إِذْ قَالَتِ ٱمْرَأَتُ عِمْرَٰنَ رَبِّ إِنِّى نَذَرْتُ لَكَ مَا فِى بَطْنِى مُحَرَّرًا · فَلَمَّا وَضَعَتْهَا قَالَتْ رَبِّ إِنِّى وَضَعْتُهَآ أُنثَىٰ وَٱللَّهُ أَعْلَمُ بِمَا وَضَعَتْ وَلَيْسَ ٱلذَّكَرُ كَٱلْأُنثَىٰ
Idh qālati'mraʾatu ʿImrāna rabbi innī nadhartu laka mā fī baṭnī muḥarraran fa-taqabbal minnī, innaka anta's-samīʿu'l-ʿalīm · Fa-lammā waḍaʿathā qālat rabbi innī waḍaʿtuhā unthā wa'llāhu aʿlamu bimā waḍaʿat, wa laysa'dh-dhakaru ka'l-unthā, wa innī sammaytuhā Maryama wa innī uʿīdhuhā bika wa dhurriyyatahā mina'sh-shayṭāni'r-rajīm
"When the wife of ʿImrān said: 'My Lord! I have vowed to You what is in my womb — set free. Accept it from me; truly You are the hearing, the knowing.' · And when she gave birth to her she said: 'My Lord! I have given birth to a female.' — and God knew better what she had given birth to — 'and the male is not like the female. I have named her Mary; and I place her and her offspring in Your protection from the accursed Satan.'"
These two verses will be worked through with care. The sentence wa laysa'dh-dhakaru ka'l-unthā in particular is one of the sentences on which the most mistaken rulings have been built. Per the method (Method) I shall first settle the question of whose sentence it is, then give the classical explanations in a table.
The concrete sense of the root: ح-ر-ر — heat; and to be free, to be released from a bond. Ḥurr — free; taḥrīr — setting loose. The root was treated at 90/13 in al-Balad (fakku raqaba) and at 58/3 in al-Mujādala (taḥrīru raqaba).
| # | What muḥarrar means | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dedicated to the sanctuary | Released from worldly affairs and set apart for the service of the sanctuary |
| 2 | Made pure | For God alone, with no other purpose mixed in |
| 3 | Exempt from service | Freed from the obligation of serving his parents |
And there is a tension in the word itself, and I record it as an observation: muḥarrar means "set free"; but in the sentence this freedom is given by a vow. That is, being loosed from everything else by being bound to one thing. The word carries the logic of a vow by itself.
The root و-ض-ع: to put a thing down, to set it down. Its use for giving birth comes from here — in Arabic waḍaʿati'l-marʾa means "the woman gave birth"; the picture of the root is the setting down of a carried load.
| Order | Sentence | Who says it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fa-lammā waḍaʿathā | The narrator |
| 2 | Innī waḍaʿtuhā unthā | The woman |
| 3 | Wa'llāhu aʿlamu bimā waḍaʿat | The narrator — breaking in |
| 4 | (mā fī baṭnī, 35 — indirectly) | The woman |
There is an interposed clause (jumla muʿtariḍa) in the verse, and this is plainly recorded in the classical commentaries:
"…qālat rabbi innī waḍaʿtuhā unthā — wa'llāhu aʿlamu bimā waḍaʿat — wa laysa'dh-dhakaru ka'l-unthā…"
The middle sentence (wa'llāhu aʿlamu bimā waḍaʿat — "and God knew better what she had given birth to") is not the woman's words; it is the narrator breaking in. On this there is broad agreement among the sources.
And the real disagreement is about the sentence after it: wa laysa'dh-dhakaru ka'l-unthā. Whose speech does this sentence continue?
| Reading | Whose the sentence is | The direction of the sentence |
|---|---|---|
| A | A continuation of the woman's words — she returns to her speech after the interposed clause | The woman is voicing her own expectation: "I had wanted a male; he would not have been like this female" — a human being's own reckoning |
| B | God's words — a continuation of the interposed clause | An answer given to the woman's reckoning: "the male is not like this female" — that is, what was expected is not the equal of what was given |
And it should be seen how much the sense changes between the two readings — this shows why the sentence before us must be worked through with care:
| Reading A | Reading B | |
|---|---|---|
| Whose the sentence is | The human being's | The narrator's / God's |
| What the sentence does | Records an expectation | Corrects an expectation |
| What al-dhakar is | What was expected, hoped for | What was expected, the lesser |
| To whom it gives precedence | To neither — a note of a state | To the female — because ka'l-unthā is taken as the measure |
And now, per the method (Method), I enter a note, because this sentence is often misused:
One. Whichever reading is taken, the sentence is not a sentence of general ruling. It is spoken inside a scene, at the moment of a birth, in the context of a particular vow. Every element around the sentence is particular: a woman, a vow, a birth, a name.
Two. The word order of the sentence does not support a reading of disparagement; it blocks it. In Arabic, in the pattern laysa A ka-B, the measure is B — A is what is likened, B is what it is likened to. That is, the sentence makes unthā the measure and dhakar what is measured. This is a fact of word order that comes out of the wording itself, and it has been recorded in the classical commentaries as well.
Three. And the continuation of the verse confirms it. What happens immediately after the sentence: a name is given to the girl (Maryam), protection is sought, and then in verse 37 it is said "Her Lord accepted her with a good acceptance". That is, the vow is accepted — and what was expected in the vow was a male. The flow of the text describes not a deficiency but a change of place.
Four. And the sixth verse of the sūra had laid down the ruling of this scene in advance: huwa'lladhī yuṣawwirukum fi'l-arḥāmi kayfa yashāʾ — "He it is who shapes you in the wombs as He wills." Thirty verses apart, in the same sūra. This is a link verifiable from the text.
I record this as my own reading, and it is not binding: what the two verses do together is to show the difference between a person's plan and what comes about. The woman had made a plan; the plan held, but not in the shape she expected. And the sūra will tell this not as a loss but as an outcome greater than the plan itself — because the child born will be settled at the centre of the family from which the sūra takes its name.
And I record this explicitly: no disparaging ruling about women can be drawn from this sentence; none is drawn in this commentary. What the sentence addresses is not a sex but an expectation.
And the name will occur six times in the second half of the sūra. In Maryam a sūra bears this name, and Mary's account was treated there in detail.
Per the method (Method) I record this: differing views are transmitted in the classical sources about the meaning of the name, and there is no certain knowledge. I make no claim about its meaning in this commentary.
ٱلشَّيْطَٰنِ ٱلرَّجِيمِ — rajīm: from the root ر-ج-م, stoned, driven off. The root was treated at 37/7 in al-Ṣāffāt and at 67/5 in al-Mulk (rujūman li'sh-shayāṭīn).
And the extent of the request must be recorded: uʿīdhuhā bika wa dhurriyyatahā — "her and her offspring". That is, the request for protection is stretched a generation further. And that offspring will, later in the sūra, consist of a single person.