أَمِ ٱتَّخَذُوا۟ مِن دُونِهِۦٓ ءَالِهَةً قُلْ هَاتُوا۟ بُرْهَٰنَكُمْ هَٰذَا ذِكْرُ مَن مَّعِىَ وَذِكْرُ مَن قَبْلِى · وَمَآ أَرْسَلْنَا مِن قَبْلِكَ مِن رَّسُولٍ إِلَّا نُوحِىٓ إِلَيْهِ أَنَّهُۥ لَآ إِلَٰهَ إِلَّآ أَنَا۠ فَٱعْبُدُونِ
Ami'ttakhadhū min dūnihi āliha, qul hātū burhānakum, hādhā dhikru man maʿiya wa dhikru man qablī, bal aktharuhum lā yaʿlamūna'l-ḥaqqa fa-hum muʿriḍūn · Wa mā arsalnā min qablika min rasūlin illā nūḥī ilayhi annahu lā ilāha illā ana fa'budūn
"Or have they taken gods besides Him? Say: 'Bring your proof! This is the remembrance of those with me and the remembrance of those before me.' No — most of them do not know the truth, and so they turn away. · We sent no messenger before you but that We revealed to him: there is no god but I, so serve Me."
Hātū — a verbal noun used as a verb, in the sense of "bring". Burhān — a decisive, indisputable proof. The lexicographers relate the word to bariha (to shine, to be evident); a burhān is a proof that does not leave one in the dark.
And what must be recorded is that the demand is turned back on the other side. In the fifth verse the addressees had said fa'l-yaʾtinā bi-āya — "let him bring us a sign". Here the same structure is reversed: hātū burhānakum.
| Verse | Who demands | What is demanded |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | The addressees | bi-āya — a visible sign |
| 24 | The text | burhānakum — a proof |
I record this as my own reading, its ground being the shared pattern of the two verses: one asks for a thing to be shown, the other for a thing to be argued. The two demands are not of the same kind.
هَٰذَا ذِكْرُ مَن مَّعِىَ وَذِكْرُ مَن قَبْلِى — and what is offered as proof is a text. The fourth link of the root dhikr in the sūra is here.
| Reading | Sense |
|---|---|
| 1 | "This Qurʾān is the book of those with me; and the earlier books, of those before me" — two books |
| 2 | "This is the remembrance in which both those with me and those before me are named" — one book, two contents |
| 3 | Dhikr here means admonition: "the admonition given both to my contemporaries and to those before" |
بَلْ أَكْثَرُهُمْ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ ٱلْحَقَّ فَهُم مُّعْرِضُونَ — and muʿriḍūn for the second time in the sūra. In the first verse it was tied to ghafla; here it is tied to not knowing: lā yaʿlamūna'l-ḥaqqa fa-hum muʿriḍūn. The fāʾ conveys cause.
And the twenty-fifth verse gives in advance the verdict of the series of prophets that will begin in the forty-eighth verse of the sūra.
Wa mā arsalnā min qablika min rasūlin illā nūḥī ilayhi… — it is exactly the pattern of the seventh verse: wa mā arsalnā qablaka illā rijālan nūḥī ilayhim.
| Verse | The shared pattern | The emphasis |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | wa mā arsalnā … illā … nūḥī | The kind of the messengers: they are human |
| 25 | wa mā arsalnā … illā nūḥī | The content of the revelation: one god |
The same pattern fills two different gaps. This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra.
And a point of word order: the sentence ends with fa'budūn — a plural imperative. Yet the one revealed to is a single messenger (ilayhi). That is, the address passes over to the one addressed inside the reported speech. The same shift will be made once more in the ninety-second verse: wa anā rabbukum fa'budūn. The two verses end with the same word, and the whole series of prophets stands between them.