Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, Verse 19

1. The Questions This Verse Raises

4:19 raises five questions:

1. what the 'inheriting' of women was;
2. who is forbidden to pressurize a woman into giving back what she was given;
3. what the clear immorality is and what it permits;
4. what living with a wife in kindness requires;
5. and why a husband is urged to keep a wife he dislikes.

The table below summarizes the outcome of each discussion.

Q1. What was the 'inheriting' of women that 4:19 forbids, and does ⁧كَرْهًا⁩, "by compulsion", restrict the ban?

4:19 opens with a prohibition: ⁧يَاأَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا لَا يَحِلُّ لَكُمْ أَنْ تَرِثُوا النِّسَاءَ كَرْهًا⁩, "O you who have believed, it is not lawful for you to inherit women by compulsion." The words ⁧لَا يَحِلُّ لَكُمْ⁩, "it is not lawful for you", deny that the act is permitted, so it must be either forbidden, ḥarām, or only disliked, makrūh (Ibn ʿArafa).^[1] The commentators take it as forbidden, a prohibition (taḥrīm): Allah made the practice ḥarām for His servants (al-Ṭabarī; Muḥammad ʿAbduh, as Rashīd Riḍā reports him).^[2]

The phrase 'inherit women' needs explaining, since under the Law, the Sharīʿa, a woman is a person and never part of an estate: it can only refer to a custom that treated her as property. So the first question is what that custom was. Two more follow from the verse: which event it answered and how sound the report of that event is, and whether ⁧كَرْهًا⁩, "by compulsion", makes the practice lawful when the woman consents.

The reports under this verse describe four practices. An heir took the dead man's widow with his estate. A kinsman kept an unmarried woman from marriage for her wealth. A husband kept a wife he disliked until she died, for her wealth. And a guardian kept an orphan girl for himself, for his son, or for her wealth.

The scholars explain the custom in two ways, each taking the words 'inherit women' to refer to one of these practices. The widow view takes them to refer to the widow herself, taken with the estate. The property view takes them to refer to a woman's wealth, taken when she died, whether a kinsman had kept her from marriage or a husband had kept her in a marriage he no longer wanted. What is settled about "by compulsion" decides between them.

The practice the verse forbids

On the widow view, the custom worked this way. When a man died, his son by another wife or his nearest kinsman had, by that custom, more right to his widow than she had to herself. He cast his garment over her to claim her. Then he did one of three things (al-Zuhrī, Abū Mijlaz, al-Bayḍāwī):^[5]

• He married her himself on the dower her late husband had given.
• He gave her in marriage to another man and took her dower.
• He kept her from marrying until she gave him what she had inherited, or until she died.

If the heir was still a boy, she was held for him until he grew up (ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ, Abū Mālik, Ibn Zayd, Sayyid Quṭb).^[6]

The verse ended the whole widow custom. A widow now keeps her ʿidda, the waiting period after his death, in her husband's house. When it ends she goes where she wishes, with her own wealth and what she inherited from him, free to marry whom she wishes (al-Jazāʾirī, Mawdūdī).^[7]

On the property view, what is inherited is her wealth, not the woman herself (a view Ibn ʿAṭiyya reports).^[8] As al-Ṭabarī describes it, a kinsman kept an unmarried woman from marriage, against her will, until she died, and then he inherited her wealth.^[9] The same view also covers a husband who kept a wife he no longer wanted, treating her badly, in the hope of inheriting from her (Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[10] 'By compulsion' then describes her dislike of being held.

The property view's evidence is the report of Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭalḥa, whose isnād, its chain of narrators, is sound, and one of al-Zuhrī's reports. In that report a kinsman held the dead man's wife until she died and then inherited from her. It counts for the property view because a widow is one of the unmarried women whom a kinsman kept from marriage.^[11]

The two views concern what the words 'inherit women' refer to, not what the ban covers. The words of 4:19 are general: they cover what the Jāhiliyya did and every practice of the same kind (Ibn Kathīr).^[12] So whichever view is taken of the words, the ban covers every practice of keeping a woman against her will in order to take her or what is hers. It covers the widow taken with the estate, and the kinsman who kept an unmarried woman for her wealth.

It also covers the husband who keeps a wife he no longer wants, denies her the rights of marriage, and waits for her to die so that he may inherit from her. A husband normally inherits from his wife by the share that 4:12 gives him.

But suppose such a husband stays married to a wife who has committed no clear immorality, denies her what she is owed in order to inherit from her, and she dies while still married to him. It is not lawful for him to inherit from her. Nor may he take anything from her while she lives, and if he does, it must be returned to her (al-Shāfiʿī).^[13]

Had she committed that immorality, the verse's exception, "unless they commit a clear immorality", would let him pressurize her only until she pays for her divorce, never keep her until she dies, as Question 3 explains. The ban also covers the guardian who keeps an orphan girl in his care from marrying so that he may marry her himself (Mujāhid), marry her to his son (Saʿīd, Sayyid Quṭb), or inherit from her when she dies (Saʿīd).^[14]

The occasion of revelation

The verse was revealed in response to one of these practices, the widow taken with the estate: the full account of Abū Qays b. al-Aslat's widow, whom his son claimed after his death, as Abū Umāma b. Sahl relates it, appears in Historical Context.^[15]

Because establishing this historical trigger is critical, scholars scrutinize the report's chain of transmission (isnād). The critics differ on Abū Umāma's report. Ibn Ḥajar, Ḥikmat Bashīr Yāsīn, al-Zuḥaylī and al-Suyūṭī grade it ḥasan, sound though below the highest grade, and al-Suyūṭī gives it ʿIkrima's report as its shāhid, a supporting witness.^[16] Al-Dāraquṭnī, before them, judged the report mursal, with a link missing at the top of its chain: the sounder version, he says, is the one in which Abū Umāma's son Muḥammad relates it without naming his father.^[17] ʿIkrima's report, the shāhid, comes by another route and gives the widow's name as Kubaysha ⁧رضي الله عنها⁩ bint Maʿn, and its isnād is mursal (Ḥikmat Bashīr Yāsīn).^[18]

By contrast, a third report of the occasion, Miqsam's, which ends "and the verse came down", has Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ in its isnād in the route al-Wādiʿī relates. Al-Wādiʿī finds ʿAlī b. Badhīma, one of its narrators, trustworthy, and the rest of them men of the Ṣaḥīḥ. Ḥikmat Bashīr Yāsīn finds the same route mursal as al-Ṭabarī relates it, without naming Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩.^[19]

In any case, the link between the custom and 4:19 does not depend on any of these reports. Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ describes the custom in a report that al-Bukhārī relates, and he ties it to this verse:

⁧ كَانُوا إِذَا مَاتَ الرَّجُلُ كَانَ أَوْلِيَاؤُهُ أَحَقَّ بِامْرَأَتِهِ، إِنْ شَاءَ بَعْضُهُمْ تَزَوَّجَهَا، وَإِنْ شَاؤُوا زَوَّجُوهَا، وَإِنْ شَاؤُوا لَمْ يُزَوِّجُوهَا، فَهُمْ أَحَقُّ بِهَا مِنْ أَهْلِهَا، فَنَزَلَتْ هَذِهِ الْآيَةُ فِي ذَلِك ⁩

"When a man died, his heirs had more right to his wife. If one of them wished, he married her; if they wished, they married her to someone else; and if they wished, they did not marry her off. They had more right to her than her own family, and this verse came down about that."^[20]

One objection denies this link. The later clauses of 4:19 speak to husbands, so the reports about heirs must belong to 4:22, which forbids marrying the wife of one's father, and 4:19 must concern the husband who keeps a wife he dislikes (Darwaza).^[21] The objection's conclusion has older support: it is also said that the verse came down about that husband (al-Shāfiʿī, Ibn Juzayy).^[22] The ban covers that husband in any case, since its words cover every practice of the kind. What the objection denies is that 4:19 came down about the custom; it does not deny the custom itself.

The answer lies in the custom itself, which had two forms, as al-Sarakhsī relates from Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩. In one, the son took over his father's marriage as he took over his property. He lived with the widow as his wife with no new contract, whether she consented or not, and 4:19 came down about this takeover. In the other, the son married her by a new contract, claiming a prior right to her, and 4:22 came down about that.^[23]

So the occasion belongs to both verses, and Muḥammad b. Kaʿb al-Quraẓī relates that both came down about the same case.^[24] The objection rests on the address to husbands, but that address belongs to the later clauses. The first clause speaks to all the Muslims (al-Shawkānī),^[25] and Question 2 explains whom the next clause addresses.

Whether ⁧كَرْهًا⁩, "by compulsion", restricts the ban

4:19 forbids the takeover whether the widow consented or not. The word ⁧كَرْهًا⁩, "by compulsion", might suggest otherwise: if it were a condition, the ban would apply only when she is forced, and inheriting a woman would be lawful when she consents. It is not a condition, and three things show this:

1. It describes what was done. The heirs took the women against their will, and the word states that fact. A word that describes the usual case does not set a condition, so it does not make the act lawful when she consents (Abū Ḥayyān, al-Samīn; ʿAbduh, as Rashīd Riḍā reports him).^[26] The word is there to show how ugly the practice was, not to set a condition (Ibn Kamāl Pāshā).^[27]
2. The Qurʾān speaks the same way elsewhere. In 17:31 Allah forbids killing children ⁧خَشْيَةَ إِمْلَاقٍ⁩, "for fear of poverty", and that verse does not permit killing them for another reason. In the same way, mentioning compulsion does not permit what lies outside it (al-Nasafī, al-Qāsimī, Saʿīd Ḥawwā, Ṭanṭāwī).^[28]
3. The grammar agrees. ⁧كَرْهًا⁩ goes with the verb ⁧تَرِثُوا⁩, "inherit". It cannot go with ⁧لَا يَحِلُّ لَكُمْ⁩, "it is not lawful for you", because it would then describe the heirs: inheriting women would be forbidden only to heirs who do it unwillingly, which is an unsound meaning (al-Sāmarrāʾī).^[29] It does describe the women in one of al-Biqāʿī's two explanations, which takes "inherit women" to mean inheriting the women themselves and not their wealth: the word is then a ḥāl muʾakkida that describes them as unwilling.^[30] A ḥāl muʾakkida is a word describing the women's state that only restates what the verb already means, so it adds no condition to the act.

Some take the word as a restriction all the same, so that the ban would not apply when she consents (al-Saʿdī, Muqātil, al-Hararī).^[31] What they allow, however, is something else: a new marriage that the widow herself chooses, to a kinsman of her late husband whom she may lawfully marry, or a gift of her wealth that she makes willingly, as 4:4 permits. Neither is inheriting her: a woman may become a wife only by a sound contract of marriage, and no one may inherit a woman, whether by compulsion or by her own choice (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[32]

The same answer covers an account that might seem to support the restriction: sons went on marrying their fathers' widows with the widows' consent after 4:19 came down, until 4:22 forbade it (al-Samarqandī, al-Nasafī; a view al-Qurṭubī reports).^[33] Such marriages by agreement were already known in the Jāhiliyya.

Among Quraysh, the Prophet's ﷺ tribe at Mecca, a son could marry his father's widow when both agreed, as Abū ʿAmr b. Umayya did after his father died, while among the Anṣār, the people of Medina, the custom was binding on the widow (Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Ibn al-Faras).^[34] The binding custom was not followed everywhere either, nor did all who knew it hold it to be right: only some of the Arabs followed it, and many of them condemned it (Abū Zahra).^[35]

So marriage by agreement was a practice of its own beside the binding custom. It was made by a new contract, and 4:22 answers it. The account of those marriages therefore has no bearing on what ⁧كَرْهًا⁩ means in 4:19.

Which interpretation is stronger?

What the word describes also decides between the two views of 'inherit women'. Allah has already fixed the shares of every estate, and the heirs take them whether the one who died, man or woman, would have liked it or not. So a woman's wealth passes to her heirs by right, and her wishes play no part in it.

The property view takes 'by compulsion' to describe her being held instead. But the word goes with the verb 'inherit', so it describes the inheriting itself. 'By compulsion' can therefore describe only the woman herself, taken against her will as if she were part of the estate. What the verse forbids is taking over her marriage as part of the estate.

Even the report of Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭalḥa, the property view's soundest evidence, concerns the dead man's widow. His close kinsman cast his garment over her and married her himself if she was beautiful. Only if she was unattractive did he keep her until she died and inherit from her.^[36] One of al-Zuhrī's reports, too, describes the dead man's widow, kept by his nearest kinsman until she died so that he inherited from her.

The widow view is therefore the stronger, following al-Ṭabarī's tarjīḥ, his weighing of the views.^[37] Most scholars hold it, as Ibn al-Jawzī and Musāʿid al-Ṭayyār report.^[38]

Conclusion: The verse forbids treating a dead man's widow as part of his estate, as the Jāhiliyya did when his heir took her as his own wife, gave her in marriage to another and took her dower, or kept her from marrying until she gave him her wealth or died; its words cover every practice of that kind, and "by compulsion" describes what was done without making it lawful when she consents.

And Allah knows best.

Q2. Who is addressed by ⁧وَلَا تَعْضُلُوهُنَّ⁩, "and do not make difficulties for them"?

