130يا أَيُّهَا الَّذينَ آمَنوا لا تَأكُلُوا الرِّبا أَضعافًا مُضاعَفَةً ۖ وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُم تُفلِحونَMuhammad AsadO YOU who have attained to faith! Do not gorge yourselves on usury, doubling and re-doubling it1 - but remain conscious of God, so that you might attain to a happy state;For a definition of riba ("usury"), see note 35 on 30: 39, the earliest Qur'anic reference to this term. As for the connection of the above verse with the subject-matter dealt with in the foregoing, the best explanation is, to my mind, the one offered by Qiffal (as quoted by Razi): Since it was mainly through usurious gains that the pagan Meccans had acquired the wealth which enabled them to equip their powerful army and almost to defeat the poorly-armed Muslims at Uhud, the latter might have been tempted to emulate their enemies in this respect; and it was to remove this temptation - from them as well as from later generations of believers - that the prohibition of usury was once again stressed through revelation.