al-Aḥzāb 33:28-29

Yā ayyuha'l-nabiyyu qul li-azwājika in kuntunna turidna'l-ḥayāta'l-dunyā wa zīnatahā fa-taʿālayna umattiʿkunna wa usarriḥkunna sarāḥan jamīlā · Wa in kuntunna turidna'llāha wa rasūlahu wa'l-dāra'l-ākhirata fa-inna'llāha aʿadda li'l-muḥsināti minkunna ajran ʿaẓīmā

"O Prophet! Say to your wives: If you desire the life of this world and its adornment, then come, I will give you a provision and release you in a fair release. · But if you desire God, His Messenger and the abode of the hereafter, then know that God has prepared a great reward for those among you who do good."

The siege is over; the sūra enters the house. And the entry is made with the sūra's second address yā ayyuha'l-nabiyy.

And the first thing the block does is to offer a choice. This is worth recording: in entering the house the sūra begins not with a command but with a question.

The verse addresses the Prophet and asks him to say it to his wives. That is, the address has two layers.

And this layering will disappear in the verses that follow: in the thirtieth and thirty-first the speech continues in the third person, and from the thirty-second onwards directly in the second person feminine plural (kunna, not kum). That is, the sūra begins with an intermediary and passes to direct address.

I record this as a datum of the text.

The structure of the verses is an exact symmetry:

There are two points of word order.

One. The answer to the first condition is a command, the answer to the second a statement. In the first it is said "come, let me do such-and-such" — a procedure is described. In the second there is no procedure; what has been prepared is simply announced.

And this difference is meaningful: the first road requires a decision and that decision has a procedure. The second road is not a decision but a continuation. There is nothing new to be done.

Two. The second condition has three elements, the first two. And the third element (al-dāru'l-ākhira — the abode of the hereafter) is the counterpart of al-dunyā in the first condition. That is, the list has been deliberately kept longer: on the other side there are both counterparts and more.

I record these two points as my own reading.

دُنْيَا — root د-ن-و. To be near. Dunyā is the feminine of the elative: "the nearest". It was treated at al-Layl and elsewhere.

The word itself carries no verdict: dunyā does not mean "bad"; it means "near". And ākhira, opposite it, means "later". Both are words of time.

زِينَة — root ز-ي-ن. Adornment. And this semantic field will meet us once more in the thirty-third verse, in tabarruj — a different root, but the same field.

And the addition of the word zīna is worth noting: the verse is not content with "the life of this world", it adds "and its adornment". That is, what is meant is not staying alive; it is the surplus of life.

Root: ع-ل-و. To be high. Taʿāla — originally "come up"; in Arabic it has become a common verb of calling.

That the word comes in the feminine plural imperative (taʿālayna) shows the directness of the address.

Root: م-ت-ع. It occurred in the sixteenth verse: to derive benefit temporarily.

Here the word comes close to a legal term: mutʿa, a provision given to a woman in the case of divorce. The Qurʾān mentions it in other places too (al-Baqara 2/236, 2/241; al-Aḥzāb 33/49).

I do not enter into legal detail; the schools have adopted different rulings on the amount and the obligatoriness of this provision, and that is not the subject of this commentary.

سَرَّحَ — root س-ر-ح. And the concrete sense of the root must be dwelt on: saraḥa'l-māshiya — he let the animals out to pasture. Sarḥ — the herd that goes out to pasture in the morning.

That is, the picture in the word is a setting free — untying the tether and letting out to pasture.

This construction (sarāḥan jamīlā) was recorded at al-Muzzammil, and al-Aḥzāb 33/28 and 33/49 were given there as examples. I rely on that treatment.

جَمِيل — root ج-م-ل. Beautiful. And the root has a striking side: jamal — a camel; jumla — a total. The lexicographers explain jamāl as "the harmony of the whole of a thing".

The construction occurs three times in the Qurʾān, and in all three it qualifies a hard situation:

And in all three the adjective jamīl states how a thing is to be done — not what is to be done.

This is a measure worth recording, and I give it as my own reading: separation is a possibility the verse envisages and it is not forbidden. What is regulated is not the separation itself but its form. The ending of a relationship and its ending badly are different things; the verse removes the second.

A note is needed.

What the verse says: a choice has been offered and both roads are open. For the one who chooses the first road a procedure has been laid down (a provision + a fair release); for the one who chooses the second, a recompense has been announced.

What the verse does not say: what answer the wives gave to this offer. The Qurʾān does not write it.

In the classical sources it is transmitted that all of them chose the second road, and this is given with the note "it is transmitted". The text itself does not contain the answer, and this is not a deficiency: the continuation of the sūra (30-34) is in any case addressed to those who have chosen the second road. The answer is understood from the way the text goes on.

I record this as a datum of the text.

One. Setting the choice out openly.

What the verse does is to make the terms of a relationship explicit. And it is striking that the party making the offer is the party that wishes to continue the relationship.

Its present-day form is this: laying expectations out openly in a relationship does not weaken the relationship. An expectation not laid out openly turns, when it is not met, into a disappointment; an expectation laid out openly turns into a decision.

Two. The form of the separation is regulated.

Sarāḥan jamīlā is perhaps one of the constructions in this sūra that looks most directly at the present. The ending of a relationship may be unavoidable; the manner of the ending is always a choice.

And the picture in the root of the word supports this: sarḥ is letting an animal out to pasture — that is, the one who is released has an open space before him. The word conveys not abandoning but setting free.