Uzair (Ezra)

Uzair (Ezra) - Ezra Finds and Copies the Torah

She rushed to the assembly of the Israelites. Ezra's son was one hundred eighteen years old, and his children's children now were lords of the assembly. She called out to them saying: "This is Ezra come to you." They accused her of lying. She said: "I am your old maid. He has just prayed to Allah for me, and here I am whole again, walking and seeing." The people stood up and looked at him. His son said: "My father had a mark between his shoulders, a black mole," and they discovered it. They said: "None among us memorized the Torah since Neabuchadnezzar burnt it, except Ezra; and there was only one copy of the Torah, which was hidden by Sarukha. He buried it in the days of Nebuchadnezzar in a place none but Ezra knows." Ezra led the people to the hidden place and took out that copy of the Torah. Its leaves had rotted, and the book itself crumpled.

Ezra sat under the shade of a tree surrounded by the children of Israel and copied out the Torah for them from that script. Henceforth the Jews said that Ezra is the son Allah, for the two pieces of evidence which came down from Heaven: for his copying the Torah and for his fighting the cause of the Israelites. He had been copying the Torah for Ezekial in the land of darkness in the hermitage of Ezekiel. The village which was in ruins is said to be Sayrabadh.

Ibn Abbas commented: "So it is as Allah said: "We have made of you a sign for the people." Surah 2: 269 That is, for the Israelites, in that he was sitting among his children, they old men, and he a youth. He died as a forty-year-old, and Allah resurrected him at the same age on the day of his death."