4. Sūrat al-Nisāʾ

176 verses. Medinan. It takes its name from the density of rulings concerning women within it: ٱلنِّسَآء (al-nisāʾ) — "women".

This is the second-longest sūra in the Qurʾān and the most extensive legislative text after al-Baqara. It contains the shares of inheritance, the prohibitions of marriage, the settlement of disputes within the family, the protection of the orphan's property, the degrees of homicide, the performance of prayer in a state of war, migration, testimony and the order of the state. Nearly every question a community meets while building its own internal law appears here at least once.

But to read the sūra as a list of topics is to fail to understand it. The reading followed in this commentary is the following, and I record it as my own reading: Sūrat al-Nisāʾ is built from beginning to end on the right of the one who has no protection.

The people who enter the sūra's field of concern are these:

• Orphans — children whose property is held by another and who have no voice (2-10, 127).
• Women — the party whose bridal gift is taken from her, who is counted as inheritance instead of inheriting, and who is pressed when she is not wanted (4, 19-21, 32, 34-35, 127-130).
• Those with a share in an estate — those left without their share being reckoned (7-12, 176).
• Slaves and those under one's hand — placed last in the list of verse 36, but placed in the list (25, 36, 92).
• Those left behind in war — al-mustaḍʿafīna mina'l-rijāli wa'l-nisāʾi wa'l-wildān (75, 98, 127).
• The stranded traveller, the neighbour, the companion — those who fall outside the tie of kinship (36).

And this thread is tied in the sūra's very first verse. The first verse names humankind as created from a single soul, and then ends thus:

وَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ ٱلَّذِى تَسَآءَلُونَ بِهِۦ وَٱلْأَرْحَامَ — "Be mindful of God, in whose name you make requests of one another; and of the tie of kinship." (4/1)

The tie of kinship is set beside mindfulness of God. The rest of the sūra tells where that tie breaks and how it is to be held: in the division of an estate, in the orphan's property, at the moment of divorce, in the sending of arbitrators, in the sharing out after a battle.

I shall follow this tie through every block.

نِسَاء — the word has no singular; it is counted as the plural, from a different root, of imraʾa (woman). The lexicographers connect the word with the roots ن-س-و / ن-س-ي but do not agree on any settled derivation; nothing definite is said in this commentary about the origin of the word.

It must not be forgotten that the name was given later. Sūra names are not a claim of the text itself but a choice of the tradition. But the ground for choosing this name is in the text: the word occurs dozens of times in the sūra, it is the subject of a ruling in the third verse, it is one half of a balance of word order in the thirty-second, and it is the subject of a question in the hundred and twenty-seventh.

One other sūra in the Qurʾān is popularly called "the lesser al-Nisāʾ" (Sūrat al-Ṭalāq); this naming too comes from the tradition, not from the text itself.

One record is necessary: although the name of the sūra is "women", the sūra is not a "women's chapter". The verses concerning women are placed inside the discussion of the orphan's property and of inheritance — and this placement will be shown in detail below in the treatment of 4/2-3. What the sūra is concerned with is not a sex but the person whose right is in someone else's hands.

There is no disagreement that the sūra came down in the Medinan period, and the text itself supports this:

• There are enforceable rulings such as the shares of inheritance, the prohibitions of marriage and the degrees of penalty (11-12, 23, 92, 176).
• An arrangement for sending arbitrators is provided for (35): there is a mechanism that will decide and a community that will abide by it.
• There is a state of war and an order for prayer within war (101-104).
• Migration is named as something that has happened and is happening (89, 97-100).
• A group that presents itself as Muslim while looking elsewhere is described in detail (60-63, 88-91, 138-145): this is meaningful only within a settled and strong community.
• Reference is made to a judicial episode (105-113) and to a dispute after a battle (94).

It cannot be said that the whole of the sūra came down at one time. It is transmitted in the sources that the verses of inheritance belong to the aftermath of a battle and that some sections belong to later years; there is disagreement in the details, and datings I cannot give with certainty are not given in this commentary. What can be said is this: the sūra is the text of the period in which an established community was writing its own internal law.

For many verses of this sūra the sources transmit detailed accounts of events: the widows and orphans left after a battle, a woman whose property was taken from her, an accusation of theft, a tribal dispute.

In this commentary those accounts are related in the language of "it is transmitted" and without naming persons. The reason is the rule of accuracy in the method (Method): to attach an event to particular people requires being sure of one's source. I write down no chain of attribution I am not sure of. And the frame needed to understand a verse is most often already in the verse's own wording.

The sūra is a long text in which the subjects run into one another; the boundaries of the blocks are not firm lines but centres of gravity. The table below shows this and is my own reading; its ground is the shifts of address, the recurring words and the transitions of subject.

The most striking side of the structure is that the sūra's closing section opens with a fatwā and closes with a fatwā. The hundred and twenty-seventh verse begins wa yastaftūnaka fi'l-nisāʾ (they ask you for a ruling concerning women) and names the orphan girls; the hundred and seventy-sixth begins yastaftūnaka and gives the ruling on kalāla. Both questions concern inheritance and the sharing of rights; both tie back to the first block of the sūra.

I record this as my own reading; the places of the verses and the words stand in the text.

This section attempts to read the whole of the sūra from a single frame. This is a reading, not a transmitted report; its ground is the verses in the table below themselves.

What all eight rows have in common is this: the person whose right is in someone else's hands.

In laying down a ruling the sūra uses one pattern again and again: it gives the command, then closes with a verse-ending that recalls who it is that gives the command.

Most of these verse-endings carry a verb of seeing, hearing, reckoning or watching: raqīb, ḥasīb, shahīd, samīʿ, baṣīr, khabīr.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the list above: the sūra sets a witness beside the person whose right is unprotected. The orphan, the woman, the slave, the traveller has no advocate; each time, the verse names in their place one who watches.

The sūra opens with the word al-arḥām (the ties of kinship) (1) and closes with the discussion of kalāla — the estate of a person who leaves neither child nor father (176).

This is a datum that can be verified from the text. And it yields the following observation, which I record as my own reading: the sūra begins from the widest form of the tie (all humankind from a single soul) and ends at its most attenuated form (a person who leaves behind neither child nor father). At both ends the question is the same: when the tie breaks, how is the right to be protected?

Sūrat al-Nisāʾ is the sūra in which this commentary's rules of style must be observed most closely. So I set down at the outset what is not done.

One. No legal ruling is issued. From this sūra arose the widest discussions of classical jurisprudence: the reckoning of inheritance, marriage, divorce, penalties, the law of war. In this section the disagreements within those discussions are related in the language of "it is transmitted" and in the form of tables; none of them is preferred and none of them is binding. To decide how a ruling is to be applied in practice is not the business of this text; that business belongs to the literature of jurisprudence, which has the competence for it.

Two. The reckoning of inheritance is not entered into. In the eleventh, twelfth and hundred and seventy-sixth verses the shares given by the verse's own wording are set out in a table. What is to be done when the shares add up to more or to less than the whole (ʿawliyya, raddiyya), which heir is excluded in which case, and the differences among the schools of law are not the subject of this text.

Three. No side is taken on the thirty-fourth verse. The readings of this verse in the classical commentaries are given as a table of the disagreement, with their grounds. No preference is imposed, no legal ruling is issued, and no current debate or politics is entered into. And the verse is treated together with the thirty-fifth, from which it cannot be separated.

Four. No demeaning language about women is used. This is a record that holds from the first verse onward: no ranking of worth is built upon the expressions min nafsin wāḥida and wa khalaqa minhā zawjahā.

Five. Current politics is not entered into. This record holds especially in the treatment of the fifty-ninth verse (ulu'l-amr) and the seventy-fifth (the mustaḍʿafūn). Today's debates about whom the verse fits are not the subject of this text.

Six. No sweeping ruling is made about any group. The verses between the hundred and fifty-third and the hundred and seventy-third touch on the history of a community and on a claim. What is at issue are attributes and claims; whoever bears the attribute is included in it. No general ruling is made about any religious, ethnic or national group.

Seven. The reader is not scolded. The subjects of this sūra — the quarrel over an inheritance, discord within the family, duplicity — are the subjects that have produced the most scolding in the language of preaching. This section does not do that.

Eight. No fabricated report is used. No statement I am not sure of is ascribed to an exegete, to a hadith or to a source.

The word-by-word analysis of the basmala was made in the section on al-Fātiḥa; I do not repeat it here. The numbering of the verses has been counted without the basmala.

One point particular to this sūra can be recorded: the first verse of a text that opens with the names al-Raḥmān and al-Raḥīm names the tie of kinship (al-arḥām). The words Raḥmān, Raḥīm and raḥim (womb, kinship) are from the same root: ر-ح-م. The analyses of this root in this commentary were made in al-Fātiḥa and al-Rūm; I rely on those treatments.

I record this as an observation about a word: the two divine names at the head of the sūra and the closing command of the first verse come from the same root. This is not a claim resting on numbers or letters; the root of the words stands in the dictionary.

Yā ayyuha'l-nāsu'ttaqū rabbakumu'lladhī khalaqakum min nafsin wāḥidatin wa khalaqa minhā zawjahā wa bassa minhumā rijālan kathīran wa nisāʾā, wa'ttaqu'llāha'lladhī tasāʾalūna bihī wa'l-arḥām, inna'llāha kāna ʿalaykum raqībā

"O mankind! Be mindful of your Lord, who created you from a single soul, and created from it its mate, and spread from the two of them many men and women. Be mindful of God, in whose name you make requests of one another, and of the ties of kinship. Surely God is a watcher over you."

Two expressions in this verse — min nafsin wāḥida and wa khalaqa minhā zawjahā — have been much debated in the history of exegesis, and that debate has from time to time been made material for readings that pass judgement on the worth of women.

What will be done in this section is this: the classical explanations will be given as a table of the disagreement, with their grounds; none of them will be preferred; and no ranking of worth between the sexes will be built upon any reading. Whatever the verse's own wording says, with that we shall be content.

The sūra is Medinan, yet its opening address is not yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū but yā ayyuha'l-nās: "O mankind".

This is a choice worth recording. Most Medinan sūras address those who believe; and the party addressed by a text that lays down rulings is naturally the community that will apply them. Al-Nisāʾ, though it is the most densely legislative sūra of all, opens by addressing the whole of humankind.

And the address does not stand alone in the sūra: the call yā ayyuha'l-nās comes twice more towards the end of the sūra (170, 174), and in the hundred and thirty-third verse it occurs as ayyuha'l-nās, without the vocative particle.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the position of these four places: the sūra opens by addressing humankind and approaches its close by addressing humankind; in between, the internal law of one community is being written. That is, the rulings are set inside the frame of humankind.

The analysis of the root ت-ق-ي / و-ق-ي was made at al-Baqara 2/2: the concrete sense of the root is to guard something from what would harm it, to put a shield in between. I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it here.

What must be recorded is which name is used: rabbakum. It does not say "be mindful of God" — it says "of your Lord". The root ر-ب-ب: the one who nurtures, who brings up, who owns. And immediately afterwards the creating is recounted.

The order of the sentence is therefore this: be mindful → because He is the one who brought you up → because He is the one who brought you into being from a single origin. The ground of the command comes after the command.

نَفْس — root ن-ف-س. The concrete sense of the root is to breathe, breath. Nafas — breath; nafīs — precious (reckoned equal to life); tanāfus — to vie with one another; nifās — the state that follows childbirth. The root was treated from various sides in al-Nūr, al-Takwīr and al-Muṭaffifīn.

The word's range of use in the Qurʾān is wide: life, person, the human being himself, selfhood. Here it means "one person, one being".

In Arabic the word نَفْس is feminine.

This is a fact of grammar, not an interpretation. Its consequence is this:

These three items show the ground on which the debate is being conducted. The wording of the verse does not say "the male was created first, then the female"; what says this, or does not say it, is the interpretation of what the word nafs answers to.

The sense of the root ز-و-ج must also be recorded: zawj is not "spouse" on its own but each single member of a pair. One shoe of a pair is a zawj too. The word therefore states the pairing; it does not subordinate either party to the other. The Qurʾān uses the word for plants and for the whole of creation as well (wa min kulli shayʾin khalaqnā zawjayn — al-Dhāriyāt 51/49; treated in al-Dhāriyāt).

The following are the principal readings transmitted in the classical commentaries concerning these two expressions. The table is neutral; no preference is imposed and none of them is binding.

All three readings are found in the classical literature, and I make no firm choice among them. The reason is the rule on disagreement in the method (Method): the disagreement is not concealed, no preference is imposed.

But there are three things that do not enter the table, that can be read directly from the wording of the verse, and that are not in dispute:

One. The verse says that both parties were created by the same verb: khalaqa… and khalaqa… — the verb is repeated, it does not change.

Two. Increase is attached to the two of them together: wa bassa minhumā — "from the two of them". Not the singular, but the dual.

Three. The outcome is given in two words: rijālan kathīran wa nisāʾan — men and women. The verse counts them both.

No ranking of superiority follows from these three data. And none is drawn in this commentary.

Root ب-ث-ث: to spread, to disperse, to scatter. The root was treated at al-Jāthiya 45/4 (wa mā yabuththu min dābba); the record made there was the following, and it sits directly here:

"بَثّ — root ب-ث-ث: to spread, to disperse, to scatter. The lexicographers record for the root the picture of 'strewing something about'… the verse does not classify living creatures, it makes their being spread abroad the proof. What is named is not diversity but distribution."

And the same observation holds here. The verse is not classifying the human species; it is recounting its dispersal. The word draws the picture of a scattering outward from a centre.

And a second use of the root must be recorded: from the same root comes the word بَثّ, in the sense of "grief that cannot be held in, that overflows" (Yūsuf 12/86: innamā ashkū baththī wa ḥuznī ila'llāh). The root thus names both the multitude that spreads outward and the grief that will not fit inside and spills over. I record this as an observation about the root; I build no interpretation of the verse upon it.

The adjective kathīran (many) comes after the word rijāl; no further adjective is repeated after the word nisāʾ.

This is an ordinary situation in Arabic grammar: a single adjective can refer back to two nouns joined by a conjunction. In the classical commentaries it is explained thus: kathīran qualifies both nouns, and there is no need to repeat it.

I give this as a grammatical record and draw from it no sense of superiority or of deficiency. The sentence of the verse states that the number is great; it does not state which of the two is the greater.

The verse gives the command to mindfulness twice. In the first the name is rabbakum, in the second Allāh.

تَسَآءَلُونَ — root س-أ-ل, Form VI (tafāʿul): reciprocity. That is, "you ask of one another, you make requests of one another".

And bihī — "by Him, in His name". The expression records a habit of language: when people ask something of one another they put the name of God in between — "for God's sake", "in God's name". This is a formula that lives in Arabic and in English alike.

What the verse does is worth recording: it takes the most frequently used, most worn-down religious expression and makes it the object of mindfulness. What is asked is wariness before the Being whose name circulates on the tongue.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the verb tasāʾalūna bihī itself.

