Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, Verse 1

1. The Questions This Verse Raises

Saheeh International.

The verse raises six questions, and they come below in the order it raises them.

Why Does the Verse Put Kinship Beside Being Mindful of Allah?

The command to be mindful of Allah reaches every part of life. Why, then, does the verse name the wombs, the bonds between relatives, beside Him? Keeping those bonds is already part of obedience to Allah. Naming them expressly gives that duty particular weight.

The Arabic word for the womb and the divine name al-Raḥmān share the letters ر ح م:

The Prophet ﷺ explained the connection and its consequence:

Kinship has a claim established by Allah. Even its name carries the connection with His mercy.

Ibn ʿAbbās رضي الله عنهما explains the command in one sentence:

Al-Ṭabarī and Ibn Abī Ḥātim preserve this athar through two asanid that Ḥikmat Bashīr Yāsīn grades ḥasan. Its practical meaning is direct: give relatives their rights as an act of obedience to Allah.

Abū Ḥayyān sees the same relationship in the wording. To name kinship beside Allah, under one command, shows the gravity of severing it. He compares the covenant in 2:83, where kindness to parents and near relatives follows the command to worship Allah alone. ^[3]

How does one command govern both?

Being mindful of Allah means obeying Him and avoiding disobedience. Being mindful of kinship means maintaining it through kindness and avoiding its severance. The two expressions call for different actions. The commentators therefore examine how the single verb اتَّقُوا (ittaqū), “be mindful,” carries both.

Al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār takes the verse as evidence that one word may be intended in more than one sense at once. On his explanation, the difference between the two kinds of taqwā is the point: one concerns Allah’s commands generally, and the other concerns the rights of relatives. ^[4]

Al-Rāzī offers a possible answer through تَقْدِير (taqdīr), expressing the words understood within a construction. He sets out the sense as:

If the command is understood again with the second object, each duty has its own “be mindful.” There is then no need for a single occurrence of the word to carry two meanings. ^[5]

Abū Ḥayyān answers in two related ways. First, the actions share a general meaning, which he calls الْقَدْرُ الْمُشْتَرَك (al-qadr al-mushtarak). In both, a person guards against a wrong: disobedience to Allah, or the severance of kinship. One verb can express that shared meaning while its objects show what the person must guard against. ^[6]

Second, the particular duty is included within the general one:

The command to obey Allah already requires a person to maintain the ties He has commanded. The verse first gives the general duty, then names one part of it expressly. On this explanation, one verb governs both without a second verb being understood and without requiring two separate senses. ^[8]

Ibn ʿĀshūr takes اتَّقُوا (ittaqū) in two senses: mindfulness of Allah and care for the rights of kinship. He is explaining the reading الْأَرْحَامَ (al-arḥāma), with a fatḥah at the end, in which the noun is مَنْصُوب (manṣūb) as an object of the command. Both this reading and the reading with the other ending are Qurʾān. As Ibn ʿUthaymīn explains, each brings a meaning the other does not, and the two meanings are compatible. ^[9]

In his explanation, “the wombs” stands for “the rights of the wombs.” The word “rights” is the understood مُضَاف (muḍāf), the first term in this possessive construction. Thus the command concerning kinship means guarding its rights. He calls this اسْتِعْمَالُ الْمُشْتَرَكِ فِي مَعْنَيَيْهِ (istiʿmāl al-mushtarak fī maʿnayayh), the use of a shared word in both its senses. ^[10] On this reading, he also identifies this point as the beginning of the sūrah’s legislation. ^[11]

The duty established by the wording.

These explanations account for the language in different ways. They all leave the reader with a duty toward relatives. Al-Saʿdī states why it is named so prominently: Allah joins the command about kinship to the command to fear Him لِيُؤَكِّدَ هَذَا الْحَقَّ (li-yuʾakkida hādhā al-ḥaqq), “to confirm this right.” He then explains its place within obedience:

Abū Ḥayyān reaches this relationship through the joining of a particular duty to a general one; al-Saʿdī explains the right itself. Ibn ʿĀshūr’s grammatical account differs, but it also gives kinship an express command. The rights of created beings must be fulfilled, and the nearest relatives have a particular claim.

Which relatives does this include? Al-Qurṭubī defines the word broadly:

Nearer relatives have a stronger claim, but the duty is not confined to them. ^[13]

How that duty affects gifts. Al-Rāzī records a Ḥanafī deduction: a gift to a close relative whom one may not marry cannot be reclaimed, because taking it back breeds estrangement and the severing of kinship. Al-Qurṭubī disputes restricting this protection to that class of relatives: kinship, and the harm of cutting it, also exist beyond them. The disagreement concerns the legal reach of the gift rule, not whether other relatives have rights. ^[14]

The setting makes the command more relevant still. Ibn ʿĀshūr describes people who invoked kinship when asking a favour, then neglected its rights and wronged the orphaned children of their own families. The verse’s wording is تَعْرِيض (taʿrīḍ), an indirect reproach. It recalls the tie they appealed to and confronts them with what that tie requires. ^[15]

The laws that follow concern orphans, inheritance, spouses, women and children. Al-Saʿdī observes that the sūrah develops in detail the responsibilities announced at its opening. ^[16] Ibn ʿUthaymīn states the command in its practical form: guard against falling short in the rights of your relatives. ^[17] And Allah knows best.

Who Is This Verse Speaking To?

The call يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ, “O mankind,” names neither a tribe nor a community of believers. Does it address everyone who receives the Qurʾān, or only the people alive when it was revealed? A further explanation restricts it to the people of Makkah or to the Arabs. The question concerns the reach of the address: who enters through its wording, and who enters through a further proof that the command applies to them?

The address is general. It reaches every person accountable to Allah, from the time of revelation to the end of the world. Al-Rāzī calls this الْأَصَحّ (al-aṣaḥḥ), “the sounder view,” and records the agreement of the legal theorists among the commentators. ^[18] He gives three reasons. The definite article in النَّاس (al-nās) takes in the whole class of people. The reason given for the command, creation from one soul, belongs to all of them. And taqwā is a duty that cannot be confined to one town. ^[19]

The alternative explanations need to be distinguished. Restricting the immediate address to its first hearers does not release later people from the command. Restricting it to Makkah, however, requires an explanation of why the verse’s general wording and its reason should be confined to that place.

How do later generations enter?

Abū al-Suʿūd separates the people directly addressed from everyone whom the ruling will bind. Its ruling includes those accountable at revelation and those who become accountable afterwards, until the Day of Rising. A command spoken to people face to face does not literally address those who are not yet old enough to be accountable; he records a different position among the Ḥanbalīs. Later generations nevertheless enter in one of two ways. Through تَغْلِيب (taghlīb), they are included with the group directly addressed. Or an external proof extends the ruling to them: the consensus that the last of this community is bound by what bound its first. ^[20]

People who had already died before revelation are different. They cannot carry out its commands or avoid its prohibitions, so they are not their addressees. Abū al-Suʿūd treats their place within the verse’s other meanings separately. Their creation is included in the account of human descent, as the discussion of “your Lord” below explains. ^[21]

Al-Shawkānī likewise takes النَّاس (al-nās) as the people existing at the time of the address. He gives both ways of including those born later: the external proof of consensus, or taghlīb, treating the present and future hearers as one group under the address. He compares the latter with the use of masculine forms for a group that includes women. ^[22] Thus his explanation differs from taking the wording as directly general to all generations, while retaining the command’s application to them.

Why the Arabs were the first hearers. The call includes believers and non-believers. Ibn ʿĀshūr explains the first audience historically: the Arabs received the Qurʾān in their own language and were charged with conveying its summons to other nations. He points to the Prophet’s ﷺ letters to Rome, Persia and Egypt, written in Arabic to be translated into their recipients’ languages. ^[23] Being the first to receive the address did not make them its only recipients.

Does the reference to an Arab custom restrict the opening call?

Al-Wāḥidī explains the call as يَا أَهْلَ مَكَّةَ (yā ahl Makkah), “O people of Makkah.” ^[24] Al-Rāzī records this explanation from Ibn ʿAbbās رضي الله عنهما through al-Wāḥidī, together with its reasoning: appealing by Allah and by kinship was an Arab custom; the closing command refers to that custom; and the two commands of one verse address the same people. On this account, the opening is also directed to the Arabs. ^[25] Ibn ʿĀdil records the same explanation and reasoning through al-Wāḥidī. ^[26]

Four responses address different parts of that case:

1. A particular ending does not restrict a general beginning. Al-Rāzī accepts that the closing clause is خَاصًّا بِالْعَرَبِ (khāṣṣan bi-l-ʿarab), “particular to the Arabs.” His answer is a principle of legal theory: a verse can begin with a general address and end with a particular one. The latter does not require the former to be narrowed. ^[27]

2. The closing command can itself be general. Al-Ālūsī takes both commands as addressing everyone to whom the Prophet ﷺ was sent. He describes assigning the two commands separate audiences as التَّفْكِيك (al-tafkīk), breaking apart the verse’s connected wording. ^[28] His answer therefore differs from al-Rāzī’s: both keep the opening general, but they explain the closing audience differently.

3. The attribution to Ibn ʿAbbās may reflect a broader observation. Rashīd Riḍā recalls hearing his father say, when Riḍā was a boy, that the people of Makkah were called by “O mankind” and the people of Madīnah by “O you who believe.” That was an observation about the usual settings of the two forms of address. Riḍā thinks it likely that Ibn ʿAbbās had said something similar, which later narrators applied too narrowly to the opening of al-Nisāʾ. ^[29] This is Riḍā’s proposed explanation of how the attribution arose, rather than an established account of its history.

4. The form of address does not determine where a verse was revealed. Al-Qurṭubī answers the claim, attributed to ʿAlqamah and others, that every occurrence of “O mankind” is Makkan:

Those two places are 2:21 and 2:168. A Madinan sūrah can address mankind in this form.

The distinction between the opening and closing audiences should remain clear. Al-Rāzī and al-Ālūsī both take the opening generally; their explanations of the closing clause differ. The readings of وَالْأَرْحَامِ (wa-l-arḥāmi) and وَالْأَرْحَامَ (wa-l-arḥāma), examined below, also affect how that clause is understood. The vowel alone does not settle every commentator’s account of its audience.

The attribution to Ibn ʿAbbās is a separate source question. In the passage cited here, al-Rāzī relays it through al-Wāḥidī without giving an isnad by which its strength could be assessed. ^[31] The other reports used here concern kinship: Ibn ʿAbbās’s command to maintain its ties, ^[32] and his statement about severed kinship and denied favour, accompanied by Ṭāwūs’s mursal narration about kinship and al-Raḥmān. ^[33] Neither establishes a restriction of the audience to Makkah.

Riḍā also identifies the consequence of treating the general observation as a rule. Al-Suyūṭī restricted the address to Makkah in his commentary, although in al-Itqān he established that the sūrah was Madinan. Riḍā locates the mistake in the commentary. ^[34]

Does the masculine command include women?

The command اتَّقُوا رَبَّكُمُ (ittaqū rabbakum), “be mindful of your Lord,” uses a masculine plural form. Al-Ālūsī distinguishes what this form conveys by itself from whom it includes in this setting. On the first question, he takes the position of most legal theorists: women are not included by the bare form, while the Ḥanbalīs take a different view. At this verse, however, he expressly includes them through taghlīb:

The masculine form represents the mixed group. Women therefore enter the command on his explanation; the qualification concerns how the Arabic includes them, not whether they owe Allah taqwā.

The conclusion follows the reason stated in the verse. The Arabs were its first hearers, and its message was entrusted to them for others. ^[36] The command reaches all accountable people. Allah created them from one soul, and that shared origin gives the same reason for obedience wherever and whenever the verse is heard. ^[37]

Why Does the Verse Say "Your Lord" First and "Allah" Second?

The verse commands taqwā twice: first, “be mindful of your Lord”; then, “be mindful of Allah.” Three questions arise. Why is each name suited to its place? What does repeating the command add? And does the word “your” limit whose Lord He is?

