate pressing upon his shoulders"—it is not like it in any respect. According to the first reading, it is also a foreign name. It is said: It is an Arabized form of Yūsha‘ (Joshua). It is also said: It is an Arabic name transferred from yasa‘, the imperfect tense of wasi‘a (to be spacious/ample).

(And Jonah): He is the son of Mattā, with a fatḥah on the mīm and a shaddah on the tā’, written with a shortened alif (maqṣūr) like ḥattā. It is also said Mattatā with the tā’ uncontracted; this is his father’s name, as stated by Ibn Ḥajar and other scholars of tradition. It occurred in the commentary of ‘Abd al-Razzāq that it is his mother’s name, but this is rejected. We have not found, as others have not, an unbroken lineage for him, peace be upon him, and what is mentioned in Jāmi‘ al-Uṣūl has already passed. It is said: His time was during the era of the petty kings of Persia. The nūn in his name can be read with all three vowel points, and it can be hamzated. Abū Ṭalḥah read (Yūnis) with a kasrah on the nūn; it is said: he intended to make it Arabic, derived from uns (intimacy), but this is an irregular (shādh) reading.

(And Lot): Ibn Isḥāq said: He is the son of Hārān ibn Āzar. In al-Mustadrak, it is narrated from Ibn ‘Abbās—may God be pleased with both of them—that he was the nephew of Abraham, though he did not specify his father’s name.

(And all): Meaning, every one of those mentioned—not some to the exclusion of others.

(We favored): With prophethood.

(Over the worlds): Meaning, the worlds of their respective eras. The sentence is a parenthetical clause, like the two before it, and it contains evidence that the prophets are superior to the angels.