4:19 then forbids a second wrong: ⁧وَلَا تَعْضُلُوهُنَّ لِتَذْهَبُوا بِبَعْضِ مَا آتَيْتُمُوهُنَّ⁩, "and do not make difficulties for them in order to take [back] part of what you gave them". The word ⁧تَعْضُلُوهُنَّ⁩ refers to keeping a woman against her will and restricting her in order to harm her (Ibn ʿAjība, al-Zuḥaylī, ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Khaṭīb).^[1] It does not mean preventing her from marrying another man (as Tafsīr al-Jalālayn suggests), but rather making her life so difficult that she is driven to give up wealth to end the marriage (Muḥammad ʿAbduh, as Rashīd Riḍā reports him).^[2] Said of a husband, it has this name because he holds back what she is owed, her maintenance and good companionship (al-Azharī).^[3]

The clause also states the aim of this barring: to take back part of "what you gave them". That aim determines who is addressed. The commentators give different answers: the husband during the marriage, the heirs of a dead man, the guardians, or the husband after a divorce (al-Māwardī, al-ʿIzz b. ʿAbd al-Salām).^[4] Each answer identifies people who did hold women back in this way, so two things must be settled: what the ban covers, and which of these people the clause addresses first.

What the ban covers

On what the ban covers, the words leave no one out. The verse addresses all who believe, so that each of them takes from it what concerns him, and making a woman's life hard to take her property is forbidden whoever does it: husband, heir or guardian, ruler or anyone else (Ibn ʿĀshūr, Ṭanṭāwī, al-Rāghib).^[9] One explanation widens "what you gave them" in the same way, to whatever women received from the believers, inheritance or dower, since the believers are responsible for one another (Rashīd Riḍā).^[10] That widening serves the breadth of the ban; it does not show whom the clause addresses first.

The ban also covers less direct ways of harming her, just as it covers every person who does this. It forbids keeping a woman where she does not want to be, to harm her or to take from her, whatever form that takes. So one view takes it to forbid a husband to divorce his wife, take her back, and divorce her again to harm her (a view al-Khāzin reports).^[11] For the same reason the verse may forbid him to take her back during her ʿidda only to keep her, with no wish for her (al-Shāfiʿī).^[12]

If making her give up part of the dower is forbidden, making her give up all of it is forbidden with more reason (Abū Zahra, al-Hararī).^[13] The stated aim leaves one thing outside the ban, however: barring her for a benefit of her own, in her person or her property, is not what the clause forbids (al-Hararī).^[14]

Which interpretation is stronger?

What the ban covers is therefore wide, and the commentators who take the address as general are right about that. Whom the clause addresses first, however, is decided by the aim it states. Only a man with a right over a woman can stop her from leaving or from marrying, and only two men have such a right: her husband, and the guardian who gives her in marriage.

The guardian gave her nothing, so he cannot be making things hard for her to take back part of what he gave. The husband gave her the dower, so the clause addresses him. The husband view is therefore the stronger, following al-Ṭabarī's tarjīḥ.^[15] Most exegetes hold the husband view, as al-Rāzī, Ibn ʿĀdil, al-Qāsimī and Ibn al-Faras report.^[16]

The rest of the verse agrees. The next command, ⁧وَعَاشِرُوهُنَّ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ⁩, "and live with them in kindness", concerns husbands on its apparent sense, though it may concern others, and so it strengthens the view that the clause before it is addressed to them as well (Ibn Juzayy).^[17]

The exception, ⁧إِلَّا أَنْ يَأْتِينَ بِفَاحِشَةٍ مُبَيِّنَةٍ⁩, "unless they commit a clear immorality", allows a husband to keep an unwilling wife in the marriage in one case, which Question 3 explains, and in that case only a husband may do it. Ibn ʿAṭiyya reports that the Umma, the Muslim community, agrees that once she has committed such a wrong, no guardian may keep her against her will to take her property, because that right belongs to the husband alone. So Ibn ʿAṭiyya takes the exception as his proof that the husbands are meant.^[18]

The clause therefore speaks in the first place to someone other than the heirs of the ban on inheriting women. It speaks to a husband who no longer wants his wife and will not let her go, so that she pays him for a divorce (al-Zajjāj).^[19]

None of the other answers passes both tests: who has a right that lets him stop a woman from leaving or marrying, and who gave her what "what you gave them" refers to. Some fail for other reasons as well. Each is answered in turn:

1. The heirs' answer joins the clause to the ban on inheriting women, so that both speak to the heirs. On this answer, "what you gave them" must mean what the dead man gave her, or her share of his estate (Ibn Juzayy, al-Rāzī).^[20] The heirs gave her nothing, so the words must be stretched from "what you gave" to "what men of your kind gave", and without that stretch the clause does not fit together (al-Ālūsī).^[21]

The two prohibitions it joins may also be aimed at practices of different periods, and such prohibitions need not speak to the same people. Inheriting women was a custom of the Jāhiliyya that Islam ended. Making a wife's life hard to take back her dower may belong to Islam's own time. A report from Ibn al-Baylamānī says that one of the two clauses came down about a matter of the Jāhiliyya and the other about a matter of Islam. Ibn al-Mubārak explains that the second is "and do not make difficulties for them".^[22] That report is mursal and its narrator weak.^[23]

The other early reports point the other way: they imply that the whole passage concerns a practice of the Jāhiliyya, which Muslims were then forbidden to continue in Islam (Ibn Kathīr).^[24] Even so, the barring the second clause forbids can still happen after inheriting women has ended, which is why Saʿīd Ḥawwā calls Ibn al-Mubārak's point a fine observation.^[25] So when each practice belonged stays uncertain, and the case against the heirs' answer does not depend on it.

This answer also gives the exception an unlawful sense, since it would let the heirs keep a woman who has committed an immorality from marrying, though it is not lawful to keep her from a marriage that keeps her chaste (al-Shawkānī).^[26] So the second clause does not simply continue the first. 2. The guardians' answer rests on the verb itself. 2:232 uses it, on that verse's apparent sense, for guardians who prevent women from marrying their husbands (al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī).^[27] Yet some take 2:232 itself as said to husbands (al-Rāghib),^[28] and on that view the guardians' answer loses its premise. Even on the apparent sense, a guardian who keeps a woman from marrying so that he will inherit from her does what the first clause already forbids, as Question 1 explains.

The shared verb does not make the two verses speak to the same people, because they describe different acts. In 2:232 a woman is kept from a marriage she wants. In 4:19 a man refuses to let her go and harms her until she is driven to seek khulʿ, a divorce that only a husband can grant, and to give up for it part of what he gave her. So 2:232 speaks to guardians and 4:19 to husbands (Jabal).^[29] 3. The answer that identifies the husband after divorce refers to a practice known among Quraysh at Mecca: a man parted from a noble wife on condition that she marry only with his leave. The same reason shows this answer to be mistaken: only a husband or a guardian has a right that lets him stop a woman from leaving or marrying. Once she is finally separated from him by the divorce, he is neither (al-Ṭabarī).^[30]

Conclusion: This command speaks first to husbands, because the husband is the one who gave the dower: a husband who no longer wants his wife may not refuse to let her go and make things hard for her so that she returns part of it to be divorced; its words forbid anyone else from doing the same.

And Allah knows best.

Q3. What is the ⁧بِفَاحِشَةٍ مُبَيِّنَةٍ⁩, "clear immorality", what does the exception permit, and was it abrogated?

4:19 makes one exception to the ban of Question 2: ⁧إِلَّا أَنْ يَأْتِينَ بِفَاحِشَةٍ مُبَيِّنَةٍ⁩, "unless they commit a clear immorality". In that case alone a husband may keep his wife in the marriage until she seeks khulʿ, so the definition of the clear immorality determines when he may do so.

Commentators identify three views of 'clear immorality': zinā, defiance of the husband, and foul speech and harm (al-Māwardī, al-ʿIzz b. ʿAbd al-Salām).^[1] Defiance is a wife's refusal of what she owes her husband in the marriage. Three interpretations emerge from these forms: the wrong is exclusively zinā; it is defiance combined with abusive speech; or it is a general category encompassing all three. Defining the wrong itself is only the first step. Two further questions immediately follow: what action the exception permits the husband, and whether the ruling remains in force.

What the clear immorality is

The two narrower views, the zinā view and the defiance view, each rely on evidence for a single wrong.

The zinā view rests on the word itself. It frequently occurs with the meaning of zinā, and zinā is identified by this name (Ibn al-Athīr),^[5] as at 4:15.

The defiance view comes from a hadith in which the Prophet ﷺ used the verse's own words in the Farewell Sermon, his address at the pilgrimage of his last year, and then said what a husband should do. ʿAmr b. al-Aḥwaṣ ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ relates that the Prophet ﷺ said:

⁧ اسْتَوْصُوا بِالنِّسَاءِ خَيْرًا، فَإِنَّهُنَّ عِنْدَكُمْ عَوَانٍ، لَيْسَ تَمْلِكُونَ مِنْهُنَّ شَيْئًا غَيْرَ ذَلِكَ، إِلَّا أَنْ يَأْتِينَ بِفَاحِشَةٍ مُبَيِّنَةٍ، فَإِنْ فَعَلْنَ فَاهْجُرُوهُنَّ فِي الْمَضَاجِعِ، وَاضْرِبُوهُنَّ ضَرْبًا غَيْرَ مُبَرِّحٍ، فَإِنْ أَطَعْنَكُمْ فَلَا تَبْغُوا عَلَيْهِنَّ سَبِيلًا ⁩

"Take my counsel to treat women well, for they are with you as captives. You own nothing of them beyond that, unless they commit a clear immorality. If they do, leave them alone in their beds and tap them lightly. If they obey you, seek no way against them."^[6]

Al-Tirmidhī relates the same hadith and grades it ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ, and al-Albānī grades it ḥasan. The hadith mentions two of the steps discussed at 4:34: leaving her alone in her bed, followed by a painless, symbolic tap. It then says, “if they obey you”, and forbids further action against them. So the immorality it speaks of is disobedience, the defiance of 4:34, whose steps the hadith gives (Ismāʿīl al-Qāḍī).^[7] The defiance view takes the same words in 4:19 in the same sense.

The personal copies of the Qurʾān, the muṣḥafs, of two Companions, Ubayy b. Kaʿb and ʿAbd Allāh b. Masʿūd ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩, point the same way: "unless they act foully toward you" in Ubayy's, and "unless they act foully" in Ibn Masʿūd's (Miqsam, al-Zamakhsharī).^[8]

Neither wording is part of the recited Qurʾān: Ibn Masʿūd's departs far from ʿUthmān's master copy of the Qurʾān (Ibn ʿAṭiyya), al-Ṭayyār, the Mawsūʿa's muḥaqqiq, calls such a wording irregular, shādhdh, and both should be taken as an explanation of the verse (Abū Ḥayyān).^[9] Indeed the two Companions may only have cited the verse by its meaning, and a hearer took their words for a recitation (Rashīd Riḍā).^[10] Either way the two wordings serve as explanation, and as explanation they point to defiance.

One objection would leave zinā out altogether based on Qurʾānic usage. In the Qurʾān an immorality called "clear" is a wrong of the tongue, while an immorality with no such word is zinā. Based on that, "clear" would exclude zinā here, and the wrong would be reviling the husband's honour, disobeying him and speaking foully (Makkī).^[11] The rebuttal acknowledges this linguistic pattern but rejects it as the deciding factor, for two reasons:

1. "Clear" describes how the wrong is known. The word requires the wrong to be open and established, so that a husband's suspicion or jealousy is not enough (al-Zuḥaylī, al-Hararī, al-Marāghī).^[12] It answers a custom of the Jāhiliyya: a man who wanted to part from his wife accused her of immorality, so that she took fright and gave up the dower he had paid her to end the marriage (Ḥijāzī).^[13] So the word guards her against a charge over a slip or a small fault as much as against suspicion (Muḥammad ʿAbduh, as Rashīd Riḍā reports him).^[14] The word protects the wife and does not specify the kind of wrong.
2. Zinā falls under the ruling in any case, with more reason than defiance. If defiance permits a husband to take a khulʿ payment, zinā permits it all the more, since it is harder on the husband than defiance (Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Ibn Juzayy) and disobeys Allah as well as him (al-Shāfiʿī).^[15]

Which interpretation is stronger?