الرَّبّ (al-rabb), Lord, names Allah as the Owner who nurtures and governs His creation. The word can also take the attached pronoun “your,” forming رَبَّكُمْ (rabbakum). The proper Name Allah does not form that relationship in the same way. This grammatical difference allows the first command to name both the Lord and the people who owe Him obedience.

Why the first naming is the word for Lord. Ibn ʿĀshūr sees in this naming an invitation to believe in Allah’s oneness: the Lord is the Owner who tends His creation and manages its affairs. ^[38] The attached “your” then states the addressees’ own relationship with Him. They owe Him taqwā, and to neglect that bond is folly and error. ^[39] The command recalls who has created and nurtured them, and therefore whom they must obey.

Why the second naming is His own Name. It does a different job, and the change marks a change in the sūrah. At the second command the sūrah moves from its opening encouragement into legislation, and law is spoken in a voice that puts awe into the hearer (Ibn ʿĀshūr). ^[40] Al-Rāzī explains the change through the distinction between lordship and godhood. He compares الرَّبّ (al-rabb), Lord, with الإِلَٰه (al-ilāh), God: the first evokes nurture and kindness, the second power and awe. His comparison explains the movement from “your Lord” to the proper Name Allah in this verse. So the first command draws you towards Him and the second puts you on your guard. Two verses pair those same two motions: يَدۡعُونَ رَبَّهُمۡ خَوۡفٗا وَطَمَعٗا, “they call upon their Lord in fear and hope” (32:16), and وَيَدۡعُونَنَا رَغَبٗا وَرَهَبٗا, “they used to call upon Us in longing and in dread” (21:90) (al-Rāzī). ^[41] Attaching the fearing to the Majestic Name, which is the word Allah itself, increases awe and brings in dread (Abū al-Suʿūd). ^[42]

Al-Ālūsī develops the significance of the proper Name further. The verse could have said "be mindful of Him." Put the Name itself where that "Him" could have gone, and you point at every attribute of perfection at once. The command now recalls all of those perfections as grounds for taqwā, beyond the lordship already named. Be mindful of Him for His lordship, for His having created you in this remarkable way, and for His being entitled to every perfection there is (al-Ālūsī). ^[43]

Why the command is said twice at all. The plainest answer comes first, with a homely comparison. Saying it twice is like telling a man "hurry, hurry," which pushes harder than telling him to hurry once (al-Rāzī). ^[44] The repetition confirms the command and rouses the people commanded (al-Qurṭubī). ^[45]

Al-Rāzī does not choose between the answers. He heads the discussion وَفِي هَذَا التَّكْرِيرِ وُجُوهٌ (wa-fī hādhā al-takrīri wujūh), "and in this repetition there are several accounts", and answers it three ways. Saying it twice for force is the first. His second gives each command its own ground: the first is asked for the favour of having been created, the second for the fact that people ask things of one another in His Name. His third is the difference between the two words, which is the answer given above (al-Rāzī). ^[46]

Ibn ʿĀshūr considers a further question: why is the command renewed for the people being addressed at this point? The verb is said again because this second mindfulness is commanded of the Muslims in particular. A remnant of the customs of the age before Islam was still in them without their feeling it, namely laxity about the rights of kin and of orphans (Ibn ʿĀshūr). ^[47]

Repetition first strengthens the command. Abū Ḥayyān opens on it and does not qualify it. His words are كَرَّرَ الْأَمْرَ بِالتَّقْوَى تَأْكِيدًا لِلْأَوَّلِ (karrara al-amra bi-l-taqwā taʾkīdan li-l-awwal), "He repeated the command to be mindful, confirming the first". Only after that does he add the differing-ground answer, and he adds it under وَقِيلَ (wa-qīla), "and it is said" (Abū Ḥayyān). ^[48] Al-Qurṭubī says the same affirmatively. ^[49] It is also the first of al-Rāzī's three. ^[50]

Ibn ʿĀshūr identifies the particular audience and the neglected rights that call for renewed instruction. The other explanations show how repetition confirms the command and how each name gives a reason for obeying it. These observations can work together.

Does “your Lord” limit His lordship? The attached pronoun identifies a real relationship: He is the Lord of the people addressed. It does not make Him their Lord alone. Ibn ʿUthaymīn explains the distinction through the next clause.

The words “who created you” are a صِفَة كَاشِفَة (ṣifah kāshifah), a description that discloses who the Lord is. They do not distinguish one lord from another. If the description were restrictive, it would imply two lords: one who created us from a single soul, and another who did not. There is only one Lord, so the clause makes His work known; it does not restrict His lordship (Ibn ʿUthaymīn). ^[51]

How does the verse include earlier generations? Abū al-Suʿūd distinguishes the people directly addressed from the ancestors included through their creation. The pronoun “you” need not be extended to nations that had already died. He calls that extension تَفْكِيكٌ لِلنَّظْمِ الْكَرِيمِ مَعَ الِاسْتِغْنَاءِ عَنْهُ (tafkīkun li-l-naẓm al-karīm maʿa al-istighnāʾ ʿanhu), "a dismembering of the noble ordering, and it is not needed." It is not needed because Allah created the people commanded out of the soul of Ādam, through the fathers and mothers standing between them and him. Mention their creation and you have already mentioned the creation of everyone in that line, and His lordship over the whole of it with them (Abū al-Suʿūd). ^[52] The connection is through descent: Allah’s creation of the present hearers includes His creation of the parents and earlier generations through whom they came. Earlier nations are therefore included in the meaning without being made the direct addressees of the pronoun. Al-Ālūsī draws out a further consequence: mentioning our creation through those parents and ancestors also includes their rights. The line of descent is therefore a line of obligations, not only an account of where we came from. ^[53]

Two kinds of nurture, and the one used here. Al-Saʿdī distinguishes two kinds of Allah’s nurture. The general kind is His creating, providing for and guiding everyone. The particular kind is His nurture of those close to Him: He nurtures their faith, grants them success in it, completes it for them, and removes what would turn them away from it (al-Saʿdī). ^[54] At this verse he uses the first. What makes being mindful of Him binding is that your Lord created you, provided for you, and nurtured you with His great favours. ^[55] Those three items are the general nurture as he defined it.

The first naming recalls the bond between the Lord and those He created and nurtures (Ibn ʿĀshūr). ^[56] The second brings the awe of His proper Name into the command governing their conduct. ^[57] Neither the pronoun nor the description limits His lordship: the One addressing them is the one Lord (Ibn ʿUthaymīn). ^[58] And Allah knows best.

Who Is the One Soul, and How Was the Mate Made From It?

The verse traces human creation to نَفْسٍ وَاحِدَةٍ, “a single soul,” then says وَخَلَقَ مِنْهَا زَوْجَهَا, “and created from it its mate.” The soul is Ādam, and the mate is Ḥawwāʾ. The commentators explain how the wording identifies them and how the hadith about creation from a rib bears on the second clause. Two questions therefore need to be followed together: who is meant, and what “from it” means.

Why the distinction matters. Shared descent gives a reason for the duties the verse commands. The commentators who identify a particular ancestor understand all humanity as one family through him. An explanation taking the soul as the human kind instead grounds the connection in a shared nature. Merely leaving the person unnamed does not by itself settle that question. Similarly, understanding the mate as created out of him differs from understanding her as a separate creation of the same kind. The latter account must explain its relationship to the hadith about the rib.

On the name, three answers were given.

1. It is Ādam, one particular person, and this is what the wording means when you read it.
2. The name is true, and it does not come from this verse. Ādam is the father of mankind on grounds the commentators already hold, and the name reaches this clause from there rather than from its wording (Riḍā).
3. The wording leaves the soul unnamed on purpose, and it should be left unnamed.

The plain sense is a particular soul. Is one particular soul meant, or the human kind? The answer is الظَّاهِرُ الْأَوَّلُ (al-ẓāhir al-awwal), "the plain sense is the first." It is a particular soul. It is Ādam, the father of mankind (Ibn ʿUthaymīn). ^[59] The term ظَاهِر (ẓāhir), used here by Ibn ʿUthaymīn, al-Qurṭubī and Abū Ḥayyān, means the apparent sense of the wording. Taking another sense requires a reason for departing from it.

Early athar also identify the soul. Al-Suddī and Qatāda each explain it as Ādam, in athar preserved with their asanid (al-Ṭabarī). ^[60] Ibn Abī Ḥātim also preserves al-Suddī’s explanation:

and Yāsīn grades this isnad ḥasan. ^[61]

Al-Qurṭubī answers a small point of Arabic here, and the name settles it. The word for soul, نَفْس (nafs), is treated as feminine even when the person meant is a man. So the verse says "one" in the feminine. Ibn Abī ʿAbla is recorded as reciting it in the masculine, going by the person meant rather than by the word. This form is outside the ten canonical readings. Set the two side by side and the difference is one letter at the end:

Both constructions are possible in Arabic, and each has a grammatical explanation (al-Qurṭubī). ^[62] Al-Shawkānī sets down both recitations too, with the reason for each. ^[63] Reciting it in the masculine only makes sense if the person meant is a man, and that is the reason for allowing it.

One Ādam or more than one. Al-Ālūsī records that the majority of jurists and hadith scholars, الجُمْهُور (al-jumhūr), hold that there was only one Ādam. He also examines accounts asserting many Ādams before him. A long account comes from Jāmiʿ al-Akhbār, whose author was of the Imāmiyya, the Shīʿa who hold to twelve imāms. It has Allah creating thirty Ādams before our father, a thousand years between each. The like comes from Ibn Bābawayh's Kitāb al-Tawḥīd and from Maytham's commentary on Nahj al-Balāgha (al-Ālūsī). ^[64] Al-Ālūsī gathers these claims from books without giving their asanid in the passage cited here. Al-Ālūsī does not leave them standing either. Holding to the plain sense of them, he says, is not what the People of the Sunnah and the Community hold. ^[65] Al-Zuḥaylī rules the same way in one line: whoever asserts Ādams before him collides with the plain sense of the Qurʾān. ^[66]

The name is not in the sentence. Muḥammad ʿAbduh held that. Rashīd Riḍā records his teacher’s explanation in Tafsīr al-Manār. The one soul is not Ādam by the text, and not by its plain sense. The claim comes with its grounds, and there are two. One is the audience. If the address goes to every nation, then every nation will read its own ancestor into an unnamed soul, and some peoples have never heard of Ādam or Ḥawwāʾ at all. The other is a mark inside the verse, and you can see it for yourself. The clause that follows says He scattered from the two of them "many men and women," with no "the" on either word. A sentence about the first parents of the whole race would have said "all the men and the women":

ʿAbduh thus takes the indefinite wording as evidence against identifying the pair as the first parents of all humanity. ^[68] The fifth question below explains why the phrase takes its present form. Ibn ʿĀshūr connects “many” with the multitude conveyed by scattering, while Abū Ḥayyān records the explanation that the description of the women is understood. Those observations explain the wording without making it a census. The statement about human origins must be read as a whole: the opening traces the addressees to one soul, then describes the mate and the descendants of the pair. Multitude alone does not establish universality, but neither does an indefinite plural cancel the shared origin already stated.

Riḍā adds his own distinction between an accepted belief and what he considers established by this particular wording. When the great body of commentators explained the one soul as Ādam, they did not take that from the text of the verse or from its plain sense. They took it from something they already accepted, that Ādam is the father of mankind. ^[69]

ʿAbduh’s explanation should not be taken as an assertion that different peoples descend from different first fathers. Later in the same discussion, he describes a single pair. The opening statement is a summary; the clause about the mate fills that summary in; and

These are ʿAbduh’s words as preserved by Riḍā. ^[70] His objection concerns identifying the pair from this verse; it does not deny the pair in the explanation just quoted.

