Muḥammad 47:4

Fa-idhā laqītumu'lladhīna kafarū fa-ḍarba'r-riqāb; ḥattā idhā athkhantumūhum fa-shuddu'l-wathāq; fa-immā mannan baʿdu wa immā fidāʾan ḥattā taḍaʿa'l-ḥarbu awzārahā. Dhālika; wa law yashāʾu'llāhu la'ntaṣara minhum wa lākin li-yabluwa baʿḍakum bi-baʿḍ. Wa'lladhīna qutilū fī sabīli'llāhi fa-lan yuḍilla aʿmālahum

"So when you encounter those who deny — the striking of necks. Then, when you have subdued them, bind the bond fast. Thereafter either release without payment, or ransom — until the war lays down its burdens. So it is. Had God willed, He would [Himself] have taken retribution from them; but [it is so] that He may test some of you by means of others. And as for those killed in the path of God, [God] will never make their deeds go astray."

This verse is one of the most frequently torn from its context in the sūra and perhaps in the Qurʾān. Per the method (Method), I shall do four things here in order:

1. I shall show how the sentence is built — because the way the sentence is built determines its scope. 2. I shall analyse the roots of the words. 3. I shall show the limits the verse sets within itself. 4. I shall transmit the debate in the classical commentaries in the form of a table of disagreement — and I shall issue no legal ruling.

And I write this at the outset: this verse will not be attached to any event, any side, any group of the present day. This is not a sentence of precaution; it is a limit required by the wording of the verse. I shall show its ground below.

The first word of the verse is not a command but a condition.

فَإِذَا لَقِيتُمُ — fa-idhā laqītum: "when you encounter".

To see this changes everything. The sentence could have been built like this:

• uqtulu'lladhīna kafarū — "kill those who deny." It does not say this.
• ughzū ʿalayhim — "march against them." It does not say this.
• jāhidūhum — "struggle against them." It does not say this.

The sentence begins with إِذَا. In Arabic idhā is the adverb of time for a situation whose occurrence is expected: "when it happens". And the property of a conditional sentence is this: the answer is not in force until the condition has come about.

That is, what the verse regulates is not the starting of a war; it is what is to happen when an encounter takes place on the field of battle.

Root: ل-ق-ي. Its primary sense is to meet, to come upon, to come face to face. From the same root: لِقَاء (liqāʾ, meeting), تَلَقَّى (to meet, to receive — Adam's (Ādam) "receiving" of the words at al-Baqara 2/37), مُلَاقَاة, and أَلْقَى (to throw, to set before).

At the centre of the word lies a coming face to face — and this is not a one-sided movement. Liqāʾ requires both parties to be at that point.

The Qurʾān uses this verb in the context of war in several places, and wherever it uses it, it recounts the same thing: not the moment of attack, but the moment when the lines meet.

• "O you who believe! When you encounter a force, stand firm" (al-Anfāl 8/45).
• "O you who believe! When you encounter those who deny in a marching host, do not turn your backs to them" (al-Anfāl 8/15).

That is, the verb itself describes the scene: two ranks face to face. This is not a street, a house, a marketplace.

This part of the verse is grammatically extraordinary, and it has to be seen.

What is expected as the answer of the sentence is an imperative verb: fa'ḍribū'r-riqāb — "strike the necks". But the verse does not say this.

The verse says فَضَرْبَ ٱلرِّقَابِ: a verbal noun, in the accusative. The vowelling of the word is ḍarba (accusative), not iḍribū.

The grammarians resolve this as follows: there is an absolute object here whose verb has been elided (dropped). The implied form is: fa'ḍribū'r-riqāba ḍarban — "strike the necks with a striking". The verb has been dropped, the verbal noun has remained. This construction is called مَصْدَر نَائِب عَن فِعْلِه: the verbal noun that stands in place of its verb.

And what does this do?

The books of rhetoric record two functions of this construction:

And there is a third point, often recorded by the lexicographers: the verbal noun, unlike the verb, carries no tense and no person. The verb says "you, strike"; the verbal noun says only "striking". That is, the expression ceases to be a command directed at a person and becomes the description of a situation.

I record its fit with the scene as an observation: the sentence is as short as the moment of encounter itself. This is not a place for building long sentences.

Root: ر-ق-ب. And the family of senses in this root is interesting: raqaba — neck; raqīb — one who watches; murāqaba — watching; irtiqāb — waiting and watching.

The lexicographers make the connection thus: the one who watches cranes his neck. That is, murāqaba is a work done with the neck; the word has passed from the organ to the act.

رِقَاب — the plural of raqaba.

