The stories of the Prophets (The Exegesis of the Quran)

Author: By Al-‘Allamah ‘Abd al Rahman Ibn Nasir al Sa’di

Category: Short stories of the prophets

Expectation:

When I purchased this book, my expectations were that I was going to read all the stories about the Prophets of Islam (peace and blessings be upon all of them) in detail including the ayat that they were mentioned in it. After having read the book, I cannot say that these expectations were subverted…

Reality:

The book does indeed give an insight to the stories of the different Prophets (peace and blessings be upon all of them), and it also elaborates on the benefits, and the morals of their stories. The chorological order of the Prophets is somewhat there but not entirely accurate. For example, Prophet Musa (peace and blessings be upon him) was mentioned before Yusuf, while it is a fact that Prophet Yusuf (peace and blessings be upon him) existed before Musa. Interestingly, not all the Prophets were mentioned, like Prophet Ilias and Seth (peace and blessings be upon both).

The Review:

When I opened the first chapter, I was confused by what I was reading, I expected to go through the stories like a novel. Instead, I did get the stories of the prophets, but I got the most important aspects of their stories. These aspects are the benefits of the stories, so you get the moral of the story and what you can learn from it directly from this book rather than the events of the story. So if you come into this book expecting to read about the stories of the Prophets from beginning to end, you will be disappointed, but if you already know their stories, and want to get some incredible insights into their lives, then this book will definitely deliver.

The author picked certain events from the stories of the Prophets (peace and blessings be upon all of them), and extracted the benefits from which we can learn, such as greed, envy and explaining them in detail through the highlighted events. Still, for some, the story would give a better view to the lessons, rather than mentioning the moral lessons directly. For example, we learn the story of Shu’ayb the value of prayer. You learn that by prayer there is a means of good and avoiding to do harm. We also learn that Allah knows how prayer can benefit us as humans.

At the end of the book the author gives a conclusion, and a summary of his work. Reading these two chapters gives an idea on what the author wants to tell his audience about his book. The book gave me short yet powerful benefits of each story. From each story there is a lesson to be learned and providing the evidence that shows the moral essence of the story from the Quran, was very well-done.

This book is recommended to those who are already familiar with the Prophets (peace and blessings be upon all of them), and want to view their stories from a different perspective, and learn something new. However, this book is not recommended for someone who does not know much about the Prophets to begin with.