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Qaṣaṣ an-Nabiyyīn · Part 3 (Mūsā) · Chapter 25
وَعِيدُ فِرْعَوْنَ
Waʿīdu Firʿawn
Pharaoh's Threat
Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī al-Nadwī·قَصَصُ النَّبِيِّينَ لِلْأَطْفَالِ·Part 3, Book pp. 70–74
The story so far. In the arena (chapter 24), Mūsā's staff swallowed the magicians' illusion, and the magicians — recognising what no sorcery could do — fell in prostration and declared their faith in the Lord of Mūsā and Hārūn. Now Pharaoh, humiliated before the whole crowd, rounds on them in fury. This chapter is his threat — and their answer.
📄 Source, text & editorial notes

Source

Chapter 25 (وَعِيدُ فِرْعَوْنَ) of Qaṣaṣ an-Nabiyyīn lil-Atfāl (“Stories of the Prophets, for Children”), Part 3 — the life of Mūsā ﷺ — by Sayyid Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī al-Ḥasanī al-Nadwī (1914–1999). The chapter runs across book pages 70–74 of Part 3, and follows chapter 24, “Between Truth and Falsehood.”

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

نُونُ التَّوكيدِ ولامُ القَسَمِ· the emphatic nūn and the oath-lām
لَأُقَطِّعَنَّ أَيْدِيَكُمْ … وَلَأُصَلِّبَنَّكُمْ أَجْمَعِينَ— Line 16 — “I will SURELY cut off your hands… and I will SURELY crucify you all”

How it works. To swear that you will definitely do something, Arabic wraps the verb in two layers of emphasis at once:

  • the oath-lām (lām al-qasam) prefixed to the verb — the لَـ that stands in for “by God, I will…”;
  • the heavy nūn of emphasis (nūn al-tawkīd al-thaqīla) suffixed to it — ـَنَّ.

So uqaṭṭiʿu (“I cut”) becomes la-uqaṭṭiʿanna (“I shall most certainly cut”). Both of Pharaoh's verbs here, لَأُقَطِّعَنَّ and لَأُصَلِّبَنَّ, carry the pair — the very strongest threat the language can make. Both are also Form II (faʿʿala), whose internal doubling adds the sense of doing the act thoroughly or repeatedly (“cut to pieces”).

Watch out. The emphatic nūn changes the verb's ending: a present verb stops being marfūʿ and is built on a fatḥa before the nūn (la-yafʿalanna). Don't mistake that fatḥa for an accusative case — it is mabnī (a fixed form), not iʿrāb.
كانَ وأَخَواتُها· kāna and its sisters
فَأَصْبَحَ السَّحَرَةُ جُنْدَ مُوسَى— Line 4 — “and the magicians BECAME Mūsā's army”

How it works. A small family of verbs — kāna (“was”), aṣbaḥa (“became / came to be in the morning”), laysa (“is not”), and others — enters a nominal sentence and re-labels its two parts:

  • the old mubtadaʾ becomes the noun of kāna and stays nominative;
  • the old khabar becomes the predicate of kāna and turns accusative.

So in أَصْبَحَ السَّحَرَةُ جُنْدَ مُوسَى: السَّحَرَةُ is nominative (the noun) and جُنْدَ مُوسَى is accusative (the predicate). You can see the whole family at work in this chapter: كَانَ … يَعْتَقِدُ (line 7, “used to believe”), لَيْسَ لِأَحَدٍ… (line 9, “it is not for anyone…”), and أَصْبَحَ here.

Watch out. With kāna + a present-tense verb (kāna yaʿtaqidu), there is no accusative predicate to spot — the predicate is the whole verb-clause “(he) used to believe.” This is the standard way Arabic expresses the habitual past (“used to / kept on”).

أَسْئِلَة· Comprehension Questions

لِماذا وَصَفَ الكاتِبُ فِرْعَوْنَ بِأَنَّهُ «مِسْكينٌ»؟Why does the author call Pharaoh “wretched” (miskīn)?

الإجابَةُ النَّموذَجِيَّة

لِأَنَّ خُطَّتَهُ انْقَلَبَت عَلَيهِ تَمامًا: فقد أَرادَ أن يَهْزِمَ مُوسَى بِالسَّحَرَةِ، فأَصْبَحَ السَّحَرَةُ جُنْدَ مُوسَى؛ وأَرادَ أن يَصُدَّ النَّاسَ عن مُوسَى، فإذا بِالسَّحَرَةِ أَوَّلُ المُؤْمِنينَ. وهكذا ارْتَدَّت سِهامُهُ عَلَيهِ، فاسْتَحَقَّ الشَّفَقَةَ لا الهَيبَةَ.

