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Qaṣaṣ an-Nabiyyīn · Part 3 (Mūsā) · Chapter 24
بَيْنَ الْحَقِّ وَالْبَاطِلِ
Bayna al-Ḥaqqi wa-l-Bāṭil
Between Truth and Falsehood
Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī al-Nadwī·قَصَصُ النَّبِيِّينَ لِلْأَطْفَالِ·Part 3, Book pp. 66–70
The story so far. Mūsā (Moses) has stood before Pharaoh and called him to God. Pharaoh, refusing, has summoned the greatest magicians of Egypt to a public contest in the open square — sure that their sorcery will humiliate Mūsā before the watching crowd. This chapter is the contest itself: the moment the staff of a single prophet meets the massed craft of Pharaoh's sorcerers.
📄 Source, text & editorial notes

Source

Chapter 24 (بَيْنَ الْحَقِّ وَالْبَاطِلِ) of Qaṣaṣ an-Nabiyyīn lil-Atfāl (“Stories of the Prophets, for Children”), Part 3 — the life of Mūsā (Mūsā ﷺ) — by Sayyid Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī al-Ḥasanī al-Nadwī (1914–1999). The chapter runs across book pages 66–70 of Part 3.

About the book

Al-Nadwī wrote Qaṣaṣ an-Nabiyyīn in the 1940s as a graded Arabic reader for children — deliberately simple, vivid, and fully vocalised, so that a beginner can read classical Arabic prose for meaning. It remains one of the most widely used first readers in Arabic-language teaching worldwide. Part 3 tells the story of Mūsā in 46 short chapters, drawing the narrative spine from the Qurʾan itself.

Qurʾanic verses

Where the chapter quotes the Qurʾan, the verse is shown in full Uthmani rasm (the canonical script — with madd marks, dagger alifs, hamzat waṣl, and the small superscript marks preserved) and set apart in a green-bordered card with its sūra and āya reference. These verses are always shown fully vocalised; the vowel buttons apply only to al-Nadwī's own prose.

How this reader is designed

Al-Nadwī's prose is shown without harakat by default, so you can test your own reading and iʿrāb. Each line carries a Vowels button — hover to preview the vocalisation, click to lock it on — and a Show Vowels button (top right) reveals every line at once. Tap any line to open its English translation, a short vocabulary list keyed to root, and a language note. The Qurʾanic verses are always shown fully vocalised; English translations of the verses are the editor's own, rendered to follow the well-established meaning.

Editorial note

The chapter has been segmented into reading lines for line-by-line study; the wording of the Arabic is al-Nadwī's, unchanged. Sentences that run a piece of al-Nadwī's prose straight into a quoted verse have been split at the verse boundary so each Qurʾanic citation stands on its own card.

0 of 0 lines expanded Tap a line for translation, vocabulary & a language note; tap Vowels on a line — or “Show Vowels” — to reveal the harakat. Qurʾanic verses stay fully vocalised.

مُلاحَظاتٌ نَحوِيَّة· Grammar Notes

المَبْنِيُّ لِلمَجهول· the passive voice
وَإِذَا غَلَبَ السَّحَرَةُ … وَإِذَا غُلِبَ مُوسَى— Line 10 — “if the magicians win (active)… if Mūsā is defeated (passive)”

How it works. Arabic turns an active verb into a passive one not with a helper word like English “is/was”, but by changing the internal vowels. The doer disappears and the object is promoted to subject (the nāʾib al-fāʿil, “stand-in for the doer”).

  • Past tense: faʿala → fuʿila (first vowel u, second i). So غَلَبَ (ghalaba, “he conquered”) → غُلِبَ (ghuliba, “he was conquered”).
  • Present tense: yafʿalu → yufʿalu. So يُكْرِمُ (“he honours”) → يُكْرَمُ (“he is honoured”), and يُهِينُ (“he disgraces”) → يُهَانُ (“he is disgraced”).

