Surah 4 of 114 · Madinah
سُورَةُ النِّسَاءِ
An-Nisa The Women
176 verses · revealed in Madinah
The context
An-Nisa is Madinan and its occasion is visible in almost every page. Uhud had left roughly seventy men dead in a small community, and the households they left behind were suddenly full of widows and of orphans holding property they were too young to defend. The surah legislates into that exact situation, which is why its opening verses move within a few lines from the creation of humanity out of a single soul to the property of orphans and the rights of women.
It is also the surah in which the hypocrites of Madinah are examined most closely. A community under military pressure had acquired members who calculated their allegiance week by week, and long passages describe the posture precisely: standing lazily for prayer, wavering between two sides, belonging fully to neither.
The name
Named for the women who are its most persistent concern. The naming is not incidental. In a society where a widow could be inherited along with the property, the surah opens by grounding the rights of women in the fact that men and women were made from one soul, and then spends much of its length converting that into enforceable rules on inheritance, dower, marriage and the treatment of orphans.
How it moves
- 1-14One soul, then the ledgerFrom the creation of humanity from a single soul straight into the property of orphans and the fixed shares of inheritance, with a severe warning about consuming what belongs to the defenceless.
- 15-42Marriage and the householdWho may be married, the dower as the woman's own right, conduct within the home, and the instruction to live with them in kindness.
- 43-104Prayer, the Book, and a community at warPurification, the fear prayer, addresses to the People of the Book, and the rules of fighting including the prohibition on killing a believer.
- 105-126Justice, even against your ownOccasioned by a case in which a Muslim was nearly acquitted and a Jewish man nearly convicted of a theft the Muslim had committed. The surah refuses it.
- 127-176The hypocrites, and the last verse of inheritanceThe wavering described at length, the correction of claims about Isa, and a closing verse on kalalah, the estate of one who dies with neither parent nor child, revealed last.
The themes
Guarding those who cannot guard themselves
Orphans and widows are named again and again, and the threat attached to consuming an orphan's property is among the sharpest in the Qur'an.
Rights made specific
The surah does not exhort men to be fair. It fixes shares, names the dower as the woman's own, and puts numbers where sentiment would have been easier.
Justice without regard to who benefits
Stand firmly for justice as witnesses for Allah, even against yourselves, your parents and your relatives. The occasion of the passage was a case where the community's instinct went the other way.
Faith that is calculated
The long treatment of hypocrisy describes not deception of others so much as a permanent hedging, which is why the imagery is of wavering rather than of lying.
The heart of it
Recited slowly, An-Nisa trains a particular kind of attention: it makes you notice who in a situation has no one to speak for them. Its rhythm is the repeated turn from a general principle to the specific person the principle protects, and a reciter comes away less able to leave the weakest party in a room out of the calculation.
It is also the surah that made the Prophet ﷺ weep. He asked Ibn Mas'ud to recite to him from it, and when the recitation reached the verse about bringing a witness from every nation and bringing you as a witness against these, he said enough, and Ibn Mas'ud looked up to find his eyes overflowing.
Verses worth knowing
- 4:1The opening: created from one soul, and from it its mate. Everything the surah legislates about men and women is built on this sentence.
- 4:58Render trusts to whom they are due, and judge with justice. Two clauses that between them cover most of public life.
- 4:135Stand firmly for justice even against yourselves, your parents and your kin. Revealed about a case the community had been getting wrong.
- 4:41The verse at which the Prophet ﷺ told Ibn Mas'ud to stop, because he was weeping.
On reciting it
There is no report promising a specific reward for reciting An-Nisa. What is authentically reported is an incident: the Prophet ﷺ asked Ibn Mas'ud to recite from this surah, and stopped him at verse 41 with his eyes overflowing. That is a report about what the surah did to him, and is given here as that rather than as a promised merit.
Sunnah-confirmedBukhari 4582; Muslim 800
Read beside it
On the shelf
- 4:1An-Nisa · 4:1
- 4:110An-Nisa · 4:110
- 4:124An-Nisa · 4:124
- 4:125An-Nisa · 4:125
- 4:135An-Nisa · 4:135
- 4:147An-Nisa · 4:147
- 4:28An-Nisa · 4:28
- 4:40An-Nisa · 4:40
- 4:58An-Nisa · 4:58
- 4:69An-Nisa · 4:69
- 4:85An-Nisa · 4:85
- 4:86An-Nisa · 4:86
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