The same passage explains the mate as a separate creation of the same kind. He writes that Allah created the mate مِنْ جِنْسِ تِلْكَ النَّفْسِ (min jinsi tilka al-nafs), "of the kind of that soul", and not out of the soul itself. ^[71] This is the explanation considered below when the discussion turns to the rib. A separate distinction concerns the verse being interpreted. Al-Rāzī and Riḍā are speaking at two different verses. At 4:1 al-Rāzī reports that the Muslims are agreed the one soul is Ādam. ^[72] Riḍā points instead to 7:189, a different verse, where a similar phrase receives three interpretations. Al-Qaffāl understands the passage as a likeness: each one of you is created from a single soul, with a mate of your own kind. Another interpretation has the address going to Quraysh, with their ancestor Quṣayy as the one soul. A third has Ādam. ^[73]

How the mate was made turns on one small word. It is the preposition مِن (min), "from", and English hides the question by putting the same "from" in both places. On the تَبْعِيض (tabʿīḍ) explanation, it indicates a part: she was created out of the first man’s own body. On the explanation of جِنْس (jins), kind, it identifies her as human like him. Taking only the latter sense allows an account in which she was created separately; retaining it alongside the first also affirms that she shares his nature.

Out of him. The one soul is Ādam and the mate is Ḥawwāʾ, brought out of Ādam, from his rib, as the plain sense of مِنْهَا (minhā), “from it,” requires. The grammar is stated with it: وَ (مِنْ) تَبْعِيضِيَّةٌ (wa-min tabʿīḍiyya), "and min means a part of," and that means Ḥawwāʾ was created out of a part of Ādam (Ibn ʿĀshūr). ^[74] Which part, exactly? Either the remainder of the clay Ādam was made from, or a piece separated from his rib. The rib is the apparent sense of the hadith in the two Ṣaḥīḥ collections, the books of al-Bukhārī and of Muslim. ^[75] Early athar also mention the rib. Al-Ṭabarī has it from Qatāda by way of Saʿīd, and al-Qurṭubī has it from Mujāhid, who names Ādam's short rib. ^[76]

Of his kind. On this explanation, مِنْهَا (minhā), “from it,” means “of its kind.” There should be between the two of them what makes for fellowship and for holding together. Al-Qāsimī, quoting Abū al-Suʿūd, explains that likeness of kind is a cause of their coming together. The passage sets 30:21 beside it, where Allah says He created for you mates from among yourselves, so that you may find rest in them (al-Qāsimī). ^[77] Ibn Baḥr understood it that way as well, against the great body of the commentators, and Ibn al-Jawzī gives him a single line (Ibn Baḥr, reported by Ibn al-Jawzī). ^[78] Abū Muslim al-Iṣfahānī is named for it by al-Ṣābūnī and by al-Zuḥaylī, and his argument turns on what a rib adds. What is the benefit in creating her from a rib, when Allah is able to create her from dust as He created Ādam? The three Qurʾānic parallels are 30:21 and 9:128, which say مِنْ أَنْفُسِكُمْ (min anfusikum), “from yourselves,” and 62:2, which says مِنْهُمْ (minhum), “from them.” In each, the phrase concerns a shared kind (al-Zuḥaylī). ^[79]

Two reasons for rejecting the separate-creation explanation. Ibn ʿĀshūr says that whoever explains the clause only as creating the mate of the same species لَمْ يَأْتِ بِطَائِلٍ (lam yaʾti bi-ṭāʾil), "has brought nothing worth having". Being of one's own species is not peculiar to human beings, so the clause would state what no reader needed telling (Ibn ʿĀshūr). ^[80] Al-Ṣābūnī rules the interpretation void, and he gives more than one ground for it.

He then quotes the hadith that woman was created from a crooked rib. His two grounds should be kept distinct: the verse traces creation to one soul, and the hadith explicitly mentions the rib. An answer to the first ground would still need to address the second.

The counting argument bears on both explanations, and Riḍā says so. Riḍā raises it in his own words first. Scattering men and women from the pair together, he says, is inconsistent with their being created from one soul. Then he says which positions it touches.

His reason is short. People are in fact created from a male and a female,

That holds whether the two were created separately or one out of the other. His objection is that both explanations must account for the move from one soul to two parents. He also says that taking “one soul” as the common human kind avoids this difficulty: a shared kind can be created as male and female and have many descendants. ^[83]

Riḍā finds the majority explanation easier, while allowing the other account an answer. He continues:

On the majority explanation, both parents go back to one soul because one was created out of the other. Riḍā calls that explanation easier. His further judgment, that the alternative can also be reconciled with the wording, leads into the answer he quotes from al-Rāzī.

The interpretation answered above is not Abū Muslim’s alone. Riḍā quotes al-Rāzī answering the counting argument twice over. First, مِن (min) may mark where a thing begins, so that, creation having begun with Ādam, "He created you from one soul" is sound as it stands. Second, the One who could create Ādam from dust could create Ḥawwāʾ from dust, and then what does a rib add. From these answers, Riḍā infers that al-Rāzī inclined to Abū Muslim’s explanation. He also names his own teacher, Muḥammad ʿAbduh, as taking it. ^[85]

This exchange explains how the objection about one soul and two parents is answered. It does not remove al-Ṣābūnī’s further evidence from the hadith, which Riḍā does not address in the passage quoted here.

Why create her from a rib when creation from dust was possible? Allah shows His power to bring a living thing out of a living thing, without ordinary generation. He does the like when He brings a living thing out of what has no life at all. Ādam from dust. ʿĪsā from a woman with no man. Ḥawwāʾ from a man with no woman (al-Ṣābūnī). ^[86] Al-Zuḥaylī gives that answer in the same words. ^[87]

Ibn ʿUthaymīn keeps both senses at once. مِن here means "a part of," and it may also be the kind that states the sort, "of her kind"; and from that second sense a benefit is drawn which the first does not give. Had our wives been of another kind we could never settle with them, because a person settles only with what is of his own kind, and from a mate of some other kind he would recoil (Ibn ʿUthaymīn). ^[88] Ibn ʿUthaymīn affirms creation from a part of Ādam and also permits the sense of shared kind. Al-Ṣābūnī rejects the explanation that substitutes shared kind for creation from the rib. The distinction allows Ibn ʿUthaymīn’s observation about marital companionship to stand with the hadith.

The one soul is Ādam.

Al-Ṭabarī explains the words in four: يعنى: من آدم ﵇ (yaʿnī: min Ādam), "meaning: from Ādam." Al-Baghawī explains them the same way and adds that the mate is Ḥawwāʾ. Ibn Kathīr writes that the one soul

Al-Shawkānī writes

Al-Rāzī goes further than all of them and reports agreement:

Al-Ālūsī says it, and so do Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Ṣābūnī, al-Zuḥaylī and Ibn ʿUthaymīn. ^[90] These commentators identify the soul as Ādam, and al-Rāzī expressly records consensus on that identification.

Shared nature and creation from the rib. A man and his wife are of one kind, and that is why they can settle with each other at all. Ibn ʿUthaymīn draws exactly that from the same word مِن. ^[91]

Al-Ṣābūnī names ʿAbduh’s explanation and answers it with the explicit wording of the sound hadith: woman was created from a rib. ^[92]

Why "Many Men" and Not "Many Women"?

The verse says رِجَالًا كَثِيرًا وَنِسَاءً, “many men, and women.” The description “many” follows the men and is not repeated after the women. Does the first description apply to the second noun as well? Does the wording draw attention to something particular about men? The commentators offer four explanations, some concerning the construction and others the significance they see in this choice.

One description applies to both nouns. Abū Ḥayyān records an explanation in which the understood sense is “and many women.” Arabic can leave a description unstated when the neighbouring description already makes it clear. ^[93] Ibn Kamāl Bāshā gives this account too: the description of the women is indicated by the description of their counterpart. He also explains the masculine form كَثِيرًا (kathīran). Although the broken plural رِجَالًا (rijālan) could take feminine agreement, here the adjective follows the sense of the collective. ^[94]

Ibn ʿĀshūr connects the same construction to the verb. بَثَّ (baththa), “scattered,” conveys a multitude spread abroad. Describing the men as many indicates that multitude, making repetition of the description with the women unnecessary. ^[95] His further observation concerns number rather than gender: كَثِير (kathīr) can have the same form with a singular or a plural, so its singular form here can describe the plural “men.” ^[96]

The women’s greater number is understood. Al-Bayḍāwī gives a different reason: wisdom requires women to be more numerous, so their multitude does not need to be stated again. ^[97] On this explanation, the wording leaves the second description understood because of what the commentator takes to be the relative numbers of the two groups. Al-Ālūsī records this reason and attributes it to al-Khaṭīb. ^[98]

The men’s multitude is more apparent. Al-Rāzī explains that men’s greater public prominence makes their numbers more visible. He calls their multitude أَظْهَر (aẓhar), “more apparent.” ^[99] A crowd in a marketplace can illustrate the distinction: seeing more of one group in public does not establish that the group is more numerous in the whole population. His explanation concerns visibility.

Al-Rāzī then draws a further lesson about what he considers fitting for each: prominence, going out and being seen for men; being unseen and unremarked for women. ^[100] Abū Ḥayyān records this as the second of his two explanations. He introduces both with قِيلَ (qīla), “it is said,” and does not state a preference between them in this passage. ^[101]

The description marks social standing. Ibn ʿUthaymīn explains that a multitude of men is a source of strength and pride among people, while a multitude of women brings the burden and labour of supporting them. ^[102] His point concerns the value attached to the numbers in that social setting. He also states that women among the children of Ādam are more numerous, and relates Ibn Taymiyyah’s inference from two hadith statements: women are the greater part of the people of the Fire, and those of the children of Ādam assigned to the Fire are nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand. Ibn ʿUthaymīn presents their greater number as the conclusion and closes with وهذا هو الواقع (wa-hādhā huwa al-wāqiʿ), “and this is what is the case.” ^[103]

What the two explanations recorded by Abū Ḥayyān share. The first gives an understood description for the women. The second does not provide the word, but expressly accepts the meaning:

Thus the second account also allows that the women were many. The difference concerns whether a description is understood in the construction and what significance the explicit description of men has. Abū Ḥayyān records both accounts; Ibn Kamāl Bāshā states the first, ^[105] and Ibn ʿĀshūr explains how the verb and the first description make the meaning clear. ^[106]

Why the verse names men and women. Al-Qurṭubī also draws a legal classification from the two nouns. A خُنْثَى (khunthā), a person whose sex is outwardly ambiguous, is not thereby a third sex; the person’s underlying condition belongs to one of the two. ^[107] Abū Ḥayyān makes the same observation from the verse’s division into men and women. ^[108] The qualification concerns ambiguous outward signs, and the conclusion concerns the classification used in these explanations.

The clause describes the spread of humanity from the pair. Its wording accommodates the multitude of both men and women without repeating “many.” The additional explanations concern why that description is made explicit for the men; the verse gives no numerical census.

What Changes When the Last Vowel Changes?

Near the close of the verse, وَالْأَرْحَامَ means “and the wombs,” the ties of kinship. Among the ten canonical readings, Ḥamza recites its final mīm with a kasrah, and the other nine with a fatḥah. The ending affects how the noun connects to the rest of the sentence. A third form, with a ḍammah, is also recorded outside the ten. The two canonical forms are:

Five terms make the grammatical explanations easier to follow:

• الفَتْحَة (al-fatḥa), the stroke written above a letter and sounded a. It sits on the م of وَالْأَرْحَامَ.
• النَّصْب (al-naṣb), the case marked here by a fatḥah. A noun in this case is مَنْصُوب (manṣūb): وَالْأَرْحَامَ.
• الكَسْرَة (al-kasra), the stroke written below a letter and sounded i. It sits on the م of وَالْأَرْحَامِ.
• الجَرّ (al-jarr), the case marked here by a kasrah. A noun in this case is مَجْرُور (majrūr): وَالْأَرْحَامِ.
• حَرْف الجَرّ (ḥarf al-jarr), a preposition. It is what puts the noun after it into الجَرّ. Here: the بِ (bi), "by", of بِهِ (bihi), "by Him".

