Sūrah An-Nisāʾ (The Women), Verse 5

1. The Questions This Verse Raises

The verse joins a restriction to three duties: provide, clothe and speak well. The questions below explain who may be restricted, what happens to ownership and control, and what the person managing the wealth must continue to do.

Q1. Who is meant by السُّفَهَاء?

Does the verse identify a fixed class of people, or a condition that may affect different people? The answer determines whether control may be withheld merely because someone belongs to a group, or because he or she cannot manage property soundly.

The condition described by the word. السَّفَه, al-safah, is a failure of sound judgment. Here the person cannot preserve wealth or use it properly. A person may lack experience, fail to understand a transaction, or repeatedly spend in ways that destroy the means of meeting his needs. These are financial questions. They are not answered merely by calling someone ignorant or morally deficient.

The Qurʾān also uses the word in a religious setting:

﴿وَمَن يَرْغَبُ عَن مِّلَّةِ إِبْرَاهِيمَ إِلَّا مَن سَفِهَ نَفْسَهُ﴾

“And who would be averse to the religion of Abraham except one who makes a fool of himself.” (2:130)

Someone may manage money skilfully and still make that grave religious error. Conversely, a child may be unable to manage money without being guilty of disobedience. The surrounding commands show which kind of judgment is immediately at issue here: preserving property, providing for its owner and eventually handing it over. The relationship between religious conduct and the legal test of sound judgment is considered in Q3 (Ibn ʿUthaymīn; al-Qaṣṣāb; al-Fīrūzābādī).^[1]

The broad interpretation and its evidence. The following verse makes sound judgment a condition of handing over an orphan’s property:

﴿فَإِنْ آنَسْتُمْ مِنْهُمْ رُشْدًا فَادْفَعُوا إِلَيْهِمْ أَمْوَالَهُمْ﴾

“Then if you perceive in them sound judgement, release their property to them.” (4:6)

Orphans may be male or female. The command requires delivery when the stated conditions are met; it makes no exception for a girl who can manage what belongs to her. Read with that command, السُّفَهَاء describes financial incapacity rather than one sex (al-Ṭabarī).^[2]

The description can therefore apply to different people for the same reason. Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī رضي الله عنه expresses its breadth as السُّفَهَاءُ هُنَا كُلُّ مَنْ يَسْتَحِقُّ الْحَجْرَ, “The financially foolish here are everyone who warrants restraint.” Al-Rāzī identifies the relevant failure as أَنَّ الْمُرَادَ بِالسُّفَهَاءِ كُلُّ مَنْ لَمْ يَكُنْ لَهُ عَقْلٌ يَفِي بِحِفْظِ الْمَالِ, “What is meant by the financially foolish is everyone whose judgment does not suffice to preserve property.”^[3]

There is no proof in the verse requiring this description to be confined to one of the named groups. Giving its general wording its full scope preserves the prohibition wherever the same financial danger exists. The broader explanation also accounts for a child who has yet to learn, an adult who cannot manage, and a person who begins to waste wealth after previously managing it well (al-Rāzī; Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[4]

What the narrower explanations say. The early athār name women and children, women alone, children alone and orphans. Their wordings differ. Some explicitly attach the condition to the person: al-Ḥasan says ابْنُكَ السَّفِيهُ وَامْرَأَتُكَ السَّفِيهَةُ, “your financially foolish son and your financially foolish wife.” A wording from Mujāhid includes السُّفَهَاءُ مِنَ الرِّجَالِ وَالنِّسَاءِ, “the financially foolish among men and women”; other wordings from him speak specifically of wives, mothers and daughters. The condition and the people used to illustrate it must both be retained. A qualified warning about an incapable member of the household is not a declaration that every woman or every son lacks financial judgment.^[5]

Other athār simply name a group. The women-and-children explanation is related from Ibn Masʿūd رضي الله عنه and several early commentators; children or orphans are named in other explanations. Al-Farrāʾ and Ibn Qutaybah also adopt the women-and-children interpretation. Whether these narrower interpretations fit the verse depends on its wording and context. The surrounding recognition of women’s dowries, inheritance and voluntary gifts gives a further reason against treating womanhood itself as financial incapacity (al-Wāḥidī; Ibn Kathīr; Darwaza).^[6]

A different narrower explanation sets a condition for each sex. Al-Thaʿlabī’s commentary attributes the following explanation to al-Suddī in the edition cited by Mawsūʿat al-Tafsīr al-Maʾthūr, and to al-Shaʿbī in Khālid b. ʿAlī al-Ghāmidī’s edition:

لَا تُعْطِ الْمَرْأَةَ مَالَهَا حَتَّى تَتَزَوَّجَ وَإِنْ قَرَأَتِ التَّوْرَاةَ وَالْإِنْجِيلَ وَالْقُرْآنَ، وَلَا تُعْطِ الْغُلَامَ مَالَهُ حَتَّى يَحْتَلِمَ

“Do not give a woman her property until she marries, even if she has read the Torah, the Gospel and the Qurʾān; and do not give a boy his property until he reaches puberty.”^[7]

This explanation makes marriage the woman's threshold and puberty the boy's. Knowledge of scripture does not remove its restriction. It is therefore more specific than the general requirement of financial ability. The contextual argument above gives the reason for adopting the broader criterion: 4:6 makes delivery follow maturity and observed sound judgment, without adding marriage as a separate condition for a capable woman.

One athar goes further than naming examples. Ibn ʿAbbās رضي الله عنهما is reported to have said, وَلَيْسَ الْيَتَامَى مِنْ ذَلِكَ فِي شَيْءٍ, “Orphans have no part in this.” It accompanies his warning against putting one’s own wealth under the control of an incapable child. This is a more restrictive interpretation, not simply an example of the general one.^[8] Its strength is the direct sense of “your property.” The broader interpretation, however, explains both that danger and the guardian’s duties toward an orphan, with the following verse providing the test for safe delivery.

The maintenance command helps explain why some commentators begin with women and children in the household. A person is not obliged to feed and clothe every ignorant or irresponsible person he encounters. Those he must maintain therefore help identify the immediate setting. This supports the household explanation without exhausting the warning: anyone whose conduct destroys the purposes for which wealth is given falls within its financial concern. Nor is foolish conduct always caused by ignorance; someone may know better and still act foolishly (al-Māturīdī).^[9]

A further qualification matters when assessing the early explanations. Ibn al-ʿArabī specifies a young child and an inexperienced woman, then adds لَكِنَّهُمَا لَا يُلَامَانِ عَلَى ذَلِكَ, “But neither is blamed for that.” Inexperience calls for protection and instruction; it does not by itself make the person blameworthy.^[10]

Does the plural exclude women alone? One objection is grammatical. The pattern فُعَلَاء, fuʿalāʾ, normally denotes males or a mixed group. Plurals for females alone commonly take such forms as فَعَائِل, faʿāʾil, or فَعِيلَات, faʿīlāt. This is part of al-Ṭabarī’s argument; Ibn ʿAṭiyyah and al-Naḥḥās make a related objection.^[11]

Yet ordinary usage is not an absolute prohibition. A feminine singular such as فَقِيرَة, faqīrah, can have فُقَرَاء, fuqarāʾ, as its plural; al-Zajjāj accordingly allows سُفَهَاء for سَفِيهَة.^[12] Nor are feminine plurals confined to the two proposed patterns: كَرِيمَة and ظَرِيفَة can become كِرَام and ظِرَاف. This answers the claim of grammatical impossibility (Abū Ḥayyān; al-Samīn).^[13] It does not establish that women alone are intended. The contextual case for the general interpretation remains.

A separate explanation concerns heirs who would waste what reaches their hands: the prohibition warns against accumulating wealth for them. Abū Ḥayyān records this anonymously.^[14] It draws attention to the eventual use of wealth, but the guardianship explanation connects more directly with the commands to maintain, clothe and speak to someone whose property is being withheld.

The hadith and athār cited for narrower meanings. A very weak hadith attributed to the Prophet ﷺ through Abū Umāmah رضي الله عنه includes:

أَلَا إِنَّمَا خُلِقَتِ النَّارُ لِلسُّفَهَاءِ ... أَلَا وَإِنَّ السُّفَهَاءَ النِّسَاءُ، إِلَّا امْرَأَةً أَطَاعَتْ قَيِّمَهَا

“Take heed: the Fire was created for the foolish ... indeed, the foolish are women, except a woman who obeys her guardian.” The narrator says that the first statement was repeated three times.^[15]

Khālid b. ʿAlī al-Ghāmidī grades its isnād ضَعِيفٌ جِدًّا, “very weak.” Even its own wording contains an exception, as Darwaza observes; it cannot establish a definition embracing all women.

The athar attributed to Abū Hurayrah رضي الله عنه identifying the sufahāʾ as servants begins with Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s phrase ذُكِرَ عَنْ, “it was reported from.”^[16] The harsh saying attributed to Muʿāwiya b. Qurra also gives no basis for a gender-based definition; its wording has a recorded textual variation, and al-Ghāmidī rejects the women-only interpretation.^[17]

The tarjīḥ. The broad financial meaning best explains the general wording, the continuing duties of care and the test in 4:6. Its strength does not depend on declaring a feminine plural impossible. What must be established is a failure of financial judgment, not membership of a sex or social class. And Allah knows best.

Q2. Whose property is “your property,” and why is it called a support?

The person managing an asset is not always its owner. أَمْوَالَكُمُ, “your property,” must therefore be considered alongside the instructions about its use: who holds it, whose needs it meets and who is entitled to receive it.

The direct-ownership interpretation. Someone may give away control of the money that maintains his household and then become dependent on a poor manager's decisions. The prohibition warns against that reversal. An explanation transmitted from Ibn ʿAbbās رضي الله عنهما tells the owner to retain and maintain his property while providing for his wife and children from it.^[18]

Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī رضي الله عنه gives the warning a sharper edge. Among three people whose supplication goes unanswered, he names:

وَرَجُلٌ أَعْطَى مَالَهُ سَفِيهًا، وَقَدْ قَالَ اللَّهُ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ: ﴿وَلَا تُؤْتُوا السُّفَهَاءَ أَمْوَالَكُمُ﴾

“A man who gave his wealth to a foolish person, although Allah, Mighty and Majestic, has said: ‘Do not give the foolish your property.’”^[19]

The example concerns a person who has surrendered the very protection Allah told him to retain. Providing for a dependant does not require putting the family's capital at that dependant's disposal. A garden or another valuable asset can remain safely managed while its benefit reaches the person who needs it (Ibn Zayd; Ibn Kathīr).^[20] A further explanation, related by Ibn Zayd from his father, names a house and an enslaved person among assets whose value could be consumed by unsafe management. The historical examples concern capital that can be lost even while the needs it was meant to meet continue.^[21]

The guardianship interpretation. A ward's property also needs to be preserved, although the guardian must not treat it as his own. Saʿīd b. Jubayr explains “your property” here as the property of those under guardianship: preserve it, maintain its owners and do not surrender control before they can manage it.^[22]

Why, then, use “your”? One answer is that a possessive can express a relationship other than ownership. The Qurʾān says of divorced women, لَا تُخْرِجُوهُنَّ مِنْ بُيُوتِهِنَّ, “Do not turn them out of their [husbands'] houses” (65:1). They are called their houses because they live there and have the relevant right of residence; the expression need not mean that they own the buildings. Similarly, a guardian can be addressed about “your property” because its administration belongs to him. It is his to administer, while remaining the ward's to own (Abū Ḥafṣ al-Nasafī; al-Kiyā al-Harrāsī).^[23]

A second answer concerns wealth as something on which everyone depends. The particular assets have different owners, but they belong to the same kind of means by which people live. A third concerns the people themselves: members of a community may be spoken of as one body. In ثُمَّ أَنْتُمْ هَؤُلَاءِ تَقْتُلُونَ أَنْفُسَكُمْ, “Yet here you are, killing yourselves” (2:85), the people are killing one another, not each taking his own life. On this understanding, another member's wealth can be called “yours” without abolishing his separate ownership (al-Zamakhsharī; al-Rāzī; al-Wāḥidī; al-Zajjāj).^[24]

The same collective address appears in the Prophet's ﷺ words during the Farewell Pilgrimage:

فَإِنَّ دِمَاءَكُمْ وَأَمْوَالَكُمْ وَأَعْرَاضَكُمْ بَيْنَكُمْ حَرَامٌ، كَحُرْمَةِ يَوْمِكُمْ هَذَا، فِي شَهْرِكُمْ هَذَا، فِي بَلَدِكُمْ هَذَا

“Your blood, your property and your honour are inviolable among you, as inviolable as this day of yours, in this month of yours, in this land of yours.”^[25]

“Your property” there includes the property of other people whose rights each listener must respect. The collective expression protects individual ownership; it does not dissolve it. This is the comparison al-Durra draws with the wording of 4:5.

