Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, Verses 15 to 16

1. The Questions This Verse Raises

The two verses raise four questions: whom they name, what the promised 'way' was, how the law defines the witnesses and confinement, and what the harm and turning away entailed. The table below summarizes the outcome of each discussion.

Q1. Who are the women of 4:15, and who are ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩, "the two", of 4:16?

The first verse names women in the feminine plural: ⁧وَاللَّاتِي يَأْتِينَ الْفَاحِشَةَ مِنْ نِسَائِكُمْ⁩, "those of your women who commit the indecency." The second turns to the masculine dual: ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ يَأْتِيَانِهَا مِنْكُمْ⁩, "the two of you who commit it," and says 'of you' where the first said 'of your women.' Ibn al-ʿArabī called the first verse a hard problem, one he had found no one to understand.^[49] This Question takes up one part of that problem: how 'the two' (⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩) of 4:16 relate to 'the women' (⁧وَاللَّاتِي⁩) of 4:15. Three things need explaining:

1. The act: what ⁧الْفَاحِشَةَ⁩, "the indecency", refers to in the first verse.
2. The women: whom ⁧مِنْ نِسَائِكُمْ⁩, "of your women", includes.
3. The two: who is meant by ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩, "the two," and how they relate to the women of the first verse.

The first two have one answer each. The positions below address the third, with the final position also offering an alternative interpretation of the first verse.

The five views below differ on two points: what 4:15 is about, and who ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩, "the two", of 4:16 are. The first table shows that difference at a glance. The second table gives each view's argument, the scholars who hold it, and its evidence. Each view is named here by what it says: the man-and-woman view, the unmarried view, the men view, the liwāṭ view and the same-sex view.

Arguments and evidence

What ⁧الْفَاحِشَةَ⁩, "the indecency", means in 4:15

The context identifies the act as zinā; the word ⁧الْفَاحِشَةَ⁩ alone has a wider meaning.

The word and its use in this verse

The noun means a very foul deed. In 4:15, as in 4:19, it refers indirectly to zinā (al-Rāghib).^[55] Elsewhere, however, the Qurʾān uses it for the act of the people of Lūṭ (7:80). Its general meaning can also include sexual acts between women and anal intercourse with a woman who is not one's wife (al-Maẓharī).^[56]

Why the distinction matters in law

The act's legal classification cannot be settled by translating the word alone. Two jurists apply the ḥadd of zinā to anal intercourse with a woman who is not one's wife, but their reasons differ:

• The Mālikī jurist Ibn al-Qāsim argues from the shared Qurʾānic description: both zinā and the act of Lūṭ's people are called an indecency.
• Ibn Qudāma understands 4:15 itself to include the act within zinā.^[57]

To establish what 4:15 specifically means, the explanation must therefore consider the rest of the verse, especially its requirement of four witnesses.

How the four witnesses of 4:15 show that the act is zinā

The number of witnesses identifies the particular offence intended by the verse.

The legal significance of four witnesses

Islamic law requires four witnesses for zinā and for no other crime (Abū al-Suʿūd).^[58] The command ⁧أَرْبَعَةً مِنْكُمْ⁩, "four from among you", therefore identifies the indecency here as zinā (al-Shāfiʿī). A consensus of the exegetes is reported on this interpretation, with one exception attributed to Mujāhid and followed by Abū Muslim (Abū Ḥayyān, Muḥammad Fārūq al-Zayn).^[59]

The witnesses must be Muslim men. ⁧مِنْكُمْ⁩, "from among you", addresses the believers, and women's testimony is not accepted in establishing zinā (al-Shāfiʿī, Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[60] Question 3 explains the further conditions governing their testimony.

The consequence for the same-sex interpretation

If 4:15 concerned sexual acts between women, its requirement of four witnesses would need an explanation: that evidentiary requirement belongs to zinā. This is one reason for rejecting that interpretation. The interpretation is also called far-fetched, and no Companion or Successor is known to have held it (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[61] The account attributed to Mujāhid is considered below, because its meaning is itself explained differently.

The women of 4:15

The phrase ⁧مِنْ نِسَائِكُمْ⁩, "of your women", covers all the believers' women, married or not. Its wording has no limit, and a general wording includes every woman it can cover (Ibn al-ʿArabī, Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[62] The word 'your' shows that they are the women of the believers (al-Shāfiʿī), set against the men whom the verse addresses as 'you' (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[63] So the ruling does not apply to a woman who is not Muslim, even if she is related to Muslims by family (al-Qurṭubī).^[64]

The narrower limits: wives, or women married before

Some scholars limit ⁧مِنْ نِسَائِكُمْ⁩, "of your women", to a smaller group, in one of two ways:

1. To wives. This limit is reported as the view of most exegetes and most Companions (a view Abū Ḥayyān and Ibn al-ʿArabī report).^[65]
2. To women who were married before. This limit takes 'your women' to mean 'your wives'. In the same way, 'their women' means their wives in 2:226, 'those who swear off their women' (a view Ibn Qudāma and al-Rāzī report).^[66]

The Origin of These Restrictions: The Unmarried View

Both restrictions come from the unmarried view. If ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩, "the two", of 4:16 are the unmarried, then the women of 4:15 must be the married (al-Suddī, as al-Ālūsī and Abū al-Suʿūd present him).^[67] So these two restrictions are only as strong as the unmarried view. The grammar of ⁧مِنْ نِسَائِكُمْ⁩ is explained under Iʿrāb.

Neither 4:15 nor 4:16, in its wording, separates the married from the unmarried.

Why ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩, "the two", of 4:16 can be a man and a woman

A dual normally refers to two people. In zinā, those two are a man and a woman; the grammatical gender of ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩ does not by itself exclude that meaning.

Why the dual matters

If 4:16 referred generally to male offenders, the expected form would be a plural, "those who commit it", or a singular, "he who commits it". Verse 4:15 has already used a plural for the women. The choice of a dual in 4:16 instead suggests the two participants in one act (al-Ṭabarī).^[68]

How a masculine dual includes a woman

Arabic can use a masculine form for a group or pair that includes both sexes. This is taghlīb: the masculine form represents them together. Although it departs from the normal correspondence between grammatical gender and the persons described, it occurs frequently in the Qurʾān (al-Ālūsī).^[69] On al-Ṭabarī's interpretation, the masculine dual therefore gives no reason to exclude the woman.

The same argument considers how legal commands are normally expressed. A plural applies the ruling to everyone concerned; a generic singular represents each person who commits the act. A dual would be unexplained if the verse merely meant male offenders in general, without pairing them in an act (an argument al-Jaṣṣāṣ records).^[70]

This supports the man-and-woman interpretation. The men interpretation answers the grammatical objection by understanding two categories of men rather than two participants, as explained below.

Why ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩, "the two", of 4:16 are not only the unmarried

Even if the dual refers to a man and a woman, a further question remains: does it exclude those who have been married?

The case for restricting it to the unmarried

Two features support that restriction in al-Ṭabarī's explanation:^[71]

1. Verse 4:16 distinguishes its two offenders from the women mentioned in 4:15. The two groups must therefore differ.
2. Confinement until death is the heavier penalty. It is understood as the punishment for women who have been married, leaving the lighter punishment of 4:16 for an unmarried man and woman.

Why those reasons do not establish the restriction

The first distinction can be explained without reference to marriage. Verse 4:15 confines the woman, while 4:16 imposes a punishment shared by both participants. On that explanation the verses differ in the punishment and the people who receive it, even though both concern zinā.

The second reason infers marital status from the severity of the punishment. Neither verse, however, makes marriage a condition. Restricting general wording requires evidence for that restriction (al-Jaṣṣāṣ; Abū Yaʿlā, as reported by Ibn al-Jawzī).^[72] The unmarried interpretation is conceivable, but fits the wording less well (Ibn ʿAṭiyya).^[73]

Without this restriction, the dual includes a man and a woman whether previously married or not. The next interpretation, however, questions whether the woman is included in 4:16 at all.

Why ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩, "the two", of 4:16 can be the men of the community

The alternative interpretation begins with the change in address: 4:15 says ⁧مِنْ نِسَائِكُمْ⁩, "of your women", whereas 4:16 says ⁧مِنْكُمْ⁩, "of you".

Two verses addressing the two sexes

Once the first verse has dealt with the women, "of you" in the second can refer to the men. Together, the verses then cover all offenders: confinement for women and harm for men. This is what Ibn ʿAṭiyya considers the wording to require.^[74]

The pronoun in ⁧يَأْتِيَانِهَا⁩, "who commit it", keeps the offence the same. It refers to the indecency already mentioned in 4:15. Since that verse explicitly concerns women, the second is understood to complete the ruling by addressing men (Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[75]

Why a dual can refer to men generally

This interpretation must explain why 4:16 uses a dual rather than a plural. Its answer is that the dual represents two categories: the previously married man and the unmarried man. It need not describe two people committing an act together. Each verse then has a distinct application, without overlapping the other (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[76]

How the early accounts divide the penalties

The account that confines women and imposes harm on men fits this interpretation. A man, it explains, needs to leave home to provide for his family. Al-Khāzin records that division. Another account differs: the woman was confined, but both offenders were subjected to harm (Qatāda, as al-Qurṭubī presents his account).^[77]

The distinction is consequential. Harm imposed on the man alone fits the men interpretation; harm imposed on both participants fits the man-and-woman interpretation.

Why some say ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩, "the two", of 4:16 are two men who commit liwāṭ

On this interpretation, the masculine dual refers to two men participating in liwāṭ: the active participant and the consenting recipient.

The dual and the act

The dual is understood as two participants in one act, as in the man-and-woman interpretation, but both participants are male. The contrast with the plural in 4:15 is explained by the relative prevalence of the offences: zinā was more widespread among women than liwāṭ among men, so the first verse uses a plural and the second a dual (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[78]

What Mujāhid's account means

Mujāhid is reported to have explained 4:16 as concerning two men who commit the act. That wording has received three interpretations:

• It probably means liwāṭ (Ibn Kathīr).^[79]
• Liwāṭ is its apparent meaning (al-Maẓharī).^[80]
• It means male offenders committing zinā, either as stated in Majmaʿ al-Bayān and reported by al-Ālūsī,^[81] or as the men interpretation explained above (Abū Ḥayyān).^[82]

The hadith invoked in support

Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ relates that the Prophet ﷺ said:

⁧ مَنْ وَجَدْتُمُوهُ يَعْمَلُ عَمَلَ قَوْمِ لُوطٍ، فَاقْتُلُوا الْفَاعِلَ، وَالْمَفْعُولَ بِهِ ⁩

"Whoever you find doing the deed of the people of Lūṭ, kill the one who does it and the one to whom it is done."^[83]

The hadith likewise distinguishes the two participants. It is understood as establishing the later punishment for liwāṭ after the harm commanded in 4:16 (Ibn ʿUthaymīn). Ibn Taymiyya reports the Companions' agreement on a death penalty, with different views about its manner.^[84]

The hadith's isnād and the attributed grades

This marfūʿ hadith is known from Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ through this isnād alone (al-Tirmidhī). It includes ʿAmr b. Abī ʿAmr reporting from ʿIkrima. Al-Arnaʾūṭ grades the hadith weak because he regards ʿAmr's narrations from ʿIkrima as weak; al-Albānī grades it ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ.^[85]

The penalty for liwāṭ, and why the Ḥanafīs use 4:16

The interpretation of 4:16 affects a further legal question: does liwāṭ receive a fixed ḥadd, or a discretionary punishment imposed by the ruler?

Whether liwāṭ is legally classified as zinā

One argument treats liwāṭ as zinā in its meaning: sexual desire is fully satisfied in a person who is an object of desire. On this argument it is also more grave than zinā (al-Maẓharī).^[86] Abū Ḥanīfa does not regard liwāṭ as zinā in Arabic usage and points to the Companions' differing penalties as evidence that its punishment was not already settled by the law of zinā (al-Maẓharī).^[87]

The jurists who prescribe a ḥadd differ about its form. The recorded positions include stoning regardless of iḥṣān, execution by the sword, and the same distinction as in zinā: lashes for the unmarried and stoning for the married. These are separate positions and riwāyāt associated with Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad and others.^[88] Question 2 explains iḥṣān.

Can the penalty be established by analogy with zinā?

The analogy treats both offences as unlawful penetration that satisfies sexual desire, and therefore assigns liwāṭ the penalty of zinā. One objection rejects analogy in the ḥudūd altogether because doubts avert these penalties. The majority answer permits analogy in the ḥudūd; that general objection does not therefore settle the particular case.

