ﱧ ﱨ ﱩ ﱪ ﱫ ﱬ ﱭ ﱮ ﱯ ﱰ ﱱ ﱲ ﱳ ﱴ ﱵ ﱶ ﱷ ﱸ ﱹ ﱺ ﱻ ﱼ ﱽ ﱾ ﱿ ﲀ ﲁ
And Pharaoh said, "O eminent ones, I have not known you to have a god other than me. Then ignite for me, O Haman, [a fire] upon the clay and make for me a tower that I may look at the God of Moses. And indeed, I do think he is among the liars."
Tafsir
Verse range: 28:38
It is narrated that when he ordered the construction of the tower, Haman gathered fifty thousand builders, excluding laborers and assistants. He ordered the firing of bricks, the preparation of mortar, the cutting of wood, and the forging of nails. They built it to a height never before reached by any human creation, to the point that a builder could not stand at its summit to continue the work.
God sent Gabriel (peace be upon him) at sunset; he struck it with his wing, shattering it into three pieces: one fell upon Pharaoh’s army, killing a million men; another fell into the sea; and the third fell in the West. None of his workers survived. It is also narrated that Pharaoh climbed it and shot an arrow toward the sky. God, wishing to test them, returned the arrow stained with blood. Pharaoh said, "I have killed the God of Moses." Thereupon, God sent Gabriel to demolish it. And God knows the truth of this.
His denial of knowing any god other than himself is a denial of the existence of such a god. It means: "You have no god other than me," similar to the verse: "Do you inform Allah of what He does not know in the heavens or on the earth?" (Yunus: 18), meaning what does not exist within them. Knowledge follows the known; it cannot relate to something except as it is. If a thing is non-existent, no knowledge of it can exist. Thus, he expressed the non-existence of a god by the non-existence of knowledge of one.
It is also possible that the statement is literal: that he did not know of another god, yet he suspected one, as evidenced by his words: "And indeed, I think he is a liar." If he suspected Moses was lying in his claim of another god—without knowing for certain he was a liar—then he suspected that such a god existed. Had the wretched man been certain—rather than merely suspicious—of the truth of Moses’s claim (as Moses said to him: "You have known that no one has sent these down except the Lord of the heavens and the earth as evidence"), he would not have gone to the trouble of building that great structure, nor would he have exhausted himself in its construction, hoping to reach the God of Moses. He was profoundly ignorant of God and His attributes, imagining that God was in a place just as he was, and that he could ascend to Him just as he ascended to his upper chambers, and that He was a king of the sky just as he was a king of the earth.
There is no clearer evidence of his extreme ignorance and stupidity—and that of his people—than their attempt to reach the heavens with a tower. I wonder: was he deceiving his people and mocking their intellects, finding them the most foolish and animal-like of men? Or was he truly of that character himself? If the story of the blood-stained arrow is true, it was a mockery by God through action, just as mockery by word is found in many places in the Book of God regarding the disbelievers.
It is also possible that "suspicion" (zann) here means "certainty," as in the poet’s verse: "I said to them: be certain (zannu) of a thousand armored men." In this case, the building of the tower contradicts his claim of knowledge and certainty. This contradiction was hidden from his people due to their stupidity and foolishness. Or perhaps it was not hidden, but they feared his whip and sword.
He said, "Kindle for me, O Haman, upon the clay," rather than "Make me bricks," because he was the first to use fired bricks; he was teaching the craft. Furthermore, this phrasing is more fitting for the eloquence and high status of the Quran, and more characteristic of the speech of tyrants. He commanded Haman—his minister and deputy—to kindle the clay, calling him by name in the middle of the sentence as a sign of arrogance and tyranny. Umar (may Allah be pleased with him), when traveling to the Levant and seeing palaces built of fired bricks, said, "I did not know anyone built with fired bricks except Pharaoh."
"Ascending" (al-tulu' and al-ittila') means to climb. It is said: "He climbed (tala'a) the mountain" and "He climbed (ittala'a)," both meaning the same.
"So he and his soldiers were arrogant in the land without right, and they thought that they would not be returned to Us. So We took him and his soldiers and threw them into the sea. So see how was the end of the wrongdoers."
