Tafsir for verse: 16:48
أَوَلَمۡ يَرَوۡاْ إِلَىٰ مَا خَلَقَ ٱللَّهُ مِن شَيۡءٖ يَتَفَيَّؤُاْ ظِلَٰلُهُۥ عَنِ ٱلۡيَمِينِ وَٱلشَّمَآئِلِ سُجَّدٗا لِّلَّهِ وَهُمۡ دَٰخِرُونَ ٤٨ ﴿48
48Have they not observed the things Allah has created, their shadows inclining from the right and the left prostrating themselves before Allah, while they are humble?
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Commentary

It is recited: Or did they not see. And they shade, with the yā and the tā. And what is meant is connected to the creation of Allah, and it is ambiguous in its explanation of something that shades its shadows and the right side, meaning the oaths. And prostrating is a state of the shadows. And they are subdued is a state of the pronoun in its shadows, because it is in the meaning of the plural, which is what Allah created from everything that has a shadow. And it is gathered with the wāw, because subjugation is one of the attributes of the rational beings, or because among that group there are those who understand, and it predominates. The meaning is: Or did they not see to what Allah created from the bodies that have shadows that shade from their right and left, that is, from the sides of each one of them. And the left side is a metaphor from the right of a person and his left for the sides of the thing, that is: the shadows return from one side to the other, submissive to Allah, not resisting Him in what He has made them shade for, and the bodies themselves are also subdued, humbled, and submissive to the actions of Allah within them, not resisting.

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Al-ZamakhshariAbū al-Qāsim Maḥmūd ibn ʿUmar al-Zamakhsharī
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