All over this chapter: غُلِبَ (line 10), يُكْرَمُ … يُهَانُ (line 9), يُخَيَّلُ (“it is made to seem”, line 6), بُهِتُوا (“they were struck dumb”, line 20), and أُلْقِيَ (“they were cast down”, line 29). Al-Nadwī leans on the passive at exactly the moments when things are done to people — defeat, illusion, being overwhelmed.

Watch out. One letter's vowel separates triumph from disaster: غَلَبَ (he won) vs غُلِبَ (he was beaten) share every consonant. With an unvowelled text the only way to tell them apart is the meaning — so reveal the harakat on line 10 (tap its Vowels button) to see which is which.
لَوِ الامْتِناعِيَّة· the counterfactual “law” (had … would have …)
لَوْ كَانَ مِنَ السِّحْرِ لَضَرَبْنَا السِّحْرَ بِالسِّحْرِ— Line 24 — “had it been magic, we would have met magic with magic”

How it works. لَوْ (law) is the “if” of impossible or unreal conditions — “if it had been…, it would have…”. It tells you that the condition did not happen, so the result did not happen either (hence al-imtināʿiyya, “the [particle] of non-occurrence”). It is built from two past-tense verbs:

  • Condition: لَوْ + past verb — law kāna mina s-siḥri (“had it been magic”).
  • Result: لَـ + past verb — la-ḍarabnā (“we would have struck”). That opening لَـ is the lām al-jawāb, the “answer-lām” that signals the result clause.

The magicians are reasoning: law this had been mere sorcery, we — the experts — would certainly have countered it. We could not. Therefore it is no sorcery at all.

Watch out. Don't confuse لَوْ with إِنْ / إِذَا. إنْ and إذا introduce real, possible conditions (“if you study, you will pass”) and are usually followed by the jussive or the present. لَوْ is for the contrary-to-fact (“had you studied, you would have passed — but you didn't”), and takes the past on both sides.

أَسْئِلَة· Comprehension Questions

لِماذا خافَ مُوسَى عليه السلام في أَوَّلِ الأَمْرِ، وهو نَبِيٌّ؟Why did Mūsā feel fear at first, even though he is a prophet?

الإجابَةُ النَّموذَجِيَّة

لم يَكُنْ خَوْفُ مُوسَى على نَفْسِهِ، وإنَّما خافَ أن يُغْلَبَ الحَقُّ أَمامَ الباطِلِ، والدِّينُ أَمامَ المَلِكِ؛ فلو غُلِبَ يَوْمَئِذٍ لَظَنَّ النَّاسُ أنَّ سِحْرَ فِرْعَوْنَ أَقْوى مِن آياتِ اللهِ. ثُمَّ طَمْأَنَهُ اللهُ وشَجَّعَهُ بِقَوْلِهِ: «لَا تَخَفْ إِنَّكَ أَنتَ ٱلْأَعْلَىٰ».

الشَّواهِد: السُّطور ٧–١٥

ما الدَّليلُ على أنَّ ما جاءَ بِهِ مُوسَى لم يَكُنْ سِحْرًا؟What is the proof that what Mūsā brought was not magic?

الإجابَةُ النَّموذَجِيَّة

أَقْوى دَليلٍ هو اعْتِرافُ السَّحَرَةِ أَنْفُسِهِم، وهُم أَساتِذَةُ الفَنِّ وأَئِمَّتُهُ. قالوا إنَّهُم يَعْرِفونَ السِّحْرَ وأَصْلَهُ وأَنْواعَهُ، ولو كانَ هذا سِحْرًا لَقابَلوهُ بِسِحْرٍ مِثْلِهِ؛ ولكِنَّ فَنَّهُمُ اضْمَحَلَّ وذابَ كما يَذوبُ النَّدى أَمامَ الشَّمْسِ، فأَدْرَكوا أنَّهُ مِنَ اللهِ.