رَحِم — root ر-ح-م. The concrete sense of the word is the womb. And the words raḥma, Raḥmān and Raḥīm are from the same root.

The lexicographers dwell on this feature of the root: the name of the feeling of mercy comes from the same root as the name of the organ that gives birth. I record this as an observation about the root.

Al-arḥām here is plural and means, figuratively, the ties of kinship: the bond that arises from having come from the same womb.

There is a difference worth recording in the reading of this word, and the difference affects the meaning. I give no imam's name, because I cannot give it with certainty.

Both readings are recorded in the classical literature of variant readings. I make no choice between them.

And the two readings arrive at the same place by different routes: in the first, the tie of kinship enters the object of mindfulness as something that must be protected; in the second it is named as a ground people invoke when they ask something of one another. In both cases the weight of the tie is recorded.

This is the most striking move of the verse: ittaqu'llāha … wa'l-arḥām.

On the first reading, two things to be mindful of come side by side: God and the tie of kinship. This is not a common word order in the Qurʾān.

And this is the place that explains the whole of the sūra. I record it as my own reading; its ground is the rest of the sūra:

• The verses of inheritance (11-12, 176) turn the tie of kinship into a share.
• The verses on the orphan's property (2-10) turn the tie of kinship into a trust.
• The verse on conflict within the family (35) asks for the arbitrators to be drawn from the families of both parties: ḥakaman min ahlihī wa ḥakaman min ahlihā.
• The thirty-sixth verse names the kinsman in its list of kindness immediately after the parents.
• The hundred and thirty-fifth verse, by contrast, sets a limit in the opposite direction: justice may not be bent in a relative's favour (awi'l-wālidayni wa'l-aqrabīn).

So the sūra both raises the tie of kinship and limits it. The tie is a source of right; but it is not a ground for favour. Read together, the first verse and the hundred and thirty-fifth make this balance visible.

رَقِيب — root ر-ق-ب. The concrete sense of the root is striking: رَقَبَة (raqaba) — the neck. And the verb raqaba: to watch by craning the neck, to look out from a high place.

Marqab — a lookout post. Irtiqāb — to wait and watch. And in the Qurʾān فَكُّ رَقَبَةٍ (the loosing of a neck — the freeing of a slave; al-Balad 90/13, treated in al-Balad) is from the same root.

So the picture carried by the word raqīb is this: one who cranes his neck and looks, who does not take his eyes off.

And the placing of the word here must be recorded. The sūra is about to begin regulating people whose right is in someone else's hands. The last word of the first verse sets a watcher beside those people.

And the verb comes with kāna: kāna ʿalaykum raqībā. In Arabic the pattern kāna + noun states not a passing but a continuing state. This pattern recurs very often in the verse-endings of this sūra — kāna ʿalaykum raqībā, kāna ḥūban kabīrā, kāna samīʿan baṣīrā, kāna ʿalīman ḥakīmā. This is the sound-weave of the sūra, and each instance will be named below in its place.

One. The verse opens a sūra of law with a family tree. Before all the quarrels over division, the lawsuits over inheritance and the disputes over rights, it sets down the information that the parties come from the same root. The section of rulings begins by announcing that the parties are not strangers to one another.

Two. The record tasāʾalūna bihī touches something still alive today: the wearing-down of a name through constant use. The verse takes that name back and makes it the object of mindfulness.

Three. The placing of al-arḥām beside mindfulness of God lifts kinship out of being a matter of feeling and carries it into the field of responsibility. A tie exists not to the degree that it is felt but to the degree that it is kept.

And a limit: it does not follow from this that "a relative is to be favoured in every case". The same sūra says exactly the opposite in the hundred and thirty-fifth verse. To keep a tie and to show favour through a tie are two different things in this sūra.

Wa ātu'l-yatāmā amwālahum wa lā tatabaddalu'l-khabītha bi'l-ṭayyib, wa lā taʾkulū amwālahum ilā amwālikum, innahū kāna ḥūban kabīrā

"Give the orphans their property. Do not exchange what is good for what is foul. Do not consume their property by adding it to your own. This is a great sin."

The first verse recounted humankind as coming from a single root and set the tie of kinship beside mindfulness of God. The second verse begins from the place where that tie breaks most easily: the property of a child who has lost his father.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the order of the two verses. Whether a tie really exists shows itself where the other party cannot defend himself. The sūra enters at exactly that point.

The root's original sense: to be left alone, to be separated from one's like.

A usage the lexicographers record is worth noting: دُرَّة يَتِيمَة (durra yatīma) — "an orphan pearl", that is, a pearl with no match, standing alone. When the word is used of a human being it means a small child who has lost his father.

The root was treated in al-Ḍuḥā (93/6 — a-lam yajidka yatīman fa-āwā); I rely on that treatment.

And the picture the word carries explains the subject of the verse: the orphan is the person with no one standing behind him. His property is in his hands, but he has not the strength to protect it.

The verb is an imperative, and its object is stated at the outset: amwālahum — "their property".

A detail of the word order must be recorded: the verse does not say "give property to the orphans"; it says "give the orphans their own property". The pronoun belongs to them. What is at issue, then, is not a gift but a restitution.

The root ب-د-ل: to put something in the place of another. Form V (tafaʿʿul) here states a deliberate and gradual operation.

In the classical commentaries the following is widely transmitted as the concrete referent of this sentence: that the guardian would take what was good in the orphan's property and put in its place what was bad in his own — like taking the fat sheep of the flock and leaving the lean one. I relate this explanation in the language of "it is transmitted".

And the choice of the pair khabīth / ṭayyib must be recorded. Both words are used in the Qurʾān in a material and in a moral sense alike: ṭayyib — clean, pleasant, lawful; khabīth — foul, corrupt, forbidden. The sentence therefore names a transaction of property in the language of morals.

I record this as an observation about a word: the exchange looks equal; the naming is not.

The verse does not say maʿa (together with), it says ilā (towards, adding to).

In the classical commentaries the following sense is drawn from this preposition, and I relate it as it is transmitted: to consume the orphan's property by adding it to one's own, so that it can no longer be told apart. The matter, then, is not only the consuming but the mixing itself — what can be called to account so long as it stands apart becomes invisible once it is merged.

And this record must be read together with the measure given in al-Baqara. At al-Baqara 2/220 the balance between keeping the orphan's property separate and mixing it was treated, and what was recorded there was: fa-ikhwānukum — "they are your brothers", but wa'llāhu yaʿlamu'l-mufsida mina'l-muṣliḥ — the one who corrupts is told apart from the one who sets right. I rely on that treatment.

Read together, the two verses give this measure, and I record it as an observation: to live in common is free; to keep a common account is not.

حُوب — root ح-و-ب. The lexicographers explain the word as sin, guilt, grave offence. The root's sense of "need, distress" is also recorded.

The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān. Other words for sin are used in the sūra (ithm, sayyiʾa, dhanb); here a word that occurs only once is chosen.

I record this as an observation and draw no firm conclusion from it: it can be said that the choice of word carries an emphasis, but how much of that is meaning and how much the harmony of the verse-ending cannot be determined.

And the pattern of the verse-ending is again formed with kāna: innahū kāna ḥūban kabīrā. The same structure as kāna ʿalaykum raqībā in the first verse.

Wa in khiftum allā tuqsiṭū fi'l-yatāmā fa'nkiḥū mā ṭāba lakum mina'l-nisāʾi mathnā wa thulātha wa rubāʿ, fa-in khiftum allā taʿdilū fa-wāḥidatan aw mā malakat aymānukum, dhālika adnā allā taʿūlū

"If you fear that you cannot act with fairness towards the orphans, then marry of the women lawful to you two by two, three by three, four by four. If you fear that you cannot deal equitably, then one; or what your right hands possess. That is nearer to your not falling into injustice / into a burden."

This verse is one of the most debated places in the Qurʾān and one of the most often torn from its context.

What will be done in this section is this: 1. That the verse comes in the context of orphans will be shown from the text's own wording. 2. The condition fa-in khiftum allā taʿdilū fa-wāḥida will be brought to the fore. 3. The verse will be read together with 4/129, and the two verses will be compared in a table. 4. The differing readings of the classical commentaries and of the schools of law will be related in the language of "it is transmitted".

And these will not be done: no preference will be imposed, no legal ruling will be issued, no current debate will be entered into, the reader will not be scolded, and no demeaning language about women will be used.

The verse does not begin with a command. It begins with a conditional clause:

وَإِنْ خِفْتُمْ أَلَّا تُقْسِطُوا۟ فِى ٱلْيَتَٰمَىٰ — "If you fear that you cannot act with fairness towards the orphans…"

So the subject of the condition standing before the command (fa'nkiḥū) is orphans. This is not a point open to interpretation; it is the wording of the sentence.

And the verse's position says the same thing: the second verse was about the orphan's property, and the sixth verse will again be about the orphan's property. The third verse stands between the two.

Four of these five verses concern the trusteeship of property directly. The third verse stands in the middle of this cluster, and that is a countable fact.

The condition concerns orphans, the answer concerns marriage. What the link between the two is has been one of the most debated questions in the classical commentaries.

The table below shows the main explanations transmitted in the classical sources. None of them is preferred and none is binding.

The four explanations do not wholly exclude one another. A and D are readings that support one another; B rests on the repetition in the wording of the sentence.

I make no choice. The one certain thing is that the subject of the conditional clause is orphans.

These three words are in a special Arabic pattern called maʿdūl, and their meaning is not "two, three, four" but "two by two, three by three, four by four".

The pattern carries two pieces of information, and both are grammar, not interpretation:

One. The pattern of repetition/distribution shows that the address is not to one person but to a community. It means "each of you two by two, three by three, four by four" — distribution, not addition.

Two. The same pattern occurs in one other place in the Qurʾān: al-Fāṭir 35/1 — of the wings of the angels, mathnā wa thulātha wa rubāʿ. That verse was treated in Fāṭir. The pattern therefore states not the number itself but the distribution.

And the particle itself must be recorded: between the words stands wa (the conjunction), not aw (or). In classical grammar it is said that this wa states an alternative here; this is a point the grammarians dwell on, and it has not been brought to a firm conclusion.

The second half of the verse sets a condition upon the first half, and this condition must be brought to the fore:

فَإِنْ خِفْتُمْ أَلَّا تَعْدِلُوا۟ فَوَٰحِدَةً — "If you fear that you cannot deal equitably, then one."

The structure of the sentence deserves attention:

The verse's own logic is this, and it is read off the wording of the sentence: the permission has been tied to a condition, the measure of the condition has been lowered to the level of fear, and the place to be reached when the condition holds is stated in a single word.

Two different roots are used in the verse, and this must be recorded.

And the placing of the two roots is worth recording: the root that concerns the share is used for the orphans, the root that concerns equivalence for marriage.

I record this as an observation about word order; I draw no ruling from it.

The root ق-س-ط was treated at al-Ḥujurāt 49/9 and at al-Raḥmān 55/9; I rely on those treatments. The root will return once more in this sūra, in the hundred and thirty-fifth verse, this time in the context of testimony: kūnū qawwāmīna bi'l-qisṭ.

تَعُولُوا۟ — root ع-و-ل. And there is a classical disagreement over the meaning of the word.

Both are found among the lexicographers. I do not impose a preference.

And neither reading changes the outcome of the verse: in the one it says "not to fall into injustice", in the other "not to take on a burden you cannot carry". In both cases the function of the sentence is limitation.

The sūra returns to the same subject in the hundred and twenty-ninth verse, and there it says something else:

وَلَن تَسْتَطِيعُوٓا۟ أَن تَعْدِلُوا۟ بَيْنَ ٱلنِّسَآءِ وَلَوْ حَرَصْتُمْ فَلَا تَمِيلُوا۟ كُلَّ ٱلْمَيْلِ فَتَذَرُوهَا كَٱلْمُعَلَّقَةِ "You will never be able to deal equitably among women, however much you desire it. So do not incline wholly to one side and leave the other as though suspended." (4/129)

I set the two verses side by side. The table compares the wording of the two verses; it establishes no ruling.

What follows from the wording of the two verses and is not in dispute is this: the first verse sets justice as a condition; the second states that this condition cannot be fulfilled completely.

On how these two verses are to be reconciled, different tendencies are transmitted in the classical commentaries:

I prefer none of these three tendencies, and none of them is binding. All three have been defended in the classical literature, and the rulings drawn from these verses differ among the schools of law.

One thing I record separately, because it is a datum of the text: the continuation of 4/129 runs wa in tuṣliḥū wa tattaqū fa-inna'llāha kāna Ghafūran Raḥīmā, and in 4/128 it says wa'l-ṣulḥu khayr (settlement is better). That is, the sūra closes this discussion not with a sanction but with a call to setting right. The same thing will happen in the thirty-fifth verse.

The table below shows the principal divergences that arose from this verse in classical jurisprudence. None of them is this text's preference, none of them is binding, and within each school there are differences of view as well.

This table is not a fatwā and cannot be read as a guide to practice. The reason it is placed here is the rule on disagreement in the method (Method): the disagreement is not concealed, no preference is imposed.

And current debates are not entered into. How this verse is understood today, how it is regulated in this or that country, and the social debates around it are not the subject of this text.

I record this as an observation about word order, and its ground is the wording of the verse. In giving the permission, the verse narrows it three times:

So the sentence structure of the verse produces more restriction than permission. This is a countable fact: the sentence contains one command, two conditions and one ground.

It is possible to write the bearing of this verse on the present without entering current debates and without scolding the reader; what is treated is the measure the verse itself establishes.

One. The threshold drawn back to fear. The verse does not say "if you commit injustice", it says "if you fear you will commit injustice". This is a rare threshold in law: not the act but the anxiety about the act is made the measure. The decision whether one can carry an obligation is left to the person's own foresight.

Two. Responsibility tied to number. The logic of the verse is this: as the number of relationships undertaken rises, the share of justice falling to each one falls. This logic works independently of marriage too — a child cared for, a job taken on, a promise given. When capacity is exceeded, the party beyond the limit is the one who suffers.

Three. And a limit. No general conclusion such as "a person sets his own measure" follows from this verse; the verse speaks within a particular field of ruling. And no judgement about the morals of a person or a society today can be built from here.

Wa ātu'l-nisāʾa ṣaduqātihinna niḥla, fa-in ṭibna lakum ʿan shayʾin minhu nafsan fa-kulūhu hanīʾan marīʾā

"Give the women their bridal gifts with a glad heart. If of their own accord they leave you some part of it, then eat it with pleasure and ease."

The second verse began wa ātu'l-yatāmā amwālahum. The fourth verse begins wa ātu'l-nisāʾa ṣaduqātihinna.

The same verb, the same pattern, two verses apart, for two different parties addressed. This is a countable fact.

And in both sentences the object is named as belonging to the recipient: amwālahum (their property) / ṣaduqātihinna (their bridal gifts). In both, the pronoun is on the receiving side.

I record this as my own reading: the sūra gives back with the same verb what can be taken from the hands of two different groups, and it names both acts as a restitution.

The word the Qurʾān uses for the bridal gift comes from the root of truthfulness.

