Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, Verse 10
﴿إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ يَأۡكُلُونَ أَمۡوَٰلَ ٱلۡيَتَٰمَىٰ ظُلۡمًا إِنَّمَا يَأۡكُلُونَ فِي بُطُونِهِمۡ نَارٗاۖ وَسَيَصۡلَوۡنَ سَعِيرٗا ١٠﴾“Indeed, those who devour the property of orphans unjustly are only consuming into their bellies fire. And they will be burned in a Blaze.” (4:10)
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1. Summary
An orphan is a child whose father has died. His money and property remain his, even when someone else manages them. Allah warns anyone who takes or uses that wealth unjustly of terrible punishment in the Fire. What seems like a gain now brings the threat of suffering in the life to come. Those caring for orphans must protect what belongs to them.[1]
2. Historical Context
A report with no chain of transmission gives a name for the one the verse came down about: Marthad b. Zayd, of the tribe of Ghaṭafān, who held the property of his small orphaned nephew and ate it.[1] One early scholar said the verse came down about the people of shirk, who gave the orphans no inheritance and ate their property (a view al-Ṭabarī reports from Zayd b. Aslam).[2] Most scholars say it came down about guardians who took from the orphans in their charge what was not theirs to take (the majority's view, as al-Qurṭubī, Ibn ʿAṭiyya and Abū Ḥayyān report it).[3] The threat reaches everyone who eats an orphan's property wrongfully, whoever the verse first came down about (al-Ālūsī, al-Zuḥaylī, Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Abū Ḥayyān).[4]
What the reports preserve best is what the verse did to the people who first heard it. When it came down, the Muslims who had orphans in their houses were afraid. They set the orphan's food and drink apart from their own, and what was left over was kept for him until it spoiled; and they were wary of taking an orphan into the household at all. They asked the Prophet ﷺ about it, and the verse of Sūrat al-Baqara came down: وَإِنْ تُخَالِطُوهُمْ فَإِخْوَانُكُمْ, "and if you mix with them, they are your brothers" (2:220).[5] Al-Naḥḥās explains the permission through a simple example: the orphan has dates and the guardian has dates, and they put them together so that both can eat. People had avoided this for fear that the guardian might eat a little more. He explains that Allah permits this when the aim is to put matters right, not to cause harm. He reports Mujāhid’s examples of shared pastoral arrangements and food, and understands the permission here as food-sharing rather than partnership.[6] ʿĀʾisha رضي الله عنها is reported to have mixed the food and drink of an orphan in her care with her own. In the account recorded through al-Aswad, she says:
أخْلِطُ طعامَ يتيمى بطعامي، وشرابَه بشرابي؛ فإنِّي أكْرَهُ أن يكونَ مالُ اليتيم عندي كالعُرَّةِ“I mix my orphan’s food with mine and his drink with mine, for I dislike having the orphan’s property with me like scabies.”[7]
Scabies is a skin disease. She uses the comparison to express her dislike of treating the orphan’s property as something repellent that had to be kept apart.
3. Word-by-Word Analysis
| Arabic | Transliteration | Root | Type | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| إِنَّ | inna | none | a particle that stresses what follows | indeed, truly |
| ٱلَّذِينَ | alladhīna | none | a word that opens a description, "those who" | those who |
| يَأۡكُلُونَ | yaʾkulūna | أ-ك-ل | a present-tense verb for a group | they eat, they consume |
| أَمۡوَٰلَ | amwāla | م-و-ل | a plural noun, joined to the word after it | the property of, the wealth of |
| ٱلۡيَتَٰمَىٰ | al-yatāmā | ي-ت-م | a definite plural noun | the orphans |
| ظُلۡمًا | ẓulman | ظ-ل-م | an indefinite noun naming the act, here describing how the eating is done | wrongfully, unjustly |
| إِنَّمَا | innamā | none | a particle of restriction, "only", "nothing but" | only |
| يَأۡكُلُونَ | yaʾkulūna | أ-ك-ل | a present-tense verb for a group | they eat |
| فِي بُطُونِهِمۡ | fī buṭūnihim | ب-ط-ن | preposition + a plural noun + "their" | in their bellies |
| نَارٗاۖ | nāran | ن-و-ر | an indefinite noun | fire |
| وَسَيَصۡلَوۡنَ | wa-sa-yaṣlawna | ص-ل-ي | and + “will” + a verb for a group | and they will burn, will endure the Blaze |
| سَعِيرٗا | saʿīran | س-ع-ر | an indefinite noun, a describing word used as a name | a blazing fire |
4. Understanding the Verse
The verses before this one have been about the weak: the orphans' property in verse 2, the guardian's duty in verse 6, the people at the estate division in verse 8, the fear for small children in verse 9. This verse closes the passage with a threat, and it returns to the orphan a third time because the heirs a man leaves so often include his orphaned children (Ibn ʿĀshūr).[1] The threat is repeated in these verses again and again, and all of it is mercy from Allah to the orphans, whose weakness and helplessness earned them more of His care (al-Rāzī).[2]
إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ يَأۡكُلُونَ أَمۡوَٰلَ ٱلۡيَتَٰمَىٰ ظُلۡمًا “Indeed, those who devour the property of orphans unjustly” (4:10).
"Those who eat", يَأْكُلُونَ (yaʾkulūna), does not mean only those who put it in their mouths. "Eat" stands for every wrongful use of an orphan's property, not eating alone (al-Rāzī, al-Qurṭubī, Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Ibn ʿUthaymīn, al-Shanqīṭī).[3] The harm to the orphan is the same whether his property is eaten or destroyed some other way, and burning it or drowning it is worse than eating it (al-Rāzī, Ibn ʿUthaymīn).[4] Why, then, does the verse say "eat"? Most of what orphans owned in those days was livestock, eaten and milked; when people say someone "ate" wealth, they just mean they spent or used it up. Because buying food is the primary reason people need money, the word "eating" is used as a catch-all term for any kind of spending (al-Rāzī, al-Qurṭubī, al-Jaṣṣāṣ).[5]
"Wrongfully", ظُلْمًا (ẓulman), is the word that defines the scope of the threat. The threat is for eating an orphan's property wrongfully; a poor guardian who takes his fair due, as 4:6 allows, is not in it (al-Rāzī, al-Saʿdī, Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Ālūsī, Ibn ʿUthaymīn, al-Zuḥaylī).[6] If it meant any kind of taking, the word "wrongfully" would have added nothing (al-Rāzī).[7] There are two exceptions to this warning. A guardian who is poor may eat from the property fairly, in return for his work, by the permission in verse 6; this is the position of al-Shāfiʿī and the majority (al-Nawawī),[8] on Aḥmad's view his due is the lesser of a fair wage for his work and what he needs (al-Karmī),[9] and a poor guardian who takes a fair wage for his work does no wrong (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).[10] And a household that shares its food with an orphan, as 2:220 allows, is outside it too (al-Saʿdī).[11] One early scholar held that this verse withdrew the permission of verse 6 (a view Abū Ḥayyān reports from Mujāhid).[12] The jurists did not follow him: a verse against wrong does not cancel a verse permitting what is fair, it confirms it (Ibn al-ʿArabī, Abū Ḥayyān).[13]
إِنَّمَا يَأۡكُلُونَ فِي بُطُونِهِمۡ نَارٗاۖ “are only consuming into their bellies fire” (4:10).
The verse calls the property they take “fire”. One explanation is that taking it leads to the Fire; the deed is named by its terrible outcome (al-Qurṭubī, al-Wāḥidī, al-Baghawī, Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Ālūsī, al-Shawkānī).[14] Another explanation takes the eating of fire literally.[15] Together, these explanations connect what the wrongdoer takes here with what he is threatened with there. The Qurʾān names a thing by what it becomes. Yūsuf's companion in prison said
﴿إِنِّيٓ أَرَىٰنِيٓ أَعۡصِرُ خَمۡرٗاۖ﴾"I see myself pressing wine" (12:36),
and what he pressed was grapes, named for what they would become (al-Qurṭubī, al-Wāḥidī).[16] The Prophet ﷺ said of the one who drinks from a silver vessel:
إِنَّمَا يجرجر في بطنه نار جهنم"he is only pouring the fire of Hell into his belly".[17]
So the property is fire because it ends there. And on the Day it is actual fire of Hell in their bellies, earned by their eating of orphans' property in this world (al-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr).[18] One early commentator gave a picture of it, that the eater is raised on the Day of Resurrection with flames coming out of his mouth, his ears, his nose and his eyes, and everyone who sees him knows him for what he did (a view al-Ṭabarī reports from al-Suddī);[19]. The two explanations can be reconciled: the property is called fire because it leads to it, and the threat also includes real fire in the Hereafter. This is the reconciliation followed here (al-Rāghib).[20] Riḍā’s tense-based objection to taking the first clause as future literal eating is considered in Deeper Study, Question 1. There is also a report connecting this verse to what the Prophet ﷺ saw on the night journey, but its chain is very weak (al-Albānī).[21] Some scholars go a step further: the fire is real now, in this world, and we simply do not feel it, because it is not the fire the senses know (al-Biqāʿī).[22]
Why specify "in their bellies," فِي بُطُونِهِمْ (fī buṭūnihim), since food only goes to the belly anyway?
It is emphasis, the way the Qurʾān says "the hearts that are in the breasts" and "a bird that flies with its two wings" (al-Rāzī, al-Ālūsī).[23]
And it is reproach: naming the belly shows their baseness and their greed, and the Arabs mocked a man by his belly (Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Qurṭubī, Abū Ḥayyān).[24]
They are the ones who put the fire into their own bellies (al-Saʿdī).[25]
The punishment mirrors what they did: they ate the wealth, so the fire meets them right where they ate (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).[26]
وَسَيَصۡلَوۡنَ سَعِيرٗا “And they will be burned in a Blaze” (4:10).
"Will burn", وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ (wa-sa-yaṣlawna), is from a word for warming oneself at a fire, and then for being burnt by it. "A blaze", سَعِيرًا (saʿīran), is a fire kindled and blazing, glowing coals (al-Ṭabarī, al-Qurṭubī).[27] The word is left without "the" because it is a fire whose fierceness only Allah knows (al-Rāzī).[28] The first part describes the act; this part describes the outcome. The fire starts in the belly, but here it takes over the whole body, inside and out (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).[29] Abū Ḥayyān calls this الْعَذَابِ الدَّائِمِ بِهَا, “lasting punishment in it”: the Fire does not destroy their persons altogether. He cites 4:56, where skins are renewed so that the punishment is tasted again.[30] Deeper Study, Question 6 considers how this warning relates to the texts about forgiveness and release from the Fire.
Eating an orphan's property is among the gravest sins. The strongest threat found in the Qurʾān for any sin is here (al-Saʿdī),[31] the Quran and the Sunna together show that eating an orphan's property is one of the major sins (al-Qurṭubī),[32] it is a major sin because a threat in the Hereafter is attached to it (Ibn ʿUthaymīn),[33] and the Law itself names it one (Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām as quoted by al-Nawawī).[34] The Prophet ﷺ said: avoid the seven destroyers,
الشِّرْكُ بِاللَّهِ. وَالسِّحْرُ. وَقَتْلُ النَّفْسِ الَّتِي حَرَّمَ اللَّهُ إِلَّا بِالْحَقِّ. وَأَكْلُ مَالِ الْيَتِيمِ"associating others with Allah, sorcery, killing the soul Allah has forbidden except by right, and eating an orphan's property",
then usury, fleeing on the day of battle, and slandering chaste, unsuspecting, believing women.[35] The verse is a threat, and a threat to a Muslim is subject to Allah's will; it does not make the eater a disbeliever (al-Qurṭubī, al-Jaṣṣāṣ, al-Zuḥaylī).[36] Allah does not forgive that partners be set beside Him, and forgives what is less than that to whom He wills (4:48), so whoever did this and did not repent is under a threat that Allah may inflict or may forgive (al-Qurṭubī).[37] An athar attributed to Ibn ʿUmar رضي الله عنهما says that when the verses came down that made the Fire binding, this one among them, the Companions used to testify of whoever did such a thing that the Fire was his, until 4:48 came down, and then they stopped.[38]
5. Thematic Connections in the Qurʾān
The verse before it, 4:9. Verse 9 asked whoever handles another man's children to fear for them as he would fear for his own. This verse says what waits for the one who does not. The passage began with the orphans' property in verse 2 and returns to it here a third time, so that no reader can think the matter small (Ibn ʿĀshūr).[1]
"Do not eat their property", 4:2.
﴿وَلَا تَأۡكُلُوٓاْ أَمۡوَٰلَهُمۡ إِلَىٰٓ أَمۡوَٰلِكُمۡۚ إِنَّهُۥ كَانَ حُوبٗا كَبِيرٗا﴾“and do not consume their property with your own; indeed, that is a great sin” (4:2)
There too "eat" is the word, and there too it stands for taking the property in every form (Abū Ḥayyān).[2] Verse 2 called it a great sin; this verse says what the sin is made of.
The poor guardian's due, 4:6.
﴿وَمَن كَانَ غَنِيّٗا فَلۡيَسۡتَعۡفِفۡۖ وَمَن كَانَ فَقِيرٗا فَلۡيَأۡكُلۡ بِٱلۡمَعۡرُوفِۚ﴾“and whoever is rich should abstain, and whoever is poor may eat from it fairly” (4:6)
This is the eating that "wrongfully" leaves outside the threat; the one word in this verse presupposes the permission in that one (al-Rāzī, al-Saʿdī).[3]
Mixing with orphans, 2:220.
﴿قُلۡ إِصۡلَاحٞ لَّهُمۡ خَيۡرٞۖ وَإِن تُخَالِطُوهُمۡ فَإِخۡوَٰنُكُمۡۚ وَٱللَّهُ يَعۡلَمُ ٱلۡمُفۡسِدَ مِنَ ٱلۡمُصۡلِحِۚ﴾“say: setting their affairs right is good, and if you mix with them, they are your brothers; and Allah knows the one who corrupts from the one who sets right” (2:220)
That verse settled the fear this one caused. It allowed sharing a home, but not wronging the orphan. The two verses work together, and neither cancels the other out (al-Naḥḥās, al-Jaṣṣāṣ).[4]
"Do not come near the orphan's property", 6:152.
﴿وَلَا تَقۡرَبُواْ مَالَ ٱلۡيَتِيمِ إِلَّا بِٱلَّتِي هِيَ أَحۡسَنُ حَتَّىٰ يَبۡلُغَ أَشُدَّهُۥۚ﴾“and do not come near the orphan's property except in the way that is best, until he reaches his maturity” (6:152, and again at 17:34)
That verse forbids going near the orphan's property unless it's for his own good, while this one lays out the punishment for taking it wrongfully. One early grammarian read them together as a total ban on using the property in any way, even moderately (Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī).[5] But the word 'wrongfully' here, along with the permission in 4:6, leaves room for a poor guardian to take a fair wage (al-Rāzī, al-Saʿdī).[6]
Those who eat usury, 2:275.
﴿ٱلَّذِينَ يَأۡكُلُونَ ٱلرِّبَوٰاْ لَا يَقُومُونَ إِلَّا كَمَا يَقُومُ ٱلَّذِي يَتَخَبَّطُهُ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنُ مِنَ ٱلۡمَسِّۚ﴾“those who eat interest will not stand except as one stands whom Satan has driven mad by his touch” (2:275)
The Qurʾān shows the eater of wrongful gain what his gain really is: eating another's property is fire in the belly, as interest is madness in the mind (al-Biqāʿī).[7]
Lasting punishment, 4:56.
﴿كُلَّمَا نَضِجَتۡ جُلُودُهُم بَدَّلۡنَٰهُمۡ جُلُودًا غَيۡرَهَا لِيَذُوقُواْ ٱلۡعَذَابَۗ﴾“every time their skins are roasted through, We will replace them with other skins so that they may taste the punishment” (4:56)
Abū Ḥayyān cites this verse when explaining 4:10 as lasting punishment in the Fire: it does not destroy their persons altogether.[8] For the discussion of forgiveness and the fate of individual sinners, see Deeper Study, Question 6.
Forgiveness for what is less than shirk, 4:48.
﴿إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يَغۡفِرُ أَن يُشۡرَكَ بِهِۦ وَيَغۡفِرُ مَا دُونَ ذَٰلِكَ لِمَن يَشَآءُۚ﴾“indeed, Allah does not forgive that partners be set beside Him, and He forgives what is less than that to whom He wills” (4:48)
The threat in this verse must be understood in light of that promise: it is a threat to a Muslim, and Allah may inflict it or forgive it (al-Qurṭubī).[9]
6. Gems and Subtleties
Gem 1
The child’s helplessness makes the wrong more grievous.
The Qurʾān warns those who hoard gold and silver without paying their zakāt that their wealth will be heated in Hell and used to brand them (9:35). Here the warning is more terrible still: the stolen wealth becomes fire within the body.
The difference is not only in the punishment. A person withholding zakāt keeps back part of his own wealth; someone taking an orphan’s property takes what already belongs to the child. A poor adult may be able to work for his living. A small orphan cannot. The wrongdoer takes from someone who has little means of recovering the loss or defending his right. That helplessness makes the wrong greater, not the child’s right smaller.[1]
Gem 2
“They eat” and “they will burn”: the deed and its end.
يَأْكُلُونَ, “they eat,” is followed by وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ, “and they will burn.” The letter س in the second verb makes the future explicit. The verse will not let the act of taking be considered apart from its end.[2]
That future tense drives home a threat that will absolutely come true.[3] Money may look harmless in the hand. The verse makes the wrongdoer look beyond it to the blaze.
Gem 3
The fire does not stop at the belly.
The verse first warns that those who take an orphan’s wealth unjustly are
﴿إِنَّمَا يَأۡكُلُونَ فِي بُطُونِهِمۡ نَارٗاۖ﴾“only consuming into their bellies fire.” (4:10)
Then comes
﴿وَسَيَصۡلَوۡنَ سَعِيرٗا﴾“And they will be burned in a Blaze.” (4:10)
The word سَعِيرًا describes a fire kindled and fiercely burning.[4] Its full fierceness is left beyond our knowledge; only Allah knows its measure.[5]
The warning widens as it moves. First the fire is in their bellies; then they themselves burn in it, inside and out.[6] What they took to satisfy themselves becomes suffering throughout the body.
Gem 4
What the senses cannot tell you.
The stolen wealth still looks like wealth. Food bought with it still looks like food. Yet the verse calls it fire.
One explanation takes this as its reality even now: the wrongdoer consumes fire without feeling it. On this understanding, burning in the Hereafter is a further warning, not the whole meaning of the first clause.[7]
The scene is terrible: fire fills the body and burns through it.[8] Nothing in the appearance of the money tells the wrongdoer what he has taken into himself.
Gem 5
A severe warning, a merciful purpose.
The person who consumed an orphan’s property meets fire where he ate. The punishment answers the deed.[9]
The Prophet ﷺ gave a related warning about drinking from silver vessels:
الَّذِي يَشْرَبُ فِي آنِيَةِ الْفِضَّةِ، إِنَّمَا يجرجر في بطنه نار جهنم“Whoever drinks from silver vessels is only gulping the fire of Hell into his belly.”[10]
Here the warning goes further. To the fire in the belly, the verse adds “and they will burn in a blaze,” a further punishment not named in the hadith about the vessel.[11]
There is mercy in this severity. Through these repeated warnings, the Qurʾān gives special care to the child whose weakness others might exploit.[12] The threat is severe because the one it protects cannot defend himself.
7. Contemporary Applications
The guardian who shares a household with an orphan.
Consider a widow’s brother who takes her children into his home and manages their inheritance. The family can share meals; he does not need to keep two kitchens. The condition is that sharing benefits the children rather than becoming a way to take their money.[1] Keep a clear record of what belongs to each child and what is spent for that child. Their inheritance must not disappear into the household budget. When they reach maturity and show sound judgment in managing their property, hand it over with witnesses, as 4:6 directs.[2]
School fees show why the child’s circumstances matter. Shaykh Nūḥ ʿAlī Salmān allowed private-school fees from an orphan’s wealth when the schooling suited a child of those means and circumstances. Educational benefit and available alternatives matter, not simply the guardian’s preference.[3]
The poor guardian who works for the orphan’s estate.
A man runs his late brother’s shop for the children and has no other income. His work does not make the business his. A poor guardian may take a fair allowance, but its extent must be determined rather than left to whatever he thinks he deserves.[4] On Aḥmad’s measure used here, it is the lesser of what the guardian needs and the usual wage for the work.[5] Establish both amounts and record what is taken. A guardian who is well off must refrain. See Deeper Study, Question 2 for the differing measures.[6]
“Eating” that never touches the mouth.
An uncle keeps the rent from a house left to children, sells their land cheaply to please a cousin, or refuses to hand over the property after they are mature and able to manage it. “It is all family” excuses none of these acts. The warning covers wrongful use and destruction, not just money spent on food.[7] Record the children’s rent, profits and sale proceeds as theirs. Family closeness does not transfer ownership.
When the person taking the property is not the guardian.
A man dies, and his brothers continue running the business they shared with him. His children are too young to work in it, but that does not make their inherited share belong to their uncles. The warning applies to anyone who takes an orphan’s property wrongfully.[8] Identify the children’s share and keep any payment for managing it distinct from ownership.
