(p-69) The purpose of Surah Ash-Shams is to affirm His, glorified and exalted is He, control over the souls which are the steeds of the bodies. They lead them to happiness or to scheming, humiliation, and hardship. Just as the sun is the lamp of the ship, He, glorified and exalted is He, controls the souls by choice, leading them astray or guiding them, to bliss or misery. His control, glorified and exalted is He, over the sun is similar in terms of health and illness, order and disorder, and likewise in all of creation, due to His great status. Its name, the sun, clearly indicates this by reflecting on the oath [and the object of the oath] by what He has informed and pointed to, 'In the name of Allah,' [who is] the Greatest King, for Him is the general control. 'The Most Gracious,' whose mercy encompasses all things, thus to Him is the bestowal. 'The Most Merciful,' who has specifically chosen whom He wills for guidance, and He has built His bestowal upon them in completeness. * * When He established in Surah Al-Balad that man is in toil, and concluded it by stating that whoever deviates from His path [is] in the utmost hardship, which is the blazing fire, He swore at the beginning of this [Surah] that the doer of that, first and last, is Allah, glorified and exalted is He, for He intervenes between a person and his heart, and between the heart and its core. So He said, swearing by what indicates the completeness of His knowledge (p-70) and the comprehensiveness of His power in the upper and lower horizons, and the souls, both of the happy and the wretched. He began with the upper world, thus affirming the knowledge that He is the chosen doer, and the knowledge of the necessity of His essence and the perfection of His attributes, and that is the highest degree of theoretical powers, reminding of the greatness of His blessings, to compel one to immerse in gratitude for His bounties, which is the ultimate [perfection of] practical powers. Although the first of what He swore by reminds of what the last of that ended with, which is the fire: ﴿By the sun﴾ meaning the one that combines benefit and harm through light and heat, just as the intellects likewise do not shine more than it when it burns, nor are they darker than it when it shines. ﴿And its brightness﴾ meaning [the] light that arises from its great body, the wondrous creation that reminds of the fires when it shines and its authority rises, like the shining of the lights of the intellects. And 'the forenoon' - with a dammah and a kasrah: the beginning of the day when it rises, and with a fathah and a madd: the intensity of heat [after the day has extended, and something that is bright - when it appears to the sun and the heat].