Most exegetes restricted the immorality to zinā (Darwaza, Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[16] Yet the words of the verse go further. Because they leave the kind of wrong open, the general view encompasses zinā alongside any other blatant offense: abusive speech, defiance, or theft, which people hold to be foul (Muḥammad ʿAbduh, as Rashīd Riḍā reports him; al-Marāghī),^[17] as well as intimacy between women, siḥāq (Rashīd Riḍā).^[18]

Whatever its kind, the wrong must be grave enough that keeping her brings the husband humiliation and contempt, or the two fear they will not keep within Allah's limits (Rashīd Riḍā, al-Marāghī).^[19]

Because zinā, defiance, and abusive speech are all fundamentally wrongs against married life, bad companionship in one form or another, the general view combines the two narrower answers rather than rejecting them (Ibn ʿUthaymīn, Abū Zahra).^[20] The general view is therefore the stronger, following al-Ṭabarī's tarjīḥ, which Ibn Kathīr approves.^[21]

Al-Ṭabarī bases it on the literal sense of the verse and on a sound hadith. Jābir b. ʿAbd Allāh ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ relates that the Prophet ﷺ said in the Farewell Sermon:

⁧ اتَّقوا الله في النساء، فإنكم أخَذْتُموهنَّ بأمانةِ اللهِ، واستحلَلْتُم فُروجَهنَّ بكلمة الله، وإنّ لكم عليهنَّ ألَّا يُوطِئْنَ فُرُشَكم أحدًا تَكْرَهُونه، فإن فعَلْنَ ذلك، فاضْرِبُوهُنَّ ضربًا غَيرَ مُبَرِّحٍ، ولهنَّ عليكم رِزْقُهنَّ وكسْوَتُهنَّ بالمعروف ⁩

"Fear Allah concerning women, for you have taken them on Allah's trust and made their private parts lawful to you by Allah's word. Your right over them is that they let no one you dislike onto your bedding; if they do that, tap them without harshness. And they have from you their provision and their clothing, in kindness."^[22]

Al-Ṭabarī then gives the wording of the hadith as narrated from Ibn ʿUmar and argues from both versions together. The hadith gives two of a wife’s duties toward her husband: she must let no man onto his bed, and she must not disobey him in what is right. Her provision and clothing, the ⁧نفقة⁩ ("maintenance"), are owed to her while she gives him these two things. He explains the duty to let no man onto his bed as meaning that she gives herself to no man but her husband.^[23]

So if she commits zinā, the husband may withhold her provision and clothing, just as he may when she disobeys him in what is right. If she then offers a ⁧فدية⁩ ("fidya," a payment to end the marriage), he may accept what she gives, because withholding her maintenance no longer violates her rights. What he takes results from a restriction he is permitted to place on her, not from the unjust restriction that the verse forbids. This is why al-Ṭabarī counts both zinā and defiance alike under the exception.^[24]

What the exception allows

The exception for a clear immorality lifts the ban that comes just before it. So once a wife has committed such a wrong, her husband may keep her in the marriage and refuse to divorce her until she pays him to end it, and that payment is the fidya (al-Ṭabarī, Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[25]

Ending the marriage this way is khulʿ, the divorce a wife obtains by giving back wealth to her husband. It joins 4:19 to 2:229: when she disobeys him and does not keep Allah's limits, there is no sin on him concerning what she gives to obtain her divorce (a view al-Shāfiʿī reports).^[26] Most scholars hold that a husband whose wife commits zinā or defies him may ask her for khulʿ, as al-Wāḥidī reports.^[27]

The Law grants the husband this permission because the fault is hers. A wife who has come to dislike her husband and wants another man might hurt him with foul words or deeds until he tires of her and divorces her. She might then take what he gave her and enjoy it with another husband. Knowing that her husband may restrict her and make her life hard if she does this deters her from it (Muḥammad ʿAbduh, as Rashīd Riḍā reports him; al-Marāghī, Ḥijāzī, al-Hararī).^[28]

Since she has disrupted his household and left him needing another wife, Allah does not make him lose his wealth to her (Rashīd Riḍā, Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[29] The permission is therefore discipline for her wrong and not a means to misappropriate her property (Mawdūdī, ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Khaṭīb).^[30]

How far this permission goes is the main question. The answers range from a choice to keep her or let her go, through keeping her until he takes property from her, to putting some pressure on her until she seeks khulʿ.

One early report gives only the choice and says nothing of a payment. Once they commit the wrong, the husband may keep them if he wishes or let them go (ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ).^[31]

A second answer goes further than the choice, since it speaks of her property. When her zinā or defiance leaves no room for good companionship, he may keep her as his wife until he takes property from her (Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[32]

The wider answer goes further than Ibn al-ʿArabī's: it lets the husband keep her in the marriage and put some pressure on her until she seeks khulʿ (al-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr, Saʿīd Ḥawwā, al-Jazāʾirī).^[33]

On the means, one reported view for zinā goes less far than al-Ṭabarī's argument above, which lets the husband withhold her provision and clothing. On this view he pressurizes her by withholding her night's turn, not by beating her or denying her maintenance (a view al-Shāfiʿī reports).^[34]

On Ibn al-ʿArabī's answer and al-Ṭabarī's alike, the rulings on khulʿ restrain the husband. Each ruling allows the payment only on a condition: that he has not harmed her to obtain it, that the wrong is hers, or both.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr reports that the scholars agree that khulʿ for the dower he gave her is permitted when he is not harming her and the two fear they will not keep within Allah's limits.^[35] Mālik's ruling that khulʿ may be taken from a defiant wife fits the verse as the defiance view explains it. Yet Ibn ʿAṭiyya, who draws the link, knows of no text from Mālik on what the immorality in this verse is.^[36]

Under Mālik's ruling, when the defiance is hers, the husband may take what she gives to end the marriage, even more than the dower, if she consents and he has not harmed her. If she gave it for fear of his harm, or because he wronged or harmed her, he may not take it. If he took anything this way he must return it, and the khulʿ remains valid.^[37]

The wrong must also be hers. The husband may take nothing of the khulʿ payment until she turns "defiant", shown in her hatred, bad conduct toward him and her disobedience (al-Zuhrī).^[38]

Which answer is stronger

The clause itself decides how far the permission goes. What the clause forbids is a husband who dislikes his wife, will not divorce her, and makes her life hard, to her harm, so that she pays him for her divorce. The exception for a clear immorality lifts that very ban.

So once she has committed a wrong that is open and clear, whether zinā or defiance, the husband may keep her in the marriage in the way Allah has made clear in His Book. He may put some pressure on her until she gives back what he gave her, or part of it. Al-Ṭabarī's argument from the hadith lets that pressure include withholding her provision and clothing. So on that point the view al-Shāfiʿī reports, which spares her maintenance, is not followed. The wider answer is therefore the stronger, and it is al-Ṭabarī's tarjīḥ, which Ibn Kathīr approves.^[39]

This answer parts from Mālik on the defiant wife whose wrong is open and clear, for whom Mālik requires that the husband has done her no harm. It agrees with him that whatever a husband takes by harm from a wife who has committed no such wrong must be returned.

A bare choice to keep her or let her go, however, falls short of what the exception allows, because the same clause states the payment: "that you take part of what you gave them". On Ibn al-ʿArabī's answer and al-Ṭabarī's alike, the husband may do nothing until her wrong is open and clear, and he may keep her only until she pays to end the marriage.

One commentator adds a second end for the case of defiance. The husband may keep her in the marriage until she mends her conduct or gives willingly to end it, so her return to good conduct ends his permission as her payment does (al-Biqāʿī).^[40]

What “ghayr mubarriḥ” means

Both wordings of the Farewell Sermon qualify the disciplinary measure with ⁧غَيْرَ مُبَرِّحٍ⁩, ghayr mubarriḥ. It belongs to the discussion of defiance at 4:34, after admonition and leaving her alone in her bed. It is a restricted permission, not an instruction to use physical force in every marital disagreement.

Al-Nawawī explains that mubarriḥ means severe and harsh. The hadith excludes that kind of strike: what it permits must be neither severe nor harsh.^[41]

The clearest explanation comes from the leading exegete of the Quran from the Companions. ʿAṭāʾ asked Ibn ʿAbbās what ghayr mubarriḥ meant. He answered, «بالسواك ونحوه», “with a toothstick and something like it.” Muḥammad ibn Mubārak Ḥakīmī grades the report ṣaḥīḥ.^[42]

Al-Rāzī also records a folded handkerchief or cloth among the examples given by some Shāfiʿī jurists. He reports their rejection of a whip or stick and their insistence on the greatest gentleness.^[43]

Here, “tap lightly” means a painless, symbolic tap expressing disapproval, not a blow intended to hurt. Egypt’s Dar al-Iftāʾ expressly explains the gesture as a way of drawing attention to the wrong, not causing pain. It must not injure, humiliate or strike the face. Even this limited permission does not make it a duty: refraining is preferable. If a gentler response will work, it is not permitted. Nor is it permitted if it will cause harm or achieve no improvement.^[44]

Both hadith wordings contain the same restriction, ghayr mubarriḥ. In ʿAmr b. al-Aḥwaṣ’s wording, leaving her alone in her bed and the light tap are followed by an express stopping point: “If they obey you, seek no way against them.”^[45] Jābir’s wording uses the same restriction when speaking of a wife who lets onto her husband’s bed someone he dislikes.^[46]

Al-Ḍaḥḥāk’s two reports also mention a disciplinary "strike," and both read the clear immorality as disobedience and defiance. In the first, Allah commanded the husband to give a symbolic touch and to leave her alone in her bed. He may take the khulʿ payment only if she still does not give up her disobedience and defiance. The second expressly qualifies the strike as ghayr mubarriḥ, not severe or harsh, and calls for admonition with Allah’s Book.^[47]

The command that follows the exception, "live with them in kindness", points the same way. The husband may not part from her merely because of her defiance. He should treat her gently and address what turns her against him, if he can (Abū Zahra).^[48]

On the explanation adopted here, the disciplinary measure of 4:34 is a painless, symbolic tap intended to address the defiance, not inflict suffering. Al-Ḍaḥḥāk’s first report places discipline before a possible khulʿ payment, which the husband may take only if she persists. That sequence is not permission to hurt her until she pays.

Two views outside these answers

Two views fall entirely outside these answers on how far the permission goes: one restricts the husband further, and the other grants him more.

The first gives the exception no effect when the wrong is zinā. Where ʿAṭāʾ's report still lets the husband keep her under the exception, this view denies him the right to harm her until she gives up her property to end the marriage. The reason is that for zinā the Law gives the husband liʿān, or divorce if he wishes. Khulʿ under 2:229 is allowed to a couple who fear they will not keep within Allah's limits (Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr).^[49] Liʿān is the oaths that husband and wife swear against each other before a judge, and it ends the marriage.

The second view goes the other way: her zinā takes the dower from her outright, with no khulʿ, because it takes the exception to permit the husband to take back what he gave her once the immorality is zinā. On this view she loses what he gave her: the husband takes back her dower (al-Suddī), and for zinā Mālik allows this even without her consent, as Abū Zahra reports him.^[50]

A bride who commits zinā before the marriage is consummated is flogged a hundred lashes, banished for a year and returns to her husband what she took from him (al-Ḥasan).^[51] On another report, she is separated from her husband and receives nothing (Jābir b. ʿAbd Allāh ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩).^[52]

The hadith of the couple who made liʿān answers the view that her zinā takes her dower, and gives no support to the view that gives the exception no effect for zinā. Ibn ʿUmar ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ relates that when the husband asked for his money, the Prophet ﷺ said, ⁧لَا مَالَ لَكَ إِنْ كُنْتَ صَدَقْتَ عَلَيْهَا، فَهُوَ بِمَا اسْتَحْلَلْتَ مِنْ فَرْجِهَا⁩, "you have no claim to the money: if you told the truth about her, it is for what you made lawful of her private parts".^[53] The money is hers in return for what he made lawful to himself. So the hadith weakens al-Suddī's view that her zinā takes her dower, and al-Thaʿālibī answers him with this argument.^[54]

Nor does the hadith support the view that gives the exception no effect for zinā, because liʿān and khulʿ are two separate courses open to the husband. If he makes liʿān, she is divorced from him and his right to the dower falls. If he does not want liʿān, the verse allows him, for zinā, to put some pressure on her so that he recovers her dower and parts from her by khulʿ (Saʿīd Ḥawwā).^[55] The hadith speaks of liʿān, so it does not exclude khulʿ.

What she gives back

Once liʿān and khulʿ are told apart, the amount of the khulʿ payment remains, and the answers follow the view taken of the wrong.

Those who take the immorality to be zinā allow the husband to refuse her a divorce and put some pressure on her until she gives back what he gave her of her dower (a view al-Ṭabarī reports).^[56] In al-Suddī's wording the command is: when they do this, take their dowers.^[57]

Ibn ʿĀshūr explains the majority's understanding, that the immorality here is zinā, by a narrower rule, which he draws from the words of early scholars. A husband who is certain that his wife committed zinā may keep her in the marriage. If she asks for divorce, he may refuse it until she gives back part of her dower, and not the whole of it, so that the time she was his wife is not left without anything in return.^[58]

The rule rests on the husband's own certainty of her zinā. Ibn ʿĀshūr leaves its use to his religion and the trust of his faith. If he departs from what is right, the judges may compel him back to it.^[59]

On the general view of the wrong, which this tafsīr follows, she may give back all he gave her or part of it to end the marriage (al-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr, Abū Zahra).^[60]

Whether she may give more than he gave her is a separate question. Some infer from "part of what you gave them" that khulʿ for more than he gave her is barred (a view al-Qāsimī reports from al-Iklīl).^[61] Ibn ʿUthaymīn mentions this inference and then doubts it: the clause forbids making her life hard to take anything at all from her, however little, and says nothing about whether she may give more or less than he gave.^[62]

The question therefore belongs to 2:229 and not to this verse, and this tafsīr weighs it there. The scholars hold three views on it: that it is allowed, that it is forbidden, and that it is disliked (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[63] Those who allow it do not hold her to part of the dower. They permit more than her dower once she has committed zinā beyond doubt or is clearly defiant (al-Jazāʾirī).^[64] In cases of defiance they permit everything she has (a view Ibn al-Faras reports from Mālik and others).^[65]

Whether every khulʿ needs zinā

One more question about khulʿ follows from 2:229: whether it needs zinā at all. Some held that every khulʿ does: a husband may take nothing from his wife until he finds her in zinā, since Allah says "unless they commit a clear immorality" (Abū Qilāba, Ibn Sīrīn).^[66]

Their argument fails, because immorality also includes foul speech and harm, which is why a foul-mouthed person is called fāḥish (Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr).^[67]

2:229 gives a second reply. That verse was not abrogated by 4:19 and 4:20, the two verses cited against it, because abrogation needs a conflict and there is none. 2:229 concerns a fear the two share, while 4:20 concerns a husband who alone wants to exchange one wife for another. A wife who fears she will not keep within Allah's limits, and so gives wealth for her divorce, gives it willingly. This is the view of most scholars (Ismāʿīl al-Qāḍī, as Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr quotes him).^[68] So a khulʿ under 2:229 does not wait for zinā.

