Qala fa-inna qad fatanna qawmaka min baAAdika waadallahumu assamiriy (surah TaHa: 85)

Tafseer Tafheem-ul-Quran by Syed Abu-al-A'la Maududi

(20:85) He said, "Well, listen! We put your people to a trial after you and the Samiri *63 has misled them. "

Qaala fa innaa qad fatannaa qawmaka mim ba`dika wa adallahumus Saamiriyy

*63) It is obvious from the last letter `ya' that Samiri was not the proper name of the person, for this Arabic letter is always added to show a person's connection with his race or clan or place. Moreover, the prefix `al' (definite article 'the') in the original Arabic text clearly denotes that the Samiri was a particular man from among many other persons of the same race or clan or place, who had propagated (he worship of the golden calf. In fact, this does not require any further explanation than this, but this has been necessitated because many Christian missionaries and the Western Orientalists have tried to criticise the Holy Prophet and the Qur'an on this account. They say, (God forbid,) "This is a proof of the grievous ignorance of history on the part of Muhammad, the author of the Qur'an, and is one of the anachronisms of the Qur'an." They base this absurd criticism on the assumption that this Samiri was the inhabitant of Samaria, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Israel, which was built in 925 B.C. long after this happening; then centuries after this, a generation of the Samaritans came into existence as a result of inter-marriage between the Israelites and the non-Israelites. As the Samaritans worshipped the golden calf, the critics accuse the Holy Prophet of inventing this story on the basis of mere hearsay. They say that the Holy Prophet might have heard something like this from the neighbouring Jews and inserted it in the Qur'an. This is not all. They also criticise that Haman who was a courtier of Cyrus has been mentioned in the Qur'an as a minister of Pharaoh. It is a pity that these so-called scholars seem to think that in the ancient times there used to be only one person bearing one name in a clan or a place, and there was absolutely no possibility of another person or persons having the same name. They do not know, or pretend they do not know, that during the time of Prophet Abraham, a famous people known as the Sumerians inhabited 'Iraq and the neighbouring regions, and it is just possible that during the time of Prophet Moses there were some people known as the Samiris who might have migrated to Egypt from 'Iraq. Besides this, according to the Bible (1 Kings, 16: 24), Samaria itself was built on a hill which was bought from Shemer and named Samaria after him. This is a clear proof that there were people named Shemer (or Sumer) even before Samaria came into existence and it is also just possible that some clans might have been called "Samiri"