Ali Quli Qarai, The Qur’ān with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (2005)
11 The heart did not deny what it saw.
12 Will you then dispute with him about what he saw?!
13 Certainly he saw it 1 yet another time,
14 by the Lote Tree of the Ultimate Boundary,
15 near which is the Garden of the Abode,
16 when there covered the Lote Tree what covered it.
17 The gaze did not swerve,
nor did it overstep the bounds.
18 Certainly he saw
some of the greatest signs of his Lord.
19 Have you considered Lāt and ‘Uzzā?
20 and Manāt, the third one?
21 Are you to have males and He females?
22 That, then, will be an unfair division!
23 These are but names which you have coined
— you and your fathers —
for which Allah has not sent down any authority.
They follow nothing but conjectures
and the desires of the [lower] soul,
while there has already come to them
the guidance from their Lord.
24 Shall man have whatever he yearns for?
25 Yet to Allah belong this world and the Hereafter.
26 How many an angel there is in the heavens
whose intercession is of no avail in any way
except after Allah grants permission
1 Or ‘them.’ To explain, the object of the pronoun hū is specified in verse 18, ‘Certainly he saw some of the greatest signs of his Lord.’ This interpretation is also supported by a tradition of Imam ‘Ali b. Mūsā al-Riḍā (‘a) cited in the Uṣūl al-Kāfī, vol. 1, p. 95, ḥadīth 2.