When Jordan’s Iftāʾ Committee was asked about partners buying a young orphan’s company share, it required action through her lawful guardian, a clear benefit for her and recourse to the judge. Agreement among the other partners was not enough.[9]
8. Common Misconceptions
Wrong: “If none of the money buys food, the warning does not apply.”
Correct: “Eating wealth” includes taking, misusing or destroying it unjustly. What matters is the wrong done to the child’s property, not whether anyone ate a meal.[1]
Wrong: “The permission to share meals in 2:220 cancelled this warning.”
Correct: Verse 2:220 permits beneficial sharing, not taking the orphan’s property unjustly. The prohibition remains in force.[2]
Wrong: “A Muslim who commits this sin has left Islam and must enter the Fire.”
Correct: It is a grave sin, but committing it does not by itself make a Muslim a disbeliever. A Muslim who dies without repenting remains under Allah’s will: He may punish or forgive. The warning does not authorize us to declare a particular sinner destined for the Fire.[3]
Wrong: “Sharing a household’s meals with an orphan is itself forbidden.”
Correct: Sharing is permitted when it serves the orphan’s welfare. It must not become a way to consume the child’s money unjustly.[4]
9. Points for Reflection
-
The verse gives the orphan's money a new name. In the hand it is coin, dates, a shop, a house. In the verse it is fire. Take one thing you hold that is not yours, a deposit, a loan, a share you manage for someone who cannot check, and call it by the name the verse would give it if you kept it.
-
The severest threat over wealth in the Qurʾān is for taking from the one who cannot take it back. Ask why the weakness of the person wronged makes taking his property so grave.
-
The first Muslims were so afraid of this verse that they let an orphan's food spoil rather than touch it. Their fear was corrected, not mocked. Ask whether you have ever felt a fear of Allah that exact about someone else's property, and what it would change in how you keep accounts.
-
The verse calls what they take “fire”. Consider how that name changes the way a person looks at money he has no right to keep.
Ibn ʿUmar رضي الله عنهما and the Companions stopped calling anyone a person of the Fire once 4:48 came down. But they still feared for him. Consider the massive gap between those two mindsets, and ask yourself which one you fall into more easily.
- The warning is against wrongful taking. Verse 4:6 permits a poor guardian to take fairly, while a rich guardian must abstain. Ask which you would be, and whether you would want the account examined.
Deeper Study for Specialists
1. The Questions This Verse Raises
The verse turns one act, wrongfully consuming an orphan’s property, toward its legal scope, its historical setting and its consequence before Allah. The six questions below keep those matters distinct before bringing them together.
| Question | Central disagreement | Practical consequence | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is the fire they eat? | Whether “fire” names the present deed by its outcome, literal fire on the Day of Resurrection, or a reality already present but unfelt | How the first clause relates to the future punishment | The property is called fire because it leads to the Fire, and the threatened fire is real |
| What does “wrongfully” exclude? | Whether the word restricts the warning, merely emphasizes it, or withdraws the allowance in 4:6 | Whether a poor guardian’s lawful allowance remains possible | The threat excludes fair taking permitted by 4:6; the amount and repayment remain separate questions |
| Does “eat” mean only eating? | Whether ordinary Arabic and the reason for the prohibition extend the warning to every wrongful use | Whether burning, drowning or otherwise wasting the property falls under the verse | The word covers every wrongful use and destruction of the orphan’s property |
| Whom did the verse come down about, and whom does it address? | Whether a reported occasion restricts the general wording | Who comes within the warning | The warning includes everyone who commits the named wrong, whatever the original occasion |
| Was the verse abrogated? | Whether later permission to mix households or take fairly removed this warning | Whether the prohibition remains in force | The provisions address different acts and remain operative together |
| Does the threat establish disbelief or inevitable punishment? | Whether the offender leaves Islam, must be punished, or remains subject to Allah’s will | How the warning is understood within the wider Qurʾānic teaching on major sins | The sin does not by itself expel a Muslim from Islam; punishment or pardon remains subject to Allah’s will |
Q1. What is the fire they eat?
The verse says إِنَّمَا يَأْكُلُونَ فِي بُطُونِهِمْ نَارًا, “are only eating fire in their bellies”. Does “fire” name the consequence of taking the property, or the fire the wrongdoers will actually eat? The two principal explanations connect the deed in this world with its punishment in the next.
| Explanation | What “fire” names | When the eating occurs |
|---|---|---|
| The property is named by its outcome | Taking it leads to the Fire | The wrongful taking happens now |
| The fire is literal | Real fire in the wrongdoer’s belly | On the Day of Resurrection |
A further view holds that the fire is real even now, though it cannot be felt. That view is distinguished below from the explanation concerning the Day of Resurrection.
Position 1. The property is called fire because taking it leads to the Fire
The expression can name the property by what it leads to. This explanation appears across early legal and exegetical discussions.[1] Later commentaries develop the same connection between the wrongful deed and its outcome.[2] The lexical works explain the expression in the same way.[3] Al-Zuḥaylī and al-Sāyis report it as the majority position.[4]
The explanation is widely reported but not universally preferred. Abū Ḥayyān records it while treating literal fire as the apparent sense; several other commentators preserve both explanations without choosing between them.[5] Al-Khāzin brings the two together in a different way: they will eat fire on the Day of Resurrection, so the present deed is named by what it becomes, while a second explanation treats the expression as figurative because wrongful eating leads to the Fire.[6]
Evidence.
1. A thing can be named by what it becomes. Yūsuf’s companion says إِنِّي أَرَانِي أَعْصِرُ خَمْرًا, “I see myself pressing wine” (12:36). What is pressed is grapes; they are called wine because that is what they will become. The same explanation applies here: the property is called fire because taking it leads to the Fire.[7]
The Prophet ﷺ said of drinking from a silver vessel:
إِنَّمَا يجرجر في بطنه نار جهنم“he is only pouring the fire of Hell into his belly”.
The drink is not fire in the cup. The drink is called fire because it leads to the Fire; al-Nawawī cites this verse as the parallel.[8]
A further example shows how one thing can be named by what it is connected to. The reliable opening of the poem al-Rāghib quotes is:
إذا صُبَّ ما في الوَطْب فاعلم بأنه دم الشيخ“When what is in the milk-skin is poured, know that it is the old man’s blood.”[9]
The vessel contains milk, not blood. Al-Rāghib says
فسمّى اللبن دما لكونه بدلاً منه“he called the milk blood because it was a substitute for it.”
The cited passage does not explain the circumstances of that substitution. Even so, the main point stands: one thing can take the name of another just based on their connection. In 4:10 the relationship being discussed is not substitution, but the wrongful taking and the fire it leads to.
2. The statement applies to every wrongful eater now. The verse does not describe only what a particular person will experience later. It says of all who take the property wrongfully that they eat fire. Calling the deed by its consequence makes that statement true of every one of them in the present. This is al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s reason for preferring the explanation, as al-Rāzī records it.[10]
3. The two verbs distinguish the deed from its future punishment. يَأْكُلُونَ means “they eat”; وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ means “and they will burn”. The second expression has the future marker س. Abū Ḥayyān explains that, on the figurative interpretation, the first verb describes what they take now. On the literal interpretation, its future setting is understood from the second clause.[11]
Position 2. They will eat real fire on the Day of Resurrection
The literal explanation takes the words at their apparent sense and places the eating on the Day of Resurrection. Al-Ṭabarī and Ibn Kathīr state it directly, while Abū Ḥayyān allows the future verb to establish the time of both actions. Later commentators also explain the punishment as a correspondence between what was consumed and what fills the wrongdoer’s belly.[12]
Early accounts give concrete descriptions of that punishment; their wording and transmission limits are kept in the note.[13] Other commentators record the literal explanation without making those reports its foundation.[14]
Evidence.
1. The words say “eat fire”. Literal fire is the apparent sense. The addition فِي بُطُونِهِمْ, “in their bellies”, strengthens that sense: the punishment reaches the place into which the stolen property was consumed. Abū Ḥayyān compares such emphasis with the Qurʾān’s mention of a bird flying with its two wings (6:38) and people writing with their hands (2:79).[15]
2. The punishment matches the deed. They consumed the orphan’s property; their punishment is fire where they consumed it. Ibn ʿUthaymīn, al-Ṭarīfī and al-Luhaymīd use this correspondence to explain the literal fire.[16]
3. Reports describe the punishment, but their chains do not establish those details. One report attributed to Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī رضي الله عنه describes what the Prophet ﷺ was shown on the night journey; al-Albānī grades its chain very weak.[17] Another, attributed to Abū Barza رضي الله عنه, describes the wrongdoers at the resurrection. Al-Albānī judges that chain fabricated, while Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ grades it very weak.[18] These reports cannot establish the detailed picture they give. The argument for literal fire rests on the verse, not on these reports.
Objections and replies.
Does the present tense favour the explanation by outcome? Riḍā argues that it does. He writes:
وَالْمُتَبَادِرُ مِنْهُ أَنَّهُ لِلْحَالِ بِقَرِينَةِ عَطْفِ الْفِعْلِ الْمُسْتَقْبَلِ عَلَيْهِ“Its immediately apparent sense is the present, as indicated by the future verb joined to it.”[19]
His point is that يَأْكُلُونَ, “they eat”, lacks the future marker which appears in وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ, “they will burn”. He therefore understands the first clause as wrongful taking now, called fire because it resembles fire in its harm or leads to it; the second announces the punishment to come. He also makes using the reported pictures of literal eating as an explanation conditional on the reports’ soundness. On that interpretation, he argues, the wording would instead have been فَسَيَأْكُلُونَ نَارًا وَيَصْلَوْنَ سَعِيرًا, “then they will eat fire and burn in a Blaze”. This is his proposed contrast, not another transmitted qirāʾah.[20]
A different grammatical account prevents the tense contrast from settling the question by itself. If the first clause describes literal fire, the future verb joined to it can establish the future setting for both actions; if it names the deed by its outcome, the first action is present. Abū Ḥayyān develops the first possibility, while al-Rāzī records al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s argument for the second. The disagreement concerns what the first clause denotes, not whether the verse threatens future punishment.[21]
Does “in their bellies” settle the question? Not by itself. Abū Ḥayyān also explains how the phrase strengthens the image for those who understand “fire” figuratively. Ibn ʿĀshūr holds that, on either interpretation, it completes the image of eating used for taking property. The different rhetorical explanations are set out in the note.[22]
Must the two principal explanations compete? Al-Ṭabarī likewise describes: they eat the fire of Hell on the Day of Resurrection because they ate orphans’ property wrongfully in this world. Ibn Kathīr describes real fire in their bellies on that Day. Naming the present deed by its outcome does not make the outcome unreal.[23]
The two explanations can therefore describe the same person at different times: he consumes what leads to fire in this world, then meets that fire in the Hereafter. Al-Rāghib states the reconciliation directly: والقولان صحيحان وسيان, “both explanations are correct and equivalent.”[24]
An additional view: real fire now, though unfelt
A further interpretation takes the fire as real even now, though hidden from the senses (al-Ḥarrālī, al-Biqāʿī and Muftī Shafīʿ).[25] On this view, the first clause reveals a present reality rather than merely repeating the future warning in وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ, “and they will burn”. Sayyid Quṭb likewise concentrates on the reality and heat of the fire burning bellies and skins.[26]
A further possibility makes “fire” a description of pain or ruin in this world, followed by the punishment of the Hereafter. Ibn ʿĀshūr compares this with يَمْحَقُ اللَّهُ الرِّبَا, Allah’s destruction of usury (2:276), and presents it beside his principal explanation.[27]
The tarjīḥ: the preferred conclusion
The preferred reconciliation is that the property is called fire because it leads to the Fire, and that the threatened fire is real.
The person who consumes what leads to fire in this world is the person whose punishment is described in the Hereafter. This joins the moral reality of the present act to the real punishment threatened for it, without forcing the two clauses to describe the same moment. Al-Rāghib states the reconciliation expressly, while al-Ṭabarī and Ibn Kathīr likewise connect wrongful taking here with fire in the belly on the Day. This is the conclusion followed here.[28]
This reconciliation does not mean that the sources agree that the first clause itself denotes literal eating on the Day. Riḍā argues that the present tense points to wrongful taking now, while the future verb announces the punishment to come. The conclusion joins deed and punishment while preserving that disagreement about the first clause.[29]
The two reports that describe the wrongdoers’ appearance on the Day are too weak to add to either explanation. And Allah knows best.
Q2. Does “wrongfully” exclude the poor guardian’s lawful allowance?
ظُلْمًا means “wrongfully”. Does it distinguish wrongful taking from an allowance the guardian may lawfully receive, or merely emphasize that taking an orphan’s property is wrong? A third position holds that this verse withdrew the permission in 4:6.
| Position | What “wrongfully” does | Consequence for the allowance in 4:6 |
|---|---|---|
| Restriction | Excludes taking that is permitted | The poor guardian’s fair allowance remains lawful |
| Emphasis | Describes taking the orphan’s property as wrongful | A lawful wage or loan is the taker’s own property |
| Abrogation | Prohibits the taking previously permitted | The earlier allowance was withdrawn |
Position 1. The threat excludes what may lawfully be taken
The restrictive explanation runs from early transmitted tafsir into the legal commentaries.[1] Its central reasoning is that ظُلْمًا distinguishes excess and abuse from the fair taking allowed to a poor guardian.[2] Later tafsirs preserve the same distinction through examples such as a lawful wage, a loan or taking only what need and work justify.[3] Al-Qurṭubī and Abū Ḥayyān accordingly identify the threatened guardians as those taking what was not permitted, while al-Nawawī attributes the underlying permission to al-Shāfiʿī and the majority.[4]
Evidence.
1. The qualification has work to do. If every taking were wrongful, adding “wrongfully” would distinguish nothing. The word separates abuse of the property from the fair taking allowed in the preceding verses. This is al-Rāzī’s argument; Ibn ʿArafa likewise explains that the qualification prevents a conflict with 4:6.[5]
2. The adjacent permission is explicit. Verse 4:6 says وَمَنْ كَانَ فَقِيرًا فَلْيَأْكُلْ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ, “whoever is poor, let him eat fairly”. Verse 2:220 also permits sharing a household with orphans: وَإِنْ تُخَالِطُوهُمْ فَإِخْوَانُكُمْ, “and if you mix with them, they are your brothers”. Neither permission authorizes injustice. Al-Saʿdī uses both to explain what lies outside the threat, and Ibn ʿĀshūr explicitly connects the qualification with 4:6.[6]
3. Permission and its extent are separate questions. The jurists who allow a poor guardian to take fairly do not all define his allowance in the same way. Here is how those rules differ:
| Question | Position recorded |
|---|---|
| May a poor guardian take fairly? | Al-Shāfiʿī and the majority permit it, as al-Nawawī records. |
| What extent does this author use in its practical example? | Aḥmad’s extent, as al-Karmī records: the lesser of the guardian’s need and the usual wage for his work. |
| How is the allowance related to work? | Al-Zajjāj relates it to management of the property without excess. Ibn ʿUthaymīn gives the example of a poor guardian taking the equivalent of his wage. |
| Must it later be repaid? | A loan to be repaid when possible is one position, not an agreed-upon condition. |
The source details, including the scholars who held the loan position, are in the note.[7]
Position 2. “Wrongfully” emphasizes what all such taking is
An unnamed explanation recorded, and rejected, by al-Ālūsī treats ظُلْمًا as emphasis rather than restriction.[8] On this account, someone receiving a lawful wage or loan takes what has become his own property, not what still belongs to the orphan. “Wrongfully” therefore describes the character of taking the orphan’s property; it does not create an exception within that taking.
Reply. The difference is partly how the property is described. This position does not deny that a lawful wage or loan can exist. The stronger explanation, however, lets the verse’s qualification distinguish directly between permitted and forbidden taking from the property being managed. That fits both the permission in 4:6 and the jurists’ discussion of its extent.[9]
Position 3. This verse withdrew the permission in 4:6
The claim that 4:10 withdrew the allowance is attributed to Mujāhid, Zayd b. Aslam and Ibn ʿAbbās رضي الله عنهما.[10] Later authors preserve those attributions with different degrees of specificity; some record the claim without identifying who held it.[11] Related arguments include Abū Ḥanīfa’s refusal of an allowance and Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī’s general prohibition, but neither is by itself another explicit attribution of abrogation.[12]
Evidence offered. The argument is that the prohibition in this verse cancels the earlier permission. A report from Ibn ʿAbbās, passed down through ʿAṭāʾ al-Khurāsānī, specifically names 4:10 as the abrogating verse.[13]
Why that argument does not stand.
1. Forbidding injustice does not cancel permission to act fairly. The verses address different acts: one permits a poor guardian to take fairly; the other threatens whoever takes wrongfully. There is no conflict requiring one ruling to replace the other. Ibn al-ʿArabī makes this the answer to the abrogation claim.[14]
2. Together, the verses explain each other. Verse 4:6 identifies a permitted allowance, and “wrongfully” in 4:10 keeps it outside the threat. Al-Zurqānī, Ibn ʿArafa and al-Rāzī explain this relationship. The permission is not an afterthought, it is built right into the text.[15]
3. The jurists continued to discuss a lawful allowance. Abū Ḥayyān records permission without repayment from Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī, ʿAṭāʾ, al-Ḥasan and Qatāda, and lists the jurists on the side of permission. Al-Nawawī reports al-Shāfiʿī and the majority likewise. Al-Naḥḥās records 4:6 as unabrogated while preserving disagreement over the amount and repayment.[16]
The tarjīḥ: the preferred conclusion
The threat is for eating an orphan's property wrongfully; a poor guardian who takes his fair due, as 4:6 allows, is not in it.
“Wrongfully” distinguishes abuse from a permitted allowance. There is no need to cancel the permission in 4:6: a command to act fairly and a prohibition of injustice go together. The restrictive explanation also avoids treating a meaningful qualification as mere repetition.[17]
The schools differ over the amount and whether it must be repaid. The practical example in Contemporary Applications follows Aḥmad’s measure, as al-Karmī records it: the lesser of the guardian’s need and the usual wage for his work.[18] And Allah knows best.
Q3. Does “eat” mean only eating?
يَأْكُلُونَ, “they eat”, names what the wrongdoers do with the orphan’s property. Does the warning reach only food, or every wrongful use and destruction of that property?
| Interpretation | What “eat” includes | Principal reason | Legal consequence |
|---|---|---|---|
| The ordinary broad expression | Spending, taking, wasting and destroying the property wrongfully | Arabic commonly uses “eating wealth” for consuming or disposing of it; the same harm reaches the orphan through every form of destruction | Burning, drowning and other wrongful destruction fall under the prohibition |
| A strictly literal restriction | Eating the property as food | The verse expressly names eating and does not name every other act | Other forms of destruction would require proof outside this wording |
| The related warning about the vulnerable | Refraining from taking the property of women and orphans | The report reinforces protection of their property | It supports the seriousness of the prohibition but does not by itself determine the lexical scope of “eat” |
Position 1. “Eat” includes every wrongful use of the property
The broader interpretation appears across the legal and linguistic commentaries.[1] Other tafsirs explain the same ordinary use of “eating wealth” for taking or disposing of it.[2] Al-Suyūṭī and al-Shanqīṭī make explicit the legal reasoning by which the prohibition reaches other forms of destruction.[3]
Evidence.
1. “Eating wealth” is wider than eating food. A person who spends wealth on whatever he wishes has effectively “eaten” it. Since food is a primary use of property, that use can stand for consuming or disposing of the wealth as a whole. Al-Rāzī adds that much orphan property consisted of livestock that provided meat and milk; Abū Ḥayyān describes the rhetorical relation as naming the effect, eating, for its cause, taking.[4]
2. The harm does not depend on how the property is destroyed. The orphan loses his property whether someone eats it, burns it or sinks it in water. The reason for the prohibition remains. Al-Rāzī makes the equality of that harm explicit; Ibn ʿUthaymīn adds that burning or drowning the property can be worse than eating it.[5]
3. The same reason expands the rule to cover what is not explicitly mentioned. For al-Suyūṭī, the message of the verse (لحن الخطاب) is that burning is forbidden because it destroys the property just as eating does. Al-Shanqīṭī likewise explains that burning and drowning are included because all are ways of destroying the wealth without right.[6]
Position 2. The verse mentions eating and is silent about other destruction
A strict restriction attributed to Ibn Ḥazm argues from what the verse expressly names: eating.[7] On this position, the wording itself does not establish the prohibition of burning or drowning the property.
An extreme Khārijī extension shows where such strict literalism can lead. Maymūn al-ʿAjradī argued that the verse condemns consuming even a tiny amount but does not expressly name killing the orphan; Muḥammad Ḥusayn al-Dhahabī records the example while criticizing this method. This was Maymūn’s argument, not Ibn Ḥazm’s position.[8]
Replies.
1. The proposed restriction is narrower than ordinary usage. “Eating wealth” already covers spending it in ways other than buying food. The Arabic expression cannot be limited simply by picturing what enters the mouth.[9]
2. The prohibition protects the property from wrongful destruction. Burning and drowning do the very harm for which wrongful eating is forbidden. Al-Shanqīṭī expressly rejects treating the verse as silent about them; al-Suyūṭī explains why the unmentioned case shares the ruling.[10]
3. Edible property has no special claim to protection. Al-Ṭaḥāwī includes debts and goods, what can be eaten and what cannot. The broader prohibition protects the orphan’s property as property. The extreme argument reported by al-Dhahabī would attach the warning to a lesser wrong while excluding a greater one; it does not answer the scholars' explanation of the harm.[11]
A related hadith concerning the woman and orphan
Ibn Mardawayh records this warning through an isnād containing a transmitter whom al-Dāraquṭnī judged weak:
أُحَرِّجُ مال الضَّعِيفيْن: المرأة واليتيم“I solemnly warn concerning the property of the two vulnerable: the woman and the orphan.”[12]
Ibn Ḥibbān also records the warning through a different isnād, which Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ grades ḥasan.