A different objection to this analogy is ⁧فساد الاعتبار⁩ (fasād al-iʿtibār), conflict with a revealed text: Ibn ʿAbbās’s hadith prescribes death for both participants without distinguishing the muḥṣan from the non-muḥṣan, and an analogy that imports zinā’s distinction would conflict with the hadith as it is understood on this objection. The analogy’s premise that both acts satisfy a natural desire is also rejected (al-Shanqīṭī).^[89]

Why Abū Ḥanīfa applies taʿzīr

On Abū Ḥanīfa's position, liwāṭ receives taʿzīr rather than a ḥadd. The punishment described is imprisonment until death (Ibn al-Humām, quoted by al-Maẓharī). A persistent offender may be executed through siyāsa, the ruler's authority to address repeated wrongdoing, rather than as a fixed ḥadd (al-Maẓharī).^[90]

The argument from 4:16 has three connected steps:^[91]

1. The uncertainty surrounding the hadith prevents it from establishing death as a fixed ḥadd.
2. In Ḥanafī uṣūl, even a ṣaḥīḥ āḥād hadith cannot add such a ruling to the Qurʾān.
3. Verse 4:16 already establishes harm as the punishment, understood here as taʿzīr.

This reasoning depends on including liwāṭ within 4:16. The inclusion is explained through the general meaning of ⁧الْفَاحِشَةَ⁩, "the indecency": the verse was revealed concerning zinā, but the Qurʾān also calls liwāṭ an indecency in 7:80 (al-Maẓharī).^[92]

How repeated offending changes the application

The Companion accounts and the marfūʿ hadith are brought together by applying execution to a person who repeatedly commits liwāṭ and is not deterred by taʿzīr. The indication of repetition is in ⁧يَعْمَلُ⁩, "does", rather than ⁧عَمِلَ⁩, "did", and the conclusion is presented as Abū Ḥanīfa's position (al-Maẓharī).

On this account, persistence despite punishment is decisive, and execution rests on siyāsa. The jurists who prescribe a ḥadd attach it to the offence itself, without requiring repeated offending. The ruling is death for both participants, married or not, because Ibn ʿAbbās's hadith commands both to be killed and is not limited to the married as the penalty of zinā is (Ibn ʿUthaymīn, al-Shanqīṭī). Ibn Taymiyya reports that the Companions agreed on killing both and differed only on the manner, as Ibn ʿUthaymīn relates.^[93]

The pronoun 'it' in ⁧يَأْتِيَانِهَا⁩, "who commit it"

The pronoun links 4:16 to the indecency in 4:15. The question is whether that link restricts both verses to zinā.

The objection from the preceding verse

If ⁧الْفَاحِشَةَ⁩ in 4:15 means zinā, the pronoun referring back to it should retain that meaning. An interpretation that gives the pronoun a different referent is rejected (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[94] On this argument, 4:16 continues the ruling on the offence already identified.

The answer from the word's general meaning

The alternative explanation also takes the pronoun to refer to ⁧الْفَاحِشَةَ⁩, but understands the indecency committed by two men as liwāṭ (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[95] The explanation above shows how this can be an additional application: the verse concerns zinā, while the general term also includes an act that the Qurʾān calls an indecency in 7:80 (al-Maẓharī).

The distinction is between replacing zinā with liwāṭ and including liwāṭ alongside it. The latter preserves the link with 4:15 while allowing the additional application adopted here.

The Companions' silence on 4:16

The Companions' discussions of the penalty for liwāṭ raise another objection: why did they not invoke 4:16 when they needed a text on the offence?

The argument from their silence

Their failure to invoke the verse is taken as evidence that they did not understand it to concern liwāṭ (Mawdūdī; an objection to Abū Muslim recorded by al-Rāzī).^[96]

What they were deciding

The response distinguishes the question they were answering. They were determining a fixed ḥadd, whereas 4:16 commands harm without specifying such a penalty. The verse would therefore not settle their question even if liwāṭ fell within its scope (al-Rāzī, answering for Abū Muslim; Abū Ḥayyān records this as Abū Muslim's answer).^[97]

The Ḥanafī argument illustrates the distinction: it applies 4:16 to liwāṭ but understands its punishment as taʿzīr. The Companions' silence consequently does not, by itself, exclude liwāṭ from the verse.

Why some say 4:15 and 4:16 are both about same-sex acts

A further interpretation assigns a different offence to each verse: sexual acts between women in 4:15 and liwāṭ between men in 4:16.

Why this interpretation avoids abrogation

On this account, neither verse concerns the zinā later punished in Sūrat al-Nūr. Confinement remains the punishment for the women, and harm remains the punishment for the men. Both verses therefore continue in force (Abū Muslim al-Aṣfahānī, as reported by al-Rāzī).^[98] This accords with Abū Muslim's rejection of abrogation within the Qurʾān (Abū Ḥayyān).^[99]

The arguments from the wording

Three features are offered in support:

1. Women are addressed separately. If the masculine dual in 4:16 included a woman, why had women already been addressed in 4:15?^[100]
2. Each verse establishes a different ruling. Assigning both to zinā is said to repeat the same ruling unnecessarily.^[101]
3. The promised 'way' is “for them.” The word ⁧لَهُنَّ⁩, "for them", is understood to promise a benefit, whereas a heavier penalty would be against them.^[102]

The first argument also supports the men interpretation, which retains zinā as the offence. The same-sex view therefore needs the other arguments to establish that two different sexual acts are intended. The objection concerning the promised 'way' is answered in Question 2.

How the interpretation relates the three offences

On this account the Qurʾān gives a ruling for all three offences: zinā in Sūrat al-Nūr, and the two same-sex acts here. Keeping both verses operative is preferred to abrogation even by scholars who accept that abrogation can occur (Rashīd Riḍā).^[103]

The contrast between plural and dual receives a social explanation as well. In Muḥammad ʿAbduh's account, recorded by Riḍā, women felt less shame about siḥāq than men felt about liwāṭ. The former could therefore spread openly, whereas the latter tended to remain concealed between its two participants.^[104] This explanation accounts for the grammatical contrast, but its application still depends on establishing that the verses concern those acts.

Were these acts known to the Arabs?

The claim that siḥāq and liwāṭ were unknown among the Arabs would weaken both interpretations that refer to them. Abū Ḥayyān answers that the acts existed before Islam, although they were rare.^[105]

The two poetic witnesses

He cites a line attributed to Ṭarafa b. al-ʿAbd:^[106]

⁧ مَلَكُ النَّهَارِ وَأَنْتِ اللَّيْلَ مُومِسَةٌ مَاءَ الرِّجَالِ عَلَى فَخْذَيْكِ كَالْقُرُسِ ⁩

"An angel by day, and by night you are a harlot, men's water on your thighs like frost."

He also cites anonymous rajaz:^[107]

⁧ يَا عَجَبًا لِسَاحِقَاتِ الورس الجاعلات المكس فوق المكس ⁩

"O the wonder of the women who grind the wars dye, who set maks upon maks!"

The historical point they address

Abū Ḥayyān adduces these lines in answering the claim that the acts were unknown among the Arabs. However, both citations leave historical gaps: the second uses sāḥiqāt, “grinders”, whose sexual implication requires explanation beyond a shared root, while the first is addressed to a woman, leaving its relevance to liwāṭ unclear.

The answers to the same-sex view

Every textual argument advanced for this view has an answer; taken together, they weaken the position's claim to any Qurʾānic support.

1. The four witnesses. The same-sex view's account of the act in 4:15 does not fit ⁧أَرْبَعَةً مِنْكُمْ⁩, "four from among you". Islamic law requires four witnesses for zinā alone.
2. No early exegete held it. The defence names Mujāhid. It adds that it is permissible to derive from a verse a new interpretation the early scholars did not give (al-Rāzī, answering for Abū Muslim).^[108] However, in Mujāhid's words as Majmaʿ al-Bayān reports them, ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩ are two men committing zinā, not a same-sex pair (an answer al-Ālūsī reports).^[109] And, as noted above, no Companion or Successor is known to have held the same-sex view. Consequently, this permission merely allows the argument to be evaluated on its own textual merits, it does not establish its validity.
3. The hadith of the 'way' (⁧سَبِيلًا⁩). The objection is that the hadith of the 'way' is about those who commit zinā. The defence replies that using the hadith here would abrogate the Qurʾān by a single report (al-Rāzī, answering for Abū Muslim).^[110] The hadith, however, can explain the 'way' that 4:15 left open without abrogating anything. And on the view that the confinement was abrogated, the Companions' agreed practice ended it, not a single report, as Question 2 explains. Consequently, the counter-argument collapses under either interpretation.
4. The plural and the dual. The plural ⁧وَاللَّاتِي⁩ in 4:15 and the dual ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩ in 4:16 do not need a same-sex act to explain them. Neither verse repeats the other. On the view al-Ālūsī gives as the majority's, 4:15 is about women who had been married and 4:16 about an unmarried pair, so each verse states a different case in different words (al-Ālūsī).^[111]
5. The aim of a verse left in force. This aim can be reached without the same-sex view. On al-Rāzī's account, the confinement lasted until the end that 4:15 itself set. So even with zinā as the act, no abrogation needs to be claimed (al-Rāzī).^[112]

An objection that does not work here: the Companions' silence

The Companions' silence does not count against the same-sex view either. It fails here as it failed against the liwāṭ view. It shows only that 4:16 set no ḥadd.

So the answers above weaken the same-sex view's claim to Qurʾānic support; the Companions' silence does not.

Which view is stronger?

Two interpretations remain persuasive for the primary reference of 4:16, because each explains a different feature of the wording.

The dual and the change in address

The dual naturally identifies the man and woman participating in zinā (al-Rāzī, al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[113] The change from ⁧مِنْ نِسَائِكُمْ⁩, "of your women", to ⁧مِنْكُمْ⁩, "of you", instead supports understanding the second verse as the ruling for men (Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[114]

The other interpretations introduce further considerations. Al-Ṭabarī connects the heavier penalty with prior marriage,^[115] Ibn ʿUthaymīn understands the masculine dual as two men committing liwāṭ and invokes its hadith,^[116] and Rashīd Riḍā favours an interpretation that keeps both verses in force.^[117] The earlier discussion has established the strict constraints of each argument: marriage is not stated as a condition, keeping a verse in force does not establish its referent, and liwāṭ can be included through the general meaning of the indecency without displacing zinā.

Why neither primary interpretation excludes the other

The men interpretation answers the objection from the dual by counting two categories, previously married and unmarried men. Conversely, the man-and-woman interpretation explains why women are mentioned separately: confinement applies to them, while harm applies to both participants. This is judged the best explanation (al-Rāzī), and the shared application of the harm is likewise supported (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[118]

Each interpretation therefore answers the principal grammatical objection against it. Both interpretations stand as equally valid. The additional inclusion of liwāṭ follows al-Maẓharī's explanation of the general term ⁧الْفَاحِشَةَ⁩ and is strengthened by the hadith discussed above.

Conclusion: The first verse is about women who commit zinā, proved by four Muslim men, and the second about the two who commit it; by the general meaning of 'the indecency', the second also includes two men who commit liwāṭ, a view strengthened by the hadith on liwāṭ.

The wording supports two distinct identities for ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩, "the two", of 4:16: a man and a woman, or the men beside the women.

And Allah knows best.

Q2. What was the 'way' (⁧سَبِيلًا⁩) Allah made for them, and is 4:15 abrogated?

4:15 sets an end to the confinement in its own words: ⁧حَتَّى يَتَوَفَّاهُنَّ الْمَوْتُ أَوْ يَجْعَلَ اللَّهُ لَهُنَّ سَبِيلًا⁩, "until death takes them or Allah ordains for them a way." The confinement was to last until one of these two things happened. Three things need explaining:

1. The 'way': what the 'way' (⁧سَبِيلًا⁩) Allah ordained turned out to be.
2. The married offender: whether the 'way' for the muḥṣan, one who has once consummated a lawful marriage, is stoning alone, or a hundred lashes and then stoning.
3. The name: whether the end of the confinement is naskh, the lifting of one ruling by a later one, or simply the end of a term that 4:15 itself set.

The Prophet ﷺ definitively settled the first question. The scholarly positions outlined below address the remaining two.

