al-Taḥrīm 66:2

Qad faraḍa'llāhu lakum taḥillata aymānikum, wa'llāhu mawlākum wa huwa'l-ʿalīmu'l-ḥakīm

"God has determined for you the loosing of your oaths. God is your mawlā; He is the knowing, the wise."

The most important feature of the verse stands, before its words, in its pronouns.

In the first verse everything was singular: tuḥarrimu (you make forbidden), laka (to you), azwājika (your wives). The addressee was one person.

In the second verse everything is plural: لَكُمْ (to you), أَيْمَانِكُمْ (your oaths), مَوْلَاكُمْ (your mawlā).

There is no transitional sentence in between. One verse ends, the other begins, and the addressee has changed.

This is the first instance showing how the sūra works, and it gives a rule that holds for the whole text: a particular incident is used as the place where a general ruling is born; but the ruling does not stay inside the incident.

And when this transition is joined to the indefiniteness of the object we saw in the previous verse, the picture is complete: the verse does not say what was made forbidden, it does not count the persons, and in the second sentence it already generalises the addressee. The same work is done in three separate ways — the incident is erased, the ruling remains.

Root ف ر ض (f-r-ḍ). The concrete sense of the root is rather far from the word's present religious usage: to cut a notch into something, to open a nick, to score a mark.

The notch in which the bowstring sits is called furḍa. A mark cut into a board or a bone is named with the same word.

Two branches come out of this:

The first branch: to determine, to fix the exact amount. A notch is the mark of a measure; it shows how far a thing goes. In Arabic faraḍa lahū — "he assigned him a definite share". The Qurʾān uses this sense plainly: in the context of the dower the expression "half of the amount you have made obligatory (determined) for them" (al-Baqara 2/237) is in this sense — what is at issue there is not a command but a determined figure.

The second branch: to make binding, to turn into an obligation. What has been determined binds because it has been determined. Farīḍa, farḍ, iftirāḍ are from this branch.

And note: which branch is at work in this verse?

Reading the sentence as a command seems possible at first sight: "God has made it obligatory for you to loose your oaths." But this reading makes the sentence meaningless — no one is under obligation to loose every oath he takes.

The right reading is the first branch: God has determined for you the way in which your oaths may be loosed. That is, what is there is not a command but the fixing of a possibility. A door has been opened and its measure set.

This difference matters, because it changes the tone of the verse entirely. Read as a command the verse imposes an obligation; read as a determination the verse shows a way out. The second suits both the root's original sense and the context.

And here a link may be made with the next sūra: at al-Ṭalāq 65/2 it will be said that "whoever guards himself against God, He makes for him a way out (مَخْرَجًا)". The two sūras stand side by side and both recount a door opened in a tight place. I record this not as a claim about the arrangement of the muṣḥaf but as a possibility of reading.

One of the most technical and most beautiful words of the sūra.

Root ح ل ل — treated at the first verse: the untying of a knot, the opening of a bond. I do not repeat that analysis.

The pattern: تَفْعِلَة (tafʿila). This is one verbal-noun form of the tafʿīl pattern (like taḥliya / taḥilla). That is, the name of the act of untying.

And the picture the word carries is this: an oath is a knot; taḥilla is the untying of that knot.

This picture has spread over all the words to do with oaths in Arabic, and that is no coincidence:

• عَقْد (ʿaqd) — a knot. The Qurʾān uses this word for oaths: ʿaqqadtumu'l-aymān (al-Māʾida 5/89). English keeps the same picture with a different word-family: one "ties the knot", one is "bound" by an agreement.
• حَلّ (ḥall) — untying. The opening of the same knot. English does the same by another road: to solve a problem is, at bottom, to loosen it — solvere means to untie.
• رَبْط / وَثَاق — to bind, a tight bond.

That is, when Arabic counts a word as given, it takes it to have been physically tied. A word is not a sound leaving the mouth; it is a rope knotted at both ends.

The consequence of this is heavy and it stands in the language of the verse: if an oath is a knot, then going back on an oath is not "failing to keep one's word" but untying a knot. And a knot can be untied without being cut. This is what the verse offers: the way to open the knot without cutting the rope.

Root ي م ن (y-m-n). The concrete sense of the root is the right hand. From the same root come yamīn (the right side), maymana (the right wing), yumn (good fortune, blessing) and maymūn (fortunate).

Why is an oath named with the word for "right hand"? Because among the Arabs — and in many cultures — right hands were clasped together when an agreement was made. The word was placed into the hand. In al-Ḥāqqa, where the notions of right and left were taken up, this side of the root was already mentioned.

That the word comes from this root shows that an oath was thought of as a bodily act: a word is not spoken, a hand is given.

And when this is joined with taḥilla the picture is complete: the hand is clasped, the knot is tied; then the knot is untied. The whole sentence is recounted by the movement of two hands.

A note: that the word yamīn occurs in the Qurʾān both in the sense "right hand / right side" and in the sense "oath" shows that this doubleness of the root is alive in the text. In the eighth verse of this sūra bi-aymānihim will occur as well — there in the sense "their right sides". The same root, four verses apart, with two different senses. I record this not as a claim of wordplay but as an indication of the root's liveliness.