Why favour guardianship in this context? The commands that follow require food and clothing to be provided from the assets being protected. That fits a guardian who holds an orphan's wealth. The preceding commands also secure financial rights. In 4:2 the property is called theirs, directing attention to its rightful owners; here it is called yours, directing attention to the responsibility of those who must withhold unsafe control. The right remains the same while the required action changes (al-Rāzī; al-Ṭībī).^[26]

The prohibition's legal force adds another reason. A prohibition ordinarily makes the act unlawful. Yet gifts to children and women are lawful, whereas handing an incapable ward unrestricted control of his assets is forbidden. Interpreting the verse as a rule for guardianship explains that contrast. The distinction between ownership and control, developed in Q4, also answers the apparent conflict with lawful gifts.

Finally, the command to speak well has particular importance when the person in one's care is an orphan rather than one's own child. A parent's natural affection ordinarily encourages kindly treatment; an unrelated guardian needs to be reminded of the duty despite the absence of that bond. These connected reasons favour the guardianship interpretation (al-Rāzī).^[27]

The objections make the relationship more precise. There is a serious objection to extending the possessive beyond its direct meaning. Here “you” and “the financially incapable” are two separately identified groups: the wealth called “yours” should therefore belong to the people addressed. Collective expressions elsewhere do not settle this point, because in those expressions the people acting and those affected can belong to the same addressed group (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[28]

Mere custody also leaves part of the wording unexplained. Why call the ward's assets a support for you, the guardian? And saying only that everyone needs wealth is too broad: it applies equally to a stranger's money. The explanation must account for this guardian's particular responsibility (Abū al-Suʿūd).^[29]

The answer lies in the interests joined by that responsibility. If a ward's wealth is lost, a relative obliged to maintain him may have to meet the cost from his own resources. If it is preserved and later used well, its benefits can return to the family and community. These are reasons for caring about another person's assets as carefully as one's own. The maintenance obligation applies where that guardian is legally responsible for it; holding someone's property does not by itself make every guardian personally liable for all his needs (Muḥammad ʿAbduh).^[30]

This nearer relationship also gives substance to the appeal to human solidarity. Consider the command to the Israelites in the account of their repentance: فَاقْتُلُوا أَنْفُسَكُمْ, “kill yourselves” (2:54). It concerned people joined in a particular community and its offence. Killing some unrelated people would not have fulfilled the command merely because they too were human. A collective expression needs a connection relevant to what is being said. Here, care and kinship join the guardian and ward in a particular interest concerning the wealth. That relationship explains why its preservation demands action from the person responsible for it (Rashīd Riḍā).^[31]

Can both principal interpretations be intended? The objection is that “your property” would then be literal in one case and figurative in the other. But both cases share something more exact than the mere presence of money: the addressee has authority to administer it. An owner manages his own property; a guardian manages a ward's property. Their ownership differs, while the responsibility relevant to the prohibition is present in both. Al-Rāzī gives this answer to al-Qāḍī's objection, while retaining his preference for the guardianship explanation.^[32]

There is a further linguistic reason for the inclusive interpretation. An address to a community can concern both those immediately addressed and other people belonging to it. “Your property” can therefore mean the property among you, some owned by you and some by those under your care. On the same interpretation, لَكُمْ, “for you,” includes the wards whose livelihood also depends on it. The prohibition is not restricted to one class of assets (al-Ṭabarī; Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[33]

The interpretive principle is straightforward: when the wording admits two meanings that do not contradict one another, both may be intended. Protecting an owner's own means of support does not contradict protecting a ward's property. Each fulfils the prohibition in its proper circumstances (Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[34]

This does not require every commentator to give the two interpretations equal weight. Ibn ʿĀshūr considers the ward's property the contextual meaning and rejects making the direct-owner interpretation the sole explanation. He nevertheless accepts the latter as an additional meaning that the wording can bear.^[35] Mufti Muḥammad Shafīʿ likewise tentatively suggests that both kinds of property may be included, with the difference in ownership preserved.^[36]

Why call wealth a support? قِيَامًا, qiyāman, concerns what enables life and its affairs to stand. Ibn ʿAbbās رضي الله عنهما explains it through people's livelihoods. Food, clothing and shelter require material means; so do many religious responsibilities.^[37] Wealth can free a captive, meet an urgent need, provide for an orphan, make the pilgrimage possible or pay for service in Allah's cause. These duties and good works require practical means. Its value lies in what it enables people to do (al-Baghawī; Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[38]

A person preoccupied with obtaining necessities has less freedom to attend to the duties of this life and the next. Wealth can relieve that pressure. Sought for that purpose, worldly means can assist happiness in the next life; sought for their own sake, they can become a great obstacle. The distinction is between wealth as a means and wealth as the end (al-Rāzī; al-Nīsābūrī).^[39]

The Qurʾān accordingly protects wealth through practical safeguards. In the debt verse it commands فَاكْتُبُوهُ, “write it down,” and وَاسْتَشْهِدُوا شَهِيدَيْنِ مِنْ رِجَالِكُمْ, “bring to witness two witnesses from among your men” (2:282). Where the stated circumstances prevent finding a scribe, it provides for فَرِهَانٌ مَقْبُوضَةٌ, “a security deposit [should be] taken” (2:283). Documentation, witnesses and security serve the same concern: rights should not be left needlessly exposed to loss (al-Rāzī; al-Qurṭubī).^[40]

The length of the debt verse reinforces that concern. After commanding a written record, it requires a just scribe, forbids his refusal to write and requires the debtor to dictate honestly. It then says, وَلَا تَسْأَمُوا أَنْ تَكْتُبُوهُ صَغِيرًا أَوْ كَبِيرًا إِلَىٰ أَجَلِهِ, “And do not be [too] weary to write it, whether it is small or large, for its [specified] term” (2:282). Even the size of the debt is no excuse for neglecting the record. The verse gives its reasons: ذَٰلِكُمْ أَقْسَطُ عِنْدَ اللَّهِ وَأَقْوَمُ لِلشَّهَادَةِ وَأَدْنَىٰ أَلَّا تَرْتَابُوا, “That is more just in the sight of Allah and stronger as evidence and more likely to prevent doubt between you.” Such detailed reinforcement, in a Book often marked by concision, shows how strongly lawful wealth is to be protected. Preserving it enables spending in Allah's cause and helps a person avoid unlawful means of meeting his needs (al-Qaffāl).^[41]

Nor does generosity require destroying the means of future provision. The Qurʾān warns against both withholding and giving without measure:

﴿وَلَا تَجْعَلْ يَدَكَ مَغْلُولَةً إِلَىٰ عُنُقِكَ وَلَا تَبْسُطْهَا كُلَّ الْبَسْطِ فَتَقْعُدَ مَلُومًا مَحْسُورًا ٢٩﴾

“And do not make your hand [as] chained to your neck or extend it completely and [thereby] become blamed and insolvent.” (17:29)

The middle course preserves the ability to fulfil obligations. Al-Manār connects this with قَوَامًا, qawāman, the balanced expenditure described in 25:67: support is preserved through wise use, not through refusing every expense.^[42]

The Sunnah makes the moral distinction equally clear. The Prophet ﷺ told ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ رضي الله عنه:

يَا عَمْرُو، نِعْمَ الْمَالُ الصَّالِحُ لِلْمَرْءِ الصَّالِحِ

“ʿAmr, how good sound wealth is for a righteous person!”^[43]

The good belongs to wealth rightly held and rightly used. Another hadith states the condition directly:

لَا بَأْسَ بِالْغِنَى لِمَنِ اتَّقَى، وَالصِّحَّةُ لِمَنِ اتَّقَى خَيْرٌ مِنَ الْغِنَى، وَطِيبُ النَّفْسِ مِنَ النَّعِيمِ

“There is no harm in wealth for one who fears Allah. Health for one who fears Allah is better than wealth, and contentment is among the blessings.”^[44]

Possession is therefore neither a proof of righteousness nor an obstacle to it in itself. What matters is its place in a person's obedience. Preserving enough for those one must support can itself be better than giving that provision away. When Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ رضي الله عنه wished to bequeath much of his wealth, the Prophet ﷺ told him:

إِنَّكَ أَنْ تَذَرَ وَرَثَتَكَ أَغْنِيَاءَ خَيْرٌ مِنْ أَنْ تَذَرَهُمْ عَالَةً يَتَكَفَّفُونَ النَّاسَ

“To leave your heirs with sufficient means is better than to leave them dependent, begging from people.”^[45]

The Prophet ﷺ also prayed for an increase in Anas's wealth:

اللَّهُمَّ أَكْثِرْ مَالَهُ وَوَلَدَهُ، وَبَارِكْ لَهُ فِيمَا أَعْطَيْتَهُ

“O Allah, increase his wealth and children, and bless him in what You have given him.”^[46]

The increase is joined to blessing. Wealth itself is not treated as something from which every believer must escape. When Kaʿb b. Mālik رضي الله عنه wished to give up his wealth in charity as part of his repentance, the Prophet ﷺ told him:

أَمْسِكْ عَلَيْكَ بَعْضَ مَالِكَ فَهُوَ خَيْرٌ لَكَ

“Keep some of your wealth; that is better for you.”^[47]

These examples answer the claim that renouncing possessions is always more religious. Retaining wealth for lawful needs can be the better course. A person who fears being distracted by riches may choose less for himself, but his circumstance does not make all possession blameworthy (Ibn al-Jawzī).^[48]

Protection of property also has a recognized moral weight. The Prophet ﷺ said:

مَنْ قُتِلَ دُونَ مَالِهِ فَهُوَ شَهِيدٌ

“Whoever is killed defending his property is a martyr.”^[49]

These hadiths explain why the instruction to preserve wealth belongs within religious teaching. A Muslim discharges Allah's right in it and protects what remains for its proper uses (Muḥammad Shafīʿ; al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[50]

Its benefits reach beyond its owner. Wealth reaches other people through wages, buying and selling, charity and inheritance. Its preservation can benefit workers, traders and those in need; its destruction cuts off those benefits. Where that loss becomes widespread, a community can become dependent on others, with its independence and interests exposed to their control. This is the wider consequence Ibn ʿĀshūr draws from the circulation of wealth.^[51]

Quṭb develops a related argument about private ownership and the community's welfare. He first acknowledges that the property belongs to the orphans, then calls the community its primary owner in a broader sense: Allah has given wealth for individuals and society to benefit from its proper use. Individual possession and investment are not erased by that account. His concern is how their use affects the whole community.^[52]

The conclusion. The two principal explanations need not be contradictory: an owner must not surrender his means of support to destructive management, and a guardian must not surrender a ward's property before it can be managed safely. Neither explanation allows the guardian to take ownership of the ward's assets. And Allah knows best.

Q3. When does financial conduct justify restriction?

الحَجْر, ḥajr, is a legal restriction on a person's ability to dispose of property. Before deciding whether it is justified, two questions must be answered: whose interests need protection, and what inability or conduct threatens them?