ص-د-ق: ṣidq — truthfulness; ṣādiq — truthful; ṣadaqa — a gift given; taṣdīq — confirming as true. The root was treated in al-Ḥujurāt and in al-Baqara.

And the explanation the lexicographers record for this word is this: the bridal gift is what shows the seriousness and the truthfulness of the desire to marry; the sign that there is something backing the word. I relate this explanation in the language of "what the lexicographers record".

For the same thing the Qurʾān elsewhere uses the words ajr (25, 24) and farīḍa (24) as well. The variety of words is worth recording: the same legal element is named from three different sides — a token of truthfulness, a return, an appointed share.

نِحْلَة — root ن-ح-ل. The lexicographers explain the word as a gift given without return, given from the heart. From the same root comes نَحْل (naḥl) — the bee; and the link the lexicographers make is this: the bee gives back more than it takes, expecting no return. This link is widely transmitted among the lexicographers; I do not present it as a settled derivation.

There is disagreement over the word's case and meaning in the verse:

I do not impose a preference and I issue no legal ruling.

But the outcome common to the three readings can be recorded: in none of them is the bridal gift a price paid to someone other than the woman. The party addressed by the verse is the men, the recipient is the women, and there is no third party in between.

It is transmitted in the sources that in that period the bridal gift was given to the woman's guardian or withheld by him. It is said that the verse ties the payment directly to the woman.

I relate this in the language of "it is transmitted" and give no name of a person or a tribe. What the wording of the verse says is clear in any case: the object of the verb is al-nisāʾ.

In the sentence, consent is reinforced by three separate elements, and this must be recorded:

Read together, the three settle by whom and in what manner the consent must be given. Without the word nafsan the sentence could have been read as "if they leave it to you"; the word adds the qualification that the leaving must come from inward willingness.

I record this as an observation about word order; its ground is the specification itself.

And this is the word nafs's second occurrence in the sūra: in the first verse as the root of creation (min nafsin wāḥida), here as the source of consent. The same word, at two separate tasks.

هَنِيء — root ه-ن-أ: pleasant, wholesome, free of trouble. مَرِيء — root م-ر-أ: easily digested, lying light on the stomach. (Marʾ — a human being; imraʾa — woman is counted in the same root family.)

The distinction the lexicographers draw is worth recording: hanīʾ is what is pleasant while being eaten, marīʾ what causes no discomfort after it has been eaten. The first adjective therefore looks to the moment, the second to what follows.

And the placing of the two here yields an observation, which I record as my own reading: the verse says that what is given with consent will not turn into a burden of guilt afterwards either. The picture used in the tenth verse for those who consume the orphan's property wrongfully (innamā yaʾkulūna fī buṭūnihim nārā) and these two adjectives stand opposite one another in the same sūra.

Wa lā tuʾtu'l-sufahāʾa amwālakumu'llatī jaʿala'llāhu lakum qiyāman wa'rzuqūhum fīhā wa'ksūhum wa qūlū lahum qawlan maʿrūfā

"Do not give over to those who lack judgement the property that God has made a means of standing upright for you. Feed them from it, clothe them, and speak to them a kindly word."

The second verse: wa ātu'l-yatāmā. The fourth verse: wa ātu'l-nisāʾa. The fifth verse: wa lā tuʾtu'l-sufahāʾa.

The same verb a third time; but this time in the negative. This is a weave of word order that can be verified, and it shows this: the sūra uses the same verb when it says "give" and when it says "do not give". The measure is not whose the property is; it is who is able to hold it.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the sameness of the verb in the three verses.

The concrete sense of the root: lightness, having no weight. Safihati'l-rīḥ — the wind tossed the air about; thawbun safīh — cloth of loose, light weave.

So safah is not the absence of intellect but the lightness of its weight. The opposite of the word is ḥilm — gravity, being weighty.

The root was treated at al-Jinn 72/4 (wa annahū kāna yaqūlu safīhunā ʿala'llāhi shaṭaṭā); I rely on that treatment.

And there is a classical disagreement over whom the word sufahāʾ means here:

I do not impose a preference. The third reading is in keeping with the method's measure that "what the verse describes is an attribute"; but I give this as a record, not as a preference.

Speaking of the orphan's property, the verse says "your property".

This is a point that has been dwelt upon, and several explanations are transmitted in the classical commentaries:

I do not impose a preference.

But the connection of reading B with the continuation of the verse must be recorded: the sentence goes on allatī jaʿala'llāhu lakum qiyāman — "which God has made a means of standing upright for you". The property, that is, is named by its function and not by its owner.

قِيَٰم — root ق-و-م: to stand upright, to be set up. Qiyām — the post on which a thing stands, a support. The root was treated in many places in this commentary (al-Baqara, al-Aḥzāb, al-Ḥujurāt).

And this root occurs in three critical places in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ. This is a countable datum of the text:

Read together, the three verses show the function of the root in the sūra: "to hold upright". This table will be returned to in the treatment of the thirty-fourth verse.

I record this as my own reading; the places of the words can be counted in the text.

The verse does not say minhā (from it), it says fīhā (within it).

In the classical commentaries the following sense is drawn from this preposition, and I relate it as it is transmitted: provide for them not by diminishing the property but by working it — that is, not from the capital but from the income that arises within it. The property itself stays; the maintenance comes out of what it yields.

This explanation is not a strict grammatical necessity; it has also been said that the preposition fī stands here for min. I do not impose a preference. But it can be recorded that the explanation is in keeping with the whole of the verse: the sixth verse will command that the property be preserved and handed over.

The verse commands three things, and the third is worth recording: feed them, clothe them, and speak a kindly word.

Beside the decision not to hand over property, that is, is set how the tongue is to be used. A qualification is entered upon the party that holds the authority, concerning the sentence he frames while exercising it.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the order of the commands: immediately after commanding the restriction, the verse commands how one is to speak with the person restricted.

And the same expression will come once more in the eighth verse: wa qūlū lahum qawlan maʿrūfā. Two verses apart, the same sentence for two different groups. In both, the party addressed is the one left empty-handed.

The same field was treated at al-Baqara 2/83 (wa qūlū li'l-nāsi ḥusnā) and at 2/263 (qawlun maʿrūfun wa maghfiratun khayrun min ṣadaqatin yatbaʿuhā adhā); I rely on those treatments.

Wa'btalu'l-yatāmā ḥattā idhā balaghu'l-nikāḥ, fa-in ānastum minhum rushdan fa'dfaʿū ilayhim amwālahum, wa lā taʾkulūhā isrāfan wa bidāran an yakbarū, wa man kāna ghaniyyan fa'l-yastaʿfif wa man kāna faqīran fa'l-yaʾkul bi'l-maʿrūf, fa-idhā dafaʿtum ilayhim amwālahum fa-ashhidū ʿalayhim, wa kafā bi'llāhi ḥasībā

"Test the orphans until they reach the age of marriage. If you perceive in them a soundness of judgement, hand over their property to them. Do not consume it wastefully, in haste before they grow up. Let the one who is rich abstain; let the one who is poor consume in the recognised measure. When you hand over their property to them, call witnesses. God suffices as a reckoner."

The fifth verse forbade handing over the property. The sixth verse regulates when the prohibition ends. Read apart, the fifth verse looks like a permanent restriction; read together with the sixth, it is seen to be the regulation of a period of transition.

The sequence the verse establishes is this, and it can be verified:

Of the five steps, two are measures, one is an act, two are procedures. And the two measures are set together: age alone is not enough, and soundness alone is not named either.

The concrete sense of the root: to wear something out by using it. To wear out a garment by wearing it. And from there comes the sense of testing: what a thing is comes out only when it is used.

The root was treated at al-Baqara 2/155 and at al-ʿAnkabūt 29/2; I rely on those treatments.

And the placing of the root here is worth recording: the verse does not say "look", "ask", "observe" — it says "test". Soundness is established not by opinion but by trial.

How the testing is to be done is not written in the verse. In classical jurisprudence there are detailed views on this (having them make small purchases, giving them responsibility for spending); those details are not entered into in this section, and no ruling is issued.

Root أ-ن-س: to notice something with familiarity, from close at hand. Uns — closeness, familiarity; insān — is connected with this root (in al-Aḥzāb it was recorded that nothing definite is said about the root of the word; I keep the same record here).

The root was treated at al-Nūr 24/27 (ḥattā tastaʾnisū); I rely on that treatment.

And the choice of verb is worth recording: the verse does not say raʾaytum (you saw) or ʿalimtum (you knew). Ānastum — you noticed, you sensed. The word states recognition rather than certain knowledge.

The Qurʾān uses the same verb for Moses's (Mūsā's) noticing the fire (innī ānastu nāran — Ṭāhā 20/10; treated in Ṭāhā). In both places there is the sensing of a sign from a distance.

Root ر-ش-د: that a road be straight, that it lead to the goal. Rāshid — one on the right road; irshād — showing the way. The opposite of the word is ghayy (losing one's way).

And there is a classical disagreement over what rushd is here:

This disagreement produced a wide discussion in classical jurisprudence, and its consequences differ among the schools of law. I do not impose a preference, I issue no legal ruling, and none of them is binding.

What follows from the wording of the verse and is not in dispute is this: the word comes indefinite (rushdan — "a soundness"), that is, what is sought is not a complete and flawless maturity but a soundness that can be perceived.

Two verbal nouns come side by side, and both describe the manner in which the consuming is done:

The concrete sense of the root ب-د-ر is worth recording: badr — the full moon. The lexicographers explain this by the root's sense of "to get ahead, to arrive first". Bādara — to hasten to a task.

And the picture in the expression bidāran an yakbarū must be recorded: "racing against their growing up". The orphan will grow and ask for his property; the guardian moves before that. The verse describes a race run against time.

This matches the concrete sense of the word exactly, and I record it as an observation about a word.

فَلْيَسْتَعْفِفْ — root ع-ف-ف, Form X. ʿIffa — to hold oneself back, to keep away. Form X here states keeping away deliberately and with effort.

What the sentence does must be recorded: where the guardian is wealthy, no prohibition is laid down — he is asked to hold himself back. The ruling, that is, varies with the person's own circumstances.

And there is a classical disagreement over the scope of this clause:

This disagreement is real in classical jurisprudence, and the schools divide. I do not impose a preference, I issue no legal ruling, and none of them is binding.

The qualification the verse itself lays down must be recorded: bi'l-maʿrūf. The root ع-ر-ف — known, recognised, accepted by custom. The amount, that is, is not fixed; the measure is the measure known in that community.

The word occurs very frequently in this sūra (5, 6, 8, 19, 25, 114) and almost every time it draws the limit of a ruling. This is a countable fact.

The verse ties the handing over to a procedure: the calling of witnesses.

And the logic of this runs in two directions, and I record it as my own reading: the witness protects both the one who receives the property and the one who hands it over. The orphan cannot say "it was never given to me", nor is the guardian left without proof of his claim "I gave it". Witnessing, that is, is not an act of mistrust but a way of protecting the relationship from a future dispute.

The same logic was treated in detail at al-Baqara 2/282 (the writing down of a debt); I rely on that treatment.

حَسِيب — root ح-س-ب: to count, to reckon. Ḥisāb — a reckoning; ḥasb — sufficiency ("this is enough for me"). The two senses of the root — to count and to suffice — meet in one place: what is counted becomes sufficient when it is complete.

And the pattern of the verse-ending must be recorded: kafā bi'llāhi … — "God suffices as …". This pattern recurs several times in this sūra (6, 45, 70, 79, 81, 132, 166, 171) and six different attributes follow it: ḥasībā, waliyyan, naṣīrā, ʿalīmā, wakīlā, shahīdā.

This is an observation about style, and the places of the words can be counted. Having laid down the obligation, the sūra points again and again to the same place.

Li'l-rijāli naṣībun mimmā taraka'l-wālidāni wa'l-aqrabūn, wa li'l-nisāʾi naṣībun mimmā taraka'l-wālidāni wa'l-aqrabūna mimmā qalla minhu aw kathur, naṣīban mafrūḍā

"To the men belongs a share of what parents and near kin leave; and to the women belongs a share of what parents and near kin leave — of the little of it and of the much. An appointed share."

The most striking side of the verse is that the same sentence is repeated twice, with not one of its words abbreviated.

In Arabic this repetition is not required. The sentence could have been built once: "to the men and to the women there is a share". It was not.

I record this as an observation about word order, and its ground is the repetition itself: that the right is tied to each of the two parties separately, in a complete sentence, is said by the repetition itself. The same technique will be used once more in the thirty-second verse (li'l-rijāli naṣībun mimma'ktasabū wa li'l-nisāʾi naṣībun mimma'ktasabna), and will be compared there in a table.

A similar repetition was treated at al-Aḥzāb 33/35 — there ten pairs of attributes were counted out one by one, and in that discussion it was recorded as my own reading that "the repetition itself carries information". I keep the same record here: this is an observation, not a transmitted report.

The concrete sense of the root: to plant something, to set it standing upright. Naṣb — to set up; nuṣub — an erected stone; naṣab — weariness (setting oneself up, wearing oneself out). The root was treated at al-Inshirāḥ 94/7 (fa-idhā faraghta fa'nṣab) and at al-Ghāshiya 88/3.

And that the word naṣīb comes from this root is worth recording: a share is what has been set up — put in its place, fixed. The word carries "being determined" within itself.

The verse says this separately as well: naṣīban mafrūḍā.

Root ف-ر-ض: to notch, to cut a mark. To fix the measure of something by opening a mark upon it. The root was treated in detail at al-Nūr 24/1 (faraḍnāhā); I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it here.

The record made there sits directly here: farḍ is not "a heavy obligation" but a notched measure. What is not left indefinite.

And the use of the two words together is an emphasis: naṣīban mafrūḍā — "a share set up and notched". Both words state fixity.

The sentence removes the size of the estate from the ruling: "of the little of it and of the much."

I record this as an observation: the coming into being of the right is not tied to the amount. It cannot be said of a small estate that "nothing will come out of it anyway".

It is transmitted in the sources that in that period the estate was given to the men who could fight and ride, and that women and small children took no share. It is also transmitted that in some places the woman herself was counted as an object of inheritance — and this will be forbidden outright in the nineteenth verse (lā yaḥillu lakum an tarithu'l-nisāʾa karhā).

I relate this in the language of "it is transmitted"; I give no name of a person or a tribe.

And the function of the verse, as it can be read from the text, is this: before the figures of the shares are given in the eleventh verse, the right itself is proclaimed. The seventh verse is the principle, the eleventh its reckoning.

Wa idhā ḥaḍara'l-qismata ulu'l-qurbā wa'l-yatāmā wa'l-masākīnu fa'rzuqūhum minhu wa qūlū lahum qawlan maʿrūfā

"If relatives, orphans and the poor are present at the division, give them something out of it, and speak to them a kindly word."

The seventh verse said that the share exists; the eleventh will give the shares. The eighth verse stands between the two and speaks of those who have no share.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the position of the verse: before it works out the reckoning of the right, the sūra names those who fall outside the reckoning. A field is left outside the law.

