Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Qur’ān; Translated and Explained by Muhammad Asad (1980)
(31) And He imparted unto Adam the names of all things;23 then He brought them within the ken of the angels and said: “Declare unto Me the names of these [things], if what you say is true.”24
(32) They replied: “Limitless art Thou in Thy glory! No knowledge have we save that which Thou hast imparted unto us. Verily, Thou alone art all-knowing, truly wise.”
(33) Said He: “O Adam, convey unto them the names of these [things].”
And as soon as [Adam] had conveyed unto them their names, [God] said: “Did I not say unto you, ‘Verily, I alone know the hidden reality of the heavens and the earth, and know all that you bring into the open and all that you would conceal’?”
(34) And when We told the angels, “Prostrate yourselves before Adam!”25 – they all prostrated themselves, save Iblīs, who refused and gloried in his arrogance: and thus he became one of those who deny the truth.26
(35) And We said: “O Adam, dwell thou and thy wife in this garden,27 and eat freely thereof, both of you, whatever you may wish; but do not approach this one tree, lest you become wrongdoers.”28
23 Lit., “all the names”. The term ism (“name”) implies, according to all philologists, an expression “conveying the knowledge [of a thing] … applied to denote a substance or an accident or an attribute, for the purpose of distinction” (Lane IV, 1435): in philosophical terminology, a “concept”. From this it may legitimately be inferred that the "knowledge of all the names” denotes here man’s faculty of logical definition and. thus, of conceptual thinking. That by "Adam” the whole human race is meant here becomes obvious from the preceding reference, by the angels, to “such as will spread corruption on earth and will shed blood”, as well as from 7:11.
24 Namely, that it was they who, by virtue of their purity, were better qualified to “inherit the earth”.
25 To show that, by virtue of his ability to think conceptually, man is superior in this respect even to the angels.
26 For an explanation of the name of the Fallen Angel, see sūrah 7, note 10. The fact of this “rebellion”, repeatedly stressed in the Qur’an, has led some of the commentators to the conclusion that he could not have been one of the angels, since these are incapable of sinning: “they do not bear themselves with false pride ... and they do whatever they are bidden to do” (16:49–50). As against this, other commentators point to the Quranic phrasing of God’s command to the angels and of Iblīs’ refusal to obey, which makes it absolutely clear that at the time of that command he was indeed one of the heavenly host. Hence, we must assume that his “rebellion” has a purely symbolic significance and is, in reality, the outcome of a specific function assigned to him by God (see note 31 on 15:41).
27 Lit., “the garden”. There is a considerable difference of opinion among the commentators as to what is meant here by “garden”: a garden in the earthly sense, or the paradise that awaits the righteous in the life to come, or some special garden in the heavenly regions? According to some of the earliest commentators (see Manār I, 277), an earthly abode is here alluded to – namely, an environment of perfect ease, happiness and innocence. In any case, this story of Adam is obviously one of the allegories referred to in 3:7.
28 This tree is alluded to elsewhere in the Qurʾān (20:120) as “the tree of life eternal”, and in the