Protection of the owner differs from protection of creditors. A child's wealth is managed for the child. The same protective purpose can apply when mental incapacity or destructive management prevents someone from looking after his own interests. Insolvency is different: other people's rights are attached to the available assets (al-Qurṭubī).^[53]

In Ibn Kathīr's account, the insolvency case arises when debts exceed what the debtor can pay from his property. The creditors then ask the judge to restrict him, and the judge does so. The shortage of assets, the creditors' request and the judge's intervention are all parts of the explanation. Merely owing money does not establish this case, nor does it give any relative an unrestricted right to seize its management.^[54]

For protection of the owner, the operative danger is unsafe disposal. Ibn Kathīr states the verse's prohibition as follows:

يَنْهَى تَعَالَى عَنْ تَمْكِينِ السُّفَهَاءِ مِنَ التَّصَرُّفِ فِي الْأَمْوَالِ الَّتِي جَعَلَهَا اللَّهُ لِلنَّاسِ قِيَامًا

“The Most High forbids enabling the financially foolish to dispose of the wealth which Allah has made a support for people.”^[55]

The case for restricting an adult who wastes wealth. Adulthood does not necessarily bring sound management. The word safah carries the idea of lightness or lack of steadiness. Someone who squanders his means of support exhibits that defect in financial judgment even if he is no longer a child. The general prohibition therefore includes him. If he must not be entrusted with another person's assets, his own assets also deserve protection from the same destructive conduct (al-Rāzī, explaining al-Shāfiʿī; Abū Ḥayyān).^[56]

This interpretation requires more than refusing a new handover. Leaving a person in unrestricted possession when his conduct destroys the wealth can perpetuate the very harm the command forbids. The accompanying instruction to buy his provisions and clothing also shows another person lawfully administering his assets for him. Withholding unsafe control and providing responsible administration work together (Ibn al-Faras; al-Sāyis).^[57]

The debt verse gives a further argument by addressing cases in which a debtor needs someone to dictate for him:

﴿فَإِنْ كَانَ الَّذِي عَلَيْهِ الْحَقُّ سَفِيهًا أَوْ ضَعِيفًا أَوْ لَا يَسْتَطِيعُ أَنْ يُمِلَّ هُوَ فَلْيُمْلِلْ وَلِيُّهُ بِالْعَدْلِ﴾

“… of limited understanding or weak or unable to dictate himself, then let his guardian dictate in justice.” (2:282; excerpt)

Here a walī, a guardian, acts for a person described as safīh. Since the word can describe failings in more than one sphere, its legal effect must be understood from the context. Verse 4:5 identifies the financial concern: unsafe control of wealth, with another person responsible for its owner's provision. Read together, the verses establish guardianship for deficient financial judgment, rather than leaving the inference to the word safīh alone (al-Kiyā al-Harrāsī).^[58]

The case against removing a sane adult's authority. The contrary position is held by Abū Ḥanīfa, Zufar and al-Nakhaʿī. It concerns restriction for wastefulness by a free, sane adult, rather than the agreed protection of a young child or someone lacking mental capacity.^[59]

The objection is not that wastefulness is harmless. A sane adult remains responsible for his religious duties and legally answerable for what he says. His freedom to make binding decisions is itself a substantial right. Taking away the legal effect of his words may therefore inflict a greater injury than the financial protection secures. This is why withholding access to assets and invalidating transactions cannot simply be treated as the same measure (al-Sarakhsī).^[60]

The comparison with legal responsibility makes the point concrete. An adult's acknowledgment of an offence can expose him to punishment, even though punishments are subject to safeguards against doubt. If his words still bind him where his own person is at stake, why should wastefulness alone make them ineffective where property is at stake? The reply that a gravely ill person's financial acts may be limited does not settle the comparison: in that case, creditors' and heirs' rights can be involved when death follows the illness. That is a different basis from protecting an adult solely against himself (al-Jaṣṣāṣ; al-Sarakhsī).^[61]

Likewise, prohibiting waste does not establish that every gift, acknowledgment or favourable sale made by a wasteful person is itself wasteful. Such acts are lawful in suitable circumstances. The objection therefore asks for the further step connecting the prohibition of harmful spending to a general loss of authority over dealings. It also questions the effectiveness of the proposed remedy: under the positions permitting marriage and divorce after restriction, repeated marriages followed by divorce before consummation could still consume wealth through the resulting dowry obligations. Restriction would not prevent every means of dissipation (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[62]

Does the debt verse decide between the two positions? It too admits a contrary explanation. A person may manage money competently yet be unable to dictate a proper debt document. On that interpretation, safīh concerns this particular deficiency. If the debtor were already barred from financial dealings, how had he incurred the debt being documented? Nor, the objection continues, may a guardian simply acknowledge a debt and bind the owner by it. The person entitled to the debt therefore dictates its terms for the debtor to acknowledge (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[63]

The reply turns on وَلِيُّهُ, “his guardian.” In ordinary usage, a person has a walī. A debt has a صَاحِبُ الْحَقِّ, ṣāḥib al-ḥaqq, the person entitled to it. Referring the pronoun to the debtor therefore fits the expression more directly. On that interpretation, the verse itself authorizes a guardian to dictate for the person under his care; the objection that the guardian's acknowledgment could never bind him assumes the point that needs to be established (Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[64]

Rejecting this particular proof nevertheless does not require rejection of restriction itself. Al-Ṭaḥāwī understands the walī here as the person entitled to the debt, yet accepts ḥajr when the owner's conduct endangers his wealth. His conclusion rests on the wider case for protection.^[65]

The man who was cheated in trading. The Sunnah presents a practical case around which the two legal positions turn. Ibn ʿUmar رضي الله عنهما relates that a man complained of being deceived in transactions. The Prophet ﷺ told him:

مَنْ بَايَعْتَ فَقُلْ: لَا خِلَابَةَ

“Whoever you transact with, say: ‘There must be no deception.’”^[66]

Anas رضي الله عنه gives the fuller sequence. The man's family asked the Prophet ﷺ to restrict him because his judgment was weak. He was first told to stop trading. When he said that he could not give it up, the Prophet ﷺ answered:

إِنْ كُنْتَ غَيْرَ تَارِكٍ الْبَيْعَ فَقُلْ: هَاءَ وَهَاءَ، وَلَا خِلَابَةَ

“If you will not give up trading, say: ‘Take and give, and there must be no deception.’”^[67]

The first part supports intervention: the family asked for restriction, and the Prophet ﷺ initially forbade the trading. The eventual permission was accompanied by a safeguard against deception. On this interpretation, the hadith recognizes the need for protection rather than an unconditional right to keep making harmful purchases.

The contrary argument begins with the outcome. The man was allowed to transact; his sales were not suspended until a judge approved them. If restriction had been legally indispensable, saying “I cannot give up trading” would not have removed it, any more than such a plea would remove a child's incapacity. The initial prohibition can therefore be understood as protective advice, followed by a way of trading more safely (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[68]

A further wording adds a time in which to reconsider the purchase:

إِذَا أَنْتَ بَايَعْتَ فَقُلْ: لَا خِلَابَةَ. ثُمَّ أَنْتَ فِي كُلِّ سِلْعَةٍ ابْتَعْتَهَا بِالْخِيَارِ ثَلَاثَ لَيَالٍ؛ فَإِنْ رَضِيتَ فَأَمْسِكْ، وَإِنْ سَخِطْتَ فَارْدُدْهَا عَلَى صَاحِبِهَا

“When you transact, say: ‘There must be no deception.’ Then, for every article you buy, you have the choice for three nights: if you are satisfied, keep it; if dissatisfied, return it to its owner.”^[69]

The three-night addition has its own assessment, detailed in the note; it is not part of the short wording in the two Ṣaḥīḥs. Even when accepted, another question remains: was this a concession for this man's circumstances, or a general right for everyone who pays too much? Nor had his impairment removed all discernment. Vulnerability to being cheated and complete inability to hold or administer money are not identical conditions (al-Nawawī; al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ).^[70]

What if the person manages money well but commits sins? The broader religious sense of safah cannot simply be substituted for the financial test. There is a real scholarly question here. In al-Shinqīṭī's explanation of the Mālikī position, someone who preserves his wealth, understands dealings and avoids being cheated is financially competent despite sinful conduct. Ibn ʿĀṣim expresses the criterion in his legal poem:

وَشَارِبُ الْخَمْرِ إِذَا مَا ثَمَّرَا \ لِمَا يَلِي مِنْ مَالِهِ لَمْ يُحْجَرَا

“A drinker of wine who makes the wealth he administers grow is not placed under restriction.”^[71]

The line does not excuse drinking. It states that this sin does not, by itself, demonstrate inability to manage money. The contrary reasoning takes sound judgment more broadly: someone who knowingly exposes himself to the Fire is failing in the most serious matter of self-preservation. On the Shāfiʿī position presented by al-Shinqīṭī, delivery therefore requires soundness in religious as well as worldly conduct.^[72]

The Shāfiʿī discussion also contains an internal distinction. Where religious conduct is poor but money is well managed, Ibn Surayj permits restriction and Abū Isḥāq al-Marwazī does not. Al-Thaʿlabī calls al-Marwazī's answer the more apparent position of the school.^[73] The initial test for releasing a ward's assets and the grounds for restricting a person already managing his affairs must therefore be considered in their respective legal settings; a single description of “the Shāfiʿī view” can obscure the treatment under discussion.

A concrete argument against making religious misconduct itself a loss of financial standing comes from a claim about land. A man from Ḥaḍramawt accused a man from Kindah of taking land belonging to his father. When the claimant could provide no evidence, the Prophet ﷺ allowed the defendant's oath. The claimant protested:

يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ، إِنَّ الرَّجُلَ فَاجِرٌ، لَا يُبَالِي عَلَى مَا حَلَفَ عَلَيْهِ، وَلَيْسَ يَتَوَرَّعُ مِنْ شَيْءٍ. فَقَالَ: «لَيْسَ لَكَ مِنْهُ إِلَّا ذَلِكَ»

“Messenger of Allah, the man is wicked: he does not care what he swears to and refrains from nothing.” He answered: “You have no claim upon him beyond that.”^[74]

The allegation did not itself cancel the defendant's legal standing. Financial claims were not made conditional on first proving every litigant's uprightness. The validity of non-Muslims' property dealings provides a related comparison: religious error alone does not abolish the ability to own, contract or acknowledge obligations (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[75]

The financial test still includes unlawful and ruinous spending. Spending wealth on prohibited things, or destroying it for no useful purpose, directly concerns its management. Ibn ʿUthaymīn gives such examples as spending on intoxicants or burning fuel merely to watch it burn. Here the religious fault and the misuse of wealth meet in the same act.^[76]

Conversely, an expense may have a lawful or devotional object and still exhaust the means needed for the spender and his dependants. Al-Qurṭubī records Mālikī positions both permitting and declining restriction when wealth is dissipated in acts of devotion. The goodness of the intended object does not remove the question about the expenditure's consequences. A general necessity affecting the Muslim community may nevertheless call for exceptional sacrifice; al-Ṭarīfī expressly distinguishes that circumstance from ordinary spending that harms the giver and his family.^[77]

Competence may also differ by activity. Someone capable in familiar dealings may enter a market he does not understand and expose his wealth to losses he cannot assess. That calls for attention to the actual activity and its danger, rather than a judgment that every unfamiliar purchase proves general incapacity (al-Ṭarīfī).^[78]

The conclusion. The stronger interpretation permits restriction when actual financial incompetence threatens the owner's wealth: adulthood alone does not remove the condition described in 4:5. The protection is for the owner, whose title remains intact. If competent management later gives way to destructive conduct, the protective reason can arise again (al-Rāghib).^[79] Restriction for creditors' rights rests on a separate basis. Religious misconduct, inability to conduct a particular transaction and general financial incapacity also require their own assessment. The contrary position concerning a sane adult's authority remains a substantive legal view, not permission to waste wealth. How withholding and restriction affect particular dealings is the next question. And Allah knows best.

Q4. Does withholding property take away ownership or invalidate transactions?

A person may own an asset without receiving unrestricted control of it. Whether he may receive the asset, use it personally or make a binding transaction with it are further questions. The distinctions matter both before and after a judge orders restriction.

A gift can confer ownership without surrendering control. Al-Nuʿmān b. Bashīr رضي الله عنهما relates that his father brought him to the Prophet ﷺ and said:

إِنِّي نَحَلْتُ ابْنِي هَذَا غُلَامًا. فَقَالَ: أَكُلَّ وَلَدِكَ نَحَلْتَ مِثْلَهُ؟ قَالَ: لَا. قَالَ: فَارْجِعْهُ

“I have given this son of mine an enslaved boy.” He asked, “Have you given every one of your children the same?” He said, “No.” He said, “Then take it back.”^[80]

The objection concerns unequal treatment of the children, not a child’s inability to own a gift. If 4:5 prohibited transferring ownership to a child, that would have given a different reason to object. The distinction is therefore between title and management: the child may own the gift while the person responsible for him receives and preserves it (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).