The Qurʾān uses this word elsewhere in a wholly different context, and this needs to be recorded:

• "…and for [the freeing of] necks" — وَفِى ٱلرِّقَابِ (al-Baqara 2/177 and al-Tawba 9/60): one of the categories of alms is the bringing of slaves to freedom, and the Qurʾān names this by saying "necks".
• "…the freeing of a neck" — فَتَحْرِيرُ رَقَبَةٍ (al-Nisāʾ 4/92, al-Māʾida 5/89, al-Mujādala 58/3 — the last treated in al-Mujādala).
• "The loosing of a neck" — فَكُّ رَقَبَةٍ (al-Balad 90/13; treated in al-Balad).

That is, the overwhelming majority of this word's occurrences in the Qurʾān are in the context of a neck's being loosed. The word occurs in seven places in the Qurʾān; six of them have to do with the loosing of a bond. The only use in the context of war is this verse.

I record this distribution as a textual fact. I draw no ruling from it; but seeing where the weight of the word lies within the Qurʾān corrects the picture in the hands of one who reads the verse.

Why not "kill them" but "the striking of necks"? Two explanations are given in the classical commentaries: (a) metonymy (kināya) — killing named in its most explicit form; (b) that this is the place of the blow which in battle is most effective and gives the quickest result, so that the expression also includes not prolonging the suffering. I transmit this second explanation; I do not present it as a firm report.

This is the turning point of the verse, and the concrete sense of the root carries everything.

Root: ث-خ-ن. Its primary sense is to thicken, to grow dense, to grow heavy.

• ثَخِين (thakhīn) — thick, dense. Of a liquid: viscous, having lost its fluidity. Of a cloth: thick.
• ثَخُنَ ٱلشَّىْءُ — the thing thickened, grew heavy.
• أَثْخَنَ (Form ifʿāl) — to thicken something, to make it heavy; and from here: to bring someone to a state where he cannot move, to land a heavy blow and break his resistance.

The Arabs say athkhanahu'l-jurḥ: the wound weighed him down, left him motionless. And athkhana fi'l-arḍ — to press down heavily in the land, to establish dominance.

That is, the picture of the word is this: something that has been flowing thickens and stops. Conflict is a flow; ithkhān is the change in the consistency of that flow to the point of stopping.

An exact English equivalent is hard to find. "To subdue" is close; but "to thicken / to weigh down" gives the root better. I use "subdue" and write the real picture of the root beside it.

The word occurs in two places in the Qurʾān:

The two verses use the same word and both describe the same threshold: taking captives only after ithkhān. The relation between the two is one of the most disputed matters in the classical commentaries, and I shall take it up below in the table of disagreement.

The particle حَتَّىٰ here announces a limit (ghāya): "until…". And this is the most important structural element of the verse.

There are two ḥattās in the verse:

1. حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَآ أَثْخَنتُمُوهُمْ — "until you have subdued them". 2. حَتَّىٰ تَضَعَ ٱلْحَرْبُ أَوْزَارَهَا — "until the war lays down its burdens".

That is, nothing in the sentence has been left without a limit. The striking has an upper bound (ithkhān), and the regulation as a whole has an upper bound (the end of the war).

This is a fact read from the wording of the verse and it needs to be put on record: the text sets two separate end points for itself.

شَدَّ — root ش-د-د: to tighten, to make firm, to strengthen. From the same root shadīd (severe), ashadd (stronger).

وَثَاق — root و-ث-ق: to be firm, to be trustworthy. From the same root مِيثَاق (mīthāq — a firm covenant), وَثِيقَة (wathīqa — a document), ثِقَة (thiqa — trust).

وَثَاق, for its part, names the thing that is tied, the bond, the rope.

And there is a point of language here: from the same root come both "the covenant that gives assurance" (mīthāq) and "the captive's bond" (wathāq). The common core is firmness and not coming loose. Mīthāq is the word that will not be undone; wathāq is the bond that will not be undone.

I transmit this relation by way of the root sense the lexicographers record; the picture drawn between the two words is my own inference.

And what the sentence says here is a change of status. Where the striking ends is where the binding begins. The one who is bound is no longer a combatant — he is a captive. The verse makes this transition with a single fāʾ: fa-shuddū.

This is the most frequently skipped place in the verse, and it is the place this commentary will dwell on most.

What is to happen after the captive is bound? The verse gives two options:

إِمَّا … وَإِمَّا — in Arabic this is the pattern of leaving a choice (takhyīr): "either… or…". It announces that one of two alternatives is to be chosen.

And no third option is mentioned.

I write this plainly because this part of the verse often stays invisible: all the possibilities the verse counts regarding captives are two forms of setting free. Both end with the captive's release; the difference between them is whether the release is with or without a price.

This is not an exegetical interpretation; it is the wording of the verse itself. The pattern immā… wa immā enumerates the alternatives counted. In this verse the two alternatives enumerated are these.

And the order too is worth noting: mann comes first. Release without price is mentioned before release for a price. In Arabic, priority in order does not always announce superiority; but I record it as an observation.