The four views below answer two different questions, so a scholar may hold one view on each. The first table shows the difference at a glance. The second table gives each view's argument, the scholars who hold it, and its evidence. Each view is called here by what it says: the abrogation view, the no-abrogation view, the lashes-and-stoning view and the stoning-alone view. Two other answers are taken up after them: that the confinement remains beside the flogging, and that the 'way' is marriage.

Arguments and evidence

What the 'way', ⁧سَبِيلًا⁩, of 4:15 turned out to be

The verse promised a new ruling without specifying it. The Prophet ﷺ clarified that ruling by invoking the verse's exact phrasing.

The Prophet's explanation

ʿUbāda b. al-Ṣāmit ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ relates that he said:

⁧ خُذُوا عَنِّي . خُذُوا عَنِّي . قَدْ جَعَلَ اللَّهُ لَهُنَّ سَبِيلًا . الْبِكْرُ بِالْبِكْرِ جَلْدُ مِائَةٍ وَنَفْيُ سَنَةٍ وَالثَّيِّبُ بِالثَّيِّبِ، جَلْدُ مِائَةٍ وَالرَّجْمُ ⁩

"Take it from me, take it from me: Allah has made a way for them. The unmarried with the unmarried, a hundred lashes and a year's exile; and the married with the married, a hundred lashes and stoning."^[123]

Another narration in Muslim describes the occasion: revelation weighed heavily on the Prophet ﷺ and darkened his face; when it ceased, he announced the ruling.^[124]

How the hadith explains the verse

The declaration ⁧قَدْ جَعَلَ اللَّهُ لَهُنَّ سَبِيلًا⁩, "Allah has made a way for them", expressly answers ⁧أَوْ يَجْعَلَ اللَّهُ لَهُنَّ سَبِيلًا⁩, "or Allah ordains for them a way". The promised 'way' is thus the ḥadd stated in the hadith (al-Nawawī, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ).^[125] Its treatment of the married offender must then be considered alongside the Prophet's ﷺ later practice.

Married and unmarried in the law

The distinction in the hadith concerns a legal status, not simply whether someone currently has a spouse.

The two categories

The hadith uses ⁧الْبِكْرُ⁩, "the unmarried", and ⁧الثَّيِّبُ⁩, "the married". In the explanation given here:

• The married offender has had intercourse within a valid marriage while adult, sane and free. That status continues if the marriage later ends.
• The unmarried offender has not met those conditions. Intercourse through a doubtful claim of lawfulness or within an invalid marriage does not establish this status (al-Nawawī).^[126]

The jurists call the status iḥṣān and the person who has it muḥṣan. Stoning applies only to an offender who is muḥṣan, an agreement reported by al-Shanqīṭī.^[127]

Why each participant is considered separately

"The unmarried with the unmarried" and "the married with the married" describe the usual pairing, rather than a condition requiring both participants to have the same status. Each receives the punishment applicable to that person's own status (al-Nawawī).^[128] References to married and unmarried offenders in this discussion have this legal meaning.

A 'way' heavier than the confinement

Does ⁧لَهُنَّ⁩, "for them", require the promised 'way' to be a lighter punishment?

Abū Muslim objects that something made "for them" should benefit them, whereas stoning is more severe than confinement. The answer begins with the explicit Prophetic explanation: the Prophet ﷺ himself identified the ḥadd as the 'way'. Moreover, a way out of one condition does not necessarily mean a less severe outcome; it may end that condition through a heavier ruling (al-Rāzī, Abū al-Suʿūd).^[129]

The progression also has a legislative explanation. Punishment was introduced in stages for an offence previously left unpunished, moving towards the more severe penalty (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[130] The comparative severity therefore does not overturn the hadith's identification of the promised 'way'.

The married offender: lashes and stoning, or stoning alone

The hadith joins flogging to stoning. The Prophet's ﷺ later practice, however, is the principal evidence for applying stoning alone.

The argument for combining the penalties

The words "a hundred lashes and stoning" expressly name both. ʿAlī ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ is also reported to have flogged Sharāḥa on Thursday and stoned her on Friday, explaining that he flogged her by the Book of Allah and stoned her by the Sunna of His Messenger ﷺ. No contrary account from ʿAlī is known (al-Qurṭubī).^[131] The account of ʿAlī combining the penalties is, however, not accepted as sound (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[132]

Why later practice establishes stoning alone

The Prophet ﷺ stoned Māʿiz, al-Ghāmidiyya and the woman to whom he sent Unays, without first flogging them.^[133] When two rulings concern the same matter, the later ruling governs (al-Shāfiʿī).^[134] The earlier combination is therefore understood as a first stage that was superseded by stoning alone, the position of al-Shāfiʿī and the jumhūr as reported by al-Nawawī.^[135]

Whether the earlier hadith is rejected or superseded

Al-Ṭabarī treats the sound accounts of stoning without flogging as evidence against the hadith combining both penalties.^[136] Yet Muslim relates the combined wording through the isnād from al-Ḥasan, from Ḥiṭṭān, from ʿUbāda ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩.^[137] The position adopted here treats the ṣaḥīḥ hadith as the initial legislation, superseded by the Prophet’s ﷺ subsequent practice. It therefore distinguishes strictly between a ruling that is legally inoperative and a report that is historically unsound. A different explanation treats the combined wording as a narrator's error (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[138]

The resulting ruling is stoning alone; the explanation adopted here retains the authenticity of the earlier hadith.

The unmarried offender: lashes and exile

The hundred lashes are agreed; the question is whether the year's exile is also a fixed part of the ḥadd.

Most scholars include exile in the ḥadd. Abū Ḥanīfa's school instead leaves it to the ruler's discretion (al-Qurṭubī, al-Nawawī, al-Jaṣṣāṣ, al-Ṣābūnī).^[139] The shared requirement is therefore the hundred lashes (Ibn ʿAṭiyya), and the year's exile is part of the ḥadd with them (al-Ṭabarī, al-Shāfiʿī).^[140]

The appendix, "The Stoning Penalty in Modern Discussion", considers the contemporary positions concerning the married offender.

The no-abrogation view: the word ⁧حَتَّى⁩, "until", in 4:15

On this interpretation, the confinement ended as the verse itself had prescribed, rather than through abrogation.

A Ruling with a Prescribed Term

Verse 4:15 required confinement until death or until Allah made a 'way'. Once that 'way' was revealed, the condition for ending confinement had been met. A fast likewise ends at nightfall without its ruling being abrogated (the argument of later scholars of uṣūl reported by al-Qurṭubī).^[141]

The hadith consequently explains what the verse left unspecified. It also restricts the general command to flog in 24:2. The hadith itself need not be an abrogating text (al-Khaṭṭābī, al-Rāzī).^[142]

Why the distinction matters

This account avoids treating each stage as a further abrogation: first the hadith abrogating 4:15, then the Nūr verse abrogating the hadith (al-Rāzī, Abū Ḥayyān).^[143] It also permits scholars who reject abrogation of the Qurʾān by the Sunna to accept the hadith as an explanation of the Qurʾān (a position Ibn Qudāma records).^[144]

Ibn al-ʿArabī likewise describes the confinement as a penalty prescribed until another penalty was made known, and reports agreement that the verse is not abrogated in this sense.^[145] The following response concerns precisely whether an ending that still required revelation should be called abrogation.

The Response for Abrogation: An Unspecified Term

The reply distinguishes a known ending, such as nightfall, from one whose meaning still awaits revelation.

A fasting person already knows when the fast must end. By contrast, the first audience of 4:15 did not know what the promised 'way' would be or when it would be established. The original command therefore continued until a later revelation gave a ruling that ended it.

On this explanation, saying that the later text "explains the ending" does not change its effect: it removes a ruling that remained operative until that revelation. That is naskh, even though the earlier verse announced that an ending would come (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[146]

The texts that ended the confinement of 4:15

The evidence for the end of confinement brings together the hadith of ʿUbāda and the command in 24:2 to flog the adulteress and the adulterer.

The Qurʾānic ruling and its Prophetic explanation

Confinement was abrogated by Allah's command in Sūrat al-Nūr, "then on the tongue of His Messenger", and ʿUbāda's hadith "cuts off doubt" that the earlier penalty had been confinement, or confinement together with harm (al-Shāfiʿī).^[147]

Agreement on the replacement of confinement is reported in the early and later commentaries (al-Ṭabarī, al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Qurṭubī, Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[148] The further question is how the hadith and the Nūr verse relate as proofs of that replacement.

Does the confinement of 4:15 remain beside the flogging?

The possibility of applying two penalties does not itself establish that both remain obligatory. The question is whether the first command still applies after the second is revealed.

The argument for retaining both

Confinement and flogging can be applied together, so some scholars held that the later penalty need not displace the earlier confinement and harm. Al-Shawkānī records this position without naming its adherents, but prefers abrogation and identifies the promised 'way' through ʿUbāda's report.^[149]

The Prescribed Term in the Verse

The confinement was ordered ⁧حَتَّى يَتَوَفَّاهُنَّ الْمَوْتُ أَوْ يَجْعَلَ اللَّهُ لَهُنَّ سَبِيلًا⁩, "until death takes them or Allah ordains for them a way". The disagreement discussed above concerns whether the arrival of that 'way' is called abrogation or the expiration anticipated by the verse. Both explanations make it the end of the confinement. Retaining confinement as an additional punishment would therefore require an answer to "until", and not only proof that confinement and flogging are physically compatible.

The harm commanded in 4:16 raises a further question because that verse expressly orders it to stop after repentance and reform. Question 4 examines its relationship to the later ḥadd.

Custody pending judgment

Detention while a case is being decided is different from confinement as the punishment itself. A judge may detain the accused while the uprightness of the witnesses is investigated. The remaining role of detention is understood in this way: before the ḥadd was revealed, detention awaited its legislation; afterward, it awaited its application (al-Maẓharī).^[150] This does not retain the former confinement as a second punishment.

Which text abrogated the confinement of 4:15?

For scholars who call the change abrogation, identifying the abrogating evidence matters. If ʿUbāda's hadith ended confinement before 24:2 was revealed, this would be an instance of the Sunna abrogating a Qurʾānic ruling. If the hadith accompanied the verse, it could instead explain the new Qurʾānic legislation.

Did the hadith precede 24:2?

The case for the hadith as the abrogator rests on its announcement: Allah has now ordained the promised 'way'. If 24:2 had already prescribed the punishment, that announcement would have added nothing to the law. The hadith must therefore have preceded the verse (al-Jaṣṣāṣ, al-Ṭaḥāwī and the Ḥanafī position).^[151] On this account, the ruling was first learned from the Prophet ﷺ, not from the Nūr verse (al-Jaṣṣāṣ, al-Sarakhsī).^[152]

That argument excludes one sequence, but does not establish the other. The verse and hadith might have been given together. The objection is developed in two steps (al-Rāzī):

1. If the verse had already established the 'way', the later announcement would indeed be unnecessary. But this does not exclude an announcement made when the verse was revealed.
2. An explanation restricting a general command may not be delayed beyond that command, because the delay would mislead its hearers, and this is al-Jaṣṣāṣ's own principle. Since the general flogging command does not apply to the married Muslim offender, its restriction could accompany it rather than follow it.

On al-Rāzī's account, the Prophet ﷺ announced the ruling when the Nūr verse was revealed. The argument for an earlier hadith therefore does not establish abrogation of the Qurʾān by the Sunna.^[153]

The disagreement is consequently about the evidence for the sequence, not about whether chronology matters. An earlier hadith could abrogate confinement; a simultaneous announcement could explain the verse and identify the promised 'way' in 4:15 (al-Rāzī).^[154] The account of revelation descending before the Prophet ﷺ spoke does not name the passage revealed on that occasion.^[155]

Could another Qurʾānic ruling have ended it?

A further possibility is the stoning verse: its recitation was abrogated while its ruling remained (Ibn Qudāma).^[156] This answers the objection that an āḥād report cannot abrogate the Qurʾān (Abū Yaʿlā, reported by Ibn al-Jawzī).^[157]

Ibn ʿĀshūr's answer: the Sunna known to the Companions

The individual narrations that reached later scholars capture only a fraction of the Companions' actual knowledge. Ibn ʿĀshūr expressly calls those later narrations āḥād, while explaining that the Sunna establishing the replacement punishment was mutawātir among the Companions. Their agreement, during the Prophet's ﷺ lifetime, to abandon confinement and apply the ḥadd establishes that they knew a Prophetic ruling which ended it. His conclusion is therefore abrogation by mutawātir Sunna, evidenced for later generations by the transmitted agreement of the Companions.^[158]

This is Ibn ʿĀshūr's answer to the difficulty about the strength of the evidence. It does not depend on classifying each surviving isnād as mutawātir.