When the fault is the husband's

Outside this exception, however, a husband may not keep an unwilling wife in the marriage or put any pressure on her at all. 4:20 makes clear that harming a wife is forbidden in every case but that of a clear immorality (al-Rāzī).^[69]

Two rulings address what happens to a payment a husband takes when the fault is his: he must return it, or his taking it is disliked. Under the first ruling, anything a husband takes by wronging or harming his wife must be returned, though the divorce remains valid (Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī).^[70]

The Ḥanafī scholars hold the second view: taking the payment is disliked. When the defiance lies with the husband, the literal sense of 4:20 bars him from taking back anything he gave her, which is why they rule it disliked for him to take any part of her dower (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[71] Al-Rāzī and Ibn ʿĀdil agree the taking is disliked. If a khulʿ is executed anyway, they add, he legally owns what she gave for it, just as a sale made during the call to prayer is forbidden, yet still passes ownership.^[72]

This tafsīr follows the ruling that he must return it, since the verse forbids him from taking anything from her by means of harm.

Whether the exception was abrogated

Some reports, however, say that the exception's permission ended when the ḥudūd came down. ʿAṭāʾ al-Khurāsānī relates that before the ḥudūd came down, a husband whose wife committed an immorality took back what he had given her and put her out, and the ḥudūd abrogated that.^[73] ʿAṭāʾ also relates from Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ that the ḥudūd abrogated it: the immorality these verses speak of came before Sūrat al-Nūr brought flogging and rajm, and a woman who commits it now is taken out and stoned.^[74] In one wording ʿAṭāʾ names two abrogators, the ḥadd for zinā and liʿān (a view Ibn ʿĀshūr reports).^[75]

These reports conflate two different rights. The ḥadd is Allah's right over the one who commits zinā. Refusing to divorce her and putting some pressure on her until she gives back what he gave her, or part of it, is the husband's right, as it is when she defies him. Neither ruling cancels the other (al-Ṭabarī).^[76] Nor does liʿān cancel the husband's right, since liʿān and khulʿ are two courses open to the husband. The claim of abrogation is therefore a weak view (Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Ibn al-Faras).^[77]

Even if the reports are accepted, the abrogation could concern only those who take the immorality to be zinā. Those who take the immorality to be defiance hold that the exception was not abrogated (al-Wāḥidī).^[78] There is no ḥadd for defiance, so no later ruling came down that could cancel the exception for it.

Even ʿAṭāʾ's account, that in the Jāhiliyya a husband whose wife committed zinā took back all he had given her, until Allah abrogated this by the ḥadd punishments, is a possible and sound meaning that 4:19 includes. It is not to be called abrogation, even though in strict terms it is one, because what the Prophet ﷺ abrogated was a falsehood (Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[79]

A second interpretation addresses this question by taking the exception to mean confinement like that of 4:15. There, women who commit the immorality are held in the houses until death takes them or Allah makes a way for them. On one view the exception meant confining her in prison once the immorality was proved by witnesses, and that confinement was abrogated by the verse of stoning (Tanwīr al-Miqbās).^[80]

A related interpretation draws the confinement from the verse's own word. ʿAḍl is confinement and so includes holding a woman in the house, which husbands and guardians are forbidden to do unless the women commit an open immorality, when confining them becomes permissible (a possibility al-Rāzī offers).^[81]

The same tie to ʿaḍl as confinement is reported from Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī and Abū Muslim, who add that the verse makes no reference to taking money. So for them the exception permits confining women who commit an immorality, zinā for al-Jubbāʾī and, for Abū Muslim, siḥāq, sexual relations between women, on the pattern of 4:15 (a view al-Ālūsī reports).^[82] Applied to zinā proved by four witnesses, this confinement means that she is held in the houses (al-Biqāʿī).^[83]

The confinement view gives two answers on abrogation: the exception was not abrogated, or the verse of flogging abrogated it. Abū Muslim, whom al-Rāzī reports tying the exception to the confinement of 4:15, held that it was not abrogated.^[84] Some who tie it to ʿaḍl called this ruling abrogated by the verse of flogging (a view al-Nīsābūrī reports).^[85]

Al-Shāfiʿī reports the view that the verse was abrogated. On that view it has the same sense as the confinement of 4:15 and was abrogated by the verse of the ḥudūd, ⁧فَاجْلِدُوا كُلَّ وَاحِدٍ مِنْهُمَا مِائَةَ جَلْدَةٍ⁩, "flog each of them a hundred lashes" (24:2). In the view al-Shāfiʿī reports, the Prophet ﷺ then said, ⁧خُذُوا عَنِّي خُذُوا عَنِّي خُذُوا عَنِّي قَدْ جَعَلَ اللَّهُ لَهُنَّ سَبِيلًا⁩, "take it from me, take it from me, take it from me: Allah has made a way for them".^[86]

Al-Shāfiʿī leans toward that view in guarded words: ⁧وَمَا أَشْبَهَ مَا قِيلَ مِنْ هَذَا بِمَا قِيلَ وَاَللَّهُ أَعْلَمُ⁩, "how close what was said here is to what was said, and Allah knows best". His reason is that Allah lets a husband keep his wife or divorce her whether she does well or ill, and in no state lets him deny her what she is owed.^[87] So the abrogation he leans toward is only that of a confinement which denies her right when she commits an immorality, as al-Bayhaqī explains.^[88]

The confinement view does not remove the exception, for two reasons:

1. The exception concerns a khulʿ payment, not a confinement. The verse joins the exception to "that you take part of what you gave them", so what it allows is pressurizing her into a payment, not a penalty of confinement. The confinement view has the same sense as ʿAṭāʾ's report, a ruling from before the ḥudūd that they abrogated, and that view is weak (al-Qurṭubī).^[89] The two rights, Allah's in the ḥadd and the husband's in the khulʿ payment, answer the confinement view as they answer ʿAṭāʾ's report.
2. That abrogation leaves untouched the payment the exception speaks of, and al-Shāfiʿī himself allows the heart of the exception: after zinā, if she gives back part of what she was given to be separated, that is lawful, if Allah wills.^[90]

Conclusion: The clear immorality of the exception is any open wrong a wife commits against the marriage, whether zinā, defiance of her husband or abusive speech, and only then may he pressurize her until she pays to end the marriage; the view that the exception was abrogated by the ḥudūd seems weak, because the ḥadd is Allah's right while that payment is her husband's.

The Farewell Sermon’s restricted disciplinary measure is explained here as a painless, symbolic tap within the discussion of 4:34. It is not permission to hurt a wife or make her surrender money.

And Allah knows best.

Q4. What does ⁧وَعَاشِرُوهُنَّ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ⁩, "and live with them in kindness", require?

After two prohibitions, 4:19 gives a command: ⁧وَعَاشِرُوهُنَّ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ⁩, "and live with them in kindness". It responds to the conduct of men before Islam, when they spoke harshly to women and harmed them (al-Zuḥaylī),^[1] and it speaks to those who treat their wives badly (Abū al-Suʿūd, Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī).^[2] The command is addressed to everyone who has women in his care, whether husband or guardian, but it applies chiefly to husbands, because they are the ones who mostly live with women (Ibn ʿAṭiyya, al-Thaʿālibī, al-Zuḥaylī).^[3] The question is therefore what it requires of a husband:

1. what he owes his wife, and whether that duty remains when he dislikes her;
2. what the command asks of him beyond her due;
3. and whether she owes him the same.

What he owes her

The standard of the command is its last word, ⁧بِالْمَعْرُوفِ⁩, "in kindness", which refers to what is recognized as right: what sound human nature finds agreeable, and what neither the Law nor custom nor decency rejects (al-Zuḥaylī, al-Hararī, Muḥammad al-Hilāl).^[4] That covers a wide range, since the Law recognizes as right what it makes obligatory, what it recommends and what it permits (Abū Bakr al-Jazāʾirī).^[5] So not all of it is binding on a husband.

'Kindness' has two senses here, and they mark what binds and what does not. Where it means only permissible treatment, the command is an obligation. Where it means more than that, it is a recommendation (Ibn ʿArafa).^[6]

Two narrower explanations of kindness are each weak taken alone. One explains it as fairness in his nights and her maintenance, and graciousness in word and deed. The other explains it as no more than refraining from harming her. Each is weak because kindness is judged by what the wife recognizes as right and does not object to, and what befits both spouses by their standing among people (Rashīd Riḍā; Muḥammad ʿAbduh, as he reports him).^[7] Together, though, they give the two parts of her due, since each is something he must do: give her her rights, and treat her well, beginning with keeping from harming her.

The first part of her due is her rights. Since the verse has just forbidden him to keep her in order to take back what he gave her, he may keep her only while giving her the rights Allah assigned to her. Otherwise he must release her with grace, in the words of 2:229 (al-Ṭabarī).^[8] These rights are specified: her maintenance and her share of his nights (al-Zuḥaylī), each given with fairness (al-Zajjāj, al-Nasafī), her maintenance being her clothing and her provision by custom (ʿIkrima).^[9]

The Prophet ﷺ named these two, her provision and her clothing, in the Farewell Sermon hadith that Question 3 quotes: ⁧ولهنَّ عليكم رِزْقُهنَّ وكسْوَتُهنَّ بالمعروف⁩, "and they have from you their provision and their clothing, in kindness", with the very word of this command.^[10] Another hadith ties both to what the husband has himself. Muʿāwiya b. Ḥayda ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ asked the Prophet ﷺ what a wife's right over her husband is, and he answered, ⁧أَنْ تُطْعِمَهَا إِذَا طَعِمْتَ، وَتَكْسُوَهَا إِذَا اكْتَسَيْتَ⁩, "that you feed her when you eat, and clothe her when you clothe yourself".^[11]

Custom then clarifies what this requires: what is customary between a man like him and a woman like her, in that time and place, so it varies with circumstances (al-Saʿdī).^[12] So the Mālikī scholars infer from the same command that a wife for whom one servant is not enough, such as a caliph's or a king's daughter, is owed service enough for her (al-Qurṭubī).^[13]

Al-Shāfiʿī and Abū Ḥanīfa held that he owes her no more than one servant, since one is enough for her personal needs. In the same way a fighter who brings several horses is given a share for one, because he can fight on only one (a view al-Qurṭubī and al-Zuḥaylī report).^[14] The Mālikī scholars answer that this is a mistake. A king's daughter, who is used to much service, needs more than one servant can do in washing her clothes, preparing her bed and the rest. Al-Qurṭubī calls their answer clear.^[15] So her service, like the rest of her maintenance, follows the custom between a man like him and a woman like her.

The second part of her due is the way he treats her, and it begins by ending the harshness the command responds to. He must not harm her in word or deed (al-Hararī), frown at her when she has done nothing wrong, speak to her harshly, or show any preference for another woman (al-Zuḥaylī, al-Durra).^[16]

The hadith of Muʿāwiya b. Ḥayda that gives her food and clothing goes on to list three such harms: ⁧وَلَا تَضْرِبِ الْوَجْهَ، وَلَا تُقَبِّحْ، وَلَا تَهْجُرْ⁩, "do not strike the face, do not revile her, and do not stay away from her", ⁧إِلَّا فِي الْبَيْتِ⁩, "except within the house". Abū Dāwūd explains "do not revile her" as saying to her, "May Allah make you ugly".^[17] Refraining from this harm is part of her due just as her rights are, so it is obligatory on him (al-Zuḥaylī).^[18]

The duty serves the marriage in two ways: it guards against worse, and it completes the bond between the spouses. It guards against worse, since keeping company with her with fairness in what he does and gentleness in what he says saves him from becoming, by neglecting her, the cause of her zinā, or of her defiance or bad character (al-Qāsimī).^[19] It also completes the bond between the spouses, which brings tranquility to the soul and ease to life, and that is why Allah commanded good companionship (al-Qurṭubī).^[20]

This good companionship is a duty the husband owes before Allah, even though no court imposes it on him (Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Qurṭubī, al-Zuḥaylī).^[21] A court holds him to it only where people, following a bad custom of theirs, have made it a condition of the marriage and bound it with an oath (Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[22]

Nor does his dislike of her lift the duty, since the verse moves straight from the command to that very wife, "if you dislike them" (Sayyid Quṭb, Darwaza, al-Shāfiʿī).^[23] It can ask this of him because kindness does not depend on love: it is broader than affection, since affection is good done out of love, while kindness is given even without it (al-Shaʿrāwī).^[24]

In a view al-Shāfiʿī reports, a husband may keep a wife he dislikes, as long as he gives her her due. On that view, what the verse forbids is keeping her while denying her right, in order to inherit from her or take some of what he gave her, not keeping her while disliking her.^[25] Question 5 explains why he is urged to keep her.