Both are recited, and both come from the Prophet ﷺ. One line covers them: فَقَرَأَ حَمْزَةُ بِخَفْضِ الْمِيمِ، وَقَرَأَ الْبَاقُونَ بِنَصْبِهَا. Ḥamza recited the م with الجَرّ (al-jarr). And the rest recited it with النَّصْب (al-naṣb) (Ibn al-Jazarī). ^[109] Both belong to the ten accepted readings.

The naṣb reading can place kinship directly under the command. On the first explanation, the word is joined to the Name of Allah. One verb then reaches both: be mindful of Allah, and be mindful of the wombs. Al-Ṭabarī preserves early athar explaining it, with their asanid. Their formulations bring out two aspects of the command. Mujāhid and Ibn Zayd read it as

which makes the wombs the thing you are told to be mindful of. Al-Ḍaḥḥāk and al-Rabīʿ read it as

which makes the wombs the field your mindfulness of Allah runs in. The difference is one word, the في (fī), "in", that the second wording adds (al-Ṭabarī). ^[110] Both formulations direct people to fulfil the rights of kinship: one names kinship as what must be guarded; the other specifies the duty owed to Allah concerning it. Al-Rāzī records this explanation from most commentators, with al-Suddī, al-Farrāʾ and al-Zajjāj added to the list (al-Rāzī). ^[111]

A second naṣb explanation connects kinship with the appeal. Arabic separates the ending a word wears from the slot it fills in the sentence, so a second word can be joined to the slot instead of to the ending. Arabic already does this. As in your saying مَرَرْتُ بِزَيْدٍ وَعَمْرًا (marartu bi-Zaydin wa-ʿAmran), "I passed by Zayd, and ʿAmr." Here زَيْدٍ (Zaydin) is مَجْرُور (majrūr) because the preposition reached it. And عَمْرًا (ʿAmran) is مَنْصُوب (manṣūb) because it was joined to the slot instead, with no second "by" said before it. Ibn Masʿūd’s recorded form, outside the ten, supports that explanation: تَسَاءَلُونَ بِهِ وَبِالْأَرْحَامِ (tasāʾalūna bihi wa-bi-l-arḥām), "you ask one another by Him and by the wombs" (al-Zamakhsharī). ^[112]

A third naṣb explanation understands an urging to preserve kinship. Al-Wāḥidī reads the ending as الإِغْرَاء (al-ighrāʾ), the construction Arabic uses to put somebody on his guard: the wombs! guard them and keep them joined. He gives the parallel himself, الْأَسَدَ الْأَسَدَ (al-asada al-asada), "the lion! the lion!", called out at a man walking towards one. And he draws the ruling in the same breath. On that reading the wording itself makes cutting kinship forbidden and keeping it obligatory. Al-Rāzī quotes him to the end of that sentence and turns to the next recitation. ^[113]

The jarr reading can describe an appeal by kinship. On this explanation, the noun is joined to the pronoun in بِهِ (bihi), “by Him.” So the verse describes what people appeal to one another by: by Allah, and by the kinship between them. The scene behind it is ordinary Arab life. Someone says "by Allah and by the kinship, do such and such", asking the other for kindness (al-Zamakhsharī). ^[114] Mentioning the kinship between two people gives the request an additional claim on their attention. An explanation attributed to al-Ḥasan uses those words: "I adjure you by Allah and by the kinship" (al-Ṭabarī). ^[115] To adjure somebody is to put him under an oath as you ask him. Al-Ṭabarī also records the other explanation from al-Ḥasan. Through a different isnad, he has him saying: be mindful of Allah by whom you ask one another, and be mindful of Him in the matter of the wombs. ^[116] The appeal athar explicitly describes this request, and al-Qurṭubī and Abū Ḥayyān both name him for this sense. ^[117] Mujāhid’s explanation has an isnad graded ṣaḥīḥ. Yāsīn cites Ibn Abī Ḥātim through two asanid to Sufyān, from Ibn Abī Najīḥ, from Mujāhid:

and grades it

He also gives an isnad graded ḥasan for the other sense, from Ibn ʿAbbās through ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭalḥa: be mindful of Allah in the matter of the wombs, and keep them joined (Yāsīn). ^[118] The graded athar therefore support both meanings. This concerns their explanations of the wording; the canonical standing of the two recited forms is established in the qirāʾāt sources. Six early reciters are named for it: al-Nakhaʿī, Yaḥyā b. Waththāb, Ṭalḥa b. Muṣarrif, Qatāda, al-Aʿmash and Ḥamza (al-Thaʿlabī). ^[119]

A third form is recorded outside the ten: وَالْأَرْحَامُ (wa-l-arḥāmu), مَرْفُوع (marfūʿ). Al-Zamakhsharī, Ibn ʿAṭiyyah and Abū Ḥayyān explain its sentence without naming a reciter in the passages cited here. Its attribution to ʿAbd Allāh b. Yazīd and its status are examined in §6. It starts a fresh sentence whose second half is left unstated. Two ways of finishing it are on offer. Al-Zamakhsharī's is "the wombs are among what is to be feared". Ibn ʿAṭiyya's is "the wombs are fit to be kept joined". Abū Ḥayyān prefers al-Zamakhsharī’s completion. He takes his missing half from a word already in the verse, the command to be mindful, which is what makes a thing feared. Ibn ʿAṭiyya takes his from what the passage is about, and no word there says it (Abū Ḥayyān). ^[120]

Must the preposition be repeated before the joined noun? This is the grammatical question raised about Ḥamza’s reading. A short pronoun can be attached to a preposition, the way the هِ is attached in بِهِ. Add a plain noun onto that pronoun and most grammarians of Baṣra required the preposition to be said again. Baṣra and Kūfa were two towns in Iraq. Each was home to a school of Arabic grammar, and the two schools differed here. The Baṣran reason is short. An attached pronoun is attached like a letter of the word it sits on. A preposition with what it governs is like one word. So adding a bare noun onto the pronoun looks like joining a noun onto half a word (al-Zamakhsharī). ^[121] Think of بِهِ as one piece and not two. Now set the two forms one above the other:

The بِ said a second time is the entire difference. Both English lines are ordinary English, which is why the rule cannot be shown to you in translation. In Arabic it is one letter. Ḥamza's recitation has the shape of the refused line. This is the grammatical basis of the objection, made by scholars who also wrote commentaries.

Al-Ṭabarī states the rule of Arabic, and then gives his verdict. Joining a plain noun onto a مَجْرُور (majrūr) pronoun is غَيْرُ فَصِيحٍ مِنَ الْكَلَامِ عِنْدَ الْعَرَبِ, not eloquent speech among the Arabs. Poetry is allowed it, because verse is tight for room. Ordinary speech is not, because nothing compels a speaker outside verse to choose what is disliked (al-Ṭabarī). ^[122] Then comes the verdict:

The leading grammarians of Baṣra called the مَجْرُور (majrūr) recitation لَحْن (laḥn), an outright mistake in Arabic, and said it was not lawful to recite by (al-Qurṭubī). ^[124]

And one objection was not about Arabic at all. Ḥamza's recitation is خَطَأٌ عَظِيمٌ فِي أُصُولِ أَمْرِ الدِّينِ, a grave error in the foundations of religion. Al-Zajjāj bases this objection on the Prophet’s ﷺ words:

And what may not be sworn by a father cannot be sworn by kinship (al-Zajjāj). ^[125] Al-Ṣābūnī sets down both halves of that verdict, and names al-Farrāʾ as holding it too. ^[126]

Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī answers from the authority of received Qurʾānic Arabic. He is the son of Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī, whose reflections appear in the Simple Explanation. His response concerns al-Mubarrad, al-Zajjāj and the Baṣran rule. Each of them was describing the Arab speech he had been taught, and that is a grammarian's work. But the Qurʾān is the highest witness to that speech there is. When a thing is established from the Prophet ﷺ, whoever rejects it has rejected upon the Prophet ﷺ. The imams of language and grammar are not followed here,

(Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī, reported by al-Qurṭubī). ^[127]

Al-Rāzī likewise gives priority to the received reading. Ḥamza is one of the seven imāms, and his recitation is established through tawātur. Al-Rāzī therefore understands it as received from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, rather than devised by Ḥamza, and الْقِيَاسُ يَتَضَاءَلُ عِنْدَ السَّمَاعِ, "reasoning by analogy shrinks before what was heard" (al-Rāzī). ^[128] Working out what a rule ought to be gives way to what was actually heard and handed down.

There is an inconsistency in the objection as well. The same usage is thought fine to establish from two lines of poetry whose authors nobody knows. It is not thought fine to establish from the recitation of Ḥamza and Mujāhid, who were among the greatest of the early scholars of the Qurʾān (al-Rāzī). ^[129]

The Baṣran rule itself, that the preposition must be said a second time, has been denied outright. What the Baṣrans held, and al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya after them, is غَيْرُ صَحِيحٍ (ghayru ṣaḥīḥ), not correct. And

(Abū Ḥayyān). ^[130] The reason given with it is not that grammarians may be disregarded. It is that the Kūfans transmitted usages from Arab speech which the Baṣrans never transmitted at all (Abū Ḥayyān). ^[131] For Abū Ḥayyān, the additional Arabic usages support the Kufan allowance of the construction.

Ḥamza's own reputation matters here. لَمْ يَقْرَأْ حَمْزَةُ حَرْفًا مِنْ كِتَابِ اللَّهِ إِلَّا بِأَثَرٍ. He did not recite one letter of the Book of Allah except on an athar (Abū Ḥayyān). ^[132] And joining onto a مَجْرُور (majrūr) without repeating the حَرْف الجَرّ (ḥarf al-jarr) was rightly permitted by Ibn Mālik (Ibn ʿĀshūr). ^[133]

Al-Thaʿlabī reports the grammarians' own preference, and even that stops short of refusal. وَالْقِرَاءَةُ الْأُولَى أَصَحُّ وَأَفْصَحُ, "the first recitation is sounder and more eloquent". The ground is that the Arabs hardly ever add a plain noun onto a مَجْرُور (majrūr) pronoun without saying the preposition again. Al-Thaʿlabī also preserves the qualification:

(al-Thaʿlabī). ^[134] His preference therefore includes an acknowledgment that the construction is permissible, though rare.

He cites an unnamed poet as an example:

The point lies in بك والأيام, “about you and the times.” The noun الأيام is joined to the pronoun in بك without repeating بـ before it. This is the same construction at issue in Ḥamza’s recitation. The line demonstrates its use in Arabic poetry; the separate question is whether a grammatical preference can override a received Qurʾānic reading.