The root م-ن-ن has been treated in several places in this commentary: al-Baqara (2/262-264 — lā tubṭilū ṣadaqātikum bi'l-manni wa'l-adhā), al-Tīn, al-Qalam, al-Ḥujurāt (49/17 — yamunnūna ʿalayka an aslamū), al-Muddaththir. I do not repeat it here.

The two directions the root carries were recorded earlier in this commentary, and here they are decisive:

And the measure recorded in al-Ḥujurāt: the difference lies not in what is given but in what is done after the giving.

In this verse the word is in the first sense: release without payment. Mannan — an absolute object whose verb has been dropped (the implied form: fa-immā an tamunnū mannan).

And the primary sense of the root matters here. The lexicographers also connect mann with "cutting": manna'l-ḥabl — he cut the rope. From here: to bestow is to cut a bond and give without return; the one who receives is cut off from the debt of return.

What the word carries in this verse is exactly that: the bond is undone and no return is asked for it. In the preceding clause the bond had been tightened (shuddu'l-wathāq); here the same bond can be undone with no price taken at all.

I record this reversal of direction between the two clauses as my own reading.

Root: ف-د-ي. Its primary sense: to save one thing by giving another; to get back by paying a price.

• فِدْيَة (fidya) — the price paid in place of an obligation. At al-Baqara 2/184, the fidya of one who cannot fast.
• فِدَاء (fidāʾ) — the price of ransom.
• إِفْتِدَاء — to ransom oneself. This root was taken up in al-Maʿārij (al-Maʿārij 70/11-14: yawaddu'l-mujrimu law yaftadī min ʿadhābi yawmi-idhin bi-banīh) and in al-Ḥadīd.

The basic idea the root carries is an exchange: something is given, something is taken.

And in the context of war two forms of fidāʾ are recorded in the classical sources: release for property, and the exchange of captives (a trade against the Muslim captives on the other side). The second form is closer to the root sense of the word — for there the exchange is, in the full sense of the word, a life for a life.

This is one of the most striking expressions in the Qurʾān, and its word order deserves particular examination.

Who is the subject of the sentence? The subject of the verb taḍaʿa is ٱلْحَرْب — the war itself.

That is, the sentence does not say: "until you lay down your weapons", or "until those who fight set down their burdens". It says: until the war lays down its own burdens.

This is an istiʿāra makniyya (an implicit metaphor): the war is imagined as a being carrying a load on its back. And that being sets its load on the ground at the end of the road.

This root has been treated in three places in this commentary: al-Inshirāḥ (وِزْر — a heavy load, and from there sin), al-Qiyāma (وَزَر — a refuge, a rock on a mountain), and al-Najm (53/38: allā taziru wāziratun wizra ukhrā — and there the word وَزِير, "the one who shares the load"). I do not repeat it here.

What was recorded there and is decisive here is this:

"At the centre of the root lies the idea of weight and mass. Wazar is the steep and heavy mass of rock on a mountain. Wizr is the weight carried. Wazīr is the one who shares the weight."

What I shall add here is the particular use of the root in this verse.

أَوْزَار — the plural of wizr: loads, weights. And there are two views on what the word means in this verse:

Both explanations are found in the classical commentaries, and I make no preference.

I record this much: both explanations arrive at the same result — the expression describes the ending of the war. The difference between them lies not in what brings it to an end but in what the "load" points to.

And an observation about the expression itself — it is my own reading: the Qurʾān does not describe the end of the war as "until victory is won" or "until the enemy is destroyed". It describes it as the setting down of a load. That choice positions war not as a gain but as a weight. A value judgement is hidden inside the expression: what is carried is something to be put down.

I do not present this as a binding exegesis; but the choice of the word stands in the text, and the "weight" sense of the root is beyond dispute.

In the middle of the sentence, a demonstrative standing alone: ذَٰلِكَ.

The grammarians resolve this in several ways: the predicate of an elided subject (al-amru dhālika — "the matter is this"), or the subject of an elided predicate (dhālika ḥukmuhum — "this is the ruling concerning them").

Its function is clear: it seals a section. What has been said up to here was a regulation; it says dhālika and the regulation closes. What follows is another subject.

And now comes the most striking sentence of the verse.

لَوْ — in Arabic this is the particle of the counterfactual condition (imtināʿiyya): it announces a condition that has not come about and is not expected to. "Had it been so, it would have been thus — but it was not."

The sentence says this: "Had God willed, He would Himself have taken retribution from them."

ٱنتَصَرَ — root ن-ص-ر, Form VIII. This root has been treated in many places in this commentary (al-Ḥashr, al-Ṣaff, al-Qamar, al-Mulk, Nūḥ, al-Jinn, al-Ṭāriq); and the intiṣār pattern in particular was taken up in al-Dhāriyāt and al-Raḥmān: to help oneself, to take one's own due, to take one's revenge. I do not repeat it here.