Marriage as the 'way', ⁧سَبِيلًا⁩

One further interpretation takes the promised 'way' to mean marriage, not a newly legislated punishment. It assumes that the ḥadd was already known and that confinement was imposed afterward to prevent a repetition of the conduct; marriage would then end that additional restriction (al-Zamakhsharī).^[159]

The principal objection is the Prophet's ﷺ explicit identification of the 'way' with the prescribed punishment. Abū al-Suʿūd also finds no support for the marriage interpretation in the wording of 4:15. Riḍā observes that the Qurʾān alone does not rule out the chronology this interpretation requires, though the majority's chronology is supported by reports from the early exegetes.^[160] The hadith is the reason for preferring the ḥadd rather than marriage.

One legal outcome, different uses of naskh

Calling the change abrogation or the ending already anticipated by the verse need not produce a different law. A later revelation ended a command whose precise end had not previously been disclosed. The dispute is whether such a change should be called naskh. This disagreement is treated as terminological (Ibn Taymiyya).^[161] The early scholars could likewise use naskh more broadly than its strict technical sense (al-Qurṭubī).^[162]

Both explanations appear in al-Shanqīṭī's discussion: either the later ruling abrogated confinement, or it explained the 'way' for which confinement had been ordered to continue.^[163] In either explanation, confinement was temporary and the later legislation replaced it (Sayyid Quṭb, Mawdūdī).^[164] This agreement about the legal outcome does not require agreement about the definition of abrogation.

Which view is stronger?

Two conclusions are needed: the operative punishment, and the description of the change from the earlier law.

The punishment for the married offender

The Prophet's ﷺ later practice was to stone without first flogging. That practice is the basis for preferring stoning alone (al-Ṭabarī, al-Shāfiʿī).^[165] The combined punishment in ʿUbāda's hadith belongs to the earlier stage; ʿAlī ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ is reported to have applied it, and the Ẓāhirīs retain that position.^[166]

Whether the change is called abrogation

This tafsīr adopts the term naskh. Although 4:15 anticipated a 'way', it did not identify that way or specify when confinement would end. A further revelation was needed to end the ruling; Ibn ʿĀshūr regards that as abrogation.^[167] The alternative account treats the later revelation as the explanation of the promised 'way' (al-Rāzī). The difference between these uses of naskh is described as terminological (Ibn Taymiyya).^[168]

Conclusion: The 'way' Allah promised came with the Prophet's words and the Nūr verse, stoning for the married and a hundred lashes for the unmarried, and with it the confinement ended.

For the married offender, the 'way' is stoning alone. Whether the end of the confinement is called naskh or the end of its term, the law is the same.

And Allah knows best.

Q3. Who may serve as the four witnesses (⁧أَرْبَعَةً مِنْكُمْ⁩), and what was the legal nature of the confinement?

4:15 asks for proof before it gives a penalty: ⁧فَاسْتَشْهِدُوا عَلَيْهِنَّ أَرْبَعَةً مِنْكُمْ فَإِنْ شَهِدُوا فَأَمْسِكُوهُنَّ فِي الْبُيُوتِ⁩, "bring against them four [witnesses] from among you. And if they testify, confine them to houses". Without the four, the women are not confined, even when the act is certain (al-Biqāʿī).^[169] Four witnesses are one way to prove zinā. In the ḥadd that later replaced the confinement, a confession is another way. Confession stands beside the proof: ʿUmar ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ named it with the proof, and the Prophet ﷺ had Māʿiz ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ stoned on his own confession.^[170] Five things need explaining:

1. Why four: why zinā needs four witnesses (⁧أَرْبَعَةً مِنْكُمْ⁩, "four from among you") when other claims need two.
2. How hard the proof is: how the texts themselves make zinā hard to prove.
3. Who may be one of the four: men, Muslims, upright, and testifying to the act itself.
4. How the four could look: how the witnesses may look at the act, and why they may also stay silent.
5. The confinement: who imposed it, and whether it was a ḥadd, a penalty the Law itself fixes, or a taʿzīr, a penalty left to those in authority.

The principal dispute about confinement is whether it was the fixed penalty of its time or a provisional measure awaiting that penalty.

Arguments and evidence

Why 4:15 asks for ⁧أَرْبَعَةً مِنْكُمْ⁩, "four from among you"

The unusually demanding proof protects people from the spread of sexual accusations.

Four witnesses rather than two

Two witnesses are required in divorce, taking a wife back and a bequest; here the number is four (al-Shāfiʿī).^[173] This distinguishes zinā from other claims (al-Sarakhsī),^[174] and the requirement of four is agreed upon (Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Ibn Qudāma).^[175]

Why make the proof harder?

The purpose is satr: keeping a person's sin concealed rather than exposing it. Allah loves to conceal His servants' faults and condemns the desire to spread indecency. Requiring more witnesses makes an accusation harder to establish and prevents private sins from readily becoming public scandals (al-Sarakhsī).^[176] The requirement is thus deliberately severe on the accuser and protective of the accused (Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Qurṭubī, Abū Ḥayyān, Ibn ʿĀdil, al-Ālūsī, al-Zuḥaylī and others).^[177]

The number cannot simply measure the gravity of the offence. Killing is graver, yet two witnesses suffice; the law also recognizes qasāma, the prescribed oaths used in a homicide claim supported by grounds for suspicion. The protection of life calls for one evidentiary approach, while the concealment of private sexual wrongdoing explains another (Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[178]

How the texts make zinā hard to prove

The restriction is not a later device added by jurists. The Qurʾānic rules and Prophetic practice themselves discourage unsupported accusations and leave room for private repentance.

An accusation without four witnesses

The demand in 4:15 is reinforced by 24:4, which prescribes eighty lashes for accusing chaste women without four witnesses, and 24:13, which calls such accusers liars in Allah's sight. When three men testified against al-Mughīra b. Shuʿba ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ and the fourth did not explicitly confirm the act, ʿUmar ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ had the three flogged for slander. This is the position of most scholars (al-Shāfiʿī, al-Shanqīṭī; Ibn Qudāma records the majority position).^[179]

An accuser cannot repair his deficient accusation by appointing himself the fourth witness: his unsupported accusation has already made him liable as a slanderer (Ibn al-Qāsim).^[180] These restrictions protect a woman from accusations motivated by hostility, including hostility from her husband's family (Muftī Muḥammad Shafīʿ).^[181]

Even a confession was not eagerly accepted

When Māʿiz ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ asked to be purified, the Prophet ﷺ first sent him away: ⁧ارْجِعْ فَاسْتَغْفِرِ اللَّهَ وَتُبْ إِلَيْهِ⁩, "Go back, ask Allah's forgiveness and turn to Him in repentance."^[182] Another account describes four confessions from which the Prophet ﷺ turned away, followed at the fifth by precise questions about intercourse itself: ⁧كَمَا يَغِيبُ الْمِرْوَدُ فِي الْمُكْحُلَةِ⁩, "as the kohl stick disappears into the kohl pot" (Ibn al-ʿArabī, citing Abū Dāwūd and al-Nasāʾī).^[183] When Māʿiz later fled during the stoning, the Prophet ﷺ asked why they had not left him. This is evidence that a person whose punishment rests on his own confession is not pursued if he flees (Ibn Qudāma).^[184]

A husband is not exempt

Abū Hurayra ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ reports that Saʿd b. ʿUbāda ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ asked:

⁧ يا رسولَ الله، إن وجَدتُ مَعَ امرأتِي رَجُلًا أُمهِلُه حَتَّى آتِيَ بأربَعَةِ شُهَداءَ؟ قال : " نَعَم "⁩

"Messenger of Allah, if I find a man with my wife, am I to leave him until I bring four witnesses?" He said: "Yes."^[185]

Personal certainty therefore gives a husband no authority to inflict punishment himself. The hadith shows that no one below the imām may kill or punish on the strength of what he personally witnessed (al-Shāfiʿī).^[186]

The reported cases

The cases from the Prophet's ﷺ lifetime and the rightly guided caliphs are described as proceeding from confessions, with questioning that did not seek to secure punishment (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jazīrī).^[187] That description has a recorded exception: the two Jews brought before the Prophet ﷺ were stoned after testimony that the witnesses had seen the act itself (Ibn al-ʿArabī, citing Abū Dāwūd).^[188] Together, these accounts explain why the jurists attend so closely to the quality and exact content of the testimony.

Who may be one of the four witnesses of 4:15

The number alone is insufficient. The witnesses must meet the qualifications for this testimony, and what they report must establish intercourse rather than suggest it.

Muslim men

The verse first names ⁧مِنْ نِسَائِكُمْ⁩, “of your women”, then requires ⁧أَرْبَعَةً مِنْكُمْ⁩, “four from among you”, to testify against them. Ibn al-ʿArabī explains the contrast:

⁧ قَوْله تَعَالَى: ﴿مِنْكُمْ﴾ [ النساء: ١٥ ] الْمُرَادُ بِهِ هَاهُنَا الذُّكُورُ دُونَ الْإِنَاثِ؛ لِأَنَّهُ سُبْحَانَهُ ذَكَرَ أَوَّلًا ﴿مِنْ نِسَائِكُمْ﴾ [ النساء: ١٥ ] ثُمَّ قَالَ: ﴿مِنْكُمْ﴾ [ النساء: ١٥ ] فَاقْتَضَى ذَلِكَ أَنْ يَكُونَ الشَّاهِدُ غَيْرَ الْمَشْهُودِ عَلَيْهِ، وَلَا خِلَافَ فِي ذَلِكَ بَيْنَ الْأُمَّةِ .⁩

“His statement, ‘from among you’, means males here, not females. He first said ‘of your women’, then said ‘from among you’. This entails that the witness is different from the person testified against. There is no disagreement about this among the community.”^[189]

The apparent sense of "witnesses" here is likewise taken to refer to men (al-Shāfiʿī).^[190] Al-Zuhrī reports that the practice of the Prophet ﷺ and the two caliphs after him did not admit women's testimony in the ḥudūd.^[191]

The juristic explanation connects this restriction with the principle that a ḥadd is averted by doubt: Ibn ʿUthaymīn considers the testimony of four women insufficient to remove that doubt.^[192] Agreement on male witnesses is reported, with an exceptional early account accepting three men and two women. That account is anomalous and not relied upon (Ibn Qudāma); the standard requirement remains four men (al-Qurṭubī, Ibn Qudāma, al-Maẓharī).^[193]

They must also be Muslims, because ⁧مِنْكُمْ⁩ addresses the believers (al-Ṭabarī).^[194] On the rule stated by al-Zuḥaylī, a non-Muslim's testimony to zinā is not accepted even against a woman of his own faith.^[195]

Uprightness and legal capacity

Although 4:15 does not expressly repeat ʿadāla, uprightness, the Qurʾān requires it in the other testimony it regulates. The same requirement therefore applies here (al-Shāfiʿī).^[196] It is particularly appropriate where the proof has been made demanding to protect people from exposure (al-Saʿdī).^[197] The classical qualifications also require freedom, adulthood and sanity, which al-Shāfiʿī reports as agreed conditions.^[198]

Direct and explicit testimony

The phrase ⁧فَإِنْ شَهِدُوا⁩, "and if they testify", requires an express statement of what was witnessed, not hints or insinuations. The testimony is given in the form "I bear witness" (al-Saʿdī; al-Rāghib and al-Samīn on the meaning and form of testimony).^[199]

This precision matters because zinā can be used of conduct short of intercourse (al-Shāfiʿī).^[200] A judge must therefore question the witnesses until they describe having seen intercourse itself, using the comparison of the kohl stick entering its pot (al-Shāfiʿī).^[201] If their answers disclose grounds for averting the ḥadd, it is averted (Mālik, reported by Ibn al-Qāsim).^[202]

How the four witnesses could look at the act

Direct testimony raises an apparent difficulty: looking at another person's private parts is normally forbidden. How could such a look support valid testimony from an upright witness?