The same structure was treated at al-Baqara 2/237: the leaving of a field beyond the share the law assigns (wa lā tansawu'l-faḍla baynakum). I rely on that treatment. What the two verses have in common is this: a ruling is laid down, and then a door is opened beyond the ruling.

What the three have in common: they are there at the division but are not included in the reckoning.

مِسْكِين — root س-ك-ن: stillness, absence of movement. Sakana — it came to rest; sakīna — calm, tranquillity; maskana — the immobilised condition of poverty. The lexicographers record the picture of the word thus: the person whom poverty itself has made unable to move from his place. The word was treated in al-Balad and al-Māʿūn.

Whether this verse is a binding ruling or a recommendation has been debated in classical exegesis:

This disagreement is real and its outcome differs among the schools of law. I do not impose a preference, I issue no legal ruling, and none of them is binding.

What follows from the wording of the verse and is not in dispute: no amount is stated, and a word is added beside the command.

The same sentence occurred in the fifth verse too. In both verses the party addressed is the one left empty-handed.

And its function here is worth recording: when nothing is given at a division, or too little is given, what breaks the relationship is most often not the amount but the word that is spoken. The verse sets the word to be spoken beside the thing to be given.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the standing of the two commands side by side in one sentence.

Wa'l-yakhsha'lladhīna law tarakū min khalfihim dhurriyyatan ḍiʿāfan khāfū ʿalayhim, fa'l-yattaqu'llāha wa'l-yaqūlū qawlan sadīdā

"Let those be wary who, if they left weak offspring behind them, would fear for them. Let them be mindful of God and speak a word that is right / that holds."

This verse uses one of the plainest ethical techniques in the Qurʾān, and the name of the technique is exchange of places.

The structure of the sentence is this: "those who, if they themselves left weak offspring behind them, would fear for them…" — that is, the one addressed is told to put his own child in the place of the orphan before him.

And this is not an appeal to feeling but an appeal to reasoning. The verse does not say "have pity"; it says "consider your own situation". The difference between the two is this: pity depends on the state of the other party and shifts; exchange of places is a measure, and it is constant.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the construction of the conditional clause (law tarakū … khāfū ʿalayhim).

The verse uses two different roots in the same sentence, and this must be recorded.

And their places in the word order are meaningful: khashya is commanded of the one addressed, while khawf is ascribed to the hypothetical father.

I record this as an observation about word order: the sentence takes the natural fear a man feels for his own child (khawf) and turns it into the deliberate wariness that ought to be felt for another's child (khashya).

ضِعَاف — root ض-ع-ف: weakness. And this root will return in a far heavier place in the later parts of the sūra:

In the ninth verse weakness is a state; in the seventy-fifth it passes into Form X and becomes something that is done.

This distinction was treated at al-Qaṣaṣ 28/4-5, and it was recorded there: "يَسْتَضْعِفُ — root ض-ع-ف, Form X: to reckon someone weak and to make him weak. The pattern matters: weakness is not something that happens of itself but something that is done." I rely on that treatment.

This weave of roots is one of the clearest data showing the backbone of the sūra, and the places of the words can be counted.

Root س-د-د: to close a breach, to stop it up; and to aim straight, to hit the mark. Sadd — a barrier, a dam (a wall that closes a gap); sadād — hitting the mark; musaddad — aimed at a target.

So qawlan sadīdan says two things at once: a word that hits the mark and a word that closes a gap.

The same expression occurs at al-Aḥzāb 33/70 (yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanu'ttaqu'llāha wa qūlū qawlan sadīdā) and was treated there; I rely on that treatment.

Comparing the two verses is worth recording:

And the context here makes the sense of the word precise: the word spoken at the division of an estate and at the making of a bequest. What the verse asks for, then, is a word that is both true and leaves no gap.

Several views are transmitted in the classical commentaries about whom this verse speaks to:

I do not impose a preference. All three are compatible with the wording of the verse, and all three come out at the same place: that the right of the one left behind be looked after.

Inna'lladhīna yaʾkulūna amwāla'l-yatāmā ẓulman innamā yaʾkulūna fī buṭūnihim nārā, wa sayaṣlawna saʿīrā

"Those who consume the property of orphans wrongfully consume nothing but fire into their bellies; and they will enter a blazing fire."

The orphan block (2-10) closes here, and the closing is the harshest sentence in the block.

The course of the block is worth recording:

The block, that is, begins with regulation, continues with reasoning and ends with sanction. This is a countable sequence.

The verse does not say "those who consume the orphan's property"; it says "those who consume it wrongfully".

This qualification is necessary, because the sixth verse permitted the poor guardian to consume bi'l-maʿrūf. The word ẓulman keeps the two verses apart.

The concrete sense of the root ظ-ل-م: to put a thing somewhere other than its place. The root was treated in al-Baqara and at Luqmān 31/13; I rely on those treatments.

And this sense of the root matches the subject of the verse exactly: the orphan's property is put somewhere other than where it belongs.

There are three elements in the sentence, and the three work together:

What the sentence does is to recount a future punishment in the present tense. The verb is imperfect (yaʾkulūn) — it is happening now. The punishment is stated separately and in the future: wa sayaṣlawna saʿīrā.

Two separate things, then, are being said: one that is happening now (what is eaten is fire), the other that will happen later (they will enter the fire).

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the moods of the two verbs.

The same picture was set up at al-Baqara 2/174: "Inna'lladhīna yaktumūna mā anzala'llāhu mina'l-kitābi… ulāʾika mā yaʾkulūna fī buṭūnihim illa'l-nār" — there the heading of the section was "Those who fill their bellies with fire". I rely on that treatment.

Comparing the two verses is worth recording:

In both, the same verb (yaʾkulūna fī buṭūnihim), the same object (nār). This is a shared expression between two sūras that can be verified.

And the point in common is this, which I record as my own reading: in both verses a benefit is obtained in exchange for something that ought to have been protected. The Qurʾān names these two acts with the same sentence.

Root س-ع-ر: the kindling and flaring up of a fire. Saʿara'l-nār — he kindled the fire; mustaʿir — set ablaze. The root was treated in al-Mulk and al-Qamar.

And the verb sayaṣlawna — root ص-ل-ي: to enter the fire, to burn in the fire. The word occurred in al-Ḥāqqa, al-Muddaththir and al-Inshiqāq.

The bearing of this block (2-10) on the present can be written without accusing anyone; what is treated is the structure the block establishes.

One. The most fragile form of a trust. From beginning to end the block regulates one situation: that property is in someone else's hands while its owner cannot defend it. This situation is not peculiar to the orphan's property — agency, guardianship, holding an office, using an institution's funds all have the same structure. The measures the block lays down (not mixing, testing, handing over, calling witnesses) fit that whole structure.

Two. The measure of changing places. The mirror set up by the ninth verse is still one of the most workable instruments of moral reasoning today: if your own child were in the same position. The verse puts this not as a feeling but as a method of reckoning.

Three. And a limit. It does not follow from this block that everyone who holds property in his hands is under suspicion. The sixth verse lays down two separate rulings according to the guardian's circumstances and opens a way for the one who is poor. The block does not do away with trust; it asks that trust be open to examination.

Yūṣīkumu'llāhu fī awlādikum li'l-dhakari mithlu ḥaẓẓi'l-unthayayn, fa-in kunna nisāʾan fawqa'thnatayni fa-lahunna thuluthā mā tarak, wa in kānat wāḥidatan fa-laha'l-niṣf, wa li-abawayhi li-kulli wāḥidin minhuma'l-sudusu mimmā taraka in kāna lahū walad, fa-in lam yakun lahū waladun wa warithahū abawāhu fa-li-ummihi'l-thuluth, fa-in kāna lahū ikhwatun fa-li-ummihi'l-sudus, min baʿdi waṣiyyatin yūṣī bihā aw dayn, ābāʾukum wa abnāʾukum lā tadrūna ayyuhum aqrabu lakum nafʿā, farīḍatan mina'llāh, inna'llāha kāna ʿAlīman Ḥakīmā

"God enjoins upon you concerning your children: to the male the like of the share of two females. If they are women more than two, theirs is two-thirds of what is left; if she is one alone, hers is a half. To his parents, to each one of them, falls a sixth of what he leaves, if he has a child. If he has no child and his parents are his heirs, a third falls to his mother. If he has brothers, a sixth falls to his mother. All this after any bequest made and after any debt. Your fathers and your sons — you do not know which of them is nearer to you in benefit. This is an ordinance from God. God is Knowing, Wise."

Inheritance is the most technical discussion in classical jurisprudence, and it produced a discipline of its own (farāʾiḍ).

What will be done in this section is this: 1. The shares given by the verse's own wording are set out in a table. 2. The terms are analysed: ḥaẓẓ, waṣiyya, dayn, kalāla, farīḍa. 3. The order of priority the verse itself lays down is brought to the fore: min baʿdi waṣiyyatin yūṣī bihā aw dayn.

And these will not be done:

• The debates over reckoning will not be entered into. What is to be done when the shares do not reach one whole or exceed it (the matters known in the classical literature as ʿawliyya and raddiyya), which heir is excluded in which case, the position of the grandfather and of the brothers — none of these is the subject of this text.
• No legal ruling will be issued and no preference will be imposed.
• This is not a guide to practice. The division of an actual estate belongs to those competent in it and to the relevant law.

And this record is entered plainly: inheritance is a subject of jurisprudence in which there are differences of detail among the schools of law; nothing related in this section is binding.

The verse does not say yaḥkumu (He rules) or yaʾmurukum (He commands you). It says Yūṣīkum — "He enjoins upon you, He charges you."

The concrete sense of the root و-ص-ي: to join, to attach one thing to another. Arḍun wāṣiya — land whose plants have run together, contiguous ground. And from there waṣiyya: to carry a matter over to another, to attach it to him.

The picture in the root, then, is a joining. And this looks in the same direction as the word al-arḥām (ties) in the sūra's first verse.

I record this as an observation about a word: the ruling on inheritance is given not with the verb "to rule" but with a verb from the root of "joining".

And that the verb is imperfect must be recorded: yūṣīkum — ongoing. The pattern states that the ruling is not a one-time order but a lasting arrangement.

For "share" the verse here uses not naṣīb but the word ḥaẓẓ.

The root ح-ظ-ظ: the portion, the lot that falls to a person. The lexicographers explain the word as "the portion set aside for a person"; maḥẓūẓ — one whose portion is ample.

The distribution of the two words in the sūra is worth recording:

This is an observation about word order, and the places of the words can be counted. Naṣīb names the principle, ḥaẓẓ the reckoning.

The table below shows only the proportions that occur in the wording of the verse. It is not a table for practice; it does no more than arrange the text of the verse.

Every row in the table is in the wording of the verse. No case not found in the verse has been added to the table.

And three things must be recorded that do not appear in the table but can be read from the wording of the verse:

One. The verse names a female heir in three separate places: the daughter (twice), the mother (twice). Most of the rulings, that is, are laid down in order to determine the share of a female heir. This is a countable fact.

Two. The verse states the father's share openly in one case only (a sixth, if there is a child); in the others it does not specify it. The mother's share, on the other hand, is stated openly in two separate cases.

Three. The sentence li'l-dhakari mithlu ḥaẓẓi'l-unthayayn states a proportion, not a ranking of worth. The thing measured in the sentence is the male's share, and that share is defined by reference to the daughter's share — that is, in the sentence the unit of measure is the female share. I record this as an observation about word order, and I draw no ruling from it.

There are explanations transmitted in the classical literature about the ground of this proportion — the distribution of the obligation of maintenance, the obligation of the bridal gift, financial responsibilities within the family, and the like. These explanations are recorded in the language of "it is transmitted"; no preference is imposed, no ruling is established, and current debates are not entered into. The verse itself gives no clause of justification for this proportion.

This qualification is the most often repeated sentence in the verses of inheritance, and it needs to be brought to the fore.

In the eleventh and twelfth verses this qualification is repeated four times, and each time the form of the verb changes:

Four repetitions are a datum of the text.

And the sense of the qualification is this: before the shares are reckoned, two things are taken out — any bequest made and any debt. The estate itself, that is, is what remains.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the repetition itself: while giving the most technical of reckonings, the verse recalls four times what comes before the reckoning. The right of the one who has a share arises after the obligations the deceased has left behind.

It is recorded in the classical literature that the debt comes before the bequest, although in the verse they are joined by the particle aw (or). This is a question of jurisprudence, and no ruling is issued here. What the wording of the verse says is that both come before the shares.

Root د-ي-ن. And the family of words the lexicographers record is worth noting: dayn — debt; dāna — he became indebted, he submitted; dīn — religion, and at the same time "judgement, recompense, obedience"; madīna — a city (a place bound to an order); dayyān — the one who calls to account.

The common core is this, and the lexicographers record it: to be bound by a tie, to be under something. The debtor is under the creditor; the servant under his Lord.

I relate this connection as the lexicographers record it, and I build no interpretation upon it.

The bequest is named in the verse without restriction. But in the twelfth verse a qualification is added: ghayra muḍārr — not causing harm.

The root ض-ر-ر, Form III. The same pattern was treated at al-Baqara 2/231 (ḍirāran li-taʿtadū), and it was recorded there: "the pattern is Form III (mufāʿala): it states reciprocity or intent. That is, 'so that harm should come to her, knowingly.'" I rely on that treatment.

And the function of the qualification must be recorded: a bequest cannot be used as an instrument for depriving an heir of his share. The verse, that is, foresees the misuse of the very power it grants.

The amount of the bequest is not specified in the verse. In classical jurisprudence a limit has been set in this matter, and its ground is transmitted as the sunna, not the verse. This is a question of jurisprudence; no ruling is issued here and nothing is said about the amount.

This sentence stands in the very middle of a technical table of reckoning, and its bearing on the subject is not visible at first sight.

"Your fathers and your sons — you do not know which of them is nearer to you in benefit."

I record what the sentence does as my own reading, and its ground is the place where the sentence stands:

At the division of an estate the most natural human objection is this: "he was closer", "he gave more labour", "he will bring more benefit". The sentence is set directly in the path of that objection and ties it to a lack of knowledge.

The shares, that is, are given not by the benefit of persons but by a fixed measure — because the knowledge needed to calculate benefit is not in human hands.

And the verb must be recorded: lā tadrūn — "you do not know". The root د-ر-ي: to know something by searching it out, by following its trace. The verb says that the knowledge is not obtainable.

The pattern looks in the same direction as the pattern treated at al-Baqara 2/216: "It may be that you dislike a thing and it is good for you… God knows and you do not know." And it was recorded there: "the sentence is not a claim to knowledge but the statement of a limit. The place where the decision rests is not what the person sees at that moment." I rely on that treatment, and the same record holds here.

The root ف-ر-ض occurred in the seventh verse (naṣīban mafrūḍā); here it comes again. A bridge of words is built between the two verses: the proclamation of the right and the reckoning of the right are joined by the same root.