More than her due

What goes beyond her due, the second sense of 'kindness', is what the command recommends. Kindness asks him to make his conduct and his appearance pleasing to her, as far as he is able, because she wants from him the same good treatment that he wants from her (Ibn Kathīr, al-Zuḥaylī).^[26] Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ said that he adorned himself for his wife just as she adorned herself for him.^[27]

Kindness also asks for good character and gentleness toward her (Ibn Qudāma).^[28] Good character toward a wife is more than refraining from harming her: it is bearing her harm (al-Ghazālī, al-Qushayrī) and being patient with her anger (al-Ghazālī).^[29] The Prophet ﷺ counselled men to be patient in this way. Abū Hurayra ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ relates that he said:

⁧ اسْتَوْصُوا بِالنِّسَاءِ فَإِنَّ الْمَرْأَةَ خُلِقَتْ مِنْ ضِلَعٍ وَإِنَّ أَعْوَجَ شَيْءٍ فِي الضِّلَعِ أَعْلَاهُ فَإِنْ ذَهَبْتَ تُقِيمُهُ كَسَرْتَهُ وَإِنْ تَرَكْتَهُ لَمْ يَزَلْ أَعْوَجَ فَاسْتَوْصُوا بِالنِّسَاءِ ⁩

"Take my counsel to treat women well, for woman was created from a rib, and the most crooked part of the rib is its top. If you set about straightening it, you break it, and if you leave it, it stays crooked. So take my counsel to treat women well."^[30]

The image teaches patience: a husband benefits from her only by being patient with what is crooked in her (Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī).^[31] In another wording the Prophet ﷺ speaks of the break, and with it the cost of impatience: ⁧وَإِنْ ذَهَبْتَ تُقِيمُهَا كَسَرْتَهَا. وَكَسْرُهَا طَلَاقُهَا⁩, "if you set about straightening her, you break her, and her breaking is her divorce".^[32]

Beyond patience, the Prophet ﷺ made a man's treatment of his family the true mark of his character, urging a husband to give more than his basic duty. ʿĀʾisha ⁧رضي الله عنها⁩ relates that he said:

⁧ خيْرُكُمْ خَيْرُكُمْ لِأهْلِهِ وأنا خَيْرُكُمْ لِأهْلي ⁩

"The best of you is the best of you to his family, and I am the best of you to my family."

Al-Tirmidhī grades the hadith ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ, and Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ grades its isnād ṣaḥīḥ.^[33]

The hadith's last words point to the model for this kindness, the Prophet's ﷺ own conduct with his family. He was gracious in company and always cheerful; he joked with his family, was gentle with them, provided for them generously and laughed with his wives, and he even raced ʿĀʾisha ⁧رضي الله عنها⁩ to show her his affection (Ibn Kathīr).^[34] She relates that she was with the Prophet ﷺ on a journey:

⁧ فَسَابَقْتُهُ فَسَبَقْتُهُ عَلَى رِجْلَيَّ، فَلَمَّا حَمَلْتُ اللَّحْمَ سَابَقْتُهُ فَسَبَقَنِي فَقَالَ: «هَذِهِ بِتِلْكَ السَّبْقَةِ »⁩

"I raced him and outran him on foot. When I had put on weight, I raced him and he outran me, and he said: 'This is for that race.'"^[35]

Al-Albānī grades the hadith ṣaḥīḥ,^[36] so the husband who gives more than her due follows the Prophet's ﷺ practice as well as his words.

Owed by each spouse

The command falls chiefly on husbands, but its verb makes the duty mutual. The verb in ⁧وَعَاشِرُوهُنَّ⁩, "and live with them", is of the form mufāʿala, which usually denotes a reciprocal act, like the Arabic verbs qātala, "fought one another", and yāsara, "made things easy for one another" (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[37] An early explanation gives the verb as "keeping company with them" (Muqātil b. Ḥayyān),^[38] and keeping company is something two people do together.

The command therefore includes the wives: "live with them in kindness, and let them live with you in the same way", so that each spouse is a cause of the other's joy (al-Hararī).^[39] Nor is it a courtesy only: Allah made it obligatory that each spouse give the other what is due in kindness (al-Shāfiʿī).^[40] Some scholars, as Ibn Qudāma reports, say how each gives it: without delay, without a show of dislike, and with a cheerful face.^[41]

Conclusion: Living with them in kindness obliges a husband to give his wife her rights, her maintenance and her share of his nights, to do her no harm in word or deed, and to keep good company with her, a duty before Allah that no court enforces, even toward a wife he dislikes; kindness beyond those rights is recommended, and the form of the verb makes it owed by each spouse to the other.

And Allah knows best.

Q5. Why is a husband urged to keep a wife he dislikes, and what is the ⁧خَيْرًا كَثِيرًا⁩, "much good"?

4:19 closes with a counsel: ⁧فَإِنْ كَرِهْتُمُوهُنَّ فَعَسَى أَنْ تَكْرَهُوا شَيْئًا وَيَجْعَلَ اللَّهُ فِيهِ خَيْرًا كَثِيرًا⁩, "For if you dislike them, perhaps you dislike a thing and Allah makes therein much good." The answer to the condition "if you dislike them" is omitted. It is "be patient with them and do not part from them", and the words that follow give its reason: you may dislike a thing in which Allah places much good (al-Zamakhsharī, al-Bayḍāwī, al-Hararī).^[1] The question is therefore what the counsel asks of a husband who dislikes his wife and how far it binds him, what rule its reason states, and what the much good is.

What the counsel asks

The counsel addresses one kind of dislike: he dislikes her looks or her character, but she has committed no clear immorality and shown no defiance (al-Qurṭubī, al-Zuḥaylī, Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥammad Fārūq al-Zayn).^[2] A defect in her looks or her character is no sin of hers, since it is not in her hands (Rashīd Riḍā).^[3]

The cause may also be a shortfall in the housework due from her, or an illness, or his own heart turning away from her or toward another woman (al-Marāghī, al-Zuḥaylī, Rashīd Riḍā, al-Qaṭṭān, Ḥijāzī, Saʿīd Ḥawwā).^[4] No woman is free of such a shortfall, nor is any man in his own work (Rashīd Riḍā).^[5] In each such case the dislike is for some worldly reason and has nothing to do with her religion (al-Shaʿrāwī).^[6] A clear immorality or defiance on her part falls under the exception explained in Question 3.

Toward a wife he dislikes for such a reason, he is urged to keep her, even against his own wish, and to bear with her (Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Kiyā al-Harrāsī).^[7] He bears even the harm she does him and her want of fairness toward him, so long as it is neither a clear immorality nor defiance (Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[8] The verse urges this strongly, since it calls the good "much". Yet it urges without commanding, because divorce itself remains permitted. Divorcing her for dislike alone is, however, makrūh, a thing the Law discourages (al-Qurṭubī, al-Kiyā al-Harrāsī, al-Ālūsī), and so keeping her is recommended (al-Jaṣṣāṣ, al-Zuḥaylī).^[9]

Before he acts on that permission, the counsel asks him to take a fuller look. He is to look at married life from every side and not from his dislike alone: his children, his household, her merits beside her faults, and who would come after her (Abū Zahra, Ṭanṭāwī).^[10] Its aim is that he look deeply into where things lead and not be deceived by how they first appear (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[11]

Nor does the counsel ask him to keep her whatever the circumstances. It never asks him to keep her while denying her right, because keeping a wife who wants to leave, while withholding what she is owed, is exactly what the verse forbids, as Question 2 explains. The good the counsel promises assumes that keeping her is possible and leads to nothing forbidden (al-Saʿdī),^[12] so where parting cannot be avoided, the counsel does not require him to keep her.^[13]

Nor does the counsel ask patience with what goes against what pleases Allah. A chaste wife who is free of grave faults is owed kindness and patience with all her ways. But where her conduct touches his honour, his protective jealousy, ghayra, obliges him to refuse it (Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī).^[14]

A rule for every disliked thing

Where the counsel does apply, it rests on the reason the verse gives for keeping her, and that reason is a general rule. It says ⁧شَيْئًا⁩, "a thing", and not "a woman", although its counsel concerns women. So the rule applies to everything a person dislikes, and the wife is one instance of it (al-Ṣābūnī).^[15]

The verse gives only the first half of the rule that 2:216 states in full. 2:216 adds that a person may love a thing that is bad for him. But 4:19 speaks to a husband who wants to leave a wife he dislikes and has no wish for another woman. Telling him that some loved things are bad would open a door of excuses toward what his desire leans to (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[16] 4:19 also ascribes the good to Allah, who places it in the thing disliked: the good is not in every disliked thing by its nature, but something Allah places in a particular one (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[17]

The rule is stated with "perhaps", yet the word is not a bare hope here, because when Allah says ⁧عَسَى⁩, "perhaps", what He says comes to pass (Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩, Ibn ʿUthaymīn),^[18] and here the word has that force (al-Hararī).^[19] Others give it here its usual sense, the hope of a thing or its nearness, so that the good is hoped for when the dislike comes (Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Maẓharī).^[20] The two views meet once the rule is told apart from the single case.

What "perhaps" makes certain is the rule, not every case. Allah places much good in many things people dislike, as experience shows. In a single case the outcome may not be good, but in most cases His promise comes true (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[21] But for one who is patient with what he dislikes, seeking Allah's face and hoping for His reward, the verse is a promise, and it is fulfilled for him. Where in a single case it is not fulfilled, something has prevented it, for Allah's promise is true (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[22]

Where good does lie in a disliked thing, a person may not see it, since no one knows with certainty where the good will be. Some of it the mind can find by looking deeply. Some of it Allah knows is there though it does not appear to people (Ibn ʿĀshūr, Muḥammad Fārūq al-Zayn).^[23] Since the verse gives this rule as the reason for its omitted answer, "be patient", the good it promises comes through his patience with her.

What the much good is

The good that patience brings is not one thing only, since the verse leaves "much good" general. The child mentioned in the early reports is an example of it, not the whole of it (Abū Ḥayyān, Ibn Juzayy).^[24] Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ himself explains the much good as both affection for her and a child by her.^[25] The good takes several forms:

1. Allah may give him a child by her, a righteous one (al-Ṭabarī, al-Wāḥidī); noble children are the greatest part of that good, and such a child raises her standing with him (Rashīd Riḍā).^[26]
2. The dislike may pass, and love may take its place (al-Ṭabarī, al-Saʿdī).^[27]
3. He is rewarded for his patience and for giving her her due though he dislikes her (al-Shāfiʿī), and that there is much good for him in that patience, in this world and the next (Ibn Kathīr).^[28] Even where no good comes from the thing itself, he gains from it through his patience (Rashīd Riḍā).^[29]
4. Compelling himself to keep her without loving her is a struggle against the self and a training in good character (al-Saʿdī).^[30]
5. Her conduct may change for the better, and she may come to treat him well (al-Zuḥaylī).^[31]

The good may also be in her already, in another side of her. If he dislikes one aspect of her, he is to be patient, for Allah may place the good in another, and that is the meaning of the Prophet's ﷺ words (Ibn Juzayy).^[32] Abū Hurayra ⁧رضي الله عنه⁩ relates that the Prophet ﷺ said:

⁧ لَا يَفْرَكْ مُؤْمِنٌ مُؤْمِنَةً . إِنْ كَرِهَ مِنْهَا خُلُقًا رَضِيَ مِنْهَا آخَرَ ⁩

"Let no believing man hate a believing woman. If he dislikes one trait in her, he is pleased with another."^[33]

The same counsel is given for every companion, in poetry by an unnamed poet that Abū Ḥayyān cites at this verse:

⁧ وَمَنْ لَا يُغْمِضُ عَيْنَهُ عَنْ صَدِيقِهِ ... وَعَنْ بَعْضِ مَا فِيهِ يَمُتْ وَهُوَ عَاتِب ⁩ ⁧ وَمَنْ يَتَتَبَّعْ جَاهِدًا كُلَّ عَثْرَةٍ ... يَجِدْهَا وَلَا يَسْلَمْ لَهُ الدَّهْرَ صَاحِب ⁩

"Whoever does not close his eye to his friend, and to some of what is in him, dies still reproaching him; and whoever strives to track down every stumble will find it, and no companion will stay with him for ever."

The hadith asks the husband not to be that fault-finder with his wife, but to set the trait that pleases him against the trait he dislikes.^[34]

The hadith asks this of him only if its words are a prohibition, since as a statement they would only describe how a believing husband feels. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ took them as a statement of fact: a believing man does not hate his wife completely.^[35]

Al-Nawawī answers that al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ's view is weak or an error, and that the words are a prohibition. In the known riwāya, the wording as it is transmitted, he notes, the verb is ⁧يَفْرَكْ⁩, "hate", with a sukūn, no vowel, on its last letter, which is the form of a prohibition. A disliked trait in her, he adds, comes with one that pleases, so he should not hate her.^[36]

The prohibition tells him not to let one disliked trait grow into a hatred of her whole person that would drive him to leave her. It governs his feelings toward her, while the kindness of Question 4 is owed whatever he feels, and divorce itself remains permitted.