Purpose distinguishes the permissible look from the sinful one

Looking for the purpose of testimony is permitted and does not disqualify the witness (al-Shāfiʿī, Abū Ḥayyān).^[203] Deliberately looking is not, by itself, the objection. The four schools accept testimony from those who acknowledge having looked deliberately for this purpose, just as necessary observation by a physician or midwife is permitted (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jazīrī).^[204]

Looking for sexual pleasure is different. It is sinful, and the rejection of testimony given by witnesses who admit that purpose is reported as a consensus (al-Jazīrī, Ibn al-Humām, Ibn Nujaym).^[205] A qualification is recorded from some Shāfiʿīs: a single such look does not necessarily destroy the uprightness of a person whose usual conduct is obedient.^[206]

Testifying or concealing the sin

A witness may testify or conceal what he saw. Both can be acts done for Allah, although concealment is encouraged (al-Qudūrī, al-Marghīnānī).^[207]

In al-Qudūrī's explanation, an unjustified delay indicates that the witness initially chose concealment. A later decision to testify then raises suspicion of rancour, and the testimony is refused. He cites ʿUmar's description of such men as "witnesses of rancour".^[208] This reasoning concerns the witness's motive, not a relaxation of the need for direct knowledge.

The implication for public conduct

In the opinion of this author, four witnesses can testify only to an act done so openly that four people saw it, so the requirement applies only to an act committed in public view, and this is why so few cases in the reports came by witnesses.

Why the four witnesses outlived the confinement of 4:15

Replacing a punishment need not replace the proof required to establish the offence. The four witnesses are expressly retained where the abrogation of the other rulings in this verse is described (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[209]

The later Qurʾānic legislation confirms the same requirement: "Why did they not produce for it four witnesses?" (24:13). The two verses are placed together in the chapters on testimony to zinā (al-Bayhaqī),^[210] and 4:15 is the original statement of the rule which Sūrat al-Nūr confirms (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[211] The confinement ended; the evidentiary requirement did not.

Whom each command of 4:15 addresses

The commands to produce witnesses and to confine the convicted women concern different responsibilities.

Producing evidence is not a right to punish

The view that the verse addresses husbands makes sense where a husband brings an accusation (al-Durra).^[212] The burden of producing the witnesses falls on the accusers: this is how al-Bayḍāwī and al-Qāsimī interpret the command in this sense, while al-Maẓharī addresses rulers who require those witnesses from the accusers.^[213]

But the command ⁧فَأَمْسِكُوهُنَّ⁩, "confine them", concerns imprisonment. Judges decide whether testimony is admissible and impose imprisonment; the accusation does not confer that authority on a husband or guardian (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[214]

Individual and communal responsibility

Other explanations address the rulers (al-Baghawī),^[215] or the Muslim community responsible for its common affairs and the appointment of rulers (Riḍā).^[216] A separate disagreement concerns who was commanded to impose confinement: husbands, guardians, or governors and judges. These are three alternative interpretations recorded by Abū Ḥayyān.^[217] The interpretation adopted here is Ibn ʿĀshūr’s: imposing this punishment belongs to the public authorities.

The confinement accordingly took place in houses appointed by the rulers, not as a punishment imposed by a household in its own home (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[218] Such houses served as prisons in the early period before the increase in offenders led to the construction of prisons (Ibn al-ʿArabī). Two other interpretations take ⁧الْبُيُوتِ⁩, "the houses", to mean the prisons (Saʿīd b. Jubayr, al-Wāḥidī) or the women's own homes (Riḍā).^[219]

The ḥadd view: the confinement of 4:15 was the ḥadd of its time

A punishment can be divinely fixed even if it is temporary. The verse specifies confinement, its location ⁧فِي الْبُيُوتِ⁩, "in the houses", and its duration: death or the 'way' Allah would ordain. It also makes the punishment conditional on the testimony of four. The rulers appoint the houses, but do not choose a different penalty. This is the basis for treating confinement as the ḥadd of that stage; al-Qurṭubī reports that description from Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ and al-Ḥasan.^[220]

A further account describes the women as barred from marriage until death. Ibn ʿĀdil takes Ibn Zayd's report of that additional deprivation as evidence that confinement was a punishment and not a wait for one.^[221] Its protective purpose was also explained: preventing the opportunity to repeat the act and encouraging chastity (al-Rāzī, Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[222]

The provisional view: a discretionary penalty (taʿzīr)

The opposing argument emphasizes that the verse expressly awaits another ruling. On this account, the temporary punishment belongs to taʿzīr, discipline whose application is entrusted to those in authority, rather than the permanent ḥadd (al-Ṣābūnī).^[223]

Its immediate purpose was deterrence while the community awaited a further ruling that would address its response to the offence (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[224] The gradual introduction of punishment also prepared a community unfamiliar with obedience to an established judicial order: a provisional measure preceded the final legislation (Mawdūdī, al-Ṣābūnī).^[225]

A different explanation takes the temporary measure as custody pending the revelation and application of the ḥadd, rather than a punishment in its own right, and relates its continuing procedural use to detention while a judge investigates the witnesses' uprightness (al-Maẓharī).^[226]

Which view is stronger?

The adopted conclusion is that confinement was the ḥadd of its time. Its temporary duration does not make its content discretionary.

What the verse actually leaves to the ruler

The strongest objection is that the community was left to determine the punishment's manner and measure (al-Zuḥaylī).^[227] Yet the verse prescribes confinement ⁧فِي الْبُيُوتِ⁩, "in the houses", and states the two events that would end it. The ruler appoints the place; he does not determine a different kind or duration of punishment.

This is why Ibn al-ʿArabī calls it a ḥadd legislated to last until the further ruling,^[228] and Abū Ḥayyān regards that as the apparent sense.^[229] Nor does the command describe custody before proof: confinement follows testimony and may continue until death. The later, lasting ḥadd is the 'way' subsequently explained by the Prophet ﷺ (al-Nawawī).^[230]

The distinction from 4:16 is important. That verse does not specify the form of harm in the same way, which is why taʿzīr is considered there. Neither analysis makes the old confinement a continuing punishment today. The likelier view is that life imprisonment has a basis in the Law, but deriving it as a present sentence from a verse whose penal ruling has been abrogated is open to question (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[231]

Conclusion: Four upright Muslim men must testify to the act itself, a rule that outlived the verse's punishment and guards the accused more than it serves the accuser.

The confinement that the four proved was imposed by the rulers, never by a household. It stood as the ḥadd of its era, its prescribed term merely anticipating the permanent ḥadd.

And Allah knows best.

Q4. What was the harm commanded in 4:16, and what does it mean to turn away from ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩, "the two"?

4:16 gives a penalty and, in the same verse, opens a way out of it: ⁧فَآذُوهُمَا فَإِنْ تَابَا وَأَصْلَحَا فَأَعْرِضُوا عَنْهُمَا⁩, "punish them both. But if they repent and correct themselves, leave them alone." The word rendered "punish" is ⁧فَآذُوهُمَا⁩, "harm them both". It does not say what kind of harm. 4:16 then closes on Allah's two names, ⁧تَوَّابًا رَحِيمًا⁩, "Accepting of Repentance and Merciful". Four things need explaining:

1. The harm: what ⁧فَآذُوهُمَا⁩, "harm them both", commanded: words, words and blows, or whatever those who applied it judged.
2. The door of mercy: why 4:16 ends the harm with repentance, and what ⁧فَأَعْرِضُوا عَنْهُمَا⁩, "leave them alone", asks of the community.
3. The harm after the ḥudūd: whether the harm, or a rebuke, remained once the ḥadd came.
4. The two names: what ⁧تَوَّابًا رَحِيمًا⁩, "Accepting of Repentance and Merciful", says of the servant's repentance and of Allah's.

Three interpretations differ over what the command required beyond verbal censure.

Arguments and evidence

What the word ⁧فَآذُوهُمَا⁩, "harm them both", covers

The word can include injury by speech or action; its breadth is the source of the disagreement (al-Ṭabarī).^[235] It is frequently used of verbal harm (Ibn Taymiyya),^[236] but the early explanations describe three forms: reproach and rebuke, insult without reproach, or words accompanied by blows and sandals (Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Qurṭubī).^[237]

Verbal censure is common to these accounts. Al-Rāzī reports agreement that the command includes rebuke and reproach.^[238] The question is whether the verse also requires physical punishment, or merely permits the authorities to determine an appropriate disciplinary measure.

Does the report of the sandals establish a required punishment?

Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ reports that a man who committed zinā was reproached and struck with sandals.^[239] Yāsīn grades its route through ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭalḥa twice: thābit, established, in his notes to Ibn Kathīr, and ḥasan in another of his works.^[240] The word ⁧فَآذُوهُمَا⁩ is also understood as indicating beating (al-Rāghib, al-Samīn).^[241]

A possible meaning is not necessarily a required one

The textual objection is that a command to cause harm is fulfilled by the least conduct that satisfies it. Verbal rebuke fulfils the command. The text gives no indication of beating, so beating may not be adopted (al-Rāzī).^[242]

An example of discretionary discipline

A second answer accepts the reported practice without making it the sole prescribed form of punishment. Al-Ṭabarī finds no Prophetic report fixing the form of harm, whether āḥād or mutawātir.^[243] The verse therefore leaves its application to the ruler's judgment (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[244] On this explanation, the sandals are an example of the discipline applied under the command, not an additional fixed rule (Muftī Muḥammad Shafīʿ).^[245]

So the three views answer this question differently:

• The tongue view: the harm is words, and nothing beyond words is allowed (al-Rāzī).
• The tongue-and-hand view: the sandals were part of the harm (the report of Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩).
• The open view: the form of the harm was left to the ruler (Ibn ʿĀshūr).

Repentance and reform end the harm

The command does not authorize indefinite punishment. It expressly requires the harm to stop when the two offenders repent and reform: ⁧فَإِنْ تَابَا وَأَصْلَحَا⁩, "but if they repent and correct themselves". They abandon the indecency and put their conduct right through obedience to Allah (al-Ṭabarī).^[246] The intended return to obedience therefore determines when this discipline must end.

The two verses specify different endings (al-Saʿdī):^[247]

• confinement in 4:15 lasts until death or the promised 'way';
• the harm in 4:16 ends with repentance and reform.

Repentance accordingly ends the harm, but does not by itself end the confinement prescribed in 4:15 (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[248]

Repentance in the Prophetic reports

When Māʿiz ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ fled during his stoning and was pursued, the Prophet ﷺ said:

⁧ هَلَّا تَرَكْتُمُوهُ لَعَلَّهُ أَنْ يَتُوبَ، فَيَتُوبَ اللَّهُ عَلَيْه ⁩

"Why did you not leave him? Perhaps he would repent, and Allah would accept his repentance."

Al-Albānī's grade of ṣaḥīḥ does not extend to the clause beginning "perhaps he would repent".^[249] The distinction matters: the question "Why did you not leave him?" is included in the authentication, but the explicit explanation about repentance is not.

Other reports expressly praise the repentance of women who confessed. The Ghāmidiyya's ⁧رضي الله عنها⁩ repentance was such that even a taker of unjust taxes would have been forgiven through it; the Juhaniyya's ⁧رضي الله عنها⁩ would have sufficed for seventy people of Madinah.^[250] These reports establish the greatness of their repentance. Whether repentance also removes an otherwise applicable ḥadd is a separate juristic dispute, examined below under Ibn Qudāma.

What ⁧فَأَعْرِضُوا عَنْهُمَا⁩, "leave them alone", requires

After the offenders have abandoned the sin and reformed, the community must stop rebuking them. Repentance removes the basis for continuing to hold the sin against them (Ibn Kathīr, al-Wāḥidī).^[251]

"Turn away" here means leave them alone, not ostracize them (Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Qurṭubī, al-Zuḥaylī).^[252] The legal reasoning is straightforward: the harm was imposed because of the sin; when that cause has ceased, its consequence ceases with it (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[253] An order to end punishment cannot itself become a means of prolonging punishment through exclusion.

Does turning away also express contempt?

Two interpretations explain what the turning away leaves once the two offenders repent. In one, the turning away is not shunning but still shows contempt for the earlier sin (Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Qurṭubī, al-Zuḥaylī), and Ibn ʿAṭiyya compares it with "turn away from the ignorant" (7:199). In the other, the conclusion adopted here, the harm and the rebuke stop and no contempt remains (Ibn Kathīr, Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Abū al-Suʿūd, Saʿīd b. Jubayr).^[254]

That conclusion has two reasons. First, treating repentant people with contempt would continue to hold against them a sin of which they have repented. Second, the comparison with 7:199 concerns people persisting in ignorance, whereas 4:16 expressly concerns people who have repented and reformed. Their changed condition is the reason the verse commands the community to leave them alone.