What the مَجْرُور (majrūr) recitation is describing, and the objection raised against it. Al-Zajjāj held that this ending makes swearing by kinship allowable, against the ḥadīth لَا تَحْلِفُوا بِآبَائِكُمْ, "do not swear by your fathers". Al-Rāzī answers him twice. On the first answer the verse tells you something people did before Islam, and telling it afterwards does not conflict with a prohibition issued later. On the second the prohibition named fathers, whereas here Allah is sworn by first and the kinship joined after Him, so

(al-Rāzī). ^[136]

Is the asking a request, an adjuration or an oath? Al-Zamakhsharī takes it to mean a favour asked and nothing more, and he puts the scene in plain words: someone says "by Allah and by the kinship, do such and such" (al-Zamakhsharī). ^[137] Al-Thaʿlabī gives the مَجْرُور (majrūr) recitation two plain Arabic sentences to the same effect, in one breath. The first is سَأَلْتُكَ بِاللهِ وَبِالرَّحِمِ (saʺltuka bi-Llāhi wa-bi-l-raḥim), "I asked you by Allah and by the kinship". The second, in the same sentence, is نَشَدْتُكَ بِاللهِ وَالرَّحِمِ (nashadtuka bi-Llāhi wa-l-raḥim), "I adjured you by Allah and by the kinship" (al-Thaʿlabī). ^[138] Ibn ʿĀshūr puts the same verb inside the oath. He reads تَسائَلُونَ بِهِ as يَسْأَلُ بَعْضُكُمْ بَعْضًا بِهِ فِي الْقَسَمِ (yasʺlu baʿḍukum baʿḍan bihi fī al-qasam), "one of you asks another by Him in the oath", so on his interpretation the asking this verse names is not a separate act from swearing (Ibn ʿĀshūr). ^[139]

Ibn ʿĀshūr reads Ḥamza's recitation further still. He brings the Arabs' formula نَاشَدْتُكَ اللَّهَ وَالرَّحِمَ (nāshadtuka Llāha wa-l-raḥim), "I adjure you by Allah and by the kinship", with the account that ʿUtbah b. Rabīʿah used that formula when the Prophet ﷺ recited Sūrat Fuṣṣilat and fear overtook him. Ibn ʿĀshūr uses the appeal to distinguish a request made by kinship from an oath sworn by it. He brings it to settle a question of Arabic, whether a noun may be joined onto a مَجْرُور (majrūr) pronoun without the preposition said again, and he says as much:

Then he takes the naming of the wombs here to be تَعْرِيضًا بِعَوَائِدِ الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ (taʿrīḍan bi-ʿawāʾidi al-jāhiliyyah), "an oblique reproach at the customs of the Jāhiliyyah", because they would ask one another by kinship and then neglect its rights (Ibn ʿĀshūr). ^[140]

Al-Rāzī draws two rulings out of the verse and names them as rulings. Here is the first.

He supports it with the Prophet’s ﷺ instruction, narrated by Ibn ʿUmar: مَنْ سَأَلَكُمْ بِاللَّهِ فَأَعْطُوهُ, “Whoever asks you by Allah, give to him.” ^[142] Here is the second.

Both are al-Rāzī’s stated conclusions about what the wording establishes. ^[143]

Al-Qurṭubī prefers explaining the jarr construction as people appealing to one another by Allah and kinship. He names al-Ḥasan, al-Nakhaʿī and Mujāhid for this explanation and calls it وَهُوَ الصَّحِيحُ فِي الْمَسْأَلَةِ, “and it is the sound one in this question.” ^[144] His preference concerns this grammatical explanation of the reading, rather than the divine-oath account considered next.

The oath account he defends without adopting. On that account the phrase is an oath and the One swearing is Allah: He swears by the wombs, as He swears elsewhere by things He has made. Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī had called it تَكَلُّف (takalluf), a contrivance. Al-Qurṭubī answers

because Allah does swear by things He has made, and swearing by the wombs would be an honour done to them, حَتَّى قَرَنَهَا بِنَفْسِهِ (ḥattā qaranahā bi-nafsih), "so that He joined them to Himself" (al-Qurṭubī). ^[145] He therefore defends the possibility of a divine oath while preferring the account of people’s appeals.

Ibn ʿUthaymīn answers the grammarians' difficulty in one sentence, and gives his reason in the same breath. بَلْ إِنَّ الْقُرْآنَ حَاكِمٌ وَلَيْسَ مَحْكُومًا عَلَيْهِ: the Qurʾān judges and is not judged upon. So where a usage is called irregular, نَقُولُ: الشُّذُوذُ مِنْكُمْ (naqūlu: al-shudhūdhu minkum), "we say: the irregularity is yours." Imagine a turn of speech that was once rare among the Arabs. It is rare no longer, now that the Qurʾān has come down with it and people recite it at every hour of the day (Ibn ʿUthaymīn). ^[146]

Both are recited, both come down from the Prophet ﷺ, and neither cancels the other. Ḥamza’s reading is sound. The explanations above preserve both the historical objections and the scholarly answers to them. Asked outright whether the two conflict, the answer is فَالْجَوَابُ: لَا (fa-l-jawābu: lā), no. Where a word is recited two ways, either one way explains the other, or a fresh meaning arrives with the other. Here each of them brings a fresh meaning. The مَنْصُوب (manṣūb) recitation gives you the command to be mindful of the wombs, that is, of falling short in what is due to them. The مَجْرُور (majrūr) recitation reminds you that people appeal to one another by kinship, and would not appeal by it except for the greatness of its right among them (Ibn ʿUthaymīn). ^[147] So the verse tells you to guard your relatives. And it reminds you that you already invoke them when you want something.

2. How the Commentators Read This Verse

The preceding questions bring the commentators’ explanations together around the issues they address. These five entries highlight contributions that deserve a closer look.

Some later commentaries also carry earlier explanations forward. Ibn ʿĀdil follows al-Rāzī on who is addressed and al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī on the grammar. ^[1] Al-Qāsimī follows Abū al-Suʿūd and names him. ^[2] Al-Zuḥaylī answers Abū Muslim as al-Ṣābūnī does. ^[3] Al-Khāzin gives al-Rāzī's answer on why the men and not the women are described as many, in fewer words and with the same pairing of prominence against being unremarked. ^[4]

3. Iʿrāb: Grammatical Analysis

The table below follows the Dār al-Ṣaḥāba إعراب القرآن الكريم, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, which takes the verse word by word and gives each word its position. ^[1] Where an attached pronoun has to be separated from the word it sits on, it is given as Maḥmūd Ṣāfī gives it in الجدول في إعراب القرآن, al-Jadwal fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān. ^[2]

The clauses of the verse, and where each one stands.

Where the grammar changes the meaning

مِنْهَا (minhā), "from it," in "and created from it its mate."

Does this small word say what she was made out of, or only what she was made like?

The preposition and its pronoun attach to خَلَقَ (khalaqa), “created.” ^[3] The explanations concern which use of the preposition is intended. These uses need not exclude one another; Ibn ʿĀshūr, for example, combines a starting point with creation from a part.

Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī gives the first, and he applies it to all three prepositions of the passage in one clause:

Al-ʿUkbarī reads it the same way and adds that the phrase stands in the naṣb position because the verb governs it. ^[5] Ibn ʿĀshūr states the second in his commentary on the clause at 4/215, and then, at 4/216 and after citing the hadith about the rib, writes that the preposition is للابتداء, of the starting point, meaning that Allah brought the creation of Ḥawwāʾ out of the rib of Ādam. ^[6] For Ibn ʿĀshūr, the two labels explain one account: a thing taken out of a rib both starts there and is a part of what it came from.

Al-Samīn explains how an understood word yields the third sense. He records that some scholars understood a word to have been left out, so that the sense is مِنْ جنسِها زوجَها, "of her kind, her mate," and he says whose position that is and what he thinks of it: it belongs to those who hold that Ḥawwāʾ was not created out of Ādam but out of clay left over from his clay,

Ibn ʿUthaymīn keeps the second and the third together and draws a benefit from the third that the second does not give. The full argument, with the names on both sides, is set out in §1 above, under the question of what "and created from it its mate" says about how she was made.

Why this matters. A starting point and a material source are related ideas, but the first does not by itself specify the second. Ibn ʿĀshūr identifies both with the rib because of the hadith. Shared kind, by itself, says that she was human as he was; it does not state that she was created out of him. Al-Samīn rejects the separate-creation position he records. ^[8] Al-Ṣābūnī likewise rejects it, naming Abū Muslim and ʿAbduh, on the grounds that the verse traces creation to one soul and that the sound hadith explicitly names the rib. ^[9] Ibn ʿUthaymīn’s combined explanation preserves the material source while also drawing attention to shared nature.

تَسَاءَلُونَ بِهِ (tasāʾalūna bihi), "by whom you ask one another."

What is the little word "by" doing here: naming what people swear on, or naming the means they get their rights by?

The verb is a form that means doing a thing to one another, and the preposition after it is what tells a reader what kind of asking is meant. Three accounts explain the connection between the asking and Allah’s Name.

The Dār al-Ṣaḥāba Iʿrāb takes the first and says no more than that the preposition with its pronoun attaches to the verb. ^[10] Ṣāfī does the same, ^[11] and Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh states the sense of the form outright,

Abū al-Baqāʾ al-ʿUkbarī’s second account explains why the preposition appears. His point is that the verb "ask" does not normally take a preposition before the person asked; you ask somebody, you do not ask by somebody. So the preposition here needs a reason, and the reason is that the verb has been made to hold the sense of a second verb:

Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī reports him and spells out the mechanism: the verb would have governed the pronoun by itself, and once the sense of swearing was put into it, it governed the way the verb of swearing governs. ^[14]

Al-Zajjāj takes the third and states it in four words,

His explanation brings the purpose of the appeal into view: people invoke Allah in seeking what is owed to them.

Why this matters. The first account gives the grammatical attachment: the phrase belongs to the asking. The second explains it through the sense of putting one another on oath. The third identifies the rights being sought through an appeal to Allah. Each helps explain why the verse recalls this familiar practice beside the command to fear Him. People already acknowledge the authority of His Name in their dealings; that acknowledgment calls for obedience.

وَالْأَرْحَامَ (wa-l-arḥām), "and the wombs."

Which earlier word is this last word tied to, and what does each answer make the sentence say?

The two recitations, and the قُرَّاء (qurrāʾ), the imāms of Qurʾānic recitation, who transmit each, are given with the question of what "and the wombs" is joined to. Four accounts are given of what the sentence is then doing.

Be mindful of Allah, and be mindful of the wombs. One command, two objects. Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī writes the sense out:

The joining here is a particular joined to a general. Being mindful of Allah already means being mindful of going against Him, and cutting kinship is one of the ways of going against Him, so the second object was inside the first before the verse named it. ^[16] For Darwīsh the naming is the point: kinship is set beside the Name of Allah, and that says what relatives are owed. ^[17] This is the account the Dār al-Ṣaḥāba Iʿrāb and Ṣāfī both give, and the one the table above follows. ^[18]

You ask one another by Him, and by the wombs. On this account the word is recited وَالْأَرْحَامَ (wa-l-arḥāma), ending in a. This noun is مَنْصُوب (manṣūb), marked here by the final fatḥah. What changes is not the ending but what the wombs are joined to. Not the Name of Allah, but the phrase بِهِ (bihi), "by Him", in تَسَاءَلُونَ بِهِ (tasāʾalūna bihi), "you ask one another by Him."

How can a manṣūb noun be connected with بِهِ (bihi)? The phrase contains the preposition بِ (bi) and the attached pronoun هِ (hi). The pronoun has a fixed form and stands فِي مَحَلِّ جَرّ (fī maḥall jarr), in the position governed by a preposition. The explanation therefore has to distinguish following the form from following the phrase’s function.