Some go further than permitting divorce and place the good in the parting itself: he divorces her, she marries another man, and the good falls to one of them. It may fall to her new husband, for whom Allah places much good in her (al-Ḥasan) and to whom He gives a child by her (Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Muqātil b. Ḥayyān).^[37] Or it may fall to her, once she is rid of a husband who dislikes her and marries a better one (a view al-Khāzin and al-Nīsābūrī report, and al-Rāzī reports from al-Aṣamm).^[38]

Against this, al-Rāzī and Ibn ʿĀdil report an answer from the scholar they call al-Qāḍī: Allah urges the companionship to continue, so the same verse cannot also mean parting.^[39] Such a meaning is also remote from the verse's context, and from what comes before it and after it (Abū Ḥayyān).^[40]

Conclusion: A husband who dislikes his wife when she has committed no clear immorality and shown no defiance is urged to keep her and bear with her rather than divorce her, because a man may dislike something in which Allah places much good, a righteous child, affection that returns, or the reward of patience; the counsel is a recommendation and does not bind him where parting cannot be avoided.

And Allah knows best.

2. How the Commentators Read This Verse

Some commentators also explain what the husband dislikes in ⁧فَإِنْ كَرِهْتُمُوهُنَّ⁩, "For if you dislike them", and how 4:19 follows from 4:18, which ends on those who die as unbelievers.

Al-Māturīdī (d. 333 AH / 944–45 CE)

The words ⁧فَإِنْ كَرِهْتُمُوهُنَّ⁩, "For if you dislike them", are usually taken to mean that the husband dislikes his wife herself, and Question 5 follows that sense. Another sense changes what he dislikes: he dislikes parting from her, and Allah puts much good in the parting (a view al-Māturīdī reports).^[1] It is supported by 4:130, where Allah promises that if a couple separate, He will enrich each of them from His abundance.^[2]

So this sense does not need the child that a new husband might have by her, which the parting view in Question 5 mentions: the good is the provision Allah promises after a separation. The answer given there applies to this sense as well, since its reason concerns parting itself: a verse that urges the marriage to continue does not also intend parting.

Al-Biqāʿī (d. 885 AH / 1480 CE)

4:19 is tied to 4:18 both in what it forbids and in whom it addresses. The verses just before 4:19 had broken off the discussion of women as the mothers of heirs, and they closed with the threat of 4:18 against anyone who does what is not lawful for him. The discussion of women then resumes with a thing that is not lawful, ⁧لَا يَحِلُّ لَكُمْ⁩, "it is not lawful for you".

Whoever does that thing, inheriting women by compulsion, falls under the threat of 4:18. If he believes it forbidden, he is a man who commits zinā and persists in it until death, and if he believes it halal, he is an unbeliever.^[3]

The address is tied to 4:18 as well. After 4:18 speaks of those who die as unbelievers, 4:19 opens ⁧يَاأَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا⁩, "O you who have believed". Singling out the believers at this point, in a verse that addresses them as heirs, is a pointer to a rule of inheritance, that an unbeliever does not inherit from a Muslim. Otherwise the address would have been "O people".^[4] Both points are drawn from the order of the verses, not from the apparent sense of 4:19.

3. Iʿrāb: Grammatical Analysis

The verse is one address with three rulings, a ban, a prohibition and a command, then a condition and what answers it. The word and clause tables follow Dār al-Ṣaḥāba’s Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Karīm.^[1] In the tables, rafʿ, naṣb, jarr and jazm are the grammatical states:

• rafʿ is the state of a subject, a doer or a predicate;
• naṣb that of an object, a ḥāl and a verb after ⁧أَنْ⁩;
• jarr that of a noun after a preposition or completing another noun;
• and jazm that of a verb after a particle of prohibition or of condition.

The explanations after the tables take the verse’s words in order, give the other constructions, and say what each changes, or leaves unchanged, in the English.

Word / Grammar / What it does

Clause / Position

A clause can stand as a fresh statement, complete another clause, or take a noun’s place. The table follows the same work.^[5]

Where the grammar changes the meaning

Some words and clauses of the verse are construed in more than one way. The table gives each in brief: its constructions, whether they change the meaning or a ruling, and which this tafsīr follows. The entries after it explain each in the verse’s order.

⁧النِّسَاءَ⁩, “women”

Are the women inherited, or inherited from?

⁧النِّسَاءَ⁩, “women”, is the object of ⁧تَرِثُوا⁩, “inherit”. The grammarians analyse it in two ways: with the verb taking two objects, or with the verb taking one.

On the analysis with two objects, if “women” is the first object, the women themselves are what the heirs take, as the people of the Jāhiliyya took their fathers’ wives and said, “We have more right to marry them”. If it is the second, the first is understood: the one addressed inherits wealth from the women (al-ʿUkbarī).^[7]

Another analysis needs only one object, so no second object is understood. Either a word is understood before “women”, and the one addressed inherits the women’s wealth, as a husband did who kept a wife he did not want until she died and he inherited from her. Or no word is understood, and the women themselves are made into things inherited, as a dead man’s kinsmen took his widow (al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī).^[8]

Why this matters. Either analysis gives the grammar of the two senses of the practice in Question 1. The English “inherit women” follows the sense in which the women themselves are taken, which Question 1 adopts, and the next word describes the manner of the taking on either sense.

⁧كَرْهًا⁩, “by compulsion”

Whose unwillingness does the word describe?

⁧كَرْهًا⁩, “by compulsion”, is a maṣdar, a noun naming an act, used as a ḥāl, a word that describes the state of someone in the clause. The accounts differ on whose state it describes:

Why this matters. So the accounts differ on whose state the word describes, the woman’s or the man’s who takes, and for him, whether it is force or dislike. The English “by compulsion” conveys the first two, and none of the three changes the ban, because Question 1 finds that the word does not restrict it.

⁧وَلَا تَعْضُلُوهُنَّ⁩, “and do not make difficulties for them”

A new prohibition, or part of the ban?

⁧وَلَا تَعْضُلُوهُنَّ⁩, “and do not make difficulties for them”, has two constructions: a new prohibition in jazm, or part of the one ban in naṣb. Either way the two clauses are joined because they are alike: both force something on a woman against her will, both are bad treatment of her, and the barring is done to take her property (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[12]

In the first construction, ⁧لَا⁩ forbids and puts the verb in jazm, so the clause is a new prohibition joined to “it is not lawful” (Dār al-Ṣaḥāba, Maḥmūd Ṣāfī).^[13]

In the second, the verb is in naṣb, joined to “that you inherit”, so that the one ban covers both acts: it is not lawful for you to inherit women, nor to bar them (al-ʿUkbarī, Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh).^[14] On this construction ⁧لَا⁩ does not forbid. It is added to stress the negation of “it is not lawful” (al-Zamakhsharī, al-Maẓharī, al-Hararī).^[15]

The two constructions differ in who is forbidden to bar her. On the jazm, barring is forbidden in its own right, and the clause may speak to other people, such as husbands. On the naṣb, it is a second thing that is not lawful, under the same “for you” as inheriting, so the barring falls to the same people who were inheriting (Abū Zahra, Ibn al-Jawzī).^[16] What she is barred from is left unsaid, and it follows who is addressed: from marrying, if the clause speaks to the guardians who could keep her from it, or from divorce, if it speaks to husbands (al-ʿUkbarī, al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī).^[17] The English leaves it unsaid, as the Arabic does.

The naṣb has early support: Ibn Masʿūd’s wording, “nor that you bar them”, has it, and on its strength the naṣb is preferred, though the jazm is allowed as well (al-Ṭabarī, Ibn ʿAṭiyya).^[18]

Against the naṣb there is an objection from the grammar. When a verb negated by ⁧لَا⁩ is joined to a verb in naṣb, ⁧أَنْ⁩, the particle that puts it in naṣb, is understood after the joining wāw and before ⁧لَا⁩. So it is in “I want to repent and not enter the Fire”, where what is wanted is the repenting and the not entering. Here that would give “it is not lawful for you that you do not bar them”, the opposite of the meaning, unless ⁧لَا⁩ is taken as an added word, which is against its apparent sense (Abū Ḥayyān).^[19]

The answer is that in that example ⁧أَنْ⁩ must come before ⁧لَا⁩, because the sentence breaks if it comes after it. In this verse ⁧أَنْ⁩ can be understood after ⁧لَا⁩, and the meaning is sound: inheriting women against their will is not lawful for you, nor barring them (al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī).^[20]

The words that follow raise another objection to the naṣb if it makes the two clauses speak to the same people: “part of what you gave them” cannot be said to the heirs addressed by “that you inherit” (Ibn Kamāl Pāshā).^[21]

The objection assumes that each “you” means the same people. The verse speaks to the believers as one body and shares its “you” among them, so the “you” who would take part is the dead man’s heirs, and the “you” who gave it is the dead husband (al-Maẓharī).^[22] In the same way, the one who would take may be a guardian, and what was given may be what his ward received from her mother, a relative or her husband (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[23]

The jazm draws its reason from the command later in the verse. ⁧وَعَاشِرُوهُنَّ⁩, “and live with them”, is joined to this clause, and a command sits more naturally beside a prohibition than beside a statement, so ⁧لَا⁩ here forbids (al-Nīsābūrī, al-Biqāʿī).^[24]

The prohibition may then begin a new sentence, or be joined to “it is not lawful”. Joined, it puts a prohibition beside a statement, but such a joining is allowed, and “it is not lawful for you” is in any case a prohibition in its meaning, “do not inherit women” (al-Maẓharī, al-Ālūsī, Rashīd Riḍā).^[25] So the jazm is the more apparent construction, and Ibn Masʿūd’s wording strengthens the naṣb as a possibility without making it the apparent sense (al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī).^[26]

Taken as a new sentence, the prohibition lets the reciter pause at ⁧كَرْهًا⁩, “by compulsion”, where the verse turns from a statement to a prohibition (al-Nīsābūrī, al-Nasafī).^[27] On this view the first sentence ends there, “it is not lawful for you” speaks to the dead man’s guardians, and the prohibition begins a new address to the husbands (al-Maẓharī; a view al-Bayḍāwī reports).^[28]

The rule that one sentence does not speak to two parties unless each is called by name does not apply here, even if it is granted, because the first sentence has ended at ⁧كَرْهًا⁩ (al-Ālūsī).^[29] Changing the address where the meaning calls for it is itself eloquence (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[30]

Why this matters. The English “and do not” follows the jazm. Who is addressed is the subject of Question 2.

⁧إِلَّا أَنْ يَأْتِينَ بِفَاحِشَةٍ مُبَيِّنَةٍ⁩, “unless they commit a clear immorality”

What is the exception taken from?

⁧إِلَّا أَنْ يَأْتِينَ بِفَاحِشَةٍ مُبَيِّنَةٍ⁩, “unless they commit a clear immorality”, excepts something from a class the verse does not state. The accounts differ on the class, and on which of the verse’s words the exception is drawn from. On the class there are three:

Of times and causes, the cause is the better, since the time needs a word for time to be understood before the clause (al-Karkhī).^[34] The verse gives one cause, “in order to take part”. That does not rule out a general cause: the general may be meant and the stated cause be one case of it, or the stated cause is the aim of the barring while the general one is its motive (al-Ālūsī).^[35]

The case of the clause follows the account. If the exception is disconnected, ⁧أَنْ⁩ with its verb must be in naṣb as the thing excepted. If it is connected, it is drawn from the most general states, or, as Abū Ḥayyān takes it, from the most general times or causes (Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh).^[36] Al-Durra puts the clause in naṣb either way, as a ḥāl excepted from the most general states or as the thing excepted, and he holds the second the stronger.^[37]

Yet the disconnected account is not needed: taken as times or causes, the exception is connected, drawn from within its own class (Abū Ḥayyān).^[38] The account by states needs no disconnection either, since a state is also a class the exception can be drawn from.

The accounts also differ on which of the verse’s words the exception is drawn from: the taking, the barring, or the women themselves. On one view al-Nīsābūrī reports, it is drawn from the taking of her property, which the ban gives as its reason. On that view a husband may not make her life hard to have her give up wealth for her divorce, unless she commits zinā. On a second view al-Nīsābūrī reports, it is drawn from the barring: guardians and husbands may not confine women in their houses except after the immorality.^[39]

Drawn from the taking, it may be disconnected or connected, and Ibn ʿĀshūr allows both. As connected, an act left general is general in its states, so the sense is “except when they commit an immorality, and then your taking part of what you gave them is allowed”.^[40] It may also be drawn from the women themselves: those who commit an immorality are excepted from all the women whose husbands may not bar them (al-Azharī).^[41]

Why this matters. The choice between the connected and the disconnected accounts changes neither the English nor the ruling: “unless they commit” fits the state, the time and the cause alike, and on the disconnected account it gives the same result. Whichever word it is drawn from, the exception gives one case, an open immorality, in which barring her is no longer forbidden. What it then permits the husband to do is the subject of Question 3.

⁧فَعَسَى⁩, “perhaps”, after “for if you dislike them”

Is the clause that opens with “perhaps” the answer to the condition, or the reason for an answer left unsaid?

