Fir'awn

Fir'awn — Pharaoh — is the Quran's primary case study in political tyranny taken to its theological extreme: a ruler who not only oppressed his people but declared 'I am your lord, most high.' Ibn Kathir presents Pharaoh as a figure who began with ordinary political ambition and, unchecked by any inner restraint or external opposition, escalated to divine claims that the Quran treats as the ultimate human arrogance. His drowning in the Red Sea while pursuing the freed Israelites — crying out at the last moment 'I believe that there is no god but the One in whom the Children of Israel believe' — is accepted by some scholars as a deathbed repentance that came too late, a faith adopted at the moment of death that the moment of death does not accept.

As understood in the classical tradition of Ibn Kathir and the scholars of his school.