Transliteration:( Qaala fa innaa qad fatannaa qawmaka mim ba'dika wa adallahumus Saamiriyy )
114. This means that those Israelites, whom he had left behind in Egypt, were put to a test under Hazrat Harun (On whom be peace).Â
115. Because Samari was the cause of their going astray, therefore apostasy is linked with him. This tells us that the Friends of Allah Almighty can provide guidance.
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The tafsir of Surah Ta-Ha verse 85 by Ibn Kathir is unavailable here.
Please refer to Surah Taha ayat 83 which provides the complete commentary from verse 83 through 89.
(20:85) Said He: “Verily We tested your people in your absence and the Samiri[63] led them astray.”
63. It is obvious from the last Arabic letter ‘ya’ that Samiri was not the proper name of the person, for this Arabic letter is always added to show a person’s connection with his race or clan or place. Moreover, the prefix al (definite article ‘the’) in the original Arabic text clearly denotes that the Samiri was a particular man from among many other persons of the same race or clan or place, who had propagated the worship of the golden calf. In fact, this does not require any further explanation than this, but this has been necessitated because many Christian missionaries and the Western Orientalists have tried to criticize the Prophet (peace be upon him) and the Quran on this account. They say, (God forbid,) “This is a proof of the grievous ignorance of history on the part of Muhammad (peace be upon him), the author of the Quran, and is one of the anachronisms of the Quran. They base this absurd criticism on the assumption that this Samiri was the inhabitant of Samaria, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Israel, which was built in 925 B.C. long after this happening; then centuries after this, a generation of the Samaritans came into existence as a result of inter-marriage between the Israelites and the non-Israelites. As the Samaritans worshiped the golden calf, the critics accuse the Prophet (peace be upon him) of inventing this story on the basis of mere hearsay. They say that the Prophet (peace be upon him) might have heard something like this from the neighboring Jews and inserted it in the Quran. That is not all. They also criticize that Haman who was a courtier of Cyrus has been mentioned in the Quran as a minister of Pharaoh. It is a pity that these so called scholars seem to think that in the ancient times there used to be only one person bearing one name in a clan or a place, and there was absolutely no possibility of another person or persons having the same name. They do not know, or pretend they do not know, that during the time of Prophet Abraham (peace be upon him), a famous people known as the Sumerians inhabited Iraq and the neighboring regions, and it is just possible that during the time of Prophet Moses (peace be upon him) there were some people known as the Samiris who might have migrated to Egypt from Iraq. Besides this, according to the Bible (1 Kings, 16: 24), Samaria itself was built on a hill which was bought from Shemer and named Samaria after him. This is a clear proof that there were people named Shemer (or Sumer) even before Samaria came into existence and it is also just possible that some clans might have been called “Samiri”
[847]- Translated as "the Samaritan" (from Samaria), a hypocrite among them who led the Children of Israel into idol-worship.
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