يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓا۟ إِذَا جَآءَكُمُ ٱلْمُؤْمِنَٰتُ مُهَٰجِرَٰتٍ فَٱمْتَحِنُوهُنَّ
Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū idhā jāʾakumu'l-muʾminātu muhājirātin fa'mtaḥinūhunn, allāhu aʿlamu bi-īmānihinn, fa-in ʿalimtumūhunna muʾminātin fa-lā tarjiʿūhunna ila'l-kuffār, lā hunna ḥillun lahum wa lā hum yaḥillūna lahunn, wa ātūhum mā anfaqū, wa lā junāḥa ʿalaykum an tankiḥūhunna idhā ātaytumūhunna ujūrahunn, wa lā tumsikū bi-ʿiṣami'l-kawāfiri wa'sʾalū mā anfaqtum wa'l-yasʾalū mā anfaqū, dhālikum ḥukmullāh, yaḥkumu baynakum, wallāhu ʿAlīmun Ḥakīm
"O you who believe! When believing women come to you as emigrants, test them. God knows their faith better. If you find them to be believers, do not send them back to the unbelievers. These women are not lawful for them, nor are they lawful for these women. Give to them (their husbands) what they have spent. There is no fault in you if you marry them, provided you give them their marriage portions. Do not hold to the marriage bonds of unbelieving women; ask for what you have spent, and let them ask for what they have spent. This is God's ruling; He judges between you. God is knowing, wise."
The sūra takes its name from here. And the verse is the place where the sūra passes from its general principles to application: a procedure is described.
As the historical frame of the verse the Treaty of al-Ḥudaybiya is pointed to. It is transmitted that one of the articles of the treaty provided for the return of those who came from Mecca to Medina. On the wording of this article, and on whether it covered women, there are differing reports; in some transmissions it is said that the article concerned men and that women fell outside its scope. On the exact wording of the text I do not speak with certainty. What is certain is that the verse is answering a problem of return; for to say "do not send them back" shows that a demand for return existed.
The root م-ح-ن. In the dictionaries the following are transmitted as the concrete uses of the root: مَحَنَ الأَدِيمَ — to draw out and stretch the hide in tanning, to thin it; and مَحَنَ البِئْرَ — to scrape out a well in order to clean it. What the two uses share is this: to bring out what is inside a thing by working on it.
From here arise the senses miḥna (hardship, trial) and imtiḥān (testing). At the centre of the word there is an operation of bringing to light — and the operation itself is laborious.
That the word should be from this root makes the next sentence of the verse meaningful too: the hide grows thin by being drawn, but whatever is inside it is what comes out. A test produces nothing; it makes visible what is there.
The command is given: test them. And immediately after the command, without a single word in between, comes a caveat: God knows their faith better.
The meaning of this sequence is: the authority given to you is not the authority to know the heart. Test — but knowing that the result is not absolute. In commanding a procedure the verse draws in the same sentence the epistemological limit of that procedure.
This appears in the verse's next expression too: فَإِنْ عَلِمْتُمُوهُنَّ مُؤْمِنَٰتٍ — "if you know / find them to be believers". Here the verb ʿilm is used not in the sense of absolute knowledge but in the sense of arriving at a conviction; in the classical exegesis this is explained by "strong conviction" (ẓann ghālib). That is, the decision is built not upon certainty but upon the best conviction obtainable.
What is the content of the test? In the classical commentaries it is transmitted that the women were asked the reason for their emigration — whether they had come out of anger at a husband, out of some worldly expectation or some other cause, or really on account of faith. The view is also transmitted that the articles of the pledge in the twelfth verse are the content of this test. I record these transmissions as possibilities; the wording of the verse does not describe a procedure, it only gives the command.
In practice this means: the ruling is built upon outward signs and upon declaration. This agrees with the general attitude of the Qurʾān; indeed at al-Ḥujurāt 49/14, when a community is told "do not say 'we have believed'; say 'we have submitted'", what is being distinguished is exactly the difference between declaration and knowledge of the heart.
لَا هُنَّ حِلٌّ لَّهُمْ وَلَا هُمْ يَحِلُّونَ لَهُنَّ "These women are not lawful for them, nor are they lawful for these women."
A symmetrical sentence. The same ruling is said in both directions. And this is a choice of word order that must be attended to: the sentence could have been built one-directionally ("they are no longer lawful for them"), but it is said separately to both sides.
حِلّ — the root ح-ل-ل: to untie, to loosen a bond. From the same root come ḥall (a solution), ḥulūl (to come down and halt at a place — the traveller's untying of his load), ḥalāl (that whose bond is untied, free). Its opposite is ḥarām, root ح-ر-م: made inviolable, closed off.
That is, "not to be lawful" is not, in the logic of the word itself, the bond's not having been untied; in this context it is the very opposite — the marriage bond's no longer being valid.
The substance of the ruling is this: the emigration has in fact brought the marriage bond to an end. The verse lays this down not as a punishment but as a statement of the situation.
The logic of this ruling needs to be seen. The other side is the enemy; the first verses of the sūra speak about them. The woman is not returned to them, because this is a matter of faith. But the financial right stands as a separate category and is paid.
This is the most concrete application of the principle of qisṭ laid down two verses earlier. In the eighth verse it was said "deal justly towards them"; here a debt that must be paid even to a party in a state of war is entered on the record.
وَسْـَٔلُوا۟ مَآ أَنفَقْتُمْ وَلْيَسْـَٔلُوا۟ مَآ أَنفَقُوا۟ "Ask for what you have spent, and let them ask for what they have spent."
The two sentences are mirrors of one another. And the particle لْ in the second sentence is the lām of command: "let them ask" — that is, the verse grants the same right to the other side too in the imperative mood.
That a text should grant to the party it has defined as an enemy a right of claim in that party's own favour is worth noting. What the verse establishes here is not the law of one side but an order of settlement between two sides.
عِصَم — the plural of ʿiṣma. The root ع-ص-م: to hold on, to cling, to protect. From the same root come iʿtiṣām (to cling fast — Āl ʿImrān 3/103: "hold fast to the rope of God"), maʿṣūm (protected), ʿiṣām (the cord that ties the mouth of a waterskin).
That marriage should be named by this word is worth noting: marriage is here mentioned as a handhold, a bond, a point of clinging. The concrete sense of the word — the cord that ties the mouth of a thing — also shows the function of the bond: what holds in what is inside.
The ruling is the symmetry of the preceding sentence. There the woman who came was not given back; here it is said that the bond going in the reverse direction is not to be held to either. That is, the regulation is not one-directional.
حَكَمَ — the root ح-ك-م: as occurred above, to bridle, to hold back. A ruling is what holds the parties back from running after their own wishes.
يَحْكُمُ بَيْنَكُمْ — "He judges between you". And the scope of "between you" is wide here: not only among the believers but between the two parties to the settlement.
عَلِيمٌ حَكِيمٌ — knowing and wise. That these two names should come at the end of this verse is apt: throughout the verse the matter was the establishing of a ruling upon something that cannot be known (the faith in the heart). ʿAlīm: it is He who knows what cannot be known. Ḥakīm: and in spite of that, the order established is not arbitrary.