Ibn al-ʿArabī states the distinction directly:

وَيَجُوزُ هِبَةُ ذَلِكَ لَهُمْ، فَيَكُونُ لِلسُّفَهَاءِ مِلْكًا وَلَكِنْ لَا يَكُونُ لَهُمْ عَلَيْهِ يَدٌ

“It is permissible to give it to them as a gift, so it becomes the property of the financially foolish, but they do not have control over it.”^[81]

There is also a practical objection to treating this as a ban on gifts. Someone unable to earn may have a greater need of a gift, not a lesser one. If financial incapacity prevented acquiring property at all, it would also prevent acquiring an inheritance. Yet the verse requires the property to support its owner and the next verse requires its eventual delivery. Those duties presuppose ownership while regulating control (al-Zajjāj).^[82]

The donor's conditions raise a further question. Suppose someone gives property to a person under restriction but stipulates that this particular gift must remain in the recipient's hands. Ibn al-Faras records permission as the well-known Mālikī position. He also records an objection drawn from 4:5: the donor's condition would authorize the very delivery the verse forbids. The latter reasoning also appears in al-Suyūṭī's deductions, quoted by al-Qāsimī.^[83]

The distinction is between the benefit of acquiring a new asset and the danger of placing it under unsafe control. A condition that defeats justified protection should therefore be refused. The contrary position allows the donor’s condition, so this conclusion is not shared by all jurists.

A guardian's authority has its own limit. Providing for the owner does not authorize voluntary donations from the owner's property. The wealth is held for him, not available for the guardian's charitable projects (al-Suyūṭī; al-Qāsimī).^[84]

The recipient’s apparent permission also has to be assessed in light of that restriction. A competent owner may permit someone to use his property. A child or another person under financial restriction does not possess the same authority to give it away; his consent therefore does not make taking it lawful. Ownership alone is not enough: the permission must come from someone legally able to give it (al-Shāfiʿī).^[85]

Delayed delivery is not a declaration of invalid transactions. Al-Qurṭubī records a position from Abū Ḥanīfa in which property is withheld from a wasteful young adult until twenty-five and then delivered to him even if the wastefulness continues. He also records the explanation that the person's transactions remain legally effective during the period of withholding: only delivery of the assets is delayed as a precaution.^[86]

Why twenty-five? The explanation attributed to Abū Ḥanīfa imagines a boy fathering a child at twelve and a half, and that child doing the same: the first could then be a grandfather at twenty-five. The argument is that withholding property from someone capable of reaching that family position is no longer fitting. This is the stated rationale for the age limit. Precaution explains why delivery is delayed despite effective transactions; it does not explain the number twenty-five.^[87]

The interpretation also attempts to give each of two commands a distinct operation. وَآتُوا الْيَتَامَىٰ أَمْوَالَهُمْ, “And give to the orphans their properties” (4:2), is read as the general command to deliver; فَإِنْ آنَسْتُمْ مِنْهُمْ رُشْدًا فَادْفَعُوا إِلَيْهِمْ أَمْوَالَهُمْ, “Then if you perceive in them sound judgment, release their property to them” (4:6), sets a condition during the earlier period. The first command resumes its unrestricted force at the proposed age limit (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[88]

There are two answers. The command in 4:2 can require preserving an orphan's property for its proper delivery, so it remains operative throughout minority. Alternatively, if it directly commands delivery, the more specific directions in 4:5–6 explain which recipients may safely receive it. On either interpretation, both passages retain their work without creating an age after which continuing incapacity ceases to matter (al-Sāyis).^[89]

Another objection asks whether a conditional command necessarily forbids the act whenever its condition is absent. A command to deliver when sound judgment appears expressly establishes that case; the opposite rule needs to be established too. This is the inference raised in Darj al-Durar. Here, however, 4:5 expressly prohibits handing control to the financially incapable, in addition to 4:6's condition for release.^[90]

The age is therefore a proposed ceiling on withholding, not a definition of puberty. The position distinguishes an adult’s legal acts from delivery of assets held for him. The answer from Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad returns to the condition in 4:6: delivery depends on finding sound judgment. Continued wastefulness at twenty-five does not fulfil that condition any more than it did at adulthood. The passage gives a condition, not this particular age limit.^[91]

What do the Companion accounts establish? The objection to the age-based limit is that restriction need not end merely because the owner is an adult. Al-Qurṭubī criticizes it as وَهَذَا كُلُّهُ ضَعِيفٌ فِي النَّظَرِ وَالْأَثَرِ, “All of this is weak in reasoning and transmitted evidence.” His counterexample is an account in which ʿAlī asks ʿUthmān to restrict ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar after a purchase. Al-Zubayr declares himself a partner in the purchase, and ʿUthmān declines to restrict a transaction in which al-Zubayr is a partner, رضي الله عنهم. The inference is that adult restriction was an available measure: the answer concerns the circumstances of this purchase, not a rule that no adult can be restricted.^[92]

The same incident receives a different assessment from al-Sarakhsī. ʿUthmān declined to impose restriction. Al-Zubayr’s willingness to join the purchase may show that this particular transaction involved no loss, but one good transaction would not, on the restriction view, remove a person’s general wastefulness. Al-Sarakhsī therefore understands the threatened restriction as a warning, not a binding legal measure. The difference turns on what ʿUthmān’s refusal establishes: an exception in this purchase, or the absence of enforceable restriction on that ground.^[93]

One inference goes further: ʿAlī would not have sought restriction unless he accepted it, and al-Zubayr and ʿUthmān answered through the circumstances of the purchase rather than rejecting the measure itself. Al-Shāfiʿī uses that reasoning; al-Thaʿlabī presents a claim of Companion agreement.^[94]

But accepting that a judge may decide a matter is not necessarily agreement with his legal view. Al-Zubayr's intervention could avert a measure he did not himself endorse. Moreover, withholding assets differs from invalidating contracts, and ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar resisted the proposed restriction. Those distinctions prevent the incident from establishing an uncontested Companion consensus (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[95]

A second incident brings the distinction between a rule and its application into focus. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr رضي الله عنهما objected to a sale or gift made by ʿĀʾishah رضي الله عنها, saying:

وَاللَّهِ لَتَنْتَهِيَنَّ عَائِشَةُ، أَوْ لَأَحْجُرَنَّ عَلَيْهَا

“By Allah, ʿĀʾishah must stop, or I shall place her under restriction.”

When she confirmed that he had said it, she answered:

هُوَ لِلَّهِ عَلَيَّ نَذْرٌ، أَنْ لَا أُكَلِّمَ ابْنَ الزُّبَيْرِ أَبَدًا

“It is a vow I owe to Allah that I shall never speak to Ibn al-Zubayr.”^[96]

Those permitting restriction understand her objection as rejection of its application to her, not rejection of the legal measure itself. Al-Jaṣṣāṣ reads her refusal more broadly: it shows opposition to the proposed restriction, and does not establish assent to the underlying rule. The account records the threat and her forceful rejection; it records no judicial finding that she had mismanaged her wealth.^[97]

When does restriction begin to affect dealings? First distinguish a ward whose protected status continues from an adult who has already received independent control. Initial protection does not require a new order before every transaction. Renewed restriction of an adult raises the further question of when the change takes legal effect. Difficulty dictating a document, by itself, is another matter again and need not invalidate the person's dealings (Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[98]

Requiring a judicial order gives the change in legal status an identifiable beginning. Before it, transactions remain effective; afterward, the restriction governs them. If the transactions had already been ineffective, there would have been no need for the ruler's order. That is Saḥnūn's argument for Mālik's position.^[99]

The order also needs to be known to those who might transact with the person. In Mālik's account, the matter is brought before the authority and the restriction is publicly established and witnessed. In the Shāfiʿī account, someone who deals with the person after restriction bears the resulting loss. Public notice prevents a private family assertion from silently changing another person's legal position (Mālik; al-Shāfiʿī, as recorded by al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[100]

On Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan's position, the condition warranting restriction is operative before the judge declares it. Yet a beneficial sale need not simply be discarded: the judge examines the dealing and may approve it. Abū Yūsuf, by contrast, makes the judge's restriction the beginning of the disability. Thus the need for judicial involvement and the time from which acts are affected remain distinct questions (al-Jaṣṣāṣ; al-Sarakhsī).^[101]

The opposing argument begins with a concrete intervention. Jābir b. ʿAbd Allāh رضي الله عنهما relates:

أَعْتَقَ رَجُلٌ غُلَامًا لَهُ عَنْ دُبُرٍ، فَقَالَ النَّبِيُّ ﷺ: «مَنْ يَشْتَرِيهِ مِنِّي؟» فَاشْتَرَاهُ نُعَيْمُ بْنُ عَبْدِ اللَّهِ، فَأَخَذَ ثَمَنَهُ، فَدَفَعَهُ إِلَيْهِ.

“A man arranged for an enslaved boy of his to become free after his death. The Prophet ﷺ said, ‘Who will buy him from me?’ Nuʿaym b. ʿAbd Allāh bought him; he took the price and handed it to the man.”^[102]

Muslim’s fuller wording establishes that the man had no other property. This was التَّدْبِير, tadbīr, freedom made dependent on the owner’s death, rather than freedom already taking effect. In al-Qurṭubī’s account of Ibn al-Qāsim’s position, the Prophet’s ﷺ intervention, made without an earlier restriction order, shows that financial foolishness can make a dealing ineffective before the judge acts. Aṣbagh distinguishes an obvious condition from a concealed one: the former affects the acts immediately, while the latter requires a judicial order.^[103]

The legal inference is open to a further question. The sale price was returned to the man, who was still allowed to dispose of it. Muslim also gives the Prophet’s ﷺ instruction: ابْدَأْ بِنَفْسِكَ فَتَصَدَّقْ عَلَيْهَا, “Begin with yourself and spend on yourself.” That makes it harder to treat the incident as proof that all his transactions had become ineffective. The intervention can instead be understood as preventing him from giving away his entire means of support (al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ).^[104]

There is also a way of assessing the dealing itself: a sound transaction takes effect, while an unsound one is set aside. This protects the owner without treating every act alike (Ibn al-ʿArabī). His account of the Mālikī positions differs from al-Qurṭubī’s: he attributes validity before restriction to Ibn al-Qāsim, and invalidity to most of his Mālikī colleagues. The two accounts therefore agree that the issue is real, but give different attributions within the school.^[105]

A judicial restriction also need not undo dealings that were valid before it. A witness's later loss of uprightness does not invalidate a judgment properly based on his earlier testimony. In the same way, a later change in an owner's capacity does not retrospectively destroy the validity of his earlier sales and purchases (al-Shāfiʿī).^[106]

The contrary objection asks how a judge can annul contracts that do not yet exist. If an adult has authority to transact today, a declaration about his future dealings requires an explanation beyond the cancellation of an existing contract (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[107] The restriction view treats the order as a change in the person's legal authority, with consequences for acts afterward. It is not a judgment that every earlier dealing was defective.

Nor must every ordinary purchase cease. Ibn al-Qāsim permits small purchases of food for the restricted person and his children from the maintenance handed to him, explaining that these are modest expenditures for their needs. Permission to trade or to meet daily necessities also does not automatically authorize gifts from the capital. Each permission has its own scope.^[108]

The same limit answers the comparison with divorce. Financial restriction concerns property that another person may administer for its owner. Marriage does not make a wife an item of property under that administrator's control. The husband's personal authority concerning divorce therefore does not establish an equivalent authority to give away restricted assets (al-Shāfiʿī).^[109]

Creditors' rights can affect a dealing before their petition. This is a separate question from renewed restriction for wastefulness. Suppose debts exceed the debtor's assets, and he declares part of those assets a وَقْف, waqf, an endowment. The act would remove property needed to satisfy other people's existing rights.

The well-known Ḥanbalī position described by Ibn ʿUthaymīn treats the debtor's disposition as effective before creditors request restriction. The position he adopts from Ibn Taymiyyah forbids a disposition harmful to creditors and treats it as ineffective even before their request. On that reasoning, the endowment fails because creditors' rights are already attached to the property; their protection does not begin only when they file a petition.^[110]

These arguments concern different reasons for limiting dealings. None makes the judge or guardian the owner of the assets.

The conclusion. Ownership, delivery and the validity of transactions must be considered separately. Protecting management does not prevent someone from acquiring property, and delaying delivery does not necessarily make every transaction invalid. A decision about validity must identify the person's existing status, the ground for restriction, the time and nature of the dealing, and any relevant authority to approve it. The juristic positions concern those legal effects; none gives the guardian ownership of the wealth. And Allah knows best.