And the qualification mina'llāh must be recorded: the source of the measure is stated. The shares, that is, are not a custom or a settlement but a measure that has been laid down — this is the verse's own claim.

Two names side by side: ʿAlīm (Knowing) and Ḥakīm (Wise, the one who puts each thing in its place).

And the verse-ending's link with the verse is direct: a few lines earlier the verse had said lā tadrūna — "you do not know". The verse-ending says where the knowledge is.

The concrete sense of the root ح-ك-م was treated in al-Baqara and at Luqmān 31/12: ḥakama — to put the bit in a horse's mouth; ḥikma — knowledge that does not let a thing shift from its place. I rely on that treatment.

Wa lakum niṣfu mā taraka azwājukum in lam yakun lahunna walad, fa-in kāna lahunna waladun fa-lakumu'l-rubuʿu mimmā tarakna min baʿdi waṣiyyatin yūṣīna bihā aw dayn, wa lahunna'l-rubuʿu mimmā taraktum in lam yakun lakum walad, fa-in kāna lakum waladun fa-lahunna'l-thumunu mimmā taraktum min baʿdi waṣiyyatin tūṣūna bihā aw dayn, wa in kāna rajulun yūrathu kalālatan awi'mraʾatun wa lahū akhun aw ukhtun fa-li-kulli wāḥidin minhuma'l-sudus, fa-in kānū akthara min dhālika fa-hum shurakāʾu fi'l-thuluthi min baʿdi waṣiyyatin yūṣā bihā aw daynin ghayra muḍārr, waṣiyyatan mina'llāh, wa'llāhu ʿAlīmun Ḥalīm

"Half of what your wives leave is yours — if they have no child. If they have a child, a quarter of it is yours; after any bequest they have made and after any debt. A quarter of what you leave is theirs — if you have no child. If you have a child, an eighth of it is theirs; after any bequest you have made and after any debt. If a man or a woman leaves an estate as kalāla and has a brother or a sister, a sixth falls to each of them. If they are more than that, they are partners in a third; after any bequest made without causing harm and after any debt. This is a charge from God. God is Knowing, Forbearing."

The note on method above holds here too: this table does no more than arrange the wording of the verse; it is not a table for practice.

The verse gives the share of the wife and of the husband in the same structure, one after the other, and with the same qualifications.

The structure is identical, and the share of each side falls by half according to whether there is a child. This is a countable fact.

I record this as an observation about word order: the pattern of the sentence does not change for either side; only the proportions change. And on both sides the same cause yields the same effect: if there is a child, the share falls by half.

This is the most technical and most disputed term in the sūra. It occurs in the twelfth verse, it occurs once more in the hundred and seventy-sixth, and the sūra closes with it.

The root ك-ل-ل. The family of senses in the root:

There are two clusters of sense: to grow weary/blunt, and to encompass. And the lexicographers explain the term kalāla by both of them.

The disagreement over what the term is:

And the term's link with the language is explained as follows, which I relate as it is transmitted: the estate arrives "wearily" — since it does not come along the direct line, it comes round about, encircling. Like the iklīl (the crown), it is arranged not at the centre but around the edge.

It is plainly recorded in the sources that the definition of the word was disputed in the classical period, and it is transmitted that this disagreement has persisted from the earliest times. No preference is adopted in this section and no legal ruling is issued.

What follows from the wording of the verse and is not in dispute is this: in the twelfth verse the share of the siblings named in the case of kalāla is a sixth and a third; in the hundred and seventy-sixth the share of the siblings named is a half, two-thirds, and li'l-dhakari mithlu ḥaẓẓi'l-unthayayn. The proportions the two verses give are different, and the explanation of that difference is a discussion in classical jurisprudence. It is not entered into here.

The root ش-ر-ك: partnership. The word generally occurs in the Qurʾān in a negative context (shirk). Here it is used in its technical and neutral sense: to be a partner in a share.

I record this as an observation about a word: the root itself is not evil; what is evil is where the partnership is set up. The same record was entered in the treatment of Luqmān 31/13 as well.

This was treated above (in the discussion of 4/11). I record it once more here, because the qualification occurs only in this verse.

And its position needs to be recorded: the qualification comes after the case of kalāla. That is, in the case where the estate passes in the most indirect way, the possibility of the bequest turning into an instrument of dispossession is named expressly.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the place of the qualification.

The eleventh verse ended with farīḍatan mina'llāh; the twelfth ends with waṣiyyatan mina'llāh.

Both words point to the same place, but from different sides: farīḍa — a notched measure; waṣiyya — a charge that has been attached. And both with the same qualification: mina'llāh.

The verse-ending changes too: the eleventh verse ends with ʿAlīman Ḥakīmā, the twelfth with ʿAlīmun Ḥalīm.

حَلِيم — root ح-ل-م: one who does not hurry, who is not carried away by his anger, who is grave. The opposite of the word is safah (lightness), which occurred in the fifth verse.

I record this as a weave of words: the block opened in the fifth verse with the word sufahāʾ (the light ones); the twelfth verse closes with the name Ḥalīm (the grave one). The two words are the two ends of the same measure, and both stand in the dictionary.

And the placing of the name Ḥalīm here must be recorded separately: the division of an estate is one of the places where people lose their temper most quickly. The verse sets the ruling beneath a name that does not hurry. I give this as my own reading.

Tilka ḥudūdu'llāh, wa man yuṭiʿi'llāha wa rasūlahū yudkhilhu jannātin tajrī min taḥtiha'l-anhāru khālidīna fīhā, wa dhālika'l-fawzu'l-ʿaẓīm · Wa man yaʿṣi'llāha wa rasūlahū wa yataʿadda ḥudūdahū yudkhilhu nāran khālidan fīhā wa lahū ʿadhābun muhīn

"These are the limits set by God. Whoever obeys God and His Messenger, He will admit him into gardens beneath which rivers flow, to dwell there for ever. That is the great triumph. And whoever disobeys God and His Messenger and oversteps His limits, He will admit him into a fire, to dwell there for ever; and for him there is a humiliating punishment."

The two verses are each other's reflection in a mirror, and this can be followed word by word:

The difference in the fourth row is worth recording and is a datum of the text: for the garden the plural is used (khālidīn), for the fire the singular (khālidan).

Several explanations of this difference are given in the classical commentaries: the flow of the sentence and the harmony of the verse-ending; or that the garden is shared while the fire is solitary. I impose no preference; the one certain thing is that the difference is there in the text.

The root ح-د-د: the place where a thing ends, an edge. Ḥadīd — iron (a sharp edge); ḥadd — a limit; ḥidād — sharpness.

The word occurred many times in the section on divorce in al-Baqara, and it was recorded there that it is given in two different patterns:

"تِلْكَ حُدُودُ ٱللَّهِ فَلَا تَعْتَدُوهَا — 'these are the limits set by God, do not overstep them.' The word حُدُود recurs many times in this section; in verse 187 it said fa-lā taqrabūhā (do not approach them), here fa-lā taʿtadūhā (do not overstep them). Two patterns in two separate places: one of distance, one of a boundary."

I rely on that treatment.

And one observation must be recorded: in al-Baqara the words ḥudūdu'llāh were placed at the end of the rulings on divorce; in al-Nisāʾ they are placed at the end of the rulings on inheritance. In both places the word closes a block in which sharing within the family is regulated. This is a similarity of structure between two sūras that can be verified.

The verses of inheritance (11-12) are a wholly technical text: proportions, conditions, exceptions. The thirteenth and fourteenth verses set a frame over that technique.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the order of the verses: having finished the reckoning, the sūra says what the reckoning is. The shares are not an arithmetic but a limit; and the overstepping of the limit is named not as an error in calculation but as an act of disobedience.

And the choice of the verb yataʿadda must be recorded. The root ع-د-و: to exceed the bound, to pass over onto something. The verse does not say "the one who miscalculates"; it says "the one who oversteps the limit". Injustice in the division of an estate is named not as a mistake in arithmetic but as a breach of a boundary.

The root ه-و-ن: lightness, worthlessness, lowness. Hūn — ease and lightness; hawān — abasement; muhīn — the one who abases.

And the placing of the word here is worth recording: what is done in a quarrel over an estate is to leave the other party out of the reckoning — that is, to count him as worth nothing. The name of the recompense is given from the same root: muhīn.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the root of the word together with the subject of the block.

One. That the bequest and the debt come first. What is most often forgotten in the discussion of an estate is the qualification the verse repeats four times: what is to be shared out is what remains after the obligations are taken out. This is still today the point most often skipped — when the division of an estate is being discussed, the debts of the deceased usually come to mind last. The verse puts them first.

Two. The rejection of the calculus of benefit. The sentence lā tadrūna ayyuhum aqrabu lakum nafʿā closes the argument over "who deserved more". That argument is still where an inheritance does the most damage, and it usually runs on things that cannot be measured: who cared for him more, who was closer to him. The verse ties the measure to what can be measured.

Three. And a limit. How an actual estate is to be divided does not follow from here. This section is not a text of farāʾiḍ; it analyses the wording and the terms of the verse. Application belongs to the law and the jurisprudence competent in it.

Wa'llātī yaʾtīna'l-fāḥishata min nisāʾikum fa'stashhidū ʿalayhinna arbaʿatan minkum, fa-in shahidū fa-amsikūhunna fi'l-buyūti ḥattā yatawaffāhunna'l-mawtu aw yajʿala'llāhu lahunna sabīlā · Wa'lladhāni yaʾtiyānihā minkum fa-ādhūhumā, fa-in tābā wa aṣlaḥā fa-aʿriḍū ʿanhumā, inna'llāha kāna Tawwāban Raḥīmā

"Against those of your women who commit indecency, call four witnesses from among you. If they bear witness, keep them in the houses until death takes them or God appoints a way for them. As for the two among you who commit it, cause them hurt. If they repent and set themselves right, turn away from them. God is ever relenting, merciful."

These two verses produced a long discussion in classical jurisprudence and exegesis, and that discussion is connected with Sūrat al-Nūr.

This field was treated in detail in the discussion of al-Nūr 24/2 and 24/4, and it was recorded plainly there: "This verse and those that follow it produced one of the widest discussions in classical jurisprudence. In this section the disagreements within that discussion are transmitted, none of them is preferred and none of them is binding. How the penalty is to be applied today, whether it is to be applied at all, and the current debates around this are not the subject of this text."

The same record holds here. I rely on that treatment and do not repeat what was treated there. Only the points peculiar to these two verses will be treated here.

The condition of four witnesses was treated in detail in the discussion of al-Nūr 24/4 and 24/13. The record made there was this, and it sits here: by tying the accusation itself to four witnesses, it is in practice closed off.

And there is a detail in the word order here: fa'stashhidū — Form X. The root ش-ه-د. Form X states asking, demanding: "demand that witnesses be produced."

The verse, that is, places the accuser directly under an obligation. The accusation gives rise to the demand for witnesses.

The most striking side of the verse is that it carries a clause showing the ruling to be provisional in itself: "or until God appoints a way for them."

The explanation widely transmitted in the classical commentaries about this clause is the following, and I relate it as it is transmitted: this is the announcement, in the verse's own wording, that the ruling is provisional; a "way" was opened by a later regulation.

There are differing views in the classical literature as to which verse or which regulation this was. I impose no preference and issue no legal ruling.

What follows from the wording of the verse and is not in dispute is this: the ruling carries within itself a clause of termination. This is not a structure often met with in the Qurʾān, and it is a datum of the text.

The sixteenth verse provides for a measure against two persons but does not define the measure: fa-ādhūhumā — "cause them hurt".

The root أ-ذ-ي: to injure, to trouble. The word was treated at al-Aḥzāb 33/57-58; I rely on that treatment.

And that the word is left without a measure must be recorded: in Sūrat al-Nūr there was a number (miʾata jalda); here there is no number. It is transmitted in the classical commentaries that this difference has to do with the ruling's being laid down by stages.

In this matter I impose no preference and issue no legal ruling.

And this is the clause in the block that most needs to be dwelt on, because it comes immediately after the clause of the ruling.

That the three verbs work together must be recorded: repentance alone is not enough, iṣlāḥ is asked for beside it; and in return the community is asked to close the matter.

The expression فَأَعْرِضُوا۟ عَنْهُمَا does not say "forgive"; it says "turn away, do not press it". What is commanded, that is, is that the matter not be kept on the agenda.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the verb itself. And it looks in the same direction as the measure treated throughout al-Nūr: as the sūra closes a matter, so it closes the talking about it.

This root is one of the busiest in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, and its places can be counted:

Four of the five places are where a dispute comes to an end.

I record this as my own reading: the sūra tends to close its rulings not with a sanction but with setting right. This will be shown separately in the discussion of the thirty-fifth verse.

Innama'l-tawbatu ʿala'llāhi li'lladhīna yaʿmalūna'l-sūʾa bi-jahālatin thumma yatūbūna min qarībin fa-ulāʾika yatūbu'llāhu ʿalayhim, wa kāna'llāhu ʿAlīman Ḥakīmā · Wa laysati'l-tawbatu li'lladhīna yaʿmalūna'l-sayyiʾāti ḥattā idhā ḥaḍara aḥadahumu'l-mawtu qāla innī tubtu'l-āna wa la'lladhīna yamūtūna wa hum kuffār, ulāʾika aʿtadnā lahum ʿadhāban alīmā

"The repentance God will accept is only that of those who do evil in ignorance and then repent soon after. It is these whose repentance God accepts. But there is no repentance for those who go on doing evil deeds until, when death comes to one of them, he says 'now I repent'; nor for those who die as deniers. For these We have prepared a painful punishment."

The seventeenth verse describes the case in which repentance is accepted, the eighteenth the case in which it is not. The two form a pair.

In every one of the four rows there is an opposition, and this is read off the words themselves.

The root ج-ه-ل. And the distinction the lexicographers record must be noted: jahl is not only "ignorance"; it also carries the sense of feeling overpowering the mind, of excess, of acting without thinking. The word jāhiliyya too is explained by this second sense.

This is needed if the verse is to be understood. If jahāla were only "not knowing", the door of repentance would be closed to one who sins knowingly — and that does not fit with other verses of the Qurʾān (al-Zumar 39/53; treated in al-Zumar).

Two tendencies are transmitted in the classical commentaries about this word:

The second view is widely transmitted in the classical commentaries and is in keeping with the family of senses in the root. I impose no preference.

"Soon" — no length of time is specified, a nearness is specified.

And the eighteenth verse shows the limit of that nearness: the coming of death. The measure, that is, is not a calendar but a possibility: repentance is what is done while something can still be done.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the opposition of the two verses.

The verse relates the repentance that is rejected as a sentence: "now I repent."

The word inside the sentence must be recorded: al-āna — "now".

I record this as an observation about word order: what is rejected is not the content of the repentance but its timing. And the word that states the timing is set inside the sentence. That is, in relating the words the verse also shows the flaw in the words within the same sentence.

No conclusion such as "after a certain sin the door of repentance is closed" follows from these two verses, and this must be written plainly.

