forgiveness indicates the existence of faults. At that time it would be forgiveness, the greatest bounty, that the Companions would want. The highest reward would be absence of punishment, thanks to forgiveness. The word “forgiveness” both makes this subtle allusion, and it is connected with the verse at the beginning of the Sura, “That God may forgive you your faults of the past and those to follow.”(48:2) By giving the good news of forgiveness at the start of the Sura not for true sins, since the Messenger (UWBP) was exempt from sin and did not commit them, but for a meaning in keeping with the rank of prophethood, and by giving the good news of forgiveness for the Companions at the end of the Sura, it adds a further subtlety to the allusion.
Of the ten aspects of miraculousness contained in the above-mentioned three verses at the end of Sura al-Fath, we have discussed here only the aspect concerning predictions about the Unseen, and of the numerous parts of that aspect, only seven. A flash of miraculousness in the positioning of the letters of the last verse is alluded to at the end of the Twenty-Sixth Word, which is about divine determining and man’s faculty of will. This last verse looks to the Companions both with its sentences, and to their situations with its phrases, and it describes their attributes with its words1 and letters; so too with the repetition of the number of letters it alludes to classes of famous Companions like the Companions of Badr, of Uhud, of Hunayn, of the Bench, and of Ridwan. Moreover, it expresses many further mysteries through ‘coincidences’ and abjad reckoning, which are branches of the science of jafr and keys to it.
See, Ahmad b. Hanbal, Fada’il al-Sahaba, i, 434; Ibn al-Jawzi, Zad al-Masir, vii, 446; Suyuti, al-Durr al-Manthur, vii, 544; Alusi, Ruh al-Ma’ani, xxvi, 129; Baghawi, Ma‘alim al-Tanzil, iv, 206.