Q5. Who may be appointed to administer another person's affairs?

A person unable to manage wealth needs someone trustworthy to act for him. One way that responsibility arises is through الْوَصِيَّة, waṣiyya: appointment to carry out responsibilities after the appointing person’s death. The discussion here concerns that appointment as executor. It does not make every rule for executors a rule for every kind of guardianship.

The duty of protection extends to the choice of a successor. If a person must not put his own wealth under incapable management during his life, he should not arrange the same danger for young heirs after his death. The executor must be both trustworthy and able to preserve what belongs to them. Honesty without the necessary ability leaves the inheritance exposed to loss; ability without honesty leaves it exposed to misuse (al-Jaṣṣāṣ; al-Rāzī).^[111]

The Prophet's ﷺ advice to Abū Dharr رضي الله عنه shows why esteem for a person and fitness for administration are separate judgments:

يَا أَبَا ذَرٍّ، إِنِّي أَرَاكَ ضَعِيفًا، وَإِنِّي أُحِبُّ لَكَ مَا أُحِبُّ لِنَفْسِي، لَا تَأَمَّرَنَّ عَلَى اثْنَيْنِ، وَلَا تَوَلَّيَنَّ مَالَ يَتِيمٍ

“Abū Dharr, I see that you are weak, and I love for you what I love for myself. Do not take command over two people, and do not take charge of an orphan's property.”^[112]

The warning is given with affection, and it identifies the responsibility to avoid. Good intentions do not give a person the capacity needed to protect someone else's livelihood.

The clearest agreed case in al-Qurṭubī’s executor discussion is a free Muslim appointee who is trustworthy and upright. He must also understand the transactions he undertakes. Al-Qurṭubī extends the warning to employing an agent who cannot distinguish lawful from unlawful dealings. Entrusting property to someone unable to recognize those boundaries would expose it to the very danger the appointment is meant to prevent. The concern is concrete: an agent unfamiliar with the relevant rules may conclude a prohibited sale or undertake a transaction involving ribā. The appointment must be assessed against the work entrusted to him.^[113]

Commercial skill and knowledge of lawful dealing thus meet in the same responsibility. A person appointed as an investment agent must understand how to trade; a مُضَارَبَة, muḍārabah, arrangement, in which one party provides capital and another trades with it, is no exception. Handing over capital to someone unable to conduct that work defeats the purpose of the arrangement (al-Samarqandī).^[114]

ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb رضي الله عنه said:

لَا يَبِعْ فِي سُوقِنَا إِلَّا مَنْ قَدْ تَفَقَّهَ فِي الدِّينِ

“No one should sell in our market unless he has gained understanding of the religion.”^[115]

The relevance is practical. Someone can know how to make a profit yet fail to recognize a forbidden bargain. The person managing another's money needs both kinds of understanding for the transactions entrusted to him.

The appointment of a woman shows why ownership and administrative authority cannot be discussed as though they were the same question. The permission view does not merely allow a woman to possess property; it allows her to administer a trust. Its concrete precedent is ʿUmar's appointment of Ḥafṣa رضي الله عنهما, which Aḥmad cites. Al-Qurṭubī also records the contrary position related from ʿAṭāʾ, who says that a husband's appointment of his wife should be transferred to a man from his people.^[116]

The older discussion also asks whether an enslaved person could be appointed executor. Permission would allow him to administer this trust despite his own restricted legal status; the contrary position excludes him from this appointment. Al-Nakhaʿī’s permission is narrower, applying to a man appointing his own enslaved person. The precise holders of the two positions are recorded in the note.^[117]

Knowledge must match the entrusted responsibility. The discussion of a non-Muslim agent in al-Qurṭubī concerns knowledge of lawful and unlawful transactions, especially ribā. Al-Māturīdī considers a narrower explanation of al-Ḥasan's identification of the sufahāʾ with unbelievers: perhaps it concerns administration of religious affairs, for which knowledge and observance of Islam's requirements are essential. He offers this tentatively. These explanations identify the duties at stake; they do not make every form of paid assistance identical to religious guardianship.^[118]

Family relationships may guide the choice without replacing competence. Quṭb describes appointing a capable member of the community while taking account of his degree of kinship to the orphan. Family care and communal responsibility meet in that appointment: closeness matters, but the task still requires someone able to perform it.^[119]

The conclusion. The appointment must serve the entrusted person’s interests through competent, trustworthy administration. A woman may undertake this responsibility on the majority position recorded here, with Ḥafṣa’s appointment as its concrete precedent. The contrary position concerns eligibility for this particular appointment; it does not establish that women cannot own or manage wealth. And Allah knows best.

Q6. What must the guardian provide, and from where?

The person whose wealth is being protected still needs to live. وَارْزُقُوهُمْ فِيهَا وَاكْسُوهُمْ, “provide for them through it and clothe them,” follows the prohibition immediately. These are commands concerning another person's rights. Preservation of future support cannot excuse neglect of present needs (Ibn ʿUthaymīn, al-Qushayrī).^[120]

The money must serve the person. الرِّزْق, al-rizq, here means the provision assigned to someone. Human beings provide in this limited sense by passing on what Allah has given them; the command does not make them independent sources of sustenance. One explanation of فِيهَا is therefore to assign an allowance within the wealth, treating the recipient's provision as a claim upon it (al-Wāḥidī, al-Shinqīṭī).^[121]

This matters because the verse concerns an owner's continuing needs, not merely a payment made on a particular occasion. Verse 4:8 directs that something be given to people present at an estate's distribution. Here the people being maintained own the property withheld from them, so provision and clothing follow their entitlement to its benefit. That difference helps explain why clothing is expressly named here (Ibn al-Zubayr al-Gharnāṭī).^[122]

Protect the source of support. A sum of money can disappear through repeated withdrawals. If it is prudently made productive, its yield can instead support the owner while the underlying asset remains. This is the force drawn from فِيهَا by al-Zamakhsharī:

وَاجْعَلُوهَا مَكَانًا لِرِزْقِهِمْ

“Make it the setting from which their provision comes.”

He explains this through trade and profit, so that maintenance comes from the profit rather than the principal. The point is to make the wealth support its owner repeatedly instead of letting each payment bring that support nearer to an end (al-Rāzī, Rashīd Riḍā, Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[123]

Does that forbid spending the principal? No such prohibition follows. Property may support its owner through what it directly provides, through its sale price or through what it produces. The preposition can describe provision within this wider range of resources, repeatedly and continuously. If profit alone were permitted, necessary expenditure from the principal would be forbidden. Ibn ʿĀshūr expressly objects to that implication while acknowledging the insight in al-Zamakhsharī's account.^[124]

Ibn ʿĀshūr’s poetic witness shows why فِي need not refer only to an asset's profits. Sabra b. ʿAmr al-Faqʿasī speaks of camels received as compensation for a slain member of his people:

نُحَابِي بِهَا أَكْفَاءَنَا وَنُهِينُهَا ... وَنَشْرَبُ فِي أَثْمَانِهَا وَنُقَامِرُ

“With them we favour our peers and hold them of little account; we drink with their proceeds and gamble.”^[125]

The relevant words are فِي أَثْمَانِهَا, literally “in their prices.” The proceeds are the means by which the actions are carried out. Ibn ʿĀshūr explains that the expression can cover all or part of the proceeds and what may be won back in gambling. It illustrates the breadth of the preposition, not the permissibility of the acts described.

Another explanation emphasizes the scale of the owner's right: the wealth as a whole is available to meet his needs, rather than maintenance being confined to its margins. On that interpretation, فِيهَا keeps the full resource in view. This reaches the same practical result through a different emphasis in the wording (ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Khaṭīb).^[126]

Whose wealth pays for maintenance? The answer follows the two principal explanations of “your property.” If a father is being told to retain his own wealth, the command that follows requires him to spend it on his dependants. The possessive and the command together give evidence for the father's duty to provide his child's maintenance and clothing. If a guardian is being told to preserve a ward's property, the ward is maintained from that property. The permission to use it for necessary purchases also shows that withholding unrestricted control does not mean leaving the property untouched (al-Māturīdī, al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Ibn al-ʿArabī).^[127]

This is why the verse is used as evidence for the maintenance of relatives. It does not, by itself, settle every question about which relative must support whom. Nor does appointment as a guardian make a person liable from his own funds for a ward whom he has no separate duty to maintain. Such a ward is supported from the assets entrusted to the guardian (al-Ṭabarī, al-Shawkānī).^[128]

The same distinction explains the qualifications concerning children and grandchildren. On one position, a father's ordinary obligation lasts for a son until puberty and for a daughter until marriage has been consummated; if her marriage ends before consummation, the obligation remains, whereas it does not automatically return after a consummated marriage ends. A broader position continues maintenance for children without sufficient means, whether young or adult. Its evidence is the unrestricted word “your child” in the Prophet's ﷺ instruction to Hind رضي الله عنها, quoted below. The question is whether that wording establishes need alone as the continuing condition, or must be understood alongside the child's ability to earn.

That second consideration appears in al-Qurṭubī's explanation of Abū Hurayrah's رضي الله عنه example:

يَقُولُ الِابْنُ: أَطْعِمْنِي، إِلَى مَنْ تَدَعُنِي؟

“The child says, ‘Feed me. To whom are you leaving me?’”

These are Abū Hurayrah's words explaining the Prophet's ﷺ direction to begin with one's dependants. Al-Qurṭubī understands the appeal as that of someone unable to earn his own living. On this reasoning, mere adulthood does not describe the whole problem; earning capacity matters to the claim being made.^[129]

Closeness of descent is another question. Mālik does not extend the grandfather's obligation to the grandchild in the position recorded here. Al-Shāfiʿī extends maintenance to descendants without property, including grandchildren, until puberty and afterward where disability prevents them from providing for themselves. A nearer father able to support them takes precedence over the grandfather. These differences concern the reach of the obligation, not permission to leave a needy child without care. For a poor orphan without assets, al-Qurṭubī places responsibility on the ruler through the public treasury; if that provision is not made, it falls upon Muslims, beginning with those closest to the child.^[130]

What is enough? Hind bint ʿUtbah رضي الله عنها complained that Abū Sufyān رضي الله عنه did not give her enough for herself and her children. The Prophet ﷺ told her:

خُذِي مَا يَكْفِيكِ وَوَلَدَكِ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ

“Take what suffices you and your child, according to what is reasonable.”^[131]

The measure is sufficiency governed by what is right, not unrestricted desire. It varies with the people, the time and the circumstances. A fixed amount that feeds one household may fail to feed another. The alternative argument for fixed food quantities draws an analogy with the expiation for a broken oath: food is measured there, while clothing is not fixed in the same way. The answer is that Hind's hadith addresses family maintenance directly and expressly makes sufficiency the measure. That direct instruction is stronger here than the proposed analogy (ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Ṭarīfī).^[132]

For a ward, available wealth and personal condition also govern appropriate spending. A wealthy young child may need a wet nurse and carers; an older child's food, clothing and assistance should suit his condition. Limited funds require a more modest provision, without abandoning necessities (al-Qurṭubī).^[133]

Provide more than meals. الرِّزْق includes the different kinds of necessary spending. Food, lodging, marriage and clothing appear in ʿAbduh's explanation; clothing is named separately because people sometimes neglect it. Riḍā also expressly includes upbringing and education, while Ibn ʿUthaymīn includes housing and bedding. These explanations prevent the two named duties from being used to disregard the person's other needs.^[134] Medical care likewise belongs among the needs for which a person's wealth is administered (Wahbah al-Zuḥaylī).^[135]

Meeting those needs does not require the guardian to control every small decision. Provision and clothing may be handed to the person under restriction when they can safely be entrusted to him, according to his condition and means. This is the ruling Ibn ʿĀshūr records from his school.^[136] Nor can a trustee always be required to prove each ordinary expense in the same way as a disputed transfer: by entrusting him with maintenance, the verse supports accepting his account of expenditure that is plausible for maintenance and clothing. Plausibility limits that acceptance; it does not protect any amount he chooses to claim (al-Saʿdī).^[137]

The conclusion. Preserve the wealth so that it can continue to support its owner, but meet the owner's present needs. Profit is one means of doing so, not the only permitted means. Where maintenance is owed from another person's funds, the duty follows the relevant family relationship and its conditions; it does not arise from guardianship alone. The level of direct access should take account of what the person can safely manage. And Allah knows best.