After ⁧فَإِنْ كَرِهْتُمُوهُنَّ⁩, “for if you dislike them”, the answer opens with a fāʾ: ⁧فَعَسَى⁩, “perhaps”. The fāʾ is needed because the answer is a clause whose verb is jāmid, used only in its past form. Such an answer must be bound to its condition by the fāʾ (al-Hararī).^[42] Here ⁧عَسَى⁩ is complete, needing only a doer, and its doer is the maṣdar made of “that you dislike a thing”: your disliking a thing has drawn near (Dār al-Ṣaḥāba, Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṭāhā al-Durra, al-Zuḥaylī).^[43] The grammarians then take the clause in two ways: as the answer itself, or as the reason for an answer left unsaid.

On the first view, “perhaps you dislike a thing” is itself the answer.

On the second view, the clause is a reason and not the answer itself: “if you dislike them, be patient, because it may be that you dislike a thing” (Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṭāhā al-Durra, Maḥmūd Ṣāfī).^[44] Al-Ālūsī gives this view its reason: ⁧عَسَى⁩ expresses a hope, which cannot itself be an answer, so the clause is the reason for the answer, put in its place to show how surely it brings it about.^[45] The answer itself is left unsaid. It is the counsel to keep the marriage that Question 5 explains.

Why this matters. The English words are the same on both views. Question 5 takes the second view: the clause gives the reason, and the answer left unsaid is the counsel to keep the marriage.

⁧وَيَجْعَلَ⁩, “and ... makes”

What is the verb joined to?

⁧وَيَجْعَلَ⁩, “and ... makes”, is in naṣb, not the rafʿ of a fresh statement. The accounts explain the naṣb in three ways:

Why this matters. On all three accounts the verb is in naṣb. The English “and Allah makes therein much good” keeps the verb joined to what comes before, as all of them do. A recitation in rafʿ is taken up in the Qirāʾāt section.

⁧فِيهِ⁩, “therein”

What does the pronoun point back to?

The pronoun in ⁧فِيهِ⁩, “therein”, may point back to the thing disliked, to the dislike itself, or to the keeping of the wife:

Why this matters. The English “therein” follows “a thing”, the noun in the clause. What the much good is, Question 5 explains.

4. Ṣarf: Roots and Morphology

The table follows the words of the verse that have a root, in order, repeated words included. Particles, pronouns, relative words and the divine name are left to the grammatical tables. The states rafʿ, naṣb, jarr and jazm are those of the Iʿrāb section. A “weak” root has wāw or yāʾ among its letters, and that letter may drop or change in some forms.

Four of these roots decide how the verse is understood, and each is explained below in the verse’s order: the verb of inheriting, the word for compulsion, the verb of making difficulties and the verb of living together. The verb of disliking comes last, because the fourth leads into it.

Inherit: what passes at a death

⁧تَرِثُوا⁩, “inherit”, is from the root ⁧و ر ث⁩, which has one meaning: something belongs to a people and then passes to others, by lineage or by a cause (Ibn Fāris).^[6] The passing comes at a death and needs no contract: the heir takes what the dead person owned (al-Rāghib, Jabal).^[7] So the verb takes as its object the thing that passes. Ibn Fāris cites poetry for the verb by a poet he does not name:

⁧ ورِثْناهُنَّ عن آباءِ صدق … ونُورِثُها إذا مِتْنا بَنِينا ⁩

“We inherited them from fathers of truth, and we shall leave them to our sons when we die.”^[8]

The poet puts what passes from fathers to sons in the place of the object. In the verse ⁧النِّسَاءَ⁩, “women”, takes that place, so the women are made the thing that passes. This is the construction in the Iʿrāb section that makes “women” the first object, and it is the practice that Question 1 finds the verse forbids. The English “inherit women” has the women as its object.

By compulsion: ⁧كَرْه⁩ and ⁧كُرْه⁩

The women are inherited ⁧كَرْهًا⁩, “by compulsion”. The word is from a root with one sense, the opposite of contentment and love (Ibn Fāris),^[9] and it comes with two vowels on its first letter, ⁧كَرْه⁩ and ⁧كُرْه⁩. Some lexicographers make the two one in meaning, like ⁧ضَعْف⁩ and ⁧ضُعْف⁩, “weakness” (al-Rāghib, al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī), and al-Azharī reports that many agreed that they are two dialects of one word, except al-Farrāʾ.^[10]

Others make them two words. With the fatḥa, ⁧كَرْه⁩ is what a person is made to do against his will, a hardship that comes to him from outside; with the ḍamma, ⁧كُرْه⁩ is a hardship he bears from within himself, without being made to (al-Farrāʾ, Ibn Fāris, Jabal, Ibn Sīda).^[11] The reverse is reported too, even from al-Farrāʾ himself: ⁧كُرْه⁩ is compulsion and ⁧كَرْه⁩ dislike (a view al-Ālūsī, Rashīd Riḍā and al-Maẓharī report), so al-Farrāʾ’s distinction is transmitted in both orders.^[12]

So the lexicographers differ on which vowel goes with which meaning. Jabal, who gives compulsion to ⁧كَرْه⁩ and hardship to ⁧كُرْه⁩, marks this as one of two views, and adds that either form can also mean simply a thing disliked.^[13] The English “by compulsion” gives ⁧كَرْه⁩, the form with the fatḥa, its original sense, since in that form compulsion is the origin and “disliked” only a derived sense (Jabal).^[14] On the view that ⁧كَرْه⁩ is compulsion, then, ⁧كَرْهًا⁩ means force from outside.

If the two are one word, as many held, or if the meanings are reversed, the word means no more than “against their will”. “By compulsion” still fits, because to take a woman as part of an estate against her will is to force her. Whose will the word describes is taken up in the Iʿrāb section, and Question 1 finds that it does not restrict the ban. The form with the ḍamma, ⁧كُرْهًا⁩, is a recitation, taken up in the Qirāʾāt section.

Making difficulties: the root ⁧ع ض ل⁩

The next clause forbids ⁧وَلَا تَعْضُلُوهُنَّ⁩, “and do not make difficulties for them”. The root has one sense, intensity and twisting in a matter (Ibn Fāris),^[15] and its picture is something stuck so that it cannot pass. The Arabs said that a woman ⁧عَضَّلَتْ⁩ with her child when it stuck in her womb at birth, and a hen with her egg when it would not come out (Ibn Fāris, al-Rāghib).^[16] The word was first used of binding a thing with sinew, then of every hard barring, and so its root sense is narrowing (al-Rāghib, al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī).^[17]

The Arabs used the same picture for a land choked with its people (Ibn Fāris, al-Zamakhsharī, al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī).^[18] Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh cites Aws’s poetry for it:

⁧ ترى الأرض منا بالفضاء مريضة ... معضّلة منا بجمع عرمرم ⁩

“You see the land in the open country sick from us, choked by us with a vast host.”^[19]

The poet’s ⁧مُعَضِّلَة⁩ is the land so full of the host that it is choked and straitened by their number. The verse uses the word in a figurative sense taken from this picture: ⁧عَضَلَ عَلَيْهِ⁩, said of a person, means that he narrowed his affair and came between him and what he wanted (Muḥyī al-Dīn Darwīsh).^[20]

Barring a woman from marriage is another use of the same root (Ibn Fāris).^[21] From that use the figure has a second explanation: a wife held in the marriage is like a woman with no husband who cannot marry, so the word for barring her is used of the wife by resemblance (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[22] So on both explanations the barring of 4:19 hems her in, and the English “make difficulties for them” renders the narrowing. Which barring the verse means, and whom it addresses, is the subject of Question 2.

Living with them: the root ⁧ع ش ر⁩

After the ban, the verse commands ⁧وَعَاشِرُوهُنَّ⁩, “and live with them”. The verb is Form III, ⁧فَاعَلَ⁩, a form for an act that two people share. The lexicons give ⁧عَاشَرْتُهُ مُعَاشَرَةً⁩, “I lived with him”, and say that people ⁧تَعَاشَرُوا⁩ and ⁧اعْتَشَرُوا⁩ when they mix with one another, and ⁧الْعِشْرَة⁩ is this mixing (Ibn Manẓūr, Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Jabal).^[23] For this reason a woman’s husband is called her ⁧عَشِير⁩: he lives with her and she lives with him, as a friend does with a friend (Ibn Fāris, al-Zamakhsharī, Ibn Manẓūr).^[24]

Ṭarafa uses the root in poetry that Ibn ʿAṭiyya cites at this verse:

⁧ فلئن شطّت نواها مرّة ... لعلى عهد حبيب معتشر ⁩

“If her abode has once gone far away, I still keep the pact of a beloved who shares my life.”^[25]

The poet’s ⁧مُعْتَشِر⁩ is the beloved who shares his life, spoken of as a group, like ⁧الْخَلِيط⁩, the people one lives among (Ibn ʿAṭiyya).^[26] The poetry uses the root for the people a man lives with, and the verse gives a wife that place.

The word’s origin has three explanations: the first and the third put a sharing or a belonging at its root, and the third is set against the second. One takes it from the tenths, ⁧أَعْشَار⁩, of a slaughtered camel, which partners divide among themselves, so that the word means sharing out, mixing and fine dealing in character (Ibn ʿAṭiyya).^[27] The second takes the root’s real sense to be completeness: ten completes the count, and the clan, ⁧الْعَشِيرَة⁩, is named from it because it makes a people’s affair complete (Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[28]

The third, against the second, takes the verb from ⁧الْعَشِيرَة⁩ itself, so that ⁧عَاشَرَهُ⁩ means that he made him one of his clan. It doubts that the clan is named from the number ten, since the origin of that name is unknown (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[29] Taken from the clan, the verb means to become like someone’s clan through marriage (al-Rāghib, al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī).^[30]

The command therefore asks for a shared life, and with ⁧بِالْمَعْرُوفِ⁩, “in kindness”, it asks for fine dealing within it, a sense an early explanation finds in the verb itself, “treat them with good character” (Abū ʿUbayda).^[31] What that requires of each spouse is the subject of Question 4.

But dislike can also grow in a shared life. Zuhayr’s poetry uses the maṣdar of the verse’s verb, ⁧الْمُعَاشَرَة⁩:

⁧ لعمرُكَ والخطوبُ مغيِّراتٌ … وفى طول المعاشرة التقالى ⁩

“By your life, and events change things: in long living together there is dislike on both sides.”^[32]

Ibn Fāris cites it under the root for ⁧الْمُعَاشَرَة⁩, a long life lived together, and its second half tells what such a life can bring. The verse turns to that next.

Disliking them: ⁧كَرِهَ⁩ with a person as its object

⁧فَإِنْ كَرِهْتُمُوهُنَّ⁩, “and if you dislike them”, uses the verb of the root of ⁧كَرْهًا⁩, and here it takes a person as its object. Ibn Manẓūr cites poetry by al-Khathʿamiyya with the verb used in this way:

⁧ رأَيتُ لهمْ سِيماءَ قَوْمٍ كَرِهْتُهم، ... وأَهْلُ الغَضَى قَوْمٌ عليَّ كِرام ⁩

“I saw on them the mark of a people I disliked, while the people of al-Ghaḍā are a people dear to me.”^[33]

The poetry sets dislike of one people beside regard for another. In the verse the object is the wives: the husband dislikes the woman herself. The next clause uses the same verb with an indefinite object, ⁧أَنْ تَكْرَهُوا شَيْئًا⁩, “that you dislike a thing”, and so widens the dislike from a wife to anything a person dislikes. Question 5 explains why the verse counsels a husband to keep a wife he dislikes.

5. Balāghah: Rhetorical Analysis

The verse moves from a ban to a counsel: the bans and the command end at “live with them in kindness”, and the counsel begins at “for if you dislike them”. Its wording shapes that movement at six places:

1. the ban is stated as what is not lawful;
2. the act it bans is named by what it led to;
3. the dislike is put as a condition that may not happen;
4. the same verb returns for the dislike of “a thing”;
5. that thing is left general;
6. and the thing disliked is set against much good.

“It is not lawful for you”, not “do not inherit”

Where it is. ⁧لَا يَحِلُّ لَكُمْ أَنْ تَرِثُوا النِّسَاءَ كَرْهًا⁩, “it is not lawful for you to inherit women by compulsion”, at the opening of the verse.

The plain way. A prohibition, “do not inherit women”, would state the same ban. Other bans in the Qurʾān take that form: “do not consume your wealth wrongly”, “do not approach zinā” (Faḍl Ḥasan ʿAbbās).^[1]

What it does. The form “do not …” is used for acts that the hearers already held to be ugly. Zinā, lying and consuming wealth wrongly were shameful in their eyes. Inheriting women and taking their property was not: they held it an ordinary custom that nobody blamed. So the verse calls it unlawful, a word that makes a familiar custom look monstrous to the people who practised it. The same word does this in 2:229, “it is not lawful for you to take anything of what you gave them” (Faḍl Ḥasan ʿAbbās).^[2]

The form also presents the act as unlawful by its nature, not as something that becomes unlawful only once a command forbids it (Abū Zahra),^[3] and “for you” turns the judgement on the hearers themselves, urging them to refrain (Ibn ʿArafa).^[4]

The effect. The reader learns from the verse’s first words that what its hearers counted as an heir’s right over a widow, the custom Question 1 describes, was never lawful.

