al-Taḥrīm 66:5

ʿAsā rabbuhū in ṭallaqakunna an yubdilahū azwājan khayran minkunna muslimātin muʾminātin qānitātin tāʾibātin ʿābidātin sāʾiḥātin thayyibātin wa abkārā

"If he divorces you, it may be that his Lord will give him in exchange wives better than you: submitting, believing, devoutly obedient, repentant, worshipping, travelling (or fasting) — previously married and virgin."

This verse is one of those most open to being misread when torn from its context. Two grammatical signs prevent this and both stand at the head of the sentence.

The first sign: عَسَىٰ. This is a verb in Arabic stating hope and expectation — "it may be that", "perhaps". It states no certainty, it sets up no ruling, it gives no promise.

The Qurʾān uses this word in contexts of threat as well as in contexts of promise; what they have in common is that the outcome is left open. Indeed the eighth verse of this sūra will come with the same word: ʿasā rabbukum an yukaffira ʿankum — "it may be that your Lord will cover over your evil deeds." There the addressees are all the believers and the word again states not a certainty but a possibility.

That is, the verse does not announce a decision; it voices a possibility.

The second sign: إِن طَلَّقَكُنَّ. The conditional form. "If he divorces." And this condition did not come about.

When the two signs are joined the logical structure of the sentence is this: an uncertain consequence of a condition that did not come about. This is the form of sentence with the weakest bindingness there can be.

I stress this because the verse is sometimes relayed as though it were a ruling or a threat. The grammar does not permit that.

The place the verse really works is the list of attributes, and what the list is built upon is the most important information in the verse.

Eight attributes are counted. They must be seen one by one, and then all together.

Now look at the list as a whole.

All of the first six attributes recount the woman's relation with God: submitting, trusting, obedience, turning, worship, and the sixth, in whichever sense it is taken, again a form of worship.

There is not a single attribute in the list to do with the husband. Neither obedience, nor service, nor agreeableness, nor beauty, nor lineage, nor wealth. Not one.

This is the real thing the verse says and it is generally skipped. The khayr in the expression "better wives" is not defined from the side of the husband; it is defined from the side of the relation established with God. That is, the measure comes not from inside the marriage but from outside it.

And this agrees exactly with the account of the four women at the end of the sūra: there too the women will be assessed not by their husbands but by their own choices. The sūra will apply from the tenth verse on the measure it lays down in the fifth.

The last two attributes are of a different kind. Thayyibāt and abkār state not a moral quality but a status: those who have married before and those who have not. And by their being mentioned together something is done: both categories are counted as equal.

This has a consequence: that a woman has married before subtracts none of the attributes in the list. The list counts moral qualities, then sets two marital statuses side by side. No distinction is made; both are counted.

Moreover the root of the word أَبْكَار (ب ك ر) means "to be early, to be first" — from the same root come bukra (the early time of morning) and bākir (first, early). English shows the same in virgin soil and virgin forest, where the word keeps the root's original sense: untouched, in its first state.

Root س ي ح (s-y-ḥ). The concrete sense of the root is the flowing of water over the ground. Sāḥa'l-māʾ — the water flowed, it spread. From this come sayḥ (flowing water, a stream) and siyāḥa (going about a place without stopping, roaming). The Turkish words seyahat (travel) and seyyah (traveller) are borrowings from this root.

The meaning of the word in the verse is disputed in the classical sources:

I adopt no preference. The first view is the most widespread in the sources; but widespread currency is not linguistic proof. The second view is closer to the sense of the root but is strained by historical practice. I do not have enough data in hand to speak with certainty.

The context of the verse is, for the reasons I recorded in the introductory section, a context in which the detail should not be entered upon. The verse speaks of the consequence of a condition, and that condition did not come about.

I content myself with saying this much: the verse names no person, it issues no ruling about any person, and the measure it gives — eight attributes — looks not at persons but at qualities. This means that the rule of method recorded in al-Māʿūn is at work here too: the verse describes an attribute; whoever bears that attribute is the one the verse is speaking of.

Where the measure of "better" is taken from.

What the verse does in a single sentence is to set up a measure of comparison. And where the measure is taken from is more important than the measure itself.

Whether a person is "better" has an answer that changes according to whom and to what the question is put. The verse answers this question not from inside the relationship but from outside it: six of the eight attributes counted are qualities the person carries on her own. These are not produced in a relationship with someone else, and they do not disappear when that relationship ends.

The side of this that faces the present is direct: to measure a person's worth by how far she suits someone else makes that person dependent on the relationship. When the relationship changes the measure changes too; and the person is obliged to negotiate her own worth over again each time.

The list in the verse does not use this measure. And its not using it lays down a principle valid for men and women alike: a person's quality comes before her relationships.