Ibn Kathīr explains it as أوصيكم باجتناب مالهما, “I charge you to refrain from taking their property.”
The tarjīḥ: the preferred conclusion
"Eat" stands for every wrongful use of an orphan's property, not eating alone.
That conclusion follows both the ordinary expression “eating wealth” and the reason for the prohibition. The orphan’s loss is not smaller because someone destroyed his property without eating it. The commentators’ explanations and the legal argument set out by al-Suyūṭī and al-Shanqīṭī therefore reach the same result.[13] And Allah knows best.
Q4. Whom did the verse come down about, and whom does it address?
The person named in an account of revelation and the people addressed by the verse are not necessarily the same. A particular incident may occasion a warning whose words apply to everyone who commits the wrong.
| Account | Persons concerned | What must be distinguished |
|---|---|---|
| Marthad b. Zayd | A guardian who consumed his orphaned nephew’s property | The occasion and the wider warning |
| The polytheists | People who withheld inheritance from women and children | Whether the reported occasion restricts the wider warning |
| Ḥanẓala b. al-Shamardal | A person named in another account | An anonymous attribution |
Account 1. Marthad b. Zayd, the orphan’s guardian
Muqātil b. Ḥayyān’s account names Marthad b. Zayd of Ghaṭafān, who had charge of his young orphaned nephew and consumed the child’s property. The account is preserved by several commentators and by Ibn Ḥajar.[1] It comes without an isnad, and Abū Ḥayyān gives a different form of the man’s name.[2]
The reported occasion does not define the full address. The majority explanation makes guardians who take what was not permitted the immediate concern, while Ibn ʿAṭiyya and Abū Ḥayyān expressly extend the warning to anyone who wrongfully consumes an orphan’s property.[3]
Account 2. Polytheists who denied women and children inheritance
A second account, transmitted by al-Ṭabarī from Zayd b. Aslam through his son ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, links the verse to polytheists who denied women and children their inheritance. Later commentaries often preserve it under the son’s name, Ibn Zayd.[4]
The account explains the verse through a known wrong: people gave these dependants no inheritance and consumed their property themselves. It identifies a setting for the warning; it does not imply that Muslims who commit the same act escape it.
Objection and reply. Does this explanation restrict the verse to polytheists? Only if we assume the verse is strictly limited to the historical event that prompted it. Al-Ālūsī rejects that restriction while allowing that the report may describe the occasion. The principle is
الْعِبْرَةُ لِعُمُومِ اللَّفْظِ لَا لِخُصُوصِ السَّبَبِ“What counts is the general wording, not only the particular occasion.”
Al-Zuḥaylī likewise includes both believers and unbelievers in the prohibition.[5]
Nor does the warning stop at guardians. The warning targets the action itself, not a specific role: anyone who consumes the property wrongfully comes within them. Ibn ʿAṭiyya and Abū Ḥayyān make that extension explicit.[6] Taking anyone’s property unjustly is forbidden; the orphan is singled out for particular protection, not because other people’s property is lawful to take.[7]
How the early Muslims understood the warning
Muslims feared the warning for themselves. In the account from Ibn ʿAbbās رضي الله عنهما, guardians separated the orphans’ food and drink from their own. Leftovers were kept for the children until they spoiled, and the arrangements became burdensome. The permission in 2:220, وَإِنْ تُخَالِطُوهُمْ فَإِخْوَانُكُمْ, “and if you mix with them, they are your brothers”, relieved that difficulty. [8]
Another account describes Muslims becoming reluctant even to take orphans into their households. Its chain has received differing assessments; other early accounts also describe the household difficulty.[9]
The account recorded through al-Aswad gives ʿĀʾisha رضي الله عنها as an example of sharing food: she mixed the orphan’s food and drink with her own.[10] Other explanations illustrate permissible sharing through everyday household arrangements. The question is whether the orphan is treated fairly, not whether every meal is kept apart.[11]
Account 3. Ḥanẓala b. al-Shamardal
A third account names Ḥanẓala, but the commentators introduce it anonymously and without an isnad.[12] It therefore does not establish an occasion for revelation.
The tarjīḥ: the preferred conclusion
The threat reaches everyone who eats an orphan’s property wrongfully, whoever the verse first came down about.
The wording names the wrongful act without restricting it to a particular guardian, family or religious community. That is why an account about one guardian or about polytheists does not narrow the prohibition. The early Muslims’ concern about their own households also shows that they did not understand the warning as directed only at others.[13] And Allah knows best.
Q5. Was the verse abrogated?
Sharing a household with an orphan, taking a lawful allowance and consuming the child’s property wrongfully are different acts. The claims of abrogation must be tested against that distinction.
| Claim | Supposedly replacing verse | The central question |
|---|---|---|
| Permission to mix households replaced the warning | 2:220 | Does sharing permit wrongful taking? |
| The poor guardian’s allowance replaced the warning | 4:6 | Is a lawful allowance the wrong condemned here? |
| This warning withdrew the allowance | 4:10 replacing 4:6 | Does ظُلْمًا, “wrongfully”, include what is lawful? |
Position 1. The permission in 2:220 abrogated this verse
Muqātil b. Sulaymān uses the language of abrogation but immediately distinguishes the two acts: mixing was permitted, while wrongful consumption was not.[1] Al-Naḥḥās records an attribution to Ibn ʿAbbās only conditionally and rejects any repeal of the prohibition.[2] Other commentators mention unnamed proponents while answering the claim rather than adopting it.[3]
Evidence offered. The household hardship described in Question 4 was followed by permission to mix with orphans. The proponents understood that relief as a change brought by 2:220.
The reply. The permission changed the household arrangements, not the prohibition of injustice. Food could be shared without the guardian appropriating the child’s property. The mistake is to treat relief from a precaution as permission to commit the wrong that prompted the precaution. Al-Naḥḥās, al-Jaṣṣāṣ, al-Rāzī, Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Khāzin distinguish the two. Ibn al-ʿArabī holds that 4:10, 6:152 and 2:220 remain in force together.[4]
Agreement on the prohibition. Al-Jaṣṣāṣ reports no disagreement among Muslims that the prohibition and warning remain in force. Ibn al-Jawzī likewise reports no disagreement on the prohibition. These statements concern wrongful consumption; they do not deny that early authors sometimes called the removal of household difficulty “abrogation”.[5]
Position 2. The allowance in 4:6 abrogated this verse
Hibat Allāh b. Salāma states that 4:6 replaced the warning,[6] and the same claim occurs in the work circulated under Ibn Ḥazm’s name.[7] Al-Sakhāwī, Ibn al-ʿArabī and al-Zurqānī record it without adopting it.[8]
Evidence offered. Verse 4:6 says وَمَنْ كَانَ فَقِيرًا فَلْيَأْكُلْ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ, “and whoever is poor, let him take according to what is acceptable”. If 4:10 forbade every form of taking, this allowance would appear to replace that prohibition.
The reply. Verse 4:10 does not forbid every form of taking. It forbids taking ظُلْمًا, “wrongfully”. What 4:6 permits on fair terms is therefore not the act threatened here. The allowance explains the limits of the prohibition; it does not repeal it. That is how Al-Sakhāwī, Ibn al-ʿArabī and al-Zurqānī answer the claim.[9]
Position 3. This verse withdrew the allowance in 4:6
The reverse claim, that 4:10 withdrew the earlier allowance, is attributed to Mujāhid, Zayd b. Aslam and Ibn ʿAbbās, and also occurs in the work attributed to al-Zuhrī. The report from Ibn ʿAbbās passes through ʿAṭāʾ al-Khurāsānī; its additional source details remain in the note.[10]
Evidence and reply. This is the dispute examined in Question 2: whether the later warning leaves room for the poor guardian’s allowance. The word ظُلْمًا has the answer. Wrongful taking and permitted taking are not one act whose ruling has been reversed. The differing extents of the allowance remain a separate legal question; they do not establish that it was withdrawn.[11]
The tarjīḥ: the preferred conclusion
The verse is in force; 2:220 lifted the hardship of sharing a household with an orphan and permitted no wrong, so nothing in it was abrogated.
The three provisions can be obeyed together: do not consume the orphan’s property wrongfully; share household arrangements fairly; and observe the limits of any lawful allowance. No permission requires the wrong condemned in this verse. This is why the scholars who reject abrogation distinguish the acts rather than set one verse against another.[12] And Allah knows best.
Q6. Does the threat make the eater a disbeliever or make punishment certain?
Does committing this major sin take a Muslim out of Islam? And must every Muslim who dies without repenting from it receive the punishment, or may Allah forgive him?
| Position | What it says about this warning |
|---|---|
| Ahl al-Sunna | This major sin does not by itself take a Muslim out of Islam. Allah may punish him or forgive him. |
| The Muʿtazilī position presented here | An offender who dies without repentance must receive the threatened punishment. Al-Jubbāʾī also stipulates a minimum amount. |
| Those who infer disbelief | The threat is taken as proof that the offender has left Islam. |
Position 1. A grave sin, with the Muslim sinner subject to Allah’s will
The first position separates two matters: the threat remains true and severe, but its existence does not make every Muslim offender a disbeliever or make punishment inevitable for every individual. Al-Qurṭubī states this as the position of Ahl al-Sunna; al-Zuḥaylī and al-Jaṣṣāṣ adhere to it.[1]
Calling the act a major sin does not soften the warning. The Fire is precisely what makes it one of the gravest offences. The commentaries cited here emphasize that gravity, and al-Nawawī transmits Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s discussion of it among the major sins.[2]
Evidence.
1. The Qurʾān expressly leaves sins below shirk subject to forgiveness. Verse 4:48 says:
﴿إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يَغۡفِرُ أَن يُشۡرَكَ بِهِۦ وَيَغۡفِرُ مَا دُونَ ذَٰلِكَ لِمَن يَشَآءُۚ﴾“Indeed, Allah does not forgive association with Him, but He forgives what is less than that for whom He wills.” (4:48)
The verse therefore leaves the outcome of a particular Muslim offender to Allah’s will: some sinners may be punished and others forgiven. Al-Qurṭubī applies this principle directly to the threat in 4:10.[3]
2. The hadith distinguishes permanent inhabitants of the Fire from sinful people brought out of it. Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī رضي الله عنه reports that the Prophet ﷺ said:
أَمَّا أَهْلُ النَّارِ الَّذِينَ هُمْ أَهْلُهَا فَإِنَّهُمْ لاَ يَمُوتُونَ فِيهَا وَلاَ يَحْيَوْنَ وَلَكِنْ نَاسٌ أَصَابَتْهُمُ النَّارُ بِذُنُوبِهِمْ أَوْ قَالَ بِخَطَايَاهُمْ فَأَمَاتَهُمْ إِمَاتَةً حَتَّى إِذَا كَانُوا فَحْمًا أُذِنَ بِالشَّفَاعَةِ فَجِيءَ بِهِمْ ضَبَائِرَ ضَبَائِرَ فَبُثُّوا عَلَى أَنْهَارِ الْجَنَّةِ ثُمَّ قِيلَ يَا أَهْلَ الْجَنَّةِ أَفِيضُوا عَلَيْهِمْ فَيَنْبُتُونَ نَبَاتَ الْحِبَّةِ تَكُونُ فِي حَمِيلِ السَّيْلِ“As for the people of the Fire who are its inhabitants, they neither die in it nor live. But some people whom the Fire has afflicted because of their sins, or he said, ‘their misdeeds’, He causes to die. When they have become charcoal, intercession is permitted. They are brought in groups and spread beside the rivers of Paradise. Then it is said, ‘People of Paradise, pour [water] over them.’ They grow as a seed grows in the silt carried by a flood.”[4]
The warning can therefore be fulfilled through a sinful believer’s punishment without making him one of the Fire’s permanent inhabitants. Al-Qurṭubī applies the hadith in this way and joins it to 4:48, which leaves forgiveness of sins below shirk to Allah’s will.[5]
An athar attributed to Ibn ʿUmar رضي الله عنهما describes the same distinction in the Companions’ response: after 4:48, they ceased declaring that particular offenders would be in the Fire, while continuing to fear the threatened punishment for them.[6]
Position 2. Punishment must follow unless the sinner repents
The argument begins with the general wording إِنَّ الَّذِينَ يَأْكُلُونَ, “Indeed, those who consume”: everyone who meets the description must receive the threatened punishment unless repentance removes it. Al-Rāzī records this reasoning from the Muʿtazila; Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī also attaches an amount threshold, and Ibn ʿĀdil records the general form of the argument when discussing 2:81.[7]
The certainty of the warning. Al-Biqāʿī explains وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ with the words:
أَيْ فِي الْآخِرَةِ - بِوَعِيدِ حَتْمٍ لَا خُلْفَ فِيهِ“That is, in the Hereafter, with a decisive threat in which there is no failure.”[8]
He stresses the certainty of the promised punishment. This passage does not discuss pardon or identify which individual sinners are punished; it does not establish that he adopts the Muʿtazilī argument above.
A hadith whose isnād al-Munāwī grades weak appears to exclude four classes of sinner from Paradise, including one who consumes an orphan’s property without right. Al-Ḥākim called its isnad sound, but al-Munāwī calls its isnad weak and says that judgment was rejected. Al-Dhahabī and al-Mundhirī identify a narrator judged unfit to transmit hadith.[9]
Objections and replies. Al-Rāzī first challenges the claimed universal scope of the threat:
لِمَ لَا يَجُوزُ أَنْ يَكُونَ هَذَا الْوَعِيدُ مَخْصُوصًا بِالْكُفَّارِ لِقَوْلِهِ تَعَالَى: وَالْكافِرُونَ هُمُ الظَّالِمُونَ“Why may this threat not be particular to the disbelievers, in view of His saying, ‘The disbelievers are the wrongdoers’?”[10]
He offers this simply to counter the claim that every offender must be punished. As Question 4 established, we do not actually restrict the verse this way.
His second reply tackles the debate over Muslim sinners head-on. He points out that the opposing side already accepts conditions not found in 4:10, like the sinner failing to repent, or (in al-Jubbāʾī’s view) the amount stolen being large enough. If they can add those, al-Rāzī asks, why can we not add one more: that Allah simply has not pardoned the sinner? He adds that evidence for such pardons exists, and even a lack of evidence would not prove forgiveness is impossible.[11]
Does 4:48 promise forgiveness only to those who repent? That would remove the distinction the verse makes between shirk and lesser sins. Ibn ʿAṭiyya answers: إذ الشرك أيضا يغفر للتائب, “since shirk too is forgiven to one who repents.” If only repentant people were meant, saying that Allah does not forgive shirk but forgives lesser sins would no longer make that distinction. His conclusion is that forgiveness for those “whom He wills” includes the possibility of pardoning a sinner who has not repented; it does not promise pardon to every sinner.[12]
Verse 4:48 gives the positive reason for recognizing that possibility. The choice is not between taking the threat seriously and denying it. It is between treating punishment as inevitable for every unrepentant offender and acknowledging the forgiveness that the Qurʾān itself allows.[13]
Position 3. The threat proves that the sinner is a disbeliever
A third argument treats being threatened with the Fire as proof that the offender has left Islam. Al-Qurṭubī and al-Zuḥaylī record and reject that inference without naming its proponents in these passages.[14] A threat against a sin does not by itself make the sin disbelief. The texts already cited distinguish sins below shirk and sinful people who are eventually brought out of the Fire. The gravity of consuming an orphan’s property establishes a major sin; it does not erase that distinction.[15]
The tarjīḥ: the preferred conclusion
The conclusion followed here is the Ahl al-Sunna position stated by al-Qurṭubī: the threat does not make the Muslim offender a disbeliever, and pardon remains subject to Allah’s will.
The prohibition remains binding and the warning severe. A Muslim who dies with this sin may be punished or forgiven; the verse does not authorize us to declare him outside Islam or certainly destined for the Fire. If he is punished, his fate is not that of its permanent inhabitants. Al-Qurṭubī reaches this conclusion by considering 4:10 together with 4:48 and the hadith distinguishing permanent inhabitants of the Fire from sinful people brought out of it.[16]
And Allah knows best.
2. Iʿrāb: Grammatical Structure
The word and clause tables follow Dār al-Ṣaḥāba’s Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Karīm.[1] The discussion below explains the alternatives recorded by other grammarians and whether they change the meaning or the English translation.
Word, grammar, what it does
| Word | Grammar | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| إِنَّ inna |
حرف ناسخ، للتوكيد ḥarf nāsikh, li-l-tawkīd a particle that changes the case of the sentence it enters, and gives emphasis |
"Indeed": the whole verse is stated with emphasis, as a thing not to be doubted |
| الَّذِينَ alladhīna |
موصول مبني في محلّ نصب اسم إنّ mawṣūl mabnī fī maḥall naṣb, ism inna a relative pronoun of fixed form, standing where a word in naṣb stands, as the subject of inna |
"Those who": names the people the verse is about by what follows |
| يَأْكُلُونَ yaʾkulūna |
مضارع مرفوع بثبوت النون، و (الواو): فاعل muḍāriʿ marfūʿ bi-thubūt al-nūn, wa-l-wāw fāʿil a present-tense verb, in rafʿ shown by the nūn that stays, its subject the wāw of the plural |
"Eat": the act that defines them, stated in the present |
| أَمْوَالَ amwāla |
مفعول به منصوب mafʿūl bihi manṣūb the object of the verb, in naṣb |
"The property": what is eaten |
| الْيَتَامَى al-yatāmā |
مضاف إليه مجرور muḍāf ilayhi majrūr the second term of a construct, in jarr |
"Of orphans": whose property it is |
| ظُلْمًا ẓulman |
مفعول لأجله منصوب, or مصدر في موضع الحال mafʿūl li-ajlihi manṣūb, aw maṣdar fī mawḍiʿ al-ḥāl a maṣdar, a noun naming the act of wrong, in naṣb: the motive of the eating, or a description of the eaters |
"Wrongfully": restricts the threat to wrongful eating, on either account |
| إِنَّمَا innamā |
كافّة ومكفوفة kāffa wa-makfūfa inna stopped from governing by the mā attached to it, the two together a particle of restriction |
"Only": what they eat is fire and nothing else |
| يَأْكُلُونَ yaʾkulūna |
مضارع مرفوع بثبوت النون، و (الواو): فاعل muḍāriʿ marfūʿ bi-thubūt al-nūn, wa-l-wāw fāʿil the same verb again, in the present |
"Eat": the second clause names their act by their own act |
| فِي بُطُونِهِمْ fī buṭūnihim |
جارّ ومجرور، متعلق بمحذوف حال من ﴿ناراً﴾; ضمير، مضاف إليه jārr wa-majrūr, mutaʿalliq bi-maḥdhūf ḥāl min nāran; ḍamīr, muḍāf ilayh a preposition with its noun in jarr, attached to an unspoken word describing the fire; the pronoun completes "bellies" |
“In their bellies”: the fire is described as being there |
| نَارًا nāran |
مفعول به منصوب mafʿūl bihi manṣūb the object of the verb, in naṣb |
"Fire": what they eat, in place of the property they thought they were eating |
| وَ wa |
عاطفة ʿāṭifa a joining particle |
Joins the second threat to the first |
| سَ sa |
حرف استقبال ḥarf istiqbāl a particle that turns the present verb to the future |
"Will": puts the burning in the time to come |
| يَصْلَوْنَ yaṣlawna |
مضارع مرفوع بثبوت النون، و (الواو): فاعل muḍāriʿ marfūʿ bi-thubūt al-nūn, wa-l-wāw fāʿil a present-tense verb in rafʿ, its subject the wāw of the plural |
“Burn”: they will endure the Blaze |
| سَعِيرًا saʿīran |
مفعول به منصوب mafʿūl bihi manṣūb the object of the verb, in naṣb |
"A Blaze": the fire they burn in, named by its intensity |
Clause and position
| Clause | Position |
|---|---|
| يَأْكُلُونَ أَمْوَالَ الْيَتَامَى ظُلْمًا “eat the property of orphans wrongfully” |
صلة الموصول, ṣilat al-mawṣūl. Completes الَّذِينَ, “those who”, by identifying what they do. |
| إِنَّمَا يَأْكُلُونَ فِي بُطُونِهِمْ نَارًا “are only consuming into their bellies fire” |
في محلّ رفع خبر إنّ, fī maḥall rafʿ khabar inna. The predicate: what the verse states about those people. |
| إِنَّ الَّذِينَ يَأْكُلُونَ أَمْوَالَ الْيَتَامَى ظُلْمًا إِنَّمَا يَأْكُلُونَ فِي بُطُونِهِمْ نَارًا “Indeed, those who devour the property of orphans unjustly are only consuming into their bellies fire” |
استئنافية, istiʾnāfiyya. A new sentence, with no grammatical position in a preceding sentence. |
| وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ سَعِيرًا “And they will burn in a Blaze” |
في محلّ رفع معطوفة على جملة إنّما يأكلون, fī maḥall rafʿ, maʿṭūfa ʿalā jumlat innamā yaʾkulūna. Joined to the predicate: a further statement about the same people. |
These relationships follow Dār al-Ṣaḥāba.[2]
Why the predicate begins with another إِنَّ. The opening إِنَّ introduces “those who eat the property of orphans wrongfully”. What is said about them then begins with إِنَّمَا. Abū Ḥayyān uses this construction as evidence that a sentence beginning with إِنَّ can itself serve as a predicate, a point on which grammarians differ.[3] He explains its suitability here by the distance between the two particles: the relative clause has lengthened the opening before the predicate begins.[4]
How the new sentence connects with its neighbours. Al-Shawkānī understands it as a fresh prohibition of wrongdoing by guardians and executors.[5] Ibn ʿĀshūr calls it a جُمْلَة مُعْتَرِضَة, jumla muʿtariḍa, an intervening sentence. The discussion of estate division brings orphans to mind because heirs often include children who have lost their fathers. The verse therefore repeats the warning against taking their property.[6] The first explanation describes the sentence’s fresh start; the second also explains its place within the surrounding discussion.