Here I must draw a boundary.

The verse states that oaths can be loosed and that there is a way of doing so. This verse does not say what that way is. The content of the expiation for an oath — who is to be fed, how many, the alternatives, and what one who lacks the means is to do — is regulated elsewhere in the Qurʾān, at al-Māʾida 5/89. This verse points there; I do not repeat that ruling here.

And I issue no legal ruling. As the method of this text requires:

• In what cases an oath is binding,
• Whether making something forbidden to oneself counts legally as an oath,
• The details and order of the expiation,

all of these are the subject of the literature of law and there are differences among the schools. To decide these matters is not the business of this text. The reader should consult the sources of law for these questions.

The only thing I say here is what the verse itself says: a way out has been determined.

Root و ل ي (w-l-y). The concrete sense of the root is nearness, adjacency, standing side by side with no gap between. Walī, walāya, awlā, tawallī, mawlā, walī'l-ʿahd are all from this root.

The most concrete use of the word is the ranging of two things with nothing else between them: what comes immediately after a thing is its walī.

The word مَوْلَى (mawlā) covers a wide field in Arabic and is interestingly a reciprocal word:

• Master (one who frees)
• A freed slave
• Helper, protector
• Friend, one who is close
• Owner, one who takes charge of another's affair

That is, the same word is used both for the upper and for the lower party. The reason for this is the sense of the root: the word states not a hierarchy but a bond. Both ends of the bond are named by the name of the bond.

Its function in the verse. Note where the sentence stands. It comes immediately after the statement that an oath can be loosed. That is, the context is this: a person has given a word, the possibility of going back on that word has been stated, and immediately afterwards it is said "God is your mawlā".

There are two readings of this and both are defensible:

The two do not exclude one another. The common conclusion is this: the authority to untie comes from the other end of the bond.

Two names, and their choice suits the context.

الْعَلِيم — root ع ل م: to know. The faʿīl pattern, a knowing that is constant and complete.

الْحَكِيم — root ح ك م. The concrete sense of the root comes from a place often skipped: the bit put in an animal's mouth (ḥakama). A bit does not stop the animal; it steers it. It keeps it from going on its own and puts it into a direction.

The derivatives that come out of this: ḥukm (the decision that puts a matter in its place), ḥikma (the knowledge of putting a thing in its right place), iḥkām (making firm), ḥakam (arbiter).

That is, ḥakīm is not "one who knows much" — it is one who puts knowledge in its right place. The difference between knowledge and wisdom lies exactly here, and by setting the two side by side the verse makes the difference visible.

Its fitness to the context. The verse stated a way of resolution. That an oath can be loosed may look at first sight like a slackness: if the word given does not bind, what is the value of the word?

The two names give the answer to this objection:

• ʿAlīm — the one who knows which oath was given under which conditions. Who knows the states behind the oaths, the tight places, the things said in haste.
• Ḥakīm — the one who opens the door not arbitrarily but in its proper place. To return to the image of the bit: the possibility of untying is not the rein's being let go entirely; it is the correcting of direction.

That is, the verse says this: this door is not a slackness but a measured flexibility.

One. That a word given can be taken back.

The verse says something heavier than it appears: every bond by which a person binds himself does not have to be permanent.

This has two sides and both must be seen at once.

The first side is open to abuse: every arrangement that makes going back on one's word easier can lower the value of the word. The Qurʾān is aware of this risk and criticises openly elsewhere the taking of oaths lightly; moreover, that an expiation is provided shows that untying is not without cost. The door is open but it is not free.

The second side, and the principal one: a person may have bound himself to a wrong thing. There are words given in a moment's anger, out of an excessive scrupulousness, out of a feeling of guilt. To carry such a word for a lifetime is not keeping one's word; it is keeping up a mistake.

What the verse does is to open a road between the two: to preserve the weight of the word but not to lock a person inside his own mistake.

Two. A door opened for excess.

The context of the verse — the extra prohibition in the previous verse — makes this verse face in a particular direction. The oath whose loosing is made easier is not an oath to do evil; it is an oath of deprivation.

That is, the Qurʾān is here giving a way out to a person who is loading extra weight upon himself. This is not a sentence standing alone; at al-Muzzammil 73/20 there was a verse doing exactly the same work, and the finding recorded there was this: the lightening does not come upon a fault, it comes after something done in excess.

The two verses show the same mechanism:

The common conclusion: in correcting a person who loads too much upon himself, the Qurʾān does not use punishment; it recalls the measure.

Three. That a word is bodily.

That the word yamīn means "right hand" points to something we have lost today: giving one's word had a body. A hand is clasped, eyes meet, a witness is found.

Today most undertakings are bodiless: a box is ticked, a button is pressed. And the psychological weight of a bodiless undertaking is different from that of a bodily one — this is a fact observed in the behavioural sciences too, and it explains why rituals such as the signature, the handshake and the witness persist.

I write this not as a "scientific miracle" but as an ancient observation recorded by the word: a word is heavier when it is given by hand.