al-Nūr 24:61

Laysa ʿala'l-aʿmā ḥarajun wa lā ʿala'l-aʿraji ḥarajun wa lā ʿala'l-marīḍi ḥarajun wa lā ʿalā anfusikum an taʾkulū min buyūtikum aw buyūti ābāʾikum aw buyūti ummahātikum aw buyūti ikhwānikum aw buyūti akhawātikum aw buyūti aʿmāmikum aw buyūti ʿammātikum aw buyūti akhwālikum aw buyūti khālātikum aw mā malaktum mafātiḥahū aw ṣadīqikum, laysa ʿalaykum junāḥun an taʾkulū jamīʿan aw ashtātā, fa-idhā dakhaltum buyūtan fa-sallimū ʿalā anfusikum taḥiyyatan min ʿindi'llāhi mubārakatan ṭayyibah, ka-dhālika yubayyinu'llāhu lakumu'l-āyāti laʿallakum taʿqilūn

"There is no difficulty for the blind, no difficulty for the lame, no difficulty for the sick; nor is there any difficulty for yourselves: no fault in your eating from your own houses, or the houses of your fathers, or the houses of your mothers, or the houses of your brothers, or of your sisters, or of your paternal uncles, or of your paternal aunts, or of your maternal uncles, or of your maternal aunts, or the places whose keys are in your hands, or the house of your friend. Nor is there any fault in your eating together or separately. When you enter houses, give greeting to yourselves, as a blessed and good wish of well-being from God. Thus God makes the verses clear to you; perhaps you will use your reason."

This verse is one of the longest in the sūra, and it does four separate things:

And the verse's place in the sūra is worth noting: in the twenty-seventh verse the sūra restricted the entering of houses. The sixty-first leaves eating in houses free.

The sūra, that is, gives rulings in two different directions about the same place:

I record this as my own reading; the subjects of the verses stand in the text.

Root: ح-ر-ج. This root was analysed in al-Fatḥ; I rely on that treatment. The note there:

The concrete sense of the root: narrowness, constriction. Ḥaraj is a thing's being pressed together, becoming too narrow, becoming impossible to get out of. The concrete usage the lexicographers record is more vivid still: حَرَجَة — a thicket so dense with trees pressed against one another that it cannot be passed through. In the root, that is, there is a picture of impassability.

And the use of the word here agrees exactly with the root sense: the verse announces that a constriction is lifted concerning three groups of people.

And the difference between ḥaraj and junāḥ is worth noting:

And the verse uses both: ḥaraj for the three groups, junāḥ for eating together. Two different words; the lifting of two different burdens.

I record this as an observation about the word.

The verse enumerates three groups one by one: al-aʿmā (the blind), al-aʿraj (the lame), al-marīḍ (the sick).

And on why the verse names these groups, more than one explanation is transmitted in the classical commentaries:

I do not impose a preference, and it is not binding.

Yet what the first two explanations have in common can be recorded, and I give this as my own reading: both look at the matter of being shut out of a table.

And its concrete counterpart may be put, in language that does not wound, thus: at a common table the way a person eats is visible. One who does not see may feel with his hand; one who walks with difficulty may come late; one who is ill may eat little, or eat differently. And this visibility may give rise in that person to a diffidence.

The verse lifts this diffidence with a ruling. And the manner of the lifting is worth noting: the three groups are enumerated one by one, and after each of them the word ḥarajun is repeated.

The verse, that is, does not name the three together and pass on with a single ruling — it names each of them separately, and repeats the ruling separately for each.

I record this as my own reading; the repetition itself is the wording of the text, and can be counted.

And a fourth group is added: wa lā ʿalā anfusikum — "nor upon yourselves".

This is the most important move in the word order, and I record it as my own reading: having enumerated the three groups, the verse adds the addressee himself to the same sentence.

The three groups, that is, are not left as a category apart. The same ruling, in the same sentence, with the same word, is extended to everyone: wa lā ʿalā anfusikum.

The verse enumerates one by one the houses in which food may be eaten, and the list is worth noting:

I record two observations on the structure of the list:

One. In its kinship the list is symmetrical. Father–mother, brother–sister, paternal uncle–paternal aunt, maternal uncle–maternal aunt. Four pairs, and in each of them two sides.

