Today We Save You in Your Body

Then there is the account of Pharaoh coming to belief — or attempting to profess it — as he is about to drown. Allah says, in verse 91:

Now — after all the disobedience that went before, when you were among the corrupt ones on the earth? Today We shall give you respite in your body, that you may be a sign for those who come after. But the majority of people take no heed of Our signs.

Here lies a point of great interest: a miracle of the Qur'an. For some thirteen hundred years Pharaoh's body was not found. When this verse was revealed, the body had long been mummified — mummification was the practice of the Egyptians at the time, their tradition, as it was the tradition of certain other places as well — and it lay in a sarcophagus inside the pyramids.

Then, a hundred and fifty or so years ago, Carter came and discovered it, and others discovered the mummies.^** And there Ramesses is, together with several others, in the Egyptian Museum today.

SubḥānAllāh — one wonders what, for those thirteen hundred years, people made of this verse: "Today We give you respite with your body, so that you may be a sign for the people after you." Perhaps they supposed that his body had simply been taken, since the mufassirīn mention that the body was cast out of the river. But thirteen hundred or so years later — twelve hundred and fifty, thirteen hundred, however long it was — there comes a discovery, and Pharaoh's body is there. ʿAjīb. Allah told us this fourteen hundred years ago: that We have given you respite. The words take on a wholly new and more intense meaning: We have given you safety in your body.