How the final warning joins the first. On the explanation that “eating fire” means taking what leads to the Fire of the Hereafter, Ibn ʿĀshūr calls the joining عَطْف مُرَادِف, ʿaṭf murādif, joining expressions of like meaning: the final clause restates the threatened outcome.[7] This is his explanation of the relation between the clauses, not a change to their wording.
Where the grammar changes the meaning
1. ظُلْمًا, “wrongfully”: does it describe the eaters, or give the reason for the eating?
The word is a maṣdar, a noun naming the act of wrong, and it is in naṣb. The grammarians account for the naṣb in four ways:
| Explanation | What it means |
|---|---|
| مصدر في موضع الحال, maṣdar fī mawḍiʿ al-ḥāl, a maṣdar in the place of a ḥāl, a description of the doers at the moment of the act | They eat it being wrongdoers, ظَالِمِينَ: the word describes the eaters |
| مفعول لأجله, mafʿūl li-ajlih, the object of purpose | They eat it out of wrong, for no reason but wrong: the word gives the motive |
| مفعول مطلق, mafʿūl muṭlaq, an absolute object naming the kind of act | An eating that is a wrong, أَكْلَ ظُلْمٍ: the word names the kind of eating |
| تمييز, tamyīz, a specifier | It says in what respect the eating is meant: as to wrong |
The two principal analyses differ in what ظُلْمًا contributes. As an object of purpose, it names the motive: they consume the property out of wrong. As a ḥāl, it describes their condition: they consume it as wrongdoers. Dār al-Ṣaḥābah gives the purpose analysis first and the ḥāl as an alternative;[8] al-ʿUkbarī gives the same two in that order,[9] while Abū Ḥayyān puts the ḥāl first.[10] Al-Muntajab al-Hamadhānī makes the contrast explicit: the ḥāl describes the subject of يَأْكُلُونَ, whereas the purpose analysis means acting “by way of wrong”.[11]
The ḥāl analysis also clarifies the legal boundary. Maḥmūd Ṣāfī, al-Kharrāṭ and Ibn ʿUthaymīn adopt it,[12] and Ibn ʿĀshūr explains its restrictive force: permitted taking falls outside the threat.[13] The less common analyses identify the kind or respect of the act rather than the doer or motive. Al-Shawkānī records the maṣdar account, “an eating of wrong”;[14] Darwīsh adds the absolute object to the two principal analyses;[15] and al-Ālūsī records all four, placing the tamyīz last as a reported view.[16]
Does the translation change? “Wrongfully” can convey the qualification under each analysis. The difference is whether ظُلْمًا describes the eaters, their motive, the kind of eating, or the respect in which it is described. A separate question is whether the word excludes a guardian’s rightful allowance or emphasises the wrong already contained in the act. That disagreement, and the adopted conclusion that rightful taking is outside the threat, are explained in Question 2.
2. فِي بُطُونِهِمْ, “in their bellies”: does it go with the eating, or with the fire?
| Explanation | What it means |
|---|---|
| متعلقان بيأكلون, mutaʿalliqān bi-yaʾkulūna, attached to the verb | They eat fire into their bellies: the belly is where the eating goes, and the phrase means a bellyful |
| حال من ناراً, ḥāl min nāran, a description of the fire, brought before its noun | They eat a fire that is in their bellies: the phrase describes the fire, and comes before "fire" because that noun is indefinite |
The first analysis attaches the phrase to the act of eating. Abū Ḥayyān calls this the apparent construction, الظَّاهِر, and records al-Ḥawfī with it;[17] al-Ālūsī likewise presents it as the apparent sense.[18] On this account, the words picture a bellyful, مِلْءُ بُطُونِهِمْ,[19] and al-Akhfash treats the phrase as emphatic.[20]
The second analysis makes فِي بُطُونِهِمْ a ḥāl describing the fire. Al-ʿUkbarī explains the sense as “a fire that is in their bellies” and rejects attaching the phrase to “they eat”.[21] Dār al-Ṣaḥābah, Maḥmūd Ṣāfī and al-Hamadhānī use the same construction: an adjective of the indefinite noun “fire” has come before it and therefore functions as a ḥāl.[22] Darwīsh allows either attachment.[23]
Does the translation change? The same close translation can serve both accounts. What differs is the grammatical connection:
| Attached to | The question it answers | An explanatory rendering |
|---|---|---|
| يَأْكُلُونَ, “they eat” | Where does the eating go? | “They eat fire into their bellies.” |
| An understood description of نَارًا, “fire” | Where is the fire they eat? | “They eat fire that is in their bellies.” |
The second is the Dār al-Ṣaḥāba baseline. Neither attachment, by itself, decides between literal fire and the explanation that names the deed by its outcome. That question is discussed in Question 1.
3. إِنَّمَا, “only”: does it restrict?
Dār al-Ṣaḥāba gives the particle as كافّة ومكفوفة, kāffa wa-makfūfa: inna stopped from governing by the mā attached to it.[24] What the two together do is the question. Al-Sāmarrāʾī reports that the majority hold the mā extra and restraining, and that إِنَّمَا gives restriction, الْحَصْر, while Abū Ḥayyān and a small group hold that it does not; he rules for the majority, and gives this verse among his examples.[25] On the majority's account, what they eat is fire and nothing else: the property they took is, in truth, fire. On the other account the particle emphasises without excluding.
Does the translation change? Yes, by one word. "Only" belongs to the majority's account; without the restriction the clause would read "they are eating fire into their bellies", the same fact stated with emphasis and without exclusion.
4. يَأْكُلُونَ without the sīn and وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ with it: is the eating now, and the burning later?
The first verb is a present tense with no particle of the future; the second has سَ, which Dār al-Ṣaḥāba calls حرف استقبال, ḥarf istiqbāl,[26] and Ibn ʿĀshūr حَرْف تَنْفِيس, ḥarf tanfīs: it enters a present verb and makes it purely future, near or far, and in a promise or a threat it gives the certainty of what is promised.[27] Al-Durra says the same of it here: it confirms, and it threatens.[28] Abū Ḥayyān draws the consequence for the first verb. If the eating of fire is real, it is future, and the verse could do without a sīn on it because the future clause is joined to it; if the eating of fire is a figure, it is not future at all, since the meaning is that they eat what drags them to the Fire and is the cause of its punishment.[29] Darwīsh notes the same contrast between the two verbs.[30]
Does the translation change? Keep the contrast between “they eat” and “they will burn”. The explicit future marker belongs to وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ. It does not prove that the eating of fire must occur in this world. Abū Ḥayyān explains that, on the literal account, the future clause shows that both actions are future; on the figurative account, the eating refers to taking the property now. The Arabic forms remain the same under both explanations. Riḍā argues instead that the contrast favours a present reference in the first clause; his full objection and Abū Ḥayyān’s alternative are set out in Question 1.
5. سَعِيرًا after يَصْلَوْنَ: the object of the verb, or a noun whose preposition is dropped?
Dār al-Ṣaḥāba and the grammarians after it take سَعِيرًا as مفعول به, mafʿūl bih, the object of "they will burn".[31] Ibn ʿĀshūr accounts for the naṣb differently: صَلِيَ takes a preposition, صَلِيَ بِالنَّارِ, and the preposition is often dropped with this verb, the noun after it then taking naṣb عَلَى نَزْعِ الْخَافِض, ʿalā nazʿ al-khāfiḍ, by the removal of the preposition.[32]
Does the translation change? No. “They will burn in a Blaze” is the English of both analyses; the difference is in how the grammar accounts for the ending.
And Allah knows best.
3. Ṣarf: Roots and Word Formation
The particles إِنَّ (inna), إِنَّمَا (innamā), فِي (fī), وَ (wa) and سَ (sa), the relative الَّذِينَ (alladhīna) and the pronoun هِمْ (him) have no root and are not given one. يَأْكُلُونَ (yaʾkulūna) appears twice, so each occurrence has its own row in verse order.
| Form | Root | Pattern and inflection | Its work in this verse |
|---|---|---|---|
| يَأْكُلُونَ, first occurrence yaʾkulūna |
أ ك ل | يَفْعُلُونَ (yafʿulūna), Form I imperfect of أَكَلَ (akala), third person masculine plural, marfūʿ by the nūn | “They eat”: identifies those who take the orphans’ property. The imperfect form does not limit the warning to repeated offences. |
| أَمْوَالَ amwāla |
م و ل | أَفْعَال (afʿāl), a broken plural of مَال (māl), in naṣb as the object; the wāw of the root, an alif in the singular, shows in the plural | "Property" in all its kinds, everything the orphans own |
| الْيَتَامَى al-yatāmā |
ي ت م | فَعَالَى (faʿālā), a broken plural of يَتِيم (yatīm) on فَعِيل (faʿīl), definite, in jarr as muḍāf ilayh | The orphans as a class, the same plural the passage has used since 4:2 |
| ظُلْمًا ẓulman |
ظ ل م | فُعْل (fuʿl), a maṣdar, a noun naming the act, indefinite, in naṣb | “Wrongfully”: a noun naming wrongdoing. Its grammatical functions are distinguished in Iʿrāb; the exclusion of rightful taking is explained in Question 2. |
| يَأْكُلُونَ, second occurrence yaʾkulūna |
أ ك ل | يَفْعُلُونَ (yafʿulūna), Form I imperfect of أَكَلَ (akala), third person masculine plural, marfūʿ by the nūn | “They eat”: the repeated verb now has نَارًا, “fire”, as its object. Its time is explained under Iʿrāb, not decided by the imperfect form alone. |
| بُطُونِهِمْ buṭūnihim |
ب ط ن | فُعُول (fuʿūl), a broken plural of بَطْن (baṭn), in jarr after فِي, with the pronoun attached | "Bellies", one to each eater: the inside where what is eaten goes |
| نَارًا nāran |
ن و ر | فَعَل (faʿal), a noun whose middle root letter, the wāw, has become an alif, as in دَار (dār); the weak letter shows again in the plural نِيرَان (nīrān); indefinite, in naṣb as the object | "Fire", with no article and no measure: a fire, not yet said how fierce |
| يَصْلَوْنَ yaṣlawna |
ص ل ي | يَفْعَوْنَ (yafʿawna), Form I imperfect of صَلِيَ (ṣaliya), a verb whose last root letter is weak, third person masculine plural; the final alif of يَصْلَى (yaṣlā) drops before the wāw of the plural and the fatḥa before the wāw marks where it stood; سَ (sa) in front points the verb to the future | "They will burn": endure the heat of a fire, the word for warming oneself at one, not for being burned up |
| سَعِيرًا saʿīran |
س ع ر | فَعِيل (faʿīl) in the sense of مَفْعُول (mafʿūl), a noun, indefinite, in naṣb as the object | "A Blaze": a fire that has been set ablaze, named by what was done to it, and left indefinite |
From warmth to suffering. Al-Ṭabarī begins with الصَّلَا, warming oneself at a fire.[1] Al-Rāghib gives الصَّلْي for kindling with fire and the idiom صَلِيَ بِالنَّارِ for being afflicted by it;[2] al-Khalīl’s example صَلِيَ الْكَافِرُ النَّارَ describes the unbeliever suffering its heat.[3] The same family can describe entry, صَلَى النَّارَ, or causing another to enter, أَصْلَاهَا غَيْرَهُ.[4]
The relation among the forms. Ibn Fāris illustrates the basic act with صَلَيْتُ الْعُودَ بِالنَّارِ, “I heated the stick in the fire.”[5] Ibn Manẓūr gathers اصْطَلَى and تَصَلَّاهَا among the forms for suffering its heat,[6] then distinguishes the causative أَصْلَاهُ النَّارَ, making another enter the Fire.[7] Ibn ʿĀshūr conjugates صَلِيَ like رَضِيَ and explains it as suffering the heat severely.[8] This is why Abū Ḥayyān distinguishes الصَّلَا, approaching and suffering heat, from الْإِحْرَاق, destroying something by burning.[9] Al-Shawkānī stresses warming near or touching the fire,[10] while al-Ālūsī[11] and Maḥmūd Ṣāfī[12] connect that nearness with the verse’s use for entering it.
The same word can therefore express punishment endured without annihilation. Abū Ḥayyān states:
وعبر بالصلا بِالنَّارِ عَنِ الْعَذَابِ الدَّائِمِ بِهَا، إِذِ النَّارُ لَا تُذْهِبُ ذَوَاتِهِمْ بِالْكُلِّيَّةِ“Burning in the Fire expresses lasting punishment in it, since the Fire does not do away with their persons altogether.”[13]
The form in this verse. In سَيَصْلَوْنَ the weak third root letter drops before the plural wāw; the preceding fatḥa marks where it stood, giving the pattern سَيَفْعَوْنَ (sa-yafʿawna).[14]
Poetic witnesses for heat and enduring it
The commentators illustrate this family of words through warmth sought and heat endured. Al-Ṭabarī cites al-Farazdaq for الصَّلا, the heat of a fire:
وقاتَلَ كَلْبُ الحَيِّ عن نارِ أهْلِهِ ليَرْبضَ فيها والصَّلا مُتَكَنَّفُ“The camp’s dog fought to defend its people’s fire, to lie there with its warmth surrounding him.”[15]
He then gives the use of the root for enduring the heat of war. The poet, identified by al-Turkī as al-Ḥārith b. ʿAbbād al-Bakrī, says:
لم أَكُنْ مِن جُنَاتِها علِم اللَّهُ وإنِّي بحرِّها اليومَ صالِي“I was not among those who brought it about, Allah knows; yet today I endure its heat.”[16]
The war is something he did not start but whose heat he now suffers. The line illustrates the extension from the heat of a fire to the hardship of war.
Al-Qurṭubī gives the related verb تَصَلَّى in a line attributed to Abū Zubayd al-Ṭāʾī:
وَقَدْ تَصَلَّيْتُ حَرَّ حَرْبِهِمْ كَمَا تَصَلَّى الْمَقْرُورُ مِنْ قَرَسِ“I have faced the heat of their war as one chilled by bitter cold warms himself at a fire.”[17]
The comparison brings the two uses together: facing war’s heat and approaching a fire for warmth.
Al-Wāḥidī cites al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza for the noun الصَّلاء:
فتنورت نارها من بعيدٍ بخَزازَى هيهات منك الصَّلاء“I sighted her fire from afar, at Khazāzā; how far its warmth is from you!”[18]
Here the warmth is desired but distant. Al-Ālūsī adds a use of the verb with the preposition بِـ, in a line he attributes to الطهوي:
ولا تبلى بسالتهم وإن هم صلوا بالحرب حينا بعد حين“Their courage does not wear away, though they endure war time after time.”[19]
Why this matters. These examples explain the words the commentators use when discussing وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ, “and they will burn”: nearness to heat, undergoing it and suffering through it. The verse’s سَعِيرًا, “a Blaze”, gives that heat its terrible setting. The poems demonstrate linguistic usage; the verse names the punishment.
A fire kindled to intensity. سَعِير (saʿīr) names a blaze whose heat has risen. Al-Ṭabarī connects it with اسْتَعَرَتِ الْحَرْبُ, “the war grew fierce”, and explains it as originally مَسْعُور, “set ablaze”, shortened as كَفٌّ خَضِيبٌ means “a dyed palm” and لِحْيَةٌ دَهِينٌ “an oiled beard”.[20] Ibn Fāris traces the root س ع ر to catching fire, burning and rising.[21] Al-Rāghib names the flaring itself السِّعْر and gives the related verbs سَعَرْتُهَا, سَعَّرْتُهَا and أَسْعَرْتُهَا for kindling and intensifying a fire.[22] On this account, سَعِير carries the force of مَفْعُول: a fire that has been kindled.[23] Ibn Manẓūr preserves the adjectival نَارٌ سَعِيرٌ, “a fire set ablaze”,[24] and السَّعِير as the fire itself or its flame.[25]
Fire spreading through what it enters. Muḥammad Ḥasan Jabal identifies a sharper underlying image: heat spreading through the inside of something once its moisture is gone.[26] Thus سَعَرَ النَّارَ means to kindle and stir a fire, while سَعَّرَهَا means to feed it until its flame spreads.[27]
Why the form means “a Blaze.” Several grammarians and commentators take سَعِير as فَعِيل with the force of مَفْعُول, the fire kindled to its utmost, from سَعَرْتُ النَّارَ, “I set the fire ablaze.”[28] Ibn ʿĀshūr explains why the noun can be built on the bare stem although the common verb is augmented: سَمِيع comes from أَسْمَعَ, and حَكِيم from أَحْكَمَ.[29] Ṣāfī treats it as a basic noun for the flame on the pattern فَعِيل.[30] The tafsirs accordingly explain it as وُقُودًا, “fuel”,[31] burning ember,[32] a blazing fire or name of Jahannam,[33] and a fire whose heat and flame roast the person within it.[34]
The surrounding words complete the picture. أَكَلَ (akala) can describe turning property to a forbidden use,[35] while the verse makes that use something that brings fire into the wrongdoer’s insides.[36] Ibn Manẓūr likewise explains the property as fire by the punishment to which it leads.[37] يَتِيم (yatīm) carries the wider root sense of being alone, as in دُرَّةٌ يَتِيمَة, “a solitary pearl”.[38] بُطُون (buṭūn) can describe a bellyful in this construction,[39] illustrated by أَكَلَ فُلَانٌ فِي بَطْنِهِ, “so-and-so ate into his belly”.[40]
4. Balāghah: Rhetorical Analysis
Eating named for every wrongful taking (إِطْلَاقُ اسْمِ الْمُسَبَّبِ عَلَى السَّبَبِ, iṭlāq ism al-musabbab ʿalā l-sabab)
Where it is: يَأْكُلُونَ أَمْوَالَ الْيَتَامَى, “devour the property of orphans.”
The plain way: “Those who take the property of orphans” would name the wrong directly. The verse names one use of property, eating it, and means every wrongful use or disposal.
What it does: The word expands the prohibition from food to every wrongful disposal of the property. Eating is named because consumption is a principal reason property is sought; the act most associated with taking wealth can therefore stand for all the ways it is wrongfully used or destroyed. Al-Jaṣṣāṣ,[1] Ibn ʿAṭiyya,[2] al-Durra and Abū Ḥafṣ al-Nasafī[3] explain the expression on this practical ground. Abū Ḥayyān identifies the rhetorical relation more precisely: taking is the cause, while eating is one of its effects, so the cause is named by the effect.[4] The same principle makes the prohibition cover appropriation in all its forms.[5]
The effect: The reader hears the wrong as a swallowing, the orphan's property going into the eater as food does. Wrongful disposal other than eating is included in the threat, and the figure at the same time prepares the second clause, where what is eaten is called fire.
The fire named for what leads to it (الْمَجَازُ الْمُرْسَلُ, al-majāz al-mursal)
Where it is: إِنَّمَا يَأْكُلُونَ فِي بُطُونِهِمْ نَارًا, “are only consuming into their bellies fire.”
The plain way: Saying 'They are only eating what will bring them to the Fire' simply states the final result. The verse instead gives the property they eat the name of the Fire itself.
What it does: The figure makes the consequence present in the deed itself. The property is what they consume, but it is named “fire” because consuming it wrongfully leads to the Fire: the effect is stated while its cause is meant. Ibn ʿĀshūr identifies this as الْمَجَازُ الْمُرْسَلُ through what the thing will become or through cause and effect;[6] al-Ālūsī and al-Shawkānī name the same relation,[7] while Maḥmūd Ṣāfī and Darwīsh state it directly.[8] Al-Sāyis reports this as the position of most commentators.[9]
A second possibility makes “fire” a borrowed image for worldly pain and ruin, with وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ سَعِيرًا adding the punishment of the Hereafter. Ibn ʿĀshūr offers this as an اسْتِعَارَة beside the first explanation, not as the same device.[10] A literal account is also preserved: Abū Ḥayyān first takes the words as real fire[11] and then records the figurative explanation as another position.[12]
The effect: Read this way, the verse does not just say that taking the property leads to fire. It calls the property itself “fire”, pulling the terrible outcome into the act of taking it. As Question 1 concludes, this still leaves room for actual fire on the Day of Resurrection: the two explanations can work together without erasing each other.
Naming the bellies: emphasis, fullness and reproach (التَّوْكِيد وَالتَّعْرِيض)
Where it is: فِي بُطُونِهِمْ, “into their bellies.”