الشَّواهِد: السُّطور ٣–٦

ما «السِّهامُ الثَّلاثَةُ» الّتي رَمى بِها فِرْعَوْنُ المُؤْمِنينَ؟What are the “three arrows” Pharaoh shot at the believers?

الإجابَةُ النَّموذَجِيَّة

هي ثَلاثُ رَمَياتٍ مِن تُهَمٍ ووَعيدٍ: الأَوَّلُ اتِّهامُ مُوسَى بِأَنَّهُ كَبيرُهُمُ الّذي عَلَّمَهُمُ السِّحْرَ؛ والثَّاني زَعْمُهُ أَنَّ إيمانَهُم مَكْرٌ دَبَّروهُ لِيُخْرِجوا أَهْلَ المَدينةِ مِنها؛ والثَّالِثُ — وهو السَّهْمُ المَسْمومُ الأَخيرُ — التَّهديدُ بِتَقطيعِ الأَيدي والأَرجُلِ مِن خِلافٍ وبِالصَّلْبِ.

الشَّواهِد: السُّطور ١٢، ١٤، ١٦

بِمَ رَدَّ المُؤْمِنونَ على وَعيدِ فِرْعَوْنَ؟How did the believers answer Pharaoh's threat?

الإجابَةُ النَّموذَجِيَّة

تَلَقَّوُا السِّهامَ كُلَّها بِجُنَّةِ الإيمانِ والصَّبْرِ، فلم يَخافوا المَوتَ ولا العَذابَ، وقالوا: «لا ضَيْرَ إنّا إلى رَبِّنا مُنقَلِبونَ»، وأَعلَنوا أَنَّهُم يَطمَعونَ في مَغفِرَةِ اللهِ لِأَنَّهُم أَوَّلُ المُؤْمِنينَ، وأَنَّ ما عِندَ اللهِ خَيْرٌ وأَبقى مِن دُنيا فِرْعَوْنَ.

الشَّواهِد: السُّطور ١٧–٢١

تَذَوُّقٌ بَلاغِيّ· A Note on the Writing

Pharaoh's arrows. Al-Nadwī does not list Pharaoh's accusations flatly. He turns them into arrows: Pharaoh “shoots” a first arrow, then a second, then “a third, poisoned one — the last arrow in the quiver of kings” (lines 11, 13, 15). The believers, in turn, “meet all the arrows with the shield of faith and patience” (line 17).

Why build the whole passage on this one image? Think about what a quiver of arrows says about Pharaoh's power — and what it means that he reaches for the last one. And why does the believers' answer use a shield rather than an arrow of their own?

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

An extended metaphor (istiʿāra) that carries the meaning:

  • A finite supply. A quiver holds only so many arrows. Counting them — first, second, third and last — quietly tells us Pharaoh is running out of power: threats are all he has left, and even those are numbered.
  • The poisoned last arrow. The death-threat is his ultimate weapon. That it is the last one, and that it fails, is the point: when a tyrant has nothing left but the fear of death, he has nothing at all over people who don't fear it.
  • Shield, not arrow. The believers don't shoot back. Faith and patience are defensive — they absorb everything Pharaoh throws and leave him with no target. “No harm,” they say; “to our Lord we are returning.”
💬سُؤالٌ لِلنِّقاش· Discussion

Only moments after believing, the magicians faced torture and death — and answered, “No harm! To our Lord we are returning.” The same men who had bargained with Pharaoh for a reward that morning now feared nothing he could do.

What changes in a person so that the worst threat loses its power? Try writing two or three short Arabic sentences in answer — for example beginning: مَن آمَنَ حَقًّا …

👩‍🏫 Teacher / Self-study notes

Where this sits

Chapter 25 of Part 3, immediately after the magicians' contest (chapter 24). It is the hinge between the contest and what follows: Pharaoh's failed threat here leads into chapter 26, “Pharaoh's Folly” (سَفاهة فرعون).

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 are worth pausing on and have their own notes above: the emphatic nūn with the oath-lām (Pharaoh's la-uqaṭṭiʿanna threat, line 16) and kāna and its sisters (aṣbaḥa, kāna yaʿtaqidu, laysa across lines 4, 7, 9). The chapter is also a showcase of an + the subjunctive (arāda an…, li-tukhrijū, an yaghfira).

A point of reverence

The chapter quotes verses from four sūras (Ṭā-Hā, al-Aʿrāf, ash-Shuʿarāʾ). Encourage the learner to recite them aloud in full tajwīd and to treat them differently from the surrounding story — which is why this reader gives them their own script (Uthmani rasm), their own colour, and keeps them always vocalised.