Did the harm remain after the ḥudūd were legislated?

The repentance clause explains when harm stopped for an individual offender. It does not by itself settle whether that early punishment continued after the later legislation.

The adopted answer is abrogation. The later flogging and stoning punishments addressed the same offence; their chronology was known, and they replaced rather than supplemented the earlier harm (Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[255] The confinement and harm are likewise described as abrogated (al-Shāfiʿī).^[256]

This also limits the practical importance of reconstructing the exact early form of harm: once its ruling had been abrogated, uncertainty about whether it included a particular kind of physical injury did not prevent compliance with the operative law (al-Ṭabarī).^[257]

Is a rebuke still required after the ḥadd?

One position retains verbal discipline even after the punishment has changed. Al-Naḥḥās, as reported by al-Qurṭubī, requires the offenders to be rebuked for their sin and disobedience; al-Zajjāj also records the position that the harm continues until repentance.^[258]

The evidence against reproach after punishment

Ibn Kathīr cites the hadith of the two Ṣaḥīḥs:

⁧ إذا زَنَتْ أمَة أحدكُم فَلْيَجْلدْها الحدَّ ولا يُثَرِّبْ عليها ⁩

"If the slave-woman of one of you commits zinā, let him flog her the ḥadd and not reproach her."^[259]

The prohibition concerns reproach added after the punishment. The ḥadd expiates the act, so the person administering it must not continue to reproach her. Tathrīb means rebuke and holding the sin against its doer (al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ).^[260]

In the opinion of this author, the reason applies to the two offenders of 4:16 as well, because it is the ḥadd that expiates the act, whoever committed it. The harm, which the ḥadd replaced, does not survive beside it. It is abrogated, and Ibn al-ʿArabī rules the same.

Reproach before and after the later legislation

The order in 4:16 places repentance after the punishment. On Muftī Muḥammad Shafīʿ's explanation, the offenders are first disciplined; once they repent and reform, further disgrace and punishment must stop. If they do not repent, reproach continues: "however, in case repentance has not been made, reproach is in order even after punishment".^[261]

This explains the early penalty of 4:16, whose cessation is expressly conditional on ⁧فَإِنْ تَابَا وَأَصْلَحَا⁩, "if they repent and correct themselves". It does not overturn the later hadith's prohibition of reproach after the ḥadd. That hadith names no additional repentance as a condition: the completed ḥadd itself expiates the act. The distinction is between continuing discipline under the early rule and adding reproach after the punishment which replaced it.

The two names: ⁧تَوَّابًا رَحِيمًا⁩, "Accepting of Repentance and Merciful"

The closing words ⁧إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ تَوَّابًا رَحِيمًا⁩, "Indeed, Allah is ever Accepting of Repentance and Merciful", explain why the community must make room for the offenders' return.

The servant's return and Allah's acceptance

Tawba means a return, but the servant's return and Allah's turning toward him are different. For the servant, repentance requires abandoning the sin because it is wrong, regretting it, resolving not to return to it, and making good what can be put right (al-Rāghib).^[262]

Allah's turning toward His servant both enables repentance and accepts it. Before the servant repents, Allah grants him the ability to do so: "then He turned to them so that they might repent" (9:118). Afterward, He accepts it: "It is He who accepts repentance from His servants" (42:25; Ibn ʿUthaymīn, al-Maẓharī).^[263] In this second sense, Allah returns to the servant with grace and forgiveness (al-Rāzī, al-Wāḥidī).^[264]

Thus ⁧تَوَّابًا⁩, "one who turns often", can describe a servant who repeatedly repents and Allah's repeated gracious turning toward His servants, without making the two actions identical (al-Rāghib, Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[265]

Mercy at the end of a penal command

⁧رَحِيمًا⁩ affirms Allah's mercy and compassion toward them (al-Ṭabarī).^[266] The verse therefore does not leave the repentant offender defined by the offence. It closes with acceptance and mercy, then leads into 4:17's account of the repentance Allah accepts (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[267]

Which view is stronger?

Verbal rebuke is the requirement established by the command itself. It fulfils the minimum meaning of harm without assuming a particular physical punishment that the verse does not name; this is al-Rāzī's reason for preferring it.^[268]

Ibn ʿAbbās's report says that sandals were used, but no report from the Prophet ﷺ names the form of the harm, so it was never fixed (al-Ṭabarī).^[269] Any measure beyond words was therefore a matter for those in authority, not private retaliation (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[270]

The verse is explicit about the ending: repentance and reform require the harm to stop. Under that early rule, reproach continued only while the offenders remained unrepentant (Muftī Muḥammad Shafīʿ).^[271]

Conclusion: The harm was verbal rebuke, and any measure beyond words was left to those in authority; the penalty ended with repentance, and turning away means leaving the two alone, not shunning them.

As a penalty for zinā, the harm ended when the ḥudūd came, and after the ḥadd no rebuke is owed for the act it expiated. Throughout, the verse prefers repentance and reform to the penalty, and it culminates with Allah, who accepts the repentance of those who turn to Him.

And Allah knows best.

2. Distinctive Contributions of the Commentators

These discussions consider the role of witnesses, the sequence of the legislation, the meaning of the promised 'way', and the disputed effect of repentance on a later ḥadd.

Al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538 AH / 1144 CE)

Admonition by witnesses. The command to harm may address witnesses as well as rulers. Someone who discovers the two offenders in secret could rebuke them and warn that the matter will be taken to the imām. If they repent before that happens, the witnesses must cease pursuing them (al-Zamakhsharī).^[272] This interpretation concerns admonition and referral to authority, not a witness's right to impose a judicial punishment.

Al-Rāzī (d. 606 AH / 1210 CE)

Did the verses come down in reverse order? Two accounts place the harm before the confinement. In the account attributed to al-Ḥasan, harm initially applied to both offenders and confinement was later added for the woman; al-Jaṣṣāṣ finds this chronology unlikely in one respect.^[273] Another account makes confinement abrogate the earlier harm, although the later verse is recited first; al-Qurṭubī records this position through Ibn Fūrak.^[274]

Both explanations require a reversal of the sequence in the muṣḥaf. Al-Rāzī rejects al-Ḥasan's account as highly unlikely because it disrupts the order of the verses.^[275] The same chronological difficulty affects the second account. The discussion here therefore follows the order in which the verses are recited.

Ibn Qudāma (d. 620 AH / 1223 CE)

A rule for testimony, not a duty to expose. The imperative ⁧فَاسْتَشْهِدُوا⁩, "call to witness", explains how a judgment resting on testimony is established; it does not order people to search for witnesses (Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[276] Concealing a private sin may be better than bringing it to court. Ibn Qudāma supports that preference with the hadith, in Muslim's wording:

⁧ من ستر مسلما، ستره الله في الدنيا والآخرة ⁩

"Whoever covers a Muslim, Allah covers him in this world and the next."^[277]

Testimony remains permissible, as the verse itself shows: ⁧فَاسْتَشْهِدُوا عَلَيْهِنَّ أَرْبَعَةً مِنْكُمْ⁩.^[278] The legal requirements for giving evidence do not make giving it obligatory in every case.

Does repentance remove a ḥadd? Ibn Qudāma records two riwāyāt within his school without preferring either. The dispute concerns the later ḥadd, not whether repentance ended the earlier harm of 4:16.

The first riwāya relies on ⁧فَإِنْ تَابَا وَأَصْلَحَا فَأَعْرِضُوا عَنْهُمَا⁩, "but if they repent and reform, leave them alone".^[279] It also invokes the promise following the theft penalty: "whoever repents after his wrongdoing and reforms, Allah will turn to him" (5:39).

Two hadiths are cited with this argument. The first is ⁧التَّائِبُ مِنَ الذَّنْبِ، كَمَنْ لَا ذَنْبَ لَهُ⁩, "the one who repents of a sin is like one who has no sin". Its route through Abū ʿUbayda from his father is interrupted, although al-Sakhāwī records his teacher's grading of ḥasan, explained as resting on corroborating reports.^[280] The second is the response to Māʿiz's flight: ⁧هَلَّا تَرَكْتُمُوهُ لَعَلَّهُ أَنْ يَتُوبَ، فَيَتُوبَ اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ⁩, "Why did you not leave him? Perhaps he would repent, and Allah would accept his repentance." Al-Albānī's ṣaḥīḥ grading expressly excludes the clause beginning "perhaps he would".^[281] That qualification affects the explicit reference to repentance used in this argument. The Qurʾānic evidence is also joined by analogy: a ḥadd belonging purely to Allah's right may be removed by repentance, as the highway robber's is.^[282]

The second riwāya is also the position of Mālik, Abū Ḥanīfa and one of al-Shāfiʿī's views.^[283] Its argument begins with the general command to flog in 24:2, which does not exempt the repentant. It then points to Māʿiz and the Ghāmidiyya, who came repentant and sought purification, yet were punished. Finally, it treats the ḥadd as an expiation which repentance does not remove.^[284] Muslim relates the two stonings.^[285]

The praise of the women's repentance is important to this argument. Muslim reports of the Juhaniyya:

⁧ لَقَدْ تَابَتْ تَوْبَةً لَوْ قُسِمَتْ بَيْنَ سَبْعِينَ مِنْ أَهْلِ الْمَدِينَةِ لَوَسِعَتْهُمْ ⁩

"She has repented with a repentance that, if it were divided among seventy of the people of Madina, would be enough for them all."

Of the Ghāmidiyya he reports:

⁧ لَقَدْ تَابَتْ تَوْبَةً، لَوْ تَابَهَا صَاحِبُ مَكْسٍ لَغُفِرَ لَهُ ⁩

"She has repented with a repentance that, if a collector of unlawful levies had made it, he would be forgiven."^[286]

Both accounts expressly affirm repentance despite the application of the punishment.

Within the first riwāya, a further question remains: does repentance alone suffice, or must reform also be demonstrated, as ⁧وَأَصْلَحَا⁩, "and reform", would require? Ibn Qudāma calls the first the apparent position of his school.^[287] Where demonstrated reform is required, enough time must pass to establish its sincerity. He rejects fixing that period at one year without textual evidence. Repentance before the offender is caught lifts the penalty, as 5:34 says of those who wage war, but repentance after capture does not, except that a penalty proven by the offender's own confession is left if he repents, as the report of Māʿiz's flight shows (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[288]

Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1354 AH / 1935–36 CE)

Can the 'way' mean a change in the offender rather than new legislation? Muḥammad ʿAbduh objects that death and the 'way' are presented as alternative endings of an existing confinement. He therefore questions interpreting the second as a new ruling revealed about the women.^[289] Riḍā offers repentance and reform as a possible 'way' if the indecency means zinā, drawing support from 4:16's command to leave repentant offenders alone.^[290]

The answer adopted here is that new legislation can itself provide release. The words ⁧أَوْ يَجْعَلَ اللَّهُ لَهُنَّ سَبِيلًا⁩, "or Allah ordains for them a way", promise a way out of confinement (al-Ṭabarī).^[291] The hadith then identifies it: "Take it from me, take it from me: Allah has made a way for them", followed by the prescribed punishment.^[292] The new ruling is therefore not an alternative to a way out; it is the means by which the old confinement ends. And Allah knows best.

3. Iʿrāb: Grammatical Analysis

Both verses begin by identifying people through an act, then state what is to be done. A conditional sentence follows: testimony precedes confinement in 4:15; repentance and reform require an end to reproach in 4:16. Dār al-Ṣaḥābah is the baseline below, supplemented by al-Jadwal where needed.^[293] The alternatives are explained after the tables, including their effect on translation.