The plain way: Saying 'They are only eating fire' would be enough on its own, since whatever you eat obviously ends up in your belly. Yet the verse deliberately adds 'into their bellies.'
What it does: The mention of the bellies works in three connected ways.
Emphasis. Arabic may name an obvious organ to intensify the statement: يَقُولُونَ بِأَفْوَاهِهِمْ, “they say with their mouths” (3:167), تَعْمَى الْقُلُوبُ الَّتِي فِي الصُّدُورِ, “the hearts that are in the breasts” (22:46), and يَطِيرُ بِجَنَاحَيْهِ, a bird that “flies with its two wings” (6:38). Al-Rāzī[13] and al-Ālūsī[14] place this phrase beside those examples; al-Akhfash calls it تَوْكِيد (tawkīd),[15] while al-Ṣābūnī and al-Durra compare the idiom أَبْصَرْتُ بِعَيْنِي وَسَمِعْتُ بِأُذُنِي, “I saw with my eye and heard with my ear.”[16]
Fullness. The phrase may also picture the bellies filled to their limit. Maḥmūd Ṣāfī and al-Zuḥaylī preserve this possibility,[17] and al-Ālūsī and al-Khaṭīb al-Shirbīnī take it as a bellyful.[18]
Abū Ḥayyān explains فِي بُطُونِهِمْ, “in their bellies,” as مِلْءُ بُطُونِهِمْ, “a bellyful.” He illustrates the distinction between filling the belly and filling only part of it with a poet’s advice:
كُلُوا فِي بَعْضِ بَطْنِكُمْ تَعِفُّوا فَإِنَّ زَمَانَكُمْ زَمَنٌ خَمِيصُ“Eat into only part of your bellies and you will practise restraint, for yours is a time of hunger.”[19]
The poet is urging people not to fill their bellies in a time of hunger. That is why he says فِي بَعْضِ بَطْنِكُمْ, “into only part of your bellies.” Abū Ḥayyān contrasts this partial filling with the fullness he understands in the verse: the image is of bellies filled with fire.
Reproach. Naming the belly also exposes the motive: the wrongdoer has put appetite ahead of the orphan’s right. Ibn ʿAṭiyya describes this as shaming conduct opposed to noble character,[20] and al-Qurṭubī adopts the point.[21] Abū Ḥayyān distinguishes الِاخْتِصَاص, singling out the organ where food goes, from التَّعْرِيض, hinting at the baseness and low aim of the act;[22] the account he preserves adds that food placed in the belly disappears quickly.[23] Darwīsh likewise names التَّعْرِيض[24] and explains that the phrase gives visible form to the ugliness of the crime.[25]
Abū Ḥayyān explains that naming the bellies also exposes greed. He contrasts that conduct with al-Shanfarā’s description of himself at a meal:
وَإِنْ مُدَّتِ الْأَيْدِي إِلَى الزَّادِ لَمْ أَكُنْ بِأَعْجَلِهِمْ إِذْ أَجْشَعُ الْقَوْمِ أَعْجَلُ“When hands reach for the food, I am not the quickest among them: the greediest of the company is quickest.”[26]
Food is within reach, yet the speaker does not rush ahead of the others. His restraint is the opposite of the greed Abū Ḥayyān sees condemned in the verse: taking an orphan’s wealth to satisfy one’s appetite.
Abū Ḥayyān and Darwīsh also cite al-Ḥuṭayʾa’s mockery of a man who is content with being fed and clothed:
دَعِ الْمَكَارِمَ لَا تَرْحَلْ لِبُغْيَتِهَا وَاقْعُدْ فَإِنَّكَ أَنْتَ الطَّاعِمُ الْكَاسِي“Leave noble deeds; do not travel in search of them. Sit still, for you are the one fed and clothed.”[27]
This is an insult, not praise or advice to abandon noble deeds. Darwīsh explains الطاعم الكاسي here as “the one fed and clothed.” The poet belittles a man whose ambition reaches no further than having his bodily needs met. Abū Ḥayyān cites the line to explain التَّعْرِيض, indirect reproach, in the verse: naming the bellies exposes how low the wrongdoers have set their concern when they put their appetite ahead of the orphan’s rights.
The effect: Pointing out where the food goes might seem redundant, like saying 'I saw it with my eyes', but that deliberate repetition drives the point home. It can also imply a literal bellyful. As a reproach, it highlights exactly what the thief put ahead of the child's rights: his own appetite. These ideas all work together. Whether mentioning the bellies proves the fire is literal or just makes the metaphor stronger is a separate question for the next section.
The phrase that fixes the fire as real, or strengthens the figure (تَرْشِيحُ الْمَجَازِ, tarshīḥ al-majāz)
Where it is: فِي بُطُونِهِمْ نَارًا, “into their bellies fire.”
The plain way: “They eat fire” would leave the image without a stated location. The verse adds “into their bellies”.
What it does: The phrase serves either principal explanation of “fire”. On the literal account, “in their bellies” confirms that real fire is meant by adding a physical detail.[28] On the figurative account, the same detail gives the figure an accompaniment of the real act and thus strengthens it, تَرْشِيحُ الْمَجَازِ.[29] Abū Ḥayyān develops both possibilities. Ibn ʿĀshūr similarly treats the phrase as تَخْيِيل and تَرْشِيح for the use of “eat” in the sense of taking and seizing.[30]
The effect: Read literally, Abū Ḥayyān says this detail proves the fire is real. Read figuratively, it makes the imagery more vivid by picturing the stolen wealth being swallowed. Either way, the phrase makes the explanation stronger, but it does not settle the debate on its own.
“They eat” beside “they will burn” (سِينُ الِاسْتِقْبَالِ, sīn al-istiqbāl)
Where it is: يَأْكُلُونَ, “are consuming,” without the sīn; وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ, “and they will burn,” with it.
The plain way: Both verbs could have taken the sīn, “they will eat fire and they will burn.” The verse puts the eating in the bare present and only the burning in the marked future.
What it does: The س fixes the second action in the future; the time of the first depends on what “eating fire” means. If the fire is literal, the marked future verb can establish the future setting for both actions. If “eating” names present wrongdoing by its outcome, only the punishment is future. Abū Ḥayyān develops these two possibilities,[31] and Darwīsh notes the same contrast.[32] Ibn ʿĀshūr explains the particle itself as حَرْفُ تَنْفِيسٍ, a particle that makes the imperfect purely future, near or far, and is synonymous with سَوْفَ; in a promise or threat it conveys certainty.[33] Al-Durra likewise says that the sīn confirms the certainty of this threat.[34]
The effect: The س makes the coming punishment explicit. On the figurative explanation, the first verb names the deed now by the outcome awaiting it. On the literal explanation, both actions belong to the Day, with the second verb making the time clear for the first. These are Abū Ḥayyān’s alternatives. Riḍā argues for the present reference instead; his reasoning is given in Question 1.
A Blaze whose full intensity is unstated (التَّنْكِيرُ لِلتَّعْظِيمِ, al-tankīr li-l-taʿẓīm)
Where it is: نَارًا, “fire,” and سَعِيرًا, “a Blaze,” both without the article.
The plain way: “The Fire” and “the Blaze” would name Jahannam as a known place. The verse leaves both words indefinite.
What it does: The indefinite forms leave the intensity unstated and thereby magnify it, التَّنْكِيرُ لِلتَّعْظِيمِ. Al-Naysābūrī names the device,[35] while al-Rāzī explains that سَعِيرًا points to a fire whose full fierceness none knows but Allah.[36] The wording then develops from unqualified نَارًا to سَعِيرًا, “the burning ember”, as Abū Ḥayyān and Darwīsh observe.[37] Ibn ʿUthaymīn adds that the second threat is greater because the heat now reaches the outside of the body as well as its insides.[38]
The effect: The fire’s full intensity is left to Allah’s knowledge. Yet the verse gives the reader two clear developments: نَارًا, “fire”, becomes سَعِيرًا, “a Blaze”; and, in Ibn ʿUthaymīn’s explanation, the threat reaches the outside of the body as well as the inside. The wording makes the punishment more vivid without claiming to measure its fierceness.
And Allah knows best.
5. Qirāʾāt: Variant Readings
The ten canonical readers
The variation is in وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ, “and they will burn.” With fatḥa on the yāʾ, يَصْلَوْنَ describes their burning; with ḍamma, يُصْلَوْنَ describes their being made to burn. Both forms belong to the ten canonical readings.
Ibn al-Jazarī states:
فَقَرَأَ ابْنُ عَامِرٍ وَأَبُو بَكْرٍ بِضَمِّ الْيَاءِ، وَقَرَأَ الْبَاقُونَ بِفَتْحِهَا“Ibn ʿĀmir and Abū Bakr read it with ḍamma on the yāʾ, and the remaining readers read it with fatḥa.”[1]
Abū Bakr here is Shuʿba, one of ʿĀṣim’s two transmitters. His other transmitter, Ḥafṣ, has the fatḥa. The full distribution is as follows.[2]
| Reader | Form at 4:10 | Close meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Nāfiʿ | وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ | And they will burn. |
| Ibn Kathīr | وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ | And they will burn. |
| Abū ʿAmr | وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ | And they will burn. |
| Ibn ʿĀmir | وَسَيُصْلَوْنَ | And they will be made to burn. |
| ʿĀṣim | Shuʿba: وَسَيُصْلَوْنَ; Ḥafṣ: وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ | Shuʿba: they will be made to burn; Ḥafṣ: they will burn. |
| Ḥamza | وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ | And they will burn. |
| Al-Kisāʾī | وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ | And they will burn. |
| Abū Jaʿfar | وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ | And they will burn. |
| Yaʿqūb | وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ | And they will burn. |
| Khalaf al-ʿĀshir | وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ | And they will burn. |
The four readers beyond the ten
Al-Bannāʾ distinguishes the ten canonical readers from four further readers whose reading traditions he classifies as shādhdh, noncanonical: Ibn Muḥayṣin, al-Yazīdī, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and al-Aʿmash.[3] At this word he says:
وافقهما الحسن والباقون بالفتح من صلى النار لازمها“Al-Ḥasan agreed with the two of them; the remaining readers have fatḥa, from ‘he burned in the fire’, meaning that he remained in it.”[4]
“The two” are Ibn ʿĀmir and Shuʿba, named immediately before this phrase. The four readers’ forms here therefore agree with one or the other of the forms already shown above.
| Reader | Form at 4:10 | Close meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Ibn Muḥayṣin | وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ | And they will burn. |
| Al-Yazīdī | وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ | And they will burn. |
| Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī | وَسَيُصْلَوْنَ | And they will be made to burn. |
| Al-Aʿmash | وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ | And they will burn. |
The same word in the tafsīrs
Al-Ṭabarī describes the fatḥa as the reading of the generality of the reciters of Madīna and Iraq,[5] and the ḍamma as that of some of the Makkans and some of the Kūfans.[6] Al-Rāzī, Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baghawī, al-Ālūsī and Ibn ʿĀshūr name Ibn ʿĀmir and Abū Bakr for the ḍamma.[7] Ibn al-Jawzī also records it from al-Ḥasan,[8] and Ibn ʿUthaymīn expressly calls it one of the seven canonical readings.[9]
Al-Naḥḥās’s copy names عَاصِم فِي رِوَايَةِ ابْنِ عَبَّاسٍ, “ʿĀṣim in the transmission of Ibn ʿAbbās”, and al-Qurṭubī repeats that attribution.[10] The reader here is Abū Bakr from ʿĀṣim, as Ibn al-Jazarī records above and as Muḥammad Niẕām al-Dīn al-Fatīḥ identifies him in his note to al-Hamadhānī.[11]
Al-Thaʿlabī gives a broader source-specific list:
وقرأ أبو رجاء، والحسن، وابن عامر، وعاصم، وأبو جعفر بضم الياء“Abū Rajāʾ, al-Ḥasan, Ibn ʿĀmir, ʿĀṣim and Abū Jaʿfar read with ḍamma on the yāʾ.”[12]
His editor, Khālid b. ʿAlī al-Ghāmidī, adds: وهي قراءة أبي بكر شعبة عن عاصم, “It is the reading of Abū Bakr Shuʿba from ʿĀṣim.”[13] Al-Thaʿlabī’s general attribution to ʿĀṣim and his inclusion of Abū Jaʿfar differ from Ibn al-Jazarī’s account above. The lists are therefore kept distinct.
What the difference means
The warning remains severe in both forms. The difference is between burning and being made to burn.
| Form | Grammatical explanation | Meaning in the verse |
|---|---|---|
| يَصْلَوْنَ | A verb in the active voice, مبني للمعلوم: the people themselves are the subject of “burn.” Al-ʿUkbarī compares لَا يَصْلَاهَا إِلَّا الْأَشْقَى, “none will burn in it but the most wretched” (92:15). Al-Hamadhānī and Muḥaysin likewise explain the active form.[14] | They will burn in a Blaze. |
| يُصْلَوْنَ | A verb in the passive voice, مبني للمجهول: the people undergo the action of being made to burn. Al-Wāḥidī, al-Hamadhānī and Muḥaysin explain this through أَصْلَى, to make someone burn.[15] | They will be made to burn in a Blaze. |
The commentators explain the passive through closely related expressions. Al-Ṭabarī gives يُحْرَقُونَ, “they will be burned”, comparing شَاةٌ مَصْلِيَّةٌ, “a roasted sheep”.[16] Al-Rāzī gives يُدْخَلُونَ النَّارَ, “they will be made to enter the Fire”;[17] al-Baghawī mentions entering the Fire and being burned;[18] Ibn ʿĀshūr explains it from أَصْلَاهُ in the sense of burning him.[19]
Muḥaysin explains the passive as follows:
على أنه مضارع مبنيّ للمجهول من «أصلى» المزيد بالهمزة، والواو نائب فاعل، وهي المفعول الأول، و «سعيرا» مفعول ثان“It is a passive imperfect from أَصْلَى, the form augmented with hamza. The wāw is the deputy subject and is the first object, while سَعِيرًا is a second object.”[20]
His comparison is نُصْلِيهِمْ نَارًا, “We will make them burn in a fire” (4:56). In that expression the people are the object: they are made to burn. In the passive يُصْلَوْنَ, “they will be made to burn,” those same people become the نائب فاعل, the subject of the passive verb, represented by the plural wāw. This explains why Muḥaysin describes them both as the original object and as the deputy subject. Al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī likewise distinguishes the three-letter verb from the four-letter causative verb.[21] Muḥaysin derives the passive from the augmented أَصْلَى; al-Bannāʾ instead calls it passive from the triliteral. Both agree on the passive value but describe its derivation differently.[22]
Al-Akhfash accepts both vowel forms: فالياء تفتح وتضم ها هنا وكل صواب, “the yāʾ takes fatḥa and ḍamma here, and both are correct.”[23]
Al-Ṭabarī prefers the fatḥa, appealing to the readers’ agreement on it in لَا يَصْلَاهَا إِلَّا الْأَشْقَى.[24] Ibn ʿAṭiyya also calls the first form more correct and cites that verse.[25] These are their stated preferences; Ibn al-Jazarī records both forms among the ten.
Other transmitted forms and their stated status
The doubled-lām form is وَسَيُصَلَّوْنَ, from التَّصْلِيَة, making someone burn. Its attribution differs among the sources.
| Source | What it records |
|---|---|
| Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Shawkānī and al-Naḥḥās | The doubled form from Abū Ḥaywa. Ibn ʿAṭiyya and al-Shawkānī explain the doubling as intensity or repetition of the act.[26] |
| Al-ʿUkbarī and al-Ālūsī | Al-ʿUkbarī lists the doubled form as a third form of the word; al-Ālūsī records it without naming a reader.[27] |
| Muḥammad Niẕām al-Dīn al-Fatīḥ and al-Ṭībī | Al-Fatīḥ calls it shādhdh, noncanonical, and attributes it to Abū Ḥaywa. Al-Ṭībī also marks the doubled form shādhdh.[28] |
| Abū Ḥayyān | The doubled lām from Ibn Abī ʿAbla.[29] |
| Ibn ʿAṭiyya | A different form from Ibn Abī ʿAbla: ḍamma on both the yāʾ and the lām. He calls this form weak.[30] |
| Ibn al-Jawzī | The doubling from Ibn Miqsam.[31] |
| Al-Thaʿlabī; al-Ghāmidī’s editorial note | Al-Thaʿlabī states:
Al-Ghāmidī separately says وهي قراءة شاذة, “It is a shādhdh reading.”[32] |
Ibn Manẓūr records a doubled form from ʿAlī رضي الله عنه at 84:12, and says that al-Kisāʾī read it that way.[33] It is a comparison involving the same verb, not an additional reader's assignment for 4:10.
The Mawsūʿa records, through al-Aʿmash, a form attributed to ʿAbd Allāh b. Masʿūd رضي الله عنه that uses the singular throughout:
وَمَنْ يَأْكُلْ أَمْوَالَ الْيَتَامَى ظُلْمًا فَإِنَّمَا يَأْكُلُ فِي بَطْنِهِ نَارًا وَسَوْفَ يَصْلَى سَعِيرًا“And whoever eats the property of orphans wrongfully eats only fire in his belly and will burn in a Blaze.”[34]
Musāʿid b. Sulaymān al-Ṭayyār states: وهي قراءة شاذة؛ لمخالفتها رسم المصاحف, “It is a shādhdh reading because it differs from the written form of the muṣḥafs.”[35] The report puts in the singular what the verse states about the class.
And Allah knows best.
Notes
1. Summary
-
Al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, Tafsīr al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, 3/1119–1120; al-Saʿdī, Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān, p. 166; al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/506. ↩
2. Historical Context
-
Al-Wāḥidī, Asbāb al-Nuzūl, ed. Kamāl Basyūnī Zaghlūl, no. 296 (p. 148), from Muqātil b. Ḥayyān without an isnād. Also al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; al-Baghawī, Maʿālim al-Tanzīl, 1/573, ed. ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Mahdī; Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1/377; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/261. Al-Mahdī identifies al-Wāḥidī as the source and notes the absence of an isnād. ↩
-
al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/455, Ibn Zayd, from his father. ↩
-
al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14, reporting Ibn Zayd and most people, then in his own words; Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530, reporting the majority, then for himself. ↩
-
al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/426; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/265; Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14, reporting Ibn Zayd and most people, then in his own words; Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530, reporting the majority, then for himself. ↩
-
Abū Dāwūd, al-Sunan, ed. Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, no. 2871 (3/114), from Ibn ʿAbbās رضي الله عنهما, Book of Bequests, chapter on sharing an orphan’s food. His isnād is ʿUthmān b. Abī Shayba, Jarīr, ʿAṭāʾ b. al-Sāʾib, Saʿīd b. Jubayr and Ibn ʿAbbās. Ibn Abī Ḥātim records a shorter wording through Abū Saʿīd al-Ashajj, ʿImrān b. ʿUyayna, ʿAṭāʾ and Saʿīd: Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, ed. Asʿad Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib, no. 4879 (3/878). Al-Nasāʾī, al-Sunan, al-Risālah printing, ed. Muḥammad Riḍwān ʿArqasūsī, nos. 3669–3670 (6/484–486), records the account through Abū Kudayna and ʿImrān respectively; the latter wording also mentions separating the orphan’s utensils.
ʿArqasūsī grades both asanīd weak. For no. 3669, he cites ʿAṭāʾ’s confusion and the unknown date of Abū Kudayna’s hearing; for no. 3670, ʿImrān’s weakness and ʿAṭāʾ’s confusion. He adds: وللحديث طرق يحسن بها, “The hadith has transmissions by which it becomes ḥasan.”
Al-Ḥākim grades the isnād ṣaḥīḥ, هذا حديث صحيح الإسناد، ولم يخرجاه, “This hadith has a sound isnād, and the two did not transmit it”: al-Mustadrak, Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya printing, no. 3184 (2/331). Salīm al-Hilālī and Muḥammad Mūsā Āl Naṣr judge the individual isnād through ʿAṭāʾ weak because the students who transmitted this hadith heard from him after his memory deteriorated. They grade the hadith حسن لغيره, ḥasan li-ghayrihi on its corroboration, including a mursal account with a sound isnād to Qatāda: al-Istīʿāb fī Bayān al-Asbāb, 1/164–166.
The account of reluctance to take orphans into the household comes through ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭalḥa from Ibn ʿAbbās: Abū ʿUbayd, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, no. 437 (1/238). Musāʿid b. Sulaymān al-Ṭayyār grades that isnād ḥasan in Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 6/98, no. 16479. Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ judges al-Ṭabarī’s isnād through ʿAlī weak, citing ʿAbd Allāh b. Ṣāliḥ’s poor memory and ʿAlī’s lack of a meeting with Ibn ʿAbbās (Aḥmad, al-Musnad, 5/141, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ and ʿĀdil Murshid). See also al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372. ↩
-
Al-Naḥḥās, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, pp. 191–192, at 2:220. He reports Mujāhid's words فِي الرَّاعْيِ وَالْإِدَامِ, “in shared pastoral arrangements and food,” then illustrates food-sharing with dates. His conclusion is فَهَذَا الظَّاهِرُ فِي اللُّغَةِ أَنْ تَكُونَ الْمُخَالَطَةُ فِي الطَّعَامِ لَا فِي الشَّرِكَةِ, “the apparent sense in the language is that the mixing concerns food, not partnership.” ↩
-
Wakīʿ and ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd, from ʿĀʾisha رضي الله عنها through al-Aswad, as cited by al-Suyūṭī and recorded in Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 4/34, no. 7764. The Mawsūʿa explains العُرَّة as الجرب, scabies.
