Sūrat An-Nur 30–31 — The Men First

Nobody in the verse is addressed except the one carrying it. Qul li-l-muʾminīn — the imperative lands on the Prophet ﷺ, and the men arrive in the third person, as the people he is to say it to. Then the verb that follows loses the ن that would have made it a plain statement about what they do: yaghuḍḍū, jussive, the mood Arabic uses for what answers an order. Tell them, and they lower. The women’s verse then begins wa-qul — with the conjunction. One instruction in two halves, and the half people quote on its own is the second.

Then a two-letter word that did not have to be there. Not yaghuḍḍū abṣārahum, lower their gaze, but yaghuḍḍū min abṣārihim — lower of their gaze. Luqmān uses the identical construction telling his son wa-ghḍuḍ min ṣawtika, and nobody has ever read that as an instruction to stop speaking. Whether this min takes a portion out of the looking or only presses the verb is something the grammarians have gone back and forth on, and this page will not settle it. The rendering above says “some of” because that is what lets you see the word; it is not a verdict on the argument. What is not in question is that the word is here.

And that it is not in the next clause. Wa-yaḥfaẓū furūjahum — no min. Whatever the particle is doing in the first command, the second is given without it, in the same breath and with nothing between them but a wāw. Then the result: azkā, from the root of zakāh. Not “safer”, not “cleaner”. The word is about what grows.

The verse closes on manufacture. Yaṣnaʿūn, not yafʿalūn — the verb of the craftsman, of work done at something until it comes out right. A glance can be built: the head turned at the right moment, the reflection used, the second look given an errand. And khabīr is knowing a thing from the inside. A command that can be kept or broken with nobody else in the room closes on the name for the knowledge that needs no witness.

The opening is verse 30 with the endings changed. Yaghḍuḍna min abṣārihinna wa-yaḥfaẓna furūjahunna — the same two verbs in the same order, the same min in the same place, the same absence of it in the second clause. Whatever was asked of the men has already been asked here before a word about clothing appears. The additions start at the third clause, and everything people fight about is in the additions.

The exception is not something she does. Wa-lā yubdīna zīnatahunna — abdā is Form IV, the causative: to make appear, to put on show, an act with someone behind it. Then illā mā ẓahara minhā, and the verb changes: ẓahara, the plain intransitive, nobody making it happen — except what appeared. The prohibition is on displaying; the exception is on what came into view. The same root turns up at the far end of the list, in the children who lam yaẓharū ʿalā ʿawrāti n-nisāʾ, who have not come out upon women’s nakedness — have not yet arrived at knowing what they are looking at. What appears, and who has come to see it, are named with one root.

The khimār is assumed, not introduced. The verse does not say get one. It says bi-khumurihinna — with their head-cloths, the ones already on their heads. The commentators describe how the cloth was worn before this: on the head, with the ends thrown back behind, so the jayb — the slit cut at the neck of a garment — stayed open. On that description the command is about where the cloth ends up, ʿalā juyūbihinna, and not about acquiring one. And the verb is ḍaraba, to strike: brought down onto the opening, not arranged near it.

The last thing forbidden is a sound. Wa-lā yaḍribna bi-arjulihinna — the same verb again, twice in one verse: strike the cloth down over the opening, do not strike the feet on the ground. And the reason is spelled out, which the Qur’ān does not always do: li-yuʿlama mā yukhfīna min zīnatihinna, so that what they hide of their adornment becomes known. Nothing is seen. An anklet under a long garment is heard, and the verse legislates the hearing — with min in the clause again: what they hide of it.

Say first that it is a disagreement. Illā mā ẓahara minhā is among the earliest questions the Companions are recorded as differing over, and the early tafsīr keeps the split instead of closing it. One line, carried in the reports from Ibn Masʿūd, takes the exception to be the outer clothing — what is unavoidably visible because it is the covering itself. Another, carried from Ibn ʿAbbās, takes it to be the face and the hands, with the kohl and the ring given as the examples. A third, recorded without one owner, reads it as whatever appears without being meant to: what the wind lifts, what work uncovers.

Everything argued about downstream sits on that word. If the exception is the garment, nothing of the woman is outside the command; if it is the face and the hands, the face is. The schools’ positions on the face-veil run along those two lines, and they have never converged. This page will not decide it, and a page that did would be telling you the Companions agreed when they did not. If what you want is a ruling rather than an explanation, that is what the rulings section and the Q&A are for; the face-veil question is handled directly at is covering the face obligatory.

Three items in the list were never fully pinned down either. Nisāʾihinna, “their women” — women in general, or Muslim women, or the women of their own household: the commentators record all three. Mā malakat aymānuhunna — whether it takes in male servants as well as female was disputed early. And ghayri ūlī l-irbah, the attendants with no irbah left in them: the root is need or use, not desire as such (the same root gives Mūsā his maʾārib, the “other uses” of his staff, at Qur’an 20:18), and the proposals run from the very old servant to the man without appetite to the dependent who hangs around a household with nothing to want from it. The verse names a quality. The commentators had to supply the category.

There is a hole in the list. Fathers, husbands’ fathers, sons, husbands’ sons, brothers, brothers’ sons, sisters’ sons — and no uncles, on either side. The early commentators noticed, and the explanation usually offered is that an uncle might describe his niece to his son, who is not in the list. That is reasoning about the list, not something the list says. And this list is not the list of maḥārim; the jurists build that from Qur’an 4:23. This one answers a narrower question: before whom the zīnah is not on show.