Q7. What does a “kind and right word” require?

A person denied control of his own money needs to know what is happening and why. وَقُولُوا لَهُمْ قَوْلًا مَعْرُوفًا, “speak to them words recognized as right and kind,” requires more than a pleasant tone. The words must be truthful, useful and appropriate to his condition.

Begin with what the person needs to understand. A minor should be told that the money is his: the guardian is keeping it for him, not claiming it. Someone whose conduct wastes money needs a different explanation. He should be counselled against extravagance, encouraged to pray and shown how squandering wealth leads to poverty and dependence. Al-Qaffāl distinguishes these two situations, and al-Rāzī considers his explanation the best of those he has set out.^[138]

The difference is important. A truthful promise of future delivery explains the child's rights; advice about destructive habits addresses conduct that must change. Neither is fulfilled by saying something soothing while leaving the person ignorant of his rights or responsibilities.

There is a further kind of promise: hoped-for help from wealth that has yet to arrive. “If this journey brings a profit, I will assist you” gives a person something honest to look forward to without surrendering control of the capital. Al-Wāḥidī also gives the historical example of promising help from gains on a military expedition. Such promises concern future kindness or assistance; they are distinct from the promise to hand over a ward's existing property. The promised act must itself be lawful and proper (Mujāhid and Ibn Jurayj, as explained by al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[139]

When someone must turn away a person in need while hoping for the means to help, the Qurʾān still directs how he should answer:

﴿وَإِمَّا تُعْرِضَنَّ عَنْهُمُ ٱبْتِغَآءَ رَحْمَةٍ مِّن رَّبِّكَ تَرْجُوهَا فَقُل لَّهُمْ قَوْلًا مَّيْسُورًا﴾

“… awaiting mercy from your Lord which you expect, then speak to them a gentle word.” (17:28; excerpt)

The inability to provide at that moment explains the postponement; it does not justify a harsh dismissal. This is the connection with 4:5: keeping control of money, or waiting for the means to give, must be accompanied by speech that respects the person asking (al-Jaṣṣāṣ, al-Rāzī).^[140]

Care also teaches. Feeding and clothing someone does not remove the need to help him act well. Al-Zajjāj includes teaching the person his religion alongside the material provision.^[141] Financial habits can also improve through instruction. Where irresponsibility has been acquired, advice and education may help remove it. A guardian who encourages the wastefulness in order to keep control of the money defeats the purpose of his appointment: he is supposed to help the person reach sound judgment, not prevent it (al-Marāghī).^[142]

Kindness can include a difficult truth. A financially irresponsible person may dislike advice that serves his welfare. That does not make the advice contrary to مَعْرُوف. The relevant test is whether it is right and beneficial, not whether it wins immediate approval (Ibn ʿArafah, Ibn ʿĀshūr).^[143]

Anger does not release the guardian from that duty. He should neither begin with insults nor answer an insult in kind. The hope is that explanation and teaching will help the person improve, rather than harden his resistance. Ibn ʿĀshūr illustrates the contrary response with a line whose poet he does not name:

إِذَا نُهِيَ السَّفِيهُ جَرَى إِلَيْهِ ... وَخَالَفَ وَالسَّفِيهُ إِلَى خِلَافِ

“When the foolish person is forbidden something, he runs toward it; he opposes, for the foolish person inclines to opposition.”^[144]

The line describes wilful resistance. It explains why correction needs patient teaching; merely repeating a prohibition may leave the conduct unchanged.

Provision must not become humiliation. Explaining the need for caution is different from grumbling about the recipient or reminding him of one's generosity. A guardian can reassure him that the precaution is for his benefit; a parent can speak hopefully about what his child will one day receive. When the money already belongs to the recipient, spending it on him is plainly no personal favour by the guardian. Even when it comes from the provider's own wealth, care must not be spoiled by contempt (Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Ibn ʿUthaymīn).^[145]

The Qurʾān makes both parts of that duty clear:

﴿فَأَمَّا ٱلۡيَتِيمَ فَلَا تَقۡهَرۡ ٩﴾

“So as for the orphan, do not oppress [him].” (93:9)

And concerning charity:

﴿لَا تُبْطِلُوا صَدَقَـٰتِكُم بِٱلْمَنِّ وَٱلْأَذَىٰ﴾

“do not invalidate your charities with reminders [of it] or injury” (2:264; excerpt)

The first rules out using power to crush the orphan; the second shows why the fact of giving cannot excuse hurtful treatment. Verse 4:8 similarly joins provision to a kind word for those present at distribution. Different recipients and different financial rights share this requirement of decent speech (al-Jaṣṣāṣ).^[146]

This good speech has value of its own. The Prophet ﷺ said:

وَالْكَلِمَةُ الطَّيِّبَةُ صَدَقَةٌ

“A good word is charity.”^[147]

An explanation that removes a grievance, or advice that prevents harm, can sometimes benefit a person more than much giving. That is why speech is commanded alongside provision. It offers understanding or guidance that money alone cannot give (al-Biqāʿī).^[148]

The duty is tested in close relationships. Al-Shawkānī connects the verse's good speech toward family members with the Prophet's ﷺ words:

خَيْرُكُمْ خَيْرُكُمْ لِأَهْلِهِ، وَأَنَا خَيْرُكُمْ لِأَهْلِي

“The best of you is the best to his family, and I am the best of you to my family.”^[149]

The instruction therefore reaches the daily manner of answering a dependent person, not only conspicuous acts of generosity. Orphans and women are also the subjects of a particular prophetic warning:

اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أُحَرِّجُ حَقَّ الضَّعِيفَيْنِ: الْيَتِيمِ وَالْمَرْأَةِ

“O Allah, I solemnly warn against violating the rights of the two vulnerable ones: the orphan and the woman.”^[150]

Their vulnerability strengthens the obligation to protect their rights. It gives no permission to treat their requests as unworthy of an answer.

There is also a courteous response for someone outside one's duty of maintenance. Ibn Zayd gives the example, عَافَانَا اللَّهُ وَإِيَّاكَ، بَارَكَ اللَّهُ فِيكَ, “May Allah grant us and you well-being; may Allah bless you.” This belongs to the broader interpretation addressed to people managing their own wealth, not solely to guardians maintaining wards. A person may decline to surrender control of his money without speaking harshly to the person asking for it.^[151] Prayer can also seek the recipient's rectitude, joining concern for his welfare to the explanation or counsel he receives (Ibn al-Faras).^[152]

The conclusion. The best words address the actual need: reassure, explain, teach or correct. Firmness and respect belong together. A guardian has not fulfilled the financial trust if he preserves the money while degrading its owner. The verse joins care through action to care through speech and conduct; both belong to the duty (Ibn Kathīr).^[153] And Allah knows best.

2. How the Commentators Read This Verse

3. Iʿrāb: Grammatical Analysis

The table follows the Dār al-Ṣaḥābah إعراب القرآن الكريم, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, with Ṣāfī's additional detail on imperative forms. Attached pronouns are separated to show their functions.^[1] The clause table is followed by explanations of how the grammatical alternatives affect meaning and translation.

The clauses of the verse, and where each one stands.^[2]

Where the grammar changes the meaning

وَلَا (wa-lā): where the prohibition joins the passage. Dār al-Ṣaḥābah connects it with the command to give women their dowries in 4:4. Ibn ʿĀshūr also allows connection with the command concerning orphans in 4:2, treating the intervening material as a parenthesis. Neither requires a different English rendering of “and do not”; the difference concerns which earlier command the reader hears it continuing.^[3]

تُؤْتُوا (tuʾtū): the prohibited act. The two objects are the recipients and the property. Thus the phrase means “do not give the financially irresponsible your property,” not “do not provide for them.” The later imperatives expressly require provision and clothing.^[4]

السُّفَهَاءَ (al-sufahāʾa): the recipient object. Its grammatical position identifies who must not receive the transfer. The range of persons meant is established from the verse's setting and the explanations in §1. A plural form alone does not settle that interpretive question.

أَمْوَالَكُمُ (amwālakumu): the possessive. The expression can be translated “your property” under both the direct-ownership and guardianship explanations. Grammar identifies the possessive relationship; it does not by itself decide whether the wealth belongs personally to the addressee. That is why the ownership discussion must accompany the translation.

الَّتِي (allatī): one relative form with a plural noun. The singular feminine relative qualifies the non-rational plural أَمْوَال. Both singular and plural relative forms are possible with such plurals, although الَّتِي is more usual with wealth and other things, and اللَّاتِي with women (al-Farrāʾ).^[5]

An anonymous poetic line brings three relative forms together:

من اللواتي والتي واللاتي ... زعمن أني كبرت لداتي

“My age-mates are among those women, those who, those who claimed that I had grown old.”

The repeated “those who” renders the three parallel expressions اللواتي, التي and اللاتي. All refer to the same women. The witness shows that usage is wider than a rule limiting one form absolutely to persons and the other to things (al-Thaʿlabī).^[6]

There may nevertheless be a difference of emphasis. Al-Sāmarrāʾī suggests that الَّتِي tends to accompany abundance, whereas اللَّاتِي tends to accompany fewer things; he also permits substitution for a rhetorical purpose.^[7] English “which” accommodates either form. The suggested emphasis on abundance belongs in the explanation, not in an added number in the translation.

جَعَلَ اللَّهُ (jaʿala Allāhu): “made” or “created.” Dār al-Ṣaḥābah treats the understood pronoun as the first object and قِيَامًا as the second: Allah made the property a support. Al-Samīn and Darwīsh also explain جَعَلَ as خَلَقَ, “created.” On that account, قِيَامًا is a حال, ḥāl, describing the property in its supporting role.^[8] “Made it a means of support” expresses the first construction; “created it as a means of support” makes the second explicit. Both explanations preserve the property's supporting function.

لَكُمْ (lakum): what “for you” attaches to. In the baseline and Ṣāfī, the phrase belongs to an omitted expression of state, a ḥāl of قِيَامًا. Ṣāfī explains that it would qualify that noun if placed after it but becomes a ḥāl when brought before it. Darwīsh instead attaches it directly to قِيَامًا.^[9] Both can be rendered “a means of support for you”; the grammatical difference need not produce a different English sentence.

قِيَامًا (qiyāman): the supporting function. The baseline makes it the second object of جَعَلَ. The “created” explanation makes it a ḥāl. Al-Qurṭubī additionally records al-Kisāʾī and al-Farrāʾ explaining its naṣb as that of a maṣdar.^[10] These accounts explain how the word enters the sentence. Its formation and the shortened reading قِيَمًا are considered in ṣarf and qirāʾāt; the grammatical alternatives do not turn support into ownership by the guardian.

A further analysis changes who is described as “standing.” Al-Bāqūlī records قِيَامًا as a plural of قَائِم, qāʾim, someone attending to an affair, used as a ḥāl. The meaning becomes: Allah appointed you to oversee the wealth for those unable to manage it. This requires an understood relationship expressed by عَلَيْهَا, “over it,” linking the guardians to the property. It therefore shifts the emphasis from wealth supporting people to people administering wealth. The baseline translation follows the former analysis: the wealth itself is “a means of support.”^[11]

وَارْزُقُوهُمْ فِيهَا (wa-rzuqūhum fīhā): “in it,” “through it,” or “from it.” Al-Samīn permits فِي to retain its sense of a setting for provision, or to convey “from,” which he explains through trading profits.^[12] English “through it” brings out the property as the continuing means of provision; “from it” emphasizes the source of what is given. Ibn ʿĀshūr's explanation, developed under balāghah, includes provision from the property itself, its price or its yield. The preposition does not by itself prohibit spending principal.^[13]

وَاكْسُوهُمْ (wa-ksūhum): a separate command. The imperative is joined to provision, and its object is the same group. “And clothe them” preserves both the separate command and the continuing responsibility. No different English meaning follows from separating the attached object in the table.^[14]

وَقُولُوا لَهُمْ قَوْلًا مَعْرُوفًا (wa-qūlū lahum qawlan maʿrūfan): the speech and its quality. The verb's own action noun can specify the speech being commanded: this makes قَوْلًا a مفعول مطلق, mafʿūl muṭlaq, in Dār al-Ṣaḥābah and Darwīsh. Alternatively, the speech itself may be treated as the object, مفعول به, mafʿūl bihi, as in Ṣāfī. All make مَعْرُوفًا its description.^[15] “Speak to them words recognized as right and kind” conveys the command under either explanation. The alternative classification does not remove the required quality of the speech.