On this account, the noun follows the مَحَلّ (maḥall), grammatical position, of the governed phrase. That position can differ from the form produced by its preposition. Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī proves the language allows this with a sentence anyone can say: مَرَرْتُ بِزَيْدٍ وَعَمْرًا (marartu bi-Zaydin wa-ʿAmran), "I passed by Zayd, and ʿAmr." زَيْدٍ ends in -in because the preposition reached it. عَمْرًا ends in -an because it was joined to the slot instead. ^[19]

Makkī b. Abī Ṭālib says why that slot is an object's slot. The verb is تَسَاءَلُونَ, "you ask one another", and what you ask by is its مَفْعُول بِهِ (mafʿūl bihi), its object. But this verb cannot reach an object by itself; it needs بِ to get it there. The phrase therefore performs the work of an object and has a مَحَلّ نَصْب (maḥall naṣb), a position of naṣb, although the pronoun is governed by the preposition. The joined noun follows that object position. ^[20] Al-ʿUkbarī writes out the sense this produces: الَّذِي تُعَظِّمُونَهُ وَالْأَرْحَامَ, "whom you magnify, and the wombs", since to swear by someone is to magnify him. ^[21]

People ask one another by Allah and by their kinship. This is Ḥamza’s canonical recitation: وَالْأَرْحَامِ (wa-l-arḥāmi), ending in i. The noun is مَجْرُور (majrūr), marked here by the final kasrah. It is joined to the pronoun in بِهِ (bihi), so the preposition governs the joined noun as well. Kinship is now not a second thing commanded but a second thing appealed by. An Arab asking a favour would say "by Allah, and by the kinship between us", and the verse reports the habit rather than ordering it. ^[22]

An oath sworn on kinship. On this last account the وَ is وَاو الْقَسَم (wāw al-qasam), the wāw of an oath; kinship is what is sworn on; and "Indeed Allah is ever Watchful over you" is the جَوَاب الْقَسَم (jawāb al-qasam), the answer to the oath. Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī and al-ʿUkbarī reject this account. Al-Samīn first appeals to the other forms: the نَصْب reading, and Ibn Masʿūd's, which writes the preposition in a second time, leave no room for an oath, and recitations are taken to agree with one another. And swearing by anything other than Allah was forbidden. ^[23] Al-ʿUkbarī also considers the understood wording “by the Lord of the wombs” unnecessary after what has already preceded it. ^[24] A reply could be made to the second ground, that Allah swears by what He wishes, by the sun and by the night, though we may not. Al-Samīn allows that reply but still prefers joining the noun to the pronoun: he takes the intended meaning here to be an appeal, rather than a divine oath. ^[25]

Why this matters. Of these four accounts, one places kinship directly under the command: be mindful of it and do not sever it. Two explain the appeal people make by Allah and kinship, using different grammatical connections. The fourth understands a divine oath, an account al-Samīn and al-ʿUkbarī reject. The accepted readings convey compatible meanings: the duty to maintain kinship and the weight people already acknowledge when appealing by it. Ibn ʿUthaymīn expressly answers that the two readings do not conflict. ^[26]

4. Ṣarf: Roots and Morphology

The roots below are examined through Ibn Fāris’s معجم مقاييس اللغة, Muʿjam Maqāyīs al-Lugha, which identifies their central meanings, and from al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī's مفردات ألفاظ القرآن, Mufradāt Alfāẓ al-Qurʾān, and al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī's عمدة الحفاظ في تفسير أشرف الألفاظ, ʿUmdat al-Ḥuffāẓ fī Tafsīr Ashraf al-Alfāẓ, which give each word the sense it bears in the Qurʾān. Ibn Manẓūr's لسان العرب, Lisān al-ʿArab, records the verb pattern where the other three state none. Each entry identifies the source of its lexical or grammatical explanation.

ن-ف-س (n-f-s), in نَفْسٍ (nafs). The word can mean the spirit or the self. Here it refers to Ādam. Its lexical meaning and grammatical gender explain why that identification does not have to be contained in the noun itself.

Ibn Fāris gives the root one axis, and that axis is a bodily act: أصلٌ واحد يدلُّ على خُروج النَّسيم كيف كان, the going out of the breath, however it goes out. ^[23] From breath the word moves to the thing that breathes. Al-Rāghib records two senses side by side: النَّفْس: الرُّوحُ, the spirit, and فَنَفْسُهُ: ذَاتُهُ, his very self. ^[24] Ibn Manẓūr states the second in four words, ونَفْس الشَّيْءِ: ذَاتُهُ, a thing's نفس is the thing itself. ^[25] Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī brings the two senses together, citing the language scholars: النفس في كلام العرب على وجهين, the first the spirit that leaves a man, the second حقيقة الشيء وجملته, the reality of a thing and the whole of it. ^[26]

Two things follow for this verse. The first is that مِنْ نَفْسٍ وَاحِدَةٍ says "out of one and the same being" rather than "out of one man." The noun names no person and states no sex, so the one meant is established from the verse and its setting and not from the pattern of the word; and the one meant is Ādam, which Ibn ʿUthaymīn gives as the plain sense of the wording ^[27] and Ibn ʿĀshūr states it in his own voice with no qualification on it. ^[28]

The second is grammatical and it explains a variant reading. The word نَفْس has feminine grammatical gender here, so the verse writes وَاحِدَةٍ with the feminine ending although the being meant is a man. Al-Zajjāj sets that out and then licenses the other agreement:

Ibn Abī ʿAbla is recorded as using the masculine form in a reading outside the ten, examined in §6. Agreement can therefore follow the noun’s grammatical gender or the male person intended.

ز-و-ج (z-w-j), in زَوْجَهَا (zawjahā). The English word “wife” identifies a woman; “mate” can refer to either sex. Arabic زَوْج (zawj) likewise applies to a husband or a wife. Its central idea is the relationship between the two.

Ibn Fāris gives the root one axis and it is pairing: أصلٌ يدلُّ على مقارنَة شئٍ لشئٍ. من ذلك الزوج زوج المرأة, one thing set beside another, whence a woman's زوج. ^[30] Ibn Manẓūr states it as a contrast: الزَّوْجُ: خِلَافُ الفَرْدِ, the opposite of the odd one out, and then defines it in the way that matters here, الزَّوْجُ الفَرْدُ الَّذِي لَهُ قَرِينٌ, the single thing that has a counterpart. ^[31] Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī puts the same in the language specialists' terms, والزوج في اللغة الواحد الذي يكون معه آخر, the one that has another with it, and quotes al-Rāghib for the rule that follows: the word is said of either member of a pair, the male or the female, in any species that pairs. ^[32]

The word زَوْجَهَا names her as the soul’s mate. It identifies a relationship: each member of the pair is a زَوْج to the other. The wording therefore prepares for the next clause about their offspring.

The lexicographers also examine the form زَوْجَة (zawjah), used specifically for a wife. Al-Rāghib marks زَوْجَة as لغة رديئة, a poor usage. Al-Samīn prints that verdict and then answers it in his own voice:

and he adds that al-Farrāʾ asserted the form and produced a line of al-Farazdaq for it. ^[33] Ibn ʿĀshūr explains the distinction between the classical usage he prefers and the jurists’ terminology. The plain form covers man and woman alike because it is a noun used as a description, so the man and the woman stand equal in it; the feminine form is not heard in the best speech, some language specialists counted it a solecism, and al-Aṣmaʿī rejected it as hotly as he rejected anything. Ibn ʿĀshūr then defends the jurists who use it: they wanted to tell the husband from the wife when stating rulings,

The verse uses زَوْج, the form that can name either spouse. The discussion of زَوْجَة explains why a jurist may use a more specific form when distinguishing their rulings, while the Qurʾānic word here emphasizes the pairing.

ب-ث-ث (b-th-th), in بَثَّ (baththa). The verb brings together spreading, separation and appearance. The lexicographers explain these related meanings through dust stirred by the wind, news made known and a grief expressed.

Their picture is dust. Al-Rāghib: أصل البَثِّ: التفريق وإثارة الشيء كبث الريح التراب, the base of the word is separating and stirring a thing up, as the wind scatters the dust. ^[35] Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī gives the same image. ^[36] Ibn Manẓūr states the verb run and its result: بَثَّ الشيءَ والخَبَرَ يَبُثُّه ويَبِثُّه بَثّاً، وأَبَثَّه، بِمَعْنى، فانْبَثَّ: فَرَّقه فتَفَرَّقَ، ونَشَره, he separated it and it became separated, and he spread it. ^[37] Al-Zajjāj explains the verse's verb with one word, نشر, spread, and proves it from كَالفَرَاشِ المبْثُوثِ (101:4), scattered moths. ^[38] Ibn ʿĀshūr states the same and adds what the verb requires of its object: وَالْبَثُّ: النَّشْرُ وَالتَّفْرِيقُ لِلْأَشْيَاءِ الْكَثِيرَةِ, the spreading and separating of things that are many. ^[39]

Ibn ʿĀshūr’s definition connects the verb with multitude. That is why his explanation of the unstated second “many” returns to بَثَّ: the men and women are the many descendants whom Allah spread abroad.

Ibn Fāris also includes making something appear: أصلٌ واحد، وهو تفريق الشئ وإظهاره, separating a thing and making it appear, and in the same entry he writes a sentence that is very nearly this clause of the verse,

The same verb is used of news, and of a secret poured out: al-Zajjāj records بَثَثتُك سِري وأبْثثتك سِري, “I disclosed my secret to you.” ^[41] And al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī takes the same word to the grief Yaʿqūb pours out at 12:86, where البث (al-bathth) is the spreading of a grief the self had folded over. ^[42]

The examples clarify the range of the root. Dust is dispersed, news becomes known, and an inward grief is expressed. In 4:1, the verb describes the many descendants spread across the earth. These lexical explanations describe their dispersal; they do not assign it a duration.

A near neighbour that is not this word. Ibn Kathīr also explains this creation with ذَرَأَ (dharaʾa), ^[43] and Ibn Fāris files its axis under sowing, a thing يُبذَرُ ويُزْرَع, scattered as seed and planted. ^[44] It is a related explanatory word, while the verse itself uses بَثَّ. Keeping the two roots distinct helps show what each lexicographer is explaining.

ر-ح-م, for الْأَرْحَامَ. The Simple Explanation says that the Arabic word for the womb is also the ordinary word for relatives, and gives al-Rāghib's reason: relatives came out of one womb. That is one of two accounts, and the other runs the derivation the opposite way. The lexicographers explain the relation between the organ, the bond and tenderness in two different sequences.

The womb first. Al-Rāghib begins from the organ, الرَّحِمُ: رَحِمُ المرأة, and then makes the kinship sense a borrowing from it:

Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī runs the same direction and takes it one step further, to mercy itself:

Al-Rāghib connects kinship with the shared womb. Al-Samīn’s explanation of mercy adds the womb’s protective curvature around the child.

The bond first. Ibn Fāris states the axis as a quality and not as a thing: أصلٌ واحدٌ يدلُّ على الرقّة والعطف والرأفة, tenderness, bending towards, and pity. Then he places the two nouns in order:

On his account the word for the organ is the derived one.

Ibn Manẓūr’s cited explanation follows the womb-to-kinship sequence:

What the two accounts differ about. The verse's sense is the same on both. Kinship is what is meant and keeping it is what is commanded. What the two accounts differ about is what the word shows. On al-Rāghib's, the word makes a reader think of the womb and then of the people who came out of it. Ibn Fāris starts with tenderness and care, then names the kinship tie, and explains the name of the womb as derived from that tie. In Ibn Fāris’s account, رَحْمَة (raḥmah), mercy, and رَحِم (raḥim), kinship or womb, belong to the same root of tenderness and care. They are related words with distinct meanings. This relationship helps explain the connection between kinship and mercy discussed at the beginning of Deeper Study.

Two further facts about the word. Makkī b. Abī Ṭālib records three shapes for the singular in Arabic, رَحِمٌ ورِحِمٌ، ورَحْمٌ, and that the word is feminine. ^[49] A fourth, ورِحْمٌ, stands in the printing inside square brackets, which are his editor's and not his. ^[50] And al-Zamakhsharī's dictionary of usage records, under this root, the exact formula the verse is talking about, أنشدك بالله والرحم, "I adjure you by Allah and by the kinship," together with the two verbs the whole discussion turns on, ووصلوا الأرحام وقطعوها, they kept the ties and they cut them. ^[51] The idiom the verse reports was in the dictionaries as an idiom.

نِسَاءً (nisāʾan), the plural with no singular of its own. The singular used for it is امْرَأَة (imraʾah), a woman. The plural does not come from the same stem, so the relationship has to be explained by meaning rather than by applying a regular plural pattern to the singular.

Al-Rāghib states it and gives the parallel that makes it ordinary rather than odd:

Ibn Manẓūr records the same set of shapes and adds Ibn Sīda's note that النِّسَاء is the plural of نِسْوَة when they are many. ^[53] Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī takes it a step further and classes it: the word is جمع امرأة في المعنى, the plural of "woman" in sense, and so it is اسم جمع, a collective noun, rather than a broken plural in the strict sense. ^[54]

Its function here. The word names women collectively. The verse does not attach an exact number to either group. Why it leaves the description “many” unstated with the women is the separate question examined in §1; the form of a collective noun does not itself make counting impossible.