Ibn Kathīr records another isnād through Wakīʿ, Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī, Ḥammād and Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī: إني لأكره أن يكون مال اليتيم عندي على حدة، حتى أخلط طعامه بطعامي، وشرابه بشرابي, “I dislike having the orphan’s property separate with me, so that I mix his food with mine and his drink with mine.” Ḥikmat Bashīr Yāsīn states: أخرجه الطبري من طريق وكيع به، وفيه إبراهيم النخعي لم يسمع من عائشة, “Al-Ṭabarī transmitted it through Wakīʿ with this isnād; in it, Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī did not hear from ʿĀʾisha” (Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/147, note 5, ed. Ḥikmat Bashīr Yāsīn).
Abū ʿUbayd records the Ibrāhīm account with إني لأكره أن يكون مال اليتيم عندي عرّة لا أخلط طعامه بطعامي ولا شرابه بشرابي (al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, no. 439, 1/239). Its لا أخلط, “I do not mix,” may describe the separation she dislikes; the wording leaves that relationship unclear. Abū ʿUbayd’s lexical note explains عُرَّة as something that soils or defiles, citing al-Aṣmaʿī. ↩
4. Understanding the Verse
-
Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254. ↩
-
al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, the fourth masʾala; al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14; al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372; Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62; al-Shanqīṭī, Aḍwāʾ al-Bayān, 3/685. ↩
-
al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, the fourth masʾala; Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62. ↩
-
al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, fourth masʾala, first and third reasons; al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372. ↩
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al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/506, the first masʾala; al-Saʿdī, Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān, 166; Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254; al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/424; Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/264. ↩
-
al-Nawawī, al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 18/157, at Muslim's hadith 3019. ↩
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Marʿī al-Karmī, Qalāʾid al-Marjān fī Bayān al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh fī al-Qurʾān, p. 85. ↩
-
Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/522, at 4:6, reporting Mujāhid. ↩
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Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 1/423; Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/521, at 4:6. ↩
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al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; al-Wāḥidī, al-Wajīz, 254; al-Baghawī, Maʿālim al-Tanzīl, 1/573; Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254; al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/425; al-Shawkānī, Fatḥ al-Qadīr, 1/494. ↩
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al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/454; Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/222; Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531; al-Saʿdī, Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān, 166. ↩
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al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; al-Wāḥidī, al-Wasīṭ, 2/16. ↩
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Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, no. 2065 (3/1634), from Umm Salama رضي الله عنها, Book of Dress and Adornment, chapter prohibiting gold and silver vessels. ↩
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al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/454; Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/222. ↩
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Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/454, from al-Suddī through Asbāṭ. Also Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, ed. Asʿad Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib, no. 4882 (3/879), through Aḥmad b. ʿUthmān b. Ḥakīm, Aḥmad b. Mufaḍḍal and Asbāṭ. These are al-Suddī’s words. ↩
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Al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, Tafsīr al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, 3/1119–1120. Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā's objection is in Tafsīr al-Manār, 4/328–329; see Deeper Study, Question 1, notes 19–20 and 29. ↩
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Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, ed. Asʿad Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib, no. 4884 (3/879), from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī رضي الله عنه; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/454, through Maʿmar, Abū Hārūn al-ʿAbdī and Abū Saʿīd. Al-Albānī grades the hadith and this isnād ضعيف جدًا, “very weak”, identifying Abū Hārūn, ʿUmāra b. Juwayn, as matrūk and noting that some critics accused him of lying: Silsilat al-Aḥādīth al-Ḍaʿīfa wa-l-Mawḍūʿa, no. 5459 (11/809–810).
Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/222–223, ed. Sāmī b. Muḥammad al-Salāma, records Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s isnad: Ibn Abī Ḥātim, his father, ʿUbayda, Abū ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-ʿAmmī, Abū Hārūn al-ʿAbdī, and Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī رضي الله عنه. Sāmī b. Muḥammad al-Salāma’s editorial note at 2/222 records عبد الله, “ʿAbd Allāh”, instead of عبيدة, “ʿUbayda”, in manuscript أ. It also records هارون, “Hārūn”, in three manuscripts where the printed text has هاروي. Al-Suyūṭī also records it in al-Durr al-Manthūr, 2/443. Sāmī b. Muḥammad al-Salāma’s note at 2/223 identifies Abū Hārūn as ʿUmāra b. Juwayn and quotes Aḥmad Shākir: هو ضعيف، وقالوا: كذاب, “He is weak, and they said: a liar.” It also quotes al-Dāraquṭnī’s criticism of his shifting sectarian allegiance and Ibn Ḥibbān’s statement that he transmitted from Abū Saʿīd material that was not his hadith and should be recorded only as something astonishing. Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 6/101, no. 16494, note 2, records the same judgment. Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s own text names the third transmitter عبدة, “ʿAbda.” ↩
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al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, the third masʾala, with 3:167, 22:46 and 6:38; al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/425. ↩
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Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14; al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. ↩
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Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/63. ↩
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al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/456; al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/54. ↩
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Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/63. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. ↩
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al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53. ↩
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Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62. ↩
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al-Nawawī, al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 2/86, quoting Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām. ↩
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Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, no. 89 (1/92), from Abū Hurayra رضي الله عنه, Book of Faith, chapter on major sins. Also al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Sulṭāniyyah printing, no. 2766 (4/10), Book of Bequests, chapter on 4:10. Muslim places consuming an orphan’s property before usury; al-Bukhārī places usury first. Ibn Kathīr follows the latter order in Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/222, ed. Sāmī b. Muḥammad al-Salāma. ↩
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al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/54; al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/268. ↩
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al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/54, with 4:48. ↩
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Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, ed. Asʿad Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib, no. 4885 (3/879–880), from Ibn ʿUmar رضي الله عنهما, through Abū Zurʿa, Yaḥyā b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Bukayr, ʿAbd Allāh b. Lahīʿa and Zayd b. Aslam. Also Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 6/101–102, no. 16498.
Abū Ḥātim and Abū Zurʿa call Ibn Lahīʿa weak and say his hadith may be recorded for corroboration. Abū Zurʿa distinguishes Ibn al-Mubārak and Ibn Wahb, who checked his original books, from his other students; Abū Ḥātim still declines to rely on his hadith even through those two (Ibn Abī Ḥātim, al-Jarḥ wa-l-Taʿdīl, 5/145–148). Aḥmad b. Ṣāliḥ instead considers his original book sound and accepts reports correctly copied from it (Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, Dār al-Maʿrifa printing, 3/227–230, no. 4128). ↩
5. Thematic Connections in the Qurʾān
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254. Al-Zajjāj, Maʿānī al-Qurʾān wa-Iʿrābuh, 2/17, likewise connects this stern warning with the preceding appeal to fear for weak children. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/502, at 4:2. ↩
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al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/506, the first masʾala; al-Saʿdī, Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān, 166. ↩
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al-Naḥḥās, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, 191, at 2:220; al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/373. ↩
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Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī, al-Ḥujja li-l-Qurrāʾ al-Sabʿa, 5/99, at 17:33. ↩
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al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/506, the first masʾala; al-Saʿdī, Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān, 166. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. ↩
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al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/54, with 4:48. ↩
6. Gems and Subtleties
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Al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, sixth discussion, gives the comparison and its two reasons. Al-Saʿdī calls this the Qurʾān’s greatest threat concerning a sin: Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān, p. 166. Abū Ḥayyān emphasizes the tremendous warning: al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. Ibn ʿUthaymīn explains that a prescribed worldly penalty or threatened punishment in the Hereafter identifies a major sin: Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531; Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān wa-Bayānuh, 2/168. Abū Ḥayyān distinguishes two explanations of “eating fire”: actual eating on the Day of Resurrection, understood through the following future verb; or present wrongful taking, called fire because it leads to the Fire. The contrast does not require both verbs to describe the same time. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/255; Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṭāhā al-Durra, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm wa-Iʿrābuh wa-Bayānuh, 2/382. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531; Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān wa-Bayānuh, 2/168. ↩
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Al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/508; al-Nīsābūrī, Gharāʾib al-Qurʾān wa-Raghāʾib al-Furqān, 2/357, on the indefinite form magnifying the warning. Saʿīd b. Jubayr’s description of a valley of scorching heat in Hell is recorded in Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 6/102, from Ibn Abī Shayba and Ibn Abī Ḥātim. ↩
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Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/63, explains that the punishment reaches the inside and outside of the body. ↩
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Al-Ḥarrālī, Turāth Abī l-Ḥasan al-Ḥarrālī, p. 95; al-Biqāʿī, Naẓm al-Durar, 7/307 and 5/203, for the explanation of a present reality distinct from the future threat. Muftī Muḥammad Shafīʿ likewise describes the unlawfully consumed wealth as fire in reality although it does not appear so: Maʿārif al-Qurʾān, p. 335. ↩
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Sayyid Quṭb, In the Shade of the Qurʾān, p. 39, on the scene of swallowed fire burning bellies and skins. ↩
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Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/63; al-Ṭarīfī, al-Tafsīr wa-l-Bayān li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/740. ↩
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Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, no. 2065 (3/1634), from Umm Salama رضي الله عنها. Al-Nawawī records two vocalizations: نارَ, in which the drinker gulps fire into his belly, and نارُ, in which the Fire makes a gurgling sound there. He prefers the first, as do al-Azharī, al-Zajjāj, al-Khaṭṭābī and most of the authorities he cites: al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 14/27–28. ↩
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Al-Ṭarīfī, al-Tafsīr wa-l-Bayān li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/740, regards consuming an orphan’s property as graver on this comparison. ↩
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Al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/506, connects the repeated threats with the greater care and honour due to orphans because of their weakness and helplessness. ↩
7. Contemporary Applications
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Abū ʿUbayd, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, 1/238, Ibn ʿAbbās رضي الله عنهما by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭalḥa, Abū ʿUbayd 437; Al-Naḥḥās, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, pp. 191–192, reporting Mujāhid and explaining food-sharing at 2:220; Marʿī al-Karmī, Qalāʾid al-Marjān fī Bayān al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh fī al-Qurʾān, p. 85; al-Maghāmisī, Silsilat Maḥāsin al-Taʾwīl, 20/9. ↩
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4:6; Shaykh Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm’s ruling, carried in Islam Q&A, “When should orphans be given their wealth?”, answer 13262, 11 January 2010, citing al-Fatāwā al-Jāmiʿah li-l-Marʾah al-Muslimah, 3/1129. ↩
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Nūḥ ʿAlī Salmān, “هل يجوز دفع رسوم المدارس الخاصة من مال اليتيم الخاص؟”, Jordan General Iftāʾ Department, fatwa 772, 14 June 2010. ↩
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al-Nawawī, al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 18/157, at Muslim's hadith 3019; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/268; al-Marāghī, Tafsīr al-Marāghī, 4/193. ↩
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Marʿī al-Karmī, Qalāʾid al-Marjān fī Bayān al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh fī al-Qurʾān, p. 85. ↩
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Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62. Here he gives a poor guardian’s taking the equivalent of his wage as an example of lawful taking. The following references preserve differing measures; they do not all endorse Aḥmad’s lesser-of-two rule.
In al-Sharḥ al-Mumtiʿ, 9/312, as quoted in Islam Q&A, answer 186793 (28 October 2012), Ibn ʿUthaymīn discusses the lesser-of-need-or-wage rule, then prefers sufficient maintenance even when it exceeds the wage: يأكل كفايته سواء كانت بقدر الأجرة أو أقل أو أكثر, “He takes what suffices him, whether it equals the wage, is less, or is more.” Source passage.
al-Zajjāj, Maʿānī al-Qurʾān wa-Iʿrābuh, 2/17, the fiqh of ẓulman. He permits taking in proportion to the work of care without exceeding it; discusses the total-abstention view with an exception for a loan; and allows moderate taking according to need and the benefit of the guardian’s work. These are his layered qualifications, not a statement of Aḥmad’s exact cap.
al-Naḥḥās, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, 296. He names ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, ʿUbayda, Abū al-ʿĀliya and Saʿīd b. Jubayr for taking a loan when needed and repaying it when able. ↩
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al-Ṭaḥāwī, Aqwāl al-Ṭaḥāwī fī l-Tafsīr, collected by Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Dawsarī, 346; al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Mufradāt, p. 80, on أكل, “eating”; al-Suyūṭī, al-Itqān fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, 3/106; al-Shanqīṭī, al-ʿAdhb al-Namīr, 3/131. ↩
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al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/426; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/265; Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, 2/149. ↩
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Jordan Iftāʾ Committee, “التصرف بمال اليتيم مقيَّد بما يحقق المصلحة”, fatwa 3973, 21 May 2025. ↩
8. Common Misconceptions
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al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, the fourth masʾala; al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14; al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372; Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62; al-Shanqīṭī, Aḍwāʾ al-Bayān, 3/685; al-Suyūṭī, al-Itqān fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, 3/106; al-Ṭaḥāwī, Aqwāl al-Ṭaḥāwī fī l-Tafsīr, collected by Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Dawsarī, 346; al-Shanqīṭī, al-ʿAdhb al-Namīr, 3/131. ↩
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al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372; Ibn al-Jawzī, Nawāsikh al-Qurʾān, 109; al-Naḥḥās, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, 191, at 2:220; al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/508, against those who called it abrogated; al-Khāzin, Lubāb al-Taʾwīl fī Maʿānī al-Tanzīl, 1/346; Ibn al-Jawzī, Nawāsikh al-Qurʾān, 2/353. ↩
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al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/54, with 4:48; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/268; al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372. ↩
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Hibat Allāh b. Salāma, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, p. 67; Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr al-Fātiḥa wa-l-Baqara, 1/71 of the cited al-Baqara text, at 2:220; Al-Naḥḥās, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, pp. 191–192, reporting Mujāhid and explaining food-sharing at 2:220; Marʿī al-Karmī, Qalāʾid al-Marjān fī Bayān al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh fī al-Qurʾān, p. 85; al-Maghāmisī, Silsilat Maḥāsin al-Taʾwīl, 20/9. ↩
Q1. What is the fire they eat?
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Al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār prefers naming by outcome; al-Rāzī records his preference without a reply and explains the connection between the deed and its consequence (Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/506, second masʾala). Al-Naḥḥās calls the wording figurative: what they eat is good food, but taking it leads to the Fire (Maʿānī al-Qurʾān, 2/27). Al-Wāḥidī uses the grapes called wine and the silver-vessel hadith as parallels (al-Wajīz, p. 254; al-Wasīṭ, 2/16). Al-Baghawī describes the outcome (Maʿālim al-Tanzīl, 1/573); al-Qurṭubī names the property by that outcome (al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53). ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr’s first explanation identifies the fire as Hellfire, names its cause by its effect, and treats the second clause as restating the first (al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254). Al-Ālūsī and al-Shawkānī explain the same relation (Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/425; Fatḥ al-Qadīr, 1/494, respectively). Al-Marāghī calls the property a cause of punishment by fire (Tafsīr al-Marāghī, 4/193). Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Ṣābūnī also uses the grapes called wine as a parallel (Ṣafwat al-Tafāsīr, 1/238). ↩
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Al-Rāghib explains that taking the property leads to the Fire (al-Mufradāt, p. 80); al-Samīn, that it brings fire into the eaters’ bellies (ʿUmdat al-Ḥuffāẓ, 1/99, under eating); Ibn Manẓūr compares it with the silver-vessel hadith (Lisān al-ʿArab, 4/132, under j-r-r). ↩
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Al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/265; Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Sāyis, Tafsīr Āyāt al-Aḥkām, p. 226. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān introduces the figurative explanation with وقيل, “it is said” (al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531). His separate discussion of rhetorical devices explains “in their bellies” on both interpretations, including naming the property by what it becomes on the literal interpretation (3/532, the devices of 4:1–10). Al-Qurṭubī also records an unnamed explanation: “fire” means what is forbidden because it brings the Fire (al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53). For the accounts presenting both explanations: Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14; Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1/377; al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372; al-Māwardī, al-Nukat wa-l-ʿUyūn, 1/457. ↩
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Al-Khāzin, Lubāb al-Taʾwīl fī Maʿānī al-Tanzīl, 1/345. First: يعني سيأكلون يوم القيامة فسمي الذين يأكلون نارا بما يؤول إليه أمرهم يوم القيامة, “It means they will eat on the Day of Resurrection; those who eat are thus named by what their affair will come to on that Day.” Then: وقيل إنما ذكر أكل النار على سبيل التمثيل والتوسع في الكلام, “It is also said that eating fire is mentioned by way of illustration and extended expression.” He explains the latter as wrongful eating leading to the Fire. The first account itself includes naming by outcome; he does not expressly prefer the separate figurative account. ↩
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Al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; al-Wāḥidī, al-Wasīṭ, 2/16; Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1/377. ↩
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Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, no. 2065 (3/1634), from Umm Salama رضي الله عنها; al-Nawawī, al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 14/28. ↩
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Al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, Tafsīr al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, 3/1119, at 4:10. He quotes the verse of poetry without naming its author and explains: فسمّى اللبن دما لكونه بدلاً منه, “He called the milk blood because it was given in its place.” The cited text reads إذا صُبَّ ما في الوَطْب فاعلم بأنه. . . دم الشيخ فاشرب من دم الشيخ أو دعا. The terminal أو دعا is damaged or otherwise unverified in the available witness; it is not translated as “or leave it”. The main text quotes and translates only the secure opening. ↩
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Al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/506, reporting al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. ↩
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Al-Ṭabarī connects the Hellfire eaten on the Day with the wrongful taking in this world (Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/454); Ibn Kathīr describes it blazing in their bellies on that Day (Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/222). Abū Ḥayyān calls literal fire the apparent sense (al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531). Al-Saʿdī stresses that the wrongdoers put it there themselves (Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān, p. 166). Ibn ʿUthaymīn and al-Ṭarīfī explain how punishment matches the deed (Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/63; al-Tafsīr wa-l-Bayān li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/740, respectively). Al-Luhaymīd gives that correspondence as his reason for preferring literal fire (Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 4/330). ↩
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Al-Suddī describes flames coming from the eater’s mouth, ears, nose and eyes, making him recognizable to those who see him. His tābiʿī explanation is recorded through Asbāṭ in Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, ed. Asʿad Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib, no. 4882 (3/879). It is transmitted by al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/454; Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/223; and al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372. Al-Ālūsī also records two early descriptions: from ʿUbayd Allāh b. Abī Jaʿfar, the wrongful eater’s mouth is filled with embers and he is told to eat what he ate in the world; his copy gives the name as ʿUbayd Allāh b. Jaʿfar, without Abī (Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/425). From Saʿīd b. Jubayr, in a report attributed to Ibn Abī Shayba, السَّعِير is a valley of Jahannam’s heat (Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/426). Ibn Abī Ḥātim records ʿUbayd Allāh b. Abī Jaʿfar’s words through al-Layth, no. 4883 (3/879). ↩
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Ibn ʿAṭiyya records an unnamed group who understood literal fire and mentions hadiths about it (al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14). Al-Ālūsī records literal fire as an interpretation some scholars allowed (Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/425). ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531–532; the latter page discusses the devices of 4:1–10. ↩
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Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/63; al-Ṭarīfī, al-Tafsīr wa-l-Bayān li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/740; al-Luhaymīd, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 4/330. Al-Ṭarīfī also adduces the silver-vessel hadith. ↩
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Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, ed. Asʿad Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib, no. 4884 (3/879), from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī رضي الله عنه; al-Albānī, Silsilat al-Aḥādīth al-Ḍaʿīfa wa-l-Mawḍūʿa, no. 5459 (11/809–810); Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/222–223, ed. Sāmī b. Muḥammad al-Salāma. ↩
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Ibn Ḥibbān, al-Iḥsān fī Taqrīb Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ, no. 5566 (12/377–378), from Abū Barza رضي الله عنه, through Aḥmad b. ʿAlī b. al-Muthannā, ʿUqba b. Mukram, Yūnus b. Bukayr, Ziyād b. al-Mundhir and Nāfiʿ b. al-Ḥārith. Ibn Abī Ḥātim joins this isnād at ʿUqba: Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, ed. Asʿad Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib, no. 4881 (3/879). Ibn Kathīr records Ibn Mardawayh’s isnād through Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm b. Zayd and Aḥmad b. ʿAmr to ʿUqba, followed by the same transmitters: Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/223, ed. Sāmī b. Muḥammad al-Salāma.
Al-Albānī grades the hadith and its isnād موضوع, “fabricated,” locating the defect in Ziyād or Nāfiʿ, whom he identifies as Nufayʿ Abū Dāwūd al-Aʿmā: Silsilat al-Aḥādīth al-Ḍaʿīfa wa-l-Mawḍūʿa, no. 5458 (11/806–809). Al-Arnaʾūṭ grades the isnād ضعيف جداً, “very weak”, records agreement on Ziyād’s weakness, and cites Ibn Maʿīn’s accusation of lying. Al-Salāma identifies Ziyād and Nufayʿ as matrūk; Ibn Kathīr’s isnād gives the name Nāfiʿ.
