al-Nisāʾ 4:1

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.