in response to the questioner—who appeared to be an unknown Bedouin and asked him about the Hour, ‘When will the Hour be?’—‘The one questioned about it knows no more than the questioner.’” He did not say that no one understands the words revealed concerning it. Rather, such a claim contradicts the consensus of Muslims, indeed of all rational people. Allah’s statements concerning the Hour and its signs are clear and intelligible, and their meaning is understood. The same applies to His words:

“And many generations in between.”

The intended meaning of these words is known: Allah created many generations whose number none but He knows. As He says:

“And none knows the forces of your Lord except Him.”

What in any of this indicates that no one—neither the angels, nor the prophets, nor the Companions, nor anyone else—understands the meaning of what Allah has told us concerning faith in Allah and the Last Day?

As for what was related from ‘Urwah, it is known from reports transmitted through him that he did not interpret most verses of the Quran, apart from a few whose explanations he related from ‘Ā’ishah. Clearly, if ‘Urwah did not know the interpretation, it does not follow that others did not know it, such as the Rightly Guided Caliphs and the scholars among the Companions, including Ibn Mas‘ūd, Ubayy ibn Ka‘b, Ibn ‘Abbās, and others.

As for the linguists who say that those firmly grounded in knowledge do not know the meaning of the ambiguous passages, they contradict themselves in this. All of them discuss the interpretation of everything in the Quran and elaborate extensively on it, to the point that every one of them has advanced interpretations without precedent, which are erroneous. And Ibn al-Anbārī, who