Two. And the list does not end with kinship. The last two items are not kin: places whose keys are entrusted to one and a friend.

And the addition of the eleventh item to the list is the most striking place in the verse, and I record this as my own reading:

Ṣadīq — root ص-د-ق: truthfulness. The root was analysed at al-Ḥujurāt, 49/15 and 49/17. And ṣadīq: one whose truthfulness has been tried, one who is trusted.

The verse, that is, adds to a list built upon blood a relation with no blood in it — and the name of that relation comes from the root "truthfulness".

And that the word ṣadīq comes in the singular is worth noting: through the whole list every word was plural (ābāʾikum, ummahātikum…); the last word is singular. The explanation the classical lexicographers record is that the word can be used for both the singular and the plural.

This is the most discussed expression in the verse, and more than one explanation is transmitted in the classical commentaries.

I do not impose a preference, and it is not binding.

Yet the use of the word anfus in this sūra and in the corpus gives some ground to the second explanation, and I give this as an observation about the word order.

The word had been used in the same office in the twelfth verse as well:

In all three verses the same word is used in an office that counts the members of a community as one another's "selves".

And the measure recorded at al-Ḥujurāt, 49/11 fits here exactly: the note there was that the choosing of anfusakum as the object names the one found fault with not as "the others" but as "yourselves".

Sūrat al-Nūr uses this word three times (6, 12, 61), and in two of them with a positive verb: good opinion (12) and greeting (61).

I record this as my own reading; the places of the words and their verbs stand in the text.

تَحِيَّة — root ح-ي-ي: to live, life. Ḥayāt is from the same root. And taḥiyya: a wish of long life and well-being for someone.

The sense in the root of the word is worth noting, and I give this as an observation about the root: a greeting is, by its root, a wishing of life. In Arabic the word for greeting is a wish of "may you live".

And three qualifiers are added:

And the return of two of these words within the sūra is worth noting:

The qualifier of the tree in the sūra's central verse and the qualifier of the greeting in its last block are the same. I record this as an observation about the word order.

The verse ends with the root ع-ق-ل, and this is the only place in the sūra where that root occurs.

The root was analysed at al-Ḥujurāt, 49/4; the note there: the concrete sense of the root is to bind — the rope that binds a camel's leg is called an ʿiqāl. Reason is a bond, a power of holding; not a capacity but a brake.

And the setting of the verse-ending here makes an interesting relation with the content of the verse, and I record this as my own reading:

The verse is from beginning to end a verse of leaving free: the difficulty is lifted from three groups, eating in eleven houses is left free, eating together or separately is left free.

And the verse-ending comes with a word from the root "to bind".

The two are not opposed but complementary: the limits set through the sūra (leave, the glance, speech) required an ʿaql — a bond. And the sixty-first verse shows where the bond is not.

The verse, that is, says that knowing where the limits end requires the same faculty.

And this agrees with the sūra as a whole: as was recorded at the twenty-ninth verse, beside every rule the sūra writes the place where the rule does not apply.

One. The regulating of eating together.

What the verse takes up is utterly concrete: who may eat in whose house.

And this is a community's most basic way of forming a bond. To sit at a table is the most visible expression of a relation.

What the verse does is to make this bond easy: eleven doors are counted, and the difficulty is lifted from all of them. And an item with no blood in it is added to the list: a friend.

Two. And the matter of not being shut out.

That the verse names the three groups separately and repeats the ruling for each of them may be read, in language that does not wound, thus: the difficulty of a person who finds it hard to sit at a table is most often not physical but a worry about being seen.

And the verse lifts this worry with a ruling. And then it adds the addressee himself to the same sentence: wa lā ʿalā anfusikum.

The verse, that is, does not leave the three groups in a place apart. The ruling is given not as a separate exemption — but in the same sentence as everyone else.

And this is the most striking side of the verse, and it is read from the text.

Three. Jamīʿan aw ashtātā — "together or separately".

The verse does not impose an order of the table. It leaves both forms free. And this is the stance repeated in the sūra's discussions of manners: a measure is set, but the form is left free.