The grounds:

One. The verb of the seventeenth verse is yaʿmalūna'l-sūʾ — a generic noun, and it specifies no kind of sin. Two. What is rejected in the eighteenth verse is repentance postponed to the moment of death; no limit is set on repentance made early. Three. Elsewhere the Qurʾān holds the door of repentance widely open (al-Zumar 39/53). No contradiction can be set up between the two verses.

And one further record: no judgement about any person can be drawn from these verses. Which category a person's repentance falls into lies outside human knowledge. The function of the verse is not an instrument of diagnosis but a warning about timing.

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū lā yaḥillu lakum an tarithu'l-nisāʾa karhā, wa lā taʿḍulūhunna li-tadhhabū bi-baʿḍi mā ātaytumūhunna illā an yaʾtīna bi-fāḥishatin mubayyina, wa ʿāshirūhunna bi'l-maʿrūf, fa-in karihtumūhunna fa-ʿasā an takrahū shayʾan wa yajʿala'llāhu fīhi khayran kathīrā

"O you who believe! It is not lawful for you to inherit women against their will. And do not press them in order to take back part of what you have given them — unless they commit a manifest indecency. And live with them in kindness. If you dislike them — it may be that you dislike a thing in which God has placed much good."

The verse says three things, and the three come one after another:

Two prohibitions and one command. And the command comes after the two prohibitions: first what is not to be done, then what is.

The seventh verse said that women take a share of an estate. The nineteenth verse says that women cannot be taken as an estate.

Twelve verses stand between the two, and both use the same root: و-ر-ث.

This is a weave of roots in the sūra that can be verified, and I record it as my own reading: the same root, twelve verses apart, establishes two separate sides of one right.

And the word karhan must be recorded. The root ك-ر-ه: to dislike, not to want; and karh — compulsion, unwillingness. The word was treated at al-Baqara 2/216 (wa huwa kurhun lakum).

There are two readings of the word's case, and both are found in classical exegesis:

I impose no preference; both come out at the same place.

It is transmitted in the sources that in that period, when a man died, the wife he left behind was regarded by the deceased's relatives as part of the estate: she could be married, given to another, or prevented from marrying so that her property might be kept in hand.

I relate this in the language of "it is transmitted"; I give no name of a person or a tribe. What the wording of the verse says is clear in any case: the verb is tarithū (to inherit) and its object is al-nisāʾ.

This root was analysed at al-Baqara 2/232, and it was recorded there:

"فَلَا تَعْضُلُوهُنَّ — root ع-ض-ل. The concrete sense the lexicographers record is striking: aʿḍalati'l-nāqa — the blocking of a camel's delivery, the young unable to come out. From there comes the sense of 'to press, to block someone's way, to leave without a way out'. The choice of the word shows the character of the conduct that is forbidden: the obstruction is set up not by a ruling but by the blocking of the way out."

I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it here.

Comparing the two verses is worth recording:

In the use in al-Nisāʾ the purpose is written out openly: a financial gain. In al-Baqara the purpose was not written. This is a verifiable difference between the two verses.

There is a classical disagreement over what the exception attaches to and over what a fāḥisha mubayyina is. The transmitted views are given in a table; no preference is imposed and no legal ruling is issued.

And the word mubayyina must be recorded: root ب-ي-ن, active participle — "that makes itself plain". That is, not an imputation resting on suspicion but a situation whose plainness comes from itself.

This record matters because the same field was treated at al-Nūr 24/4: the accusation itself was tied to four witnesses. Read together, the two verses show that the exception is not a door that can be worked easily.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the pattern of the word together with the verse of al-Nūr.

عَاشِرُوا۟ — root ع-ش-ر, Form III (mufāʿala). And the pattern carries information.

The concrete sense of the root: ʿashara — ten; ʿashīra — a tribe, a community living together; muʿāshara — to live together, to be intertwined.

The function of Form III must be recorded: reciprocity. Verbs in this pattern state acts performed by two parties together (qātala — to fight, shāraka — to be a partner, sābaqa — to race).

So ʿāshirūhunna does not mean "treat them well" but "live together with them, each with the other". The verb states not a one-way treatment but a shared life.

I record this as a grammatical observation; its ground is the form itself.

And the qualification bi'l-maʿrūf: root ع-ر-ف — known, recognised. The measure is the measure known in that community. The word draws the limit of a ruling in six places in this sūra (5, 6, 8, 19, 25, 114).

And the last sentence of the verse is the very same pattern as one in al-Baqara.

This pattern was treated at al-Baqara 2/216, and what was recorded there sits directly here:

"The most striking side of the verse is that in laying down the ruling it does not deny the aversion… The ruling is laid down without disregarding what the one addressed feels. عَسَىٰٓ — 'it may be'. This particle states no certainty. The verse, that is, does not say 'everything you dislike is good'; it says that the link between the two is not necessary."

I rely on that treatment without fail. And I compare the two verses:

The difference in the fourth row is a datum of the text and must be recorded: the sentence in al-Baqara was built in two directions (what you dislike may be good, what you love may be an ill); the sentence in al-Nisāʾ states only the first direction.

I record this as my own reading and propose a ground for it: in al-Baqara the one addressed was being called to an obligation, and a warning in both directions was needed. In al-Nisāʾ the one addressed is on the threshold of ending a relationship; the sentence is trying to delay that decision. This is an interpretation, not a transmitted report.

And what the sentence does not say must also be recorded:

The verse does not say "endure it even though you dislike it". The particle ʿasā states no certainty, and the verse guarantees no outcome. What is said is this: aversion is not, by itself, a datum for a ruling. What a person feels at a given moment does not carry sufficient information about the whole of a relationship.

And it cannot be concluded from this sentence that a party who is being harmed must keep the situation going. The sūra itself regulates separation (the section on divorce in al-Baqara, and al-Nisāʾ 4/35, 4/128, 4/130), and the hundred and thirtieth verse says plainly: wa in yatafarraqā yughni'llāhu kullan min saʿatih — "if they part, God will enrich each of them out of His abundance."

The sūra, that is, encourages staying together without closing the door to separation. This is a balance within the sūra's own text, and it can be verified by the presence of the two verses.

Wa in aradtumu'stibdāla zawjin makāna zawjin wa ātaytum iḥdāhunna qinṭāran fa-lā taʾkhudhū minhu shayʾā, a-taʾkhudhūnahū buhtānan wa ithman mubīnā · Wa kayfa taʾkhudhūnahū wa qad afḍā baʿḍukum ilā baʿḍin wa akhadhna minkum mīthāqan ghalīẓā

"If you wish to take one wife in the place of another, and you have given one of them a heap of wealth, take nothing back from it. Would you take it by slander and manifest sin? And how could you take it, when you have gone in to one another and they have taken from you a solemn pledge?"

قِنطَار — root ق-ن-ط-ر. The lexicographers differ over whether the word states a definite measure of weight or "much wealth" in general; I cannot give a definite amount and do not give one.

From the same root comes qanṭara — a bridge. The link the lexicographers make is this: a bridge is the structure that binds two banks together; and a qinṭār is wealth gathered and bound. I relate this link as the lexicographers record it.

And the function of the word here must be recorded: by carrying the amount to its furthest extreme, the verse tests the ruling. "Even if you have given a heap of wealth" — that is, whatever the amount, the ruling does not change. This is a technique of argument (iḥtijāj) in law: the rule is reinforced by giving the extreme case.

Having laid down the prohibition, the verse asks a question: "would you take it by slander?"

And in Arabic this is an istifhām inkārī: a question that expects no answer and states a rejection. The pattern was treated in many places in this commentary.

بُهْتَٰن — root ب-ه-ت: to astound, to leave someone stunned. Buhita — he was left dumbfounded. And buhtān is an imputation so baseless as to leave the other party stunned. The word was treated at al-Nūr 24/16 and at al-Aḥzāb 33/58; I rely on those treatments.

What was recorded in the discussion of al-Aḥzāb was this: buhtān names the offence by the state of the victim — that is, the word itself carries the effect the imputation leaves on the other party.

And the context here must be recorded: to invent an accusation in order to take back property. The verse describes a financial greed producing a slander and joins the two acts in one sentence.

أَفْضَىٰ — root ف-ض-و. And the concrete sense of the root must be recorded: فَضَاء (faḍāʾ) — emptiness, openness, wide space. Arḍun faḍāʾ — open ground without obstruction.

And the verb is in Form IV: afḍā ilā — to open out towards something, to reach it with no barrier left in between.

The picture in the word, then, is this: the lifting of the veil between two things, their opening to one another.

The lexicographers explain the word here as "to mingle with one another, to come together in intimacy", and in the classical commentaries it is said that this points to the intimacy of married life.

And the placing of the word here is the finest point of the verse. I record this as my own reading: in refusing a financial claim, the verse gives no financial ground. It does not say "that property is hers" or "you have no legal right". The ground it gives is that the veil between them has been lifted.

A legal text, that is, rests a rule of law on intimacy.

The root م-ث-ق (و-ث-ق): to bind firmly. Wathīqa — a document; thiqa — trustworthy; mīthāq — a word bound fast.

غَلِيظ — root غ-ل-ظ: thick, coarse, heavy. Ghilẓa — thickness.

And now comes a datum of the text, and it can be verified within the sūra:

This exact expression — mīthāqan ghalīẓā — occurs in three places in the Qurʾān:

That verse was treated at al-Aḥzāb 33/7; I rely on that treatment.

Comparing these three places yields an observation, which I record as my own reading: the expression the Qurʾān uses for the pledge taken from the prophets is used for marriage as well. No equality is set up between the two bonds; but the word that states the weight of the pledge is the same.

And there is one further detail of the word order: the verse does not say wa akhadhtum minhunna (you took from them); it says wa akhadhna minkum (they took from you). The party who took the pledge is the women.

This is the wording of the sentence and a datum of the text. I draw no ruling from it; I record the subject of the verb.

One. The three verses between the nineteenth and the twenty-first take aim at a single pattern of conduct: taking back, at the end of a relationship, what is in the other party's hands. The verse closes this off three times, by three separate routes — holding by force, pressing, and slander.

Two. That the command ʿāshirūhunna bi'l-maʿrūf comes in Form III shows that the relationship is named not as a one-way treatment but as a shared life. This is something that can be read off the grammar.

Three. The ground given by the twenty-first verse is as valid today as it was then: where a relationship ends, the intimacy that relationship built cannot be turned into a bargaining counter. The verse says this with the verb afḍā.

And a limit: it does not follow from these verses that one party is right in every case and the other wrong in every case. The verse forbids a particular act and lays down its exception itself. No sweeping ruling is made about a group.

Wa lā tankiḥū mā nakaḥa ābāʾukum mina'l-nisāʾi illā mā qad salaf, innahū kāna fāḥishatan wa maqtan wa sāʾa sabīlā

"Do not marry the women your fathers married — except what is already past. That is an indecency, a thing loathed, and an evil way."

This verse is the continuation of the prohibition in the nineteenth. There it was said that women cannot be taken as an estate; here the most concrete form of that practice is named.

And there is a relation between it and the twenty-third verse: the twenty-third will give a whole list; this verse stands before the list and on its own.

I record this as an observation about word order: its being named separately shows that the ruling is newly laid down and meets a practice of the ones addressed. The list will come in the twenty-third verse; this verse abolishes a practice.

The verse gives the prohibition three names, and the three come from different directions:

Three words name the act from three separate sides: what it is, what it makes one feel, where it leads.

The root م-ق-ت is worth recording: the lexicographers explain the word as "the most violent hatred". The word is rare in the Qurʾān and occurs at Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) 40/10 and 40/35; I rely on those treatments.

And there is a linguistic datum recorded in the classical sources, which I relate as it is transmitted: it is said that in pre-Islamic Arab society the term nikāḥ al-maqt ("the marriage of loathing") was used for a marriage of this kind. That the verse uses the same word is for this reason worth noticing; but I give this not as certain historical information but as a record transmitted in the sources.

The root س-ل-ف: to go before, to be left behind. Salaf — those who went before; sālif — past.

The function of the clause must be recorded: the ruling is laid down looking forward, and no sanction is provided for the past. The same qualification will come once more at the end of the twenty-third verse.

I record this as my own reading: that where a new ruling is laid down, the life lived before the ruling is not judged by it, is a recurring qualification in this sūra.

Ḥurrimat ʿalaykum ummahātukum wa banātukum wa akhawātukum wa ʿammātukum wa khālātukum wa banātu'l-akhi wa banātu'l-ukhti wa ummahātukumu'llātī arḍaʿnakum wa akhawātukum mina'l-raḍāʿati wa ummahātu nisāʾikum wa rabāʾibukumu'llātī fī ḥujūrikum min nisāʾikumu'llātī dakhaltum bihinna, fa-in lam takūnū dakhaltum bihinna fa-lā junāḥa ʿalaykum, wa ḥalāʾilu abnāʾikumu'lladhīna min aṣlābikum wa an tajmaʿū bayna'l-ukhtayni illā mā qad salaf, inna'llāha kāna Ghafūran Raḥīmā

"Forbidden to you are: your mothers, your daughters, your sisters, your paternal aunts, your maternal aunts, your brother's daughters, your sister's daughters, the mothers who nursed you, your sisters through nursing, the mothers of your wives, your stepdaughters in your care, born of wives you have gone in to — if you have not gone in to them there is no fault upon you — the wives of your sons who are of your own loins, and that you should join two sisters together. Except what is already past. God is forgiving, merciful."

This verse is the foundational text of the discussion of marriage in classical jurisprudence, and detailed rulings have been developed upon every item in it.

What is done in this section is this: the verse's list is set in order, the terms are analysed, and the logic of the list is shown. On such matters as the scope of the tie of nursing, the position of the stepdaughter, and whether the qualification "in your care" is a condition, there are differences among the schools of law; those differences are not entered into in this section, no preference is adopted and no legal ruling is issued.

The verse counts thirteen items, and these fall into four groups. This is the verse's own order:

And the order itself must be recorded: the list begins with the tie of blood, continues with the tie of milk, and ends with the tie made by marriage. It moves, that is, from the most natural to the most constructed.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the verse's own order.

The root ر-ض-ع: to suckle. And this item of the verse is worth recording: a tie produces the same effect as a blood tie although it is not one.

I record this as an observation: the verse does not tie the source of a bond to descent alone. That a child grew up on a woman's milk establishes a legal tie.

On the scope of the tie of nursing, how many feedings establish it and up to what age it holds, there is a wide disagreement in classical jurisprudence. That disagreement is not entered into in this section and no ruling is issued.

The root ر-ب-ب — the same root as rabb in the first verse. Rabība: a girl who grows up under a person's nurture. The word itself contains the relation of care.

And the qualification in the verse must be recorded: allātī fī ḥujūrikum — "who are in your laps / in your houses".

حِجْر — root ح-ج-ر: the lap; and also a barrier, a bound (ḥijr — a forbidden zone; ḥajr — legal interdiction). The two senses of the word — lap and bound — are in the same root.

Whether this qualification is a condition or a description of the usual case is one of the disputed questions of classical jurisprudence. I impose no preference and issue no ruling.