The proper Name اللَّه (Allah). Its exclusive use as a proper name can coexist with a derived meaning. Ibn ʿĀshūr connects it with إِلَه (ilāh), one who is worshipped, and explains why it can carry that meaning while naming Allah alone. ^[55] The detailed discussion belongs to the Basmala, under “Is the Name Derived?” Here the grammatical point is that the Name does not take the attached possessive pronoun used in رَبَّكُمْ (rabbakum), “your Lord.”

Where the morphology changes the meaning

تَسَاءَلُونَ (tasāʾalūna), the verb of asking.

Does the shape of this verb say that people ask each other, or only that a person asks?

The verb stands in the sixth of the ten standard forms of the triliteral verb, تَفَاعَلَ (tafāʿala), and the plain business of that shape is two or more parties doing a thing to one another. Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī sets out two accounts of what it is doing here.

On the first, the shape means what it usually means: المشاركة في السؤال, a sharing in the asking, so that the verse reports a two-way habit and not a one-way one. Darwīsh gives only this, and states it in the plainest words available, أي يسأل بعضكم بعضا, "that is, some of you ask others." ^[56]

On the second, the shape is standing in for the plain Form I and means no more than سَأَلَ, he asked. Al-Samīn's ground for it is not a rule but a recitation: Ibn Masʿūd read تَسْأَلُونَ, the plain three-letter verb, and a reading that replaces the sixth shape with the first is evidence that the sixth was understood to mean the first here. ^[57]

Why this matters. On the first explanation, the form itself expresses mutual asking: some people ask others. On the second, it carries the basic sense of asking, supported by Ibn Masʿūd’s recorded form outside the ten. The distinction concerns what the verb form contributes. Both occur within an address to a group, so the second does not reduce the verse to one individual’s conduct.

رَقِيبًا (raqīban), the word the verse closes on.

How does the pattern express the watchfulness named here?

The pattern is فَعِيل (faʿīl). The sources explain its function in three ways, all while affirming Allah as the Keeper.

Ibn Manẓūr gives the first specifically for the divine Name:

Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī gives the second in his commentary on this verse, and states what is being intensified: والرقيب: فَعيل للمبالغة من رَقَبَ يَرْقُب

Ṣāfī gives the third: صفة مشبّهة من رقب يرقب باب نصر، وزنه فعيل, a صِفَة مُشَبَّهَة (ṣifah mushabbahah), an adjective expressing an established quality, from raqaba yarqubu on the naṣara conjugation, with the pattern faʿīl. ^[60]

Why this matters. Ibn Manẓūr’s definition already affirms that nothing is absent from Allah, although he explains the pattern through the doer-form. Al-Samīn identifies intensity in the pattern, and Ṣāfī identifies an established quality. These are grammatical explanations of the word’s force. Each directs attention to the closing warning: the duties just commanded are carried out under the watch of the Keeper from whom nothing is hidden.

5. Balāghah: Rhetorical Analysis

An opening that prepares for the sūrah (بَرَاعَة الاسْتِهْلَال, barāʿat al-istihlāl)

Where it is. The whole first clause, يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ اتَّقُوا رَبَّكُمُ الَّذِي خَلَقَكُمْ مِن نَّفْسٍ وَاحِدَةٍ.

The plain way. A sūrah about marriage, orphans and inheritance could have opened on any of those subjects. This one opens on where human beings came from.

What it does. Al-Ṣābūnī names the device and says what the opening prepares for:

Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh names the same device and counts what the opening does in three strokes: it points to the beginning of creation, it draws attention to the part the woman plays, and it commands the keeping of kinship. ^[2]

Ṣāfī gives the same observation in closely matching wording in his discussion of البلاغة (al-balāghah). ^[3]

The effect. The opening establishes the human relationship within which the sūrah’s family laws will operate. Marriage, inheritance, marital rights, relations through marriage and suckling all concern bonds the reader has first been taught to honour.

Saying one thing to mean another (الكِنَايَة, al-kināya)

Where it is. مِن نَّفْسٍ وَاحِدَةٍ, "from a single soul."

The plain way. The verse could have said هو الذي خلقكم من آدم, "He is the One who created you from Ādam." Al-Maydānī writes that alternative out himself before saying what it would lose.

What it does. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ḥasan Ḥabannaka al-Maydānī takes 4:1 as his one worked illustration of the second purpose of this device, which is that the expression used in place of a name alerts a hearer to something the name itself would not. ^[4]

The effect. Naming Ādam would identify the ancestor. Calling him “a single soul” also draws attention to the wonder al-Maydānī describes: the whole human line comes from one being through Allah’s power, knowledge and wisdom. The wording makes that unity part of the reminder.

Setting out in detail what was said in sum (تفصيل ما أُجمل, tafṣīl mā ujmila)

Where it is. خَلَقَكُم مِّن نَّفْسٍ وَاحِدَةٍ وَخَلَقَ مِنْهَا زَوْجَهَا وَبَثَّ مِنْهُمَا رِجَالًا كَثِيرًا وَنِسَاءً.

The plain way. Ibn ʿĀshūr writes the alternative wording out and then reads what would be left. Drop the middle clause and the sentence runs الَّذِي خَلَقَكُمْ مِنْ نَفْسٍ وَاحِدَةٍ وَبَثَّ مِنْهَا رِجَالًا كَثِيرًا وَنِسَاءً, "who created you from a single soul and scattered from it many men and women." The alternative still traces the people to one soul, but it no longer separately names the creation of the mate.

What it does. Ibn ʿĀshūr says what the loss would be:

The summary states that everyone came from one. The detail then names the mate’s creation and the spread of descendants from the pair. It unfolds the remarkable manner of creation contained within the opening statement.

Three other commentators explain how the middle clause develops the opening statement.

1. Al-Zamakhsharī asks what the clause is joined to and answers with two accounts, and on the first he calls it بيان وتفصيل بكيفية خلقهم منها, "a making plain and a setting out in detail of the manner of their creation from it." ^[6]
2. Abū al-Suʿūd calls it استئنافٌ مَسوقٌ لتقرير وَحدةِ المبدأ وبيانِ كيفيةِ خلْقِهم منه وتفصيلِ ما أُجمل أولاً, "a fresh start set out to establish the oneness of the origin, to make plain the manner of their creation from it, and to set out in detail what was summarised first." ^[7]
3. Al-Bayḍāwī describes the clause as تقرير لخلقهم من نفس واحدة, a settling of their creation from a single soul. ^[8]

Why repeat the verb “created”? The verb "created" is said twice, when Arabic would have allowed the second object to be joined to the first without repeating it. He gives the reason:

The repeated verb marks the difference between creation through descent and the creation of the mate from the original material.

The effect. The verse first states our shared origin, then explains the connection through the mate and the pair’s descendants. The command that follows recalls a relationship whose origin has now been unfolded.

Putting a word ahead of its usual place (التَّقْدِيم, al-taqdīm)

Where it is. وَخَلَقَ مِنْهَا زَوْجَهَا: "from it" stands before "its mate."

The plain way. Arabic normally lets the object follow its verb, so the ordinary order would be وخلق زوجها منها, "and created its mate from it."

What it does. Abū al-Suʿūd gives the fronting a double office:

The fronted phrase gives special attention to her origin in Ādam and creates anticipation for the mate named after it.

He gives the same reason for the order of the two clauses, and this one is about the audience rather than about the words: وتأخيرُ ذكرِ خلقِها عن ذكر خلقِهم لما أن تذكيرَ خلقهم أدخلُ في تحقيق ما هو المقصودُ, the mention of her creation comes after the mention of theirs because reminding people of their own creation goes further towards what is intended. ^[11] Al-Ālūsī gives these same explanations in closely matching wording. ^[12]

The effect. The order gives the mate’s origin prominence before naming her. The earlier mention of the addressees’ own creation also keeps the reminder directed toward their response to the command.

Choosing the title "mate" (عنوان الزوجية, ʿunwān al-zawjiyya)

Where it is. زَوْجَهَا, "its mate."

The plain way. The verse could have named the new creature by her sex, أنثى, a female, or by her kind. It names her by her relation to the being she came from.

What it does. Abū al-Suʿūd:

The effect. Naming her as a mate prepares for the next clause: offspring come from this pair.

Resting content with one description for two nouns (الاكْتِفَاء, al-iktifāʾ, and الإِيجَاز, al-ījāz)

Where it is. رِجَالًا كَثِيرًا وَنِسَاءً, "many men, and women."

The plain way. رجالًا كثيرًا ونساءً كثيرات, "many men and many women." Al-Ṣābūnī and Abū al-Suʿūd both write that wording out.

What it does. Al-Ṣābūnī names the device and gives the understood wording with it:

Abū al-Suʿūd names it the other way, as a resting content:

Al-Bayḍāwī uses the same word and adds a reason of his own, إذ الحكمة تقتضي أن يكن أكثر, since wisdom requires that they be the more numerous. ^[16] Ibn ʿĀshūr does not name a device; he states the fact and gives a different reason for it, which is that the verb of scattering itself requires a multitude. ^[17]

The four accounts of why the second description was left out are set out in §1 above, under the question of why the verse says "many men" and not "many women." Here the rhetorical point is the economy of expression: one stated description makes the intended sense clear for both nouns.

The effect. The verse remains concise while the understood abundance reaches both the men and the women.

Why “men and women”? Abū al-Suʿūd examines a second choice in the same clause. The verse says "men and women" where it could have said ذكورًا وإناثًا, "males and females." His reason: وإيثارُهما على ذكوراً وإناثاً لتأكيد الكثرةِ والمبالغةِ فيها, the choice confirms the multitude and makes much of it. ^[18] Words for the two sexes would have named a biological division. Words for grown men and grown women name a population.

Setting a word against its opposite (الطِّبَاق, al-ṭibāq)

Where it is. رِجَالًا … وَنِسَاءً, "men … and women."

The plain way. The verse could have said خلقًا كثيرًا, a great many creatures, or بشرًا, human beings, and named no division at all.

What it does. Al-Ṣābūnī identifies الطِّبَاق in the pairing of men and women. ^[19] The clause names the two groups explicitly rather than referring to people in general.

The effect. Naming men and women separately includes both in the descent from the pair.

Putting the Name where a pronoun would have stood, and the two settings (المَقَام, al-maqām)

Where it is. وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ, "and be mindful of Allah," after اتَّقُوا رَبَّكُمُ, "be mindful of your Lord."

The plain way. واتقوه, "and be mindful of Him." The second command already has a Lord to refer back to, so a pronoun would have served.

What it does. Ibn ʿĀshūr explains the choice through the two settings within the verse. ^[20]

A setting, in this vocabulary, is what the words are being said for at that point. Ibn ʿĀshūr's claim is that one verse contains two of them: the first half is drawing people in, and the second half is where the sūrah's legislation starts. The choice of name serves the purpose of each setting.

Abū al-Suʿūd reaches the same conclusion from the wording rather than from the setting:

He adds the reason the Name in particular fits this clause: because it is by that Name and by no other of His names that people put one another on oath. ^[22]

The effect. “Your Lord” recalls the bond with the One who created and nurtures the hearers. The explicit Name then brings awe into the command governing their dealings. The change supports the movement from encouragement to legislation.

Warning by naming the thing itself (التَّحْذِير, al-taḥdhīr)

Where it is. وَالْأَرْحَامَ, "and the wombs."

The plain way. Arabic can warn by naming the danger and nothing else. A speaker shouts الحيةَ والعقربَ, "the snake and the scorpion," and everyone understands "look out for." On that pattern the verse could have read اللهَ والأرحامَ, the two nouns alone, and al-Sāmarrāʾī writes that alternative out.

What it does. Fāḍil Ṣāliḥ al-Sāmarrāʾī uses this clause as his lead example of the case where the verb is stated rather than left out, and uses it to explain why he does not accept an obligatory omission of the verb merely because the nouns are joined. ^[23]

His own rule follows: the verb is left out only where the noun by itself conveys the warning and the moment is too short to say more, as with the snake and the scorpion; where neither of those holds, the verb is stated. Here the divine Name alone does not express the intended warning, and the sentence allows the verb to be stated. The explicit اتَّقُوا (ittaqū) makes the command clear.

