16وَاذكُر فِي الكِتابِ مَريَمَ إِذِ انتَبَذَت مِن أَهلِها مَكانًا شَرقِيًّاMuhammad AsadAND CALL to mind, through this divine writ,1 Mary. Lo! She withdrew from her family to an eastern placeLit., "in the divine writ". In this surah as well as in Al 'Imran the story of the birth of John is followed by that of Jesus - firstly, because John (called "the Baptist" in the Bible) was to be a precursor of Jesus, and, secondly, because of the obvious parallelism in the form of the announcements of these two births.