But the choice of the word yields an observation, which I record as my own reading: the word ḥujūr carries both "lap" and "bound". The word holds within itself the link between protection and prohibition.

In counting the wives of sons, a qualification is added: alladhīna min aṣlābikum — "who are of your own loins".

This qualification is directly connected with the matter treated at al-Aḥzāb 33/4-5 and 33/37: that an adopted child is not counted as a child of one's own.

The principle recorded in the discussion of al-Aḥzāb was this: "calling a child 'my son' does not make him one's own son." This qualification in al-Nisāʾ is the counterpart of the same principle within a ruling on marriage. I rely on that treatment.

This link between the two sūras is a datum of the text, and the places of the words can be counted.

What do those counted in the list have in common?

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the list itself: all the ties counted are ties the person did not choose or that are already established. Mother, daughter, sister, paternal aunt, maternal aunt — these are not chosen. The tie of milk — it is formed in childhood. Mother-in-law, stepdaughter, daughter-in-law — these arise from a marriage already made.

The list, that is, prevents a new tie from being built on top of existing ties. And the prohibition of marrying two sisters at once is the clearest instance of this: a tie already exists between two sisters, and a marriage could turn that tie into a rivalry.

This is an interpretation, not a transmitted report. But it can be read from the list itself.

It occurred in the twenty-second verse too. It is repeated two verses later.

And the verse-ending changes: the twenty-second verse ended with sāʾa sabīlā (an evil way); the twenty-third ends with Ghafūran Raḥīmā.

I record this as an observation about word order: the same exception occurs twice, but one closes with reproach and the other with forgiveness. That the new ruling does not run backwards is said with two different names.

Wa'l-muḥṣanātu mina'l-nisāʾi illā mā malakat aymānukum, kitāba'llāhi ʿalaykum, wa uḥilla lakum mā warāʾa dhālikum an tabtaghū bi-amwālikum muḥṣinīna ghayra musāfiḥīn, fa-ma'stamtaʿtum bihī minhunna fa-ātūhunna ujūrahunna farīḍatan, wa lā junāḥa ʿalaykum fīmā tarāḍaytum bihī min baʿdi'l-farīḍa, inna'llāha kāna ʿAlīman Ḥakīmā

"And married women are forbidden to you — except those your right hands possess. This is God's writ upon you. Apart from these, it is made lawful for you to seek with your wealth, in chastity and not in fornication. To those of them from whom you have had enjoyment, give their bridal gifts as an appointed due. There is no fault upon you in what you agree between you after the appointed due. God is Knowing, Wise."

The root ح-ص-ن: to be protected, to be made secure. Ḥiṣn — a fortress; ḥaṣīn — firm; muḥṣan — protected, brought under protection.

The word was treated in the discussion of al-Nūr 24/4, and it was recorded there that there is disagreement over its scope. I rely on that treatment.

There is a classical disagreement over the sense in which the word comes in this verse:

This disagreement is real in the classical commentaries. The context (a list of marriage prohibitions) supports the first reading; I impose no preference.

And an interesting linguistic datum must be recorded: in the continuation of the same verse the word is used this time of men: muḥṣinīna ghayra musāfiḥīn — "in chastity, not in fornication". The root, that is, is applied to both sides.

This is a countable fact, and it is within a single verse.

This expression occurs several times in the sūra (3, 24, 25, 36, 92) and concerns an institution of society that existed in the classical period.

A record was entered on this matter in the discussion of al-Aḥzāb 33/50, and I carry it over here as it stands:

"No legal ruling was issued on the expression mā malakat aymānuhum in 33/50. The Qurʾān's other records on the same subject (the bringing forward of manumission as a good deed and as an expiation) were recorded without concealment; it was stated that the matter was discussed at length in the history of Islamic thought and that it exceeds the bounds of this commentary."

The same record holds here.

And the Qurʾān's own data can be recorded: in the ninety-second verse of this sūra the freeing of a neck (taḥrīru raqabatin muʾmina) is provided as the expiation for killing by mistake; in the thirty-sixth verse mā malakat aymānukum is included in the list of kindness; and in the twenty-fifth verse the manner of marriage with women in this position is regulated and their bridal gifts are given to them.

These are data of the text. I build no thesis about history from them and draw no ruling.

"God's writ upon you" — an emphasis in the pattern of the absolute object (mafʿūl muṭlaq).

The sense "to write an obligation" in the root ك-ت-ب was treated at al-Baqara 2/2: "kutiba ʿalaykum — 'it was written for you', that is, it was made obligatory… In this usage a book is not only what is read but a text that brings an obligation." I rely on that treatment.

This expression has been the subject of different readings in the history of Islamic thought, and this is a known disagreement.

What is done in this section is this: the existence of the disagreement is recorded, no choice is made between the parties, no insinuation is made against any group, and no polemic is entered into.

This divergence is a question of jurisprudence whose outcome differs among the schools of law. I make no choice, I issue no legal ruling, and none of them is binding.

What follows from the wording of the verse and is not in dispute is this: the command of the sentence is the payment of the bridal gift (fa-ātūhunna ujūrahunna farīḍatan), and this command is a repetition of the command in the sūra's fourth verse (wa ātu'l-nisāʾa ṣaduqātihinna).

The sūra uses a third word for the bridal gift: ajr.

Three words name the same legal element from three separate sides. This is a countable fact, and it was recorded in the discussion of the fourth verse as well.

تَرَٰضَيْتُم — root ر-ض-و, Form VI: mutual consent.

The same pattern was treated at al-Baqara 2/233 (ʿan tarāḍin minhumā wa tashāwur) and it was recorded there: "Both words are from Forms III and VI, that is, from the patterns that state reciprocity." I rely on that treatment.

And the place of the qualification must be recorded: the verse first lays down a measure (farīḍa), then leaves room for mutual agreement above that measure. The law, that is, draws a floor and leaves the ceiling to the parties.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the qualification min baʿdi'l-farīḍa.

Wa man lam yastaṭiʿ minkum ṭawlan an yankiḥa'l-muḥṣanāti'l-muʾmināti fa-min mā malakat aymānukum min fatayātikumu'l-muʾmināt, wa'llāhu aʿlamu bi-īmānikum, baʿḍukum min baʿḍ, fa'nkiḥūhunna bi-idhni ahlihinna wa ātūhunna ujūrahunna bi'l-maʿrūfi muḥṣanātin ghayra musāfiḥātin wa lā muttakhidhāti akhdān… dhālika li-man khashiya'l-ʿanata minkum, wa an taṣbirū khayrun lakum, wa'llāhu Ghafūrun Raḥīm

"Whoever among you cannot afford to marry free believing women, let him marry from among the believing young women your right hands possess. God knows your faith best. You are all of one another. Marry them with the permission of their people and give them their bridal gifts in the recognised manner… This is for those among you who fear falling into hardship. That you be patient is better for you. God is forgiving, merciful."

Into the middle of a long clause of ruling a sentence of four words has been set: baʿḍukum min baʿḍ — "you are, one of you, from another."

And this sentence ties back to the sūra's first verse: khalaqakum min nafsin wāḥida.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the shared logic of the two verses: the first verse said that humankind comes from a single root. The twenty-fifth verse, while giving a ruling about the section of society seen as lowest, says the same thing again.

The sentence, that is, is a reminder set into the middle of a ruling: the social difference between the parties is not a difference in respect of being human.

And immediately before it there is one more sentence: "God knows your faith best."

About the function of this sentence the following is widely transmitted in the classical commentaries: it is a qualification set in the path of people's ranking one another by faith.

I relate this explanation as it is transmitted. And the order of the verse supports it: the sentence comes immediately after the expression "believing young women".

The verse lays down two conditions:

The pronoun of the second qualification must be recorded: ātūhunna — "give them". The bridal gift is paid to the woman herself. This is the repetition here of the ruling in the fourth verse.

The root ع-ن-ت: to fall into hardship, to be hard pressed; and the re-breaking of a broken bone. The lexicographers record for the root the sense of "hardship, harm, a difficult position".

The word occurs at al-Baqara 2/220 as well (wa law shāʾa'llāhu la-aʿnatakum), and there it is in the context of the orphan's property. In both places the word concerns the qualification that a ruling should not press a person too hard.

The verse gives a permission, then says "that you be patient is better for you".

This structure recurs in the sūra, and I record it as my own reading:

In all three places a ruling is laid down and what is better is shown beside it. This is the same line recorded in the section on divorce in al-Baqara: "the rulings are laid down in detail, but beside every ruling a door of latitude is left open." I rely on that treatment.

Yurīdu'llāhu li-yubayyina lakum wa yahdiyakum sunana'lladhīna min qablikum wa yatūba ʿalaykum, wa'llāhu ʿAlīmun Ḥakīm · Wa'llāhu yurīdu an yatūba ʿalaykum wa yurīdu'lladhīna yattabiʿūna'l-shahawāti an tamīlū maylan ʿaẓīmā · Yurīdu'llāhu an yukhaffifa ʿankum wa khuliqa'l-insānu ḍaʿīfā

"God wishes to make things clear to you, to show you the ways of those before you, and to accept your repentance. God is Knowing, Wise. God wishes to accept your repentance; but those who follow their desires wish you to swerve utterly away. God wishes to lighten your burden. Man was created weak."

In these three verses the verb يُرِيدُ occurs four times, three of them ascribed to God and one to the other party. This is a countable fact.

And the structure itself carries information, which I record as my own reading: after the rulings, what the will that lays them down wants is stated. The verse, that is, explains the intention behind a list of prohibitions running to twenty-three items.

سُنَّة — root س-ن-ن: to do something evenly and smoothly; to open a way. Sanna'l-māʾa — he made the water flow; masnūn — evenly shaped.

The word is plural here: sunan — ways. And the expression "the ways of those before you" states that the rulings have a continuity within history.

The concept of sunnat Allāh was treated in al-Fatḥ, and a record was entered there: "the concept is a measure for understanding the past, not a warrant for judging the present." I keep that record here too.

The sentence reinforces the verb an tamīlū (that you swerve) with maylan ʿaẓīmā (a great swerving).

And the word's second occurrence in the sūra must be recorded: the same root will return in the hundred and twenty-ninth verse — fa-lā tamīlū kulla'l-mayl ("do not incline wholly to one side").

The same root, at two different scales. This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra.

"Man was created weak."

And where this sentence is spoken must be recorded: as the ground of the will to lighten. Weakness, that is, is not named as a defect; it is named as the reason for the lightening of the ruling.

The root ض-ع-ف had occurred in this sūra at the ninth verse (dhurriyyatan ḍiʿāfan) and at the seventy-fifth (al-mustaḍʿafīn).

Now the root returns in a third place and in its most general form: khuliqa'l-insānu ḍaʿīfā.

Read together, the three rows show the three layers the sūra builds around weakness: a state, a nature, and a wrong done.

I record this as my own reading; the places of the words can be counted in the text.

And this is an important place for this sūra: the sūra is built on the right of the one who has no protection, and in the twenty-eighth verse it is said that being without protection belongs to everyone. Those addressed by the rulings, that is, are weak too.

One. The verses between the twenty-sixth and the twenty-eighth come immediately after a long list of prohibitions and set a frame around the list: the aim is not to restrict but to make clear and to lighten. That the intention is stated after a body of rules also determines how the rules are to be read.

Two. The sentence khuliqa'l-insānu ḍaʿīfā makes, in the middle of a text of obligations, one of the plainest admissions about human beings. This sentence produces neither an excuse nor a humiliation. It says that the measure of the burden is set according to the strength of the one who carries it.

And a limit: no conclusion such as "man is weak, and therefore not responsible" follows from here. The verse names weakness not so that responsibility should be lifted but so that it should be lightened — the verb itself is yukhaffifa, not yarfaʿa.

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū lā taʾkulū amwālakum baynakum bi'l-bāṭili illā an takūna tijāratan ʿan tarāḍin minkum, wa lā taqtulū anfusakum, inna'llāha kāna bikum Raḥīmā · Wa man yafʿal dhālika ʿudwānan wa ẓulman fa-sawfa nuṣlīhi nārā, wa kāna dhālika ʿala'llāhi yasīrā

"O you who believe! Do not consume one another's property among you by false means — unless it be a trade by mutual consent among you. And do not kill yourselves. God is merciful towards you. Whoever does this in enmity and wrongdoing, We shall cast him into a fire; and that is easy for God."

The twenty-ninth verse opens a new block, and the opening address changes: in the first verse it was yā ayyuha'l-nās (O mankind); here comes yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū (O you who believe).

But the subject does not change. For twenty-eight verses the sūra has been occupied with property in someone else's hands: the orphan's property (2-10), the shares of inheritance (11-12), the bridal gift (4, 20-21, 24-25). The twenty-ninth verse builds the same subject again in its most general form: amwālakum baynakum — "the property among you".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the repetition of the verb: the verb lā taʾkulū (do not consume) occurs in the sūra at the second verse (wa lā taʾkulū amwālahum), at the sixth (wa lā taʾkulūhā isrāfan), at the tenth (yaʾkulūna amwāla'l-yatāmā), and here. All four are about property, and all four use the same verb.

The root's original sense: to come to nothing, to be void, to be without effect. Baṭala — it came to nothing; bāṭil — what has no ground, what has no counter-value.

And the word's function here must be recorded: the verse does not say "by forbidden means", it says bi'l-bāṭili. The measure, that is, is property changing hands without a counter-value: if what is given has nothing given back for it, that transaction is bāṭil.

The same pattern occurs at al-Baqara 2/188 (wa lā taʾkulū amwālakum baynakum bi'l-bāṭil), and there the giving of bribes to judges is named. The two verses build the same sentence with two different examples. This is a repetition that can be verified.

The verse lays down a prohibition and gives its exception with two qualifications.

Tarāḍin — root ر-ض-و, the tafāʿul form. And this form in Arabic states reciprocity: taqātala (they fought one another), taʿāwana (they helped one another). The word is therefore not "to consent" but "to consent to one another" — consent cannot be one-sided.

And the root comes for the third time in this sūra. In the fourth verse there was fa-in ṭibna lakum ʿan shayʾin minhu nafsan (if of their own accord they leave you some part of the bridal gift); in the twenty-fourth fīmā tarāḍaytum bihī min baʿdi'l-farīḍa occurred and was treated there under the heading "the field of consent".

The same measure is present in all three, and the third is the widest. I record this as an observation about word order.

The clause is short and its word carries several senses: anfusakum — "your souls".

There is disagreement in the classical commentaries over this expression, and it must not be concealed:

All three readings are transmitted; I impose no preference and draw no legal ruling from them.

But an indication that can be verified from the text may be recorded: immediately before the clause stands the expression amwālakum baynakum ("the property among you"), and baynakum plainly states reciprocity. This is an indication supporting reading A. I record it as an indication, not as a preference.

And this too must be recorded: two clauses stand side by side in the same verse — the taking of property unjustly and the taking of life. The sūra forbids both in one breath.

The verse lays down two prohibitions and closes with mercy.