Word / Grammar / What it does

Clause / Position

The baseline follows Dār al-Ṣaḥābah and al-Jadwal. Alternatives from al-Mujtabā and al-Durra are identified where they occur.^[295]

Where the Grammar Changes the Meaning

1. The fāʾ connects the command to the offence. The verse does not first identify particular women and then give an unrelated command about them. It identifies them by the act: “those who commit the indecency”. The command applies because they commit it. This explains why its predicate can begin with fāʾ, although an ordinary nominal predicate does not. Al-Akhfash's objection to making “cut off” the predicate in the verse about theft illustrates the ordinary restriction.^[300] Here, however, a relative noun followed by a verb has the force of a condition: whoever does this is subject to what follows (al-Akhfash, al-ʿUkbarī).^[301]

This construction also explains the rafʿ of ⁧اللَّذَانِ⁩. Makkī reports Sībawayh's preference for treating it as the subject, although the sentence contains a command. Naṣb with an understood governing verb remains grammatically possible: resemblance to a condition does not make the relative noun an actual conditional particle.^[302] The fāʾ makes the consequence explicit. Without it, the sentence would not express this connection as clearly (al-Sāmarrāʾī).^[303]

The alternative analysis understands an omitted predicate: “among what is recited to you is the ruling of those women who …”. The command then begins a separate sentence. Al-Samīn explains this through Sībawayh's treatment of the verses about the adulteress and the thief.^[304] The objection is that no such omission is needed here: a relative noun followed by a verb already permits the fāʾ. Al-Zarkashī records that objection and al-Ṣaffār's answer that the competing analyses each have a difficulty.^[305]

Neither analysis changes the instruction in English: “as for those of your women who commit the indecency, call four of you to witness against them.” They differ over sentence structure, not over who is subject to the command. The tables retain Dār al-Ṣaḥābah's subject-and-predicate analysis.

1. ⁧أَوْ⁩ makes the 'way' either an end of the confinement or an exception to it; the English changes, but the outcome does not. Both accounts explain why ⁧يَجْعَلَ⁩ is in naṣb. On the first, ⁧أَوْ⁩ joins it to ⁧يَتَوَفَّاهُنَّ⁩ under the same ⁧حَتَّى⁩, "or until Allah makes", so the 'way' is a second end of the confinement beside death. On the second, ⁧أَوْ⁩ means "unless", as in the Arabs' saying ⁧لألزَمَنَّك أو تقضيَني حقي⁩, "I will hold on to you unless you pay me my due". Both accounts are accepted as sound (al-ʿUkbarī, al-Samīn).^[306] For the second, al-Samīn cites a line by an unnamed poet:^[307]

⁧ فَسِرْ في بلادِ اللهِ والتمسِ الغِنَى تَعِشْ ذا يَسارٍ أو تموت فَتُعْذَرا ⁩

"So travel in Allah's lands and seek wealth: you will live in ease, unless you die first and are excused."

Al-Samīn cites the line for ⁧أَوْ⁩ meaning "unless" before a verb in naṣb, which is how the poet's "or die" is understood. On this account the 'way' is not a second end of the confinement but an exception to it: the confinement lasts until death, unless the 'way' comes (al-Samīn).^[308] The English is therefore either "confine them until death takes them or Allah makes a way for them", or "confine them until death takes them, unless Allah makes a way for them". The outcome is the same on both, because the confinement ended when the 'way' came. Whether that ending was an abrogation is the question that Question 2 answers.

1. The number's form is one proof that the four are men, and "of you" makes them believers. ⁧أَرْبَعَةً⁩ has the feminine form, which an Arabic number takes when what it counts is masculine. The counted noun, "witnesses" or "men", is left unsaid (al-Jadwal),^[309] and this form proves that the witnesses are men (al-Ṣābūnī).^[310] ⁧مِنْكُمْ⁩, "of you", is addressed to the believers, so the four must be believers, "that is, of the Muslims" (al-Zajjāj).^[311] The women are restricted in the same way. ⁧مِنْ نِسَائِكُمْ⁩ is a ḥāl, a state, of the subject of ⁧يَأْتِينَ⁩: "being of your women" (al-Mujtabā, al-Samīn).^[312] Question 1 explains which women 'your women' covers. The English is "four of you" whichever account is taken. The verse does not mention the witnesses' uprightness, which comes from the rule for the Qurʾān's other testimonies, as Question 3 explains. And Allah knows best.

4. Ṣarf: Roots and Morphology

The table follows the twenty root-bearing occurrences in verse order, including the different plural and dual forms of ⁧أتى⁩. Relative nouns, particles, pronouns and lafẓ al-jalālah are treated in the grammar table rather than assigned roots here. The lexical discussions then explain the distinctions most relevant to the two verses.

⁧اللَّاتِي⁩ is a plural used only for women, so the first verse is about women. The word is the plural of ⁧الَّتِي⁩ (allatī), "she who". It is not formed by the ordinary rule for plurals. Like the duals and plurals of the other relative nouns, it is a form coined for the plural, so it is plural in meaning but not in form (al-ʿUkbarī, al-Samīn).^[322] It is used only for the feminine, just as ⁧الَّذِي⁩ (alladhī) is used only for the masculine (Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[323] The second verse's ⁧اللَّذَانِ⁩ is the masculine dual, and Question 1 explains who is meant by it. The Arabs used many plurals of ⁧الَّتِي⁩, thirteen by al-Samīn's count,^[324] and several of these feminine relative forms are attested in the following poetry. An unnamed poet, cited by al-Zajjāj, places it beside another plural and the singular in one half-line:^[325]

⁧ من اللواتي والتي واللاتي . . . زَعَمْن أنِّي كبِرَتْ لِدَاتِي ⁩

"Of those women, allawātī, allatī and allātī, who claimed my age-mates had grown old."

Al-Zajjāj cites the line for ⁧اللَّاتِي⁩ with its yāʾ kept, beside ⁧اللَّوَاتِي⁩ (allawātī). The tāʾ may also be dropped while the yāʾ is kept, as in ⁧وَاللائِي يَئِسْنَ⁩ at 65:4, "and those who have despaired". A further shortened form, ⁧اللَّاءِ⁩ (allāʾi), omits the final yāʾ as well. Ibn al-ʿArabī cites this shorter form in a line by the Makhzūmī poet, whom Ibn al-Mundhir identifies as ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa:^[326]

⁧ مِنْ اللَّاءِ لَمْ يَحْجُجْنَ يَبْغِينَ حِسْبَةً وَلَكِنْ لِيَقْتُلْنَ الْبَرِيءَ الْمُغَفَّلَا ⁩

"Of those women, allāʾi, who made no pilgrimage in search of the reward, but to slay the unwary innocent."

Ibn al-ʿArabī cites the line for ⁧اللَّاءِ⁩ (allāʾi), a form without the tāʾ or final yāʾ, and he treats this form and the verse's form as the same plural. The yāʾ may also be dropped. Al-Wāḥidī cites the following witness; Muḥammad b. Ḥamad al-Muḥaymīd, who edited his al-Basīṭ, attributes it to al-Aswad b. Yaʿfur and records textual variants:^[327]

⁧ اللَّات كالبِيض لَّما تَعْدُ أن دَرَسَتْ صُفرُ الأَنَامل من قَرع القَوَاقِيز ⁩

“Those women, like eggs [the phrase ⁧لَّما تَعْدُ أن دَرَسَتْ⁩ remains untranslated], their fingertips yellow from tapping the drinking cups.”

Al-Wāḥidī cites the line for ⁧اللَّاتِ⁩ (allāt), the verse's word with its yāʾ dropped. These forms differ in their letters but refer to women. Whichever form is heard, therefore, the first verse is about women.

The verse describes the act as "coming to" it, which marks it as deliberate. ⁧يَأْتِينَ⁩ means "they commit it". The verb of coming is used for doing a thing, because a person who does something on purpose is like one who walks to a place until he reaches it (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[328] Al-Aʿshā uses the verb in this way, in a line Ibn ʿĀshūr cites:^[329]

⁧ لِيَعْلَمَ كُلُّ الْوَرَى أَنَّنِي أَتَيْتُ الْمُرُوءَةَ مِنْ بَابِهَا ⁩

"So that all mankind may know that I came to manliness by its door."

Ibn ʿĀshūr cites the line, naming al-Aʿshā, for ⁧أَتَى⁩ (atā) in the sense of doing a thing: here, doing what manliness requires in the proper way. Arabic likewise says of an indecency that a person came to it, came upon it or covered it, meaning that he committed it (al-Durra).^[330] The verb therefore presents the deed as deliberate, and the word after it identifies the deed.

'The indecency' is an ugliness that exceeds its limit, and the root is used for more than one act. The root denotes ugliness and hideousness in a thing. The Arabs call anything that exceeds its limit fāḥish, but only when it is found repugnant (Ibn Fāris).^[331] In its basic sense the root refers to a word or deed whose ugliness is widely recognized or whose impact on the senses is sharp (Jabal). In this verse, the relevant standard is what the Sharīʿa and Muslim custom regard as indecent, not whatever a society happens to permit (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[332] In this verse ⁧الْفَاحِشَةَ⁩ refers to zinā by its ugliness, as a kināya, an indirect expression (al-Rāghib).^[333] The root is used for both zinā and liwāṭ, at 17:32 for the first and at 7:80 for the second (Jabal).^[334] The word alone, therefore, does not settle which act a verse means. In the first verse, the requirement of four witnesses identifies it as zinā. In the second, the pronoun in ⁧يَأْتِيَانِهَا⁩ refers back to that same indecency, and Question 1 explains how, by the general meaning of 'the indecency', the second verse also includes liwāṭ.

The verse's word for the confinement is the ordinary word for keeping. ⁧أَمْسَكَ⁩ (amsaka) with an object means to hold a thing back and keep it in one's possession. This verse is one use of that sense, beside 33:37, where a husband is told to keep his wife in marriage, and 16:79, where the birds are held in the air (Jabal).^[335] The verb itself says only that the women were kept where they were placed, in the houses. Since the same verb is used at 33:37 for keeping a wife in her marriage, the word does not itself denote a penalty, and Question 3 explains what this keeping was in law.

Death takes the women in full, as a debt is collected in full. ⁧تَوَفَّى⁩ (tawaffā) means to receive what is owed in full, and in this verse the verb has that original, literal sense (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[336] Ṭarafa, in a line Ibn ʿĀshūr cites, pictures life as a sum paid out night by night:^[337]

⁧ أَرَى الْعُمْرَ كَنْزًا نَاقِصًا كُلَّ لَيْلَةٍ وَمَا تَنْقُصُ الْأَيَّامُ وَالدَّهْرُ يَنْفَد ⁩

"I see life as a treasure that shrinks each night, and what the days and time diminish runs out."

Ibn ʿĀshūr cites the line, naming Ṭarafa, for life taken piece by piece until nothing is left. In another line he cites, Abū Ḥayya al-Numayrī calls death a creditor:^[338]

⁧ إِذَا مَا تَقَاضَى الْمَرْءَ يَوْمٌ وَلَيْلَةٌ تَقَاضَاهُ شَيْءٌ لَا يَمَلُّ التَّقَاضِيَا ⁩

"When a day and a night press their claim on a man, something presses its claim on him that never tires of claiming."

Ibn ʿĀshūr cites the line, naming Abū Ḥayya al-Numayrī, for death as a claimant who never lets up. What death ends, then, is a life collected whole. The Balāghah section explains why the verse presents death as the one who takes.

The condition ⁧تَابَا وَأَصْلَحَا⁩ has two verbs, and the command to leave the two alone depends on both. The root of ⁧تَابَا⁩ denotes return, a single word with a single sense (Ibn Fāris), and ⁧تَابَ⁩ (tāba) means that a person came back to Allah and turned to Him (al-Azharī).^[339] On this account, which al-Ṭabarī and al-Qurṭubī follow, tawba is a return to obedience. Jabal places its core elsewhere: a person stops and breaks off the sins he had been committing. He finds this sense clear in this verse and offers it against their account.^[340] The lexical disagreement concerns whether repentance is described primarily as returning or as stopping. The command in this verse nevertheless requires both ⁧تَابَا⁩ and ⁧وَأَصْلَحَا⁩: repentance and reform. Question 4 explains that requirement. Allah's own turning in acceptance, ⁧تَوَّابًا⁩, is discussed in Question 4.

5. Balāghah: Rhetorical Analysis

Naming the women first (⁧تَقْدِيمِ ذِكْرِ النِّسَاءِ⁩, taqdīm dhikr al-nisāʾ)

Where it is. The verse of ⁧وَاللَّاتِي⁩ (wa-llātī), "those women who", comes before the verse of ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩ (wa-lladhāni), the masculine dual. The women's penalty is therefore stated first, and on its own.

The plain way. A single ruling could have covered both parties to the act, or the verse on the second party could have come first.