4. Ṣarf: Roots and Morphology

The verse has ten root-bearing occurrences from nine roots. The root ق-و-ل occurs twice, in the command to speak and in the noun describing that speech.

From physical lightness to unstable judgment

The root س-ف-ه carries the idea of lightness. Dhū al-Rumma describes a swaying movement:

مَشَيْنَ كَمَا اهْتَزَّتْ رِمَاحٌ تَسَفَّهَتْ ... أَعَالِيهَا مَرُّ الرِّيَاحِ النَّوَاسِمِ

“They walked as spears sway when the passing gentle breezes stir their tips.”^[11]

Here تَسَفَّهَتْ concerns something moved lightly by the wind. Applied to judgment, the root describes a lack of the steadiness needed for sound decisions. The context then specifies the field: in 4:5, it is the preservation and management of wealth. The poetic image explains the lexical development; it does not identify the women in the poem as financially incapable.

A second line by Dhū al-Rumma applies the same word to a camel's rein:

وَأَبْيَضَ مُوَشَّى الْقَمِيصِ نَصَبْتُهُ ... إِلَى جَنْبِ مِقْلَاقٍ سَفِيهٍ جَدِيلُهَا

“And a white one, its covering patterned, I set upright beside a restless she-camel whose rein jerks.”^[12]

The proof lies in سَفِيهٍ جَدِيلُهَا, describing the rein as unsteady because the camel tugs against it. This is a physical use of the word, before its application to a person's judgment. The white object in the first half is not identified by this dictionary extract.

The figurative use appears directly in another witness:

نَخَافُ أَنْ تَسْفَهَ أَحْلَامُنَا ... وَنَخْمُلَ الدَّهْرَ مَعَ الْخَامِلِ

“We fear that our judgments may become light, and that we may pass our days in obscurity among the obscure.”^[13]

Here أَحْلَامُنَا means judgments or powers of understanding. The feared lightness is therefore a failure of judgment, not a movement of a physical object. Together, the witnesses explain how the language moves from an unsteady rein or swaying spear to an unsteady mind. The verse's financial setting then identifies the particular judgment required.

Where the morphology changes the meaning

The weak letter in وَاكْسُوهُمْ (wa-ksūhum). The root is ك-س-و, k-s-w. In the plural command, the root's final wāw is omitted and the written wāw marks the plural subject: “you, collectively.” The attached هُمْ is the object, “them.” Thus the visible wāw should not be mistaken for the unchanged final root letter. With the attached object pronoun, no separating alif follows that plural wāw.^[14]

The forms قِيَام (qiyām) and قِيَم (qiyam).

What makes a person's affairs continue is their قِوَام or قِيَام. Thus قوام أمرك and قيام أمرك both describe what keeps one's affairs going (Ibn Qutaybah). The noun in the verse can name that support directly, or express the action of sustaining. Abū ʿUbaydah calls قِيَام a مَصْدَر, maṣdar, an action noun. Al-Samīn distinguishes the related forms: قِوَام can name what something depends upon, while قَوَام can be an اسم مصدر, ism maṣdar, a noun conveying the action, or a word for stature. Under the latter explanation, wealth preserves people's bodily existence. The different vowels therefore matter.^[15]

Al-Fārisī gives a poetic example of قِوَام as something that guides and supports. Labīd describes a wild cow whose calf has been taken by a predator:

أَفَتِلْكَ أَمْ وَحْشِيَّةٌ مَسْبُوعَةٌ ... خَذَلَتْ وَهَادِيَةُ الصِّوَارِ قِوَامُهَا

“Is it that one, or a wild cow bereaved by a predator, who has fallen behind, while the herd's leading cow is her guide?”^[16]

The cow lingers near her lost calf but keeps looking toward the herd. Its leader enables her to find her way. The word قِوَامُهَا therefore names what she depends upon, rather than the act of standing on her feet. This helps explain wealth as the means by which people's affairs are kept in order.

The related verb can also mean remaining still or established. An anonymous rajaz poet boasts of his skill in reviling:

إِنِّي إِذَا لَمْ يُنْدِ حَلْقًا رِيقُهُ وَرَكَدَ السَّبُّ فَقَامَتْ سُوقُهُ طَبٌّ بِإِهْدَاءِ الْخَنَا لَبِيقُهُ

“When saliva no longer moistens a throat, and reviling falls still and its market comes to a halt, I am expert and deft at delivering foul speech.”^[17]

The expression فَقَامَتْ سُوقُهُ follows رَكَدَ, “became still.” Al-Fārisī uses it to show that qāma need not mean rising: here it conveys stillness or stability. The boast illustrates a word's usage, not an example of the speech commanded by this verse.

He makes the contrast clearer through Abū Dhuʾayb's description of a pearl:

فَجَاءَ بِهَا مَا شِئْتَ مِنْ لَطْمِيَّةٍ ... تَدُومُ الْبِحَارُ فَوْقَهَا وَتَمُوجُ

“He brought it, a pearl of whatever excellence you could wish, borne among a merchant caravan's goods; above it the seas lie still and surge.”^[18]

Here تَدُومُ, tadūmu, is contrasted with surging: it describes the sea lying still. The connection is lexical. Al-Fārisī explains qiyām through continuance and stability, then shows the sense of that explanation through the contrast between stillness and movement. From this he returns to the verse: wealth enables affairs to continue, instead of falling into disorder for want of support.

The shorter form قِيَمًا raises a different question: does it name support, or the values of things? If it is the plural of قِيمَة, “value,” the wording draws attention to wealth as the means by which things are priced. The same lexical family includes تَقْوِيمُ السِّلْعَةِ, taqwīm al-silʿah, determining the value of an article of merchandise (al-Rāghib).^[19]

There is a grammatical argument for the plural explanation. The middle root letter is wāw. An action noun of the proposed short pattern would ordinarily retain that wāw, as in عِوَض, ʿiwaḍ, “compensation,” and حِوَل, ḥiwal, “change.” A plural following a singular with yāʾ, however, can retain that yāʾ: قِيمَة / قِيَم, qīmah/qiyam, would then be comparable to دِيمَة / دِيَم, dīmah/diyam, continuous rain and its plural. This is the Baṣran analysis recorded by al-Qurṭubī and supported by Makkī.

Why take it as an action noun instead? The same form describes religion:

﴿دِينًا قِيَمًا مِلَّةَ إِبْرَاهِيمَ﴾

“a correct religion - the way of Abraham” (6:161; excerpt)

A religion is not being called a collection of prices. The sense is one of firmness and continuance. The shorter reading also occurs in 5:97 concerning the Kaʿbah's role in maintaining people's affairs. These other contexts show that قِيَم can express support and stability without being a plural of “value” (Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī).

The reply is that a word need not have the same analysis in every setting. A plural meaning may fit wealth here even when a different meaning is required for religion or the Kaʿbah. The parallel verses therefore establish the availability of the supporting sense; they do not, by themselves, make the pricing sense impossible in 4:5 (al-Samīn).

How, then, is the yāʾ explained? The proposed action noun follows the alteration already present in its verb. Since قَامَ, qāma, has undergone a change to its middle root letter, its action noun may follow it. There are comparable cases where a derivative follows the altered form from which it comes: حِيلَة / حِيَل, ḥīlah/ḥiyal, “device/devices,” keeps the yāʾ in the plural. An action noun is even more closely tied to its verb than a plural is to its singular, so the argument for following the verb is stronger.

An objection points to وَعْد, waʿd, “promise”: its wāw remains although it drops out of يَعِد, yaʿid, “he promises.” The answer distinguishes the structures. In waʿd, the weak letter is initial and the noun lacks the kasrah that encourages the change at issue. In qiyam, the weak letter is medial, follows a kasrah, and has an altered verb to follow. The examples do not have the same conditions (Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī).^[20]

Al-Akhfash nevertheless treats the yāʾ of قِيَم as exceptional relative to the ordinary pattern. Comparable usage includes the Banū Ḍabbah's طِيَال, ṭiyāl, beside the usual طِوَال, ṭiwāl, “tall ones,” and جِيَاد, jiyād, the plural of جَوَاد, jawād, a fine horse. Al-Fārisī quotes al-Aʿshā's witness for the latter:

جِيَادُكَ فِي الصَّيْفِ فِي نِعْمَةٍ ... تُصَانُ الْجِلَالَ وَتُعْطَى الشَّعِيرَا

“Your fine horses live in comfort in summer: they are protected with coverings and given barley.”^[21]

The relevant form is جِيَاد: the plural has yāʾ although its singular has wāw. The witness gives an actual example of the sort of alteration used to explain قِيَم.

A third analysis takes قِيَم as قِيَام shortened by removing the alif, comparable to خِيَم from خِيَام, “tents.” Al-Zamakhsharī also compares عِوَذًا, ʿiwadhan, with عِيَاذًا, ʿiyādhan, “seeking refuge.” Al-Fārisī qualifies the shortening explanation: omission of that kind belongs to poetic usage rather than unrestricted ordinary speech. His stronger morphological explanation is the action noun following its altered verb.^[22]

What about forms that retain the wāw? قِوَام, qiwām, may be a noun naming the support itself. It can also be explained as an action noun of قَاوَمَ, qāwama: the wāw remains in both verb and noun, as it does in لَاوَذَ / لِوَاذ, lāwadha/liwādh. Ibn Jinnī further shows that an action noun can sometimes preserve a wāw even where ordinary analogy would change it. He cites al-ʿAjjāj:

يَخْلِطْنَ بِالتَّأَنُّسِ النِّوَارَا ... زَهْوَكَ بِالصَّرِيمَةِ الصِّوَارَا

“They mix familiarity with shying away, like your driving a herd of wild cattle across harvested ground.”^[23]

The word النِّوَار, al-niwār, means shying away. Its verb نَارَ يَنُورُ has a weak middle letter, so Ibn Jinnī says the expected action noun would be النِّيَار, al-niyār. The poet's actual wāw shows that retaining it is linguistically possible. This explains a form; it does not establish who recited it as Qurʾān.

For the translation, the action-noun and support-noun explanations yield “a means of support.” The plural-of-value explanation instead emphasizes values or prices. The supporting sense best conveys what wealth makes possible in the verse; the qirāʾāt section identifies the forms actually transmitted by the readers.

5. Balāghah: Rhetorical Analysis

Naming the cause by its effect (إطلاق اسم المسبَّب على السبب, iṭlāq ism al-musabbab ʿalā al-sabab)

Where it is. الَّتِي جَعَلَ اللَّهُ لَكُمْ قِيَامًا, “which Allah has made a means of support for you.” The property is called قِيَامًا, “standing” or “support.”

The plain way. A plain explanation would be: wealth enables people to meet their needs and fulfil their obligations.

What it does. The verse names the means by the result it makes possible. Al-Rāzī explains:

فَلَمَّا كَانَ الْمَالُ سَبَبًا لِلْقِيَامِ وَالِاسْتِقْلَالِ سَمَّاهُ بِالْقِيَامِ إِطْلَاقًا لِاسْمِ الْمُسَبَّبِ عَلَى السَّبَبِ عَلَى سَبِيلِ الْمُبَالَغَةِ

“Since wealth was a cause of standing and independence, He called it standing, applying the name of the effect to the cause for emphasis.”^[1]

The force comes from treating the means as though it were the support itself. If the property is squandered, the people depending on it suffer. Naming it “standing” makes that dependence vivid (al-Zamakhsharī; al-Bayḍāwī; al-Biqāʿī).^[2]

A parallel use of an action noun appears in al-Khansāʾ's description of a she-camel that has lost her young:

تَرْتَعُ مَا رَتَعَتْ حَتَّى إِذَا ادَّكَرَتْ ... فَإِنَّمَا هِيَ إِقْبَالٌ وَإِدْبَارُ

“She grazes for as long as she grazes, until she remembers; then she is nothing but coming and going.”^[3]

Instead of merely saying that the camel comes and goes, the expression calls her the movement itself. Her restless movement fills the description. The grammatical mechanism is الإخبار بالمصدر, al-ikhbār bi-l-maṣdar: using the action noun as the predicate. Ibn ʿĀshūr applies that mechanism to calling wealth قِيَامًا. It gives emphatic expression to wealth's role in keeping people's affairs in order.

