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wa-ʾalqi mā fī yamīnika talqaf mā ṣanaʿū ʾinnamā ṣanaʿū kaydu sāḥirin wa-lā yufliḥu s-sāḥiru ḥaythu ʾatā
Throw down what is in your right hand, and it will swallow what they have conjured. What they have conjured is only a magician’s trick, and the magician does not fare well wherever he may show up.’
— Ali Quli Qarai
Surah Ta Ha – Verses 68 - 70
68. “Said We: ‘Fear not! Verily you are the uppermost.”
69. “And throw down what is in your right hand! It will swallow up, what they have made. Verily what they have made is but a plan of a sorcerer, and the sorcerer will not be successful wherever he goes’.”
70. “Then the sorcerers fell down in prostration, saying: ‘We believed in the Lord of Aaron and Moses!’”
With no condition Allah (s.w.t.) promises His Messenger to promote him. But He promises the believers to promote them upon the condition that they believe and keep their loyalty to Faith.6 The reason of it is that prophets are loyal, but the believers may leave out their loyalty. Therefore, Allah says that they are the uppermost if they are faithful. However, at this time, the divine help and assistance came to Moses and the revealed command of Allah defined his duty, as the Qur’an says:
Thus, Moses (as), who had lost his courage for a short moment, took heart again. For the second time Moses (as) was addressed and he was commanded:
Since the act of a sorcerer depends on the man’s limited ability while a Divine miracle originates from the infinite power of Allah, therefore a sorcerer can perform only the things which he has practiced formerly. That is why the verse continues saying:
It is interesting that the revelation does not say: ‘Throw down your rod’, but it says:
This meaning may be as a heedlessness to the rod and an indication to the fact that ‘rod’ itself is not an important thing, but the thing, which is important, is the Will and command of Allah wherewith the less significant thing than the rod can work as it did. When Moses (as) was ordered to throw down his Rod and he threw it down, the Rod changed into a huge snake and swallowed all the means and tools of sorcerers’ magic. A great uproar and tumult appeared among those people. Pharaoh was very terrified, and his companions attending there were also terribly surprised.
The sorcerers, who recognized sorcery from other than sorcery, convinced themselves that it was nothing save the Divine miracle and that Moses (as) was certainly a messenger from the side of Allah. Therefore, as the verse says:
However, as soon as the sorcerers understood that the act of Moses (as) was not a sorcery, they involuntarily fell down in prostration and, those who were infidels in the morning, joined the group of witnesses of the way of Allah in that very evening, and by saying:
they confessed that their action they performed had been wrong. They applied the word of ‘Lord’ in their sentence:
since Pharaoh had considered himself the Lord of those people. If they had used only the name of Moses in their statement and said simply ‘the Lord of Moses’, Pharaoh might have said: that he had trained Aaron. That was why the sorcerers, next to the word ‘Lord’, at first mentioned Aaron and then added the appellation of Moses (as).7
Footnotes