What it does. Putting one part of the speech before another shows where the speaker's concern lies. Al-Biqāʿī explains this order as concern to deter women, and he gives three reasons. Zinā is among the most indecent acts of disobedience. He judged corruption more common among women, the fitna through them greater and the harm from them more serious. And a woman may bring into a man's house a child who inherits from him but is not his.^[341] A similar premise explains why women alone are named here, although the ḥadd of zinā is the same for men and women: the woman, on this account, is more eager for it (al-Wāḥidī).^[342]

Rashīd Riḍā separates the two parts of al-Biqāʿī's explanation. He accepts the link to inheritance as sound, on the majority's view that the indecency is zinā, since zinā can lead to a child of zinā inheriting.^[343] He rejects the premise that corruption is more common among women. Men, he says, are bolder in indecencies and commit more of them, as a count of adulterers and adulteresses would show if such a count could be made.^[344]

The effect. On the explanation Riḍā accepts, the order connects the protection of lineage with the inheritance laws just given. An estate must pass to its rightful heirs; falsely assigning a child to a man can alter that distribution. This explains the emphasis on the women's ruling without relying on the disputed claim that women are more prone to indecency.

Death as the one who takes: personification or figurative attribution (⁧استعارة بالكناية⁩, istiʿāra bi-l-kināya / ⁧مجاز عقلي⁩, majāz ʿaqlī)

Where it is. ⁧حَتَّى يَتَوَفَّاهُنَّ الْمَوْتُ⁩ (ḥattā yatawaffāhunna l-mawtu), "until death takes them".

The plain way. "Until they die."

What it does. The act of taking is ascribed to death, which does not itself perform it. The verb cannot have its familiar sense of "cause to die" here, because the sentence would then say "until death causes them to die", which has no meaning (al-Ālūsī).^[345] Three explanations show how death can be the one who takes.

1. Death is likened to a person who does the taking. The comparison itself is left unstated and only the taking is mentioned, so the meaning is "until death takes their souls" (al-Ālūsī).^[346]
2. A word is understood before "death", and the ones who take are the angels of death (al-Jadwal; al-Ālūsī allows it).^[347]
3. The taking belongs to Allah or His angels and is ascribed to death. This is a majāz ʿaqlī, an act ascribed to something that does not itself perform it (al-Durra, al-Zuḥaylī, al-Ṣābūnī; al-Ālūsī allows it).^[348]

On the first and third explanations, death is presented as the one who takes. The wording magnifies death and shows it in the form of one who takes charge of seizing souls (Abū al-Suʿūd, and al-Qāsimī in the same words).^[349]

The effect. Death is not described merely as the end of a period. It takes the women, as a claimant takes what is due. That image gives force to the severity of confinement until death; the promised ‘way’ offers the other possible end.

The past tense for a full act (⁧الفعل الماضي⁩, al-fiʿl al-māḍī)

Where it is. ⁧فَإِنْ تَابَا وَأَصْلَحَا⁩ (fa-in tābā wa-aṣlaḥā), "but if they repent and correct themselves". Both verbs are in the past tense after the particle of condition.

The plain way. The present tense, "if the two repent", as at 66:4, ⁧إن تتوبا إلى الله⁩, "if you two repent to Allah".

What it does. The past form of a verb can be chosen for the kind of act it refers to. The verse puts both verbs in the past, as 9:11 does ("but if they repent, establish prayer and give zakāh"), because the repentance meant is the general one: at 9:11 it is entering Islam, and here it is abandoning the indecency (al-Sāmarrāʾī).^[350] The present tense of 66:4, addressed to two wives of the Prophet ﷺ, refers to a partial, passing repentance of the kind that recurs with small lapses.^[351]

The effect. The verb remains a condition, but its past tense tells the reader which repentance is required: a full repentance that abandons the indecency, not a passing one that comes and goes with small lapses.

"Was", said of what always is (⁧كَانَ⁩, kāna)

Where it is. ⁧إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ تَوَّابًا رَحِيمًا⁩ (inna llāha kāna tawwāban raḥīman), "indeed, Allah is ever Accepting of Repentance and Merciful".

The plain way. The statement without ⁧كَانَ⁩: "Allah is Accepting of Repentance and Merciful".

What it does. A verb of past time is said here of an attribute of Allah, and the reader must not hear it as past and gone. Heard in its ordinary past sense, ⁧كَانَ⁩ would mean that the attribute existed and then ceased, and this is the difficulty the verse raises (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[352] Three explanations remove the sense of "was once" from the verb.

1. ⁧كَانَ⁩ is stripped of its time and says only that the attribute is real. Whenever Allah is described with kāna joined to one of His attributes, as in "and Allah is ever powerful over all things", this is its meaning: He is described by the attribute without beginning and without end (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[353]
2. ⁧كَانَ⁩ can refer to the future as well as the past. Abū ʿUbayda recited a line of Jarīr for the two senses, which al-Wāḥidī cites:^[354]

⁧ فأدركت من قَد كان قبلي ولم أَدَع لمَن كان بَعدي في القصائدِ مَصْنَعَا ⁩

"I caught up with those who were before me, and I left no room for craft in the odes to those who will be after me."

The first ⁧كَانَ⁩ in the line refers to the past and the second to the future (Muḥammad b. Ḥamad al-Muḥaymīd, the muḥaqqiq of al-Wāḥidī's al-Basīṭ).^[355] On this explanation, “was” does not confine the attribute to the past: Allah also accepts those who will repent. 3. The past tense is used for what lasts: Allah was always so and is so still (Ibn al-Anbārī, as al-Wāḥidī quotes him).^[356]

On each explanation the attribute never ceased.

The effect. The verse closes its promise of pardon for repentance with a name that did not begin with the pair who repent and does not end after them. The reader of ⁧كَانَ⁩ therefore hears "is ever".

The shape of the whole passage

The two verses follow the shares of inheritance, and they turn from what women are owed to the penalty for their indecency. This turn joins severity to the kindness before it. After laying down women's shares, Allah laid down severity towards them in the indecency they commit, so that no woman would think she might abandon chastity (al-Qurṭubī).^[357] That severity is itself kindness to them and care for their hereafter (al-Rāzī).^[358] The passage therefore combines a serious warning with a clear command to end reproach when repentance and reform occur.

6. Qirāʾāt: Variant Readings

Ibn al-Jazarī's al-Nashr records Ibn Kathīr's doubling of the nūn in ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩.^[359] It also records the two vowels of ⁧الْبُيُوتِ⁩ under 2:189, with the rule applying wherever the word occurs. The first table gives these differences among the ten; the second gives the other forms reported in the cited sources.

Among the ten readings

⁧وَاللَّذَانِّ⁩: the doubled nūn of Ibn Kathīr

Ibn al-Jazarī records the five words together:

⁧( وَاخْتَلَفُوا) فِي: اللَّذَانِ، وَهَذَانِ، وَهَاتَيْنِ، فَذَانِكَ، وَاللَّذَيْنِ فِي حم السَّجْدَةَ فَقَرَأَ ابْنُ كَثِيرٍ بِتَشْدِيدِ النُّونِ فِي الْخَمْسَةِ، وَهُوَ عَلَى أَصْلِهِ فِي مَدِّ الْأَلِفِ وَتَمْكِينِ الْيَاءِ مِنَ الْتِقَاءِ السَّاكِنَيْنِ وَافَقَهُ أَبُو عَمْرٍو وَرُوَيْسٌ فِي فَذَانِكَ، وَقَرَأَ الْبَاقُونَ بِالتَّخْفِيفِ فِيهِنَّ ⁩

"They differed over alladhāni, hādhāni, hātayni, fa-dhānika and alladhayni in Ḥā-Mīm al-Sajda: Ibn Kathīr read the nūn doubled in the five, keeping to his principle of lengthening the alif and giving the yāʾ its full measure for the meeting of two sākins; Abū ʿAmr and Ruways agreed with him in fa-dhānika, and the rest read all five light."^[366]

Two features of Ibn Kathīr's recitation follow from the doubling. The alif before the doubled nūn is lengthened, as a madd before a sākin that is fixed and merged,^[367] and a reciter who stops on the word stops on the doubled nūn, just as he joins it.^[368]

Why can the nūn be doubled? One explanation begins with the missing yāʾ. If ⁧الذي⁩ formed its dual like an ordinary noun ending in yāʾ, it would become ⁧اللذيان⁩. Instead, the yāʾ is absent. The absence is explained either as distinguishing relative nouns from fully declinable nouns (Sībawayh), or as making a frequently used form lighter without causing ambiguity (al-Fārisī), both as al-Durra reports them.^[369] The dual of a relative noun is in any case not formed by ordinary analogy, and the relative clause makes the whole expression longer (al-Samīn).^[370] On the compensation analysis, the doubled nūn takes the place of that missing yāʾ (al-Fārisī, al-Wāḥidī, Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Samīn).^[371]

Al-Fārisī, whose account al-Wāḥidī gives, meets an objection to this compensation. The objection is that the yāʾ fell only because two sākins met, and a letter that falls for that reason counts as still present and needs no compensation. Al-Wāḥidī cites the second half of a line for this:^[372]

⁧ فألفيته غير مستعتب ولا ذاكر الله إلا قليلًا ⁩

"And I found him not seeking to make amends, nor mindful of Allah except a little."

The poet is Abū al-Aswad al-Duʾalī, as al-Wāḥidī's muḥaqqiq Muḥammad b. Ḥamad al-Muḥaymīd identifies him when he gives the first half. In the second half lafẓ al-jalālah is in naṣb after ⁧ذاكر⁩ (dhākir) even though its tanwīn has dropped, exactly as it would be with the tanwīn kept, and this is what the line shows (al-Muḥaymīd).^[373] Al-Fārisī answers that the yāʾ of ⁧وَاللَّذَانِ⁩ never appeared in the dual, where it should have stood and taken a vowel. It is therefore like a letter lost for a cause other than the meeting of two sākins, and such a loss calls for compensation.^[374]

The doubling is also explained as strengthening. ⁧الَّذِي⁩ and ⁧هَذَا⁩ are built on a single letter, the dhāl, so a nūn of the same kind is added to theirs to strengthen them (Ibn Miqsam, as al-Rāzī reports him).^[375] Nor is the doubling limited to the alif of rafʿ: at 41:29 the nūn is doubled after the yāʾ of naṣb, "show us those who led us astray", which answers the restriction Ibn ʿUṣfūr set (al-Samīn).^[376] The form with the hamza changes the alif into a hamza to avoid the meeting of two sākins that the doubling creates.^[377]

The meaning is the same whether the nūn is light or doubled: the dual refers to the same pair, whichever of Question 1's positions is adopted.

⁧الْبُيُوتِ⁩: the bāʾ with ḍamma or kasra

Ibn al-Jazarī records the two forms at 2:189, in one entry with four other words, and states that it holds wherever the word occurs.^[378] It therefore applies to 4:15. Only the vowel of the first letter differs. The letters are the same, and the word means "the houses" in either form.

⁧يأتينَ بالفاحشةِ⁩: Ibn Masʿūd's bāʾ and al-Rāghib's wording

Al-Samīn records the wording:

⁧ وقرأ عبد الله: «يأتينَ بالفاحشةِ» أي يَجِئْنَ بها، ومعنى قراءةِ الجمهور «يَغْشَيْنَها ويخالطنها »⁩

"ʿAbd Allāh read 'they come with the indecency', that is, they bring it; and the sense of the majority's reading is 'they come upon it and engage in it'."^[379]

Al-Rāghib gives the wording without the bāʾ and with the verb in the singular, ⁧تأتي الفاحشة⁩. He explains its "coming" by the coming of 19:27, "you have come with a monstrous thing", a coming with the thing, which is the meaning the bāʾ gives. His muḥaqqiq Ṣafwān Dāwūdī calls the reading shādhdha.^[380] The meaning of the act does not change: on these wordings the women bring the indecency, on the reading of the ten they come upon it, and every form refers to committing zinā.

⁧والذين يَفْعَلُونه منكم⁩: Ibn Masʿūd's plural

Al-Samīn records it and calls it difficult:

⁧ وقرأ عبد الله: «والذين يَفْعَلُونه منكم» ، وهذه قراءةُ مشكلةٌ لأنها بصيغة الجمع، / وبعدَها ضميرُ تثنية ⁩

"ʿAbd Allāh read 'and those of you who do it', and this is a difficult reading, because it is in the plural form and a dual pronoun comes after it."^[381]

The difficulty is removed if the wording is taken as an explanation rather than as the recited text: it shows that the dual includes everyone who commits zinā (Abū Ḥayyān).^[382] On that account the plural restricts nothing and changes no ruling. Question 1 explains who is meant by the dual.

None of these forms changes the ruling of either verse. And Allah knows best.