“Inherit”, named by what it led to (⁧تسمية الشيء بما يؤول إليه⁩, tasmiyat al-shayʾ bi-mā yaʾūlu ilayh)

Where it is. ⁧أَنْ تَرِثُوا النِّسَاءَ⁩, “to inherit women”.

The plain way. The verse could have named the acts themselves: an heir marrying the widow, or barring her from marrying anyone else.

What it does. It calls those acts “inheriting”. In the Jāhiliyya, marrying the widow or barring her from husbands was the way the heir took her as his inheritance, so the verse names the acts by what they brought him (al-Hararī).^[5] Ibn ʿĀshūr explains the name another way: the verse puts the women in the place of inherited property, to show how ugly the Jāhiliyya’s practice was.^[6]

The two explanations account for the name in two ways: by what the acts brought the heir, or by the women’s place among the inherited property. They agree on what it refers to: the heir treated the widow as part of the dead man’s estate, the sense Question 1 adopts.

The effect. Whatever form the heir’s claim took, a marriage or a ban on marriage, the verse calls it by one name, taking a woman as part of an estate, and forbids it under that name.

“If”, not “when”

Where it is. ⁧فَإِنْ كَرِهْتُمُوهُنَّ⁩, “for if you dislike them”.

The plain way. ⁧إذا⁩ (idhā), “when”, also opens a condition.

What it does. The two words are not equally sure of the event. ⁧فَإِنْ⁩ (fa-in), “for if”, marks something that may happen and seldom does, while ⁧إذا⁩ marks something certain to happen (Muḥammad al-Hilāl).^[7] The verse uses ⁧إِنْ⁩.

The effect. The dislike of a wife is put as a possibility, not as the expected course of a marriage. The counsel that follows is for the case in which it happens.

The same verb twice (⁧الجناس⁩, al-jinās)

Where it is. ⁧كَرِهْتُمُوهُنَّ⁩, “you dislike them”, and ⁧تَكْرَهُوا⁩, “you dislike”, in ⁧فَعَسَى أَنْ تَكْرَهُوا شَيْئًا⁩, “perhaps you dislike a thing”.

The plain way. The second clause could have used another verb for the thing disliked, and the counsel would be the same.

What it does. The two words share the root ⁧ك ر ه⁩ and take two forms. The first is a past verb with “them” attached; the second is a present verb whose object is “a thing”. Two words of one root that sound alike in this way make a jinās. It is classed as nāqiṣ, “incomplete” (al-Zuḥaylī); as mumāthil, “matching” (al-Hararī); or as mughāyir, “dissimilar” (Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Ṣābūnī).^[8] Whichever class it is put in, the verb of the husband’s dislike returns in the next clause as a dislike of something else.

The effect. The echo joins the two clauses, so the reader hears the general clause that follows as an answer to the husband’s own dislike and not as a new subject.

“A thing”, left general (⁧العموم⁩, al-ʿumūm)

Where it is. ⁧شَيْئًا⁩, “a thing”, in ⁧أَنْ تَكْرَهُوا شَيْئًا⁩, “that you dislike a thing”.

The plain way. “That you dislike them”, with the wives as the object again, would keep the clause to the marriage.

What it does. Ibn ʿAṭiyya counts the indefinite word among the Qurʾān’s eloquence. The verse’s reasoning then applies to everything a person dislikes wherever patience with it is fitting and good, because patience ends in good when it is sought for the sake of Allah.^[9] Question 5 draws the rule from this word.

The effect. The general word gives the reader a rule for every disliked thing that is fitting to bear, and a disliked wife is one such thing.

Dislike set against much good (⁧الطباق المعنوي⁩, al-ṭibāq al-maʿnawī)

Where it is. ⁧فَعَسَى أَنْ تَكْرَهُوا شَيْئًا وَيَجْعَلَ اللَّهُ فِيهِ خَيْرًا كَثِيرًا⁩, “perhaps you dislike a thing and Allah makes therein much good”.

The plain way. An antithesis in words would set “dislike” against its opposite, “love”.

What it does. The verse sets the thing disliked against ⁧خَيْرًا كَثِيرًا⁩, “much good”, and the much good has been explained as what is loved. So the opposition lies in the meaning and not in two opposite words, which is why it is called an antithesis of meaning (al-Hararī).^[10]

The effect. Dislike and good are found in one thing. What the husband dislikes may be the thing in which Allah places what he would love, and the verse ends on that pairing and not on the dislike.

6. Qirāʾāt: Variant Readings

Ibn al-Jazarī’s al-Nashr records the ten readings, and the table follows it. At 4:19 he records a difference at two words, ⁧كَرْهًا⁩, “by compulsion”, and ⁧مُبَيِّنَةٍ⁩, “clear”, and his next entry is on ⁧وَالْمُحْصَنَاتُ⁩, “the married women”, of 4:24.^[1]

The grammarians and the commentators report three more forms: ⁧مُبِينَةٍ⁩ for ⁧مُبَيِّنَةٍ⁩, ascribed to Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩; ⁧يَحِلُّ⁩ with the feminine tāʾ; and ⁧وَيَجْعَلَ⁩ in rafʿ. The last two are introduced only as “it has been recited”, with no reciter named, and none of the three is among the ten. Two wordings of the exception kept in early copies of the Qurʾān are explained in Deeper Study, Question 3. Rules of pronunciation that recur wherever their conditions recur are not given here.

⁧كَرْهًا⁩ and ⁧كُرْهًا⁩

The first of the two words is ⁧كَرْهًا⁩, “by compulsion”, which three of the ten recite with ḍamma on the kāf, ⁧كُرْهًا⁩. Ibn al-Jazarī records them:

⁧ فِي: كَرْهًا هُنَا وَالتَّوْبَةِ وَالْأَحْقَافِ فَقَرَأَ حَمْزَةُ وَالْكِسَائِيُّ، وَخَلَفٌ بِضَمِّ الْكَافِ فِيهِنَّ ⁩

“On ⁧كَرْهًا⁩ here, in al-Tawba and in al-Aḥqāf: Ḥamza, al-Kisāʾī and Khalaf recite it with ḍamma on the kāf in all of them.”^[9]

In al-Azharī’s account, al-Aʿmash, who is not among the ten, recited it so with Ḥamza and al-Kisāʾī, and Khalaf is not named; his place among the three rests on al-Nashr.^[10] Some take the two vowellings as one word in two dialects, like ⁧ضَعْف⁩ and ⁧ضُعْف⁩, “weakness” (Abū al-Suʿūd, al-Ālūsī), and al-Ālūsī reports a view that gives them two meanings, ⁧كُرْه⁩ compulsion and ⁧كَرْه⁩ dislike.^[11]

The difference is one of vowel within one root, so it belongs with the root in Ṣarf, which gives the two meanings and the reports that reverse them, and explains why the English takes ⁧كَرْه⁩ as compulsion. On either recitation, and on either view of the vowels, the verse forbids the same practice, because the word describes how the women were taken and sets no condition on the ban, as Question 1 shows.

⁧مُبَيِّنَةٍ⁩, ⁧مُبَيَّنَةٍ⁩ and ⁧مُبِينَةٍ⁩

The second word is ⁧مُبَيِّنَةٍ⁩, “clear”, which two of the ten recite with fatḥa on the yāʾ, ⁧مُبَيَّنَةٍ⁩. Ibn al-Jazarī records them:

⁧ فِي: مُبَيِّنَةٍ وَمُبَيِّنَاتٍ فَقَرَأَ ابْنُ كَثِيرٍ وَأَبُو بَكْرٍ بِفَتْحِ الْيَاءِ مِنَ الْحَرْفَيْنِ حَيْثُ وَقَعَا ⁩

“On ⁧مُبَيِّنَةٍ⁩ and ⁧مُبَيِّنَاتٍ⁩: Ibn Kathīr and Abū Bakr recite the yāʾ with fatḥa in both words wherever they occur.”^[12]

Ibn ʿĀshūr names Khalaf with them, which al-Nashr does not, so the table leaves Khalaf out of this row.^[13] The two forms turn on who makes the wrong plain.

With fatḥa, ⁧مُبَيَّنَة⁩ is a passive participle: the immorality has been made plain, by the one who brings the charge (al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī),^[14] or by the one who commits it (al-ʿUkbarī),^[15] or by proof, the witnesses the husband brings against her (Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[16]

With kasra, ⁧مُبَيِّنَة⁩ is an active participle: the immorality makes plain the state of the one who commits it, or, with the verb taken without an object, it is plain in itself (al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī, al-ʿUkbarī).^[17] Both forms are widely recited in the cities of Islam, and whoever recites either is right (al-Ṭabarī).^[18] The active form, ⁧مُبَيِّنَة⁩, says more than ⁧بَيِّنَة⁩, “plain”, would: the participle of ⁧بَيَّنَ⁩, “to make plain”, is used for what is plain, to stress how plain the wrong is (Abū Zahra).^[19] On either form the wrong is an open one, which is the condition Question 3 explains.

Ibn Jinnī records a third form of this word and ascribes it to Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩:

⁧ ومن ذلك قراءة ابن عباس : " فَاحِشَةٍ مُبِينَةٍ "⁩

“And of this kind is Ibn ʿAbbās’s recitation: “⁧فَاحِشَةٍ مُبِينَةٍ⁩”.”^[20]

⁧مُبِينَة⁩ is the participle of ⁧أَبَانَ⁩, which, like ⁧اسْتَبَانَ⁩ and ⁧تَبَيَّنَ⁩, is used both with an object and without one (Ibn Jinnī, al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī).^[21] Without an object it means “standing clear”. Ibn Jinnī cites poetry by an unnamed poet, describing a camel, with the word in that sense:

⁧ مُغتالِ أحبُله مُبينٍ عنقُه ... في مَنكِب زَبَن المطيَّ عرندس ⁩

“that fills out its girths, its neck standing clear (⁧مُبِين⁩), in a shoulder that shoves the other mounts aside, a hardy one.”^[22]

The poetry uses ⁧مُبِين⁩ of a thing that is plain in itself. So the recitation ascribed to Ibn ʿAbbās ⁧رضي الله عنهما⁩ gives the meaning that ⁧مُبَيِّنَة⁩ has when it is taken without an object: an immorality that is plain.

⁧يَحِلُّ⁩ with tāʾ, ⁧لَا تَحِلُّ⁩

Another form outside the ten is ⁧لَا تَحِلُّ⁩, with the feminine tāʾ, in place of ⁧يَحِلُّ⁩. A verb agrees with its subject. In the recitation of the ten the subject, ⁧أَنْ تَرِثُوا⁩, “that you inherit”, is taken as it stands, and the verb is masculine. On this form it is taken as the maṣdar ⁧الْوِرَاثَة⁩, “inheriting”, which is feminine, so the verb takes the feminine tāʾ (al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī, Abū al-Suʿūd).^[23] Another verse was recited with the same agreement, and al-Ālūsī sets the two side by side:

⁧ وقرئ- لا تحل- بالتاء الفوقانية لأن أَنْ تَرِثُوا بمعنى الوراثة كما قرئ لَمْ تَكُنْ فِتْنَتُهُمْ إِلَّا أَنْ قالُوا [ الأنعام: ٢٣ ] لأنه بمعنى المقالة، وهذا عكس تذكير المصدر المؤنث لتأويله بأن والفعل، فكل منهما جار في اللسان الفصيح ⁩

“It has been recited ⁧لَا تَحِلُّ⁩, with the tāʾ, the letter dotted above, because ⁧أَنْ تَرِثُوا⁩ means ⁧الْوِرَاثَة⁩, as “⁧لَمْ تَكُنْ فِتْنَتُهُمْ إِلَّا أَنْ قَالُوا⁩” [6:23] has been recited, because it means ⁧الْمَقَالَة⁩. This is the reverse of making a feminine maṣdar masculine by taking it as ⁧أَنْ⁩ with the verb, and each of the two is current in eloquent speech.”^[24]

The meaning does not change: it is not lawful for you to inherit women.

⁧وَيَجْعَلَ⁩ in rafʿ, ⁧وَيَجْعَلُ⁩

The last form outside the ten puts ⁧وَيَجْعَلَ⁩ in rafʿ, ⁧وَيَجْعَلُ⁩. Abū al-Suʿūd records it:

⁧ وقرى ويجعلُ مرفوعاً على أنه خبرٌ لمبتدأ محذوف والجملة حالية ⁩

“And ⁧وَيَجْعَلُ⁩ has been recited in rafʿ, as the predicate of a subject left unsaid, the clause being a ḥāl.”^[25]

In the recitation of the ten the verb is in naṣb, joined to “that you dislike”, as Iʿrāb shows. On this form the clause is a ḥāl, which describes the state of the thing disliked, the thing itself being the unsaid subject: “while it is something in which Allah places much good”. A second way of filling the unsaid subject takes it to be “Allah”, the name repeated where a pronoun would be (al-Ālūsī).^[26]

Both ways suppose a subject left unsaid, because some grammarians do not let a ḥāl clause open on a wāw before an imperfect verb unless a subject is supposed. Al-Ālūsī finds that supposition contrary to the apparent sense here, since others allow the wāw there without one.^[27] The English, “and Allah makes therein much good”, fits either form.

None of these forms changes a ruling of the verse.

And Allah knows best.