The sūra's order of verse-endings was set out in a table in the introductory section: the rulings mostly closed with an attribute of watching (raqīb, ḥasīb, shahīd, samīʿ, baṣīr, khabīr). Here there is not watching but mercy.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is verses twenty-six to twenty-eight: the block immediately before ended with yurīdu'llāhu an yukhaffifa ʿankum (He wishes to lighten your burden). The verse-ending continues that line.

The thirtieth verse qualifies the breach of the prohibition in the twenty-ninth with two words: ʿudwānan wa ẓulman.

The root ع-د-و: to exceed the bound, to cross the limit. The root ظ-ل-م: to put a thing somewhere other than its place. The two roots were compared in the discussion of al-Māʾida 5/2 and 5/8: the one states doing too much, the other not giving what is due. I rely on that treatment.

And the coming of the two words together produces a qualification: the verse qualifies not every loss of property or every death but what is done deliberately and wrongfully. This foreshadows the gradation that will be established in the ninety-second and ninety-third verses.

One. The qualification ʿan tarāḍin minkum ties the validity of a transaction to the will of both parties. That consent be mutual is not the same thing as one party's having signed; the pattern of the word says this.

Two. The measure bi'l-bāṭil asks a different question from "is it forbidden or not": is there a counter-value? This question can be asked even of transactions that look formally flawless.

In tajtanibū kabāʾira mā tunhawna ʿanhu nukaffir ʿankum sayyiʾātikum wa nudkhilkum mudkhalan karīmā

"If you avoid the great things you are forbidden, We shall cover over your lesser failings and admit you to an honoured place."

The concrete sense of the root: the side, the flank. Janb — the side; jānib — the side or aspect of a thing. And ijtanaba (Form VIII): to leave a thing to one side and walk on, to keep away from it.

The picture in the word is worth recording: to avoid a prohibition is to leave it aside and keep walking. The verb describes not a struggle but a distance.

The same root will return in this sūra at the thirty-sixth verse: wa'l-ṣāḥibi bi'l-janb — "the companion at your side". That one root should be used in two opposite directions, one of keeping away and one of nearness, is a fact that can be verified within the sūra.

The verse divides the prohibitions in two: kabāʾir (the great ones) and sayyiʾāt (the lesser failings).

And how the division is to be made is not stated in the verse. In classical exegesis there is a wide debate over the list and the definition of the kabāʾir; that list is not given in this commentary and no definition is preferred. The reason is the method's rule against issuing legal rulings.

What can be said from the text is this: the verse establishes a proportion. Avoiding the great ones brings the covering over of the lesser ones. The verse, that is, asks not for faultlessness but for a priority.

نُكَفِّرْ — root ك-ف-ر: to cover. The root was treated in detail in al-Baqara (the farmer covering the seed with earth). I rely on that treatment. And its use here in the direction of good is worth recording: the act of covering can, from the same root, name both denial and forgiveness.

مُّدْخَلًا كَرِيمًا — mudkhal: a place one enters. Karīm — root ك-ر-م: precious, generous, noble. The verse does not use an attribute belonging to the place; it uses an attribute belonging to a relationship.

Wa lā tatamannaw mā faḍḍala'llāhu bihī baʿḍakum ʿalā baʿḍ, li'l-rijāli naṣībun mimma'ktasabū wa li'l-nisāʾi naṣībun mimma'ktasabna, wa'sʾalu'llāha min faḍlih, inna'llāha kāna bi-kulli shayʾin ʿAlīmā

"Do not covet that by which God has favoured some of you over others. To the men belongs a share of what they have earned, and to the women belongs a share of what they have earned. Ask God of His bounty. God knows all things."

This verse uses the same words as the thirty-fourth, which will come two verses later. And this is a datum of the text that is most often skipped in exegesis. It must be established first, because the thirty-fourth verse comes on top of this one.

In both sentences there is the same verb (faḍḍala), the same structure (baʿḍ … ʿalā baʿḍ) and the same indefiniteness.

And the indefiniteness itself is a datum of the text, which I record separately: both verses say baʿḍakum ʿalā baʿḍ / baʿḍahum ʿalā baʿḍ — "some of you over others" / "some of them over others". In neither of the two verses does the expression "men over women" occur. This is a countable fact: both the subject and the object of the sentence are indefinite pronouns.

I record this as an observation about word order, not as an exegetical preference. How this indefiniteness is read in the thirty-fourth verse will be given there, in a table of the disagreement.

The two clauses in the middle of the verse are exact copies of each other:

In all three rows the word is the same; the only thing that changes is the person-ending of the verb. Iktasabū — third person plural masculine; iktasabna — third person plural feminine. The sentence, that is, builds the same word twice, changing only the inflection.

And this happens for the second time in the sūra. The seventh verse did the same thing:

Li'l-rijāli naṣībun mimmā taraka'l-wālidāni wa'l-aqrabūn wa li'l-nisāʾi naṣībun mimmā taraka'l-wālidāni wa'l-aqrabūn (4/7)

In both verses there is the same word (naṣīb), the same paired construction and the same symmetry. This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra.

And now comes the most striking side of this verse.

The root كسب: to obtain something, to earn it; and the concrete association the lexicographers record is going after a task and getting it.

The classical lexicographers have a record about Form VIII (iktasaba): it is said that between kasaba and iktasaba the second states greater effort and intent. I relate this record as the lexicographers give it; there is no complete agreement on the distinction.

What belongs here is this, and it is a datum of the text: the verse uses the verb iktasaba for both parties.

The sentence could have been built like this, but it is not:

The verse, that is, establishes by repeating the word that both parties are in the position of the one who earns. The verb is not passive but active; and active twice over.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the inflection of the verb: iktasabna is the feminine form and it stands once in the sentence, exactly in the place of its masculine counterpart. The text writes the woman's earning not as an extension of the man's earning but as an item in its own right.

And a limiting record: no legal arrangement and no theory of property is drawn from here. What is said is the sentence's own structure: the same verb and the same noun are given to both parties.

The verse forbids one thing and puts something else in its place. The two must be set side by side:

تَمَنِّي — root م-ن-ي: to let a thing pass through the heart, to picture it. From the same root comes amāniyy (vain fancies), and this word will return in the hundred and nineteenth verse of the sūra.

And the distinction must be recorded: what is forbidden is not asking but wanting what another has. The second half of the sentence commands asking outright.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the presence of the two verbs in the same verse: the verse closes off comparison and leaves asking open.

One. The verse describes comparison itself as a burden: a desire built by looking at what another has is named in the verse tamannī and is forbidden. What is put in its place is not the asking itself but the direction of the asking.

Two. That the word naṣīb is given twice, to both parties, continues the line established in the sūra's seventh verse. The sūra counts the party who has a share twice — and each time the second counting is identical to the first.

Wa li-kullin jaʿalnā mawāliya mimmā taraka'l-wālidāni wa'l-aqrabūn, wa'lladhīna ʿaqadat aymānukum fa-ātūhum naṣībahum, inna'llāha kāna ʿalā kulli shayʾin Shahīdā

"For all of what parents and near kin leave We have appointed heirs. And to those whom your oaths have bound, give their share. God is witness over all things."

The concrete sense of the root: to be near, to be adjoining. Walī — the one who is near, who takes charge of another's affair; mawlā — both master and freedman, both helper and the one bound. Because of the nearness in its root, the word is used in both directions at once.

The root was treated at al-Anfāl 8/72-75 under the heading "the bond of walāya". I rely on that treatment.

The word occurs in this sūra twice in the seventh verse, twice in the thirty-second, and once here.

The same word five times in three verses. And the command is the same every time: give the share.

The expression means literally "those whom your oaths have bound", and there is disagreement in the classical commentaries over whom it means.

All three readings are transmitted; I impose no preference and draw no legal ruling from this. The legal force of this verse is disputed in classical jurisprudence, and that debate is not the subject of this text.

What can be said from the text is this: the verse builds a sentence that counts even a bond not made by blood as holding a share. And this will widen further in the thirty-sixth verse — there the neighbour and the travelling companion will enter the list.

Al-rijālu qawwāmūna ʿala'l-nisāʾi bimā faḍḍala'llāhu baʿḍahum ʿalā baʿḍ wa bimā anfaqū min amwālihim, fa'l-ṣāliḥātu qānitātun ḥāfiẓātun li'l-ghaybi bimā ḥafiẓa'llāh, wa'llātī takhāfūna nushūzahunna fa-ʿiẓūhunna wa'hjurūhunna fi'l-maḍājiʿi wa'ḍribūhunna, fa-in aṭaʿnakum fa-lā tabghū ʿalayhinna sabīlā, inna'llāha kāna ʿAliyyan Kabīrā · Wa in khiftum shiqāqa baynihimā fa'bʿathū ḥakaman min ahlihī wa ḥakaman min ahlihā, in yurīdā iṣlāḥan yuwaffiqi'llāhu baynahumā, inna'llāha kāna ʿAlīman Khabīrā

"Men are qawwām over women, because God has favoured some over others and because they spend of their property. Good women are qānit; they guard, where no one sees, what God has guarded. As for those women whose nushūz you fear, admonish them, leave them alone in their beds, and ḍarb them. If they obey you, then seek no way against them. God is exalted, great. — And if you fear a rift between the two of them, send an arbitrator from his family and an arbitrator from hers. If the two of them wish to set things right, God will bring them together. God is Knowing, Aware."

This is the most debated place in the sūra. So I set down at the outset what is done in this section and what is not.

One. The two verses are treated together. The thirty-fourth verse is not a unit separable from the thirty-fifth: the first verse takes as its subject the settling of a dispute from within, the second the settling of the same dispute from outside by arbitration, and the block ends with the word iṣlāḥ. To cut the block in the middle is to damage the text.

Two. No legal ruling is issued. The readings of the classical commentaries and of the schools of law are related as a table of the disagreement, with their grounds. None of them is preferred and none of them is binding.

Three. Current debates are not entered into. How this verse is understood today, how it is answered in this or that legal order, and the social debates around it are not the subject of this text.

Four. No demeaning language is used and the reader is not scolded. No general judgement of worth about either party is drawn from the verse.

Five. What is not in the wording of the verse is not added to it. Below, the words and grounds the verse itself gives are established first; the readings come only after that.

The root ق-و-م: to rise to one's feet, to stand up, to keep a matter standing.

The root has occurred twice already in this sūra: at the fifth verse, allatī jaʿala'llāhu lakum qiyāmā ("the property God has made a means of standing upright for you"), and it was treated there under the heading "the weave of roots in the sūra". I rely on that treatment.

And the pattern must be recorded: qawwām is on the فَعَّال pattern. In Arabic this pattern states two things:

The same word was treated at al-Māʾida 5/8, and this was recorded there:

"That is, a qawwām is not 'one who acts justly on one occasion' but one who makes it his business to keep justice standing. The command asks not for a behaviour but for a character."

I rely on that treatment. And setting the word's three occurrences in the Qurʾān side by side must be recorded as a datum of the text:

The same pattern is present in all three. In two of them the word is a command; in the first it is a statement of a situation. This is a countable fact.

And this must be recorded: the verse does not explain the word qawwām. How much authority and how much obligation the word states is not written in the verse; what is written in the verse is two grounds.

The particle bimā occurs twice in the sentence, and two grounds are set out:

The second ground must be treated in detail, because its wording is plain and not in dispute.

Anfaqū — a perfect verb, third person plural: they spent. Min amwālihim — of their property.

The verse, that is, ties the second ground to an act. And the act is in the same field as the verb iktasabū / iktasabna two verses earlier: property, earning, spending.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the tense of the verb: anfaqū is past and states an action. A ground that states an action is bound to that action. The verse has thus tied the ground not to an attribute but to something done.

That this explanation is found in the classical commentaries too must be recorded: the connecting of qawwām-hood with the obligation of maintenance is widely transmitted. But there is disagreement over the relative weight of the two grounds and over the scope of the first, and it is set out in the table below.

First the datum of the text: the sentence does not say "men over women". It says baʿḍahum ʿalā baʿḍ — "some of them over others".

And two verses earlier, in the thirty-second, the same structure occurred (mā faḍḍala'llāhu bihī baʿḍakum ʿalā baʿḍ) — and there the sentence was the subject of a prohibition: do not covet this. This is a datum of the text that can be verified, and it was set out in a table above.

There is disagreement in the classical commentaries over how this expression is to be read. I put it in a table; I impose no preference.

All three readings have been defended in the classical and later literature. I prefer none of them and none of them is binding.

And a limiting record is written plainly, per the method (Method): no conclusion that one sex is superior to the other in respect of being human can be drawn from this sentence. The sūra's first verse (min nafsin wāḥida) and its twenty-fifth (baʿḍukum min baʿḍ) were treated in this commentary, and the records made there hold here too.

قَٰنِتَٰت — root ق-ن-ت: to keep at a task with constancy and reverence; to submit.

And the root's distribution in the Qurʾān must be recorded, because it shows the direction of the word:

Two tendencies are transmitted in the classical commentaries over towards whom the word is directed here: some explain it as obedience to God, some as constancy to the order within the family. I relate both tendencies; I impose no preference.

What can be said from the text is this, and it is an observation about word order: in the Qurʾān the dominant use of the root is directed towards God; and at al-Aḥzāb 33/35 the word is counted for both parties. This establishes no ruling beyond the wording of the verse, but it is a datum that ought to be put in the table.

حَٰفِظَٰتٌ لِّلْغَيْبِ بِمَا حَفِظَ ٱللَّهُ — "those who guard, where it is not seen, what God has guarded."

The root ح-ف-ظ occurs twice in the clause: ḥāfiẓāt and ḥafiẓa'llāh. And the word order is worth recording: the ground of the guarding is tied again to a guarding — bimā ḥafiẓa'llāh.

غَيْب — root غ-ي-ب: to be hidden, to be out of sight. Here the word states the place where no one sees.

The root ن-ش-ز. And its concrete sense must be recorded: nashz — high ground, a hillock, a rise.

The family of senses that follows from this:

The picture in the word is a rising and a leaving of one's place. One party's going out from the position it holds within a relationship.

And now comes the most important datum of the text in this discussion.

The word occurs twice in this sūra, and in its second occurrence it is used of the MAN.

This is a symmetry that can be verified from the text and a countable fact: the same root, in the same sūra, is applied to both parties.

And the detail of the symmetry must be recorded too:

It can be seen that both blocks open with the same word and close in the same field: iṣlāḥ and ṣulḥ.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the two tables above: the sūra recognises the same phenomenon for both parties, and ends both blocks in the direction of agreement.

The verse sets out three verbs: fa-ʿiẓūhunna, wa'hjurūhunna fi'l-maḍājiʿi, wa'ḍribūhunna.

The table below gives, with their grounds, the readings transmitted in the classical exegetical and juristic literature about these three steps. None of them is this text's preference, none of them is binding, and no practice can be derived from here.

This table is not a fatwā and cannot be read as a guide to practice. The reason it is placed here is the rule on disagreement in the method (Method): the disagreement is not concealed, no preference is imposed.