The effect. Property is more than something available to spend. It sustains the person, the household and their obligations. The wording makes preservation matter because of the lives that depend on it.

Calling their wealth “your wealth” (الإضافة, al-iḍāfa, and التغبيط, al-taghbīṭ)

Where it is. أَمْوَالَكُمُ, “your property,” on the explanation that the property belongs to the people under guardianship.

The plain way. A guardian could simply be told not to hand over “their property.”

What it does. The possessive brings another person's wealth close to the guardian's own concern. On Saʿīd b. Jubayr's explanation, the property belongs to the sufahāʾ. Calling it “yours” makes it something to be prized and protected, تَغْبِيطًا بِالْأَمْوَالِ, in Abū Ḥayyān's explanation. It is also the kind of wealth through which people's lives are maintained, as al-Zamakhsharī explains.^[4]

Al-Ālūsī explains a further shift in the following words, “which Allah made a support for you”:

حيث غير عن جعلها مناطا لمعاش أصحابها بجعلها مناطا لمعاش الأولياء

“He shifted from making it the mainstay of its owners' livelihood to making it the mainstay of the guardians' livelihood.”^[5]

The possessive can express a relationship without ownership. A poetic example calls Canopus “the heedless woman's star”:

إِذَا كَوْكَبُ الْخَرْقَاءِ لَاحَ بِسُحْرَةٍ ... سُهَيْلٌ أَذَاعَتْ غَزْلَهَا فِي الْقَرَائِبِ

“When the heedless woman's star, Canopus, appears before dawn, she distributes her spinning among her female relatives.”^[6]

The woman has delayed preparing her work until the star's seasonal appearance prompts her to hurry and seek help. Canopus is called “hers” because of that association, not because she owns it. This is الإضافة لأدنى ملابسة, al-iḍāfah li-adnā mulābasah, a possessive based on a sufficient connection. Likewise, management can explain calling a ward's assets the guardian's property. Why the following description also calls those assets a support “for you” requires the further reasoning developed in Question 2 (al-Ālūsī).

The effect. The guardian is drawn into the consequences of preservation and loss. This interpretation intensifies responsibility without transferring ownership. On the alternative explanation that the addressee owns the property himself, the possessive is direct; that explanation is set out in Question 2.

Giving the reason within the description (الإيماء إلى تعليل النهي, al-īmāʾ ilā taʿlīl al-nahy)

Where it is. The relative clause الَّتِي جَعَلَ اللَّهُ لَكُمْ قِيَامًا, “which Allah has made a means of support for you.”

The plain way. The prohibition could be followed by a separate explanation: preserve the wealth because it sustains your lives.

What it does. The reason is placed inside the description of the very property that must not be surrendered. Ibn ʿĀshūr writes:

فَجَاءَ فِي الصِّفَةِ بِمَوْصُولٍ إِيمَاءً إِلَى تَعْلِيلِ النَّهْيِ، وَإِيضَاحًا لِمَعْنَى الْإِضَافَة

“He used a relative expression in the description, pointing to the reason for the prohibition and clarifying the meaning of the possessive.”^[7]

The effect. The reader meets the prohibition and its reason together. Control is withheld because this wealth supports people's lives, not because having power over another person is an end in itself.

Guarding the prohibition against a harmful interpretation (الاحتراس, al-iḥtirās)

Where it is. وَارْزُقُوهُمْ فِيهَا وَاكْسُوهُمْ, “and provide for them through it and clothe them,” immediately after the prohibition on handing over the wealth.

The plain way. A prohibition on handing over property, left by itself, might be taken to mean that nothing should be given to the person.

What it does. The next command excludes that understanding. Ibn ʿĀshūr calls its place مَوْقِعَ الِاحْتِرَاسِ, a guarding qualification, and explains:

لَا تُؤْتُوهُمُ الْأَمْوَالَ إِيتَاءَ تَصَرُّفٍ مُطْلَقٍ، وَلَكِنْ آتَوْهُمْ إِيَّاهَا بِمِقْدَارِ انْتِفَاعِهِمْ مِنْ نَفَقَةٍ وَكُسْوَةٍ

“Do not give them the wealth with unrestricted power of disposal, but give it to them to the extent of their benefit from maintenance and clothing.”^[8]

The effect. The same sentence that restricts management requires care. The guarding function belongs to the maintenance command as a whole: withholding control must not become abandonment.

Making the wealth a setting for provision (الظرفية المجازية, al-ẓarfiyya al-majāziyya)

Where it is. فِيهَا, “in it,” in the command to provide.

The plain way. “Provide for them from it” would directly name what is taken out of the property.

What it does. The property is pictured as containing the means of repeated provision. What meets the need may be the asset itself, its price or its yield. This is figurative containment, الظرفية المجازية, in Ibn ʿĀshūr's explanation.^[9]

The distinction between spending an asset, its price and its yield is developed in Question 6, with the poetic witness that explains the preposition.

The effect. The property is presented as an ongoing means of care, not merely a sum being reduced. This supports thoughtful management while leaving room to meet needs from the asset itself when necessary.

Requiring speech measured by what is right

Where it is. قَوْلًا مَعْرُوفًا, “words recognized as right and kind.”

The plain way. The sentence could have ended with “speak to them,” without describing the speech.

What it does. The adjective specifies the quality of what is said. Abū Ḥayyān explains maʿrūf through what people welcome and what the sacred law requires. Ibn ʿĀshūr includes beneficial counsel even when the person would rather not hear it.^[10]

The effect. Explanation must be respectful and useful. Neither an insulting lecture nor reassuring words that avoid a needed correction fulfil the meaning developed by these commentators. The verse's closing words keep the person's dignity and welfare within the financial trust.

Repeating the root while changing the form (التجنيس المغاير, al-tajnīs al-mughāyir)

Where it is. وَقُولُوا لَهُمْ قَوْلًا, wa-qūlū lahum qawlan: the verb “speak” is followed by the related noun “speech.”

The plain way. “Speak to them kindly” would give a command and its manner without repeating the same root in a noun.

What it does. قُولُوا commands the act, while قَوْلًا brings that act before the reader as something whose quality must now be specified: مَعْرُوفًا. The shared root joins the command to the required kind of speech; the different forms distinguish doing it from describing it. Al-Hararī records this as tajnīs mughāyir, correspondence through related but differently formed words, in his account drawn from Abū Ḥayyān.^[11]

The effect. Attention falls on what sort of speech fulfils the command. Merely answering the person is insufficient; the answer must have the quality the final adjective names.

6. Qirāʾāt: The Readings

The ten canonical readers

The word-form variation discussed here is between قِيَامًا, with the alif, and قِيَمًا, without it. Ibn al-Jazarī states the distribution:

فَقَرَأَ ابْنُ عَامِرٍ بِغَيْرِ أَلِفٍ فِيهِمَا، وَوَافَقَهُ نَافِعٌ هُنَا، وَقَرَأَ الْبَاقُونَ بِالْأَلِفِ فِي الْحَرْفَيْنِ

“Ibn ʿĀmir read without an alif in both places; Nāfiʿ agreed with him here, and the remaining readers read with an alif in both places.”

The two places are 4:5 and 5:97. “Here” assigns Nāfiʿ the shorter form in 4:5. The table below concerns this verse.^[1]

Meaning. The explanation “a means of support” fits both forms in the account that treats them as action nouns. The alternative explanation of قِيَمًا as the plural of “value” brings out wealth as the means of pricing things. The competing grammatical arguments are set out under Ṣarf; Ibn ʿĀshūr prefers the supporting-function explanation because it expresses more of the verse's force.^[2]

Al-Ṭabarī preferred قِيَامًا because it was the familiar, widely used expression for that by which an affair is maintained. He also recognized قِيَمًا as intelligible Arabic with the same supporting sense. His linguistic preference therefore belongs alongside the explanation of the forms; both are established readings in the Ten.^[3]

Differences in pronunciation

The readers also differ in الأُصُول, al-uṣūl: recurring rules of pronunciation that apply across many verses. Here they affect the hamzas and some plural endings. They leave the commands, their recipients and the ownership of the wealth unchanged.

The hamza in تُؤْتُوا. The word means “give.” In الإِبْدَال, al-ibdāl, its silent hamza is replaced by wāw, producing تُوتُوا, tūtū, instead of tuʾtū. Warsh and Abū Jaʿfar read with this replacement. In the Shāṭibiyyah framework, al-Sūsī also replaces it, while al-Dūrī from Abū ʿAmr pronounces the hamza. The broader evidence in al-Nashr records both practices from Abū ʿAmr through their respective teaching chains. This is a difference between established ways of reading the same verb, with no difference in its meaning.^[4]

The two hamzas in السُّفَهَاءَ أَمْوَالَكُم. When the words are joined, the final hamza of al-sufahāʾa meets the initial hamza of amwālakum. Both have fatḥa. التَّحْقِيق, al-taḥqīq pronounces both fully; التَّسْهِيل, al-tashīl eases one hamza to a sound between hamza and the corresponding long vowel; الإِسْقَاط, al-isqāṭ omits one of them.

The difference occurs at the meeting of the words. If one begins directly with أَمْوَالَكُم, its initial hamza is pronounced fully. The table distinguishes the teaching chains because a choice established for one transmitter is not automatically available through every chain attributed to him.^[5]

Stopping on السُّفَهَاءَ. Ḥamza replaces its final hamza by alif when stopping. Hishām also has this practice through the chains that soften his final hamzas; other established chains retain the hamza. With the replacement, the final vowel may be prolonged to the transmitted short, middle or long extent. These are stopping forms of al-sufahāʾ, not new descriptions of the people addressed.^[6]

The plural mīm. In لَكُمْ قِيَامًا, وَارْزُقُوهُمْ فِيهَا, وَاكْسُوهُمْ وَقُولُوا and لَهُمْ قَوْلًا, Ibn Kathīr and Abū Jaʿfar join the plural mīm to the next word with a short linking wāw: for example, lakumū qiyāman. This is صِلَةُ مِيمِ الْجَمْع, ṣilat mīm al-jamʿ. Qālūn has both linking and still-mīm forms through their respective chains; the other readers use the still mīm in these particular phrases. At a stop, all use the still mīm. In أَمْوَالَكُمُ الَّتِي, all pronounce the mīm with ḍamma when joining the words, without adding this linking wāw. None of these differences alters the plural reference or the translation.^[7]

Other forms recorded in the sources

The attributions are not uniform. In al-Muḥtasab, Ibn Jinnī reports Ibn Mujāhid's account as follows:

قرأ "قَوَامًا" بالواو وفتح القاف ابن عمر. انتهى كلام ابن مجاهد ولم يذكر "قِوَامًا" عن أحد؛ لكنه أثبته.

“Ibn ʿUmar read ‘qawāman,’ with wāw and an open qāf. Ibn Mujāhid's words end here. He did not attribute ‘qiwāman’ to anyone, though he recorded it.”^[8]

The difference between the first two attributions is a difference in the vowel and named reader, not merely another spelling of the same statement. Ibn Jinnī discusses the forms in his work on noncanonical readings. Its editors, ʿAlī al-Najdī Nāṣif, ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm al-Najjār and ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Ismāʿīl Shalabī, quote Abū Ḥayyān's different distribution. Khālid b. ʿAlī al-Ghāmidī, in his notes to the Dār al-Tafsīr edition of al-Thaʿlabī, classifies the two additional قَوَامًا / قِوَامًا forms and the relative-pronoun variant as shādhdh. Abū Ḥayyān’s attribution of قَوَامًا to Abū ʿAmr is a separately reported form, not his established canonical reading. In the Ten, Abū ʿAmr reads قِيَامًا, as recorded above.^[9]

Two further forms are recorded without a named reader. Abū Ḥayyān explicitly calls قِوَمًا (qiwaman, with a short vowel after the wāw) shādhdh. Al-Samīn explains it as an action noun retaining the root’s wāw; its sense is still support. Al-Samīn also records اللَّوَاتِي, a plural relative form meaning “which.” Abū Ḥayyān explicitly classifies it as shādhdh; neither names its reader. It changes the relative form referring to the wealth, not the duty concerning it.^[10]