Two further interpretations of the same joining. Al-Bayḍāwī takes the placing itself as the point:

Darwīsh says the same of the joining word:

The effect. The verb states the warning expressly. Joining kinship to Allah’s Name within that command gives its rights the weight described by al-Bayḍāwī and Darwīsh.

Fronting that is not narrowing (التَّقْدِيم, al-taqdīm, and the denial of القَصْر, al-qaṣr)

Where it is. إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ عَلَيْكُمْ رَقِيبًا: "over you" stands before "Watcher."

The plain way. إن الله كان رقيبًا عليكم, "indeed Allah is ever a Watcher over you," in the ordinary order.

What it does. Moving a phrase forward can express قَصْر (qaṣr), restriction: a quality or action is confined to what has been brought forward. It can also give something special attention without making it exclusive. Here the difference matters. Allah’s watchfulness is not confined to the people addressed; He watches everything. Al-Sāmarrāʾī therefore explains the position of “over you” as a warning directed to the hearers and their deeds. ^[26]

The effect. The verse brings the hearers’ conduct to their attention. They have been commanded to fear Allah and honour kinship, and the closing words tell them that their response is under His watch. By bringing “over you” forward, the verse directs its warning to the hearers about their deeds. Allah’s watchfulness remains universal.

Closing synthesis: the shape of the whole verse

Al-Zamakhsharī asks how the account of creation supports the preceding command to fear Allah. ^[27]

His first answer gives two reasons for taqwā. Creation reveals immense power, giving people reason to fear punishment. It also reveals abundant favour: النِّعْمَةِ السَّابِغَةِ. They must not meet that favour with ingratitude or neglect the thanks they owe. He then offers a more particular explanation:

On this second account, the laws that follow develop the opening command to preserve people’s rights.

Al-Ṣābūnī explains the force of repeating the command at the verse’s beginning and close:

The two commands emphasize Allah’s right, while the express mention of kinship emphasizes this human bond.

Al-Sāmarrāʾī takes the point one step out, to the sūrah as a whole: al-Nisāʾ opens with the making of the human being and the spreading of his descendants over the earth, and closes at 4:176 with a man who dies leaving neither parent nor child. Beginning and end are the beginning and the end of a life. The sūrah introduction develops this correspondence between creation at the opening and death without descendants at the close. ^[30]

6. Qirāʾāt: The Readings

Two words of this verse are recited in more than one way among the ten accepted readings, and two more have forms recited outside them. Ibn al-Jazarī's النشر في القراءات العشر, al-Nashr fī al-Qirāʾāt al-ʿAshr, which registers the differences among the ten word by word, opens its chapter on this sūrah with them. ^[1]

Both variations belong to the ten accepted readings. Ibn al-Jazarī records their distribution at these two words. The grammatical accounts and their effects on meaning follow below.

تَسَاءَلُونَ (tasāʾalūna), "you ask one another"

The four Kufan readers, whom Ibn ʿĀshūr names as Ḥamza, ʿĀṣim, al-Kisāʾī and Khalaf, recite تَسَاءَلُونَ with a single s sound; the other six of the ten recite تَسَّاءَلُونَ with the s doubled. ^[2] Ibn al-Jazarī records the same distribution in his digest of the ten and in his poem on them. ^[3]

Two pronunciations of the same verb. The word underneath both is تَتَسَاءَلُونَ (tatasāʾalūna), with two t sounds at the front. Two t sounds in a row are heavy to say, and Arabic has two settled ways out of it. One is to drop one of them, which gives the Kufan form. The other is to turn the second t into the s that follows it, so that the two s sounds run together as one doubled sound, which gives the other form. Al-Zajjāj sets both formations out in one sentence and names each: the doubled form is by إدغام (idghām), running one letter into the next, and the light form is by حذف (ḥadhf), dropping a letter, and he adds why the dropping is safe:

Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī gives the same and explains why it is the s that the t runs into: the two letters are made close together in the mouth and share a whispered quality, which is why Arabic also says سِتّ for what was سِدْس. ^[5] Al-ʿUkbarī and al-Akhfash give both formations as well. ^[6]

So the two recited forms are two ways of saying one word, and no scholar quoted above reads a difference of meaning into them.

Two forms of the word are recited outside the ten, and the first of them is useful for a reason that has nothing to do with pronunciation. Ibn Masʿūd read تَسْأَلُونَ, the Form I verb with its present-tense prefix, without the added tāʾ of Form VI, and someone whose name has not come down read تَسَلُونَ, which moves the vowel of the hamza onto the s. ^[7] Ibn Masʿūd's form is the evidence al-Samīn uses for one of the two accounts of what the sixth verb shape is doing in this verse, and that entry stands in §4 above.

وَالْأَرْحَامَ (wa-l-arḥām), "and the wombs"

Both readings are among the ten. Nine of the ten recite وَالْأَرْحَامَ with a short a on the last letter; Ḥamza recites وَالْأَرْحَامِ with a short i. ^[8] What each does to the sentence is set out in §1 above, where the whole question is taken up, and what each does to the grammar is in §3.

Ḥamza’s reading in the poem. Ibn al-Jazarī’s Ṭayyibat al-Nashr uses letter symbols for the readers and their narrators. In the line for this sūrah, the ف (fāʾ) of فُقْ (fuq) identifies Ḥamza. ^[9]

The assignment is to Ḥamza’s reading. Al-Nashr likewise gives it to him without restricting it to one of his two narrators, so it includes both riwāyahs, those of Khalaf and Khallād. ^[10]

Who Ḥamza was. Ibn al-Jazarī's dictionary of the readers gives him at length. The leadership in recitation passed to him after ʿĀṣim and al-Aʿmash; he was an authority, trustworthy and exact, versed in the law of inheritance, learned in Arabic, a memoriser of ḥadīth; and Sufyān al-Thawrī said of him

This testimony concerns the received basis of his recitation. It supports the answer given in §1 to objections made solely from a grammatical rule.

The early readers named alongside Ḥamza. Al-Thaʿlabī names six reciters of the خَفْض (khafḍ): al-Nakhaʿī, Yaḥyā b. Waththāb, Ṭalḥa b. Muṣarrif, Qatāda, al-Aʿmash and Ḥamza. ^[12] Of those six, one is among the ten. The other five names belong to early readers outside the list of the ten canonical imāms. Their use of the same form and Ḥamza’s canonical reading are distinct attributions. Ibn al-Jazarī registers Ḥamza’s received reading among the ten.

What the grammarians said, and where it is answered. Section 1 sets out the grammatical objections and the answers to them. Two further points concern the standing of the reading.

First, al-Ṭabarī records the jarr form but permits only the naṣb. His verdict is therefore a restriction on what he allows to be recited, rather than a denial that the other form was handed down. ^[13] That restriction is not followed in the accepted ten: Ibn al-Jazarī registers both readings. ^[14] The distinction preserves al-Ṭabarī’s stated judgment while making the standing of Ḥamza’s reading clear.

Second, the grammatical objections received explicit scholarly answers. An editorial note in the Dār al-Tafsīr edition of al-Thaʿlabī brings the two sets of views together in a note: it lists those who rejected the jarr, among them al-Farrāʾ, al-Zajjāj, al-Akhfash, Makkī, al-Ṭabarī, Ibn ʿAṭiyya and al-Zamakhsharī, and then writes of what they did,

The note then concludes:

A third form of the word, recited outside the ten. ʿAbdullāh b. Yazīd al-Muqriʾ read وَالْأَرْحَامُ with a short u on the last letter, which makes the word the subject of a new sentence whose predicate is not said. Ibn Jinnī records the form in al-Muḥtasab and explains the force of its grammar. ^[16] Two other commentators record the same reading, and they do not name its reader the same way. Al-Thaʿlabī gives the full name as Ibn Jinnī does. ^[17] Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī gives only عبد الله (ʿAbd Allāh), without a fuller identification here. ^[18] The table follows the fuller identification given by Ibn Jinnī and al-Thaʿlabī, while retaining al-Samīn’s abbreviated attribution in the note.

Ibn Jinnī explains “stronger” by comparing an object with the subject of a nominal sentence. In “I struck Zayd,” the name is an object. In “Zayd, I struck him,” it is the sentence’s subject and is mentioned again through the pronoun. He calls it رب الجملة, “the master of the sentence.” On this account, beginning with kinship as a مُبْتَدَأ (mubtadaʾ) gives its importance greater emphasis. In the naṣb or jarr construction it is a فَضْلَة (faḍlah), a grammatical addition to the sentence’s core, “and an addition is exposed to being dropped.” ^[19] Al-Thaʿlabī records the same reading and another grammatical explanation: the rafʿ can be used to urge someone to attend to the matter named. ^[20]

And Ibn Masʿūd read وَبِالْأَرْحَامِ , with the preposition written in a second time. This form lies outside the ten and supports one grammatical account of the نَصْب (naṣb) reading, and al-Zamakhsharī and al-Samīn both use it as such; §1 and §3 above set out how. ^[21]

Two more readings of the verse, from outside the ten

Ibn Abī ʿAbla read مِن نَّفْسٍ وَاحِدٍ, dropping the feminine ending from "one." Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī gives two accounts of it, and both are set out in §4 above: either the reader was agreeing with the person meant rather than with the word, or he was using the licence Arabic allows, since the word for soul takes both genders. ^[22] The reading is discussed at §1 above as well, where al-Qurṭubī and al-Shawkānī use it to settle a point about the feminine ending in the reading everybody recites.

And someone whose name has not come down read وَخَالِقٌ and وَبَاثٌّ, turning the two verbs "and created" and "and scattered" into nouns of the doer, "and One who creates" and "and One who scatters." Al-Samīn records it and gives al-Zamakhsharī's account of how it stands: a subject is left unsaid before it, so that the sense is وهو خالقٌ وباثٌّ, "and He is One who creates and One who scatters." ^[23] These two forms replace past-tense verbs with اسْم فَاعِل (ism fāʿil) forms, describing the One who creates and spreads.

The readings of this verse, and the standing of each

How the table identifies the accepted forms. The Ten are Ibn al-Jazarī's register. He runs through Sūrat al-Nisāʾ in his chapter on the distribution of the individual words, naming every place the Ten differ, and for this verse he names two, تَسَاءَلُونَ and وَالْأَرْحَامَ, before passing to 4:3 and then to 4:5. ^[36] So a form he names is one of the Ten; a word he does not stop at is one the Ten recite alike; and a form that reaches us from the exegetes with no reader of the Ten behind it is outside them. Ibn Jinnī's al-Muḥtasab is the standing collection for those, and Ibn Jinnī opens his chapter on this sūrah with the one form of 4:1 he records, ʿAbdullāh b. Yazīd's وَالْأَرْحَامُ. ^[37] Every row above names the note its standing rests on.

What the table distinguishes. “Among the Ten” identifies the forms in Ibn al-Jazarī’s register; “outside the Ten” identifies the additional forms reported here by other sources. Al-Rāzī and the Dār al-Tafsīr editorial note expressly defend Ḥamza’s reading as mutawātir, as discussed above. The additional forms also help explain the language: Ibn Masʿūd’s تَسْأَلُونَ bears on the verb form, and his وَبِالْأَرْحَامِ bears on the coordination.

In conclusion

Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī states a preference on the خَفْض (khafḍ) reading, and he states it as a specialist in the readings rather than as a grammarian defending a rule. Having set out both accounts of it, and both objections to the second of them, he writes: ^[38]

Al-Samīn’s grammatical preference follows his examination of the sentence’s intended meaning and the other recorded forms. His final defense of Ḥamza concerns the authority of the received reading: a grammatical objection does not make that reading weak. He has set out the objections before answering them.

The two canonical forms convey compatible meanings. As Ibn ʿUthaymīn explains at the close of §1, one commands care for kinship and the other recalls the weight of the tie by which people appeal to one another. Together they reinforce its claim.