has several uses:

It may express asking another to perform an action. Thus, istikhrāj (extracting), istifhām (requesting clarification), and isti‘ lām (seeking information) involve transitive verbs. One says, “I extracted the money from someone else,” and similarly, “I requested clarification.” This cannot be the meaning of istī’ās, for no one seeks despair or calls it upon himself. Moreover, istay’asa is an intransitive verb, not a transitive one.

The istif‘āl pattern may also indicate that its subject acquires the characteristics of something else. This occurs with intransitive verbs, as in the expressions istahjara al-tīn, meaning that the clay became like stone, and istanwaqa al-fahl, meaning that the male camel became like a she-camel.

As for considering what they had lost hope of, Allah Most High specified this in the account of Joseph’s brothers, saying:

“So when they had lost hope of him.”

Regarding the messengers, however, He did not specify what they had lost hope of; rather, He described them as losing hope without qualification. No one, therefore, may restrict this to their having lost hope of what they had been promised and told would happen. Nor did Ibn ‘Abbās say this.

It has also been established that His words:

“And they thought that they had been lied to”

do not indicate, in their apparent meaning, let alone any deeper meaning, that anything resembling an equal balance between the two possibilities arose in their hearts concerning what they had been told. The Arabic word zann (supposition) does not entail this. Indeed, something may be called zann even when it is among the falsest assertions made by the person entertaining it, because it is, in itself, the less likely possibility. And the term