The Seventh Flash — The Qur'an's News of the Unseen

The Seventh Flash reads the three verses that close Sūrat al-Fath (48:27–29) as a sample of one of the ten “aspects” of the Qur’an’s miraculous inimitability (i’câz): its tidings of the Unseen (ihbâr-ı gaybî) — its foretelling of things hidden when it was revealed. From these verses Nursî draws out seven such predictions, all, he argues, borne out by events.

The first four are historical: the conquest of Mecca, which came two years later; the Truce of Hudaybiya, outwardly a setback but in truth a “manifest victory” that opened hearts (so that fierce opponents like Khālid and ʿAmr soon entered Islam); the promise of a safe, fearless circumambulation of the Ka’ba; and the triumph of the new faith over the great religions and empires of the age. The next, read allusively, finds the distinguishing traits of the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs folded into the verse’s phrases — “strong against the unbelievers,” “merciful among themselves,” “bowing and prostrating.” Two further predictions concern the Companions (Sahâbe): their likeness foretold “in the Torah” and “in the Gospel,” pictured as a seed that sends up its shoot, grows thick and firm, and enrages those who oppose it.

A Postscript extends the method to another verse (4:68–69). Its roll-call — “the Prophets, the Veracious, the Witnesses, and the Righteous” — Nursî reads as pointing, beneath its plain sense, to Abū Bakr (the Veracious), to the three later Caliphs who died as martyrs (the Witnesses), and even, by a turn of phrasing, to Hasan as a fifth Caliph.

Underneath the particulars lies the Flash’s real claim, which is about method: because the Qur’an proceeds from an all-encompassing knowledge, its words carry many layered meanings at once, and this single strand of its miraculousness — its veiled news of the Unseen — runs not to the forty or fifty verses literalists allow but into the thousands. The original sets out each prediction with its evidences; the full text is linked above.