Al-Mundhirī calls both transmitters gravely weak and accused (al-Targhīb wa-l-Tarhīb, 4/189, no. 5372); al-Haythamī calls Ziyād a liar (Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid, 7/2, no. 10915); and al-Būṣīrī grades the isnād weak (Itḥāf al-Khiyara, 6/192, no. 5655-2), as quoted by Musāʿid b. Sulaymān al-Ṭayyār in Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 6/100, no. 16493, note 4. ↩
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Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā, Tafsīr al-Manār, 4/328. The quotation is his argument from the contrast between the unmarked imperfect and the explicitly future verb. ↩
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Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā, Tafsīr al-Manār, 4/328–329. He conditions the literal-report explanation on the report’s soundness and an interpretation of يأكلون as future, then argues for a present reference. He ends: وليس عندنا في الآية شيء عن الأستاذ الإمام, “We have nothing concerning this verse from al-Ustādh al-Imām [Muḥammad ʿAbduh].” His hypothetical wording is an argument about the expression, not a qirāʾah. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531; al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/506, reporting al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār. ↩
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For the treatment of “in their bellies”: Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/532; Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/255. Al-Ālūsī leads with majāz mursal, naming the effect for its cause. He also records an istiʿāra, likening the property to fire because of the ruin it brings, which some verifying scholars found far-fetched. Literal fire is a further possibility he records (Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/425). ↩
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Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/454; Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/222. ↩
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Al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, Tafsīr al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, 3/1119–1120. After the explanation concerning what leads to fire and the report concerning fire placed in the wrongdoer’s belly on the Day of Resurrection, he says: والقولان صحيحان وسيان، فإنه من كان حاله في الآخرة هذه، هو الذي حاله في الدنيا ما قاله الأولون, “Both explanations are correct and equivalent: the person whose condition in the Hereafter is this is the one whose condition in this world is what the first group described.” This is al-Rāghib’s reconciliation of the explanations, not a grading of a report. ↩
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Al-Ḥarrālī says the wrongdoer eats fire though he does not feel it and rejects explaining the first clause merely as a future threat (Turāth Abī l-Ḥasan al-Ḥarrālī, p. 95). Al-Biqāʿī holds the fire real in this world but different from that known to the outward senses (Naẓm al-Durar, 5/203); he points to وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ as the separate announcement of future punishment (7/307). Muftī Shafīʿ says what is eaten unlawfully is in reality nothing but fire, though it does not look like fire at the time (Maʿārif al-Qurʾān, p. 335). ↩
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Quṭb describes the property as fire swallowed as food (In the Shade of the Qurʾān, p. 39). ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254. ↩
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Al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, Tafsīr, 3/1119–1120; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/454; Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/222. Also recorded are the majority explanation in al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/265, and al-Sāyis, Tafsīr Āyāt al-Aḥkām, p. 226; literal fire in al-Luhaymīd, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 4/330; and the relation between the clauses in Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254–255, and Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531–532. These are distinct contributions, not evidence of unanimous acceptance of the reconciliation. ↩
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Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā, Tafsīr al-Manār, 4/328–329. His objection concerns what the first clause denotes. It does not deny the future punishment named in the second clause. ↩
Q2. Does “wrongfully” exclude the poor guardian’s lawful allowance?
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Al-Ṭabarī explains the taking as without right (Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/454). Ibn al-Jawzī transmits that explanation from Saʿīd b. Jubayr (Zād al-Masīr, 1/377). The wording “treating it as lawful without right” is also transmitted from Saʿīd; the companions of al-Thawrī explain it as unlawful taking (Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 6/100, the latter account from al-Thawrī’s Tafsīr). ↩
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Al-Zajjāj permits taking in proportion to managing the property without excess (Maʿānī al-Qurʾān wa-Iʿrābuh, 2/17). Ibn ʿAṭiyya identifies the wrong as exceeding the fair amount allowed to a poor guardian (al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14). Al-Rāzī explains why the qualification must distinguish permitted from forbidden taking (Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/506, first masʾala). Ibn ʿArafa explains how it removes the apparent contradiction with 4:6 (Tafsīr Ibn ʿArafa, 2/8). ↩
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Al-Saʿdī excludes both the poor guardian’s fair taking and permitted mixing of food (Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān, p. 166). Ibn ʿĀshūr treats “wrongfully” as a restricting ḥāl, a circumstantial expression excluding the allowance in 4:6 (al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254). Al-Ālūsī gives a lawful wage or loan as examples (Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/424); Ibn ʿUthaymīn gives the poor guardian taking the equivalent of his wage (Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62). Al-Zuḥaylī mentions a wage or loan (al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/264), and al-Marāghī fair need or a fixed wage (Tafsīr al-Marāghī, 4/193). Al-Zurqānī explains 4:6 as identifying what is not wrongful (Manāhil al-ʿIrfān, 2/255). ↩
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Al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; al-Nawawī, al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 18/157, on hadith 3019. Abū Ḥayyān reports the majority’s reference to guardians and adds that the threat reaches every wrongful eater, guardian or not (al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530). His account at 4:6 names Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī, ʿAṭāʾ, al-Ḥasan and Qatāda among those permitting taking, and places the jurists on the side of permission (3/521). ↩
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Al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/506, first masʾala; Ibn ʿArafa, Tafsīr Ibn ʿArafa, 2/8. ↩
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Al-Saʿdī, Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān, p. 166; Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254. ↩
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For the table’s positions: al-Nawawī, al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 18/157, on hadith 3019; Marʿī al-Karmī, Qalāʾid al-Marjān fī Bayān al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh fī al-Qurʾān, p. 85; al-Zajjāj, Maʿānī al-Qurʾān wa-Iʿrābuh, 2/17; Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62. Al-Karmī records both Aḥmad’s lesser-of-two measure and a view requiring repayment when able. Al-Naḥḥās names ʿUmar رضي الله عنه, ʿUbayda, Abū al-ʿĀliya and Saʿīd b. Jubayr for the loan position (al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, p. 296). ↩
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Al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/424. He introduces the explanation with وقيل, “it is said”, and calls the objection to it obvious. ↩
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Al-Zajjāj, Maʿānī al-Qurʾān wa-Iʿrābuh, 2/17; al-Nawawī, al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 18/157, on hadith 3019; Marʿī al-Karmī, Qalāʾid al-Marjān fī Bayān al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh fī al-Qurʾān, p. 85; al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/506, first masʾala. ↩
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Mujāhid’s position is reported by Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/522, at 4:6; Zayd b. Aslam’s by Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 1/422. The statement attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās is transmitted through ʿAṭāʾ al-Khurāsānī by al-Naḥḥās, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, p. 295. ↩
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Ibn al-ʿArabī records Zayd b. Aslam’s position before answering it (Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 1/422). Al-Shawkānī names Abū Dāwūd and al-Naḥḥās in their works on abrogation, and Ibn al-Mundhir, as carriers of the statement attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās (Fatḥ al-Qadīr, 1/492). Al-Nawawī records the position from Ibn ʿAbbās and Zayd b. Aslam (al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 18/157). See also al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh wa-Tanzīl al-Qurʾān, attributed to al-Zuhrī, p. 22; al-Suyūṭī, Muʿtarak al-Aqrān fī Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān, 3/33, where the claim is introduced with وقيل, “it is said”. For Abū Ḥayyān and al-Naḥḥās, see Question 2, note 10. ↩
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Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muṣaffā bi-Akuff Ahl al-Rusūkh, p. 23; Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī, al-Ḥujja li-l-Qurrāʾ al-Sabʿa, 5/99, at 17:33. Al-Fārisī’s general prohibition includes moderate use. ↩
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Al-Naḥḥās’s transmitted wording begins نُسِخَ: الظُّلْمُ وَالِاعْتِدَاءُ, “wrong and transgression were abrogated”, before naming 4:10 as abrogating 4:6. He then records the non-abrogation position (al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, p. 295). Ibn al-Jawzī also transmits the statement and relates it to Abū Ḥanīfa’s refusal of an allowance (al-Muṣaffā bi-Akuff Ahl al-Rusūkh, p. 23). ↩
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Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 1/423. ↩
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Al-Zurqānī, Manāhil al-ʿIrfān, 2/255; Ibn ʿArafa, Tafsīr Ibn ʿArafa, 2/8; al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/506, first masʾala. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/521, at 4:6; al-Nawawī, al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 18/157, on hadith 3019; al-Naḥḥās, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, p. 296. Abū Ḥayyān’s no-repayment account concerns taking to relieve hunger; the continuing allowance does not settle all the jurists’ different conditions of repayment. ↩
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For the continuing permission and the rejection of abrogation: Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/521; al-Nawawī, al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 18/157, on hadith 3019; Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 1/423. For the restrictive qualification: al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/506, first masʾala; al-Saʿdī, Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān, p. 166; Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254; Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/264. Al-Ālūsī gives the restrictive explanation and rejects treating the word as emphasis alone (Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/424). ↩
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Marʿī al-Karmī, Qalāʾid al-Marjān fī Bayān al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh fī al-Qurʾān, p. 85. ↩
Q3. Does “eat” mean only eating?
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Al-Rāzī explains the equal harm caused by different forms of destruction (Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, fourth masʾala). Al-Qurṭubī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya explain eating as naming the different forms of taking (al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14, respectively). Al-Jaṣṣāṣ includes destruction of property that cannot be eaten (Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372). Al-Māwardī calls eating the purpose of taking (al-Nukat wa-l-ʿUyūn, 1/457); Ibn al-Jawzī understands it as taking, named for its chief purpose (Zād al-Masīr, 1/377). ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān extends the same ruling to taking possession in every form (al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/502, at 4:2). Abū Ḥafṣ al-Nasafī includes destruction by eating or otherwise (al-Taysīr fī l-Tafsīr, 4/451). Al-Ṭaḥāwī includes debts and goods, edible and inedible (Aqwāl al-Ṭaḥāwī fī l-Tafsīr, collected by Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Dawsarī, p. 346). Ibn ʿUthaymīn includes burning and drowning as the like of eating or worse (Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62). Al-Zuḥaylī and Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṭāhā al-Durra include wrongful use, destruction and consumption (al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/264; Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm wa-Iʿrābuh wa-Bayānuh, 2/380, respectively). ↩
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Al-Suyūṭī, al-Itqān fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, 3/106; al-Shanqīṭī, Aḍwāʾ al-Bayān, 3/685, and al-ʿAdhb al-Namīr, 3/131. The latter work also identifies Ibn Ḥazm’s contrary treatment, discussed under Position 2. ↩
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Al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, fourth masʾala, all three reasons; Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/532, the devices of 4:1–10. ↩
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Al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, fourth masʾala; Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62. ↩
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Al-Suyūṭī, al-Itqān fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, 3/106; al-Shanqīṭī, Aḍwāʾ al-Bayān, 3/685, and al-ʿAdhb al-Namīr, 3/131. ↩
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Al-Shanqīṭī, al-ʿAdhb al-Namīr, 3/131, reporting Ibn Ḥazm’s position on what this verse establishes. ↩
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Muḥammad Ḥusayn al-Dhahabī reports Maymūn al-ʿAjradī’s argument that eating two coppers of an orphan’s property would entail the Fire, while killing the orphan or cutting open his belly would not, because the verse did not state it. He presents this as an extreme consequence of literalism (al-Tafsīr wa-l-Mufassirūn, 2/230). ↩
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Al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, fourth masʾala, second reason. ↩
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Al-Shanqīṭī, al-ʿAdhb al-Namīr, 3/131; al-Suyūṭī, al-Itqān fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, 3/106. ↩
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Al-Ṭaḥāwī, Aqwāl al-Ṭaḥāwī fī l-Tafsīr, collected by Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Dawsarī, p. 346; Muḥammad Ḥusayn al-Dhahabī, al-Tafsīr wa-l-Mufassirūn, 2/230; al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, fourth masʾala; Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62. The latter two explain the shared harm without naming the sectarian argument. ↩
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Ibn Ḥibbān, al-Iḥsān fī Taqrīb Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ, no. 5565 (12/376–377), from Abū Hurayra رضي الله عنه, through Ismāʿīl b. Dāwūd b. Wardān, ʿĪsā b. Ḥammād, al-Layth, Muḥammad b. ʿAjlān and Saʿīd al-Maqburī. Al-Arnaʾūṭ grades this isnād ḥasan. Its wording is أُحَرِّجُ مَالَ الضَّعِيفَيْنِ: الْيَتِيمِ وَالْمَرْأَةِ, “I solemnly warn concerning the property of the two vulnerable: the orphan and the woman.”
Ibn Mardawayh’s transmission is recorded by Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/223, ed. Sāmī b. Muḥammad al-Salāma: ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar, Aḥmad b. ʿIṣām, Abū ʿĀmir al-ʿAbdī, ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar al-Zuhrī, ʿUthmān b. Muḥammad, al-Maqburī and Abū Hurayra. Al-Salāma states: وفي إسناده أحمد بن عصام الموصلي ضعفه الدارقطني, “Its isnād includes Aḥmad b. ʿIṣām al-Mawṣilī, whom al-Dāraquṭnī judged weak.” Manuscript أ has ʿĀṣim for ʿIṣām, and manuscript ر has ʿUbayd Allāh for the ʿAbd Allāh before al-Zuhrī. This lafẓ puts “the woman” before “the orphan.” ↩
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Al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, fourth masʾala; al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14; al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372; al-Māwardī, al-Nukat wa-l-ʿUyūn, 1/457; Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1/377; Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/502, at 4:2; al-Ṭaḥāwī, Aqwāl al-Ṭaḥāwī fī l-Tafsīr, collected by Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Dawsarī, p. 346; Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/264; al-Suyūṭī, al-Itqān fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, 3/106; al-Shanqīṭī, al-ʿAdhb al-Namīr, 3/131. ↩
Q4. Whom did the verse come down about, and whom does it address?
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Al-Wāḥidī, Asbāb al-Nuzūl, p. 144, ed. al-Ḥumaydān, and p. 148, no. 296, ed. Kamāl Basyūnī Zaghlūl; al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; al-Baghawī, Maʿālim al-Tanzīl, 1/573; Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1/377; al-Khāzin, Lubāb al-Taʾwīl fī Maʿānī al-Tanzīl, 1/345; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/261. Ibn Ḥajar, al-ʿUjāb fī Bayān al-Asbāb, 2/841, entry 283, gives al-Thaʿlabī’s report from Muqātil b. Ḥayyān. ↩
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ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Mahdī notes the absence of an isnad in his editorial note to al-Baghawī, Maʿālim al-Tanzīl, 1/573. Kamāl Basyūnī Zaghlūl’s note to al-Wāḥidī, Asbāb al-Nuzūl, p. 148, no. 296, refers to Ibn Ḥajar’s al-Iṣāba, 3/397, under Marthad b. Zayd al-Ghaṭafānī. Abū Ḥayyān gives the name as Zayd b. Zayd al-Ghaṭafānī: al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530. ↩
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Al-Qurṭubī introduces the guardian explanation with قَالَ الْجُمْهُورُ, “the majority said”: al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53. Ibn ʿAṭiyya says وَقَالَ أَكْثَرُ النَّاسِ, “most people said”, and then includes anyone who consumes the property wrongfully: al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14. Abū Ḥayyān uses وَقَالَ الْأَكْثَرُونَ, “the majority said”, and likewise gives the wider scope: al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530. Their majority statements concern the addressees, not the authenticity of the Marthad account. ↩
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Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/455, transmits Ibn Zayd from his father, Zayd b. Aslam. The explanation appears under Ibn Zayd’s name in al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14; and Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530. Al-Shawkānī, Fatḥ al-Qadīr, 1/495, and al-Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-Manthūr, 2/444, give Zayd b. Aslam through Ibn Jarīr. Makkī, al-Hidāya ilā Bulūgh al-Nihāya, 2/1236, reports Ibn Zayd’s explanation and connects “eating fire” with consuming what leads to the Fire. ↩
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Al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/426; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/265. ↩
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Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14; Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530. ↩
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Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, 2/149. ↩
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Abū Dāwūd, al-Sunan, ed. Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, no. 2871 (3/114), from Ibn ʿAbbās رضي الله عنهما; Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, ed. Asʿad Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib, no. 4879 (3/878); Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/223, ed. Sāmī b. Muḥammad al-Salāma. ↩
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Abū ʿUbayd, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, no. 437 (1/238), from Ibn ʿAbbās رضي الله عنهما through ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭalḥa; Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 6/98, no. 16479; Aḥmad, al-Musnad, 5/141, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ and ʿĀdil Murshid. The Mawsūʿa’s isnād is graded ḥasan by Musāʿid b. Sulaymān al-Ṭayyār; al-Arnaʾūṭ judges al-Ṭabarī’s isnād through ʿAlī weak. The additional collections are al-Ṭabarānī, al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr, 12/251, no. 13020; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 3/701; Ibn al-Mundhir, 2/586, no. 1430; and Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, 2/396, no. 2090, as cited in the Mawsūʿa. ↩
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Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 4/34, no. 7764, from ʿĀʾisha رضي الله عنها through al-Aswad; Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, ed. Ḥikmat Bashīr Yāsīn, 2/147, note 5, on the separate isnād through Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī. ↩
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Al-Naḥḥās reports Mujāhid’s explanation of mixing in pastoral arrangements and food. He illustrates it with dates belonging to the orphan and similar dates belonging to the guardian, mixed so that both eat together: al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, pp. 191–192, at 2:220. Ibn ʿUthaymīn describes the earlier separation of the two meals in Tafsīr al-Fātiḥa wa-l-Baqara, 1/71 of the cited al-Baqara text, at 2:220. ↩
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Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1/377, says “some commentators”; Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530, introduces it with وقيل, “and it was said”. Al-Samʿānī, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān, 1/400, and Abū Bakr al-Ḥaddād, Kashf al-Tanzīl fī Taḥqīq al-Mabāḥith wa-l-Taʾwīl, 2/197, also record it without a named informant or isnad. ↩
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Al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53; Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14; Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530; al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/426; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/265; Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, 2/149. The household accounts are cited in the discussion above. ↩
Q5. Was the verse abrogated?
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Muqātil b. Sulaymān, as quoted in Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 6/102. He brings 4:10 together with 6:152, وَلَا تَقْرَبُوا مَالَ الْيَتِيمِ إِلَّا بِالَّتِي هِيَ أَحْسَنُ, “And do not approach the orphan’s property except in a way that is best”, and the permission to mix in 2:220. His concluding distinction is explicit: permission was given for mixing, not for consuming orphans’ property wrongfully. ↩
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Al-Naḥḥās, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, p. 191, at 2:220. He describes a claim transmitted from Ibn ʿAbbās, then says the verse is a statement, threat and prohibition of injustice that cannot be repealed. If the attribution to Ibn ʿAbbās is sound, he interprets the language as saying that one verse is “on the pattern” of the other, rather than withdrawing the prohibition. ↩
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Al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/508, says وَمِنَ الْجُهَّالِ مَنْ قَالَ, “among the ignorant are those who said” it was abrogated. Al-Jaṣṣāṣ criticizes ignorant literalists and some people of hadith who entered the claim in abrogation works: Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372. Ibn al-Jawzī criticizes lack of understanding of tafsir and its fiqh: Zād al-Masīr, 1/377, and Nawāsikh al-Qurʾān, p. 109. Al-Khāzin also records it as something some people mistakenly supposed: Lubāb al-Taʾwīl fī Maʿānī al-Tanzīl, 1/345. These passages do not provide a list of named proponents. ↩
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Al-Rāzī recounts the household difficulty without an isnad and rejects repeal of a prohibition of injustice: Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/508. Al-Ālūsī introduces the difficulty as occurring “in some reports”: Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/426. For the distinction between mixing and wrongful consumption, see al-Naḥḥās, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, p. 191; al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372–373; Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1/377, and Nawāsikh al-Qurʾān, 2/353; al-Khāzin, Lubāb al-Taʾwīl fī Maʿānī al-Tanzīl, 1/346. Ibn al-Jawzī makes the relief conditional on the orphan’s benefit. Ibn al-ʿArabī calls the three verses compatible and still in force: al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, 2/149. ↩
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Al-Jaṣṣāṣ uses وَلَا خِلَافَ بَيْنَ الْمُسْلِمِينَ, “there is no disagreement among Muslims”, for the prohibition and continuing threat: Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372. Ibn al-Jawzī uses لا خِلافَ, “there is no disagreement”, for the prohibition: Nawāsikh al-Qurʾān, 2/353. Muqātil’s explicit distinction is given under Position 1 above. ↩
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Hibat Allāh b. Salāma, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, p. 67. His discussion includes the Anṣār separating orphans from their households, the ensuing harm, and relief through 2:220. Riding an animal and drinking its milk illustrate beneficial use: failing to milk it or use it could harm its owner. He expressly excludes wrongful consumption from the permission. The same discussion also calls 4:6 an abrogator of 4:10. ↩
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The work al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, p. 32, under Ibn Ḥazm’s name. It treats the taking permitted by 4:6 as a loan to be repaid when the guardian becomes able. It adds that nothing is owed if he dies before then. ↩
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Al-Sakhāwī records the claim with “they said”: Jamāl al-Qurrāʾ wa-Kamāl al-Iqrāʾ, p. 369. Ibn al-ʿArabī records “some” saying that the Anṣār’s separation harmed the orphans, with the examples of unmilked milk and an unused animal, and connects the relief with 4:6: al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, 2/148. Al-Zurqānī places the claim among examples of mistaking clarification for abrogation: Manāhil al-ʿIrfān, 2/255. ↩
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Al-Sakhāwī answers that the permitted taking is not injustice: Jamāl al-Qurrāʾ wa-Kamāl al-Iqrāʾ, p. 369. At p. 367 he reports that the majority hold 4:6 to remain in force while differing over its meaning. Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, 2/149; al-Zurqānī, Manāhil al-ʿIrfān, 2/255. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān records Mujāhid at 4:6: al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/522. Ibn al-ʿArabī records Zayd b. Aslam: Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 1/422. Al-Naḥḥās gives the report through ʿAṭāʾ al-Khurāsānī from Ibn ʿAbbās, including the expression that “wrong and transgression were abrogated”: al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, p. 295. See also al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh wa-Tanzīl al-Qurʾān, p. 22, attributed to al-Zuhrī. Muḥammad Ashraf ʿAlī al-Malībārī’s editorial note to Ibn al-Jawzī, Nawāsikh al-Qurʾān, 2/353, cites Makkī’s abrogation work, p. 175, as reporting the claim from Ibn ʿAbbās and Zayd b. Aslam. ↩
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Ibn al-ʿArabī distinguishes forbidden wrong from the permitted allowance: Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 1/423. Ibn ʿArafa uses the qualifier “wrongfully” to remove the supposed conflict: Tafsīr Ibn ʿArafa, 2/8. For the continuing allowance, see Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/521, at 4:6; al-Nawawī, al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 18/157, at hadith 3019; and al-Naḥḥās, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, p. 296, on its differing measures. The legal positions and adopted measure are discussed in Question 2. ↩
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Al-Naḥḥās, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, p. 191; al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372–373; al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/508; Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1/377, and Nawāsikh al-Qurʾān, 2/353; al-Khāzin, Lubāb al-Taʾwīl fī Maʿānī al-Tanzīl, 1/346; Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, 2/149; al-Sakhāwī, Jamāl al-Qurrāʾ wa-Kamāl al-Iqrāʾ, p. 369. ↩
Q6. Does the threat make the eater a disbeliever or make punishment certain?