الشَّواهِد: السُّطور ٢٠–٢٦

بِمَ خَتَمَ السَّحَرَةُ مَوْقِفَهُم في المَيْدانِ؟How did the magicians end their stand in the arena?

الإجابَةُ النَّموذَجِيَّة

اقْتَنَعوا بأنَّ مُوسَى نَبِيٌّ وأنَّ اللهَ قد مَنَحَهُ مُعْجِزَةً، فخَرّوا سُجَّدًا وآمَنوا في الحالِ غَيْرَ خائِفينَ مِن فِرْعَوْنَ، وقالوا: «ءَامَنَّا بِرَبِّ ٱلْعَٰلَمِينَ ۞ رَبِّ مُوسَىٰ وَهَٰرُونَ».

الشَّواهِد: السُّطور ٢٧–٢٩

تَذَوُّقٌ بَلاغِيّ· A Note on the Writing

The melting dew. When the magicians' craft fails, al-Nadwī does not simply say it failed. He writes that it “melted as the dew melts before the sun” (وذابَ كما يَذوبُ النَّدى أَمامَ الشَّمْسِ, line 25).

Why this image, do you think? Consider: dew looks beautiful and even precious at dawn — yet the instant the sun rises it is simply gone, leaving nothing behind. What does that say about the magicians' art the moment the truth appeared? And why is the sun a fitting picture for the truth that Mūsā brought?

📝 Some thoughts (open after you've had your own)

A simile (tashbīh) does more than decorate — this one carries the argument:

  • Effortless and total. Dew doesn't fight the sun; it vanishes the moment the sun is there. The magicians' craft didn't lose a battle — it simply ceased to exist before something of a wholly different order.
  • Small before vast. A drop of dew against the sun is a picture of scale: human craft against the power of God. The mismatch is the point.
  • Beautiful but temporary vs. permanent. Falsehood can glitter for a morning; truth, like the sun, is what remains. That is the chapter's title — between truth and falsehood — turned into a single image.
💬سُؤالٌ لِلنِّقاش· Discussion

The magicians were the experts — the “masters and leaders of the craft”. Yet the moment they saw the truth, they declared their faith on the spot, knowing it might cost them everything under Pharaoh.

What is it about being a true expert that made them, of all people, able to recognise the truth so fast? Try writing two or three short Arabic sentences in answer — for example beginning: الخَبيرُ الحَقيقِيُّ يَعْرِفُ …

👩‍🏫 Teacher / Self-study notes

Level & aim

Upper-beginner to intermediate. Because al-Nadwī wrote this as a children's reader, the prose is simple enough to read for meaning early on, while the embedded Qurʾanic verses stretch a stronger reader. The aim is fluent reading with comprehension and confident handling of the harakat — not exam practice.

How to use the vowel buttons

Each prose line opens without harakat. Read it first from the bare consonantal skeleton, predicting the case endings (iʿrāb) aloud — then hover or tap that line's Vowels button to check yourself (or press Show Vowels to reveal them all). The Qurʾanic verses deliberately stay vocalised throughout.

Grammar focus

Two structures recur and are worth pausing on: the passive voice (al-mabnī lil-majhūl — the active/passive pair ghalaba / ghuliba is the clearest teaching example in the whole chapter) and the counterfactual law (line 24). Both have their own grammar note above.

A point of reverence

The chapter quotes verses from five different sūras. Encourage the learner to recite the verses aloud in full tajwīd and to treat them differently from the surrounding story — which is exactly why this reader gives them their own script (Uthmani rasm), their own colour, and keeps them always vocalised.

Where this sits in the book

This is chapter 24 of Part 3's first section (the contest is the dramatic centre of the Mūsā story). It follows chapter 23, “To the Arena” (إلى الميدان), in which the contest is set up, and is followed by chapter 25, “Pharaoh's Threat” (وعيد فرعون), in which Pharaoh turns on the believing magicians.