This sentence of the verse binds everything regulated before it to a qualification.

It says: this is not a matter God could not have handled otherwise. It is not a question of power. Had it been a question of power, la'ntaṣara minhum — He would have handled it Himself.

Why, then, is it so?

لَٰكِن — the particle of correction (istidrāk): "but".

لِيَبْلُوَ — the lām of purpose (taʿlīl) + the root ب-ل-و: to try, to test.

Root: ب-ل-و. The primary sense the lexicographers record is interesting: to wear a thing out, to make it threadbare. Baliya'th-thawb — the garment wore out. From the same root بَالٍ (worn out).

The connection between testing and wearing out is this: to try a thing is to use it; and use wears it out. The trial wears down the one tried.

This root has been touched on in other places in this commentary; what is to be added here is the object of the word in this verse.

بَعْضَكُم بِبَعْضٍ — "some of you by means of others".

Note: the object is not "them". The sentence does not say "We shall test you by means of them". It says "some of you by means of others". The word baʿḍ occurs twice, both times indefinite.

The meaning of this needs to be dwelt on. The sentence takes both sides inside the same pronoun. The trial is not one-directional; it is mutual. For one side to be a test for the other means that the other is a test for that side too.

And this is the second qualification set upon the verse's regulation of war: the conflict is positioned not as an end but as a ground of testing. Not a result, but a process.

This reading rests on the wording of the text (li-yabluwa — the ground of testing is given explicitly); but the conclusion I draw from it, that conflict is not an end, is my own inference and is not binding.

There is a variant reading and it affects the meaning:

Both readings are transmitted. The difference is not trivial: the first makes having been killed a condition; the second holds having fought to be sufficient.

I make no preference. I record this: the two readings do not cancel each other, they complete each other. One puts the outcome first, the other the act.

The qualification فِى سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ must not be passed over either. This qualification was the object of the verb ṣadd in the first verse (ṣaddū ʿan sabīli'llāh — they turned others away from the path of God). Now the same construct becomes the place to which the death is attributed.

And the measure recorded on 61/4 in al-Ṣaff holds here too:

"The qualification فِى سَبِيلِهِۦ must not be passed over either: 'in His path'. Not every war."

And the verse closes by returning to the first sentence of the sūra.

The same verb, the same object, the opposite ruling. And the negation is made with لَن — the strongest negation of the future in Arabic.

This says something about the structure of the verse. The verse began with the regulation of the field of battle; it continued with the qualification about power; it went on with the ground of testing; and it ended with the promise that the deeds will not be lost. That is, it began with a regulation and closed with deed — with the key word of the sūra.

The debate the classical commentaries conduct around this verse is essentially the relation of the following three texts to one another:

• Muḥammad 47/4 — after subduing, bind; then either mann or fidāʾ.
• al-Anfāl 8/67-70 — "It is not for a prophet to take captives until he has subdued in the land…" and then verse 70, which addresses the captives.
• al-Tawba 9/5 — the verses regulating the rulings of war and peace.

The views transmitted, in a table:

In this commentary I make no preference and issue no legal ruling. Per the method (Method), the views of the schools of law are transmitted and no ruling is issued; and I have no sound measure by which to prefer among the reports concerning the order of revelation.

What is to be recorded is this: the debate itself shows that the verse has not been read as a general ruling standing alone and settled. The classical exegetical tradition has always taken this verse up together with other verses. To take the verse by itself and present it as a general ruling is the exact opposite of what that tradition does.

The limits that can be read directly from the wording of the text:

All eight of these items are in the verse's own wording. Not one of them is a qualification brought in from outside.

And to "tear a verse from its context" means exactly this: to drop the first and third of the eight items above and take the second clause on its own. In that state the verse says something else — but what it says is no longer what the verse says.

I have to be careful here, because the most dangerous thing that could be written under the heading "what this says to the present" for this verse is to attach it to a conflict of today. I shall not do that.

There are two observations that can be drawn from the verse and that are attached to no side:

One. The hardest sentence of a text is read together with the qualifications the text itself sets. This verse carries eight separate qualifications, and all of them are inside the text. To take the hard sentence and leave the qualifications while reading a text is not reading but selecting. This is a measure valid not only for this verse but for every text.

Two. Both of the alternatives the verse counts regarding captives are release — and this is a regulation worth noting within the text's own historical context. From the moment the fighting is subdued the verse changes the status of the captive: he ceases to be a combatant and becomes one who has been bound, and finally one who is to be released.

I record one further inference from here — it is my own reading: the structure of the verse is built upon violence setting a limit to itself. Two ḥattās, one fa-shuddū, one immā… wa immā. The text says where what it permits will end, in the very place where it permits it.