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Al-Qurṭubī introduces his account with وَالَّذِي يَعْتَقِدُهُ أَهْلُ السُّنَّةِ, “what Ahl al-Sunna believe”: al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/54. Al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/268, rejects using the threat to declare the sinner a disbeliever. Al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372, reports agreement that the prohibition and threat remain, while distinguishing disagreement over inevitable punishment from the possibility of forgiveness. ↩
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Al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53, identifies the offence as a major sin on the evidence of the Book and Sunna. Al-Saʿdī calls it among the gravest major sins in view of this severe threat: Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān, p. 166. Ibn ʿUthaymīn explains that a threatened punishment or a prescribed worldly penalty identifies a major sin: Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62. Al-Nawawī quotes Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām on the Sharīʿa’s express identification of false witness and consuming an orphan’s property as major sins: al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 2/86. ↩
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Al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/54, explicitly applies 4:48 to the threat. Qurʾān translation: Saheeh International, 4:48, opening portion. ↩
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Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, no. 185 (1/172–173), from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī رضي الله عنه, Book of Faith, chapter باب إِثْبَاتِ الشَّفَاعَةِ وَإِخْرَاجِ الْمُوَحِّدِينَ مِنَ النَّارِ, “Establishing intercession and bringing the people of tawḥīd out of the Fire.” ↩
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Al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/54. ↩
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Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, ed. Asʿad Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib, no. 4885 (3/879–880), from Ibn ʿUmar رضي الله عنهما; Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 6/101–102, no. 16498. ↩
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Al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, fifth discussion, records the Muʿtazilī appeal to the general threat, whether the offender is Muslim or not. He also records Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī’s threshold of five dirhams, drawn from his account of the threat for withholding zakāt in the verse about hoarding. That is al-Jubbāʾī’s proposed threshold for the threat, not permission to take a smaller amount. Ibn ʿĀdil, al-Lubāb fī ʿUlūm al-Kitāb, 2/221, at 2:81, includes 4:10 among the plural “those who” expressions used in the argument and states the proponents’ reasoning that a sinner outside the threat would have no need of repentance. ↩
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Al-Biqāʿī, Naẓm al-Durar, 5/203. The quoted words explain وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ. The quoted sentence does not separately address pardon, disbelief or the fate of each individual offender. ↩
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Al-Ḥākim, al-Mustadrak, Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya printing, no. 2260 (2/43), from Abū Hurayra رضي الله عنه. He says: هذا حديث صحيح الإسناد، ولم يخرجاه، وقد اتفقا على خثيم, “This hadith has a sound isnād; the two did not transmit it, though both included Khuthaym.” Al-Dhahabī’s al-Talkhīṣ, printed with that edition, states: إبراهيم بن خثيم بن عراك بن مالك، قال النسائي: متروك, “Ibrāhīm b. Khuthaym b. ʿIrāk b. Mālik; al-Nasāʾī said: matrūk.” Al-Munāwī says: وإسناده ضعيف، وقول الحاكم: صحيح. رُدَّ عليه, “Its isnād is weak, and al-Ḥākim’s statement that it is sound was rejected”: al-Taysīr bi-Sharḥ al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr, 1/139. Al-Mundhirī says: فيه إبراهيم بن خثيم بن عراك، وهو متروك, “Its chain contains Ibrāhīm b. Khuthaym b. ʿIrāk, who is matrūk” (al-Targhīb wa-l-Tarhīb, 3/177, no. 3561), as quoted by Musāʿid b. Sulaymān al-Ṭayyār in Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 6/102, no. 16502, note 5.
The wording is أربعٌ حَقٌّ على الله أن لا يدخلهم الجنة، ولا يذيقهم نعيمًا: مُدْمِن خمرٍ، وآكِل رِبا، وآكِل مال اليتيم بغير حق، والعاقُّ لوالديه, “Four whom Allah has bound Himself not to admit to Paradise or let taste its bliss: one addicted to wine, one who consumes usury, one who consumes an orphan’s property without right, and one undutiful to his parents.” Al-Suyūṭī also attributes it to al-Bayhaqī’s Shuʿab al-Īmān: al-Durr al-Manthūr, 2/444. ↩
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Al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, fifth discussion. He poses the possible restriction to disbelievers as a reply to the Muʿtazilī universal-threat argument, citing 2:254. This is a possible reply to that argument, not his settled restriction of the verse or a permission for Muslims to take property. ↩
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Al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, fifth discussion. He further replies that not finding evidence does not prove its nonexistence. ↩
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Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/15, continuation of 4:10 before the heading for 4:11. He answers the claim that لِمَنْ يَشاءُ refers only to the repentant: رد عليهم بأن الفائدة في التفضيل كانت تنفسد، إذ الشرك أيضا يغفر للتائب, “They are answered that the point of the distinction would be lost, since shirk too is forgiven to one who repents.” His discussion expressly distinguishes pardon by Allah’s will from the execution of the threat upon some sinners. ↩
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Al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/54; al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372. ↩
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Al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/54; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/268. ↩
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Al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53–54; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/268; al-Saʿdī, Taysīr al-Karīm al-Raḥmān, p. 166; Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62. ↩
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Al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/54. His explanation is introduced as the belief of Ahl al-Sunna. See also: al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2/372; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/268; al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507. ↩
2. Iʿrāb: Grammatical Structure
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Dār al-Ṣaḥāba, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 1/367. ↩
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Dār al-Ṣaḥāba, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 1/367. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530. ↩
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al-Shawkānī, Fatḥ al-Qadīr, 1/494. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254. ↩
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Dār al-Ṣaḥāba, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 1/367. ↩
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al-ʿUkbarī, al-Tibyān fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 1/333, the entry on ẓulman. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530. ↩
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al-Muntajab al-Hamadhānī, al-Kitāb al-Farīd fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Majīd, 2/216. ↩
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Maḥmūd Ṣāfī, al-Jadwal fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 2/448, the entry on ẓulman; Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Kharrāṭ, al-Mujtabā min Mushkil Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 1/165; Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254. ↩
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al-Shawkānī, Fatḥ al-Qadīr, 1/494. ↩
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Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān wa-Bayānuh, 2/167, on ẓulman, including its third grammatical analysis. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530; al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/424. ↩
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al-Akhfash, Maʿānī al-Qurʾān, 1/247, on fī buṭūnihim. ↩
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al-ʿUkbarī, al-Tibyān fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 1/333, the entry on fī buṭūnihim. ↩
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Dār al-Ṣaḥāba, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 1/367, the entry on fī buṭūnihim; Maḥmūd Ṣāfī, al-Jadwal fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 2/448, the entry on fī buṭūnihim; al-Muntajab al-Hamadhānī, al-Kitāb al-Farīd fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Majīd, 2/216. ↩
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Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān wa-Bayānuh, 2/168, on fī buṭūnihim. ↩
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Dār al-Ṣaḥāba, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 1/367. ↩
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Fāḍil al-Sāmarrāʾī, Maʿānī al-Naḥw, 1/328, on innamā, with 4:10 among his examples. ↩
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Dār al-Ṣaḥāba, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 1/367. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/255. ↩
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Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṭāhā al-Durra, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm wa-Iʿrābuh wa-Bayānuh, 2/382. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. ↩
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Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān wa-Bayānuh, 2/168, balāghah, the two tenses. ↩
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Dār al-Ṣaḥāba, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 1/367. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/255. ↩
3. Ṣarf: Roots and Word Formation
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al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Mufradāt, p. 490, ṣ-l-y. ↩
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al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Mufradāt, p. 490. ↩
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al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Mufradāt, p. 490. ↩
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Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, 14/467, ṣ-l-y. ↩
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Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, 14/467. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/255. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. ↩
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al-Shawkānī, Fatḥ al-Qadīr, 1/494. ↩
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Maḥmūd Ṣāfī, al-Jadwal fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 2/449, balāgha. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. ↩
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Maḥmūd Ṣāfī, al-Jadwal fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 2/449. ↩
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Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/455, at 4:10. He names al-Farazdaq and cites the line for الصَّلا, the heat of fire. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī’s edition identifies the line’s location in the poet’s collected verse. ↩
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Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, 6/455, and al-Turkī’s note identifying the poet as al-Ḥārith b. ʿAbbād al-Bakrī. Al-Ṭabarī introduces the line as an example of using صَلِيَ for enduring the heat of war and other difficulties. The same witness appears, with minor wording differences, in Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/15, and al-Shawkānī, Fatḥ al-Qadīr, 1/494; those are repeated citations of the poem, not separate poems. ↩
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Al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/54, quotes this line while explaining تَصَلَّى. For the attribution to Abū Zubayd al-Ṭāʾī, see Khālid b. ʿAlī al-Ghāmidī’s note to al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf wa-l-Bayān, 10/104, note 4; he refers to the poet’s Dīwān, p. 106, no. 14, and the lexicons. المقرور is one afflicted by cold; قرس is bitter cold. ↩
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Al-Wāḥidī, al-Tafsīr al-Basīṭ, 6/351, and Muḥammad b. Ḥamad al-Muḥaymīd’s editorial note. The author names Ibn Ḥilliza; the note identifies al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza al-Yashkurī and explains that he sighted the fire at night. The citation concerns الصَّلاء and its related noun forms, not a variant recitation of 4:10. ↩
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Al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/425, at 4:10. He names the poet الطهوي and cites the line for using صَلِيَ with بِـ in the sense of enduring war. ↩
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al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Mufradāt, p. 411, s-ʿ-r. ↩
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al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Mufradāt, p. 411. ↩
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Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, 4/365, s-ʿ-r. ↩
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Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, 4/365. ↩
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Muḥammad Ḥasan Jabal, al-Muʿjam al-Ishtiqāqī al-Muʾaṣṣal, 2/1015. ↩
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Muḥammad Ḥasan Jabal, al-Muʿjam al-Ishtiqāqī al-Muʾaṣṣal, 2/1015. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/255; al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/426; al-Muntajab al-Hamadhānī, al-Kitāb al-Farīd fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Majīd, 2/217; Ibn Kamāl Pāshā, Tafsīr Ibn Kamāl Bāshā, 3/25. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/255. ↩
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Maḥmūd Ṣāfī, al-Jadwal fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 2/449. ↩
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Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Sulṭāniyyah printing, 6/45, Book of Tafsīr, Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, the explanation سَعِيرًا: وُقُودًا. ↩
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al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/54; al-Shawkānī, Fatḥ al-Qadīr, 1/494. ↩
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al-Samʿānī, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān, 1/401. ↩
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Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Ṣābūnī, Rawāʾiʿ al-Bayān, 1/434. ↩
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al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Mufradāt, p. 80, on akl. ↩
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al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī, ʿUmdat al-Ḥuffāẓ, 1/99, on akl. ↩
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Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, 4/132, j-r-r. ↩
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al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Mufradāt, p. 889, y-t-m. ↩
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al-Khaṭīb al-Shirbīnī, al-Sirāj al-Munīr, 1/284. ↩
4. Balāghah: Rhetorical Analysis
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Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14. ↩
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Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṭāhā al-Durra, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm wa-Iʿrābuh wa-Bayānuh, 2/380; Abū Ḥafṣ al-Nasafī, al-Taysīr fī l-Tafsīr, 4/451. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/532, the closing passage on the devices of 4:1 to 4:10. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/502, at 4:2. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254. ↩
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al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/425; al-Shawkānī, Fatḥ al-Qadīr, 1/494. ↩
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Maḥmūd Ṣāfī, al-Jadwal fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 2/449; Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān wa-Bayānuh, 2/168. ↩
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Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Sāyis, Tafsīr Āyāt al-Aḥkām, 226. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/254. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. ↩
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al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507, the third masʾala, with 3:167, 22:46 and 6:38. ↩
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al-Akhfash, Maʿānī al-Qurʾān, 1/247. ↩
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Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Ṣābūnī, Ṣafwat al-Tafāsīr, 1/239; Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṭāhā al-Durra, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm wa-Iʿrābuh wa-Bayānuh, 2/380. ↩
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Maḥmūd Ṣāfī, al-Jadwal fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 2/449; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Tafsīr al-Munīr, 4/264. ↩
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al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/424; al-Khaṭīb al-Shirbīnī, al-Sirāj al-Munīr, 1/284. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/530. The line is unnamed in the cited passage. Al-Ālūsī also cites it at 2/425, and al-Qāsimī reproduces al-Zamakhsharī’s use of it in Maḥāsin al-Taʾwīl, 3/36. Their uses explain fullness. Al-Akhfash cites the same poem at 1/249 for a different grammatical question in 4:11; that is not an additional direct 4:10 interpretation. ↩
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Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14. ↩
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al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/532, the closing passage on the devices of 4:1 to 4:10. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. ↩
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Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān wa-Bayānuh, 2/168. ↩
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Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān wa-Bayānuh, 2/168. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. He names al-Shanfarā and cites the line while explaining the reproach carried by the mention of bellies and greedy eating. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/532, cites the line under التعريض. Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān wa-Bayānuh, 2/168–169, identifies al-Ḥuṭayʾa and explains الطاعم الكاسي here as المطعوم والمكسوّ, “the one fed and clothed.” ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/532, the closing passage on the devices of 4:1 to 4:10. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/532, the closing passage on the devices of 4:1 to 4:10. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/255. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. ↩
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Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān wa-Bayānuh, 2/168. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/255. ↩
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Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṭāhā al-Durra, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm wa-Iʿrābuh wa-Bayānuh, 2/382. ↩
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al-Nīsābūrī, Gharāʾib al-Qurʾān wa-Raghāʾib al-Furqān, 2/357. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531; Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān wa-Bayānuh, 2/168. ↩
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Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/63. ↩
5. Qirāʾāt: Variant Readings
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Ibn al-Jazarī, al-Nashr fī al-Qirāʾāt al-ʿAshr, 2/247. ↩
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Ibn al-Jazarī, al-Nashr fī al-Qirāʾāt al-ʿAshr, 2/247; al-Bannāʾ, Itḥāf Fuḍalāʾ al-Bashar fī al-Qirāʾāt al-Arbaʿata ʿAshar, pp. 10, 14, 237. The roster on p. 10 identifies Abū Bakr as Shuʿba b. ʿAyyāsh and names Ḥafṣ as ʿĀṣim’s other transmitter. The verse entry assigns ḍamma to Ibn ʿĀmir and Abū Bakr, and fatḥa to the remaining readers. ↩
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Al-Bannāʾ, Itḥāf Fuḍalāʾ al-Bashar, pp. 9–10, 14. He calls the seven readings mutawātir by agreement and regards the three completing the ten as mutawātir on the correct, preferred position. He then names Ibn Muḥayṣin, al-Yazīdī, al-Ḥasan and al-Aʿmash as the four whose reading traditions are agreed shādhdh. This classification does not make every word form distinctive to those four: at 4:10 each agrees in form with a canonical reading. ↩
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Al-Bannāʾ, Itḥāf Fuḍalāʾ al-Bashar, p. 237; his explanation of the notation, p. 14. The complete entry is: واختلف في "وسيصلون" [الآية: ١٠] فابن عامر وأبو بكر بضم الياء مبنيا للمفعول من الثلاثي وافقهما الحسن والباقون بالفتح من صلى النار لازمها. He names Ibn ʿĀmir and Abū Bakr for ḍamma, adds that al-Ḥasan agrees with them, and assigns fatḥa to the rest. His introductory method explains that he identifies an agreeing member of the four with “agreed with them,” and names a differing form separately. The roster, method and verse entry together establish the four rows. ↩
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al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb, 9/507; Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531; al-Baghawī, Maʿālim al-Tanzīl, 1/573; al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/425; Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/255. ↩
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Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1/377. ↩
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Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Tafsīr Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 1/62. ↩
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al-Naḥḥās, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 1/202.
al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 5/53, as his copy gives it, after al-Naḥḥās, where the reading is Abū Bakr's from ʿĀṣim: وَقَرَأَ ابْنُ عَامِرٍ وَعَاصِمٌ فِي رِوَايَةِ ابْنِ عَبَّاسٍ بِضَمِّ الْيَاءِ عَلَى اسْمِ مَا لَمْ يُسَمَّ فَاعِلُهُ، مِنْ أَصْلَاهُ اللَّهُ حَرَّ النَّارِ إصلاء "Ibn ʿĀmir, and ʿĀṣim in the transmission of 'Ibn ʿAbbās', read it with ḍamm on the yāʾ as a passive, from 'Allah made him burn in the heat of the Fire', iṣlāʾ". ↩
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al-Muntajab al-Hamadhānī, al-Kitāb al-Farīd fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Majīd, 2/216, ed. Muḥammad Niẕām al-Dīn al-Fatīḥ (editor’s note). ↩
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Al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf wa-l-Bayān, 10/103. These are his named carriers of the ḍamma form. The list differs from Ibn al-Jazarī’s canonical distribution, notably in its inclusion of Abū Jaʿfar among the readers with ḍamma. ↩
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Khālid b. ʿAlī al-Ghāmidī, editorial note to al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf wa-l-Bayān, 10/103. ↩
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al-ʿUkbarī, al-Tibyān fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 1/334, the entry on sa-yaṣlawna; al-Muntajab al-Hamadhānī, al-Kitāb al-Farīd fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Majīd, 2/216; Muḥammad Muḥaysin, al-Hādī Sharḥ Ṭayyibat al-Nashr, 2/142. ↩
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al-Wāḥidī, al-Wasīṭ, 2/17; al-Muntajab al-Hamadhānī, al-Kitāb al-Farīd fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Majīd, 2/216; Muḥammad Muḥaysin, al-Hādī Sharḥ Ṭayyibat al-Nashr, 2/142. ↩
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al-Baghawī, Maʿālim al-Tanzīl, 1/573. ↩
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Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr, 4/255. ↩
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Muḥammad Muḥaysin, al-Hādī Sharḥ Ṭayyibat al-Nashr, 2/142. ↩
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al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī, ʿUmdat al-Ḥuffāẓ, 2/352. ↩
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Muḥaysin, al-Hādī Sharḥ Ṭayyibat al-Nashr, 2/142, calls it مضارع مبنيّ للمجهول من «أصلى» المزيد بالهمزة, “a passive imperfect from أَصْلَى, augmented with hamza.” Al-Bannāʾ, Itḥāf Fuḍalāʾ al-Bashar, p. 237, instead writes مبنيا للمفعول من الثلاثي, “passive, from the three-letter verb.” Both describe a passive form, but their stated derivations differ. ↩
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al-Akhfash, Maʿānī al-Qurʾān, 1/247, the entry on sa-yaṣlawna. ↩
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Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14. ↩
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Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14; al-Shawkānī, Fatḥ al-Qadīr, 1/494; al-Naḥḥās, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 1/202. ↩
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al-ʿUkbarī, al-Tibyān fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, 1/334, the entry on sa-yaṣlawna; al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī, 2/425. ↩
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al-Muntajab al-Hamadhānī, al-Kitāb al-Farīd fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Majīd, 2/216, ed. Muḥammad Niẕām al-Dīn al-Fatīḥ (editor’s note); al-Ṭībī, Futūḥ al-Ghayb fī al-Kashf ʿan Qināʿ al-Rayb, 4/454. ↩
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Abū Ḥayyān, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 3/531. ↩
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Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, 2/14. ↩
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Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr, 1/377. ↩
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Al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf wa-l-Bayān, 10/103; Khālid b. ʿAlī al-Ghāmidī’s note 7. The author gives Ḥumayd b. Qays and explains doubling as repeated action. The editor gives the shādhdh judgment. ↩
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Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, 14/467. ↩
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Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 6/98, from Ibn Abī Dāwūd's al-Maṣāḥif, through al-Aʿmash. ↩
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Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, 6/98, no. 16478, editorial note by Musāʿid b. Sulaymān al-Ṭayyār; Ibn Abī Dāwūd, al-Maṣāḥif 1/312. ↩